The Freeze (Barren Trilogy, Book 3)

by Holly Hook

  “You have to go back, Laney.”

  “I don't want to,” I say. “Life is too hard.” I don't want to leave this place.

  “That's what makes it worth it,” she says, and--

  “Laney! Open your eyes.”

  The world snapped into darkness, throwing me back into some limbo zone. I coughed and it was wet as I gagged up water. There was light, a dim light like someone might have a flashlight nearby. Where was I?

  “Huh?” I asked, sitting up and coughing again.

  “It's me,” Jerome said. “We pulled you out of the water.”

  Somewhere, Alana was crying. She dove down and hugged me, forcing more water out of my lungs.

  It took a second for me to realize where I was. Another tunnel, this one dry and full of people. I spotted Tawna holding her daughter nearby. She still had blood around her shoulder but she smiled. Teddy stood next to her. People clapped as I stared at them, blinking water out of my eyes. I needed a towel.

  “Everyone is out,” the leader man shouted. “We need to keep moving.” He leaned down at me as Alana let me go. “Are you okay to walk?”

  I struggled to make sense of what had happened, what I had seen. This place was a dream and I'd just been yanked from the real world. “Yes,” I said. My body felt strange, like I'd have to learn how to use it again.

  But Jerome...he was so beautiful. He smiled at me, holding back his own tears. We were both dripping with cold water but I didn't care. I hadn't realized what was here the whole time. Jerome and Alana, my two best friends. I was lucky to have people like them, to have survived with them. Many of these others weren't so lucky.

  “Let's go!” the leader shouted, turning away and walking down the tunnel. We were in an abandoned subway tunnel now, complete with tracks. We were closer to the surface. The light bouncing off the rails was brighter, the smells more intense. I could smell the outside, the wintry winds and even the snow. Everything was becoming beautiful in its own way.

  I stood up and let my arms sling over Alana and Jerome.

  Jerome leaned close to me. “We almost lost you, Laney. It took me forever to get the water out of your lungs. The leader man pulled us out just in time.”

  “That's good,” I said. I couldn't even feel terror at the thought of nearly drowning in that tunnel anymore. I didn't want to. This moment with Jerome and Alana was precious and I was going to keep it.

  “You're soaked,” Alana said.

  “I'll dry,” I told her. I couldn't stop thinking about what had happened. Something in me had shifted. Even though I wanted to return to that place, whatever it was, the cage inside me had shattered and lay at my feet, turning to water and flowing away with all the rest.

  I gave Jerome a peck on the cheek.

  He smiled. “Laney!”

  “Hey. I just almost drowned. Maybe I did drown. I think I deserve it.”

  We walked behind the others. The rush of the water from the tunnel below us got fainter and fainter as we left that archway and the ancient stairs behind. I'd entered a new world and I was going to make the best of it.

  “Up here!” the leader man shouted. “There's a way up to the surface. The flooding hasn't reached this area. Careful, everyone. Get indoors as soon as you can to avoid hypothermia.”

  Ahead, light streamed down a stairway and onto an abandoned platform. It was the most beautiful light I'd seen. We'd be heading up into the outside soon, into the danger, but it would be worth it in the end.

  I shivered, but keeping close to Alana and Jerome was helping to warm me up. We were all shuddering together, but it didn't matter. We were together, and we would be for the rest of our lives.

  * * * * *

  We found Alana's grandparents at their Baltimore home. They hadn't left because Alana's grandfather had a bad back and her grandmother couldn't drive because of her vision, but they made us tea and let us snack on some cookies. Oh, and they let us take showers, because water was still running in the Baltimore area.

  Hot showers.

  Alana, Jerome and I had barely made it out of New York City due to the blizzard that came in from the ocean. We'd taken shelter in a looted dollar store until the wind died down enough for us to walk outside. It had given us time to dry and layer up. Then the leader man of our group, it turned out, owned a used car dealership and he let us take one of his cars. After more white-knuckle driving we managed to get out of the city and out of the storm after getting stuck two or three times on street corners. By time we'd taken the car, the snow had stopped coming down and the only road left was tire tracks from brave drivers and taxis.

