Anyone? (21 page)

“Hungry?” He placed a small pot on top of the kerosene
camping stove and proceeded to light it. “I’ve got a can of stew if you’re—”

“No, no stew.” The waxy essence still clung to my mouth from
the first time I’d eaten canned stew—Cole’s offering when he’d found me at Rite
Aid. Thinking about canned stew brought the tinged taste to memory. Strange this
boy would offer me the same thing. “Anything else would be fine though.”

He nodded, removed a different can from the cupboard, and
began the task of heating the small meal over the tiny flame. “If you’re
thirsty, there’s soda in the fridge, warm of course, but you can help yourself.”

“The fridge?” I hadn’t dared open it due to my past
experiences. Meat, eggs, and cheese did not keep for more than a few days
without cooling temps to hold mold and rot at bay. Remembering caused a shiver to
snake across my shoulder blades.
So nasty.
But soda? I’d risk it for
that.

“Yeah, it seemed like a perfect place to store it. Go on. It’s
all good.” He stirred the pot with a spoon, clanking it against the sides with
each rotation; a small metallic noise to fill the silence.

I continued to hug my burned arm to my chest, and used my good
arm to open the fridge door. No light came on, like it would have under normal
circumstances, but the light from candles and lanterns shone on the treasure of
flavored goodness inside. I settled on a orange Fanta, hoping that even though the
soda was warm it still might live up to the memories of my past—pizza, orange
soda, breadsticks, and salad with vinegar-and-oil dressing.

My stomach growled.
Oh, how I miss Tony’s Pizza Pie!

Would I ever experience normalcy again? Pizza? Cold soda? A simple
fridge light?

“It’s ready.” He motioned to the table, and I squashed my
memories, and sat my bottled soda on the flat surface. He waited for me to
scoot out one of the chairs before he approached with two steaming bowls,
placing one in front of me and the other on the opposite side of the table.

Instead of sitting down, he went to a cabinet, took down a
box of crackers, and grabbed a warm soda for himself from the fridge. Orange,
just like mine.

The hot tomato soup wasn’t pizza, not by a long shot, but it
hit the spot and settled the ache of my belly. “Thanks,” I said. “It’s good.”

“It isn’t much, but it’ll do.” He lifted his spoon to his
lips and blew across the surface before placing it in his mouth. His face
pinched together, for only a flicker of a moment, and he lowered the spoon.

“You okay?” He kind of looked like he might throw up.

He nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just give me a second.” True to
his words, it seemed to pass and he smiled at me to ease my worry. “Go on, eat.
You’re too skinny.”

Me, skinny?
Maybe, but he obviously hadn’t looked in
a mirror lately. I had a good twenty or more pounds on him. He was the one needing
to eat.

“Please.” He motioned to the bowl.

I slurped my soup from the spoon and drank the warm bubbly
soda as though nothing had happened. “What I wouldn’t give for an apple or a
piece of bacon right now.” I dipped a cracker into my bowl. “Something fresh
and not processed.”

Normal conversation in an abnormal situation.

“Everything fresh is dead.” He showed no emotion, a
straight-faced fact giver, and took a small sip from his bottle. “All of it.”

“Yes, I’m totally aware, that’s why I said it, but wouldn’t
it be nice if something fresh
wasn’t
? I could go for a thick piece of
homemade bread about now. What about you? What do you miss most?”

He shrugged. “I don’t miss any one thing over anything else.
I pretty much miss it all.”

I nodded. Now that I thought about it, I pretty much missed
it all too. Food. People. Even standing in really long lines or being shoved
around on over-crowded school buses. I missed lettuce, peaches, warm showers,
indoor plumbing, traffic jams, and barking dogs. All of it. The noise and taste
of living. We weren’t living right now. Not really.

He reached across the table and held out his hand to me. “I’m
Dylan.”

If Cole were here, he’d have pointed out my social foibles with
some smartass remark about rudeness and my lack of grace, but since he wasn’t,
I took Dylan’s hand and shook it. “Tess.”

“I wish we could’ve met under better circumstances, Tess,”
he said as he released my hand. “But I’m not sure our paths would have crossed
any other way.”

“Yeah, probably not. I’ve never been to Denver.”

He smiled. “I haven’t been back here since I was a kid.
Maybe twelve years ago, I think?”

