“And I crashed for fourteen hours. My mom thought I had mono.”
“Everyone else had napped, so we were outside swimming, building sand castles, doing things tourists do…and little Shelby was up in her room sound asleep.”
He reached over to squeeze her neck, and she batted his hand away.
“I don’t like this. We’re just sitting around. We need to get in, get what we need, and get out.”
“And we will.” All teasing had left his voice. “We will, Shelby.”
She pulled her backpack beside her. The notebook rested on her lap, and she thought of opening it to check her notes, confirming she hadn’t forgotten anything. She didn’t, though. She was too tired to string three words together. Instead of reading what she’d written, she held it, laid her palm flat against the cover, and allowed her eyes to drift shut. She heard Max’s breathing deepen, but she didn’t sleep.
Instead, her mind replayed images from the last forty-eight hours.
The contents of a suitcase scattered across the road outside of Townsen Mills.
Nadine Perkins wearing a determined expression.
Bianca and Bhatti bending over young Zack Allen.
Burned-out buildings.
Max swinging the lug wrench.
All of those details were recorded in the journal. The need to keep a record of everything they were seeing was becoming more urgent every day. She didn’t know why. Honestly, she couldn’t imagine anyone important ever reading it, but perhaps that wasn’t the point. Maybe the important people now were the common folks. Maybe that was who she should have been writing for all along—not publishers or editors or sales departments.
The morning grew even darker and wind began to buffet the rafters. At 10:00 a.m. sharp, Clay called them all together.
“The weather’s worse, as you can tell, but it might work to our advantage—maybe the bad guys will stay inside.” That drew a few grunts of agreement. Clay ran his hand over the top of his bald head and continued. “Kenny is going to ride in the Dodge with Max and Shelby.”
The black man shouldered his rifle and walked over to stand beside them.
“Jamie is going to ride in the hot rod with Patrick and Bianca.” Jamie pumped his fist in victory, and everyone laughed.
“I’ll be in the lead vehicle. I’d like Dr. Bhatti to ride with me. I want each vehicle to maintain a three-car-length distance between one another. We don’t want to bunch up and make for a big, plump target. We also don’t want to spread out where we could get separated, so watch your distance.”
Max and Patrick gave him a thumbs-up.
“The rest of my crew will wait back here.”
“What good are they here?” Max asked. “No offense, guys.”
“None taken,” a tall, gangly man assured him. “It’s a good question.”
“The truth is they’re our fallback plan.” Clay scanned the room, his gaze settling on Shelby and Max. “If you get in trouble, if we get separated, if someone is injured…we come back here. Clear?”
Everyone nodded, followed by a flurry of activity.
“I feel like I’ve been in this barn for months,” Shelby admitted. And then they were dodging raindrops, what looked like the beginning of a Texas-sized storm, and climbing into the Dodge. Max started up the engine, and Kenny slipped into the backseat, taking Bhatti’s spot.
Humidity was high, and temperatures were holding steady at too hot. A heavy gray mist draped the hills and fields. The landscape was dreary and tired. Or maybe it was that she knew what lay to the south. Maybe that was coloring her perceptions.
“Clay didn’t talk much about what we’re likely to encounter,” Kenny said. “You might want to prepare yourself.”
Shelby angled herself in the corner of the front seat. She could see out the front window and still easily look at Kenny as they spoke. His tone was earnest and his expression more than a little worried.
“What are we likely to see that we haven’t seen already? Max and I walked from the interchange—burned-out buildings and thugs. It was a mess.”
“I’m sure it was, but that’s sort of the fringe. The real trouble is in the more crowded areas.”
“Can you be a little more specific?” Max asked. “Like you said, it’s better that we’re prepared.”
Kenny glanced left, out the window, and then returned his gaze to Shelby’s. “Bodies—a lot of them.”
“Bodies?”
“The stench is something terrible. Folks have nowhere to bury their dead and no means to do so. Most people living in an apartment don’t own a shovel.”
“So no one is in charge?”
“Some people think they are, and some neighborhoods are better than others. Trash is a problem. When the food that was in the freezers went bad, people just tossed it beside Dumpsters as if someone was going to show up and fetch it for them. Sanitation is a problem. Toilets don’t work. Hospitals…well, most of them had to close their doors because no one came to cover their shift.”
The rain began to patter on the roof, growing increasingly louder as the sky continued to darken. Peering through the windshield, Shelby had a hard time believing it was midmorning.
“Rats, wild dogs, children…that’s probably the worst for me, seeing the children.”
Farmland gave way to urban sprawl. Apartment buildings crowded up against one another, vacant stores offered nothing to buy, and cars were abandoned everywhere. They followed the thoroughfare another mile before Clay turned to the north, away from downtown.
“Most of the roads to the south are blocked,” Kenny explained. “But don’t worry, there’s a way through if you know how to zigzag. At least there was last week.”
TWENTY
Max wanted to speed up. Groups of people were milling around, even in the rain. They seemed impervious to it. Some were on bicycles, others simply stood near the side of the road—waiting, watching. A few sheltered in abandoned cars.
