An eight-hour trip lay ahead, maybe more with the checkpoints along the way.
Jack turned back to the computer screen. He entered his password for the NYPD secure site and navigated his way to an innocuously titled tab labeled ROAD REPORTS. Sometimes there’d be a connection, torturously slow, sometimes he’d get nothing.
Today he got lucky.
A screen appeared, showing a map of the metropolitan area.
A section of the Long Island Expressway glowed red. Another red spot flashed in Williamsburg, where the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway passed the Brooklyn Bridge on its way toward Queens.
And up in the Bronx, lots of red spots.
Par for the course for the Bronx.
All the hot spots were clickable, and Jack could see the details of whatever the incident was. But these would be no normal accident reports, no tractor trailers overturned and spilling diesel on the highway, no five-car pileups as commuters raced home.
No, this folder only carried reports of road incidents carried out by Can Heads.
And those could make for interesting reading.
Once, Can Heads had rolled barrels on the Belt Parkway after a fence breakthrough. The cars hit by those barrels became flaming traps; the people within turned into the pickings for the crazed Can Heads, who dug the screaming humans out.
Jack had seen video of that one. Stomach churning didn’t begin to convey it.
Human barbecue.
Or the Saw Mill River Parkway attack near Van Cortlandt Park. Though the walkway over the highway near Van Cortlandt Park was enclosed by a heavy-duty, prison-gauge steel-mesh fence, somehow a hole had been cut.
And like cavemen attempting to leverage boulders down to stop a lumbering mastodon, Can Heads had tossed down rocks and then leaped—some to their own deaths—onto the roofs of the careening cars.
Road safety. Shit.
Did that expression even have any meaning at all anymore?
In Staten Island, lots of places still looked peaceful. Living on an island, accessible only by a pair of heavily guarded and fortified bridges, with all the communities with their own security systems, there were hardly any incidents on the island.
Would the Can Heads eventually figure out how to take charge of the ferry, and ram it into the St. George Terminal?
And once they got there, would their contagion spread? Was it even a goddamn contagion?
But that brought to mind another question that bothered Jack.
The holes in fences, the stopping traffic, the breakthroughs.
Are we losing this war?
No one talked about that.
Not yet. Not on TV.
And that wasn’t surprising. Would anyone want the world to be even more panicked than it already was?
If people thought that the Can Heads were winning—what then?
Jack moved the mouse to scroll the map upward, to where he really needed to look.
He zoomed close to the New York Thruway as it snaked up to Albany. Promoted as New York’s safest highway, Jack knew that it had become a vital pipeline for the limited food and supplies that moved back and forth from the ports of New York to the rest of the state.
Who knew where they got the money for the ten-foot fences and the armored checkpoints?
A few chopper stations had been built, mini-launching platforms for a response to any problem picked up by the highway’s motion detection system or video surveillance.
Then from Albany, the Northway continued the same degree of protective armor.
As expected, these highways showed green all the way clear to Montreal.
But it was the road he’d have to take getting off the highway that concerned Jack.
To get to the Paterville Camp, he would have to travel through some of the smaller towns of the Adirondacks. Most of them—thanks to low populations and the fact that the locals had their own guns to fight back—remained relatively quiet.
Relatively.
Each week would bring the story of another battle between a horde of Can Heads and local townspeople. Each town had its own Home Patrol, a neighborhood watch on steroids. There was some support from the State Troopers, the undermanned National Guard, even volunteer militias.
Still, things could happen.
These roads—watched and guarded, but still very much open and exposed—could be attacked.
And were.
If there was any danger on this road trip, it would come on those stretches of road.
For now, the route they’d need to take—nearly an hour and a half off the highways—looked quiet.
He slid the mouse to the left and right. Western New York. A few spots glowed red, but nothing within a couple hundred miles of Paterville.
We winning this thing?
He wished he could believe it.
He clicked on an X in the corner of the screen. The NYPD site vanished.
“Jack, could you give me a hand here?”
He got up and left the quiet shadows of the dining room.
Jack looked down at the freezer chest. Full already, with so-called juice drinks, the synthetic peanut butter and jelly sandwiches—a staple—and some unknown items wrapped in tin foil.
Christie held a few bottles of water, as precious as food.
“Can you help me find some room in here? Maybe move some things around?”
Jack smiled. “Room? Looks packed.”
“C’mon. Work your man-magic. Move stuff. I want to keep this water cold for our trip.”
Jack crouched down and rearranged things. Like some kid’s sliding block puzzle, eventually he made space appear.
“See. I knew you could do it.”
“A man of many—”
“Dad! Dad! Tell stupid Simon that I get the big bag!”
He turned around to see his kids, each with a hand locked on a purple suitcase. Kate gave it a rough yank that sent Simon spinning, then flying across the kitchen, his hand released.
Jack straightened up, shooting a look at Christie, hoping she would take this one.
“Guess I get the bag,” Kate said, shooting a grin at her brother.
But Simon raced back.
“What do you even have in here, dork?”
“Look,” Jack started, “we have a lot of—”
Kate unzipped the bag and an assortment of plastic monsters, refugees from decade-old cartoon shows, spilled onto the kitchen floor.
“Hey!” Simon yelled. He gathered up the tumbled creatures while trying to lock a hand on the bag.
Kate, however, continued making jerking motions as the bag went left, then right, then up.
Christie finally took the cue that Jack didn’t have a clue how to intervene here.
“All right. Enough. Kate, put down the bag. Simon—just freeze.”
Simon held his gathered creatures close.
“We have a lot of bags.”
“Yes, but I’m the oldest and I—” Kate began.
Christie took the bag. “Really? I need to use this one. You two can use any of the other bags in my closet.”
“They’re all ugly,” Kate said.
“Not big enough,” Simon said, looking down at his toys.
Now Jack saw his opening.
“Well, they’ll have to do. We leave in an hour. Hate to leave without you.”
Kate shook her head and stormed away while Simon stood there, looking confused.
“Si, think you can pick only a few of those toys to bring? We’re only gone a week.”
Simon nodded and walked away.
Jack turned back to Christie. “Nice peaceful week ahead, hm?”
“Good thing I’ve already packed for them. Otherwise they’d only have toys and bathing suits.”
Jack turned back to the freezer chest and closed the lid. Two snaps on either side locked the top down tight.