by Logan Keys
Kai paused, his gaze catching on the stream of blood coming from his shoulder down his arm. “All right. Let’s look at it, quickly.”
He sat down, and Mathew helped him pull his shirt off.
“How bad is it?” he asked.
“Pretty bad. But I think you’ll live. I grabbed some stuff to wrap it.”
“Hurry. And thanks.”
Kai’s gaze bounced around the empty city. His foot tapped, and his hands fisted and un-fisted. If he didn’t figure out a way to get to Sierra, he’d lose his marbles. Still, he had to find her first.
“Done,” Mathew said a few minutes later.
Kai touched the spot and hissed, but at least the bleeding had stopped. “Thanks again, Man.”
Mathew nodded. “Can you move it at all?”
“A bit.”
Not really, but he didn’t want to discuss it anymore.
At that moment Jennifer strode out of the shadows, her face pale. “You guys just left me?” she asked, her voice hollow.
Kai had completely forgotten about her, and by the look on Mathew’s face, he must have, too.
They quickly told her what happened and by the end, she was in tears. “They took them? Where?”
“This direction,” Mathew said, pointing where he thought they might have gone.
Together, they began to jog down the street.
A woman was coming their way, her face haggard and drawn. She was looking through them when Kai asked, “Did you see anyone? Two guys and three girls?”
She nodded but her gaze remained unfocused.
“Where did they go?”
She smiled slightly and passed a hand through her hair that was twisted in snarls and covered in ash. “To hell.”
Kai brushed by her. “What happened here?” he muttered to Mathew, though the answer was apparent.
“Same thing that happened everywhere else, I suppose.”
Jennifer followed, but her eyes were glazed over with shock or sadness. Most likely both.
The rain had stopped the fires, but the minds of the citizens were still burning. A blaze that might never go out. Kai judged the woman for being insane, but how did he look? Bloody, swamp-logged, frantically searching for his sister.
Perhaps hell wasn’t far off…
Kai, Mathew, and Jennifer searched each street, again and again.
He was pushing through the fact that blood loss was making it harder and harder to keep going.
He was at his wits end when he heard the scream.
After that, Kai didn’t remember really running towards the sound and losing both of his traveling companions behind him. Or reaching the door of what was the skeleton of an apartment. He didn’t remember rushing up the stairs or leaping across giant pieces of the flooring that were missing. He would never be able to recall how he got to the door where his sister was, where someone was screaming for help. He just was suddenly there, and kicking it in, before he realized he had no plan to take them on and he only had one working arm.
Sierra was almost pulled all the way into the bedroom when the door flew open. Quinn was screaming so loudly that she couldn’t hardly hear herself think, but perhaps, later, when things died down and if they lived, she’d be kissing the girl’s feet for sounding such a loud alarm because she blinked once, twice, three times, but Kai was still there. Her brother had shown up just like he promised.
He was pale as a ghost, and his entire side was dark with blood. Sierra whimpered when she saw how much he’d lost, but that sound only triggered something in her brother she’d rarely ever seen before. Not that she hadn’t seen something close to it.
“Are you hurt?” he demanded, but she shook her head that she wasn’t.
She had some bruises, but Kai noted her posture. She was definitely not unscathed, and she was hunched slightly over her stomach.
The man who had her let her go and stomped over to Kai. If he was smart, he would have armed himself, but instead, he saw Kai’s arm limp at his side—the tall but, lighter built college kid, with nothing but rage on his side.
The hubris of the evil, Sierra thought, with a smile.
“I see that Francis here didn’t finish you off like I told him to,” the leader said. “That’s okay, I’ll handle that now.”
Sierra snorted. “Francis?” she said looking at the other guy with a raised brow.
He turned pink and shrugged, avoiding her gaze.
The leader rushed at Kai, his shoulder striking Sierra’s brother in the chest, pinning him into the wall with a thud.
“Get him, Swag!” Francis yelled.
Sierra could roll her eyes at the names of these morons, but she was too focused on the fight.
Kai took the hit and didn’t quickly rebound, which made her worry, but then he did a quick jerk of his elbow into Swag’s back. When Swag backed up a step, Kai was ready.
Balanced on one foot, he brought his other up to kick Swag in a fast array of places. It was hard to follow, but Sierra heard the landing blows with a satisfying thud.
Swag was no beginner, however. A street brawler by nature, he put up his fists, and dodged a swift punch Kai sent, before he stuck a jab into Kai’s injured shoulder hard enough to make her brother huddle into himself and almost go to his knees.
But he got back to his feet, and they circled one another.
They exchanged punches and Kai landed a hook kick to the side of Swag, making him hold his ribs.
Swag then landed an uppercut that sent Kai’s head backwards and blood sprayed from his mouth.
Sierra knew better than to do anything other than watch. If she got involved, first, she had her hands tied so she’d be useless, and second, Kai would be far more distracted by protecting her.
He could do this. He could. “Come on, Kai, you got this,” she whispered.
