CyberStorm Part 42

Laying my head down on the backpack, sleep came quickly.

Day 35 January 26.

THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT, I could just see its tip poking above the trees ahead as I walked out from an underpa.s.s. I'd awoken at dawn, stiff with cold and my throat parched. After downing nearly the last of my water and finishing off the peanuts, I'd gotten back on the road to continue my trek. I almost forgot the mezuzah, but had remembered to grab it just before I left the shed.

As I got closer to Washington, I began to see gas stations and convenience stores lining the highway. Most of them were abandoned, but one had a line of empty cars parked outside. Unable to contain my curiosity, and my hunger, I'd carefully approached it. Inside, the shelves were bare, and a man behind the counter had informed me that there would be gas the next day.

He'd filled up my water bottles and, as I was leaving, offered me a sandwich, probably his lunch. I'd accepted and hungrily wolfed it down. He said that there was nothing for me in Washington, that I shouldn't go, and that it was safer to stay in the countryside.

I'd thanked him and continued on my way.

Pedestrian foot traffic was taking up one whole lane of the highway as we approached Washington, and I was quietly stumbling along with everyone else.

It was midday already.

Office towers stretched into the gray sky to my right, abandoned cranes and construction equipment hovering between them, and to my left were a line of skeleton trees, knotted with green vines. Signs for the Roosevelt Bridge pointed straight ahead, while signs for the Pentagon and Arlington pointed off to the right.

I was almost there.

What are they doing at the Pentagon? It was right there, barely more than a mile away from me. Do they have a plan? Are they sending brave men and women off to defend our homeland?

I'd never done anything brave in my life, not physically brave anyway.

Is this brave? Walking sixty miles into the unknown?

Fear had driven me to do it, but the thing that had scared me the most was leaving Luke and Lauren. She'd begged me not to go, not to leave her, to just stay. The scare of the attack and what we'd seen in that house had been too much. Chuck must have seen it too, but we hadn't talked about it.

I walked with the growing crowds along the shoulder of the highway, a corridor hemmed in by high walls covered in creeping vines, becoming a stream of refugees as we pa.s.sed Fairfax and Oakton and Vienna on the way in. My love for Lauren and Luke was most of what kept me going that morning. It was what kept my legs moving through the pain, kept me pushing each foot one in front of the other.

The other thing that drove me was my anger.

Where before I'd just been trying to survive, as I approached Washington, and the prospect of this thing ending became real, my thoughts turned to retribution.

Someone will pay for this, for hurting my family.

I followed the road onto the bridge over the Potomac. The tide was low, and seagulls wheeled in the distance. Ahead, the Washington Monument speared into the sky, growing over the tops of the trees. I followed the crowd along Const.i.tution Avenue. There were barricades up, keeping us away from the Lincoln Memorial, funneling us toward some destination.

We were being herded.

A light rain began. Low, pregnant clouds had replaced the shining sun of the morning. Cars streamed back and forth on the road, half of them military. I resisted the urge to reach out and stop one of them.

But who would stop for me? I was just one of the ragged mult.i.tude, walking along in the rain, and anyway, my mission was nearly complete. Just another two or three miles.

Familiar, rea.s.suring sights came into view-the White House, just barely visible through the trees, and the tops of the Smithsonian buildings further down the street.

To my right, however, the National Mall, the open s.p.a.ce of green that stretched from the Lincoln Memorial all the way to the Capitol, was completely obscured by a high fence topped in barbed wire. The fence was covered, but I could see through the gaps that there was a beehive of activity behind it.

What are they hiding?

Police were positioned at the intersections, keeping the traffic moving. As I neared the American Museum of Natural History, itself positioned on the Mall, I saw a stack of scaffolding stretching up its side. I wanted to see what was behind the fences, so I slid off to the right side of the street and, seeing that n.o.body was watching me, wandered along the fence and under the scaffolding.

