When the Power Is Gone: A Powerless World - Book 1 (16 page)

We no sooner got off our street, maybe a mile down the road, when we saw signs of recent activity in the area. Apparently, the inhabitants of the burned-out neighborhood by the mall were making their way to our neighborhood, just like Russ had predicted. There were people walking, pushing shopping carts full of whatever meager belongings they had been able to either salvage from their homes, or scavenge from other homes, from the looks of it. There were families, couples, and single individuals, all seemingly migrating together to…did they even know where they were going? What they might be walking into? Did they care? If you had nothing, or almost nothing, anything was an improvement. They were dirty and seemed to be rather thin, or they were wearing clothes that did not originally belong to them. How long had it been now? Over a week, maybe a week and a half. Would people starve that fast? No, but going from three meals a day to one or none, would definitely make a difference. These were the kind of people we were hoping to avoid. These were the ones who would be getting desperate, who would do whatever they had to do to feed their families. These were the dangerous ones – the ones who had nothing to lose.

Russ grabbed the two-way. “Bob, no matter what happens, don’t stop, don’t slow down. In fact, if anyone steps out in front of you, gun it. They’ll move or die. If they move, we keep going and say a prayer for them. If they don’t and we have to kill one of them, the rest will back off. Everybody get your gun out, and make sure it’s visible to them. Brian, open your window and stick a rifle barrel out, so they can see it. This is the new world, gang, and it sucks. It sucks to be them, the ones who didn’t prepare for the unknown, and it sucks to be us, who did, and now we have to watch others suffer and die. No hesitation, buddy. Stay on my ass.”

Bob radioed back. “I hear ya. I got ya. I’m right behind ya.”

Russ kept going, heading for the interstate. The people on the side of the road looked up, staring at us. Their eyes seemed to light up when they saw our vehicles, like we were saviors or something, but when they saw we weren’t stopping, not even slowing down, their eyes changed. They seemed to take on a defiant look, like we were in some way treating them as inferior. Maybe we were. My heart went out to them. How awful to have to fight for your survival, for the lives of your family. But when it came down to it, my family was more important, to me at least. I pulled my pistol out of my holster, and held it up at window level. The looks from the pedestrians didn’t get any less vindictive, but they did back up from the road. One guy seemed to be angling toward us, with a very menacing look.

He was pointing at our truck, waving a bat and yelling. “HEY! STOP! WE NEED HELP! YOU CAN’T JUST LEAVE US HERE!”

Russ pushed the gas pedal harder, speeding up. Bob stayed right behind us. The yeller jumped out of the way just before Russ would have hit him. I looked in the side view mirror. He was running behind us, still yelling, though we couldn’t hear what he said any more. I looked over at Russ, but he shook his head and kept going.

The people on the sides of the road kept coming toward us, toward our street I guess. I couldn’t get over how many there were. It looked like more than could have been living in the burned-out area. That meant people were migrating from the cities now. Was it that bad, already? If the larger cities were working their way out to areas like ours, that meant the 72-hour theory was right. It had been three times three days since the EMP. Supplies were gone in the larger metropolitan areas. People were out of food already. What would it be like in another two weeks? We couldn’t get to the farm fast enough for me. We could only hope the migrants wouldn’t go that far out, at least not for a while. Unfortunately for them, there was a really good chance some of them wouldn’t live that long. Unfortunately for us, the ones who did last that long would probably not be the kind of folks we wanted to deal with. Hopefully, by then we would have our perimeter secure and have the bodies to hold it. I was pretty sure we’d need every available person.

