Haven (6 page)

“Go! Go! Go!” Doc shouted as Harrison stepped on the gas and peeled straight ahead.

I actually didn’t cringe when Old Boy’s hood hit the fence and sent it churning over the roof. My mind was too busy screaming the same word as Doc, mentally propelling Old Boy faster.

We careened through the grassy strip on the opposite side and into the street, still being chased but gaining ground as Harrison pressed the gas pedal. The first block was as eerily quiet and untouched as the inside of our school and then we came face to face with everything we’d read in the news. Houses were in flames. A car was rammed into the front of someone’s house. Trees were down and bushes were strewn about. In the middle of it all, people who looked like the kind that had just tried to run us down, roamed the sidewalks and yards. A few were scattered across the street, which Harrison steered around. All of them, on hearing Old Boys rumbling engine, made an attempt to get at us but never quite succeeded. Harrison ignored all traffic laws, driving straight through stop signs and red lights, over people’s lawns, and across sidewalks, but he got us there.

Doc’s house was on a cul-de-sac, which hid us from the hordes moving through the city, but also corralled us in if they chose to come down his street. So, we didn’t waste time getting out of the car and into his house.

“Kennedy,” Harrison said, keeping his voice to a whisper.

I looked at him.

“Just…” He paused and I could see that he wanted me to stay in the car. Apparently he knew that wouldn’t be an option and instead settled for, “Be alert.”

“I am.”

We made it to the front door in record time. Doc pushed it open, shouting, “Mom! Dad!”

And then he came to a stop just inside.

There was a reason why his street didn’t have anyone on it waiting to attack us. They’d already been here. Chairs were overturned, glass had been shattered across the carpet, there were blood streaks along the walls. We kept up with Doc’s panicked rush through the house and then found ourselves back at the front door.

We could see it on his face and all of us knew without anyone needing to say a word. There were only certain people that would be able to survive whatever was happening. Unfortunately, Doc’s parents didn’t fall into this category.

Nonetheless, Harrison left Doc with a little hope. “Leave a note,” he advised. “If they come back then they’ll know where to find you.”

Doc nodded, pulled out a pad and pen set from the entryway table, and scribbled his location on it. It seemed to reinvigorate him a little. “I’m gonna get some stuff from my room,” he said, putting down the pen.

A visible tension ran through the rest of us when he said it, which he noticed after he looked up. Realizing what he’d said, he swallowed nervously making the Adam’s apple slip up and down along his throat. It seemed to be nodding at us, saying “Yes, you know he’s correct. You’ll be staying at school for a little longer than expected.”

He raced up the stairs and returned a few minutes later with a backpack slung over his shoulder. “Mei’s house next,” he said, not bothering to stop or look back at his home as he headed out the door. And I understood why. He refused to believe it would be his last chance to do it.

Harrison didn’t offer me the keys to Old Boy and I didn’t ask for them. He was doing a good job. No reason to switch drivers now. That was what I told myself, anyways. The truth, which I eventually admitted to myself, was that he was comforting to watch. He handled the gears with precision, knowing just when to shift, bending with the ebb of the car as it skirted corners. In the midst of the chaos, he seemed so calm, self-assured, like he knew what to expect every time he turned onto a new street. It was encouraging.
He
was encouraging. Even when we pulled down Mei’s street and found it choked with the bloody roamers.

Their heads were aimlessly swiveling in search of Old Boy’s motor when he pressed the brake and their attention zeroed in on us.

“Go! Go! Go!” Doc yelled. Harrison threw Old Boy into reverse.

Our bodies were flung forward as he slammed the gas and then sharply turned the wheel to the right as he breached the corner. He was forced to stop and shift into drive, giving Mei just enough time to protest.

“Wrong way! You’re going the wrong way!”

“I saw a back alley,” Harrison said under his breath, focused more on punching his foot into the gas and the mob coming at us than on Mei’s complaint.

“Let him drive,” I said, and Mei shot me a glare.

