Colony East (6 page)

“Hey, I know my brother. He says things he doesn’t mean. He’s frightened. He’ll never admit it, but he’s afraid of the trip home. I am, too. If we stick together, we’ll make it. Timmy’s going to love the island. There are other kids his age. It’s a great place to grow up. He can act like a kid again. He won’t have to steal just to eat. Besides, Timmy needs you.”

“He doesn’t need anyone.” Mandy raised her eyebrows. “He’s tough.”

“Tough on the outside. Trust me, he needs you.”

Mandy sighed and stared into the distance. “Maybe I need him, too.” It was barely a whisper, and Abby thought Mandy might have been saying it to herself. Could Timmy help heal her shattered heart?

Abby took Mandy’s hand. “I think we could both use some chocolate.”

The corners of Mandy’s mouth curled up, but the sadness in her eyes remained.

CHAPTER TEN

“Look how much there was.” Jordan showed the shoebox of empty wrappers to Abby and Mandy, wanting to prove he hadn’t made up the Halloween story.

They were all disappointed about the candy, but they had other things to discuss.

They talked about the plan to return to the island. They had a good cache of crickets for their time at sea, and about six liters of drinking water. Jordan rattled off some useful things they could use: winter jackets, garbage bags, shoelaces. Abby, Mel, and Timmy, who would stay in the house while he went to find a boat, could hunt for the items.

Jordan grudgingly accepted that Mandy would have to take him on her motorcycle. It was the fastest way. And in this new world, speed was survival.

“We’ll go to Charlestown first,” he told them. “If I don’t find a boat there, we’ll head north. There’s a port in Lynn and a really big harbor in Marblehead. Wherever I find a boat, I’ll sail it back to Charlestown.”

“Isn’t Charlestown close to the airport?” Mel asked in a concerned tone.

“The dock’s about a hundred yards from one of the runways. “I don’t think the fire would have spread to the yacht club. That hundred yards is all water.”

Abby wanted to know how the others would get to Charlestown. “That could be the most dangerous part of the trip. After the fire, kids will be desperate to get pills.”

Mel shrugged. “We’ll walk. Five miles is nothing. We’ll hang our heads and shuffle.”

“After I drop off Jordan, I can give the rest of you rides,” Mandy offered.

Jordan’s heart beat faster. He imagined a situation where it would just be Mandy and Timmy on the motorcycle. Would that tempt Mandy, who still held on to the pills, to take off? He couldn’t chance it. “Timmy, come with me and Mandy. I could use a hand.”

“Jordan, that’s not safe,” Abby said.

He made a face. “The three of you rode on the motorcycle. Timmy’s small.”

“I mean, it won’t be safe at the yacht club.”

Jordan gave the thumbs up to Timmy. “We’ll watch out for each other, right? Four eyes are better than two.”

Abby persisted. “Jordan, you might have to swim out to a boat. You’d leave Timmy alone on the shore.”

Jordan did in fact expect he’d have to swim out to the moored boats, knowing the odds of finding a rowboat would be slim. Survivors would have found rowboats useful for fishing and would have claimed them by now.

Timmy piped up, “I’m not afraid to be alone.”

Jordan let out a low whistle. “Timmy knows how to survive better than all of us combined.”

“I know you’re not afraid,” Abby told the boy. “But none of us has to be alone, except for Jordan, and he’ll be on a boat. We should always stay in pairs. It’s safer.”

“I can go with Jordan,” Mel countered.

Jordan hung his head. His plan was sinking like a boat on the rocks. No sooner had he patched one hole than another one opened up.

Mandy shook her head. “Sorry, there’s not enough room on the bike for me and two older kids.”

Unknowingly, Abby shot another hole into his plan. “When Mandy comes back, she can give Timmy a ride. Mel and I will walk.”

Jordan gulped, then tried his best to sound calm. “You three should walk together. Safety in numbers.”

“Then Mandy would be alone,” Abby pointed out.

Jordan wanted to stuff a sock in her mouth. Instead, he turned to Mandy. “If somebody is chasing you, wouldn’t you rather be alone on your motorcycle.”

She patted her knife. “Not too many people chase you when you know how to defend yourself.”

Jordan felt like someone was holding him under water, and he only had a few molecules of oxygen left in his lungs. “Let’s ask Timmy what he wants to do. Timmy, I can teach you how to rig a boat. It’s really cool.”

