The Escape Read online

“We’re going to do an organized search, starting with where the truck was found. Based on the truck’s location and the wheel tracks in the blood you found, we can presume they’re heading north. We’ll keep going that way until we see something. Shouldn’t take more than a day to drive much farther than they could walk. They have to rest, after all. And we don’t.”

  “We’ll find them for you, sir,” Dobson said.

  “This time,” Lanche said, “I’m coming with you. They wouldn’t dare shoot me.”

  “Sir, we need you here, we need to protect you, as our leader.”

  “Dobson—what kind of leader would I be if I never went to battle myself?”

  Lanche saluted them. He knew Jenna, and Clarissa. He could convince them to come back and share their story. He just had to do a little pre-execution brainwashing.

  Lanche walked with the soldiers to the main terminal, and blew his whistle. The other soldiers gathered everyone into the terminal, as many as would fit, so they could listen.

  When the Colonel looked out over the sea of unwashed faces, he no longer saw a group of weak citizens, willing to do whatever he said. Now he saw them as a potential threat—as an unruly mob, bent on overthrowing him.

  That had to end. They had to be scared again. He was turning the terror threat level up to red alert, the way Bush used to do whenever his popularity would fall in the polls. It was a smart move. Scare the people, get them begging to be controlled in return for safety.

  Hell, it was how they’d gotten all the guns out of the hands of New Yorkers in the first place.

  “Citizens! I have the unfortunate duty today to warn you all of impending danger.”

  The people listened, whispers rumbling through the crowd.

  “If, or when, intruders threaten us all, you must be able to recognize them. There are key phrases they will use that you must listen for. Much like the terrorists from before the Pulse, they think they are in the right. They think America, the America we are striving to rebuild right here in New York City, is evil. You will hear the word evil come from their mouths.”

  The people muttered. Was it a good mutter, or a bad one?

  “You will hear things such as rise up, and revolt. But, my fellow citizens, what are we revolting against, other than our own security? When you were hungry, and freezing, you came here. To Grand Central. To have a safe place to live, to have food to eat, to have access to free medical care when the hospitals were all abandoned.”

  Now people were nodding. Good.

  “You watched in horror as your friends and family have died out there. Out there!” He gestured wildly to the outside world. “But in here, you have lived. You have survived, because you, my friends, are survivors. And survive we must. We must fight against the threat of our security being overthrown, at any cost.”

  He looked out at the soldiers, who stood straighter, it seemed. Like they were listening, and agreeing. Good.

  “One of our own, one of our very own soldiers went crazy. He was already mentally unstable, and hid it well. The former Private Barker has used his snake-like charms the way a cult leader might, and he has turned the very women he kidnapped against us. When we are attacked, it will be from faces you once knew.”

  At this, there was a cluster of gasps in the crowd.

  “But I care for my people. I care about your safety. This gang, these terrorists, they will not go unpunished. They’ve already murdered four of our men who went out to search for them, to help them. But the time for helping them is over. They have too much blood on their hands. And so today, I will personally lead a search for them once more, in the hopes of bringing them back here, to be held accountable for their actions.”

  The other soldiers looked up in confusion. Lanche rarely left the compound.

  “While I am gone, the soldiers will keep order. And I will return. With them.” He spat the last word like it was a curse.

  And to his surprise, the people cheered.

  Hallelujah.

  Greenwich, Connecticut

  Clarissa sighed with relief when the exit for Greenwich came up ahead of them.

  “We made it,” she said.

  With a renewed boost of energy, they ran down the off-ramp.

  Roy put his finger to his lips and pointed down the road.

  A truck. Not just any truck. The truck. The very same truck that had carried the soldiers sent after them.

  “They’re looking for us,” Clarissa whispered, so quietly that the words barely escaped her lips.

  Roy took his knife out of his pack. “I’m going to slash the tires.”

  “Where are they?” she asked, panic creeping into her voice. “Don’t get caught.”