“Are they living there?” Shelby asked.
“On the streets or in the cars?” Kenny leaned forward to see what Shelby was staring at.
“Both.”
“Could be. At first the local authorities tried to offer assistance. They opened up public buildings like the library, the high school gym, that sort of thing.”
“I’m going to guess that didn’t go very well.” Max maneuvered over a railroad track. He glanced to the left, saw a railcar overturned and empty cartons spilled out on the ground. It wasn’t until he was past it, looking in his rearview mirror, that he saw what must have been the conductor—his body hanging half out of one of the cars, half obscured by vultures.
“That’s for sure. The first assault, the first rape, the first murder…the people in charge decided to close it down, or they tried. When that didn’t work, when the people staying there turned on the workers who weren’t getting paid anyway, the authorities abandoned ship.”
“Every man for himself?” Shelby’s voice sounded far away. Her gaze was locked out her side window. Max slowed even further, peered around her, and saw three children, hand in hand, walking down the middle of a side road.
“Should we go back?” His gaze flicked up to the rearview mirror.
Kenny’s gaze met his. One quick shake of the head.
“Explain that to me,” Shelby said. “You’re supposed to be the Remnant. You’re supposed to help people. If you can’t do that, what’s the point in existing?”
“We’re helping you,” Kenny reminded her.
Max noticed that he didn’t sound defensive as much as tired.
Shelby pulled in a sharp breath. “And we appreciate it, but what about all of these people?”
“We help where we can, and we did stop in the beginning—whenever we saw kids or old people—we stopped to see what we could do.” Now it was Kenny’s turn to stare out the window. “We lost three men that way before we decided the risk was too high. Some people pay the kids to do that, to walk around and look lost and alone, whic
h they probably are. But if you pull over, the adults lurking in the background rob you…or worse.”
“You said they pay the kids. With what?” Shelby’s voice was indignant.
Max knew that tone. She’d never been one to stand for social injustice, and this was so much worse than anything they’d faced before. He was surprised she wasn’t trying to hop out of the moving car.
“Food. They pay them with food. Not much I imagine, but it’s something, and before you ask, there is still some food to be had, and more to be stolen.”
Max wanted to speed past the desolation outside their window, but Clay had slowed for the storm, and he was trying to maintain the distance of three cars. He tapped the brakes, and a crowd of people standing at the corner surged toward their vehicle.
He pulled away as one person reached for Shelby’s door handle and another bumped up against his window.
Shelby jumped toward him.
“They’re locked,” he assured her. The windows were rolled up to keep out the rain and the people. The heat created a sauna-like effect. He had to reach forward every few minutes to wipe the condensation from the windows. And he constantly glanced in his rearview mirror. Max knew there was no reason to worry about Patrick, but what they were driving through was off the charts. It was beyond anything he could have imagined.
They could smell the stench of the area even through the closed windows of the Dodge. A pack of dogs pawed through a mountain of trash next to a Dumpster. As they watched, a man joined the dogs, and then another person joined him, and then a kid who couldn’t have been more than ten. Max couldn’t imagine what they expected to find.
“Less fires in this area,” Shelby noted.
“That’s true here, but three blocks that way”—Kenny nodded to the left—“fire took out an entire neighborhood. The only thing that stopped it was a creek on one side and a six-lane road on the other.”
Lightning flashed, the rain increased, and the sky darkened to something resembling twilight. Max didn’t dare reduce his speed any further. He approached a yield sign, checked both ways, though he could see very little, and pulled forward at the exact moment a giraffe stepped in front of the Dodge.
Slamming on his brakes, his right hand shot out across Shelby, who gasped and leaned forward, her nose practically touching the front windshield.
They all three watched in silence as the giraffe ignored them, reached up to pull leaves off an overhanging tree, and then plodded forward down the street.
Max glanced in the rearview mirror. Kenny’s gaze darted toward him and then away. His voice melted into the drumbeat of the rain against their roof and the crash of distant thunder. “Like I said, prepare yourself. The people are hungry, the neighborhoods are a disaster, and the animals? They’re not in the zoo anymore.”
“How did they get out?”
“The prevailing theory is that one of the keepers let them out because he or she didn’t want to see them starve and thought they would be better off fending for themselves.”
“And the other theory?”
“Folks went in thinking they could…harvest them.”
“You mean eat them,” Shelby said.
“It might have worked with the birds or the smaller mammals. The guy I heard it from said that three bodies—or what was left of three bodies—were found outside the lions’ cage.”
“Who would try to eat a lion?” Max asked.
Kenny shrugged. “Story goes that the guy took a handgun with him, but the gun was on the ground outside the cage, and all the bullets were still in the chamber.”
“Sounds like the stuff of urban legends.” Shelby leaned forward to better see out the window.
“Yeah, I would agree, except for that giraffe. The last time we were through, we encountered a hippo. Thing was much faster than you’d expect and bigger. Giant teeth that can cut a person in half faster than…well, you don’t want to know about that.”
