Free Desperate Times by Nicholas Antinozzi

don’t want to
get pulled over.”
     
    “Yes, sir,” replied Julie, choosing to pull
the middle belt from between the seats. She slid it around her slim
waist and snapped the clasp. “Relax, Jimmy,” she said with a smile.
“I’m not going to attack you.”
     
    “I’m not worried,” Jimmy lied, releasing the
brakes and shifting the truck into gear.
     
    “Good,” said Julie.
     
    The caravan turned onto the highway, keeping
together close as Ken had instructed. Each one of them was leaving
behind a home and a life. The few who still had jobs were leaving
those behind and every last one of them was leaving a little piece
of themselves in the rearview mirrors, unsure when, if ever, they’d
return. Even then, what would they be returning home to?
     
    The traffic grew lighter with each passing
mile and they were over a hundred miles from Minneapolis before the
sun began to set in the western sky. It was the last sunset that
some of the travelers would ever see.
     
    The innocence would soon be torn from their
eyes as the outside world changed beyond their comprehension. They
didn’t know it, but there wasn’t a single State Patrol between them
and their destination. The counties had called off their cruisers
and the nearest on-duty cop was getting ready to clock out to be
with his own family. The great State of Minnesota had just gone
belly up.
     
    The closing of the banks had caused the
greatest wave of panic since the Cuban missile crisis. The banks
were soon followed by the corporate sector. Businesses sent their
people home with false promises and trucking companies began
pulling their rigs off the road. Public utilities began to blink
out by late afternoon like so many bad bulbs on a Christmas tree. A
mass exodus was taking place. Like rats leaving a sinking ship, the
working people of America had turned tail and abandoned their
posts. The afternoon rush hour was unlike any this country had ever
seen.
     
    That tidbit of information had somehow been
lost by the good people at the Emergency Broadcast System who had
taken control of the airwaves. They tried desperately to put a good
face on the day’s events, pointing out that tomorrow was another
day and playing prerecorded footage of peaceful streets in quiet
towns. The last plug to be pulled by the government was the
internet, leaving the American people totally in the dark and
without access to any factual information.
     
    The looting had begun in New York City and
spread across the country like a plague. Minneapolis was burning.
Saint Paul was in shambles. People flooded the streets and mayhem
ensued. There was no one there to stop it.
     
    The day would go down in history as the
darkest America had ever known.
     
    The caravan reached the remote rest area on
Highway 53 at just after nine. Jimmy pulled the Mack into the back
of the lot and everyone else followed. Thirty miles northwest of
Duluth, the facility was a popular stop for vacationers on their
way to Minnesota’s Iron Range and the great wilderness beyond. They
joined about half a dozen other cars in the lot. Julie and Jimmy
had visited the entire way there, laughing about old times and
catching up on their old friends. The conversation had been so
light-hearted that Jimmy had never had the opportunity to bring up
Paula. As a matter of fact, he hadn’t even thought of her for the
last fifty miles. He turned the ignition off and welcomed the
silence.
     
    Jimmy and Julie got out of the truck and
stretched. Bill nearly scrambled out of his car and headed for the
bathroom. Cindy joined Jimmy and Julie at the Mack and gave them
both a good looking over.
     
    “You gotta go?” Cindy asked Julie, cocking
her head in the direction of the bathrooms.
     
    “Yeah,” replied Julie.
     
    Jimmy watched them walk up to the brick
building as the sun was setting behind the birch trees beyond the
highway. He could tell by the way they were talking that Cindy was
saying everything that Jimmy had intended