Captain Mallory went back and counted the people staying—21 passengers sat there stoned-faced, without making eye contact with him. He waited for a moment to see if any of them would change their minds. Not seeing any change of heart, he got into the driver’s seat of the lead vehicle with the kid who knew where they were going, squashed in between three armed men. One of the men was standing with his upper body through the turret with an M4 in his hands ready to shoot. Without looking at the unhappy people watching them leave, they drove out into the street and then stopped briefly to make sure all five vehicles got through the warehouse door, which was promptly closed behind them.

John was driving the rear vehicle, and together with the drivers, they had at least two men in each cab who had been in the military or had combat experience. One M4 with a rifle grenade was fitted in each cab and the other M4s were ready to fire with dozens of magazines filled and waiting.

The final headcount in the convoy was 86 adults and ten children and there wasn’t much spare room in any of the vehicles with the drum of gas, food, and everything else they had brought along. They had placed 28 adults and four of the ten kids in the back of each SWAT truck. In the ambulance, there were three in the front and 12 in the back, including the young girl with the flight attendant and the last drum of fuel. There were 12 in the fire truck and six in the police car, which was behind the first SWAT truck with another two M4s ready for action.

In all, they had ten M4s ready and their owners weren’t afraid to use them.

Captain Mallory smiled when his co-pilot told him that they had landed in Newark Bay and realized that he had landed the 737 in a much smaller expanse of water than the Hudson. “Like old Sully! I should get a medal for that,” he laughed. “If I’m right, we are right next to Newark Airport, which means that I-95 South is not too far.” He looked over at the 10-year old who knew the area. “Okay kid, which way? You’re my navigator. I want I-95 southbound—we’re heading for Florida!”

“Left, Captain,” the boy proudly told him. “Then we turn left onto Fleet Street, I think. Fleet Street should be the second or third road to the left, then go all the way up Fleet Street and we should see the on-ramp to the highway.” Captain Mallory did as he was told. There were four vehicles behind him, dawn was beginning to break above the smoke, which was getting lighter as they drove away from the fires, and he hoped the vigilantes were still asleep wherever it was that they were sleeping.

The first few blocks were pretty clear since not many cars would have been in this area at midnight on New Year’s Eve, but they still had one turn to the left to make before they would reach the high way.

They ran into a roadblock of bricks a couple of streets earlier than expected due to a burned-out and collapsed warehouse that blocked the road they were on, and they had to divert south for several blocks before they found an undamaged road that would take them to Fleet Street. They maneuvered slowly through debris as they navigated a route that would get all five vehicles to the highway.

A couple of blocks later, they saw the highway stretching above the streets in front of them, but they could not see the on-ramp. Captain Mallory turned right to go one more block north and then turned left onto Fleet Street, and saw the on-ramp right in front of him.

Suddenly a truck drove across their path and stopped 100 feet in front of them, blocking off the street ahead of them. Captain Mallory stopped and looked at the vehicle. It was an old white delivery truck—a freezer meat truck by the look of it—and it had several men lying on top with guns pointing at them. A man in the cab got out and used a bullhorn shouting at the five trucks in front of him.

“We are not afraid to shoot. All we want is your vehicles. Get out with your hands up and you can all go. We won’t shoot you. Leave the keys in your vehicles and get out now, or we will start shooting. You have ten seconds.”

“What do you think?” the captain asked the kid, who had his nose pressed up against the inner windshield.

“I’ve seen that guy before,” the kid replied. “He was leading the group who shot at us yesterday. The other kids called him ‘The Executioner.’ They saw him shoot people in the head, like you see on television.”

“I’m giving you one last chance,” the ‘Executioner’ ordered into the bullhorn. ”We will kill all of you one-by-one and rape any sluts you got with you. You now have five seconds.”

“I’m going to open the window and take him down,” Captain Mallory stated quietly to the group in the cab. The man who had been standing up had already sat down, his name was Jimmy. “Jimmy, hand me an M4. You take the one with the rifle grenade on it and after I shoot this noisy asshole, you stand up and aim to take out the men on the top of the truck with the grenade, and then you get out of the way and let Mike here stand up. Mike,” he ordered the man next to Jimmy. “You stand up and spray the back area of the truck once we have these suckers with their heads down. I’ll do the same, and young man, you pass us magazines when we need them.”

“Two!” the man with the bullhorn called out as Captain Mallory locked the M4 into three-round bursts, rolled down the window, opened the driver’s door, took aim through the window, and blew the man’s head off. Several shots immediately rang out from the truck in front of them, one dinging the side of the SWAT truck next to the captain’s head.

Jimmy fired the grenade at the truck and it landed and exploded two feet short of the truck’s cab, but sprayed it with shrapnel so hard that the truck literally jumped back an inch and nearly flipped over. The engine area immediately caught fire as bits and pieces of roadway and metal opened the fuel lines. Captain Mallory emptied his first magazine towards the roof of the vehicle as the truck, which must have been gas-powered, blew up with an almighty roar, dinging his SWAT truck with hundreds of pieces of flying debris.

The shock wave hit them as the captain jumped back into the driver’s seat and turned the truck around on the wide road, while Mike gave them covering fire from the turret. He headed back in the direction they had come, closely followed by the other four. The captain then slowly and carefully crossed the low concrete center median and drove back around the corner of the next building to get away from the burning vehicle. He turned left at the next road, a one-way street going the other way, and headed along the side of the highway above him.

“Turn right,” shouted the boy. “The closest entrance is to the right.” Mike looked behind him, saw the four vehicles in their convoy still following, and then knew where he was. The next entrance to the highway was an off-ramp opposite the main entrance into Newark Airport.

He had to turn sharply to get up the off-ramp as there were several vehicles parked at odd angles in his path. He aimed his truck to drive between them, hitting one out of the way so that the vehicles behind could follow. The top of the off-ramp was blocked with a small car on its side, and he slowly pushed it to the side as he went up the wrong way and got onto the northbound side of I-95, driving south.

“That was pretty close back there,” Captain Mallory stated to the others in the cab. “I don’t suppose we are going to have a moving traffic problem coming the opposite way.” He smiled as he saw the four vehicles still following them in his rear-view mirror but his smile quickly faded when he saw the dozens of crashed vehicles blocking their way in front of them on northbound I-95.

It was hard work driving; the convoy could do no more than a few miles a hour, continually having to veer around blackened and crashed vehicles everywhere. The road was icy and slippery and the snow was a foot thick in some places. Some parts of the asphalt or concrete could be seen through the white covering and had only a light dusting as the snow had blown into drifts on the sides of the highway.