They’d driven through a park which was dotted with tents and lean-to shelters. Past that, they abruptly moved into a better neighborhood. A sign at the entrance proclaimed that you could Live at Your Perfect Pace. The houses were farther apart, none of the dwellings were burned, and the owners were doing something with their trash. It certainly wasn’t piling up at the curb.
“These folks look like they’re doing all right.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. It’s hard to know. Most of the homes you see here are occupied. The people inside are locked up tight, and they can afford good locks. Plus they have cameras that weren’t fried because they’re shielded, and backup monitors for what was fried. They have solar panels and generators, and they usually have a handgun that they kept in a safe beside the bed for home protection. Never thought they’d need to use it. Never expected this to happen.”
“So they were better prepared.”
“Some were and some weren’t.”
“How do you know these things?” Shelby asked.
“So far we’ve talked to a maid, a groundskeeper, and a butler.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. Sounds like people who would be working for British aristocracy, not rich Austin families.”
“What else did they tell you?”
“Some of these houses have a lot of food inside. Some…well, they were waiting for the maid to do the shopping, but the maid never came back.”
“How do they keep out the folks we saw back there?”
“They shoot the first one who tries to break in. The hoodlums we saw a few blocks back have easier prey who aren’t so well armed. Why risk it?”
“Until people stop coming through. Until there’s no one left to prey on.”
Clay tapped his brakes twice and turned on his signal as if he were afraid that Max wouldn’t see him. He turned right into what looked like a golf course. No golf carts on the greens. No lights on at the clubhouse. They continued down a winding road and came out at an elementary school.
GT Elementary.
“GT?” Shelby asked.
“Green Tech.”
Clay parked on the side of the school, in front of a fence and a barricade. Max parked behind him, and they waited for Patrick.
“What you saw back there? It’s nothing compared to what this city will look like in six weeks, or six months.” Kenny’s voice was low, solemn. “We’re trying to get as many folks out as possible, before that happens. Before this whole situation breaks down.”
Max glanced up at his rearview mirror and saw Patrick pull in behind them.
“So we’re headed opposite the flow,” Shelby said.
“Pretty much. We haven’t had too many people trying to get inside, and like Clay said…those who have? They were never seen again.”
TWENTY-ONE
Shelby stared out the Dodge window. The rain had not eased at all. If anything, it was pouring harder than before, but they couldn’t exactly wait in their cars for it to stop. And what difference did it really make? Wet, cold, hungry, and tired were all irrelevant. They had to keep going. The other stuff would work itself out.
The group paired up as they walked toward the barricade positioned to the side of the school.
Clay and Bhatti in the front.
Kenny and Jamie next.
Shelby and Bianca in the middle.
Max and Patrick bringing up the rear.
The school did not have cameras, at least not that Shelby could see, and even if it did, they probably were not functioning ones. She had trouble believing that any cameras could survive something that knocked out the entire electrical grid, regardless of what Kenny said about rich people and their resources.
No cameras—but the school did have guards. Shelby didn’t see them, not at first, but she did see two rifle barrels poke up and over a barricade that had been built on the other side of a fence.
Clay barked out, “Micah. Five. Remnant. Clear.”
A ball cap appeared over the top of the barricade, followed by a smiling face. “Figured we mi
ght see you today. Only the fish and the crazies are out.” The woman disappeared and almost immediately the barricade opened up.
She popped through the opening and enfolded Clay in a hug. Stepping back, she said, “Pull your cars inside. Donna doesn’t want any indication that we’re here in case someone happens to pass by.”
So they all walked back to their cars, their clothes now thoroughly soaked, and drove into what looked like a teachers’ parking lot. Only it was surrounded by a fence and blockade and guards.
The barricade closed behind them, and the woman—she was probably in her early thirties, Hispanic, and wearing a raincoat—walked them to a back door.
She did some complicated knock, and Shelby could hear a chain being unlocked and pulled through the handles of the door. Then they stepped into the school.
There must have been summer school classes going on there before the flare. Or maybe, given the high-priced neighborhood, an enrichment program for kids during the summer.
Family trees had been drawn on construction paper, small hands traced on the trees, names crayoned across the hands. Some of the hands were from Manila paper, others from a light tan, and others still from a dark brown. An integrated community—apparently.
They followed the woman in the raincoat down the hall. She took them deeper into the building, which Shelby expected to be dark, dark as a tomb with no light and no windows. It wasn’t though. Soft lighting lined the walkway, like an aisle at a movie theater. They stepped into a large open area, and light filtered down through huge skylights. It must have been something on a sunny day. Today? It lessened the darkness, and that was all.
The large room had sunken areas, like indoor amphitheaters. It had a snack bar, where kids had probably been served popcorn or fruit drinks. It had bathrooms to the left and the right, and it had an open library area on one side with large overstuffed chairs.
Shelby had never taught, but she’d spoken to many groups of schoolchildren about fiction and writing and the importance of doing well in school. She’d probably been to several hundred schools in the last ten years—poor schools and rich schools and everything in between. Her jaw dropped, and she stood staring, frozen in her tracks, until Bianca said, “This doesn’t look anything like the schools in Abney.”
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