“You don’t understand. How can you look at me like that...you don’t know what this place is...what I went through here.” The image of the water closing in over the top of the tanks filled her memory for a brief second before she shook it away. Her lungs seared as if the drowning had just happened, as if Blair had tried to kill her only yesterday. “Can’t you trust me? Can’t you see through your own misery for just one second to think that maybe I knew something you didn’t? You think you’re the only one who has suffered?”
Ethan didn’t blink. He held her gaze. And Lucy let out a frustrated groan. It was Cass who stepped forward between them and raised her hands to call a truce, as if Lucy and Ethan were in danger of flying toward each other, claws out, at any second.
She looked from the brother to the sister and then hung her head. “Ethan. We must be cruel to be kind,” Cass said. “But we’ll leave. Rest, okay? We’ll keep coming back. We’ll discuss it all when you’re ready.” Cass spun and took Lucy by the hand, tugging her toward the door. Reluctant at first, Lucy followed. She stole a glance at Ethan before the hospital door shut behind her: he was still staring; looking right at her, silent and full of fury.
CHAPTER THREE
Dean was a meticulous packer.
While Darla paced, fretted, and grew more anxious with each passing minute, Dean refused to journey outside of the Whispering Waters complex until they had loaded the bed of his pick-up truck with both provisions and luxuries. They were losing ground and losing time.
They predicted the drive would, after they maneuvered past the traffic jams and closed roads, take them three days. For Darla, it was three days too many. But she kept her attention and focus on getting out of the neighborhood.
“Get in the damn truck, Dean,” Darla commanded, and she bit her lip to keep it from trembling. “We’re losing light and there’s nothing more we can take. Stop putzing around. I can starve and wear the same clothes. I don’t need anything but to get on the road. I need my son. And we need to get out of here before the whole complex goes up.”
Dean jumped down from the bed of the truck and the whole pickup bounced under his weight. They had pulled the truck halfway down the street, away from the inferno. After the armed guards from Nebraska kidnapped Ethan and Teddy, they set the house ablaze. And while the fire at the King home was nothing more than smoldering rubble, the flames had licked the houses on either side—smoke was now billowing from a neighboring upstairs window, as if the house had finally decided to succumb to the heat. Darla watched the other houses warily. It wouldn’t be long before they set each other on fire. Like dominoes they would fall one by one, without anyone to put them out.
Dean brushed his hands together and then leaned back. He patted his front pockets and pulled out a half-crushed pack of cigarettes. Slipping one out and holding the pack forward, he nodded to it. “You smoke?”
“Do you?” Darla asked. She crossed her arms over the front of her body and her leg shook with impatience.
He examined the cigarette closely, peering at the open end, and tapped the filter against his open palm. “Once upon a time.”
“Smoke on the road,” she replied. She walked up to Dean and, in a stealthy maneuver, slipped the stick from one hand and the packet from the other before he had time to protest. Then Darla walked around to the passenger side, climbed into the truck, and waited.
Dean didn’t move.
“Are you kidding me?” Darla yelled at him and she leaned over and gave the horn a healthy honk.
Jolted into action, Dean leaned against the driver side door and peered in through the open window. “You think we should do something? For the others? Despite what’s happened in this world, I still believe in the next one, you know?”
“Good for you.”
“Come on, they deserve something. A prayer. A remembrance.”
Darla rolled her head sideways and her eyes landed on Dean. She felt for the gun against her hip, unhooked her holster, removed it, and in slow motion brought her right hand and arm across her body and angled the gun at Dean’s head. In that awkward position, Darla raised her eyebrows as a challenge. Dean yawned, undeterred by Darla’s act of aggression, and patted his pockets again for his nonexistent cigarettes and then settled his body weight against the truck. He motioned for her to speak.
With the gun still aimed, Darla cleared her throat.
“God, take care of your four new members to heaven, if that’s where those souls ended up. I’m sure you have your hands full dealing with admitting the other seven billion people lined up outside the pearly gates. Must be quite an intake list. But let’s be honest, skip yourself the work and let Spencer rot in hell. Amen.” Darla lowered the gun. “Get in the truck, Dean. Get in the truck or I’m leaving you.”
“You think I don’t have a sense of urgency?” Dean asked, unmoving from outside the cab.
“We should have left hours ago.”
“This trip will take three days with no hiccups. But what if we get stuck? Sick? Trapped? I’m not out here trying to waste time. I’m trying to safeguard success.” Dean sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. He squinted into the sky black with smoke and ran his tongue across his teeth. “You’re right. We need to get past the back-ups and find some open road before dark. But we’ve got time...not much...but some. And I’ll use all the time we have, because,” he raised his eyebrows, “you’re not the only smart one.”
Darla looked incredulous.
“Generator. And then we’re gone. I promise,” Dean said pointing to the backyard and motioning for Darla to follow. “Come on, tough gal. I can’t carry that thing by myself.”
For a second, it appeared like Darla wouldn’t budge, but then she rolled herself out of the truck and trudged through grass and past the wreckage of the house. Heat still radiated from the collapsed wood, but the King house was nothing more than a heap of blackened lumber. Only the fireplace stood unscathed; standing erect, like a beacon to their tragedy.
