Storm (23 page)

Jon and Olivia pulled up, both still flushed and excited.
“That was the most fun I’ve had in forever!” Olivia exclaimed dramatically. “Kent is a genius!”
I could think of a lot of words to describe Kent. “Genius” wasn’t one of them.
I gathered everybody’s helmets and put them back in the office. I don’t know why. Guess I was still trying to be civilized.
When Olivia, Jon, and I got to the Volvo, Kent and Tori were already inside.
Not
making out. Kent was in the third row, and Tori was riding shotgun. Maybe I imagined it, but the atmosphere seemed icy. Or maybe they were just playing it cool so Olivia wouldn’t know what was really going on. Or me.
Olivia jumped in the third row and threw her arms around Kent.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” she said. “It’s just what I needed.”
“That was pretty cool, Kent,” Jon said. “I’m glad you talked us into it.”
“Yeah, well, I do have good ideas sometimes.”
Everything he said had a double meaning for me. I was about to say, “So, Kent, when did you and Tori get together? By the way, are you a traitor?” But I bit my tongue.
We were about to hit the last leg of our journey. The go-karts were a fun diversion but nothing more. It was time to get back to reality. I had to make sure my head was on straight and focus on what lay ahead, not on what could have been.
I drove out of the racetrack and headed toward Denver, where we found yet another hospital. We went through our practiced routines of finding food, washing up, and claiming beds in the ER. Jon didn’t even bother trying the radio. What was the point? We would find the truth for ourselves the next day. We went to bed with the agreement that we would get up early to begin the final leg of our journey.
Nevada.
After all the speculation and debate, we were almost there. When we left Colorado, we had to traverse the width of Utah before entering the state of Nevada. The Silver State, as a highway sign proclaimed. Once we crossed the border, it would only be a short leg to the park, and . . . whatever.
The map looked as though we were going to be traveling through some desolate country with nowhere to stop for supplies. There was limited room in the Volvo, so we chose to stock up on bottled water rather than gas. There were plenty of abandoned cars to siphon along the way but no guaranteed spot to find fresh water.
Once again, we hit the road long before dawn. When we loaded up the car, there was a definite pregame feeling. Whatever was in Nevada, we would find it soon. Was it hope? A new life? Would we find a group of tenacious survivors who had banded together to wrestle control back from the two military forces that had decimated the country? Or would we fall into a trap that was set to lure in the stragglers who weren’t wiped out the first time?
Or would we find a gate to hell?
I drove first. The camaraderie from the go-kart experience was a thing of the past. We were back to stony silence. I imagined that this was what it was like to be nearing the appointed hour on death row. Up until then, it had all just been theory. What lay ahead was real.
Kent and Olivia were snuggled together in the way back. I wanted to call him out so badly, but if Tori wouldn’t do it, I wasn’t going to rock the boat.
We drove as fast as the day before, stopping for gas several times. Until then, we had been driving through civilization. Granted, it was an altered civilization, but most of our journey was through developed land. The West proved to be very different. In Colorado, we crossed the Rocky Mountains. I’d never seen anything like them before. It was breathtaking. In Utah, we passed through deserts that were stunning in their natural simplicity and rugged, unspoiled forests. I’d lived in only two places in my life: Connecticut and Maine. I’d only seen sights like these in the movies or on TV. It was awe inspiring, and depressing.
I would have liked to be seeing them with my mom and dad.
As I took in the amazing vistas, I was struck by yet another disturbing thought. We were used to living in towns with electricity and clean water. We could watch TV and send texts and buy whatever we needed in a store. We had enjoyed all the advantages of living in an advanced, civilized society. And now those luxuries were gone. We had been adjusting to that reality for some time now. What I hadn’t considered was what these changes would mean to the ecology of the planet. What plans did SYLO have for the land? Or if the Retros triumphed and were allowed to “reset” civilization, what would that mean to the physical world?
Until then, I’d only thought about the war’s impact on people, and cities, and governments. But this was real life. This was our world. What did these military powers have in mind for the most basic aspects of life on earth? Civilization was going to change. Did that mean severe changes for the mountains and deserts and oceans too? The Retros had not only wiped out people, they’d decimated other living things as well. What would that do to the balance of nature? To the food chain? The circle of life had been broken for good.
