by Amy Briant
Having watered the first redwood, I crouched down at the foot of the second one, organizing my gear. I froze as I heard a rustle in the bushes and then a girl’s voice.
“Come on, Hunter, let’s go—we have to get back on the bus in like a minute.”
The girl—East—and Hunter Cohen appeared around the trunk of the third giant redwood. He backed her up against the tree and kissed her neck, intent on getting what he wanted. She saw me, though. Down on one knee, with my gear spread out on the ground before me. Our eyes met. I tried to tell her with a look that I’d be gone in a moment if she would just give me that chance. If she would just let me disappear.
I heard Mr. Giovanni call from below. “Let’s go, campers! All aboard!”
“Hunter…Hunter!” East said, finally pushing him off her to get his attention.
“What?” he said, aggrieved, half slipping on the pine needles. Then he saw me.
“Are you spying on us, you little queer?” he angrily demanded. He took a step toward me.
I donned my pack with my gear finally secured and started walking away, downward into the bowl-like depression. There was no point in talking to him. The only reaction he was capable of was hatred. He didn’t even know what or why he hated. He certainly didn’t know me.
“Did you hear me, faggot?” he yelled. I kept an eye on them with my peripheral vision, but kept moving. East grabbed one of his arms. He dragged her with him as he followed me. There was shouting from down the hill now too. Shouting and screaming. One voice rose above the others.
“Long live the Ship of State! Death to all traitors and cowards!”
In a split second—a bone-jarring, ground-shaking split second—a high-pitched whine like a mosquito seemed to start deep inside my brain, but then was suddenly all around us, unbearably, impossibly, painfully loud.
BOOM.
Chapter Three
Graduation Day
The bowl-like depression in which we were standing was fifty yards up the hill from the bus, behind and below the stand of three giant redwoods. Those trees saved our lives. They blocked the force of the blast and much of the shower of debris that ensued. Although we were a few steps down in the bowl, we were all knocked off our feet by the violence of the explosion. I was the first to scramble back up and ran—stupidly, in retrospect—to the tree line. I was abruptly stopped there by what I saw. I was already deaf from the explosion, but then I wished I were blind as well.
The scene was horrendous. I could hardly process what I was seeing. The bus was blown in two. Black smoke was billowing from the wreckage and flames twisted throughout. Bodies—mostly parts of bodies—as well as pieces of the bus and camping gear were everywhere, littering the formerly cleared space with flesh, blood, metal and Gore-Tex. With all the smoke, it was hard to see, let alone make sense of what I was seeing, but as far as I could tell, there were no survivors. It looked like everyone had been on or near the bus. Everyone—except me, East and Hunter. They stumbled to my side, white-faced and shocked. East looked desperately into my eyes. Her lips were moving, but I couldn’t hear anything. The total silence added another layer of eeriness to the grim display. Time stood still while we stared at things no one should see.
When my stunned brain could once again form a coherent thought, it was: this kind of stuff isn’t supposed to happen anymore. The Bad Times are over, the adults had told us. Over…
I walked slowly down the hill, careful where I was stepping. My legs felt simultaneously heavy and numb, like they belonged to someone else. I could hear something now, but it was only the sound of my own blood, pounding in my ears. In an unhurried manner, matching my measured pace, background noises began to reemerge. The wind in the trees. The awful crackling of the fire. Birds chirping. Birds—I wondered how long it would be before the crows and condors showed up, but thrust that thought away from me with a shiver. The smoke was noxious, choking me. Some of the bodies were whole, or nearly so. I checked each one. All dead. I had met Death before, seen it creep up slowly on my Gran and finally devour her. This Death-in-the-blink-of-an-eye was much different and yet the same. And no improvement.
Thirty feet from the bus was a cluster of young pine trees and scrub brush. Thrown in their midst like a rag doll was the observatory lookout guy. His eyes were open. Blood trickled from his ears and nose. There was a lot of blood on his clothes as well, presumably his. I knelt down beside him.
“A…bom…” he said.
“A bomb,” I agreed. I figured he was dying. There was nothing I could do for him, except wait with him for his imminent departure.
“Noooo…” he labored to say, then lapsed into a weak and agonized coughing fit.
No?
I glanced back over my shoulder up the hill toward East and Hunter. They hadn’t moved.
Lookout Dude seemed to get some strength back for a moment. I tried to offer him a sip of water from my canteen, but he pushed my hand away, almost angrily, I thought.
“A…bom…” he said again. It seemed important to him to get it out, so I leaned in to hear him better. There was a rattle in his throat now.
“Abomination,” he whispered hoarsely. “You…and your kind…nothing but an abomination…”
I recoiled from him, both amazed and horror-stricken that those were the words he would choose for his last. There had to be more, I thought. But it appeared that was it. His eyes slowly closed, the rattle faded.
God, I hate field trips, I thought with all my might.
