Storm (14 page)

Chris shouted, “Or maybe they just heard how good we have it here and want to stay for lunch!”
That got a cheer from the crowd. They loved Chris. He was their protector. Their benefactor.
He would be their executioner.
“I’m telling the truth!” I screamed. “We’ve got to get out of here. Now!”
Chris and the cowboys didn’t even make a move to shut me up. They knew I had no credibility. I saw them exchange knowing looks and laugh. These guys were ruthless. They knew what was coming, and they were enjoying the warm-up.
Olivia took a ste p forward and held her hand out for me to take it.
“Let’s go, Tucker,” she said softly, as if she were trying to calm a raving lunatic.
“No,” Chris said. “I think we should all stay right here and welcome these soldiers that Tucker warned us about. What do you think, Tucker?”
That got another laugh.
I wanted to smack the guy. He was keeping everyone together because it would be so much easier for the soldiers to do their dirty work if we were all in one place.
I suddenly realized that instead of warning these people, I had managed to gather them together like sheep to be slaughtered.
“Come on out, everybody!” Chris commanded. “Looks like we’re in for an exciting afternoon!”
People flooded out of the buildings. And why not? Chris was their Santa Claus. He gave them food and shelter and protection from the big, bad, black planes.
I turned to him and asked, “Why?”
Chris shrugged and answered softly so that nobody else could hear.
“Don’t take it personally. You should be proud. You’re all making a sacrifice for the greater good.”
“Hey!” came a terrified shout. “Look out!”
People suddenly scattered, screaming with surprise and panic.
I figured it was the beginning of the end and that the soldiers had arrived.
“Don’t worry,” Chris said to me. “It won’t be painful.”
He was wrong. It was going to be very painful.
The soldiers hadn’t arrived . . . it was Tori.
Kent was behind the wheel of the Explorer, headed directly toward us. People dove out of the way of the careening SUV. The group of cowboys stood their ground and pulled out their own baton weapons . . . too late. Kent drove into them, scattering bodies like bowling pins. I heard several sickening thuds as they were hit dead-on.
I didn’t care.
Olivia screamed.
Chris lifted his weapon and took aim at the car . . . as I took aim at Chris. I threw myself at him and wrapped my arms around his body, driving him to the ground with the best open-field tackle I’d ever made. I landed on top of him and wrestled the black baton out of his hands. I had no idea how to use it, and even if I did I was too close to him to fire, so I did the next best thing: I swung the handle and hit him on the side of the head, knocking his cocky smile into next week.
I shouldn’t say that it felt good.
It felt good.
The Explorer screeched to a stop directly in front of us.
“Giddyap, Rook!” Kent shouted.
I looked for Olivia. She stood alone, looking bewildered at what was happening.
“Get in!” I yelled to her.
She hesitated a moment as if debating what to do.
“Now!” I screamed.
That shook her out of her own head. She focused and ran for the Explorer.
Jon, on the other hand, still looked paralyzed.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked, near tears.
His answer came in the form of another explosion . . . and a scream.
In the center of the courtyard, four people were blown off their feet as the bricks beneath them erupted.
The Air Force had arrived.
On the far end of the courtyard, the soldiers were advancing as if it was a military assault . . . because it was. They walked in a loose formation with one guy at the point and the others fanning out behind him like an arrow, giving each a clear shot at their victims. Every one of them held a black baton gun.
Every one of them opened fire.
“Get in the damn car!” Tori screamed at Olivia.
She ducked down and jumped in the back.
A cowboy took a run at us and fell in his tracks as Tori dropped him with a shot to his legs.
“You coming?” I shouted to Jon.
Jon looked like a deer caught in the headlights. He nodded quickly but didn’t move, so I grabbed his arm, pushed him toward the car, yanked the door open, and shoved him inside.
“Go!” I shouted.
Kent jammed on the gas before I could close the door.
All around us, people were being hit. The invisible projectiles of energy peppered the air and blasted people off of their feet. It was exactly as I feared. It was a slaughter. I couldn’t help but wonder if any more people would have been saved if I had stopped to warn them earlier.
Kent careened through the courtyard, doing his best to weave through the mass of fleeing people.
