the nightworld
Jack Blaine
Contents
I’m watching the clock, watching the second hand tick-tick-tick silently toward home, waiting for that sweet, sweet sound of freedom. One . . . more . . . sec—ah!
There it is. The final bell. The rest of the class bolts, stampeding out the door. At last junior year is over. I don’t have to hear that stupid bell again for three long months. Don’t have to study, don’t have to figure out new ways to skip chem lab, don’t have to watch all the hot girls ignore me and only pay attention to the jocks.
“What are you waiting for, Nick? I figured you for the first student out of the classroom, not the last.”
For an English teacher, Mrs. Martin isn’t bad. I even liked some of her assignments this year. She stands at the front of the classroom, looking a little sad behind her smile.
I smile back and stand up. “I’m going. See you next year.”
“Wait a minute.”
When I turn back to her, she’s holding out a book. “Some summer reading.”
“Oh, man.” I can’t help but groan a little. All year long Mrs. Martin has thought I’m one of those kids she can fix by focusing a little individual attention on me. I’m not dumb, but the phrase “does not work to potential” is what they’ll put under my senior picture in the yearbook.
“Oh, it won’t kill you. And yes, I do expect a book report in the fall.” Mrs. Martin waits for me to take the book.
“Lord of the Flies?” I turn the book over.
“You should have read it two years ago.” Mrs. Martin shakes her head. “It used to be required reading for the ninth graders, but they replaced it with some—”
She stops, but I could swear she was about to say a nasty word. I look at the front cover of the book again. It has a guy looking straight out from what seems to be a jungle. The stems of some leaves look sort of woven into his hair. He looks . . . pissed? No, more like he’s sad. There are big old houseflies all over his shoulder.
“Uh . . . what’s it about?” I’m not digging the idea of spending any time on reading this summer. Maybe I can get out of it. “I’m going to be so busy over break—”
“I expect you to tell me what it’s about when you come back in the fall.” Mrs. Martin assumes her teacher face. “And I’m holding your final grade in English this year until I get your book report.”
Crap. There is it—the power play. I skipped a few too many of Mrs. Martin’s classes, too, along with chem lab. She could give me a righteous D for the year if she wanted. I figured there would be some sort of makeup work to do over the summer, but I was hoping for some vocabulary words, not a novel about flies.
“Well, thanks, Mrs. Martin. I’ll do my best.”
“If only you would, Nick.”
The disappointment in her voice should make me feel bad, but it’s officially summer now and I can’t bring myself to care. I shove the book in my backpack, give Mrs. Martin a wave, and leave. The halls already look deserted. I was hoping to run into Lara Hanover before everyone split, so I’m disappointed. Lara is the hottest girl in the junior class. She’s not a cheerleader or anything stupid like that, either. All year long I’d been working up the nerve to ask her out. I actually managed to talk to her a couple of times when we had to do group reports in English. She’s smart, but I was never able to concentrate on her reports because every time she talked in our group all I could do was watch her mouth move. I’d finally decided that today, the last day of junior year, was a make-or-break moment—either get her number and call her over the summer, or forget about it. Looks like I’d missed my chance.
I push out the double doors to the front of the school where the buses pick up the suburbs. That’s what they call those of us who have to bus in to school and bus back to our sleepy neighborhoods. I’ve been a suburb most of my life, so I’m used to being part of the lame crowd. I have my favorite seat, and I know to avoid getting jacked for lunch money or homework, and my buddy Charlie Bradley is usually along for the ride, so it’s not that bad.
The sun is glinting off the buses, and the heat is nice after the air-conditioning inside. I squint at the sea of tank-topped students looking for Charlie. A surprise is waiting for me there. Lara is standing in front of the bus with Charlie. Lara Hanover, who doesn’t take the bus and who doesn’t talk to Charlie. He’s just a little lamer than me, which puts him right over the edge of too-lame-for-Lara-to-notice.
I have no idea how to react to this unlikely scene. Lara’s wearing a red tank top and blue cutoff jeans. She looks, well, like she always looks. Beautiful. Her hair looks like gold in the sunlight and her shoulders, bare in the light breeze, look smooth and soft. I can’t count how many times I’ve watched her from afar, knowing full well she’ll never notice me. And then, as though she’s being filmed in slow motion, she turns, and sees me, and ooooooh sooooo sloooowly smiles at me. Charlie turns too, equally slowly, and makes an incredulous face while he points at Lara, as though to say “Duuuuude, do you seeeee this?” All I can do is nod, dumbly.
“Nick!” Lara is making actual sounds.
“Ummm.” I stand there for an additional two brainless seconds, and then I lope over to her.
“Hi, Lara.” I’m trying for cool. Her lips look so soft. And pink. And soft.
“Listen.” She tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear.
I listen.
She stares at me for a full ten seconds, waiting for some sort of appropriate response, but I am lost in her aura. Finally she frowns slightly and speaks again.
“I’m having a little thing, Nick.”
She knows my name!
“A thing?” I’ve managed to form words.
“Yeah. A sort of inaugural bash for summer.” She peers into my eyes, trying to see if I understand.
“An inaugural bash, huh? Sounds pretty fancy.” I see Charlie making desperate motions behind Lara’s back, beseeching me to stop acting like such an idiot. I have got to snap out of it.
“Sounds cool.” I cock my head at Lara and slouch a little. “Where and when?”
She smiles at me and giggles. But she’s not laughing at me. She’s just amused.
“My place, this weekend.” She pauses for dramatic effect. “My parents are in Europe, so the place is all mine.”
“Sounds way cool.” Charlie’s panting like a happy puppy.
Lara and I both turn to stare at him. He’s practically drooling on her. I give him a look, the look I give him when he’s being lamer than usual. He closes his mouth.
“Anyway.” Lara hands me a scrap of paper. It’s pink. “See ya.”
She walks away while Charlie and I stare after her.
“Huh.” Charlie is astute, sometimes. This is not one of those times. But I can’t blame him. I can’t even muster a huh.
“You boys want a ride or not?” Mrs. Snelling, the bus driver, is leaning out toward us from her seat behind the wheel of our bus, her hand on the lever that closes the bus door.
We both clamber on, sliding into our customary seats near the back of the bus.
“What was that?” I doubt Charlie will know, but I have to ask somebody.
“Dude.” He shakes his head back and forth, as stunned as I am.
Lara Hanover. Inviting me to her . . . thing. My high lasts the whole bus ride home. But as soon as I open the door to my house: buzz kill. It’s absentee father time again.
I can hear the hum of the generator, which means Dad’s still in the basement. Of course. He promised he’d be up for dinner tonight, but I know from experience that if he’s still down there by the time I get home from school, I won’t see him until the next morning.
Dad’s a consulting research scientist for the government. He works in development, specifically in particle physics. I don’t really know what that means, but the two words have rolled off Dad’s tongue for as long as I can remember, whenever people ask what he does. All I really know is that he’s supposed to be finding a scientific explanation of mass or gravity or spacetime curvature or something that sounds ripped from an episode of Battlestar Galactica.
He used to go to the lab in the city, but then he started some classified project, and overnight forty-two van loads of equipment got hauled down to the basement. For about a week, technicians scrambled around like ants, setting up a state-of-the-art lab where we used to have a saggy couch and a foosball table. There’s a generator down there, too, because Dad says the guys in charge are pushing for fast results and don’t want the project to go offline. He won’t say much more about the project besides that I’m not supposed to go around advertising it.
He’s always been a little absentminded and absorbed in his work, but lately it’s getting bad. He forgets to shave for days, and I can hear him mumbling stuff about the Higgs mechanism and other things I can’t even pronounce. It’s almost as bad as it was right after Mom died, when he was drinking. But it’s bad in a different way—there’s a worried look on his face that I’ve never seen before, like there’s something he can’t figure out how to solve. Dad always knows how to solve everything. I’ve asked him a couple of times if everything’s okay and he always says it’s fine, but I know it’s not. I know something is wrong.
Here’s another thing I know. My pacifist dad, the guy who constantly lectures me that turning the other cheek is the only appropriate response to violence, has a gun.
It’s hidden in the back of the china cabinet, where he keeps his bottle of single malt scotch. When Mom died, Dad lost it for a while. He tried to stay in control for me, I know he did, but he just couldn’t handle it. He started drinking, way too much. He stayed up late at night and slept through the mornings when I was supposed to be getting breakfast and going to school. Once I’d missed the bus a few times, the school called, and then my aunt Becky had to come out from California for two weeks. Once she came, it gave him the chance to pull it together, and he’s never done that again, but it scared me. I was only seven when Mom died, and I thought I was losing him too.
That’s how I found the gun. Like I said, he’s never acted that way again, but I still check the level of his latest scotch bottle every once in a while, just to see. I was checking last week and I found the gun, partway under a cloth place mat behind the scotch bottle. It’s heavy and cool to the touch and deadly looking. Finding it there was like walking into my bedroom and discovering a coiled, hissing viper in the middle of my down comforter.
I have to talk to him about it, and I was planning on doing it tonight. I had thrown the ingredients for a stew in the Crock-Pot before I left for school this morning, because I thought we’d be eating together, and I can smell it—spicy, tomato-y goodness. I put together a pretty good stew. It looks like I’ll be eating alone again, though.
I throw my backpack on the couch and go through to the kitchen. Sure enough, the lightbulb over the basement door is on, which means “Don’t come down here.” It’s the arrangement we made when his work got moved home—Dad says he can’t be disturbed when he’s in the middle of his research. I’m not sure why we need the lightbulb; it’s not like he’s ever allowed me down there since the equipment got moved in; the door stays locked if he’s not using the lab.
I rummage through the utensil drawer until I find a wooden spoon, and then I take the top off the Crock-Pot. Steam bathes my face and I inhale. It’s good stuff; too bad Dad will miss out. Another hour or so, and it will be ready to eat.
I kill the time online. Charlie has some new photos of his latest dorky T-shirt finds on his Facebook page. I leave comments on two of the worst ones. I notice a new friend request and when I click on it, my heart almost stops. It’s from Lara! I confirm it before I even take another breath.
Ahh. I have access to her wall and her photos now. I spend the next hour just clicking, from photo to photo to photo: Lara in a car, laughing; Lara in a formal dress with some guy I don’t know; Lara and one of her many friends from school, I think this girl’s name is Barbara, building some sort of science project thing on a dining-room table. Her photos all show her laughing or smiling, and she seems to be having a great life. I wonder what she’ll think if she bothers to click through to my page. My photos are all of me and Charlie doing stupid stuff like blowing up a mail-order rocket in his backyard, or planking in various places. We went through a phase last fall where we planked everywhere. There’s one of Charlie planking in the frozen food aisle at the Food Lion. Real smooth.
The stew smells ready to eat. I set out a bowl and a spoon on the breakfast counter and go to the fridge to get the milk. I’m just about to take a swig from the carton when the basement door opens.
“Get a glass.” Dad locks the door and flicks the switch on the wall; the hum of the generator stops. He gives me a noogie on his way to the sink to wash his hands.
“Are you joining me for dinner?” I can’t help but let a little snark into my tone.
“I said I’d be here, didn’t I?” He gets another bowl and two glasses from the cupboard. “Did you wash your hands?”
I put the milk on the counter and head to the sink. When I come back, Dad has two bowls of stew ladled out and he’s poured us each a glass of milk. He’s even put out a couple of paper napkins.
“Smells delicious, Nick.” We busy ourselves with eating for a few minutes. When I look up from my bowl, Dad is giving me what I call his visual assessment. Mom used to do this too. Checking to see if I was too tired, or coming down with something. Dad’s visual assessment is much more scientific, and I think he’s checking to see if I got high or something. Still, at least it shows he cares.
“How’s school?”
“Over,” I say. “Today was the last day.”
Dad raises his eyebrows. “Wow.”
“Wow, what?”
“Wow, time really got away from me.” He shakes his head. “Sorry, Nick. I know I’ve been . . . distracted.”
It’s my turn to raise my eyebrows.
He nods. “I know, I know. Listen, what if we plan a camping trip? We haven’t gone camping for so long. What do you think?”
What I think is that he must be feeling really guilty. Camping used to be our special time together—I loved going with him.
“When would we do this?” Camping with Dad used to be fun. We haven’t done it in a long time.
He looks at some inner calendar. “Hmm, maybe this weekend? I think I could hustle on a few things tomorrow and Friday, and we could go Saturday.”
I picture the scrap of pink paper in my backpack. The scrap of paper with Lara’s address and a little heart—a heart—that she drew herself. I want to go camping with him, but I want to go to Lara’s party too. “I sort of have plans for this weekend.”
“Plans, huh? What sort of plans?”
“There’s a party.”
“Well, there will be other part—”
“I want to go, Dad.” It pisses me off that he’s been buried in that lab for months and the minute he wants to remember he has a son, I’m supposed to rearrange everything for him. Still, I try to soften it for him. “There’s this girl.”
He smiles. “Ahh. I see.” He picks up his spoon again, ready to eat some more stew. “Well, maybe next weekend then, what do you say?”
“Sounds good.” I pick up my spoon too, and we eat the rest of our dinner together in a companionable silence. I don’t bring up the gun. It just doesn’t seem like the right time.
I wake up late on Saturday—it’s almost noon by the time I roll out of bed. My body clock has already adapted to a summer schedule. It’s sunny, one of those warm, breezy June days that make you glad to be alive and out of school for the summer. When I get downstairs, the light above the basement door is on. I don’t think it’s been off for the last two days. I know Dad’s still alive because he leaves dirty dishes in the sink, but I haven’t seen him since we had our stew dinner together. He’s left me two sticky notes on the fridge. One, left yesterday, said Plz p/u milk and had a ten-dollar bill attached to it. He likes lots of milk in his coffee. I walked down to the corner mini-mart to get it for him and spent the change on chips. Today’s note says Don’t frgt to mow with a smiley face drawn under it.
The lawn is my job. I mow it once a week during the summer, and I get ten bucks a pop. Keeps me in Twizzlers. And Dad thinks it teaches me about responsibility. Who knows, maybe it does.
After a brunch of cereal and a banana, I go out to the garage and get the mower. It’s already hot out, and the sun beats down on the top of my head. The lawn doesn’t look too bad—it won’t take long. That’s good, because tonight’s Lara’s thing, and I want time to get ready. I usually don’t give much thought to what I wear, but I know I’ll try on five different T-shirts before I hit the right one for tonight.
My phone vibrates just as I’m finishing the lawn. It’s Charlie. He’s texting to see what time he should be ready.
Crap.
It’s not like Lara even invited Charlie. I mean, he just happened to be there when she invited me. And none of my daydreams about how the party is going to go involve Charlie standing around drooling while I put the moves on Lara.
Still, he’s my best friend. He stood up for me in fourth grade, when Ben Anderson decided to start his career as class bully with me as his first victim. When Amy Winters broke my heart in sixth grade, he told her that Donny Morris, the guy she ditched me for, cheated on her. Last year, when I thought I was going to flunk Algebra II, he explained how to solve linear equations over and over until I got it.
Part of me wants to ignore the text, just pretend I never got it, but I know I can’t. I do a quick revision in my head of all the scenes of the party I’ve imagined so far, and add Charlie. It’s not quite the same imagining me and Lara and Charlie hanging out on her sofa, listening to music, while all the rest of the people at the party just fade into the background. It doesn’t work quite as well when I lean in for that kiss if Charlie’s grinning at the two of us like a loon.
Nothing to be done about it, though. I text Charlie and tell him to meet me at the bus stop at seven thirty.
I shower—the longest shower ever, I think—and shave, even though there’s not much to shave yet. After several tries I find just the right combination of jeans and a T-shirt. Once I’m happy with my look, I head downstairs to make a sandwich.
The light is still on above the basement door, and the generator is humming away. I grab the peanut butter from the cupboard and slather some on a slice of bread. There’s an apple left in the fruit bowl, and I eat that too. It’s seven fifteen; almost time to go. I know better than to disturb Dad, so I go to the fridge to write him a note and find one he’s left me, sometime between when I went out to mow and now. It says Have a good time—be careful. Home by eleven.
My hopes of getting out of the house without a clear curfew crumble. Eleven! That’s so lame. I draw a frowny face under his note and write Eleven?! Love you anyway. See you tomorrow. Although knowing him, he’ll probably choose tonight to wait up for me.
Charlie is standing at the bus stop. He waves when I’m still half a block away, and jumps up and down a little. I duck my head and grin. What a goof. I’m glad I didn’t pretend not to get his text, even though he’s bound to throw some sort of wrench in my plan to get next to Lara.
“Dude,” he says once I reach the stop.
“Uh-huh?” I take in his Death Cab for Cutie T-shirt and his khakis. Red high-tops finish off the look. If I was hoping for Charlie to wear something sort of normal, I was wasting my time.
“I figured you’d pretend you never got my text.”
I try to look like he’s crazy. “Would I do that?”
Charlie just laughs. The bus pulls up and we climb aboard.
“Who else do you think is coming?” Charlie raises his voice in order to be heard above the bus engine.
I shrug. I’ve been so focused on the fact that Lara invited me that I haven’t even thought of who else she’s invited.
“I bet Morris will be there.” Charlie knows I still harbor a grudge against Donny, ever since he stole my girlfriend in sixth grade. Okay, it was just sixth grade and barely even counted, but even so. “He’s always checking Lara out in chem lab.”
I hate to admit it, but I saw that too. It was almost like sixth grade repeating itself, except that Lara didn’t seem to be interested in Donny, even though now he’s the quarterback for the stupid football team. Chem lab had been a sort of sweet torture, watching Lara from three stations behind, wishing I could get up the guts to ask to be part of her group for the final project, knowing I never would. At least Donny hadn’t either.
“Man, I guess I should have brought my jacket.” Charlie’s voice brought me back from my reverie.
“What do you mean? It’s . . .” I was about to say “It’s an awesome day,” but when I look out the bus window, I see what Charlie means. There’s a mean-looking storm cloud far off in the distance. It will take a while to reach us, but by the time the party’s over I bet it will be pouring rain. I didn’t bring a jacket either.
“Oh, well,” says Charlie. “We can steal Donny’s jacket.” He grins.
“Listen, Charlie.” I’m not sure how to get my point across without hurting his feelings. “Not sayin’ it will happen, but if by some miracle I get next to Lara . . .”
Charlie looks at me blankly, waiting for more. I can’t think how to put it in a delicate way. “I mean, if we were to, you know. . .”
“You mean you don’t want me around you at the party?” He looks a little hurt.
“It’s not that I don’t want you around . . .”
Charlie starts laughing. “Got ya.” He shakes his head at me. “Dude. Like I’m gonna hang on you if you get a chance with her? Tell me you know me better than that by now.”
Charlie may be a pain in the ass sometimes. But he’s still my best friend, you know?
When we get off the bus, I look up at the sky and notice that the cloud we saw earlier has gotten even bigger. There’s something about it that makes me a little nervous, but I don’t have much time to think about it. I’m looking up at Lara’s building, and suddenly I’m nervous. It’s a fancy high-rise, with a doorman and one of those lobbies with more art in it than most galleries. Are we really going to do this? She did really invite me, right?
The doorman gives us a look, but nothing compared to the look we get from the guy behind the desk in the lobby. “Boys,” he says with the same tone Mrs. Martin uses when she has to explain dirty jokes in Shakespeare to the class. “Are you expected?”
At first I don’t know what he means, but Charlie does.
“We are, Jeeves,” he says, in a fake English accent. “We certainly are.”
The guy ignores him and turns to me. “Who might be expecting a visit from you?”
“Um, Lara . . . um, Hanover.” I wonder if I’m supposed to prove it somehow.
“I see.” He doesn’t sound like he approves. “Just so you’re aware, the building management is of the understanding that Ms. Hanover’s parents are abroad. We have instructions to limit the attendance of her soiree this evening.” He looks us both up and down. “Wait right there while I call up to see if you two are in the in crowd, won’t you?” He turns his back and picks up a desk phone, punches in some numbers. We hear some murmuring, but I can’t make out what he’s saying.
Charlie and I look at each other. We’re not in the in crowd. Never have been. I heave a sigh, get ready for the boot. Charlie gives me his best it-ain’t-over-till-it’s-over look and plants his feet more squarely on the marble floor.
“Well.” The desk guy turns back around, an irritated look on his face. “It appears that at least one of you is on the list. Which one of you is Nick?”
I raise my hand.
“You, my fair sir, are on the list.” The guy eyes me. “Your friend is not.”
I can see Charlie already deflating. I don’t like this guy. He seems to me to be like every guy I’ve ever known who wants to be sure you know you’re not up to par, that you don’t quite have what it takes. You just never know where you’ll run into one, but they’re all pretty much the same. That “Your friend is not” shit? One of their favorite tactics. Divide and conquer. They figure you’ll ditch your friend for the prestige they’re holding out like candy, and sometimes they’re right. I’ve seen people do it.
“I think you better call again.”
The guy’s having none of me. “I’ve already confirmed with the lady.”
“Well.” I take out my cell phone. “Either you can call her, or I will.” I wait, hoping there is no way he can know that I don’t even have Lara’s number. He doesn’t budge, so I start tapping on the screen of my phone.
“Very well.” He snarls the words, and turns back to his phone, stabbing in numbers. “Ms. Hanover. Yes. The person you indicated had approval . . . yes, that Nick person. He is insisting that his friend must be on the list as well. What? Well, one moment.” He turns back to me and gestures toward Charlie. “What’s his name?”
“Charlie.”
He turns back, and we can hear him say Charlie’s name. After a few seconds he hangs up the phone. I steel myself, because as much as I want to go to Lara’s party, if she doesn’t let Charlie in, I don’t know what I’ll do.
The guy looks at us with that same disgusted expression. But I can tell we won by the peeved expression on his face. He doesn’t even bother to tell us we got the okay, just shrugs in annoyance and motions for us to go on up. “Number 1201,” he says.
I give him an exaggerated military salute and snap my heels together. “See you later.”
We head for the bank of elevators. When we get inside, Charlie looks at the buttons and his eyes get all wide, like he’s seeing God or something. “She’s all the way at the top. Wonder if it’s the penthouse.”
I look too, and sure enough, there are only twelve floors. “Top floor doesn’t mean it’s a penthouse. I bet there are lots of apartments on twelve.”
But when the doors whoosh open, we spill out into a small landing with a table, a small sofa, and one door with the number 1201 on it.
“Penthouse,” breathes Charlie, like he’s seeing a starlet in person.
I reach up to lift the knocker, a brass lion, no less, and the door whips opens before I can even touch the lion’s mane. Radiohead blares out, along with cigarette smoke and laughter. It looks like there’s quite a crowd already here. Some guy I don’t recognize looms in the doorway.
“Damn, I wore the wrong shirt,” mumbles Charlie, looking down at his Death Cab for Cutie. He has the largest collection of band T-shirts in the known universe. I know just the Radiohead shirt he’s thinking of because I’ve seen him wear it a million times.
“You Nick?” The guy is older than us—he looks like he must be in college. I think I recognize him from Lara’s Facebook photos, but I’m not sure.
“That’s me.” I wonder if he’s Lara’s boyfriend. I bet. I bet she just invited me to the party out of pity or something.
“Nick!” Lara bounces up, laughing, and puts her arm around the guy’s waist. “So glad you could come!” She looks amazing. I mean, she always looks amazing, but there’s something different about her tonight. She’s dressed up, sure, but cool and relaxed too. There’s an easiness to her smile and an amused look in her eye, like she just heard a joke. She’s on her home turf now, and it makes her more beautiful than ever.
“Charlie, you too! Glad you’re here. Is Brian acting like the bouncer again?” She mock-punches the guy in the side. He grabs her and messes up her hair. And—another reason I think she is the coolest chick ever—she doesn’t care.
Lara smiles at me and Charlie. “Brian doesn’t bite. He just likes to act all big-brother-y when he’s home from college.” She wrinkles her nose. “Come on in.”
He’s her brother! I hear angels singing somewhere. We follow her into a room with one wall made entirely of windows. There’s a huge flat screen mounted on the opposite wall, flashing music videos. A couch and some chairs furnish the room, but they’re not like the furniture in my living room. Clearly we’re looking at a different level of couch and chairs, from a different level of store, if they even came from a store. I bet they got delivered from some designer place. After they got picked out by some designer. It looks like Charlie and I walked onto a movie set instead of into somebody’s apartment. I wonder what Lara’s parents do for a living; must be something with pretty good pay.
The place is packed, both with kids I recognize from school and others I don’t. People mill around in the living area, staring at the flat screen and talking in little groups. There’s bottled beer chilling in ice and a spread of food that looks like it had to be catered. Do people really cater their high school parties? I’m more used to a keg and some Doritos and dip. Charlie grabs a beer and starts loading up a paper plate with delicacies. Lara watches him, amusement coloring her face. Then she looks at me and sort of tilts her head in a way that makes my heart beat faster.
“Want a beer, Nick?”
“Sure.” I take the bottle she hands me. We stand, two feet apart, awkward and silent. Charlie’s busy with his food and seems to be keeping his distance nicely. Finally I say, “How have you been?”
“How have you been?” Freaking genius. I saw her three days ago. I’m sure nothing earth-shattering has happened to her since then. She must think I’m such a—
“Okay.” She smiles that smile and I stop thinking. “Nothing much going on. How have you been?”
“Um, you know. The same.” We both start laughing.
“Want to check out the view?” She starts walking toward the windows, and I see that one of them is a door. I follow her through the room, out onto a balcony that looks over the entire city. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the city all lit up and spread out like this before. It would be amazing to see this every day.
“Weird,” Lara says with a frown.
“What?”
“It’s only eight o’clock.” She points toward the rest of the city. “There are never that many lights on this early.” Lara looks up at the sky, eyeing the cloud cover. “Then again, it’s never this dark on a summer evening at eight o’clock at night.”
The dark cloud that was off in the distance when Charlie and I were at the bus stop has grown into a blob that blots out the sun as it gets ready to set.
“Looks like there’s going to be a storm.” I smile sideways. “Hey, maybe I’ll have an excuse to miss my curfew. I can’t go home if it’s raining, right?”
Lara rolls her eyes and looks like she’s trying not to let on that she thinks it’s funny, but she can’t help letting out a little stutter of a laugh. She just shakes her head and looks back up at the cloud, not saying anything.
I know I should try to be chill, but I can’t stop looking at her. I almost can’t believe I’m standing here with her like this, like we’re old friends or something. Her hair’s come a little bit undone and it’s blowing a little in the breeze, twisting into her face. It’s blue, then pink and then yellow again in this weird, shifting twilight.
I almost want to reach out and put my arm around her—I have this weird feeling that she wouldn’t push me away. But just as I’m about to do it, she turns from the sky and back to me and busts me staring. I feel heat rise to my cheeks.
