“I wish I had a number to call my brother at,” Danny sighed.
“You’ve never been able to get in contact with him?” Mr. Eggor turned to Danny.
“There’s an emergency number at Keystone where they can relay important messages to him, like if I get into an accident or something, but nowhere I can call him directly,” Danny shrugged.
“Well I think this counts as an emergency,” Alice spoke up.
“I think Keystone knows all about this emergency,” Mr. Eggor smiled at her. “They aren’t going to be helping us out anytime soon, though.”
“What about your mommy and daddy?” Alice asked Danny. “Can you call them?”
“My mom and dad died when I was little,” Danny told her.
“My mommy died when I was little too. Daddy said she was very sad and didn’t want to make us sad,” Alice nodded. “I have pictures though.”
“I have pictures too,” Danny smiled but it wasn’t a real smile. It was a sad smile. “My brother took care of me.”
“I don’t have any brothers or sisters,” Alice told him. “It’s just me and my Daddy and Shoes. Do you have any brothers or sisters, Mr. Eggor?”
“Mr. Eggor?” He smiled a real smile. He thought it was funny. “You can call me Alec okay?”
“Alec.” Alice tried the name. “Alec and Alice.” She smiled brightly at the similarity. “So Alec, do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“I had a sister,” Alec told her. “She passed away a few years ago. She was married though, and her husband is pretty much my brother now.”
“What about your mommy and daddy?” Alice wondered. Although it was always weird for Alice to picture grownups with mommies and daddies, she had met her grandparents and knew they existed.
“They passed away an even longer time ago. There was a plane crash,” Alec sighed. It was a sad thought for him.
“My mommy’s mommy was in a plane crash once.” Alice remembered overhearing a story. “It was a little one, though. A little plane. They went too far and went off of something called a tarmac.”
“A tarmac is what planes land on,” Alec told her.
“Oh, so a runway?” Alice knew what a runway was. “I got to fly in a plane once. Me and my Daddy went to visit grandpapa and grandmama last year. We got to fly over the country to Vancouver. I saw mountains.” When saying Vancouver, Alice always stressed the cou part.
“I’ve been in a plane a few times,” Danny told her. “I wanted to learn to fly helicopters.”
“You don’t want to anymore?” Alice had noticed the past tense.
“I don’t know if that’s possible anymore.” Danny looked sad.
“Sure, you can still learn.” Alec knocked on Danny’s helmet. “This will right itself out and they’ll still need chopper pilots. You’ll see.”
“I want to be a vet,” Alice told them. “I want to help animals, like Shoes.”
“I’m sure you’d make a great vet,” Alec told her.
“Do you think it’s safe to open the pop?” Danny wondered.
“No idea,” Alec shrugged. “You might as well try though.”
“’kay.” Danny picked up the soda can again. He held it out away from his body and squinted his eyes when he pulled on the tab. The can cracked open and the pop fizzled. It didn’t explode or gush out, but Danny quickly placed his mouth over the hole and sucked out the top stuff just in case. He then held it out to Alice.
“You don’t have cooties, do you?” Alice took the can.
“Nope, I got my cootie shot,” Danny told her.
“Cootie shot?” Alice had never heard of the concept.
Danny gasped. “You don’t know what a cootie shot is? Then you must have cooties yourself.”
“I do not,” Alice pouted.
“Want me to give you a cootie shot?” Alec asked her, showing all his teeth when he smiled.
“Does it hurt?” Alice didn’t like shots.
“Not at all. In fact, it’s the least painful shot you could ever get. All you have to do is hold out your hand.” Alec held out his own.
“Okay.” Alice imitated him. “But if it hurts, I’m going to be really mad at you.”
“I promise it won’t hurt.” Alec held her hand in his own. He drew circles on the back of her hand and tapped the centre of them with his finger while he chanted, “Circle circle, dot dot, now you got your cooties shot.”
“That’s it?” Alice looked at her hand.
“That’s it.” Alec smiled.
