Under a Tell-Tale Sky: Disruption - Book 1 (25 page)

Nothing to do now but relax, and he walked over and examined the fully stocked bar—an unexpected bonus. The former owner of the boat had exceptional—and expensive—tastes. Singletary reached up and slipped a brandy snifter from the rack and lifted a bottle of Courvoisier from the recessed hole that secured it against movement of the boat. He poured himself an ample measure and held the snifter to his nose, savoring the aroma, then took a tiny sip, allowing the taste to spread through his mouth before it slipped down his throat. He reached over to set the bottle back in the recess, thought better of it, and carried both the bottle and the snifter to the table beside a leather-upholstered easy chair. He knew he was going to have more than one, and there was no need to strain himself by getting up and down, now was there?

***

He was the captain at last, and not of some crappy tanker stinking of gasoline and diesel, but a luxury yacht, crewed by all those fools and stuck-up bitches from his old neighborhood. He called the shots and they did exactly like he said or they didn’t eat. How did they like that shit? Everything was going along just fine until … until some fool was poking him in the forehead with something hard. What the hell …

Singletary opened his eyes to stare at a huge gun held perhaps two inches away from the bridge of his nose, the hole in the barrel looking as big as a half dollar. He followed the gun to the hand that held it, and then up a long arm to stare into the face of the meanest looking black dude he’d ever seen.

“Wh-who are you?”

“I’m Kwintell Banks, nigga, but the question is who are YOU, and what you doin’ on MY boat, drinkin’ MY booze.”

“I … I’m Jerome Singletary, and I didn’t know it was your boat … I mean, I didn’t know it was anyone’s … I was just looking for a place to sleep …”

“That so? Looks like to me you was getting ready to steal my boat. That right? Best tell the truth, or it’ll go hard on you,” Banks said.

“Yes, but I didn’t know it was yours. I’m very sorry. I’ll pick another boat.”

“You see, that’s the thing. They’re ALL my boats, including the one you and those crackers stole earlier. Though I do thank you for bringing it back, all filled up with nice things. Just for that, I’m gonna kill you fast so you don’t suffer too much.”

Banks backed away, and Singletary became fully aware of his surroundings for the first time. Lights were on in the cabin, and he saw four men with Banks, all heavily armed. He saw Banks holster his pistol and then point at him with his free hand.

“Take this fool into the middle of the river and then shoot him in the head. We got enough dead people stinking things up around here without adding another one.”

Two of the men nodded and dragged Singletary out of the chair and toward the door, deflecting his efforts to resist as if he were a child.

“Wait, wait! I have information. I can help you.”

Banks held up his hand and his underlings stopped but retained their grip on the squirming Singletary.

“So what you gonna tell me, Singletary? You gonna tell me about those crazy crackers and their tame Toms, building their little fort down on the docks? We watching ‘em all the time, and I know how many they got and what they doing. It don’t matter because they got those machine guns and grenades, so we ain’t dumb enough to start a fight with them. No need anyhow. If they want to stay inside their little fort, that’s fine by me. We got everything else and we’re already spreading out into the country, figuring ways to put people to work growing food. We might even let them keep a little. Not too much, mind you, but just enough to make sure they stay alive so they can keep working for us. So you see, you don’t really know nothing.”

Banks nodded at his two underlings, and they started for the door once again.

“Wait, I know other things. There’s … there’s this guy named Levi with a hideout near here with a lot of food. Guns and ammunition too, and a generator, I think. And a lot of other stuff, gold and silver too. I … I know where it is. He tries to keep it quiet, but I heard him talking. I’ll tell you, just let me go.”

Banks stopped his henchmen again and rubbed his chin, deliberating. After a moment he nodded and his men returned Singletary and dumped him down on the couch.

“All right,” Banks said, “start talking. And it better be good or your death ain’t gonna be near as easy as the one you just avoided.”

Skyline Drive—Northbound

Approaching Front Royal, VA

Day 14, 1:00 p.m.

Bill Wiggins gripped the wheel, white-knuckled as he negotiated the twisting switchback, tires squealing on the asphalt. Tex looked up from the map.

