“You gonna make it?” she asked, peering over at his pain-filled

face.

“I have to. You’ll need me—and I’m the only one who knows

where the shelter is.”

Then, “Hurry, Emma.”

The streets were a nightmare. The smoke so thick, she couldn’t

see two feet in front of her. Market Street had been ripped into

a ragged scar, full of smashed cars and dead or wounded people,

so she drove onto one of the smaller side streets. But bricks,

glass, and dirt soon forced them to a rolling crawl, while crippled

or stalled cars and trucks blocked most of the roads. Water was

rushing down the streets from somewhere, getting higher every

second.

“The river’s flooding the city. If we don’t get out soon, we’ll be

floating.”

Larry didn’t have to tell her to get off the street, she sharply

spun the wheel and the Rover jumped the curb and headed for

land that was clear enough to drive through. Parking lots. Grass.

Sidewalks.

But there were people running everywhere, or lying injured,

and as hard as Emma tried, she couldn’t miss all of them all the

time. Some of them; when they saw the Rover was still moving,

ran alongside screaming and begging for a ride out of the city, or

for help. Emma wanted to stop.

“Keep going.” Larry glared out the window with a cold gleam

in his eyes, as his hands fumbled under the seat and came out

clutching a gun. “It’s a Beretta M-10. I got it off an old Army friend

of mine. He swore it could drop an elephant.”

“I don’t see any elephants,” she commented feebly, but he

didn’t laugh.

“I mean it, we’re not going to stop for anything or anyone,”

he warned her heartlessly. “There’s no more room at the shelter.

No more supplies. Just enough for two people. I’m sorry.” Guilt

changed his face’s expression, and he covered it in shame—still

clutching the Beretta—with his trembling hands.

The crowd turned violent, ugly, when Emma refused to stop.

They pounded out their rage against the side of the car with their

fists or pieces of metal, as they splashed through the swiftly rising

water. They cursed them; threw bricks at them.

Larry leveled the gun’s long barrel against the window and

threateningly pointed it at a woman’s outraged, fire-scarred face.

Get back. Get back.

All of them did, except one man. He was in a tattered pinstriped

suit, his hair still smoking. Emma glanced at him and

thought: Maybe I drove by you this morning on my way to work,

you in your expensive suit and leather briefcase. Maybe you even

worked in one of the other offices in my building.

He spat at Larry through the window; shook his fist. The whole

left side of his face seemed to be gone. But he fell back, and Emma

watched his slumped figure dwindle into a smudge on the side of

the road as they drove away, the water knee-deep already.

Emma accepted it without a word, hardening her heart, though

it sickened her.

There was just too many of them.

“You’re learning. From now on, Emma, all that matters is survival.

Nothing else.” His voice didn’t even sound like the Larry

she’d known.

He gave her directions to where they were going.

They raced across Bell Telephone’s smoldering lawn, cut

through the outskirts of a large parking lot, and up onto a sidewalk

with benches. At times, they were driving through swirling

water mid-tire high, and Emma wasn’t sure what she was driving over. She winced every time something crunched beneath the Rover’s tires. Building rubble or bodies. Maybe a child…like Jenny…like Peter.

“Oh, Lord. My family’s all dead,” she whispered, narrowly missing a screaming dark-skinned man who had suddenly jumped out in front of them, a human torch. ***