NightFall (11 page)

Rob pulled Mila close and
shouted over the din surrounding them.
“We’ve got to get through! Follow me!” Rob pushed his way
through the crowd and they made it to the corner on 84th Street.
They ran as fast as they could down the sidewalk, joining others,
hysterical and desperate to get as far away as possible.

Soldiers dropped from ropes all around
them as Black Hawks circled the city.

“
Let’s go. Try to keep
up,” Rob said.

Kelly was falling behind.
Her legs could only move so fast. Mila kept a tight grip on her
hand, slowing just enough for her to keep up. Mila suddenly lost
Rob
’s hand as he quickly moved ahead. She
shouted for him, drowned out by the noise of the truck.

The disorder in the streets shocked
her senses. Helicopters, panicked screams, voices blaring from
intercoms above, roads blocked with motionless vehicles, and the
methodical destruction of vehicles was unbelievable. It couldn’t
have been happening. But it was.

After a quarter mile, they reached
Park Avenue, only to find two green-military cargo trucks clearing
the roads like snow plows. Anyone in the road soon discovered that
the trucks were not stopping—no matter what. Commuters jumped out
of the way and watched helplessly as their cars were crushed and
swept along the road like debris.

Rob looked north down Park
Avenue. Platoons of armed soldiers walked behind the trucks,
scanning the road. The Black Hawks continued to blare from
overhead. With blocks to go, the odds seemed insurmountable, but
they had no choice but to push on.
“Everyone stay together,” Rob said.

Kelly, close to tears,
wrapped her arms around Mila.
“I’m scared.
Why are they doing this?” she cried.

Mila was helpless to move
with Kelly attached to her. Rob pulled Josh back as he tried to run
ahead.
“Wait,” he said.

He went over to Mila and picked Kelly
up, holding her in his arms against his chest. She was trembling
and drenched with sweat.

“
All right,” Rob said to
Mila and Josh. “
Now
we move. And don’t stop until we get to the car.”

They moved forcibly through the
crowds, trying to stay focused on their narrow path ahead, trying
to ignore the impossibility of what was happening around
them.

Race to the
Cabin

After a long, exhausting
journey, they finally neared the parking garage. Sirens wailed from
every direction.
Smoke and tear gas rose
into the city skyline, toward the top of skyscrapers. New York City
was a disaster, and the sooner they escaped, the better. The
three-story parking garage offered temporary refuge. They were all
exhausted and equally shaken—Rob’s arms strained from carrying his
daughter, Josh in a state of shock, and Mila rendered nearly
catatonic.

“
Guess we should have
taken the subway,” Mila said in a dry tone.

Rob laughter with uneasy. “Guess
you’re right.”

They had no clue if the subway was
still operational or not. Metro stations from Manhattan to Queens
had been swarmed with no way for them to enter. Sad as it seemed,
they were safer above ground.

Looting had begun along the way, in
small doses, but apparent in nearly every storefront they
encountered. The city looked to be in a full-scale riot. Smoke. Gun
shots. Vandalism. Sirens. Helicopters circled above as trucks
bulldozed through gridlocked traffic throughout all five
boroughs.

The Datsun looked untouched—a
glistening jewel, covered in dust in debris. He pulled the keys
from his pocket, confident that the car would start, but a little
nervous anyway.

“
All right, everyone. In
the car,” he said, unlocking his door.

Josh stood back and
scanned the car.
“In this thing? Where’s
the Kia?”

Kelly and Mila were
already inside, happy to be off their feet.
Rob walked to Josh and pointed outside the parking garage to
the streets below. “You see what’s going on out there?”

“
I do. But I don’t
understand it because you won’t tell me anything.”

Rob gripped his
shoulder.
“I told you that I’ll explain
everything once we get home.”

Josh crossed his arms and
huffed.

“
What is it?” Rob
asked.

He looked up,
saddened.
“My friends from school. I made
fun of them for having to stay in the museum. I didn’t know…” he
voice trailed off and he hung his head.

“
None of us could have
seen this coming. But all that matters now is how prepared we
are.”

“
Are we prepared?” Josh
asked.

Rob looked ahead. He could
see smoke and fire rising from afar, deep in the city.
“I believe we are, yes.” He then gently ushered
Josh in the back seat. After he got in, Rob took a seat and took a
deep breath. He stuck the key in and turned the ignition to the
glorious sound of his internal combustion engine.

He turned to Mila, exhaling in relief.
“Thank God.”

Mila unfolded the map, and
looked at the route back. There was no way to avoid the highway,
and she was certain things had gotten worse.
“Just get us home safely,” she said.

“
I plan to,” Rob said,
putting the car in reverse.

Kelly was quiet, still shaken. Josh,
on the other hand, fired off a litany of questions.

“
Is it like this back
home, too?” “What shut the power off?” “Who were those guys
dropping out of the helicopters?” “Why were those trucks pushing
cars out of the way?”

“
It was an EMP,” Rob said,
backing out and trying to answer one question at a time.

Mila turned around to face
Kelly.
“Honey, are you all
right?”

Kelly nodded. She looked pale,
possibly dehydrated. Mila quickly pulled some water bottles from
under her seat and passed them around. Josh and Kelly gulped them
down.

“
An EMP? You mean like
that thing in
Last
Earth
?
” Josh
asked.
Last Earth
was a popular science-fiction show from a few years ago that
portrayed the effects of an aerial EMP over a small town. Josh and
Rob had watched it all the time.

