Quickly, I went online and to my bank. The electric company payment cleared causing a deficit. It appeared earlier in the day, a huge withdraw had been taken out of the branch. Almost every dime we had.
I wanted to call the bank, but they closed at three. I sat there wanting to pull out my hair. Money wasn’t important at that moment, but once the virus situation cleared up, it would be needed again.
My cell phone rang, nearly causing me to jump from my skin.
“Cal?” Leah called my name. “What train are you taking?”
A nervous twitch hit me, how was I going to tell her someone wiped out our account? “The uh, five ten.”
“Can you catch the four thirty?”
“No, I have to finish up here.”
“I need you to leave work early, Cal,” she said calmly. “I have us a way out.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The Save a Lot truck. I bought us passage. It cost—”
“Leah,” I cut her off. “Did you drain the account today?”
“I did. It was the only way to get us out. We need to be at the warehouse by six thirty. We’ll wait in the truck until it’s ready to pull out.”
“We can’t do that, Leah. It’s illegal.”
“Too bad. We need to get to Montana. The truck will take us as far as Beaver County. My father will meet us there. We’ll head to Montana. We need to get to Martin’s place.”
“Yeah, well, we should have gone when we had the chance. You didn’t want to.”
“I want to now. Be home, Calvin. I love you, but I will go without you. This baby is my top priority.”
Then she hung up.
What was she thinking? Our suburb was safe, we were far enough out of the city and there had been zero reports of Vee in our area. Plus, our home was secure. Our house was on a small hill with a long set of stairs leading to the front door. The porch was easily blocked, and our first floor windows weren’t ground level. So even if Vee made it up the hillside, they couldn’t break through the windows. We had supplies. The news hadn’t spoke of Sanctuary City retreats. Leaving was a mistake, I believed it.
However, I had to go where she went. Leah and the baby were my family. I hurriedly finished my work, and made it with a minute to spare, catching the four-thirty train.
There was a strange and different feel to everything when I left work. It felt like a holiday, like the time I went to work on Thanksgiving. No one was around, no one on the streets.
There were three other people on the train; they all got off before me.
My stop was the last one, and when I disembarked, I saw the parking lot. It was empty. My car was the only one remaining.
Had I missed something? Admittedly, I was so busy at work, I never listened to the news or checked it. Surely, Leah would have told me if something happened. I had my phone set up to receive Vee alerts. Nothing came through.
There was a scary sensation around me, a deadness to the air, it just didn’t feel right. When I reached for the handle, I paused when the sound of air raid sirens blasted through the air. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard them. They were commonplace because they were a means to call upon the volunteer fireman in the area when there was a fire.
These sounded different. Perhaps it was my imagination, but I felt they were different. I hurriedly got in my car and pulled from the lot.
Instantly, I turned on the radio The Emergency Alert System was playing mid-cycle.
“…urging citizens to remain in their homes and vigilant…” The robotic female voice said.
I kept changing the station hoping to catch it, but it was the same message, played at the same time on all stations.
Finally, it repeated.
“This is the emergency alert system. This is not a test. Citizens of the greater Philadelphia and surrounding areas be advised. The area is under a level three warning…”
Level three. That was the highest it could be. Usually we weren’t under even a level one. Never a level three. That meant that one of those waves of outbreaks finally hit our region. How many people were struck? Was it wide spread or sporadic?
The automated message didn’t give that information.
“Immediate infection outbreaks have been confirmed in the following areas …”
The streets and areas were read off like a computer reading text to speech. As soon as I heard Powell Street in Springfield, I knew it was too close to home.
The short two-mile drive to my house was an adventure, more like a video game. There was a mad rush to leave; cars were driving erratically and fast. Pulling out without stopping, running red lights. It was stop and go for me, dart and move. Holding my breath, hoping some car didn’t fly out from a side street and T-bone me.
To go where? Another area? The current retreat and safety place was Springfield Mall. Were they all going there? Surely, they weren’t getting on the highway, it was blocked off, as were many of the main roads. Then again, I knew getting out of the city and area wasn’t an impossibility. There were side roads and lesser-known routes.
Authorities advised people not to take those roads. They were jammed tight with vehicles and people ended up getting stuck when they ran out of gas. There were countless stories online. The worst happened outside of Boston. Citizens tried to escape, traffic came to a standstill and all it took was a few Vee and the gridlock quickly turned into an all they could eat buffet.
I made it to my street, a small dead end road, where one side was the ‘flat’ side where the homes set flush with the road, the other the ‘high’ side where the homes were on a hill. Cars were whipping out of the driveways, backing up and speeding away.
As soon as I pulled to the curb, I saw my neighbor loading his car.
“You better get moving, Calvin,” my neighbor, Bill, yelled. “You don’t have much time.”
I raced around my car and to Bill. “What’s going on? I didn’t hear anything. I was on the train.”
“Outbreak storm hit all over. They say for a fact it hit the entire area north of Powell,” Bill said. “Authorities can’t get in there fast enough to get them all. So you know what that means. In about an hour, Vee will be everywhere. Get out now.”
“And go where?” I asked.
“East, south, they said Swarthmore is setting up a secure area. Anywhere but here, Powell is four streets over, Cal. Get your wife and get out.”
“Don’t you think if we hunker down and wait until authorities clean up?”
Bill laughed at me as he secured a bungee cord to the roof of his SUV. ‘If they don’t. You’re stuck here.”
“Cal!” Leah called my name and I turned my head to see her on the porch.
“Get your wife and go,” Bill said. “Now.”
I nodded and rushed up the steps to my porch.
“I tried to call you. I couldn’t get through,” Leah said. “I’m trying to pack.”
“No,” I shook my head. “Just pack what we can in a backpack. The Save A Lot warehouse is only three miles south. Worse comes to worse, we can walk with a backpack for three miles.”
“What about all of our stuff. We have so much.”
“We lock it up,” I said. “We need to. In case we have to come back.”
“Will we?” she asked.
“You got us a ticket on that truck,” I said. “Hopefully, we’ll be out of here by nightfall.”
We were out of the house in a few minutes. I swore it took longer for me to lock up than it did to pack the backpack. We didn’t need much. We just had to get out of the quarantine zone.
The Save a Lot truck was parked just outside the loading docks. Several cars were parked behind the building and the rear end was open.