Jim ran to the woman.
“Hey!” he said, leaning down into her face. “Can you hear me?”
She was unresponsive.
Jim put his middle and index fingers against her neck, trying to find a pulse.
For a tense moment, he felt nothing.
Then he found it.
Her pulse was there. She was still alive.
“Hey!” shouted someone. A deep, male voice.
Jim turned his head.
It was the cop. He was still running, but he’d slowed down. He was panting with exertion.
“Come on,” muttered Jim, taking the young woman by the shoulders and shaking her gently, hoping that she’d wake up.
“Step away from her,” shouted the cop, finally catching up to him.
Jim froze.
“Step away.”
Jim didn’t move.
He didn’t know how the cop was going to react. It was likely that he didn’t understand the gravity of the situation, that he would try to arrest Jim for speeding, for ignoring a traffic stop, and for hitting a pedestrian.
Jim couldn’t be in jail while society crumbled. Especially not while Aly was out there. She didn’t know anything about EMPs. She wouldn’t have the slightest idea what to do. She’d stay locked inside her mother’s house and they’d both slowly starve to death.
“I’m just trying to help her.”
“Hands on your head.”
Jim raised his hands slowly above his head. He thought about the Ruger revolver in its holster. He didn’t know what to do.
Suddenly, there was shouting not far away from them.
About twenty feet away, there were two cars stopped in the road. One was behind the other.
Two men, presumably the drivers, had gotten out and were standing face to face, only inches apart from one another. One was skinny and short, and the other was massive and hulking. He looked like he might be a bodybuilder.
“Get away from my car!”
“You’re blocking me! Why won’t you just move out of the way?”
“Listen, buddy, you’ve got two seconds to get out of my face.”
“Oh yeah, or what?”
The skinny guy took a step back, turned around. He opened up the trunk of his sedan and took out a metal baseball bat.
This is how it starts, thought Jim to himself. He glanced at the cop, who didn’t seem to know what to do.
“Don’t move a muscle,” said the cop, who rushed off in the direction of the men.
The big bodybuilder guy didn’t stand a chance. He barely managed to react before the metal baseball bat swung in a wide arc and smashed into his face.
Blood ran freely from his nose, and his right eye remained closed. He howled in pain. But he didn’t go down.
Not yet.
He swung his fist in an arc towards the skinny guy.
But the skinny guy was too fast. He stepped easily out of the way. Meanwhile, he pulled his baseball bat back, gearing up for another swing. “I told you to get out my face,” he shouted.
“Rob,” hissed Jim. “Get over here. I need your help.”
No answer.
“Rob!” he hissed again.
Rob was probably petrified about the cop’s presence.
But he’d need to get over that.
Jim was on his hands and knees, trying to lift the young woman by himself. Her bike lay nearby.
Jim wasn’t looking, but he heard the metal baseball bat make contact again. He heard the sickening sound of bones breaking. He heard the sound of the cop’s orders to drop the weapon. He heard the curses. Then he heard the static zapping sound of the cop’s taser, and the skinny man’s scream of pain as he fell to the ground.
Hopefully this would all distract the cop long enough so that he could get away.
“Rob!” he hissed again, just as he lifted the limp woman’s body up.
She was heavy, but he was strong enough.
As he was walking her towards the Subaru, Rob finally appeared.
“Get the bike,” said Jim.
Rob looked scared. He glanced nervously in the cop’s direction.
The cop had the skinny guy on the ground, his face pressed into the pavement. The cop had the guy’s arms behind him, and was trying to get handcuffs on him. But the skinny guy was struggling wildly, like a fish flopping around on a dock.
“Get the bike,” said Jim again.
Whatever happened to the woman, a bike could be useful later on.
Jim’s Subaru was old enough that it didn’t have an electronic keychain fob, not that it would have worked, anyway.
At the back of his wagon, he managed to free one of his hands enough to open the latch and swing the fifth door up and open.
He lay the woman down carefully. She still wasn’t moving, but he could see her breathing now, her chest rising and falling. There were scrapes all along her arms, and her jeans were torn along the side. Blood leaked out of her leg, slowly staining her jeans.
Rob was rushing along with the bicycle, nearly tripping over himself.
“Put it in the backseat,” said Jim, opening the door for Rob.
With the bike in the car and the woman in the back, Jim and Rob got back in the Subaru.
Jim fished the keys out of his pocket, stuck them in the ignition, depressed the clutch, and hoped that the car would once again start.
He knew that logically there was no reason why it shouldn’t, but seeing all the other non-functioning cars gave him pause.
He turned the key. The engine roared to life.
“Hey!” shouted the cop, turning around.
He’d finally gotten the handcuffs on the skinny man.
Now there was a crowd of bystanders that had gathered around the cop and the fight.
Jim threw the stick into reverse, hit the accelerator hard, and the wagon’s engine started whining as he drove rapidly backwards down Park Avenue.
There wasn’t anything the cop could do. Not that Jim relished the situation. He’d always respected the police and what they did.
But they weren’t going to help him now.
Not without communication.
He was on his own.
They all were.
“What the hell’s going on?” said Rob.
Jim ignored him. Rob would have to catch up as they went.
The next question was, where were the headed next?
To Aly’s mother’s house, or to the hospital?
Jim needed to choose between the safety of his own wife, and the life of a stranger, whose injuries he was directly responsible for.
5
Judy was peering out the windows of her living room, looking into the normally calm street.
Something was going on. There were three or four cars that had simply stopped in the middle of the road. A couple people that Judy didn’t recognize were milling around aimlessly.
One woman had the hood of her car open and was peering into it, a wrench in one hand.
None of them were neighbors, and that worried Judy further.
She stepped back from the window and let the curtains fall once again over the windows.
The living room was dark.
It had been an hour or so since the power went out.
Strangely, nothing worked at all. Her cell phone included.
Judy was, by nature, an anxious woman. She always had been.
And the situation at hand wasn’t helping her anxiety at all.
It would have been OK, maybe, if Aly had been there. But her daughter hadn’t been home since last night.
Judy was sure that Aly must have just been staying with her husband, and had forgotten to call.
But, even so, a phone call would have been nice. And Judy didn’t like not knowing for certain that her daughter was OK.
Judy stood there in the darkened living room, on the plush carpet, for a few moments, lost in thought. She wished that things had been better for her daughter. That husband of hers wasn’t good for her. And unfortunately Judy was the only one who could see it clearly. She understood the type of man that Jim was.