“It was cool being in class with you this year,” she says.
I’m surprised. I didn’t even think she’d noticed me. “Um,” I mumble. “It was?”
“Yeah. I, um, I sort of wondered if maybe you were going to ask me out, before the year was over. But you never did.” She looks up at me sort of funny, and it suddenly hits me. I realize that she must be shy. Lara Hanover, shy!
“Wow.” I don’t know what to say.
“You’re really pretty smart, aren’t you, Nick? I noticed in Mrs. Martin’s class that you really read the assignments. I could tell because of the way you knew what she was talking about sometimes.” Lara looks down at the balcony railing. “I read them too. I like books, mostly.” She looks back up at me. “Does that sound dumb?”
I’m about to say that she could never sound dumb to me, when my worst nightmare appears at the balcony door.
“There you are!”
I close my eyes. I know that voice. I turn, and sure enough, there’s Donny Morris. Standing just inside the apartment, grinning his sleazy grin at Lara. “I wondered where you were hiding.”
Lara smiles back at him. I’m not surprised—I’ve never seen her be mean to anyone. “Hi, Donny. Did you find the beer?”
Donny keeps grinning and brandishes a bottle. “I sure did. Want to show me that game now, Lara?” He holds up another bottle he’s been hiding behind his back.
“Oh, Donny, I forgot.” Lara looks at me, an apology of some sort in her eyes. “I told Donny I’d show him Brian’s newest Wii game. Maybe,” she says to me in a lower tone, “we can meet up later.” Then she’s heading toward Donny, and I’m standing there alone.
Almost as soon as Lara and Donny disappear through the open door back into the apartment, Charlie pops out onto the balcony. He must have been lurking around, waiting to see how things went between me and Lara.
“I tried to keep Donny busy, but he’s one focused guy.”
“Oh, yeah?” I wait for the scoop.
“Yeah. I saw him sniffing around in there; he couldn’t figure out where she got to, and then when he saw her out here with you, he headed straight for the door. I managed to block him for a few minutes, talking about how cool all his football moves were this year, but even that didn’t hold him off for long.”
Figures. Any other time, if you mentioned football to Donny, he’d be happy to keep you entertained for hours detailing his greatest plays. “Well, thanks for trying.”
Charlie nods. “Some place, huh?”
“Wild.” I wonder what it’s like to come home to this view every day. Or to just sit around watching reruns or whatever on that huge flat screen in the living room. I can’t really imagine inviting Lara over to watch TV on our thirty-six-inch Panasonic.
“Want to go check out the rest of the place?” Charlie holds up his empty bottle. “I need another beer anyway.”
“Yeah, might as well.”
We go back inside and grab a couple more beers. I see lots of people from our class. Over in the corner a couple of guys—the class president, Mark Johnson, and his ever-present sidekick, Greg somebody—are geeking out about the weather.
“. . . tornado. Or maybe it’s just an early manifestation of the changes we’re going to see from global warming. Or it could even—”
“What are you guys talking about?” Charlie butts into the conversation.
Ben nods a greeting at both of us. “Have you taken a look at the sky lately?” His voice is all dramatic, like he’s announcing a national disaster or something.
“I have seen the sky,” booms Charlie, doing his best James Earl Jones. “A storm is coming.”
Ben makes a face. “Ha. Ha. Not. Greg thinks it’s just storm clouds too, but I’m telling you, those are no ordinary clouds.”
Greg swirls a finger next to his ear and nods toward Ben. “He’s crazy.” He shrugs. “It’s just one of those summer thunderstorms. Hey, are you guys . . .”
He trails off, because Lisa Cassity is walking by us. She’s dressed in even tighter jeans than she wears at school. Her lipstick is flaming red, and she’s giggling into Jason Ono’s ear while he drapes his arm around her like she’s the smooth leather back of the passenger seat in the slickest Mustang convertible ever and he’s in the driver’s seat, ready to hit the road.
Not my type, so much, but the sight of her butt in those jeans deserves a moment of silence from us all. Once she’s passed, Greg swallows and continues. “Are you guys going to try out for any teams next year?”
Charlie and I shake our heads while Ben nods his. We all jump when we hear a crash in the kitchen.
I hop up and head in the direction of the noise. When I round the corner of the huge kitchen island, I see a girl sprawled on the floor, one leg folded back behind her at a weird angle. She obviously had too much of something. Her friends are standing around laughing, as though she’s the funniest sight they’ve ever seen. Not a single person has offered to help her.
“You okay?” I squat down and take a closer look at her leg. I don’t like the looks of it. I hope it’s not broken.
“Fine.” She’s got a pretty good slur going. “Pull me up.”
I take hold of the hand she’s reaching out and tug, hoping the leg will hold her. It does, so she must just be drunk enough that she’s extra flexible and hasn’t done any real damage. I don’t quite know what to do with her now that she’s up, so I’m relieved when Lara’s brother rides in on his nonexistent white horse.
“Somebody drank one too many beers,” Brian says, laughing, but he takes the girl’s arm and leads her toward one of the couches. Her group of friends slowly disperses now that there’s nothing to gawk at.
“My brother can be a pain when he’s being overprotective, but he’s a good guy. She’s in good hands. Looks like you are too, Nick. A good guy, I mean.”
It’s Lara, standing close to me. I didn’t see her show up. She smells like some sort of citrus fruit, tinged with vanilla.
“She’s a little wasted.” I shrug off the compliment, if that’s what it was.
“She’s one of Brian’s friends. He’ll watch her, make sure she’s okay.” She looks behind her. “I think I managed to throw Donny off, at least momentarily. He had to use the bathroom.” She winks. “Want to go back out on the balcony before he gets here?”
I feel something flip in my stomach, like there’s an acrobatic mackerel swimming around in it, but I try to look cool. “Sure, if you want.”
Before we get to the balcony, the TV suddenly switches from writhing dancers covered with gold body paint to a blank screen. Lara reaches out and touches my arm as she pauses and hesitates, waiting to see what’s wrong. We hear a high-pitched hum, and then the emergency broadcast system message starts. Everybody in the room stops talking and turns toward the noise. A news anchor flashes onto the screen, rustling some papers and looking grim. He keeps glancing off camera, as though he’s waiting for a signal. Then he straightens up in his chair and speaks.
“We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming tonight to bring you a news update on the unusual weather pattern occurring in our area. Some of you may have noticed the strange cloud formation developing today. The National Weather Service has upgraded its earlier thunderstorm warning risk from slight to severe. Additional information indicates that the anomaly is not confined to the local area but seems to be spreading over at least eleven states at this time, with no evidence of slowing. An advisory to stay indoors, away from windows, has been issued and is in force through five a.m. Sunday. As always, we’ll bring you any updates as they occur.”
The screen blips back into a blank, and then the gold dancers reappear.
Lara and I look at each other and shrug. Nobody else in the room seems too impressed, and the party starts back up as though nothing ever happened. We head for the balcony and gaze out at the skyline.
“It does look bigger now, doesn’t it?”
I nod. It looks really big, and weird—like it’s smooth and dense. Unlike any cloud I remember seeing before.
“Anyway . . . enough about the freaky weather. So, um, my parents are in Europe for a month. Brian’s home from college for the summer, and they figured it was safe to leave.” Lara laughs. “He really is a great older brother, but he’s totally acting like a third parent since they left. Always asking where I’m going and when I’ll be back.” She leans against the balcony railing, looking out at the city.
“Um.” Smooth. I start again. “Do you think Brian would let you go out with me one night? If I got you home at a decent hour?” I’m afraid to look over at her to check her reaction.
“Sure.”
I can hear that she’s smiling.
“I mean, he’d probably put you through the third degree first, but then he’d let us. Where do you want to go?”
“I was thinking pizza?” I hadn’t been thinking anything; asking her out was a spur-of-the-moment thing. But she’s being so friendly, she makes me think I might have a shot. I finally look over at her. She’s smiling, all right, and she’s turned toward me. I grin back and scoot a little closer.
“Listen, Lara.” I’ve only had one and a half beers, but I feel like maybe they’ve loosened me up some. Or maybe it’s just the way she looks right now—like she has a happy secret that she knows no one will ever be able to guess. She’s looking at me like she’s waiting for something, and I open my mouth to say something and then shut it again. I know it’s not the time for talking anymore. I missed my chance on the roof, but I’m not going to chicken out this time. Trying not to think too much about what I’m doing, I lean in and kiss her.
It feels different than I guess I expected. As soon as my lips touch hers, any nervousness I have is gone, replaced by this feeling of total certainty. She’s soft, and warm, and . . . everything. It feels totally natural, totally right. She falls into me, her hands on my shoulders. The world around us seems to disappear. Well—for a second at least. Then I hear Charlie’s voice.
“Hey.” Lara and I break apart like we’re doing something wrong. Charlie’s standing in the doorway, biting his lip and running his hand through his hair. I would want to kill him if he didn’t look so worried. I try to keep my voice even. “What’s up, Charlie?”
“Sorry. But I think we’d better get out of here. They just announced that all the buses are gonna stop running early tonight. Last one is in about twenty minutes.”
“Isn’t there somebody who drove that we can hitch a ride home with later?”
Charlie shakes his head. “They said they want people home. Something about the storm coming.”
“Jeez. Is it really that bad?” It figures. Just when something was actually happening, the stupid weather has to go and ruin it. “I’ll be right in, okay?” I wait for Charlie to leave and then turn back to Lara.
“Well, looks like I have to take off.” I touch her arm, wishing I could kiss her again.
“We’re still on for pizza though, right?” She takes hold of my hand, studies it like there’s a map on it. She doesn’t look at me.
“That is one pizza I would hate to miss.”
She finally looks up, and she’s smiling. “I’ll call you tomorrow, to confirm what night.” And then she kisses me. It’s a kiss I don’t think I’ll ever forget. It’s the kiss I never once dreamed I would get from Lara Hanover.
Dad’s sitting in the living room when I get home, obviously waiting for me. He looks worried.
“Oh, come on, it’s not even close to curfew.” I flash my wrist at him like I’m wearing a watch.
“Nick, thank God.” He stands and looks so relieved I feel guilty for giving him crap. But then I think about what might make him look that worried.
“I only had one beer, Dad—”
“It’s not that, Nick.” He walks over to me and grabs my arms. He just stares at me for a minute, and the look on his face is almost as bad as the look he had when he told me Mom was dead. “Listen. There are things happening. Things I didn’t want to have to tell you, but it looks like there’s no choice.”
I drop onto the sofa. “What’s going on?”
He looks at his hands for a long time. When he finally meets my eyes, his are wet. “We need to get out of here, Nick. I’m going to need your help, because I haven’t had much time to plan. But I have reason to believe that we’ll need to disappear in the next couple of weeks, maybe even sooner.”
I’m trying to track what he’s saying, but it makes no sense. “Disappear?”
He nods. “I know it’s a lot to take in—”
“Does this have something to do with your gun?”
He suddenly focuses all his attention on me. “You know about the . . . which gun?”
“There’s more than one?” I am shocked.
“Which gun did you find, Nick?”
“The one in the china cabinet.”
He nods. “Okay. So the other gun is in my nightstand drawer. They’re both loaded, Nick, so don’t play around. We’ll take them with us when we go, but I need to get some more supplies over the next few days. I’ve already got some . . .” He trails off, as though he’s trying to make a decision, and stands. “Follow me.”
I watch him head into the kitchen and follow him down to the basement.
I haven’t seen the place since they brought in all the equipment. Dad never lets me down there when he’s working, and even when he’s sleeping he keeps it locked. I never really cared; I saw his lab when he still worked in the lab downtown, and it was the most boring thing ever. Lots of measuring devices and blocky plastic machines that didn’t look like they did anything too exciting. Dad used to try to explain stuff to me, but I think he could tell I didn’t care.
The basement lab looks about the same as the one in the city. Dad heads straight for a stainless steel cabinet that’s padlocked shut. He fishes a key hanging on a nylon cord out from under his shirt. “This is the key to that lock,” he says, pointing to the cabinet.
There’s a label on the corner of the right cabinet door. The words OPTIMUS PRIME are printed out on it.
“Transformers?” When Mom was still alive, one of the things she used to laugh about was how Dad and I loved to play Transformers. I always liked Optimus Prime the best—if there’s one thing more awesome than a giant robot who can turn into a car or whatever, it’s a giant robot who can turn into a sixteen-wheeler, right?
“Hopefully.” Dad gives a weird laugh. “What’s in that cabinet is important. Remember that, Nick, if anything . . . happens.” He heads toward the basement closet. We used to keep board games and old sports equipment in it. When he opens the door, I can see it’s now filled with what look like survival supplies, top to bottom: dried fruit, foil packs of dehydrated meat, bottles and bottles and bottles of water. There’s some gear stuffed in there too, sleeping bags and what looks like a tent. “I’m going to go out tomorrow and get some more things we may need. While I’m gone, I want you in the house with the doors locked. I don’t want you to answer the door or the telephone. And I want you to keep one of the guns with you. I’ll show you the basics about how to shoot it before we go to bed.”
“Dad, what’s going on?” This is starting to get weird. Why would everyone be freaking out like this over the weather? Is that what it’s even about?
“Listen, Nick.” He leans against one of the work counters. “During the last couple of years, I’ve been working with government agencies more than I usually do in my line of research. And not the usual agencies either. These are the big boys: the Department of Defense. DARPA—the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. I was collaborating with some researchers that work on large hadron colliders. No big deal at first. But soon control of the project was transferred out of my hands to someone within DARPA who I wasn’t even allowed to meet. I kept requesting clearance to be allowed to discuss outcomes, but they kept dismissing me, telling me that if I didn’t fulfill my research contribution on the project I’d have my grant money revoked.”
“Dad, I don’t—”
“I think they were trying to make a weapon. I think they released Higgs particles.” Dad’s told me about Higgs particles before. They’re sometimes called “the God particle” because if a Higgs particle was made, it could do the one thing that’s supposed to be impossible. It could create matter.
Dad looks around at the lab like it’s a place he’s never really seen. “Nick, I think I helped them. I’ve tried to do what I can to fix it, but I haven’t had enough time—I haven’t been able to test anything.” He looks at me for a long few seconds. “Do you remember what a photon is?”
I rack my brain. “Light? A particle of light.”
“Yes. Okay. Now, usually light is pure energy. But a Higgs particle could interact with photons—particles of light—and it could change light, change the way light interacts with matter.”
“Dad, what the hell are you talking about?”
“It’s going to get dark, Nick. Soon.”
“It probably already is by now.” There are no windows in the basement, but it’s late enough that I bet it’s dark outside. “It’s gotta be past ten, and that weird cloud was making—”
“It’s not a cloud.”
This morning, I wake to a note on my nightstand, anchored in place by the gun from the china cabinet.
I’m going for supplies.
Don’t leave the house. Be safe.
Love you,
Dad
Dad tells me to “be safe” all the time, but the instruction has never been accompanied by a gun before. I rub my eyes and head for the bathroom, but I back right up and grab the gun. I’m spooked.
I lock the door and take the fastest shower ever. I take the stairs three at a time to the kitchen. Dad’s left a box of cereal out on the counter, along with a bowl, a spoon, and half a grapefruit. It’s a throwback to when I was little, after Mom died. He usually had to leave for work before I was even up, so he always got my breakfast ready for me, as a way to say good morning. We had sitters until I was old enough to take care of myself, but he never let them make my breakfast.
My phone buzzes across the counter and I pick it up. Charlie’s texting me.
Have you seen the news?
I pour some milk over my cereal and take it to the living room. I grab the remote and switch on the TV. Every channel seems to be a new announcer. I stop on one and listen.
“. . . as it would be just after dusk. No explanation has been forthcoming from any government source thus far. Scientists say it’s too early to comment—that they need more data. The White House remains silent on the strange phenomenon.”
The announcer presses the bud in his ear for a moment, listening to some voice tell him what to say. “Ladies and gentleman, this just in—the White House press secretary says there will be an announcement today. The president will address the nation at seven p.m. Eastern Standard Time this evening. Keep—”
That’s when I realize that the room seems dark. I mean, the curtains are all drawn, so at first I didn’t notice anything, but now that I think about it . . . I jump up and go to the big bay window. I’m almost afraid to pull back the cloth, but I do, just a few inches.
It’s dark. The streetlights are glowing all the way down the street, even though the clock on the wall says it’s nine thirty in the morning. It looks just like the guy said, like dusk, when you can barely see, but it’s not pitch dark yet. I switch off the T.V. and text Charlie.
WTH?
He comes back right away with
I know, right? The whole world’s gone batshit crazy. Mom is crying and calling people. Oh, hell, here she comes. Gotta go—back in a few.
I check to see if all the doors are locked.
Dad doesn’t show up until almost four in the afternoon. I’ve spent the time peeking out various windows to see if it’s really still dark (it always is) and channel surfing to see if any of the news stations say anything different. Finally I hear the garage door open and close, and by the time Dad puts his key in the back-door lock I’m ready to jump out of my skin.
“Where have you been?” I must sound like a pissed-off girlfriend.
“Can you give me a hand with these?” Dad nods toward the Subaru. He’s backed it into the garage, and there are boxes in the cargo area.
I grumble, but I pick up a box.
“I didn’t have time to pack them in right at the store. I want to rearrange so that we have some more room for stuff in the back.”
“What is this stuff?” The boxes don’t have labels.
“Survival supplies. It’s funny, you think you’re prepared until something actually happens and then you realize you’re not prepared at all. I went to that store out on the highway—The End Is Nigh, remember it?”
I sure do. We went in there one Saturday to see what it was when it first opened—must have been a couple of years ago. It turned out to be a survivalist’s paradise. They had all kinds of freeze-dried foods and water purifiers and blankets made of tinfoil stuff and knives and guns and traps. They even had a store model of a “survival cube” that you could shut yourself into in case of a disaster. The brochure said the company guaranteed the cube would keep a person alive thirty days, even in the case of a nuclear bomb, as long as you didn’t open the door. You just strapped yourself in, closed the door and locked it from the inside, and waited it out. There was a toilet built into the seat, and a tube stuck out of one of the walls that you could suck “nutripaste” from. I climbed in and sat down and wondered how anybody could stand it for more than an hour.
After we rearrange all the boxes, Dad starts cooking some dinner. He’s not a bad cook, and tonight it looks like he’s going all out—steaks and fried mushrooms.
“Don’t know when we’ll eat like this again,” he says while he splashes some cooking wine on the steaks.
“What do you mean?” I’m doing the salad, like I always do. I try to focus on chopping the carrots so I don’t lose a finger.
Dad shrugs. “I don’t know how things will be, Nick. Let’s eat first, and then we’ll talk.”
We eat in front of the TV. It feels weird, sitting here acting like everything’s almost normal. Nothing is normal. But I really don’t know how else to act. I barely even know what to think, so I’m trying not to think at all.
Dad keeps switching channels like I did, but finally he stops on CNN. Anderson Cooper stands in front of a green screen with a huge caption that reads SHOULD YOU BE AFRAID OF THE DARK? After about three minutes of listening to Anderson talk with his D.C. correspondent about how the government has no comment at this time, Dad hits the mute button. He heaves a huge sigh and picks at his steak.
My phone vibrates. It’s Charlie.
We r leaving soon. My stepdad knows some guy and he thinks we’ll b safer in
That’s all there is. The display goes blank. I push the power button a couple of times, but nothing happens. “Dad.”
“Hmm?” He doesn’t look up from his steak.
“Does your phone work?” I hold up my blank display so he can see. He puts his plate on the coffee table and half stands, gets his phone from his back pocket. I can tell by his face that his display is blank too. He turns up the volume on the television, and I think we’re both relieved when Anderson Cooper’s voice resumes. We’re not so relieved when we hear what he’s saying, though.
“. . . plans to restore cell service in those areas as soon as possible, but gives no indication what may have caused the disruption. New outages are being reported as we speak. Meanwhile, authorities claim that the curfews being imposed across the nation are merely precautionary and temporary in nature.”
Dad and I just look at each other. He lets the television drone on for a few more seconds and then clicks it off.
“Okay, Nick. We need to eat and then hit it. I’m going to be getting you up at the crack of . . .” He falters. There is no dawn anymore, it seems.
“Where are we going?” I don’t want to go anywhere. I want to stay here, in the house I grew up in, and spend the summer taking Lara Hanover to pizza. Instead, because my scientist dad did whatever the stupid government asked him without even wondering if it was right, the world’s going to end or something and who knows if I’ll even get to see Lara before school starts again.
“I think we’ll head west.”
This pisses me off in a way I can’t even explain. “You think we’ll head west? You think? For the guy who caused the whole mess, you don’t seem to be too sure about anything.”
He doesn’t say anything to that. No “I didn’t cause this, so shut up about it,” no “Stop mouthing off to your father.” Nothing. He just looks tired. He finishes his steak and stands up to take his plate into the kitchen. On his way past me, he stops and puts a hand on my shoulder.
“Get to sleep soon, Nick. We’ll be leaving very early.” He waits to see if I say anything, and when I don’t, he slowly walks away. I hear him rinse off his plate and set it in the sink.
“Nick,” he calls.
“What?” I don’t care how mad I sound.
“Take the gun with you when you go upstairs.” He must have seen it lying on the counter, where I left it when he came home. I hear his footsteps on the stairs going down to the basement and then nothing.
I push my steak around with my fork, but I’m not hungry. I try the phone again a couple of times, but service doesn’t come back. Finally I trudge into the kitchen and clatter my plate into the sink without rinsing it. I start up the stairs, but I turn around on the third step and go back for the gun. Better safe than sorry.
I wake out of a sound sleep like I’ve been plunged into icy water, to the sounds of splintering wood. Disoriented, I blink my eyes furiously for a minute, trying to place the noise. It sounds like someone’s kicking down the back door. Then I hear low voices, men’s voices, first from the living room, then the kitchen. Before I can react, there’s a hand over my mouth.
“Get up and get in the closet. Don’t make a sound.”
It’s Dad. He’s crouching next to my bed, holding a gun in front of him. When I don’t move, he turns to look at me, and his eyes are scary—so intense and focused. This is not a joke. I scramble out of bed and grab the gun on the nightstand. I’m not going to hide in some closet—I’ll fight right next to Dad.
“No!” Dad hisses at me in the dark, and I feel his hand grip my biceps hard. “Get in the fucking closet. And don’t come out, Nick, no matter what you hear.”
I don’t understand what’s happening. I’m still groggy from sleep and the way my dad’s talking to me—it doesn’t even seem real. If it weren’t for the slightly sour smell of his breath, I’d think it was a dream.
The voices downstairs get more intense, and Dad shoves me toward the closet.
“Dad!” I whisper. I want to say something else, anything, and I can tell he wants to as well, but he just puts a finger to his lips and pushes me backward.
I pull the door closed and try to bury myself behind the coats and junk. It’s still not much cover. Then I hear feet pounding up the stairs, and then Dad’s door being kicked open. They sound like they’re tearing the room apart.
And then they kick in my door. I hear them sort of stumble against each other when they see Dad—it sounds like there are at least three.
“Drop your weapon,” says one.
“Watch yourself. Don’t forget we need him alive, genius,” says another.
“Why do you need me? Do you think I would go with you?” Dad asks. “So I can help you destroy the world? Not a chance.”
“Don’t get smart,” the first voice says. “You know why.”
“The light will come back,” Dad says firmly. “If I can’t bring it back, someone else will.”
Then I hear him shoot. His gun sounds like a bomb going off in the room. One of them screams; Dad must have hit somebody. When they shoot, which they do right away, the phffft of silencers is all I hear. That, and the sound of impact when the bullets hit my father. I can’t breathe. I know if I make a sound, I’m dead.
“Damn it, damn it, damn it! Orders were alive.”
“He was shooting at me!”
“Search the place, see if there’s anything—”
I hear the crackle of a two-way radio. I can’t make out the words, but they sound urgent.
“Over.” One of the guys in my bedroom responds to the radio voice. “You heard him, let’s get the hell out of here.”
“But what about the device? His son—he was supposed to be here tonight.”
“We don’t have time. We’ll get him as soon as he goes to the cops. They’re always so predictable. As far as the device—”
I hear more radio crackling. Something about “central,” and “abort.” Then the guy who must be in charge says, “All right, we’ve got our orders. We’re done here.”
I hear their feet on the stairs again, and then nothing.
I don’t know how long I sit there, huddled on the closet floor, gripping the gun so tight that my knuckles are bloodless. My face is wet. I realize I’m shaking, and I try to take some deep breaths to calm myself. I wipe my tears away with the back of my hand.
I’ve got to think. Think straight.
Dad’s gun made a lot of noise. I know the Robinsons, our neighbors to the north, are on vacation for the week, because they asked me to take in their newspapers while they’re gone. I think the neighbors on the west side, the Johanssons, are gone too, but I’m not sure. If they’re not, there’s no way they missed that shot. I’m going to have to go look out a window and see if there are any lights on at their place. Maybe they could help—maybe they already called the police.
But that means opening this closet door. And going out into my bedroom, where I know without a doubt that my father lies dead on the floor. When I open this door, everything changes, forever.
Some part of me understands that it has already changed. But another part resists while I turn the knob, while I crack the door open just enough to confirm that the men have gone. Let it not be changed. Let the world go back to what it was just a day ago. I want to scream when I see him, crumpled in the shadowy room, lit only by the baseball nightlight he got me the year Mom died, when I started being afraid of the dark. I don’t know why I kept it; I’m not afraid of the dark anymore.
He’s sitting by the side of the bed, slumped forward. I pull him up and see the three stains on his shirt, still spreading. He’s not breathing, and it’s so clear that he won’t, ever again. I’ve never seen a dead person before, but all the things I’ve read about how you can tell right away are true. My dad isn’t here anymore. There’s no life in him, no rise and fall of his chest, no light in his eyes. There’s just a body. I settle him against the side of the mattress and close his eyes.
I don’t know what else to do.
It doesn’t feel like I thought it would either. After my mom died, I was terrified that I’d somehow lose my dad, too. I’d lie in bed imagining a million different nightmares: Dad getting in a car accident, Dad getting in a plane crash, Dad getting cancer, Dad falling out an open window. I know it’s sick, but I was testing myself, trying to see how I would feel if it really happened.
And now it’s happened and I realize I never imagined him getting murdered.
When I reach up and rub my eyes, I realize that my face is wet. I’ve been crying this whole time and I didn’t even feel it. Because it feels like nothing.
There’s no time to dwell on saying good-bye. I have to get out of here. If I’m lucky, nobody heard the gunshot, but I don’t feel very lucky right now. And even if the neighbors didn’t hear, who knows if those men are coming back.
Think.
