Surviving the Fall (Surviving the Fall 1)

Rick slipped out of his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, trying to appear more casual and like he didn’t have any valuables on his person. Not like I do anyway, but I’m not sure certain folks would agree with me there. Another hour’s walk transpired in relative silence until, in the distance, Rick saw a faint glow appear on the overpass. As he drew closer he saw crowds of people shuffling off onto a series of exits from the overpass down into the city. “What’s going on?” Rick asked a few people walking by. “Why is everyone getting off?”

The fourth person Rick questioned stopped for a moment and pointed at the light in the distance. “A fuel truck overturned on the road; there’s no way through.” The woman resumed her steady plod down the ramp while Rick stare

d at the burning wreckage. In the distance, beyond it, he could just barely see the eastern edge of the city, and the hope that it brought with it to escape the burned and blackened hell it had become. “Damn.” Rick whispered to himself as he joined the others in their slow walk down the overpass and into the darkened streets below.

As Rick descended into the unfamiliar streets of a city he had never before visited, he became aware of just how vulnerable he was. The streets were sheltered from much of the moonlight and starlight above, necessitating a slower pace to his travels. Although he had exited the overpass in the company of several other people, he soon found himself walking alone as they split off onto other paths, their paths and destinations clear in their minds. Rick’s destination was clear, but the path to reach it was vague.

Resisting the urge to use his penlight, Rick stuck to the middle of the street as he walked along, listening to the wind blow past the buildings and along the alleys. He was in a cross between a residential and business area of the city, where signs alternated between advertising apartments for rent and various cuisines. Movement was visible inside many of the buildings as people walked about holding flashlights and lanterns as they tried to end their day with some sense of normalcy.

As Rick walked along his ears began to pick up more sounds from the city. A few distant shouts, the cry of an unhappy baby, the vague and unsettling whispers of figures hiding in the shadows. The further out into the city Rick went, the quieter the city became, until all was still and silent for the longest time. After a good half hour of hearing nothing but the wind and his own footsteps, Rick thought he was hearing things when the sounds of a car engine started drifting along on the breeze. He stopped in the middle of the street and cocked his head, searching for the elusive sound when it echoed through, slightly louder than it was before.

The roar of the engine was growing rapidly closer, and Rick finally realized that it wasn’t his imagination—the sound was quite real. He glanced behind him and saw the faint glow of headlights growing rapidly closer, and a strange thought passed through the back of his head. Hide. The hairs on the back of Rick’s neck prickled as he dashed behind the wreckage of a burned out car sitting on the side of the road.

As the car approached, it became apparent that it wasn’t just one car, but three. They were older vehicles, two Cadillacs and a black SUV, and all three had loud music blasting from inside. They drove along the road at a dangerous pace, their tires screeching as they wove between the burned out vehicles in their way and gunned their engines when they had a hundred feet of clear street ahead.

Rick could make out the drivers and passengers of the vehicles as they whizzed by since the cars had their internal lights switched on. Rows of tattoos adorned the skin of each person he saw, and nearly every one of them held a bottle or can in one hand and a gun in the other. There was no particular cohesive ethnic background about the individuals in the vehicles, though they all shared one trait—an excessive amount of maniacal laughter, making Rick exceptionally glad he had listened to his gut.

As the vehicles roared off into the night, Rick slowly stood up from his hiding place and stared at where they had gone, a single question on his mind. “How are their cars still working?”

Chapter 8

Ellisville, VA

Dianne was grateful that there were a few running vehicles going through the town since they helped her truck blend in and be less of a target than it had been while driving in. As she approached the “Eat Rite” grocery store, though, she noticed that there was a distinct lack of vehicles in the parking lot that weren’t burned to a crisp, and decided to stop and drive around to the side of the building, parking the truck near a pair of dumpsters.

“All right, kids. Listen up.” Dianne looked in the rearview mirror at Jacob and Josie. “I need to run into the store for five minutes. I want you to stay here, with the doors locked, and I want all three of you tucked out of sight in the back cab with a blanket over you, okay?”

Mark looked confusedly at his mom. “Even me?”

“Especially you, bud. I need you back there taking care of your brother and sister, okay?”