Once again, I was overwhelmed by the scope of the change that this war had brought.
Kent, on the other hand, was probably thinking about making out with Tori.
He was behind the wheel when we entered Nevada.
“We’re here,” he announced.
It was as simple as that.
The final leg of our journey was through wide-open desert. The temperature outside rose to 110 degrees. There was nothing to see for miles but sand and rocks and more sand. In the distance were mountain ranges, but they were hundreds of miles away. We were square in the middle of beautiful desolation.
“Look at the temperature,” Kent said. “A hundred and five. Sure seems like we’re getting nearer to hell.”
“We gotta decide,” Jon said. “What are we gonna do when we get there?”
Nobody answered.
“Seriously,” he pressed. “We just drove two thousand miles. We’ve got to have some kind of plan.”
“It depends on what we find,” I said. “We’ll go to where the coordinates say. Who knows? Maybe it’s a camp of survivors.”
“In the desert?” Olivia asked skeptically.
“What can I tell you?” I said. “This is where we were called, so this is where we’re going. Once we get there, we’ll figure out what our next move is.”
That seemed to satisfy everyone, though it was a totally unsatisfying answer.
“There!” Jon pointed out.
There was a highway sign for the Valley of Fire State Park.
The tension in the car suddenly amped up.
“It’s real,” Olivia said with a gasp.
“Here we go,” Kent announced and took the exit.
We followed a barely paved dusty road for several miles. Each time we thought we were lost, we’d see another sign that directed us to the park.
Nobody spoke. My mouth was bone dry as we entered the Valley of Fire.
“It’s beautiful,” Tori said. They were the first words she’d said since we left Denver.
We were surrounded by towering natural sculptures cut from rusty-orange rock. The “valley” was the desert floor. Surrounding us were soaring, jagged peaks of the same amber stone. Looking off into the distance, I saw many other impossible rock formations. It was like a sculpture garden created by nature.
“Are those pueblos?” Jon the historian asked.
He was pointing to several huts that at first seemed like part of the terrain, but when you looked closer, you could see the hand of man. Ancient man, probably. Native Americans.
We had hit the park at the exact right time of day to get the most stunning effect. The sun was sinking toward the horizon behind streaks of clouds that glowed orange and purple. Its fading light spread over the desert floor like warm butterscotch, highlighting the detail of the rock formations and their multiple layers and colors.
Olivia said, “This doesn’t look anything like a gate into hell. This is . . . beautiful.”
We drove further on, past a section that was scattered with mobile trailers. Abandoned mobile trailers. My mind was already jumping ahead and thinking that we could spend the night in one of them.
We continued until we hit the parking lot and a building that looked like the visitor’s center. Kent parked in front, and we all got out.
After traveling in an air-conditioned car, stepping into hundred-degree heat was a brutal shock.
“Okay, maybe this is a gate to hell after all,” Olivia commented while dabbing her forehead.
We all glanced around looking for . . . what? We didn’t know.
“We’re sure this is the place, right?” Kent asked.
“These are the exact coordinates that were being broadcast,” Jon replied defensively.
“Maybe the survivors are living in those trailers we passed,” Olivia said hopefully.
“If they are, there aren’t many of them,” Kent said. “I hope we didn’t come all the way out here just to hook up with twelve yahoos looking to get even.”
“I’ll look inside the building,” I offered. “Maybe there’s a message or instructions or—”
“I hear something,” Tori interrupted.
We all listened. The sound was faint at first, but it grew quickly. After spending so much time in silence over the past few weeks, it was easy to hear an alien sound because every sound was alien.
“Engines,” I said. “More than one.”
“At least it’s not music from the sky,” Kent said.
The engine sounds grew louder. Whatever it was, it was headed our way.
“What should we do?” Olivia asked nervously.
“Get back in the car,” I ordered.
“No!” Tori countered. “This is what we came for. Whatever it is, we’re going to face it.”
There was a tense silence, then Olivia said meekly, “I wouldn’t mind waiting in the car.”
