Struck

by Jennifer Bosworth

  My eyes strayed to the TV. On-screen, the camera panned back, revealing the stage. Several identically dressed teenagers—the boys wearing crisp white shirts and white slacks, the girls in long white dresses—flanked Prophet on each side. Two of them were twins, a boy and a girl, with white-blond hair a shade more ivory than Prophet’s; both so tall and thin, they looked like they’d been stretched. Prophet’s entourage of adopted children. His Twelve Apostles, he called them, though I only counted eleven on stage with him.

  Considering how Prophet had managed to brainwash millions of people into believing he was not just a man named Prophet, not just a prophet, but the prophet God had chosen to let us know the world was about over, I didn’t want to imagine the conditioning that went on in the privacy of the man’s home.

  “He’s out there again … watching the house,” Mom said urgently. “The boy. Look.”

  I bent to squint through the blinds into the bright sunlight. People passed by on the sidewalk, wandering aimlessly. The Displaced. Those whose homes had been destroyed by the earthquake. But I didn’t see any boy watching the house.

  “What does he want?” Mom asked. Her hand fluttered to her face; fingers traced the knotted line of a jagged pink scar along her jaw.

  “I don’t know,” I told her, hearing the despair in my voice, thick as an accent.

  Her voice shook. “Everything is coming apart, and Prophet says things are only going to get worse. He knows what’s coming, Mia. God speaks to him.”

  God. Oh, God, God, God. I was sick of hearing about God, maybe because I hadn’t heard much about him (or her, or it) since Mom’s mom—our fanatically God-fearing, Bible-thumping grandma—passed away a couple years ago. After that, Mom was free to stop pretending she bought into Grandma’s fire-and-brimstone theology. Grandma went to the grave thinking her daughter would someday join her in fluffy white-cloud heaven, instead of plummeting straight to hell, where my father was roasting on a spit with the rest of the unbelievers.

  Mom always claimed she was firmly agnostic despite her extreme evangelical upbringing. She didn’t believe in anything in particular, and she was perfectly content to wait until she died to find out the real deal. I figured her obsession with Prophet was a phase born out of desperation, like people on an airplane who start praying when they go through a nasty bit of turbulence.

  I touched Mom’s shoulder. It was a hard, protruding angle. She was nothing but bones under her bathrobe.

  “Everything’s going to be okay,” I told her, even though the words had lost their meaning from too frequent use. I was always saying them to someone now, to Mom, to Parker, or to myself.

  “Be careful out there,” Mom said, touching me briefly on my gloved hand before pulling away. “Take care of your brother.”

  “I will.” I turned to go, and Prophet whispered over my shoulder, like he was standing right behind me. “And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as a sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood.

  “The time is coming,” Prophet said. “The end is coming.”

  3

  PARKER SAT IN the front passenger seat of my silver hatch-back, watching the Displaced wander past on the sidewalk, looking as tattered and lifeless as a herd of zombies. I wished, not for the first time, that we had a bigger garage so I didn’t have to leave my car on the street. So far the Displaced hadn’t messed with it, but I expected every morning to come outside and find a window busted out, and maybe a family sleeping inside.

  Our Craftsman bungalow was located only a few blocks east of Venice Beach, where so many of the Displaced had migrated after the quake and set up tents as temporary homes. A lot of them made their way up to our neighborhood to knock on doors and ask for food or clothing or clean water.

  But sometimes they didn’t ask.

  I looked around again for the boy Mom mentioned. I didn’t want to think someone might be casing our house, but I also didn’t want to believe Mom was hallucinating again. The Dealer—that was the only name I knew him by—told me the Thorazine was supposed to control that.

  For some reason I thought of the dream I’d had about Nightmare Boy and that knife he’d been ready to plunge into me. And I thought of the unlocked window in our garage. Then I forgot those things as a middle-aged man with grime etched deep into the lines on his forehead spotted Parker in my car and stooped to knock on the window.