The cord around my dad’s neck catches my eye. The key to the lab cabinet, the one Dad labeled OPTIMUS PRIME. Whatever’s in there is important, so I better grab it. I reach out and touch the cord, and the act of taking it off his neck breaks me. The sobs catch me by surprise, hard, retching heaves that double me over. I can’t look at Dad. I can’t, because if I do this will all be real. I force myself to move, to get the key and his gun. A quick peek out the window reveals only darkness at the Johanssons’, and no other signs of life on the street. I go to my dresser, grab some underwear and shirts, a pair of jeans, and shove them all in my backpack. I pull on another pair of jeans and lace up my tennis shoes. I can’t bring myself to look back when I leave the room.
I know I have to go to Dad’s room—he keeps the key to the basement in a magnetic key hider under his bed. I wonder if he knew that I know that. I cross the hall and push the door, already ajar, open wider. His room has been tossed—the mattress is upended and the drawers in his dresser are all pulled out. When I grope under the bed, I find his magnetic key holder still stuck to the bed frame—they must not have had time to look under there. I grab it and get up to go, and hear a crunch. I look down, and see that I’ve stepped on a picture frame. It’s the framed print of Dad and Mom on their honeymoon. They went to Hawaii, and they’re standing on a beach, the sun shining down on them, big smiles on their faces, their arms around each other. They look young and happy. I shake off the broken glass and slide the photo out of the frame. I want it. I stick it in my back pocket for now.
I practically fall down the stairs to the lab and head straight for the cabinet Dad showed me earlier. I jam the key into the padlock, but it sticks. Forcing myself to take slow, deep breaths, I remove the key and reinsert it carefully. This time it turns. The cabinet door opens smoothly. Inside, it’s empty—save for a small box. It’s made of some sort of metal with a complicated latch on the side of it. I try to figure it out, but I can’t get it open and I don’t feel like I have time to waste right now. I shut the cabinet back up and lock the padlock. If someone comes looking, maybe it will buy me some time if they think something is still in there.
The closet full of supplies is calling my name. I eye the water, wondering how many cases I can get upstairs fast. There’s a duffel bag hanging on a hook inside the door, and I fill it with as many packs of dried meat and fruit as I can fit. I shove one of the sleeping bags on top and tuck the box with Dad’s gizmo in its folds. Then I haul six cases of water upstairs and stow them in the car. I start to lock up the house, but then I realize there’s really no point. I shove the garage door open by hand so there’s less noise and check the street. Nothing. The Subaru starts, its engine loud in the dark night, and I ease out of the garage into the street.
That’s when I realize I have no idea where I’m going.
For the longest time, I just sit in the car in the middle of the street, engine idling, no idea what to do. I think I must be in shock or something. Everything feels far away. My house looks totally normal. There’s isn’t anything about it that would indicate a man was just shot to death in it. Our street looks the same as it always does at night, lit by the safe glow of suburban street lights. But nothing is normal, or safe.
I take out my phone and start to text Charlie, but I can’t get a signal. Then I remember his text about how they were leaving. I look at it again. Leaving soon, it says. Maybe he’s still home, and I can go with him and his parents to wherever they’re headed. I try to text again, but there’s still no signal, so I put the Subaru in gear and drive the seven blocks to Charlie’s house. It’s seven blocks I’ve walked, biked, and driven so many times in my life I don’t even look at the houses I pass anymore. But tonight I do. Tonight I wonder how long these houses will be like this—when I look at them I flash on shaggy lawns gone to seed, chipped paint, smashed windows.
The house looks dark, but they could just be in bed. It is the middle of the night, after all. At least that’s what I tell myself. I park in their driveway and try to be silent when I shut the car door. The neighboring houses look just like they should at this time of night—interior lights off, porch lights on. I slip up the steps to the front door of Charlie’s and ring the bell. I can hear it inside, but nobody comes.
The garage door is shut, so I can’t tell if the car is there. I sneak around back and open the gate to the backyard. It’s so dark back here that I almost fall over a huge bag of dog food someone’s left on the ground, torn open. I hear a low growl, and in the dimness I can see a pair of eyes glittering up at me.
Tank’s here.
Tank, a hundred-pound mutt who looks like a cross between a German shepherd and a bloodhound, is seven now. He’s been Charlie’s steadfast companion since he was nine years old—the year Charlie’s mom divorced his real dad. The fact that Tank’s locked in the backyard with a food supply tells me that something is really wrong. Tank’s not a backyard sort of dog. He’s a spoiled house dog, who sleeps in Charlie’s room on a huge dog bed that is as thick as my mattress at home. Mrs. Bradley says he needs the support because he’s “big boned.” Mr. Holzer, Charlie’s stepdad, isn’t as crazy about Tank, but I can’t believe they left him like this. I bet Charlie is pissed.
“Tank.” I don’t like the sound of the growl, but I’ve known Tank since I was nine, too, so I’m hoping he’ll be happy once he knows it’s me. “It’s me, buddy, Nick. C’mere.” I grab a handful of dog food from the bag and crouch down, holding it out to him. He noses the air and I say a few more encouraging words. Finally he walks up to sniff my hand, and I see that his back legs are trembling.
“Oh, Tank. Poor guy.” I smooth his fur and scratch him on the chest, his favorite place in the world to get scratched. This seems to make him feel a little better. “What happened, buddy? Why’d they just leave you here?” He looks up at me with those sad brown eyes, and I swear he’s trying to tell me. “Well, let’s see if we can get in the house, Tank.”
I check the sliding door in back, but it’s locked. So I swing up onto the half shed that sits under Charlie’s second-floor bedroom and try his window. Unlocked, of course. We sneak in and out of Charlie’s house all the time, ever since his mom married Mr. Holzer. He’s pretty much a control freak, so we’ve had to get by on sneakiness in order to do anything.
I switch on the light and check out Charlie’s room. He has a bunk bed and the top bunk, where he sleeps, is unmade, but that’s how it always is, no matter how many times his mom tells him to make it. Some of his drawers are half open, but it’s more like he was in a hurry grabbing stuff, not like somebody was searching his room. I don’t see his jacket in the closet—he wears an old army jacket that has a name patch embroidered with the word Tiny. I never got the joke, but he loves it. I check his other stuff. Laptop, phone, iPod, all missing. Underwear and sock drawers, empty.
They are definitely gone.
I go downstairs to the sliding glass door where Tank is waiting and let him in. I lock it after him. He seems to be relieved to be back in the house, but he keeps looking around, like he wonders where the family is now.
“Aw, buddy. They had to go, I guess. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you.” Tank follows me around the house, whining softly while I look for some sort of clue to where Charlie’s family might have been headed. I don’t see anything that would tip me off. Just a lot more evidence that they left in a hurry—dinner dishes half empty and still on the table, the kitchen sort of a mess. His mom is a little anal about things being clean, and she never would have left it like this if there had been time to clean up. I check the garage from the door off the kitchen: no car.
A peek out the living-room window reveals no sign of life on the street.
Tank nuzzles my hand. Suddenly I feel as though every muscle in my body is drained of energy. I’m so bone tired I could drop right there on the living-room carpet. I just want to curl up and sleep, and wake up tomorrow with everything different. I have to get my stuff first, though, from the car.
Tank doesn’t want me to go, and he whines when I open the front door.
“No, you wait here.” I shake my finger at him and he backs up, a worried look on his face. “I’ll come right back.”
In the Subaru I grab my backpack and start to lock up the car when I remember the box. Optimus Prime, the gizmo, the device. Holy crap—the device. I bet this is what those guys meant when they said that back at the house. Dad said it was important. I grab it from the folds of the sleeping bag in the duffel and shove it into my backpack. Then I lock the car, shutting the door quietly. Standing in the driveway of Charlie’s house, looking around his neighborhood, which is exactly like my neighborhood, really, everything seems so normal. It’s dark because it’s supposed to be, at whatever time in the middle of the night it is now. The streetlights are lighting the neighborhood and everybody is snuggled in bed. Like Charlie should be, like I should be. Like Dad should be.
I lock the front door of the house. Maybe this can be a safe haven for a while. My house sure as hell isn’t anymore. I keep hearing the crackling noise from the radios of the men who killed my dad, and it makes me shudder. I wonder who those guys were. Government? Some rogue agency? Could they somehow trace me to here? I’m too wiped to think straight.
Tank follows me up the stairs to Charlie’s room, so close his chin gets nicked a couple of times by my heel. Charlie’s door doesn’t have a lock, and I’m not sure what good it would do if it did, but I shut it anyway. Drop the backpack, kick off my shoes, and fall onto the bottom bunk with all my clothes still on, too tired to care. Tank starts to lie down on his mega bed, but he has second thoughts and jumps onto the bottom bunk with me. I don’t tell him to get down. I throw an arm around him and listen to his heartbeat, for the few seconds I manage to stay awake.
I think it’s morning. I can’t tell. The window in Charlie’s room frames a dark sky, but I remember that doesn’t mean anything anymore. I hear Tank whining softly and sit up. He’s sitting at the door, wagging his tail and looking back at me with an I-have-to-pee look.
“Okay, boy. Just give me a minute.” I rub my eyes and try to stretch the kinks out of my shoulders. Tank leads me eagerly downstairs to the sliding door. Out in the backyard, he pees and then runs away, growling. I can’t make out what the problem is, so I go check it out. The bag of dog food has been dragged away from the back gate to the end of the yard—looks like a raccoon had a great meal. About half the bag is left, so I grab it and head for the house. Tank keeps furiously growling and sniffing the grass until he realizes I’m about to shut him out in the yard, and then he hightails it for the door.
My stomach is growling. I check the fridge and find eggs and bacon. Fifteen minutes and a half a cube of melted butter later, I’m ready to feast. Tank lies at my feet, eyeing my plate. Still no signal on my phone, so I switch on the television to see what they’re saying today.
Every channel is news.
I settle on one that seems to be doing national coverage and listen to the report, this time from a woman with a dark blue suit and a serious expression.
“. . . president says that the curfew will be enforced until further notice. The National Guard is being deployed in some areas of the country now, in order to control the looting and violence that seem to be increasing. Please remain in your homes if at all possible. If you need to venture out for food or medical supplies, be certain to do so during approved hours. Check your local stations for curfew hours, emergency procedures, availability of supplies, and other information. And as always, we urge you to remain calm. The situation is under control.”
The picture switches to a local news anchor. He’s just as quickly replaced by a montage of footage showing scenes from the city. A building, fully engulfed in flames, blazes bright against the dark sky; a guy in a hoodie running and throwing a brick into the plate-glass window of a bank; a shot of the freeway out of town, completely gridlocked with cars full of people trying to get away. Back to the news anchor, who looks almost panicked himself.
“We’ve lost contact with the Team Four mobile crew, but as soon as we can reestablish, we’ll be bringing you the latest. Stay tuned for—”
The picture cuts out, replaced by static.
To me, the situation doesn’t seem to be under control.
Tank pushes his nose against my knee and gives my plate another pointed look. I dump what’s left of my bacon and eggs on top of some of his kibble in a bowl and set it on the floor for him. Four seconds later, it’s gone.
“You’re gonna have to watch that, my friend. We don’t have an endless supply, I bet.” Tank looks up at me and tilts his head back and forth like he’s trying to figure out if I’m capable of actually communicating or if I’m just making random sounds.
After I make sure all of the curtains are pulled on all of the windows, I decide to see what we do have, and I start in the kitchen. Mrs. Bradley keeps the place stocked. There’s lots of pasta and cereal and canned stuff in the cupboards. The fridge is full, and when I look more carefully than I did when I grabbed the eggs, I see we can probably last here a long time. I check the downstairs bathroom, but it’s a guest bathroom, so there’s not much but pretty soap. Upstairs, in the family bathroom, there’s a ton of stuff that might come in handy. Aspirin, Band-Aids, some gauze, some peroxide. I check the nightstand next to the Mr. and Mrs. Holzer’s bed, just in case there’s a gun, but no luck there. I guess Mr. Holzer would have taken it, though, if they had one. I find a little metal flashlight in the back and shove it in my pocket.
Back downstairs, I go for the junk drawer in the kitchen—I know Charlie’s house almost as well as my own, and they have a junk drawer just like we do. It’s filled with odds and ends that are too good to throw out. That’s where we keep our batteries, and it turns out they do too. I find four that fit the flashlight I found upstairs. I find an old pocketknife and a pocket spray can of mace.
I spend the day switching the television on and off to see if it’s getting any stations. Nothing comes on until after my lunch—a ham-and-cheese sandwich with some rocky road ice cream from the freezer. Then it’s the channel with the SHOULD YOU BE AFRAID OF THE DARK? banner all over the screen. The reporter seems to be relishing the job of announcing all the shitty news. People are outright rioting in the city, and it sounds like it’s pretty much the same all over the country.
“It’s getting ugly out there, folks.” The guy shakes his head. “I’d stay in tonight if I were you.” He gives a nervous little laugh before the television cuts out again. I switch around, but no other stations come in either. It’s weird how little they’re saying about why it’s dark. They just keep saying the situation’s under control and showing looters smashing things.
By dinner, Tank and I have thoroughly inspected every inch of the fence line in the backyard because he seems convinced the raccoon will be back for an encore. I’ve tried my phone multiple times with no luck. I doubt they can trace a dead phone, so that’s good. I catch three more bits of television news coverage and check all the locks on the doors and windows twice. I peek out the windows pretty often, and I’ve seen a couple of people walking down the street now, lit by the streetlights. People who don’t look like they know where they’re going.
I fix us a dinner of Hamburger Helper, and after we eat I wash all the dishes that have been piling up. When I take a shower, Tank stations himself in a guard position on the bathroom rug until I get out. I think he’s worried that I’m going to disappear, like his whole family did. He watches every move I make with worried brown eyes.
Back downstairs, I get my backpack and take it with me to the couch. I flop down and open it up, and out falls the box. Optimus Prime. Hot tears spring to my eyes, and I shove the box back into the backpack. I dig past it and come up with a book. Lord of the Flies. It makes me think of Mrs. Martin—what happened to her? I think she lives in the city. I wonder if she’s safe. Did she manage to get out before it got crazy? Thinking of her makes me think of school, which makes me think of Lara. I hope she’s okay. Did her brother get her out, or is she still in the city? I wish I could call her. I wish I could call anyone, really.
The television is nothing but static. It’s so quiet, and so dark—even inside the house. I’m afraid to turn on too many lights now, ever since I noticed the people wandering down the street. I figure they’re refugees from the city, and I don’t want to draw too much attention. Right now the only illumination in the living room is a small table lamp next to the couch, and I’ve thrown a bandana over it to make it dim. I don’t think any of the glow can get past the curtains.
I’m not sure what I should do. Do I stay here for a while like I planned? It seemed like a good idea at first, but the wanderers give me the creeps. As long as they keep just wandering and don’t start trying doors, it’s fine, but I wonder how long that can last.
I’m so tired. I don’t want to think too hard right now. Every time I start to think, I see Dad, with three red blooms spreading across the front of his shirt. I see his eyes cloud over as the life leaves his body. The last thing I did was blame him for this whole mess. The last words I said to him were angry. I don’t want to remember any of it.
I pick up the book Mrs. Martin gave me and glance at the back. Doesn’t sound too uplifting, but it’s what I’ve got. Maybe it will keep my mind off other things. I stretch out on the couch and Tank lies next to me on the floor, and I start to read about a world with no grown-ups at all.
During the next few days, I stay inside the house, frozen in some sort of strange numbness. There have been gunshots but they’ve been far away. Twice I’ve heard screaming, but when I went to the window to peek out, I couldn’t see any sign of who was doing it. Tank follows me around looking worried, and when I let him out in the backyard to pee, he always stares up at me before he goes through the door, as though he thinks I might not let him back in.
I bring some sheets and blankets from upstairs and make a bed on the couch. I drag Tank’s bed down too, and earn yet another worried look. I try to barricade off the rooms I’m not using, to limit the number of ways people can break in and get to me and Tank. Maybe it’s paranoid, but after what happened to Dad and what’s going on outside, maybe not. Mr. Holzer doesn’t have many tools, just the usual hammer and some screwdrivers. I check the garage, but there’s no lumber in there—nothing to nail up to the stairway opening.
It doesn’t feel very safe here.
Lord of the Flies doesn’t do a great job of taking my mind off the situation. The boys in the book are on an island, shipwrecked and on their own. So far, they’ve set up their own society, and it isn’t one I’d want to be in—they’re fighting each other for power right from the start, and the bad guys seem to be the ones who take over.
I keep the television on all the time now, even though the light glowing from it makes me nervous. I don’t want it too obvious that anyone is in the house, but I don’t want to miss any information either, and it’s hard to know when the rare broadcast will happen. When it does, now the news is grim. The darkness is showing no signs of letting up. Thankfully, some of the sun’s warmth does penetrate the haze covering it. According to the reports, if it didn’t we would all be dead in a week or so, because the temperature would plummet so far that we would freeze. As it is, it’s about 20 degrees colder than it should be, and they say we’ll lose a degree or two a day because it isn’t warming back up in the daytime from the cooler night temperatures.
Right now, if things were normal, Charlie and I would probably be out looking for trouble in the neighborhood, roaming around in our cutoff jeans and tank tops, longboards under our arms, pulling stupid shit. We’d be feeling great, knowing that two full months separate us from school, and we have all summer to play.
As it is, I’m already wearing two pairs of pants and two shirts in the house. So far the heat still works, but the Holzers’ house is heated with oil, and I’m afraid to keep it really comfortable because I don’t know how much is left in their tank. I guess I’m lucky that they do use oil heat, because I saw one news flash about power grids going down. Here, at least so far, the lights and heat work, and water still comes out of the faucets. When that changes I’ll have to think about where to go. I can’t think too much about the future right now—it makes my head hurt. For now, I’m in a familiar place, and that will just have to be good enough.
On the morning of day seven at the Holzers’, I run out of milk. Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal, but I’ve spent the last week watching snippets of news coverage that include updates on how so many store shelves are now completely empty, and how freeways clogged with abandoned vehicles and fields of crops dying from lack of sunshine are causing supply problems the government isn’t sure how to solve. Mrs. Holzer had two gallons of milk in the fridge. When I finished the first, I didn’t give it much thought. When I upended the second on my bowl of cereal this morning and nothing but a dribble came out, I felt a moment of pure panic.
It finally hits me that I can’t stay here forever. There’s still food, but it won’t last, and the wanderers are getting scary. There are more of them now—it seems like every time I peek out the front window I see one or two people who obviously don’t live on the street. Sometimes there’s a group. Twice now somebody has pounded on the front door. I can’t decide if it’s Tank’s huge bark that has kept anyone from trying to kick down the door, or if they’re just not that desperate yet. Either way, I think it’s time for us to hit the road.
I’m going to pack up the car and figure out where to head. I’m leaning toward going on to the city. I know that most people have been trying to get out of it, but in a way, that makes it seem more attractive—maybe there will be less chance of running into trouble with most people going the opposite direction from me. And in the back of my mind, I keep thinking of Lara. Maybe she’s still there, up in her penthouse apartment. Everything good, like hope, and warmth, and sunshine, all of it seems to be wrapped up with her, with the last good night of my life. Maybe she needs help. I can see her face in my mind, her soft pink lips and her smile. I can still feel that kiss. Besides, with the car it’s not that long a drive, assuming the roads are open. It can’t hurt to check. If I find her, maybe she and I can head toward . . . somewhere safe.
I take a shower while Tank does his guard-dog act on the bathroom rug. Then I head downstairs to see if there’s anything more from the Holzers’ I might need to take with me. The Subaru is loaded with the supplies Dad stocked up on, so I doubt I will need to add much in terms of food, but better to be prepared. One thing I know I want to take is the three sets of thermal underwear I found in Charlie’s room—part of his snowboarding ensemble, I guess. They’ll come in handy in these new, chillier temperatures.
In Mr. Holzer’s office I risk turning on the overhead light, since there’s only one window in the room and it’s facing the backyard. I make sure the curtains are fully closed first and then flip the wall switch. The ceiling light blazes. My eyes are so accustomed to dim lighting now that the bright light makes them blink furiously, and water. Once I’ve adjusted, I go through Mr. Holzer’s desk drawers. There are some more batteries that will fit the flashlight, but that’s all that seems useful. The desk calendar, one of those big ones that people lay flat on their desks, has handwritten notes in some of the date squares. June 7 has Charlie last day—that was the last day of school. June 14 has roses/anniversary. There are no more notes in the days, but there is something scrawled in the margin of the calendar.
not weather?
meet Bob Detroit
underground/geothermal
I stare at the words for a while, trying to figure them out. In my head I hear Dad saying, “It’s not a cloud.” Charlie’s text—I dig my phone out of my pocket and look at it again.
We r leaving soon. My stepdad knows some guy and he thinks we’ll b safer in
Safer in Detroit? I wonder. Who’s the guy? Is it this Bob? And what does underground mean? Was Mr. Holzer involved in some sort of underground movement? Geothermal is some sort of heating method, I think—we learned about it in class. What’s in Detroit? I look at the calendar pages prior to June, but there’s no reference to anything having to do with Detroit, or with anyone named Bob.
I power on Mr. Holzer’s computer, and the monitor lights up. His desktop wallpaper is a picture of him and Mrs. Bradley and Charlie from when they went to the Grand Canyon last year. Just seeing Charlie’s face makes me feel better for a minute, but it fades quickly. I don’t know where he is, or if I’ll ever see him again. For all I know, Charlie could be dead, one of the many casualties of the violence that’s raging in places out there.
I’m tempted to log in to Facebook, but I know for sure that’s a way to get traced, so I don’t. I nose around in Mr. Holzer’s computer files, but there doesn’t seem to be anything that relevant. When I look at his email contacts I come up with a Robert Langley, who could be Bob, so I paste his email into Google and I get a hit. Robert Langley, CEO of Geothermal Systems, Detroit, Michigan. It’s some company that installs heating systems in buildings. I start to enter the website into my phone for later, but then I realize I don’t know how long my phone is going to keep working. There’s a little notebook on the desk—one of those free things banks give to their account holders. Its pages are all blank. I find a pen in the drawer and write down the company name and address, along with the guy’s name. I know it’s a long shot, but it’s the only lead I have on Charlie.
Tank, who’s been lying at my feet, erupts into snarling barks and launches himself out of the room. I run after him and find him leaping against the front door. I don’t want to yell at him, partially because I don’t want whatever’s out there to know I’m in here, so I just let him bark. I step up to the door and listen, trying to see if I can hear anything. At first there’s nothing, but then I hear what sounds like a car running. I peer through the peephole, trying to ignore the B movie scenes that come to mind where the person who does that gets an ice pick to the eye. Through the fishbowl lens I can barely make out the shape of the Subaru, sans headlights, backing out of the Holzers’ driveway.
“Shit!” I unlock the door and run out onto the driveway without thinking. Everything I have is in that car—everything I need to survive. It’s hard to tell, but it looks like there are two people in the Subaru. The driver sees me running toward them, and he starts to back out faster. I can hear Tank right behind me, barking like crazy at the car. I keep running. I don’t know what I think I’m going to do—throw myself on the windshield? But I can’t just watch all those supplies drive away.
The passenger looks like a young girl, no older than me for sure. As the car swings out onto the street, she looks straight at me from the passenger-side window. At first she just shrugs at me and shakes her head in response to my screaming, but then, when I get closer to the car, she rolls down the window and sticks out a gun. Without a single second’s hesitation, she shoots at me. The sound of the gun scares me almost as much as the bullet I feel whiz past my face. I am frozen to the spot, and I see her point the gun again, this time at Tank.
“Tank!” I yell as loud as I can, and between the split second Tank hesitates and the forward motion of the car, the bullet misses. The Subaru speeds down the road and away. The last thing I see of it are the taillights as it turns onto the main road.
I’m not sure how, but I end up on the ground. Tank is licking my face and whining, and all I can do is hold my head and try to stop the ringing in my ears from the shots. I feel completely defeated. I have no idea what I’m going to do now.
“Best get inside, boy. They might be comin’ back.”
I’m back on my feet in a second, although I almost fall over trying to get my balance. An old gray-haired man is standing on the sidewalk in front of the Holzers’ house. He’s holding a gun down at his side with one hand and ruffling the fur on Tank’s head with his other. Tank abandoned me as soon as he saw him.
“You’re a good dog, Tank, always have been.” The man turns to go, then swings back to me, his reluctance clear in the way he has to force his body to switch directions.
“Listen, you got enough to eat in there?” He doesn’t look like he’s going to wait long for an answer.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Doug’s dad.”
When I shake my head, he nods toward the house next to the Holzers’. “Doug Gannon. He lives in that house with his wife and kids. I was on my way to come visit, see the grandkids, when all this shit came down. I got here and they was already gone.”
An engine roars on the main road. The man shakes his head. “No time to talk right now. People’s crazy out there, and gettin’ crazier. We shouldn’t be out here in the open. Listen, let me get a couple things and I’ll come by. I’ll knock the SOS code so you’ll know it’s me.”
He hurries away, and I hear the door to the house shut. The engine revs again in the distance, and I realize I’d better take the old man’s advice and get off the street.
“Come on, Tank.” Tank looks back in the direction the guy went and whines. But he follows me back to the front door of the Holzers’. I lock it and turn the deadbolt, but it doesn’t seem like enough. So I drag the buffet from the dining room into the living room and shove it up against the door. It’s pretty heavy; it might buy some time if someone were trying to break in.
I slump on the couch, absently scratching Tank’s head while I try to think. What the hell do I do now? My whole plan to get to the city is screwed, all of my food supplies are gone save what’s left in this house, and people with guns know I’m here.
My backpack is leaning against the couch half open, and I see a folded scrap of pink paper inside. I know what it says, but I unfold it anyway. Just her address, and that little heart she drew. Lara. She might need help. And I’m going to get to her, somehow.
Tank leaps up and runs toward the sliding door. I hear a tapping, fast, then slow, then fast. I get up and go to the door. The tapping happens again, fast, slow, fast. I sure as hell hope that’s Morse code for SOS. I go to the far end of the door and peek through the curtain. The old man is standing by the handle getting ready to knock again. He’s got a bag with him—one of those soft leather briefcases.
“’Bout time,” he says when I let him inside.
“Sorry,” I mumble. I’m not sure why he’s here anyway. I back up to let him get farther into the room and lock the sliding door. I wonder if I should have hidden the gun that’s on the end table, or better yet, if I should be holding it right now.
“So you’re not a Holzer, right?” He eyes me, squinting in the dim light.
“No. I’m Charlie’s best friend.”
“That their kid?”
“Yeah.”
“They gone too, huh?”
I nod.
“So why you here anyway? Where’s your family?”
“I just had my dad, and he’s . . .” I can’t finish.
