“What the f—”
“Okay, folks,” the radio announcer cut in through the emergency message. “This is an unusual situation but I’m being told we need to get out of here. A massive storm is ripping through our area. I shouldn’t say this but there are multiple reports that another country has released a device… shit. Good luck out there, folks. Get safe.”
There were harsh clinking and clunking sounds before there was nothing. Dead air was all that followed.
“Try another channel,” Deacon said.
“I’m scared,” Lexi said leaning further into the front.
“Me too,” I said attempting to sound reassuring but failing miserably. “What do you think they mean by that?”
Deacon’s knuckles nearly glowed in the darkness with how tightly he was gripping the steering wheel. He was stretched so far forward his nose was nearly touching the windshield.
“By what?” Caleb asked.
“He said they released a device. What does that mean?” I asked.
Caleb shook his head. “My parents were watching the news tonight. There was some kind of secret meeting being held in another country tonight, I guess.”
“That’s really helpful, Caleb, thanks,” Lexi said sarcastically.
“I don’t know,” Caleb said raising his voice slightly. “You guys know I don’t pay attention to current events.”
He stopped the radio dial when there was a voice. It sounded as though it was someone broadcasting from their basement miles and miles away. There was a lot of static and the woman’s voice wasn’t clear.
“I think I have to stop,” Deacon said. The car was barely rolling forward the way it was. “I can’t see a damn thing.”
“Shh!” Lexi said pointing at the radio.
“The Reset was intended to fix our climate problems,” the woman on the radio said. Her voice was shaky but she was trying to put power behind her words. There was also a splash of anger to them. “But look out your window folks. We didn’t ask for this, did we? Nothing has been fixed. Instead, it’s been destroyed.”
There was a loud crackle of static at the same time wind whistled and howled at the car. It felt like we’d moved back several inches.
“Oh, my God!” Lexi cried out. “Get me home! Please just get me home!”
5
Adam
A liquid heat drizzled slickly down the side of my leg. I looked down and even though I couldn’t see the blood, I knew it was there, dripping down my leg and soaking into my fifty-dollar socks.
That was my punishment for dropping that kind of cash down on a pair of socks. I’d been trying to impress the cashier. It had worked, I’d gotten her number, but it hadn’t mattered because I had a girlfriend.
“Eva!” I screamed. The sound that had exited my mouth had been fueled by the searing pain in my leg. I sounded concerned. Worried even.
Truth was, I was those things. I didn’t want anything bad to happen to Eva. I wanted only good things for her. It was just that I didn’t want to be around her when they did.
My vision was improving with each blink but the faint glowing orbs were still there, moving along with my darting eyes.
I reached for my back pocket where I’d tucked my phone before we left. I needed to call for help, whether that meant my parents, my best friend, or an ambulance.
“Shit,” I said wincing as I slammed my fist into my leg. My phone wasn’t there.
Every inch of my body hurt from sliding along the concrete. It was like every inch was bruised. The deep blues and purples that would eventually turn yellow.
My leg was in the worst shape and I was pretty sure I was lucky it wasn’t broken. The breeze against my leg let me know that my nearly five hundred dollar jeans had been torn along with my skin.
I dragged my leg along with me as I walked around the area. Eva couldn’t be that far. We’d fallen at practically the same time. I’d rolled for a bit and perhaps she had too.
She’d been wearing her helmet, hadn’t she? I knew at times she complained about how it messed up her hair. Sometimes she refused but I was pretty sure she’d had it on tonight even though I hadn’t turned to check. There had been too much on my mind.
“Dammit, Eva, answer me,” I said but this time, I hadn’t shouted.
“Hey there,” a voice said at the same moment a bright beam stung my eyes. “You okay?”
I shielded my eyes from the flashlight and stared at the curly-haired man with glasses walking between the trees. He looked like he should have been in a coffee shop, not wandering through the woods at the side of the road.
“Um, mostly,” I said taking a step back as he came closer. “We were in an accident. I can’t find my girlfriend.”
“I see,” he said. “I heard your bike coming up the road.”
The man who couldn’t have been more than thirty pointed his flashlight down at the ground, moving it methodically back and forth along the road. He stopped the light on my mangled bike.
“Dang,” he said.
“I was going pretty slow,” I explained. “It was the light that—”
“Yeah, I saw it too,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“Adam,” I replied quickly. “Yours?”
He hesitated, as if he didn’t know. “Mike.”
“You got a phone, Mike?” I asked repeating his name to help me remember.
“Nah,” he said. “At least not one that’s working. There!”
Mike jogged several feet away from me and kneeled down next to something. He moved the beam up and down Eva’s still body.
“Dammit,” I said moving as quick as I could to get closer to them.
“What’s her name?” Mike asked.
“Eva.”
“Eva,” Mike said lightly shaking her shoulder.
Thank God she’d been wearing her helmet. I crouched down across from Mike and took Eva’s hand into mine.
“Eva,” I said gently as I patted the back of her hand. There were little pebbles embedded in her flesh. “Wake up, Eva.”
