The Washington Monument. I could just see its tip poking above the trees ahead as I emerged from an underpass. I’d awoken at dawn, stiff with cold and my throat parched. After downing the last of my water and finishing off the peanuts, I’d gotten back on the road to continue my trek. I almost forgot the mezuzah, but darted back to grab it just before I left the shed.
As I got closer to Washington, I began to see gas stations and convenience stores lining the highway. Most were abandoned, but I saw a line of empty cars parked outside one. Unable to contain either my curiosity or my hunger, I’d approached the building. Inside, the shelves were bare, and a man behind the counter informed me that there would be gas the next day.
He’d filled up my water bottles and, as I was leaving, offered me a sandwich, probably his lunch. I’d accepted and wolfed it down. He said that there was nothing for me in Washington, that I shouldn’t go, and that it was safer to stay in the countryside.
I’d thanked him and continued on my way.
Pedestrian foot traffic was taking up one whole lane of the highway as we approached the city, and I was stumbling along with everyone else.
It was midday already. Office towers stretched into the gray sky to my right, abandoned cranes and construction equipment hovering between them. To my left was a line of skeleton trees, knotted with green vines. Signs for the Roosevelt Bridge pointed straight ahead, while signs for the Pentagon and Arlington pointed off to the right.
I was almost there.
What are they doing at the Pentagon? It was right there, barely a mile away from me. Is there a plan? Are brave men and women being sent off to defend our homeland?
I’d never done anything brave in my life, not in a physical sense anyway.
Is this brave? Walking sixty miles into the unknown? Fear had driven me to do it, but what had scared me the most was leaving Luke and Lauren, especially when she’d begged me not to go.
I walked with a growing crowd along the shoulder of the highway, a corridor hemmed in by high walls covered in creeping vines. We were a stream of refugees as we passed Fairfax and Oakton and Vienna on the way into the city. My love for Lauren and Luke was most of what kept me going that morning, what kept my legs moving through the pain, kept me putting each foot one in front of the other.
The other thing that drove me was my anger. Where before I’d just been trying to survive, as I approached Washington, and the prospect of this thing ending became real, my thoughts turned to retribution. Someone will pay for this, for hurting my family.
I followed the road onto the bridge over the Potomac. The tide was low, and seagulls wheeled in the distance. Ahead, the Washington Monument speared the sky. I followed the crowd along Constitution Avenue. Barricades kept us away from the Lincoln Memorial, funneling us toward some unknown destination.
A light rain began. Low, heavy clouds had replaced the bright sun of the morning. Vehicles streamed back and forth on the road, half of them military. I resisted the urge to reach out and stop one of them.
But who would stop for me? I was just one of the ragged multitude, walking along in the rain, and anyway, my mission was nearly complete. Just another two or three miles.
Familiar, reassuring sights came into view—the White House, just visible through the trees, and the tops of the Smithsonian buildings farther down the street.
To my right, however, the National Mall, the open space of green that stretched from the Lincoln Memorial all the way to the Capitol, was completely obscured by a high fence topped with barbed wire. The fence was covered, but I could see through the gaps that there was a beehive of activity behind it.
What are they hiding?
Police were positioned at the intersections, keeping the traffic moving, but as I had promised Lauren, I didn’t speak to anyone. As I neared the American Museum of Natural History on the Mall, I saw a stack of scaffolding stretching up one side. I wanted to see what was behind the fences, so I slid off to one side of the street and, making sure that nobody was watching me, wandered along the fence and under the scaffolding.
A blue sheet hung around the scaffold, so once I was under it I was hidden. I climbed up one level and then the next, ascending the side of the building. When I was several stories up, I climbed out onto the roof, lying flat as I reached the edge and looked out.
The National Mall was an immense city of khaki tents, military trucks, and aluminum structures. It stretched all the way to the Capitol building and, to my right, surrounded the Washington Monument and continued all the way into the distance, swallowing the Reflecting Pool and the Lincoln Memorial. It must be the military mobilization.
But something was wrong. The trucks didn’t look like American military to me. As I tried to figure out what I was looking at, a helicopter took off from the middle of the military installation, rising up to haul a piece of equipment into the air. And then I looked at the soldiers behind the fence, not more than a hundred feet away. That’s not an American uniform.
They were Chinese. I stared in disbelief, my body tingling. Rubbing my eyes, I took a deep breath and looked again. Everyone, as far as I could see, was Asian. Some were wearing khaki uniforms, some gray, and many wore camouflage, but they all had red lapel tags. And they all wore caps with one bright red star in the center.