The guy says nothing for a long time, just watches me. Then he looks around the room. “You going to offer an old man a seat?”
“Uh, sure.” I gesture toward the dining-room table, since the couch is covered with sheets and a blanket. We both sit, but I stand right away.
“I have some Coke in the fridge. Want one?”
“Got any beer?”
“Actually, yeah.” There’s a six-pack of Budweiser in the fridge. I’ve been eyeing them since I arrived, but I figured it would be better not to have any. I get a couple of bottles out and bring them to the table. We twist our tops off and watch the vapor drift out of the bottles.
“Beer fog.”
“Huh?” I don’t get it.
“We used to call that little bit of smoke that comes out of the beer bottle fog.” The guy laughs a little and shakes his head. He holds up his bottle. “Here’s to your family, and to mine, wherever they may be.” He takes a long swallow of beer. Then he looks me in the eye. “Now, what’s your plan?”
I take a sip of my beer. “I don’t really have a plan anymore. My plan just backed out of the driveway.”
“Ahh.” The guy nods. “Well, the car wouldn’t get you too far anyway, I bet. Haven’t you been watching the news? Almost all the freeways are blocked with abandoned vehicles. Pretty sad state of affairs in terms of the potential of the youth of America if that’s all you had up your sleeve.”
The last thing I need right now is a lecture. Especially from some old fart who’s probably just here for my beer. “What’s your name, anyway?”
“Name’s Gus. You?”
“I’m Nick. You have a better plan, Gus?”
“Nah.” Gus shakes his head and takes another swig. “Not for me, anyway. I figure I’m staying right here.” He stares at the tabletop for a long minute before he looks back up at me. “I don’t know,” he says, his voice catching just once, “where my boy went, or whether he plans to come back here. It’s a wide world out there for sure, and I figure the best thing I can do is to wait for him here. I don’t even have the first clue where I’d head if I were to start off looking. But you—you obviously thought you had a place to go in that car. Am I right?” He waits for my answer.
“I guess. I thought I’d head into the city, see if I could find a friend of mine.”
“The city.” Gus sits back, contemplating his bottle. “The city sounds rough, from what they say on the television.”
“Looks to me like it’s getting pretty rough out here,” I say, but I know what he means. The news coverage is all flaming storefronts and roaming gangs.
“Well.” Gus sets the leather bag on the table and pushes back its flap. “I brought some things that might be useful to you. I figured I could make a trade for some food, if you have any to spare, but I’d actually just take beer if you have any more.”
“What if I didn’t have anything to trade?”
Aw, hell, then I’d just give you the stuff. Not like I’ll be needing it.” He pulls some maps out of the bag, and a ring with two keys on it.
I don’t see what good any of it will do me. But I’m starting to feel bad for the guy. “I have more beer. You’re welcome to it.”
“That’s good news, son. Now listen up. If you’re going to go to the city, you’re looking at a journey. It’s not so easy, like just zipping in there in your car, now. You’d best stay off the roads, and I would say travel at night, but it looks like that won’t be required advice now. I dug up some maps for you.” He points to a well-creased map of the county. “And here’s something you might want to keep very safe.” He reaches into the back and pulls out a road atlas—the kind that’s bound with a plastic spiral. The words United States Road Atlas are printed on the cover in red letters.
“What am I going to need that for?”
“One never knows, son.” Gus takes another drink. “It looks to me like what we have here is an apocalypse. Do you know what that is?”
It’s all I can do not to laugh. “Are you kidding me? I’m the generation who gets to hear it predicted every forty seconds on some news show. So yeah, I think I’m familiar.”
“Fair enough.” He smoothes the cover of the atlas. “Knowledge will fade, wisdom will falter.” He shrugs. “I forget the rest of the poem. But you’ll need all the information you can get, and if the power goes, and people keep burning shit up, you better keep what you can close. This atlas might be one of the last ones that survive, depending on how bad this thing gets.”
“Wow. You’re not serious, are you?”
Gus just looks at me. “Why in the world would I be joking at a time like this? The world is ending, my friend. The things we take for granted now, like that atlas, they are going to be gone like that. In a wink of your eye.”
We both take a big gulp of beer.
“Now this . . . this is also important.” He picks up the key ring. “This will open a locker in the city, the contents of which could be helpful. I’ll write down the address for you.”
“What’s in the locker?” I’m thinking maybe this guy has watched too many sorcerer movies.
“It’s a bike. A very special bike, to me. Never thought I’d be handing it over to some kid.”
I don’t know what to say. If Gus thinks some ancient ten-speed is going to help me out, I’m going to let him think it.
Gus spends the next few hours reviewing my supplies. He adds a few things from his son’s house, like a hatchet and a small pistol. When I tell him I already have two guns, he says without the pistol he’ll still have five.
“Can’t have too many guns, son.”
He makes several trips back and forth between houses as he sees what I do and don’t have. He brings three half-full disposable lighters, four cans of tuna, and some rope. It’s stuff I know I can use, but I’m feeling a little guilty about taking it.
“Don’t you think you might need some of this?”
He brushes me off. “Not as much as you will, son. I plan to hole up and sit next to the fire, keep my toes warm burning that cord of wood my son bought for next winter. I have enough to get by for quite some time.”
I can tell he’s just trying to make me feel better. I bet his son’s house is stocked about the same way the Holzers’ house is, which means he’s going to run out of food soon. I don’t have the heart to tell him the Subaru had enough supplies in it to keep us both going for weeks. I don’t want to think about how stupid I was not to put the car in the garage. Or whether the goons who stole it will come back to the neighborhood, looking for more. What will Gus do then?
“What if you came with me?”
He smiles at me, but he doesn’t make eye contact. “I need to wait here, son. I might have family coming back.”
For a while, we just sit together, drinking our beers, thinking our thoughts. I don’t know what his are about. Mine are about my dad.
I wish he were here. Gus reminds me of him, in some ways. My dad would help me out too, if I were a strange kid who showed up next door. He would try to make sure I was okay. He would give me supplies he could probably use himself. He was a good guy. No matter what his part was in the darkness coming, I know he didn’t mean to cause any harm. I know he’d try to fix it if he could.
It’s eight in the morning, but it looks like it’s around ten o’clock at night. My backpack is stuffed with everything we could fit into it and I’m wearing a set of Charlie’s thermal underwear beneath my jeans and sweater, along with a down jacket that belongs to Gus’s son. Gus showed up really early today to cook me a huge breakfast of scrambled eggs and sliced ham and toast that he brought from next door. He’s a pretty good cook.
For the last two days Gus has been helping me—showing me different routes into the city on the map, drilling me with facts: keep hydrated but don’t waste water, eat small meals all day while I’m walking, sleep well hidden from all vantage points, with my back against something like a wall or a rock or a hill if possible.
The television is out more and more. When we check the internet, the stories seem even more dated than the ones on TV. I show Gus the notes Mr. Holzer scribbled and the Geothermal Systems site. I show him the last text I got from Charlie. All he says is that it sounds like a place to start.
I hold the curtain back from the sliding glass door, staring out at the backyard. The grass looks weird—sort of limp and gray—and the dandelions sprouting in the lawn are a creepy white color, like plants that have been growing under a rock. They’ll all be dead before they form their third leaves. Some of the ornamental plants have already succumbed to the colder temperatures. The only things that look sort of normal are the pine trees; so far they seem okay.
I don’t want to go out there. But it’s time for me to do just that. I don’t know if I’ll find Lara, but I have to try. If I don’t find her, I’m heading to Detroit. Maybe there’s something there—maybe Charlie’s there.
Gus comes out of the kitchen, drying his hands on a dish towel. “Make sure you stay off the roads like I said, son.”
“I will.” I let the curtain drop. “Sure you aren’t coming?”
Gus doesn’t answer.
When I turn around, he’s staring at the tabletop, shaking his head. “I should, son. I know I should go with you instead of letting you face the trip alone. But I’m old. And if I’m going to die, I expect I’ll do it next door, waiting for my son.” He looks up and his eyes are shining in the dim light. “I’m sorry to let you down.”
Part of me wishes he would come, because I am scared and I don’t want to be alone out there. But he doesn’t owe me anything. He’s tried to help me as much as he can. He could have shot me that first day and taken the supplies in the Holzer house for himself.
“You’re doing the right thing, Gus. I’ll be fine.”
He nods, a little too eager to agree. “I know you will be. Just stay off the roads, and keep one of the guns at the ready.”
I pick up my backpack and shrug it onto my shoulders. It’s pretty heavy now, packed with everything we could think of that might prove important. I slip on some gloves and it’s time to go.
“Well.” I’m not sure how to say good-bye. “Take good care of Tank.” I rub the top of the dog’s head. He’s been watching us all morning, getting my stuff ready to go. He knows something’s up.
Gus doesn’t seem to know what to say either. He keeps his eyes on Tank. “He’s gonna miss you.”
I slide open the door to the backyard. One step, two steps, and I’m outside. I turn, and before I close the door behind me I take one last look: Gus and Tank are watching me with the same look in their eyes.
“See ya.” And I shut the door.
Before I even get to the back gate, the door opens. Tank flies out of it and runs to me, dancing around my feet and snuffling, almost panicked.
“He wasn’t having none of it.” Gus leans out the door, tosses me a bag of dry dog kibble. “Probably for the best. I’d just have ended up eating him when things got tough.”
I know he’s joking, or at least I think he is, but people are doing it. The latest news broadcasts—before they stopped altogether two nights ago—were brutal. One clip showed the head of a golden retriever, tossed in a gutter like garbage. There’s no food in parts of the country, and people are desperate.
I raise a hand to Gus, in a final farewell. He nods.
“Only one thing I know about life, son. And that is this: don’t ever give up. It’s always darkest right before the dawn.” He turns and disappears inside the house. The sliding door closes. That’s that, I guess.
Tank is ecstatic, pushing his nose against my hand and leaning on my legs. I kneel and try to hold him still. I shove the kibble into my pack’s outside pocket. It’s not much, but I can share my food too.
“Okay, Tank. But you better do what I tell you.”
A peek out the gate reveals an empty street. I slip through and latch the gate behind me. And I’m on my way.
We walk quickly, heading down toward the main road. Everything is strange looking. The bushes and grass all look like the backyard did—gray and flattened. It’s cold enough that I feel every breath I take as it enters my lungs. My eyes are tired within the first twenty minutes from straining to see in the dark. Gus said the best way to go would be to follow the freeway, as long as I just use it as a guide and stay off it.
Once we hit the main road out of the suburbs, it’s not long until we reach an on-ramp. I walk halfway up and try to scope out the empty freeway. No abandoned cars out there that I can see, not like the descriptions of snarled roads across the country that news reports were showing. I stand still, listening for any sound, looking for any sign that people are around, but I see and hear nothing. Tank sticks right with me, as though he’s heeling. I wish I could stay on the freeway because the road lights are still working, spilling isolated pools of illumination every two hundred feet or so. It’s comforting, and I bet it would make travel faster too.
I’m standing on the edge of the on-ramp, weighing the odds, when a green station wagon comes careening toward me from the freeway, veering crazily. Tank and I barely have time to throw ourselves into the scrub brush before it rolls right over the spot where we were standing. I hear the sound of impact and the screech of twisting metal. Before I can get up to see what the car hit, another car comes racing down the ramp just as fast as the first. Breaks squeal as the car stops suddenly. The motor idles. I risk peeking over the tops of the bushes Tank and I are hiding behind and see a red Mustang. The driver’s side door starts to open, and I duck, holding Tank down too. I hear the door shut and then footsteps, eerily distinct in the quiet after the roaring engines and crash noises. I edge upward to see if I can get a glimpse. A man is walking toward the station wagon, slowly, deliberately. The station wagon smashed into a light pole, and the front end is wrapped around it. I can hear someone trying to get one of the doors open, but it looks like they must be crunched shut.
The man has a shotgun leaning against his shoulder, barrel pointed to the sky. He’s tall and he’s wearing black leather everything. Pants, vest, hat. Some sort of white symbol is painted on the back of the jacket—it looks like a crescent moon. He stands in front of the station wagon, watching it, for the longest time. The door noises stop. I keep waiting for him to go help the people inside, but instead he lowers the shotgun and points it toward the front windshield. A muffled scream comes from the station wagon right before he unloads into it. He just keeps shooting until there’s nothing left of the windshield and no sign of life in the car.
I barely have time to duck again before he turns around. I hear his footsteps going back to the still-idling Mustang, hear the door shut. He doesn’t drive off right away, and I have a sick fear that he’s looking around, that he might be able to see me and Tank, who’s being as invisible as a hundred-pound mutt can be, but who is also, well, a hundred-pound mutt, hiding behind some scrubby bushes. Finally the motor revs, and the Mustang heads back up the ramp. I listen to it for a long time, until the sound of the engine is completely gone.
I don’t want to go look at what’s inside the station wagon.
Tank whines when I start toward the car. He doesn’t want to get close to it, and once I am near, I understand why. There is a man in the driver’s seat; I can see him through the front, where the windshield was before that guy turned it into a million tiny crystals. Some of them cover part of the man’s face—or what’s left of it.
There’s a boy, about five years old, sitting in the passenger seat. He’s wearing an orange parka and a rainbow-colored hat that looks like it was knitted by somebody—maybe his mom. He’s holding on to a stuffed green dinosaur.
I know I should do something practical. I should check the back of the car for supplies, or see if the man has any ammo, or a knife, or anything I could use. But I can’t. I can’t go any closer to the car at all. All I can do is turn and walk away, shaking. I want to unsee that little boy more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life, but I know, somehow, that I never will.
I walk for hours, following the freeway, keeping out of sight as much as possible. I hear a couple of cars on it, but I’m staying far enough away that I don’t see them. Mostly I can stick to green areas with some cover made up of bushes and the occasional tree, but sometimes I’m forced to travel along frontage roads. I don’t see any sign of life along them, but I have a feeling that doesn’t mean much. I try to be as quiet as possible, and keep out of sight.
Navigating in the dark is hard. I risk the flashlight a few times, but Gus said to try to avoid that—he said my eyes will adjust better if I don’t use light. He also said that the flashlight is like a beacon to anyone looking. I don’t want a beacon, that’s for sure. Who knows who’s out there looking.
Gus gave me an old-fashioned wristwatch—the kind that you have to wind. It reads eight p.m. when I decide I can’t go any farther and I stop for the night. I find a spot about fifty yards off the freeway, a spot with four or five really tall bushes. Their leaves look gray and sort of withered, but they still provide cover. Tank runs right into the middle of them sniffing, but he doesn’t flush anything out, and he doesn’t act like there’s somebody hiding in there, so I guess it’s safe.
I crawl through the branches into the middle of the bushes. It covers us pretty good—I bet we can’t be seen by passersby. Before I do anything else, I wind the watch like Gus showed me, not too tight, then I unroll the sleeping bag and get in it. Tank watches eagerly while I rummage through the pack and choose our dinner: one can of tuna, one handful of dog kibble, and a bottle of water to split between us. He eats his kibble while eyeing my can of tuna the whole time. When I’m finished with it, I pour some of the water into the can and set it out for him. It helps remove some of the tuna smell, which can’t hurt. Who knows what’s creeping around out there.
Once I am as far down into the sleeping bag as I can get, Tank snuffles. I try to ignore him, but he snuffles again, and when I uncover my head he’s sitting right next to me, shivering and looking at me with his big brown eyes.
“You’re kidding, right?” I wait as though he might answer me. “A big tough guy like you?” He keeps staring and shivering.
He knows he’s got me when I start unzipping the sleeping bag. He waits patiently, and then when I hold it open and pat my side, he settles down, lying with his back to me. I fold the sleeping bag over both of us, but I can’t get it zipped back up with him in it. As it turns out, it doesn’t matter, because Tank is like a heater. I am warm and toasty all night long.
It isn’t a sound that wakes me. It’s the feeling of Tank, tensing his entire body. Just as I wake he starts growling, so low in his throat that if he wasn’t lying right next to me I wouldn’t be able to hear it. I put my hand on his shoulder and feel the vibration of his growls. He’s looking away, toward the direction we came from last night.
Then I hear it: the sound of people walking, pushing through the tall grass. I move my hand to Tank’s muzzle and bring his face around to me. I put my finger up to my mouth.
“Shhhhhhhhhhh. Quiet, Tank.” I sure as hell hope he knows what that means. I hold him close to me, letting him know he is not to get up and run out at whoever they are. The noise gets closer. I slowly move so that I’m kneeling in the sleeping bag, keeping a tight hold on Tank, and I try to see through the bushes into the darkness.
I see a bobbing light and realize that one of them has a flashlight. It looks like they are moving single file, with the person at the front of the line holding the flashlight. The last one has a flashlight too, and shines it up and down the line of people. I make out six between the leader and the last guy. I can’t see much, but it’s clear that the six—all women or girls—are tied at their wrists and then tied to each other, all in a line. When the flashlight beam flickers over the faces, I see that their cheeks shine where tears are streaking downward.
None of the prisoners make a sound. They don’t struggle, they don’t cry out; they just trudge along like robots. I have no idea what must have happened to them to make them that docile, or what will happen to them when they get where they are going. I want to stop them, to stop the chain of events that has been set into motion. I think about the gun in my hand. Would it do any good to leap out of the bushes and start shooting? Would it stop what’s going to happen to the women? Can I overpower these two guys?
By the time I’ve decided all it will do is get me killed, the group has passed us by. I feel so helpless, but I don’t know what else to do. I guess the wanderers I’d been seeing in the suburbs, and the people who stole the Subaru, were just the beginnings of people starting to freak out. They definitely hadn’t prepared me for, first, the guy in the red Mustang, and now this human slave gang. Tank keeps quietly growling even after I can’t hear or see them anymore.
They must be following the freeway, like me and Tank. That’s a problem. I don’t want to chance traveling behind them and passing them while they rest. They’re moving slowly, far slower than we are, and I think I can pass them if I take the freeway for a while. Not the safest thing, but safer than catching up to them.
After drinking half of a bottle of water, I let Tank have the rest. I set down another handful of kibble for him and eat a banana. Gus had put the ones he found on his son’s kitchen counter in the freezer immediately. He said he knew they would rot fast and he figured freezing might preserve them a little longer. This one has thawed out by now and it’s surprisingly good, as long as I don’t look at it. I get about two thirds of the way done before the image of the station wagon comes into my head again. I drop the rest for Tank, who seems happy to eat it.
Once we’re packed back up, I listen hard, and then I push out of our bushes. Tank follows, ready to go where I lead. I don’t see any sign of anyone ahead of us on the frontage road. We travel along it to the first on-ramp, and I scope out the freeway as far ahead as I can see. It looks abandoned, but I know that can change fast, and there’s nowhere to hide if it does. But I don’t have another option right now, so up the ramp we go.
The one good thing is that the freeway along this stretch is high enough that we can’t be seen from the surface roads, so all I have to worry about is whoever might be on it with me. I start to jog, but I quickly decide that I won’t last long at that pace, so I return to a steady walk. Tank sticks close. It’s funny—I remember all the times Charlie and I had to run and catch Tank when he got out of the backyard and ran through the neighborhood. He doesn’t seem eager to stray now.
We make great time, because there’s nothing but even ground and it’s pretty well lit by the freeway lights. By the time three hours have passed, I’m betting we’re far ahead of the weird crew we saw earlier. Still, I don’t want to risk it. I decide to stay with the freeway for a while longer.
I regret that decision almost immediately.
I hear the car before I see it, but I try to tell myself it’s just my imagination, that it could be anything. By the time it becomes clear that it’s the sound of a motor, it’s too late. The car’s zooming toward me, on the opposite side of the freeway.
It’s a sedan of some sort, and it’s traveling fast. The closest exit ramp is not in sight, so there’s no way we could run for it. I check over the side of the freeway to see if we could jump, but it’s too high. We’d probably both break our legs. I look around, but there is just no place to hide. The best I can do is to make myself and Tank as small as I can against the concrete barriers. I crouch down next to him and watch the car come. Maybe, just maybe, they won’t even notice us, given how fast they’re speeding along. I’m wearing dark clothes and Tank is a mixture of dark brown and black, and we’re not directly under one of the lights.
No such luck. The sedan slows as it approaches us. It’s a dark color, with sleek, low lines—I don’t think I’ve seen a car like it in real life, only in those ads in car magazines. The tinted windows keep the interior a mystery. I have my gun in my hand, like Gus told me to do, but I don’t know if I should show it. Whoever is in the sedan might just shoot me dead if I do. I stand up as it pulls closer. The freeway here is split by concrete barriers instead of a median. The car pulls up right next to the barrier, as close as it can get to our side of the road.
Nothing happens. I stare at the driver’s-side window, and I’m sure whoever is inside is staring back at me. But neither of us makes a move. Finally I start walking in the direction we were headed before the damn car showed up. When we get past it, I turn and walk backward. It starts moving in reverse, keeping pace with us. I show my gun, and the car slows, then stops. But after two seconds, it starts following us. I show my gun again, this time in a more no-nonsense sort of way. The car stops. I keep moving, slowly, watching, trying not to trip. The dark window rolls down about four inches. I stop and point my gun straight at the window. I can see the gun shaking in my hand, but I’m hoping whoever unrolled that window can’t. I hope I look like I mean business. I also hope, rather fervently, that I’m not about to die.
For a few tense moments, nothing happens. Then I see movement and a hand comes out of the window waving something—it looks like toilet paper. Finally I just shrug and hold up my own hands in the universal WTF? sign. The window rolls down even more, and I can see a guy in the car, a balding guy wearing wire-rimmed glasses. He keeps waving the toilet paper.
“White flag?” He sort of whisper-shouts the words, looking around like he’s afraid someone will hear him. I am afraid someone will hear him, so I walk over closer to the cement barricade, keeping the gun pointed just below the window. The guy’s really ugly, with old acne scars all over his face—the worst case I’ve ever seen. But he doesn’t look like a killer.
“What did you say?”
He looks exasperated. “White flag, kid. Surrender, you know? As in, don’t shoot me.”
“Oh.”
The guy watches me for a minute to see if I’m going to lower the gun. I keep it where it is.
“Figures,” the guy says, looking disgusted. “I feel like I have to stop because I see a teenager and his dog walking around in the dark. Only it turns out the teenager is armed and dangerous. Great.” He starts to roll up the window.
“Wait.” I point the gun at the ground. “I have to be careful, you know?”
He stops the window, looks at me with an expression I can’t quite read. “Oh, I do know. I’ve seen some crazy stuff the last few days. Tell you what. Let’s make a deal that for the next three minutes, because that’s as long as I plan on staying here, neither one of us will shoot the other. Okay?”
“Do you have a gun?”
“For all you know I’m pointing one right at your balls, okay?”
I nod.
He nods back. “Okay. So, thing one, you seem to be headed in the wrong direction—the city is a mess, or haven’t you heard?”
“I have to check on someone. And where you’re headed isn’t so great either.”
He sighs. “My luck. I have to check on someone too, though, and then I’ll be hightailing it to warmer climes. I can give you a ride if you want. And that dog too, I guess.”
This makes me suspicious. “Why would you do that?”
He considers me. “You’ve heard of common human decency, right?”
“Heard of it. Haven’t seen much lately.” I think of the men who killed my father. Of the screaming in the suburban streets. Of the girl in the Subaru, ready to shoot me without a qualm. Of the leather-clad man who killed that man and his little boy.
“It still exists, my friend.”
His voice brings me back to the freeway. I think of Gus, sitting in his son’s house, waiting to die. “I guess it does.”
“So? Want a ride?”
I consider my options. I can keep walking and maybe run into someone like that leather-clad guy or, worse, some government thugs, or I can take a detour back to the ’burbs and maybe actually make it to the city in one piece. I peer into the car. It looks warm. “Okay. Deal.”
We both hear it at the same time: a low thrum far off, the sound of an engine.
“Crap. Get in, fast.” The passenger-door lock clicks.
I don’t have to be told twice. I hop the cement barrier, and so does Tank. There’s room for him in the backseat, and I stash my backpack there too. Before I have the door all the way closed, the guy is accelerating. It’s blissfully warm inside the car; the heater is going and the fans are blowing out toasty air.
“Name’s Morton Caruthers.” The guy laughs, a ratchety sound. “I know. A very stupid name for a very rich man. Not that that will matter for much longer. The rich part, I mean. Money’s gonna be as worthless as, well, as the dollar.”
“I’m Nick.” I pick up a roll of toilet paper from the center console. “So this is your white flag, huh?”
“It’s all I had handy. I’ve got the trunk stuffed with it—my theory is it will be as valuable as gold soon.”
“Really?”
He smirks. “Nah. I just don’t want to have to wipe my ass with leaves. Listen, Nick. Want to keep an eye on the back so I can drive faster?”
“Sure.” I twist in my seat so I can see out the rear window. “Nothing back there yet.”
Morton floors it and the sedan surges forward like a stallion, strong and steady. He smiles. “Always did love this machine.”
I look around. Leather everything, with brushed chrome accents. A sound system so fancy I don’t even recognize the brand. “Rich, huh?”
“Oh, yes. Filthy rich. Made a lot of money buying shares of the right stuff and selling before it became the wrong stuff. But like I said, it’s meaningless now, or it will be soon enough. And of course I was not one of those survival buffs. So I don’t have a bunker filled with emergency supplies.”
“Bummer.” I check the rear window. “So what’s your plan?”
“Head south. As far south as I can get, because it’s a little warmer. Try to stay out of the way of the wackos. And hope that somebody somewhere is working on the situation.”
It doesn’t sound like a very good plan to me. But I don’t even have a plan at all, beyond finding Lara, so who am I to talk? “Who are you checking on, before you go?”
“Nadine.” Morton doesn’t say anything more until we’re off the freeway, in a neighborhood not so different from my own.
Morton pulls into the driveway of a deserted-looking split level. He lets the car idle and stares at the house, frowning.
“Shit. I thought it was 2523, but this doesn’t look right.” Morton gestures toward the glove box. “Can you get in there, please, Nick? There’s a paper with an address.”
I find it, a scrap of notebook paper in an otherwise empty glove box. “It says 2528. Humbuld Street.” I stretch to see the corner sign. We’re on Humbuld.
“Right.” Morton backs down the driveway. Across the street, a few houses down, is a brick colonial with brass numbers: 2528. We pull into the driveway.
“Yep. This is it.” He turns to me. “I suggest we stick together.”
“We’re going in there?” The house looks safe enough. The whole neighborhood looks safe enough. There are working streetlights and everything is quiet. But there’s an odd, deserted look to all the houses. I don’t see any lights on inside any of them at all, even though the streetlights attest to a functioning power grid.
“That’s where Nadine is, so that’s where we’re going. Unless you’d prefer to stay out here?”
I shake my head.