Lookout Dude had a gun in a holster on his hip. I hadn’t noticed that before. Guns were not uncommon around the Settlement, but ammunition was strictly rationed. Gran had taught Gabriel and me to shoot. After she’d died, I traded most of her weapons and livestock for items I needed more. I thought with a pang of the shotgun hung over the fireplace in our little cabin. I hadn’t thought I would need it for a school camping trip. But there were snakes and bears in these woods—mountain lions too. Maybe some two-legged predators as well. I put the gun in my pack after making sure the safety was on. Lookout Dude did not protest.
I hiked back up to where East and Hunter awaited me. She spoke, her voice low and quavering. “Is there anyone—? Are they—?”
“They’re all dead,” I said flatly. She flinched, then looked searchingly into my face as if she might find more of an explanation there.
I turned away. I needed to get out of that place. And I had already decided I wouldn’t be going back to the Settlement. There was nothing there for me. Nothing and no one. I took a step, but East stopped me.
“Where are you going?” she demanded.
“I’m out of here,” I told her and Hunter.
“You can’t just leave,” she said, outraged. “We have to…”
“Have to what?” I said.
She was silent, staring at me intensely with her dark blue eyes huge in her pale face, her hand clamped tightly on my arm. I looked down at it and then back up at her tear-streaked face. She withdrew the hand. It was trembling.
“There’s nothing we can do for them now,” I told her, as gently as I could. “And we need to get out of here, to somewhere safe.”
“But shouldn’t we…bury them or something?” More tears were welling. Even in her distress, she was beautiful. I silently berated myself for thinking that with death and chaos all around, but I couldn’t help it. I shook my head, trying to shake that thought out of my skull. It was nothing but a waste of time. It always had been.
Hunter was still standing there, staring down at the devastation in utter shock. He hadn’t said a word since the bus blew up. Which was a welcome relief.
I said bluntly to East, “There’s too many. It would take too long. We need to go—now.”
I nodded up the hill, which was more or less north. She looked confused.
“But we have to go back,” she insisted, pointing southwest toward San Tomas. “We have to go back to the Settlement, back to school…”
“I don’t know about you, but
I just graduated.” My voice came out harsh and cold. I didn’t mean for it to, it just did. “Look, I’m out. I’m not going back. You do what you want.”
Hunter had slowly sunk to his knees while we argued. He was making small, wordless sounds. The smell of what was burning below was sickening.
East said fiercely, the outrage again uppermost in her voice, “You can’t leave. We have to go back. Or wait here, at least—someone will come for us. They’ll come get us when they realize what’s happened.” She grabbed me again, as if she would forcibly make me stay.
To the southwest, there was a “whoomp” kind of noise. And then another. A small, but distinctly shaped, cloud formed in the distance.
A mushroom cloud.
Chapter Four
Mile One
“Get a pack!” I screamed at East and Hunter. The latter was still on his knees, his face now in his hands, shoulders shaking.
East screamed back frantically, “It’s on the bus!”
Not your pack, ANY pack, I thought, but I didn’t want to waste time explaining it to her. We needed to get the hell out of there. The prevailing winds were offshore and San Tomas was on the coast. So with any luck, that mushroom cloud wouldn’t be blowing our way. Still, we were far too close for comfort. We needed to put some distance between us and them (whoever “they” were) and pronto.
Most of the bus and what had been on it was blown to gruesome smithereens. But a surprising amount had simply been blown clear by the force of the explosion. I darted down the hill to snag the nearest backpack. We each needed a pack with some kind of provisions to have any chance at surviving the days ahead. Mine was on my back, along with my sleeping bag and tent. I reached down for a large blue pack with an aluminum frame and froze. It was Mr. Giovanni’s pack. I could tell that because of the nametag and also because Mr. Giovanni’s hairy arm was still entangled in the straps. The rest of him was nowhere to be seen. I shut my eyes and my mind to the horror of it, focusing instead on the need to get the backpack and then get out of there. Another dirty bomb or missile or whatever might be headed our way any second for all we knew. I grabbed the backpack, which had a bright smear of fresh red blood down one side, managed to shake the arm loose without looking directly at it and ran back up the hill.
East had hauled Hunter to his feet, although he still looked dazed and traumatized and was clinging to the big redwood tree for support. Even better, she had found a couple of sleeping bags that had bounced into the bowl.
“Here,” I growled at Hunter, slamming the backpack into his chest as hard as I could. In part to snap him out of his funk. But mostly because I didn’t like him. “Put it on and let’s go.”
He fumbled with the straps, shuddering at the blood, but managed to get it on. I strode hurriedly past East, who followed me, clutching the sleeping bags. She stopped to pick up something off the ground. I started to yell at her to keep walking, then saw that what she had retrieved was a water bottle. Which was smart. Maybe there was more to her than I’d given her credit for.
I was moving fast. I wanted to get up and over the hill, putting that physical barrier and as much distance as possible between us and that mushroom cloud. The other two stumbled along behind me. There was no time to think of what had happened to the bus or the Settlement. Of who or why or how. I kept my mind blank.
As soon as I could, I got us back on the remnants of Highway 17. Speed was more important than stealth at that point, and it was easier going than through the woods. Plus, it was headed in the direction I wanted to go. North.
Before she left, my sister Gabriel told me a few things. I was fifteen then, too old to be blubbering like a baby, but I couldn’t help it. I hated that she had to leave. She wasn’t just my big sister, she was my best friend. My only friend, actually.