That’s when Sierra saw where Kai was in the apartment. “Kai!” She shouted and his gaze snapped to her. “Sword!”
She pointed with her hands until he spotted the Katana.
There were guns there too but who knew if they were loaded. Having only been recently stolen, most would be empty. But a blade was a blade. And this was a wicked looking one at that.
Her brother’s face lit up like it was Christmas morning. He reached down with his good hand and slid the sword from its sheath.
It shined with a sharpness that Sierra doubted she’d ever seen before. Her brother too, was certainly in awe over how well made it was.
“What you plan on doing with that?” Swag said, laughing.
Francis joined in. “He thinks he’s a samurai now!”
Sierra didn’t say a word.
She didn’t scream as Quinn did when Swag’s throat opened in the less than three moves that Kai made. The light caught the blade as it sang through the air, but otherwise, she couldn’t follow the strikes.
She didn’t cry as warm blood struck her face when Francis too fell to the same fate.
And she didn’t even feel guilty when she nodded as Kai slid the blade into the back of the woman who was trying to flee.
She merely stood quietly until Kai came to her side, cutting her ties with the same blade he’d just used to take his first life then another and another.
Sierra let him take her in his one good arm, blood sticky between them as she hugged him tightly, feeling him tremble in her arms from adrenaline, maybe even fear.
She sighed out her own fear and squeezed him until he winced from too much pressure on his hurt shoulder.
Kai had a black belt in every single martial art she could name or the equivalent of it. Their parents had tried to figure out ways to gift him back a part of his culture even though it was a sort of stereotype. But Kai had embraced it and pushed himself to the limits to learn them all. To be proficient in them all. To spar and win and be champion of them all.
That was just how he was.
Anger fueled Kai, and she knew it. Bitterness and betrayal made him as sharp as that sword. Perhaps that his pa
rents gave him up. Perhaps that the world wasn’t easy for immigrants in the first place so that they felt like they had to.
What was in his mind was his own. But she had guessed much of it over the years, and it made forgiveness easy, and love even easier.
She didn’t blame his parents for what they did. Or him for how he sometimes treated her when he wasn’t coping particularly well with the cards dealt.
She just loved him.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You know it, Sparky,” he said hoarsely.
As they were leaving the apartment, she turned and found Swag’s eyes had not lost all their light.
Oh, he’d die for sure, but he was hanging on by a thread as his blood pooled around him.
Sierra bent down over him and whispered, “I told you so.”
10
Two Years Earlier
Griggs’ sister hadn’t had the answers. He had told her not to tell anyone but who would she tell? Pot heads? Her hippie friends full of conspiracy theories? Who would believe her?
So, he told her to take the information for herself. To prepare. Lila was already a bit paranoid, and so it was easy enough to get her to take him seriously. She’d have to tell Daniel, but that eased Griggs’ mind. Daniel would help Lila. They were one and the same almost now it seemed.
He’d decided that the people of the world should know even without his sister’s sage advice that seemed a lot more like, “This sounds like a personal problem,” after she’d calmed down.
The General had left it up to him and so he’d slept on it, or rather, restlessly tossed and turned until the beer came up and in a cold sweat, morning had found him hugging the porcelain throne.
He’d made himself physically ill over either idea.
One: to tell the world and then watch it collapse into chaos and then the sun, that might not be dying, continued to shine down on a destroyed planet.
His fault.
Two: to not tell the world and the sun does in fact die and no one was prepared, to slowly dim on a destroyed planet.
His fault as well.
No, the sun dying or not dying was not his fault, but at this point, it might as well have been.
He would tell them.
He would do that, and the rest was not up to him, now was it? He wasn’t God. Although carrying the stupid envelope that predicted the end of everything sometimes made him feel a little bit that way.
So, Griggs called an old friend and told her to fly out to see him. She’d scoffed at the idea, but when he’d told her that he had a story that would change her life—all their lives—she, for some inexplicable reason, listened.
Mandy met him at the airport that evening. Their plan was to have dinner, and Griggs figured he’d hand her the folder, and that would be that. She’d use that information and report on it.
Griggs pulled up to the restaurant and his guest laughed.
“You still like steak, I see,” Mandy said, tucking a long curly blonde strand behind her ear. “And your sister…?”
“Still eats mulch or something.”
She stopped walking; her mouth slightly open as she breathed a little fast. She was excited with the prospect of something top secret being passed her way. Mandy seemed as though she realized this could mean a promotion or put her name out there as the journalist with the top stories.
Griggs felt a pang in his heart, the guilty conscience had eaten through his stomach and found its way to another organ entirely. She was pretty. Had he noticed that before?
He thought about them in high school. They’d had agriculture together, he remembered. She’d been afraid of the dead pigs they were to dissect, but so had he. He’d just pretended it didn’t make him want to run from the room screaming like a girl.