  I hurried down the walk, bracing for trouble. The Displaced weren’t like people who’d been homeless before the quake. They weren’t used to going without, and it made them more aggressive, a fact Parker often chose to ignore. He probably would have turned our house into a temporary shelter if it weren’t for Mom.

  By the time I reached the car, Parker had already rolled down the window. He held out several rumpled bills to the man.

  “It’s all I’ve got,” Parker said. I caught his eye over the man’s shoulder and shook my head. A few dollars was more than we could spare these days. Black market meds weren’t cheap.

  Parker ignored me.

  “Thank you,” the man said, nodding over the money. “This helps. Everything helps. I have a family, you know. It’s for my family.”

  A militiaman I’d seen patrolling the area jogged up the sidewalk toward us, one hand resting on the Taser fastened to his belt. He was dressed head-to-toe in black, like he thought he was a Navy SEAL or something.

  When riots and looting broke out after the quake, it quickly became apparent that the LAPD didn’t have anywhere near enough officers to control the chaos, and the National Guard and FEMA were tied up elsewhere. Droughts and wildfires in the Midwest had destroyed over a million acres of farmland, resulting in food shortages all over the country. A series of unseasonal hurricanes had ripped through the Gulf of Mexico, killing thousands and wiping out the fishing industry. Fierce tornadoes were showing up in states where they had no business existing, tearing up whole communities. Add to that the United States was involved in more wars at the moment than I could keep track of, and military forces were deployed overseas. Humanitarian organizations were occupied with famine in Africa and mass outbreaks of some new pandemic in India.

  Our federal government was too busy saving the world to focus on Los Angeles, and our city government wasn’t doing much better. A number of high-ranking officials, including the mayor, had perished during the quake, and those who were left couldn’t figure out who was in charge, much less make any decisions about a riot solution. It was up to the people to protect themselves, so that’s what they did, forming neighborhood militias composed of ordinary citizens.

  “Move along, sir,” the militiaman called out to Parker’s charity case, who shoved the money into his pocket and shuffled away. The militiaman gave him a little push to hurry him along. The guy stumbled, probably weak from hunger.

  “Hey!” Parker said, getting out of the car and facing the militiaman. The man had several inches on my brother. Still, Parker didn’t back down. “You didn’t need to do that. He was already leaving.”

  The militiaman narrowed one eye at Parker, probably the way he’d seen someone do it in a cop drama. “You shouldn’t give them money. They know where to get handouts, it encourages them to come up into the neighborhoods instead of staying in Tentville where they belong.”

  Parker glowered at the man, but wisely chose to stay quiet when he saw how the militiaman’s hand rested so lovingly on that Taser.

  I cleared my throat to get the militiaman’s attention.

  “Hi,” I said, holding out my hand. “My name’s Mia. I live here.” I nodded toward our house.

  The man eyed my fingerless leather gloves, took note of my black turtleneck, my black jeans, and my boots. It was warm out, even this early in the morning. Not turtleneck and gloves weather, for sure, but I needed the coverage at all times, or someone might catch sight of my lightning scars. It occurred to me that the militiaman and I were dressed in nearly identical outfits. H
e nodded approval.

  “Brent,” the militiaman said.

  “We appreciate what you’re doing,” I said, casting Parker a keep-your-mouth-shut look.

  “Someone has to make sure we’re not overrun by these drifters,” Brent said. “I feel sorry for them, losing their homes and everything, but it’s time things got back to normal around here.”

  I didn’t have to fake a nod of agreement. What I wanted more than anything was for things to get back to normal.

  “Could you do me a favor?” I asked. “My mom saw a guy watching our house. She said she’s seen him before.”

  “You think he’s planning a break-in?”

  “I don’t know, but I wondered if you could keep an eye out for him.”

  “What’s he look like?” Brent asked, eyes suddenly bright with interest.

  “Um … he was around my age … oh, and he had glasses.”

  “Dark glasses?”

  “Um … yeah,” I decided. Mom hadn’t been specific.

