Struck (3 page)

“Move along, sir,” the militiaman called out to Parker’s charity case, who shoved the money into his pocket and shuffled away. The militiaman gave him a little push to hurry him along. The guy stumbled, probably weak from hunger.

“Hey!” Parker said, getting out of the car and facing the militiaman. The man had several inches on my brother. Still, Parker didn’t back down. “You didn’t need to do that. He was already leaving.”

The militiaman narrowed one eye at Parker, probably the way he’d seen someone do it in a cop drama. “You shouldn’t give them money. They know where to get
handouts, it encourages them to come up into the neighborhoods instead of staying in Tentville where they belong.”

Parker glowered at the man, but wisely chose to stay quiet when he saw how the militiaman’s hand rested so lovingly on that Taser.

I cleared my throat to get the militiaman’s attention.

“Hi,” I said, holding out my hand. “My name’s Mia. I live here.” I nodded toward our house.

The man eyed my fingerless leather gloves, took note of my black turtleneck, my black jeans, and my boots. It was warm out, even this early in the morning. Not turtleneck and gloves weather, for sure, but I needed the coverage at all times, or someone might catch sight of my lightning scars. It occurred to me that the militiaman and I were dressed in nearly identical outfits. He nodded approval.

“Brent,” the militiaman said.

“We appreciate what you’re doing,” I said, casting Parker a keep-your-mouth-shut look.

“Someone has to make sure we’re not overrun by these drifters,” Brent said. “I feel sorry for them, losing their homes and everything, but it’s time things got back to normal around here.”

I didn’t have to fake a nod of agreement. What I wanted more than anything was for things to get back to normal.

“Could you do me a favor?” I asked. “My mom saw a guy watching our house. She said she’s seen him before.”

“You think he’s planning a break-in?”

“I don’t know, but I wondered if you could keep an eye out for him.”

“What’s he look like?” Brent asked, eyes suddenly bright with interest.

“Um … he was around my age … oh, and he had glasses.”

“Dark glasses?”

“Um … yeah,” I decided. Mom hadn’t been specific.

“I’ll find him,” Brent said, caressing his Taser again. “And you might want to tell your brother to wise up. You leave crumbs on the floor, eventually you get roaches.”

Parker muttered something I didn’t catch, and I hoped Militiaman Brent didn’t either. It wouldn’t hurt to have this guy watching our backs.

“Thank you so much,” I told Brent, gushing a bit to make up for my brother.

Brent was standing in front of my house with his thumbs hooked in his belt loops when we pulled away. I wondered if Mom was still peering out the window. I hoped Brent made her feel safer.

Parker barely spoke during the drive to school. I wasn’t sure if he was annoyed with me for enlisting Militiaman Brent to keep an eye on the house, or if he was upset about Mom, or nervous about returning to school. Probably all of the above, with an added emphasis on the latter. Parker hadn’t heard much from his friends since the quake. Once the Internet was up he’d exchanged a few brief e-mails with them, so he knew they were alive, but not much else. With riots and looting still rampant, and so many people sick or injured or starving, not knowing if his friends were okay was almost more than he could handle. He didn’t say much, but he didn’t have to. I knew my brother. At least, I used to.

Nothing was the same as it used to be.

Parker and I were only two years apart in age, and we’d always been close. But he’d changed since the quake, grown quieter, more introverted. I thought tragedy was supposed to bring people closer, but Parker was pulling away, same as Mom. I should have been the glue holding us together, but apparently I wasn’t sticky enough.

Ocean Avenue, which ran parallel to the Pacific, was the quickest way to Skyline High School, and as far as I knew the road was intact and clear of debris. We passed several groups of road crew volunteers in orange vests still working to haul mounds of rubble from collapsed buildings out of the road, but at least we could get through.

But as I drove, I began to wish I’d chosen a different route. The drive along Ocean Avenue offered a view of the vast shantytown known as Tentville that had been assembled on the sands of Venice and Santa Monica. Ten square miles of the city had been destroyed, including downtown Los Angeles. People called it the Waste now, because that’s what it was. A wasteland of fallen high-rises, shattered cement and glass, and empty, ruined buildings. Only one tower remained standing in the Waste, dominating the cityscape like an enormous monument to the dead.

