Overshadowed (Free Short Story) (The Remnant) Read online

  “Unlikely that anyone will listen to him, and there will be a lot of theories bouncing around. I’m more worried about someone at NASA spilling the news.”

  Suzanne shrugged, as if it were only a matter of time, and perhaps it was.

  THREE

  Lenora waited an hour, and then she used her key to enter Gabe’s apartment.

  Before that, though, she’d snagged her smartphone and paged through various social media and news sights. She didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. No international incident or domestic emergency. Nothing concerning CDC. No special newscasts.

  Whatever was happening, the general population didn’t know about it.

  Oliver was sound asleep in the window seat of her apartment. She promised to be back in a flash, hurried across the hall, unlocked the door and then shut it behind her.

  As usual, everything was tidy. Gabe Thompson had lived across from her since she’d moved into the building two years before. Occasionally they’d shared a bottle of wine, but most of the time he kept to himself. Once or twice, she’d thought he might be interested in a relationship, but then he’d claim to have an early shift the next day and offer to walk her across the hall. Being the smart girl her mama had raised, Lenora took the hint.

  Three times in the last year she’d kept Oliver.

  Each time Gabe had been “called out” and couldn’t tell her anything about where he was going or what he was training for. Military guys. They weren’t big on sharing. She’d always thought they enjoyed the drama and intrigue of it. But Gabe was different. He’d been open about everything else and seemed to enjoy both talking about his past and hearing about hers.

  Not that there was much to hear. Born and raised in the little town of Hondo, Texas, Lenora had attended college in San Antonio. After earning her nursing degree, she’d accepted a job at the county hospital. She’d moved into her current apartment when she was promoted to floor supervisor. The rent was a bit of a stretch, but she didn’t have expensive hobbies or indulge in fancy clothes. Boots, blue jeans, and a nice place to crash were her style. She preferred to keep life simple.

  She glanced around the room, trying to decide whether anything was different.

  Shrugging, she walked over to the pantry, where Gabe kept the cat food.

  When she opened the door, she stared at it for a full thirty seconds, and then she realized her mouth was hanging open and snapped it shut. The pantry was full from the top shelf to the bottom. Food was meticulously stacked—canned meats, dried beans and pasta, and one entire shelf donated to MREs. There was enough here to last…to last a long time. There was enough cat food to last months.

  What was it Gabe had said when he’d left?

  “Anything you need from my apartment, anything at all, you take it.”

  Was this what he’d been talking about?

  She shook her head, struggling to come up with a reason Gabe would have this kind of emergency stash. Opening the refrigerator, she saw that it too was full, but not with what she’d expect.

  Sure, the top shelf had eggs and milk. There was a little meat in the freezer, but the majority of space was taken up by more supplies—flour, cornmeal, rice, sugar, peanut butter, powdered milk, a few sacks of potatoes, dehydrated eggs, and salt.

  The salt gave her pause. It caused her heart rate to jump. She wiped her sweaty palms against her pajama bottoms. Why would he need that much salt? Why would he need any of this?

  She hurried to the washer and dryer closet, where he kept kitty litter.

  She found the litter stacked on the shelves—and cases of water stacked on top of the dryer, reaching to the ceiling.

  Spinning around, she hurried to the bathroom and dropped to the floor when she saw that he’d filled the tub with water.

  Think. She had to think straight, stay calm, and figure out what to do next.

  She’d asked him if something was wrong, and he’d said…he’d said yes and no.

  An unusual answer, and that was the moment she’d first known this was no ordinary mission he was going on. No doubt it was classified. He couldn’t share the details, but he had managed to tell her what she needed to know. Gabe Thompson had always struck her as methodical. Now she understood that the food and the supplies were for her. Leaving Oliver in her care—that had ensured she would go into his apartment and find what he’d left. What was it he had said? “I want you to have it.” He’d prepared all of this… for her.

  She hurried out of the apartment, careful to lock the door behind her.

  Rushing into her living room, she almost laughed to see Oliver in the exact same position he’d been in when she’d left. He blinked his green eyes at her once and then yawned, as if the problems of man were of no concern to him.

  Lenora pulled out a sheet of paper and began to write a list of what she needed to do next. She’d only made it halfway down the sheet of paper when she dropped the pen and lurched for her cell phone. She stared at it a moment, hesitated, and then punched the speed dial.

  FOUR

  Gabe and Suzanne walked toward his car.

  The plan had always been for them to go out in pairs. The biblical allusion wasn’t lost on Gabe. Christ had appointed seventy and sent them ahead—to every city and place he was going—and he had sent them in pairs. Governor Reed had considerably more than seventy. She’d needed two hundred fifty-four because there were two hundred fifty-four counties in the state of Texas. She would have preferred one for every town over 50,000, but that plan hadn’t proved feasible. Increasing the number of task force personnel would exponentially increase the number of people in the general populace who would find out the details. It was important to contain the knowledge for as long as possible. Fortunately, many county seats were located surprisingly close together. Suzanne’s assignment and his were twenty miles apart.

