The Nightworld (6 page)

Chapter 11

During the next few days, I stay inside the house, frozen in some sort of strange numbness. There have been gunshots but they’ve been far away. Twice I’ve heard screaming, but when I went to the window to peek out, I couldn’t see any sign of who was doing it. Tank follows me around looking worried, and when I let him out in the backyard to pee, he always stares up at me before he goes through the door, as though he thinks I might not let him back in.

I bring some sheets and blankets from upstairs and make a bed on the couch. I drag Tank’s bed down too, and earn yet another worried look. I try to barricade off the rooms I’m not using, to limit the number of ways people can break in and get to me and Tank. Maybe it’s paranoid, but after what happened to Dad and what’s going on outside, maybe not. Mr. Holzer doesn’t have many tools, just the usual hammer and some screwdrivers. I check the garage, but there’s no lumber in there—nothing to nail up to the stairway opening.

It doesn’t feel very safe here.

Lord of the Flies
doesn’t do a great job of taking my mind off the situation. The boys in the book are on an island, shipwrecked and on their own. So far, they’ve set up their own society, and it isn’t one I’d want to be in—they’re fighting each other for power right from the start, and the bad guys seem to be the ones who take over.

I keep the television on all the time now, even though the light glowing from it makes me nervous. I don’t want it too obvious that anyone is in the house, but I don’t want to miss any information either, and it’s hard to know when the rare broadcast will happen. When it does, now the news is grim. The darkness is showing no signs of letting up. Thankfully, some of the sun’s warmth does penetrate the haze covering it. According to the reports, if it didn’t we would all be dead in a week or so, because the temperature would plummet so far that we would freeze. As it is, it’s about 20 degrees colder than it should be, and they say we’ll lose a degree or two a day because it isn’t warming back up in the daytime from the cooler night temperatures.

Right now, if things were normal, Charlie and I would probably be out looking for trouble in the neighborhood, roaming around in our cutoff jeans and tank tops, longboards under our arms, pulling stupid shit. We’d be feeling great, knowing that two full months separate us from school, and we have all summer to play.

As it is, I’m already wearing two pairs of pants and two shirts in the house. So far the heat still works, but the Holzers’ house is heated with oil, and I’m afraid to keep it really comfortable because I don’t know how much is left in their tank. I guess I’m lucky that they do use oil heat, because I saw one news flash about power grids going down. Here, at least so far, the lights and heat work, and water still comes out of the faucets. When that changes I’ll have to think about where to go. I can’t think too much about the future right now—it makes my head hurt. For now, I’m in a familiar place, and that will just have to be good enough.

On the morning of day seven at the Holzers’, I run out of milk. Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal, but I’ve spent the last week watching snippets of news coverage that include updates on how so many store shelves are now completely empty, and how freeways clogged with abandoned vehicles and fields of crops dying from lack of sunshine are causing supply problems the government isn’t sure how to solve. Mrs. Holzer had two gallons of milk in the fridge. When I finished the first, I didn’t give it much thought. When I upended the second on my bowl of cereal this morning and nothing but a dribble came out, I felt a moment of pure panic.

It finally hits me that I can’t stay here forever. There’s still food, but it won’t last, and the wanderers are getting scary. There are more of them now—it seems like every time I peek out the front window I see one or two people who obviously don’t live on the street. Sometimes there’s a group. Twice now somebody has pounded on the front door. I can’t decide if it’s Tank’s huge bark that has kept anyone from trying to kick down the door, or if they’re just not that desperate yet. Either way, I think it’s time for us to hit the road.

I’m going to pack up the car and figure out where to head. I’m leaning toward going on to the city. I know that most people have been trying to get out of it, but in a way, that makes it seem more attractive—maybe there will be less chance of running into trouble with most people going the opposite direction from me. And in the back of my mind, I keep thinking of Lara. Maybe she’s still there, up in her penthouse apartment. Everything good, like hope, and warmth, and sunshine, all of it seems to be wrapped up with her, with the last good night of my life. Maybe she needs help. I can see her face in my mind, her soft pink lips and her smile. I can still feel that kiss. Besides, with the car it’s not that long a drive, assuming the roads are open. It can’t hurt to check. If I find her, maybe she and I can head toward . . . somewhere safe.

