Surviving Chaos

5

There wasn’t anything Max could do. He didn’t know why the men were being hanged, whether they were innocent or guilty.

Max left the front yard. The noise of the crowds followed him. He heard them cheer when the stool was kicked out from under the first man.

None of the man’s noises reached Max, but he could imagine the man’s face contorted terribly as he struggled to breathe with the rope pulling tight against his neck. The man hadn’t been high enough to break his neck. Those makeshift gallows hadn’t been designed for killing swiftly and painlessly. They’d been designed to torture, to provide public spectacle.

Max kept moving from house to house. He moved quickly and quietly. He was aware that the crowd might disperse at any moment, that hundreds of people might be coming back to their houses. And he knew that they were all riled up, that they had become a mob, capable of doing anything. If he wasn’t careful, he might wind up hanged himself.

The next house Max found had a car in the driveway. It was an old Japanese import, compact and economical.

Max paused near the car. If he started it, the noise would surely attract the nearby crowd. But it was a risk he’d have to take.

It took Max about ten tries to break the passenger-side window with the butt of his pocketknife. He chose the passenger side, so that if the car worked, he wouldn’t be sitting on broken glass in the driver’s seat.

He reached in and hit the unlock button, but nothing happened. That was weird. Maybe the battery was dead. Max got the door open with the manual switch, and climbed over to the driver’s seat.

Running his hand underneath the front seat, he found the car keys by sheer luck. But when he went to crank the engine, nothing happened. The engine didn’t turn over. The battery wasn’t working.

It could very well just have been a regular dead battery. But Max’s mind went to another possibility. What if the EMP had affected different areas differently? They still didn’t know the source of the EMP. But whether it was natural or artificial, it was possible that its intensity was higher over some areas. Most of the cars Max had run into so far hadn’t been affected for some reason. Maybe farther west, the cars had all been shut off.

Max didn’t know, and he didn’t have time to speculate. The noise from the crowd was different, and closer. It sounded like they were disappearing. Maybe the last man had been hanged, and people were drifting purposefully back to their homes.

The gas gauge wasn’t registering, but it was possible there was gas still in the car.

Max wouldn’t be able to tell whether there was gas unless he tried to siphon it. He hit the button to pop the door to the gas tank.

In a neighbor’s shed, Max found what he was looking for. A big two gallon plastic container of pesticide. He unscrewed the cap, and found that it was half full. He poured it out into some bushes, and hurried back to the compact car.

Some of the pesticide would remain as residue in the bottle, but it probably wouldn’t affect an engine. Even if it did, the longevity of the Bronco’s engine wasn’t exactly on Max’s mind.

Max jammed the hose he’d carried with him down into the tank. He got his mouth onto the dirty hose and started sucking. Thankfully, the awful taste of gas didn’t hit his mouth.

Max had the pesticide container at his feet, and got the hose into it.

The sound of the crowd was closer now than it had been.

Max almost didn’t dare look up.

When he did, he saw them. A man and a woman. Late fifties. The woman wore a bathrobe and the man wore a jean jacket and faded corduroy pants.

“What the hell are you doing to my car?”

Max didn’t answer. He reached for his Glock. But he wasn’t going to shoot them. The situation was desperate, but he couldn’t justify it to himself. After all, in this situation, he was the thief. He was in the wrong, even if he was trying to do the right thing.

The pesticide container was almost full.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” The man’s voice was full of anger. “Hey, Tom, Bobby! Someone’s stealing my gas!”

More footsteps. More people were coming. If his luck was bad, soon the whole crowd would be after him.

The container was full. Max had the cap on and he was off in a flash. He was running away from the man and woman, away from the crowd, towards the house that sat behind this one.

He wasn’t as fast as he’d been before he’d been shot in the leg. And carrying the gas slowed him down.

A chain link fence separated the two yards. Max heard the footsteps behind him.

“Get him!” someone yelled.

“Get the gun from the house!”

“Another thief! We’ll hang him.”

Someone cheered.

Max didn’t look behind him. He dropped the pesticide container over the fence, and then threw himself over. He picked it up and ran as hard and as fast as he could.

“He’s gone through the backyard!”

Max barely had time to think. He knew that getting away wasn’t going to be easy. He’d have to think of something. Some trick. Or surprise.

If only that car had started. Max would have been out of town by now.

Instead of running through the driveway, Max cut over to the next yard.

He didn’t let himself panic. He didn’t let himself get lost. He kept his head as clear as he could, and didn’t let himself lose his orientation. He needed to get back to the main road, the way he’d come in, or he could easily wind up trapped in a corner somewhere, with no way out.

Max moved swiftly backwards, throwing himself over fences, ducking down low to keep himself less visible.

The shouts followed him, and the roar of the crowd increased.

If he wasn’t careful, he’d end up on the gallows he’d seen earlier. There was no telling what a mob was capable of.

And the thing was that he was guilty. He’d stolen gas.

But there was no time for regret.

He had to keep moving.

“Freeze right there.”

The words came from a cold, deep voice. Male and older, grizzled. Max couldn’t see the man, but he could smell his breath, rancid and disgusting and intense.

“I don’t want any trouble,” said Max.

“Put the gun down.”

“Do you have one?” said Max.

“What? I’ve got to show it to you?”

“If you want me to take you seriously.”

Max heard a revolver cocking. Metal on metal. An unmistakable sound.

“OK,” said Max, speaking quietly and slowly. “Let’s not get too excited here.” Max made no move to drop his gun. Instead, he turned his head slightly, trying to catch a glimpse of the guy, who stood somewhere beyond his peripheral vision.

“Don’t push me,” said the man. His voice cracked and groaned. He sounded like a life-long smoker.

The noise of the crowd was getting louder. They were shouting. They were calling for blood.

Max had to act. It was either make a move now, risking getting shot. Or not make a move and certainly die.

But there was no chance of shooting the guy. Max would have to use another tactic. He couldn’t rely on his Glock.

“OK,” said Max. “I’m putting the gun down.”

He did as he’d said, leaning down and setting the Glock down on the ground.

“Now can you get that gun out of my face?”

“No chance.”

“What do you want from me?”

“That’s not the question you should be asking.”

“The crowds are coming,” said Max. “And something tells me you’re not a part of them.”

“They’re savages,” said the man, spitting his words out with disgust. “They’re hanging everyone they can get their hands on. You don’t want to know what they do with the bodies afterwards.”

“What?”

“Think about it. There’s no food. No food except other humans. But you can’t eat live people. They’ve got to be good and dead. So they hang anyone they can. Pretty soon there won’t be anyone left at all.”

“Where do you fit into this?”

“Me? I’m just a concerned citizen like anyone else.”

“What’s your problem with me? If you don’t like the mob and what they do, then let me go.”

“The thing is… if I deliver you to them alive and well, that’s one less person they’ve got to hang. That’s one more body they’ve got before they come for me and my family.”

Max planted his left foot firmly into the ground. His hand gripped the pesticide container tightly. He moved fast, swinging the container around in a big arc.

The guy didn’t get off a shot. It was too much of a surprise for him.

The heavy plastic container collided with the man’s pistol, knocking it out of his hand, before it smashed into his head, coming at him in an arc that aimed upwards.

The man yelled, then fell.

The crowd was close.

Max grabbed his Glock from the ground, holstering it. He grabbed the man’s revolver. Max didn’t recognize the brand, but he checked it and it was loaded.

He didn’t have much time. He had to either find a place to hide or a way to get out. The last option was to make a stand and take out as many of them as he could before they got to him. He wouldn’t go out without a fight. But if he had to make a stand, he wouldn’t get the gas back to the Bronco, no matter how well he fought.