Desolation

by David Lucin

  Shouting broke out again.

  “Please, everyone.” The lead officer took another step forward. “We’re doing the best we can. If you need extra help getting home, please hang tight and we’ll try to find you a ride.”

  “Where are we supposed to wait?” the woman with the child snapped. “Out here on the street? Security guards at the Go Market turned me away. They said they’re closed. We can’t even wait in there.”

  Jenn had heard enough. The police didn’t know much more than she did. She cut across University Avenue and made for the parking lot. As she stepped onto the curb on the far side, a man’s voice cut in behind her. “Hey! You!”

  Her heart skipped a beat. Was he talking to Jenn?

  Ignoring the voice, she threaded two pine trees, the gravel of the nature strip crunching beneath her shoes with each step.

  “Stop!” the voice called out again.

  Fuck. Jenn paused and put her hands on her hips. What now?

  She turned to see one of the young officers jogging toward her. His right hand hovered above the gun hanging from his belt. “Where you off to in such a hurry?” he said, coming to a stop at the edge of the road.

  Jenn cleared her throat. “My boyfriend’s place.”

  The officer took another step toward her. His eyes scanned her ankles, hips, and hands. “Where’s he live?”

  Why’d this cop care? He made Jenn feel like she’d committed a crime. “McKay Village,” she spat. The words came out sharper and more hostile than she wanted. She’d met her fair share of testy police officers, sure, but never in Flagstaff. Up here, the police seemed friendly, not like in Phoenix, where they were wound tight and quick to pull the trigger. She supposed that came with the job. The flood of migrant workers and jobless vagrants from all over the Southwest had driven Phoenix to the brink. Each new shitty government-subsidized modular housing complex brought in more trash, more drugs, and more crime, even to Jenn’s suburban neighborhood of Peoria. She expected Phoenix police to be suspicious, but Flagstaff police played in softball tournaments and volunteered at clothes drives. Liam even hosted a World Series viewing party for Gary’s neighborhood last year. Seeing the police this edgy made Flagstaff feel too much like home.

  The officer bit his lip and pointed at her. “All right. But stay inside when you get there.”

  “You got it,” she said with an exaggerated nod, then continued to Sam’s place.

  4

  A few groups of five or more clustered on the quad in McKay Village, where Sam lived. Ringing the quad, which, Jenn learned, used to have grass but now had the same bluish gravel as Gary’s yard, were four three-story buildings covered in faded cream or brown stucco that Jenn judged at least a half-century old. On the inside, though, the apartments were fully renovated a couple of years before Sam enrolled at NAU—new bathrooms, new appliances, new furniture, everything. Each unit even had its own built-in Alexa. The door to Sam’s place felt like a time machine that transported Jenn to her childhood, when her parents both worked, she had her own bedroom, and gunshots didn’t wake her up at night.

  Jenn made for Sam’s building on the far side, pretending like she belonged here. To some extent she did, but she could never afford to live in McKay Village. Here, she rubbed elbows with some of the university’s more elite students—ones whose parents hadn’t lost their jobs to an AI, like Jenn’s father, or to someone working for pennies on the dollar in Africa, like her mother. She resented those students for winning the economic lottery and avoiding the worst of the depression, though she grudgingly acknowledged the hypocrisy of that. Sam fit into that category. She told herself he was different, that his heart was with her, not with the one-percenters.

  She crossed the quad and saw Sam sitting on the bench outside his building. He wore his white runners and the khaki shorts she always made fun of. He had on a blue T-shirt today, no polo or button-up. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped together. He spotted Jenn, then jumped to his feet and ran to her.

  Her breath caught in her chest, the same as it did last winter, when he sat next to her in Anthropology 109. Good thing he’d switched majors that September and was taking first-year classes again. Also a good thing Jenn skipped so many lectures. Otherwise, she might not have needed to ask him for a week’s worth of notes.

  He wrapped his arms around her, and she did the same to him. She rested her head on his chest as he squeezed her tight. “Are you okay?” he asked. “My phone won’t turn on. I tried calling from Dougie’s but he didn’t have any service.”

