State of Emergency c-1 Read online

  I shiver.

  “Then there’s no place to escape to.”

  “Nah.” Chris turns back towards me. “This is the last route out of here. If it’s blocked…” He lets the sentence hang in the air between us. People are starting to act like maniacal psychopaths on the streets. It’s not safe to go back into the city. If there were any working cars, the freeways would be jammed to full capacity.

  “Then what?” I ask, voicing our twin concerns.

  “Then we find another way.”

  I yawn again, feeling exhausted. This road is a two-lane highway that was probably built during the Babylonian Empire. It’s that outdated. It winds throughout the little hills that define Hollywood, dodging the freeways and dipping close to residential areas. Off in the distance there are sparks of orange light, signifying fires, explosions and the like.

  “I haven’t seen any planes for a while,” I mutter.

  “Most modern passenger planes have faraday cages,” Chris replies. “You know. They’re protected from EMPs.”

  “Then what about the ones that fell out of the sky in Culver City?” I ask. “Those thing were like bombs.”

  “They obviously weren’t protected well enough.” Chris stretches. “I can drive. You look like you’re going to fall asleep any second.”

  “I probably am.”

  “I’ll take over.”

  “Sorry. Nobody drives the Mustang but me.”

  Chris shakes his head. After another forty-five minutes we reach the other side of the hills, signifying the break out of Hollywood. I roll to a stop at the top of a rise, looking down over the beginning of the small mountain range separating Southern California from the rest of the state: Total darkness.

  I just stare at it, my heart starting to race in my chest.

  Who knows what’s out there? The freeway is probably jammed with a thousand accidents. Evacuees will be attempting to find transportation.

  “Cassie?” Chris says.

  I snap out of it.

  “Yeah?” I reply, shaky. “I’m fine.”

  But I’m so not. The world is coming to an end.

  Who could be fine with that?

  When late morning hits, I fall asleep at the wheel. We’ve spent the last three hours navigating some old halfway abandoned roads in the middle of nowhere in order to avoid jammed freeways and populated areas. It was a difficult thing to do, since the maps I have in the car aren’t specific when it comes to the back roads. So by the time the sun is getting warm enough to make me sleepy, I just can’t take it anymore.

  My head lolls forward and hits the steering wheel. The next thing I know the whole car is jerking to the left and Chris’s hands are taking the controls as I come to my senses.

  I choke on a gaspafter I realize what’s happened. Early morning sunlight is breaking over the road. It’s the kind of lighting that naturally puts you to sleep. I jerk backwards and Chris slams on the brakes, pulling the car to the side of the road.

  Chris seems to realize that he’s almost sitting on top of me and draws back, flushing. “Let me drive,” is all he says. No chastisement. No lecture on how falling asleep at the wheel is worse than drinking a Frappuccino before bedtime.

  As for me, my heart is beating out of my chest. I think I ruptured my nervous system. I just nod, mumbling something about having to use the restroom, and open the driver door. The air is crisp and cutting. Chris walks around the back of the car and, for the first time, I see my new traveling companion in daylight.

  His skin is tanned, a thin scar trails from the inside of his wrist to his elbow. His eyes are green — electric green. I stand and stare at him for a full ten seconds with my mouth open like an idiot before realizing that he’s doing the exact same thing.

  And the corner of his mouth is quirking upwards. My hands automatically fly to my face, trying to hide the blush creeping across my cheeks.

  Being pale does little to hide emotions.

  “It’s all yours,” I say, avoiding eye contact. “But if you crash or scratch her, I’ll shoot you.”

  Placing his hand on the door above my head, he replies, “I’ll remember that.”

  For one intense moment we lock gazes. I feel like a two-ton weight is dropped on my chest, unable to breathe, unable to move. Trapped between the car door and his body.

  But I’m not, so I exhale and step away.

  “I have to pee,” I say quickly.

  In retrospect I realize that probably wasn’t the most seductive thing to say after a hot staring contest. But hey. The truth is the truth.

