Brain Jack

51 | REFUGEES

Route 93 was deserted all the way to Kingman, Arizona.
The thunderstorm still raged around them. As they drove, the sky lit up in brilliant, searing flashes of lightning. Stunted desert grass and rocks lined both sides of the highway, distorted into grotesque shapes as rain cascaded freely down the windshield.
The radio in the pickup had been set to scan, and as they neared Kingman, it burst into life, picking up a music station. In between songs, the announcer, a woman with a soft, sultry voice, talked about community events and read some advertisements. There was a big yard sale at the First Baptist Church, apparently, and Joe’s Budget Flooring was having a half-price weekend. If there really was a war raging in America, either she didn’t know about it or it was already over.
Sam scanned the skies for signs of aircraft, despite the weather. Ursula would not want to lose them now; that was for certain.
Once, he thought he saw lights in the sky, and Dodge immediately cut the headlights and the engine.
If it was an aircraft, it quickly disappeared into the thunderheads, and after only a short wait, Dodge restarted the truck.
In those few minutes, the temperature inside the cab dropped at least ten degrees, and Sam was grateful once the heater kicked in again.
“If they get us in this weather,” Dodge said, “it’ll be on thermal. A black truck at night in a storm will be nearly invisible, but we’ll be a lot warmer than the surrounding countryside. If they can get a thermal imager in our vicinity, we’ll show up as a hot spot.”
Vienna’s condition seemed to be getting worse, not better. Her breathing at times became shallow and forced, and her face looked gray and lifeless. She spoke only twice on the trip. Once to ask for water and once to ask where they were. Other than that, she sat with her eyes closed, dozing or just resting, Sam wasn’t sure.
A solitary streetlight illuminated a gas station, dark and silent, standing alone in the storm.
“Pull in here,” Sam said, and Dodge turned into the forecourt, not bothering to signal.
Why had he even thought that? Sam wondered. With all that was going on, signaling a turn hardly mattered. It wasn’t as if there were other cars on the road. But somehow it just seemed wrong. As if by getting the little things right, like signaling when you made a turn, you could start to put the big things right. Like Ursula.
It made no sense, but what did make sense nowadays?
Dodge stopped the truck when they got to the gas station. It looked deserted.
“Everybody out,” Sam said. “We need to get Vienna out of her hazmat suit and see if we can find a hose to wash out the car.”
“It’s freezing outside,” Tyler said, but opened his door anyway. The cold hit them immediately, and the rain lashed and stung at them.
Sam helped Vienna out of the car, gasping as the shock of the rain hit his unprotected skin. His clothes were saturated in seconds. She stood silently, scarcely noticing the rain as he unfastened the suit and peeled it from her body.
With tender fingers, he tilted her head backward. She shut her eyes against the rain. He ran his fingers through her hair, rinsing any dust from it, then helped her back into the pickup, soaking and shivering. Dodge had already found a hose and sprayed water across the backseat of the pickup, flushing out any dust residue.
“Where’s Tyler?” Sam asked.
Dodge shook his head.
Tyler appeared a moment later, carrying a cardboard box full of food and drinks that he had appropriated from the gas station.
Sam helped himself to a chocolate bar and realized that he hadn’t eaten for hours. Vienna refused to eat, though, which worried him.
Dodge turned the heater to max as they swung around back onto the highway, and the air inside the car turned into a muggy soup within a few miles. Sam could actually see the steam lifting off his clothes as they slowly dried.
The questions in his mind about the events in the world since they’d been holed up in Vegas were answered, shockingly and severely, as they turned onto the interstate at Kingman. Both lanes were lined with vehicles, many of them with roof racks full of luggage, strapped under sheets of plastic or tarpaulins.
“What’s going on?” Sam wondered out loud.
“Refugees,” Dodge said, and Sam realized that he was right.
He had seen images like this many times before on news reports of wars or natural disasters in foreign countries. But never with his own eyes.
Never in America.
“What have we done?” Vienna whispered beside him. “What are they running from?”
Sam shook his head but said nothing.
It was after 10:00 p.m. by the time they reached Flagstaff, Arizona, crawling along with the rest of the refugees in lanes that were clogged and occasionally blocked.
It took just one car to break down, and the entire lane would stop while its occupants, sometimes with the help of those behind, would get it onto the shoulder.
There were still no airplanes, and the only reason that Sam could think of was the thunderstorm that raged above them. Mother Nature was protecting them from Ursula.
Almost all of the refugee traffic was exiting at Flagstaff. Looking for a place to stop for the night, Sam thought. After a short discussion, they also took the exit, staying with the crowd in the hope that it might make it harder for Ursula to find them.