  Not all of the city had been flooded or we would have been trapped, but I spotted water rising to the top of bridges, flooding subways and gushing out of sewers in places. I was glad when we got out of the city.

  Alana hadn't been happier in weeks. Dad's loss hung overhead and of course I cried, but Jerome and Alana were there every time I did and they made the tears go away every time. I told them what I was feeling and it helped more than I thought. I wasn't in a dark pit of despair anymore, unable to climb out. I knew how to climb and that there was hope for the future. It would take time. I hoped the worst was behind us.

  We stayed in Baltimore for almost a week, sleeping in real beds and enjoying real food. Alana's grandparents froze a lot of food to save on trips to the store so there was plenty to go around. Jerome and I laid on the floor, side by side, thighs touching, and played cards together. For the first time in weeks, we were having real fun and not thinking about death hanging over our heads all the time. I felt like a person again.

  I'd spent the last year in a cage, trying to hide from death, when it was really death that set me free.

  And every day, the sky got brighter. The smog was clearing, even though the emergency radio said that acid rain and the ozone layer would still be problems for the next five to ten years. It was still cold outside, with frost on the ground each morning that got thicker and thicker. Food was still getting scarcer and the guy on the emergency radio even said something about the people of New York setting up a blockade around their city to keep people from coming and going. Things were happening there. Word had gotten out about the real food situation.

  We told Alana's grandparents about our plans to hide out back at the Visitor Center. They were hesitant at first, especially since they had the comforts of home here, but the nearby stores were all empty and the food in their freezer wouldn't last more than another month. They really didn't like the idea of heading down a long ladder.

  “If we go,” her grandfather said from his chair, “We will have no choice but to stay on the top floor of that place where there are no beds and furniture. We are better off here.”

  It took a lot of debating and talking and thinking, but we decided that if we could find a truck—and her grandparents had one they hadn't used in forever—we could take furniture to the Visitor Center and make it more like home, at least on the top floor. The nearby town of Marlon was close now that we had working vehicles. We could take from there. The dust storms had stopped according to the radio and we could do everything at night. Either way, Alana was not going to leave without her grandparents. A place to store food was the most important thing right now and we had to plan for that yesterday.

  Besides, Colton was right there. If it wasn't taken by looters or gangs, or raided by the army yet, it would supply food. And maybe, fish from the river. And it would be warmer, but we had to hurry.

  At last we convinced her grandparents to go. Alana took the car and drove them, Jerome and I the truck (after we jumped it, of course.)

  It was a long drive back across the country. The freeways were still lined with accidents as we drove farther and farther into more barren areas. There were people out here, driving west along with us, but it seemed like more were staying. We stopped every thirty miles to let Alana’s grandfather out to walk and loosen up his back, so that slowed us down, but Jerome and I played corny music from the truck’s
CD player. Many of the bodies had been cleaned from the side of the road now, claimed by family or maybe by surviving animals. Or we just couldn’t see them because we were driving at night.

  During the days, we took shelter in abandoned hotels, most of which were broken into and full of people who were cooperating and not trying to kill each other. We all had to cram into one room, which limited the time Jerome and I could spend together, but we had to leave as much space as we could for others. The panic seemed to be dying down and people were getting used to a new reality. Some sense of order was following. Somewhere at a Kansas motel, a guy even got out a grill and started grilling frozen burger patties he’d found in a deep freezer for everyone. Someone else had brought a portable radio and played a collection of old pop hits.

  Things weren’t too bad. For the first time in forever, I was actually happy to be alive. Now I understood why Mina had gone through such a change when I pulled her out of the dust storm. Life was precious and more people were realizing that.

