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Tom siphoned enough gas to fill the two-gallon can a
half dozen times. When he’d emptied the last of the gas into the
Jeep, he tossed the can along with the hose into the cargo section
and got back behind the wheel.

Tom backtracked to the I-71 south access road.
Radiant sun was coming from the southeast as he drove along at a
brisk speed. In another ten minutes, he pulled off onto the Broad
Street exit and began his search for signs of life in downtown
Columbus.

As expected, there were cars parked along the
streets, no working traffic lights and not a glimmer of life. He
swung by the Columbus Police Department, double-parked and ran up
to the door. He went inside and glanced around the darkened
reception area. Not a single soul. It looked just like the
Worthington P.D. but a lot bigger.

Columbus, Ohio was absolutely shut down and totally
evacuated-save for one solitary soul. And it looked like that soul
would be abandoning the city as well.

With a shrug, Tom hopped back into the Jeep, drove
east to the I-71 entrance ramp and headed north to New York
City.

CHAPTER 7

By the time he reached Akron, Tom was totally lost in
thought. He thought back to the last time he’d been in New York,
which was nearly twenty years ago. He had lived in The Big Apple
for over five years in search of his idea of the American Dream:
becoming a self employed, successful artist.

After graduating cum laude from Ohio University with
a B.F.A. to his credit, Tom had returned to his hometown of
Smithtown long enough to realize that he was going to have to get
out of there pronto if he had any aspirations of making a living at
his chosen career. Not only was the tiny town economically
challenged, as was the case of virtually every other Appalachian
town in southern Ohio, it was absolutely depressing. He had enjoyed
his childhood there but it was time to spread his wings and go
somewhere that had a future.

After several weeks of serious deliberation, he opted
for New York. After all, he figured, if you’re going to be serious
about a career in art, you may as well go to the art capital of the
country. And besides that, he knew of a friend living there who had
offered to put him up until he was able to get on his feet.

So it was off to a new city and a new life. After
several agonizing weeks of pounding the streets, he had finally
found a job with a salary decent enough to allow him his own loft
space in Soho. Although the nine-to-five gig as an archive photo
intern at the Museum of Modern Art was interesting and fairly
prestigious, Tom would much rather have been creating his own art
instead of preserving others.’

But it was a job nonetheless. And in addition to a
generous salary, it offered him a great opportunity for
establishing connections in the art community. Tom had dove into
his new job with a positive attitude and worked on his art in his
spare time. Photography was his discipline of choice but he also
spent time drawing and painting.

Between his full time job at the museum and spending
the rest of his time in his loft studio, Tom had enjoyed his life
in New York for the most part. His social life, however, was nearly
non-existent. He preferred to pursue his art with as little
distraction from outside influences as was humanly possible. That
isn’t to say he was a self-ordained monk by any means, but the sum
total of his socializing was limited mostly to the occasional night
out bar hopping with a small circle of coworkers from the museum
and the even rarer one night stand with some girl he’d meet at a
bar. Tom adamantly refused to get involved in any serious
relationships. He had a career to think of first.

But his life seemed lackluster and he still wasn’t
making a living at what he wanted to do. He had amassed a
considerable body of work after living five years in the city but
had found very few galleries interested in displaying any of it. In
fact, he had only sold one piece of art in all the time he’d been
there—a black and white portrait of one of his coworkers from the
museum.

The job at the museum became less and less
challenging and more of a grind than anything else as time passed
by. But at least one good thing came out of his employment there:
he had made up his mind to become an art teacher — perhaps to
specialize in art history. He decided to move back to Smithtown and
eventually enrolled at Ohio State University to pursue his MFA. OSU
had an excellent art program and was located only a couple of hours
away in Ohio’s capital and largest city—

A deer suddenly darted out into the road and Tom
swerved hard to the right to avoid plowing into it. The sudden move
caused the Jeep to spin a full 360 degrees. He watched the white
tail bound into the woods and felt his heart race wildly as he
finally managed to bring the car under control.

This abrupt reality check made Tom snap out of his
reverie. He had driven over three hours and still hadn’t seen a
single vehicle or a single soul. It had started snowing again and
was becoming more and more difficult to see the road. He decided he
would stop off in Youngstown long enough to eat and wait to see if
the snow was going to let up any.

Tom pulled off onto the first exit for downtown
Youngstown. Five minutes later, he was driving down one of the main
streets in search of a place with something substantial to eat. He
finally opted for a gas station with a mini mart. He pulled up
beside the entrance, got out and went inside.

It was at that moment that Tom nearly lost it
completely. He took one look at the deserted store and realized
that it looked just like the one he had been at in Columbus. In a
single sickening moment, he considered the notion of being the last
man on earth. The proverbial Omega Man. Feeling weak in the knees
and beaten down, he leaned over and rested his head on the counter,
feeling tears come to his eyes.

His family had vanished into thin air along with the
rest of mankind and now here he was in this goddamn deserted mini
mart in Youngstown searching for a decent meal.

It was as daunting as it was absurd.

Why had this happened? he thought. And when was it
going to end? Would he ever see Peg and the kids again? As he
thought back to the whole unreal scenario he had left behind in
Columbus, he now found it difficult to believe it had ever
happened.

But the ten thousand dollar question came down to
this: had he made the right decision traveling to NYC while his
family could at this moment be in harm’s way somewhere back in
Columbus?

Tom shivered and dashed the impending urge to break
down totally. What sobered him up was the innate desire to live and
a compulsion to find out what was happening. He was only human—what
other options did he have? He could either continue standing there
bawling like a baby until he froze to death or be grateful that he
was still alive and go where his heart told him to go.

Smiling faintly, looked around and snagged a candy
bar off the shelf. He unwrapped it, took a bite of the frozen rock
hard Milky Way and nearly chipped a tooth in the process. Perhaps
something a bit more palatable? he thought.

