There was another benefit to the years he’d spent working in Rockford. Connections. You got to know the cops, other private investigators and, above all, some of the more unsavory elements of the city’s underworld. Folks who, as luck would have it, might be useful in helping them navigate the present situation.
It wasn’t long before the snarl of wrecked and abandoned vehicles began to grow. And they weren’t only seeing sedans and small hatchbacks either. Range Rovers, Escalades and a few Jeeps were also on display, only partly obscured by the never-ending flurries.
When they reached the intersection of Highway 20, the one that led to Interstate 90 and east to Chicago, it was abundantly clear most of the traffic had been heading in the other direction.
“I’m sure Uncle Roger had a lot to say about cities during a grid-down situation.”
“Sure, he said to avoid them like the plague.”
Nate laughed, stuttering when the sharp intake of cold air bit his lungs. “What Roger might not have considered are the nuclear power plants ringing this area. There are nine of them to the south and another four to the north. We know Byron and at least a few others have gone into full meltdown. Right now, the exclusion zone around the plant back home is only fifteen miles, but if that gets pushed anywhere close to fifty, and if that same fate follows the over two dozen plants in this part of the country, it doesn’t leave folks with nearly as many places to go. Not to mention the forty-six other plants dotting the rest of America.”
“So stay away from nuclear power plants,” Dakota said, summing up. “That’s the lesson.”
“One of them,” he acknowledged. “Especially given they were the very things targeted by the twisted, evil group that started this.”
Slowly, laboriously, they crossed the Rock River and hung a left at a machine tooling shop. This was the industrial part of town and Kishwaukee was the main artery through southern Rockford. Following it north would bring them to the city center and within striking distance of the hospital. Unlike in Byron, they soon encountered surprising signs of life—small groups of people, mostly in twos and threes, walking along the cluttered roadway, many of them carrying reusable grocery bags. They were dressed against the elements. Also, at least one member of every group carried a weapon, many of them sporting items. One guy had a bat, another what looked like a nine-iron golf club. Hockey sticks also seemed to be popular.
“These people don’t seem all that worried,” Dakota said. “Looks to me like they’re heading to a communal sports event.”
Nate made a mental note of the pistol in his waistband and how quickly he could draw it if need be. “Despite appearances, these people aren’t out for fun,” Nate told her. “They’re searching for food. Least, most of them are. Others might be taking advantage of the chaos to loot. Though it’s sometimes difficult to tell one group from another.”
“The looters. Uncle Roger always said they would be the dangerous ones.”
Nate agreed. “A starving man with a club won’t hesitate to kill you for a can of tuna.”
“Or a dead rabbit,” she added, getting the point.
A few stragglers stopped and watched them pass. Two people riding into town on a horse was probably not a sight many of them had seen before.
The streets here were not nearly as tough to traverse as they had been back home. Population density, that was the difference. All of these folks stepping away from their homes to restock their shelves had helped cut a path along the sidewalks and roads. Nate suspected the further into town they drew, the easier the going would become.
“They don’t know this area is within the exclusion zone, do they?” she asked, quietly.
Nate shook his head. “I suspect not. Most here are still in the dark, confused. All they know is this mess has been going on for the better part of five days now without any sign of letting up. If they stay here, it won’t be long before strange things start happening to them. Things they don’t understand. Bouts of dizziness and disorientation, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting. By the time their hair starts falling out, well…” His voice trailed off, swept away by a strong gust of arctic wind.
Two more hours passed. They were now approaching the center of town. Even so, this area was far more residential than what they’d encountered on the outskirts. The number of folks out and about had also gone up. There was even the occasional four-wheel-drive vehicle pushing through the deep accumulation. To the east came the rattle of distant gunfire. It wasn’t the first time they’d heard that distinct sound since crossing into town. Quite the opposite. The closer they drew to the city center, the more frequent it had become.
Nate felt a surge of relief when he finally spotted the Javon Bea Hospital. The timing couldn’t have been better. The painful throb in Nate’s left knee was now coming in waves. Besides his own discomfort, Nate could almost hear Wayne’s belly grumbling for a bit of hay. But there was something else. Their arrival in the center of town also represented another important milestone since it meant they were out of the current exclusion zone.
Another surprise greeted them as they approached the hospital—two, actually. The first was that some of the lights were still on. He knew the hospital had generators and a backup power system designed to deal with outages. The jury, however, was still out on how long that redundancy could last them.
The other thing they discovered was far less welcome, although not the least bit surprising given surprise number one. When you were the only show in town with electricity, you were bound to become inordinately popular. The line of cold and desperate people waiting to get inside stretched back around the corner. There was hardly a chance everyone here was really sick or waiting to see relatives. Most were simply trying to beat the cold any way they could.
A cordon of large men by the front door kept the masses at bay. Like bouncers they checked the crowd one at a time, peppering them with questions to weed out anyone who didn’t have a good enough reason to be here. The vast majority were turned away, an act which on the surface seemed heartless and in direct opposition to a hospital’s mandate until you considered that cramming lots of people together in one place only created a vector for disease. But the bar bouncer analogy only went so far, since the beefy guys blocking this entrance were also well armed.
Nate dismounted and approached a big guy wearing a North Face jacket and a black sailor’s beanie.
“My brother’s here,” he said, moving forward only to be straight-armed in the chest.
“Line starts over there,” the guy told him, gruffly, jabbing a finger from his gloved hand toward the starting point.
“Just check the list for me, would you?” Nate asked him. “His name is Evan Bauer. B-A-U…”
“You want some brain damage to go along with that hearing problem?” the guy threatened, his black pinprick eyes lost in his massive face.
“He was an engineer at the Byron nuclear plant,” Nate persisted. He hadn’t come all this way to be told no by some oaf. “He stayed after the core started melting down doing what he could to save your life and the life of everyone else in a fifty-mile radius. So the least you could do is check the damn list.”