Ryan Westfield - Final Chaos

Jim didn’t look back.

The Subaru was already packed. It looked impossibly full. And on the roof, along with the bicycle, the duffle bag was strapped to the roof rack.

Jessica helped Aly squish into the backseat next to all the gear. Rob was in the passenger’s seat.

The Subaru was sinking down on its suspension under all the weight.

The crowd had dispersed, but a few were standing on their front steps, glaring menacingly in the Subaru’s direction.

One of them cupped their hands together and shouted something in Jim’s direction, but he couldn’t make out what it was.

Far down the street, Jim spotted something.

He couldn’t make out what it was.

But it was moving.

And getting closer.

It wasn’t a vehicle.

It was larger than a person.

“Everyone set?” said Jim, throwing himself into the driver’s seat, depressing the clutch, and cranking the engine.

He didn’t wait for them to respond before he had it in reverse and the engine was whining as he sped out of the driveway.

Jim sprung the wheel, swinging the car around.

In the rearview mirror, the moving thing was close enough that Jim could make it out.

It was a horse.

And a cop.

A mounted police officer.

“Looks like they got ahold of the police somehow,” said Jim, throwing the Subaru into first.

As far as he knew, only the Rochester city police had mounted cops. There’d likely be plenty to deal with within the city limits. Very soon, if not already. It was too bad they were wasting their energy sending a cop over here to Pittsford.

Who knew what the communication system looked like. Maybe they’d gotten hold of some radios that worked.

Who knew.

Jim wasn’t going to wait around to find out.

Aly’s sobs filled the car as Jim sped down the road. The engine was pulling a little harder than normal with all the extra weight. The interior was packed full of trash bags that stuck out at awkward angles, since they were packed full of all manner of household things.

Jim hoped that Rob and Jessica, who’d done the majority of the packing, had had the sense to gather things that really would be useful.

They’d be OK once they got to the lake house, as long as they had food.

At least that was what he was telling himself.

They’d wait it out for a month or so. Until things calmed down. Doing some quick mental calculations, he figured they might have food in the car for four people for a month. Light rations, of course. Difficult, but entirely doable. Especially with fish from the lake.

Aly sat in the back of the crowded Subaru, completely wracked with guilt. Guilt like she’d never felt before, guilt that she hoped, somewhere deep down inside of herself, that she’d never feel again. Ever.

She’d stopped sobbing. Her throat felt dry and almost as if she was choking, as if it was partially constricted. Her face felt flushed and tingly, and her hands felt like claws, as if she couldn’t properly move her fingers. She’d felt those effects before, during an especially bad anxiety attack in which she’d hyperventilated. There was some physiology term for what had happened, but she couldn’t remember what it was.

Her mind was nothing but a fog. There were still tears in her eyes, and her heart was pounding.

How could she do this? How could they do this? Leaving her mother like that, lying on the floor in her own home. What would happen to her body? Would it just rot? Would someone open the house again in a few weeks to be met by a horrendous stench? The bugs would swarm and start to devour the corpse.

Her death was a shock, but it really shouldn’t have been. She took heart medication, and had taken it for years. Maybe she’d forgotten it that morning, given what had happened. Or maybe the disease had finally progressed to the point that the medication wasn’t any good.

Aly couldn’t focus on the conversation in the car. Jim, Jessica, and Rob were talking about possible routes to the cabin.

It was good Jim knew how to get there, because Aly felt as if she wouldn’t have been able to talk coherently. If she’d been the only one who knew the way, she doubted she’d have been able to get them all there.

“But the highway’s faster,” Rob was saying. “And look, we don’t have that much gas. And from what you’re saying, it doesn’t sound like the gas pumps are going to work.”

“Can’t we siphon gas from them?” said Jessica. “The gas is still there after all. It’s just that the pumps don’t work.”

“I don’t know how we’d get at the gas,” said Jim. “It’s in underground tanks. It’s not like we can just stick a tube in there and start sucking away. Plus, the tanks are below ground. It’s not like the gas is going to just magically flow up into our own tank.”

“Gravity,” muttered Rob. “Damn gravity.”

“I’m doing the best I can with the gas,” said Jim. “We’ll get better gas mileage at about 50 MPH. I think we can get there on what’s left in the tank, even if we take the back way.”

“You really think the highway’s going to be packed full of cars?”

“Think about it,” said Jim. “Everyone who was driving on the highway, well, they’ll still be there, for the most part. And people who’ve figured out something is wrong, they’ll be on the highway, too. The ones with working cars, that is. It’ll be a mess.”

“Can’t we just drive by and check it out?” said Rob.

“You mean go through the on ramp and then get stuck there, with no way out for miles until the next exit?”

Rob didn’t answer.

Aly found herself slipping back into her memories. Her eyes felt impossibly heavy, and they closed slowly. She drifted off into something resembling sleep. But she was still awake.

It’d happened to her before, towards the end of an anxiety attack. Her body had been so exhausted by the hyperventilation, the intensity of the thoughts, that she’d closed her eyes and sunk into a trance-like state.

Memories of her mother flashed before her eyes. Memories from when Aly’d been a little kid. They hadn’t grown up in Pittsford. In fact, she’d grown up in one of the roughest, poorest neighborhoods of Rochester.

When Aly’d been a kid was around the time that Rochester had gone through its most severe economic crisis. The big tech companies in the area, which had supported the economy for so long, had started their huge layoffs. Suddenly, huge swaths of the local, loyal workforce were sitting around with nothing to do, with no hope and no prospects.

Aly’s parents had been hit as hard as anyone. Her father hadn’t been the type to just sit around and do nothing. He’d had his pride, but it hadn’t kept him from getting the first job he could find, which was bagging groceries. He’d said it was a fine job, that there was nothing wrong with it. And that was true, but when Aly’d gotten older she’d realized how hard it had been for him to make the transition from engineer to grocery bagger.

Her mother had gone back to school, gotten her teaching certification, and become a kindergarten teacher.

It was only when Aly’s grandparents had died and her parents had inherited quite a bit of money that they’d moved to Pittsford.

Her father had kept bagging groceries, saying that he needed something to keep busy, until he’d died.

With the memories flooding through her, Aly was only vaguely aware of something going on in the car around her. Fragments of conversation reached her, and she recognized her husband’s voice, but she didn’t really register on the meaning of the words. They were just that, words.

At some point, Aly drifted off to an exhausted sleep. It was her body trying to protect her, trying its best to protect her from the horror of what had happened, of what was happening.