Ryan Westfield - Final Chaos

“So where are you taking me? And just to be clear, I’m going to tell the police exactly what happened when they finally catch up with us. If you’re not going to turn yourself in, the least you could do is take her to the hospital. It might look good when you go before a judge.”

“What are you talking about?” said Jim.

“He thinks the world’s ending,” said Rob.

“Someone please tell me what’s going on,” said the amnesiac woman in a loud voice, almost a shout.

“OK,” shouted Jim. “Everyone calm down and be quiet. I’m going to explain everything. Just listen and look around.”

He’d been loud enough that everyone shut up.

He was driving down Connecticut Avenue, which was a four lane road. Two lanes on either side.

There were plenty of cars stopped in the middle of the road. The drivers, for the most part, remained in their cars. Some of them had opened their doors.

Jim weaved the Subaru between the stopped cars.

In his rearview mirror, he saw one other moving car, which was staying about a hundred feet behind him. It was a pickup truck, one of those small old Nissans that had small diameter wheels and rode fairly low to the ground.

“OK, everyone,” said Jim, speaking in a commanding voice that dared them not to listen to him carefully. “Look around you carefully. You see those stopped cars? They’re not doing that for fun. Their cars don’t work anymore.”

Jim continued speaking, giving them a pretty basic rundown of what an EMP was and what it affected.

Of course, Jim wasn’t completely sure of exactly what electronics an EMP actually would affect. He’d read various reports and various opinions online, and everyone seemed to believe something a little bit different.

What he was sure of was that the power grid wasn’t just temporarily down. It was damaged and it would take considerable work to get it running again.

“Now just imagine this going on all across the country,” said Jim. “Imagine the majority of the cars and trucks simply sitting there. Where’s the food going to come from? And the water? Now I’m sure you’ve all seen how people around here react when there’s a bad blizzard coming in. And we’re all pretty used to the snow, but still you’ll see huge lines in the supermarkets, and the bottled water going completely missing off the shelves in a matter of hours. You’ll see fights here and there breaking out, just from rising tensions. Now that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”

“So you’re completely serious about all this?” said Aly. For once, he couldn’t read her tone of voice or tell what she was thinking.

Either she still thought he was having a psychotic break or she was beginning to take him seriously.

“Yeah,” said Jim. “Very serious. We need to get out of here.”

“I think he’s making some good points,” said Rob. “People were going crazy at your mom’s house… They were thinking that…”

“You saw it with your own eyes, Rob,” said Jim, cutting him off. “And you still have doubts?”

“Well,” said Rob. “I’ll admit people were going pretty crazy, but you know I don’t see why you think that everything’s going to fall apart so easily. Like in a snowstorm maybe there’s a little bit of chaos and then people pretty much go home and wait it out.”

“But what happens when the power doesn’t come back on tomorrow, or the next day, and then it’s still off a week out? And people are hungry and thirsty and they’re realizing that they’re literally going to die in a matter of weeks simply from hunger?”

“Huh,” muttered Rob, as if he was stumped.

Jim glanced in his rearview mirror again. The small truck was still following them at the same distance.

Up ahead, there were two cars stopped. They sat next to each other, blocking the way.

Jim downshifted and swerved into the oncoming lane to avoid them.

He was driving about forty, which was a little faster than normal for this road. But he didn’t want to go fast and risk an accident. That’d be the last thing they’d need right now.

“It’s going to be OK, honey,” his wife was saying in the backseat. “Now tell me, you don’t remember anything?”

“I remember some things… I know who I am… and…”

Jim didn’t have time to pay attention.

Up ahead, there was something blocking the entire road. Something huge. But it was still far enough off in the distance that he couldn’t quite make out what it was.

Was it a tractor trailer lying sideways?

No, it seemed bigger than that.

They’d taken a different route to the police station. He’d chosen this way back after realizing it was a more direct route.

“What the hell is that?” muttered Rob, from the passenger seat.

Suddenly, it hit Jim.

He knew what it was.

“It’s a plane,” he said.

“A plane?”

“The EMP would knock out the plane’s electronics,” said Jim.

“So it’d just fall to the ground? It doesn’t look too busted up.”

They were getting closer, and Jim hadn’t yet slowed down.

Jim shook his head. “They’d have, what, twenty minutes gliding in the air. And that’s max.”

They had a good view of the plane now.

“Wow,” said Rob. “It’s a big one.”

Jim said nothing.

From the back of the car, he heard his wife gasp.

“You believe me now?” said Jim.

She said nothing.

“What are you going to do?” said Rob. “Why aren’t you slowing down?”

“We’re going to need to get around it,” said Jim.

“Why not just go another way?”

“There’s no other way,” said Jim.

“Sure there is.”

“It’d take us an extra half an hour with how much we’d have to backtrack. We don’t have time for that.”

In the rearview mirror, the small Nissan truck was still following at a distance. Did they want something? Were they following them for some reason? Or were they just headed in the same direction?

Maybe her husband was onto something. The stopped cars in the middle of the road had been strange enough.

But now there was a downed plane?

“Where are the ambulances and police?” said Aly. “You know, the rescue crews?”

She immediately felt stupid for saying that. If most of the cars weren’t working, how were rescue crews going to get there?

“Maybe the radio has something about it,” said Rob, reaching over to press the radio’s power button.

“Doesn’t work,” muttered Jim, but he let him turn it on anyway.

“No static,” said Rob. “Nothing. It’s dead.”

No radio. Cars weren’t working. The police had rushed out of the station, and apparently on foot.

All signs pointed to Jim being right.

And the only other option she’d had in her mind was that her husband had gone mad.

And going crazy wasn’t like him. He’d never shown any signs of mental illness, after all.

But it couldn’t be true.

It just couldn’t.

The young woman next to her had remained mostly silent, almost as if she was lost in a daze. But she seemed as calm as could be under the circumstances. She made no sudden movements, and showed no sign of threatening them again.

Nevertheless, her presence made Aly nervous. As if she could be more nervous.

The woman had clearly shown some kind of instability. Not long ago, she’d been pointing a gun in their direction.

Anxiety had always been an issue for Aly. Ever since she was a kid, she’d had periods where the anxiety had seemed to take over completely. She’d learned some mental techniques, like focusing on her breathing, that had helped her through things. She hadn’t let it slow her down in life or her career.