Her hand twitched at the sound of my voice. It wasn’t even a full second before she panicked and started clawing at the helmet like she’d forgotten she’d been wearing it.
“It’s okay,” I said in a soft, soothing voice as I helped her get the helmet off.
Her eyes were wide but there wasn’t anything wrong with her face. Not even a scratch. She’d be happy about that since she considered it her greatest asset. The one thing that would get her in movies or a worst-case scenario, the host of her own talk show.
“Adam,” she gasped as if she was taking in air after drowning. A tear streamed down the side of her face. “What… who’s—”
“His name is Mike. He’s helping us. We were in an accident,” I explained. “Do you remember the light?”
She shook her head. “My neck hurts. And my leg.”
“We need an ambulance,” I said meeting Mike’s gaze.
Eva started sobbing as she tried to get herself upright. She stopped and howled as she gingerly touched her leg as though it may shatter.
“I’ve got a place about a mile up the road,” Mike said. “Phone there might be working but to be honest with you, even if it works, I don’t think anyone will be coming.”
“What? Why not?” I asked sharply as I looked skeptically at Mike as his expression grew darker. “What were you doing out here in the dark a mile away from your house?”
Mike blinked and grabbed his flashlight from off the ground. He held it to his body as he stood and looked down at us.
“I had some personal business to attend to,” Mike said. His eyes flicked upward for a second. “They did it. The light. They must have done it. This isn’t good. No one is coming. We’re all on our own now.”
Mike started to back away from us. It was like he was suddenly afraid of us.
“Mike, man,” I said with an awkward chuckle. I held up my palms toward him. “Don’t leave us out here like this. I can’t help her
on my own.”
“Things are going to get really bad out here, aren’t they?” Mike asked.
He sounded like a completely different person than the one that had wandered out of the trees. This version of Mike seemed terrified of his surroundings.
Lightning whipped through the sky, splitting it in two. Thunder rocked the hill so violently I thought we were going to tumble down the side of the cliff like rocks.
“I’m sorry,” Mike said. He turned and ran off into the darkness, almost instantly disappearing.
I turned to chase him but I didn’t make it more than a few painful steps. I leaned forward at the waist to catch my breath.
“Asshole!” I shouted when I had enough air and energy.
“My phone,” Eva said from the ground behind me. She hadn’t moved and I could tell she was crying. A different cry than her usual dry cry. “It doesn’t work. And the screen is cracked. What are we going to do?”
Something bigger was wrong. Eva never let her phone go below sixty percent battery. The reason it wasn’t working was something out of our control.
Mike had been right. No one would be coming to help. At least not anytime soon.
“Let’s see if we can get you to your feet,” I said bending and stretching my arm around her. I didn’t think I’d be able to lift much of her weight when I was having trouble carrying my own with my sliced-up, bleeding leg.
“I don’t think I can,” she said but she was up.
Every ounce of weight was on her one good leg. She could barely touch her toe of her bad leg to the road without tears of pain leaking out of the corners of her eyes.
“I can’t do this, Adam. I can't!”
“You’re doing it,” I said excitedly, trying to get her spirits up.
She groaned. “What are you expecting me to do? Walk back to town? We’re miles away.”
“What are our options?” I asked.
“We might be better off just sitting here and waiting for a car to drive by,” Eva said.
I snorted. “They’ll probably give us as much of help as Mike did.”
I looked down the road. It was darker than before. Everything was darker.
“No one is going to come up here.” I shook my head. “At least it seems pretty unlikely. We’re going to have to figure out something else.”
Eva’s shoulders drooped forward. She exhaled sharply and sobbed. “It was so stupid of you to even take me up here. I hate it out here.”
My body shook and not just because of the bright bolt of lightning that struck a nearby tree and freaked me out. I remembered what I had been planning to do.
I couldn’t do it now. Not after what happened.
I was stuck. And apparently, it was all my fault we were stranded, which I guess, technically, it was.
The tree that had been struck was like a sparkler on the Fourth of July. After a bit, it fizzled out, which I decided was a good thing. The last thing we’d need was a forest fire.
The earth moved like someone had picked it up and shook it like a giant snow globe. Eva held onto me and I held her tightly.
The wind picked up and the surrounding branches creaked and cracked as they smacked into one another. A cold chill ran down my spine and I tried not to shiver.
“What is going on?” Eva asked finally in a voice that wasn’t tinged with her normal judging tone. She suddenly seemed smaller and I held her harder. The glimmer of the fearful Eva hadn’t lasted long. “Ugh! Why couldn’t you have just taken me for lobster like a normal boyfriend would have? I can’t even right now.”
She shoved me away slightly but pulled me back when she wobbled to the side as if she would tip over without me holding her. I bit my cheek hard.
There would have been no way I could have forced myself to sit with her in a dimly lit restaurant while she went on and on talking about some boring celebrity as she scrolled through her Instagram again. I couldn’t pose for another fake selfie that she’d have to retake thirty times to get it just right so she could post it on all her social media. Keeping up the illusion of a perfect life for all six hundred and forty-three of her followers.
