It was a warm early May day and Frank Whittmore was rolling down I90 in upstate NY between his home in Madison and his ex's in Fulton County. They had been broken up since the older of his two now teenage sons was about four. Every weekend with dad had been the standard for the boy's entire life and if Frank was honest the deciding factor in his as well.
Frank was marveling at the perfect day and pointedly ignoring the over-powerful bass coming from the speakers of his VW Golf. Jake, the older of his sons now eighteen and preparing for graduation, was playing some popular rap through the Bluetooth in the car and his cell phone. Frank couldn't remember the artist's name some rap thing like Lil Scooty or some junk.
In all honesty, it wasn't bad music. In fact, the current song When I Grow Up was pretty good and even managed to have, in Frank's opinion, a decent message about the artist's struggle and dedication. The bass was just too heavy though, it took away from the sound. The irony wasn't lost that at near Jake's age he had been running off to Albany with his older friends to stand near speakers nearly as tall as he was to hear one band or another play in a dirty crowded bar.
It probably wasn't fair to judge Frank against the boys, and he knew it. The boys were loved and although neither parent was rich the two boys had been a shit ton better off than Frank himself had been. They had two parents that loved them, were decently fed, and clothes their whole lives. To Frank's immense pride they hadn't spent years growing up in busted old houses one step away from being labeled uninhabitable. They hadn't been saddled with a drunk for a mother that was nowhere near the functional level with no father in sight. Frank was, in essence, proud his boys, and stepdaughter for that matter were soft.
You're getting old. Old people complain about music and the softness of these youngins.
Frank always loved the drive on the nice days and this was about as good as spring days get. They were just past Utica and the open river valley was giving way to hills. Frank was checking his mirrors getting ready to move over to the left lane of the highway in preparation to pass the tractor-trailer he was behind before it slowed on the upcoming hill. Judging the black truck with a large tool rack and maroon sedan behind him far enough back Frank made his move into the left lane as a dark blue Cherokee moved into the right lane in front of the tractor-trailer.
Frank was halfway past the large truck when translucent text-filled his vision.
You will enter the next stage of the simulation in 10,9,8,7.....
Fuck I need to get this thing gone. I can't see right.
As abruptly as it had appeared the count down went away.
“Dad,” Max said from the back with obvious fear and concern.
“Wow” was the only thing Jake said from the passenger side.
“It's okay guys,” Frank said without really trusting it.
The dark blue Jeep Cherokee in front of the tractor-trailer must have broke hard because the tractor-trailer broke hard. Frank was nearly to the cab of the truck when the highway went to hell. He heard the crunch of the massive truck hitting the SUV. The SUV then bounced off the truck half into Frank's lane, being pushed more into it every moment. Luckily the truck driver was also pulling onto the shoulder on the opposite side giving up more space. It was fucking close. Frank took all of this in and realized the shoulder was his only real option.
Fearing time would push the SUV too far into his lane Frank made his move aggressively. He jammed the pedal down and the little German car he had grown to love jumped into action surging forward admirably all four turbocharged cylinders giving what they had to give and then just a little more. Feeling the shake of the rumble strip through his clenched fists once then twice Frank shot through the narrowing hole. Completely on the shoulder Frank still lost a mirror and no doubt got a massive scratch as the jeep scraped on the passenger side as they got by which caused Frank to pull a little too much to the left and just barely avoid making a match on the driver's side from the guard rail.
He looked up to check the rearview mirror to see if other cars were going to get caught up in the mess letting off the acceleration. That is when something happened, something Frank had never felt before. A feeling, sort of like a wave of unseen force, washed over him, but that wasn't the important part. Reality glitched. Everything did a weird little stutter that shook him to the bone. On a primal level, Frank knew nothing would ever be the same. If asked later he wouldn't be able to say with certainty it was real, but in that exact moment, it was real, dead fucking real.
When the stuttered reality resumed at normal pace everything was dead. The music, the car, the phone in Jake’s hand, and the laptop Max was using in the backseat, although at the time Frank didn't know about the laptop. All of it. So quickly and completely it was as if the physics behind electricity just called in sick. Of course, none of those higher thoughts had occurred to Frank as the car began to slow.
All the cars, not just mine.
Frank saw one of the turnarounds where state troopers often stood sentinel reminding everyone to obey the carefully crafted rules and punish those that didn't. He made it, mostly. His car was out of the road but only by a foot or two in the rear when he was forced to use the brake and put it in park to avoid rolling backward on the slight incline.
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In there somewhere was an eruption of noise as the accident behind them got bigger. Oddly Frank didn't even register any of it at first. Focused on driving and a mental loop of what had happened he missed the noises going on around him as one might miss the sounds of nature on a walk while consumed with work.
This is crazy. What the hell happened?
EMP?
All he could come up with was an EMP with the tech shutting down but there was something else in the back of his mind whispering that the answer was far more sinister. An EMP would be almost welcomed, an exotic but explainable phenomenon. Hell, Frank had listened to some apocalypse survival fiction audiobooks during his hours and hours of driving every week. Actually, he listened to two to three books a week of all sorts of fiction and those had been among them.