  Suzanne raised an eyebrow at the classic 1967 Chevy Malibu, but she tossed her go bag into Gabe’s backseat, dropped into the front bucket seat, and buckled her seat belt. They drove back out the way Gabe had entered, hit the 410, and wound around the city to the north.

  “All my life, I’ve had this sense of impending doom.”

  “So you’re a fatalist?”

  “Or a pragmatist.” Suzanne smiled, and it softened her face.

  Gabe had never seen her out of uniform. The jeans and Western shirt surprised him, but then they were headed to two of the more rural counties. Suzanne was what one might expect from a woman in the military—a tad on the heavy side, though he didn’t doubt it was muscle and not fat. She didn’t wear makeup, had never worn her hair in anything other than a straight ponytail down the back, and didn’t wear jewelry that he had ever noticed. He glanced at her, and the sunshine coming through the car window reflected off a gold pendant—a cross—which she shimmied back and forth across a gold chain.

  Suzanne craned her neck for a better view out the window. “You’d think we would be able to see something or feel it. But everything looks completely…”

  “Normal.” He swerved around a man who was holding up traffic, texting on his phone. “Everything looks normal.”

  “Not sure I agree with this policy to withhold information from the populace.”

  They exited the freeway to make the 281 interchange and passed a man with a beard, holding up a sign that claimed he was a disabled vet. Gabe glanced over at her. “So you think telling folks, like that guy, would be a better idea?”

  “Not everyone is like that guy.”

  “True.”

  “But some people wouldn’t react well. I agree.”

  “Tell the average American that the power is going out for an hour, and they become irritable. If it’s out for a day, they’re writing their congressional representative. Something like this? Forty years? I can imagine the reaction, and it wouldn’t be good or helpful.”

  “Americans are more resilient than those studies. I can tell you that for certain. Eighty-five percent dead in the first week? I’m not buying it.
People don’t die because the electricity goes out.”

  “Let’s hope you’re right.”

  They drove the next few miles in silence. Highway 281 north of the interchange was a classic example of urban sprawl—retail centers crowded within a few feet of the highway. Giant apartment complexes rose behind them, and stoplights dotted every half mile.

  They were nearly clear of it. Gabe stopped at a red light and could see two more lights in front of them, and he knew it was clear sailing from there. He’d done one reconnaissance mission on his own. Wanting to see the town, the area, the people. Wanting to know where he’d be living during the first few weeks of the event, if it ever happened—which on that beautiful spring day had seemed highly unlikely.

  The light turned green, and he accelerated, eager to get past what seemed like an overly crowded area.

  “Looks like something is going on over at the grocer.”

  Gabe wasn’t willing to take his eyes off the road. “How so?”

  Suzanne rose up in her seat, trying to see better. “Parking lot’s full.”

  She settled back again, cinching the seat belt, as he approached another intersection. The light turned to green, beckoning him forward.

  “Big crowd around the entrance, and someone’s standing up on a picnic table or something. Looks like he’s trying to talk them into—”

  But she never finished the sentence because at that moment a Ford 250 diesel pickup slammed into the side of Gabe’s car, inches behind Suzanne’s seat.

  His head snapped back against the headrest, but he focused on controlling the spin. The force of the collision pushed the front of his car into the one next to him, and from there it was a ripple effect. Metal slamming into metal. Brakes squealing. Suzanne screamed, “Watch out!” as another vehicle slammed into their already crumpled front left fender.

  They’d become just one more vehicle in a bizarre case of bumper cars, and though Gabe had been traveling under thirty miles per hour, he knew without taking a full assessment that his car would not be carrying them any farther north. When they finally came to a stop, the quiet was unsettling and unnatural. For a moment he stared around in disbelief. He saw people exiting their vehicles, some with blood running down their faces, or cradling an arm, or limping forward. He saw it all but heard nothing except the drumming of his own heartbeat.

  The few seconds of shock passed, and his hearing returned with stunning clarity. People shouting, horns honking, and the bleep of car alarms crashed through to the logical portion of his brain.

  “We need to get out of this vehicle,” Suzanne said.

  “Are you okay?”

  “A few scratches where the glass shattered.”

  “You’re bleeding.” The cuts looked superficial, but he could see where tiny pieces of glass had embedded in her scalp. “Are you dizzy?”

  “No. I’m fine, but I think I smell gas.”

  “Grab the go bags.”

  “How are we—”

  “Just get them.”

  He hurried to the next vehicle and advised a young mother to take her child over to the adjacent parking area.

  “But I need to stay with my car.”

  “It isn’t going anywhere.”

  Suzanne appeared at his side, holding both bags. “What’s the plan?”

  Gabe nodded toward the north.

  “We just leave?”

  “We have to get out of here.”

  Several people stood with their phones raised toward the sky, looking for service, trying to call 9-1-1.

  “My phone’s not working,” an older man said.

  “Neither is mine.” This from a truck driver whose rig had been rear-ended by a minivan.

  “The lights went out,” the driver of the diesel pickup was saying over and again to no one in particular. “The red light blinked off and I just…I drove forward.”