“Then go!” Tori snapped at her.
Olivia went right for the Volvo and got in, but she kept her face pressed to the window to keep an eye on what was about to unfold.
A cloud of dust was being kicked up on the road behind us. Something was definitely coming in.
“I’m getting kind of nervous,” Jon said. “Should we be prepared to defend ourselves?”
“You have your gun, Tori?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Don’t pull it out unless you think we’re done. We have no idea how well they’re armed.”
“Or who they are,” Jon added.
“I’m not an idiot,” Tori said.
“Motorcycles,” Kent announced. “Harleys.”
As soon as he said that, several motorcycles rounded an outcropping of rock and thundered toward us. I counted ten. “Look!” Jon said, pointing to a ridge behind the visitor’s center.
There were four people on horseback looking down on us. They were dressed in jeans and cotton shirts: civilian clothes. It looked like there were four men, but any of them could easily have been a woman. It was hard to tell because they were all wearing cowboy hats.
“Hey!” I called. “Who are you?”
The four didn’t answer, or budge. They sat on their horses, silently watching.
The motorcycles roared into the parking lot and turned directly toward us. These people didn’t look like military types either. Some wore leathers, like typical bikers. Others had more colorful, outdoorsy jackets and jeans. They all wore full helmets that covered their faces. They definitely weren’t wearing uniforms of any sort, which was a relief. They also didn’t look to be carrying weapons, which was an even bigger relief.
The bikers rode up and circled us. We huddled closer to the Volvo. It was the only protection we had, and having strangers on motorcycles surrounding us in the middle of the desert was definitely intimidating. They formed a tight circle around us.
“I think we’ve just been trapped,” Jon said.
They continued to circle us until one of the riders raised his hand and they all came to a stop. They didn’t kill their engines. All the riders straddled their bikes and looked at us.
“We come in peace!” Kent shouted, holding up his open palm.
“Shut up, Kent,” I snapped.
I took a few steps toward the rider who had given the command to stop. I made sure that I held my hands out to show that I wasn’t hiding anything.
Unlike Tori.
“We’ve come a long way,” I said. “We heard the radio broadcast. Was that you?”
They continued to stare at us. At least I think they were staring. It was hard to tell because their faces were hidden by the helmet visors.
“We’re from Pemberwick Island in Maine,” I called out. “Who are you?”
The lead rider’s response was to reach into his saddlebag . . . and pull out a pistol.
“Gun!” Kent shouted.
Tori went for hers too late. All the riders pulled out their own guns with practiced precision. It was so quick we didn’t have the chance to defend ourselves. Or run.
The bikers aimed and fired.
I had never been shot before, so I didn’t know what to expect. I was hit in the chest and knocked back against the Volvo. I thought it would hurt more. That’s exactly what went through my mind.
I looked toward Tori to see that she had been hit too. She slid down the door of the Volvo and crumpled onto the asphalt. Her gun was on the ground, out of reach.
The window of the Volvo shattered. Olivia screamed but was abruptly cut off. She’d been hit too. We’d all been hit. The gunmen knew what they were doing. We didn’t stand a chance.
The world began to spin. The horizon turned sideways. My knees went weak, and I slumped to the ground. My last thought before losing consciousness was that it was such a beautiful park to be a gate to hell.

I couldn’t tell if I was awake or asleep or dead.
My head hurt, which was good. As far as I knew, dead people didn’t get headaches.
I felt as though I was coming out of a coma, not that I’d ever done that, but I imagined that’s what it was like. I was disoriented with nothing to see but . . . nothing.
My senses started coming back online, though there wasn’t much input for them to work with. I was lying on something soft. That much I understood. I tried to stand up, but my right leg wouldn’t move. I thought maybe I was paralyzed and started to panic. The fear got my heart pounding and my blood pumping, which helped clear my head.
I tried to move my leg again and realized there was nothing wrong with it. I couldn’t move because I was shackled. My right leg was chained to the floor.
At least I wasn’t dead.
“Tori!” I called. “Kent?”
