Ross had never heard of Stebbins beyond it being a place on the map between his long drive from an uncle’s funeral in Akron to a friend’s wedding in Cape May, New Jersey. He’d taken the back roads because the news said the Pennsylvania turnpike was slowed to a crawl, even this late. Because of the storm and because of whatever the hell was happening in wherever the hell Stebbins was.
Then he hit the traffic jam on Route 653, totally blocked in, sitting there for forty minutes before finally getting out of the car to see what he could see. What he saw was the riot.
Or whatever it was.
Then the helicopters.
That made no sense to Ross.
Then the jets and the flashes of bright light.
And now he ran through the rain with steam hissing from his clothes and a mouth filled with hot ash and gritty debris. He coughed and gagged as he
ran. He fell several times, dropping knees-first onto the highway, then falling off the asphalt into the rainwater that surged through the brimming run-off ditch. Falling into the cold water was like plunging into a river of knives. Ross screamed hoarsely, his burned throat seemingly filled with razor blades.
He scrambled up the other side and struggled weakly to his feet just as a second streak of fiery light arced out of the clouds and struck the line of stalled cars. Then Ross felt himself flying.
Flying.
He soared through the storm winds, wondering if this was real or a dream.
Ross did not remember landing.
His next conscious perception was pain.
And sickness.
He lay in the dark, legs and arms splayed, face turned to the sky as water filled his mouth. He coughed. Swallowed too much water and then rolled to his side and vomited. The insides of his mouth ached from the superheated air he’d inhaled and there was a burning line of scalded tissue running along the wall into his lungs, and down into his stomach. It hurt. And it itched.
He coughed again and spat something bitter and foul into the mud.
Ross pawed at the dribble on his lips and he thought, just for a strange little moment, that he could feel something wriggle between his fingertips. Something tiny. But the rain washed it away.
The itching in his throat continued.
Sickness sloshed like sewer water in his stomach.
He vomited again. And again, unsure of whether anything was coming up. It was too dark to see and his throat hurt too much to tell.
The darkness took him again.
When he was next aware of things, he was on his feet, walking. It wasn’t the median anymore, nor was it farmlands. When the lightning flashed it painted vertical lines all around him. Tree trunks. He was in the woods.
Ross did not know which woods. At night, in the dark, he hadn’t seen much of the landscape. This was rural Pennsylvania, though, and it was a green state. Lots of damn forests.
He knew, on some level, that he was in shock, and that he was hurt. Maybe badly hurt. But he didn’t seem able to care about it.
He did care about the sickness, though. His stomach felt like it was full of wriggling snakes, and his entire esophagus itched terribly. His skin did, too. He scratched his arms and chest, but it didn’t help; the itch was under the skin. Deep and painful.
I got to get home, he thought.
And while he understood what that meant, it felt somehow irrational and stupid. Home was hundreds of miles away from here and he didn’t even have a car.
Why didn’t he have a car? he wondered, but he couldn’t answer that question. It was so hard to think clearly.
The ground began to slant downward and he followed it because it was so much easier than climbing uphill. He staggered along, going in and out of awareness.
Then his foot caught on an exposed root and Ross was falling, falling.