A Town Called America (2 page)

The car was a beast, with its 454 big block punched out with twin carburetors and a blower. It was nothing short of pure power! A few years back, Rick had to reinforce the frame just to keep it from twisting. He called the El Camino his “War Machine,” and he loved it. He didn’t even mind the mesh wire over the windows or the faded black paint job that was about a half century past its prime.

Soon he would meet up with his ex-wife, Jess, at the gas station in Brick Creek, and then he and Eric would drive to his cabin. Perhaps they’d finally get to go on that ice-fishing trip he’d been promising him forever. It was going to be just the two of them for an entire week. It had been close to two years since they’d last seen each other, which was partially Rick’s fault, but times were tough for everyone—well, almost everyone. Jess, with her lack of loyalty and deep pockets of family money, was living the good life in a wealthy gated community that could afford full-time security. Although Rick hadn’t been there, he knew they weren’t hurting for food, and all because she was now married to some snob senator or former congressional representative or something like that.

Just thinking about having to see Jess and listen to her go on and on about how fabulous her life was and how he was just a bum sent a chill up his spine. Few people in the world scared him, but if one person did, it was definitely her. She just made him so angry and losing
his temper was the last thing he wanted. Unfortunately it was also what had happened the last time he saw his son, however in the end, he knew that seeing her would be worth the pain he was about to endure so he could see his Eric.

As he drove on, the closer to town he got, the more the excited he became. Rick knew the next week with Eric was going to be perfect in every way. Eric was about to turn twelve and was growing up way too fast; for Rick, just seeing him would be paradise.

He pulled the El Camino over to the side of the broken-concrete road. For a few moments, he sat there before stepping out. He needed to move some debris that was blocking his path. It was nothing he couldn’t handle, just an old car tire and an empty wooden create. Several minutes after he had stepped into the cold afternoon air, as he rubbed his fingers together in a poor attempt to stay warm, the radio in his car crackled to life. It sounded only like static at first, but it was enough to get his attention. The Emergency Broadcast Center was sounding an alert. After a series of repeated tones, Rick heard a message, but it wasn’t not clear enough for him to make out what exactly what was being said. He stood there, silently listening, until the words finally came through. They were words that would stay in his mind forever.

Rick knew he had only a short amount of time, and if he didn’t get off the freeway and to Eric, he wouldn’t be able to see his son, nor would he be able to ensure Eric was safe. After jumping back into his torn driver’s seat, he hit the gas and pushed the War Machine around the abandoned vehicles and debris that lay in his path.

Twisting and turning past the cars, he started to feel the impact of what was about to happen. Just up the highway, he turned the wheel hard to the right, hitting the off-ramp at sixty-five miles an hour. By now his mind was racing with the possibilities of what may soon occur. Traveling on the ice this fast may not have been the best idea, but under the circumstances, he had no other option.

Heading off the freeway to a side road, Rick knew he could be meeting Eric in less than an hour, but if he really pushed it, he could cut that time in half. The War Machine screamed to life as soon as he
hit the red button above his stick shift. Immediately, upon depression of the button, the thick black belt that connected to the turbo charger that protruded nine inches above his engine began to spin pushing Rick back in his seat hard.

Once off the freeway, he was hitting tree branches and fences and desperately trying to keep the vehicle under control at speeds well over a hundred miles an hour. Moving up the mountainside as fast as he could, he thought about how he wanted to teach his son to drive one day. One time he had told Eric that it was important to drive slowly because going fast just meant you wouldn’t get where you were going in one piece. Somehow this no longer applied to Rick because he was
moving
!

As Rick’s mind snapped back to reality, he realized he was coming around a pass that was only a mile or so from town. He didn’t remember passing the river or going through the underpass. His mind had been in another place altogether, and time had sped up. After what seemed like only a moment, he was in Brick Creek, Alabama.

In the town’s heyday, the population couldn’t have been more than two or three thousand; now it was fewer than six hundred. For Rick, however, it was the perfect place to escape the reality of his past.

