Immortality (24 page)

~

Sarah was in the bedroom getting dressed. The electricity winked out for a moment, then came back. In the living room the television was playing an earlier speech by the president. Sarah slid an optional trauma plate into the front of her body armor. The plate was a flat piece of ceramic material designed for added chest protection. Bullets striking a vest could cause severe bruises or even bone damage. The plate prevented that type of trauma and also slowed high velocity rifle rounds that would otherwise penetrate the vest. She readjusted some Velcro straps for the added thickness.

Over the armor, Sarah tugged on an extra large sweatshirt. The gray cotton hung from her shoulders like a tent. She also had on a pair of jeans and high-top sneakers. She racked a shell into her Beretta and then concealed it inside a jogger’s belt-pack that had a special quick draw compartment designed for the gun. The pack was standard police detective issue. Another part of the pack had a flap used to hold her police shield. In the normal part of the pack went extra clips and as much ammunition as she could fit. All the ammo caused the pack to weigh down against her tummy like a sandbag. She put on a baseball cap that had the Morristown Police logo stenciled in white on the front. She pulled her ponytail through the adjustment strap in the back. Her look was complete. She hoped it would attract little or no attention. She started to put on some lipstick but then stopped and gazed at her reflection. The only adornments she wore were a set of pearl stud earnings. She dropped the lipstick onto the floor and walked away.

Sarah felt disconnected from the world. At eight in the morning on a clear fall day, she slung on her backpack and picked up her walking stick. She noticed how her fingers wrapped around the time-smoothed wood. The paint on the walls had a more pronounced texture than she remembered ever seeing. She noticed a faint buzzing from the kitchen clock. All her perceptions seemed to be slightly skewed, a bit like a dream that was vanishing just before waking. She called to Ralph. He came trotting into the kitchen. He was jittery and clearly psyched for a great adventure. From past experience, he connected the walking stick and backpack with trips to the country.

Sarah opened the door and stepped out. She started walking with little thought beyond the moment, just one foot in front of the other. Hiking back to her Nissan, she tried to keep everything she saw as snapshots in her memory. The trees had lost most of their leaves and what remained were muted autumn colors. The world looked almost normal. What was missing were the sounds – no squeals of children, or people chatting on porches, or cars, or the other million different sounds of an industrialized world. There were the occasional barking and bird noises, but that was all. Some of the more aggressive wild animals were already staking out new territories in yards and alleys and other places they had never been. A raccoon was on a roof trying to pry up a lose shingle. The first into the ecological void would reap the bounty.

As they walked, Sarah explained her plan to Ralph. They were heading south. He seemed okay with the idea, then ran off to chase a squirrel. A minute later he came back with a look of pride on his face. As they turned a corner, Sarah noticed a pack of dogs on the porch of a house. One of them, a large German Shepherd, came down the steps toward them. The animal was crouched and moving directly at them. The dog was not growling or barking. The animal was completely silent. The remainder of the dogs followed behind what was probably the alpha male. They were behaving like a wild pack of hunters. Ralph’s hair bristled on his back. He began to move at the leader. “No,” shouted Sarah. He stopped but kept his focus on the alpha dog. Ralph was much larger and stronger than the Shepherd. The pack continued in a cautious advance. They began to spread out in a semicircle across the yard. Sarah drew her gun and fired two shots in the air. The pack broke and fled in different directions.

The Nissan was just as she’d left it. Sarah had been worried that it might have been vandalized or towed from the front lawn where she’d parked it. The officials in charge of cleanup must have thought it belonged to whoever owned the house. The engine turned over on the first try. She made a right turn onto Washington Street; route Two Eighty-Seven was less than a mile away. The car radio was receiving news reports. Her police walkie-talkie was plugged into the cigarette lighter. The volume was set low. There were continuous radio calls sending State Troopers in one direction, then a minute later turning them around and vectoring them off toward higher priority incidents. The system was being taxed beyond all limits.

