Internet Kill Switch (18 page)

47

He
was in the middle of a dream about he and Scarlett riding dolphins across the ocean when the front door opened.
“Not now, guys...” he mumbled, wanting more than anything for the dream to go on. “Wanna sleep...”

Lots of noise
instead. An orange bicycle came through the door, pushed by Rick. It had knobby tires, and was followed by a second bike, a woman’s model, pushed by Scarlett. Rick went out again and soon dragged in a third bike, much like the first, except yellow.

“Meet
our new rides,” Rick said. “This is how we get to Maryland.”

Tony looked the bikes over. They looked new, with shiny paint, no wear on the tires and no marks of abuse. But because Rick acquired them, Tony was naturally a bit suspicious. “How’d you get them? I figured every store in town would be sold out.”

“Or vandalized,” Rick said. “Yup. But like in probably every town and city in America, a healthy black market has appeared overnight.”

“It’s amazing,” Scarlett said. “Rick just seems to
know
stuff like this.”

Rick smiled.
“Not around here, I don’t. When I was out yesterday, I asked around a bit about where you might go to get certain in-demand items. Wasn’t too hard, or too expensive.”

Scarlett picked up the story.
“We were heading into a bad part of town. I was getting scared. We were passing abandoned buildings and warehouses, and had to duck behind a dumpster once to hide from a roving gang.”

Tony squirmed
at the thought.

“Eventually
, we ended up at this building that looked deserted. Guys with guns stood outside. It was horrible.”

Rick spoke up. “Not the place for a wedding reception, that’s for sure. Inside, though, it was like a survivalist’s Wal-Mart: bottled water, guns and rifles, sleeping bags, canned food,
stuff like that. And lots of bikes, since that seems to be the hot new mode of transportation.”

Rick nodded toward the three bikes. “In a bike store, these would probably be $200 to $300 or something like that. I paid $1,500 each for them.”

Tony again felt a rush of gratitude toward Rick. “You’re going to go broke,” he said apologetically.

Scarlett rubbed Rick’s arm. “He didn’t hesitate. He also bought water and some dried fruit and other stuff we can carry in the backpacks.”

Tony didn’t like seeing Scarlett rub Rick’s arm, and a momentary flash of anger rushed through him. He immediately felt guilty for it; Scarlett was only showing her appreciation for what Rick did. He should be glad that they weren’t mad at each other anymore. But whether right or wrong, the feeling of intense dislike for Rick lingered a bit. Tony looked down.

“I think if we really hoof it, we can get to Maryland in a week
,” Rick said. “Ten miles an hour for 10 hours a day should do it. Assuming no big detours or problems or anything.”

Scarlett crossed to Tony and checked out his bandage carefully with her fingers. Tony was glad she was touching him now
, instead of Rick. “Well, there’s a bit of blood,” she said, “but it doesn’t seem too bad. How does it feel? Do you think you’re up to that much riding?”

“Sure,” Tony said, although he wasn’t really sure at all. His leg did feel better than it had for a
while, probably because he’d been off it for more than a day. One hundred miles of riding a day seemed like a lot, but he imagined he could handle it. He
had
to handle it; as ridiculous as it sounded, America could be depending on him and Max.

They lay down for the night, preparing to start out early the next
morning. Rick and Scarlett fell asleep almost immediately, but Tony couldn’t, having slept so much of the day.

He lay on his side
next to Rick, thinking and thinking and unable to turn off his thinking. How would they make it 700 miles on bikes? With no electricity and society breaking down around them? What happened if their bikes were stolen or taken, the way the Hummer was? What if they got attacked? The normal rules -- the rules that included electricity and cars and laws and people behaving decently -- didn’t seem to apply anymore.

There were police around, but
it looked like they were losing control. It reminded him in a way of something from the movie “A Bug’s Life”. In it, the evil grasshoppers knew that, although they were in control, if the ants ever realized that they hugely outnumbered the grasshoppers, they could defeat them. He wondered if the police and soldiers felt that way now. How long until it wasn’t just the criminals and nutjobs and psychos and gang types that started doing whatever they wanted, but regular people who’d had enough? When it became each man for himself?

That unleashed
a deeper fear, one buried many layers down in his subconscious, but which had been growing. For his whole life, adults had been in charge: his Mom, his teachers, the bus driver. And beyond that small circle, the larger world of adults who ran stuff: businessmen, the military, lawyers, doctors, store owners. Beyond them were the government people: congressmen, senators, the president.

