A bullet pinged off of the brickwork beside Samuel’s head. Gravel and dirt exploded into the air as he ran for his life. Samuel and Austin pounded down the alley, ducking and weaving. Bullets flew all around them, a hundred yards of alley stretched ahead of them.
Austin did his best to zigzag as he ran, but in such a narrow alleyway it was almost impossible. Either one of them could be hit at any moment, their lives hanging in the balance. He and Samuel had overheard what the group was planning. That was enough to sign their death warrants.
Thoughts of Dante and Bowie gave Austin just that little bit of extra energy that he needed as they fled the scene, the end of the alley almost within reach.
After what felt like a marathon for the two men, they finally burst out of the alleyway and onto a wider street, both still running at full pelt as gunshots rang out behind them. Neither slowed a fraction as they turned the corner, glancing at one another from the corner of their eyes and knowing this was not the time for slowing down. They may have gotten lucky so far, but their lives were far from safe.
Austin wondered what his family was doing in that moment. They couldn’t possibly be in a more dangerous predicament than he was. Poughkeepsie was a safe place. It was filled with survivalists and preppers, men and women who loved to spend time in the mountains and only needed a proper address for their mail and other formalities. Dante’s father, Russell had been just like that. Austin recalled the camping trip he’d been forced to take with the man just a few short weeks before his wedding.
That had been a very peculiar weekend. Dante wasn’t all that close with his father to begin with, the older man struggled with the life choices his son had made. It was something Dante had always found difficult to deal with and so when Austin was invited to spend a weekend in the Catskills with Russell, he felt like it was something he needed to do to try and help their relationship.
The two of them had hunted, fished, cooked their kills and drank beer around a campfire. What they hadn’t done a great deal of however, was talk. Still to this day, Austin didn’t know exactly why Russell had invited him on that trip. The man had died only a few years after their wedding and the question was never raised. Dante had mourned the loss in his own way, with Austin there for him however he was needed.
The one good thing to come out of Russell’s passing at least was that it confirmed for both Dante and Austin how much they wanted to be fathers themselves. It was only a month later that they started looking into adoption and ended up finding Bowie, the little boy who had turned their lives around and given them more purpose than they ever could’ve imagined. Once you had a child to care for, everything seemed to change and all other worries or problems faded into the background, that child becoming the be all and end all of everything. That was why Austin knew he had to survive. Not for Dante – though he loved the man dearly – but for Bowie. His little boy was his world and Austin would do anything to make sure he saw his face again.
Samuel was already losing track of how many times he’d been forced to run for his life since Trident went down. He wondered if it was punishment for his actions since the crash, whether this was in some way making up for his selfish deeds and the people he had let down.
Samuel was now doing everything he could to help others and to be a better person, but he couldn’t help but wonder if it was all just a bit too late. Perhaps the world was trying to tell him something, perhaps he wasn’t one of the people who was worth saving.
“The bridge…” Austin gasped as they sprinted down the street.
Picking up his head, Samuel saw what Austin was referring to – the George Washington Bridge. His sense of direction was totally shot. He had no idea how they had ended up near the bridge from where they had started that morning.
The bridge signified safety for both him and Austin and both of them quickly started moving toward it.
New York was the epicenter of the disaster. While Trident’s collapse signified great loss and a new way of life for people all across America and the world, Samuel felt like things were worse in New York because that was where it had all started. It was maybe just because he was connected to the center of it all there, but the idea of crossing into New Jersey filled him with hope for an easier journey north.
But the nearer to the bridge they got, the more apparent it became that they weren’t the only people with that idea. New York City had a population of over ten million people before the crash, but that number had dwindled significantly in the days following the crash. Each day more and more of them considered that life might be easier elsewhere. It came as little surprise that the roads and bridges out of the city were gridlocked and the sidewalks awash with pedestrians carrying their most valued possessions.
“This is crazy.”
“Come on,” Austin encouraged as Samuel paused to take in the scene ahead of them. Thousands of people rushing out of the city at once. He wondered if the surge had been like this from the get-go, or if the deteriorating conditions in the city, and the increased danger, were pushing more and more residents out. “We need to get in there.”
Austin was right. The two men still wore the large