  “I’ll find him,” Brent said, caressing his Taser again. “And you might want to tell your brother to wise up. You leave crumbs on the floor, eventually you get roaches.”

  Parker muttered something I didn’t catch, and I hoped Militiaman Brent didn’t either. It wouldn’t hurt to have this guy watching our backs.

  “Thank you so much,” I told Brent, gushing a bit to make up for my brother.

  Brent was standing in front of my house with his thumbs hooked in his belt loops when we pulled away. I wondered if Mom was still peering out the window. I hoped Brent made her feel safer.

  Parker barely spoke during the drive to school. I wasn’t sure if he was annoyed with me for enlisting Militiaman Brent to keep an eye on the house, or if he was upset about Mom, or nervous about returning to school. Probably all of the above, with an added emphasis on the latter. Parker hadn’t heard much from his friends since the quake. Once the Internet was up he’d exchanged a few brief e-mails with them, so he knew they were alive, but not much else. With riots and looting still rampant, and so many people sick or injured or starving, not knowing if his friends were okay was almost more than he could handle. He didn’t say much, but he didn’t have to. I knew my brother. At least, I used to.

  Nothing was the same as it used to be.

  Parker and I were only two years apart in age, and we’d always been close. But he’d changed since the quake, grown quieter, more introverted. I thought tragedy was supposed to bring people closer, but Parker was pulling away, same as Mom. I should have been the glue holding us together, but apparently I wasn’t sticky enough.

  Ocean Avenue, which ran parallel to the Pacific, was the quickest way to Skyline High School, and as far as I knew the road was intact and clear of debris. We passed several groups of road crew volunteers in orange vests still working to haul mounds of rubble from collapsed buildings out of the road, but at least we could get through.

  But as I drove, I began to wish I’d chosen a different route. The drive along Ocean Avenue offered a view of the vast shantytown known as Tentville that had been assembled on the sands of Venice and Santa Monica. Ten square miles of the city had been destroyed, including downtown Los Angeles. People called it the Waste now, because that’s what it was. A wasteland of fallen high-rises, shattered cement and glass, and empty, ruined buildings. Only one tower remained standing in the Waste, dominating the cityscape like an enormous monument to the dead.

  But even miles from the epicenter of the quake, buildings had sustained major damage, especially those that were not up to code. Roofs caved in. Walls collapsed. Fires broke out and raged unchecked, while firemen and rescue workers were distracted by the catastrophic devastation downtown. On the west side, the damage was random. You’d see a dozen normal houses, and then one that looked like it had been stepped on by a giant. Even our house, which had been built around the time when people were still building houses “right,” had cracks running up the walls and across the ceiling. I didn’t want to think about what Parker and I would have done if our house had collapsed or burned to the ground. We’d be living in Tentville with the rest of the Displaced, caring for Mom in the midst of the chaos.

  We drove past a woman sitting on the sidewalk, surrounded by plastic bags full of her belongings and holding a large umbrella, though the sun had barely climbed over the horizon. I wondered if she didn’t have a tent, if the umbrella was the closest thing she had to shelter.

  “Was the Internet up this morning?” Parker asked, squinting at the woman with the umbrella. “Did you check the weather?”

  “Don’t I always?” It was a ritual of mine to check at least three weather sites every morning, even though it wasn’t necessary. When a storm was coming, I felt it. My skin would tingle and my bones would ache, and the fire in my heart and my blood, the feeling that had been growing inside me since the first time I was struck, would burn hotter.

  Except on the day of the Puente Hills Earthquake. That day the storm had materialized out of a clear blue sky. I’d seen storms do that where we used to live in Lake Havasu City, but only during the sweltering monsoon season, and those storms were usually over as soon as they began. But storms in L.A. didn’t just happen; you could always see them coming.

  “So, what’s the forecast?” Parker asked.

  “Clear skies all week.”

  He nodded. “Good. The last thing we need right now is …” He trailed off, casting a glance my way. “You know,” he mumbled.