These adults r
an the world. Kids didn’t have to know how any of it worked, because other people knew how to do it; and they got it done, every day. They just knew, somehow, how to take care of everything.

But not anymore, it seemed. The adults had lost control. They weren’t fixing things, although they were trying. What if -- what if they
couldn’t
fix it this time? What if the adults had no more idea how to fix this mess than anyone else? What if they were as helpless as Tony felt?

I
t was ironic: Tony wanted to be a man, an adult. He was desperate to learn how to drive, and months before had started drinking Starbucks coffee, which he despised, because it made him feel older. Now, though, he realized how very young he was, how inexperienced, how naive and powerless. The adults could do what he couldn’t, because they were, well,
adults
. Adults had it figured out. Didn’t they?

Maybe that was all a lie.

The thought terrified Tony as he listened to Rick breathe. If adults didn’t know what to do, how could he possibly know? Who would make things OK again?

And more:
what if Max couldn’t fix the Internet? What if the power didn’t come back on again -- ever?

Tony turned over
and put his pillow over his head. He didn’t want to be responsible for this anymore. He wanted an adult to take over, to tell him everything would be OK, tell him all he had to worry about was bullies and homework and not embarrassing himself in front of girls.

But he knew in his heart he’d never be that kid again. This had changed him. The larger world had intruded and forced Tony to join it. He wouldn’t, he
couldn’t
, be unnoticed Tony Carver anymore.

It made him incredibly sad, and incredibly scared.

48

Tony eventually fell asleep. After what felt like 10 minutes, but was in reality four hours, Scarlett gently nudged him awake. “Time to get up and eat something, Tony,” she said. “We’re leaving soon.”

Tony rubbed his eyes and sat up, disoriented. He thought he was in his bed at home in Miles Forge. After a moment, he remembered where he was. Reality again sucked.

“’K. Give me a minute to wake up.”

Rick and Scarlett were packing up the food and water in the backpacks. Tony had a
bagel with peanut butter for breakfast, washing it down with Deer Spring water. Scarlett told him the peanut butter bagel would give him the most energy for riding. He hoped she was right.

His watch said it was just after 7 a.m. when they left their room and headed out through the lobby. The power was still out. The few people in the lobby, including the hotel employees, were disheveled, with unkempt hair and rumpled clothing. The women wore no makeup. Among other things, no electricity meant no showers. These people were starting to resemble on the outside what Tony felt on the inside
: dirty and smelly, suffering the disintegration of what they used to know, what they used to be.

The
y got on their bikes and headed out. The plan called for using a special path called the Music City Bikeway, a road for bikes that wound along the Cumberland river for miles, and would eventually deposit them on the east side of Nashville, back on Route 40 toward east Tennessee. From there, they would stay on 40 through most of Tennessee, then take I-81 from Knoxville into Virginia, then up through the Shenandoah Valley toward the D.C./Maryland area. That was the plan, at least. Whether it would actually work out that way was another question entirely.

The morning was misty and foggy, which didn’t bother them; the cool air filled their lungs and made riding easier. As they headed north through the city, Scarlett
noticed something she hadn’t seen before: small piles of human waste here and there on the streets and sidewalks. She pointed to one. “That is
totally
disgusting. It’s like they’ve become dogs.”

Rick looked. “Yup. But what choice do peop
le have? Plumbing isn’t working, and folks still gotta go. I remember watching this movie about Medieval times. People sometimes used to dump their bucketfuls of poop and pee out their windows into the street below. Some roads were like open sewers.”

“Is that what we’re going back to?” Scarlett wondered. Neither Rick nor Tony answered.
They kept their eyes away from the little piles they passed on their way out of Nashville.

The scenery got better as they put Nashville behind them, but the weather didn’t. What started as mist and light drizzle became steady rain as they pedaled east. Their knobby tires gave them good traction on the highway, but their speed remained low; they weren’t used to biking long distances. In addition, Tony’s leg started to bother him. Rick had bought lots of medication for it: Tylenol, Motrin, anything to reduce the pain. That helped some, and Tony’s long legs helped him keep up.

