Nate and Dakota walked for close to an hour before the peak-roofed aluminum structure finally came into view. And all at once Nate’s heart sank.
“What’s wrong?” Dakota asked, noticing the change.
“The buses are gone,” he said, his voice tight with emotion.
“Don’t worry about it. They’re probably around back.”
The girl had offered him a thin reed of hope and he decided to take it. He could see the vague shape of cars buried under mounds of snow in the parking lot. That had to mean something.
Approaching a set of glass doors, Nate spotted the flame from a single candle inside. It was late evening, which meant whoever was here might very well be asleep.
Nate switched on the light from his cell phone and pushed his way into the sports complex.
Unlocked doors and no visible security. None of this was setting his mind at ease. For a moment, they stood at the entrance, taking in the darkened space before them. Murkiness aside, it was the silence that disturbed him most. Where was the coughing, the snoring, the sound of cots creaking as folks shifted position?
The beam of light from his phone was quickly swallowed up by the enormous space. And yet the few feet of visibility it had afforded made one thing perfectly clear. The sports center was virtually empty.
Nate’s attention shifted to the solitary source of light in the distance. He and Dakota headed toward it, feeling like moths drawn to a flame. Not a moment later, he bumped his leg on an empty cot and cursed. Scanning around, he could see now vacant cots were everywhere, along with discarded blankets and possessions left behind.
Ten meters away, a lone figure came into focus, lying still in the candle’s warm glow. Fighting back waves of sadness and disappointment, Nate weaved through the sea of empty cots.
They arrived at an old man, his skin dotted with sunspots and wrinkled with age. He opened his eyes.
“Have you come to kill me?” His voice, barely a whisper, betrayed no sign of fear. Either way, he seemed like a man resigned to his fate.
“No,” Nate replied evenly. “I’m sorry to disappoint you. I’m looking for my family.”
“There were a lot of families here,” the old man said, unable or unwilling to sit up. “But not anymore.”
“What happened?” he asked.
“The radiation,” he replied. “We were told it wasn’t safe anymore. That we had to keep moving.”
“Do you know where they were sent?”
The man’s head made a slow nod. “Natural History Museum.”
“Huh? Where’s that?” Dakota asked.
Nate’s voice became low, somber. “Downtown Chicago.”
“Oh, no,” she said, before she could catch herself.
But Nate couldn’t really blame her since he had just been thinking the same thing. Any major metropolis was a dangerous place in a grid-down situation. It was hardly a secret that some cities were worse than others. He knew Chicago well, a city as renowned for its beauty as it was for its crime. He had walked its inner-city streets as a beat cop for longer than anyone should be expected to. With this in mind, Nate began to steel himself for what lay ahead. Saving his family now meant entering a veritable hornets’ nest.
Dakota turned her attention back to the old man. “Why didn’t you go with them?”
“I’m not made for a life on the run,” he explained, trying his best to smile and managing to hold it for nearly a full second. “I should never have left Byron. At least then I could have died in my own bed.”
“Is there anything we can do?” Nate asked.
A twinkle of gratitude formed in the old man’s eyes. “I fully expected to die alone in the dark. Maybe you could sit for a minute, hold my hand.”
“Sure thing,” Dakota said, settling down on the edge of the man’s cot and folding her delicate hand into his.
Chapter 41
After the old man passed, they returned to Sanchez’s place, still processing everything that had just happened. The loss of Sanchez was hard enough, but to have Nate’s family slip through his hands made it all the more difficult to bear.
The next morning, after stocking up with weapons, ammo and food, Nate found an old framed picture of his friend on the wall, a little five-by-seven job. He removed the photograph and stuffed it into his pocket.
“What’s that for?” Dakota asked.
“I’ll do something on the road to honor him,” Nate replied. “Or maybe I’ll just keep it on me. A remembrance of a friend who made the ultimate sacrifice.” The necklace of St. Christopher was also around his neck and there it would remain.
“You’re going to Chicago now, aren’t you?” she asked. “To find your family.”
Given the state of the country, it was the last place on earth any sane person should be heading. If Rockford was coming apart at the seams, he couldn’t imagine how things would be in a city of nearly three million. But sometimes you had to crawl through hell to get to heaven. And rather than say a word, he simply nodded. There was no other choice. “And you?”
“If my uncle’s still alive, I have a good idea where he might be.”
Nate nodded and zipped up his jacket. “Good. If it’s along the way, I’ll take you there.”
“It is,” Dakota said, smiling, her delicate features wavering in the soft winter light spilling in from outside. “I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather have with me.”
Nate favored her with a brief glance and a wink. He shouldered his rifle and said, “So what do you say we get going?”
Thank you for reading
America Offline: Zero Day!
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of the series now available for pre-order!
America Offline: System Failure (March 2020)
America Offline: Citadel (May 2020)
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America Offline (Book 1): America Offline [Zero Day] Page 21