An EMP would be easy. A simple answer to put a nice little bow on the shit sandwich of a situation. Except for the two obvious and terrifying holes in that piece of logic. First was that weird glitch he felt, that sure as shit wasn't an EMP, he just knew it. Second and more obvious was that EMPs to the best of his knowledge didn't cause mass hallucinations. They had all seen the counted down. Frank knew the boys had seen it, and he was also certain it had caused the accident.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“ Dad!” the question had so much fear and pain in it that it unlocked Frank's mind from the near-hysterical loop it was in.
The noises of the world around them came back to Frank now. Explosions off in the distance rumbled through the sky like far-off thunder as dark black clouds of another sort of storm entirely gathered on the western horizon from the city visible through the rearview mirror. Frank shuttered to think of all those cars and trucks all failing throughout the city, or the whole world. Then his stomach lurched when he thought about planes. Closer and more concerning were screams of fear and pain coming from an overturned truck that got caught up in the jeep mess behind them.
Frank snapped into action once the shock had been broken, “ I'm going back there to see if I can help. I want you two to go in the trunk and put anything in there into the shopping bags, then get back in the car, and wait for me. While you wait look under all the seats, in the glove compartment, and anywhere else you can think of for anything else we might have in here. You never know what might be handy so find everything, and we can sort it later.”
Thankfully, New York state had prohibited plastic bags and Frank's wife Sara had made sure the cars both had reusable bags in the trunk all the time. One of about the million things she managed to remember that collectively kept their lives in some measure of order.
Frank paused before he got out of the car, “I love you guys.”
Frank made eye contact with a large pot-bellied black dude wearing a red Make America Great Again hat before he turned and ran to the turned-over black pickup truck with a tool rack. The screaming from the truck had stopped, and he was afraid he'd be too late to help the person, but as he closed in he noticed movement through the spiderwebbed windshield. Frank lost sight of the movement as he approached running over tools, some pieces of lumber, broken glass, and various other articles one wouldn't be surprised to find in the bed of a construction truck.
Using the tool rack for assistance he climbed up to the passenger door that was now faced upwards and heaved to get it opened. With gravity still working despite electricity's break from reality, Frank struggled to get the door opened and keep it opened so the woman who seemed shaken, but fine, could climb out. She looked like a construction worker, tanned already even though summer was a couple of months off, and he noted the corded muscles as he pulled her up.
After he helped her out then down Frank was surveying the scene. It looked like the puck up had successfully maneuvered to avoid the tractor-trailer and the jeep but must have had to turn so hard she flipped the truck over. From on top of the truck, he had a good line of sight and nothing looked good.
Frank was watching a man from a small group of cars twenty or so yards down the road approach, presumably to offer aid, and the person in the marron car that hadn't been far behind Frank wasn't even exiting their vehicle. The man noticed Frank looking and reached a hand over his head and waved. Frank noticed more with fascination than fear that the man had a pistol in his other, he waved.
What the hell does he think he needs that for?
Maybe two hundred yards further down the road another group of cars were stopped and people were beginning to interact. The group was too far away for anything to stand out but Frank could see the signs of an animated conversation arms waving and all that. Frank began turning his head right and taking the rest of it in. The MAGA hat dude had been traveling west on the other side of the highway, but it seemed that was the less popular direction at this particular moment, and there were only two other cars fairly close on that side
Then the ground began to quake as Frank had always imagined an earthquake would feel like just less. It shook enough to make Frank wobble on the truck and eventually half fall half jump off landing somewhat smoothly all things considered, even though he was on his butt. Then the asphalt cracked this way and that starting slow and gaining momentum until a maze of cracks spread in all directions. As suddenly as the quaking had started it stopped and the movement moved to the chunks of the road and amplified.
First, the small pieces moved in a little erratic hop like a Mexican Jumping Bean. Then, when they were bouncing all about like toddlers with energy drinks, bigger and bigger pieces began to shake. Then as if by some unseen magnates the pieces began to come together. Frank watched the nearest conglomeration of stone chunks form together. First six spiderish legs took shape, then a spider-like body to connect all those spider-like legs. That's where the twist came in. Frank watched in fascinated horror as where the head should have formed a human torso took shape.
There was a small army of them around. They were probably five-foot-tall rock spider beings. Their rough asphalt arms ended on chunks of the stone and tar substance. Then while Frank was still taking in the mindfucking sight they began to move. Like someone had screamed charge the creatures lit off in all directions oozing malevolent intent. In all directions the things scurried, narrow rock legs clicking on the exposed dirt and pieces of the road that didn't make it into the monster's bodies.
When Frank saw some of the monsters scurrying towards his car, where the boys hadn't gotten back in and locked the doors, and shot towards them. Ignoring two of the creatures close by as he bolted by Frank scooped up a pickaxe that was part of the road hazards. The thought made him laugh.
Road hazards!
Frank was still laughing as he descended on the creatures between him and his children.