To the right was the reason for the dip: the same set of railroad tracks that ran close behind the shop where they’d spent the night. The tracks were supported by an old concrete bridge that was decorated with graffiti and starting to crumble. Nothing was moving in either direction, on the street or the bridge. Quentin cranked the wheel over and the Ford slowly chugged under the bridge, its exhaust momentarily loud as it echoed off the square bridge columns. Half a mile away, straight west, was another intersection with dark traffic lights.
Past the bridge the two-lane road rose quickly. More small businesses on the right, some but not all abandoned; even with intermittent electricity some owners refused to close their doors. They had seen entire machine shops operating on bicycle and solar power. A few occasionally ran generators on black market gas. Where there’s a will… On the left were tiny one-story homes, once well maintained but still little more than pillboxes. Some were obviously vacant, but a surprising number seemed to still be occupied. No one could afford gas for lawn mowers of course, but quite a few of the lawns had been hacked down by hand, and a few residents had planted flowers in their front yards in addition to the ubiquitous garden in back. Store-bought vegetables were a thing of the fabled past.
“Watch the windows, watch the windows!” George barked over his shoulder. No matter where they were, snipers were a real threat. Not necessarily the trained professionals, the men the Army sent out regularly to harass them, but yahoos, drunks and crazies with guns who liked to shoot at anything—or anyone—that happened by. There weren’t so many of those around anymore, though. They’d gotten bored, run out of ammo, or been shot. George kept his eyes locked on the distant intersection, and let the rest of the squad watch the buildings and the road behind them.
On the far right corner of the intersection ahead sat a small, low-roofed bowling alley. There were two cars in its lot. While they appeared empty, both vehicles looked driveable. George pointed his rifle at them and the bowling alley’s front door as the SUV slowed for the intersection.
The street signs, as was so often the case, even in the suburbs, had been ripped down. The north-south surface street they planned to turn onto had been nicknamed long ago The President. Whenever possible nicknames and euphemisms were used for street and site names, leftover when the dogsoldiers were using radios, thinking it was probably safe since they were encrypted. That had turned out not to be the case, but the habit remained.
The Pres had a narrow median running down its center, with two lanes on either side. The grass on the median was tall enough to partially block their view of the far lanes as Quentin nosed the SUV into the intersection. George stayed focused on the cars and bowling alley while everyone else looked about.
“There’s a car moving up north!” Bobby said excitedly. “Way up there, almost half a mile away.”
Ed squinted. Damn, the kid’s eyes were good. All he could make out was a tiny blue blob. “Keep going,” he told Quentin, who’d kept the SUV rolling. As Quentin turned south onto The Pres Ed lifted binoculars to his eyes and peered out the back of the Ford. What he saw was a small, battered blue car, with two or three people inside. Coming their way, but slowly. Too far away to tell who they were or if they had weapons.
“Early, you and Mark keep an eye on them,” he said as they began accelerating, southbound once again. “You tell me if they’re getting closer.”
“You got it Cap’n.”
George twisted back straight in his seat and peered forward once more over the hood of the Ford. Small houses lined this stretch of The Pres, tiny, one story ranches close to the road that had suffered quite a lot of damage, but it was hard to tell whether it was from vandalism or combat. A pickup truck was upside down on the median. As they passed they could see the grass growing through the rents in the rusty body; it had been there a while.
Half a mile up was the next in a quick succession of major intersections. Once past the first, where the traffic lights appeared to be down on the pavement, The Pres curved right and then crossed the widest thoroughfare they’d find until they hit the Interstate; a boulevard, ten lanes total, plus a wide median.
“Heads up everybody, this is where it gets hairy,” Ed called out.
“Watch for choppers!” George threw over his shoulder. Once they hit the first intersection they’d have no overhead cover, absolutely none, for almost half a mile.
The tiny houses to either side vanished. A park appeared on the right, swingsets and slides rusty with disuse. Batting cages, then a baseball diamond popped up on their left. Two boys in their early teens stood where home plate would have been. Both were painfully skinny, wearing clothes that hung on them like sheets. One held a bat, the other a ball, but finding the energy to play seemed beyond them. They turned and watched the SUV roll by with eyes sunken deep into their skulls but made no move to hide or run away. They’d seen carloads of rifle-toting men before.
Quentin took his foot off the accelerator and steered around the crunched hulk of the traffic light on the concrete in the middle of the intersection. On the ground they looked a lot bigger than when they hung above the passing cars. The whole squad leaned as Quentin took the sharp curve to the right. The small blue car was way back there, apparently stopped on the road.
A hundred feet up the wide boulevard nicknamed One Way loomed. The intersection was vast and empty. Once they were out in the middle of it they’d have a much better view both north and south, but they’d also be visible to any aircraft in the area. They weren’t in a restricted area yet, but any moving vehicle close to the city limits always garnered attention and unless the pilot was blind he’d see their weapons. The secret to survival was to drive as fast as possible where you could and get the hell out of sight.
Jason caught glimpses of gas stations, a car wash, and a drug store, all abandoned, then they were rolling through the huge intersection as fast as Quentin could get the Ford to move. One Way was four lanes on either side of a wide boulevard spotted with small trees and topped by grass three feet tall. The men stared out the windows intently, peering over their rifles, sweating even as the cool morning air poured through the car.
There was a bump bump from the undercarriage and then they were through, shooting by a gas station on their left and a tire store on their right, both long abandoned and wantonly vandalized.
“I saw something flying way the hell north of us,” Weasel said. “It was just a dot, too far away to tell what it was. I doubt he saw us.”
“It’s the one you don’t see you’ve got to worry about,” George muttered.
Not quite half a mile to the northwest loomed the big square bulk of a hospital. A handful of dedicated doctors and nurses still worked there, doing what they could under horrific conditions. Hardly any water, even fewer medical supplies, and more than half the time without power. Ed didn’t know how they did it. The Red Cross had been providing limited amounts of food and medicine, not to mention intermittent foreign aid from the few allies who had proven to be true friends, and a few new “allies” who were hoping for a piece of the pie when the war finally wore down, but those humanitarian shipments had dried up inexplicably six months before. Rumor was the Army had cut them off to drive people away from the city. The patients they helped paid with whatever coin they had, whether that was food, clean water, scavenged wiring, electrical components, sometimes even good old-fashioned sex.