Final Chaos

11

Aly was helping the young woman back into the Subaru. She’d taken the gun from her and talked to her in a soothing voice, telling her that everything was going to be OK in the end, that they were going to get her help.

The young woman still glared at Jim and Rob with suspicious, narrowed eyes. But she seemed more open to Aly.

“Glad to see she’s OK,” said Rob.

“I don’t think she’s out of the weeds yet.”

“She woke up. That’s a good sign.”

“She seems confused. I hope she didn’t suffer brain damage.”

“She was wearing a helmet.”

Jim nodded.

“So what are we going to do? Take her to the hospital?”

“I don’t know,” said Jim.

This wasn’t going the way he’d hoped it would go.

The whole situation was a mess.

Now that he had Aly, the entire weight of the situation fell heavily on him. He’d been focusing so much on just getting to her, that he’d been mentally ignoring the countless serious risks they now faced.

He cursed himself for not having a better plan. Before the EMP, he’d taken some private pride in believing that he understood the havoc an EMP could bring. He’d believed that he, unlike the others, was prepared.

Sure, he had his little bag of odds and ends in the Subaru. But that was about it.

Now that he was faced with the situation head on, he realized he really had nothing. No plan. No place to go.

And worst of all, everyone he cared about didn’t have the slightest idea what an EMP was.

Both his wife and Rob were completely uneducated. He’d have to explain it all to them.

And that would take time. Precious time.

Jim glanced at his watch.

The clock was ticking. The longer the city went without power or communication, the greater the panic would become.

Tensions would rise.

A riot was inevitable. It was just a question of how long they had.

Jim threw open the rear door and grabbed the woman’s bicycle. He thought about tossing it aside, to make room for everyone in the car, but then he thought better of it.

Who knew when or if they’d be able to refill the gas tank. A bicycle might be useful later on.

There was some rope in the back, underneath the upholstered floorboards, where the spare tire sat. Jim grabbed it and began lashing the road bike to the roof. Fortunately, there were bars that continued a sort of roof rack. Good for tying extra gear without having to run rope through the windows, making the doors inoperable.

Jim’s mind was stuck on what he should have done. How he should have prepared.

Sure, he’d known there were things with his plan he could have improved on. And he’d known that at the time. He’d known he’d need a place to head, more gear, more of a plan. But it had always felt like there was all the time in the world to get those pieces in place.

The biggest thing he’d neglected was simple education. If only he’d bothered to spend twenty minutes explaining the nature of an EMP and the aftermath to his wife, to Rob, even to his mother in law, this whole process would have been a lot smoother.

Jim got in the Subaru and cranked the engine, driving slowly out of the police station parking lot.

It was a strange sight, seeing it full of police cruisers, with no police in sight.

Jim’s mind set to working. He ignored the chatter in the car, the frantic voices of his wife and friend and the stranger.

He needed a plan.

All he needed to do was stay calm and stay logical.

The situation was a mess, completely the opposite of how he would have liked it to have gone.

He’d wasted precious time trying to find his wife, with the police station, and with the amnesiac girl.

Worst of all, his mother-in-law and the supplies were all the way across town.

And no one but Jim seemed to understand the gravity of the situation.

And he still had to figure out where they were going to go.

Well, one step at a time.

His plan for now was to pick up his mother in law and the supplies. He’d search through the house to find whatever else he could.

He would have liked to go back to his house to scrounge up whatever else he could. There was food in the fridge and some cans here and there. Not much, but it was something. And he might have had a couple extra flashlights, and some spare rounds.

But he didn’t like the idea of heading back into Rochester which was more densely populated than Pittsford.

No, it was better to get out of there.

Out of Pittsford. Out of the greater Rochester area.

And then they’d figure out where to go.

And how to live as society crumbled.

There was a chance that society would hold together, that they’d be able to rebuild before chaos took over.

But Jim wasn’t counting on it.

“How’s she doing back there?” said Jim, glancing into the rearview mirror at the woman he’d hit with his car.

“I think she needs to get to a hospital,” said Aly.

Jim shook his head. “There’s no time for that now,” he said.

“What the hell’s gotten into you, Jim? You’re not going to take a sick woman to the hospital?”

“If she has brain damage, there’s not much they’re going to be able to do for her. If she’s lost some memories, only time will bring them back. She’s alive and breathing. She’ll be safer with us.”

“So where are you taking me? And just to be clear, I’m going to tell the police exactly what happened when they finally catch up with us. If you’re not going to turn yourself in, the least you could do is take her to the hospital. It might look good when you go before a judge.”

“What are you talking about?” said Jim.

“He thinks the world’s ending,” said Rob.