Timmy ran over to the Jenga game. “I want to stay here.”

Jordan slumped back in the chair. Friends and loved ones on Castine Island might die because of a stupid game. Unless he came up with a new plan fast, Mandy could seize the opportunity and take off with Timmy, leaving them high and dry without the pills.

He had to find a way to tell Abby that without alerting Mandy. “There’s something you should take with you,” he told her.

From the sideboard drawer, he removed the photo of their parents on their honeymoon in Paris. Keeping his back to the others, he wrote in pencil on the back: Keep Timmy with you.

He allowed Mandy and Mel to glance at the photo. “Our mom and dad.” Abby’s eyes widened and glassed over with tears. When he passed her the photo, he made sure that only she saw his note. Her eyes opened wider and she gave him a stare of disbelief before nodding reluctantly.

~ ~ ~

Ten minutes after leaving the house, Jordan stood behind Mandy as she removed the trashcans blocking her motorcycle. Life surely was strange. Forty-eight hours earlier, Mandy had left him to die at the side of the road. Now they were a team of sorts.

He drank from the kiddie pool, then belched, tasting crickets, before helping Mandy push the motorcycle to the street.

His legs cramped up quickly, and his lungs burned from the exertion of pushing something so heavy. He shook his head in silent embarrassment, hoping Mandy didn't notice how weak he was. Still, he felt stronger than he had in weeks.

The kids walking down Pearl Street kept their distance. He wondered if the knife on Mandy’s belt had anything to do with that.

“We need gas,” Mandy said, speaking her first words since they’d left the house.

She could keep her mouth shut for the rest of the day for all he cared. He needed a ride to Charlestown and the pills, not a friend.

She produced a rubber tube and a fold-up knife from her pocket. She locked the blade in place, then, searching for a tank that held gasoline, worked her way up the line of cars parked on the street. She used the jackknife to pop open a locked lid. She unscrewed the cap and put her nose close to the opening. After striking out on the first six cars, she seemed pleased with the sniff test on a blue SUV. She wheeled the motorcycle next to it, fed one end of the tube into the gas tank of the car, gave a quick hard suck on the other end of the tube, and then inserted that end into the motorcycle tank.

Siphoning the gas seemed to take forever, and Jordan grew impatient. If they started out soon and he caught a few lucky breaks, they could all be heading to the island before dark. From the position of the sun, he guessed it was close to noon, but by the look of the gray clouds bunched up on the horizon, it might rain later on. Rain was not a huge problem. They’d be wet, cold, and miserable, but they’d survive. The biggest problem was nightfall. He needed light to rig a boat.

Mandy mounted the motorcycle, put on her helmet, and kick-started the engine. Jordan climbed on back and pointed which way to go. She shifted gears, and they were off.

He directed her through Medford Square and then toward the highway. She stayed on the streets unless a section of road became too crowded with kids, and then she didn’t think twice about riding on sidewalks and lawns. Reluctantly, he had to admire her driving skills.

The four-lane highway, Route 93, was mostly free of survivors but clogged with abandoned vehicles. Mandy had no problem navigating around them with her motorcycle.

They took the Charlestown exit off the highway, leaning into the corner as they followed the off-ramp. Soon the Bunker Hill Monument came into view.

“Go to that thing,” he shouted, pointing to the stone spire.

Rising from the city’s highest point, the monument, which resembled a miniature Washington Monument, honored a Revolutionary War battle. Jordan couldn't remember which one, but the yacht club was a straight shot from the monument, on the other side of the hill.

At the top of the hill, he had a bird’s-eye view of the airport two miles away. Wisps of black smoke rose from craters and from the terminals. A gruesome assortment of charred plane parts spread across the tarmac.

Jordan drew in a sharp breath at the scope of devastation. Until now, he had held out hope that the scientists might send more jets with pills. That hope went up in smoke as he witnessed the destruction. With all that debris, there was no way a jet could land on the runways.

When they had seen enough, Mandy coasted down the long, steep hill and took a left at the bottom. The entrance to the yacht club driveway was on the right side of the street, two blocks up. She turned in. Halfway down the driveway, Jordan spotted the first sign of trouble. There was no yacht club.

They rolled to a stop in the parking lot. The club had obviously burned long ago. One wall and a flagpole were all that remained standing. A charred flag dangled at half-mast from a rope.