Darla tried not to look in the corner of the front yard where she knew Spencer’s body was still slumped against the shrubbery. He was very dead. His gunshot wound to the stomach bled out and Darla took a morbid satisfaction in knowing that his final moments had been painful. She had not wanted to take his life—despite the pain he’d inflicted—but she had not wanted him to survive, either. He’d lived long enough to reflect on his actions. The man who valued personal survival above basic humanity had invited his own demise. Whether or not the men who came for Ethan would have found Teddy on their own was beside the point; Spencer had handed her son’s whereabouts to them on a silver platter—damning Ainsley and Doctor Krause, sacrificing Joey, and leaving her and Dean to escape. Just barely.
Reeling from the loss, Darla couldn’t quite wrap her head around the last few hours. Her heart had not stopped aching. There was a pain lodged under her ribcage, and it nearly crippled her every time she thought of Teddy’s face—wide-eyed, freckled, a tangled mess of wavy hair, uncut and growing longer by the day. How she longed to tousle that hair again, plant a kiss on his forehead, or discuss Star Wars or the meaning of life.
One time he had asked if she would color him a rainbow fish. She told him that she would later.
She never drew that fish, and it haunted her.
In her memories of Teddy’s kidnapping, the militant strangers at the heart of the siege were faceless shapes. Ghosts. As she tried to recollect a feature, a concrete detail, they slipped from her grasp like she was trying to hold on to steam.
Dean walked into the backyard. A smoky haze lingered, creating the illusion of fog. He walked toward the middle of the grass, where the generator sat unplugged. He bent down and reached out to the metal handle and then drew his hand back quickly.
“It’s hot,” he announced. “The house went straight down, didn’t touch the trees...but this thing is sitting here scalding?” He shook his head.
Darla hadn’t heard him.
/> She looked out into the wooded area behind the house. It was a small expanse of untouched wilderness, just along the edge of the tract housing. While cookie-cutter homes popped up on either side, this backyard was a comparative jungle. The trees spanned no more than twenty yards before the development started up again. Still, Darla peered.
“What?” Dean called, and he took a step forward, cradling his hand, rubbing the tenderness of the burn.
“Nothing,” Darla replied. She had thought she had heard something—the distinctive snap of a tree branch, a rustle of movement. The hair on her arm stood at attention and like a predator in the wild, her senses heightened, she scanned the perimeter, unmoving.
“Come help me with this. I think I put some gloves in the truck...”
“Dean—” Darla said. She didn’t turn to face him. “Leave it.”
He began to protest. But Darla put up her hand to freeze his argument. Then she turned, unable to locate the source of the sound. “Leave. It.”
A new plume of black smoke tumbled into the sky, and she watched it curl and loop into the cloud cover.
Dean looked down at the heavy metal contraption, with its exposed motor and external gas tank. A source of power and a source of comfort, the generator provided the Oregon survivors with small luxuries during their last days together.
Like a dejected preschooler, he shuffled away and muttered under his breath, and Darla watched him go, as he slipped through the wisps of smoke. Then she turned back to the empty woods and felt an urge to sob. For a brief second, she thought she had seen the shadow of her child slipping from tree to tree. When she realized it was just a figment of her imagination, her brain created an alternate reality where Teddy was still by her side and safe. She could feel the flesh of his hands seeking out her fingers. She clutched him tight until the moment passed and her brain reminded her that it was only air.
With heavy footsteps, she trudged back toward Dean and the pickup, her arms motionless by her side.
“We’ll find him,” Dean said as Darla climbed back into the truck. She took her gun off her side-holster and placed it on the expanse of seat cushion between her and the driver’s side—it sat lamely on the leather next to a crumpled up fast food bag and a discarded cassette tape.
“Yes, we will,” Darla replied, and she turned to look at her unlikely traveling partner. She saw his expectant look, his puppy dog eagerness, and she added, “And we’ll find Grant, too.”
He smiled and tapped the steering wheel with an energized rat-a-tat-tat, as if that was what he had been waiting for her to say. Putting the car into drive, Dean rolled down the road, weaving through the abandoned cars and overturned recycling cans that made up the landscape of their lives. The neighboring house behind them still refused to give in to the fire, and Darla hoped that rains would come and save the chain reaction from picking up speed.
Dean’s face was scruffy and his fingernails were blackened from an accumulation of dirt and grime. She imagined that in a different life this lanky, brown-eyed man might have been attractive. He had a sweet naiveté that both enraged and endeared him to Darla. And from what she had gathered, the Trotter men seemed to share a penchant for starry-eyed optimism and blind allegiance.
“We’ll have to take the back roads. When I was out exploring before you all came along,”—Dean said came along as if they had just happened upon each other one sunny afternoon and not as if he had been caught pilfering their supplies—“I saw that we are boxed in. No major roads or freeways are passable.”
“I know,” Darla replied.
“So, you know we should cut up north once we get on the other side of the river. Back roads through the mountain range, then down and along the Columbia? Washington to Idaho, maybe. Through Montana if we can’t find a better way.”
