by Holly Hook
"Ouch!" David shouted.
"Where did you find that?" the Goth girl asked.
Alana told them. "After dark, we need to go out and investigate." She then told them the plan.
"Dr. Shetlin is probably dead or very badly injured," Tony said. "I agree with what Laney was saying. That was some killer sun out there. Even if she drove, she might be in trouble."
"If she felt the burning, she would have come back pretty quickly," Jerome said. "I know I would."
"Unless she found shelter," Alana said.
"You're such an optimist," I said.
"You're saying that like you're trying to pity me," Alana told me.
I said nothing to that. I didn't want to break her bubble. If a room full of dead bodies couldn't do that, neither could I.
We sat and ate for a long time. By now, the stench of death had almost vanished from this room. A small breeze came in through the mostly-closed front door and the sun shifted so that the light was strictly on the opposite walls. Everyone stayed in the dark spaces and we kept the flashlight off, conserving the batteries. At last, the long beams of ruddy light began to fade, leaving us in even more profound darkness than before.
I felt like the sun would never rise again.
And if it did, it would only unveil horrors.
"Okay," Alana said when the sun had become nothing but a pale glow. "I think it's safe to venture outside for a bit."
"There's still a bit of daylight," I pointed out.
She clicked on the flashlight, illuminating Eric's face and Chirstina. Her friend stood next to her. They had been hanging together like they weren't sure how to deal with people outside of their clique. They all stood as if the light were a summons.
"Okay," David said. "I will go out first. The rest of you will follow behind me in a line."
Jerome cleared his throat. "We never had an election."
"Shut up," David said to him.
I was beginning to see David in a new light. There was another side to him, one that wasn't scared and one that needed to be on top. He was freaked out just like the rest of us. Maybe this was his way of coping with it, like Alana's was to stay cheerful and how the art girls stayed silent. Everyone had their own unique way. David pushed past all of us and held his hand out for the flashlight. Alana hesitated, then handed it over to him.
"Thanks," he said. He pointed it at the door and the circle of light fell on it. It just barely illuminated the dust outside.
I felt like we were standing in a world of dust. If the ozone really was depleted, we might be in no time. Didn't they say that hardly anything could survive that? Plants would die.
David opened the door and shined his flashlight outside. There was nothing, just as I had predicted.
"We're good now," he said. "My skin isn't burning, so we're safe."
There was barely any light at all out there. The sun had almost sunk under the murky horizon, leaving a ruddy glow. David stepped out and the rest of us followed. I rubbed my arms as coolness swept over me. It was colder out here than it should be in the Arizona desert in September. Less light was hitting the ground or something.
"Are we headed into a nuclear winter?" Alana asked.
"Most likely," David said with authority. "Keep following me."
I rolled my eyes. He was going to be the guy who wanted to be in charge of everything. There was always one of those in every disaster movie. Jerome was going to be the one to challenge him and then mutiny would break out. Someone would get hurt and might even die. I glanced at Alana and then towards the road, which was on the other side of the dark chain link fence. We needed to split and soon, before this got really bad. I'd go alone if I had to. This happy group wasn't going to last for long.
Happy things never did.
"Here's the gate," David said, walking forward. We all followed like a herd. I didn't want to, but right now we had no choice. "The guard. Oh, crap. You guys forgot about him."
I hardly flinched now as the flashlight beam fell on the shack. The guard was lying inside, slumped over with his hand pressed against the glass. The chain link gate was broken open as if he had tried to do something to it. The whole thing didn't add up.
And the guy was dead. He had been for a while. His window was open and the wind was blowing the other way. Otherwise, we would have caught a whiff of the stench. Bugs flew around inside, hitting the windows. One of the flies made a thump.
They were surviving just fine. The insects would have plenty of food for the next several months. They would be the survivors of the apocalypse.
"I'm not dragging him out," Tony said. "He's better off in there."
David turned around and glared at him. "This guy had a family, too."
"His family is probably gone," I pointed out. "There's no one left to care. Now we need to think about getting out of here. Supplies aren't going to last much longer."
"I know that," David said. He was talking to me in such a condescending voice. "That's why we're investigating."
"Leave her alone," Alana said. "We really do need a way out."
"We should find the doctor," the Goth girl said. "She couldn't have gone far."
David walked through the smashed gate. "I think someone drove out of here," he said. "That means some vehicles are still working. Someone needs to check and see if the bus will start."
"She abandoned us," Mina said.
"We don't know that," Alana said. "Maybe something happened to her."
"Are you kidding? Dr. Shetlin didn't want to be down there with us. She wanted to go check on her own family," I said.
"Can you blame her?" Alana asked.
I thought about Dad. He had to be out there somewhere. He might still be in New York. New York could have missed the first blast, but with the atmosphere this messed up, there was still plenty of danger.
"I'll check and see if the bus will start," I offered.
Dad was all I had left.
David handed me the flashlight. "I don't know where the keys are," he said. "You'll have to find them."
"I'll come with you," Alana said.
