Age of Power 1: Legacy (5 page)

He said, “So
how’ve you been, Vaughn? I thought you and your mom had left a long while back.
Why are you out walking the town, though?”

And there it
was. They just thought we had taken off too. Okay, again, I wasn’t going to
argue. I shrugged and said, “Um, ghosts? I came over here because I wanted
something to hold onto. Something belonging to Brand, I mean.”

He stopped
pulling cans out of the box and gave me a quizzical look. He said, “Really? And
here I thought you were a nice boy. Ransacking houses now, huh?”

I said, “Um, I
wasn’t thinking anything like that.”

He gave me a
narrow green-eyed look that made me want to step back. He had one of those cold
stares that I remembered getting whenever Brand and I got into trouble. Then he
grinned, laughed, and began putting the cans on the shelves again.

He said, “Just
kidding, bud. And call me Jim.”

I said, “Um,
okay Jim.”

Just then, Brand
came in carrying a box filled with bread, lots of bread. He put it down on the
counter. Thinking of what we had left in terms of food in our house, I knew the
Housemans would be lighter by a few loaves once Mom and Dad dropped by.

Brand said,
“Hey, I just saw a cop car. I didn’t see who it was, but the town actually has
cops even now?”

I grinned at him
and said, “Are you kidding? The town may be close to empty, but the Chief of
Police stayed, along with some other volunteers. They even have some services
running. Heck, one radio announcer still has the radio station outside town
going! Obviously, you’ve noticed, though, since you have it on.”

Just then, Karla
came up from the basement carrying a load of folded clothes. She smiled and
said, “Well, hello Vaughn. It’s good to see you…such as the things are, I mean.
How’s Andrea?”

I nodded to her
and said, “She’s fine. My dad even came back. They’re at home if you want to
call.”

Jim blinked with
surprise. He said, “Whoa! Mark’s here! That’s great to know! Maybe we could get
a football game going before…”

He stopped, and
the lighthearted mood faltered. Like it or not, we were on our way to a final
date in time. I had to admit that the coming Day could be a conversation
killer, no matter what. But I was determined that the mood would not be ruined.

Pushing past the
tension filled
moment, I said, “Hey that’s possible.
They’re going to be getting people together for a big cookout at the high
school. Everyone in the area is going to try to be there. If you want, you can
call Dad and Mom and see about setting something up.”

Karla forced a
smile that didn’t reach her eyes. She said, “Oh that would be wonderful! She
and I can get a bridge game going! Do the phones still work?”

I said, “The
cell towers are still going locally. So you can call her. I know she’d love to
hear from you.”

Karla gave me a
smile and went into one of the bedrooms with the clothes. I just watched,
thinking how odd it was that she was still doing normal everyday things such as
clothes washing, drying, and folding. Mom’s comments about my attitude toward
scientists came to mind, and I let the surreal feelings fade. Just then, however,
Brand turned from the counter and saw the look on my face. He nodded with a
shrug; he understood. We were
real
good at non-verbal
communication.

He said, “Dad,
since the cops are still here, do you think it would be okay for us to go out?”

Brand’s dad didn’t
say anything for a moment. He stopped unloading boxes, and glanced at the two
of us.

He said, “Just
remember what happens when everyone gets off the sinking ship, boys.”

Brand blinked
and said, “Huh?”

Jim sighed,
“Contrary to the popular saying, the rats get left behind. Be careful. Don’t go
into a place if you hear anything, and if you do, call the cops. We may in be a
dead town now, but if Sinclair is still here, I know he’s always been serious
about keeping people safe.”

From the main
bedroom, we heard Karla talking. Her voice had a sound of false cheer to it. I
could hear it while she talked to my mom about getting a bridge game going. Jim
listened for a second or two, and then started putting bread into the
refrigerator. He had to move cans around, to make room for the bread.

With a wave of a
hand to his dad, Brand grabbed my arm and led me outside. We went out to the
curb near the back of the SUV. I asked, “Rats on sinking ships…don’t they
usually get off the ship first?”

Brand looked
around as he said, “Not all the rats get off the boat, and they turn on each
other. At least, that is what I think he meant. Look, we've both been there.
People ran, but not everyone had the money or even the want to try to get to
safety. The closer this thing gets to happening the more desperate some people
will be. Dad’s was just telling us
to not take
any
chances. Even when we don’t think we are in danger…we are. Here, if you want a
good example, take a look at this.”

Pulling me to
the SUV, Brand pointed out a hole in the back that hadn’t been there before
they’d left. Someone had shot at them. He said, “Serious problems out there,
man. Someone tried to shoot the gas tank when we drove through some small town
west of Saint Louis. It wasn’t a happy time. The places look empty, and
everyone starts relaxing, but then…”

He gestured to
the bullet hole, saying, “You suddenly get stuff like this happening. It was
silent, and then, boom!”

Silence…that’s
what was bothering me.
 
I should’ve been hearing planes flying
overhead. On the way here, there should’ve been sound of cars driving down the
roads. Sounds were gone, and it brought home that things had gone wrong. The
neighborhood had been silent on the way here, but I’d been thinking so deeply
it didn’t click in my head.

Gods, what had
we come to? I reached out and felt the round, indented edge of the bullet hole.
I don’t know why I was bothered. After what I'd seen on television and the
Internet, nothing should surprise me. And I’d seen bullet holes in cars and
trucks before. But had they been vehicles with friends inside them? No.

I turned back to
him and asked, “You want to stay here? Or go to my place?”

Brand thought
about it for a moment before he shook his head. “Honestly, I want to walk
around. I need to see the town. I needed it when we hit the border between
Missouri and Louisiana, where there were just cars that
had
been left abandoned
. It was like that for as far as we could see…blocked
roads. And it was almost as bad when we headed back. So right now, I could use
a bit of seeing a familiar place. Even if it is empty, at least I won’t feel
like I’m being haunted by strange buildings and houses!”

