The Eighth Day (3 page)

It took three tries for Jax to break through the glass doors of the Walmart with a concrete parking block. Inside, only dim emergency lights were on. They provided illumination to see by but left enough of the store in shadow to make Jax skittish.

He filled a shopping cart with supplies he'd seen people grab before snowstorms, hurricanes, and during zombie movies. With one hand on his bike and another on the shopping cart, he walked home, keeping an eye out for people and monsters. At home, he carried his stolen items upstairs, thinking that the second floor would be easier to defend. He bypassed the shed as too easy a target and hid his bike and the Walmart cart under a bush behind
the house. In apocalyptic movies, there were always stray survivors who'd steal what you had.

Hours passed while he watched out the windows. He would have been happy to see even A.J. Crandall, but he saw no people, no animals, no zombies—nothing.

The day weighed heavily on him, time passing at a crawl. He wished they had a clock that ticked—or anything that made a sound. Oddly, he felt drawn to Riley's room—as if he missed him, which was impossible. He poked through his guardian's stuff, kicking dirty clothes across the floor, opening drawers, and peering at the photo of an unknown girl tucked into a mirror. But there were no answers here any more than there'd been at the Ramirez house.

He had to force himself to eat a cold can of stew and drink a bottle of water. It was rare for Jax to have no appetite, although it had happened the day his dad never came home . . . and the day they'd found the car in the river . . . and the day Riley Pendare had brought him
here
.

When it grew too dark to see anything outside but the creepy glow of the streetlights, he pulled the curtains shut and curled up miserably on his bed to wait for dawn. In the morning, he'd risk going out to look for other survivors.

His final thought, as he drifted into a troubled sleep, was that he didn't want to be the last human on earth.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

“JAX, GET UP!
You're gonna miss the bus.”

The pounding on Jax's bedroom door caused his heart to thump in panic for a reason he couldn't remember.
A bad dream?

“Jax! I gotta get to work. I can't drive you in.”

“Okay, okay!” He rubbed his eyes and sat up. Across the room, his open closet door gave him a view of the water bottles and canned food stacked waist high inside.

Not a dream
.

Outside, a motorcycle engine revved up.

“Riley!” Jax shouted. He leaped out of bed and stumbled down the stairs and out the door in time to see his guardian pull away from the house.

Jax stood on the stoop and stared at the neighborhood with his mouth hanging open.

Across the street, a woman stuffed a toddler into a car seat. An old man walked past the house with two dogs. Mr.
Blum watered his sod, which had gone dangerously brown, while overhead a jet cut a white swath across the sky.

Holy crap, it was the
Spongebob
episode after all. They all left town for a Jax-free day and now they're back
.

He grabbed hold of the doorknob to steady himself.

I broke into a Walmart!

Jax scrambled upstairs. He pulled on clean clothes and closed the closet door. When he ran down to the kitchen, he found bread on the counter, along with new containers of peanut butter and jelly.

It figures Riley goes shopping when I've got a room full of stolen canned goods
.

He made the bus by a hair. All the usual riders were on board and nobody was talking about mass disappearances. Billy was engrossed in reading
The Fellowship of the Ring
, and Jax sat down beside him.

Did it really happen?

Jax looked out the window as the bus passed through town. Walmart employees were nailing boards over the broken glass on their front door.

He sank lower in his seat.
It happened
.

In first-period science class, his hand shook as he wrote his name and the date on a lab paper.

“Is the party on?” Billy slid into the chair beside him.

“Riley said no,” Jax lied. He'd never asked.

“Dang it. Well, at least come to my house for dinner tomorrow after school.”

“Sure,” Jax mumbled. Then he lifted his head. “Tomorrow's Saturday.”

“Tomorrow's Friday.” Billy tapped the date on Jax's paper. “Today's Thursday, dude.”

Jax stared at Billy.
Yesterday
had been Thursday. He looked across the aisle. “Hey, Giana. Is today Thursday or Friday?”