“Sure, I guess. But why the blanket?”

“I want all three of you out of sight.” Dianne looked around outside the vehicle, seeing a few people walking off in the distance but no one close enough to notice them. “And whatever you do, don’t open the door or make a sound for anyone. I don’t care who they look or sound like. Unless I unlock and open the door to this truck, you don’t move or make a sound. Got it?”

The gravity of the situation was starting to set in for Mark, and he nodded slowly, his eyes wide. As he turned to crawl into the back of the vehicle, he stopped to whisper to Dianne. “Mom, are we going to be okay?”

Dianne put on a brave face, smiled and patted him on the back. “You bet we are. I don’t know what’s going on, but we’re going to be A-Okay.”

Mark didn’t really believe what his mother was saying, but he crawled into the back seat and helped pull up an old quilt from where it was folded on the floor. Dianne stepped out of the truck and closed the door quietly before turning the key in the lock and pulling on both doors on the left side to ensure they wouldn’t open. She checked the doors on the right side as well before casting an eye at the ground nearby, jingling the keys in her hand.

“Where to put you… ah. Here we go.” A small stack of cinderblocks sat behind the dumpster on the left side of the truck, and Dianne carefully tucked the keys to the truck inside one of the holes in the bottom block before standing back up and surveying the area. There was still no sign of anyone nearby, and she headed for the front of the grocery store, walking at a quick pace. Hiding the keys in the cinderblock had been a spur-of-the-moment decision, but the condition of the town had her feeling especially worried and paranoid about being robbed. The last thing she wanted to do was give anyone the keys to her vehicle, and she figured that hiding them was better than potentially losing them.

As Dianne rounded the corner to the grocery store and approached the entrance, she started to hear the roar of angry voices and the clatter of carts, cans, and people pushing into each other. As she walked in, she stopped just inside the door, staring in horror at the scene unfolding in the store. Mass panic had gripped the residents of the town, and the store was filled with at least two hundred people—far more than would ever be there on a normal day.

They were crammed into the store like sardines in a can, pushing against each other and smashing their shopping carts together as they ran down the aisles, dumping food into their carts. Fights were breaking out across the store as supplies began running low and shoppers began stealing from each other’s baskets. At the front, it was somehow even worse. There were only four cashiers on duty, and they were desperately trying to ring everyone up, though the noise and commotion made it impossible to concentrate.

At the front of the store, on a large television usually reserved for displaying corny advertisements and sales, a newscaster sat behind his desk. Dianne couldn’t hear anything over the noise in the store, but closed captioning had been turned on. She stopped for a minute and watching, growing increasingly mortified at what she read.

“Repeating our top story—the US government has confirmed that this is a national emergency. An unknown attack has resulted in the destruction of an estimated hundred and fifty million vehicles in the country, with an unknown additional number in other countries across the world. The key to these attacks appears to be an attack on the vehicle computers that caused them to short circuit and ignite their gas tanks. Similar reports are being confirmed about the mobile phone and airline industries, which have also suffered catastrophic losses. We’re also receiving reports that the computer systems in several major power providers have been affected and it is expected that rolling blackouts will occur as the day progresses.

“The human toll is incalculable, but deaths are likely to be in the millions, based on what we’re seeing thus

far. We have very little solid information to go on at this time, but we encourage you to remain in your homes and away from your vehicles and phones until more information comes in.”

Dianne could feel her adrenaline flowing as she turned from the television with a renewed sense of purpose. She grabbed a cart sitting off to the side near the ice cooler and made her way to the center of the store where the canned goods and nonperishables were stocked. She was surprised to see only a handful of people in the two aisles containing the nonperishables loading up their carts. One of them, an older man, glanced at her as she turned the corner and sped down the aisle. “You’d better hurry up; once the bread and meat runs out, that mob’s gonna stop being so picky about what they want.”

Dianne nodded slowly in thanks at the man, who simply headed off to the next aisle. It was unfathomable to her that people were fighting over things like fresh meat and bread, which would go bad within a few days or less, especially if the power were to go out. Still, she wasn’t ungrateful for the mob’s foolishness, as it offered her ample time to stock up on what she needed.