The two of us walked towards the bus. I shined the flashlight on it. A few crickets chirped as the night deepened. There was still a little bit of life out here, at least. The silence was putting me on the edge of crazy.
The bus door was open, which made the whole thing a lot easier. The dying driver hadn't bothered to close it behind him. I hopped onto the bus and shined the flashlight all over the seat. There was something crusted on the steering wheel that might be puke. I almost threw up the chips I had eaten along with whatever fizzy drink I'd sucked down. Coke. The taste of it burned at the back of my throat.
"I don't see any keys," Alana said. "Wow. The driver got really sick."
"I don't want to touch that," I said. "You're right. They're not here. We know what that means." I faced Alana and she grimaced.
"The keys are with the driver," she said.
"Exactly."
We scrambled out of the bus and out of the putrid smell. I shined the flashlight on the ground and found nothing except a few dots of what was probably blood. Or bloody puke. I didn't want to think about it. I got on my knees and sucked in a breath of fresh air. I thought about Dad and the uselessness of staying out here. We had to get the bus started. The EMP hadn't wiped out all the cars. There was hope.
The monster was back.
I pushed it away and moved, crawling under the bus while Alana held the flashlight. The driver still lay there. No one had dragged him out. We hadn't had time. He was face-down with his pockets exposed. The point of a key stuck out of one.
"Found them!" I shouted. I reached in and his dead body pushed against my hand. I had to breathe in. It was disgusting. I coughed and dropped the keys, then grabbed them again and crawled out from under the bus. I handed them to Alana and stood, sucking in fresh air. At least that wasn't poisoned.
I sucked in another breath. David and the others stood at the gate, waiting in
silence for the verdict. I climbed onto the bus and without sitting where the sick driver had been, I put the keys in the ignition and turned.
There was a horrible click and then nothing.
I tried again, and again, but the same click followed and nothing happened.
The bus was fried along with almost everything else around here.
That was great.
"Sorry," I told Alana. I beat at the clean side of the steering wheel, rage building through me. "I'm sorry!"
"It's not your fault," she told me, climbing onto the bus. "Come down. We'll figure something out. There has to be another way."
I did. I wanted to fall to the dust.
The nearest town was thirty miles away. We'd passed it on the way here.
It was too far to walk before the sun came up. Unless another survivor came by in a working vehicle, we were all going to be stuck here for quite a while. The horror of it rose inside of me and I pushed that hope monster aside. We had to face the truth, sooner rather than later.
"Are there any other vehicles?" I asked everyone, who stood around the bus. It was a dumb question as there were four cars parked in the dusty lot, probably one for each employee. I shined the flashlight on them and the windows reflected it right back at me. They were empty, of course. There was a newer sedan, a rusty truck that might belong to the guard, and a minivan with one of those stick figure families on the back. My heart ached when the light fell on that. I thought of Dr. Shetlin or maybe the receptionist lady. There was a woman, a man, and three kids. And a dog, happy and smiling on the very end.
If that was Dr. Shetlin's, it was no wonder she hadn't come back.
But she hadn't taken the van. I ran up to it, just to see, and opened the driver side door. The keys were in the ignition like she had tried and failed. I got in and turned them again anyway, to no results.
She had left us in some way, abandoning us to vehicles that didn't start.
"Well?" David asked from outside. He had come to see what was up.
"It's all fried," I told him, climbing out of the van. "I don't know how our guide managed to get out of here or how that gate got smashed. Did she find a big work truck or something?"
David shrugged. For the leader, he didn't know a whole lot. "Maybe," he said. He turned in a circle. "I don't see any work trucks out here. Do you?"
I shook my head. It was just the visitor center, another low building that was identical to this one, the fence, and desert. The other building hadn't looked like a garage, that was for sure.
"I didn't see anything when we pulled in," David said. "I checked the whole place. Then again, I couldn't see behind the buildings or the tower."
"Did you know something was going to happen?" I asked.
"No," he said. "My dad used to be in the Marines and he served in some special forces before I was born. He always told me to know an escape for any situation. He kind of drilled that into me when I was little, so it's automatic. Whenever I'm in a new place, I look for the exits. He'd grill me if I didn't."
"That's kind of rough on a kid," I said. I tried to imagine growing up with a dad like that and never getting to relax. Son, we're at the theater. Now where are the exits? Tell me. You have five seconds. I forced the play in my head to stop and handed David the flashlight.
"It was," he admitted. His words were heavy. "Look, we need to get out of here. The closest town was Mariot and it was about twenty-five miles behind us. Maybe we can walk there and reach it by morning. It takes fifteen minutes to walk one mile. How long would that take us to get there?"
I wanted to say that it had been my idea to get out of here but I kept that back. I didn't want to fight. That was going to come in our group sooner or later the hungrier we got. "I think it was farther away than that," I said. I remembered passing through the tiny little town earlier.
"It's just an estimate," David said. "I stopped counting the mile markers when Mrs. Taney ripped into me. Man, I'm going to miss her."
"That's odd coming from you," I said.
"Guys," Alana said. I had forgotten she was standing there. "We have the other building to check out. I forgot about it. Now's the time to look at it."