I didn’t have any more smiles to give her. Even trying would have likely killed me. Of course, I couldn’t tell her that now because I had just messed up her leg and maybe given her whiplash as well. I wanted to end things but not like this.
Hell, she probably would have accused me of trying to kill her. I wasn’t up for her dramatics. Definitely not now.
Thank God, her phone wasn’t working. I would have jumped off the cliff at the dramatic post she would have made.
“Are you even listening to me, Adam?” she barked sharply as she shook my arm.
I hadn’t been. And I didn’t even care. I had more important things on my mind other than whatever it was she was rambling on about.
But before I could lie, there was a loud whoosh above us, like something heavy falling from the sky. I ducked and covered my head. It only took a few seconds to realize what the sound was.
Rain.
6
Stevie
Water seemed to hit me from every angle. I held onto Gage tighter and Jace held us both. If we were going to get swept away, we were going together.
My clothing was soaked. It clung to be like a shrinking second skin.
“What’s happening?” Gage said digging his fingertips into my arms.
I wanted to explain it to him since he couldn’t see but I had no idea what was happening around us. All I knew was water was hitting us from everywhere.
My vision was streaked with rapid falling droplets. And mixed with the darkness that seemed to have swallowed us, I couldn’t see well either.
“It’s a tsunami!” Jace said.
“It’s not a tsunami,” I said pulling Gage along with me as I made my way toward what I hoped was the road. The beach sand was more like quicksand under my feet, trying to pull me down into the earth.
“Hurricane then,” Jace shouted over a whoosh of rain from the left.
I couldn’t argue. It was definitely a possibility. It wouldn’t be my first hurricane but it would be the first that had hit so suddenly and without warning. Also, it would be the first I’d been outside to experience firsthand instead of inside a boarded-up house.
“We need to get inside,” I said.
“What about the ER?” Jace asked.
“It might have to wait until this storm passes,” I said as rain pelted hard against my right cheek. It felt like someone had thrown a handful of pebbles into my face.
Jace grabbed my arm. “We can’t wait. He might need immediate care to save his vision.”
“We’ll do what we can,” I said planting my feet into the sand as the wind threatened to blow me away from both of them.
We walked with our heads down. Inches of water splashed over my shoes and slurped back away in an instant. I spun around suddenly, worried we’d been walking right back toward the ocean.
There was a single light outside a building flickering, which indicated we were going the right way. When another wave, deeper this time, splashed up to my calf, my stomach sank.
We were on the road. We hadn’t slowed our pace when another wave came, this one, just above my knees, attempting to pull me back into the ocean.
“Ahh!” I shouted.
Jace and Gage held me. The wave was so strong it pulled us back off of the road.
Lightning crashed above, lighting the area around us. All I could see was water splashing in every direction.
“We have to get inside!” I shouted. It had been hard to force the words out of my dry mouth.
“There!” Jace said pointing at the building with the flickering light.
“No,” I said shaking my head. “That one.”
I pointed to an office building that was a block further but it was ten stories high. Not only did we need shelter but we would also need high ground if we wanted to survive.
Our feet splashed into pools of water as the wi
nd and waves pushed and pulled at our legs. The only source of light guiding our way was the random flickers and flashes from the lightning.
We were halfway to the building when a wave crashed into our backs so hard it knocked us down. Gage was holding onto me like I was his life preserver. My head dunked down below the surface but I manage to get my head up and grab onto the pole of a street sign with both hands.
“Jace!” I screamed.
“Help!” Jace shouted back. His voice was distant.
“Jace!” I shouted as loud as I could as I scanned the wavy surface. This time there was no response.
The water receded and I hurriedly got to my feet. Tears were streaming down my face as I looked around in every direction, waiting for a flash of light.
“Jace!” I hollered again. “Answer me!”
Gage was clutching onto me as if his life depended on it. But the only thing that was going to save us was luck.
“He knows where we’re going,” Gage said between rapid breaths. “He’ll find us.”
I nodded but I didn’t think he would. The world around us wasn’t calming… it was getting more violent.
We got to the building but the door was locked. I shook the glass door and screamed at it but it didn’t do more than rattle in the frame.
Lightning struck and illuminated the sky. My body froze. Behind us, there was an enormous wave rolling right toward us. If we didn’t get inside, Gage and I would be pulled away in the same way Jace had been.
I looked around and spotted the flower pot that held only dirt and soggy stems. The muscles in my back strained as I lifted it with a loud grunt.
I tossed it as best as I could toward the glass door. The pot hit and the sounds of shattering glass were drowned out by the raging storm.
I grabbed Gage again and pulled him inside. Just as I located the stairwell, the wave crashed into the building.
Water filled the lobby at a rapid pace. Gage held out his hand as I yanked him toward the stairs.
“We’re going up, okay?” I said.
The Reset Series (Book 1): Flood Page 3