I lock Tank in the car and we start for the front door. Halfway up the sidewalk, Morton stops. I run right into him. He doesn’t move, doesn’t speak. He just points.
The front door is cracked open.
We exchange a look. Morton throws his shoulders back and juts his chin out. I guess we’re still going in. He touches the door with one finger, pushing slightly. It opens more. Morton stops and turns to me.
“Nick, where’s your gun?” He’s whispering in a sharp, hissing tone.
It’s in my jacket pocket. I get it out. “Here.”
“I don’t want it, I just—”
“I wasn’t offering it. I was just saying I have it.”
“Perfect.” Morton rolls his eyes. “I don’t have one, and I think we may need one. So keep it out, okay?”
“Okay.” So Morton was lying when he said he might have a gun trained on me when he first picked me up.
The interior of the house is completely dark. I follow his lead, and we make our way through a foyer, into a living room. As my eyes adjust I can make out modest furnishings, a couch, a television sitting in the corner. I don’t hear anything but our breathing.
Morton leads on, through a hallway to what looks like the kitchen. Nothing. No sign of a mess, no sign of people. He opens the refrigerator to check it out. The light shines out at us like a beacon. There is a half gallon of milk and three opened cans of Fancy Feast cat food. I notice that there is a case of the same canned cat food on the counter next to the fridge.
I wonder what happened to Nadine.
Morton looks discouraged, and I feel bad for him. I think of Gus again, waiting for his son, hoping to see him pull up in the driveway with his family. I see those women marching along single file between the two guys on the highway, and wonder whose mothers and daughters they are, and if those people are waiting for them somewhere. “Let’s keep looking,” I whisper.
We go down the back hall, past a bathroom and a bedroom. The last door is closed, and when Morton opens it the smell knocks me back.
She’s on the bed. Half her clothes are gone. The rest are askew—her blouse twisted so that the collar is over her shoulder. There’s not a lot of blood on her, but the pillow under her head is soaked and brown. There’s a single bullet hole in her forehead. Her eyes are still open. It looks to me like she was a pretty woman when she was alive. Morton just stares.
I don’t know what to say. “I’m so sorry, Morton.” He doesn’t respond. Finally I touch his elbow. “We’ve got to go.”
He shakes his head. “Not until I find Nadine.”
I’m stunned. “That’s not Nadine?”
“That’s Tessa. My assistant.” Morton looks disturbed. “She was taking care of Nadine.”
There’s a noise then, coming from the closet. I whirl and face it, pointing the gun. Morton crouches behind me. “Holy crap,” he whispers.
The door begins to rattle as though somebody is trying to get out. There’s a strange howl, and suddenly Morton is pushing past me.
“Nadine!” He wrenches open the closet door.
A creature unlike anything I’ve ever seen before leaps from the floor into Morton’s arms. I have to fight my instinct to shoot it. It is covered in weird wrinkles and has no hair. Its face looks like a cross between a bat and a demon, and its body is that of an eighty-five-year-old man with a potbelly and a tail. Morton is cradling it in his arms and crooning to it.
“Oh, my baby, oh, you’re cold. It’s okay, baby, it’s okay. Let’s find your stuff.” Morton looks around the room. He carries the creature over to the dresser and roots through the contents of a box. Pretty soon he’s pulling what looks like a tiny dog sweater over the animal.
“What is that thing?”
He grabs the box and tucks it under his arm. “This thing is Nadine. She’s a Canadian hairless cat. Very rare.” Morton snuggles Nadine close. “Let’s get that cat food from the kitchen and get the hell out of here.” Morton leaves the room without a backward glance.
We do just that. Morton finds Nadine’s cat carrier on the dining-room table and lines it with a crocheted throw from the couch. I offer to carry the case of food, but he says no.
“You just keep that gun pointed and ready. I can handle this stuff.” He stuffs the sweaters from the box into his jacket pockets and stacks Nadine in her carrier on top of the case of food. At the car, he puts Nadine in back, next to Tank. She doesn’t seem afraid of the dog at all, just presses her nose against the screened front of her carrier and sniffs him. Tank eyes the cat like he knows better than to get too close.
“Okay.” Morton jumps in the driver’s seat and waits while I get in the passenger seat. “Let’s roll.”
We rip out of there fast, and before long we’re back on the freeway.
“Sorry about your assistant.”
“Me too.” Morton keeps his eyes on the road. “I was going to ask her to marry me.” He falls silent.
“Oh, wow. I mean, I’m so sorry, Morton.” I don’t know what else to say.
He glances at me and then turns his attention back to the road. “We weren’t in love or anything like that, Nick. But she took good care of Nadine, and she probably would have said yes. I mean, she didn’t seem to mind me, and I’m filthy rich.”
“Why would she mind you?”
“I’m hideous, Nick, in case you hadn’t noticed. And most women don’t do hideous, not even rich hideous.”
“You’re not hideous.” I feel bad. The first thing I thought when I saw him was ugly. How many other people not only thought it, but said it? Must have been quite a few for him to think of himself that way.
“Right.” He doesn’t bother looking at me. “Anyway, Tessa’s dead. Just like a lot of people are dead. And nobody can do anything about it.”
We don’t talk for the next few miles, each of us lost in our thoughts. The freeway is deserted for the first few minutes, but pretty soon it starts to look more like the clips of freeways they showed on the news. There are cars abandoned on the side of the road, and some right in the middle. Morton slows down some so that he can maneuver through them. It seems like we won’t be able to make it through at times, but I guess enough people have been here ahead of us that there’s a path cleared. You can tell that some of the cars have just been pushed out of the way by people trying to get through.
“Let’s hope it’s this easy all the way south.” Morton checks the backseat quickly. I think Nadine must be asleep, because she’s not yowling or anything.
“I’m only going to the city,” I remind him.
“Seriously? Still?” Morton frowns at me. “Can’t I talk you out of it, Nick? It’s really bad in places. I was there—I know.”
I think about that, but I know I have to see if Lara is okay. It’s not like I know where she is for sure, so I can’t very well ask Morton to hang around while I go grab her. For all I know, I won’t ever find her. “I bet you couldn’t have been talked out of checking on Nadine, right?”
Morton nods. “Actually, I went back for Tessa.” He taps his fingers against the steering wheel as he drives. “I know I sounded like an asshole earlier. I mean, I do love Nadine, but I’m not an idiot. I don’t know that I would have risked going back for her. But for her and Tessa? No question.” He glances at the backseat. “Let’s hope she’s asleep and didn’t hear that.”
“I’m sorry. About Tessa.”
Morton nods and grits his teeth. I can see his jaw tightening. I get the feeling if he speaks he’ll lose it, so I let the moment go by. The city is in view below us. There are still lights twinkling and it looks almost like any other time I’ve come into the city at night. Almost. Except there are plumes of black smoke rising up to the sky in places, and some of the skyscrapers are dark. And it’s eleven in the morning, according to my vintage Timex.
“Almost there.” Morton sounds doubtful. “You sure?”
“Yep. If you just drop me at the city center exit, I should be fine.”
“Where are you trying to get to?”
I tell him Lara’s address. I still have it written down, but I don’t even need to look at the paper. I’ve had it memorized ever since she gave me the note about the party. I can still see her handwriting on the pink paper.
“Well, la-di-da, boy. That’s almost as hoity-toity as my building.” Morton glances over. “Is it about a girl?”
I nod. “Yep. Lara.” Saying her name makes it seem like she might still exist. I hope she does still exist.
“All right. I think I can get you closer if I take the James Street exit and head in the back way.”
“I don’t know—what’s it like on the surface streets? Wouldn’t it be pretty easy to get stuck?” Some of the reports were saying that gangs were constructing traps for unwitting drivers. They would block off the end of a street and let someone drive their car in, then pull a truck or two out to block any exit. They weren’t just stealing from the people, either. The footage showed bodies pulled halfway out of cars, a child’s stuffed toy in the backseat with no evidence of the child anywhere. It sounds to me like people have gone nuts.
“Look, kid. I got out the first time. I think I can handle one more.” Morton passes the city center exit, and I kind of can’t believe we’ve made it here this quickly, after all this. I hate to admit it, but I’m not sure I ever really thought I was going to get here. But James Street is coming right up, and Morton cuts his lights and slows way down. When we hit the city streets he drives fast, again, though not as fast as when we were on the freeway.
“Okay, so next left . . . then I think it’s two more blocks. . . .” He talks to himself as he makes each maneuver. “And here we are.” He stops behind a skyscraper, next to a loading dock. “This is you.”
I don’t recognize the place, and it must show on my face.
“This is the back of the building of that address. If you’re lucky, you can just slip in that service door.” He points to a steel door set into the wall next to the loading dock.
I get out and push the seat forward so Tank can jump out. Then I grab the backpack and lean into the car to say good-bye.
“Here.” Morton is holding out a roll of toilet paper. “Might come in handy.” He laughs.
I feel the same surge of gratitude I did with Gus. But I don’t say anything about it. “Thanks for the ride, man.”
“Hope you find your girl, Nick.” And then he’s just a set of taillights, fading into the blackness.
I trot over to the loading dock so I’m not standing in the middle of the street, and listen. No sounds close by, nothing to make me feel like I might be in trouble. There are stairs at the far end of the dock, and I take them, edging toward the steel service door, stopping every few feet to listen. Tank is nervous, but he’s not going batshit, so I guess I’m alone.
When I get to the door I try the handle, and of course it’s locked.
“Would have been too easy, right?” Tank looks up at me like I’m stupid for even trying it.
“Okay, around front we go.”
I ease around the side of the building and peek at the front. The street here is a mess. There are cars abandoned in front of the building—one is smashed into the front of another, and a third has gone right through the plate-glass lobby. I think of the snotty concierge who didn’t want to let me and Charlie up to Lara’s apartment. I bet he wouldn’t approve at all.
I listen some more—hearing is becoming one of my more important senses. Seems safe enough. There’s a smattering of gunfire in the distance, but it’s far enough away that it doesn’t pose an immediate threat. It does, however, make me want to get off the street. The lobby is covered in shattered glass, but thankfully for Tank it’s all safety glass that falls right off his pads. We make our way to the bank of elevators I remember from the night of Lara’s party, and I start pushing buttons. Nothing happens.
I was really hoping to avoid the stairs, and not just because of the exercise. But it looks like that’s our best bet. I shift my backpack so it’s more comfortable and get a better grip on the gun. The door is ajar; someone’s jammed it open with a shoe shoved underneath. There’s some blood—at least I think it’s blood—on the handrail all the way up to the second floor. I start up. Tank follows, visibly nervous. I don’t blame him one bit.
My footsteps seem to echo so loudly it makes me nervous. The stairwell is lit by dim yellow lights so I can see pretty well, and I don’t like what I see. Besides the blood, it looks like there have been some scuffles here. A shiny leather loafer, the kind businessmen wear, is flung into the corner of the fifth-floor landing. One more flight, and there’s an omelet pan lying on the third step. It’s got a huge dent in one side, as though someone hit something with it pretty hard. I try not to imagine what got hit and just keep going up the stairs.
“Of course it has to be the freaking penthouse.” Tank looks at me like he doesn’t see the problem, but my thighs are starting to burn. I can hear my breathing echoing off the walls, and Tank’s too. I stop every few seconds to listen; I keep thinking I hear something up ahead, or maybe it’s behind us.
It feels like we’ll never reach the top of the stairs. I can’t see farther than the next landing, and it feels like every corner I turn might be the one with some freak hunched there, waiting. I keep the gun in front of me, holding with both hands and skirting the walls at corners like I’ve seen cops do on television.
We finally make it to the top. There is another flight of stairs that goes up past the stairwell exit door that’s marked PENTHOUSE, but I think they must lead to the roof. I don’t feel like I’m up for exploring that right now. I try the door and it’s open. The hallway isn’t lit by anything but a nightlight sort of thing at the end, so it’s pretty hard to see, but I can make out the door to Lara’s apartment just ahead. I hold the stairwell door open for Tank and then shut it as quietly as I can. There’s a golf club lying on the floor next to the door, along with a rag that looks like it was torn from somebody’s flannel sheet.
I can’t believe I’m actually here. Five feet from Lara’s door.
I think of Morton and his assistant, Tessa. I don’t know what I’ll do if Lara isn’t alive and well in that apartment.
I’m just raising my hand to knock when the stairwell door bursts open and a guy with a gun yells, “Freeze!” like he’s playing a cop on TV. I do freeze, but Tank isn’t so cooperative. He starts growling at the guy, acting like he’s going to lunge.
“Drop your gun.” The guy points his own at my forehead. Reluctantly, I drop my gun at my feet. Tank’s growling increases in volume a notch or two.
“I’ll shoot that thing in two seconds if you don’t get it under control.” The guy isn’t kidding. I kneel next to Tank and tell him to sit. He does, but he doesn’t take his eyes off the guy.
“Who are you and what do you want?” The guy is practically screaming.
“Hey, want to keep it down? I don’t think we want to draw attention like that, do we?”
“Shut up and answer the question.”
“Which one?”
He just stares at me for a second, blinking.
“Do you want me to shut up or answer the question?”
He sneers and raises the gun. I’m getting ready to try to grab mine from where I dropped it when the door behind me opens.
“Zeke, stop!”
Without turning I know it’s her. Lara.
“Get back inside.” The guy named Zeke looks pissed that he’s not getting to shoot me.
“No, Zeke. He’s a friend. I know him.”
She comes into view and I want to cry. She’s even more thin than she was before, if that’s possible. Her hair is combed but it looks dirty, and she has a bruise under her left eye that starts a burn simmering inside me.
“Who hit you?” I sound harsher than I mean to sound.
She shakes her head. “It was an accident.” A beat passes while she looks at me, and then she says, “I can’t believe you’re here.”
“I wanted to make sure you were okay.” I don’t tell her how many times I told myself she was dead. Or how scared I was getting here.
“She’s fine.” Zeke isn’t happy.
“Who’s he?” I tip my head toward the Neanderthal.
“Zeke’s good people.” She turns to Zeke. “Just like Nick is, Zeke. Now put down the gun and let’s get inside.”
“With him? I don’t think so. And for sure that dog isn’t coming inside.”
Lara stares him down. “It’s still my place, Zeke. You will always be welcome in it, but so is Nick.” She looks doubtfully at Tank. “And his dog too.”
I’ve never seen that look on her face before. She looks like nobody better mess with her, like she could make you regret it if you did. It’s kind of sexy.
She turns and holds the door open, and I don’t have to be asked twice.
The place looks nothing like it did the night of Lara’s party. The wall of windows is covered with blankets and plastic. The largest couch is covered with a tangle of sheets, and the fireplace’s glass cover is open, the gas flame blazing. There are only a couple of lights on, dim lamps that cast a warm glow on the room but don’t penetrate the blankets on the windows. On the chair closest to the fireplace, a girl is huddled under a blanket. She has the darkest circles under her eyes that I have ever seen.
“Kath.” Lara speaks to the girl gently, as though she’s talking to a spooked horse. “This is Nick. Remember? I told you about him.”
Kath focuses on me slowly and smiles. “The boy from the party,” she whispers.
Lara nods, blushing a little. “That’s right, Kath.”
Tank runs all around the place, sniffing. He finally settles on one of the couches and rests his head on his paws. I can tell he’s beat, but he keeps his eyes open, watching to see that everything is safe. I see Kath watching him.
“That’s Tank. He won’t hurt you.”
“Damn right he won’t, or I’ll drop him.” Zeke is locking the door. Once he’s got all the deadbolts done, he pushes a credenza in front of it. “I locked up the stairwell door again too, in case anybody cares. That cloth wadding is really helping to hold the golf club in the handles better.”
“That’s great, Zeke. That was a good idea you had.” Lara reaches out for me, and I can’t believe she is standing in front of me, alive. I take her hand, and she leads me toward the balcony. “I’m going to show Nick around. Can you guys finish the last of the lunch prep?”
Zeke just grunts, but Kath smiles that slow smile and hops up. “Sure. Come on, Zeke.” She tries to take his hand, but he just brushes past her and stalks into the kitchen. Kath’s smile disappears, but she follows him. I wonder if they’re a couple.
Lara parts the plastic sheet hanging in front of the sliding glass door and opens the door, and we go out on the balcony. It doesn’t feel like the night of the party, that’s for sure. The air is frigid. I wonder if it’s just going to keep getting colder and colder with no sun.
“What’s up with Bozo in there?”
“Zeke?” She shrugs. “He’s been through a lot. We all have.” She falls silent and stares out at the city.
I look too. “Not much like the last time we were here, is it?” The plumes of smoke Morton and I saw from the freeway are bigger and blacker up close, inky stains against the murky sky. Half the buildings are dark, and weirdest of all, there is very little traffic noise. I hear distant yelling, the sound of some sort of metal crashing against metal, a gunshot. But no city buses, no cabs. No traffic.
“It’s really scary out there, Nick. People are killing each other for scraps of food or clothing. They killed my brother, Brian.” Her voice is soft, but I can hear the pain in it.
I’m stunned. I don’t even know what to say to her, so I just take her hand and hold it tight. She looks up at me, her lip trembling, and I think she’s going to burst into tears, but she grits her teeth and pulls it together. Something hard passes over her face, and she turns back to the cityscape. “That’s how I met Zeke and Kath. Zeke saved my life that night.” She takes a deep breath, and I can tell she’s not seeing the city that’s laid out before her. She’s seeing something else, something horrible. “We were trying to get out. Brian thought it would be safer at our country house, and since Mom and Dad were still—are still—in Europe, we figured there was no reason to stay here. We’d packed what we could and we were getting into Brian’s car in the garage. They came out of nowhere. We heard them running before we saw them . . . you know how underground garages always echo? I don’t think I’ll ever get that sound of them running toward us out of my head.
“There were four of them. One grabbed me by the hair and held me. They dragged Brian out of the car and started hitting him. One of them hit him with a baseball bat across the head, like he was swinging for a ball. And Brian . . . the next moment he was gone.” She narrows her eyes at whatever she’s seeing. “I’m glad he was gone so quickly. They . . . they kept hitting him for a long time. And then they turned their attention to me.
“That’s when Zeke showed up. He shot two of them before they knew what was happening. I managed to kick the one who had hold of me, and Kath jumped on him. He finally ran. Zeke told the last guy to run too, or die. He ran.”
I squeeze her hand. “I’m so sorry, Lara. So sorry.” There isn’t anything else to say. Less than three weeks ago, I was here at a party. Her brother was alive and well. My friend Charlie was geeking it up. My dad was home waiting for me. I can’t believe how things have changed.
She nods. And then she says something that doesn’t go with the girl I knew, the high school prom queen, the candy-pink lip gloss aficionado. She says, “I just wish Zeke had shot them all.”
When we go back in, there’s no sign of Kath or Zeke. Tank is still on the couch, but now he’s fast asleep. It’s a lot warmer than outside on the balcony, and I’m thankful for the heat coming from the fireplace.
“You guys still have gas? And power.” I nod toward the lamps.
“Not dependably. We lose the gas at least twice a day now, and one day it didn’t come on at all. It got really cold in here. The power is iffy too. And the water is pumped up here with electricity, which is what really worries me. We can’t live long without that. We do collect rainwater, but it’s not enough.”
It’s starting to sink in to me how screwed we all might be—and how clear it is that staying here really isn’t an option.
“Let’s see how lunch is coming,” says Lara, heading for the kitchen.
Zeke and Kath are standing side by side, comparing cans of food. They are a couple, judging by Zeke’s hand on Kath’s waist.
“What do you think of green beans?” Kath holds up a can for Zeke to see.
“Sounds delectable, baby.” He’s smiling. He actually looks like a nice guy at this moment. At least, nicer than the snarling jerk who met me at the door.
“Is the menu decided?” Lara says it in her snootiest voice, like she’s planning a million-dollar wedding instead of talking about canned food.
“Yes, milady, the menu is ready. Shall we dine on the good china?” Kath smiles at Lara.
“Oh! Fancy. Sounds perfect.” Lara grabs some plates from a cupboard and points to a drawer. “Silverware is in there, Nick.” I grab some forks and spoons and we all gather in the living room to eat a lunch of canned ravioli and canned green beans and Pepsi by candlelight. Tank wakes up immediately when he smells the ravioli.
“Um, is there a place I can feed him? I have some dog food in my pack.”
Lara grabs a bowl from the kitchen and we settle Tank in a corner of the living room. He looks over occasionally while he’s inhaling his food, and I can tell he thinks the ravioli is a better deal.
When we’ve finished eating, Kath brings a box from the kitchen and shyly bestows it upon Lara. “I think this should be a celebration,” she says. “In honor of finding old friends.” She smiles at me.
“The Twinkies.” The reverence in Lara’s voice makes me smile. I watch her take individually wrapped snack cakes from the box. She places one in front of each of us, and even Zeke seems to defrost a bit more.
“We found these in the 7-Eleven on Broad Street,” he says. “It looked like it was totally looted, but Kath has a nose for Twinkies.” He winked at Kath across the coffee table. “She insisted we check out the back room, and there they were. Four completely unmolested Twinkies, just sitting in their box, waiting for us.”
“I heard these will last through a nuclear bomb,” says Kath as she licks the creamy filling from hers.
“I heard that too!” Lara and Kath giggle, and it’s almost like we’re all sitting around in the school cafeteria being dumb. Only we’re not, and we may never be again.
The girls seem to realize this too, because their giggles trail off. We all focus on our Twinkies for a little while.
“At least there’s no homework.” I know it’s a lame thing to say, but I just want to break the silence.
“Ugh. Chem lab.” Lara grimaces. “I always had to really study for that class.”
“I wonder if we’ll be going back to school in September.” Kath looks wistful. “I sort of miss it. Were you guys going to be seniors?”
Lara and I both nod.
“I was going to be a junior next year.” Kath wraps her arms around her knees. I notice Zeke isn’t saying anything.
“What about you, Zeke?”
He shrugs. “I dropped out in the middle of last year. It just seemed . . . pointless.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re probably one of those straight-A guys, right?” Zeke curls his upper lip at me. “It’s all easy for you, right?”
I let a moment pass before I answer. “I’d say I’m more like one of those B-minus guys, and I worked for those.” It’s only half a lie. Yeah, I’m a B-minus guy—when I’m lucky—but I’ve always earned my mediocre grades with the absolute minimum amount of work possible.
“Huh.” Zeke looks surprised. “I would have figured you for a brain.”
I just shrug. Lara doesn’t blow my cover. She just watches.
“School’s okay, but there are other things in life besides books.”
“Exactly,” says Zeke. “I just never got into it. And it was work, man. Always seemed to me that if I could get on at MacNally’s, I’d be better off than if I got a stupid diploma.”
“MacNally’s?”
“Construction. Now that I’m good at.” Zeke grinned.
“Wow.” I don’t have to fake being impressed. Those kinds of skills are likely going to matter a lot more in the future.
“I know,” says Kath. “Let’s play a board game. I know there’s Scrabble—”
“No Scrabble!” Zeke frowns.
“Okay, how about Trivial Pursuit?”
“How about poker?” Zeke grins. “Strip poker!”
I start to say we probably shouldn’t, just because I think that’s the gentlemanly thing to do, but Lara interrupts me.
“You’re on, baby!” She has a peculiar gleam in her eye. “Although you might need to refresh my memory on the rules.” She looks a little too innocent for me to believe her.
Zeke looks like a cat sucking on some feathers. “No problem.”
Lara jumps up. “I’ll grab the cards.” Kath and I both exchange a glance. I don’t think either of us is up for it. I don’t know why she’s hesitating, but I’m sort of embarrassed. I don’t really want to strip in front of Lara.
“Okay.” Lara comes back with a couple of decks. She drops them on the coffee table. “Rules—only tops come all the way off. Bottoms to your underwear.”
“What?” Zeke looks disappointed.
“Take it or leave it.” Kath is laughing. Now that the rules are clear, she seems more into it.
“We’ll take it, ladies,” I say, trying for a little levity myself. I have a feeling this is a bad idea.
“Okay, Zeke?” Lara raises her eyebrows at him.
“Okay.” He looks a little smug as he explains the rules.
Forty-five minutes later Zeke is wearing nothing but boxers and I’m down to my jeans. Kath has bare feet and is wearing a bra and her khakis. Lara hasn’t lost anything but a sock.
“She’s a shark.” I shake my head at Zeke.
He nods. “We’ve been had.” But he’s smiling. “I’m gonna declare myself the loser here, seeing as I have no wish to lose my boxers, and I’m freezing.” He picks up a throw off the couch and tosses it to Kath. In his best character-from-a-bad-Western voice, he says, “You must be freezing too, pretty lady.” He waggles his eyebrows at her and she laughs. She wraps the throw around her shoulders.
The gas fire pops out just then.
“Oh, damn.” Lara tries to act like it’s no big deal, but I can tell she’s nervous. “This happens. It always comes back on eventually.” She goes to the fireplace and turns off the gas. “Who wants first watch?”
“What’s the deal?” I’m not sure what she means.
“We can’t leave the gas turned on, because if it comes back and we haven’t lit it we’ll all die from the fumes. So we keep watch, and check every hour to see if it’s back on, with this.” She flicks one of those butane fireplace lights.
“I’ll take first watch.” It sounds easy enough.
“Nah.” Zeke shakes his head at me. “Time for you and me to go get some food.”
As it turns out, Zeke means it’s time to go down to street level and see what we can find in the way of supplies. I really don’t want to go back down there, but it doesn’t feel like I can say no right now. We’ve reached a sort of détente playing poker, and I want to keep the good feeling going.
“It’ll be good—we’ll see how you make yourself useful.” Zeke tosses me a baseball bat. I catch it but lean it against a couch.
“I’ll stick with this, thanks,” I say, pulling my gun out of my back pocket. I don’t mention the second gun stashed in my backpack.
He shrugs. “Doesn’t matter to me, pal. I’d leave the dog here, though, unless you want him to be somebody’s dinner.”
Tank is snoring on the larger of the two couches, full of the last of his dog food and a small piece of Twinkie I snuck him. Charlie will be so pissed if I let anything happen to him. I hate to admit it, but I agree with Zeke—he has to stay here.
I turn to Lara. “Do you mind keeping an eye on him until I’m back?” Before the words are out of my mouth, she is already fussing over Tank, smoothing his fur and making little kissy faces at him.
“Of course not. But do you guys really have to go today, Zeke? It seems like we have enough food to last until at least tomorrow.”
“Better to get it now, before somebody else finds it. With Nick helping, I can get it all back here this time.” He throws me a couple of cloth grocery bags. “We found a whole stash of cans this morning, but we didn’t have enough bags with us to get them all back here.”
“Sounds like a plan.” I pat Tank, who is awake now, on the head. He doesn’t offer to get off the couch and come with us.
