by Israel Keats
Copyright © 2018 by Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Keats, Israel, author.
Title: Deserted / Israel Keats.
Description: Minneapolis : Darby Creek, [2018] | Series: Attack on Earth | Summary: Teens Leo, James, and Sigrid are forced to use their instincts to locate their families after an alien invasion disables most electronics and their entire town is evacuated without them.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017056611 (print) | LCCN 2018001735 (ebook) | ISBN 9781541525863 (eb pdf) | ISBN 9781541525740 (lb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781541526297 (pb : alk. paper)
Subjects: | CYAC: Survival—Fiction. | Extraterrestrial beings—Fiction. | Science fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.K396 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.1.K396 Des 2018 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017056611
Manufactured in the United States of America
1-44558-35489-3/20/2018
9781541530973 mobi
9781541530980 ePub
9781541530997 ePub
For Will Weaver
On the morning of Friday, October 2, rings of light were seen coming down from the sky in several locations across the planet. By mid-morning, large spacecraft were visible through the clouds, hovering over major cities. The US government, along with others, attempted to make contact, without success.
At 9:48 that morning, the alien ships released an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, around the world, disabling all electronics—including many vehicles and machines. All forms of communication technology were useless.
Now people could only wait and see what would happen with the “Visitors” next . . .
Chapter 1
Today was the day Leo would take the Death Dive.
Five miles from home, in the middle of Fuller Woods, was a steep, narrow path that zigzagged down a big hill. There were tight turns through the trees, low-hanging branches, and roots that made for a bumpy ride. The path ended at the paved bike line that wound through the woods. The Death Dive wasn’t just riding down the path itself. Leo had done that dozens of times. The Death Dive meant sailing down the path at top speed without stopping.
Leo secretly thought it was kind of a stupid thing to do, but it was a rite of passage at his school. His friend Steve had done it ages ago, then Kenny, and finally Joe last Sunday. That meant Leo was the last of his group of friends to do it, and the others kept bugging him about it, asking him when he was going to try. Finally, yesterday, he had blurted out that he would do it today after school.
But he wanted to do a dry run first, so here he was. There was just enough time to do the Dive and get back before his second class. His first class was study hall in the media center, and he figured the librarian wouldn’t even notice he wasn’t there.
Leo sat at the top of the hill and eyed the path.
He was nervous about wiping out in front of his friends—but the worst that would happen would be them teasing him about it for a few weeks. If he chickened out, everyone at school would know he was a wuss and he’d never live it down.
As he tightened the strap on his helmet, he pictured himself flying down the hill this afternoon. He tried to visualize himself making every turn with ease. Maybe it would even be fun, and he could let loose a little as he took the jumps. He would skid to a stop at the bottom and say, “Piece of cake!” All his friends would cheer for him. Every time he faced a tough test or wanted to ask a girl out he would remember this day.
Leo checked that his backpack’s straps were securely buckled across his chest. Then he kicked his way forward. He bit hard into his mouth guard as his front tire dipped. The Death Dive began.
He had to keep his feet pedaling because of the fixed gears, fighting the urge to brake. Though his whole body was tense, he tried to relax and enjoy the Dive. A pine branch whapped his face, but he kept up with the twists and turns of the path.
That pine tree was the halfway point. Almost there! he told himself.
The second half of the path wasn’t as steep, but it had more obstacles. Leo whipped the bike around a tree, rode out a hard bounce, and hit the bottom of the hill. All he had to do now was keep the bike straight and ride through a narrow gap between two trees, like the posts at a finishing line. He sailed through the trees, letting out a loud whoop. His tire hit the paved bike path and skidded on a patch of gravel. The bike jerked sideways and fell. Leo tumbled to the ground, banging and scraping the left half of his body.
Leo checked his bike: the gear had been hit and bent out of shape. He groaned. He had a small repair kit with him, but nothing that could fix this. He checked himself: the left leg on his jeans was ripped and his left arm was scraped up. Nothing serious, but he had wounds that would impress the others. Maybe some of it would even scar.
He walked the bike to a small patch of dead leaves and leaned it against a tree. He undid the strap under the seat to get his emergency kit. He had alcohol pads to dab the dirt out of his scrapes and an ointment to rub into them. He had bandages too, but this wasn’t serious enough for that. Then he turned his attention to the bike itself. He had to push the gear back into place with his bare hands, so he hoped the fix would do for now.
His stomach rumbled. Leo sat down next to his bike and dug through his backpack in search of an energy bar. He tore it open with a frustrated sigh. The wipeout had taken him out of the moment. He was supposed to be celebrating. He’d taken the Death Dive—he’d finally done it!