Brand’s voice
had a tone of fear in it that I didn’t like. He needed to talk about this,
though, so I prompted him. “So…”

Brand said,
“Just that, Vaughn. SUV’s, Trucks, pick-ups, sedans, hell, there were cars of
every make, all just sitting there, as if they were in some huge ass parking
lot. But the scary part was that there were no people. And we weren’t the only
ones to see it. Others were behind us. They passed us by. Not driving, but
walking, hoping to get to New Orleans for a boat lift farther south…”

I opened my
mouth to say something, and found nothing to say. That would have to have been
thousands of people.
All of them trying to escape to the same
place, or somewhere like it.
Where was the U.S. government in all this?
Where was the National Guard? Then it hit me. The obvious answer was that they
had gone back to their families. They’d given up.

I said, “Come
on, let’s walk.”

Brand blinked,
and said, “What’s wrong? You just tensed up.”

Instead of
answering, I started walking. He caught up and looked at me, but said nothing.
I didn’t want to talk about what I was hearing, not yet. We walked down
the streets, gazing at the littered yards and homes, taking in the empty homes.
Whatever ungodly conditions Brand’s family had run into, it certainly
wasn’t
like that here.

Driveways were
empty except for the refuse left in the exodus. And when he wasn’t looking at
me, I’d glance at Brand worriedly. I kept seeing a look that I’d never seen on
his face before—resignation. But instead of talking to him about it, I
would just distract him by pointing at some empty home.

But while the
town seemed virtually empty of people, it wasn’t literally so. We did see the
police car Brand had seen earlier. I didn’t see who was driving, but it showed
that we weren’t entirely alone. And every so often, Brand and I would turn a
corner or pass a row of homes and see people. One, maybe two people were
carrying on with their lives, talking—sometimes laughing—and waving to us as we
walked by. We waved back, but after his father’s warning, we just passed them
all by.

At one point,
after passing two guys talking on a porch, laughing and drinking whiskey from a
bottle, Brand said, “I guess others thought the same thing as your mom did.
They didn’t even bother trying to escape the inevitable…”

Again, that
resigned tone was in his voice. Brand was giving up! You had to know Brand
Houseman to understand how wrong that was. Bright, short tempered, ready to
fight armies if he had to. And beneath it, he was full of deep anger from
things unresolved in his life. Now, he sounded defeated. I hadn’t reached that
stage yet. I refused to let myself think that way. So instead of saying that I
understood, because I didn’t, all I could do was shrug it off and continue
walking to Main Street. From there, I could see from one end of the town to the
other going East to West; at least until it hit the hills on the western side.

Riverlite wasn’t
a big town. It only held about fifteen thousand people. But it was a prosperous
place, what with Ryan Tech, the major research firm, and a big technical
college. Given the changing attitudes in politics these days, that was to the
town’s advantage. When the public interest in such things brought in more
people to do research, it brought the downtown back to life. After all, people
wanted somewhere to spend the money those research jobs brought with them.

But the stores
weren’t open. Who was going to open a store when the world was ending? And,
seeing all the doors locked and shut, I had the urge to scream. It had taken
walking past those empty stores and roads to get me to realize that everything
was ending.

There would be
no more Library Square, with the memorial wall dedicated to the First World War
veterans. There would be no more building in the center of the square. It would
disintegrate once Yama hit. No more Outlet Brands store to the west of it, no
Italian restaurant south of it. And there would be no Main Street Drug Store
across the street from them. The stores
were now closed
forever. The bank on the corner would never have deposits or withdrawals made,
and the ATM would remain dark and empty.

We were going to
die.

The hopelessness
of it all overtook me. All at once, I wandered down the street in a daze. Brand
didn’t notice. He was looking in stores through spaces between the wooden
boards that their owners had put up after Yama’s first pass. Brand moved on
ahead, and I let him. I stood in the middle of the four-lane road, seeing
everything, and knowing that the buildings—all of it—would turn to ash. Every
house, every business, the schools I’d gone to, the college, the swimming pool,
even the land would be gone. I stood there and looked in all directions,
imagining farms obliterated, the river turning to steam, and even the high
hills that Riverlite
had been built
near would become
tons of shredded earth, thanks to the coming blast wave.

Suddenly I
was brought
back to reality when I heard Brand yell with
fright. I looked around in time to see somebody dragging him into the dark
Kerrington Hardware Store. Yelling his name, I ran across the parking lot and,
without thinking, slammed open the front door, yelling Brand’s name. I stopped
suddenly as I realized how stupid it was to do that.
Brand
was being held by a large man near the front counter, his mouth covered
.
The guy holding him wasn’t alone.

We were in
trouble. Looking around the dimly lit room, I counted five muscular men, all
with hard expressions on their faces. They were all wearing leather jackets,
blue jeans, and work boots. Thoughts of a street gage came to mind. The one in
front pushed Brand down to the floor in front of a checkout counter and sneered
at me.

He said, “Man,
did you two come out at the wrong time! Get him.”

Reaching for the
cell phone in my coat, I started backing away. Before I could dial, though, one
of the men moved in fast and grabbed me from behind—yanking the phone out of my
hand. I realized that I’d been focusing too much on the leader of the pack and
had let my attacker get behind me. He tossed the phone and pushed me over to
where Brand was, pushing me down to my knees. I nearly hit my head on the
counter as I fell. Recovering, I looked up only to see a sledgehammer sticking
out of the cash register. I swallowed down the fear that brought up. It could
be in our heads soon enough.