Alice then took a big drink from the pop can. It was delicious and fizzy. When she was done, she burped loudly and giggled.
“Excuse me,” she giggled into her hand.
“Oh yeah? Watch this.” Danny took the pop can from her and took another drink. He waited a brief moment and then burped louder than Alice had.
Alice giggled even more and Danny laughed.
“That’s nothing. You’re sitting next to the burping champ,” Alec told them both. He then started to burp out the ABCs without taking a single sip of pop. He got to G before he started laughing too hard to keep going. They were all in stitches.
Danny and Alice passed the pop back and forth, trying to burp more, until it was all gone. They then shared the Dunkeroos. Alice liked the little cookies. She tried the dipping stuff, but she still didn’t like vanilla, and so she didn’t have any after that. They went through the rest of the snack food that Kelly had given them. Even Alec ate some more granola bars. When it was all gone, Alice yawned loudly.
“You tired?” Alec looked down at her.
“A little,” she nodded. Also her head was hurting a little.
“Why don’t you try to sleep then?” Alec suggested. “I'll wake you up if something happens or if we stop.”
“Do you promise you’ll still be here when I wake up?” Alice looked up at him. The last time she went to sleep, Paul and Judy disappeared.
“I promise,” he nodded.
“You too, Danny?” She looked across Alec to Danny.
“I promise to be here also,” he smiled.
“Okay, good.” Alice snuggled down next to Alec, placing her head on his leg. She pulled the coat tighter around her, then grabbed Shoes and pulled him up to her chest. The dog huffed but didn’t try to get away. She fell asleep almost instantly.
28:
Abigail
Abby looked through the bag that she had been given. Although they had a list telling them what was in each pack, they all sorted through them anyway, making sure. She couldn’t understand what had made Cender’s doctor friend run off without waiting for him, but she also thought that maybe the dead bodies on the back porch and in the bedroom had something to do with it.
“So, let’s take a vote,” Cillian spoke up from where he was sitting in a plushy, grey armchair. “Who thinks we should take a short break here to regain our energy before following the map we were left?” He raised his own hand.
Tobias, Cender, and Jessica all raised theirs as well. Although Abby would have rather gotten moving as soon as possible, she raised her hand in the end so as not to be labelled as separate from the group.
“Second vote: Who thinks we should trade the limo for the hybrid Ford Escape in the garage? Both have about half a tank of gas in them.” Cillian raised his hand again.
Abby and Jessica also raised their hands, but Tobias and Cender did not.
“Three to one, sorry guys,” Cillian shrugged.
Tobias shrugged back and kept looking through his pack.
“Third vote: Who thinks that, along with the packs we’ve been left, we fit as much else in the Escape as we can?”
Everybody voted unanimously for that one.
“All right. Now this next one is not a vote.” Cillian got up from his seat. “I’m starving and I’m going to make some food. Who else wants something?”
Everyone but Jessica raised their hands again.
“Okay, I’ll check out what’s in the cupboards.” Cillian head
ed into the kitchen.
Not long after he left, Abby came across the gun in her bag. It was some sort of pistol, matte black. It looked like the kind the actors used in the TV show she worked for, only this one was real. It came with a holster that could be threaded onto a belt, two extra clips already loaded, and a sack of extra rounds. Abby didn’t have a belt to put the holster on, but since the backpack was the hiking kind with the straps that buckled in front, Abby was able to thread it through one of the straps. She put the sack of extra rounds back into the backpack and put the loaded clips into a side pocket. The side pocket already held a water bottle, but since the other side held one too, she packed that bottle into the main section of the pack.
Abby knew that everybody in the house now had a gun. Cender’s was a bolt action hunting rifle of some kind, so was Cillian’s, and Tobias also had a pistol. Jessica got a pistol too, but she instantly handed it over to Cillian as if it carried a disease. Cillian didn’t ask, and just put it in with his own gear. Jessica stuck with her shovel.