I leaned forward. “So, what does it look like between here
and Denver?”

He placed his spoon down next to his bowl. “Looks about the
same as it does here, though some places are worse than others.”

“What did you see?” I scooted forward even more. “Before
everything went crazy, I mean?” We had several hours to kill, until the stupid
sun and its death rays disappeared from the sky. I might as well try to use the
time to cipher useful information from the guy.

His eyes lowered and the fingers of his right hand traced
the checkered pattern of the Formica tabletop. “Everything happened really fast.
Probably a lot like what you saw here. It was as if pieces of the sky caught on
fire and then came crashing to the ground, destroying everything.”

Orange and white streaks had tarnished the otherwise clear sky
and the ground shook below my feet as Dad rushed me to the bunker. I’d had only
moments, seconds really, to take in what was happening—my demolished house, the
mushroom clouds of smoke, and the neighbors’ cries. Not enough time to come to
any conclusion, but enough to know all hell had broken loose.

“It seemed to go on forever,” he continued, still tracing
the lines in the table, not looking at me at all. “But maybe it only lasted ten
or fifteen minutes. I can’t be sure. Most everyone at my college campus panicked
and took off running through the snow—some to the dorms, others to the art
building or library, but a whole lot more stood in the square, transfixed by
the flecks of fire in the sky.”

He glanced at me, quiet for a moment. “Nowhere was safe, not
really, and I think somewhere in my shocked mind that knowledge kept me from standing
there. I started running, away from everything and everyone, not sure why
exactly. I tossed my backpack on the ground and ran—my track scholarship
kicking in, I guess.”

He shook his head. “Good thing too, because I’d only made it
a few miles away when another round hit the campus. The impact knocked me off
my feet and sent me flying. Kind of what you’d see in the movies, only it felt
like slow motion. Had I stayed with the others, I wouldn’t be here now. Most of
the campus disappeared into a crater.”

Jeez
.

I slipped another cracker into my mouth, chewing slowly, but
kept my eyes on him. Dylan’s account held me spellbound. He knew way more than
I did.

“After awhile, things settled down some, no more rocks from
the sky, but people were terrified, coming out to the streets or what was left
of them, wandering around as if in a daze, unsure what to do or where to even
begin. Parents cried and screamed over the tops of everyone else because the
elementary school had collapsed. Most houses had crumbled in on themselves and
people began digging through the rubble for survivors, but I just climbed to my
feet and ran past them all.” His fingers stilled. “I ran. I should have stopped
and helped, but the thought didn’t even occur to me.”

“Maybe you’d suffered a concussion when you fell?” A
concussion was possible. He had to have been in shock too. Nobody could think
normally in those kinds of situations.

He shrugged. “Maybe. Still doesn’t make me feel any better
about it.”

“But there were people, right? You saw them? Heard them?”

He removed the cap from his bottle of soda, placed it on the
table but didn’t drink from it. He spun the cap around in circles. “Yeah.”

“Okay, that’s good. Where did they go? Those people who
survived all this
have
to be somewhere.” I don’t think I could have
leaned forward any further. This wasn’t the end of the world—only a temporary
setback. People were out there, somewhere. He’d seen them!

“I have no idea.”

I slapped the table, rattling the bottles of soda and surprising
myself. “You have no idea? How’s that even possible? Where were you?”

His gaze narrowed, focusing on me. “Where were
you?”

“I was stuck in an underground bunker for the past couple of
months, and didn’t get to see anything. Five minutes, maybe, was all I had
before my dad shoved me down there. If you feel as though I’m drilling you, I
am, because I have a lot of questions and so far I have very few answers.”

“Consider yourself lucky then, because I saw more than I’d
ever want to, and I still don’t know what happened or where everyone went. Not
really. Believe it or not, I have questions too.” He ran a quick hand over the
top of his beanie. “Only, I don’t think I’ll make it long enough to get any answers.”

I slumped down in my seat, and sighed. “Don’t say that.”

“It’s the truth.” He picked up his spoon and attempted a
couple of bites, but never placed the spoon in his mouth.

I contemplated what to do or say. Nothing came to mind that
wouldn’t make me look like a real jerk.

“Stop staring at me like that.” He kept his gaze down while
he moved the spoon around in the bowl, so I had no idea how he knew I was
watching him.