Whether it was some herd instinct or it had been prearranged, the long lines of refugees all seemed to know where to go, and when they finally stopped, Sam could see why.
A huge, almost tentlike dome rose up behind a line of pines to their right, and as they followed the car in front of them into a large parking lot, signs on both sides announced the J. Lawrence Walkup Skydome stadium.
A sports stadium. Covered. With room for hundreds, if not thousands, of people. There would be toilets, and they could find a place to sleep. It was a logical place to head in a disaster.
The parking lot seemed full. How many lives had they disrupted? Sam wondered, and not for the first time asked himself if they should have just left Ursula alone.
But she was the one who had started this fight, and now they would have to finish it.
They parked next to a white Mazda station wagon. A woman was getting two young children out of the car with the help of another lady, possibly her mother. The women looked harried and tired. The children looked as though they had just woken up, and the younger one, a boy, was crying.
Vienna seemed tired and listless, and Sam had to help her out of the car, supporting her as they hurried through the driving rain to the stadium. Dodge followed them, carrying the cardboard box full of food and water, and Tyler trotted silently behind.
“Wait a minute,” Sam said as they neared the entrance. “We need to check for security cameras.”
“I think the power is out in the stadium,” Dodge said, gesturing at the entrance. “We should be okay.”
The entrance to the stadium was in darkness, except for a flashlight that someone had set on top of a ticketing booth, shining a meager light down a long, dark corridor.
If the power was off, then the cameras were off, Sam thought, and hoped it was true.
Inside the stadium, it was warmer than he expected. His first thought was that the heaters were turned on, but as they made their way out through the players’ tunnel underneath the bleachers, he saw the real reason.
Dotted across the artificial turf of the stadium were campfires, many ringed with small rocks, as if this was a camping ground instead of a refugee center.
There must have been thirty or forty fires, each surrounded by people, huddling together for warmth or cooking in metal pots that were suspended over the flames by all sorts of ingenious stands or tripods. There was something about adversity, Sam thought, that brought out the ability of people to cope. To adapt. To survive, no matter what happened.
Rain crashed and hammered on the roof of the stadium high above them, an intricate design of interlocking wooden triangles. The whole roof seemed to shudder with the explosions of thunder outside.
“We should change cars again,” Sam said as they found an empty area and sat down on the turf. “Ursula knows what this one looks like, and we can’t expect this storm to last all the way to Cheyenne.”
“I’ll go and see what I can find,” Dodge said.
“I’ll come with you,” Tyler said.
“Hide the pickup truck as well as you can,” Sam said. “If they find it, they’ll know we’re not really heading for Mexico.”
Dodge nodded and disappeared with Tyler back toward the tunnel.
Vienna shivered suddenly and violently.
Sam looked around. There was a campfire about ten yards away, and he would have liked to move Vienna closer to it, but it was already crowded with people trying to make the most of the warmth.
He took off his own jacket and laid it over her as a blanket.
The young mother with the two children and the grandmother were next to him. The two women were sitting facing each other, the children between them.
Both children were crying now, and he caught the word “hungry” in between the sobs.
He found a packet of Oreos in the box of food Dodge had carried in and picked up a bottle of water as well. He shuffled across to the small group and tapped the younger of the two women on the shoulder.
“Some water and some cookies, for your kids,” he said. “It’s not much, but—”
His next words were cut off as the young woman reached up and hugged him, sobbing at the same time.
She eventually let go, mumbled a thank-you, and took the items.
The older lady smiled at him, and he looked away, a little embarrassed. All he had done was give them cookies and some water.
Vienna began to cough, started choking, then hoicked up a gray mess of phlegm and grit. Her eyes fluttered for a moment, then closed. Her weight slumped against him, and he held her for a moment before gently easing her to the ground.
He found an old newspaper in a trash can and cleaned up the mess, then washed his hands carefully in one of the washrooms. The last thing he needed was a dose of radiation poisoning; he didn’t want to even think about what that dust was doing to Vienna’s lungs.
When he got back, the grandmother was hovering over Vienna, looking concerned. She pulled back one of Vienna’s eyelids and examined her pupil.
“What happened to her?” she asked.
“She”—Sam hesitated, not wanting to reveal too much—“swallowed some dust.”
“Dust?” The woman looked at him suspiciously.
“We came through Vegas,” Sam finally admitted.
“Vegas dust!” The woman looked shocked and said, “I’m a nurse, or I was for most of my life. Are you telling me you went through Vegas without protective clothing?”
