Matthew Mark - Dark Days Rough Roads

It was close to midnight now. He had been driving for almost 18 hours total. Six and half hours, that was his record back in the days when they used to travel here to see Linda’s folks who lived there. They had since moved to Florida when they retired, but after the divorce she had moved back here where family was. They had no plans to move because Mike had just gotten settled in a new job.

Just past a little town called Monticello, he stopped by a big old Ford dually. Haliday figured it to be a diesel and so he went and checked the fender. He had turned his headlights off and turned the Tahoe off, so he used a red lensed flashlight to look at it. F350, no symbol other than that.

He walked around to the other side where he saw the same thing. “Are you kidding me?” he said. He checked to see if it was unlocked and no luck. He peered inside on the dashboard. There it was “unleaded fuel only.” He grabbed his gas can and gear and went to work to drain the tank. He hit a home run with this one; he was able to fill the Tahoe completely from this one truck.

He had about 20 miles until he hit his left-hand turn. From there it was south until he headed west again to Decatur. He made another check on the radio and told them he was about three hours out. He continued running through the small towns with the light bar on.

Only a couple times did he have a close encounter with hitting a stalled car or truck. He was in the home stretch now. Thank goodness it was nighttime. Everyone seemed to be hunkered down at home and asleep. It wasn’t until he was just a few miles away from where he wanted to be that he would run into more trouble.

It was 2:30 in the morning and he was looking forward to a few hours sleep. It wasn’t such a bad thing that he was rolling in at night. Haliday was in the home stretch, he stopped just two miles from where he needed to be and killed the lights immediately. He watched in disbelief.

He could not believe what he saw. It appeared that the whole intersection was ablaze. What in the hell is going on down there? He got out and tried to look with his binoculars but couldn’t make out anything specific through the smoke or the flames. He reached in and grabbed the ham.

“Kaybear are you there? Kaybear are you there kiddo? Kaybear talk to me.”

“Hey Roger, this is Mike, I’ve got them hiding in a closet. All hell is breaking loose around here. It’s bad. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Roger heard an occasional gunshot in the background.

“What the hell is happening Mike?”

“You ain’t gonna believe this,” he said.

“Damn it Mike, I need a SITREP.” There came no answer. “Mike, you copy?” he said. “Mike you copy?”

Mike replied, “Ok, I had to ask Kayla what a SITREP was, situation report right?”

“Yes Mike, now what the hell is going on?”

He was straining to see what was going on through the binoculars and kept hearing the occasional report of what sounded like an AR15 and a shotgun. “Mike, tell me what you know.”

Mike came back and said, “Damn, I think we need to get the hell out of here.”

“Bullshit,” Roger told him. “You don’t know what the hell you are walking into; you better sit put and try to figure this out. You put a gun in everybody’s hands right now; I don’t care if it’s a damn flintlock.” He hated that damn FOID Illinois residents had to have. You could barely look at ammo without a damn congressional inquiry.

His adrenaline was pumping strong and he was fighting the urge to storm down there. “Mike, you have any idea what’s going on?”

“Roger, this is all I know and I heard it from a neighbor. The jail unlocked when this all happened and a lot of prisoners took off. The deputies were able to contain some, but then one by one they started to leave. Pretty soon there were more prisoners than guards and they rushed them.

“A few of them that were waiting for transport to the state prison for murder convictions rallied a couple more guys together and they took off toward the strip mall. They ran across a police car stalled in the intersection and the gator that they used to patrol the parks with was on a trailer behind it.

“They managed to shoot the cop guarding it and take the shotgun and rifle and then they torched the vehicles. Now they’re just shooting blindly at anything. Some of the houses have been hit. They’ve been sitting around for a couple hours now drinking, smoking, and eating everything out of the party store.”

“How do you know this Mike,” he asked.

“My neighbor is a sheriff’s deputy at the jail. He took off before it got too bad.” Haliday looked at the side of the Tahoe, “Police”. Real good.

The ham lit up, Mike was trying to talk, Roger’s mom and dad were trying to talk, and Dawn was trying to talk. It was mass confusion. He managed to get a few words in. “Stop the racket and listen. What’s going on is out of my control right now. I can’t get the info I need if you’re all interrupting me. Now stop and leave me alone to talk to Mike. Mike, go get me your neighbor. You have to do this or it isn’t going to work.”

Mike returned a few minutes later and Roger took notes as he asked questions. There was only one way into this neighborhood and going through that intersection was it. The alternative was crossing a damn river and trying to walk in and out. This had to work, he kept telling himself.

He backed the Tahoe up slowly onto a side street so he was out of sight. He had installed a toggle switch so he could disrupt power to the brake lights for just such a circumstance. He looked around to see if anything else was going to be a problem. Seemed like a decent spot. He was looking at a nearby house that had a for sale sign in the yard. No blinds or anything on the windows, so he took a quick peek. It was empty. He backed into the driveway and started going over his notes.

He’d have to wait until dawn. If he did it now, there were far too many risks. He kept going over the map of the area. No other route to get in and out easily. It was the river and a walk, or the neighborhood and fences and houses to go over and cut through. Kayla only had a small bit of luggage, but even scaling it as far down as possible was still too risky. Taking her through the neighborhood here was far too risky too.

This had once been the premier housing for the area’s two biggest companies which processed corn and soy into many products we use today. As the companies grew bigger and the economy grew bigger as well, the execs moved into bigger homes. They had done this a few times until now they were spread out in the suburbs on large lots with mini-mansions. This area was now blue collar with the slums not too far away.

It was time to get ready. He keyed the mic on the ham and said “I’m going in now. You’ll have time, and this is what I want you to do.” He gave some simple instructions to Mike. He grabbed the gear he would need and locked up the Tahoe. He took the side streets as far as he could go.

He cut back out toward the street and looked around a bit. He spotted the perfect place. It was a large group of mail boxes with a bunch of trash cans next to it and the mouth of a cul-de-sac. He slid in behind the cans and placed a small foam mat down. He opened up the cans and pulled out a piece of cardboard and few other pieces of trash. Next he moved one of the cans aside slightly to create a small gap.

He unlatched his case and pulled out his rifle. He readied himself by covering himself with as much of the trash as he could. The sun would be rising behind him so there shouldn’t be any glare off his scope. He had made sure he kept this rifle zeroed and checked it each month. He had taken out a loan against his 401k to buy it from an older man who had bought too much gun for his ability. He loved this thing and never thought he would own something like it.