I was looking at a Chinese army base, right in the center of Washington.
As I ducked back behind a ledge, my brain scrambled to assimilate what it had seen. The unidentified intruders in American airspace, the reason the president had left Washington, the reason we’d been left to rot in New York, the reason there was power only in Washington, all the lies and misinformation—it all made sense now. We’d been invaded.
Squirming, I pulled my phone from my pocket and took a few pictures.
There was no sense in going to the Capitol. There was no help there. If I was captured, I’d never get back to Lauren. I had to get out of there.
Adrenaline fueled my descent from the scaffolding, and I made my way back onto the street, back into the flow of refugees, trying not to attract attention. Nobody seemed to notice me, so I stopped walking and scanned the fences along the Mall. A police officer was standing a few feet from me, and I couldn’t contain myself. “There’s military in there?” I said, pointing to the fences, getting his attention. He nodded.
“Chinese military?”
“They’re here,” he replied, apparently resigned, “and they’re not going anywhere.”
His words hit me like a punch to the gut. I stared at him in disbelief, the Washington Monument rising up behind him in the falling rain.
“You just need to get used to it, pal,” he added, seeing me staring. “Now keep moving.”
Shaking my head, I continued to stare, wanting to do something, wanting to scream. What are all these people doing? Their heads were bowed as they walked. No one was talking. Beaten—like they’d given up.
Has America given up already? I started walking and then running. It’s not possible. How can it be possible?
I had to get back to Lauren and Luke. That was all that mattered. In a daze I wandered through the rain, back to the Potomac, and then crossed it, leaving DC behind me. Instead of rejoining I-66, however, in my stupor I wandered onto the bridge a few hundred feet south of it and found myself at the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery.
I was at the edge of a large grass oval at the head of the walkway. It was covered by gaggles of Canada geese. They honked at me as I walked straight through them. The wide street was bordered by high, manicured bushes filled with tiny, red berries. I wonder if I can eat them? They’d probably make me sick.
Behind the bushes, bare tree branches stretched into the sky. I passed a memorial to the 101st Airborne, a bronze eagle flying above it, and I wondered where those men were now. Our flag was still flying at half-mast above the columned beige building in the middle of the cemetery, high on a hill at its center.
I need to keep moving, get some distance.
Reaching the edge of the cemetery, I stood in front of a circular fountain. It was empty, and nobody else was around. There were four arched entrances to the grounds, and I picked one to my left. I walked up a set of stairs and discovered that the inside of the arch was a glass-walled building. I could see an interior wall filled with pictures and paintings, a visual tribute to “The Greatest Generation,” read a poster. Men like my grandfather, who’d fought on the beaches of Normandy, watched me as I walked up the stairs.
When I got to the top, row upon row of white marble headstones greeted me, on a lawn still perfectly manicured. Each grave marker was decorated with a fresh wreath and a red bow. It all looked so well tended. The headstones rose up the hill before me, scattered through the oak and eucalyptus trees. Our heroes, laid out to see this abomination.
I wandered between the gravestones, reading out names. Up the hill I walked, past the Kennedy brothers’ graves and Arlington House. I stopped at the summit to look around. In the dreary rain, the Potomac stretched grayly into the distance, while Washington loomed behind.
I shook my head and began walking back down the other side. What should I do?
I realized how thirsty I was. It was raining harder now, and my tongue was sticking to the roof of my mouth. On the streets behind the cemetery, water was flowing in the drains, and I kneeled down with one of my empty bottles, trying to fill it. Someone approached me on the sidewalk but gave me a wide berth as he passed. How I must look, groveling here like an animal, my clothes ragged and sodden, head shaved. I wanted to scream at him, my anger boiling up and out.
Why is he walking so slowly? Where is he going? Couldn’t he see the world had ended?
The adrenaline began to wear off as I made my way back to the highway, and the long journey ahead weighed upon me. I was weak and soaking wet. There was no way I could walk all the way back to Chuck’s cabin. Cold and exhaustion gnawed at my bones and muscles as my anger ebbed. I wasn’t just incapable of walking all the way back—I doubted I would even survive it.
Reaching the on-ramp to the highway, I decided to try to get a lift. I’d have to risk it. Head down, I limped along, holding my thumb out. I was shivering violently. I need to get inside soon.
