Steven Konkoly - The Perseid Collapse

“You all right?” Alex asked.

“Better than you,” he said, followed by several deep breaths.

“When you’re feeling better, grab a few extra magazines for each of us. Leave the rest for them.”

“I’m fine right now,” said Charlie. “Ed’s the one you need to check on.”

Alex glanced at the Jeep idling past the bridge. Ed sat upright, motionless. Maybe this would be the end of the journey for both of them.

“Better than shitting your pants,” he heard over the rain.

A man with a thick gray beard and hair tied back into a ponytail lifted himself off the road and approached with a smirk. Wearing full leather riding gear, sunglasses and a red bandana tied across his forehead, he looked like a Sons of Anarchy recruiting poster. He slung the rifle over his right shoulder and extended a hand, oblivious to the rain beating down on him.

“I brought a change of pants just in case,” said Alex, stepping forward.

“I believe a thank you is in order. Jim Koch.”

Alex gripped his hand and shook it vigorously. “Alex Fletcher, and the thanks is all mine. Not sure how that would have gone without the backup,” he said, coughing.

“Looked like you had it more or less under control.”

“I think you’ll need these to move that SUV, if it still works. Hope you didn’t have a big lunch. The front seat’s a little bit messy,” he said, holding up a set of blood-drenched keys.

Jim swiped the keys out of Alex’s hand. “What the hell are you guys?”

“Nothing, really,” Alex said. “Just wanted to get across that bridge.”

“Hate to point this out, but you’re headed in the wrong direction,” said Jim.

“We have kids in Boston. I dropped my son off at Boston University on Saturday for early orientation.”

“Dude, Boston got hit hard. Everyone with any sense is getting out of there. We’re headed up to my brother’s place in Standish. Shitheads here wouldn’t let us cross unless we gave up our rides. Not much we could do about it without some serious hardware,” said Jim, patting the AR-15 he had taken off the road.

“How long have you been here?” asked Alex.

“Two hours. Figured these idiots would bail when the rain hit. We saw three families take that deal.”

“There was no deal,” said Alex.

“What do you mean?”

“There’s a church about two miles up the road. They take the cars there and execute the occupants in the forest—as far as we could tell,” Alex informed him.

“Looks like that’s our next stop,” Jim said, inserting the magazine in the rifle and pulling back the charging handle.

“We shut it down—hard. Nothing left for you to clean up.”

“Sounds like you’ve had a long day, man. I’d buy you guys a drink, but under the circumstances…” he said, looking around and shrugging his shoulders.

“If I see you again, I’ll take you up on that offer,” said Alex. “What route did you take to get up here?”

“Came up from Woburn. No problems at all until this shit,” said Jim.

“Any news from Boston?”

“National Guard units rolled into the areas north of the Charles pretty quickly—almost too quickly. Cambridge, Watertown and the areas closer to the city are pretty stable. South of the river is a clusterfuck. The military isn’t letting anything across the Charles, and nobody north of the river is complaining. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” said Jim.

“That’s the first real SITREP we’ve received since this whole mess started.”

“Ex-military, right?” said Jim.

“Marine Corps. Iraq War. Yourself?”

“Army. First Gulf War.”

“An oldtimer,” said Alex.

“Watch your mouth, Captain Fletcher,” said Jim.

“What makes you think I was a captain?”

“Sergeants can smell an officer a mile away—kind of a pungent, toe cheese odor. You handled yourself a little too well to be a boot LT, so that narrowed the field a little.”

“Well, Sergeant Koch,” said Alex, “welcome to Vacationland. I suggest you avoid Foxes Ridge Road. I suspect your group won’t be happy with what they find at the church.”

“I bet they won’t,” Jim said, giving his crew the signal to mount up.

While the motorcycles filled Milton Mills with a deep rumble, Alex jogged over to the Jeep and looked in the driver’s window. With his hands still gripping the steering wheel in a near perfect ten and two o’clock position, Ed stared blankly at the opaque windshield directly in front of him. He slowly turned his head toward Alex.

“Can you please promise me no more of this SEAL Team Six shit? I think we used up all of our luck with this one,” he said, meeting Alex’s eyes.

“I used up all of mine back at the church. I borrowed heavily for this one,” said Alex, patting him on the shoulder through the window.

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“Both,” said Alex, unwilling to make a promise he couldn’t keep.

“I’m too fucking tired to figure you out right now. Let’s get this Jeep back in working order,” said Ed, “unless the spare is wrecked.”

“Miraculously, the spare is intact.”

Ed stared at him for a few seconds, eventually grinning. “You must have borrowed heavily. I hope you left some for Charlie and me.”

“You’re still alive, right?” said Alex, walking with him to the rear of the Jeep.

“Somehow,” he mumbled.

They finished changing the punctured tire while the last of a steady stream of vehicles crossed the bridge. The bikers, who had taken up armed positions at the far end of each bridge, revved their motorcycles and roared away behind the last car. Ed cranked on the last lug nut and raised himself off the gravel, wiping a thick sheen of sweat from his face with his shirt. He surveyed the other side of the bridge and shook his head.

“I’m worried about our families. What if this group is bigger? They could have shit like this set up all over southern Maine.”

“I don’t think so,” said Alex. “An operation like this is too visible to run anywhere else. This was their big score. Sam and the crew will be fine. They’re probably in Limerick by now.”

“Cooking hotdogs and drinking beer—or eating tofu and salad in your case! Gotcha again!” yelled Charlie.

“You know the saying ‘there’s no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole?’ Well, there’s no such thing as a vegetarian in an apocalypse,” said Alex.

“I hope you guys are right. Still nothing on the satphone?” asked Ed.

Alex shook his head. “The military must have hijacked the system. A low orbital nuke would take out a few of the company’s satellites, but they have over seventy in geosynchronous orbit. Coverage shouldn’t be an issue for a satphone to satphone call. I guarantee the government took over the satcom networks as part of their continuity-of-government plan. We’re limited to receiving their emergency text message broadcasts.”

“One message twenty-four hours ago. Someone made a ton of money selling this crock-of-shit idea,” Ed muttered. “Maybe there’s a bigger problem out there.”

“It doesn’t matter. We get the kids and hole up at the farm. That’s our only mission. We can worry about the big picture later,” said Alex.

“Unless the big picture swallows us up in Boston.”

EVENT +31:46 Hours

Acton, Maine

Dave Littner pulled his Honda Civic off the road, craning his head out of the window. He watched the heavily armed biker gang disappear beyond a stand of trees and reappear several hundred yards beyond, cresting one of several rolling hills along Milton Mills Road.

“Let’s grab the rifles,” he said to Karen Goodsby, one of Campbell’s people.