David nodded and waved me across the parking lot. "We'd never know what's in there," he said.
We gathered everyone and headed around the visitor center and to the back. The other building was the exact shape as the Visitor Center and it was locked up. Of course. David tried to shine the light in the windows, but it landed on an empty space. I stood on my tiptoes to look inside but saw nothing except for some sawdust on the floor and some stray wires. There was no vending machine.
"It's some kind of repair shop," I said.
"There might be some tools in there," Jerome said. "We could use those."
"They might be electric tools," David said. "They won't be any use then. What are you thinking?"
Jerome sighed. The guy was having it hard right now.
"We can break the windows and get a look," Tony said. "I'll go get that chair from the other building. There has to be a way in."
He returned a few minutes later and went to work on the window, banging the chair against it as hard as he could. Tony winced as he pulled something in his back and the window shattered, its glass falling inside.
The building housed a bunch of wires, spare parts, gloves, and table saws. The only decoration on the walls was a safety guide and what to do in the event of heat stroke. We sifted through spare wires and ropes and cleared a bunch of blueprints off a table. At last I came across a half-drunk bottle of Diet Coke which must be flatter than the landscape outside.
"Don't dump that," Jerome said. "We might need it."
Someone had been working in here in the recent past, maybe even today. Whoever it was had probably died by now.
It was full dark outside by now and all of us headed back to the main building. "There might be a map somewhere in the Visitor Center," Alana said. "We can see how far it is exactly to the next town. Then we can make plans for getting out of here. They've got to have one."
The hope monster rose inside of me again and I walked faster. She had a point. Any kind of tourist trap had them somewhere for people who were lost or needed to know where the next bathroom was. I knew. My parents and I had gone on plenty of trips when I was younger and a map was a staple. Even a lot of restaurants had them. We all packed back into the visitor center, and thankfully most of the smell had gone by now.
Alana left the door cracked a bit--what was going to come and get us?--and shined the flashlight back on the desk while everyone milled around, trying to find anything that could be a map. The elevator doors remained open and the light shone on the elevator for a second, revealing the cage with the bloodstain still on the floor.
It was easier to dig through the desk now. At last, Alana pulled out a tattered map of the state and spread it out on the table, next to the bag of what turned out to be Sweet Tarts.
"Found it!" she announced.
Everyone pushed close to the desk. I smelled someone's armpits. No one had bathed. I doubted there was a shower around here or even some baby wipes. All we had was the unisex bathroom that, according to David, had a horrible mess in it. I hadn't had to go due to not drinking much all day, but the time would come and I was dreading it.
It took us a while to figure out where the Visitor Center was on the map. David found the town of Mariot, which was a tiny dot on the map surrounded by a whole lot of nothing. Colton was about thirty miles north of that and also surrounded by mostly barren land. We didn't have a lot of options out here.
I watched while David traced his finger to the legend, and then back to the map, trying to keep the same distance in between them. David frowned. "The town is forty miles away," he said. "It's farther than I thought it was."
Everyone groaned. It sounded like pure annoyance, but I knew why everyone was doing it. We were all trying to hide our terror. I looked at Alana, waiting for her to come up with some way that
this would all be okay. She shook her head and her gaze went to the vending machine.
We were going to have problems.
People who were in disaster zones always did. The flashlight stayed on the map for the most part as David continued to mutter. I pulled away from the crowd and walked to the vending machine. A little bit of light had fallen on it.
I counted.
We had twenty-seven bottled beverages left.
If we each took one per day, that would leave us without in two days if the sinks stopped working. I hadn't tried those yet, but if everyone was dead the water pumps would fail, wouldn't they? I thought about the empty bottle on my desk. I wanted to try it. The other resort was to take the water out of the toilet...and that was suicide.
Alana leaned close to me. "How much food?"
Her tone was different now. There was nothing left to be optimistic about. The hope monster had claimed another victim.
I reached in, taking care to avoid the broken glass. I felt through candy bars and bags of chips. The machine was fairly full, but I estimated that in a few days, even if we stretched things, we would be out of luck.
And then there were the bodies outside...
"We have to get out of here," I said. I turned to Alana, hoping that she would agree with me. "We need to find a way to shield ourselves from the sun and walk to the next town. There will be more supplies there. The army might even come out looking for survivors." I knew it was a risk, even with the best sunscreen, but we had nothing to put over ourselves to completely hide from the sun. It wasn't like we had packed blankets on the bus. We weren't exactly trying to snuggle up.
Jerome and David were arguing again about where Dr. Shetlin might have gone and how she could have found a working vehicle way out here. Jerome mentioned something about a movie called Tremors. This was like it, only there weren't any giant sand worms in the ground. This was worse. The danger was everywhere.
"But how?" Alana asked. "If we could find a tarp, that would be great, but I didn't see any in the other building."
I thought about the flimsy awning outside the visitor center, the one hanging over the front of the building like it used to be some biker diner. It was thin and would let the sun in. I shuddered. It was getting cold in here. The night air was invading through the door and I walked over and closed it.