I was in a big room. That much I could tell from the echo of my voice. As my wits returned, I remembered getting shot and realized I hadn’t been hit with a bullet. The bikers must have fired
tranquilizer darts. I felt the area of my chest that had been hit, and it was definitely sore.
“Hey!” I shouted. “I’m awake. Why am I chained up?” A light appeared high in the air. I couldn’t tell how big it was or how far away because I had no other frame of reference.
The light slowly grew more intense as it warmed up, and I realized that it was a spotlight that had its beam directed somewhere behind me. I rolled over to see what was being lit up and nearly
screamed.
I was lying below a giant face.
The thing must have been twenty feet high. It was the face of a woman, based on the puckered, painted lips. The skin was unnaturally white and smooth, which made me realize it wasn’t living. The
eyes and nose were covered by an ornate silver mask. Attached to the top of the mask and jutting above it were several tall blue and gold triangles that came to points another twenty feet above the face. Each point was topped with a large, golden jingle bell the size of a basketball. Similar blue and gold points circled below the face like a collar. The silver mask itself was intricately decorated with looping detail that looked like waves. There was a half moon on the forehead and something that looked like an ancient boat. Its eyes were closed, thank god.
Once I caught my breath, I realized it was a carnival mask . . . a very big carnival mask on a very big statue of a face of a very big woman. It appeared to be nestled in a bed of ornate greenery. “What’s your name?” an amplified woman’s voice boomed from the general direction of the mask.
If the lips had moved or the eyes opened, I probably would have passed out again. Thankfully it wasn’t the big head talking.
Somebody was pulling a Wizard of Oz stunt on me.
“Tucker Pierce. Where are my friends?”
“Why are you here?” she asked, ignoring my question. “We heard the radio broadcast,” I replied, and as soon as I said that, a thought hit me. “Wait, the broadcast voice sounded like you. Who are
you
?”
“Where did you come from?” she asked.
I had been through an interrogation like this once before, when I was captured and sent to the SYLO compound on Pemberwick Island. I half expected Captain Granger to come strolling out from
behind the big head/mask/statue/Oz/whatever/thing. “We came from Pemberwick Island. We’re looking for . . .” I didn’t finish the sentence. I had to be careful. There was no way to know who this woman was or who the bikers were who had drugged and captured us like wild animals.
“Why don’t you cut the show and just talk to me?” I asked. “We need to know exactly who you are and why you came here,” she said. “Your friends are safe and are also being questioned. If we are satisfied with your answers, we will join you.” “And what if you aren’t satisfied?”
“You will die.”
Oh.
I had never been a great test-taker. I hoped I was up to the challenge. The only thing I could do was speak truthfully. If I thought lying would have helped, I would have lied, but without having any idea who my interrogator was, I figured it was best to just tell the truth.
I told her the whole story, beginning with Marty Wiggins’s death and ending with the bikers showing up to the Valley of Fire.
It took a while. It was a long story.
The mask listened without asking questions. At least I think it was listening. It was hard to tell. It was a mask. My hope was that the others were telling the same story. If somebody (Kent) tried to
get clever and head off in another direction, it could doom us all because then none of us would look credible.
I finished the story by saying, “And then I ended up here, chained to the floor, talking to a giant mask. It’s been a hell of a couple of weeks.”
There was a long silence. I think I was more nervous at that point than any time before. It was like being a defendant waiting for the jury to come back with a verdict. Only this wouldn’t just be a verdict, it would be a sentence: life or death. The spotlight went out, and I was back in black.
“Whoa!” I called. “I told you the truth. What more do you want from me?” Another light appeared, only this one was much smaller, and it was moving. It came from behind the big mask, and I realized it was somebody with a headlamp.
One word came to mind: executioner.
I pulled against the chain that held me to the floor in the dumb hope that it would break loose, as opposed to the other dozen times I had tried.
“Look,” I said nervously, “there’s been way too much killing already.”
The person didn’t respond. The light moved closer until their shadow loomed over me.
I had a strange reaction. A second before I had been terrified.
That terror changed to anger.