Sarah took a sip from a gallon jug of Arrowhead water. She had no clear idea of a final destination. Anything away from this hell was a good start. For now, she headed south toward the New Jersey border. She had a vague plan of not stopping until she reached the Gulf of Mexico and then heading west along the coast. Texas sounded appealing; all that deserted sand and camping sites along its thin coastal islands, a warmer place as far away from this nightmare as anywhere in the country.

Sarah exited Route Two Eighty-Seven onto the New Jersey Turnpike. The tollgates were up. There was no one to collect money. Wrecked cars were piled up on a shoulder just past the gates. Sarah stared at the hills of metal. There had to be hundreds of cars and trucks in there. The shoulder was like a giant scrap yard. She looked straight ahead. The road was an empty three-lane strip of tar that disappeared into the horizon. She’d imagined the toll road would have been clogged with people trying to get out. She’d lived in this area her entire life and had never seen the Turnpike without heavy traffic. There was something very unsettling in all of this desolation. She pressed down on the accelerator. The Nissan moved up to sixty-five miles per hour; if she pushed it any faster, a front wheel shimmy would set in.

The highway was lined with patches of trees and buildings. Car-to-car police radio calls had been going back and forth for the last ten minutes. Sarah knew from the codes that the Staties were trying to corner a gang of teenage looters pulling hit ’n runs on stores throughout the area. One of the calls included a code for shots fired; another quickly followed with a code for high-speed pursuit.

Sarah was listening to a world that had lost its self-control; violence was becoming the coin of the realm. She wanted to leave it all far behind. She was just fifty miles from the state line where the highway would cross over into Delaware.

Every few miles there were pockets of mangled cars pushed deep into the shoulder. Sarah noticed sections of the pavement looked like a huge dozer blade had scraped it. She assumed the marks were from whatever had plowed off the wreckage. Car parts were scattered along the roadside like the fossil bones of some bygone era.

Ralph was sitting in the front seat. His muzzle was sticking out a partially-open window. One of his ears was pushed back by the wind. Sarah patted his back. He seemed to be enjoying the ride. He was probably tasting and remembering every smell that went past. He was a very intelligent animal, always curious and driven to explore anything new in his world. Sarah imagined his journey would be marked by a collection of smells, just as hers would be remembered by the images in her mind.

A shiny black Caddie flew past Sarah on the left. The car clipped her while cutting over into her lane. Sparks flew as if a power line had landed on the hood. Mayhem took her world. The wheel felt like one of her tires was gone. She spun sideways, then recovered only to lose control again. She was off the road and skimming along a grassy incline. Her teeth were clamped tight. At any moment she would be tumbling. The Nissan came to a stop in the grass. The engine puttered. Her heart was beating so fast that her body tingled. That Caddie must have been doing over a hundred. She could have been killed.

“Bastard!” she yelled. “Fuck you!”

She kicked the underside of the dash then kicked it again. A pair of State Police interceptors screamed past like ground-locked jet fighters. They had to be going half again as fast as the Caddie. Get him, she thought.

Sarah looked over at Ralph who’d ended up on the floor. The dog gave her a remorseful look. The poor guy had not enjoyed the auto-acrobatics.

Sarah got out of the car to check the damage. The front fender was crumpled into the tire. Some of the tread had been sheared off like the skin of an apple. She tried pulling on the fender. No use. The wrecked metal wasn’t moving.

Her hands were covered with road grime. She sat down on the ground and stared at the damage. Her car was going nowhere. That wheel didn’t have enough clearance to make left turns. Ralph let out a soft woof. He was looking out the window at her.

“No use, baby. We’re stuck here, screwed big time.”

Sarah slowly shook her head. She couldn’t believe how bad her luck was turning. Not an hour into her exodus and she’d already lost the Nissan. If they had to walk from here, it would be days before they reached the Delaware border. That was, of course, as long as some gang didn’t rape or kill her along the way. Get a grip, she thought. She couldn’t just sit here. She had to do something. She got into the car and turned the steering wheel to check how much of a left turn she could make. The tire pushed into the sheet metal. She heard a soft groan as the power steering applied too much pressure. Her eyes grew wide.
Mechanical power – that’s it!

“We’re okay, baby!”