I take a shower while Tank does his guard-dog act on the bathroom rug. Then I head downstairs to see if there’s anything more from the Holzers’ I might need to take with me. The Subaru is loaded with the supplies Dad stocked up on, so I doubt I will need to add much in terms of food, but better to be prepared. One thing I know I want to take is the three sets of thermal underwear I found in Charlie’s room—part of his snowboarding ensemble, I guess. They’ll come in handy in these new, chillier temperatures.

In Mr. Holzer’s office I risk turning on the overhead light, since there’s only one window in the room and it’s facing the backyard. I make sure the curtains are fully closed first and then flip the wall switch. The ceiling light blazes. My eyes are so accustomed to dim lighting now that the bright light makes them blink furiously, and water. Once I’ve adjusted, I go through Mr. Holzer’s desk drawers. There are some more batteries that will fit the flashlight, but that’s all that seems useful. The desk calendar, one of those big ones that people lay flat on their desks, has handwritten notes in some of the date squares. June 7 has
Charlie last day
—that was the last day of school. June 14 has
roses/anniversary
. There are no more notes in the days, but there is something scrawled in the margin of the calendar.

not weather?

meet Bob Detroit

underground/geothermal

I stare at the words for a while, trying to figure them out. In my head I hear Dad saying, “It’s not a cloud.” Charlie’s text—I dig my phone out of my pocket and look at it again.

We r leaving soon. My stepdad knows some guy and he thinks we’ll b safer in

Safer in Detroit? I wonder. Who’s the guy? Is it this Bob? And what does underground mean? Was Mr. Holzer involved in some sort of underground movement? Geothermal is some sort of heating method, I think—we learned about it in class. What’s in Detroit? I look at the calendar pages prior to June, but there’s no reference to anything having to do with Detroit, or with anyone named Bob.

I power on Mr. Holzer’s computer, and the monitor lights up. His desktop wallpaper is a picture of him and Mrs. Bradley and Charlie from when they went to the Grand Canyon last year. Just seeing Charlie’s face makes me feel better for a minute, but it fades quickly. I don’t know where he is, or if I’ll ever see him again. For all I know, Charlie could be dead, one of the many casualties of the violence that’s raging in places out there.

I’m tempted to log in to Facebook, but I know for sure that’s a way to get traced, so I don’t. I nose around in Mr. Holzer’s computer files, but there doesn’t seem to be anything that relevant. When I look at his email contacts I come up with a Robert Langley, who could be Bob, so I paste his email into Google and I get a hit. Robert Langley, CEO of Geothermal Systems, Detroit, Michigan. It’s some company that installs heating systems in buildings. I start to enter the website into my phone for later, but then I realize I don’t know how long my phone is going to keep working. There’s a little notebook on the desk—one of those free things banks give to their account holders. Its pages are all blank. I find a pen in the drawer and write down the company name and address, along with the guy’s name. I know it’s a long shot, but it’s the only lead I have on Charlie.

Tank, who’s been lying at my feet, erupts into snarling barks and launches himself out of the room. I run after him and find him leaping against the front door. I don’t want to yell at him, partially because I don’t want whatever’s out there to know I’m in here, so I just let him bark. I step up to the door and listen, trying to see if I can hear anything. At first there’s nothing, but then I hear what sounds like a car running. I peer through the peephole, trying to ignore the B movie scenes that come to mind where the person who does that gets an ice pick to the eye. Through the fishbowl lens I can barely make out the shape of the Subaru, sans headlights, backing out of the Holzers’ driveway.

Chapter 12

“Shit!” I unlock the door and run out onto the driveway without thinking. Everything I have is in that car—everything I need to survive. It’s hard to tell, but it looks like there are two people in the Subaru. The driver sees me running toward them, and he starts to back out faster. I can hear Tank right behind me, barking like crazy at the car. I keep running. I don’t know what I think I’m going to do—throw myself on the windshield? But I can’t just watch all those supplies drive away.

The passenger looks like a young girl, no older than me for sure. As the car swings out onto the street, she looks straight at me from the passenger-side window. At first she just shrugs at me and shakes her head in response to my screaming, but then, when I get closer to the car, she rolls down the window and sticks out a gun. Without a single second’s hesitation, she shoots at me. The sound of the gun scares me almost as much as the bullet I feel whiz past my face. I am frozen to the spot, and I see her point the gun again, this time at Tank.

