Denver jumped into the front passenger seat.
Once inside, Charlie turned the key and after a few splutters, the old diesel power plant roared to life, belching out a little black smoke before purring like a wild cat. He put it into drive and slowly pulled away from the hiding place, keeping the wheels on the harder parts of the forest floor.
From their shelter in Mohan Run, a small clearing within the forest, Charlie drove the truck out through the trees, only once scraping against a branch, and joined the hard surface of interstate 219. The plan was to head south to I-80, which would take them all the way into New York.
Fragments of blacktop had long peeled off the road. Multiple croatoan engineered environmental changes, especially the ice had conspired to ruin the surface. But as long as he stayed vigilant they could make good time.
“I would have expected more cars and trucks,” Ethan said, leaning forward from the rear.
“That’s the kind of thing you see in the films,” Denver said.
“He’s right,” Charlie added, steering around a ten-foot-wide pothole and accelerating onto a clear patch. “When the invasion happened, it took many by surprise, but the war waged for a number of years. Plenty of time for people to get off the roads and go somewhere safe. You’ll see most of the cars still parked near people’s homes or service stations and car lots. The roads were deserted during the war, to allow military traffic to get into position without worrying about the public.”
“Where are all the bodies?” Ethan asked. “I’d have expected to see more.”
Charlie looked at the young man through the rearview mirror. He didn’t really know what he was asking. The idea that billions of people were butchered had to be entirely alien to him. There just wasn’t a way for someone like him, so detached from his own species, to fully comprehend what had happened.
But he’d soon get the idea.
“Most were buried,” Charlie eventually said as he found a clear patch of road. Even without the blacktop in place, the hard concrete provided a brief section of smooth ride. “Despite the situation, many families, neighborhoods, and government organizations did their best to give everyone a proper burial, but sometimes that wasn’t always possible.”
“So what happened then?”
Charlie wanted to tell Ethan to drop it, to focus on survival rather than the dead, but as painful as it was to bring back those memories, it could just be what he and Maria needed to bring some perspective.
“I’ll show you,” Charlie said. “For now, try and get some rest; we’ll be travelling for at least nine, maybe ten hours. If we’re lucky.”
He thought about the croatoans. They wouldn’t be happy with the previous day’s losses. That’s as many of the aliens as Charlie and Denver had killed since the war. Up until now, he and Denver were probably just a minor thorn in their sides, but now… if he were on the other side, he wouldn’t take those losses without some form of vengeance.
Charlie stared out of the windshield and thought that it didn’t look too bad. The trees, bushes and vines that had built up beside the road, and some that had sent roots through the concrete and gravel to break it up into large fragments. It looked quite beautiful.
But the cost of attaining this natural beauty wasn’t worth the blood in the soil.
At one point, the braches that stretched across the road were so thick, they had to get out and chop their way through with machetes and blades Charlie had fashioned from the alien metal. An hour later and they were back on the road, finding clearer spots, making good ground.
When they approached towns or cities, Charlie always took the outer route, preferring to avoid going into the center where there were likely to be pockets of survivors. At one point, a distant sniper fired upon them, a warning shot, hissing over the hood.
“I don’t understand why they would fire on us,” Ethan said. “Surely with so few of us left, they’d leave us be.”
“They’re just frightened,” Denver said. “Not many with working vehicles. Probably think we’re scouting for the farms.”
Charlie noted the change in Ethan’s thinking by the use of us. Good, he thought. The kid was starting to think the right way. If his plans to take down the croatoans was to work, he’d need people like Ethan and Maria to see that humanity was not at war with each other for resources or survival. They had to be united in their struggles.
A FURTHER FOUR hours passed without incident; they’d crossed into New Jersey and were only a few hours from their destination of Newark. Charlie drove the truck up a hill; the road had crumbled away to dirt and gravel, but the F-150’s 4-wheel drive dug in deep and pulled them up to the summit. Putting it into park and engaging the emergency brake, Charlie got out, leaving the engine running.
He opened the door and gestured for Ethan and Maria to get out. They looked at him suspiciously. “I just want to show you two something,” Charlie said, turning his back and approaching the edge of the hill.
Ethan and Maria joined him and both took a sharp intake of breath.
Down in the green valley beyond, a two-hundred-foot-wide sinkhole scarred the earth like a huge wound. Around its crumbling edge, houses and other buildings were left in ruin, half of their walls had collapsed long ago, their open sides now providing shelter for shade-loving plants or trees.
But it wasn’t the ruined homes that caused the surprise; neither was it the huge CAT diggers rusting away on the perimeter. It was what was in the sinkhole that caused the reaction.
The very thing Ethan had expected to see.
Bodies.
Or more accurately—skeletons.
“When things got really bad, after the gas and the initial attack, it became impossible for the authorities, what were left, to handle so many bodies,” Charlie said. “Hospitals were overrun. Funeral homes and cemeteries were full to bursting. Families, those that survived the initial stage, buried their dead in their gardens or in makeshift graves in the woods or other common areas.
“But when the numbers got too huge, the remaining militia, in an effort to prevent the spread of disease, used the same sinkholes the croatoans created to come to the surface to bury the dead.
“All over the country, you’ll find huge ones like this with thousands and thousands of bodies in them.”
Charlie stared away into the distance. The evening sun silhouetted a dozen birds as they glided above the sinkhole. But there was no meat on the bones anymore. They were picked clean by scavengers and the elements years ago.
“That’s terrible,” Maria said, her voice barely a whisper. Ethan remained silent, taking in the scene, realizing what he was looking at.
Charlie didn’t want to have to show them this, but he needed them to understand what was at stake, what had happened to humanity. They had no sense of the numbers or what life was like before. But this would help bring the necessary perspective.
They all got back into the truck, silent, haunted by what they had seen. Charlie didn’t say anything, just let it sink in, let the enormity of what happened finally get through to them.
He turned around on the summit and headed back down the hill, rejoining I-80 and moving toward Newark Bridge. He gunned the engine, taking advantage of a rare section of clear road. He wanted to get to the bridge before sun up. They’d have to complete the rest of the journey throughout the night, swapping driving duties.
Over the sound of the engine, he heard a throaty roar streak by them overhead. An icy chill crept up his spine. The last time he heard a sound like that was when the croatoan fighter craft first descended upon the earth.