“Respect your father,” Kate added.
Alex clamped his mouth shut and looked out of a window. He and I rarely saw eye to eye now that he’d hit the terrible teens. Lately it seemed like all he ever did was challenge my authority and question my decisions. Something told me I was in for a lot more of that in the weeks and months to come. Crisis had a way of provoking confrontations. I took a deep breath and let it out in a shuddering sigh. The stress was getting to me.
Kate laid a hand on my leg. I removed it just as quickly, drawing a pained look from her.
“We’ll find him,” she said quietly.
We reached Newark Airport twenty minutes later. I parked the car and we hurried inside with our luggage. I struggled to drag my bag on its wheels and pull Rachel along at the same time. Her little legs couldn’t keep up with my pace, and I had to force myself to slow down. Our flight wasn’t for another three hours, but I was still in a hurry. The sooner we got through security the sooner I could rest easy knowing that at least nobody was going to be pointing another gun at us.
The ticket counters were packed. I found the one for United Airlines and lined up with everyone else. I had our passports, phones, and cash in the laptop bag slung over my shoulder. I’d left my gun in the car. Pity there was no way to take it with us to San Antonio, but I had a feeling Richard would have a few dozen guns of his own. Rachel peered up at me as we shuffled through the ticket line. The roar of the crowds was deafening. Security guards stood all over, trying to keep order.
I glanced back to make sure that Kate and Alex were still behind me. Kate caught my eye and reached out to rub my shoulder. Alex glared. I jerked my chin at him. “What’s your problem?” He was even surlier than usual.
He looked away, shaking his head. “Nothing.”
I scowled and faced forward again. It felt like hours to get to the front of the line. By the time we finally did, I greeted the harried ticket agent with a tight smile and handed her our passports. She printed our boarding passes and helped us check our bags.
After that, it felt like a weight had been lifted—literally. It was a lot easier to move through the airport without our bags to weigh us down. I scooped Rachel up and hurried to the line-up for security. This line crawled even slower than the one at the ticket counters. TSA agents kept order, but barely. People were shoving and shouting to all sides. The body scanners were in full swing. I saw someone up ahead get pulled out of a scanner for having a concealed weapon—a switch blade. I frowned, watching as two TSA agents drew their weapons and disarmed him. He complained loudly about it being a gift from his girlfriend, even as the agents cuffed him and led him away.
By the time we were through security and made it to our gate fully two hours had passed. I breathed a sigh as I found a place to sit and wait with my family. Rachel sat next to me and leaned her head against my shoulder. She drew her legs up to her chest and quietly bit her nails.
“Don’t do that honey. You’ll chip your teeth,” Kate chided.
Rachel stopped biting her nails and began sucking her thumb instead. I arched an eyebrow at that. “I thought you stopped sucking your thumb, Rachie.”
She looked up at me, but said nothing.
Kate caught my eye, and shook her head. We couldn’t win both battles.
I peered around her to get a look at Alex. He was still brooding—arms crossed and eyes pinched in adolescent protest.
“What’s up, Al?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“It doesn’t look like nothing to me.”
He didn’t reply immediately, so Kate prompted, “Answer your father.”
“Why do we have to go to stupid San Antonio?”
“Because I say so,” I said, aware that it wouldn’t be a good idea to talk about Richard’s disaster shelter with so many people around to listen in.
“Why can’t I stay? You guys can go without me.”
I almost laughed at that, but managed to choke it down. “I suppose you’re old enough to take care of yourself now. And when the snow starts to fall and the gas runs out, you won’t freeze to death. You’ll just bundle up, right? Not to mention food... you’ll be able to walk to the supermarket and buy some. I guess that’s what your piggy bank is for.”
Alexander peered around Kate to glare at me again. “I’m not stupid. I can stay at Deanna’s house.”
One of my eyebrows jumped up. “And Deanna is...?”