He browsed the aisles and picked out a large bag of
potato chips, some Planters whole cashews and a semi-hard giant
Slim Jim. Tom wondered why the latter wasn’t frozen solid then
considered the salt and preservatives that prevented the leathery
junk from crystallizing totally. And to think of what it would be
doing to his body …

Tom returned to the warm Jeep and settled down to eat
his lunch. He reached over for one of the three bottled waters he’d
packed and began munching on his junk food as the snow continued
falling hard against the windshield. It didn’t look like the storm
was going to let up anytime soon so he took his time eating. When
he was finished, he had the overpowering urge for a cup of hot
coffee. He recalled seeing canned fuel in the mini mart and made
the easiest decision he’d made all day: to brew a cup of hot
coffee.

Then he would gas up and continue his journey after
the storm broke.

CHAPTER 8

Tom’s anxiety grew more the closer he got to
Manhattan. Night had fallen about halfway through Pennsylvania and
that was intimidating enough. But as he approached the Lincoln
Tunnel and got his first glimpse of the Manhattan skyline in over
twenty years, he nearly came undone—

The famous skyline he had known so well was all but
invisible in the misty darkness. Missing were the countless
rectangles of light in the towering skyscrapers, the lights tracing
the spans of the Hudson and East River bridges, the familiar
gleaming stainless steel apex of the Chrysler Building, the
illuminated tiers of the Empire State building and most apparent of
all—the World Trade Center altogether. He hadn’t been back since
the 9/11 tragedy.

In fact, had the skies not just cleared up enough to
reveal an amber quarter moon hanging low in the southwest sky, Tom
would be unable to make out anything distinguishable from his
present perspective. But the weak light afforded by the moon
revealed the eerie silhouetted forms of the towering buildings on
Manhattan Island.

“Christ,” he breathed aloud into the silent interior
of the Jeep. “It’s even worse than I imagined.”

The skyline disappeared abruptly as Tom made a wide
turn and drove past the deserted tollbooths. He entered the Lincoln
Tunnel and slowed down to a near crawl, still overwhelmed by the
scene he’d just seen a moment ago.

This was simply too much for him to grasp right
now.

Tom continued letting up on the accelerator until he
had almost coasted to a dead stop, trying to ascertain what he
might find on the other side of this tunnel. He had just driven ten
hours alone on an abandoned highway in search of the only two
living souls he’d seen since arriving home from the supermarket the
day before. And now that he had finally arrived at his questionable
destination he found himself clueless as to what he should do
next.

He was absolutely terrified.

He stared out at the headlights as they sliced
through the blackness of the tunnel and took a deep breath. What
difference did it make? He was here, what had happened had happened
and now he had to do what he had to do to survive. It was as simple
as that.

This simple rationale rekindled his spirits a bit as
he inched his speed up to forty-five and focused on the road ahead.
Maybe, he thought, he would see the usual throngs of people on the
streets. After all, with a population of over eight million, the
odds were certainly greater than anywhere else he’d been thus far.
Surely there would at least be some signs of life—the odds had it
if nothing else.

Surely.

He spotted the exit looming in the near distance.
Impulsively, he let off the gas and slowed down to a glorified
crawl. By the time he actually emerged from the tunnel, he felt as
though he were driving in wet cement.

His first observation when he suddenly thrust into
the manmade canyons of midtown Manhattan was the near total
darkness and mind-boggling silence. He had never known the city to
be dead silent. This, along with the absence of any working lights
whatsoever, made it all the more foreboding. Columbus, Ohio was one
thing. The desolate mountain highways of Pennsylvania were another
thing.

But to be in the city that never sleeps and
experiencing this was absolutely paralyzing.

Tom puttered east along Thirty-fourth Street with no
destination in mind, numbed by the silent darkness. He spotted the
occasional abandoned taxi or truck parked along the curb but didn’t
see nearly as many vehicles as he had expected to see. This made
the enormous cityscape seem all the more desolate.

Nervously, he turned up the volume on his CD player
and continued driving east. Ironically, the song playing was Omega
Man by the Police. When he reached Herald Square, he slowed down to
a complete stop directly across from Macy’s.

It just wasn’t possible, he thought. To be sitting
there in one of the most congested pedestrian venues in the country
and not seeing a single soul. He turned down the volume,
tentatively rolled down his window a few inches and listened
intently. Not a sound. He turned off the engine. Nothing but dead
silence, except for the clicking of the Jeep’s hot engine
manifold.

Tom sighed and turned the key. The engine turned for
a moment but didn’t catch. He switched off the headlights and tried
again. The starter whined a couple of times and stopped dead.

“Shit!” he spat.

He tried a few more times to start the Jeep but
without success. The battery finally became so weak that and all he
got was the clicking of the solenoid.

The Jeep was dead.

Excellent.

In a semi-panic, he looked around for another mode of
transportation. He spotted a couple of cabs parked up ahead near
the corner of Sixth Avenue. He could only pray that the keys were
still in one of them.

Tom cursed to himself once more as he fumbled for the
flashlight in his duffel bag. He switched it on and stepped out
onto the street, thankful it had stopped snowing by the time he’d
entered New Jersey a few hours ago.

Training the flashlight’s pinpoint beam along the
sidewalk, Tom walked briskly toward the first cab. He heard the
sound of his footsteps echo crisply as he glanced at the
storefronts along the way. He suddenly stopped dead in his tracks
when he noticed the smashed window of an upscale clothing store.
Looters? he wondered. If that were the case, it was the first sign
of looting he’d seen since this nightmare had begun—which seemed a
little odd, he now realized. But at the same time, it was an
encouraging sign. It meant that perhaps someone other than himself
was alive and kicking in Gotham City.