The El Camino, finally slowing, moved down a road that was neither intended for the speed Rick had been going nor anything larger than a pickup. Once a two lane street, it was now over grown with plants and trees making it barley wide enough for a single vehicle, and it only became more narrow the closer he got to town.

Bare trees hung above both sides of the road, casting shadows that nearly blocked out the sun, even on the brightest of days. Today was no different as Rick moved down the shadowy road toward the town’s gate to wait for whoever had been assigned sentry duty to allow him to pass. He stopped his car just in front of an eighteen-foot-long box container the town used as its main gate. Full of solid concrete, it could stop just about anything that might try to get through.

Rick sat in the El Camino, watching as the faded red container rose from the ground. If you stood looking at it from the outside of the fortified town, it seemed as if it were magically floating as it moved to a
height of fifteen feet off the ground before it stopped in midair, hanging perfectly still. The real magic, as with any good illusion, took place behind the scenes. From the outside of town, what you couldn’t see was the crane the container was hanging from. Because of the incline of the hill that Rick had stopped on, to him as well as anyone else who viewed this, the container seemed to float entirely on its own. Rick had designed the container when Brick Creek had upgraded its security a few years back, and in every way, it was the perfect gate.

In the years since, however, he hadn’t done much for the good of the town. His greatest contribution now was scavenging, and most of what he found went to the town’s stockpiles. As he had become somewhat of a recluse, scavenging was the only thing that got him out of his house.

After passing under the massive gate, Rick hit the gas again. Tearing down Main Street, he knew that if Sheriff Parker were around and saw what he was doing, he’d never hear the end of it. As reluctant as he was to slow down, Rick made a hard left turn off the street and hit the brakes, sliding to a halt near the gas station where he was supposed to meet Jess and Eric. It wasn’t the first time he had driven like that, and it always amazed him that he’d never had a wreck.

The moment he stopped, a handful of people came outside, screaming at him, including Jess. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” she yelled. “You’re out of control!”

Rick jumped out of the driver’s seat and ran to the front the car, where Jess and was standing. Not wasting time, he grabbed her by the arm. “Let’s go! I don’t have time to explain. Get in the car!”

“To hell with you!” Jess screamed. “I’m not going anywhere with you!”

From the contempt in her voice, he knew this was going to be a challenge. Jess was dressed in a black coat with fur around the collar and matching earmuffs. She had a serious fondness for money and never attempted to hide it in the way she dressed.

“Where’s Eric?” Rick demanded.

“Eric? You really expect to talk about my son after you roar in here like it’s the end of the world? Eric is with my mother. He didn’t want to see you, and you…you should be grateful that I came here to tell you face-to-face.”

At that moment Rick’s heart dropped, as did as his shoulders. For a time everything seemed to pass in slow motion, and he desperately tried to pull his mind away from the emptiness that instantaneously consumed him. The excitement, joy, and belief that he would see his son suddenly vanished, leaving only contempt and anger.

After that, Rick stood up a little taller and pushed his shoulders back. A second later he was shouting at the small crowd that had gathered. Ignoring his ex-wife altogether, he was telling everyone to get back inside or they would die. It didn’t matter, however, because no one was listening; they just stood there staring at him.

Rick wasn’t surprised that Jess wasn’t listening to him either. They had gone their separate ways long ago, and he knew there was no way she’d listen to anything he said at this point. This wasn’t the first time Jess had kept Rick from their son, and he knew it wouldn’t be the last. Jess once had told Rick that they had met at a time when she was rebelling and that she had gone slumming, nothing more and nothing less. The only good thing to have come out of the situation was Eric, but if Jess had any say in the matter, Rick never would see him again, as she didn’t approve of what she called his “low-life existence.”

Rick tried to focus. He continued to speak to the crowd, informing them of what he had heard on the radio. He kept talking until the sheriff finally arrived. He didn’t even notice Sheriff Parker until he placed his hand on Rick’s shoulder, by which time he knew that two things were true: first, no one cared about what he had to say, and second, he was going to jail.