  Chris smirks.

  “Be my guest. I won’t steal the car.”

  I blink. That actually hadn’t even occurred to me. Exhausted and traumatized from falling airplanes and malfunctioning cellphones, I shake my head. “Don’t even think about it,” I warn, grinning. I pat my gun for effect, grab the car keys and walk off the asphalt.

  When I’m done I walk back to the car, half expecting it to be gone. But Chris is still standing there, waiting patiently. I give him a funny look. Surprised, I guess, that he didn’t hotwire the car and supplies, I throw open the passenger door. “I’m impressed,” I mumble.

  Chris slides behind the wheel.

  “I knew you would be.”

  A few strands of hair have escaped from his ponytail, accentuating the angles of his face. I’m tempted to reach out and brush them into place but I don’t. We’re not that chummy.

  “So what’s in Squaw Valley for you?” I ask, closing my eyes.

  He doesn’t answer right away. I curl up and lean my head against the window. “Family,” he replies.

  “Don’t tell me. They’re doomsday preppers,” I quip.

  “Something like that.” Chris raises an eyebrow. “You’re quite a prepper yourself.”

  “Thanks to my dad,” I say, fighting the annoying tears that threaten to squeeze out every time I think about dad fighting his way out of Los Angeles. “He always believed we should be prepared for a national emergency.”

  “Your father is a very wise man,” Chris nods. “Was he in the military?”

  “For six years,” I reply. “Then he was a cop for thirty. Now he’s a private detective.”

  “Impressive,” he says.

  I close my eyes.

  “Maybe.” I sigh. “Wake me up if you see anything alarming.”

  “Like…?”

  “Like an airplane dropping on our heads or a band of marauders on the side of the road.” I shrug. “Little things like that.”

  Chris smirks.

  “I’ll do that.”

  “Good.”

  I go to sleep. I nod off for about two hours. Fortunately, I’m so exhausted that I don’t have any nightmares — ironic, because I can’t help from waking up to one. One in which Los Angeles is without power and passenger airplanes are the new bombs of the 21st century.

  At around 9:15 a.m. Chris suddenly shoves me on the shoulder. I slap his hand away, irritated. “What?” I slur. “Did I miss something?”

  “You’ll want to see this,” he says, his voice calm.

  I rub the crud out of my eyes and sit up. After a few blinks to clear my vision, I notice how slow Chris is driving. He’s watching something on the road straight ahead. We’re driving on the old highway that was pretty much abandoned after the massive Interstate was built into the Grapevine, the unofficial name for the mountains we find ourselves in. It’s like driving through the countryside, beautiful trees and tall grass swaying all around us.

  And an object on the side of the road.

  “Oh, my god!” I gasp. “It’s a baby carrier!”

  It’s tilted sideways on the lip of the old road. There is also a diaper bag and an open suitcase. A dead car is sitting near all of it, its windows smashed out.

  “We have to see if there’s a baby in there,” I say.

  “It could be a trap.”

  “A trap?” I roll my eyes. “Come on. It’s a baby! We can’t just drive by and no
t try to help.”

  “Cassie…”

  I open the door and step outside. Chris yells at me to stay put, swearing like a sailor. Appropriate, I guess, for a Navy Seal. I jog down the side of the road. Chris opens his door and runs after me, telling me in explicit terms to get back in the car.

  “Cassidy, get the hell back in the car!” he yells.

  “Don’t tell me what to do!”

  I run up to the baby carrier and kneel down, pulling back the blanket. It’s empty. I breathe a sigh of relief. “Thank god,” I say. “See? It’s okay.”

  “Get back in the car,” Chris growls. “Now.”

  “Sheesh. Whatever.” I stand up, dusting off my jeans. “You’re a little high-strung, you know that?”

  Chris scowls.

  “Don’t piss me off, kid.”

  I glare at him.

  “Don’t talk to me like that.”

  Chris steps forward and grabs my arm, half-walking, half-dragging me back to the Mustang. “Let go of me!” I say, angry. “That hurts.”