I twisted around to look out the back window as the glass shattered, sending a spray of sharp shards into the car.
“Don’t stop!” I shouted at Kent.
“Like there’s a chance of that,” he shouted back.
Another charge hit the ground in front of us, spewing bits of exploded brick into the front grill, which made it sound like we’d been hit by buckshot. It didn’t slow us down. We were quickly moving out of range. Kent drove the Explorer out of the courtyard and onto the street, leaving the carnage behind.
Once in the clear, Kent drove even faster. Nobody complained. We wanted to get as far away as quickly as possible. Minutes later we were on the interstate, and Boston was in the rearview mirror.
“We’re clear,” I said to Kent. “You can go subsonic now.”
Kent didn’t let up. He was too deep in the zone.
Tori touched his arm gently, making him start as if her touch were electric.
“It’s okay,” she said softly. “We made it. Don’t get us killed now.”
Kent’s eyes were wild. He looked at Tori as if he didn’t even register what she had said.
“Slow down, Kent,” she added more firmly.
Kent finally nodded. I could see the tension melt as he eased off the gas.
We drove on without a word. The only sound was our steady, heavy breathing and Olivia’s soft whimpering.
“I’m sorry, Tucker,” Jon finally said meekly. “I . . . I . . . didn’t understand.”
Nobody responded. The terror we had just gone through was still too fresh to suddenly start thinking rationally about the fact that Jon had nearly gotten us all killed.
“Where am I going?” Kent finally asked, staring straight ahead. Tori turned and looked back at me, waiting for an answer.
I looked around at the haggard faces. We may have been kids, but we had also been through more conflict than most adults would see in a lifetime. The fact that we were still alive was nothing short of a miracle.
“We’re dealing with two enemies,” I said. “There are no good guys to side with or help us out. The only people we can trust are in this car, and others like us. The survivors.”
“What does that mean?” Tori asked.
“It means we’re going to Nevada.”

Nobody said a word. Nobody questioned. It was just as well. It wasn’t like I had any answers. I was only repeating what Feit told us. SYLO and the Air Force were nothing more than tools. There was no way to know who was using them.

I think the reality of what we had just been through and what we had learned had finally settled in and left us all in shock. The fact that Chris and his cowboys turned out to be Air Force villains wasn’t the worst of it. The mysterious device being built in Fenway Park was a minor footnote. The attack by SYLO on Fenway was the least surprising of all. It made sense that the Navy was far too huge to have been crippled by one battle. None of those revelations bothered me as much as the most important bit of information we had gotten from Feit.

In their quest to “reset” civilization, the Air Force had wiped out three-quarters of the world’s population. It was a reality that was hard enough to accept, let alone understand.

I thought back to the fleet of black planes we saw high over Boston, headed out to sea. Were they on their way to another target city? Were millions more killed that night? The possibility was too horrific to believe, but from what we’d seen in Portland and Boston, it could very well be true.

As we traveled along the empty interstate, we saw more of what we had witnessed on our journey to Boston. There were thousands of abandoned cars, though no other signs that we were in the middle of a war. There were no downed fighter planes, no burning buildings. No wounded. No bodies.

No life at all.
The full picture of what had happened was beginning to become clear. The black Air Force planes had passed over like minions sent by the angel of death and vaporized anyone who wasn’t lucky enough to have been deep in some basement and safe from their reach. Unlike what had happened to the boat that Quinn had been on, and some of the buildings in Portland and Boston, the sweep left structures intact. The weapon was selective, and it selected people. Animals too. We didn’t see any dogs or cats or skunks or most anything else that breathed.
There were still some birds in the sky. It must have been more difficult to target flying objects. For one horrifying second I imagined that the world would soon become a giant aviary. It was like something out of a horror movie.
Everything we were seeing was like something out of a horror movie.
I felt numb. It was impossible to accept such a huge loss of life. I kept searching for other answers. Other possibilities. Other explanations.
I came up empty. The harsh truth was that we were members of a very small club. We were the survivors of the most heinous crime ever committed.
What we couldn’t know was what the future held.