She listened though, and he got us safely down the alley before turning off the motor. We sat in the quiet, the ticking of Old Boy’s engine barely audible, as the mob ran past the alley’s opening and continued on down the street.

“Huh,” Harrison remarked, “I have better hearing than them…”

Doc, Mei, and I had been staring out the rear window but I turned to face Harrison after realizing that was a strange thing to say. Doc and Mei, however, didn’t pick up on it.

As the two of them shimmied out the door, Doc declared, “Of course you do. You’re human.”

Neither of them noticed Harrison’s reaction to Doc’s assumption, but I did. It was a twitch just below his eyes, a nervous snap that told me, very clearly, that he didn’t necessarily agree with Doc’s assessment of him. Harrison and I were preparing to follow them when Harrison noticed I was watching him, swinging his gaze from Doc to my face just in time to see me tilt my head while trying to figure him out. His jaw tightened and I saw that his nervousness shifted for another reason, disappointment. Now, I knew he was keeping a secret, too. This realization seemed to immobilize both of us.

In the quiet of the car, with Doc and Mei inside, we stared at each other, neither of us willing to move until one of us addressed what we’d seen. He didn’t implore me to just give it up or get angry with me. He remained reserved, waiting on my reaction, as if nothing else mattered to him. He seemed to have forgotten the psychotic people roaming around outside or the fact that Doc and Mei were inside the house now. I got a sense that my presence, right there in front of him, and my perception of him, was all that was important at the moment.

“You don’t need to worry about me judging you,” I said.

“Because you’ve already formed an opinion?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll change it.”

I was a little taken aback. “What makes you think so?”

“Because you don’t know me, Kennedy, when you do-”

A sequence of thuds reverberated from inside the house and Harrison’s head turned sharply in that direction, his face finally stirring into apprehension. He had opened the car door and was ready to bolt for the back door when Mei flew down the small concrete rear steps, through the small vegetable garden, and across the toy-strewn yard. Doc was right behind her.

Their faces told us that nothing good was coming out behind them.

Using his now-infamous phrase, Doc shouted, “Go! Go! Go!”

Harrison already had the engine started and his foot on the gas by the time they were in their seats and the stream of blood-stained people began flowing out the back door. Our heads snapped back as Harrison let Old Boy loose and we flew down the back alley and out onto the main road.

I glanced at Mei, who was gazing out the window in contemplation, her forehead creased with uncertainty. It was evident that she hadn’t found who she’d come for, and my heart softened for her. I put my hand on her shoulder and she pivoted to face me, offering a shaky smile before turning back to the window. She and Doc were in the same situation now, and sadly, my intuition told me that they weren’t alone.

A few minutes and several hordes later, we were at Harrison’s. He lived in a high-rise down on the lakefront. The parking gate was up but there was no guard at the booth. What greeted us was a dark, deserted underground parking structure. Harrison pulled directly up to a door painted with blue letters designating “stairs” and turned off the engine.

The quiet enveloped us as we sat there, listening for any sounds of impending doom.

“I think it’s clear,” Harrison said, shifting to talk to us over his shoulder. “How many bullets do you have in that gun?”

I released the magazine, pushed my finger down into it, and replied, “Not many. Three, maybe four.”

He nodded stiffly and heaved a sigh filled with enough tension for all of us. “It’s probably better if you stay here.” He was still talking directly to me. “If you see trouble…just leave.”

Before I let my jaw fall, displaying my opposition, I decided to show it in another way. There was no chance I was going to make him do this alone. Pushing open the door, I headed for the stairs, giving him my answer. I think he groaned in irritation at me as I left the car. Doc and Mei elected to stay in their seats, a wise choice, as Harrison trailed me up the stairs.

“Which floor?” I asked, my voice echoing off the walls of the narrow stair shaft.

“Twentieth.”

The elevator would have been nice, I thought, if we could be assured it wouldn’t open on a floor full of danger or fail entirely and leave us stranded. No, better to use our feet.