“But, Kell,” she told me gently. “It’s my Aptitude. I have to go. You’ll understand when it’s your turn. And that’s only three more years. Just think, you’ll probably be a Pioneer like me and you can come join us in Segundo then.”
I knew she was excited to be part of the group that was leaving the Settlement to establish a new community—Segundo, they named it. They’d had a contest to come up with the name. The math teacher, Miss Sanchez, who doubled as the Spanish teacher, submitted the winning entry. The master plan was to build a network of small, self-sustaining communities, each one hundred miles from the last. The hope was that we could reconnect with other survivors of the Bad Times, maybe even reconnect with whatever remained of the old United States of America.
Well, it was all fine and dandy for Gabriel to be excited about being a Pioneer, but that left me stuck with Gran, not to mention trapped in that hellhole of a high school for three more excruciatingly long years. At fifteen, I thought Gran would live forever. It never occurred to me that she would leave me as well. My sister must have recognized that possibility, though. Gran too. Before they left me in their different ways, they made sure I knew a lot that the other kids didn’t.
Like the location of Segundo. Or, at least, where they planned it to be. One hundred miles from the Settlement. Gabriel drew me maps in the dirt with a stick until she was sure I had it in my head.
“Highway 17 will take you over the hill,” she said, drawing a big “Y” with her stick. “The hill” was what everyone called the small mountain on which the observatory perched. In the past, it had separated San Tomas from San Jose, Silicon Valley and the rest of the greater San Francisco Bay Area.
“So first get yourself over the hill,” she continued. “When you reach the fork in the highway, that’s the bottom of San Francisco Bay. Don’t go up the left fork—that’s the peninsula that leads to San Francisco.”
We both shivered at the thought of that graveyard city.
“You want the bay to be on your left,” she told me. “Just keep going up this right fork. They say 17 eventually turns into what used to be the old Interstate 80. It runs northeast for a while, then turns straight east.”
“Why not just go straight east toward Nevada from here? Why head north at all?” I asked her.
“There’s no easy way over the mountains if you head due east, they say. Or at least there didn’t used to be. Maybe the quakes have changed that…But in the old days, they’d go north up 17 to 80 and follow it east. There’s a pass through the Sierra Nevadas there. Or at least there used to be.”
We both knew why they didn’t head south. South was where the trouble had come from in the Bad Times.
“Anyhow, Kell,” my sister concluded, tapping the stick on her dirt map for emphasis, “when you’ve traveled a hundred miles, more or less, you should find us here.” She drew an “X” in the dirt. “That’ll be Segundo.”
As maps go, it wasn’t the greatest.
* * *
After two hours of high-speed hiking, East and Hunter were ready to drop. They lived inside the Settlement with their families, so they didn’t walk five miles to school every day like I did. Settlement kids were soft. Shit, Gabriel and I had been all over the campus, had ranged for miles through the woods and on the beaches. Even made some forays into what was left of San Tomas. Stupid Settlement kids probably never even left the campus. I knew I could travel much more quickly without them, but my conscience wouldn’t quite allow me to ditch them. Not yet, at least.
Only two hours and already they weren’t looking too good. Hunter’s face was dirty, with sweat (tear?) streaks carving a path through the grime. Not looking so tough today, big boy, I thought. Like the arrogant idiot he was, he had dressed for the field trip in a T-shirt, shorts and sneakers. Fine for a fashion statement on the bus, not so fine for a serious trek. East was more appropriately garbed in jeans, a jean jacket and hiking boots. As usual, I wore a hoodie, cargo pants, work boots and my baseball cap.
We went single file at first, but then East caught up with me. Hunter clomped along a ways behind us. He was carrying a lot more weight than either East or I—Mr. Giovanni’s pack was unexpectedly heavy. I hoped it
was full of food, but we hadn’t had an opportunity yet to take stock of our limited resources. At least Hunter was good for carrying stuff. Although a mule would have been more pleasant company. Probably smell better too.
When East caught up with me, I glanced over at her. She gave me a cautious nod. Her face was still pale and drawn—I daresay mine was too, although I could feel my jaw muscles were clenched with grim determination. I nodded back at her, but kept moving. With her long legs, she matched my pace with no problem. Out of the corner of my eye, she seemed to be searching for the right words.
“I guess we’ve never really talked before,” she said eventually. “I’m Elinor Eastman—people call me East.”
She was attempting to put me at my ease, I realized with some astonishment. The princess and the commoner. How very regal of her.
“Kell Dupont,” I replied shortly. It wasn’t the time or place for social niceties. Besides, we’d been in the same class for more than two years now—did she really think I didn’t know her name? She started to say something else, but I cut her off before she could get started. “We need to keep moving.”
“Five-minute break?” she said tentatively, doing a little head jerk back toward Hunter. He had fallen even further behind as we talked. He scowled as he saw us looking back at him, then stopped. He shrugged out of the heavy pack and bent over, hands on his thighs. He waved an arm, imperiously summoning us. I hated to waste the time, but realized it was probably quicker to take the break than to argue with them.