The Borrowed World: A Novel of Post-Apocalyptic Collapse (4 page)

“Thanks,” she said.  “I can take it from here.”

“You're welcome,” he said, rubbing his forearms.

When he left, Ellen opened the back door of the vehicle and called inside, “Pete, come back here and put these in the truck.”

He did as he was told, struggling slightly with the heavy cylinders, then got back in the vehicle.  Ellen finished unloading her purchases, then got in the car too.  Both kids were settled in their seats, sprawled out in apparent exhaustion.

“Too much work, too early,” Pete groaned.

“Can I go back to bed when we get home?” Ariel asked.

“Absolutely not,” Ellen said.  “Someone has to help me unload all this stuff and put it away.”

“Awwww,” they moaned in unison.

“We all have to help out while your dad is gone.”

“I hate the apocalypse,” Ariel muttered, scowling and crossing her arms.

I don’t know what Lois and Alice did in their car, but we spent the beginning of our drive from Richmond doing something I hadn’t done in a long time – listening to AM radio.  Ever since I'd reached my teenage years and began listening to the FM album rock stations of the 1970s, where they’d play an entire LP of Dire Straits, Steely Dan, Eric Clapton, or whoever, at a time, I'd avoided AM entirely.  It was the strictly the realm of fast-talking deejays, talk radio nutcases, and preachers.  But FM signals travel shorter distances and we couldn’t pick up a single station on that band.  When we switched to AM, there were fewer stations broadcasting than you would normally find but there were some.  Several were just looping the same Emergency Broadcast System message that I’d heard earlier.  Some were broadcasting network news coverage of the terror attacks.  The more we heard, the clearer the scale of the event became, and the more worried we became.

With communication sporadic, much of the news being reported was coming from social media posts.  Although we couldn’t see them, newscasters were describing posted images of localized disasters throughout the country.  Fires, flooding, demolition of infrastructure, and power outages were everywhere.  Resources were stretched thin.  In some areas, localities were having difficulty prioritizing their response due to the scale of the overwhelming need.  In the intensity and emotional reactions, it was like the 9/11 terror attacks taking place all over again, except occurring in more places.  Despite the scale of the attack, it didn’t appear that there was tremendous loss of life yet, although numbers were certainly in the thousands.  However, in terms of devastation, it might take years to get things back to where they were. 
If
they ever could.  I also knew that the death tolls would begin to rise rapidly as the disaster began to take a toll on the medically fragile and the unprepared.

Some consultant interviewed by CNN said that the power grid could collapse entirely as small power plants still generating tried to keep up with demand.  They urged people to make preparations and conserve resources.

“It’s like they hit every weak spot we had at the same time,” Gary said, thinking aloud.  We were on I-64 getting ready to exit to I-81 near Staunton and Gary was driving.  I was riding shotgun.

Traffic coming out of Richmond had seemed almost normal.  Maybe a little lighter than normal, like Saturday morning downtown traffic in any city.  As the area we were traveling through had not been hit directly, we didn’t see many emergency vehicles responding to calls but we passed numerous convoys of military and police vehicles traveling in the opposite lane.  Perhaps they’d been called to eastern Virginia to respond to events there.  Or maybe they were on their way to DC.

The other Impala with Alice and Lois pulled up alongside us and Lois gestured to the side of the road.  They cut ahead of us and pulled over onto the shoulder.  We fell in behind them.  Lois came walking back to my window, on the passenger side, to stay away from the passing traffic.  I rolled my window down.  We all looked at her expectantly.

“I need to take a potty break,” she announced.

We all continued to stare at her, saying nothing.  When no one responded, I pointed to the bushes alongside the road.

“Go ahead,” I said.  “We’ll wait on you.”

She looked aghast.  “I will not tinkle on the side of the road like some drunken redneck,” she hissed.  “Besides, I'm hungry.  I haven't had anything to eat since I got up.”

Gary, fighting a smile, leaned over toward my window.  “There’s a travel plaza ahead, Lois.  We need gas anyway.  We’ll stop there.  I’m sure we can all use a break.”

I already had my mouth open to comment when a voice came from the back. 

“Don’t say it, Jim,” Randi said.  “She already thinks you’re a dick.”