  I did know. The last thing we needed was another electrical storm, and not only because people were saying lightning might have caused the Puente Hills Quake … because that day I felt lightning cracking the sky even from fifteen miles away, and I had wanted nothing more than to put myself in its path. It took every ounce of my self-control not to get in my car and race downtown toward the storm so I could get a piece of it. Even when the shaking started, when it seemed like the whole world would crumble if it didn’t stop, the only thing I could think about was pulling the lightning down into me. The aliveness I would feel. The perfect pain that might do anything to me. Even kill me.

  Yeah, the last thing we needed right now was another storm.

  Up ahead, what remained of the Santa Monica Pier tilted like a ramp into the ocean. The longest of the wooden pilings that supported the pier had bent and broken during the quake, pouring hundreds of tourists and a dozen or so chintzy restaurants into the Pacific. A section of the famous Santa Monica Ferris wheel still protruded from the water, like the spine of some Lovecraftian sea beast emerging from the depths.

  Laid out on the sand on either side of the downed pier were thousands of tents and makeshift lean-tos. Scores of people milled about on the sand. Aimless. Waiting to get their lives back. And in the midst of the disorder, Prophet’s great White Tent, where he held his midnight revivals, stood out like a mirage, glowing incandescent in the morning sun, its white canvas walls flapping in a light breeze. Followers, dressed in pristine white, wandered through the crowds of beach dwellers, offering to trade bottles of water or oatmeal cookies for a moment of the beach dwellers’ time. Even from the road, it was easy to distinguish the Followers from everyone else, like white doves among dirty park pigeons.

  Even from a distance, I could see how willing people were to follow the Followers into the White Tent.

  Faintly, I heard the sound of shattering glass and the scream of an alarm.

  “Mia, look out!” Parker grabbed the wheel and cranked it right. Just in time, too. We barely avoided mowing down a guy as he sprinted across the street, his arms loaded so high with stolen electronics he couldn’t see over them. He made it across Ocean Avenue without getting creamed and disappeared into an alley, headed toward Tentville.

  I screeched to a halt at the curb and waited for the inferno in my chest to cool. My heart was in my throat, my whole body trembling with the rush of adrenaline.

  A group of Followers approached the car, holding poster board signs raised above their heads
.

  The End Is Coming, one sign read.

  The Sixth Seal Is Cracked, another read.

  We Have Been Warned.

  The Real Storm Is Still to Come. I stared at the Follower who held this sign. She smiled and waved, like we were old friends, and gestured for me to roll down the window.

  I hit the gas and probably left streaks of rubber behind as I burned away from the curb.

  * * *

  Parking at school was madness. There were buses and cars jamming up the whole lot. No one seemed to know who was coming and who was going. Normally there was someone on-site to direct traffic, but apparently that person hadn’t shown up for work today.

  As soon as we got out of the car, we were immersed in shouting and honking, whistles blowing as kids shuffled off the buses. To reduce traffic on the roads—which were still barricaded or blocked off by debris in many areas—returning students were advised to take the buses, even if they had cars or their parents could drop them off. But with Mom at home alone, I wasn’t comfortable being stuck at school until the buses came at the end of the day. I wanted to be able to rush home and check on her if I needed to.

  Two militiamen tried to herd the flow of people into a line, but they were ignored. Kids pushed and shoved and fought their way toward the school, even though we wouldn’t receive our rations until the end of the day. Someone rammed past me and crunched my toes. Someone else nailed me in the ribs with an elbow. It wasn’t that there were more people than usual heading to school; there were far fewer. But they were frantic. Desperate. Starving. Crying. Sick.

  Scared.

  But not the Followers. The Followers were perfectly calm and removed from the rest of us, their eyes bright as little lightbulbs, knowing smiles playing at the corners of their mouths. Somehow they managed to disturb me more than the rest of the crowd, even the kids who were suffering from earthquake fever, their skin rash-red, lips and eyelids and the rims of their noses and ears crusted with yellow sores. Earthquake fever caused the immune system to go into overdrive, so white blood cells started attacking healthy cells. Their bodies were essentially waging war on themselves.