Sheriff Ronnie Parker, having known Rick for most of his life, wasn’t rough, nor did he mistreat him in any way. It was because of that mutual respect that Rick didn’t resist.

Sheriff Parker, standing all of five feet four inches and weighing around 160 pounds, led Rick around the corner to the jail. There were no cuffs, no embarrassing displays, but he did have a job to do, and as he saw it, Rick hadn’t left him any alternative.

From his jail cell, Rick tried once again to explain what he had heard on the radio. “I’m telling you, Sheriff, I heard it. Ronnie, you know me. I wouldn’t make this up. It was a weak signal, but I heard it.”

“Rick, no town has issued warnings in years, much less about invading troops. I know what you think you heard, but—”

Rick cut him off midsentence. “The M.M.—they’re coming, I’m telling you. You know what they’re capable of and what they’ve done in the past to other towns with more defenses than Brick Creek. They’re going to tear this town apart brick by brick and kill everyone they can.”

“Shut your mouth, Rick! I’m going to tell you this only once. You’re scaring folks with all this talk. It’s bad business. I can’t have you disturbing the public. Either the M.M. will show, or they won’t, but I have my money on the latter. If you ever do something like this again, I’ll personally ensure you never see the light of day. Do you understand me?”

Looking the sheriff right in the eyes, Rick stood up from the metal seat in his cell and grabbed the bars. “If they come, everyone will die!”

“The only reason ‘I’m gonna let you go this fast is because we grew up together. This is your only warning.” The sheriff opened the cell door and released Rick after ordering him to go home.

Just before Rick reached the main door, which was only twenty feet from the cell, the sheriff reminded him there had been zero confirmed sightings of M.M. soldiers in more than two years. Rick heard him clearly but paid him no attention.

When Rick got back to his car across the street, only a few people were still outside, talking among themselves. After his little chat with the local authority, and not wanting to risk a much longer stint in the lockup, Rick got into his car and drove off. Eric wasn’t with him—and Jess certainly wasn’t either—and he knew this was the first of many times to come that he truly would feel alone.

He couldn’t say how far down the road he was when he suddenly realized a woman was sitting silently in the passenger seat of his car. She was a woman who would change his life—and all lives—forever.

THREE

T
he town of Brick Creek—if you could call it a town—was a nightmare. At least that’s how Christiana felt about it. In a never-changing whirlwind, she had been stuck, and she knew if she didn’t get out, it eventually would lead to her destruction. If she spent one more day in that house with him, she’d end up in a ditch somewhere, most likely dead.

That piece-of-shit man who called himself her father was actually her foster parent.
What a pathetic excuse of a person
, she thought, as she walked down the street.

Chris, as she preferred to be called, was in her late teens but looked every bit a woman. Her long, flowing, brown hair was pulled tightly back in a ponytail. She’d shaved the sides of her head, but this was only revealed when her hair was pulled back in the ponytail. She had a slender figure and looked very much like the girl next-door type. The tattoos on her arms reminded her of the beating she had received after she’d gotten them. It didn’t stop her, though; she’d gotten six more since then. After her aunt, the only person close to her, had passed away, Chris decided she’d been the only one she could trust.

As she was a quiet girl, she didn’t have many friends. She was the type who’d immediately catch someone’s eye if she chose to, but she seldom ever cared enough to do so. She had high cheekbones and
a lovely face, but it was her bright-green eyes that revealed her feisty spirit along with a certain sadness she always seemed to carry with her.

The street was quiet as Chris walked to the town store to try to acquire cigarettes and, if she was lucky, some liquor. Usually the local store only had junk that people bartered for, but word had gotten around town that one of the local boys had made up some moonshine, and the prospect of that was worth the trip.

As she made her way down the street, Chris thought about her foster father, who wasn’t the noblest of men, and she had the bruises to prove it. The alcohol would, she thought, take the edge off.