NightFall (9 page)

“
You need to be more
careful, especially after we get the kids,” she said

Rob shrugged.
“We have to be prepared for more encounters like
that. Once we get to the city, it’s a guarantee.”

She pointed her finger at
him.
“You’re not hitting anyone with this
car. Do you understand?”

Rob glanced in the
rear-view mirror and nodded. They continued on, getting closer to
the Park Avenue exit.
A blurry line of
vehicles rushed by the tinted windows. Face upon face turned to
watch them pass. They were in an uncompromising spot and woefully
outnumbered. Harlem and Madison Avenue. That’s where they needed to
be. He wanted to find a parking garage. Someplace safe and out of
sight.

“
Imagine that,” he said.
“We can park anywhere we want and we won’t get towed.”

Mila looked at him unamused. “Well,
I’m glad you can find some humor in this terrible
situation.”

“
Me too,” he
responded.

They went off exit 34, Manhattan and
Queens, driving to the side of two lanes, avoiding all the cars in
the way.

“
Hold on,” Rob said,
taking a sharp turn over a median to their right. Mila clutched the
door’s armrest as the car bounced up and sparked as the tail end
came down and hit the pavement.

The hit was jarring, like going over a
speed bump too fast, but Rob maintained control and veered the car
off the exit and onto the street. He glanced to the side and saw
hordes of people standing around, near vehicles, attentively
watching him drive by.

Mila looked around trying to get her
head right. The museum was a few blocks away along the congested
streets before them.

Rob took another sharp turn down an
empty alleyway between two abandoned buildings. He drove past a
large green dumpster and several crates, coming to the back
entrance a three-story parking garage—just what he was looking for.
They coasted past the unmanned guard shack and up to the second
floor, where he slid into a space along a row of other parked
cars.

“
What is this? How’d you
know about this spot?” Mila asked, catching her breath.

“
Just a hunch,” Rob said.
“I still remember some places to park around here.” He shut off the
engine and put the keys in his pocket. “So I guess it’s on foot
from here.”

Mila nodded.

“
Do me a favor,” Rob said,
pointing. “Could you check the radio again, please?”

Mila opened the glove box and pulled
out the emergency radio. They repeatedly had tried to get a working
frequency during the drive, but had failed. Nothing but static for
miles. Rob took the radio, cranked the knob and turned the dial
slowly as the speaker crackled and hissed.

“
Come on…” he said
impatiently. “This is ridiculous. Surely the government put
measures in place to protect emergency broadcasting.” At the height
of his frustration Rob heard a high-pitched emergency
tone.

“
Massive power grid
failure along the east coast…”
a faint
voice said over the radio.

“
We got something!”
Anxious, Rob held the radio up and closer to his ear.

“
Residents advised to stay
indoors… utility companies are working with government officials to
fix issues…”

The signal disappeared
again.
“Damn it,” he said, setting the
radio to the side. And looked at Mila. She was nervous and
fidgety.

He took her hands in
his.
“We’re halfway to our goal. All we
have to do is get the kids and get back here.”

A slightly-forced smile came across
her face.

“
You have your gun,
right?” Rob asked.

Mila patted her side. Rob
pulled his Beretta from under the seat and pushed it into his
pocket.
“Let’s do this,” he said, pulling
the bottom of his short-sleeved plaid shirt over his
pocket.

They stepped out of the car and closed
their doors. The sound echoed throughout the quiet garage. Rob
circled the car, inspecting the tire pressure and searching for
leaks. Everything looked good. The last thing they wanted was to be
stranded in the city, helpless as everyone else.

“
Ready?” Rob asked Mila,
standing up.

Mila flashed a resolute expression.
“You bet.”

Rob took her hand and they walked down
the parking garage ramp to the first floor where there foot journey
would begin. They emerged from the parking garage onto a sidewalk
which led to Park Avenue.

The path ahead looked on troublesome.
Businesses seemed to be closing their doors and the streets were
full of people and growing by the minute. Hordes had taken up
residency on sidewalks, at bus stops, and anywhere they could find
shade and rest. The seeds of discontent and lawlessness were
planted and looked ready to germinate.

Rob pushed through the crowd while
keeping Mila close. He kept his eyes forward, trying not to make
eye contact with anyone. Most of the crowd moved in unison down
Park Avenue in the same direction as Rob did his best to maneuver
through.

A group of police officers rode by on
bicycles, trying to keep the roads clear and maintain some
semblance of order. They had resorted to the basics—air horns, to
maintain crowd control. People demanded all sorts of answers to why
the power was off, and why their vehicles and cell phones weren’t
working.

The police had little to
tell them.
“Interference,” they answered.
It was “a temporary glitch.” The utility companies were working to
get everything back on-line.”

The situation was becoming more heated
by the minute. People bumped against Rob and Mila time and time
again. A lanky, haggard-looking man with a beard and dirty ball
cap, grabbed Mila’s arm mumbling to her. His breath reeked of
alcohol. Mila yanked her arm away and kept walking. A string of
profanity then came from the man’s mouth in her wake.

“
Keep moving. Just a few
more blocks,” Rob said.

Swarms of people blocked their way
from all direction. They were packed in tightly among the crowd and
it was hard to breath. Rob pushed on, longing for the cabin. Mila
kept her hand over her pocket where she could feel the bulge of her
revolver.

They crossed a pedestrian
walkway to the next block, at a corner store.
As they passed, a voice shouted from inside as a man came
running out with a carton of cigarettes tucked under his arm and a
sixty-four ounce beers in each of his hands. The store owner, a
heavyset Indian man with a mustache, ran outside and chased the
man. Rob in Mila froze as the shoplifter headed right into their
path.