Giana tossed a lock of wavy brown hair over her shoulder. “Thursday. All day.” She glanced at her friend Kacey, who rolled her eyes and laughed.

“O-kay.” Jax erased the date roughly, almost ripping the paper.

Today was Thursday, the day after his birthday. The day he'd broken into a Walmart
hadn't happened
. Still, when the classroom door opened again, he flinched, expecting cops. But it was just the Donovans coming in late, which they did once or twice a week.

As Tegan walked past Jax's desk, she stopped, and Thomas plowed into her. Jax looked up to find both twins staring at him. Tegan sniffed and glanced at her brother. “What?” Jax demanded. Maybe he hadn't showered this morning—or on the day that no one else remembered—but he didn't think he stank.

Tegan nudged her twin with an elbow, and Thomas nodded, then went to his seat by the window. Normally he pulled his hood up over his head and took a nap during first period, but today Jax was uncomfortably aware of
Thomas's gaze on him throughout class.

It matched the one he sensed on the back of his neck, coming from Tegan.

When Jax got home from school, he verified the date on his computer. They had electricity again, and the refrigerator worked, as did his phone. It really was Thursday, but his closet was full of Walmart goods. The alarm on his clock was switched off, which he'd done himself when he woke up yesterday.

Jax retrieved a plastic storage tub from the top shelf of his closet. Opening this was a last resort when he was miserable, because it was a toss-up whether it made him feel better or worse. Inside were his mother's jewelry, a bottle of her perfume, and a scrapbook she used to keep, which contained photos of the Aubrey family until Jax was six. Neither he nor his dad had kept it up after she died. Four months ago, Jax had added his father's Rolex watch to the sad little collection, along with a wooden box about twelve inches long and six inches wide. Since Jax had been living here, he'd opened the tub only once, to take out this wooden box and make sure Riley hadn't stolen the contents.

Not long after moving in, Jax had come home from school and found Riley and A.J. talking intently in the kitchen. On the table between them lay something Jax had
recognized. “Hey!” He lunged across the room. “That's my dad's!”

Riley snatched the object off the table before Jax could reach it. “No, it's mine.” Then he held the dagger out for Jax to see, hilt up, blade down—the way someone would hold a cross to stop a vampire.

Jax faltered. Riley was showing him the knife like he expected Jax to recognize it wasn't his father's. “My dad had one like that,” he said, half in accusation, half in his own defense.

“I know he did. But this one's mine.” Then Riley slipped it into a sheath on his hip. It was an odd thing to be wearing, unless he was going hunting. And a decorative dagger like that would be a strange choice for skinning rabbits and gutting deer—or whatever hunters did.

Jax immediately ran upstairs to check the storage tub in his room. His father's dagger was still in its box, where it belonged. It had a five-inch blade and a cast metal handle engraved with the Aubrey family crest. The carving on Riley's knife was different, but the weapons themselves were very similar.

Seeing the two daggers, Jax had to accept that his father and Riley really had known one another. His dad had often shown this dagger to Jax, implying that it represented membership in a club. Jax assumed he meant something like the Masons or the Elks. He couldn't imagine Riley as a member of one of those clubs, but clearly he
and Jax's father had shared
some
secret.

Today, Jax closed the case with a snap. He had his own secrets now. Briskly, he returned everything to the storage tub—except his father's Rolex, which he wound up and strapped to his own wrist.

He didn't intend to lose track of time again.

Jax consulted the watch frequently. Days went by with no hiccup in time, and if it hadn't been for the items in his closet, he might have convinced himself it had never happened.

Monday after school, Riley dumped a stack of books on the desk while Jax was working on his computer. “Are you going to the library?” Riley asked him.

Jax picked up the book on top. It had a girly cover—flowers and a sunset and a woman in a fancy dress. “What, are you dying to read the sequel?” He looked up at Riley. “I didn't even know you
could
read.”

Riley crossed his arms. “Did you tell Mrs. Unger you were going to the library this weekend?”