The highway on
the east side of Nashville was about the same as the other side, when the cop drove them over from Memphis: abandoned cars and trucks at irregular intervals, and a number of tractor-trailers. One completely blocked the road; it looked like it had blown a tire and jackknifed, tipping over on its side. Those kinds of incidents were normally taken care of almost immediately, but accident cleanup was another victim of the crisis. They stopped at the site, searching to see if the driver was in the cab and if they needed help, but no one was there.

“The driver must’ve crawled out and tried to get help,” Scarlett said, pointing to a small trail of blood leading away from the cab and off the highway. “He probably figured after awhile that no one was coming.”

How strange, Scarlett thought: a major accident on a highway, and no one seems to care.
She wondered if the driver had died, lying in a road or field or driveway, unable to get help. It was almost as if they were traveling through a different country, one where everyone was on his own. If she’d said that out loud, Tony would’ve agreed.

They left the truck behind
, having never found the driver. After three hours of pedaling through the rain, Tony could go no further without rest.

“C’mon, Tony, we’ve just gotten started,” Rick complained. “We should at least get another hour in
before taking a break. I don’t even think we’ve gone 30 miles yet.”

Tony
cringed at the thought of going on. “I just need a little break, Rick. I’ll be OK soon.”

Rick
started to protest more, but Scarlett cut him off. “It’ll just be a few minutes, Rick. I could use a break myself,” she said mildly, rolling her head around on her neck a few times for emphasis.

Rick huffed a bit, then agreed to pull off the highway at the next exit. Tony noted how Scarlett’s tone toward Rick was gentle and non-confrontational, and he knew it wasn’t just that she might be tired. She was learning how to handle him.

Rick loved it when people challenged him. He liked to debate, and would never give up on an argument; a lack of self-confidence wasn’t a flaw he shared with Tony. Even those rare times he eventually agreed with a point someone else made or admitted he was wrong came grudgingly, and only after much disagreement.

If the argument was short-circuited by kindness
, a refusal to contradict him or an appeal to his empathy, Rick was much more likely to give in quickly. Scarlett’s tactic of saying that she also needed a break, then demonstrating her own soreness, won Rick over before the battle even started.

A small thing, really, for Tony to notice. But he noticed most things about Scarlett, no matter how small. Wasn’t that really the way of relationships, he mused as he rode beside her, seeing
a sign that an exit was coming up in two miles. The little things added up to the big picture, the way a photo on her iPhone was made up of thousands of tiny pixels. The pixel of her reaction to Rick added more beauty to the photo of a young woman he couldn’t stop thinking about.

They turned off at the exit, stopped in a small park, ate some snacks and rested for about an hour before heading out again. Tony’s leg continued to throb. Scarlett pulled off his bandage and inspected his leg. She’d taken it upon herself to act as his personal nurse, which was just fine with Rick. He wasn’t a big fan of blood.

The redness was spreading
down Tony’s leg, concerning Scarlett. The good news was that the stitches that hadn’t pulled out yet continued to hold, for the most part; a few more had come free, but not many. Still, the wound didn’t look any better, and smelled worse. And even though the day was rainy and chilly, Tony’s forehead felt warm.

“You feel OK?,” she asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Tony said. But Scarlett wasn’t sure she believed him.

“You don’t have to be brave, Tony. If you’re not feeling good, you can tell m
e.”

“I’m fine!” Tony said edgily
. Did she think he was some kind of wuss?

He
saw the hurt on Scarlett’s face, and immediately regretted his tone. She wasn’t implying anything. Just trying to be kind.

“Sorry, Scarlett. Didn’t mean to snap. I’m tired from this ride
, is all.”

“
No problem,” Scarlett said, relieved. “I’m tired, too. I do a lot of running, but riding uses a whole different set of muscles.”

Tony encircled his
skinny bicep with his large hand. “My problem is that I don’t have any sets of muscles.” Scarlett laughed. Most boys liked to show off their bodies, looks, hair or cars. They talked themselves up, figuring Scarlett would be impressed. On a first date, one guy actually flexed his chest muscles under his shirt, like some kind of professional wrestler. Scarlett unintentionally laughed at him, sending him running red-faced out of the restaurant. He didn’t come back. She didn’t mind, since the company immediately improved.

On the other hand,
Tony didn’t mind making fun of himself. She couldn’t imagine the guys she’d dated doing something like that. What was it about this tall, awkward, skinny guy?