Kath follows us out to the landing; I think she’s coming with us until she removes the golf club and the cloth shoved in next to it from the door handle.
“We’ve worked out a system,” she says. “Whoever is staying checks every five minutes to see if whoever left is back and needs to be let in. Lara and I will keep checking until you’re back safe.”
“I came up with that. Keeps the hoodlums locked out.” Zeke looks pretty proud.
“Be careful,” says Kath. She says it to both of us, but her gaze lingers on Zeke. He nods, barely looking at her.
We start down the stairwell. Zeke makes a big deal of holding his gun in front of him and acting like he’s going to shoot anything that appears around the next corner. I realize I must have looked at least that dumb coming up these stairs. Our footsteps echo, and I hope that we would hear anyone else’s as clearly.
“You must be in great shape, Zeke. I thought these were going to kill me on the way up.”
He doesn’t look back at me. He goes down another two flights before he stops and turns to face me. “Listen, I don’t like the fact that you’re here. But you are, and according to Lara, you’re okay. Here’s a couple of things you need to know, though.” He leans in toward me until he’s about a foot from my face. I think I’m supposed to be intimidated.
“One. Don’t get funny with Lara. She’s been through a lot of shit. She doesn’t need you messing with her.”
I don’t say anything.
“Two. If you get stupid down there and get yourself in trouble, don’t expect me to risk my ass for you. I won’t expect it from you, either.”
He steps back. It’s like he’s waiting for me to crumble into a spineless heap or something. I think he’s a little disappointed when I don’t.
“Anything else?” I’m starting to think I could get really sick of this guy.
He shakes his head. “Nada.”
We go past the lobby level to the garage. Zeke presses his ear to the door before he opens it a crack. When he’s satisfied the coast is clear, he motions for me to follow him. We run through the garage, each pointing our guns in front of us. At first I feel a little silly, like we’re playing at cops and robbers, but that disappears the instant we see our first thug.
We take him by surprise. He’s coming down the ramp that leads to the street, looking back over his shoulder, so he doesn’t spot us until Zeke is right on him. He starts to run back the way he came when he sees us, but Zeke has him by the hair and jams his gun into the guy’s temple.
“Dude!” I’m not sure if he’s going to just shoot him right there, or what. I know I’ve been packing a gun myself, but I never really thought I would use it.
Zeke ignores me. “You better run your scrawny little ass outta here, boy, and tell your friends this ain’t the place to be. Come back and you’re dead. Got it?” He jams the gun harder into the guy’s head.
“I got it.” The guy is nodding like a bobblehead.
“He’s just a kid, man.” I bet he isn’t more than thirteen years old.
Zeke snorts. “Why don’t you check this kid’s pockets?” When I don’t move, he snarls, “Check his pockets!”
He’s wearing a black leather jacket. When I get closer, I see a crescent moon stenciled on the leather with what looks like spray paint. The same symbol as the guy in the red Mustang. The guy who killed a man and a little boy for no apparent reason. I start to sweat.
“Hurry up,” Zeke says.
I check his right pocket and come up with two knives: a butcher knife and a switchblade. In his left pocket, I don’t know what I’m feeling—it’s soft and wrinkled, like a dried apricot. I pull it out and instantly drop it.
“How many of those have you taken, you little asshole?” Zeke pulls the guy’s hair so that his neck is stretched. “I ought to shoot you here and now, but that would make me as bad as you. Now get the fuck out of here.” He shoves him so hard he stumbles and falls. From his knees, the kid sneers at Zeke.
“I’ll remember you.”
“You’d better!” Zeke roars it, and lunges at him. He scrambles up and runs out of the garage.
“That’s a . . . finger.” I whisper the last word. I can’t stop staring at it, lying there on the concrete floor. The nail on the finger is covered with chipped purple polish. It looks like somebody’s pinkie.
“They take them for trophies. The more you have, the tougher you are.” He walks to the edge of the garage opening and checks the street. “We gotta go.”
I follow him up the ramp and we make our way down the block. At the corner Zeke points toward a restaurant sign halfway down the next block. It’s hanging from one chain, dangling sideways. ROSY’S KITCHEN.
“That’s where we’re going.” Zeke doesn’t wait to see if I’m following. He takes off and is at the door of Rosy’s before I even get across the street. By the time I catch up, he’s scoping out the interior through the glass.
“Looks clear,” he says, and shoves the door. The lock has been completely bashed off the door, so it opens easily. Zeke heads to the back of the restaurant, where the restrooms are located. We go into the ladies’ room and he goes into the first stall. He lifts the toilet-tank lid and starts loading dripping cans of food out of it into his grocery bag.
“Get the other one.” He nods to the second stall. I do what he says.
“Nice hiding spot,” I say, loading the cans into my bag.
“Meagan thought that up.” I hear him chuckle. “She was always . . .” He stops talking.
I finish loading my cans. There are green beans and lima beans and kidney beans and black-eyed peas. Zeke finishes too and steps out of his stall. I want to ask him who Meagan is, but he won’t look at me. “Let’s get back” is all he says.
When we get back, Tank is snoozing. Lara and Kath have planned a huge feast for dinner, but I plead exhaustion. “You guys go ahead. I just want to crash for a while.”
“I’ll show you where you can sleep.” Lara looks worried. She leads me down the hall to a bedroom. She’s put my backpack next to the bed and turned back the sheets. The little lamp on the bedside table is lit. It makes me smile.
“Just like a fancy hotel, except no mint.”
“Well. Like a fancy hotel, or maybe your mom.” She laughs, but then she gets serious, like she’s realized she may have said something painful. “Where are your parents, Nick?”
“Um. My mom died when I was seven.” Those words are familiar now, almost meaningless. I’ve said them for so many years. “And my dad . . .”
It catches me without warning. My dad’s dead. I’ve known it, known it since I saw him leaning against my bed with his clouded eyes and his bloody chest. But I haven’t known it. I sit down faster than I mean to on the bed.
“Oh, Nick. I’m sorry.” She whispers the words. Her hands are warm when she sits down next to me and takes my hand. I can’t hold back the tears; they flow down my cheeks. I don’t feel ashamed, though. Lara doesn’t make me feel that way.
We sit quietly. When my throat loosens up, I scrub my cheeks with my fists and try to laugh.
“You don’t have to talk about it. I know it’s hard.” Lara studies her hands holding mine. “I still can’t believe Brian’s gone, either. I haven’t been back downstairs since it happened.” She looks really tired. “You need some rest. Mind if I keep Tank out there with me for now?”
“Tank! Oh, man, I bet he has to pee.” I start to get up.
“It’s okay. We showed him how to go on the balcony while you guys were gone. He’s been really good.” She laughs a little. “I mean, at first he wasn’t crazy about it—I think he wanted some grass.”
And there we are again, in the thick of the pain. There is no grass anymore. Unless things are different somewhere in the world, all the grass is in its final death throes, wilting in the dark.
“I’ll let you get some rest.” Lara gets up to leave.
“Lara.” She turns at the door and looks at me expectantly. “Who’s Meagan?”
She looks so sad. “Meagan was—is—Zeke’s little sister. They took her while he and Kath were saving me. He thought she was hidden. He didn’t know there were more than four of the Crescents in the garage, but there were. And while he was saving me, they grabbed Meagan and left.”
“Crescents?” The white sliver of a moon on the back of the boy’s jacket flashes in my mind. As does the one on the jacket of the man who murdered the little boy in the station wagon.
“We just call them the crazies most of the time. They all wear black jackets with a crescent on the back. I don’t know much about them—the news reports stopped yesterday and they were just beginning to mention them. They believe that the moon caused the darkness. They claim they want blood sacrifices for the moon, but I think they’re really just a bunch of assholes using the whole thing as an excuse. They would kill people and steal things regardless.”
Sounds right to me. I think of the book in my pack—Lord of the Flies. I finished it the night before I left Charlie’s, but I took it with me anyway, because I kept thinking about it. It’s like that. Assholes will be assholes. But what nags at me is the fact that even the boys who were good, even the boys who tried to make things right on that island, even they ended up being cowards.
“Get some rest, Nick.” Lara watches me for a minute from the door. “I’m really glad you’re here.”
“Me too, Lara.” I’m not sure how to say how I feel about her. “I’m glad you’re alive.”
She smiles and pulls the door almost closed behind her.
I try to sleep, but I’m too tense. I keep thinking about the dark and the dying grass. I drag my backpack over and dig around in it until I find the box containing the device. I never did figure out how to get it open. After a few minutes of trying different combinations on the latches with no luck, I try to think like my dad would. He was always saying that the simplest solutions are the best. I try the latches in order, one, two, three. Nothing. Then I try them in order but only once for the first, twice for the second, and three times for the third latch.
It pops open. I almost drop it, but I manage to keep a grip.
Inside is a black object, roughly spherical in shape. It’s cool to the touch, and it feels a lot heavier than its size would indicate, like a golf ball is—they’re small, but they have some weight to them. There are seams in the surface—places where it looks like the thing might open up into something else, but I can’t make any of them budge. There are three round silver balls inset halfway into its surface. When I press on one of them it gives, like a button of some sort. I turn the thing in my hands, examining it from all angles. I try the buttons a few times. I try them in different orders. Then I press all three down at the same time.
It starts to glow.
The room is pretty dark anyway—just a tiny lamp on the nightstand is on, and I quickly switch it off. The glow coming from the device is clearer. It’s got an odd quality to it, almost like it’s a living entity. I press the three buttons again, expecting it to go out, but instead it grows. It doesn’t get brighter, the light just extends farther from the sphere. While I’m watching it, tendrils of light reach out like sun flares and then fall back to the surface of the sphere. There’s no heat to it, just cool, white light.
Optimus Prime. Protector of the Universe, but especially Earth. I remember my dad’s comment when I saw the label he had made for the cabinet that held this device.
“Transformers?” I had said.
“Hopefully,” he’d said, and laughed that sad, weird laugh.
Was this device supposed to make a difference? I think back to what Dad said the night before he was killed, when he was talking about photons and Higgs particles. Does this have something to do with that? Was it possible that it could bring light—
“What the hell is that thing?” Zeke bursts through the door. “I’ve been watching you from the hall, playing around with it. That doesn’t look like it’s just some toy.”
Before I have time to do anything, Tank comes roaring into the room, growling at Zeke. He positions himself between us and presents Zeke with a mouthful of teeth.
Zeke pulls his gun. He seems to like to do that. “Better get your animal under control.”
“Zeke!”
Lara bursts into the room, followed by Kath. They both look scared.
Grabbing Tank’s collar, I drag him back to my side. I lean down and whisper into his ear. “Sit, buddy. It’s all cool.” He doesn’t stop staring at Zeke, but he cuts the growl and he obeys. I look up at Zeke. There’s no way I’m telling this loose cannon anything about the device. “It’s not a big deal. Just a fancy toy my dad made for me. Before he died.”
“Let me see it.”
“Like I said, last thing I have from my dead dad. So, no.”
“Zeke, get out of here.” It’s Lara. She faces off with Zeke, her hands on her hips. “Put your stupid gun away and go get some sleep. You’re acting like one of the crazies.”
Zeke’s shoulders slump. He does look tired. He shakes his head. “Sorry, dude. I’m just . . . I’m just tired, I guess, like she says.” He slouches out of the room, gun pointed down at the floor. Kath shoots me an apologetic look and follows him.
I box up the device and put it on the nightstand. Suddenly I’m tired too. “I guess I’d better do the same,” I say to Lara.
“You do look beat.”
I give her a grin. “I think I’ll definitely sleep tonight.”
She shuffles her feet a little, starts to back toward the door. “Well, good night, then.”
“Night, Lara. I’ll see you in the morning.”
She starts to nod. But instead she looks straight at me, straight into my eyes, searching for something there. “Nick?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re one of the good guys, right?”
I think of the boys in Lord of the Flies. “I hope so.”
She considers that. “I need you to know so.”
Memories of my dad come to me; the way he pulled it together after Mom died, even though I’m sure he just wanted to quit. And Charlie, always my best friend, always there, even through his own hard times. They would both have my back if we were stranded on an island. I would have theirs too. I meet Lara’s gaze. “I’m one of the good guys. You can count on it.”
“I thought so. I thought you were a good guy all the way back in middle school. You never acted stupid, or mean, the way some of the kids do. And you were always good to Charlie.”
“Why wouldn’t I be good to Charlie?”
“Some people weren’t so nice to him.”
“They were jerks.”
She nods. “I know. Remember in fifth grade, when Jim Williams threatened to beat him up behind the gym because Charlie wouldn’t give him the math homework answers?”
I grin. I remember it well; Charlie was scared to death and so, frankly, was I. But I knew I had to show up and at least try to be a friend. We both waited for Jim, along with most of the class, behind the cinder-block gym building, but he never showed up. I heard later that somebody turned Jim in to the principal for something else, and he was already in detention. “I remember being really nervous, waiting for him to come beat the both of us into little piles. I never did figure out what happened.”
“I ratted Jim out.”
“What?”
“I told the teacher that he was threatening kids for their homework assignments. He did it to lots of them, not just Charlie. I think Charlie was the first kid to stand up to him.”
I nod. “Charlie wasn’t about to hand over his homework. I remember he said he had to work hard for those answers and damned if Jim was getting them. Thing is, if I had asked him for them, I know he would have passed them right over. It wasn’t really about the homework.”
“It was about the bullying.” Lara frowns. “That’s why I ratted. Jim just went along doing whatever he wanted, and then Charlie told him no. And when Jim threatened Charlie in the hall, I remember what you said.”
“You do?”
She nods. “You said, ‘We’ll be there, asshole.’ She laughs. “You sounded so scared! But somehow I knew you were going to show up and stand next to Charlie. And you did.”
My cheeks are hot and I sort of want to crawl under the covers. But at the same time, I feel . . . proud. The look on Lara’s face when she calls me one of the good guys is worth everything.
“Listen, I’m sorry. About last night, I mean.” Zeke is standing at the door to my bedroom. “This fucking dark—it’s getting to me. I want to go outside and see the blue sky, you know?”
I sit up. I don’t want to say anything. I don’t feel especially forgiving of Zeke, but I don’t think I want to piss him off either.
“Are we cool?” Zeke isn’t letting it pass.
“I guess.” I don’t feel too cool with him. I don’t feel like I trust the guy at all, really.
“I just overreacted.” Zeke watches me from the doorway.
“To what?” I watch him back, interested in seeing what his answer might be. No such luck, though. He just shrugs and tells me breakfast is ready. Then he leaves.
I get out of the bed and rub my eyes. I’m hoping Zeke is okay—he just freaked me out a little last night. I keep telling myself he’s fine as I walk down the hall from the bedroom. I can hear Kath’s voice from the kitchen. When I reach the room, all three of them—Kath, Zeke, and Lara—are laughing.
“What’s the joke?” I smile at Lara. She looks beautiful even with mussed-up hair and sleepy eyes. I wish I could kiss her.
“We were just comparing notes about what our parents made us eat for breakfast.” Lara rolls her eyes. “Mine were hardly ever home, so I ate what I wanted.”
It’s strange how we’ve adjusted to talking about people from before the darkness in the past tense.
“My dad always made us eat eggs and bacon and hash browns, every single morning.” Zeke chuckles. “I guess he didn’t know about cholesterol.”
Kath grins too. Parents are easy targets. “Mine were hot on grains, so we had to eat steel-cut oats. Every freaking morning my mom cooked them on the stove for forty minutes. My brother hated them.” Kath’s voice trails off. She looks pensive.
“I bet he’s okay, Kath.” Zeke puts his arm around Kath’s shoulders. “He’s probably in some safe place with your parents.”
Kath doesn’t look so sure.
I try to change the subject. “So what’s for breakfast?”
Lara gives me a grateful look. “Pancakes!” She grins. “It looks like the electricity is back on for a little while, so we took full advantage.” She opens the oven door and shows me a foil-covered heap. “We just have to set the table.”
“I can help with that.” I notice that we’re still walking around in the dark, even though the lights could be on right now if the electricity is working. “We’re keeping the lights off?”
Zeke snorts. “First thing they look for—lights.”
“He means the crazies.” Lara hands me some silverware. “They watch to see if lights come on in the high-rises when the power blips on. If they do, the crazies come up after whatever they think they can get.”
We set the table that’s in the kitchen. I guess that breakfast is going to be a more formal affair than our other meals have been. As if she’s read my mind, Lara explains.
“Kath and I thought it would be fun for us all to eat like it used to be—at the table, you know?” She laughs. “Except me and Brian hardly ever ate at the table, and neither did Zeke’s family, and Kath says they only did at holidays.”
I smile, but I don’t say anything. I’m remembering how Dad used to be sure to eat with me every morning and every night after Mom died, until we both got so wrapped up in our own stuff. I miss those mealtimes. I bet everyone here is missing something like that. Wondering if they’ll ever do it again.
Kath comes to the table with the foiled pancake mountain. Zeke follows with some syrup.
“Let’s eat!” Zeke helps himself to five cakes.
We pass the plate around, and I smother my pancakes in maple syrup. They taste delicious. I eat mine slowly, savoring the flavor. None of us talk much over the meal. It seems like just the act of sitting together around the table is enough.
“Any plans for today?” I mop up the last of the syrup off my plate.
“I was hoping we could just lay low today.” Lara looks at Zeke. “It would be nice just to spend some time together.”
He raises both hands up at her. “I’ve got no beef with that.”
Lara looks relieved. I think about what it must be like to wait here while Zeke goes out to get supplies, wondering if he’ll ever come back.
“I’d like to get some wash done.” Kath raises her eyebrows at Zeke, and he laughs.
“I guess I know what I’m doing today.” Zeke shakes his head at Kath, but he’s clearly happy to help her.
After we’ve cleaned our plates, we stack them on the counter next to the sink. Lara fills one side of the double sink with water from a bucket and adds some dish soap.
“Want to wash or dry?” She holds out a towel.
“I’ll wash,” I say. “Why are we using water from buckets?” I nod toward the bucket.
“That’s from the balcony—rainwater, like I was telling you.” Lara takes the plate I hand her and dries it. “We try to use it for everything except cooking. We have several buckets now, and we have some netting that Zeke brought home from one of his forays. We put the netting on top to keep bugs out of the water. I wish we had some big old rubber bands. I’m using shoelaces knotted together to hold the netting over the buckets.”
I nod and keep washing. The things we’re going to have to become accustomed to in this new, dark world . . . I wonder how many other changes are in store.
“It’s weird, isn’t it?” Lara seems to know, once again, what I’m thinking.
I nod. “Yeah. I mean, here we are, dressed in five layers of clothes, doing dishes in cold rainwater in the dark, scared to step out onto the street, wondering where our meals are coming from and how long we can hold out up here. It’s really weird.”
We just stand there, staring at each other for the longest moment. I want to ask Lara about leaving this place, but we get interrupted.
“Whoa.” Kath walks up behind us. “Downer city in here, huh?”
Lara and I both laugh a little. “I guess so,” I say.
“Well, Zeke and me are going to brave the laundry room on the seventh floor. So will one of you come lock the stairwell after us?”
“Do you guys have to go down there?” Lara looks worried. “Can’t you just use our machine?”
“As long as the electricity holds out, I want to try to wash some jeans and stuff. We can use all the machines down there at once and get everything done if we’re lucky.” Kath smiles. “You know how long it takes with just one machine.”
“Okay.” Lara still looks worried. “But just the washing—bring everything up here to hang dry, right?”
“Right. Now come on!” Kath whirls and heads out of the kitchen.
“Want to come?” Lara dries the last dish. I follow her out to the living room, where Zeke is waiting by the door with two baskets full of laundry. Kath joins us almost immediately with another basket and a jar of quarters.
“Ready?” Zeke raises his eyebrows at Kath.
“Of course.” She gestures like a queen. “Onward, my prince.”
“Prince of dirty clothes.” Zeke holds the door for her. He seems to be in a better mood than he was last night, that’s for sure. I hope it lasts a long time.
Lara and I follow them out to the stairwell door. Lara takes the golf club out of the handle and holds the door open. “We’ll listen every five minutes.” After Zeke and Kath go through, Lara closes the door and shoves the golf club back through the door handle, snugging it into place with the rag. She checks a watch on her wrist that I haven’t noticed before. “Batteries,” she says when she sees me looking. “So far they still work. Yours is the windup kind, though, right?” She points to the watch Gus gave me. “Are you keeping it wound?”
I nod. “Yeah. The guy who gave it to me told me it might come in handy.” I wonder where Gus is now. Is he still in the house next door to Charlie’s, waiting for his son to come home? Is he even alive? I hope so. I keep seeing his grizzled face and hearing him give me advice. I wish he was here right now. He’d know exactly what to do.
Thinking about Gus makes me think about my dad for some reason. Maybe it’s the part about knowing what to do. I bet if my dad were here, he’d know what we should be doing. I bet he wouldn’t be telling us to do laundry. That thought makes me smile. My dad would say something like, “Clean clothes are nice, but it seems to me like we may be in a crisis here.” And then he’d waggle his fingers in front of his face like he was holding a big old stogie. Some comedian used to do that—Groucho Marx, I think. Or maybe it was Charlie Chaplin? Whoever it was, Dad used to piss my mom off sometimes, doing that.
“It seems like we may be experiencing a slight problem,” he said when we blew a tire on our way to the second-grade school play. I remember I was in a lobster costume, and Mom was freaking out because I came on in the first act. “They may have to do without a crustacean tonight,” Dad said. “They’ll survive.” But he got the tire changed, and I got to the stage on time.
Thinking about Dad alive makes me think about him dead. I don’t think I’ll ever get the image of him out of my mind. I still can’t quite believe it’s actually true. I follow Lara back into the apartment and try to act like nothing’s wrong, but I think she can tell.
“Want to look at the sky?” She looks at her watch and walks over to the balcony door. “We’ve got four minutes until the next door check.”
“What are we looking for?” We step out onto the balcony.
“Light.” Lara sounds wistful. She scans the sky. “Just light.”
Of course there is none. The sky is a dark gray, like there is a heavy cloud cover, the kind where there’s going to be a bad storm. I can’t see any change in it at all. I scan the city streets. It looks like a war happened down there. The way the city is now, I have a hard time believing it will ever be normal again.
“It sucks.” Lara is looking down there too.
“We probably can’t stay here forever.” I wonder how she feels about leaving.
“I know.” Lara doesn’t seem upset. “I just . . . I hope my parents can find me if they come back.”
I don’t say anything for a minute. The last newscast I saw that mentioned Europe made it sound like they were just as bad off as the States are. I wonder if Lara’s parents are even alive. When I do speak, I’m careful to change the subject. “Probably time for us to check the door, right?”
She nods and we go back inside. There’s no sound at the stairwell door, though. We spend most of the next hour just talking, laughing about things we remember from school. Sometimes she gets quiet and I think maybe we’re talking about someone she knows is dead, but I’m afraid to ask.
“What about your friend Charlie? Is he okay?”
“I think he is, but I’m not sure. His parents took him out of town when it got dark. He texted me right before he left, but he didn’t have time to say much.” At the sound of Charlie’s name, Tank raises his head. He’s been lying on the couch, and I thought he was asleep.
“Oh—he misses him,” says Lara.
“Maybe,” I say. In fact, I’m sure Tank does miss Charlie. I think he’s wondering where his friend went, and why he got stuck with a lame replacement like me. All I can do is try to keep him safe until he and Charlie can be reunited. And it’s hard to feel too sorry for him right now, watching him get his ears scratched by the prettiest girl in school. “He looks pretty happy right now.”
Lara moves over next to me. “You know what I keep thinking about, Nick?”
“What?”
“That day—the day of the party. I was so excited that you might come. I remember watching the door every time the doorbell rang and hoping it would be you. And then, finally, it was.” She looks embarrassed. “I was so happy when you finally arrived.”
I can’t believe what she’s saying. I mean, I can, but it seems so strange to know that we felt the same way that day.
“Did you know that I—that I liked you, Lara?”
She looks down at her hands. “I thought you might. Just the way I’d catch you watching me sometimes. But I was never really sure. I hoped so, though.”
I have to kiss her then. And for the next hour, as we kiss, check the door, then kiss some more, it’s like everything goes away. I forget about the darkness, about my father being dead, about everything that’s happened. I forget about the future. It’s just the two of us, and this is the only world that matters. And every time I open my eyes and look at her, it’s like she’s the one bit of light still left in the world.
Finally Kath and Zeke come back from doing the laundry. “All of the jeans are dry!” Kath points to a stack of neatly folded pants. “All we have to hang up are the T-shirts.”
“Any sign of other people?” Lara asks as we help Kath drape shirts along the backs of the dining-room chairs.
“Nothing,” says Zeke. “We checked to see if there were any new clothes down there, or if it seemed like anybody had been there since we were last, but it all looked the same. I don’t think there’s anybody left in the building but us.”
I decide to broach the subject of leaving. “How long do you guys think we should stay here?”
“What do you mean?” Zeke sounds almost pissed off. So much for his better mood.
“I mean, if everyone is out of the building, how long can it be safe to stay here? We’ll run out of food in the immediate area after a certain amount of time, anyway.”
“People only know to come here if they’re trying to find us. They wouldn’t know where else to—” Zeke breaks off, and looks like he’s said more than he meant to say.
“It’s okay.” Lara shakes her head. “We’ll stay for a while longer, Zeke. We don’t have to make any decisions right now.”
Zeke must be thinking of Meagan and how she wouldn’t know how to find us. If she’s still alive. Lara’s remark seems to appease him, and the rest of the day is spent doing domestic things around the place. Since the electricity is back on, we get to have a hot dinner of canned ravioli, and Kath makes some sort of biscuits using only a mix and some water, and they’re delicious. I’m careful not to bring up planning again, and we all relax a little bit.
I can’t help thinking, though, about those men in my bedroom. I doubt they have a clue where I am, but I don’t want to stay in one place too long. I came here to see if Lara was safe. I planned to ask her to come with me to . . . wherever. Now I wonder if that’s such a good idea. She’s safe here, at least safer than she would be with me. If those men who killed my dad really are from the government, they won’t stop looking for the device they want, and they probably know by now that I have it. I had hoped that because the phones were out, they wouldn’t have had any way to track me to Charlie’s, but I realize now that if they’re government, they do. My phone will have given me away, even dead. They only have to look through the records of the texts I got before it stopped working to know that Charlie is a friend—from there it’s not hard to get an address. If it works like it does in the movies, they’ll be following every lead they get until they run me down.
Suddenly I’m glad Gus insisted on staying next door at his son’s house. I don’t think they would suspect he knew anything, even if they did know he was there.
“Ready to turn in?” Lara’s voice snaps me out of my thoughts. The evening has gone by already. I’m surprised at how tired I am. I nod at Lara, excuse myself, and head for bed.
