The Takeover, page 24
They were standing on their neighbor’s porch, inside the dome now, which, like every other dome around the world, had grown to twelve miles in diameter and covered 120 square miles of land. The dome was kicking all of them out whether they liked it or not. If Earl felt any resentment towards them about “their” dome having infringed on his property, he didn’t let on about it.
As Earl headed off to pack for his new life in Nebraska, Ken and Marie looked at each other. “Well, what now?” Marie asked.
“Pack up the truck, I guess,” Ken said. “Set the animals free. Let ‘em fend for themselves as best they can.”
“Most of them will die without our help.”
“What else can we do? We can’t bring ‘em with us in the truck.”
“What about us? What are we gonna do?”
“I’ve no idea,” Ken said. “No idea at all.”
*****
They packed their suitcases and a few remaining belongings into the truck. Sally surprised them with a shopping bag full of candy bars and beef jerky as they prepared to head out. Marie clutched her in her arms with tears in her eyes as they said their goodbyes. They’d been neighbors for over forty years, and they knew it was unlikely they’d ever see each other again.
It was a cold, snowy afternoon when they headed out. They couldn’t resist swinging by their own snow-covered fields and visiting their own homestead one last time before passing through the dome wall and leaving it behind forever. The two of them had decided to head east towards Kansas City in the hopes of finding food and some kind of employment there. Kansas City was supposed to be dome-free, from what they’d heard, and any place without a dome was good enough for them.
Back roads brought them to I-70, then they headed east along the highway. At first they congratulated themselves on their choice of direction because the highway heading west was an absolute mess. They lost count of how many miles the traffic jam must have stretched in that direction.
“Would you look at that,” Ken exclaimed in amazement. “There’s no end to it.”
But to their dismay, they discovered the same mess waiting for them up ahead. Near Grinnell, they hit the traffic jam of all traffic jams and realized they had some serious troubles of their own. The cars weren’t just moving slowly—they weren’t moving at all. As more cars and trucks came to a stop behind them, they found themselves sandwiched inside a parking lot of epic proportions. Horns blared, people cursed, but it made not a lick of difference because no one could go anywhere.
After two hours of waiting in an absolute standstill, they decided to follow the lead of a few other drivers in pickup trucks and four-wheel-drives who were heading off onto the grassy verge at the side of the highway. Just getting to the verge was no small feat, because every lane plus the paved shoulder was crammed with cars, but the verge itself was manageable—if you happened to have the right kind of vehicle for it, which they did.
They jounced and bounced their way forward across the grass for several miles, actually laughing at the absurdity of it, until they reached a bridge that crossed the highway. The bridge created an impassable barrier where the verge disappeared into guardrail and concrete.
That didn’t stop some of the drivers ahead of them: they plowed over a mangled stretch of fence, forged into the snowy fields to the right of the highway, then headed straight up and over the bridge’s grassy embankment and out of sight.
“If they can do it, so can we,” said Ken.
“Go for it,” said Marie. “How bad could it be?”
Pretty bad, as it turned out.
Their pickup’s all-season tires weren’t quite up to the task; they crabbed sideways up the embankment. Another vehicle trying to negotiate the same slope with even less success skidded into them sidewise. Marie gave a little whoop of surprise as her passenger side door dented in towards her.
They crested the top of the embankment and had little choice but to keep going because the same out-of-control vehicle that had already hit them once was crabbing sidewise right up behind them, horn blaring wildly.
They crossed the narrow exit road, which, in the split second he had to look, Ken saw was littered with stopped vehicles, and slid down the other side of the embankment only half in control. Ken worked the steering wheel like a pro and made it safely down the other side—only to slide into a heap of other vehicles at the bottom of the embankment. He hit the brakes but they did no good whatsoever at such a sharp angle over snow-covered grass.
They slid sideways into the next vehicle in line at the bottom of the embankment, coming to rest at right angles to the highway. The wildly out-of-control vehicle behind them finished the tableau when it collided into them from the other side. Marie gave another whoop of surprise, followed by a cry of pain as the passenger-side door crumpled into her shoulder.
“Are you all right?” Ken asked urgently. Marie nodded but winced in pain.
If they hadn’t been stuck before, they were stuck now.
Ken had a weird instant of connection with the drivers on either side of him—the one he had crashed into and the one who had crashed into him. Both looked at him with an apologetic look that Ken returned in kind. There was nothing any of them could have done to avoid the disaster that had just played out. It was what you got for driving up and down a grassy embankment in the snow.
They were wedged in tightly, and as more four-wheel-drives came tilting over the embankment and slid into the ones that were already there, their quarters became even more cramped. They would be lucky if they could exit their vehicle at all, the way things were going. Marie’s side was already crumpled beyond hope. Ken tried his door and found it wedged so tightly against the car next to him that he couldn’t budge it.
Great. Just great.
The pickup’s engine was still running, and it was so cold outside that he left it running for the heat.
He leaned over as best he could and examined Marie’s right shoulder. It was badly bruised and bleeding but didn’t appear to be dislocated, thank goodness. Marie insisted she was fine. “I’ll just sit here for awhile and say a little prayer,” she said. “Don’t you worry about me.”
