Final Chaos

23

Aly’s pus-filled infected wounds were weighing heavily on Jim’s mind.

But he had to push them to the back of his head. There were plenty more immediate things that he needed to worry about.

The Carpenter’s house was up ahead. If he didn’t make it past there, Aly wouldn’t get her antibiotics. And she’d die. There were no two ways about it. And Jim didn’t believe in sugar coating anything, even to himself.

Jim grabbed the shifter, depressed the clutch, and got the Subaru into neutral. He didn’t want to kill the engine, but if he could coast by the Carpenter’s house, there was less of a chance they’d hear him.

If they saw him, they might try to shoot him as he passed. Or, worse, they might try to attack the lake house now, knowing that he was away.

The blinds in the squalid little house were drawn and there was no one out. No sign of anyone, really, except for the beat up pickup in the driveway.

When Jim was well past the Carpenter’s house, the Subaru was slowing down, and he put it back in second and slowly accelerated, keeping the engine noise to a minimum.

His plan was to take the back roads north to Dewittville, which was a small town of only a few thousand. He had maps with him, as well as a small backpack with enough food to sustain him for a few days.

But he didn’t expect to be eating much.

The plan was to get to the pharmacy, grab the antibiotics and head back. As quickly as possible. And with as little human interaction as possible.

People were going to be getting desperate. Every new interaction would have a possibility for violence. For confrontation. For injury. And death.

The biggest problem that he foresaw was that the pharmacy would likely be already raided. And antibiotics were going to be a prime target for everyone.

Sure, many people would go for the opiates. For the anti-anxiety meds. But the ones who understood the true risks at play in a situation like this would go for the antibiotics. They’d stockpile them.

And that meant that if Jim had to get to them, he’d be up against people who knew what they were doing, who were most likely armed.

He didn’t know how it would play out.

But the one thing he did already know was that he’d stop at nothing to keep his wife from dying from an infected gunshot wound. Especially one that was his fault.

Jim kept a close eye on the gas gauge as he drove. It was getting down into the danger zone, and he expected the emergency gas light to come on at any moment.

But he knew that he had about three gallons left once that warning light came on. And that was a lot of miles, so long as he drove carefully. The important thing for gas economy was to not drive faster than 55 MPH, and accelerate and brake slowly.

When possible, on the long sloping down hills, Jim put the Subaru into neutral and killed the engine.

There weren’t any other cars on the road.

He’d expected to see a few. Maybe some stopped. Maybe some moving.

But there were none.

Rather than being reassuring, it was eerie, giving him a sense of dread that sunk deep into his bones. He couldn’t shake it no matter how hard he tried.

Occasionally, when the trees allowed for it, Jim could glimpse thick plumes of black some on the horizon. He didn’t know where they came from. But he knew what they meant.

Chaos.

Jim wondered what would happen to the lake house if the Carpenters attacked while he was gone.

Would Jessica and Rob be able to handle it on their own?

They’d be, after all, severely outnumbered.

There wasn’t anything he could do about it. Not now while he was away. He’d done his best training Rob in firearms. In accuracy. Reloading. Everything he knew.

Hopefully it’d be enough.

Jim glanced at his map. He was getting close to Dewittville. He was expecting to come up to an intersection at any moment. He’d take a right, and it’d be a five minute drive into the center of town.

The road took a long, sloping curve around to the right.

The intersection was up ahead. Finally visible.

But there was more.

A large windowless van was parked laterally across the street, about a hundred feet before the road broke into the turn offs.

Jim slowed down, keeping his eyes peeled, looking for any sign of human activity.

The van was from the 1980s, one of the large ones used by plumbers and other workmen. Probably one of the one ton versions.

If Jim drove partially off the road, there’d be just enough room to squeeze around the van.

But maybe that was what someone out there was hoping for. After all, there must have been a reason the van was parked like that.

Someone could easily be hiding in the woods or the interior of the van, waiting to spring out and shoot at Jim’s tires.

Or worse, shoot him through the window.

Jim’s mind was working rapidly.

The way he saw it, he didn’t have any other options.

He had to go for it.

And if he was going to do it, he was going to do it fast. This wasn’t the time for caution. The faster he got through there, the safer he’d be. Sure, he’d risk an accident, but that the least of his worries right now.

Still no sign from the van. Or from the woods.

Jim downshifted quickly.

He floored the accelerator.

The Subaru leapt forward.

Jim drove straight towards the van, swerving only at the very last moment.

The right tires hit the bumpy ground. The Subaru rocked forcibly across the bumps and ruts.

The van on the left side moved by in a rapid blur.

Jim was going too fast.

There was a tree in his path straight ahead. If he continued, he’d wrap the right side of the engine around the tree.

Jim jerked the wheel to the left as hard as he could. The Subaru turned sharply.

There was a flash of movement off to the left.

Jim didn’t have time to look. He was struggling to get the Subaru back on the road.

He didn’t dare take his foot off the accelerator, in case whoever was there got their way.

A loud bang rang out.

The window behind Jim let out a loud crack.

The Subaru swerved onto the road. Yanking the wheel, Jim got it into a straight line.

In the rearview mirror, a woman stood in the middle of the road, directly behind him. She had long, tangled hair that hung past her shoulders. A rifle was in her hands, pointed directly at the Subaru.