Leo leaned back against the tree and took a long swig of water from his bottle. As his heart rate slowed, he could feel his limbs grow heavy. I’ll just close my eyes for a few minutes, he told himself.
***
When his eyes opened again, it took Leo a moment to realize where he was. His neck muscles were sore from the way his chin had been resting on his chest. His back felt numb from sitting on the ground for so long.
School! he thought frantically. How long was I asleep? He reached into his pocket for his phone to check the time. The screen was black. He held down the “On” button to restart it, but nothing happened. Leo turned it over in his hands. The phone must have been damaged in the bike crash.
“Great,” he groaned.
Leo stood up and wiped himself off. He’d been out in the woods for longer than he’d planned—probably at least an hour. By the time he got to school, he’d be late for second period, and that teacher would definitely notice.
Maybe he could just say he’d wiped out while biking to school. He’d have to limp and groan a lot—act like it was pure suffering to walk into the front office. Show them the broken phone.
He wouldn’t have to fake it much, he realized as he got back on the bike and started to pedal.
Chapter 2
The gear was still messed up, so the bike was slow to pedal and made a scraping noise as
Leo rode. Leo winced every time the metal scraped against metal, but he didn’t know what else to do. It would take hours to walk back into town.
The road that led to Fullerton was rarely used, winding through woods and farmland. Dense woodland lined both sides of the road, with a stretch of tall grass between the road and the forest. Leo hoped somebody would come along and offer to give him a ride.
But nobody drove by. Nobody at all.
Leo stopped and looked behind him, then up ahead. The road was empty. He had been biking for about fifteen minutes and not a single vehicle had passed. This area was quiet, but it was unusual for the road to get no traffic at all.
A few minutes later, Leo turned around a bend and saw a truck stopped in the lane. It wasn’t even pulled over—it was stopped dead. A big, heavyset man was walking around the truck, waving his arms. As Leo got closer, he heard the man ranting.
“Not a thing works,” the man was muttering to himself. “What is going on?”
He finally noticed Leo. “Hey!” he slapped on a friendly smile. “I’m in a bit of a pickle here. Do you have a working phone?”
Leo shook his head. “Mine is dead.” He dropped his feet to the ground but stayed seated on the bike.
“Figures,” the guy said. “Can’t get the truck started or my phone to work.”
Leo thought back to the black screen of his own phone. “That’s kind of weird,” he said. “What are the odds of that?” He looked up at the power lines along the highway, as if they might have the answers.
The man gave him a surprised look. “Haven’t you been paying attention to the news?”
Leo shook his head.
“All morning they’ve been talking about the lights in the sky,” the man continued. “Just before everything quit on me, they said on the radio there were weird ships above the clouds. Visitors. From another planet.”
“Wait . . . seriously?”
“It was on every news station all morning,” the man said. “You really haven’t heard anything about it?”
“Uh . . . no.” Leo had been so focused on sneaking out early that morning that he hadn’t bothered to check social media on his phone.
“Well, listen, how about you loan me that bike?” The man suddenly took a nicer tone. “I can ride up into town, be back with help in . . . what is it from here, a few miles?”
“About four miles,” Leo told him, guessing how far he’d biked already. “But I’m keeping the bike. I could send help for you when I get to town.”
“Sure you will,” the man said. “But, the thing is, I have to call this in myself. I need somebody from my company. Most tow trucks won’t be able to get through our security system.”
“Well, sorry, then,” Leo said. His bicycle was his most valued possession. There was no way he’d let a stranger have it. Not even if it was the end of the world. “Hope someone else comes along.”
The man pulled out a handful of bills from his wallet. “How about a hundred bucks? The bike isn’t even worth that much. And I’m just renting it. Not buying it.”
Leo shook his head. His bike was worth way more than that, but that was beside the point. “It’s not for sale. Look, I’m late for school. I have to go—”
“How about you at least let me have a drink of water? I’ve been out here all morning.”
Leo did have a little water left. He climbed off his bike and took the bottle from its holder on the frame. He tossed it over. The man took a long drink, and for a moment, Leo thought about just leaving. The guy could keep the water bottle.
Then the man popped the cap back onto the bottle. “Thanks,” he said. He walked over to hand Leo the bottle, standing in front of Leo’s bike.
Leo reached out to take the bottle, when suddenly the man tossed it at him and lunged for the bike handles. Leo clutched at his bike as the man tried to jerk the handlebars out of his grip.
“You give me that bike now!”
Chapter 3
Leo staggered backward as the man swung a fist at him. The man grabbed at the bike with one hand, still swinging his other fist. Leo ducked forward and held onto the frame of his bike, keeping his head low.