  “I don’t hear them. They’ve probably been stopping in each town off the freeway trying to find us. Well, you. They wouldn’t know about me.”

  “It’s only a matter of time before they get back on I-95. They’ll find Jenna and Barker. And Evan,” Clarissa said. “They’re sitting ducks. Oh my God, I’ve killed us all.”

  “No,” Roy said, shushing her. “Get your knife. Help me. We’ll disable the truck, and we’ll get to Barker and the rest before the soldiers do.”

  “Why don’t we just steal the truck, and drive it to them? Then we’ll definitely get there faster.”

  Roy nodded. “It’s dangerous, and risky, but anything we do at this point is.”

  “We were so close,” Clarissa said, thinking of her locket, of the only remaining picture of her baby. “So fucking close.”

  “I’m sorry, Clarissa,” Roy said. “But we’ll have to mourn that loss later. Right now, we better get to the truck before they do.”

  Staying low, they ran to the truck, and got in, with Roy behind the wheel.

  “No keys,” Roy said.

  “Can’t you . . . hot-wire it or something?”

  Roy looked at her with a frown. “I don’t know how to hot-wire a car.”

  Clarissa looked in her pack.

  “What are you looking for?” Roy asked.

  “A screwdriver. Think these packs have that?”

  Roy smiled. “Hey, that’s right. This truck is so old we can probably start it with a makeshift key.” He felt under the seat, but came up empty-handed. “Let me check the back. They had to fix this truck up with something before bringing it back on the road, right?”

  He got out and Clarissa watched him as he walked in a low crouch position to the back of the truck and rummaged in the back of the pickup.

  “Here we go.” He handed her a flathead screwdriver.

  “Well, if it doesn’t work, then maybe we’ll at least ruin their truck,” Clarissa said, and jammed the screwdriver into the ignition.

  Roy reached over and pounded it in with his fist, wincing a bit as his flesh hit the top of the screwdriver like a hammer.

  “Turn it like a key,” he said.

  Clarissa took a deep breath. “Please work.” She turned the handle of the screwdriver, and the truck’s engine roared to life.

  “Yes!” Roy laughed. “Go, go, just back up the off-ramp, we gotta get out of here. They might have heard the engine.”

  Clarissa put the car in reverse, the tires burning rubber as she backed on the freeway, and started driving as fast as she could around the other cars.

  We have to get back to them. Please, God, help us get there first.

  * * *

  Lanche, Dobson, and Scar exited what was left of the FEMA camp at the town center in Greenwich. No one had heard of Barker, Jenna, or Clarissa.

  The camp was even worse off than they were. The people skinnier, dirtier. The crops they’d tried growing were killed by an early frost, and they didn’t have enough seeds to keep up with the demand.

  The vegetable and fruits they were able to grow were sterile, he was told, and the seeds they were able t
o harvest didn’t grow into new plants.

  “Damn GMO,” one of the local men-turned-farmers had said. “All that genetically modified shit, to make bigger plants, it’s no good. And those seed companies purposefully sold sterile seeds so you’d have to keep buying more seeds.”

  “You need heirloom seeds, like we have,” Lanche said. “You can send a soldier back with us, and take a few of our vegetables, and harvest those seeds. That should get you going again.”

  The people at the camp in Greenwich cheered him as if he was their savior.

  Good. He’d need all the support he could get. Maybe when the time was right, he’d take over the entire tri-state area. Be the fucking president. These people, they could be bought with a couple of tomatoes and potatoes, and a cob of corn. Amazing.

  Lanche had never been a gardener himself. Few people in Manhattan were, it seemed. But he’d planned ahead, and he had bought stockpiles of the expensive heirloom, non–genetically modified seeds, and held on to them. Until the time came when he was needed. And now look at Central Park . . . a virtual paradise of growing food, although not nearly enough to feed all the people.

  “Let’s try the next town,” Lanche said. The Connecticut soldier, an Asian man named Wen, joined them for the promised seeds.