“We gotta get gas,” Kent said. “We’re sucking fumes.”
He pulled off the interstate and drove to a gas station.
“What’s the point?” Jon said. “It’s not like the pumps work.”
Tori looked at me and said, “Get a gas can.”
She seemed to know what she was doing, so I didn’t question. I went into the convenience store that was attached to the station and found a can. I also grabbed a handful of Tootsie Pops. Why not?
Outside, Tori had gotten the hose she took from the Target store in Portland. I’d forgotten all about that. She went to one of the abandoned cars and popped open the gas door. I placed the tank on the pavement below it and unscrewed the cap. Tori fed one end of the tube into the gas tank and sucked on the other. She squinted, waiting for the first taste of gas. When she got it, she quickly spit out the little gas that made it to her mouth and jammed the end into the container. The suction had started the stream, and gas flowed from the car into the red can.
Tori wiped her mouth with her sleeve, and I handed her a Tootsie Pop.
“That’s for taking one for the team,” I said.
Tori grimaced and tore the packaging off the candy. “You’re up next,” she said and gratefully started in on the pop.
Kent walked up to us with his hands in his pockets. I tossed him a Tootsie Pop. It hit him in the chest and fell to the ground.
“Nice catch.”
He picked it up and stared at it as if it was something from an alien world . . . and maybe it was. We hadn’t been thinking much about anything that was considered normal in our previous lives. Like candy.
“So?” Kent asked. “Anybody know how to get to Nevada?”
I laughed. Tori did too. Kent finally joined in. It was a brief moment of silliness that we desperately needed.
Tori got it back together first.
“We’ve got to gear up again,” she said. “We’ll get a road atlas.”
That thought brought us back to our harsh reality. We had to collect supplies again, just as we did in Portland, since we’d left everything we owned at Faneuil Hall. The first time we’d done it, it felt like an adventure. We had high hopes of rejoining civilization in Boston, and it had been a little bit of a rush to take whatever we wanted. Now we were faced with a new normal, and that meant we might have to be raiding stores for a very long time.
This time felt less like an adventure and more like a curse.
Kent took the gas can and dumped the fuel into the Explorer. He and Tori then moved to siphon another car. While they worked, I went to Olivia and Jon, who were sitting in the Explorer. They were talking about something, maybe even arguing, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying, and they immediately stopped when I opened the door.
“Trick or treat,” I said and tossed each of them a Tootsie Pop. “Early Halloween.”
“Thanks,” Jon said and ate his hungrily.
Olivia wasn’t as enthused. “I don’t eat candy.”
Figures.
They both seemed upset, and I had a pretty good idea why.
“It’s okay, Jon” I said. “You did what you thought was right.”
What I really wanted to say was, “Why the hell didn’t you believe me?” but that would have been piling on.
“I’m sorry, Tucker. What you were saying about Chris seemed so . . . incredible. But I’m with you now. I hope you believe that.”
I couldn’t bring myself say, “Sure! No problem!” Truth was, he was on thin ice with me. He had almost gotten us killed. It’s hard to let something like that go.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, which meant absolutely nothing.
Olivia was staring straight ahead, as if her mind was miles away.
“You okay?” I asked.
“So many people,” she said, sounding dazed. “Gone. It’s just . . . impossible to imagine.”
“We still don’t know what happened to your mom,” I said, trying to give her hope but realizing how hollow it sounded.
She gave me a sad smile and said, “You’re a glass-half-full kind of guy, huh?”
“I try,” I said. “C’mon, be crazy. Eat a lollipop.”
I held the candy out to her, and she grabbed my hand. She held me tight and looked right into my eyes.
I felt as if she wanted to tell me something but couldn’t bring herself to do it. She was tortured, but we all were. My fear was that she was going to say something like “I love you, Tucker,” which I might have welcomed at the beginning of the summer, but not since Kent had admitted he had a thing for her.
And since Tori kissed me.
The last thing we needed was that kind of drama.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Take it. There’s plenty more where that came from.”
I gave her a big smile, trying to break the tension.
Olivia returned my smile and took the pop.
“For you, I’ll even eat sugar.”