Alexander didn’t reply, but he didn’t have to this time. I worked it out for myself. Deanna must have been the girl he’d kissed at school. No wonder he was so grumpy. He was heart-broken, thinking he’d never see her again. And he was right. He wouldn’t. In fact, she’d be lucky to live through what was coming. I grimaced with that thought, and left Alex to work through his feelings. Kate and I were lucky in a way, our extended family was almost non-existent, and that meant fewer people to care for or mourn. I was an only child, and both sets of Kate’s and my parents were already dead. As for friends, I’d always been too busy with work and family to maintain friendships. My wife, however... I glanced at her and my thoughts flashed back to her lover and our neighbor, Ben Fields. Maybe he’d be found among the casualties, lying in a gutter somewhere under a mountain of snow, frozen stiff.
A flash of guilt flickered through me, but my pent-up fury snuffed it out with a righteous smirk. He deserved what was coming. Then I thought about everyone else who would be affected, and my smirk died. I couldn’t allow myself to be happy for what was coming just because it settled a personal score. This time the guilt lasted longer, and I forced myself to get out of my head and rather focus on the immediate future.
Looking around to root myself in the present, I noticed a stranger watching us from the row of seats across from ours. He wore a black Yankees cap and a short brown beard that made his face look fuzzy and friendly, reminding me somewhat of my brother-in-law. The stranger smiled and nodded at me as our eyes met. The crow’s feet around his ice-blue eyes wrinkled.
“You got relatives in San Antonio?” he asked.
I shook my head. “How did you know...” This wasn’t a direct flight. How could this stranger know where we were headed?
He jerked his head to Alex. “Your kid. He mentioned it. Smart move beating the rush down South before the snow starts to fall. I’m headed to Alamo City myself. You guys gonna stay down there?”
That gut-twisting chill I’d felt just before getting robbed at gunpoint was back. I smiled and shook my head. “Wish we could. I just thought the country will be safer right now.”
“San Antonio’s not exactly the country,” the man said.
I shrugged. “Well, they don’t land jump jets on farmer’s fields.”
The man snorted and inclined his head at that. “Guess you’ll make your way from there.”
“Yeah.”
The stranger reached up and tipped the brim of his hat to me. People still do that? I wondered. He was wearing a brown leather jacket and blue jeans, so maybe he thought he was some kind of urban cowboy.
“Bill Summers,” he said.
“Logan,” I replied through a frown.
“I’m thinking of going to the country myself,” Bill said. “Let this whole mess of beans sort itself out. Maybe I’ll find a nice forest and go build myself a cabin like a goddamn pioneer!” He chuckled lightly, but his laughter gave me the chills. There was something cold in his eyes that I didn’t like.
“Well, good luck with that,” I said, and looked away, hoping he’d take the hint. Our plane was just pulling up to the gate now.
Not long now, I told myself. At least in the air there were only so many people who could cause trouble and the ways that they could do so were limited. I found it ironic that in a time of extreme crisis what worried me the most was the other people.
Chapter 10
People crowded around us as we hurried down the jetway to our plane, their elbows jabbing and hushed voices muttering as their footsteps resounded in an orderly stampede,
muffled by the red carpeting under our feet. I held tight to Rachel’s hand and tried to keep Alex in view.
Flight attendants greeted us with fake smiles as we boarded. Their eyes held the same tightness as everyone else’s that I’d seen—simmering fear restrained by sheer inertia. The routine must go on. Even in a crisis, sometimes going through the motions is all we have left. I nodded to the attendants, and we shuffled down the aisle between seats. Due to the short notice I hadn’t been able to get all of our seats together. We had two pairs of seats, separated by an aisle and two rows.
As we came to the first set, Kate said, “We’ll take these.” And then she busied herself by stuffing her carry-on into the overhead above her seat. Alexander kept his bag with him. It was a laptop bag like mine.
I nodded and walked on to find Rachel’s and my seats. When I reached our row, I thought better of stowing my bag. It had our passports and cash in it. Best to keep that with me. I ushered Rachel in ahead of me to the window seat, thinking she might want to look outside, and then I climbed into the middle seat beside her. Balancing my bag on my lap, I thought about my phone. I’d been cut off from the news for hours and I was anxious to know what was going on. The screens in the airport all had the volume turned down too low to hear anything.
