Chapter 4
GEARDO
Everything was blurry. Blake tried to swallow but his mouth was dry. Blake thought he was shaking his head, but he couldn’t be sure. Had his neck always been rubber? His ears were ringing. Blinking, he tried to get the tinkling to stop. He reached for something, but his hand didn’t move.
Acute pain spread across his ribs. He coughed, agony radiating over his body. His tongue was dry, and his teeth crunched across grit. He tasted blood. Was his mouth bleeding? No. He could feel something dribbling across his face. He touched it.
Oh. There was his hand.
Suddenly, his vision blacked out. Panic began clawing up his chest. He couldn’t do anything about it.
Couldn’t move. The blackness shifted. Then realized he had been looking at the top of Tommy’s head.
He was shouting something. Mouth opening and closing.
His face was pale under all the dirt. Someone had hit him.
A bruise was blooming across his smooth cheek.
“-lake! Can you hear me!”
Like his ears had just been turned back on, he could hear again. And it was loud. Someone was screaming. Tommy was yelling in his face, and he could hear some strange crunching noises. Something boomed in the distance; it felt like the bass on a decent car stereo. It buzzed through his legs.
“You have to get up! It’s coming! Blake move!” Tommy grabbed him by the arm and jerked.
He yelped in pain, curling his free arm around his ribs. Irritation flickered at the back of his mind. Couldn’t Tommy see he needed a minute?
Lifting his head to yell at his partner, he saw what was behind them.
Oh shit.
They didn’t have a minute.
A sedan was coming at them. And it wasn’t being driven. No, it was tossed through the air like a fucking projectile. Blake was hurting, but seeing a Corolla flipping through the air like a football thrown in a perfect spiral was motivation enough.
Scrambling to his feet, he used Tommy’s shoulder to hold himself up. They ran across the street, his blood pumped, and he suddenly remembered what the hell had happened.
They had been heading to the MidSouth Building.
Expecting an MCI, they’d almost been killed by a falling telephone pole.
Luckily, the brakes on their truck worked and Tommy had managed to keep them from being crushed.
They re-routed only to find several injured people outside a gas station.
Blake had stopped to help when he was hit.
Literally. A tire had flown out of nowhere and hit him, knocking him into the cement barrier blocking the gas pump.
The car landed behind them in a screech of bending metal. It rolled three times, finally coming to rest on its wheels. If the body didn’t look like a piece of fucked up origami paper, it might have looked like it was just parked.
Tommy dragged him inside the gas station, throwing the lock on the door. They braced, hands on knees, trying to catch their breath.
“The—” he gasped. “—fuck?”
Tommy shook his head, looking out the glass door. “There are explosions everywhere. We can’t stay here.”
Blake nodded, trying to get his brain to catch up. Everything was still fuzzy, and the back of his head ached.
“What about the patients?”
“I didn’t see them after you got hit,” Tommy admitted, looking a little concerned. He climbed onto a shelf with gum, trying to see over all the papers stuck to the window. “Everything’s on fire.”
Blake swallowed, looking out the smudged window.
The shut off.
He jerked up, running around the counter and looking for the shutoff switch. Every gas station had one. Something to keep the gas from pumping up above ground. He wasn’t sure how helpful that would be, but shit was hitting the fan, and the last thing he needed was gasoline getting involved.
“I don’t see it!” he yelled, knocking a display of cheap sunglasses to the floor.
“Do you think it’s terrorists?” Tommy asked nervously, wrapping his arms around himself.
Blake lunged across the counter. It made his ribs scream, but he grabbed Tommy by the collar.
“Fucking focus, tofu! I need you with me!” Tommy blinked at him with big eyes. “Where the hell is the emergency shut off switch for the gas?”
After a moment of lip wobbling, Tommy finally shook himself. “It’s usually outside, close to the pumps.”
Blake released him, racing around the counter and hitting the door. His fingers shook as he threw the deadbolt, racing out into the street. Looking around, he saw the big red button.
The button fastened to the outer wall of the gas station. It read ‘Emergency Fuel Shut Off’. Blake slammed it down with his palm. Nothing happened, but he figured that was a good thing.
Turning around, he tried to get his bearings.
Situated on a corner lot, the gas station was old.
With only two pumps, it was hardly bustling, but it was strategically located only a couple of miles off the highway.
The first and last stop before you were helplessly ensnared in DC traffic.
This part of town used to be mostly residential, but as the city expanded, it had turned more into a business district. Mostly warehouses and offices.
On his left, several cars and the building next door were ablaze. Sinister looking flames were licking towards the sky, oily smoke snaking up where the fire stopped. It smelled like burning plastic and hair. Gagging, Blake made to move back to the store when he saw his jump bag.
Made of sturdy plastic, it had everything needed to treat patients outside the truck. He must have grabbed it when he saw the victims. Sprinting toward it, he grabbed the heavy-duty strap and tugged it onto his protesting shoulder when he heard a weird clicking noise.
