Apocalypse Atlanta by David Rogers

front door behind himself.  He pulled out his phone and glanced at the screen as he went back downstairs, then tucked it away after he was back outside.  “I got me some time, need to get away from this crap.”
    Darryl strode angrily to his Harley Softail and dropped his leg over before settling into the seat.  He pulled his key off the detachable ring on his carabineer, flipped back the cover on the motorcycle’s dash and unlocked the ignition.  He set the switch to run, and turned to the oversized hard bag on the back right of the bike.  It unlocked to reveal his helmet, which he pulled out and jammed on his head before flipping the lid on the hard bag back down.
    After buckling his helmet strap down, he put his hand on the engine cylinder and grunted.  Warm enough.  He fingered the ignition, and the engine rumbled to life, then blatted throatily as he revved the throttle.  Pulling up the kickstand without looking, he backed out of the space, still venting his irritation by blipping the throttle to make the engine rumble, then dropped into first gear and roared out of the parking lot.
    * * * * *

Chapter Three – Remain calm
Jessica
    Jessica jammed her foot on the brake pedal and held on to the steering wheel as the Accord shuddered to a halt in the street.  She’d nearly been broad sided at Sugarloaf Parkway when she’d slowed to a mere forty miles per hour before blowing through the red light where it crossed 124, and again at Moon Road when she almost didn’t see a UPS truck coming from the right side.  But she’d made it, until this.
    She was a block away from Candice’s school, which was two blocks closer than the high school.  There was a single police cruiser parked sideways across the middle of the road, lights on, and the police officer standing in front of the cruiser was looking at her with an angry expression as she stopped.  Jessica jammed the gearshift into park and turned the engine off after the Accord’s right side tires bumped over the curb, but left the door open as she stepped out of the car with the keys in hand and ran at the officer.
    “Ma’am, ma’am.” he was saying loudly as she neared him.  “Ma’am, you need to get back in your car and move it.”
    “My children are in these schools.” Jessica said urgently.  “All three of my children.  What’s happening.”
    “Ma’am, move your car.” the officer said, looking rather frazzled around the edges.
    Jessica clutched at his arm.  “What’s happening at the schools?”
    “I don’t know, but you can’t leave the car in the street like that.” the officer repeated.
    “Tow it then.” Jessica said, leaving him and breaking into a run.  She ignored the shout he raised behind her as she sprinted past the cruiser with its rotating blue lights, toward the swirl of red lights she could see up ahead.  As she ran, she saw two fire trucks parked haphazardly across the street, their lights on.  When she drew near enough to see the elementary school, she saw the parking lot jammed with more ambulances than she bothered to count, along with two county EMS trucks and a third fire truck.
    There were so many rotating red lights that even the noontime Georgia sunlight wasn’t enough to wash out them out.  They gave the scene a somewhat surreal glow, their flash and flicker illuminating the crowd’s faces in brief strobes of color.  The crowd, almost entirely children, milled about uncertainly, marred by more than little crying and yelling and sobbing.  Those adults she saw looked either confused or concerned, even the rescue personnel.
    Jessica ran into the parking lot and slowed to a rapid walk, scanning around at the faces she saw, looking for anyone familiar.  She saw a mass of rescue personnel at the front doors of the school, though they appeared to be struggling with people as if trying to restrain them.  After a moment she saw the people they were fighting with were children, some of them kindergartners and