But even miles from the epicenter of the quake, buildings had sustained major damage, especially those that were not up to code. Roofs caved in. Walls collapsed. Fires broke out and raged unchecked, while firemen and rescue workers were distracted by the catastrophic devastation downtown. On the west side, the damage was random. You’d see a dozen normal houses, and then one that looked like it had been stepped on by a giant. Even our house, which
had been built around the time when people were still building houses “right,” had cracks running up the walls and across the ceiling. I didn’t want to think about what Parker and I would have done if our house had collapsed or burned to the ground. We’d be living in Tentville with the rest of the Displaced, caring for Mom in the midst of the chaos.

We drove past a woman sitting on the sidewalk, surrounded by plastic bags full of her belongings and holding a large umbrella, though the sun had barely climbed over the horizon. I wondered if she didn’t have a tent, if the umbrella was the closest thing she had to shelter.

“Was the Internet up this morning?” Parker asked, squinting at the woman with the umbrella. “Did you check the weather?”

“Don’t I always?” It was a ritual of mine to check at least three weather sites every morning, even though it wasn’t necessary. When a storm was coming, I
felt
it. My skin would tingle and my bones would ache, and the fire in my heart and my blood, the feeling that had been growing inside me since the first time I was struck, would burn hotter.

Except on the day of the Puente Hills Earthquake. That day the storm had materialized out of a clear blue sky. I’d seen storms do that where we used to live in Lake Havasu City, but only during the sweltering monsoon season, and those storms were usually over as soon as they began. But storms in L.A. didn’t just
happen
; you could always see them coming.

“So, what’s the forecast?” Parker asked.

“Clear skies all week.”

He nodded. “Good. The last thing we need right now is …” He trailed off, casting a glance my way. “You know,” he mumbled.

I did know. The last thing we needed was another electrical storm, and not only because people were saying lightning might have caused the Puente Hills Quake … because that day I felt lightning cracking the sky even from fifteen miles away, and I had wanted nothing more than to put myself in its path. It took every ounce of my self-control not to get in my car and race downtown toward the storm so I could get a piece of it. Even when the shaking started, when it seemed like the whole world would crumble if it didn’t stop, the only thing I could think about was pulling the lightning down into me. The aliveness I would feel. The perfect pain that might do anything to me. Even kill me.

Yeah, the last thing we needed right now was another storm.

Up ahead, what remained of the Santa Monica Pier tilted like a ramp into the ocean. The longest of the wooden pilings that supported the pier had bent and broken during the quake, pouring hundreds of tourists and a dozen or so chintzy restaurants into the Pacific. A section of the famous Santa Monica Ferris wheel still protruded from the water, like the spine of some Lovecraftian sea beast emerging from the depths.

Laid out on the sand on either side of the downed pier were thousands of tents and makeshift lean-tos. Scores of people milled about on the sand. Aimless. Waiting to get their lives back. And in the midst of the disorder, Prophet’s great White Tent, where he held his midnight revivals,
stood out like a mirage, glowing incandescent in the morning sun, its white canvas walls flapping in a light breeze. Followers, dressed in pristine white, wandered through the crowds of beach dwellers, offering to trade bottles of water or oatmeal cookies for a moment of the beach dwellers’ time. Even from the road, it was easy to distinguish the Followers from everyone else, like white doves among dirty park pigeons.

Even from a distance, I could see how willing people were to follow the Followers into the White Tent.

Faintly, I heard the sound of shattering glass and the scream of an alarm.

“Mia, look out!” Parker grabbed the wheel and cranked it right. Just in time, too. We barely avoided mowing down a guy as he sprinted across the street, his arms loaded so high with stolen electronics he couldn’t see over them. He made it across Ocean Avenue without getting creamed and disappeared into an alley, headed toward Tentville.

I screeched to a halt at the curb and waited for the inferno in my chest to cool. My heart was in my throat, my whole body trembling with the rush of adrenaline.