  “Thank you so much for helping our people, Colonel Lanche,” Wen said. “We’ve heard you’ve done an incredible job of keeping many of the people in Manhattan alive since the Pulse.”

  “I couldn’t do nearly enough,” Lanche said. “Most everyone is dead. We’ve got about twenty thousand, maybe less. Out of an entire city.”

  Wen paled. “I’m sorry, sir. That seems to be the case everywhere.”

  “Before we go back, we have to take out a terrorist threat and bring in two women. We can use your help.”

  “Anything to help you, Colonel.”

  But when the soldiers went back to the freeway to get the truck, it was gone.

  Lanche screamed at the top of his lungs in anger. “Motherfuckers! How did this happen?”

  “Sir,” Dobson said quietly, “you were rightly concerned with our working vehicle drawing attention in the towns. I took the keys with me. I have no idea how they stole it.”

  Lanche wanted to punch Dobson in the face. He would have, too, if Wen wasn’t there. Instead, he pointed to the tire tracks. “They’re back on 95. We have to get them.”

  “We’ll never catch them on foot,” Scar said.

  “Who?” Wen asked. “Who’s them?”

  “The terrorists. They’ve been stalking us, wanting to kill us, to take over Grand Central. They were RIGHT UNDER OUR NOSE!” He screamed again in fury. “Wen. We need a working vehicle.”

  “Nothing runs since the Pulse, sir.”

  “Old cars. You know, the really old cars, those work.”

  Wen raised his eyebrows. “This is Greenwich. Look around. Mercedes, BMWs, Lexuses, Porsches. Everyone around here had a new car every two years. There weren’t any decades-old clunkers sitting around.”

  “There’s got to be one,” Lanche argued. “For the sake of national security, we have to find one.”

  Wen paused. “We can go back to the camp, ask the leader. They . . . There might be one. A tractor. I remember hearing it rumbling around shortly after the Pulse, when it was so quiet. But I haven’t heard it lately.”

  A tractor. What the fuck.

  “Wen, we’re going to start up 95. Get that tractor, and get on the freeway and find us. Pick us up so we can get these guys.”

  “What if I can’t, sir?”

  “Then you won’t be getting any seeds to grow, now will you? And all those pitiful people you have left there at that camp?” Lanche stared the smaller man down. “They’ll die.”

  Lanche didn’t look back at Wen’s face as he, Dobson, and Scar shouldered their rifles and headed back onto I-95.

  Interstate 95

  BARKER, JENNA, AND EVAN

  Jenna was proud of Evan. He’d gone from being terrified of guns to being . . . well, still a bit terrified, but able to accurately shoot one. And being terrified of a deadly weapon wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. It gave him respect for it, for what it could do.

  “You realize I’m more likely to shoot one of you than to shoot an enemy with this thing,” Evan said. “That’s what statistics show.”

  “Those statistics are for pre-Pulse households,” Barker said. “This is more like a battlefield. Rule of thumb: don’t shoot unless you know what you’re shooting at.”

  “And what’s behind what you’re shooting at,” Jenna added. “A bullet can go right through an enemy and into a friend behind him.”

  “Great,” Evan said, sarcasm dripping from the word. “That makes me feel a lot better.” He paused. “I’m so thirsty. Do we have any water left?”

  “Barker has some in his pack. I’m going to take a nap while we wait,” Jenna said. “Might as well.”

  But then the sound of a truck engine rumbling in the distance caught her ear.

  She held up her fist, the way Barker did when he wanted them to be quiet. All soldier-like.

  They stared down the road.

  “Hide,” Barker said, and they each got behind a tire of a car.

  Evan tried to hide next to her, but she shooed him to another point, another car. “You have a gun, we’re safer if we’re not bunched together. More chances of hitting them, too.”

  “I’m gonna die,” Evan whispered. “I knew it.”

  “You’re not gonna die. Shoot to kill, man,” Barker said. He aimed his rifle. “When the truck comes closer, I’ll shoot out the tires.”