  “I’m good,” she said, smiling up at him.

  They walked over to the bench. “What took you so long? I was just about to drive over to Gary’s.”

  “Had to make a pit stop at Liam’s,” she said. “You remember him, right? The cop that lives down the street from Gary.”

  “Gary’s mentioned him. I haven’t met him, though.”

  Jenn sat on the metal bench. “Right.” She ran her fingers along Sam’s jawline, shaded uncharacteristically in a layer of dark stubble. “What’s this? You growing another beard? You need to get some sun first or else you’ll end up looking like a vampire again.”

  “Hey,” Sam objected, “just because you have those nice Vietnamese genes and get a tan in five minutes doesn’t mean you can go around calling people vampires.”

  Jenn smiled at that. Sam had decided she was Vietnamese. Truth was, she didn’t know. The hospital didn’t record people’s ethnic backgrounds, she supposed, when they put a baby up for adoption. She and Sam had narrowed it down to Chinese or Southeast Asian and had mostly ruled out Korean or Japanese because, Sam said, they were too fair-skinned. The Chinese weren’t very popular, even before they decided to invade India and Taiwan and start World War Three, so Sam settled on Vietnamese and Jenn went along with it. He always bugged her to take a DNA test, but she didn’t care as much as he did. Part of her didn’t want to know. She just wanted to be Jenn.

  “I’m not Vietnamese. I’m Dutch,” she joked. “Jenn Jansen, remember?”

  “Right,” Sam mused. “Anyway, I am definitely not growing a beard. My razor’s just dead and I can’t charge it. I’m guessing the power’s off at Gary’s, too?”

  “Yep. At least his car works. Have you tried yours?”

  “Should be okay. Dougie figures they only died if they were running.”

  “Was it plugged in?”

  “No. I couldn’t get a stall with a plug after I dropped you off last night.”

  “Okay, good.” Jenn didn’t know if the stalled cars on the roads were dead for good and beyond repair, but losing Sam’s black ’48 Tesla would have felt like losing an important part of their relationship. The first time she and Sam went out, just the two of them, Sam pulled up outside Gary’s house in that car. Gary, peeking through the blinds, grumbled and insisted that he needed to meet Jenn’s date. She figured Gary was more interested in vetting the car than deciding if Sam was a good fit for Jenn. In fact, Gary only asked Sam questions about the Tesla: how the autodrive handled, how far it went on a single charge, and so on.

  Later that night, she kissed Sam for the first time, and she did it in his car. Since then, everywhere they went together, they took the Tesla. After a while, the number of shoe prints on the front of the glove box became a sort of yardstick Jenn used to measure their time together. Sam pretended he hated when Jenn put her feet up like that, but he never wiped the glove box down. They were just shoe prints, sure, but they marked Jenn’s spot in the passenger seat beside Sam. The car wasn’t strictly hers, but they shared it anyway. It was theirs.

  “Why?” Sam asked. “What does plugging it in have to do with anything?”

  “Liam’s wife. Her car was off but plugged in and it didn’t turn on.”

  “Really?” Sam reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. “That’s weird, because my phone was on the charging pad and it won’t start up. But Dougie’s wasn’t and it’s fine.”

&nb
sp; Jenn took out her phone and showed it to Sam. “Same with mine and Gary’s. His was plugged in and it’s fried. Power surge, maybe?”

  Sam leaned back on the bench. “Maybe.”

  Jenn picked up a stone from between her shoes and tossed it onto the gravel. Her imagination jumped at the break in conversation, conjuring worst-case scenarios: solar flare, meltdown at the nuclear plant, worldwide computer virus, everything. “What the fuck is going on, Sam? This isn’t a regular blackout. I mean, Maria’s oxygen compressor didn’t even go nuts when the power went off. Alexa was offline. All these cars. I don’t know.”

  “I hear you,” he said. “It’s weird, for sure. But there’s not much we can do but wait.”