A blue sheet hung around the scaffold, so once I was under it I was hidden. I began climbing, up one level and then the next, ascending the side of the building. Reaching the top of the main structure, several stories up, I stopped and climbed out onto its roof, lying myself flat as I reached the edge.

I looked out onto the Mall.

It was covered by an immense city of khaki tents, military trucks, aluminium structures, and piles of equipment. Looking to my left, I saw that it stretched all the way to the Capitol building, and to my right, it surrounded the Washington Monument and continued all the way into the distance, swallowing the Reflecting Pool and the Lincoln Memorial.

It must be the military mobilization.

But something was wrong.

Those weren't American-looking trucks. I tried to figure out what I was looking at. A strange helicopter took off from the middle, rising up to haul a piece of equipment into the air. And then I looked at the soldiers behind the fence nearest to me, not more than a hundred feet away.

That's not an American uniform. I knew what our boys looked like...

They were Chinese.

I stared in disbelief, my body tingling. Rubbing my eyes, I took a deep breath and looked again. Everyone, as far as I could see, was Asian. Some were wearing khaki uniforms, some gray, and many wore camouflage, but they all had red lapel tags. And they all wore caps with one bright red star in its center.

I was looking at a Chinese army base, right in the center of Washington.

Ducking back behind the ledge, my brain scrambled to a.s.similate what it had seen. The unidentified intruders in American airs.p.a.ce, why the president had left Washington, why they'd left us to rot in New York, why there was only power in Washington, all the lies and misinformation, it all suddenly made sense.

We'd been invaded.

Squirming, I pulled my phone from my pocket and took a few quick pictures.

There was no sense in going to the Capitol. There was no help there. If they captured me, I'd never get back to Lauren.

What have I done? I had to get out of there.

Adrenalin fueled my descent from the scaffolding, and I carefully made my way back onto the street, back into the flow of refugees, trying not to attract attention. n.o.body seemed to notice me, so I stopped walking and stared at the fences along the Mall. A police officer was standing a few feet from me, and I couldn't contain myself.

"There's military in there?" I said, pointing to the fences, getting his attention. He looked at me and nodded slightly.

"Chinese military?"

"They're here," he replied, nodding, resigned, "and they're not going anywhere."

His words. .h.i.t me like a punch to the gut. I stared at him in disbelief, the Washington Monument rising up behind him in the falling rain.

"You just need to get used to it, pal," he added, seeing me staring. "Now keep moving."

Shaking my head, I continued to stare, wanting to do something, wanting to scream. What are all these people doing? Their heads were down as they walked, not talking. Beaten-like they'd given up.

Has America given up already?

I started walking and then running in the opposite direction.

It's not possible. How could it be possible?

I had to get back to Lauren and Luke. That's all that was important. In a daze I wandered through the rain, back toward the Potomac, and then crossed it, leaving DC behind me.

Instead of rejoining I-66, however, in my stupor I wandered onto the bridge a few hundred feet south of it, and crossing the water, I found myself at the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery.

I was standing at the edge of a large green oval of gra.s.s at the head of the walkway. It was covered by gaggles of Canada geese. They honked angrily at me as I walked straight through them. The wide street was bordered by high, manicured bushes filled with tiny, red berries.

I wonder if I can eat them? They'd probably make me sick.

Behind the bushes, bare branches of trees stretched like exposed blood vessels into the sky. I pa.s.sed a memorial to the 101st Airborne, a bronze eagle flying above it, and I wondered where they all were now. Our flag was still flying, at half-mast, at the columned beige building in the middle of the cemetery, high up on top of the hill at its center.

I need to keep moving, to get some distance.

Reaching the edge of the cemetery, I stood in front of a circular, gray fountain. It was empty, and n.o.body else was around. I had a choice of one of four arched entrances to enter, and I picked the closest one to my left.

Entering the archway, I walked up a set of stairs and discovered that the inside of the arch was a gla.s.s-walled building. Inside, through the gla.s.s, I could see an interior wall filled with pictures and paintings, a visual tribute to "The Greatest Generation," said a poster above the images. Men like my grandfather, who'd fought on the beaches of Normandy, watched me as I walked up the stairs.