Yes, he had. Jax looked at his dad's watch. He hadn't skipped over time; he'd just been so worried about his secret day that he'd forgotten his promise. He didn't like letting the old lady down, but he liked Riley pointing it out even less. “Is her ghost complaining?” he asked crankily, slapping the book back down on the pile.

“Her ghost?” Riley asked sharply.

“Mrs. Unger is a little . . .” Jax made a twirly finger next to his head.

Riley glared at him. “Are you going to exchange the books or not?”

Why do you care?
Jax wanted to say—or better yet,
You do it
. But Jax didn't want to see Riley doing good deeds for Mrs. Unger. He preferred to think of Riley as a jerk. “Yeah, I'll go tonight.”

“Make sure you do,” Riley said gruffly, which made Jax wonder why he
did
care.

Unless he counted Riley's interest in Mrs. Unger's reading habits, nothing weird at all happened for the better part of the week. But on Thursday morning, when Jax's alarm clock didn't wake him and the watch on his wrist didn't tick, he sat up, alert. He guessed what he was going to see even before he pulled back the curtains on his window.

The sky was a pale purple, and no cars passed on the street.

This time, instead of panicking, Jax made an effort to observe everything carefully. His clock was frozen at 12:00 a.m., and it didn't blink or respond to the push of any buttons. The bedroom lights didn't go on when he flicked the switch, and his father's watch had stopped at midnight. Downstairs, the microwave and the refrigerator
didn't work, but oddly, the gas stove did. He shrugged and made himself a breakfast of instant oatmeal.

Afterward he biked through the town, which was as empty as last time, and out to the interstate. Just when Jax thought the highway, too, was empty, he spotted a vehicle in the oncoming lane. With an excited whoop, he waved both hands over his head to signal it, but the car wasn't moving toward him. He coasted to a stop near the stationary SUV and hopped off his bike. The driver's seat was empty, which gave him a chill. He reached out to open the door, and a spark leapt from the metal handle to his hand. Using his shirt as insulation, he tried again, but every attempt to touch the vehicle resulted in a shock.

Jax leaned as close as he dared to the driver's window and peered inside. He didn't know what he was looking for until he saw it. The gear shift was set to drive. This car wasn't in park; it was supposed to be moving.

He had planned to bike to the next town and see if the same thing was happening there, but this car answered the question for him. If it wasn't the same every place, there'd be traffic on the highway, and this car would've gotten where it was going with whoever was supposed to be inside.

So instead he headed home. Inside one of the moving boxes that had come from his old house, he was pretty sure there was a camera. He hadn't used it in years because he had a camera on his phone, but his phone didn't work
today and the camera might.

Now that he knew everything would be back to normal tomorrow, Jax was excited. He was going to document this craziness and share the photos with Billy. He leaped up the front steps of the house, threw open the door, and crashed right into Riley.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

“JAX!” RILEY GRABBED JAX
by his T-shirt and hauled him into the living room.

After his first gasp of surprise, Jax felt a surge of disappointment. This fascinating world wasn't his alone. He had to share it with Riley Pendare.

Riley shoved Jax into a chair and unclipped a two-way radio from his belt. “I was so sure you were a dud,” Riley said, then spoke into the radio. “Melinda, you copy? Over.”

A woman's voice answered. “I'm here, Riley. Over.”

Jax sat up. He and Riley weren't the only ones here.

“False alarm. It was the kid. Let the others know. Over.”

“Copy that.”

“Who's she?” Jax demanded when Riley clipped the radio on his belt. “What others? There are no people here! I looked everywhere! Last week, too.”

“Last week?” Riley narrowed his eyes. “This isn't your first time?”

“This is the second time. But you weren't here last week. Nobody was!”

“I was here. I just wasn't
at home
.” Riley crossed his arms over his chest. “I thought your birthday was next week.”

“It was last Wednesday.”

“Why didn't you tell me? I would've been looking out for you if I'd known.”