Jeremy Robinson - SecondWorld

“Too loud!” Arwen shouted.

But Miller barely heard her as he fired again. Cracks spidered across the window.

“Too loud!” she shouted again. “They’re going to hear you!”

The third shot shattered the window and the glass fell away. It was only then that Arwen’s last sentence sank in. They’re going to hear you. He ran back to her. “ Who is going to hear me?”

“The bad men.”

“What bad men?”

“From the hospital. I could hear them talking, even after everyone else died. Talked about killing people. Laughed a lot. Like the world ending was a party.”

From the hospital? Miller’s mind retraced their journey, searching for anything out of the ordinary. While everything was out of the ordinary, he hadn’t seen or heard anything suspicious since they left the hospital. And the gunshots would echo off the city’s empty buildings, disguising the direction of their source.

Then a chill ran up his spine. He’d been on the lookout for people all the way from the hospital, but hadn’t once looked behind them. He slowly turned in the direction they’d come. What he saw quickened his breath and pulse.

“What is it?” Arwen asked in a whisper. “Is it them?”

“Yeah,” he said, looking at a group of nearly fifty men, perhaps two football-field lengths away. They stood in the street, not moving under his gaze. They were dressed like casual Miami beachgoers—cargo shorts and tank tops in a variety of colors. But they all had shaved heads and every last one of them was white. Worse, they all wore identical black rebreathers, which implied preparation and foreknowledge about the impending attack.

Welcome to SecondWorld.

One of the men stepped forward and raised a hand in greeting. It was friendly enough, but when the group stepped toward him as one he felt like a wounded deer facing down a wolf pack. If they reached him, he was a dead man. And even if they spared Arwen, what kind of life would she live among men such as these?

Miller offered a wave back to keep the mob moving slowly. They’d probably been trained to not exert themselves and waste air. “Arwen, we need to move fast, okay?”

“It’s going to hurt?”

“Probably for a few minutes, yeah.”

“We in trouble?”

“Yup.”

“’Kay.”

Miller grabbed the gurney and slowly moved it toward the broken window. He kept an eye on the group of men as they watched him. The mutual suspicion quickly became apparent and more than the lead man could bear. He broke into a run and the rest followed.

Miller shoved the gurney inside the dealership, yanked open the rear door of the silver four-door sedan. He placed the unused oxygen tank on the backseat, twisted the valve open, and slammed the door shut. After opening the passenger’s door, he scooped Arwen up, tent and all. She let out a cry, but held on tight. He placed her in the front seat and said, “Stay there, I need to find the keys.”

He jumped over the vomit-covered body of a gray-haired man in a suit and made for the service desk. He hadn’t yet reached it when he heard what sounded like an engine starting, but far more quiet. Remembering the car was electric, he spun around and saw the rear lights glowing red. The front window rolled down and Arwen shouted, “I had my foot on the brake, and pushed a button, and it started!”

The window rose again as Miller made for the car. He remembered seeing a car that could be started by a push button as long as the key—a small transmitter—was within a certain radius. He stopped at the dead body, patted him down, and found a small device bearing the Tesla logo. He snatched it up, afraid the car would stop if it got too far away, and dove for the driver’s side door.

After throwing himself into the front seat and slamming the door, Miller threw the car into drive and said, “Hold on!”

The lead man of the mob reached the front of the store. He held a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun, a compact, deadly weapon no civilian had any reason to own, and began raising it toward the car.

The Model S had surprising kick. Glass flung from beneath its squealing tires, peppering the Tesla storefront. With the glass clear, the tires caught the slick linoleum floor and left twin streaks of black as the car rocketed out of the dealership and directly toward the man wielding a submachine gun.

As luck would have it, the gun-toting man had neither heard the nearly silent engine start nor recognized the Telsa brand. His eyes popped wide as Miller directed the silver missile toward him. The weapon lowered as he dove to the side.

Beyond the man, the mob, which was in no danger of being run over, began raising an assortment of weapons. Miller glanced ahead. The dealership sat across from a T intersection. If they could make it to the straightaway directly across from them, they might just make it. But the death squad to their left was about to open fire. And unfortunately, car doors are not as impenetrable as the movies portray. Most bullets, especially the high-caliber variety this bunch carried, could rip right through a car door. Though he was directly in their sights, Miller didn’t duck or swerve. He simply pushed the Auto-down button on his window. While it lowered he took aim with his handgun and hoped the rest of the crew was as inexperienced and jumpy as their apparent leader. He squeezed off five rounds toward the group, not caring if he hit anyone or not. Miller watched as the group hit the pavement like his bullets had struck each and every one of them.

As Miller put the window up, the car tore across the intersection and shot down the side street, reaching sixty miles per hour in five point six seconds—the same amount of time it took the window to go back up. Miller glanced in the rearview and saw the mob rushing into the dealership. They’d have vehicles soon, too.

Miller turned left and pulled over. He turned to Arwen. “You okay?”

She looked small and frail in the seat. She had her seat belt on over the white tent tarp, which was wrapped around her like a blanket. When she gave him a small smile he realized she could breathe.

She noted his attention and said, “The air is okay. You opened the valve on the tank, remember?”

Miller removed his face mask, leaned forward, and shook out of his clunky rebreather apparatus, which had pitched him forward in the seat. He twisted the air supply valves to Off and put the whole thing in the back. The air inside the car smelled strange, but it was breathable. The car had become a mobile oxygen tent.

“We’re going to have to do some more fast driving. Might get bumpy.”

She grimaced.

Miller realized he should have taken some painkillers from the hospital. They’d probably been giving her morphine. He made a mental note to get something for the pain if they escaped the city in one piece.

Miller pulled away from the curb and wove his way through the city, avoiding bodies and the occasional abandoned vehicle as best he could. “We need to find the highway. Head north. Do you know your way around the city?”

She looked at him with squinty eyes. “You know I’m twelve, right? I usually read while my parents drive.”

“Right. I think I need to—”

“What was that?” Arwen said, her voice tinged with fear.

Miller glanced at her as he rounded a body. She was looking beyond him, out the driver’s side window. “What did you see?”

“Something red. Two intersections down. Thought it was moving.”

Miller picked up speed, steering past obstacles like the street was a slalom course. He had no doubt that the red she’d seen was one of the two red Tesla Roadsters that had been on display at the dealership. They were two-seat sports cars and no doubt faster than his four-door sedan.