Darla nodded.
“Not a shortcut, per se. Makes me wish I had my balloon,” Dean said, and he chuckled to himself. When she didn’t reciprocate even a smile, Dean sighed. “If you trust me, I’ll just make a go of it. Do my best. We can trade off. Drive until we can’t.”
“That’s all we can do,” Darla managed to say. Then she leaned her head against the back window and let her eyes slide shut.
She felt the car roll to a stop at the end of the street and Darla suppressed the urge to make a snide comment about old habits; there were some ingrained actions that were hard to shake. Then, as Dean pulled forward, she heard the shatter and felt the pebbles of the back window falling down around her. The sound jolted her upright, her mind frantic. They were back, she thought. Teddy’s kidnappers came back to finish the job.
“What the—” Dean cried, and he screeched to a halt.
Without hesitation, Darla grabbed her gun and spun, firing a shot out of the now-open window. Then she heard the shriek; the high-pitched scream halted her from firing another shot into the void.
Spinning to get a better look, Darla saw her.
Ripped clothing, matted hair, dried blood caked to the left side of her face. One leg of her jeans was ripped to the knee, and she was missing a shoe.
Ainsley stood in the middle of the road, holding fist-sized rocks against her body, panting and wailing after the truck. When she saw that the truck had stopped, Ainsley dropped the rocks, scattering them against the asphalt, and shuffled forward, wincing, her body racked with sobs as she approached the idling truck. Her shoeless foot dragged behind her, streams of tears smearing the blood on her cheek.
“Sweet Mary and Joseph,” Dean said. He jumped out and rushed forward to her, holding his arms out and inviting her to fall forward into them. She buried her head into Dean’s chest and clung to him, her hands clutched the arms of his jacket like they were the only things holding her upright.
Darla could hear Dean shushing Ainsley, and she let her gun drop back down. It was then she realized that her hand was shaking; she balled it into a fist, opening and closing her fingers until the tremors subsided.
She wanted to join in the reunion; she wanted to celebrate Ainsley’s failed assassination. Certainly the men who arrived at their house came with a single mission: annihilate everyone but Ethan and Teddy. The fact that Dean, Darla, and Ainsley walked away meant that their mission had been a disaster. But Darla couldn’t find any joy and pleasure in seeing Ainsley’s face.
For a second, Ainsley peered above Dean’s jacket with wide, pleading eyes, seeking out Darla in the truck and shaking her head before hiding again.
And it was then Darla heard Ainsley’s voice, muffled but clear. “Please don’t let her kill me,” she cried. “Please, Dean, please. Please don’t let her kill me. I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The festival was intended to boost morale.
People heard about the Brikhams’ fate. Rumor had it that the family was given the tanks for subversive behavior, and no one doubted it. The Brikhams had few allies among the survivors, but while the family’s neighbors wouldn’t miss the late-night shouting matches or their son Charlie’s blatant thievery, their absence created pockets of angsty discussions in hallways. The worry was spreading.
So, according to Lucy’s mother and father, Huck dreamed up a spectacle to while away the hours.
It seemed like an odd juxtaposition: one thousand sun-deprived people with varying levels of cabin fever filing in and out of the Center, participating in old-school carnival games and eating popcorn and hot dogs like it was all they had ever wanted. Rock music pumped through the speaker system and occasionally the MC, a shiny haired former NASA employee and weekend comic, would break in with raffle prizes, booth announcements, witty banter, and all-around good cheer.
The Sky Room chefs hosted a cake walk; someone had brought or pilfered Polaroid cameras and set up a photo booth. People walked away from it shaking the flimsy, slowly developing film in eager anticipation of seeing their expressions materialize from nothing. It was a simple joy. The
System’s occupants milled around between beanbag tosses, miniature bowling pins, and face painting stations. Many were smiling, some looked perplexed. Most were enjoying themselves.
At the center of the excitement was Maxine, standing guard with a clipboard. Drawing from her years as the chairwoman for the PTA, she threw herself into leading the event with special attention to the carnival milieu. Huck personally contacted her to fill the role of party planner. She’d organized some carnivals before, so Maxine got straight to work. With a job to do, Maxine had allowed herself freedom and distance from Ethan, who was still mute and refusing his physical therapy.
Maxine’s grief subsided with the project to keep her mind busy. If the elaborate set-up was any indication, the King matriarch was suffering more than she let on.
She’d enlisted the help of many of the System’s occupants, including Grant, who was set to perform as a keyboard player in a cover band.
Perhaps Maxine’s most ridiculous and atrocious act was convincing Cass to don herself in a billowy off-the-shoulder dress and set herself up in a darkened tent in the corner of the Center under a sloppily painted sign that read: Fortune Teller.
At first Lucy was adamant that she wouldn’t visit Cass. It was a silly, degrading, borderline racist assignment. But Cass didn’t mind; her grandmother, who had passed long before the world succumbed to Scott’s virus, had been a firm believer in divination and the power of the Tarot. So, despite Lucy’s eye-rolls and supplications, Cass assumed the role of the System’s oracle.
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