“Be nice, you guys,” Gary warned, fighting back his own smile.  “She's someone's mother.”

“Yeah,” I mumbled.  “Satan’s.”

We drove about ten more miles and took the exit for the Carson Travel Plaza.  It was the largest travel truck stop for a hundred miles and had a lot of gas pumps, good coffee, and clean bathrooms.  I'd stopped there many times while making this trip or going on vacation with my family.  As we approached it, though, I realized I'd never seen it this crowded.

“What the hell?” I mumbled, seeing the line of cars stretching from the pumps back out into the road.

“There's the problem,” Rebecca said, pointing to a large plywood sign propped up by the road:
FUEL SALES LIMITED TO 5 GALLONS PER VEHICLE.

“Five gallons?” I said.  “That won't get you anywhere.”

“Looks like you'd have to wait about an hour or two just to get your five gallons,” Gary commented.

“Maybe Lois can hold it a little while longer,” I wondered aloud.  “This is a damn mess.”

“She's not gonna hold it,” Randi said, smiling.  “She's not going to tinkle on the side of the road like a common drunk.”

I laughed.  Even though I didn’t know Randi all that well, anyone who made fun of Lois was alright in my book.

“You guys shouldn't pick on Lois,” Gary said.  “She's a sweet old lady.”

“I think you mean sour old bitch,” I muttered.

“No,” Gary replied.  “That’s not what I mean at all.  That’s just not even nice.”

Lois whipped out of the line of vehicles and cut around them.  It was clear that this line was just for the gas pumps.  Despite some horn-honking and obscene gestures, she made it to the front of the store and took the only empty spot, nearly in front of the door.  She immediately bolted from the car and into the store.

“I think she took a handicapped spot,” I said, “But I ain't saying nothing.”

Randi snickered in the back.

“If you guys don't mind walking, I'm going to park a little farther away,” Gary said.  “I don't want to park in the middle of that mess.”

“Fine with me,” I said.

“Me too,” Rebecca said.  “I need to stretch my legs.”

Gary pulled the car into a spot in a slightly less crowded section of the parking lot, just around the corner from the main entrance.

“I'll wait on you guys here,” Randi said.  “I need to smoke more than I need to pee.”

We approached the front entrance, and it was clear that the place was a madhouse.  I could hear raised voices from the line of cars waiting on the pumps as people cursed and complained.  There was a constant stream of people going in and out of the door.  My plan had been to take a leak and get a drink, maybe a candy bar, but it was apparent from the line waiting to check out that I was probably not going to be making any purchases.  I didn't think I was going to wait for the bathroom, either, but I stood around for a minute just checking out the scene.  You could tell things were right at the edge of chaos.  The frustration and urgency of the crowd was like an electrical charge in the air just before a lightning strike.  At the register, a customer was arguing with one of the clerks about the fuel purchase limit. 

A red-faced man in a sleeveless Jeff Gordon t-shirt and baggy denim shorts was pointing his finger at the cashier and complaining loudly.  The angry customer said he needed more gas to get home.  The frustrated clerk explained that they were not sure when they could get more gas and had to limit sales to make sure that everyone who needed gas could at least get some.

“Five gallons does not fucking help me,” the man said, raising his voice.  “How the hell am I going to get to Tennessee on five gallons?”

“Sorry,” the clerk said, “I can't do anything about it.  It's company policy because of the attacks.  You need to move along or I'm going to call the police.”

Impatient people in line behind the man began shouting at him, urging him to pay up and move on so they could do the same.  The man cursed back at crowd, giving them all the finger.

I could see Lois waiting in line for the restroom with a disgusted look on her face.  Alice, who'd been riding with Lois, came walking toward me.

“I was going to go, too, but I think I'll take my chances elsewhere.  I'd rather pee behind a bush than wait in this mess,” she said.  “I'll be in the car.”

“I'll be out in a second,” I said.  “I'm gonna stick around and wait on Rebecca and Lois.”

I was still watching the altercation at the registers when Gary touched me on the shoulder.  When I looked to see what he wanted, he pointed outside the front entrance to the store.  I turned in that direction.  Two Virginia State Troopers had pulled in with blue lights flashing immediately behind Lois's car, blocking it and several others in.  A trooper emerged from each vehicle, placing their hats carefully on their heads.  The lead trooper strode through the door followed quickly by the second trooper, whom I noticed carried his 12 gauge riot gun.  The gun lay up on his shoulder, the way a hunter might carry it.  The troopers headed straight for the registers.