Jim ducked down just in time.

Another loud bang and another crack. The bullet had struck the rear windshield.

Jim popped his head back up just in time to take the turn to the right.

A few tense seconds later, he was around the corner and speeding down a calm, empty road.

The van and the woman were behind him, and he was unharmed.

There wasn’t time to examine damage to the Subaru. Besides, a few semi-shattered windows didn’t matter.

His heart was pounding and there was sweat on his forehead.

He didn’t have to know who that woman was to know what she meant.

She meant that the societal situation had progressed to chaos. She was a rogue, robbing people on the road. Highway robbery was, in a very real sense, an ancient tradition that happened in places where the rule of the law had fallen to the wayside, where the natural ruthless nature of the human had room to freely raise its head and spew forth the violence and chaos that were required to take what it wanted, what it needed for its survival.

Jim was approaching the town.

Up ahead, there was a gas station to the right. And a supermarket to the left.

Farther down, there was a large hardware store.

The parking lots were all full. Probably from the shoppers that’d been there when the EMP had struck.

Jim slowed down as he approached a traffic light. The intersection here connected his road with a large, four lane road that ran through the center of the small town.

There were cars everywhere on the road, many of them when their doors and trunks open. They’d been abandoned, just left there.

There wasn’t another person in sight.

But Jim knew that didn’t mean much. Especially after his last encounter.

He’d barely survived. And that made him nervous. He didn’t like the idea of traps. Traps were situations where he didn’t stand a chance, where the odds were already stacked against him.

But that was reality.

And reality wasn’t fair.

There wasn’t such a thing as a fair fight.

Jim took the turn, heading onto the main road, heading down to the right where the largest cluster of shops seemed to be.

He had to weave through the stopped cars, sometimes driving slowly as he squeezed through tight spaces. Fortunately, the Subaru was a narrow vehicle.

It hadn’t even been two weeks since the EMP.

The way Jim saw it, it would take much longer for the majority of the population to die off.

If there was no violence, which was highly unlikely, people could survive for three weeks without any food at all. And there were bound to be scraps of food here and there to eat. So the real timeframe of starvation die off in this situation was much longer.

Jim doubted the city water here would be running, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t less than ideal water to drink. There’d be water in toilets, in the pipes, in water heaters, in ponds, and plenty of other places. People might get sick, but they’d be alive, for the most part.

The violence had likely already started, but who knew how far it had gone. Countless factors could determine what the violence would play out like, and it would probably be different for every town, city, and geographical area.

So Jim was heading into a town where people were closing in on the point of starvation. They were likely sick and starving and willing to do just about anything to get themselves and their families out of that situation.

They were desperate and dangerous.

Jim felt his Ruger with his hand, just to make sure it was there. It was reassuring. But only to a certain extent.

Jim saw no one as he weaved through the stopped cars. He drove past various shops and a few small houses that had been turned into apartment buildings.

Everywhere he looked, the shades were drawn and the doors were closed. Everywhere he looked, of course, there was no power.

Jim’s eyes scanned the shops for anything that looked like a pharmacy. Grocery stores often had pharmacies inside. But Jim figured grocery stores would be raided even before pharmacies.

To the left, he spotted one. A small pharmacy, probably family owned.

The pharmacy looked strangely normal, as if it was any other day, except for the absence of lights. A couple cars were in the parking lot.

Jim swung the wheel around and pulled the Subaru into the parking lot.

He killed the engine, pocketed the keys, and got out.

Grabbing his backpack from the rear, he unzipped it and checked the contents.

Everything was there. A hammer. A crow bar. Bolt cutters. A pair of thick work gloves. All taken from Aly’s mother’s basement.

Hopefully breaking in would be as simple as breaking a window.

It wasn’t like he had to worry about alarm systems.

Jim glanced up and down the street. He saw no one.

But he didn’t expect it to stay that way. For all he knew, there were people waiting and in hiding. Ready to pounce. Ready to take from him what he had.

Jim strode swiftly across the parking lot, heading towards the rear of the store.

The front windows of the pharmacy were shattered. Piece of glass were completely missing in places.

Jim figured it was safer to go in the back. He wanted to stay out of view as much as possible.

In the back, the pavement of the parking lot was cracked and weeds grew. There weren’t any cars there. Just an old, rusted dumpster that was overflowing with trash. It reminded him of the area behind his little computer shop.

For all Jim knew, people had ransacked the shop, stealing cell phones and expensive electrical equipment, not knowing that it was all worthless now.

There was a back door to the pharmacy. Instead of a thick, steel door, it was a regular wooden door with a pane of glass.

Small town, thought Jim.

He couldn’t have gotten away with a door like that in Rochester.

With the hammer, Jim gave the glass a single, hard, whack.

The glass shattered.

Not wanting to injure himself, Jim got a glove on his hand, reaching inside. It wasn’t hard to find the deadbolt.

A couple seconds later, the door was wide open.

The darkness of the interior yawned in front of him.

Jim’s flashlight was still working, and he flicked it on, and took a single, cautious step inside.

But not before taking his revolver from its holster and getting his finger on the trigger.

As far as he was concerned, it was time to shoot first and ask questions later.