  They waited in silence as the truck ambled toward them. It was going much slower than it had the last time, with more obstacles in its way.

  “I’ve got the front right tire in my sights,” Barker said. With a loud pop, he shot out the tire, and the truck skidded, swerving madly.

  Jenna took aim. “I’ll get the other tire, make ’em walk to us. Even ground.”

  But she couldn’t get a good sight on the tire.

  “Evan,” she said. “You’re in a better position. Shoot out the left front tire. Now!”

  Evan inhaled audibly, but he did it. He shot the tire, and pumped his fist in the air as the vehicle stopped.

  But to Jenna’s surprise, no soldiers exited the vehicle. She saw two pale, small hands reach out the window. No gun.

  “It’s a trap,” Evan said.

  “Hold your fire.” Barker replied. “Always know what you’re shooting at, remember?”

  Larger hands came out the second window, in an “I surrender” pose.

  “Get the fuck out with your hands up!” Barker yelled.

  Clarissa got out of the car, keeping her hands up. “It’s just me and Roy! We stole their truck!” she shouted.

  Oh thank God.

  Jenna left her position and they ran to the truck.

  “Damn it, and we shot out the fucking tires,” Barker said. “We didn’t know.”

  But Clarissa didn’t seem concerned about the disabled truck. “You guys, they’re coming for us. We never got to Evan’s house.” Her hand fluttered to her neck for a moment, as if remembering her lost necklace. “We found their truck and took it.”

  “So they have no vehicle,” Barker said.

  “They could get one. From the camp, the one where Evan’s parents are staying. They could be here any minute.”

  “What do we do?” Evan asked. “Maybe we can change the tires on the truck with one of these other car’s tires?”

  “No,” Roy said, “we need to get off the road. Hide. Hope they pass us by.”

  “They’ll never pass by if they see the truck here,” Jenna argued. “They’ll search for us. We have to stay and fight. Like last time.”

  “We should still try to change
these tires. We might be able to get it done before they get to us, and then we’ll have a way to move.”

  Clarissa nodded. “Let’s do it. But let’s do it fast, guys.”

  There was a large pickup truck, a newer model, stalled down the freeway. Roy pointed to it. “Those tires should work. Let’s get to it.”

  They ran to the new truck, looking in the back for a jack and a way to get the tires off.

  “I’ve never changed a tire before,” Clarissa said.

  “Me neither,” Barker admitted.

  “Well,” Roy said, “finally the old guy has some usefulness.”

  It took them a while to get the front two tires off and roll them to the old truck.

  “Jack it up,” Roy said, and Barker helped him.

  They got the first tire on before they heard the sound of an engine coming up the road.

  * * *

  Lanche saw his truck before he saw the people.

  “There they are,” he said. “Shoot the man, take the women.”

  “There’s . . . there’s three men,” Dobson said. “Wait. Two men and an adolescent and two women.”

  “I don’t give a fuck. Shoot all the men. Take the girls.”

  “One’s just a boy,” Wen said, surprised. “A teenager.” He was gripping the edge of the slow-moving tractor for his life, his rifle strapped around his chest.

  “If he’s with them, he’s against us,” Lanche said.

  “Sir, what if he was kidnapped? We could save him.”

  “Shut the fuck up, Wen,” Scar yelled. “Listen to fucking orders.”

  Lanche growled in frustration. Maybe the kid knew something. “All right, take the kid alive if you can. He could have intel.”

  They got close enough to shoot, which meant they were almost definitely in the line of fire as well.

  “Go on, men, get them!” he shouted. But he stayed in the tractor, hunching low.

  He couldn’t see the group anymore. Barker, Jenna, Clarissa, and the older man and kid were hiding somewhere out there, lying in wait to murder them all.

  Dobson moved forward, his rifle aimed. A muzzle blast from one of the combatants gave away his—her?—position, and Dobson fired at them.