Tim Washburn - The Day After Oblivion

Zane glances ahead and sees a group of people approaching and nudges Alyx off the road and into the trees. As the other group nears, they see it’s two adults, a man and a woman, and two young girls who are plodding along behind them, zombielike. The parents are humping backpacks and the two girls are struggling to keep up. Their faces are covered with a rash of blisters, and Alyx and Zane quietly argue about approaching. They decide no, and let the group pass.

“They’ll be dead within the week,” Zane whispers.

“Wonder where they’re from?”

“Does it matter?”

Alyx scowls, then whispers, “Yeah, it does. Might tell us what’s ahead.”

Zane pulls the mask down and wipes the sweat from his face. “The same thing that’s behind us.” Once the group is out of sight, they return to the road. “Tell me again, where we’re going?” Zane asks.

“Weatherford, Oklahoma. That’s where my parents and sister live. I’ve told you all of this before. I’m beginning to wonder if the radiation has infiltrated that thick skull of yours.”

“Not radiation. Exhaustion. Why don’t we find a place to hole up for a while?”

Spotting another group approaching, Alyx grabs Zane by the arm and pulls him off the road. With no weapons at hand, they’ve played the walk-and-avoid game along the entire route and today they’re approaching the outskirts of Bristol, Tennessee. “We can’t stay here. We’re outsiders.”

“Everybody’s an outsider,” Zane whispers.

“The people wandering the roads, yes. But I can guarantee you there are clans of families up in these mountains. They’d never let us in.”

As this group draws closer, Alyx and Zane hunker down a little lower. There are five people in this group—three middle-aged men toting shotguns and two young women, midtwenties, who look as if they’ve been rode hard and put away wet. The women’s wrists are bound and they’re being pulled along by ropes tied to their necks.

“Should we try to help them?” Zane whispers.

“With what? Are we going to choke out three armed men with a pair of shoelaces?”

The group halts and the man leading the pack turns in their direction. Zane and Alyx freeze, both hesitant to take a breath. After several heart-pounding moments, the leader whistles and the group trudges onward. Once they’ve disappeared from sight, Zane and Alyx breathe. “We need to find a weapon,” Zane says. “We’re sitting ducks out here.”

“Well, when we get to a Dick’s Sporting Goods, you can buy yourself a gun.”

“Funny,” Zane says. “Seriously, we should start searching some of the abandoned homes we come across.”

Alyx steps out of the tree line and moves up to the road, Zane following behind. She waits for him to draw abreast. “I’m all for finding a weapon, but how are we going to determine if a home is abandoned?”

“I think we’ll know it when we see it.”

“Maybe, maybe not. Anyway, you’ll have plenty of time to find one. By my calculations, we have weeks to go before we reach our destination. And that’s if all goes well, which is highly unlikely.”

Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport

For a week, the group from West Texas has been holed up at the Minneapolis–Saint Paul Airport. And they’re not the only ones. The place is jammed with stranded travelers and flight crews who consider themselves fortunate to have survived. Many other travelers weren’t so fortunate, with a dozen crash sites visible through the terminal’s windows. Lauren Thomas heard their survival had something to do with their flight path and a lot of luck, but she and Melissa Walker aren’t feeling especially lucky today. More than a thousand miles from home, they’re responsible for seventeen teenagers and no one knows if any of their parents are still alive.

With no power and no water, the terminal building smells like a cesspool. The restaurants and stores were raided the first day, and if it hadn’t been for an older airline captain who took charge, the situation could have turned perilous. With the assistance of two police officers who were stationed at the airport, the food was confiscated from the looters and what remains is stored behind a locked door. There is one good thing about the situation—there are no weapons handy because the passengers and crews passed through TSA screeners at their original departure cities.

Lauren glances at her watch. “Jonathon, you’re about due to start your shift.”

Jonathon rolls his eyes. “I don’t like working in the bookstore.”

“Tough. You’re not going to sit around here all day bothering everyone.”

Jonathon scowls. “Make someone else take my shift.”

“No, sir. Everyone earns their keep.”

With drooping shoulders, Jonathon shuffles up the corridor. Melissa, Lauren, and two other stranded teachers converted the terminal bookstore into a lending library. Those who wish to borrow a book or magazine—all the newspapers are pulp, they’ve been read so many times—must present an ID and provide their location within the terminal. At least it keeps the kids occupied. They played with their electronic devices until they crapped out on the second day. It took them all of about thirty minutes after device death to start moaning about being bored, forcing Melissa and Lauren to find something to occupy their time.

Lauren spots Stan McDowell walking up the corridor. He’s the airline pilot who’s now ramrodding the show. A tall, broad-shouldered man, he has a head full of gray hair and, today, he’s dressed in his uniform slacks and white shirt. Watching him walk, Lauren can still see the traces of his military training. She threads her way through the crowd and meets him. “What have you heard from the city councils?”

“Basically, they’re refusing to acknowledge we even exist. They’ve discontinued any further talks.” Using an old airport tug, Stan had sent a stranded attorney to parlay with the city councils of Minneapolis and Saint Paul.

“How can that be? Isn’t this airport their property?”

“Yes, but they’re more concerned with their constituents than an assemblage of strangers stranded at the airport. To tell you the truth, I’m not sure I wouldn’t do the same if I were in their shoes. It’s a new world, Lauren.”

“How much food do we have left?”

McDowell takes her by the elbow and steers her toward a sparsely populated corner of the terminal. “A day, maybe two, but that information needs to remain confidential.”

“Of course,” Lauren says. “What happens then?”

“I guess it’s everyone for themselves.” He leans against the wall. “Tell me again where you and the kids are from?”

“Lubbock, Texas, a long damn way away. What about the airplane we flew in on? Could we refuel it and have you fly us back home?”

“There are several reasons we can’t fly the aircraft—one, there is no power to run the pumps to refuel and, even if we could find another way to do it, there are few if any places to land a jet of that size. We were damn lucky to make it here without radios or navigation. Things were dicey getting these planes landed without further incident. But the more pressing issue is whether more bombs are going to be dropped, something we have no way of knowing. The last place I want to be is in the air if that happens.” McDowell rakes a hand through his hair. “Know how many airline crashes I saw between here and New York City?”

“How many?”

“I stopped counting at thirty. And every major airport we passed was either bombed to hell or cluttered with crashed aircraft.”

Lauren gasps. “But how did this airport survive?”