When I reached the top, row upon row of white marble headstones greeted me, in a still-perfectly manicured lawn. Each headstone had a fresh wreath and red bow set against it. It all looked so well tended. The white headstones rose up the hill before me, scattered through the oak and eucalyptus trees.

Our national heroes, laid out to see this abomination.

I wandered between the gravestones, reading out their names.

Up the hill I walked, past the Kennedy brothers' graves and Arlington House. I stopped at the top to look around. In the dreary rain, the Potomac stretched grayly into the distance, while Washington loomed behind, the stake of the Monument through its heart.

I shook my head and began walking back down the other side.

What should I do?

I realized how thirsty I was. It was raining harder now, and my tongue was sticking to the back of my throat. On the streets out back of the cemetery, water was flowing in the drains, and I kneeled down with one of my empty bottles, trying to fill it. Someone walked along the sidewalk toward me but gave me a wide berth as he pa.s.sed.

How I must look, groveling here like an animal, my clothes ragged and sodden, head shaved. I wanted to scream at him, my anger boiling up and out.

Why is he walking so slowly? Where is he going?

Couldn't he see the world had ended?

The adrenalin began to wear off as I made my way back to the highway, and the immensity of the road ahead weighed upon me. I was weak and soaking wet. There was no way I could make the walk all the way back. Cold and exhaustion gnawed at my bones and muscles as the anger ebbed, and I limped along.

I wasn't just incapable of walking all the way back-I wouldn't even survive it.

Reaching the on-ramp to the highway, I decided to try and get a lift. I'd have to risk it. My head down, I limped along, holding my thumb out. I was shivering violently.

I need to get inside somewhere soon.

Lost in my thoughts, I hardly noticed when a pickup truck slowed down and stopped right in front of me.

A man stuck his head out of the side window.

"Need a lift?"

I tried my best to jog up to the pickup truck's window, nodding my head. The temperature was dropping, and I was soaked.

"Where to?" asked one of the kids in the front. There were three of them, listening to country music on the radio. Good old boys. I involuntarily shrank back.

"Whoa, you okay, buddy?"

"Yuh-yeah," I stammered. "Exit eighteen, past Gainesville."

He turned to the others in the car, saying something.

I stood in the rain and waited.

"You alone?" he asked, turning back to me and craning his neck out of the window to look down the side of the highway.

I nodded. "I'm alone."

He c.o.c.ked a thumb toward the back of the pickup.

"We can drop you there. Got no s.p.a.ce up here, but there's room in the back. You'll be sitting in the bare box with a few other people, but at least it's covered. That work for you?"

I nodded and thanked him, deciding I had no choice. Walking around the back of the truck, I saw that someone had already pulled down the tailgate, so I jumped up and inside, closing it behind me as we began accelerating away.

In the darkness, I could see the other people crowded in the back. Picking a spot at the rear, away from everyone else, I pushed myself into the corner of the truck bed. I sat silently for a while, and I meant to stay quiet, but I couldn't.

"How long have the Chinese been here? How long since they invaded Washington?"

n.o.body said anything.

In the dim I could see five people huddled together in the bare metal box, sitting on soiled sheets and clothing. One of them threw me a blanket, and I took it, mumbling my thanks while I covered myself, shivering.

Can I trust them? I didn't have much choice. Freezing cold and wet, I'd die out there on my own. This small box was as close to salvation as I had anymore. How can I fight back when I can barely survive? I had to get back into the mountains.

"How long have they been here?" I asked again, my teeth chattering.

Silence.

I was about to give up when one of the occupants sitting in the corner away from me, a kid with blond hair and a baseball cap, replied, "A few weeks."

"What happened?"

"Cyberstorm, that's what happened," said a kid with a Mohawk sitting next to him. He had about a dozen piercings, and that was just what I could see. "Where have you been?"