She seemed angry at their stupidity.
“We had suits and masks,” Sam said. “But she lost hers. It was an accident.”
Her gaze softened. “I’m Olivia,” she said. “This is my daughter-in-law, Brenda.”
The young mother smiled at him, hugging her two children tightly to her.
“Is there anything we can do for her?” Sam asked.
Olivia lowered her gaze and stroked Vienna gently across the forehead.
“Is she important to you?” she asked.
Sam hesitated, then nodded. A week ago, he would have said no, but things had changed. She had changed.
“I’m sorry,” Olivia said, stroking Vienna’s forehead again. “The dust will have seared her lungs and poisoned her system. You need to get her to a hospital as soon as possible, but even then—” She broke off, clearly not wanting to say any more.
Brenda and the two children shuffled a little closer so that the two groups became one.
“That was very kind of you, with the cookies,” Brenda said.
“It was nothing,” Sam said. “Really nothing. We have more supplies in the car. Would you like something else?”
He pushed the box over toward her, and with just a small hesitation, she looked inside and took a couple of muesli bars, which she handed to her children.
“Eat something yourself,” Sam said. “I insist. You, too, Olivia.”
Brenda hesitated again, then took a foil packet of dried apricots, which she shared with her mother-in-law.
“I’m sorry to be so helpless,” Brenda said. “But we didn’t have time to pack or grab supplies.”
“We didn’t have time to think,” Olivia added. “We just ran.”
“Why?” Sam asked.
“Brenda and the kids were staying with me,” Olivia said. “In Phoenix. My husband got infected. We just managed to get away in time.”
“Infected?” Sam asked cautiously.
Olivia and Brenda looked at each other.
“With the neuro-virus,” Brenda said. “You do know about the neuro-virus?”
We started it, Sam wanted to say but didn’t think it wise. He said, “We’ve been out of contact for a few weeks. What’s going on?”
“There’s a virus,” Olivia said. “It spreads through neuro-connections. People go crazy.”
“Crazy like …?”
“Oh, they still seem perfectly fine,” Brenda said. “Just the same person as before, but they …”
“Tim, my husband, came to me this morning and suggested that I try out his neuro-headset,” Olivia said. “I had heard stories of the virus, so of course I refused. I didn’t even know that he was using one. But when I refused, he insisted, and when I still refused, he got angry. Called me a neuro-phobe. I’d never seen him like that. I told him there was no way, and he grabbed me. Tried to force the headset on my head. I screamed and that woke up Brenda, and she—”
“I whacked him with a stroller,” Brenda said. “It was the first thing on hand. It was sitting by the door, folded up. I just grabbed it and swung it. Knocked him right out.”
“Then there was banging on the front door,” Olivia said. “It was our neighbors, and they were wearing those neuro-caps. Somehow they knew what was going on in our house. We grabbed the kids and fled out the back door to the garage, jumped in the wagon, and just drove.”
“And here we are,” Brenda said.
“I can’t imagine why Tim would have put on a neuro-headset,” Olivia said sadly. “With all the talk of a virus.”
“But all the news stations are saying that it was just a hoax,” Brenda said. “He must have believed them.”
Olivia shook her head and tears welled up in her eyes.
“It’ll be all right,” Sam said, feeling desperately sorry for her.
“I don’t think it will,” Olivia said. “They’re talking about battles on the streets of Washington. Can you believe it? Soldiers with guns, neuros, shooting at other soldiers. It’s a war.”
“A civil war,” Brenda said.
“There’s been nothing about that on the news,” Sam said. “We’ve had the radio on the whole way, since Kingman.”
“Of course not,” Olivia said. “The television and radio stations are all run by neuros. I heard that there’s one station, Resistance Radio, running out of Wichita, but the others have all been neurolized.”
Neurolized, Sam thought. There was even a word for it now.
“Is that where you’re heading?” he asked.
Brenda nodded. “That’s where most of the refugees are going. There are big refugee shelters being set up there.”
“Trust me,” Sam said. “It is going to be all right. I can’t tell you why, but there is a cure for the virus, and it’s going to happen soon.”
Olivia looked at him suspiciously. “How do you know that?”
“I can’t say,” Sam said.
Dodge and Tyler were back not long after that and brought blankets and fresh food with them. Sam wondered where they had found it all but didn’t ask.
They shared fruit and bread with Brenda and Olivia, along with cartons of orange juice.
Hot coffee would have been nice, Sam thought, but the blankets were very welcome anyway.
“What kind of car did you get?” he asked Dodge, but Dodge shook his head and laughed.
“It’s fast,” was all he said.