  “It would have hurt worse if you were the people who were in that car.”

  I look over at the wrecked car.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “What do you think they stopped for, Cassie?” he points at the baby carrier. My eyes travel to the ravaged vehicle. I see the tip of a limp, white hand lolling out of the backseat. Droplets of blood are splattered across the broken glass on the ground. I gasp, hands darting to my mouth to keep from gagging.

  “Oh, my god… what happened?”

  “It’s called carjacking,” Chris says, walking me back to the car, physically turning me away from the horrible sight. “They use the baby carrier to get people out of their cars and onto the side of the road.”

  I find myself choking on an embarrassing sob, more from the horror of the last fifteen hours than anything else. “How can everything change so fast?” I ask, a tear squeezing out. Chris opens the passenger door and catches the tear with his thumb, green eyes sad but serious.

  “Nothing’s changed,” he says softly. “This crisis will just bring out the worst in people.”

  He gestures for me to sit. I don’t argue, just sit down like a numbed zombie and snap the lock into place. Chris gets back in and pretty soon we’re picking up speed again. “Why didn’t they take the car?” I whisper. “Why did they lure them there if they were just going to kill them?”

  Chris sighs.

  “Their probably wasn’t enough gas left in the car for it to be useful,” he replies, his voice hard. “So they just killed them.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “Why do you act so shocked?” he says. “Wasn’t your dad a cop for thirty years? Stuff like this is common in his world. Especially in LA.”

  “This is different,” I answer, making a Herculean effort not to burst into erratic tears. “This is…psycho.”

  Chris doesn’t answer. If he agrees with me he doesn’t show it. Everything about his body is tense, like a metal spring just waiting to be released. It makes me wonder how he would react if we end up getting jumped.

  And killed.

  “Is your brother a Seal, too?” I ask, feeling his eyes burning a hole in the back of my head. Trying to turn the conversation to something remotely normal

  “No.” He presses his lips together. “He’s my little brother. Just graduated from High School.”

  “Oh. What about your parents?”

  A muscle ticks in his jaw.

  “You ask a lot of questions, you know that?”

  “Yeah, so what? How else am I supposed to get to know you?”

  Chris shakes his head, amusement tugging at the corners of his mouth.

  “We’ll need to refill the gas tank again in a minute,” he says, changing the subject. “How much you have left?”

  I sigh.

  “Enough to get us to Squaw Valley,” I reply. “But not to our cabin. And that’s only if we can avoid any more detours.”

  “That could be a problem.”

  “We can stop in a smaller city. Maybe the pulse only hit LA.”

  “We can’t be sure.”

  “Yeah, but if run out of gas things will really suck.” I shrug. “I’d rather take my chances in the city.”

  Chris mulls the idea over in his head.

  “Where’s the nearest city?” he asks.

  I pull a map out of the passenger door pocket. After studying it for a little while I say, “There’s a place in Santa Clarita.”

  “That’s right off the freeway,” Chris says. “We could get stuck in gridlock. It might be safer to just siphon off some gas from some of these abandoned cars.”

  “But I want to see if Santa Clarita was affected by the EMP,” I point out. “It’s fairly remote. They have a gas station there. It might be a worth a shot.”

  Chris doesn’t continue arguing with me, but I can tell he’s uneasy about the idea. Truthfully, so am I. But the more time elapses since the pulse hit, the more gas will continue to disappear from stations. The more people will panic and start raiding grocery stores for food and water, and the more anarchic society will become.

  If this is indeed a widespread thing.

  We’ll just have to find out how far the pulse reached, I guess.

  Chapter Four

  I’ve seen ghost towns that looked friendlier than this. It’s hard for me to believe that just fifteen hours ago Los Angeles and every freeway running in and out of the city was moving with 80 mile an hour traffic.

  Santa Clarita, a little stretch of travel stops on the other side of the Magic Mountain rollercoaster park, is deserted. There are cars all over the interstate, many of them overturned or smashed together in giant piles. It looks a little like a junkyard. But there aren’t any people in sight. Not ambulances, helicopters or police cars.