“Glad you parked away from the entrance,” I said.

The man who had been arguing at the counter turned toward the troopers, raised his hands, and stammered, “I-I was j-just leaving.”  He bolted for the door.

The two troopers looked at each other briefly, shrugged, and then faced the crowd.  Apparently they weren’t here for that guy.

“Excuse me folks,” the trooper said.  “By order of the Governor of Virginia, all fuel sales in the Commonwealth will be temporarily halted, effective immediately.  If you have filled your vehicle, you may pay and leave, but no further sales will be made.  All gas and diesel fuel is reserved for authorized emergency vehicles only.”

There was a moment of silence while this sank in.  There were folks waiting in line for the bathroom who had not pumped gas yet.  There were folks getting food who were intending to get gas, but had not done so yet.  These people immediately became very, very pissed.  Limiting gas to five gallons was bad, but cutting off all sales was even worse.  Interstate 81 was a major corridor and these people were from all over the country.  How would they get home?  What would they do?  The crowd had been smoldering, and the trooper had just thrown gasoline on the fire.  I was just getting ready to tell Gary that I was going back outside when things went south in a hurry.

An angry patron behind a rack of Terry's potato chips threw an unopened plastic soda bottle at the trooper who had made the announcement.  It bounced off his Kevlar vest.  The trooper immediately stepped toward the man who had thrown the bottle, but he took off through the store, pushing over the rack of chips and bumping into several people as he ran.

“We need to get out of here,” I told Gary.

“I'll get Rebecca and Lois,” he replied, moving toward the restroom line.

Someone else threw a soup can they had snatched off a shelf and caught the remaining trooper in the face.  A cut opened over his eye and his nose started bleeding.  Another soup can came flying from the same direction but missed.  The trooper raised his shotgun and fired blindly in the direction that he thought the soup cans came from.  With people packed so tightly, the buckshot hit several bystanders.  An innocent woman died when she took a buckshot pellet to the forehead and dropped like a rock.  Her husband, a decorated veteran of the Korean War, had lost his only daughter to a drunk driver twenty years before and immediately felt he had nothing left to live for at this point.  He pulled a .357 magnum revolver from his jacket pocket and began firing at the trooper with the shotgun at a distance of less than ten feet.  The trooper caught rounds in his protective vest and toppled backward.

The other trooper, still chasing the man who'd hit him with a soda bottle, spun toward the gunfire and saw the old man emptying his revolver at his fellow trooper.  He drew his Sig and put two rounds in the armed man, dropping him in a heap across his wife.  More guns came out and the chaos escalated.  Truckers and travelers were all pulling out their concealed carry weapons and trying to defend themselves as they ran for the exits.  Wild rounds flew in all directions.  The trooper with the shotgun tried to shake off the rounds he'd taken to the vest and began firing at anyone he saw carrying a gun.  More bodies fell.  Though people were screaming and crying, some were shooting back.

The trooper with the Sig fired a round into the ceiling and tried to regain control of the situation.  He yelled at everyone to cease fire but the situation was too far gone.  Gary had gripped Lois and Rebecca by the arms, rushing them toward the exit.  I stood just outside the front door, trying to avoid the onrush of people and the sporadic gunfire.  I was staring at the blocked vehicle Lois and Alice had been traveling in, wondering what the hell we were going to do about it.  When I turned to the Gary to tell him to hurry up, Lois opened her mouth to say something to me.  I knew it because she was looking me dead in the eye.  As the first word formed in her mouth, a stray round caught her in the temple, spraying Rebecca with blood, and dropping Lois dead to the ground.  Rebecca paused for a second, staring at the dead woman beside her and recoiling in horror.  She started to scream but Gary jerked her arm and they ran out the door.

They joined me just outside the door, and we all stared at Alice sitting in the blocked vehicle.  She hadn’t seen Lois fall, but she knew that all hell had broken loose from the continuing gunfire inside and the people streaming from the door.  She looked frozen in panic.

I waved at Alice and she opened her door.  “C'mon!” I yelled at her.  “We have to go!”