Worst Case Scenario by G. Allen Mercer Page A

and the copper paint hid nicely in the shadows.  Good thinking, Dad.
    Grace also tried calling her mother again on the two-way radio, but didn’t hear back from her.  We’re coming, Mom! She turned the radio off and threw it on the dash.
    “Where are we going?” Anna finally asked.  She hadn’t spoken since leaving her house.  She kept staring at the picture of her family.
    “We’re going to my house.”
    “This isn’t the way to your house.”
    “Yeah, it’s the long way,” Grace told her friend.  She needed Anna to stop her spiral downward into freekdom.  She thought it might be good to give her a task.  “Can you look on the map and find where we are, I think I’m on the right road, but I need help?”
    Anna didn’t move she simply stared out the window.
    “Anna!”
    “What?”
    “I need your help.  Snap out of it!”
    “ My parents are dead, and that dude almost raped me! I don’t want to snap out of it, Grace!”
    Grace half thought about stopping the Jeep, which would have been something her father would do, but she decided not to stop.
    “Anna, get a grip!  Shit is going down, and I need your help!”  Grace said as firmly as she could without loosing her temper.
    “I can’t Grace.  It’s too hard.”
    “Damn it, Anna, I get that your parents might be dead.  Did you ever think that my Dad might be dead too?” Grace was tired and pissed.
    Anna sniffed and shuffled a little in her seat.  “Yeah.”
    “Good, so, let’s get through this together!  The last think I need is you turning into a freaker!”
    Grace took another turn at a road she thought was familiar. They were avoiding the main roads and as many neighborhoods as possible.  They had come across a number of stalled cars on the road, but since they were on back roads, Grace was able to drive around them without any problems.  They did see one person pop their head up while still in their car. 
    “What’s a freaker?” Anna finally asked.
    “Freakers,” Grace said, with some apprehension, “are people like Mr. Miller.”
    “Damn Grace, you think I’m like him?”
    “No, I just know that ordinary people can turn into them after some major event. My parents did a lot of research about what happens after natural disasters, wars and stuff.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Yeah.  They found patterns in how the people reacted.  It didn’t matter what the disaster was or when it happened in history, there were always freakers.  They’re the people that break apart and panic right after something happens.  They’re the ones that smash storefront windows, burn cars and loot everything.  Societal norms just evaporate from their ability to be humans.”
    “People just flip out, huh?”
    “Obviously,” Grace said, referring to Mr. Miller.  “I don’t really get it.  It’s like a hurricane hits or a terrorist attack and bam, you get riots and social order goes right out the window!”
    “What about humanity?  With Miller, it’s like a switch just went off in his head!  That was crazy.”
    “That’s why we call them freakers.  Miller saw the plane go down, he knew the power was out, I’m suspecting that he thought your parents weren’t coming back and he had this ‘thing’ for you.” She looked over at her friend, knowing that this was hard to hear.  “He saw his chance, and once he learned that we were leaving, he had just enough info to launch a rocket filled with paranoia and he flipped…he freaked ” 
    Anna looked over at her and nodded.  A tear streaked down her cheek, but she wasn’t sobbing like she had been earlier.
    Grace felt that her friend was slowly coming back to reality.  She pulled the Jeep to a stop sign and turned right.  There were only a few more miles…at least she thought there were, but again, she wasn’t entirely familiar with this way home.
    “So, how do you think he knew about Atlanta?” Anna asked.
    Grace had been asking herself the same question.  “I don’t know.  He