“Look!” Rachel pointed out the window. “There are people down there. What are they doing? Are they going to get on the plane?”
I smiled and shook my head. “They’re loading our bags sweetheart.”
“Oh. They’re really small.”
Nodding agreeably, I said, “Because we’re high up.” I unzipped my bag and pulled out my phone. Turning it on and unlocking it with my fingerprint, I swiped down and checked the notifications. There were dozens of e-mails—mostly junk mail. I went to check my inbox anyway and scanned quickly through the message subjects. One of them jumped out at me. It was from my brother-in-law. The subject was one word: Texas
My heart kicked in my chest and I opened the message. It read:
Hi, guys. If you want to join me, I’m at 13241 Stuart Rd, Calaveras Lake, San Antonio.
Love to all,
Richard
“Looks like we’re sitting together.”
I jumped at the sound of the voice and turned to see Cowboy Bill settling into the seat beside mine. He stared at my phone and nodded.
“Calaveras Lake? That’s where you’re headed?”
I blinked out of my shock, and quickly shook my head, turning off the phone and putting it away. “No.”
Bill arched an eyebrow at me. “So you’re going to San Antonio, and that e-mail is just a coincidence.”
I’d had enough of this. Giving the man a hard stare, I said, “Why are you so interested in where we’re headed?”
He held up his hands. “Whoa. Take it easy. I’m just making conversation.”
“My brother-in-law planned a fishing trip,” I said. “He invited us before the news broke.”
Bill nodded along with that. “So you’re going down there to meet him. Makes sense.” Bill clapped a hand on my shoulder and grinned. “Take it easy, man.”
I nodded and looked over at Rachel, hoping Cowboy Bill would take the hint and leave me alone. “Are you scared?” I asked Rachel.
She shook her head. “Nope.” Golden hair bobbed across her shoulders. Mine used to look like that. Now it was like salted caramel with all the white pricking through the blond.
“Good,” I said. She was braver than me. I smiled and tousled her hair
“Daaad,” she complained, and smoothed out her hair.
I tickled her instead, and she burst into a fit of giggles. “No more!” she said, between gasps for air. “I surrender!”
I withdrew, smiling.
“That’s my seat,” a woman said. I glanced in that direction.
“What? Are you sure?” Cowboy Bill asked, and then he made a show of checking his boarding pass. “Huh. Go figure. Sorry, Miss.”
She nodded stiffly to Bill as he got out of the seat beside me. He caught my eye with a shrug. “Take care of your family, Logan,” he said, and then walked further down the aisle to the back of the plane.
I watched him go with an icy chill prickling my arms. I had a bad feeling that Bill hadn’t actually mistaken his seat. He’d sat down beside me on purpose in order to pump me for more information. How much of Richard’s address had he read off my phone? And more importantly, why was he so interested in where we were going?
Chapter 11
I kept an eye on Cowboy Bill as we de-boarded in Dallas, but I quickly lost sight of him in the crowds. Dallas-Fort Worth was just as crowded and crazy as Newark had been, but at least we didn’t have to go through ticket line-ups and security checks again. Our layover was only two hours, but it was a big airport, so I decided to head straight for our gate anyway. By the time we reached it we still had an hour and a half to wait.
After barely fifteen minutes of sitting, the kids began to get restless and started bugging each other. Rachel kept pulling Alex’s ear buds out and he was getting fed up. Just as I was about to tell her to cut it out, I saw Alex cuff the back of Rachel’s head.
“Dad! Alex hit me!” Rachel said, her eyes welling with tears as she looked up at me.
“Because she’s screwing with my stuff!”
“Get over here,” I snapped, and pointed to a seat on the other side of me.
Alex got up with a heavy sigh. Rachel stuck her tongue out at him as he went. I nudged her with my elbow. “I saw that. Behave.”