After an hour of rest and snacking, they got back on their bikes. It was now mid-afternoon, and Rick was determined to make it to the little city of Anderson, which would have meant putting in about 80 miles for the day. The rain slackened a bit, and shifted around so it was behind them, blowing from west to east, giving them a much-needed boost on their way.

Tw
o cars passed them. One was a state trooper with lights flashing and siren wailing, zooming on the way to somewhere else; the other, a Dodge Minivan with Oklahoma plates, driven by some rough-looking characters who slowed down just long enough to make obscene gestures at Scarlett. Rick flipped them the bird as they sped off.

“
I’m, uh, not sure you should do that,” Tony said. “They could pulverize us, and law and order aren’t what they were a week ago.”

“No way,” Rick said with a scowl. “I don’t put up with that from anybody,” he said, looking at Scarlett. She blushed, then changed the subject.

“Wonder where they got the gas?”

“The van?” Tony asked.

“Yeah.”

“Dunno,” Rick said. “They probably beat someone up for it, and are trying to see how far they can get.
We should try the same thing. It wouldn’t suck as much as this, I bet.”

They rode for
a long time in silence after that, enjoying the wind, which picked up a bit more, giving them a continuous, healthy push from behind. Tony was especially grateful for the help; he didn’t want to look weak to Scarlett, but he was pretty sure he had a fever, as she suspected. He eventually took off the rain jacket Rick had bought, put it in his backpack, and let the cool, drizzly air battle with the heat in his forehead.

They took short breaks about every hour, and eventually pulled into
Anderson, Tennessee, population 11,804 according to the sign on the outskirts of town. Just off the highway they spotted a motel on the left and made straight for it, glad for a chance to get out of the rain.

The hotel
, called the Anderson Inn, looked completely abandoned when they got there. The front door had been smashed in, and a heavy chain and lock dangled from one of the handles.

“Looks like they tried to lock
the place down until power came back on, but some folks didn’t like that,” Rick said.

It made Scarlett nervous. “Mayb
e we should try another one,” she said. “There’s other motels down the street.”

“Let’s check this
one out first,” Tony said, surprising Scarlett. Although doing his best to hide it, he was exhausted and in extreme pain from his leg and the fever. He just wanted to find a bed and lay down -- for a month.

They went inside, pushing their bikes. The lobby was
small and plain. The furniture -- a few couches, tables and chairs -- was mostly intact, although one chair and a table were overturned. An odor of urine and rot hung over everything, causing them to nearly retch.

“Oh, gross,” Scarlett said
, her voice rising. “Somebody’s been peeing in here!”

“Yeah, that was Chief,” said a
raspy voice. They jumped and saw a man they hadn’t noticed at first; he sat in a dark corner by himself. He lit up a cigarette, and they saw a bit of his weathered, wrinkled face. He looked about 70 years old, but it was hard to judge. “He’s an Irish Wolfhound, and been doin’ his bidness in here for a coupl’a days now.” He took a pull on the cigarette and cackled. “I tol’ him ta stop, but he don’ listen to me, the damn filthy mutt.”

“We were, uh, looking for a place to stay the night…” Rick started
, hoping that it didn’t smell like this everywhere.

“Come on in! We got vacancies!” the man said, cackling again. The cackle triggered a coughing fit that was scarier than the cackle.

When the coughing subsided, he wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “I’m Bly, the uh, uh…” he thought a moment. “The manager of this fine establishment. Yeah, that’s it. The manager!” He didn’t get up; just puffed on his cigarette and stared at the visitors.

“Is anybody…
else here?” Scarlett said, looking around.

“You bet!” said Bly, energetically. “We got, uh, Dusty in room 320 and 322. He needs the
extra room, see, ‘cause his family’s wit him.” Bly winked. “Cats, y’see. He used to live with them in the shelter, but now they gots a room -- two rooms -- all to themselves. Man, he’s got like 30 cats in there. I’m tellin’ ya, it smells worse in there than it does in here.” More cackling.

They didn’t need to hear any more.

“OK, well, we’re going to get going now,” Rick said as they started backing away. When they did, Bly jumped off the couch, looking suddenly panicked. “No! Don’t go! We gots lotsa rooms!”

Bly shambled toward Scarlett. They noticed then that he wore a filthy red (probably) bathrobe which billowed open, revealing that he had nothing on under it. “Tons of rooms!” He reached out toward Scarlett, who was backing away. “Specially for a filly like you. Yu
ummm.” He grabbed her hand and licked it.