“They think the meteorites or asteroid fragments might have disrupted the ionosphere and caused an EMP. Something like that. Nobody knows shit, basically,” the officer admitted.
“That’s the real problem. Everybody is guessing.” They needed to get moving. “Keep your family safe, Officer. This is going to get a lot worse. You probably know that better than anyone.”
“Yeah. Unfortunately, I know it all too well. I hope you get those kids back,” said the officer.
The police officer moved his volunteers back and pulled his cruiser forward, clearing a path for their Jeep.
“Stay frosty!” yelled Alex from his window, earning a few nods from the roadblock crew. “Take a right up here on 109,” he directed.
“That was easy enough. He barely looked in the car,” said Ed.
“He didn’t care. Our paperwork backed up our story, so he had no real reason to dig any further,” Alex explained.
“I’m glad the two of you had fun. I was shitting my pants back here wondering what our plan might be if that little interaction had gone fucking south for the winter,” said Charlie.
“Our best play is to avoid the police or any kind of checkpoint. If there’s no way around it, like back there, we give them our story, identification, and hope for the best. If the police decide to search the car, we can always flee.”
“With two AR-15s and a shotgun working us over, I don’t think we would have gotten very far,” said Charlie.
“I didn’t get the sense that his crew would have pushed the issue if we had put the Jeep in reverse and left the way we came,” said Alex.
“What about the next crew? What about the group that decides their town needs a four-wheel-drive vehicle more than two dads trying to rescue their Ivy League kids—and I mean nothing by that. Just saying what others might be thinking. We need to come up with a better plan for these checkpoints. This won’t be our last,” said Charlie.
“I’m not drawing down on the police or National Guard. We either flee or surrender to a search if it comes to that,” said Alex.
“What if they start shooting?”
“Then we shoot back. We’re well within our rights to refuse a search and turn around without being shot at,” said Ed.
“I’m with Ed on that one,” said Charlie.
Alex agreed, but he needed Ed and Charlie to come to this decision on their own. He’d already reached this verdict when they turned around at the York tollbooth. The last thing he wanted to do was engage the police in a firefight, but they had every right to defend themselves, especially with so much riding on the success of their journey. Avoidance was their best strategy, but eventually they would find themselves facing another checkpoint—and another. They needed more than a general agreement.
“All right. It sounds like we’re all on the same sheet of music. Let’s game plan more scenarios and establish rules of engagement. We should have done this last night. That’s my bust. I should have known better. I wanted to get a better feel for what we’d be up against out here. We really got lucky back there,” said Alex.
“I was ready to rock and roll if that went the way of the taco,” said Charlie.
They both laughed at his reference.
“There’s more where that came from,” said Charlie.
“I don’t doubt it. Why don’t you chamber a round in both of the ARs and put them on safe. We’ll need every fraction of a second possible if things…”
“Rapidly devolve into a clusterfuck?” Charlie said helpfully.
“Exactly,” said Alex.
Chapter 24
EVENT +29:15 Hours
South Berwick, Maine
Alex scanned the road ahead for the inevitable roadblock. They quickly approached the Overlook Golf Course, which marked the edge of town and the most logical place to stop cars headed into South Berwick’s downtown area. He risked a glance at the parking lot, seeing several cars parked in the far corner of the spacious lot. The cars probably belonged to the golfers with the first tee times yesterday morning. He remembered driving through this area during the summer for Biosphere Pharmaceuticals. The Overlook had always teemed with golfers and summer events in the white tent next to the eighteenth green. As they passed the clubhouse and raised barn, Alex saw the tent standing empty next to the green.
He imagined a massive, outdoor wedding reception on Sunday afternoon and wondered if the newlywed couple was stuck somewhere between here and Logan International Airport, their honeymoon a long-vanished afterthought. Alex envisioned millions of scenarios like this playing out across the nation, each one consuming the focus of those involved, creating a desperate tunnel vision to survive. The sudden introduction of this desperate focus to millions of people would create a dangerous world.
“Look at those crazy assholes!” said Charlie, pointing out of the left passenger window.
In the middle of a distant fairway, on a rise past a small pond, two men hopped out of a green golf cart. One of them grabbed a golf club from a bag in the back, while the other opened the red cooler that had been stashed between the two men on the front seat. Alex couldn’t see what he pulled out of the cooler, but given the fact that these two were golfing little more than twenty-four hours after a tsunami wiped out the coast and the power grid was taken down, he imagined they weren’t messing around with cans of soda. He felt surprisingly ambivalent toward two men golfing at ten in the morning. They obviously didn’t have any pressing matters—yet.
“Ignorance is bliss,” said Alex.
“Yeah,” Charlie said, “until they come knocking on your door looking for shit.”
“Fucking idiots,” mumbled Ed, concentrating on the road.
“The town starts just past that taller tree line. You should slow down a bit,” said Alex.
Ed had just started to decelerate the jeep when Alex spotted the roadblock outside of South Berwick’s downtown area. The road curved, gently revealing the distinctive shape and style of a police cruiser perpendicular to the road, blocking the inbound lane and most of the asphalt shoulder. A blue minivan blocked the outbound lanes.
“Slowly stop the car and turn us around. Damn it. I thought we might be able to slip through the outskirts of town. We’ll backtrack to one of the local roads a mile or two behind us. Figure out how to break through to Route 9,” said Alex, fumbling with the map book between the seats.
“They’re flashing us!” said Ed, slamming on the brakes.
Alex braced his hands on the dashboard to keep his head from striking the glove box, feeling the binoculars slide from his lap onto the floor. The police car’s red and blue LED strobes ominously pierced the distance between them. He estimated that Ed had stopped the Jeep roughly five hundred feet from the blockade, which put them at a relatively safe distance from immediate gunfire. Ed had unknowingly done them a favor with his panicked stop. Possibly a bigger favor than any of them had counted on.
Unlike the group at the Wells exit, the South Berwick blocking force had chosen to stand behind their vehicles, making it difficult for him to analyze weapons and personal equipment. Four men and a woman. From what he could tell, they were all armed. A sixth person sat behind the wheel of the police car, wearing a campaign hat. One of the men hunched down behind the police cruiser’s hood, fumbling with something on the hood. He dug around for the binoculars and raised them to his face.
He shook his head. “Turn left and get us out of here.”
Ed yanked the wheel left and drove the Jeep forward, exposing Alex to the roadblock.