  “Wait for what? I passed like fifty people on the way here and nobody knows anything. The cops don’t even know.”

  “I know you’re worried, but it’s only been like—”

  “What if this shit’s going on in Phoenix?” Jenn interrupted. “I can’t get online. My phone doesn’t have any service. I can’t get a hold of my family. And have you noticed there aren’t any planes in the sky?”

  Sam didn’t respond. He knew better than to engage Jenn mid-rant.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I’m just worried about them.”

  “I know. All I’m saying is, don’t jump to conclusions.”

  Jenn chewed the inside of her cheek. “What if it’s a weapon?”

  “A weapon?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ve never heard of a weapon that can do this.”

  “We don’t know what the Chinese have. Or the Russians. Maybe it was Brazil. It could be a computer virus.”

  He rubbed her back and leaned in. “If they had a weapon that could shut off all the power and stall half the cars on the road, don’t you think they’d have used it already?”

  “Maybe they’re desperate,” Jenn said. “We’re finally winning.”

  Sam pulled Jenn in tight, and she leaned her head on his shoulder. “You’re jumping to conclusions again,” he said. “Let’s get some more information before we start talking about weapons.”

  “Then let’s take a walk somewhere,” she said, standing and holding her hand out to Sam. “Maybe the police station. Hopefully they find out something new by the time we get there.”

  He smiled and shook his head, then took her hand and stood. “Sure. Think dropping Gary’s name will get us the inside scoop?”

  “It might. He won’t be there but it’s worth a . . .”

  Near the entrance to McKay Village, a young girl fell to her knees. Another girl beside her threw her hands over her mouth. A man broke away from the group and jogged toward another.

  “Worth a what?” Sam asked.

  The man ran up to two more students, causing them to grasp each other in a hug. One was crying.

  Sam snapped his fingers in front of Jenn’s face. “Jenn!”

  “Sam,” she said, pointing. “What’s going on?”

  The man cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “We’ve been attacked!”

  5

  The crowds in the quad had dispersed and flowed out of McKay Village.

  Jenn felt cold, freezing, like she’d jumped into an ice bath. She let go of Sam’s hand and darted for the man who’d yelled about the attack.

  “Wait!” Sam said from behind her.

  The man had begun moving away from Jenn. Shouting for him to stop, she broke into a sprint and caught up. Finally, he turned to face her. The blood had drained from his face, and patches of sweat darkened the neck and armpits of his green T-shirt. The laces on one shoe had come untied. “What happened?” Jenn said between breaths. “Do you know why the power’s out?”

  “Phoenix,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “It’s been bombed.”

  An image of her parents flashed in her mind: her father, as thin as a pole, his white hair complementing the pale of his skin, and her mother, shorter and rounder, not the athletic type like Jenn and her father.

  “Bombed how?” The question escaped her lips. She didn’t want an answer. She already knew, but her instinct rejected that reality. It wasn’t possible. Not here. Kolkata or Warsaw, yes, and maybe Taipei. Hell, even Mexico City. But not Phoenix. The war was at least a thousand miles away. An answer to her question could shatter that illusion. She wanted to hold it, to make it real, for as long as she could, even if that was only another second.

  The man bit his lip and grabbed two handfuls of his wavy hair. “Roof of the library. See for yourself,” he said, then left Jenn behind.

  She felt a hand touch her arm as she blinked away tears. “Sam, it’s a—”

  “Maybe we should head over to—”

  “I want to see it.”

  Sam gripped Jenn’s shoulders with both hands and lowered his face to hers. “We need to get to Gary’s.”

  “No,” she said, turning her head to hide her eyes. “My family’s down there. I need to see this.”

  Sam dropped his chin and exhaled. “Where?”

  “He said you can see it from the library.”

  They rushed out of McKay Village and toward the towering green glass structure near the center of campus. At fifteen stories high, the library was the tallest building in town. It was also the newest, and its clean, shimmering windows lorded over the grays and browns of the aging town below, earning it the nickname Emerald City.