He’d never be able to take this guy if it came to an all-out fight. He’d never be able to wrestle the bike away, and even if he did, he didn’t know if he could ride away with the man chasing after him. His mind raced as he tried to figure out what to do.
Suddenly there was a whop sound, and the man stumbled backward. He rubbed at his head in confusion.
“What did you do to me?” the man groaned.
The same noise sounded again. A stone whapped the man in the shoulder. The trucker looked past Leo, his eyes wide. While he was distracted, Leo leaped on his bike and kicked off to give himself a burst of speed. He pedaled frantically.
“Hey!” The man reached for him, but Leo twisted the bike away and pedaled hard. The man chased after him for a long terrible minute before he seemed to finally give up, doubling over. Leo biked down the road until he couldn’t see the man anymore and stopped to catch his breath.
He heard a noise in the trees lining the highway. Leo tensed, worried the man had somehow sneaked through the woods to come after him again. But then he saw the front tire of a bike roll through the trees.
The bike came to a stop and the rider took off his helmet. It was a boy with long hair, younger than him by maybe a year. “Hey,” the boy said. “You okay?”
“Was that you?” Leo asked, waving a hand back in the direction he came from.
The kid nodded and reached into his pocket and pulled out a handmade slingshot. “Looked like he was giving you some trouble.”
“He was trying to steal my bike,” Leo explained. “It was so weird. He kept talking about . . .” He stopped, not wanting to think about it any longer. “Well, thanks anyway.”
“No problem.”
Leo glanced down at the kid’s bike. “Heading into town?”
“Yeah,” the kid said. “I was at home playing video games when the power went out and my phone stopped working. My mom works in town, so I thought I’d try to find her.”
Leo raised his eyebrows. It was Friday morning—what was he doing playing video games at home?
“Don’t you go to school?”
“Yeah. I’m a freshman at Fullerton High,” the kid said, pointing his thumb toward town. “But . . . it’s not going so great for me. I just needed a day at home. And now all this weird stuff with the power is happening.”
Leo nodded. He remembered freshman year being difficult for some people to adjust to. “Well, hey,” he said, “how about I ride back into town with you? I’m Leo.”
“James.”
They took off down the road together. At first they kept to the shoulder, but after not spotting another car for thirty minutes they drifted to ride in the middle of the road.
“So why aren’t you in school?” James asked.
Leo felt his face heat up. “Well, I only meant to skip one class. Then my bike got wrecked, so it’s been slow. But I’m on my way back to school now.”
When they rode into the edge of the city, things still seemed . . . off. The town was still. Apparently every building had lost power—even the stoplights were dead. Cars had been abandoned in the middle of the street.
“So the power’s out, but why are all the cars stalled?” Leo asked.
“I don’t know,” James admitted.
As they hit the center of town, they realized something else.
“Not only is everything out, everyone’s gone,” James said.
“Maybe they’re at work,” Leo said. “It is the middle of the day.” He looked around, expecting to see one person he could point out. But he didn’t. Usually there were some people out and about during the day. People walking dogs, or stay-at-home parents pushing strollers. Delivery trucks driving around. This was the most deserted he’d ever seen the town.
They biked past the main street. It looked as if all the stores were closed. More c
ars were stopped and empty in the middle of the street.
“Maybe everyone went home after the power went out,” Leo suggested.
“You just said you thought they were at work,” James said.
Leo let out a huff of breath. “I don’t know, man. My parents will be at home either way. They own a restaurant, and they won’t open up till later this afternoon. Let’s go ask them what’s going on.”
“Fine. Then we can check on my mom,” said James.
A few blocks later they passed by the high school.
“The school looks empty too,” James said. They glanced at each other before silently agreeing to check it out. They turned into the bus lane in front of the school.
They left their bikes by the racks, which were still full of locked bikes. Inside the halls were empty and the classrooms silent. The floor was littered with papers and pens and other dropped items.
“Looks like everyone left in a hurry,” said James. They walked down the main hall, looking in the empty classrooms. Doors hung open. In one room, tests were left incomplete on the desks.
“They must have sent everybody home,” Leo said.
“And given them, like, thirty seconds to get out?” James asked.
“Maybe there was some kind of emergency?” Leo thought back to what the truck driver had said about the Visitors. He’d thought the man was making things up, but now he wasn’t sure. He pushed the thoughts out of his head. There had to be a better explanation.
“Come on,” he said, walking back toward the front doors. “My parents will tell us what’s going on.”
They went outside and returned to where they’d left their bikes.
“This way,” said Leo, kicking off and pedaling. Though he still didn’t know what was going on, he found himself feeling more and more desperate to find his parents. When they arrived at his house, he practically leaped off his bike in the driveway and left it lying there.