“I’m sorry.” I didn’t feel much like eating anymore, but turned
my spoon around in my bowl like he did and tried my best not to look at him.

“I don’t know everything. I wish I did, for you, but I feel
like I have a handful of pieces to a puzzle—not nearly enough to make a full
picture.”

“Well, that’s more than I have.” I rested my elbows on the
table. “Anything is better than nothing, believe me, so if you have any idea
where everyone went, any idea at all, you need to tell me.”

“But you want hope, right?”

I dropped my hands in my lap. “Yeah, I do. What’s so wrong
with that? Hope is all we have.”

“So what happens when I can’t give you any?” His dark eyes followed
mine, scaring me a little with his intensity.

“You’ve already given me some by telling me there are people
who survived all of this.”

He shook his head slowly. “Not
are,
Tess.
Were.
There
were
people.”

Were?
What did that even mean? That didn’t even make
any sense. “That’s not—”

He straightened in his chair, leaning slightly toward me, his
eyes on mine. “The military swooped in—jeeps, tanks, trucks, hazmat suits—blasting
sirens and yelling at everyone to evacuate. At first, I thought them being there
was a blessing because of all the looting and fighting going on, but it didn’t
take long to realize they weren’t there to bring order.” His Adam’s apple
bobbed and fell as he swallowed hard.

“They were forcing people to leave and they weren’t kind
about it either, yanking them from vehicles and their homes at gunpoint, and
giving them no time at all to gather their belongings. They weren’t helping;
they were herding. That’s what it seemed like anyway.”

Military people always seemed rather rough. They have to be.
“But they took them away from here?”

“Yes... and no.”

He was impossible. “See? That doesn’t help me. Either they
did or they didn’t. Tell me which way they went. Did everyone head north to
Canada or east toward New York? South maybe? That’s what I need to know.”

He smirked. “No one left Colorado, Tess. That’s what I’m
trying to say.”

“You’re confusing me.”

“I’m not meaning to.”

“Then where
is
everyone? No one is here either! That’s
too many people to not be
anywhere.”
We were going around in circles,
and it was driving me crazy.

He slumped back in his chair, glanced at the floor and took
a deep breath. His eyes returned to mine, and he finally released the breath he
held. “They’re here, Tess. If you look hard enough, you’ll see the graves.”

“They killed everyone?” A load of invisible bricks dangled around
my neck and pressed against my chest, heavy and painful. My fingers trembled,
and I forced myself to take several deep breathes.
Don’t lose it, Tess. Don’t
freak out. Not now.
Dylan had to be wrong.

“The best way to get everyone out of the area would be by
plane, right?” He’d answered my question with a question and waited for me to
nod before going on.

Of course, a quick flight to somewhere safe would be the
best option since the roads were a tangled mess of rubble, buckled pavement,
and debris. It would be the difference between a flight taking a couple of
hours versus driving for weeks along a mish-mash of broken highways and back
roads.

“Planes came in, Tess. Dozens of them. They dotted the sky
like an impressive flock of birds, and for a moment, I wondered if I’d made the
wrong decision. Maybe I should have followed the group instead of dodging them.”
He sat up straight in the chair and rested his arms on the table. “But when they
swooped through the area, over and over, hovering a few miles above everyone,
never landing, I knew something wasn’t right.”

“Maybe they couldn’t land.” My brain ran wild, trying to
make sense of the insensible. “The roads were a mess, so it’s safe to assume
the runways weren’t any better.”

He shook his head “I thought that too, until they started to
spray something from the tail of the planes. One plane would fly overhead, drop
its load, like crop-dusting a field, and then a second would follow doing the
same. One right after another, so quick, dumping it on people, houses,
buildings.”

“And you saw this? For real?” I didn’t want to believe what
he was saying. How could I? This was nothing but science fiction bullshit. It
had to be.

He pushed his chair away from the table, grabbing both his
bowl and mine. “You think I’m making this up? Why would I do that?” He strode into
the kitchen and dropped both bowls in the sink.

“No, I just... I don’t....” I couldn’t speak clearly because
I couldn’t
think
clearly. “If this is true, then why would they do that?”

“It
is
true, and I have no idea.” He rested against
the counter as if needing a break and stared at me. “The government trying to
find an easy solution to a pretty big problem, maybe?”

