Chapter 35

Route 495 had been slow, but 290 was a parking lot. Nothing moved in the southbound lanes. A series of fender-benders and worse, caused by frantic people who’d waited until the last minute and were now trying desperately to escape New England, had practically closed off both routes. Almost no one was going north: national guard vehicles, an occasional ambulance and state police cars were all that used this strip of paving, two traveling lanes, plus breakdowns. Sitting empty. Shit, thought Mike Guaranga, even half a lane would do for that traffic. If it wasn’t for a ridge of crusted snow that remained in the center section he’d...The car was jammed as well: wife, two kids, dog, birdcage, three suitcases, six boxes, a knapsack, stuffed animals and the hand-woven rugs his mother had made. Everything of value, monetary or sentimental from their house in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He’d thought of taking I-93, but he’d have had to go through Connecticut to get out of New England. And the traffic through Boston or on Route 128 around was apt to be a crush. Like this. He pounded on the steering wheel. He’d figured he’d take the Mass Pike, New York State was closer that way. Looks like others had the same idea. They should have left yesterday, just like Janice said...

They heard about accidents en route from Joe Harrison in the WEYE copter. Traffic monitors were the only private planes allowed in the skies over New England. Some in fixed wing and some helicopters, these airwaves flyers that hovered daily over metropolitan areas at peak traffic periods alerting drivers to what lay ahead on their homeward commute, were vital support during this sudden crush to abandon New England. Their eyes in the sky were able to spot trouble points and focus emergency vehicles at a time when ground services were unable to cruise about freely. They had been making flights all night. That they were still at it on the morning of March 17 was a tribute to their courage or foolhardiness, take your pick.

“We shoulda taken 93,” said Janice Guaranga for the third time.

“We been over that,” growled Mike. “Susie, don’t lean out the window.”

“Nothing’s happening, why are we stopped?” asked his daughter, age twelve.

“Cause we shoulda taken 93,” repeated Janice.

“Did you hear him? Did you listen, huh? Joe Harrison said Boston’s locked up tight and so’s 128. So we take 93, to where? There’s no friggin place to get off it!”

Janice folded arms across her chest. “You know what time it is? It’s almost seven o’clock. We got just five hours to get out of Mass. Then we’re dead.”

Susie started to cry.

“Geez, Janice, whyn’t you just break her arm! It’s okay, Suze. This trip’s just a precaution. It’s probably all a big bluff. Six billion, and all they done was send six letters! I shoulda sent one to the mayor; think he’d pay me a couple mill? What I don’t like is leavin Maple Street.”

“I sure wasn’t going to stay there!”

“But everybody was leavin: the Gillises, the Santiagos, the Velises, the whole street. Nobody’s left to look after the houses. Maybe this is all a big scheme to scare people out of town so they can burglarize the houses, just take whatever they want.”

Janice turned to look at him. “You think that might be it?”

“Well it could be, couldn’t it?”

Janice thought about it. “They’re not going to bother with Lawrence when they got Newton and Brookline and money places like that.”

A few seconds of silence. All Janice could stand. “Oh Mike, suppose it’s a bomb. All kinds of countries have atomic bombs now, Koreans, Indians, Pakistanis anybody can get a hold of them.” She turned to him. “If an atomic bomb went off in the center of Boston, how far away would you have to be to be safe?”

“I don’t know. Fifty miles?”

“How far are we from Boston right now?”

“Maybe twenty-five miles is enough. That’s a long way when you think about it, all the way to Angelica’s from Maple Street. Doesn’t seem like a bomb would carry that far.”

“We’re not far enough, are we?”

“The wind’s from the north. Maybe it would blow the stuff away from us.”

“And the blast? How about the blast? How far does that carry?”

“Hey, they’re movin,” said Nando with seven-year excitement.

“Yeah! Here we go.” Mike put the wagon in gear. “Must have gotten that wreck off the road.”

“It’s just the left lane,” said Janice. “Ours isn’t moving at all. Cut in there, Mike.”

“Shit! They won’t let me.”

“Just do it! What are they going to do, hit you?”

“Okay, hold on!” There was a screeching of brakes and a crash as a car slammed into their left front fender, locking with the bumper. “God damn it! Hey you bastard, what are you trying to do, kill us?”

“Keep going! Keep going! We can’t stop now!” Janice was bouncing in her seat. Mike wrestled the wheel and gave the station wagon gas. With a rasping metallic protest the cars parted. The battered wagon limped into lane one with a tinkling of glass from the shattered headlight.

“We made it!” Janice thumped the dash. “Keep going, the hell with the car!”

He turned the wheels from side to side. They moved freely, nothing pressing against them. As he floored the pedal to catch up with the cars ahead, another from his former lane pulled out in front of him. Unable to brake in time, the wagon plowed into the driver’s door of a 94 Mercury.

“Shit!” screamed father Guaranga. “What the Christ does that son-of-a-bitch think he’s doing! He cut right in front of me!”

The force of the crash moved the Mercury back into lane two, where the car trailing it hit its right rear fender. The car behind that one, trying to avoid the pileup, swung into lane one, where it was hit by a car trying to turn into lane two. These in turn were clobbered by those behind them...

The radio in the incapacitated Guaranga car had been damaged and its volume stuck at a loud blare: “This is Joe Harrison in the WEYE copter. We’re over Route 290, there’s a ten-car pileup in the southbound lane. One of the cars has been flipped on its side. This is going to take a while to sort out. Take Route 93 if you can; it’s started to open up. Traffic south is heavy but moving...”