Lost in my thoughts, I hardly noticed when a pickup truck slowed, then stopped right in front of me. A man stuck his head out the side window. “Need a lift?”
I tried my best to jog up to the truck’s window, nodding. The temperature was dropping, and I was soaked.
“Where to?” asked one of the kids in the front. There were three of them, and country music was playing on the radio. Good old boys. I shrank back.
“Whoa, you okay, buddy?”
“Yuh-yeah,” I stammered. “Exit eighteen, past Gainesville.”
He turned to the others in the car, conferring with them. I stood in the rain and waited.
“You alone?” he asked, turning back to me and craning his neck out the window to look down the side of the highway.
He cocked a thumb toward the back of the pickup. “We can drop you there. Got no space up here, but there’s room in the back. You’ll be sitting in the bare box with a few other people, but at least it’s covered. That work for you?”
I had no choice. Walking around back, I saw that someone had already pulled down the tailgate, so I jumped up and inside, closing it behind me as we accelerated away.
In the dim light, I could see the others crowded in the back: five people huddled together, sitting on soiled sheets and clothing. I pushed myself into one corner of the truck bed, away from everyone else. I sat quietly for a while, and I meant to stay quiet, but I couldn’t. “How long have the Chinese been here? How long since they invaded Washington?”
Nobody said anything, but one of them threw me a blanket. I mumbled my thanks as I covered myself, still shivering.
Can I trust them? I didn’t have much choice. Freezing cold and wet, I’d die out there on my own. This small box was as close to salvation as I had anymore. I had to get back to the mountains.
“How long have they been here?” I asked again, my teeth chattering.
Silence.
I was about to give up when a kid with blond hair and a baseball cap replied, “A few weeks.”
“What happened?”
“Cyberstorm, that’s what happened,” said a kid with a Mohawk. He had about a dozen piercings, and that was just what I could see. “Where have you been?”
“New York.”
A pause. “That was pretty intense up there, huh?”
I nodded—all the horror summed up in one gesture.
“Where’s our military?” I asked. “How could they let us get invaded?”
“I’m glad they’re here,” replied Mohawk.
“You’re glad?” I yelled. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Blondie sat upright. “Hey, man, calm the hell down. We don’t want any trouble, okay?”
Shaking my head, I pulled the blanket up around me. These kids are the future? No wonder all this had happened. Just weeks ago, America had seemed indestructible, but now …
Somehow, we had failed.
All that was important now was finding my family, keeping them safe. Sighing, I closed my eyes and turned away from the others, pressing my face against cold metal, listening to the rumble that pulled me deeper into the night.
The next thing I knew, someone was poking my shoulder.
“Heya, friend,” said one of the cowboys from the front of the truck. The tailgate was down and he was standing on the side of the road.
We were at an exit. Were they kicking me out early?
“This is your stop.”
Shaking my head, I realized I’d been asleep. Nobody else was in the back of the pickup anymore. The kids were gone. I was covered in blankets, and one was even folded under my head. They must have placed them around me when I was asleep. I felt bad for getting angry with them.
“Thanks,” I mumbled, extricating myself from the blankets and grabbing my backpack. I jumped out. It had stopped raining but was getting dark again.
He saw me looking up at the sky. “It took us a bit longer than I thought. We had to drop those guys off—”
“Thanks,” I said. “I really appreciate it.”
He looked up the mountain. “You going up there?”
“No,” I said, pointing toward the base of the hills. “Over there.”
I was worried they would follow, or worse, go ahead of me.
He looked at me funny, and then shrugged and took a step toward me. I recoiled, thinking he was going to grab my backpack, but instead he hugged me.
“You take care, you hear?” the cowboy said.
I stood stiffly as he squeezed me tight.
“Okay then,” he laughed, releasing me. “Be safe.”
Mute, I watched him get back in the truck. They drove off.
I hadn’t noticed it, but tears were welling in my eyes.
Putting my backpack on, I looked up the road rising into the mountain. It was getting dark, and I was going to have a hard time finding my way. There would be little moonlight tonight to help me. I began the walk home, my heart heavy, but glad I would be back with Lauren and Luke soon.
There was something else, something I’d been pushing to the back of my mind. It was Lauren’s thirtieth birthday today. I’d wanted to bring her a gift of some kind, something that would promise freedom from all the pain and fear of the recent weeks, but I was coming back empty-handed. Worse than empty-handed. But at least I was coming back.
I hoped everything was okay up there.
Despite the pain, my pace picked up.