“Someone please tell me what’s going on,” said the amnesiac woman in a loud voice, almost a shout.

“OK,” shouted Jim. “Everyone calm down and be quiet. I’m going to explain everything. Just listen and look around.”

He’d been loud enough that everyone shut up.

He was driving down Connecticut Avenue, which was a four lane road. Two lanes on either side.

There were plenty of cars stopped in the middle of the road. The drivers, for the most part, remained in their cars. Some of them had opened their doors.

Jim weaved the Subaru between the stopped cars.

In his rearview mirror, he saw one other moving car, which was staying about a hundred feet behind him. It was a pickup truck, one of those small old Nissans that had small diameter wheels and rode fairly low to the ground.

“OK, everyone,” said Jim, speaking in a commanding voice that dared them not to listen to him carefully. “Look around you carefully. You see those stopped cars? They’re not doing that for fun. Their cars don’t work anymore.”

Jim continued speaking, giving them a pretty basic rundown of what an EMP was and what it affected.

Of course, Jim wasn’t completely sure of exactly what electronics an EMP actually would affect. He’d read various reports and various opinions online, and everyone seemed to believe something a little bit different.

What he was sure of was that the power grid wasn’t just temporarily down. It was damaged and it would take considerable work to get it running again.

“Now just imagine this going on all across the country,” said Jim. “Imagine the majority of the cars and trucks simply sitting there. Where’s the food going to come from? And the water? Now I’m sure you’ve all seen how people around here react when there’s a bad blizzard coming in. And we’re all pretty used to the snow, but still you’ll see huge lines in the supermarkets, and the bottled water going completely missing off the shelves in a matter of hours. You’ll see fights here and there breaking out, just from rising tensions. Now that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”

“So you’re completely serious about all this?” said Aly. For once, he couldn’t read her tone of voice or tell what she was thinking.

Either she still thought he was having a psychotic break or she was beginning to take him seriously.

“Yeah,” said Jim. “Very serious. We need to get out of here.”

“I think he’s making some good points,” said Rob. “People were going crazy at your mom’s house… They were thinking that…”

“You saw it with your own eyes, Rob,” said Jim, cutting him off. “And you still have doubts?”

“Well,” said Rob. “I’ll admit people were going pretty crazy, but you know I don’t see why you think that everything’s going to fall apart so easily. Like in a snowstorm maybe there’s a little bit of chaos and then people pretty much go home and wait it out.”

“But what happens when the power doesn’t come back on tomorrow, or the next day, and then it’s still off a week out? And people are hungry and thirsty and they’re realizing that they’re literally going to die in a matter of weeks simply from hunger?”

“Huh,” muttered Rob, as if he was stumped.

Jim glanced in his rearview mirror again. The small truck was still following them at the same distance.

Up ahead, there were two cars stopped. They sat next to each other, blocking the way.

Jim downshifted and swerved into the oncoming lane to avoid them.

He was driving about forty, which was a little faster than normal for this road. But he didn’t want to go fast and risk an accident. That’d be the last thing they’d need right now.

“It’s going to be OK, honey,” his wife was saying in the backseat. “Now tell me, you don’t remember anything?”

“I remember some things… I know who I am… and…”

Jim didn’t have time to pay attention.

Up ahead, there was something blocking the entire road. Something huge. But it was still far enough off in the distance that he couldn’t quite make out what it was.

Was it a tractor trailer lying sideways?

No, it seemed bigger than that.

They’d taken a different route to the police station. He’d chosen this way back after realizing it was a more direct route.

“What the hell is that?” muttered Rob, from the passenger seat.

Suddenly, it hit Jim.

He knew what it was.

“It’s a plane,” he said.

“A plane?”

“The EMP would knock out the plane’s electronics,” said Jim.

“So it’d just fall to the ground? It doesn’t look too busted up.”

They were getting closer, and Jim hadn’t yet slowed down.

Jim shook his head. “They’d have, what, twenty minutes gliding in the air. And that’s max.”

They had a good view of the plane now.

“Wow,” said Rob. “It’s a big one.”

Jim said nothing.

From the back of the car, he heard his wife gasp.

“You believe me now?” said Jim.

She said nothing.

“What are you going to do?” said Rob. “Why aren’t you slowing down?”

“We’re going to need to get around it,” said Jim.

“Why not just go another way?”

“There’s no other way,” said Jim.

“Sure there is.”

“It’d take us an extra half an hour with how much we’d have to backtrack. We don’t have time for that.”

In the rearview mirror, the small Nissan truck was still following at a distance. Did they want something? Were they following them for some reason? Or were they just headed in the same direction?