She hugged Ralph then jumped out of the car. She opened the trunk and pulled out the spare tire and jack. She left the tire lying in the grass. The jack was a small hydraulic model. In a few minutes she had wedged the jack between the wheel and crumpled fender. She carefully began cranking the jack up one pump at a time. Slowly, the piston began to dig into the sheet metal, pushing it up and away from the tire. The metal started to rip, but her idea was working. After pushing one piece of sheet metal away from the wheel, she moved the jack over and started working on another section.

An hour later, Sarah stepped back from the Nissan to admire her work. Her face and hands were covered in grime but she was smiling. After the sheet metal damage was cleared, she’d exchanged the tire with the spare. The car looked like hell, but who cared? She was in business again.

~

Sarah pulled onto the left shoulder of the turnpike. She was only a few miles from the Delaware Memorial Bridge and the state line. Traffic was completely stalled beginning at the last tollbooth before the bridge. Some people were milling around on a grassy area of the roadside. A couple of kids were tossing a Frisbee back and forth. A section of the barrier between North and Southbound lanes had been removed. There was a steady stream of cars making u-turns through the opening. Not far up the road, Sarah could make out an Army Humvee ambling along the shoulder. The vehicle was moving in her direction. She watched it stop for a minute and then move on. She wondered if they were giving out information. Ralph put his paw into her lap.

“Stay here, baby,” she said. “I’m going to see what’s up.”

Ralph let out a short bark as if saying,
okay with me
. Sarah got out and walked over to the nearest group of people. The gathering looked like a father, a mother, and three children. The smallest was a girl of about four years old. She was occupied with a box of animal cookies. Sarah addressed the father.

“Hi there,” Sarah called out. “What’s going on?”

She extended her hand. The man shook it. His grip was firm.

“Well, no one’s sure when they’re going to open the bridge up. We’ve been here since four o’clock this morning. Right honey?”

The woman nodded and pushed some hair out of her face. The man continued, “Seems they’ve blocked the bridge and they’re not letting anyone in or out of Jersey. Some Army guys came by and told everyone that the state’s been temporarily quarantined by orders from Washington.”

“Since when?” asked Sarah. All of a sudden two-plus-two was not equaling four.

“I’m not sure. There’s a sign up ahead that says the Army has orders to shoot anyone trying to sneak across. Guess they’re serious about keeping the plague from leaking out. The folks up there...”

The man pointed to a group of people that had set up a barbecue. “…they’ve been here for two days. They said they heard gunshots the other night; and someone else said a man and woman had been shot dead on the Jersey side of the bridge.”

Sarah started walking back toward her car. She felt lightheaded. These were just rumors. The Army wouldn’t kill anyone that way; but a quarantine – now that was something believable. Sealing off the bridges leaving Jersey had to be what was going on. All these folks were not camping here because this highway was a lovely spot for outdoor recreation. Sarah noticed Ralph was watching her from a distance through the windshield.

Why hadn’t she heard anything about a quarantine in the news? An entire state being sealed off was something CNN wouldn’t have missed. Sarah stopped walking. She looked down at the ground for a moment. She nudged a rock with her toe. Think it through. The television and radio had been cutting in and out for days. She’d blamed the poor signal on emergency equipment. The interruptions could have just as easily been censors doing their job of keeping the population tranquil and at home. Once word got out that soldiers were surrounding the state, people trapped inside might just panic and nasty confrontations would result. A news blackout like this couldn’t be sustained much longer. This news had to be getting to the rest of the country. People outside had to be watching what was going on. That talk about a man and women being shot was crazy. There would be an outcry if the Army started slaughtering innocent citizens.

Sarah decided she was getting ahead of herself. Right now, she didn’t know a single thing that was not in large part guesswork. She let Ralph out of the car. He sniffed around at the ground, then looked up at her. She got a bottle of water and a dish from the car. While Ralph lapped up his water, Sarah put on her belt-pack with the Beretta inside. She clipped a small water bottle to the belt and stuffed some food and a pair of binoculars into a nylon gym bag. She thought about it for a moment and then took her badge from the belt-pack and hung it around her neck.