“Sorry,” Rachel replied in a dulcet tone.
Alex flopped down beside me and stuffed his ear buds back in.
“I’m hungry,” Rachel said, suddenly no longer tearful.
“Me, too,” Alex added.
Kate caught my eye across the now-empty seat between her and Rachel. She pointed to a nearby convenience store. “Why don’t you go get us some snacks? I’ll stay here with the kids.”
Rachel bounced out of her seat. “I want to go.”
“No. Stay with your mother.”
“But—!”
I left the waiting area before she could come up with an argument to convince me. I wouldn’t be able to hold Rachel’s hand and an armful of snacks and drinks at the same time.
Inside the convenience store I grabbed candy bars, chips, and soda at random. While I stood in line to pay, I noticed a TV blaring the latest news from one corner of the store.
It was another presidential address. The president was denying claims that the government had known about the threat of the rogue star, and then she went on to detail a plan of action going forward.
“My administration is committed to meeting the increased demand for housing in the South. We will subsidize the costs and help people relocate. For those who choose to stay where they are, you will get tax credits for an equivalent value to help you prepare. You will not be abandoned. Together, we will prepare for the long winter ahead. We will shovel the streets and re-insulate our homes. We will buy warmer clothes and increase power to the electrical grid. We will grow food indoors in greenhouses, and use the latest technology to grow our crops year-round.”
Applause interrupted the president’s speech. She nodded and smiled winningly for the cameras. “We will do what we have always done: we will adapt. Not just to survive, but to thrive. And yes, as of 2032, we will become the first interplanetary nation in the world. Not because we are running away, or because we are afraid that the end has come, but because we can. We can live on Mars, just as we can live on this soon-to-be frozen Earth. We are taking nature head-on, and I assure you that we can survive anything it throws at us. This is our land, our country, our home. We will not be moved, and we will not surrender!”
The crowds roared and clapped. Some of the people standing in line with me did the same. But I just shook my head. The president had failed to address the fact that one year was not enough time to do even half of what she was suggesting. Not to mention, rising tides were projected to
hit coastal cities with extensive flooding that would make even the worst hurricanes look like a joke. The tides would wash clean over cities all the way from Manhattan to Miami—probably LA and San Francisco, too.
I reached the check-out counter and paid the cashier with a twenty from the roll I kept in my laptop bag. We had just over a thousand in cash.
Heading back to the gate to join my family I passed out the snacks and drinks. Rachel and Alex fought for their favorites, but Kate settled those squabbles with arbitrary decisions. I flashed a grateful smile, and she smiled back. I was too tired to deal with the kids right now.
“Did you see the news?” Kate asked.
I nodded, frowning around a mouthful of a muffin that I’d bought for myself. How had she seen it? I looked around. There weren’t any TVs around the gate. Then I noticed Alexander watching the news on his phone. He didn’t have a plan, so he must have connected to the airport’s WiFi.
“What do you think?” Kate went on. “Maybe we won’t have to stay with Richard for long. I mean, it’s only going to be twenty degrees colder. At least we won’t need air conditioners in the summer.” Kate laughed lightly at that.
She had a point. Twenty degrees wasn’t that much. Hope soared in my chest. Maybe we’d be able to sell the house after all. “I hope that’s true,” I said, even as I tried to remember what that scientist had said on the news early this morning. He’d claimed that this winter the snow was never going to melt, but that couldn’t be right. Summer in New Jersey routinely hit the high eighties. Subtract twenty degrees from that and we’d still be in the high sixties. Snow would never stick around at those temperatures.
Suddenly I felt silly for running away to Texas. Richard was a survivalist nut case who’d been talking about the end of the world for years—of course, he’d gone off the deep end believing that this was it. As for the so-called government conspiracy and cover-up he’d mentioned, he probably saw his own shadow and thought it was somebody following him. I scowled and shook my head. Somehow, in the midst of all this, crazy Richard had rubbed off on us, and now we were running from our own shadows, too.
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