I grab the device from my pack and crawl under the covers. There’s a tap on the door, and after I shove the device under my pillow I clear my throat. “Yeah?”
The door opens a bit, and Lara peeks inside the room.
“Okay if I come say good night?”
She comes in and sits on the edge of the bed. She looks as tired as I feel.
“You doing okay?” I wish there was some way I could make everything better for her.
“I’m fine.” She combs her fingers through her hair. “How about you, Nick? Do you want to talk any more, about . . . your dad? Or anything?”
I really don’t. Talking about it right now just seems to bring it closer, and I don’t want to see his face the way I saw it last. I shake my head.
Lara watches me for a moment, then nods. “It’s hard, sometimes. It’s enough to just be here, you know?” She surprises me then, by leaning toward me and giving me a soft, gentle kiss on the lips. I put my hand on her shoulder and pull her closer. The kiss turns into three, and then five, and then we both start laughing and pull away from each other.
“We’ll never get to sleep like this,” she says.
“You’re right about that.” I’m not so sure I want to get to sleep anymore.
“Well, I’ll see you in the morning, then.” She lingers at the door, and then disappears.
I’m not quite as sleepy as I was when I first got into bed. I dig the device out from under the pillow and turn it in my hands. I push the buttons, and the tendrils of light appear. I push again, and they get brighter. The third time I push, I expect it to get even brighter, but instead it goes out. I concentrate on the seams, and try to leverage the parts of it that look like they open. Nothing happens.
I know it has to do something. I just don’t know if I’ll ever figure out what.
Zeke is gone in the morning when I go out to the living room. Lara and Kath are fussing over Tank, who looks at me like he knows I’m an old friend but he’s forgotten my name because his new friends are so much better. I make a face at him.
“Morning.”
Lara turns, and her smile is like the sun. “I have some breakfast waiting for you.”
“You’re both going to spoil that dog.”
Kath grins. “He’s so sweet! I already fed him breakfast; some of the canned Spam. He loved it! But we’ll have to see if we can’t find some dog food.”
“Thanks, Kath. But don’t spoil him too much.” I shake my finger at her and follow Lara into the kitchen. There’s a box of Cheerios on the counter and a can of peaches next to it. Lara gets a bowl out of the cupboard.
“We’re out of milk now, but the peach juice from the can actually tastes decent with Cheerios.” She hands me the can opener.
“Who would have thunk it?” I open the can and fork out the peaches, then pour the juice over some cereal. She’s right; it’s good. “Thanks, Lara. Where’s Zeke off to this morning?”
“He went to see if he could find some more supplies. He said he thought if he left really early it might be quieter on the street.”
“He seems . . . intense.”
She nods. “He’s been through a lot. I mean, I guess we all have. It affects people in weird ways.”
I rinse out my bowl and spoon and we go join Kath in the living room. Tank is still in canine nirvana, getting his ears rubbed.
I look around; the plastic hanging in front of the windows drifts in the heated air put out by the gas fireplace. “That to keep the light in here from showing on the street?”
Lara nods. “We figured better safe than sorry. They look for it from street level and then break in if they can. Before the news reports stopped, we heard they were killing people for their blankets.”
I decide to try to talk with just the girls about leaving. “How long do you figure you can hold out here?”
Kath looks up. “Where else can we go?”
I tell them about the scribbled note on the desk calendar at Charlie’s. About the geothermal guy. “I wonder if there isn’t something there, someplace where people are making it work. Someplace better than this, anyway. The guy on the website was some sort of scientist.”
Kath gets up to go check the stairwell door for Zeke. Lara waits for her to leave before she says anything.
“Zeke will never go for it.” She scrunches Tank’s fur on his shoulders. “He believes Meagan is still alive. He wants to find her. I think that’s where he is now, really. Not that he isn’t keeping an eye out for food or whatever, but I think he’s out trying to find her.”
“Do you think she’s still alive?”
“Honestly?” She looks sad. “No. I think they probably killed her pretty soon after they took her. Or traded her to somebody else who did.”
I’m thinking about that, about what “pretty soon after” means in a world like the one down on the street, where kids are cutting off fingers, when Kath comes back into the room, Zeke right behind her. He’s empty-handed, but he’s flushed with excitement. He looks like he’s been running.
“Listen.” He paces the room, agitated. Tank watches him, ready to growl. “I was at the Mexican grocery store, you know that one on Third? I thought I would chance it, see if anybody overlooked a couple of cans of something. And I ran into these two guys.”
“Crazies?” Kath looks scared.
“I don’t know.” Zeke looks almost manic. “They weren’t in the getup—no black-jacket stuff. They almost got the drop on me, but I managed to get one of them covered. I told the other guy I’d kill his buddy if he made a move.”
“Zeke, sit down. You’re freaking Tank out.” Kath pats the seat next to her.
He ignores Kath and continues to pace. “These guys—one of them looked to me like one of the guys that night . . . the night they took Meagan. I decided to interrogate them. So I asked them if they knew about her. And they said they did. They said they can get to her!” He looks at me, a weird intensity in his eyes.
I don’t think I like where this is going.
“Wait, you think one of them was one of the crazies from the night Brian died?” Lara is shaking her head.
“I know he was, Lara!” Zeke is breathing like he just ran a race. “They can get Meagan. Not for nothing, of course, but I told them we had something they might want.”
“Like what?” I’m afraid I already know the answer.
“Your thing.” Zeke looks defiant. “That thing that makes light. I’m going to trade it for Meagan.”
“Wait.” I’m not about to offer up my dad’s device for a scam. “You told them about Meagan, Zeke. They didn’t tell you. They just said what you wanted to hear once they knew you had something they wanted. There’s no reason to believe they know anything about her.”
Zeke stops pacing for a minute. He looks confused, but then he shakes his head. “No. No, they knew. And my sister’s life is worth more than that stupid toy of yours.” He stands in front of me, towering over me. “Those guys want it. When I told them it made light, they were all over it. They said they would get Meagan, no problem, and I know they can. They had walkie-talkies, and they contacted their headquarters right in front of me.”
The sound of static, the clipped orders coming over the two-way radio in my bedroom, the smell of the gunpowder in the air when they were gone, leaving Dad dead on the floor.
“Did you tell them about this apartment?”
“What, do I look stupid or—”
“Did you tell them where we are, Zeke?” I stand up and meet him head-to-head.
“Zeke.” Kath stands and goes to him. She turns him toward her and takes his hands, tries to steady him. “Honey, it’s okay. We all miss Meagan, but she’s gone, Zeke. She’s dead.”
The slap comes lightning fast. “Don’t you ever say that.” Zeke’s voice is low, and he’s shaking now. I put myself between him and Kath.
“You need to go calm down. Go calm down.”
“Go fuck yourself.” Zeke storms out, slamming the apartment door behind him. We all hear the door to the stairwell slam too.
He still isn’t back after dinner, and Kath is practically beside herself. She’s also got a huge black eye from where Zeke slapped her. Lara has been switching out cool cloths for her, but all Kath wants to do is check the stairwell door to see if he’s come back.
“You guys go to bed,” she says, waving us away. “I’ll just wait up, and as soon as he’s back I’ll crash too.”
Lara shrugs at me, and we finally do leave Kath to her thoughts. I’m beat, and I say good night to Lara at the door to her room, but she follows me down the hall to mine.
“I don’t really want to be alone tonight, Nick.” Lara stares at the carpet instead of looking at me. She looks so tired, and yet she looks tough too. There’s something about her that’s totally different from how she was in school. I wonder if I seem different to her too.
“I don’t know what kind of guy you think I am, but all I’m willing to do is spoon.” I wait for her to look up, and when she does I grin. She looks relieved, and I know I’ve said the right thing. We climb into the bed and heap the blankets over us. And we spoon, and I think I sleep the sweetest sleep I ever have, just holding her close.
I don’t want to be awake, but I am. I wish Lara and I could just go on sleeping, so warm, so close. But we can’t. I rub the fuzziness out of my eyes and stretch. I automatically check the clock radio on the nightstand, even though the power has been off and on for days and it won’t tell me anything true. That’s when I see it.
The low light from the nightstand lamp is enough to reveal that the box is gone. I left the device in its box on the nightstand, and it’s not there.
“Shit.” I’m out of bed and on my way to the living room in less than thirty seconds. Kath is asleep on the couch. I touch her shoulder.
“Kath?”
“Hmm?” She doesn’t wake all the way. Lara’s up now too, looking at me with alarm.
“What’s going on?”
“That device—the thing my dad made. It’s gone. Where’s Zeke?”
“Oh, no.” Kath is awake now. She sits up and holds her head in her hands. She starts to rock back and forth. “Oh, no. He promised me he wouldn’t do it. He promised me he wouldn’t.”
“What?” I can’t believe it. “What, Kath? It’s Zeke, right?”
She nods. “He showed up really late. He tried to talk me into going with him, but I said no. I said you were right, that those guys were trying to trick him. He wouldn’t listen at first, but then he finally acted like he’d had time to think, and he agreed with me. I should have known better than to believe him.”
“Going with him where, Kath? Did he say where?” Lara is pulling on her shoes. She’s looking around the room for something—her coat, which she finally spots on the back of the couch and throws on too.
“He said they were meeting him behind Rosy’s.” Kath is up, pulling on boots. “Where’s my damn jacket?”
I run to the bedroom to get my shoes and my gun. When I get back to the living room, the girls are waiting at the door. They each have a pistol.
“You both sure?”
They don’t even bother to answer.
The alley behind Rosy’s is dirty. Overturned garbage cans spew rotted food. It’s hard to tell, because there’s no light back here, so their eyes don’t glint, but I think I see the movement of rats.
Zeke is crouching behind a Dumpster. He hears us coming, and when he turns, he’s holding his gun. Not pointing at us, but close. In his other hand, he’s holding the box with the device.
“Zeke.” Lara reaches him first. She stops three feet away. “Don’t do this. Those guys are lying to you. They’ll probably kill you.”
“You there, Zeke?” The voice comes from about thirty feet down the alley. I can make out another Dumpster down there; they’re probably using it for cover. I wish I could tell how many are there.
“Yeah.” Zeke yells out the word without taking his eyes off us. “You got Meagan?”
“She’s not here, Zeke. The deal was that we get her from those scum and take her to a safe house. Once you deliver the device, then we reveal the location, and you go get her and take her home.”
Zeke looks at us, excitement and triumph shining in his eyes. He mouths a word. See?
“Ask them how you know she’s safe, Zeke.” I’m stalling. I wonder if we could take them if we knock Zeke out and all three go in, guns blazing. I hear the crackle of one of their two-way radios, and my heart sinks. That noise is all too familiar. Is it possible that the guys who killed my dad could have tracked me here? Have they been watching Lara’s house, waiting for one of us to come out, a weak link to try to get to me? “Zeke. The guys who killed my dad were carrying the same radios.”
He shakes his head. “Lots of guys have radios, Nick.” But even as he utters the words, he seems to realize they’re not true. Nobody has radios. At least nobody we know.
“How do I know she’s safe, guys?” Zeke shouts, angry. He keeps his eyes on me, but I know somehow that it’s not me he’s angry at; it’s the whole thing. It’s the cold. It’s the fear. It’s the dark.
“You’ve got our word, Zeke. She’s such a sweet little thing. It’s great we could get her out of there before something bad happened to her.”
Zeke’s face crumples. “She is a sweet little girl, isn’t she?” He swallows. “Did she ask you to read her a bedtime story?”
The guy answers right away. “She did—she wanted Snow White.”
I hear Lara gasp.
“What?” I look from Lara to Zeke, but neither one says anything.
“Meagan’s at least six feet tall.” Lara’s whispering. “She’s Zeke’s fraternal twin. He calls her his little sister because she was born eleven minutes after him. But she’s the same age—seventeen.”
They don’t have her. Zeke knows it too, from the look on his face.
For a moment I think he’s going to cry, but he tightens his jaw and takes a long, shuddering breath. He looks at Kath, shaking his head.
“You gotta run,” he says softly. “I didn’t tell them where we live, but they’ll come looking.” He flips the box at me; I’m not sure what’s happening, but I catch it. And then Zeke is gone. He’s walking around the Dumpster, gun in hand, toward them.
There’s a sudden flurry of movement behind the other Dumpster; static crackles. A floodlight switch gets thrown, and Zeke is illuminated with a harsh glare.
“Where’s the device, Zeke?”
Zeke doesn’t say anything. He just keeps walking. Kath lunges to stop him, but Lara manages to hold her back.
One more time the voice from the other side shouts, “Where is the device?”
Lara loses her grip. I try to grab Kath, but she twists away from me and runs into the floodlight, toward Zeke. At the same time, Zeke raises his gun and shouts out at the night sky.
“Same place my little sister is, you assholes!” He pulls the trigger.
Immediately the air is filled with the deafening sound of automatic-rifle fire. Kath reaches Zeke just as he falls, and she’s caught in the rainstorm of bullets. I duck back behind the Dumpster. Lara is staring, transfixed. I grab her arm and pull, running as fast as I can, half dragging her along. The sound of the rifles doesn’t stop.
We do a quick check to make sure no one has disturbed the entry to the apartment while we’ve been out, and we grab my backpack and Lara’s and get ready to make a run for it. No time for anything but the smallest stash of food and water, and we’re off. Tank senses that something is wrong and he follows close, moving silently. I’m trying to think, but I feel like I’m in shock—everything seems to be going by really slowly, and it’s like I’m seeing it from inside one of those old-fashioned goldfish bowls. I keep us moving for a half hour, until we’re both so out of breath we can’t keep running.
The street we’re on looks deserted, but they all do now, so that doesn’t mean we’re safe. There are plenty of smashed-in storefront windows, and the rubble on the sidewalk keeps tripping us in the dark. I duck through the door of what looks like an abandoned diner.
It’s empty in front. I leave Lara with Tank and check the back rooms. There’s a small office and a storage room. Inside it, there’s a walk-in pantry. I go back out front and get Lara and Tank. We all collapse on the floor at the back of the pantry. Tank’s panting is the loudest sound; I can barely make out the shape of his head in the gloom.
“What do we do?” Lara sounds hopeless. I wish I had an answer for her. I keep seeing Kath’s body in my mind, jerking in the floodlight as the bullets hit it.
We can’t stay in this diner too long. It’s too open, too exposed. We can’t go back to the apartment, because for all we know Zeke got tailed there last night. For a second it all feels so hopeless.
“Don’t never give up.” I see Gus, raising his hand good-bye. “It’s always darkest before the dawn.”
I rip open my backpack and dig through it, and there they are. The set of keys Gus gave me. The locker with the bicycle in it. If it’s big enough to hold a bike, it’s probably big enough for the three of us to hole up in, at least for the night. I unroll the paper with the locker’s address written on it and show it to Lara.
“Do you know where this is?”
She takes it. “Yeah. It’s a self-storage place off Madison. It’s not far from here. What is it?”
“I think for tonight it’s home.”
We make our way to the storage facility address. The front door is wide open. I scope out the hallway. There are metal rollup doors lining both sides of the hall, and ours is all the way at the end. The place looks surprisingly undisturbed; I guess the locks must be pretty good.
“It looks clear,” I whisper. Lara nods. We scoot to the door with the number twelve on it. The key fits the lock and we’re inside in no time. It’s pitch black. Lara finds her flashlight and turns it on.
It’s a pretty large unit. There’s nothing in it except a large, lumpy shape at the back, covered with a canvas tarp.
“Shine it here?” I point at the door. Lara directs the light to me, and I see that there’s a manual latch on the inside of the unit. I shove it hard into place and hope it will keep us safe tonight. I walk toward the back.
“Let’s check it out—maybe we can make that tarp our mattress for the night.”
I tug it and it slips off, sliding to the floor with a scratchy sound. Lara whistles.
“That,” says Lara, “is our ride to Detroit.”
What I assumed must be a ten-speed bike when Gus talked about it has turned out to be a huge, powerful-looking motorcycle. I don’t know what kind it is, but it looks vintage. There’s room for both of us on the double saddle of the seat. And the best part? It has a sidecar.
“Looks like you’re in luck, buddy.” I scratch Tank’s ear. “Your chariot awaits.”
The gas tank is empty, but there’s a can of gas that smells fresh enough. I wonder when the last time Gus rode this was—it looks polished and ready to go.
“If this thing starts, we’re heading out tomorrow morning.” I look at Lara to see what she will say. She nods.
“Look.” She reaches into the sidecar and fishes out a brown envelope. Inside are some newspaper clippings. Lara unfolds one, and there’s a photograph of this bike, with a man on the seat and a lady sitting in the sidecar, wearing an old-fashioned hat. The caption reads “Agustus Gannon, with his wife, Irene.” There’s an article that goes with the photo.
A RIDE TO REMEMBER
Agustus Gannon, who is riding with his lady love across our entire United States, stopped today in Mettle Falls. Mr. Gannon’s motorbike, a BMW R71 with sidecar, was imported after the war. Mrs. Gannon says it is a smooth-riding vehicle. The couple will stay at the River Inn in town and leave in the morning to continue their travels.
“Wow.” Lara is smiling. I realize I am too. I wonder where Gus is now. I hope he’s still alive. I hope he found his family. If nothing else, I hope he managed to scavenge himself another six-pack.
Lara and I make a bed out of the tarp, and we’re so tired that we’re asleep before we can do so much as curl up into each other. I know Tank will warn us if anybody tries the door. Even though it’s only been a matter of hours since we woke up to find Zeke gone, so much has happened that our brains just need to shut down.
I dream about sunlight. It’s coming down from the sky through tree branches, dappling everything with a beautiful warm glow. I feel a breeze, and the light plays on the ground, changing as the branches move. There’s green grass; I think I’m in a park not far from my house. When I look ahead, I can see Lara, and Charlie. They’re sitting on a park bench, laughing about something. There’s a man sitting with them, facing away from me—when he turns, I can see it’s Dad. He smiles, waves toward me. He’s saying something, but I can’t hear him. . . .
I wake in the dark, the cold from the cement floor penetrating all the way to my bones. The dream is over. Time to move.
We pack all of our stuff into the nose of the sidecar and belt Tank into the seat with some canvas strapping we found in the corner. It’s as close to a safety belt as I can get, and I think he’s secure. I pour some of the gas into the bike’s tank and stow the rest in the sidecar next to Tank. Lara stands by the door, ready to open it as soon as the bike starts, if it does. I turn on the ignition, mentally cross my fingers, and give it a kick-start.
The bike lives! The rumble of the motor is so loud inside the storage garage that we can’t hear anything else. Tank doesn’t love it when the motor starts, but he has no time to protest because as soon as it does, Lara throws the door open, hops on the seat behind me, and I drive the bike down the hall and out onto the street. Lara has her gun out and ready, with mine tucked in her belt. I head for the freeway ramp we mapped out a few blocks away.
The second we hit the street, three guys rush the bike. They must have heard the motor inside the storage warehouse because they’re waiting at the entrance. They don’t look like they belong to the crazies—no jackets with symbols that I can see, just denim and down jackets. But they do look like they mean us harm. The first two get knocked over by the bike, but the third has some time to gauge the situation, and he jumps onto the sidecar. Tank yelps, and then he bites the guy in the thigh—it looks like it hurts. The guy doesn’t let go, though, not until Lara hits him on the head with her pistol. As soon as he’s clear of the bike, I gun it and put on as much speed as I can handle. The last time I was on a bike was summer before last, when Charlie’s stepdad bought one on a whim and let us try it out. It was a little Honda, and it didn’t have a sidecar. Charlie’s stepdad wrecked it after three weeks. I don’t want to wreck this bike. The consequences would be a lot worse than the broken leg that Charlie’s stepdad got.
I carefully and quickly wind through the streets until I see the on-ramp, trying to get familiar with the feel of the bike. The sidecar helps me keep it steady—it’s like the perfect training wheel. I pour on the speed then, and we make it onto the freeway with no other incidents.
For a little while it’s smooth sailing. The freeway isn’t much more crowded than it was when I came into the city with Morton. I’m able to zigzag between the cars that are left. Most of them look like the people in them just got out and walked away. Some are wrecked, some are burned-out shells. The streetlights work for the first few miles.
After about an hour, Lara taps my shoulder and motions for me to pull over. When I do, she swings her leg off the bike and stretches.
“I think we should find a good place to pull over and have some food.”
I look around. A few yards ahead is a van, lying on its side. Rammed into its rear end is a little Toyota pickup. Together they form a great hiding place for the bike.
“Stay here, just while I check that out?” I tilt my head toward it. Lara frowns at me.
“I’m coming.” She sounds a little pissed off.
Before I can say anything, she’s back on the bike. I shake my head and go. I know she won’t listen to me if I try to convince her it’s safer for her to wait here.
The van and the truck are only a few feet off the shoulder, but it’s enough to fit the bike behind them. They are at an angle, forming a wide V shape, so from either approach, the bike can’t be seen very well. I think it might be okay to stop here for a bit. I pull the bike as close to the van’s roof, which is facing away from the freeway, as I can get it. Lara hops off again, and I get Tank unwrapped from his makeshift seatbelt. Lara gets some food out of her pack—a can of sardines and one of peaches. We pop the can tops and share a bottle of water.
“Sardines. Who would have thought I’d be eating them like they were delicious?” Lara laughs and gives one of the oily fish to Tank, who scarfs it down in a half second.
“Lara.” I don’t want to have this talk, but I feel like we have to do it. She looks at me, all traces of laughter gone, almost as though she knows what I’m going to say. “We need to be safe. I think it would be better if you would just let me take the lead sometimes, just until we know what we’re dealing with.” I think it’s a good start. But when I look at her face, I can tell I’ve just made a big mistake.
“Are you talking about back there, when you wanted me to wait for you while you made sure the place was safe for li’l ol’ me?”
Yep. Big mistake.
“Because I can tell you right now, Nick, that will not fly. I am not some little girl you can order around, and I am not going to wait back at the fucking ranch while you go make sure everything’s safe on the prairie or whatever the hell . . .”
I can’t help laughing just a little, but Lara doesn’t think it’s funny. “Look, I get it.” I try for a conciliatory tone. “I know we’re equal, blah blah blah. It’s not about that. It’s just about . . .”
“About what?” She is ready to throw down.
I shrug. “I just worry about you. I don’t want anything to happen to you.” I have never meant anything more. She seems to know it too. Her expression goes from furious to soft.
“Okay. I get that. Because I feel the same way about you.” She looks down for a minute, but then she looks up, fierce, and meets my eyes. “But from now on, we go in together, wherever we go. Because I worry about you too, and me waiting around while you play at some idea that you can keep me safe? That’s not going to work.”
“Deal,” I say. There’s nothing else to say, really. She’s right. I probably can’t protect her. But that doesn’t mean I won’t try. Lara seems mollified, and we finish our meal in a more companionable silence. I keep my hand cupped over the flashlight even though I don’t think it illuminates anything past the van’s dark hulk. As I’m drinking the last of the water, we hear it.
It’s distant, but I know it won’t be for long. An engine. Who knows what kind, maybe a truck, maybe that car I saw on my way into the city, driven by a crazy man with a gun. I kill the flashlight and take Lara’s hand. We huddle as close to the roof of the van as we can. We look at each other—her eyes reflect the dread she must see in mine. Tank stays with us; he seems to know something’s wrong. Lara puts her free arm around him and holds him.
The engine gets louder and louder, closer and closer. It must not have a muffler; it feels like the noise is actually going to assault us. As the volume increases, I can feel fear buzzing up my spine. It’s like we’re waiting for some huge fist to make impact, and my reflexes are telling me to duck. I think I actually do duck, just a little, when the thing passes where we are. As it passes, I don’t feel relieved. Instead I imagine the sound of the motor, sputtering to a stop just a few yards past us. I imagine the driver looking back, wondering what it was he saw—a movement? A glint from our motorcycle? I see him reaching for a gun, backing up, scanning the wrecked cars for life.
None of that happens. The vehicle passes us and keeps on going. After a minute or so, we can’t even hear it anymore. I can feel my body relax. Lara takes a deep breath and lets it out.
“Let’s get going,” she says.
We get Tank strapped back into the sidecar, and Lara digs an extra shirt out of her pack to put on under her jacket. It really is cold, and having the wind whip through us while we’re on the bike doesn’t help. It strikes me that Tank might be cold too. I rummage through my own pack; I threw one of the afghans from the couch in Lara’s apartment in there. I wrap it around Tank, tucking in his toes. A few strategic adjustments of the strapping holding him in, and he’s snug and warm. He looks up at me, and I can see in his eyes he’s more comfortable. When I turn around, Lara is watching me, smiling. She tilts her head at me, and it seems like she’s about to say something, but she doesn’t. She just smiles wider and motions toward the bike.
It starts with no problem. I wonder if there will ever be a time again when things like whether the bike starts will feel like less than life-or-death issues. I hope so.
The freeway stretches ahead, an endless dark line.
We’ve been riding awhile. My butt hurts and I wonder how Lara is feeling. Tank has found a way to use Lara’s pack as a pillow, and he’s asleep, I think. I’m thinking about pulling over for another stop, just to stretch our legs, when Lara squeezes my arm hard.
“What?” I shout back at her, unsure if she can hear me over the bike. She leans forward and puts her mouth close to my ear.
“I saw a light behind us!”
I let up on the gas for a second, and the bike slows.
“No! Keep going.”
I can hear the fear in Lara’s voice. I give the bike more gas and look ahead. The freeway stretches flat for at least another couple of miles, but then there’s a drop-off where it descends into a valley. I turn my head so Lara can hear me better.
“Let me know if they get any closer! I’m going to try to lose them!”
I gun the bike, pouring on speed until I’m going so fast I worry about losing control. I just want to get down the hill with enough time to ditch whoever’s behind us—I just hope there’s an off-ramp.
When we reach the crest of the slope, I could laugh out loud. It’s a long, steep descent, with not one, but two off-ramps to choose from. I try to decide: the first one arcs off the freeway gently, eventually ending in an intersection that must lead to the usual gas stations and restaurants. The second is too far ahead to really see, but it looks like it veers off more sharply, and it disappears behind a small hill. The freeway climbs again after that and disappears on the horizon. A perfect setup to ditch a tail.
I decide to take a chance. I head for the second one as fast as I can. Right before it there’s a utility building—one of those metal cubes about the size of a garage that dot the landscape. It’s got a clump of three smallish pine trees nestled up against one side. As I’m passing it, an idea strikes me; I slow way down, turn off the exit ramp, and drive straight for the building. I pull the bike between it and the trees and kill the engine. Lara and I hop off and crouch next to the utility building’s wall, peeking out at the freeway. She shoves my gun at me and sets an extra clip of ammo between us.