  Just an abandoned McDonald’s and a gas station.

  Chris eases the Mustang down the road, keeping the window rolled down a few inches, listening. His face is pensive, his eyebrows drawn together.

  “This is not normal,” I say.

  He doesn’t reply. We just coast down the street, dodging a car that is crashed into a lamppost. I can see dark, thick skid marks all over the road. Some of them reach the sidewalk.

  “At least we know that Santa Clarita was hit with the pulse, too,” I muse aloud. “We’re at least thirty-five miles out of L.A.”

  This only makes Chris frown more.

  “We’ll try the gas station,” he says. “But don’t count on finding any fuel.”

  “I’m not.”

  Chris drives up to the pumps and cuts the engine. We both get out. The sky is starting to darken around with rainclouds. Gusts of cold air are blowing through the abandoned rest area. “These are all dead,” I say, disappointed. But really, what had I been expecting? Of course the pumps would be dead if all the cars were.

  “They might have some gas canisters inside,” Chris says, tapping the blank pump screen. “Stay here. Keep your eyes open.”

  He reaches into the backseat and pulls out his backpack. He removes a semiautomatic that’s a lot newer — and cooler looking — than mine and tucks it into his belt.

  “What? You think there’s going to be somebody in there to shoot?” I ask, alarmed. “And I didn’t know you had a gun.”

  “I didn’t want to scare you,” he says, completely serious. “Stay here.”

  “I’m not moving. Geez. A little trust would be nice.”

  Chris snorts and walks towards the building. I pull my jacket tighter and lean against the pump, overlooking the spooky scene before me. It’s like everybody just disappeared all at once. But where did they go? How did they get out so quickly?

  Spooked, I grab my crank radio from the front seat. After a few hundred windups I shake my arm out and turn up the volume. I can only hear a crackling static at first before it’s interrupted by a short burst of dialogue.

  “Citizens should take care to remain where t
hey are and stay inside,” it says. A man’s voice. Pre-recorded. “For those that are unable to reach shelter, there are emergency camps in California for refugees. The following is a list of camp locations: Santee, San Bernardino, Bakersfield, Stockton, Elk Grove, Dublin, Yreka, San Jose and Fresno. Again, do not leave your homes unless necessary. Seek shelter at a relief camp or indoors. This is not a drill. The President has declared a state of emergency. Help is coming.”

  The audio loops and starts over. I turn from station to station. Every broadcasting center is spouting out the same thing. My hand hovers over the off button just as I hear those words again: State of emergency. Apparently the whole state has gone dark. But what about the rest of the country?

  God. I hope not.

  “Chris!” I yell. “I got the radio to work!”

  No answer. I roll my eyes and toss the radio back in the car. Down the street the road dips right underneath the freeway overpass. It’s completely stacked with cars. A virtual parking lot.

  I’d hate to be the cleanup crew that has to take care of that.

  Bored, I walk around the Mustang a few times and check for dents. There’s a scratch on the rear fender. I bend to inspect it, my reflection peeking out at me in the shiny chrome. This is what I get for letting him drive, I think.

  And then I see a flicker of movement in the chrome. At first I think it’s just my hair blowing around my face. Then I think that it’s Chris returning from the building with a gas canister.

  That’s before I realize it’s another person.

  I stand straight up and turn around. On the other end of the McDonald’s parking lot, a guy dressed in gangster garb is standing there with his hat on backwards. He’s wearing all black, some kind of metal stick in his hand. A crowbar?

  Not exactly a positive sign.

  He’s staring straight at me. Both of us, motionless in the middle of this deserted rest stop. My heart drops to my stomach, not because I’m afraid of people per se, but because I’m afraid that a guy dressed like a gangster holding a crowbar in the middle of Armageddon doesn’t have sparkling intentions.

  As expected, he starts moving toward me. I immediately reach for my gun, keeping my hand on the holster in case he tries anything.