It may not have been the decent thing to do, but forcing their way onto an already overloaded NYPD patrol boat and making most of the passenger get off to stay in the chaos of the city was the only way they could guarantee their escape. The uniformed man they disarmed and held at gunpoint whilst he drove them to the far side of the Hudson River cried the entire time it took to cross, and he clearly expected them to kill him as his look of shock was almost funny when they simply walked away. The man turned his boat and gunned it toward Manhattan, hoping that his family and friends were still waiting for him.
As Leland and his two ageing former marines walked away from the pier they all ducked instinctively as the first bombs fell in the very spot they had, until recently, occupied. They exchanged looks of horrified misunderstanding.
“Definitely not us,” Leland said turning away and stepping out into the street directly in the path of an oncoming truck. He raised his rifle and seeing no response from the driver, put a single round into the windshield three feet to the guys right side. The truck slowed and stopped, the door of the cab opened, and a man got out to fall over at the side of the road. Scrambling to his feet, he ran.
“This is us,” he said, lowering his rifle but keeping it in the low ready position. Climbing inside the big cab and squeezing the three of them along the bench seat, they set their collective sights west and stopped for nothing.
Now, miles clear of the heavily populated areas and thinking themselves lucky that they weren’t caught in the bombing, they were suffering the onset of exhaustion and had to stop.
“What’s the plan then, Gunny?” the passenger on the right asked Leland. He knew little about either of them, but had heard him called Cobb by the other. He looked across at them after killing the engine and rubbed his eyes.
“I’m heading to Pittsburgh,” he told them. “I’ve got people there.”
“And after that?” asked the one who wasn’t Cobb.
“After that, I’m heading for the Kentucky militia,” he told them.
Cobb and Not Cobb looked at each other and then back to Leland.
“Why Kentucky?” Not Cobb asked.
“Boys,” Leland said wistfully, “an Alabama tick ain’t got nothing on them Kentucky boys when they’re holed up in their hollers.”
Seeing as Cobb and Not Cobb didn’t have a better suggestion, both of them were happy to tag along.
Saturday, 1:12 p.m. – Still Valley, NJ
“There,” Cal said, pointing to a sign, “pharmacy.” He glanced behind to see Louise opening and closing her mouth absently. She had drunk all of the drinks they had with them, but still complained of feeling thirsty. Cal had no doubt she could manage herself effectively with medication, but without it and having spent a night and a day on the run she was slipping in and out of cohesion. She wavered between twitchy and anxious, to sluggish and absent. Jake said nothing, but pulled off the main street in response.
Pulling up directly outside the large store, Cal saw that it was the kind of place which sold everything from tools to groceries, and had probably been family-owned for at least a couple of generations before the franchise owning the pharmacy spread out like fungus and swallowed up the small business.
The two men got out of the cab and drew their guns; Cal the Glock and Jake pulling the butt of the Mossberg into his shoulder and tugging it close with the barrel depressed to the ground. The place seemed deserted, although the sounds of cars on the highway nearby were loud with horns blasting as what seemed like the whole of Jersey headed west. There were signs that people had come by, but the place didn’t seem to have been ransacked from the outside. Finding the door open, Jake glanced to Cal to check if he was ready, and shouldered it open slowly to enter at a crouch with his eyes always pointing in the same direction as the barrel of the shotgun. A gentle tinkle of a bell above the door made the cop curse himself for not seeing it in time to prevent their entrance being announced. In spite of Jake’s training, they were instantly blindsided and the sound of another shotgun pumping a shell into the chamber was unmistakable.
“That’s far enough,” said an accented voice from behind a low counter, “drop your weapons, please.”
The manners are an interesting touch, though Cal, especially when being held at gunpoint. Jake took over the negotiations, speaking as he often did like he was reciting the NYPD playbook.
“Okay, sir,” he said, taking his left hand away from the stock of his gun to appear less hostile but keeping his right hand by the trigger grip. “We don’t mean any harm and we don’t want any trouble; we’ve got a young lady in our care who needs medical attention.”
As they both turned slowly, Cal’s eyes rested on a short man with smooth, rich brown skin and a jet-black beard. He wore a plain white shirt, collarless and done up to the very top, and a flash of brilliantly white teeth shone out between mustache and beard, and bright eyes shone out between mustache and the bright turban on his head. He held the gun uncertainly, like he wasn’t used to handling firearms, and Cal was sure that if he pulled the trigger the way he was holding the stock then the recoil would likely slam it into his face and remove those white teeth.
“What kind of medical attention?” he asked, not changing the aim of the shotgun.
“She’s diabetic, and she needs insulin,” Cal said. He opened his mouth to say more but the man cut him off.
“When did she last inject, and what is her blood sugar like?” he asked intensely, his accent clearly not Americanized but easily understandable.
“Yesterday, and she crashed out in the night, woke up all confused so we gave her candy and she got better for a while,” Jake told him.
The man lowered his gun slightly, as if fighting an internal battle between self-preservation and helping others. “Bring her inside,” he told them, lowering the gun and placing it on the counter like his hands had been dirtied by it. “And be quick,” he added.
Both Cal and Jake did as he asked, trusting the man instinctively given his response to the news that someone needed help. The bearded and turbaned man walked out from behind the counter and strode purposefully to the back of the store where his pharmacy was. A few people had come into the store since the previous day and the news reports. Some he had hidden from, fearing the responses of the ignorant being directed at him.
Amrick Ali, commonly called Ricky as it was probably easier to accept his presence with an American sounding name, had lived in the United States for near on twenty years. Since the terror attacks of 2001 he had noticed a marked difference in the way people perceived him and his family. For starters, he was an Indian Sikh and not an Arab or Muslim as people nearly always assumed. He enjoyed a drink, and endured the constant comments like, “Hey, I thought your kind didn’t drink,” and “Isn’t that against your religion?”
He was not a radicalized terrorist, nor did he believe in any loss of life being justified. He enjoyed his work, and he kept his head down to keep the people of the small town in check with their medication. He was accepted on the whole, but he was always wary. Now, having seen the reports of the terror attacks all over the continent, he was grateful for the first time that his wife and children had returned to his native Kashmir to visit relatives. They had been gone a little over two weeks, and he doubted he would ever see them again. His reverie was interrupted as the small bell above the door jingled again and the two men brought in a young woman who seemed lethargic and confused.