Darren Wearmouth - Second Activation

“You read my mind,” Jack said.

I took one last look out front. The group reached within thirty yards of the GA goons. Anthony stepped from behind the Rover, holding an M60 at his hip and opened fire.

Rounds ripped through the survivors and peppered the barn. Jack and I dove to the ground. Brett froze.

“Get down!” Jack shouted.

Brett pressed his hand against the left side of his chest, pulled it away and looked at his blood-soaked hand. He dropped to his knees, his eyes glazing over, and he fell face first and joined Bob on the dirt.

I crawled over to him and twisted his head toward me. His eyes stared back vacantly. There was nothing I could do. Our plan had died with Brett, and we would follow if we didn’t act quickly.

Somebody barked orders outside. Another burst of automatic fire hit the barn. Wood chips sprayed from the decaying doors. A round ricocheted off the farming tools to our right and whizzed in an unknown direction.

“Back door, now,” I said.

“We can take them out,” Jack said.

“Fuck that. Four against two, and they’ve got a machine gun.”

I wriggled to the hay bales, crawled over them, and dropped to the far side of the barn. The rusty bolt on the back door required a few twists of encouragement before it opened. Jack landed beside me, and I pushed the door open.

We sprinted for the trees on our left, keeping our flight obscured from anyone at the front of the property, and threw ourselves down behind them. I shouldered my rifle and checked for any signs of pursuit. Nobody followed, indicating that perhaps the survivors didn’t have time to tell the goons about us before being cut down.

Using the cover of woodland, we carried on, putting distance between the farm and us, eventually meeting up with a country road that led to Interstate 80.

Brett’s death had increased my determination to succeed against Genesis Alliance. He was a likeable guy who had been put through hell by these people. I appreciated his brave decision to join our fight, putting him miles out of his competence zone and perhaps placing his family at an even greater risk.

“That’s our plan for Hart Island—screwed,” Jack said. “With Brett gone, how are we supposed to destroy that thing?”

“Maybe find Morgan and his group. They might have some ordnance or could help us find some. If GA is right up our asses, I think we need a stronger force.”

Brett’s reward for having the courage to stand up to GA was a bullet. I vowed to honor his memory and complete the mission we’d started together—and return the compliment to Anthony.

We struggled to find a usable vehicle in the near vicinity. A group of badly damaged and charred cars cluttered around the intersection. Two were mangled together at the front end after meeting in a head-on collision.

I jogged along the inside lane and spotted an electric-blue Honda Goldwing motorbike on its side, its rider pinned underneath. I grabbed the handlebars and strained to right the bike. Jack pulled the corpse away by the helmet.

“So we’re sticking to the highway?” he said.

“Best way to build up a lead. Straight to New York.”

He straddled the bike and started the engine. It sounded too loud on the silent highway. Jack had been a weekend biker in England. I’d always thought of motorcycles as death machines, but in our current circumstances, a bike appeared the perfect way of eating distance. With a convoy heading the same way, not to mention the imminent arrival of a larger, more powerful force, we couldn’t hang around.

I took the pillion, and neither of us bothered with a helmet. What did it matter? I thought; health and safety had died in the activation too.

“Next stop, Hermitage?” Jack shouted above the whining engine.

“That’s not even funny.”

“I think we should go back to Jerry’s barn and burn it down. If we can take out that device, it might leave GA with another hole in their communications.”

“It’s on the way, so why not?” I said, remembering Bob indicate the location of Hart Island on his map. “If we head into the city from the north, it’ll give us a view of the island.”

Wind rushed against my face in the brilliant sunshine. I purposefully avoided mentioning Bernie and so did Jack. Riding on a motorbike made any reasonable conversation difficult, but I thought we could both benefit from paying respects to someone who had been an integral part of our initial survival.

With the time approaching four in the afternoon, we zipped between obstacles at a decent pace. The Newburgh-Beacon Bridge lay just over four hundred miles away in southern New York State. At our current speed, and allowing a short stop in Orange County, we could make it by the early hours of Saturday morning. I earmarked the bridge as a place to stop and get a couple of hours’ sleep before entering the city.

The bike’s fuel light blinked on just before Bellefonte. At half past nine in the evening, darkness had already descended. I thought it a blessing in disguise because I would feel far safer in a car at night.

Jack stopped next to a lone Jeep. Two people lay next to the passenger door. Moonlight reflected off their pale green skin, and I cupped my hand over my nose. More importantly, the inside of the vehicle appeared clean. I jumped into the driver’s seat. The keys were still in the ignition, and I gave them a hopeful twist.

The engine roared into life, and the fuel gauge flipped to three-quarters full. I placed my rifle between the front seats while Jack buckled up. Moonlight allowed us to drive with dipped headlights, and I felt a sense of purpose as the Jeep cruised at fifty miles per hour, curving between lanes.

We occasionally bumped over stray objects in the road, but I threw my previous caution to the wind. Brett’s death had dealt a severe blow to our plans, but we had to continue. The more I thought about meeting with Morgan’s group, the more it made sense. Without a tech geek in our midst, we probably needed a stronger force to end the local threat. We would certainly need a small organized army to defeat the larger incoming threat.

Jack seemed to be getting more used to his environment. I thought our new objectives channeled his emotions and helped him come to terms with our situation. Being in a position to do something returned him to his former self, focused and single-minded. When we were simply surviving, he acted irrationally and came close to having meltdowns.

We stopped for a short break at Bloomsberg, leaned against the hood, and shared a bottle of Gatorade I’d found under the front seat. Something buzzed in the air, and I peered into the clear night sky.

“Sounds like a chopper,” Jack said.

I looked back in our direction of travel. A white beam shone on a distant section of highway. “Kill the lights. Into the trees.”

I crouched behind the trunk and peered between branches. The buzz grew quickly louder.

“Who do you think it is?” Jack asked.

“I’d put money on it being GA.”

Twenty seconds later, a helicopter thumped overhead, perhaps only two hundred feet above the highway. A searchlight shone along the lanes, and I felt a light breeze against my face as the chopper passed. I leaned out and watched it blast along the length of the highway and disappear into the distance.

“Looks like they’ve found a quicker way to Hart Island,” I said.

“Some of them, not all. Doesn’t change our plan, though, does it?”

“No. We can still beat the convoy and take on small numbers with Morgan’s help.”

He took over the wheel and picked up Interstate 84 at one in the morning. This section of road had been relatively clear on our way to Monroe, and it was doubtful that the density of wrecks had increased in the last few days. My eyelids felt heavy, but I had to remain vigilant for any movement in the shadows around us.