Jordan climbed off the motorcycle. He half expected Mandy to leave straightaway, but she dismounted too.

When he spotted the five boats at moorings, his spirits revived. The hulls appeared to be in good shape; at least from this distance.

Then his spirits truly soared. Several boats had broken free of their moorings and had formed a boat graveyard along the shore, where they were stuck in the mud. It was a goldmine of spare parts. There had to be a set of sails in at least one of them. A mainsail would be nice, but he could make do with a jib. From all the boats available, he felt confident he could cobble together a single boat that would take them to Castine Island.

“Mandy, let me have the pills.” He had nothing to lose.

She reached into her pocket, took out the bag, and held it out to him. He stared in disbelief. With one hand Mandy placed the bag in his hand, and with her other she curled his fingers around it. “They’re safer with you. There are twenty-three pills left. I’m keeping one of them.”

He started to speak, but the first words broke into stutter and he stopped in the middle of the unintelligible sentence.

She narrowed her eyes. “Count them if you don’t believe me.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Why did I keep a pill for myself?” She looked away. “In case Timmy comes with me. He’ll reach puberty in a couple of years. Who knows what things will be like then?”

That wasn’t his question. Ever since Abby had told him that Mandy had abandoned her brother, the question of how anyone could do that burned in his mind. He was just as curious about her sudden change of heart.

“Aren’t you coming with us?”

Mandy pursed her lips and shook her head — a tense jiggle. “My grandparents lived on a lake in Northern Maine. They had a little cabin, nothing special. My mom used to take my brother and me there for Thanksgiving and Christmas. You have to go two miles down a logging road to reach the place. I don’t think any survivors will be there. Timmy and I can fish, hunt and trap. Nobody will bother us.” She looked away. “I hope Timmy wants to go.”

Jordan stared at her, not knowing what to say.

“You and the others will always think of me as the girl who abandoned her little brother. Everyone will find out. And everyone will hate me.”

“No, they won’t hate…” His voice trailed off. “Mandy, how could you do it?” His voice was barely a whisper. “How…”

She looked right through him. “This is going to sound like an excuse.” She spoke in a halting voice. “It’s not. I take full responsibility. The morning after the moon turned purple, my mom wasn’t in her room. She worked as a waitress at a fish restaurant, and she usually got home around midnight. That night, her restaurant was offering a special dinner on the terrace in honor of the comet. She told me she might be home later than normal. Sammy—my brother—was still sleeping. So I rode my bicycle to the restaurant. I don’t have to tell you what it was like. The clouds were purple. The sunlight was purple. I came across cars in the road with the drivers slumped over the wheels. At the restaurant…”

Mandy paused to collect herself.

“I don’t even remember riding home. Sammy and I stayed inside for the next two weeks. I had never been so scared in my life. We heard gunshots. Cars raced by. Some of the drivers were fifth and sixth graders. Then the house across the street burned down. At first I thought it was an accident. One morning I looked outside and saw some kids setting fires. I learned later that they were doing it because they thought it was cool to see a giant purple bonfire. I knew our house was next, so I grabbed Sammy’s hand, and we ran to Jerry’s house. Kenny was there.”

A rancid mix of anger and hatred rose in Jordan’s throat at the mention of the gang leader.

“Kenny was the toughest kid in my seventh grade class,” Mandy continued. “He knew how to ride a motorcycle because his brother worked at a dealership. Kenny had already brought five motorcycles to Jerry’s house. He made everyone feel safe. He’d go out and get us food and water. Gradually, other classmates joined us. He taught us all how to ride. He’d lead us on raids at stores like Target and Walmart. If anyone got in Kenny’s way, he…”

Jordan didn’t need Mandy to finish the sentence.

“We eventually moved into three houses on Berkley Street. It was Kenny’s idea. He had us build a barricade at both ends of the street. We never questioned him. He had saved our lives and made us feel safe. I worshipped him. I would have done anything he asked without question.

“One day, he told us that anyone under the age of nine was nothing but a drain. They ate food and drank water, but they couldn’t contribute to our survival. They couldn’t fight. They were too young to steal. He told us that living with them jeopardized all of us. Of course, I knew it was wrong, but I never said anything. There were four kids under nine in our house, including Sammy. Kenny ordered the older brothers and sisters to put them on the backs of our motorcycles.”