“And killing everyone is the easiest solution? How’s that a
solution at all?”

“Look around us. Look at me!” He motioned to his hat. “I’m
sick and dying, so whatever fell from space did more than destroy buildings and
wipe out populations of people. It set off some sort of toxic
weather-transforming chaos. We’re either breathing it in or it’s seeping in
through our skin. Either way, it’s killing us.”

“Toxic?” I shook my head. “Do you mean radiation?”

He shrugged. “If it was radiation, we’d all be dead right
now, but something else, something just as harmful, yes.”

I leaned forward. “But I feel fine.”

“You haven’t been exposed as long as I have. For your sake,
I hope I’m wrong about all of this.”

For my sake, I hoped he was wrong too, but I didn’t say so.

“Can you imagine if the government had had to care for
millions of sick people like me? How would they explain that? How would they
even physically
do
that?”

I shifted sideways in my chair to look at him. “That’s just
it, millions of people! We’re not talking about a few thousand, but millions.
You can’t kill millions of people and hide that very well.”

“They don’t have to hide it. They evacuated those who weren’t
killed in the initial blasts, and then wiped them out. The bodies are there,
Tess—all over the west desert.”

“You saw this?”

“Yeah, I did.” He swallowed hard and took in a deep breath. “And
I can’t unsee it.”

I didn’t want to believe him, but I did. My stomach
tightened, and I leaned back against my chair with my hand pressed against my
stomach. This was too much to take in. “What about the rest of the world? Why
aren’t they here helping or stopping our government from doing this?”

“I’m sure the rest of the world is too busy handling the
fallout in their own way to care what’s happening here or how it’s being dealt
with.”

“How big is this?” It was hard to think about other parts of
the world going through this same thing. I thought it had only happened here.

“I don’t know, but we can’t have been the only country hit
by this, and even if we were, everyone will be looking for a fast way to fix it,
even if it’s only to put a Band-Aid over the top.”

I pushed away from the table and stood. “This is completely
nuts! I don’t know what you saw, but you’re losing it.” This wasn’t how the
government worked, not at all. Okay, maybe a little bit, but not to this
extent. Yes, some officials might be shady and corrupt, but murdering people,
lots
of people, to fix the situation with no one stepping in to stop it? No, not
possible.

He shrugged. “Maybe I am, but let me ask you a question?” I
didn’t indicate one way or the other, so he must have taken my heated silence
as an okay to go on. “Where is the government now?”

I had wondered the same thing for a while, but there was no
way I would tell him and feed into his delusions.

“No one is here fixing anything. Doesn’t that seem the least
bit weird to you?” He ignored the fact that I hadn’t answered his first
question. “I mean, it would be hard to fix this mess, but no one’s doing
anything
.
Remember the Katrina disaster?”

I nodded.

“The government was slow to come to the rescue then, but
they did come. We’re talking months now and still there’s no one here
attempting to fix anything. No Red Cross. No National Guard. No rescue
volunteers. No one. It’s pretty apparent to me they don’t plan to come either,
because it’s too dangerous for anyone to be here.”

“But they did come once. You saw them. The planes—”

“And look what they did.” He threw his hands up. “Believe
what you want, but I know what I saw.”

“If they were spraying everyone, how did you walk away? How
did you end up so lucky?” There were too many loopholes, too much that didn’t fit.
Besides, he didn’t think Cole existed, so how much could I really trust
anything he said anyway? He wasn’t reliable.

He opened his mouth to answer, but stopped. A puzzled expression
creased his forehead and pinched his brows together. He reached up and touched
the space below his nose. When he drew his hand back, blood coated his
fingertips.

“Lucky?” He shook his head, his eyes widening. His hands quivered.
“I’m far from being lucky.”

By the time I crossed the small room to help, two tiny
streams of blood ran from both his nostrils, flowed over his lips, and dripped
from his chin. So much blood. So fast.

I caught him before he hit the floor.

“Dylan!”

His eyes rolled back, and I held his limp head in my lap.

“Don’t do this.”
What do I do? What do I do?

With shaking hands, I grabbed a dirty dishtowel from a hook
and pressed it to his face, pushing harder than perhaps I should have. Blood
soaked through the material, wetting my fingers, as though the barrier didn’t
exist. The cloth wasn’t working and seemed to absorb the blood like a sponge
instead of staunching the flow.