A group of Followers approached the car, holding poster board signs raised above their heads.

The End Is Coming
, one sign read.

The Sixth Seal Is Cracked
, another read.

We Have Been Warned
.

The Real Storm Is Still to Come
. I stared at the Follower who held this sign. She smiled and waved, like we were old friends, and gestured for me to roll down the window.

I hit the gas and probably left streaks of rubber behind as I burned away from the curb.

* * *

Parking at school was madness. There were buses and cars jamming up the whole lot. No one seemed to know who was coming and who was going. Normally there was someone on-site to direct traffic, but apparently that person hadn’t shown up for work today.

As soon as we got out of the car, we were immersed in shouting and honking, whistles blowing as kids shuffled off the buses. To reduce traffic on the roads—which were still barricaded or blocked off by debris in many areas—returning students were advised to take the buses, even if they had cars or their parents could drop them off. But with Mom at home alone, I wasn’t comfortable being stuck at school until the buses came at the end of the day. I wanted to be able to rush home and check on her if I needed to.

Two militiamen tried to herd the flow of people into a line, but they were ignored. Kids pushed and shoved and fought their way toward the school, even though we wouldn’t receive our rations until the end of the day. Someone rammed past me and crunched my toes. Someone else nailed me in the ribs with an elbow. It wasn’t that there were more people than usual heading to school; there were far fewer. But they were frantic. Desperate. Starving. Crying. Sick.

Scared.

But not the Followers. The Followers were perfectly calm and removed from the rest of us, their eyes bright as little lightbulbs, knowing smiles playing at the corners of their mouths. Somehow they managed to disturb me more than
the rest of the crowd, even the kids who were suffering from earthquake fever, their skin rash-red, lips and eyelids and the rims of their noses and ears crusted with yellow sores. Earthquake fever caused the immune system to go into overdrive, so white blood cells started attacking healthy cells. Their bodies were essentially waging war on themselves.

Looking at the sufferers turned my stomach, but seeing the Followers up close like this, in real life, not on
The Hour of Light
, made me feel like turning and running away. Running as fast as I could, and taking Parker with me.

But we couldn’t run away, not either of us. Not unless we wanted to starve.

The first bell warbled like a sick bird as Parker and I made our way through the crush of people and toward the main building. The bell system must have been damaged during the quake. One more thing that was off-kilter, knocked askew by our city being shaken like it was contained in a snowless snow globe.

I thought of what Militiaman Brent had said.
It’s time things got back to normal around here
. Looking around at how many of the students wore Followers’ white, and how many others looked like they’d come from a refugee camp, so skinny their eyes were sucked into the sockets, lips cracked and skin chalky from dehydration, I had a sinking feeling I wouldn’t find anything close to normal at Skyline.

Approaching the school, I heard raised voices and then a squawk of pain and surprise. Parker and I froze in place, earning growls and shoves from the students behind us. A group of boys with mean, feral eyes and dirty skin and clothes surrounded a much smaller, weaker-looking kid.
One of the feral boys bent the smaller kid’s arm behind his back, and another jabbed a fist into his kidney. The kid cried out again. His backpack hit the ground.

I searched the flow of students moving toward the school, hoping someone would step forward. Do something. I saw people watching out of the corners of their eyes, and people pretending not to see at all. I saw people walking faster, probably worried they might be the next victims.

Heat pulsed in my chest, thumping like a second heartbeat. The sound boomed in my ears. I breathed deep.

Keep it together, Mia. You made it through the last four weeks without imploding; you can make it through the next few minutes
.

The feral boys released the kid and shoved him away. He staggered and grabbed onto the flagpole to stabilize himself. Tears leaked from his eyes and he wiped at them angrily with his sleeve.

Parker’s paralysis broke, and he started toward the attackers. I grabbed him back.

“No,” I told him firmly.

Parker’s eyes were livid. “They can’t get away with it.”

“They already did.”

The pack of boys tore open the kid’s backpack, scattered his books and papers, and took off with whatever was left inside, probably a bottle of water or an energy bar. The backpack looked close to empty.