“You’re not going to do your family any good piled up at the bottom of a cliff in the back of beyond.”

“Sorry,” Wiggins said as he came out of the turn and focused on the next one. “I guess that thirty-five mile an hour speed limit might be pushing the envelope on some of these turns. I thought the Blue Ridge Parkway was winding, but this damn thing’s a corkscrew. I bet there’s not a hundred yards of straight level pavement on the whole drive.”

Tex smiled. “Yeah, it might even be enjoyable if we weren’t trying to get home in the middle of the apocalypse.

“That would be if you’re not driving.”

“Hey, I offered,” Tex said.

“You did, sorry for bitching. But anyway, you’re the mate. That naturally makes you the navigator.”

Tex nodded, and they lapsed into silence as Bill’s mind wandered back over the last thirty-six hours. As Levi predicted, the run to the Blue Ridge Parkway had been the most harrowing leg of the journey thus far. Two weeks into the power outage, gasoline was scarce and the roadside littered with stalled cars, making a moving vehicle all the more conspicuous. Even on secondary roads they encountered haggard pedestrians, undoubtedly refugees leaking into the countryside from the nearby interstates and major highways. They were a mixed bag, both individuals and family groups, many with haunted looks as if they no longer had a destination, but continued in the forlorn expectation wherever they were going was better than where they’d been. The children were the worst, crying from hunger or thirst, or both. It was all Bill and Tex could do to resist stopping and sharing their food.

At stream crossings, camps had sprung up—odd collections of tents and shelters improvised of plastic or blankets, as if some had concluded there really wasn’t any better place, and they could best cheat death a bit longer by conserving their energy. Mostly they flew by these places, transiting before the residents knew they were there. Mostly. At one small bridge they’d been confronted by a human chain, four dirty desperate men spread across the road, armed with a collection of hunting rifles and pistols. Bill floored it as Tex leaned out the window, firing the Glock over their heads to scatter them as the Highlander roared over the bridge. They rode on in silence for some time, each aware it could easily have been them on the roadside were it not for Levi’s generosity.

They reached the Blue Ridge Parkway with three hours of daylight left on the first day, and again as Levi predicted, found the route empty. The popularity of a twisting, scenic road-to-nowhere wasn’t great during a disaster. Their next major concern had been near Roanoke, where the parkway skirted the more congested urban area. They pressed on the first day and stopped for the night fifty miles south of Roanoke, pulling well off the road into the trees. Feeling a bit foolish, they’d strung fishing line knee high between trees and attached bells as a crude ‘early warning system.’ They ate a cold supper to avoid a fire, then sacked out in the hammocks Levi provided. They both slept fitfully and were on the road north at first light, transiting the Roanoke area without incident.

Bill brought himself back to the present as they passed a mileage sign for Front Royal, Virginia. Tex still had her nose buried in the map.

“Front Royal in five miles. That’s the northern terminus for Skyline Drive. Where to, navigator?”

Tex looked up. “It’s complicated. Find an overlook to stop and I’ll show you.”

Bill snorted. “Shouldn’t be a problem. There’s one about every ten feet on this damn road.”

Sure enough, they rounded a sharp curve and he pulled into a scenic overlook. He put the car in park and leaned over to study the map Tex spread out on the seat between them.

She traced a route on the map with her finger. “We’re about eight miles west of the AT at Front Royal, but it starts running northeast at this point, through a couple of state parks to where it crosses US 50 near Paris, then continues northeast to cross Virginia State Route 7 just west of Bluemont. Our best bet is to go through Front Royal and take Happy Creek Road out of town. That’ll get us under I-66 at a place where the road passes under the interstate with no interchange and gets us to the Shenandoah River. There are a series of interconnecting rural roads paralleling the river, which also parallels the AT. Our access point to the AT will be everywhere a substantial road intersects both the river and the AT. At those points, we can jump on the road, go a mile or two east, and have access to the AT as a backup, just like Levi said. That works as far as Bluemont. After that, we’ll take another look.”

“You think we’ll have any problem getting through Front Royal?”