“If I get killed, this fits my gun. Make sure you get my gun.”
I stare. “You’re not—”
“Look!” Lara points to the freeway.
We’ve hidden ourselves just in time. The lights of a car pierce the dark at the top of the hill behind us. The car is moving fast at first, but it slows once it clears the rise. I think they’re looking for our taillights. I’m right, because they slow nearly to a stop at the first exit. I can almost hear them wondering which exit we took, that one or the next, or if we took one at all. The car idles for a minute or so—it’s too far away at this point to see the people inside, but the fact that it’s a dark sedan with no markings makes me imagine that they are the kind of people who have two-way radios with them. The kind of people who shoot scientists and teenage kids without a second thought. I hope I’m wrong.
Lara and I wait without a sound. The sedan slowly rolls closer, and I watch with horror as a window rolls down and a high-powered spotlight shines along the side of the road. I glance at the bike: Tank is being quiet, and I don’t see how they could spot the bike or us from the road. Still, I feel like holding my breath. Lara presses closer to me.
All we can do is wait.
It’s so quiet, really, especially when you think about the fact that we are on the side of a major freeway. The only noise is the sound of the black car, its quiet engine humming as it approaches. No birds, no wind, no horns or whizzing semi trucks. I draw back from the side of the building, and Lara and I both flatten ourselves against it. The car must be directly across from us now. I can see the individual needles of one of the tree branches, lit up by the floodlight. And there, in the cold dark, sweating underneath my jacket, I hear the sound I was hoping not to hear: the crackling static of a walkie-talkie.
The government men have followed us somehow. I know that it seems silly to think that just because they have walkie-talkies that they’re the same guys—but I know. I just know. They’re looking for the device. I know we’re dead if they find us.
I squeeze Lara’s hand and turn to look at her. She’s looking back, and I can see some of the fear she’s feeling. But I see something else too, something like . . . focus, I guess. She’s right here. With me. And she’s telling me that, with her eyes, with the pressure of her hand. I gather myself and try to let her know the same thing. If we die here, I want her to know I was with her.
The car engine hums louder, and we can hear that it’s gaining some speed. After a couple of seconds, I risk peeking out again, and I see its taillights heading uphill, away from us. I wait, frozen, until it disappears from sight over the hill. Then I let out my breath.
“They might double back. Let’s just sit here for a few minutes.” Lara sounds as relieved as I feel.
“Better yet, let’s just camp here for the night.” I look around at our cover. The three trees and the building will hide us pretty well from almost all angles. As long as we don’t light a fire, we should be able to sleep here safely.
“Sounds like a plan to me.” Lara relaxes against the building.
After about fifteen minutes, we decide it might be safe to get some stuff from the bike. I grab our packs and Lara unstraps Tank. She loops the end of the strapping through his collar. “Last thing we need is for him to run off sniffing.”
“Good thinking. He might, and then we’d be in trouble.” I watch as she takes him to the edge of the tree cover and waits for him to pee. Then they come back to the back of the building. I spread the sleeping bag out and we all sit on it. We manage to assemble a half-decent dinner of cold canned chicken soup and some more water for all of us, including Tank. We make our bed as well as we can, and Tank snuggles in with us. I look up at the sky.
“I don’t know the last time I saw the moon,” I say. “The cloud cover seems to be permanent.”
“I wonder,” whispers Lara, “what really is permanent now. “ She sounds weary. “Is it always going to be dark?”
“I hope not,” I say. Tank groans, as though he’s telling us both to keep it down. Lara laughs.
“I guess we’d better go to sleep. Tank’s trying to get his rest.”
“Good night,” I say, and before I know what I’m doing, I lean over and kiss her. I mean it to be a soft, good-night sort of kiss, but it turns into a melting, throbbing sort of kiss that radiates throughout my body. She kisses me right back, with so much heat that I finally have to push her away. I know we’re both wishing we were in a place where we could lose ourselves to the feelings we’re having. But we’re not. I pull up on one elbow and swallow.
“Sorry.” I feel a little embarrassed.
“Sorry for what?”
“Well, maybe, I shouldn’t . . .”
“I feel the same way you do, Nick.” I can see Lara’s eyes glittering in the dark. “Don’t be sorry. But you’re right, we’d better get some rest, because we have a long way to go yet.”
I nod. “Want to spoon instead?”
Lara laughs. “I do want to spoon.” She rolls over so I can hold her and we make our bodies fit together. It’s warm, and I’m almost happy.
In the morning after we pack the bike back up, Lara produces a couple of washcloths and pronounces that she feels too grubby for words.
“I have to at least wash behind my ears.” She makes a face. “We have enough water to last until we get there, if we’re careful.”
“Washcloths?” I ask her with a raised eyebrow.
She shrugs. “I figured we might need them.”
I’m still pondering the workings of her mind—washcloths and an extra clip of ammo—when she pours half a bottle of water on hers. She hands me the bottle.
“I’m off to have a little privacy,” she says. “Keep Tank with you, okay?”
“Don’t go too far. And don’t get in sight of the road.”
She rolls her eyes. “I know. Be right back.”
I watch her go, admiring the view. Then I get my own washcloth wet. I can smell myself. A little washup couldn’t hurt.
Three things happen, almost all at once. Lara screams, and Tank starts to growl. Before I can even look at him, something hits me from behind and I’m out cold.
I wake to Tank licking my face and whining. For a minute I don’t remember where I am, but then I see the trees and the building and I’m on my feet. Tank stops whining and waits, like he’s waiting for me to tell him the plan. I look around. The bike is still here, along with all of our stuff. Whoever came only wanted one thing.
I run in the direction Lara headed to wash, and I find what I’m afraid of: her jacket is on the ground. The washcloth is next to it. She’s not here.
From far up the freeway I hear the screech of tires. I can’t see the vehicle because it’s already over the hill. I run back to the bike and start it. I’m on the road before I even think about Tank. My heart sinks, but I can’t go back. Tank is on his own.
I push the bike as hard as I can. I can’t hear the other vehicle anymore, but as soon as I clear the hill I see it: a beat-up convertible with just the metal frame of a soft top. Some remnants of the cloth top flutter from the frame, and I wonder who trashed it. Inside the car are three people. One of them is Lara. I can see her hair whipping in the wind, and it looks like she’s struggling, even from this distance.
The driver sees me and hits the gas. I do the same, and the bike gives me a little more, but not much. Still, I think I can catch them. Lara looks back and sees me. She struggles even harder, and the guy holding her twists one of her arms behind her back and slaps her across the face. She hits him back, and I watch in horror as he draws his fist back and slams it into her face, hard as he can. Lara slumps over, unconscious.
I scream into the air flying by, my heart pumping. I know what will happen to her if I can’t stop them. I drive with one hand, and with the other I get my gun out of my jacket. Then I get as close as I can get—they have about fifteen feet on me that I can’t seem to catch up on. I try to keep the bike steady, and I aim for the back tire. The guy behind the wheel must see me in the rearview mirror because I hear him yell. The other guy looks back and sees my gun. He grins, then casually pulls out a gun of his own and points it at my head.
He pulls his trigger a split second after I pull mine.
My bullet hits the tire, and the convertible skids to the side. I wait for the impact of his shot, but his aim is thrown by the movement of the car. I can see the driver fighting the steering wheel, and losing. The car is veering off the road, and it jolts along the side of the freeway lane until it hits the grass. I hold my breath.
Thankfully, it doesn’t roll. Before it comes to a full stop, the driver is out of his seat and running toward me. I stop the bike and jump off, just in time for him to leap on top of me. We roll together, but instantly push apart and spring to our feet. He comes in punching, but he’s wild; nothing hits home. I dodge around for a bit, trying to both avoid him and look for my gun, which I’ve lost in the tumble. There’s no time to try to get a fix on the guy who has Lara.
I can’t see my gun anywhere, and now my opponent seems to be showing better form. He darts in with a left hook that glances off my temple when I turn. He hops back and regroups. I focus on being ready for him when he comes back at me.
Then I hear a scream. I look in the direction of the car—it’s not Lara. She’s still limp as a rag, being dragged out of the car by the second guy. He’s the one screaming—a scary, crazy howl. I see him drop Lara on the ground and he falls on her, ripping at her clothes. Something deep inside me starts to burn, white-hot.
My distraction has been a welcome opening for the guy in front of me. He comes for me. But he hasn’t banked on my anger. I don’t know where my focus comes from or how I know just where to hit him; I’ve never been in a fight in my life. But I roundhouse-punch him harder than I’ve ever hit anything, and he drops like a stone. I don’t even stop to look, just run past him to where I’ve finally spotted my gun on the ground. By the time I scoop it up, the guy on Lara has seen his friend and he’s heading my way. I stand still, pointing the gun right at his head. He slows when he sees it, and then he stops. He has a weird, crooked smile on his face and tilts his head. Now that I have a chance to get a good look at him, I can see he’s older, somewhere around fifty maybe. He’s got a scar on his throat, a ragged red thing that crosses his Adam’s apple and jumps every time he swallows. He’s shaved his eyebrows or something—in any case, they aren’t there.
“You won’t pull the trigger.”
I stay silent. He smiles wider and starts walking, slow little steps in my direction. I shake my head.
“You’d better stop.”
He does. But he laughs too. “Or what, little boy?” He does a little dance step in place. “You know,” he says, “I’m going to kill you.” He reaches slowly inside his vest and draws out a knife. It’s big, and serrated. “I’m going to kill you quick, because you bore me. But then I’m going to go get your girl.” He nods in Lara’s direction. “I’m going to do things to her, and then I’m going to kill her too. Only slow.” He runs his finger along the edge of the knife, hard enough to cut his own flesh. Blood springs from his finger. Then he starts his tiny steps again, moving toward me.
“I’ll fucking kill you.” I hold my gun straight out, aiming right for his head. I mean it, and I realize that my life is about to change. I’m going to kill a man.
“No, you won’t, little boy.” He whispers the words, and then he smiles. He licks the blood from his finger.
Then his head explodes.
The guy sinks down to the ground, blood covering his face. Behind him, Lara stands shaking, holding her gun. I run to her.
“I couldn’t find it—the gun. They took it from me. But it was in the front seat.” She sounds strange, her voice monotone.
“Are you okay?”
“He told me all the things he was going to do to me. He kept saying all the things . . . he was going to do.”
“He’s not going to hurt you.” I ease the gun from her hand and pocket it. I put my arm around her. For a minute I just hold her. I feel her breathing, and I thank whatever power might exist that she is still alive. Her head is buried in my chest, and she clings to me, holding me as tight as I hold her. We sway a little, standing there by the side of the road, almost like we’re slow-dancing, next to a dead man.
I hear something, and I look past Lara’s hair. The guy I punched is getting up, eyes glittering in the dim light, a knife in his hand. He rises slowly, like a panther, and starts toward us, making a low growling sound in his throat as he comes. I raise my gun with my other arm still wrapped around Lara, and I whisper to her. “I’m going to shoot the gun now.” And then I do, sending a bullet into his skull.
I hold Lara a minute more, and then I step back and look down at her.
“You okay to ride?”
She nods.
“Let’s go, then.” We walk to the bike, and Lara starts to cry.
“Where’s Tank?” Her voice breaks. I don’t know how to tell her I had to leave him. I don’t know how to say we can go back looking for him. What’s happened has made it crystal clear to me that we need to get our asses to Detroit as quickly as we can, and hunting the freeway for Tank isn’t an option.
“I didn’t have time to—”
“We’re going back.” Lara is not asking.
“We don’t have time to mess around, Lara.”
“Stopping for somebody you love isn’t messing around, Nick.” Lara’s jaw is set. She’s not kidding. “We’re going back.”
Thankfully, we don’t have to finish this argument. Because just like out of some Disney movie, a shape appears on the road, a hundred fifty yards away. Lara and I see it at the same time, and once we figure it out, we’re both crying. Because it’s Tank, running his heart out, running to catch up to us. He closes the distance, and when he sees us we can hear him whining as he runs, a strange, heartbreaking sound filled with worry and joy. He throws himself at us and Lara falls on him, sobbing. “Tank!” She holds him, no small feat with a hundred-pound mongrel who is wiggling like a monkey. Tank licks her face, and licks mine too, once I join the hug fest.
We aren’t sentimental fools for too long. We get Tank strapped back into the bike and hit the road. I think about checking the convertible for anything we might be able to use, but something about the idea of taking anything that belonged to the savages we just had to kill makes me feel sick. We drive away without looking back.
I keep the bike lights off for as long as the freeway lights hold out. After a while they’re all black, and negotiating the road gets a little iffy, so I put on the headlight. There seem to be more and more vehicle carcasses, and I wonder why. Did people get this far along in their trek to . . . wherever they were trying to go, and then abandon their cars? Most of those on the road look like they were simply stopped and left; only a few are wrecked. Did some sort of transport arrive to take people en masse to some destination?
We cruise along, warily watching the rearview mirrors and the horizon before us. I figure we have another night on the road. I want to make it as far as we can before we stop, but I know Lara is exhausted. She’s a trouper, though. Every time we stop to stretch a bit, she always nods when I ask if she wants to go a little farther. She’s very quiet, though, and that worries me. I don’t know exactly what happened in that car.
When we finally stop for the night, we drive all the way down an off-ramp and cruise the area, looking for a really good spot. Finally we see a restaurant that looks fairly untouched. I hope there’s some sort of food inside, and I want to check it out. I stop the bike and swing off the seat. “Want to wait here for just a minute?”
“No. I thought we had this talk.” Lara gets off the bike.
“I guess we did.” I really wish she’d work with me, just a little. But I understand, at the same time. Being separated isn’t the best plan, maybe.
We let Tank out of his seatbelt and he runs ahead. Lara looks worried, and I am too, a little. I don’t want him to get hurt. I feel pretty bad about leaving him, but I know I’d do it again if it was Lara I was leaving for—I’m just glad this time we had a happy ending.
Tank pees, and then he sniffs all around the parking lot outside the restaurant. Lara and I look around, trying to see any sign of people. The interior of the restaurant is shrouded in darkness. I risk the flashlight and shine it inside. I don’t see anything alarming, but that doesn’t really reassure me.
“I think we should just go in,” says Lara. “And we should hide the bike in there too.” She holds the door open and waits for me to push the bike through.
“You don’t think we should check it out inside first?”
“I know we should, but I’m just so damn tired I don’t care. Plus, I’ve got a gun.” She yells the last four words into the restaurant.
“Okay then.” I shake my head, but I roll the bike through the door. It makes me feel a little better that Tank isn’t growling at anything. The inside of the place is okay—a typical dive-diner type of thing. It does appear to be safe, and I relax a bit more the farther we get inside. I roll the bike all the way to the back and point it toward a door I hope leads outside. I try the door and it opens. There’s a deadbolt on the inside that I slide home.
We look around. The back room is what I’ve come to expect in abandoned restaurants—an office room and then a pantry. This place looks untouched. The pantry is full of canned goods, and the office looks like someone will be arriving to schedule the wait-staff shifts any minute.
“Weird.” I say it out loud.
“Yeah. But there have to be places like this, places that have just been skipped so far.” Lara runs her hand over the can labels on the pantry shelf. Most of the cans are huge, enough peaches to feed five families, enough beans to make forty people fart.
“I guess.” I want to make the front door secure. “Listen, I’m going out front for a minute.”
“I’m coming.” Lara is right behind me.
“I just want to see if we can make this harder to get through, at least for tonight.” I point at the swinging front door.
“I think a couple of benches should do the trick.” Lara gestures toward the booths in the eating area.
“Sounds good to me.” I don’t say anything about blocking our own exit if we need to use the front. At this point I just want her to feel safe, and I can tell she is barely hanging on in her exhaustion. We tug and push until we have three of the red pleather benches moved to the front and the door doesn’t swing in anymore.
“That should do it,” says Lara. “Now let’s go eat, and then let’s sleep for a long time.” She smiles at me, but she looks pretty tired.
We head for the back rooms, Tank at our heels, sniffing every corner.
“I’ll get the bed ready if you want to pick some dinner,” I say. Lara nods. I unpack the sleeping bags and make a little nest for us in the office. It has a door that we can close—one more barrier that might help Lara sleep well. When I’m done, I join her in the pantry. She’s staring at the cans.
“Any favorites?” I watch her face as she considers the shelves.
“I don’t know.”
She’s trying, but she’s just about out of fuel. I take a can of peaches and one of beans. “Let’s try these.” I take her hand and lead her to the office. While she settles in on our sleeping bags, I take the cans to the kitchen and open them. Grabbing two plates and a bowl, and a couple of spoons, I dish up the food. When I get back to the office, Lara is almost asleep. I’m tempted to let her go, but I know getting some food into her will be important.
“I’m probably going to regret this later, Tank, but here you go.” I set the bowl of beans down in front of him, imagining the scents he’ll be gifting us with in the middle of the night.
“Lara.” I touch her shoulder gently. She opens her eyes and looks up at me with an expression like she wishes she could deck me. “Here’s some beans.” I hold her plate in front of her and the smell must revive her a bit, because she sits up.
We’re both asleep before we finish.
The rest of the trip seems almost like a dream. We don’t see anybody—just husks of dead vehicles and scraps of garbage. We stop a couple of times to siphon gas from cars, and we get lucky both times. I don’t even know if it’s the right kind of gas for the bike, but it seems to work. Lara is quiet, so quiet I start to get really worried.
We mapped out the route off the freeway using Gus’s roads atlas. He was right—this thing has come in handy now that our phones and GPS no longer work. Geothermal Systems, Inc., is located on Grand Avenue, which looks deserted. It seems like a normal storefront type of building. ROBERT LANGLEY, CEO is stenciled beneath the company name on the door in gold-foil lettering.
I shake my head at the smashed window. “That doesn’t look good.”
Lara puts her hand on my shoulder. “Let’s check it out anyway.”
We find a gas station on the next corner with an attached service center. There’s a banged-up car parked in the first bay, but the second is empty, and I pull the bike in. We cover it with some car covers that we find folded on a metal shelf. We carry our stuff with us—if someone steals the bike, at least we’ll still have the contents of our backpacks. Tank is relieved to get out of the sidecar, and he lifts his leg on every signpost and fire hydrant we pass on the way back to the storefront.
The door is unlocked. Inside, the place has been looted of most everything. Even the desks and chairs are gone, most likely burned for warmth in some trash can. There’s a huge illustration on one wall about how geothermal energy works. A gray metal file cabinet has been knocked over on its side. Tank is running around sniffing everything.
“Don’t you pee in here, Tank.” I try to sound like I mean it. I don’t really know why it would matter, though.
So much for safe haven. I don’t know what I expected to find, but at least there had been a goal, and a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. I know I’d hoped to find Charlie here, hoped that his stepdad had headed to Detroit because he knew something that would help save his family.
Lara looks as defeated as I feel. She scuffs at some loose papers on the floor. Tank barks from one of the back offices.
“What’s he into now?” I start toward the office. Lara follows.
There’s a large walk-in closet in the office. The door is ajar, and Tank is frantically scratching at the carpeting. He stops every few seconds and sniffs all around, and then he starts digging again, trying to make a hole where there is no dirt.
“Tank. Come on, buddy, stop.” I walk to the back of the closet to get him. He’s got a corner of the carpeting up, and there’s wood flooring underneath it. There’s something else too, something I just get a glimpse of before the corner of the carpet flips back down to cover it.
It’s a hinge.
“Lara.” I grab the corner of the carpeting and start yanking it up. Lara sees what I see, and she helps. When we’re done, we’ve exposed a three-foot-by-three-foot trapdoor with a round handle set into it. Tank sniffs at the edges, as excited as I’ve ever seen him. Lara and I exchange a look.
“Should we?” I think we’ve got nothing to lose, but I want her opinion.
“Duh.” She grins.
I grin back. “Okay, you hold Tank.” Lara grabs his collar and tugs him away from the door. I take hold of the handle and pull. Slowly the door inches upward, and then suddenly it lifts itself. I spot pneumatic lifts on the underside as it rises. A staircase leads down to . . . somewhere.
“Crap!” Tank lunges, and Lara loses her grip on his collar. He’s down the stairs before either of us can stop him. We both start down the stairs at the same time, which results in a crash.
“I’ll go first, okay?” I don’t want to sound sexist, but I also don’t want anything to happen to Lara. She nods, and I start down.
The stairs end in a huge room lit with fluorescent bulbs set into the ceiling. It’s mostly empty, and there are two doors on the far wall. Tank is scratching at the bottom of the left one. I try the handle. It opens. Tank runs in ahead of us.
Inside, there’s what looks like an observation booth—a glassed-in room with a counter and what looks like a closed-circuit security system. There’s nobody in the chair behind the counter. Past the booth there is another door. Tank looks back, waiting for me to open it.
I do.
They all died. It was a virus, a sort of a spore that settled in their lungs, and grew, and killed every one of them. We found the bodies of the last two, a man named Dan and Robert Langley, CEO of Geothermal Systems, himself. He was the last to die.
It’s all in the computer log. Langley detailed the course of the virus, and how it killed over half of the colony before they even knew what was happening. They developed a vaccine, but it was too late. The spores had already floated into people’s nostrils and attached to their lungs, where they were dormant for three to seven days.
Then the cramping began. Langley described it as similar to what he’d heard tetanus started out like, before people could get inoculated against it. Stiffness, progressing to cramping muscles. But where people with tetanus used to die from being unable to breathe, people in the colony died because their muscles spasmed and cramped so severely that they broke bones. Patients went through excruciating pain as their muscles contracted so strongly that femurs and tibias snapped. Organs were crushed and death finally came, but never soon enough. Survivors hauled bodies to the incinerator on the far end of the complex. There was no other way to dispose of them. The log for the date three days before we arrived was gruesome.
Dan will be dead within the hour. I don’t think I can get him to the incinerator; the cramps have started. From what I can tell, the antivirus is effective—just too late for us. I’ve left several batches in the lab freezer. I hope it helps whoever finds this log.
If you’re reading this, everything you need is here. We worked out all the kinks before the virus hit. There are instructions for all of the various factories. Before you trouble yourself with those, go to the lab freezer (behind you if you’re seated at this computer) and administer three CCs of the antivirus intramuscularly, now. Don’t wait. If you do, you’re lost.
I hope that what we created here will not end with me. I have hope for you, stranger, brother, sister, human. Perhaps one day the sun will shine again.
Robert Langley
We did what he said. We gave each other the injections, and we gave one to Tank too. It’s been two weeks, and no sign of stiffness. No cramps. I think we’ll be okay.
The factories Robert mentioned are different areas in the colony. They’ve got a hydroponic farm, and a geothermal energy plant, and chickens and a trout farm and a science lab. Everything they needed to survive is here, and we can run most of it well enough to live for a long time. There’s light, and heat, and hot and cold running water, and enough food. There’s just one thing missing: people.
We figured out that first day why Tank was so frantic to get down here. When he ran into the second room, he immediately went to a wall of coat hooks where it looks like colonists hung their jackets and sweaters before they ate in the common dining hall. There was one particular jacket there that he leaped up to get. When I took it from him, my heart broke. It was an army jacket. And on the pocket was a name patch embroidered with the word TINY. I never found Charlie’s name in the death rolls later, but I felt at that moment that he was gone. I sure hope I’m wrong.
I still haven’t figured out how Charlie’s stepdad knew Robert Langley; he did work for a drug company, but I don’t know if that’s the connection. I read all of the files I could find, and it seems like this Langley guy had been setting up this place for a long time. I don’t know if he knew what was going to go wrong with the world—he just knew something was going to go wrong. He got investments from people all over the place, and in return he promised them a place in the colony. He sent them word to come when the darkness first fell, and they all came, from the sounds of it. They all came and they all died.
Lara and I spend our days tending to what needs tending, and playing with Tank, and watching what’s happening aboveground on closed-circuit televisions. They’re connected to infrared night-vision cameras, so we can see clearly what’s out there. We’ve seen murders occur on them, watched people turn on each other for nothing more than a coat. We’re afraid to let adults know we’re down here, so if they come into view we usually just watch to make sure they aren’t trying to get into the compound. But the children—that’s a different story. If they wander into the black-and-white vision of the cameras, and they look like they’re alone, with no adults, we dart outside and fetch them in. So far we’ve brought in nine: two girls and seven boys. All of them tell us stories about how their parents have been killed. For a jacket. For a scrap of bread.
The children are innocent. They haven’t turned into monsters yet who would kill for a jacket. There’s still hope for them. At least that’s what Lara says. Most of the time I think she’s right, but sometimes, I watch all the children at dinner, laughing and yelling, and something makes me think of an island, where little boys were stranded, and their true nature was revealed.
So far we’ve been lucky down here. Everything seems to be working the way it’s supposed to, and all of the children are healthy. We’ve inoculated all of them. There’s still enough vaccine for many more. So far, no government men have stormed our little castle underground, though the crackle of static often wakes me, heart racing, from my sleep. It always takes me a second or two to realize the sound is only inside my head.
I keep the guns oiled and ready.
“Are you ever coming out of there? I’ve got some hot cocoa for us, and the fire is going.” Lara leans against the door of the lab. Tank is at her side, as he always is now. I look up at her and smile. She’s so beautiful, and I’m so lucky.
“I’ll be right out. I just want to try a couple more combinations.”
“That’s what you said an hour ago.”
“This time I promise.”
When she’s gone, I make a note of the combination I’ve just tried on the device. All three buttons at once, then the left one, then the left and the right together. That combination produced the largest area of illumination yet. There’s a puzzle I have to solve, and I’m no scientist, so I don’t know if I can. But if I do, I think there’s a chance my father’s device might be an answer to end the darkness. I think that’s what he was trying to tell me. He played some part, no matter how unwittingly, in how all of this began, and he died before he could try to end it. I know he was smart, brilliant even. He could have fixed this, and I think that he was on his way to doing so with this device before he was killed. And this has become my mission, my obsession. I have to figure out how to destroy the dark.
And so I try one more combination of buttons, just one more, on my father’s device.
The Nightworld
Copyright © 2011 by Jack Blaine
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Scraping by in classes, hanging out with his best friend Charlie, and trying to get a date with Lara Hanover, the prettiest girl in school—that was Nick Robbins’ life. Survival was the last thing on his mind. Then, a strange cloud appeared over the city. A cloud that kept growing. The darkness on the horizon consumed the light around it. And Nick’s dad, a Department of Defense energy physicist, might have something to do with it. Soon, it became clear that the world Nick knew would never be the same. Now, night is never-ending. The temperature is falling as heat leaves the world. Plants and animals are dying and people are turning into predators waiting for any small advantage. But Nick is determined not to disappear like the fading light. Desperate to glimpse a familiar face in the shadows, Nick races to find his friends—and the one clue that’s his glimmer of hope.