Just when it looked like we were going to get past the majority of the migrants, I saw a dirty woman coming up to the side of the road, pushing a stroller. Her clothes were almost rags, her face and hair were filthy, she was just pitiful to look at. She had a look of complete despair on her face, and it tore at my motherly instincts. She pushed through the crowd, heading toward the road. Just as we were coming up to where she stood, she shoved the stroller in front of our truck. I screamed, and Russ swerved. He hit the stroller with the right front bumper of the truck, but kept going. In the side view mirror I saw the stroller flip up in the air and fall back to the street. The baby that had been in it flew into the air as well and landed on the street beside the woman. She looked down at the baby, then up at me in the mirror, with a new look. This one was pure hatred. I grabbed Russ’s arm.

“Russ! We have to stop! We just killed that woman’s child!! We have to stop!!!”

Russ was shaking his head, a death grip on the steering wheel, his whole body shaking.

Just then, Brian came over the radio. “Keep going Russ. It was a trick. We swerved to stay behind you, so I got a good look at the whole thing. It was a doll. She was trying to get you to stop, probably part of a gang that was looking to take our stuff. There was no baby. Do you copy?”

Russ slowly closed and opened his eyes, and with a still severely shaking hand, grabbed the radio. “I copy. Thank you Brian. Let’s get out of here.”

I was still crying, my emotions completely unraveled. I was mad at the woman for trying to make us think we had done something so horrendous. I was upset that, had it been a real child, we still would have had to keep going, because we couldn’t take the chance that what she had tried to make happen actually did. I was scared of what this world was already becoming, that people could think of something so despicable, to try to trick someone so they could steal from them, maybe even kill them for their meager belongings. I was shocked that Russ was able to keep going, even before he knew it was a ruse, though I could tell how badly it shook him up. Mostly, I was sad – to think that mankind could sink so low, so fast. Between the scavengers that had been on our street within a couple of days breaking into homes and taking whatever they wanted; to our neighbors, thinking someone else would take care of them (or should, in their mind), and expecting those who had something, who had planned for a disaster, to share with them just because they didn’t plan past tomorrow; to the woman just now, who would play on the basest of human instincts – to protect our children, all children, from harm – to get us to stop so she, and probably her group, could try to overwhelm us and take everything we had worked so hard to gather, preparing for a situation like the one we found ourselves in. Because they hadn’t prepared, they chose the path of marauder, a viable path if you had the manpower and the weapons. The fact that she had tried to get us to stop meant they probably had both.

I had no sooner had the thought about the weapons someone in that crowd might have than a shot rang out. Russ still had the radio in his hand.

“Guys? What’s happening? Where’d that shot come from?”

Brian immediately came back. “Some guy stepped out of the crowd into the street behind us and shot at us. I think he hit the trailer, but we’re not stopping to find out. Keep going! Haul ass!”

Russ pressed the gas pedal harder. We heard more shots, but they sounded farther away. He handed me the radio.

“Check on them. I need to keep both hands on the wheel going this fast hauling the trailer.”

I keyed the radio. “Brian? Are you guys still okay? We heard more shots.”

“Yeah, Anne, we’re fine. I don’t know where those came from, but they were further back than the first one. Probably more from that group, ‘voicing’ their frustration at not getting us to stop.”

His emphasis on “voicing” got us to smile a bit. I looked at Rusty, and he looked pretty shook up. I wrapped my arms around him.

“It’s okay, honey. We’re okay. It wasn’t what it looked like. Are you alright?”

He nodded slowly and laid his head on my shoulder. I smoothed his messy hair off his forehead and planted a kiss on it. Damn them for that too, for scaring MY baby.

We got to the ramp for the interstate. Russ slowed down and looked around. He reached for the radio. I handed it to him and took to looking around myself.

“What are we looking for, Baby?”

“Anything or anybody. Once we get on the interstate and get a few miles down the road, if we can we’ll pull over for a few minutes so everyone can take a quick break. I think we could use one after that mess.”

I nodded. “I could definitely do with a bathroom break. It may be too late – I think I pissed myself back there.”

He gave me a little smile. “That makes two of us.”