The moment had passed, but I was struck by the insanity of our situation. We were alone in a near-dead world. We were all we had. If nothing else, we had to know that we could rely on one another. Without that, we would end up joining the three-quarters that didn’t make it.
Kent and Tori finished topping off the gas tank, and we all climbed back into the SUV.
“Now what?” Kent said. “Do I just drive without knowing where we’re headed?”
“I’m hungry,” Jon declared.
“I need a shower,” Olivia added.
Everyone looked to me. Whenever there was a decision to be made, I was expected to be the mediator. It wasn’t a comfortable position. If things went bad, I’d get grief, and so far there was very little that had gone right. But we couldn’t just sit there staring at one another.
“We have maybe four hours of daylight left,” I pointed out. “I say we find a store and gear up again. We’ll get a map. Then we should find a place to spend the night. A hotel or something.”
“And tomorrow we’ll head for Nevada,” Tori said.
“Why?” Olivia asked. “Do you seriously think we’re going to join up with a merry band of survivors and take back the world?”
Tori opened her mouth to answer, but no words came out. Olivia might not always have the big picture in mind, but those few words had put the plan under the harsh light of reality.
“Seriously,” Kent said. “For all we know, the Air Force has already found them and wiped them out. They have radios too. They could have heard that broadcast.”
“So what do you want to do?” Tori asked, peeved. “Crawl into a hole and hide?”
“Not me,” Jon chimed in. “I want to keep moving.”
“But if we’re moving, there’s a better chance of being spotted by those black planes,” Olivia warned. “Hiding out sounds good to me.”
“Not to me it doesn’t,” Tori shot back.
“So then go!” Olivia shouted. “Maybe it would be better if we split up.”
“Stop!” I ordered. “Nobody’s splitting up, so just . . . relax.”
There was a tense quiet in the car.
“We can’t do this,” I said. “We can’t turn on each other. Like it or not, we’re all we’ve got.”
Everyone stole looks at one another as if the reality had finally sunk in that our entire universe consisted of . . . us.
“Let’s not look too far ahead,” I added. “One step at a time. All right?”
There were a few grumbles of reluctant agreement.
“Good. Let’s go to the next big town. We’ll find a store, gear up, and then find a place to sleep. I don’t want to spend the night in this car.”
That was one thing that everyone could agree on, so Kent started up the car, and we were off.
The next big town was Springfield, Massachusetts. I’d been there once with my father to visit the Basketball Hall of Fame, but I was nine, so there was very little that I remembered about the city. Kent pulled off the interstate, and within minutes we found a Walmart.
“Seriously?” Olivia complained. “First Target, now . . .
this
?”
Nobody commented.
Walmart was open for business. Or at least it was open. The five of us grabbed carts, split up, and went on another shopping spree through the deserted superstore.
On this trip I was less worried about comfort and more concerned with practical items. I picked up a flashlight, a couple of headlamps, and some camp lanterns. Batteries too. I had always taken electricity and light for granted. Not anymore. I also grabbed some water-purification tablets in the camping area. There was no way to know if we’d always find plumbing with running, filtered water. The last thing we needed was dysentery. There was a big first aid kit in the same area, so I put it into my cart along with a waterproof box of matches and a compass. I took another hoodie, a T-shirt, and extra socks and underwear. In the grocery area I took a bunch of ramen noodle boxes and freeze-dried food packets thinking we could boil water over a fire and have a hot meal. My last stop was in the book area, where I found Tori thumbing through a large road atlas.
“This is pretty detailed,” she said. “Every page is a map of a different state. But it’s also got fifty folded satellite maps of each state. “It’s not Google Earth, but it’ll do.”
She dumped it into her cart and moved on. I took note that she had restocked with several boxes of ammunition. Gotta love Walmart. Where else can you buy candy and bullets?
We all met at the front of the store, and I was relieved to see that Olivia had chosen much more wisely this time. She only had a pair of jeans, a sweater, socks, and underwear. We all stared at her near-empty cart.
“What?” she asked defensively. “I couldn’t find anything I cared to wear.”
