I only remember slithers of what happened next. Shouted voices, mostly male, ordering us into the vans, a spray of gravel kicked up from the back of the van as the engine was forced into gear and sped toward the highway, the screech of tires as the rubber hit bitumen, the dying red glow in the distance behind us as the smoke plumed from the explosion. Most of all, I remember the eerie silence inside the van as we fled, attempting to put as much distance between us and the explosion as possible, we stopped only when the van choked and crawled to a stop.
"Dammit!" Trent hissed through clenched teeth as he pounded his fists on the steering wheel.
"What's wrong, why are we stopping?" Quinn asked fretfully as her eyes darted from Trent to the rear window.
"We're out of gas." Jane replied.
"Well, hurry up and use the spare fuel from the gas can." Daria urged as she opened the side door and stepped out of the Tank.
"Uh...You mean the big can that was in the back?" Quinn said.
"What do you mean was?" Jane asked suspiciously.
"I took it out when we stopped, I used some to get the fire going and..." Trent said quietly, he dropped his gaze from the dash to his lap and shook his head.
"So there's no fuel." Jane said irritably, it wasn't a question.
"What are we going to do? We can't just stop here; we're miles from anywhere." Quinn asked her voice heightened with fear. She looked at Daria helplessly.
"I think I saw a sign down the road, it said there was a gas station not far from here, I guess one of us could go..." Trent said quietly then got out of the van and summoned the occupants of the other car, Jesse, Max and Nick over to the Tank.
"Trent, wait." Jane called and waited for the rest of the band to arrive before continuing. "No-one is going anywhere until we figure out what the hell is going on."
"What is going on? I was asleep one minute then BANG the next thing I know I'm being pushed into the car and being told to drive." Max said, his veil of machismo was gone, it was now replaced with unbridled fear that shone in his eyes.
"There was a flash, like an explosion or something and then there was like this big boom." Quinn piped up. The rest of the group looked at her questioningly and she continued. "I thought it was a dream, I didn't think I actually heard it until, well after I woke up I had to go to the bathroom and because we are like in the middle of nowhere, I had to try and find..." Quinn babbled.
"Quinn, enough with the play by play, what did you hear?" Daria asked.
"Huh? Oh, well like I said I thought I imagined it, then just before the explosion I heard it again, but this time it was louder, stronger. It sounded like engines, but not like a car they were different. I also heard a thumping kind of noise, like a helicopter or something." She trailed off; the color had drained from her face. She looked at Daria. "Daria, I'm scared, what's going on?"
"I... I don't know. I would have said army training exercises, but the blast came from the city center…"
"So what does that mean? Is this like what happened last year?" Nick asked.
Daria shook her head, "I don't know. It might have been an explosion from one of the factories, the aircrafts may have been coincidental."
"Really?" Quinn asked, a glimmer of hope was evident in her voice.
Daria smiled tightly and shrugged, "Maybe, but I think we need to get the Tank back on the road. If there is a gas station around, we should try that for now and figure out what to do after."
Trent nodded, "Right, well I'm going to get the fuel, you guys stay here."
"Wait, we shouldn't go off alone, at least not until we know what's going on," Jane said and turned to Jesse, "You go with Trent, okay?"
Jesse nodded mutely and turned to follow Trent. Moments later Trent's Satellite roared to life and continued down the road, the tail lights dimmed as it got further away until they had disappeared and the area was silent once again.
Jane turned and muttered quietly to Daria, "You don't think this is a coincidence do you?"
Daria shook her head, "No, I just don't need Quinn freaking out just yet."
"What do you think this is then?" Jane asked hesitantly.
"I hope I'm wrong, but I think this may be the beginnings of a war."
"Oh you and your optimism, you know how depressed I get when you give me false hope."
Neither of the girls found the joke amusing.
We sat in a bleak silence. The surreality of the situation seemed to warp time, Trent and Jesse could have been gone ten minutes or ten hours, when your scarred shitless any amount of time feels like an eternity. It was Jane that broke the silence when she let out an agitated sigh and jumped into the driver's seat of the Tank. She leaned forward and turned on the radio. The chilling static of white noise answered. After a long period of time fiddling with the knobs she gave up, slumped defeated in the front seat and stared out into the night waiting for her brother to return.
It was dawn when we finally saw the boys return, the sunrise began to show part of the larger picture, the sky was hazy; marred with dust that had been soaked red by the growing sunlight and the spot fires that had erupted after the blast. As the car crawled to the top of the hill Daria, Jane and I went to meet them, the other two boys had been asleep for some time.
The car had barely stopped when Trent and Jesse burst out of it. "We need to get the cars hidden, NOW!" Trent called as he ran to the Tank and hastily began to empty the can of fuel into the gas tank.
The three girls stopped dead in their tracks, stunned at Trent's uncharacteristic behavior.
"Trent, what happened?" Jane asked.
"Later," he replied as he threw the now empty can into the back of the Tank and got into the driver's side. He started the van and reversed it into the dense undergrowth.
After the vehicles had been hidden the group congregated in the Tank, all eyes were on Trent as he began to retell his and Jesse's trip.
"The gas station is only a few miles up the road, but it's a major highway. If you want to get to or from Houston, that's the quickest and easiest way so it should have been busy, I mean I know it was the dead of the night but there should have been trucks right? No one was on the road, at least not on the way to the gas station. When we got there the clerk was acting really peaky; he had felt the blast and had been trying to pick up a news broadcast,"
"We tried that too, the radio is dead nothing but static, Daria thought it could have been interference from the dust, or the transmitter towers could have been damaged." Jane interrupted.
"It's not just the radio," Trent said, "The guy couldn't pick up any stations on the TV either; not even national news."
"You said you didn't see anyone on the way to get the fuel, what did you see on the way back?" Daria asked.
Trent gave a grave look, "Jets, at least six maybe seven and helicopters, four or five? I'm not sure, we were still inside the gas station. They were cruising really low, heaps lower than radar range." He inhaled steeply, "They weren't ours."
The van was silent as they digested the information.
"What does that mean?" Quinn asked apprehensively.
"It means," Daria paused and looked at the group, "It means this is bigger than Houston. This may very well be national."
"Huh?" Quinn asked.
"What you saw was an attack, and Houston wasn't the only place hit."