“
Nothing is official,
buddy. I did see a blast in the sky outside my shop. After that,
everything just seemes to have stopped.”

Josh pressed his face
against his window, trying to look out beyond the parking garage
with renewed interest.
“Whoa. I can’t
believe it.”

They drove down the ramp past the
guard shack and onto a road brimming with parked vehicles. Rob had
just enough room to maneuver around and toward the Expressway
on-ramp, less than a mile away. Hordes of people lingered and
gawked at the one moving car on the road, as Rob drove over medians
and sidewalks, narrowly avoiding them along the way.

Fighter jets stormed by again,
followed by a fleet of helicopters. At first glance, it appeared to
be a massive military exercise, but what they had seen was no
training exercise.

Rob turned to Mila,
handing her the emergency radio.
“Here,
give it another try.”

She turned the dials
searching for a signal. This time, Mila wasn
’t getting anything at all.

“
I just don’t understand
it,” Rob said. “Why aren’t we being told what’s going
on.”

He drove up the on-ramp toward I-87,
staying to right side of the road just over the white line and onto
the grass. His driver’s side door was within an inch of a line of
vehicles. The highway fared no better than the city streets, as
hundreds of people walked along every lane, and blocked blocking
the shoulders.

“
This is going to be
tricky,” Rob said, feeling anxious. Mila turned the radio knob back
and forth intermittently. Frustrated, she brushed her black bangs
away from her eyes, and set the radio on her lap.

“
How could something like
that happen? In
this
country?”

“
The response-time is what
gets me,” Rob responded. “Two hours after an EMP strike, and there
was already a full-fledged military operation in downtown
Manhattan.”

“
Did those look like
American soldiers to you?” Mila asked.

Rob scoffed. Not even he
had considered the idea of their being foreign.
“Mila, come on! Of course they were American
soldiers.”

“
What makes you so
sure?”

Rob thought for a minute.
He didn
’t have an answer. He laid down on
his horn, trying to clear the ranks of people walking along the
side of the road.

A large group turned around, startled
and slowly made space for Rob to drive through.

“
This is ridiculous,” Rob
said, getting frustrated. “These people have the whole damn road to
walk down and they have to block the side.”

“
They’re just as confused
as we are,” Mila said.

They continued north as Rob repeated
pressed on the horn to clear a path. The last thing he wanted to do
was hit someone—but people were making it more and more difficult
as he progressed. Up ahead, one particular group of young people
saw the Datsun coming and began to look for a way to block their
path. Their friends had already tried waving Rob down, but hand
been ignored.

“
What is it?” Mila asked,
squinting ahead.

“
Just some punk kids,” Rob
said.

A half mile up the road, a group
pushed a vehicle into the right shoulder, blocking their path. Rob
pushed the gas, flooring it.

“
Hold on tight,” Rob said,
as they shot forward.

He swerved back into the
lane, narrowly missing a parked dump truck and sped through a small
opening in the middle of the road between two cars. The punks,
unprepared for Rob
’s maneuvering, tried to
chase him down, but it was too late. The Datsun continued on
unabated.

Rob swerved through open spaces in the
road and then back onto the shoulder, where they were safe for the
time being. With thirty miles to go, the radio suddenly caught a
signal, broadcasting a message similar to the one they had heard
before.

“
Residents are advised to
stay indoors until utility services can properly be restored to
affected areas.”

Rob listened carefully as Mila turned
up the volume up all the way.

“
An unexplained aerial
magnetic wavelength has disabled power grids across the country,
also affecting stand-alone personal electronic devices and vehicles
within forty thousand feet of the mass spectrum. A reported nine
interconnected substations and transformers have been compromised,
disabling power and mobility for hundreds of millions of
Americans.”

The broadcast had yet to delve into
exactly what the government was doing. Rob waited impatiently, and
after a few seconds the broadcast resumed.

“
Government officials are
closely monitoring the situation while advising residents to stay
off the streets and out of highly populated areas, where
riot-control measures are currently being implemented.”

“
Riot control?” Mila
asked. “Is that what that was?”

Rob took
Mila
’s hand in his while keeping a careful
eye on the road. The broadcast then switched to another long,
high-pitched tone, followed by a repeat of the earlier
message.

“
This is a message from
the Emergency Alert System. This is not a test. All residents are
advised to stay indoors…”

The Datsun shuttled down the road as
they left the smoking city behind them, headed back home where they
could hunker down and wait for everything to blow over.

Refuge

“Will everyone just calm down? I told
you that we’re going to be OK. We’re prepared for this!” Rob said
as they crossed the I-287 over the Hudson River.

It had been an exhausting and
dangerous journey back home avoiding cars and angry pedestrians.
Kelly was upset, Mila was on-edge, and Josh was asking too many
questions. Stress began to weight down on all them, especially Rob.
.

After avoiding another angry mob on
the road, he slammed his fist on the steering wheel. “This is
ridiculous. Why can’t these people just move out of the way? We
should have never moved here!”

“Calm down, Rob,” Mila said. “You’re
doing fine. Just get us out of here.”

He turned to her with understanding.
Mila, herself, was tired and fatigued, but she had done everything
necessary to retrieve their children from a volatile situation. And
they had succeeded. The next step was simple: grab everything they
could and bug-out to the cabin. Rob couldn’t believe they were
actually doing it. In his mind, they were already there and safe.
But they still had a ways to go before any such fantasy
materialized.