For extra credit over spring break, they had cleaned the sheep stalls. Yes, even in southern California, some of the schools in the more rural areas had sheep and goats and cattle. He was a district transfer from the city but so was Mandy. Getting sheep shit on their boots had been the closest they’d been to actual livestock because they’d even penned up the creatures on the far side, unsure if the things would bite like dogs.
“Why are you smiling?” Mandy said, her blue eyes shining.
“I was thinking about back when.”
“Ah, yes. Cleaning the sheep pens. I think of that…often.”
“Often?”
The hostess interrupted their conversation to give them a table.
Griggs was holding the envelope that meant the end of the world, but he was more interested in why Mandy thought of that time often. Of him….
“Well,” she said, as they took their seats. “You were so chivalrous, using the hose to clean my shoes, and then offering to do it the next day alone so I wouldn’t ruin my clothes.”
“Well, it stunk to high heaven, and you always smelled so good.”
Had he really just said that? He bit back more cheesy lines and looked at his menu.
But Mandy stared at him dead on until he looked again. “But I came back.” Her cheeks were pink. “I wanted to uh…spend time with you. You were always so…” she gazed distantly, and their waters came.
Griggs would give almost anything to hear what he “always was”, but instead, he gave the waitress his attention so as not to be rude.
“Would you like to order?” she asked.
“Sure.” Griggs sighed on the inside.
They quickly ordered, and then Griggs felt the floor drop out from underneath him as Mandy reached across and grabbed his hand, eyes serious.
“Why did you call me, Ben?”
He stared at her long and hard. Would she hate him for this? Would she love him for it?
Didn’t matter.
Dammit though…it kind of did.
If she felt any kind of way about him, they had no time to figure it out.
He slid the envelope across the table.
11
Redlands, California
“My brother did try to warn people. He really did,” Lila said to Clive, and he nodded.
“I believe you.”
Siri then told Daniel and Lila about the water. “I mean, it’s rapids with rocks and parts of the highway and parts even from the dam and other cities. Even if you had a boat, I bet it would be sunk like that.” She snapped her fingers. “Clive here has family on the other side… Any ideas of how to get across?”
Daniel shook his head and Lila did, too. “If you think your family made it before the dam burst, then it’s possible they are safe. But…” Daniel seemed as if he didn’t want to go on. “I’m not so sure that the gap won’t widen as time goes on. If it does, whoever is on this side, might wind up stuck on this side.”
Clive shook his head. “Not possible. I need to get across.”
Lila chimed in seeing how tense he was at the mere suggestion that his family was unreachable. “It’s going to get cold. Really cold. Maybe it will freeze over?”
Clive shuddered. He didn’t know if that was much better at all.
“You guys should get some sleep.” Daniel showed Clive to a bedroom and while he figured he’d never sleep again, he was out like a light after only a few minutes with his head on the soft pillow.
He woke up to a rainbow staring down at him, and it made him smile though he wanted to weep at where he was and what had happened. Waking up to a world where he didn’t know if his family was alive was the most painful thing he’d ever had to face.
“I brought you some coffee,” Siri said. “I won’t spill it this time.”
He sat up and took the cup. He took a drink and grimaced.
“Yeah,” Siri said with a sympathetic glance. “They grow their own beans here and it’s…not very good. I’m not even sure it’s truly coffee to be honest.”
Clive chuckled.
“What’s the plan then?” she asked.
“I thought we could hike a bit and see what we see. There’s a hill near this one that overlooks the city o
n that far side. Maybe we can tell what’s going on. If anyone is still alive over there.”
She nodded. “Let’s go then.”
He wanted to try to find a boat, that had been his first plan, but Siri was right. It would sink. Maybe the river would calm down over time, once everything was washed away. The thought of waiting killed him, but he wouldn’t sit still until then. He’d keep on doing whatever he could.
Daniel and Lila gave them some water and more jerky. Clive was still in his borrowed pants so Siri could barely keep a straight face when he put on his backpack and stepped outside.
“They’re just so…pretty,” she said with a snort.
If only Sara could see him now.
They hiked down into the old orchards, the ash and burning wasn’t too bad there, but as they went on, it got worse. Everything they passed was dead, the closer they got to the city.
It only got better once they started to climb.
“This hill looked a lot smaller from the house.”
“Yeah,” Clive said, out of breath. He paused to get a drink and handed her the bottle.
She motioned to their path. “We better hurry. It will be dark by the time we get back at this rate.”
“Are you saying I’m slow?”
She grinned. “I’m not saying you’re fast, grandpa.”
“I’m not that old,” he grumbled letting her take the lead.
At the top of the hill they both were silent. The wind up there was strange, making pockets of heat that streamed around them between the cold. The city below was dark and quiet. Nothing seemed to move. It was hardly recognizable, a shell of what it had once been.
Clive frowned at it and turned towards Siri. “What do you think is going on?”
“I dunno. The floor is lava? Remember when the electrical current had killed those people? That could be happening in this city as well.”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
“Look,” Siri whispered. “Should we hide?”
A group of hikers were coming in their direction from the front side of the hill opposite of where they had come up.