Abby also kept her field hockey stick. Some small straps on the side of the bag were able to hold the stick. Bullets eventually ran out, but the composite object, made of carbon, Kevlar, and some fibreglass, could handle some serious whacking before breaking. It had been expensive, but it was worth it; now more than ever. Abby had played for her college team and was thinking of signing up for a league, but she never imagined she would be using the stick to crack skulls.
“Abby?” Jessica looked up from a can of peas she had found in her bag.
“Yeah?” Abby finished packing up the rest of her stuff and closed the pack.
“I want to change my shirt.” Jessica stood up. “Could you come with me and help see if any of them fit?”
“Sure, no problem.” Abby got to her feet.
She and Jessica walked down the hall and into the bedroom. They both tried not to look at the bed. Cillian had checked out the blanket-wrapped lump earlier and told them that it was a dead body, and that no one should touch it. Abby could tell by looking at it that it wasn’t the dead body of someone full grown. She tried to put it out of her mind by imagining that it was just a prop, like on the set of the TV show she worked for. The show could be violent and even gross sometimes, and they were always doing makeup and props of that sort.
Jessica went to the dresser and started looking through the drawers. Abby felt slightly embarrassed for the owner of the house as Jessica opened her underwear drawer. Eventually she found one that was full of t-shirts. Jessica grabbed the first one and held it up to look at the size. It was a medium men’s shirt so it would probably be loose on Jessica, but she seemed fine with that. Jessica began unbuttoning her blouse.
Abby reddened in the face a little, not used to being around women who were that comfortable changing in front of other women. She politely turned the other way and looked at a bookshelf in the corner. Every book on it looked like it was either a factual book about things like nuclear power plants and agriculture, or it was a fictional story about people in awful and/or end-of-the-world-type situations. There were Cell, The Stand, and Under The Dome by Stephen King, Hater and Dog Blood by David Moody, Phantoms and The Taking by Dean Koontz, The Year Of The Flood by Margaret Atwood, The Ruins by Scott Smith, and lots of others. One book in particular, stood out to Abby, though. The top books were the fiction stories and the bottom books were the factual ones, but there was one book sitting in-between. Abby went up to it and pulled it off the shelf. It was called The Zombie Survival Guide and had been written by someone named Max Brooks. Considering its mention of zombies, Abby thought it must be a fictional story, but as she flipped through it, she realized it was not. It was an actual guide on how to survive a zombie outbreak. There was another book on the shelf by the same author, World War Z, but it looked more like a story.
“What do you think?” Jessica asked from over by the dresser.
Abby turned around and looked Jessica up and down. She still wore Abby’s hiking boots, pale blue scrub pants, and now a slightly too big, faded, red T-shirt with the slogan, ‘you caught me at a bad time, I’m awake’, written in white across the chest.
“Stylish,” Abby joked.
Jessica cracked a half smile. It was the first one Abby had seen since they had run into Cillian and Tobias. She wondered if Cillian had something to do with her not smiling, or her starting to smile again. It was hard to tell. The incident with the gunman happened at the same time. And Jessica had been stressed out even before then. Abby had a perfect memory of what she did to the legless man in the ER. She had been like an animal. She still looked like that sometimes: a caged animal thinking about another place.
“What’s that you found?” Jessica pointed to the book in Abby’s hand.
“Oh, just a book that might prove useful.” Abby shrugged. “It looks like we’re going to be driving for awhile, so having something to read would be nice.”
“I can’t read in moving cars,” Jessica told her.
“That sucks.” Abby noticed the lump out of the corner of her eye again. “Let’s go find out what Cillian’s cooking up.”
“I’m not hungry,” Jessica shook her head.
“Well then, you can just sit and put your feet up.” Abby took Jessica’s hand with her free one and led her out of the room.