Through the thick smoke, he saw something moving at the end of the street.
At first, he thought it was a mirage caused by the heat because his brain refused to process what he was seeing.
It looked like a black smudge. But its movements were weird.
Hunched over, it shifted smoothly like a beetle, its four legs moving quickly, but the body was strangely steady.
His brain immediately went to the time his father made them stop at the USS Alabama on a road trip.
The tour guide told him the massive gun on the deck was gyroscopic—no matter how much the ship rolled in the waves, it would always stay upright.
That’s what the figure reminded him of. Except instead of a gun on a battleship, it was more like an animal. Even with the smoke in the way, he could see its body was matte, maybe black? Hard to tell.
What he could see was that it was coming towards him. Stumbling backwards, he raced back into the shop, making sure to throw the lock.
“Get down!” he hissed, dragging Tommy behind the candy shelf.
Crouched, he looked between a missing dog poster and one advertising a yard sale from two weeks ago. It only took a moment for the thing to come into view. Tommy gasped, inhaling to scream, but Blake pinched him hard.
Without the smoke it was easier to see the thing; it had a head.
Small and shaped like a triangle, with what looked like glassy sensors and red lasers on the tips.
It shifted and rolled like it was studying everything.
Its back was indeed hunched, but not like a beetle.
It was too angular. Four legs jutted out like a horse, but it moved as if all its joints were rounded—smooth like a shoulder.
Two stubby arms were attached to the chest area like a T.rex, useless.
Except not, they sported two wicked looking pincers.
It was about the size of a Smart car, but way more terrifying.
Tommy was hyperventilating beside him, dark eyes wide. His mouth opened and closed like he wanted to say something, but there was nothing to be said. Blake kept his hand on his shoulder. He wasn’t sure who he was trying to comfort.
The creature ambled past, head swiveling and stubby arms clacking its pincer blades together.
“We need to get out of here,” he said as he looked toward the back of the store for an exit. Without waiting for Tommy, he started swiping food off the racks. Things like beef jerky.
“What are you doing?” his partner asked from where he was still staring out the window.
“Grabbing supplies,” he answered as he snatched up the fake meat jerky that Tommy liked. It smelled like ass and Blake had forbidden him from eating it in enclosed spaces.
“I don’t know what the hell is going on, but I do know we need to get somewhere we can hole up. To do that, we need supplies. How far is the truck?”
Tommy stood shakily. “About sixty yards down the street. Fire’s close, but I think it’s ok.”
“All right,” Blake dropped to a knee so he could stuff the food and water bottles into the go bag. The zipper had difficulty closing, but he forced it.
He couldn’t help but begin to speculate.
Everything was starting to make sense—Tommy’s mom’s weird call, the phones and radios cutting out.
They were under attack. By whom or what, he didn’t know.
Blake barely looked at social media, let alone the news.
For all he knew, it was another 911. It didn’t matter. He had to do what he was good at.
In school, they taught them to triage. Ruthlessly and efficiently, Blake knew that’s what needed to happen. They needed to keep things simple. Prioritize.
The University Hospital. It was huge, with a basement. Blake was pretty sure it was a storm shelter. Either way, they had backup generators and might have a better idea of what was going on. At the very least, it was a place they could do some good.
“My mom…” Tommy mumbled as he watched Blake.
He didn’t know what to say. “She’s north of here. And it’s illegal to fire at hospitals.”
“Really?” Tommy didn’t look like he believed it.
Fuck if Blake knew, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it.
His mom’s hospital was a solid 45 minutes away—and that was without traffic and explosions.
And on the other side of the MidSouth Building, which was definitely destroyed.
He had no idea if they could get to her, even if they tried.
“Look, we’ll keep trying the phones? Maybe we can get back to the station and check the big radio. She’s probably got her hands full with injured people.”
Tommy nodded, squaring his shoulders as he grabbed the bag.
There was an edge of determination in his eye now, and Blake was proud of him.
Hell, the kid was barely twenty. He still cried after shifts sometimes, and still found it in him to care about all his causes, to educate himself and others. Tommy even went to protests and stuff.
He dropped a hand on Tommy. “Focus on one thing at a time.”
Nodding, Tommy shouldered the bag. “First the truck.”
Then they’d swing east and try to hit The University Hospital. With any luck, they could get some answers.
After sticking his head out to check the street, they jogged out across the gas station lot. They didn’t need to worry about being quiet. The crackling fire was loud enough to cover their progress.
Blake slammed into the side of the truck, wrenching open the door and taking the bag from Tommy as he climbed into the driver’s seat. Tossing the bag through the opening between the front seats, he tried the computer again. Still dead.
Tommy cranked the engine and blessedly, the ancient ambulance turned over. Steering around potholes and upended trees, they made their way east.