  Suzanne stepped closer to Gabe, lowered her voice, and said, “We have to help these people.”

  Gabe turned in a circle. It wasn’t as bad as he feared. Eight vehicles. And with the phones out, emergency personnel would be delayed if they came at all. His biggest fear was being questioned by the police. Their fake identifications would hold up, but they couldn’t afford the delay.

  “Check the three cars on the east side. I’ll take the five to the west. We’ll meet at the church in…”

  “What church?”

  “One block north, on the east side.” He checked his watch, surprised to see it was still working, and set the timer. “Fifteen minutes.”

  Then he took his go bag from her and walked toward the next car.

  A large crowd was beginning to assemble, but mostly people were looking up and down the road, waiting for the EMS personnel to arrive.

  Gabe went to each car, checked the people for injuries, and then helped them move to the side of the road. He smelled the gasoline Suzanne had noted, though he didn’t think it would ignite. It wasn’t worth taking a chance, though.

  The worst injury he came across was a broken leg. The teenage boy seemed to be in shock, so he told the boy’s mother to grab the emergency blanket from the trunk of her car. He helped the boy over to the parking area and waited until Mom had caught up and covered him with the blanket.

  “But it’s so hot.” She ran the palm of her hand over the boy’s forehead. The kid’s teeth were chattering, and he was looking about as if he couldn’t decide what had happened.

  “Your son is in shock. He has a broken leg and probably a concussion. Keep the blanket on him. Keep him still, but don’t let him sleep.” He glanced back the way they had come. The road was now a snarl of traffic. In the air he heard the whir of a helicopter, but it looked to be a news chopper. “EMS may be delayed, but they will be here.”

  “Okay. Thank you.”

  Gabe surveyed the scene one more time and then began to jog north, leaving his Chevy behind. He reached the church at the same moment his phone’s alarm beeped.

  Suzanne was already there.

  “So what now? Are we going to try walking?

  “It’s a hundred miles to your assignment, and twenty more to mine. No, we’re not walking. Our assignment was to be in position before tonight, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

  FIVE

  Lenora’s second call was to the hospital where she worked.

  Fortunately her supervisor answered. “Calling in on your day off? That’s above and beyond.”

  “Actually, I need to take some personal time.”

  “All right. I can fill out the form for you. Date of return?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You’re not sure? What’s wrong, Lenora?”

  “I’m going home.”

  “Are your parents okay?”

  “I think so. I hope so.”

  There was a pause as her boss waited for her to explain more. When she didn’t, the woman sighed heavily and said, “I’ll put you out through next week, and before that’s up you call in and let me know.”

  Lenora almost hung up, but the thought of her patients, people dependent on her for care, caused her to hesitate. “I’m going home because I think…I’m pretty sure something big is about to happen.”

  “Big?”

  “I’m stopping at the bank before I leave to pull out all of my money.”

  “Hold on…”

  “And I have food and other supplies.”

  “Slow down, Lenora.”

  “If there’s any medication you need, you should go and get it now.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I don’t know the specifics, but something is about to happen.”

  “Look, honey. I guess these newscasters have you spooked, but I can assure you the world isn’t going to end tomorrow. You go on home, check on your parents, and when you come back we’ll have a good laugh about this.”

  “I have proof.” She thought of Gabe’s stock of supplies, of the look on his face as he’d turned to go. “Sort of
…well, mostly it’s a hunch. Make sure everything is powered up—all the backup equipment and generators—and then unplug anything you can.”

  “This is about the power outages.”

  “Yes and no. I think it’s going to get much worse.”

  “Before it gets better?”

  “No. Just worse—for a long time.”

  She hung up, stared at her phone, and then pocketed it. She’d done what she could. What she knew about global emergencies she could stuff in a thimble—a few shows she’d seen on late-night television, one or two novels. She remembered that things could turn bad quickly, that stores and ATMs shut down, and that people panicked. She couldn’t begin to imagine what was about to happen, not the details. But the water in Gabe’s tub and the scope of his supplies? That seemed to suggest this wasn’t something the government could fix easily—if there still was a government.

  And why was she so sure? It wasn’t just the supplies in Gabe’s apartment. Some people hated to shop, purchased in bulk. But the salt? No one needed that much salt unless they were sure it was going to be a long time before more was available.

  She found an old collapsible dolly in her hall closet.

  Her car was parked on the far side of the parking area. She’d never been one to look for a close spot, knowing that the walk after a long day at work would do her good. Now she hurried downstairs and moved her car closer to the back door of the apartment building.

  She checked her list constantly because she couldn’t take it all. She drove a Ford Focus, and suddenly she wished she’d splurged on the Explorer. She filled the trunk with canned meat, dried beans, and MREs.

  Her first call had been to her mother, who had asked the same questions as her boss. But she’d stopped asking and listened when Lenora told her this was muy importante.

  From that point on, she’d answered Lenora’s questions promptly.

  Yes, she still raised chickens in their backyard.

  Yes, they had plenty of flour, rice, and sugar.

  Yes, she would stay home and wait for her.