“You know what? Go ahead. Kill me. I’m done. You’d be doing me a favor. Use whatever magic weapon you’ve got and just do it!” I’m not sure if I meant it. The killing part, that is. But I was
definitely tired of being scared and didn’t want to deal anymore. The person stood there for a moment, then reached into a pocket and pulled out a set of keys. The person knelt down and
unlocked the shackle around my ankle.
I immediately pulled away and curled into a ball on the far end of the mat.
“How old are you?” the person asked. It was the same woman
whose voice had been amplified during the interrogation. “Fourteen,” I replied.
“Jeez,” she said and rubbed at her eyes. “You’re a baby.” Was she crying?
“I’ve heard a lot of stories over the last couple of weeks,” she said. “But yours takes the cake. You gotta be some kind of special kid to come through all that.”
“So you believe me?” I asked.
“It’s the exact same story the others told,” she said. “So either you’ve all done a good job of cooking this up or it’s the truth.” She had a slight drawl, which made me believe she had come from these parts.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“My name’s Charlotte,” she replied. “I’m a Cook County sher iff. At least I used to be.”
“So you’re not with SYLO? Or the Retros?”
“To be honest with you, Tucker, I never heard the term ‘Retros’ before you all showed up, and all I know about SYLO is that it’s the military outfit from the Navy that quarantined Pemberwick Island. We’re not part of either.”
“So then who
are
you?” I asked. “And would you mind losing the headlight?”
“Oh, sorry,” she said as she pulled the lamp off. She placed it on a chair I had no idea was next to me, shining the light back on herself. Charlotte had short blonde hair. Though she was small, she
looked wiry and tough, like you’d expect a county sheriff to be. She looked about as old as my mom, but unlike my mom, I wouldn’t challenge her to an arm-wrestling contest. She had on her uniform, which was dark pants and a khaki shirt with sleeve patches that said:
“Clark County Sheriff.” The shirt was wrinkled and worn. She’d been wearing it for a while.
“I’m just like you,” she replied. “A survivor of the massacre.” “So the broadcast was real? You’re calling out to other survivors?”
“Real as rain, darlin’,” she said. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not one to take something like this sitting down. No, I take that back. I
do
know about you. You came a long way to be here. You may be young, but you’re a fighter.”
“What was with the bikers? And knocking us out in the middle of the desert?”
“Security,” she replied. “Anybody can hear that broadcast. We meet folks out in the middle of nowhere and bring ’em back here to size ’em up. To figure out if they’re with us or against us.” “So there are others?” I asked. Charlotte chuckled.
“You ain’t the only one left in the world with some fight in ’em.
They’ve been coming from all over the country. From Canada and Mexico too. I’ve been doing plenty of these interrogations. Guess it comes from being a sheriff. I like the whole big-mask thing. Freaks people out. It’s good to keep your subject off-balance.” Charlotte liked her job.
“Has anybody failed the test?” I asked Her expression turned dark.
“You may think we’re a loose bunch of delusional desperados, but make no mistake, young man, we are deadly serious. There have been a couple of bad seeds that the Air Force sent out on a . . . what would you call it? An exploratory mission. They didn’t pass the smell test.”
“And what happened to them?”
“They were sent back out into the desert,” she said with a shrug. “They won’t be comin’ back.”
“Oh man,” I said, stunned.
“I didn’t give it a second thought,” she said. “After what they done, they got off easy.”
My head was spinning, and it wasn’t because of the tranquilizer. As much as I had hoped that the broadcast was real and we would be meeting up with other survivors, deep down I didn’t
believe it would happen.
I looked around at the darkened room and said, “So if I passed the test, are you going to tell me where we are?”
Charlotte gave me a mischievous smile.
“Better to show you. The sun’s just coming up, thank God.
The nights are just too eerie for me. I’ve lived here my whole life, and there was never a time that the city wasn’t lit up at night as bright and sparkly as a Christmas tree. Not anymore. Now every
light we’ve got runs on batteries.”
She stood up and offered me her hand. I took it, and when I stood up, my head went weak and I nearly toppled. Charlotte grabbed me and kept me from going over. She had to be a foot shorter than me, but she was strong.