It wasn’t the easiest trek, but at least we didn’t run into anyone bloodied and snarling. Still, once we arrived on the twentieth floor, we cautiously opened the door leading into the hallway. Harrison made sure it was clear, we entered it and stopped three doors down on the right where he inserted a key. As he opened the door, a blast of frigid air hit me like a bulldozer, actually making me step back until I realized how refreshing it was after the long climb up.

“Eve must have forgotten to turn the air off,” he said to himself, entering and tapping the air conditioner’s electronic panel.

“Off?” I muttered. “You mean you keep it this cold intentionally?”

“Eve, my aunt, works in the lab, which they maintain at a cool 54 degrees.”

“You’re kidding. How does she work in that environment?”

He chuckled under his breath at what seemed to be a private joke. “You’d be amazed at what your body can adapt to.”

“Is that how you’ve survived living here?” I asked, only half-joking.

Again he laughed, although it was more to himself. “I don’t get cold,” he muttered, moving cautiously down the hall while keeping his eyes alert and focused on the corners.

“Ever?” I asked.

“No.”

We reached the heart of the apartment, a sparsely decorated living room and dining area with high-end, contemporary furniture in grey hues. Everything was in its place. There were no random coffee mugs left on the table, no magazines strewn across the couch, not even a remote control for the television was left out. It was as cold and unwelcoming as the air.

Harrison tapped on a door down a short hallway and then opened it.

“Eve?”

Inside, the room resembled the rest of the apartment, distant, chilly, controlled. He stepped inside and checked the bathroom.

He returned shaking his head. “She’s not…,” he said, letting his voice trail off. “Must still be at the lab. They were starting the third phase of clinical trials today.”

“Do you want to try her there?” I offered.

He stared past me, appearing dazed as he looked over my shoulder. “We’d never get in. They’ll be in lockdown right now.”

Where we’re supposed to be, I thought with a bit of irony.

“I need to get some things from my room.”

I realized I was blocking the door and stepped backwards into the hallway, but my body didn’t clear the door entirely and as Harrison passed our arms brushed. And there was a subtle, but unavoidably evident, adjustment to his posture. Amused, I watched him enter the room across the hall, his broad shoulders squared and stiffened.

He was shoving clothes, deodorant, and a toothbrush inside a canvas duffel bag when I walked in and surveyed his bedroom. While I didn’t expect posters of nude women or hard rock bands, I also wasn’t expecting what I did find. A small bed had been shoved against the wall with an opened suitcase of clothes lying next to it. Other than those two items, there wasn’t a single sign that this was his room. It was an office where he’d been allowed to sleep. He’d crammed his belongings into one corner, and I noted with sadness that he took up as little space in this world as I did. In fact, there was only one item not in that corner that didn’t look like it belonged to his aunt. It was a book splayed open to a specific page on the desk beneath the window, and when I moved close enough to it my breath caught. Woodrow Wilson High School was printed at the top of the page and below it, on both pages, were rows of class pictures. It was opened to the S’s, and my picture was in the top right corner.

“I need to pick up something else before we leave,” Harrison said from the door, purposely drawing my attention back to him.

“Okay.”

“And I need to leave a note for Eve.”

“Okay.” Why couldn’t I think of something else to say? Oh, that’s right, because half my mind was back on the yearbook wondering why it was opened to my picture.

I wasn’t sure if he saw me notice it or not but he strolled to the desk, lightly flipped the yearbook closed, and pulled out a piece of paper. Without either of us acknowledging what I’d seen, he scribbled something rapidly and then looked up as if he was wondering where to put it. He wandered out, I followed, and we stopped in the kitchen, where he slid the note under a long-dead potted plant. The sight of it pulled me from my pleasant daydream that Harrison might have opened that yearbook to my page for a reason. The plant seemed ghostly to me, sending an understated message that the person who tended that plant had also tended to Harrison, and her lack of care meant she probably wouldn’t be coming back for any of them…Harrison, the note he was leaving, or the plant. I turned away, reminding myself to stop being so melodramatic. The aunt must have a heart. She let Harrison stay with her. And to convince myself of this stranger’s ethics, I studied the kitchen, carefully avoiding the plant since it would only prove my point.