They passed the bathroom where the shower was running. Everyone had used the bathroom earlier to wash off any blood and dirt they had on their hands and faces. And to use the toilet. Right now Cillian’s jacket and gloves were in the bathtub getting a good soaking. He was trying to wash off as much blood as possible, but it had really caked on. They continued into the kitchen where Cillian was filling up a pot with water. Jessica sat down at the table. Abby put the book she found on the table and walked over to Cillian.
“What are you making?” Abby asked him.
“I found a huge pile of Kraft Dinner in a cupboard, so I’m going to cook up a bunch of boxes for everybody.” Cillian pointed to a section of counter next to the stove. He had placed seven boxes of the brand name mac and cheese there. “I found some other food too. Tobias, Cender, and I agreed that MREs sounded terrible-tasting, so they’re swapping some of them out for real food in our packs.”
“Sounds good.” Abby loved Kraft Dinner and ate it regularly herself. Although she rather enjoyed cooking, she didn’t always have time. She also agreed that MREs sounded awful.
Cillian finished filling up the pot and put it on the stove to boil. He found salt and poured some into the water. Abby went to the fridge to get out the milk and margarine, or butter if that was the case. She opened the door and started looking through the interior. The inside of the fridge was the only normal thing Abby had come across in this entire house. There were guns and gas masks in the living room, fuel and biohazard suits in the basement, and an arsenal of meds everywhere. It worked out for them in the end, but it was still very odd. The inside of the fridge though, looked like what you’d expect the inside of a single person’s fridge to look like. It was fairly bare, filled mostly with leftover containers from order-in restaurants, and condiments. Abby had just spotted the margarine container when the fridge’s interior light went out.
“Hey.” Her first thought was that somebody had pushed on the door sensor, making the fridge think it was closed. Her brothers used to do that all the time. Then she realized that the fridge’s motor had also gone out.
Abby grabbed the margarine and the milk and closed the fridge door. She placed the items on the counter, then tried a light switch on the wall. She flicked it up and down a few times but the overhead lights didn’t come on.
“What’s wrong?” Cillian asked from over by the stove.
“I think the power went out. One second.” Abby went into the living room and tried a lamp in there, but it also didn’t turn on.
Tobias and Cender gave her odd looks.
“The power’s out,” Abby told them.
“Crap,” Cender actually looked and sounded mo
re concerned than the power outage warranted.
“What?” Abby thought, maybe, because of the food. “The stove is gas, so Cillian will still be able to finish cooking.”
“It’s not that,” Cender shook his head, “come look at this.”
Abby went and sat next to him on the couch. Tobias also walked over and peered over his other shoulder.
“This is the map that my friend Bishop gave me, right?” Cender unfolded the piece of paper. “You see these coloured rings? Well, part of the note explains them. We have maybe four hours to get beyond this ring here.”
“Why? What happens in four hours?” Tobias asked the obvious question.
“Apparently, with the power out, the chemical storage facilities that Keystone and other companies have around here, will no longer be able to keep things cool. The chemicals are now changing from a liquid to a gas, which is going to build pressure. Now apparently, there shouldn’t be too many explosions, but the pressure is going to cause the safety valves to open and release giant chemical clouds. Depending on the generators, this could be starting to happen now and I guess in four hours it’s bad enough that we have to be beyond this point.” Cender explained as best he could.
“So now we know why there’s gas masks lying around.” Abby glanced over at one. “What’s the other ring?”
“That’s the seven day ring, so I don’t think we need to worry about that one so much,” Cender shrugged. “Apparently seven days after the power goes out, nuclear storage facility diesel generators will run dry. They will no longer be able to keep the material in cold, flowing water, and I don’t know why it needs to be stored that way, but apparently, after it’s been sitting in stale, un-chilled water for about three days, it’s heated up enough to set fire to the building. That one will be a giant explosion as well as radiation being spread all over the place.”
“Well who’s to say the power won’t come back on?” Tobias frowned.
“Think, man.” Cender poked his forehead. “Why would the power go out in the first place? Because people either fled their stations or were killed there. I don’t think anyone is going back to fix the problem.”
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