THE MASS EVACUATION WAS RENAMED as Operation Exodus by General Taylor — after his President had related it to the biblical homage of Moses' plight. Majority of the survivors, who volunteered to travel from the six states affected by the Medusa Virus attacks, took east by road.

The Jensens' Buick was also along with the other cars, which were packed with other families and their household pets. All the vehicles were crawling in slow bumper-to-bumper pace under the supervision of the US Army. Convoys of hundreds of cars were in front and at the back of Herbert's Buick — some were impatiently honking to get ahead.

Five hours ago, Hebert received some medication and antibiotics shots for his influenza condition in Logan — and he then insisted that he drove the car, knowing that Martha had not been behind the wheels much since high school.

Laura sat in the back-seat with Roberta — thinking of the kaleidoscope of events that had changed their lives since the virus attack — mostly about their safety, and also the wellbeing of her best friends whom she parted from without goodbyes...

Neither did Laura see Haley and Connie at Logan earlier.

The dejected Martha sat at the front passenger's seat, clinging to a photo-frame of her dead sons towards her bosoms...

Sadness and tears loomed in the car, whereas outside — it was totally chaotic.

*

In that jam, Laura peered out at a luxury BMW stalled by the side of the road. The male driver was unconscious behind the wheel. A pregnant woman, with her crying blond, toddler daughter in a red dress was outside the car...

The woman was desperately trying to flag down passing cars for help...

An old pickup stopped, with a young redneck and two women who stepped out — and they threw the indistinct driver out of the BMW. The screaming, pregnant woman soon put up a fight, but an older, stout woman struck her enceinte belly with a baseball bat, before smashing her skull...

The two, hardened women cursed, and then drove away with the stolen BMW, with the redneck's pickup leading the way. Laura and Roberta looked in horror to notice the hapless, blond girl in red, crying alone at the roadside with the vehicles passing by, with both the parents sprawled dead on the roadside.

Laura broke down when realizing that she too had joined the lack of mores herd — by looking away to the other way — in the everybody-for-themselves belie situation...

More elegiac tears flowed from Laura's eyes — would the child too, die like the little Robin that she had failed to save?

*

An Army helicopter hovered over to have a bird's-eye view of the miles of vehicles inching in the convoy on the interstate highway. Roberta was eating a cob of corn — looked up blasé, at the helicopter in the sky.

The others were listening to the radio broadcast. It updated on the nationwide evacuation and the terrorist attack reports in the past days — but the news concealed the recent biochemical attacks in the east-coast at Capitol Hill...

That bit of information was suppressed from the evacuees for the greater good — to avoid further panic attacks among the hopeful migrants who were heading hopefully to the east.

*

It rained later that night, the traffic slowed back to a crawling pace again.

Men in Hazmat suits were burning corpses in shallow pits by the roadside — despite Martha's warning to both the girls to shut their eyes, from the grisly sight — but, Laura watched the horror of how scores of the dead males were disposed of after being dropped by a helicopter...

Their bodies were burning in shallow dug up pits by the hundreds. They were those, who died by the viral infection — and others, in the road accidents during the evacuation.

Laura then heard the gaunt Herbert in coughing fits in the driver's seat — she prayed and hoped that her dad would survive the journey — for proper medical treatment in Ohio...

She truly did not want him to succumb to the deadly virus — like how her two little brothers did.