Nuclear Winter Series by Akart, Bobby (i read a book txt) 📗

detonating in Washington. Everyone wanted to hear about it. Yet they didn’t. Peter could see it in their eyes and changed demeanor as he continued. An overwhelming sadness seemed to come over the group as the realization of what had happened to America soaked in.

The cargo truck rumbled along through the small community of Hildebran before approaching the underpass at Interstate 40 west of Charlotte. The group was silent as they watched thousands of people walking toward the mountains. Some pushed shopping carts while others pulled luggage on wheels. They were all seeking refuge away from the cities.

The truck chugged along down Henry River Road when it suddenly slowed. The passengers became nervous, and Peter eased his hand into his backpack to get a grip on his pistol. He was relieved that Mr. Uber and his dimwit son hadn’t confiscated all of his weapons.

On the left side of the truck, a tall wooden fence appeared along the roadway. Through the heavily wooded forest, a smattering of buildings could be seen. Then a gated entry came into view with several armed guards patrolling behind it. A long gravel driveway led up a hill through a canopy of oak trees.

“What’s this place?” asked one of the passengers.

“That’s where they filmed the Hunger Games movies,” replied an older man.

“Really?” asked a child who was sitting next to him.

The old man explained, “This was once Henry River Mills Village, an old ghost town that used to be a yarn factory. This part of Carolina was booming back then, and little communities like this sprang up everywhere. When the big factories moved into Charlotte, the people left the village for the city.”

“You said something about the Hunger Games movie,” interrupted the child’s mother.

“Yeah, right. Anyway, the place was abandoned, and the folks who bought it years ago allowed it to be used as a movie set. This was used as the setting for District 12 where the start of the movie took place.”

“It doesn’t look like a movie set now,” mumbled Peter.

“Those guys were ex-military,” whispered Rafael as he leaned into Peter. “They were disciplined and carried themselves like they were well-trained operatives.”

The older man continued. “Anyway, recently, the place was bought by a couple out of Florida. Supposedly won the lottery. They fenced the entire place like a fortress or some such.”

The truck slowly rumbled across a bridge high above the Henry River. Two more armed guards were positioned on the other side behind concrete barriers. They never blinked as their eyes scanned the cargo truck and its passengers. They held their weapons at low ready, just in case.

Peter craned his neck to study the compound from the south side of the river as they continued up a hill. Eventually, the former movie set turned haven, for some, disappeared from sight. He got settled in with the others as the monotonous drone of the diesel engines began to put nearly everyone to sleep.

Their trip took them through the heart of the Old South. Towns like Gaffney, Saluda, and Barnwell in South Carolina were encountered without incident. Once in Georgia, they drove through Statesboro toward Jesup.

They’d been on the road for nearly eight hours, and the passengers were getting antsy. Mr. Uber had only afforded them one pit stop, as he called it, to stretch their legs and relieve their bladders in a looted Huddle House. He and his son swapped driving duties, during which time a passenger overheard them say they planned on stopping near Jesup, Georgia, to refuel and sleep.

During the ride, Peter struck up conversations with every one of his fellow passengers. Some were more open than others about their destination and the price they’d paid for inclusion on the trip. Most had traded guns or silver coins. The elderly couple had given up their wedding bands. One family had turned over the keys to their vacation home outside Asheville, North Carolina.

The two people he was most concerned about were a mother in her late thirties and her daughter, who appeared to be college age. They were closed off about where they were headed and why. Plus, they shut Peter down when he asked what they’d had to barter to get a ride on the truck. The daughter closed her eyes and hung her head low. Her mother shed a tear and looked away as she wiped her face with her sweater sleeve.

Peter had heard rumors of women being forced to trade sex for food, gasoline, and, apparently, a lift to Florida. It angered him that the two men sitting in the heated cab, laughing and swapping a bottle of whiskey, had enticed these two women with a ride by demanding them to humiliate themselves that way.

At one point toward the end of the ride, murderous thoughts crept into his head. He replayed the events in the CVS pharmacy that night. Was that murder or self-defense? Or was his shooting of the four men in rapid succession a preemptive first strike? A kill-or-be-killed scenario that required him to murder others to protect himself.

Then he took his analysis further. Did he have the right to take the lives of Mr. Uber and his ingrate son because they’d asked for, and received, sexual favors in exchange for an uncomfortable seat on this truck? Had America descended into a level of lawlessness where killing could be justified on moral grounds?

Peter grappled with these issues for miles, and as a result, the time flew by as Greyhound slowed the cargo truck at the entrance of the aptly named Motel Jesup. The twenty-two bungalow-style units were arranged in an L-shaped structure connected by covered walkways. The affordable accommodations were the epitome of the quintessential, roadside motor court of days gone by. Before the nation’s interstate system provided travelers the opportunity to zip from one point to another at seventy-plus miles an hour, state and federal highways had connected small towns together. Within each small town, there were motor courts.

Many had been built in the late forties as