“
Stop! You!” the
storekeeper shouted. He pulled a pistol from his jacket and fired
six shots in rapid succession, taking down the fleeing man. The
bottles shattered on the pavement. Mila screamed and threw herself
against Rob.

Rob crouched down, pulling Mila with
him. The shoplifter collapsed right in front of them, riffled with
bullet holes. The storekeeper approached, gun in the air. Mila
glanced downward. The man lay dead on his side with one leg over
the other. His arms were out, his eyes closed, and his mouth
open.

The storekeeper went pale
with disbelief.
“I told him to stop,” he
said. “Why did he not listen?”

“
Come on,” Rob said to
Mila, standing. “Let’s keep moving.”

They held each other’s
hands tightly and moved on. The bicycle cops were quick to the
scene following the echo of gunshots. They shouted
at the storekeeper to drop his weapon. A large
group of people had gathered around, paying the scene no mind, even
with the sounds of the police tackling the storekeeper to the
ground.

“
Only a few more blocks,”
Rob said.

A sign for the museum was in view. Two
sophisticated women walked by them trying to explain to each other
why their phones weren’t working. “Maybe it’s just a bad reception
area,” one of them said, holding her phone.

“
I don’t know what the
hell’s going on. Terrorists?” another man said to his friends as
they walked by.

“
Your guess is as good as
mine, dude,” his friend said.

“
EMP,” another one said.
“I’ll bet you a million bucks.”

The words caught Rob’s
ears.

Approaching the museum,
they crossed over to Madison Avenue and took East 84th Street. The
regal stone building with Greek columns lined up at the entrance
was a welcome sight. The overflow of people coming outside made
Rob
’s heart jump. He squinted to search
for any sign of Josh and Kelly. It was impossible to tell anyone
from anyone else.

“
Where do you think they
are?” Mila asked. The three-story metropolitan building was massive
in size, and they had a lot of ground to cover.

“
I’m sure their teachers
have kept the classes together for the time being. A power outage
in a museum isn’t the end of the world. No reason for panic among
the students.”

As they got closer to the
front entrance, they noticed that most of the doors were closed;
only a few remained open. A considerable amount of security guards
manned the doors, and it appeared that they
weren
’t letting anyone in.

“
Come on,” Rob said,
running ahead. “We don’t have much time.”

They charged up the steps
of the entrance, dodging around people leaving, and tried to push
their way through. Rob had lost Mila
’s
hand and turned back to find her. She was struggling to get up the
stairs, pushing through an angry batch of people denied
entrance.

“
Where do you think you’re
going?” one loud-mouthed dirty-looking man shouted at her as she
tried to push by.

Rob went back down a few
steps and tried to make some space for her to get through. He took
her hand and walked up a couple steps, shouting,
“We’re looking for our children!” His pleas only
did so much, but it was just enough that people began to let him
push past, all the way up to the platform entrance, where security
guards manned two open doors.

“
My children are on a
field trip here,” Rob said to the first, blue-uniformed security
guard. “We need to find them.”

The thirtyish security
guard showed little sympathy for Rob
’s
plight. There were simply too many people making demands to get
inside, and he had heard it all. “Sir, in light of current events,
we’re temporarily closing our doors for the safety of our staff and
of our artifacts. It’s standard protocol.”

Rob tried to push his way
through. The guard grabbed his arm as other security guards stepped
closer, ready to act.
“I’m not leaving
without my son and daughter, do you hear me?” Rob shouted. “They
came here on a field trip. Do you still have any school children in
there?”

The guard looked unsure, and didn’t
respond.

“
You don’t even know, do
you?” Rob asked. “That’s why you have to let us in.”

The guard raised his hand,
blocking Rob.
“Sir, I can’t allow
that.”

“
Let me in!” Rob
shouted.

Suddenly a woman came out
of the building wearing a long dress, her hair pinned-back in a
bun. She called for the guards to wait and examined Rob through her
glasses.
“I’m a teacher!” she shouted.
“And this man is right. We have three grades still in the building.
There’s a good chance his children are among them.”

Rob looked back at the
guard.

The guard looked his
partner, who nodded in agreement.
“Make it
quick,” he said to Rob.

They walked inside
as
Rob shook the teacher’s hand.
“I’m Rob Parker, and this is my wife, Mila. We’re
looking for our son, Josh, and daughter, Kelly. They’re in the
sixth and eighth grades.”

The teacher thought to
herself carefully, distracted as further unrest was grew steadily
outside the museum.
“We have classes from
all three grades in here. No one has been released yet, so there’s
a good chance they’re still in here.”

“
Good,” Rob
said.

The museum lobby was dark as night
inside. The staff was already hard at work locking the place up.
Rob assumed that with thousands of priceless artifacts, artwork,
and sculptures, they weren’t taking any chances.

“
I’m Mrs. Ramsey,” the
teacher said. She then turned down a long, darkened corridor. “This
way, follow me.”

Operation Urban
Breach

The security in and around
the
“Met” was at its most heightened.
Spectators pushed past Rob and Mila with guards hastily escorting
patrons toward the exits. The vast dome-like ceiling raised on
pillars high above. Mrs. Ramsey stayed close and led the way past
museum wings and cultural exhibits. Under normal circumstances, Rob
would have enjoyed the private tour, but ancient artifacts were the
furthest thing from his mind.