“Tank!” I yell as loud as I can, and between the split second Tank hesitates and the forward motion of the car, the bullet misses. The Subaru speeds down the road and away. The last thing I see of it are the taillights as it turns onto the main road.

I’m not sure how, but I end up on the ground. Tank is licking my face and whining, and all I can do is hold my head and try to stop the ringing in my ears from the shots. I feel completely defeated. I have no idea what I’m going to do now.

“Best get inside, boy. They might be comin’ back.”

I’m back on my feet in a second, although I almost fall over trying to get my balance. An old gray-haired man is standing on the sidewalk in front of the Holzers’ house. He’s holding a gun down at his side with one hand and ruffling the fur on Tank’s head with his other. Tank abandoned me as soon as he saw him.

“You’re a good dog, Tank, always have been.” The man turns to go, then swings back to me, his reluctance clear in the way he has to force his body to switch directions.

“Listen, you got enough to eat in there?” He doesn’t look like he’s going to wait long for an answer.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Doug’s dad.”

When I shake my head, he nods toward the house next to the Holzers’. “Doug Gannon. He lives in that house with his wife and kids. I was on my way to come visit, see the grandkids, when all this shit came down. I got here and they was already gone.”

An engine roars on the main road. The man shakes his head. “No time to talk right now. People’s crazy out there, and gettin’ crazier. We shouldn’t be out here in the open. Listen, let me get a couple things and I’ll come by. I’ll knock the SOS code so you’ll know it’s me.”

He hurries away, and I hear the door to the house shut. The engine revs again in the distance, and I realize I’d better take the old man’s advice and get off the street.

“Come on, Tank.” Tank looks back in the direction the guy went and whines. But he follows me back to the front door of the Holzers’. I lock it and turn the deadbolt, but it doesn’t seem like enough. So I drag the buffet from the dining room into the living room and shove it up against the door. It’s pretty heavy; it might buy some time if someone were trying to break in.

I slump on the couch, absently scratching Tank’s head while I try to think. What the hell do I do now? My whole plan to get to the city is screwed, all of my food supplies are gone save what’s left in this house, and people with guns know I’m here.

My backpack is leaning against the couch half open, and I see a folded scrap of pink paper inside. I know what it says, but I unfold it anyway. Just her address, and that little heart she drew. Lara. She might need help. And I’m going to get to her, somehow.

Tank leaps up and runs toward the sliding door. I hear a tapping, fast, then slow, then fast. I get up and go to the door. The tapping happens again, fast, slow, fast. I sure as hell hope that’s Morse code for SOS. I go to the far end of the door and peek through the curtain. The old man is standing by the handle getting ready to knock again. He’s got a bag with him—one of those soft leather briefcases.

“’Bout time,” he says when I let him inside.

“Sorry,” I mumble. I’m not sure why he’s here anyway. I back up to let him get farther into the room and lock the sliding door. I wonder if I should have hidden the gun that’s on the end table, or better yet, if I should be holding it right now.

“So you’re not a Holzer, right?” He eyes me, squinting in the dim light.

“No. I’m Charlie’s best friend.”

“That their kid?”

“Yeah.”

“They gone too, huh?”

I nod.

“So why you here anyway? Where’s your family?”

“I just had my dad, and he’s . . .” I can’t finish.

The guy says nothing for a long time, just watches me. Then he looks around the room. “You going to offer an old man a seat?”

“Uh, sure.” I gesture toward the dining-room table, since the couch is covered with sheets and a blanket. We both sit, but I stand right away.

“I have some Coke in the fridge. Want one?”

“Got any beer?”

“Actually, yeah.” There’s a six-pack of Budweiser in the fridge. I’ve been eyeing them since I arrived, but I figured it would be better not to have any. I get a couple of bottles out and bring them to the table. We twist our tops off and watch the vapor drift out of the bottles.

“Beer fog.”

“Huh?” I don’t get it.

“We used to call that little bit of smoke that comes out of the beer bottle fog.” The guy laughs a little and shakes his head. He holds up his bottle. “Here’s to your family, and to mine, wherever they may be.” He takes a long swallow of beer. Then he looks me in the eye. “Now, what’s your plan?”