He keyed the radio. “Guys, we’re going to take it slow up the ramp. I want to make sure there is no one around who might try to stop us. Keep your eyes peeled and shout out if you see or hear anything. Roll the windows down a bit so you can hear what’s going on outside. Once we get a few miles between us and that group back there, we’ll pull over for a quick break. Sound good?”

Bob had the radio back. “Sounds great. Let’s get this done!”

Russ handed the radio back to me. “If you see or hear anything, let me know, then let them know. Ready?”

I gave him a quick nod in the affirmative, and he picked up speed a bit, but still went slow enough that we could get a good look at the surrounding area. I didn’t see anything, outside of a lot of abandoned cars. No people at all. No sound – that was the weirdest part. No engines, no horns, no exhaust, nothing. It was freaking me out a little. How long before those sounds were a part of our lives again? Would they ever be?

Russ was getting to the top of the ramp. So far so good.

“Tell them we’re going to pick up speed now, Anne. We’re not going to go 70, but we are going to try to get some miles behind us, then find a safe place to stop for a few minutes.”

I relayed the information back to them, and Brian replied, “Sounds good, looks clear. Let us know if you see anything. We’ll do the same.”

We picked up speed, to about 40, 45 miles per hour. Fast enough to get somewhere, but slow enough to be able to scope out the area and stop without killing everyone if we had to. There had definitely been a path cleared here, which was concerning. Whoever went to the trouble of moving the abandoned vehicles out of the way did it for a reason, like they meant to be coming through here again. It was about three miles to the next exit, then the road narrowed to two lanes each direction. If we could get that far without trouble, we should be in a better area. It got very rural from there on out, so hopefully scavengers would think it was too much trouble, with the houses so far apart.

We tried to check every spot on the sides of the roads, especially any that looked like they might have been set up, like a hide. We did see some areas that looked suspicious, but there was no one in them. Russ had an opinion on that.

“My guess is that was used early on, when people were trying to make their way home, or anywhere, in the first few days. They would have been walking with whatever they had been able to carry from their cars, and most would have had no way to defend themselves. They would have been easy targets – scared, alone, no idea what was going on, wearing clothes and shoes NOT meant for that kind of travel. Can you imagine how it was out here? Hundreds of people, with little to no food and water, fighting for each other’s lunch they had been planning to take to work that day? I don’t know who did this, but I’m so thankful they did it when they did. You and Rusty were home. Bob got home quick. I don’t even want to think about what it would have been like for you had it happened 10, 20, or 30 minutes later.”

As if to emphasize his thought, we saw a body lying in the weeds at the side of the road. I couldn’t tell at that speed if it was a man or a woman, because it was already black and bloated. I turned my head away and saw Rusty staring at it.

“Don’t look at it, honey. Look at the road.”

Russ saw what we were seeing and sped up a bit. The radio came to life.

“Holy shit, Russ, did you see that? It was a body, a frickin’ body!”

Bob couldn’t hide the shock in his voice.

Russ replied back to him. “Yeah, I saw it. I don’t think that will be the last one we see either. Let’s get past that next exit, and see if we can find a place to pull over for a few minutes. Keep your eyes peeled.”

The cars were getting thinner the further out we went. We were heading away from town, and most people would have been heading in to work. We did see more bodies, probably people who lived out this way, trying to get home. I saw one that was unmistakably female, because her clothes had been ripped from her body. She had probably been raped, then apparently strangled, with what appeared to be her blouse. She was tossed in the ditch on the side of the road, like just another bag of garbage. It was all I could do not to throw up. I heard Rusty gag, quickly grabbed a plastic bag, and held it up for him. He waved me off.

“I’m alright, Mom. I know I have to get used to seeing stuff like that.”

My heart broke. Why did my 15-year old have to get used to that?? Because some assholes apparently set off a nuke in the atmosphere, and the world as we knew it was gone, and the new one was full of a bunch more assholes who did whatever the hell they wanted to, now that everything had gone to hell. I didn’t retch, but I couldn’t hold back the tears. I hated this new “normal”.