Waiting for the police to arrive proved hopeless.
Hours later the engine conked out, plumb out of gas, and they remained tucked in tight inside their vehicular prison.
Ken finally managed to kick out the front windshield with the heel of his boot. It was surprisingly difficult to do and left him feeling worn out, as if he’d just finished a long stretch of work out in the fields.
Just getting Marie out of the pickup’s front windshield with her tender shoulder was no easy matter. They clambered through and crawled over the hood, Ken dragging the shopping bag full of snacks behind him—but before he realized what was happening, most of the candy bars and beef jerky fell out of the bag and disappeared between the vehicles, instantly irretrievable.
Dammit!
Abandoning their truck, they retrieved their luggage and dragged it along behind them across the snowy field. That lasted all of five minutes before they realized they’d collapse with exhaustion if they didn’t leave most of their stuff behind.
Throwing on as many layers as they could, they stuffed the few remaining items of food they had into their pockets, then headed off on foot along the highway. Thousands of others were doing the same as it became apparent the traffic jam was never going to end.
Night fell like a hammer blow. It started to snow again. Then the wind started to whistle, and what had felt cold before felt downright balmy compared to the true cold of a Kansas winter night.
They struggled forward like the thousands of others around them. They were somewhere past Grinnell but before Grainfield, names no one but local Kansans would know—and even they didn’t know them well because they were nothing but tiny farming hamlets.
They picked their way past dead hulks of vehicles on the highway. The whole of I-70 was filled with cars and trucks and big rigs that would never move again. The vehicles were half-buried in the snow and looked like relics from the past.
“Where are we going?” Marie asked, shivering.
“I wish I knew,” Ken replied. “What a miserable night.”
At last they did what they saw other people doing and started checking car doors, looking for an abandoned vehicle in which they could take shelter. It was Marie who finally found an unlocked Honda Civic buried deep in the snow in the middle of the highway. They clambered in, both shivering, locked the doors, and huddled together for warmth. Ken tried the glove box and the visors and everywhere else he could think of to look but found no car keys.
“At least we’re out of the wind,” Marie whispered. Their teeth chattered and they could see their breath, but in time their body heat started to make a difference. The windows turned foggy and the world outside fell away as they drifted off into an uneasy sleep.
Ken dreamed of an endless stream of candy bars slipping through his fingers no matter how hard he tried to hold onto them.
Chapter 25
January 1 – Pasadena, California
When Rachel’s eyelids fluttered open, the three men were long gone and so was her car. She could see the spot where it had been parked through the front door, which had been left wide open. Her blouses and undergarments were strewn across the yard like so much debris after a hurricane. Her suitcase gaped open on the lawn with nothing left inside.
She saw all this—the empty driveway where her car should have been, her favorite blouses trampled into the grass—from a weird ninety-degree angle. She was lying in a heap at the bottom of the stairs.
She tried to get up and yowled with pain. Her head felt like jello and her left knee wouldn’t support her weight.
She dropped back down in a puddle of despair and didn’t move for awhile.
What time was it, anyway?
She saw light slanting in from the front door.
Slowly, Rachel untangled herself from herself and reached a sitting position on the stairs. Her brain felt like it was sloshing around inside her skull, and she kept blinking to avoid seeing double. Clearly she had suffered a concussion at the very least.
Amazingly her glasses were still intact. She wished she could say the same for her body.
She stood up, gingerly testing her left knee, and found she couldn’t put any weight on it at all without wincing. Her knee had ballooned up to nearly twice its normal size. She was no doctor (well, she was, actually), but she didn’t think that was a good sign.
Rachel sat back down and stared at her watch for a long time until the digital display came into focus. Up in the top right-hand corner was a tiny number “1.”
She tried to piece things together. The dome had jumped on December 29th around 2 pm, she was sure of that much. She’d been busy packing on the 31st—New Year’s Eve—when she’d taken her little tumble down the stairs around midnight, with the help of her new friends. She vaguely remembered coming to in a groggy sort of way in the middle of the night before going back to sleep because it simply hurt too much to stay awake. If the “1” on her watch was correct, then it meant the oxygen could run out at any time after 2 pm on this, the third day since the jump.
Her watch showed 3 pm.
Not good; not good at all.
No car, no working knee, and a head that felt like jello.
As soon as she realized the air could be running out—as soon as that thought entered her mind—it felt like she couldn’t breathe.
It came to her that she’d be lucky to survive the next few hours. Her white whale seemed intent on killing her.
She tried to think. How big was the dome at this point? It had to be twelve miles in diameter by now. She knew the dome’s center was at JPL, which was about five miles to the north, so if she headed south for a mile or so, she might be able to reach its southern edge in time. Might being the operable word.
First things first: she had to improvise a crutch. She hobbled over to the closet, head sloshing around like a swimming pool on a cruise ship during a storm at sea, and took a look around. The best she could come up with was a golf club from her abortive attempt at picking up a new hobby. She drew the three wood out of the golf bag, tossed away the head cover, and used the head as a handle. It was more like a cane than a crutch, but it would have to do.