  Students and faculty poured out of the brick buildings on either side of the street. Jenn expected a steady stream toward the library or at least in one direction, but bodies scurried left, right, forward, and backward at random like a colony of ants escaping the nest.

  Someone crashed into Jenn’s left shoulder, knocking her off balance. A girl about Jenn’s age spilled her books onto the road. Her ponytail was falling out and mascara ran down her cheeks. “Sorry,” she said, then walked away without picking up her books.

  “Wait!” Jenn said.

  The girl didn’t look back.

  “Come on,” Sam said, pulling on Jenn’s hand. “We’re almost there.”

  Someone had propped open the automatic doors at the library’s main entrance, and Jenn went inside. She expected the bright white of the LEDs to greet her, but the lobby was dark. The sun streaked through the glass, coloring the room a faint green. Nobody manned the help desk in the middle of the room, and above them on their left and right, the lounge chairs and desks on the mezzanine were vacant. Normally abuzz with chatter, Emerald City sounded like a tomb.

  “The stairs,” Jenn said, pointing to a door next to a bank of elevators.

  They darted over and ran into the stairwell. Dreading fifteen stories, Jenn cringed and made the first step. She climbed quickly at first, bounding the steps two at a time like she’d find her parents at the top. By the fourth floor, her calves ached in opposition. When she reached the sixth floor, Sam was almost a flight below her.

  She caught up with a group of ten or more on the eighth floor. Ignoring the burning in her chest, she squeezed past and kept pushing. When she checked for Sam a second time, she only saw strangers. He appeared a few moments later, pulling himself forward by the handrail. “Jenn,” he sputtered, “slow down.”

  Ignoring him, Jenn stepped onto the ninth floor and turned right onto the next flight. She moved to the side of the stairwell and made room for a girl coming down. They caught glances for a moment, but the girl, her eyes puffy, stared a hole through Jenn. Her shoulders slumped forward and her knees wobbled like they’d buckle after each step.

  Jenn’s legs felt like rubber when she reached the roof access door. Like the doors to the main lobby, this one was propped open. She stepped through and onto the roof. Sam caught up and followed her out. Fifteen stories of winding stairs, though, sent her staggering to keep balance. Her feet firmly planted, she tried to orientate herself and determine which way was south. A group of twenty or thirty crowding one side of the building gave her the answer. A few others were scattered closer to the servic
e door. A man and a woman, library staff from the looks of it, were hugging. The woman had her face buried in the man’s chest. Another man, his blue collared shirt unbuttoned, sat with his arms resting on his knees. He didn’t look at Jenn or Sam as they walked by.

  At the edge of the roof, they squeezed into the crowd to get closer to the ledge. Holding her breath, Jenn squinted. Below, the university stretched southward. She saw a break in the trees that marked the highway in the distance, then nothing but low, pine-covered hills.

  “You see anything?” Sam asked.

  “No,” Jenn said through clenched teeth.

  “They’re over there,” a woman wearing a green NAU staff T-shirt said with a sniffle. She pointed. “Look that way.”

  Jenn followed her finger.

  And then she saw them.

  They were faint, each only the height and width of her thumb, but she made them out against the sky: four—no, five—black plumes peaking above the horizon.

  “Shit,” Sam mumbled.

  Then, for some reason, the library started spinning. The floor, too, started wobbling. Jenn bent her knees to keep balanced but stumbled backward and fell. She tried to stand, but her legs didn’t work. Her eyes didn’t work anymore, either. Everything went blurry. She felt Sam’s hand on her shoulders. He was talking but she didn’t hear. She leaned to the side. The potatoes and soy bacon she made for breakfast came up as the sky crashed down and everything went dark.

  6

  “Does anybody have any water?”

  Jenn heard Sam say it, but she felt like she’d drunk six beers in as many minutes. The smell of breakfast and stomach acid burned her nose and made her stomach churn. She realized she was horizontal—mostly—her head resting awkwardly on Sam’s thigh.