11AM. WBGT:101

They passed through a small town as midday approached, driving slowly under an intense and baking sun. The radio was silent now, just static on almost every channel except Raven’s emergency band. Sometime after they left the doomed group behind they lost phone reception and Aaron’s smartphone map stopped working. Fortunately the route was simple and Felice had a good sense of it, enough confidence to slide off the I10 and into the town to look for gasoline. But the town was silent and unfriendly, curtains drawn and nobody moving on the street. The single set of traffic lights did not work and the town store was dark and closed. They saw a gas station on the outskirts of town just as Felice was beginning to panic about gasoline and maps, and she pulled in without asking anyone.

“We can refill here,” she told them. “I want to find a paper map.” She pulled the car up next to a gas stand in the shade of the forecourt’s small pavilion, ignoring the sign that urged her to turn off her engine. All around them the air rippled with the heat of the road and the concrete forecourt, silent and still. The gas stand’s shop looked closed and quiet, strangely dark and empty.

Mini and Felice slipped out of the car as quickly as they could, opening the doors as little as possible and leaving Aaron in the back trying to figure out a signal. The forecourt was another level of heat entirely, the white concrete radiating like the surface of an oven even in the shade of the canopy. Felice began worrying again about the state of her car’s little engine, wondering how long until it overheated. Should she have left the night before and driven overnight?

Mini wandered off to the service station shop to find snacks, drinks and a map, and Felice set about refilling her car. Once the cap was open she pulled the nozzle from the gas stand and tried to activate the meter, but nothing worked. There were no lights, no response from the buttons on the machine’s dial, and no sounds. She tried a different machine but that, too was out of order. In desperation she pulled the lever on the dispenser but nothing happened – a single trickle of gasoline fell out of the tip, and then it was still.

She realized then what had happened: As the emergency channel had predicted, the power grid had failed. Of course that meant the gas stand was down. She listened for the sound of any other machinery operating in the vicinity to disprove her theory, but standing still by her car she heard nothing except the gentle hum of its engine. No sound of aircon, no beeping or ticking, no sound of a generator or anything else. She looked over at the long pole that held the stand’s security cameras, which would normally make occasional robotic security warnings, but it was silent. With the power down and no gas …

“’Lise! Come quickly!” The shop door had opened and Mini was standing breathless in the doorway calling to her, her summer dress stuck to the curved profile of her body with intense layers of sweat and her usually voluminous blonde hair limp and stuck to her neck and bare shoulders. She looked tired and desperate.

Felice waved acknowledgement and opened the car door just a sliver. “Aaron!” She got his attention with a sharp voice. “The stand’s not working. Can you dig around the side of the shop and see if you can find some gasoline in a can or something? I’m going inside with Mini. Be careful!” She added, when she saw Aaron nodding assent. She jogged over to the shop as he climbed out of the car behind her, regretting her run almost immediately as her breathing degenerated to ragged gasps.

The heat inside the shop was even more intense than outside, a deranged sauna in comparison even to the overheated forecourt. The shop’s lights were off, the fridges shut down, even the emergency lighting was out, leaving the small space in semi darkness. Felice guessed the morning sunlight must have been striking through the window, turning the place into an instant greenhouse once the power failed. She called for Mini and followed her voice through a door into a back room, where the girl’s sweat-stained back was just visible in near darkness, a pattern of yellow flowers on pale-blue, the cotton of her dress drawn tight across her shoulders as she crouched down and reached out to something in front of her. It was noticeably cooler in here but still the heat was overpowering. Felice crouched down next to Mini, and found herself facing the supine form of the service station’s staff. She was unconscious on the ground, a middle-aged black woman wearing a cheap uniform in red and gold, sweat-stained and dirty. The woman lay on her back, chest barely moving with her shallow breaths, drooling slightly from one side of her mouth. A large bruise purpled one side of her face, probably from the fall. Keys and a phone lay on the ground near her in a small spill of water from an open bottle.

“I found her here,” Mini said slowly, gasping at the end of the short sentence. “The heat?” She looked over at Felice, blinking sweat out of her eyes.

Felice nodded. “I’ll call someone.” She tried the emergency number on her phone, but got only the engaged signal. “No reception,” she told Mini, who nodded, waved her own phone. “I’ll try outside. See if there’s ice in the fridge, put it on her.” She pulled herself upright, head swimming in the heat as she did so. She was beginning to feel light-headed herself. “Be careful,” she added, dragging herself to the door and pushing back through into the profound, sinister heat of the shop. Frowning at her relatively new but uncooperative phone, she turned for the door to the shop – and saw and heard the car pulling up outside, a chunky older model with the windows rolled down. As it rolled into the partial shadow of the fence on the edge of the gas station lot she saw Aaron wandering across the forecourt back towards their car, hands empty.