“Easy there, pardner,” she said. “You still got some lingering effects. Tell you what. It’s tough negotiating through the dark on foot. We’ll take a boat.”
“A boat?”
“C’mon,” she said with a chuckle, and with one arm around my waist to steady me, she led me away from the freakin’ giant mask. I began to get a sense of the room. It was big with a huge skylight overhead. Once the sun came up, the room would be completely lit. By then we would be gone. By boat. How could a boat be in the desert? Were we still in the desert?
“How long was I out?” I asked as we made our way through the hazy space.
“About twelve hours. Long enough to get you here and settled.” Yeah, settled. Manacled was more like it.
“Where are my friends?”
“I suspect they’re headed to the same place we are.” It was still too dark for me to make out any real detail, but it seemed as though we were walking along a narrow city street with shops on either side of a cobblestone sidewalk. But that didn’t make sense because we were definitely indoors.
It was about to make even less sense.
“Here we are,” Charlotte announced. “Hop in front. I’ll paddle us out of here.”
“Out of where?” I asked with growing confusion.
“Out of Venice, of course,” she said, chuckling.
It sounded like a joke, but we had stopped at a boat that looked very much like a gondola floating in a canal.
“Are we seriously in Venice?” I asked.
“Yup, but not for long.”
Charlotte was obviously having fun with me, and I stopped asking questions. When the sun came up, I’d see all I needed to see. I got in the front of the boat, or the gondola, or whatever it was
and sat on a seat that had an ornate cushion. Charlotte picked up a long oar that was yoked toward the stern and pushed us off. In seconds she was churning us along the narrow canal. We passed under elaborately decorated footbridges and slid by open courtyards that had statues in their centers. We also passed dozens of dark shops.
We really were in Venice. Was it possible that the survivors flew us across the ocean in the twelve hours that I was out? I suppose anything was possible.
“Is this ever going to make sense to me?” I asked.
“Any second now,” she replied with a chuckle.
Up ahead I saw light, which meant the canal would bring us outside. Seconds later we slipped through an archway and into a wide pool. The sun hadn’t yet risen, but the sky was bright enough
that I could make out detail through the gray haze. It was like leaving a dream, only to enter a more impossible dream. Venice is one of those cities that you see in movies and in pictures and on TV, so it looks familiar even if you’ve never been there. There was a tall brick tower near an ornate footbridge that spanned the pool. Gondola docks with red-and-white barber poles ringed the pool.
It really was Venice.
But it wasn’t. I also saw huge, modern buildings that loomed over us. I saw what looked like a small volcano nestled amid palm trees, behind which were two pirate ships flying the Jolly Roger. In the distance, I could have sworn I saw the Eifel Tower. I was convinced that the tranquilizer was giving me hallucinations.
“Uh . . . what is this?” was all I managed to say.
“Never been here?” Charlotte asked. “Guess you’re a little young.”
“I don’t think you can be too young to be insane,” I said. Charlotte laughed. “You’re not insane, though this place has driven plenty of folks off their rocker.”
“Where are we?” I asked, with more than a little desperation. “It’s Las Vegas, Tucker. Haven’t you ever seen pictures? Or been to the movies?”
Las Vegas. I’d seen it on the map, not far from the Valley of Fire. Things were suddenly clicking into place. Charlotte was right.
Las Vegas was the city that never sleeps, or something like that. But it sure looked sleepy to me. Every movie I’d seen of the place showed it with billions of glittering lights. But there was no power for that. Las Vegas was dead.
There were huge billboards advertising shows at places called the Mirage and the MGM Grand. Some had pictures of people who must have been superstars, but I didn’t recognize any of them.
Men wore tuxedos and women wore shimmering gowns. They were bright and happy and ready to please.
They were probably dead.
It might have been some great destination for people to have fun and see shows and gamble and do whatever else you did in a fantasyland out in the desert, but now it was just another dark, empty city. The word Charlotte used to describe it totally fit: eerie. Charlotte guided the gondola up to a dock that had ornate columns like you might see in Italy. The real Italy. This was a themepark copy. She tied up the craft and gave me a hand to get out because my head was still spinning . . . and it had nothing to do with the tranquilizer.