I tossed the towel aside—
useless thing
—and pinched
his nostrils closed, trying to remember how Dad used to stop my nose bleeds as
a kid.
Don’t tip your head back, Tess. Lean forward.

Gurgles rose in the back of his throat, and I rolled him to
his side, lifting him slightly, worried he’d choke to death before the bleeding
stopped. He coughed several times, splattering blood over the kitchen cabinet
and sides of the fridge, but his eyes remained closed and his body heavy in my
arms.

“Come on!” My fingers were slick with his blood which made
gripping his nostrils difficult, so I switched hands, nearly dropping him on
the floor. It seemed like no matter what I tried—pinching his nose, raising his
head, rolling him to the side—nothing worked.

A trickle of blood slipped from his ear, oozing from the dark
cavern and down over his lobe. A sob shot through my closed lips.
No, no,
no!
This couldn’t be happening.

“Wake up!” I wiped my blood-covered hand on my jeans and
pinched his nose with a better grip. Several times, I struggled to get him to
sit up. His head flopped backward and his limp body resisted. “You were going
to try and get help, remember? No giving up. Please!” Callie meowed from her
safe place on the back of the couch, adding to my pleas for Dylan to open his
eyes.

Blood ran down his face, his shirt growing thick with it,
and both my hands were covered in red nearly to my elbow. “I’ll let you come
with me. You can climb a stupid mountain at my side. I changed my mind. We’ll
do this together.”
Stop bleeding. Come on.

I lowered his head to my lap again, unable to hold his
heaviness upright. “Please, Dylan.”

His body shuddered, quaking against mine, mini-seizers,
twisting and contorting his features. Then he fell still, his breathing labored.

“We’ll find my dad. He’ll know what to do. I know you think
you’ll never find the answers, but we will. We’ll do it together.” My fingers
shook as I pinched his nostrils tighter, and rolled his head to the side to
allow thick globs to slip from his mouth. “Don’t do this.”

His eyes flew open, but he looked through me. “Go.” One
simple word, strained and barely audible. The stream of blood from his ear grew
more intense, and the whites of his eyes swirled a deep red as I stared down at
him.

I shook my head. “No, we can—”

“Go.”

“I’m not leaving you!”

He coughed and choked up more blood. Crimson tears trickled
from the corners of his eyes. “Get out of here, Tess.” His hands trembled.

“I can’t—”

“Now!” He frightened me with his outburst, something I hadn’t
expected from him in his weakened state, and my hand fell away from his face. I
reached to clasp his nose again, but he batted away my efforts. “Run from here!”

He could hardly move, but he managed to slide to the floor,
out of my lap, and squeezed his eyes shut as he whispered, “Go before you can’t.”

I didn’t move.

“Please.”

I scooted backward, away from him, but his blood on the
linoleum made getting to my feet difficult, and I struggled to stand. My heart
raced, my breath burned in my lungs as I held onto it, afraid to breathe, while
I looked at Dylan’s crumpled frame on the floor.

He shook all over; several violent tremors racked his body,
before leaving him silent and unmoving.

“Dylan?”

He didn’t respond, but lay face down in his own blood.

I ran from the room, my boots slipping and leaving red
streaks in my wake across the linoleum and shag carpet.

Callie shrieked and hissed when I scooped her into my arms,
coating her fur in blood. I pressed her to my chest and sprinted for the
garage, refusing to glance at Dylan lying there. I couldn’t.

The sun hadn’t quite set, but hung low enough that dark
shadows came to life where the light couldn’t reach. Though gambling my own
safety, risking a massive sunburn, I couldn’t stay there any longer.

Dylan had told me to run from here, and I had every
intention of doing so.

I shoved Callie inside my blood-covered jacket, knelt next
to the gap in the garage door, and thrust my hand through the hole.

Only a second.

I yanked it back inside.

No searing pain.

I did it again, leaving it longer, and when nothing
happened—the shade saving me—I rolled to my back, and shifted through the
opening feet-first.

My backpack remained in the exact spot where I’d left it
earlier, though it sat upright instead of on its side as I remembered. But what
did it matter? I grabbed it by the straps, threw it over my shoulders, and
glanced from side to side.
We’ve got to get out of here.