Mini emerged from the door behind her, and she called a warning. By the time she pushed open the door to the shop the car had run to a halt and a man was hauling himself out of the driver-side door, calling out to Aaron. The man was big, slightly overweight, young, a tanned white man in loose cargo pants and t-shirt so thick with sweat that it clung to his chubby upper body tightly enough to show every curve. His dark, scruffy hair was plastered to his scalp, and he looked visibly exhausted. “Is that your car?” he asked Aaron in a voice loud enough to carry across the forecourt, sounding out of breath just from the effort of standing up and speaking.

“Aaron, get back in the car!” Felice snapped at him as the young man answered the newcomer. He looked over at Felice with his mouth and eyes widening in a kind of surprised ‘O’ at her tone, but then to Felice’s even greater surprise he obeyed her, pulling open the rear door and climbing quickly inside.

“Howdy Miss,” The man turned to Felice, his light tone belying the frown on his face as he struggled to retain his dignity under the ferocious heat. He moved towards her and into the shade of the forecourt. Beyond him three other pale faces looked out from the shadow of the car, and she saw the same fidgeting and restless movements of hands she had noticed on the militia before – reflexively trying to find some way to cool themselves in the heat, and failing. She wondered why their windows were open and then realized it could only mean their car had no aircon, or its aircon was broken. “No need to be alarmed,” he continued, his attempt at easing her mind simply adding to her suspicions about the encounter. “We’re just passing through.”

Behind her Mini emerged from the door of the shop, and Felice spared her a sharp look, a nod to the car. Mini seemed to get the message and started hustling for the car. Felice noticed the man’s eyes follow her, saw the usual interest that her shapely body and style elicited from passing men. “Cute car,” he added, his gaze turning back to Felice, “and you the driver?” He had stopped walking forward, was leaning on the nearest pump to his own car, so Felice took the opportunity to move quickly towards the driver side door of her car. She nodded involuntarily as she moved, not that it mattered – Aaron was in the back and Mini scuttling around to the passenger door, so Felice was obviously the driver.

“Say,” he asked, stretching out his Texas drawl to put as much false bonhomie in it as possible and taking a step towards her as she reached the driver’s door. “Does that cute little thing have aircon?”

Felice did not need more confirmation of his motives. She snatched the door open and slid inside, slamming it shut and hitting the autolock just as his clumsy, heat-drained lunge for her slammed into it. The lock snapped to and he slammed the palm of his hand hard on the window, yelling something at her. Shaking and yelling, she pushed the car into drive and floored it for the road, almost forgetting to turn the wheel as the car rocketed forward out of the forecourt. They just avoided slamming into the fence and then they were onto the road, the rear of the car swinging wildly as the back wheels slid on the gravel of the verge. She looked behind her briefly, saw his palm printed in sweat on the outside of her window and beyond that the man racing back to his car, yelling and pointing.

“What’s going on?!” Aaron yelled, suddenly alert to the chaos as Mini started yelling and screaming in confusion.

“They want our car!” Felice yelled back. “Mini, seatbelt!” She hit the accelerator, suddenly wishing she had spent more money on a real car instead of this cute little urban toy. In the rear view mirror she saw the bigger, darker car pulling into the road and speeding up. It looked sinister behind them, some kind of big old road-chewing beast compared to hers. She pumped the gas anyway, trying to speed up as much as she could. The road stretched straight ahead of them, a smooth and uninterrupted line rising ahead into the vague mass of rippling, super-heated air. Perfect terrain for these men to chase them, nowhere to turn and nowhere to hide. The brush still crowded close to the road but it would be suicide to try and drive into it. They could only go forward, a perfect target for the larger car.

Beside her Mini scrambled and fumbled at her seatbelt, gasping and babbling curses under her breath. It resisted with the acceleration, but she finally managed to pull it smoothly forward and snap it into place. She had barely locked it in when the big dark car behind them surged forward and rammed into their car, smashing it forward and jerking them all forward in their seats. Felice caught herself on the steering wheel, the car wobbled and swerved over the road, and she screamed in terror as she fought to steady it. The car behind them fell back a little, and in the mirror she saw someone leaning out of a rear window, waving and yelling. The chase was on.