She shrugged. “Who knows? It’s not real big, maybe fifteen thousand. I’m actually more concerned about I-66 because we’re only about sixty or seventy miles out of DC. Given what we’ve seen on the secondary roads, I gotta think the I-66 corridor is a horror show. What I like about this route is this Happy Creek Road approaches and leaves the interstate at a right angle and transits under it with no interchange. If we’re lucky, maybe we can blow right under the interstate in a hurry, with minimal contact.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Bill started the car.

Five minutes later, he exited Skyline Drive to turn north on the broad expanse of Stonewall Jackson Highway. There was the usual collection of convenience stores, fast-food restaurants, and motels increasing in density as they neared Front Royal, all closed, of course. There were hollow-eyed pedestrians as well, some registering surprise at the moving car, but most moving mindlessly to some undetermined destination.

“Notice anything strange about the pedestrians?” Bill asked.

Tex nodded. “They’re all walking away from town. That can’t be good.”

Two miles up the highway, just past the intersection with State Route 55 East, two police cars were drawn across the road. A police officer got out of one of the cars and raised his hand as Bill approached and stopped fifty feet from the roadblock. The cop approached, well to the side, his hand on the butt of his holstered sidearm. A cop got out of the other car and approached from Tex’s side. Both men’s uniforms were rumpled and dirty, and neither looked as if they’d shaved in several days.

“This doesn’t look promising,” Bill said, as he rolled down his window. “Is there a problem, officer?”

The officer grunted. “Yeah, there’s a lot of problems. You interested in one in particular, or would you like a list?”

Bill smiled. “Sorry, I guess I meant is there any problem with us coming through?”

The officer shook his head. “No refugees. I’m gonna have to ask you folks to turn around and go back the way you came.”

“We’re not refugees,” Bill said. “We’re headed north. We just want to go as far as Happy Creek Road and take it out of town. If you’ll let us by, we won’t even slow down in Front Royal.”

“Yeah, that’s what they all say.”

“No, really. How about you escort us? That way you can make sure.”

“And does it look to you as if we have enough manpower to be providing ‘private escorts’ through town? Walt and I’ve been here over twenty-four hours without relief. So again, I ask you to turn around.”

“I understand, but we really don’t want to stay. If you’ll just let us—”

“Sir, you DON’T understand. Nobody’s getting into Front Royal who doesn’t belong here. We tried to help at first, what with all those folks fleeing DC and running out of gas, coming down from the interstate on foot. They were grateful for a day or two, and then more people kept showing up and they stopped asking and started demanding, and it got real ugly. A lot of good folks got killed before we sorted it out, and there’s plenty of hard feelings. So even if I was to LET you past, driving a car full of who knows what, I reckon you wouldn’t make it out of town alive, so you might say I’m doing you a favor. Now TURN AROUND.”

Tex leaned across the seat and looked up at the cop. “Is there any other way north, officer?”

“None I’d recommend,” he said. “You can take State Route 55 East to US 17, but 55 parallels the interstate for five or six miles at least, and it’s like the Wild West out there. The gangs started coming out from DC, hitting the outlying communities as long as the gas held out, and we didn’t have enough manpower to do anything but establish control here in town. Even now, they’re still coming out on motorbikes and hitting farms and homes near the interstate. A moving car at this point might as well have a sign saying ‘Good Stuff—Take Me.’“

Bill looked at Tex. She shrugged. “I guess we take 55 East and hope for the best.”

“Your funeral,” the cop said, and Bill backed the car around and turned east at the intersection as Tex stuck her head back in the map. In the distance, Bill saw another police cruiser on the side of the road, positioned to observe all of the cross streets leading off of State Route 55. He had no doubt if he attempted to turn north into town, the police would be on him in short order.

Bill passed the cop and watched in his mirror until he was out of sight. They were just passing Remount Road.

“I assume you’re working on plan B?”

“Absolutely. If they’re spread as thin as he says, the cops can’t be everywhere. I see one last shot at getting up to Happy Creek Road. The third street ahead on the left should be Jamestown Road. It connects to a lot of surface streets winding through subdivisions on the east side of town. It’s convoluted, but it should get us where we need to go.”