She began hobbling down the driveway in an attempt to walk her way out of the dome, but she only made it as far as the end of the driveway before realizing it was hopeless. Her knee kept screaming at her to stop. She backtracked up the driveway. Who knew knees could scream?
Inside the garage was her bike. Maybe she could coast out of the dome. She punched in the code for the garage. Nothing. It took her nearly a minute with her doubled vision to make sure she hit the right keys the second time—and still nothing.
Shit. The power was off.
The white whale snickered at her.
Rachel limp-hopped through the front door, then into the garage, head protesting with each hop. At least the criminals hadn’t stolen her bike. It made her wonder what they had stolen. But she hardly cared at this point; having only a few hours to live had a way of focusing your mind on the things that really mattered.
Could she ride with her bum leg? She guessed she was about to find out.
She pulled the manual release and somehow managed to push the garage door up and open. It felt like an Olympic-level event for concussives. She literally had to sit down on the pavement afterwards to rest.
Then it was limp-hop, limp-hop, limp-hop over to the bike.
She swore the air felt as thin as a sheet of paper.
With great effort she managed to straddle the bike.
This could go really well or really poorly.
Tentatively she pushed off with her good leg and let the bike gain some momentum down the driveway. The pedals had straps, so she was able to put her right foot into the strap and leave her left foot dangling.
There was really no decision to be made at that point: she had to go downhill because she could barely pedal with one functional leg. Since downhill was to the east, she went east, waiting and watching for her chance to turn south—the direction she really wanted to go.
Rachel could sense the dome far above her head and could actually see the dome’s wall curving downward about a mile south of her. Turning her head to look in that direction made her realize just how stiff her neck was on top of everything else. But at least she was heading east on California Boulevard, and that was a start. The boulevard had the good graces to stay flat, which meant her one-legged peddling could be kept to a minimum. It was also enormously helpful to her head that the ride over the pavement was as smooth as, well, pavement.
The bike wheels clicked with comforting familiarity as she let gravity do the work. Her path took her towards Huntington Hospital. Maybe she should pop in for a checkup. Ha! But who was she kidding? No one would be there at this late date. She wouldn’t be here at this late date, if she’d had any choice in the matter.
At last she found a road heading south that was flat and held promise. Pasadena Avenue. Perfect.
She turned as carefully as she could—maybe a little too carefully, because she lost momentum, and her bum leg couldn’t compensate like it should have, and her front wheel started wobbling like crazy, and the next thing she knew she lost control and crashed.
Excruciating blinding pain.
And deep rumbling laughter from below. Or above. She couldn’t tell which.
*****
The sunlight had faded and she was shivering with what felt like ague by the time she regained consciousness. She looked at her watch, or tried to, but the numbers kept swimming in front of her eyes like a kaleidoscope. After a full minute of staring, she was pretty sure it still said “1” for the date—thank God—but now it was after 5 pm. Which meant it had been three days plus another three hours since the jump.
Why wasn’t she dead yet?
Maybe because, as the domes got bigger with each jump, it took a little longer to expel all the oxygen. Which was a good thing if you happened to be Dr. Rachel Cavanaugh and found yourself stuck inside a dome on what was now the beginning of the fourth day and counting.
Did the air seem even thinner now? Oh yes indeed it did. Her lungs were having to work hard now just to take a breath. She was on Everest time, 28,000 feet and climbing.
Her bike was still in good shape—her crash had been about as gentle as a crash could be—but even the thought of trying to ride it again made her nauseous. She couldn’t afford a third concussion: another fall, no matter how gentle, would kill her.
She looked around at her surroundings and realized she was less than a block away from Huntington Hospital. Two tan towers rose up ahead of her, connected by an elevated pedestrian walkway. A sudden thought came to her, and she began crawling towards the two towers. Her left knee howled in protest, but she gritted her teeth and ignored it.
She crept on all fours—well, all threes, actually—all the way to the emergency room entrance between the two towers. As she’d expected, no one was there. All of Pasadena had emptied out long since. But someone had been here since the jump: the front door was smashed to smithereens. She could see a baseball bat leaning next to the shattered door.
Glass shards littered the entryway like confetti. She crawled over them as carefully as she could, but slivers stuck into her palms and knees anyway; it seemed like a small annoyance compared to everything else that was going wrong with her. The fact that her burning lungs were starting to outweigh all of her other injuries combined was definitely cause for concern.
Probably a drug addict had bashed in the doors, she decided with hazy logic as she crept through the entrance. That would make sense. Speaking of drugs, she could go for some painkillers right about now. Anything to numb the pain before the end, because the end was definitely coming.
Someone had told her once that it wasn’t one mistake that did you in, but rather a series of two or three mistakes compounded. Neglecting to lock her front door and getting tossed down the stairs like a human hackysack had been mistake number one. Trying to ride a bike with a concussion and a bum leg had been mistake number two. Crawling into an abandoned hospital as oxygen deprivation set in was beginning to look like mistake number three, the fatal one.