Everyone had been equally practical, for whatever reason. Jon had thought to grab several walkie-talkies and replacement batteries. Kent had stocked up on bags of trail mix, beef jerky, and Gatorade. Everyone picked up headlamps and lanterns. We were in and out of there in half an hour with our supplies packed into individual canvas bags.
“Okay, Mr. Practical,” Kent said. “We took that step. What’s next?”
“We gotta find someplace to spend the night.”
“I have an idea,” Jon said.
Jon hadn’t been offering much. He was still the new kid and wasn’t all that social anyway. And he had nearly gotten us all killed, so hearing him volunteer an idea was strange.
“Let’s find another hospital,” he suggested. “There’s food and beds, and if they have a radio I can probably figure out how to get it running on the backup batteries.”
“You want to hear the broadcast again?” Tori asked.
“I want to make sure there still
is
a broadcast,” he replied. “It’s been over a week. I don’t want to drive a couple of thousand miles for nothing.”
“That’s really smart, Jon,” I said.
Jon beamed proudly, as if he had re-earned my trust.
For the record, he hadn’t. But he did have a good idea.
It didn’t take us long to find a huge hospital called Bay State Medical Center. We drove around until we found the entrance to the emergency room, the most likely place for a radio. We left the car in front, grabbed our gear, and headed inside.
Jon led the group as if he knew where he was going. I guess when you work in a hospital, you get a feel for how they’re set up. Within minutes we were behind the reception desk. Jon scanned the area and headed straight for a closed door. He opened it and . . .
“Gotcha!” he proclaimed.
There was a radio setup very much like the one at Maine Medical Center.
“Give me some time,” he said. “As long as they’ve got emergency power, I can fire this up.”
“I’m starving,” I said. “Let’s hit the kitchen to see what hasn’t spoiled.”
We left Jon to work and went hunting for the cafeteria. It took a while to find, but it was worth it. There was a pantry loaded with canned food. We also found sealed bags of taco shells and plenty of bottled water. We would eat well that night.
I opened the cold locker and immediately wished I hadn’t. The smell of rotting meat and vegetables made me gag. I closed the door quickly, grateful that the seal was tight enough to block the smell.
“Get used to that,” Tori said.
We cracked open a few cans and dished out tomatoes, peaches, and some processed meat that I probably would never have eaten in our previous life, but when you’re hungry, most everything tastes good. None of us cared about manners. We all just dug in and ate.
“Vitamins,” Tori said. “There’s probably a pharmacy where we can grab some multivitamins. It’s not like we’re going to be eating balanced meals.”
“Good idea, Mom,” Kent said and gave her a friendly hug. Too friendly, if you ask me, but nobody asked.
When we had eaten our fill, Tori loaded up a plate of food and headed out.
“For Jon,” she said and walked off.
“You know the great thing about eating like this?” Kent asked.
Olivia and I looked at him, waiting.
“No clean up!” He tossed his plate onto the counter. “Who said Armageddon can’t be fun!”
We didn’t laugh.
“Jeez, just trying to lighten things up,” Kent said, irritated.
“I’m going to find a shower,” I said. “Hopefully the water’s still running.”
“Where should we sleep?” Kent asked.
“The emergency room is probably okay,” I said, thinking out loud. “It’s below ground.”
The sun had set, which meant we were once again in the dark. I grabbed one of the camp lanterns and went in search of a shower. It didn’t take long to find one. There was a locker room near the ER that was probably for nurses. At the far end was a three-stall shower. I put the lantern down outside of one stall, stepped inside, crossed my fingers, and turned the faucet.
A hard spray of water sprang from the showerhead.
“Yes!”
It wasn’t heated, but the pressure was good. There were even bottles of body wash and shampoo at each station. After finding a stack of clean white towels, I was good to go. I peeled off my clothes and stood under the cold spray to wash away the grime that had been building over the last few days. It didn’t bother me that the water was cold. It felt great. I shampooed my hair and was surprised to feel that a bunch of grit had accumulated on my scalp. It took a second for me to realize I was washing out tiny bits of Fenway Park. I lathered myself entirely to get every last particle of that nightmare off of my body. By the time I rinsed off, the cold water was making me numb, so I shut it off and stood there to drip dry.