  And now that there were more people over here, the Davids seemed to be getting away with less. By time we crossed into Oklahoma, Jerome made a good point.

  “We haven’t seen any violence lately,” he said, craning his neck to look at a rest area that still had some bodies around it. “I think things are settling down and people are finding places.”

  “That’s good,” I said, eyeing the horizon where the sun was starting to show its first glow. The world was getting less dark. It was still terrible at times—a lot of times—but I was noticing that the waves of pain were getting shorter and weaker. We had fought to survive and now we deserved to live. The cage was gone, even if the danger wasn’t, but we had a plan.

  A lot of people had stopped in Flagstaff. We passed that the next night and stopped at a gas station there to let Alana’s grandfather walk around. The air was a bit less chilly, like the coming winter had pushed all the warm air here. The smell of death lingered, but it was slightly less horrible than it had been before. The air here was dry and maybe the worst of the decay was over.

  Still, we weren’t venturing into the city, even if other people had. The lights from smaller fires lit up the night in the distance. This wasn’t the place to stay, either. People were already taking the goods from the bigger towns and cities.

  We reached Colton two hours before daybreak.

  There was no one here. At least, there seemed to be no one as we pulled across the town limits and went over the bridge to the river. The houses were all dark and there was no sign of habitation anywhere, even though there were still misshapen lumps on the side of some streets along with open car doors. The smell was still terrible in places, but it was spottier now. Things were beginning to clear.

  Alana drove ahead of me and Jerome. We slowed by the market, but the windows remained intact. Only the door was broken from where we had looted before.

  “It looks like the army hasn’t reached these little towns yet,” Jerome said. “They’re probably not worth coming to. That means there’s more for us.” He smiled at me in the dark.

  I smiled back.

  There was hope and this time, I was going to hold onto it.

  “There are peoples’ houses, too,” I said. “And we don’t have David here anymore.” There was no chance he could have survived that flooding. “I think we can stay here for the night. Maybe Colton will get overlooked and we can stay here for a while. We might not have to go down in that mine after all.”

  “Laney, that’s a great idea,” Jerome said. “I’ve always complained about Colton being in the middle of nowhere, but I’m not going to do that now. As long as the dust storms don’t come back.”

  I rolled down the window and stuck my hand out into the night. There was no sign of that horrible wind. The storms, at least, seemed to have stopped for now and we could find another emergency radio. As long as we avoided the high school for a long, long time we might be fine. There was death here, but there was also safety and hope. We had beds. We could arm ourselves and if the others ever got here and we knew to stay out of the sun for at least the next few years. There were other towns around we could raid. It wasn’t like we had to walk now. The truck would help.

  We all stayed in Alana’s house that night and let her grandparents take the bed. There were tears shed once they got in the door and Jerome and I stood outside and let them come to terms. After that, Jerome and I took the floor to give everyone else good places to sleep.

  The next day, the sky was less brown.

  And the day after that, even less so. I even saw some peeks of blue when I looked out the window that second morning after returning to Colton.

  The world was healing. Little by little, but places were starting to fix themselves. The sun was still dangerous according to Mr. Doomsayer and would be for a few more years, but maybe, if we played this right, we’d make it.

  Jerome and Alana and I raided houses during the night, taking any canned goods and bottled water we could find. We soon had a stockpile of food in the kitchen and Alana’s garage. Raiding houses wasn’t as bad as I thought. Not many people had been home in the middle of the day when the pulse hit but you could tell which places to avoid for a long time. And there was food, a lot of hidden food everywhere.

  And on the sixth day, or night, Gina and Christina and Jasmine rolled into town in a hippie van with flowers painted on the side. At first Jerome and I stared outside at the monstrosity coming down the street, but we both smiled when we saw Gina leaning out of the drivers’ seat, waving to us with a huge smile. She’d seen the vehicles parked out in front of Alana’s and figured it out.

  “Check out this really sexy ride!” Gina yelled. “Some old couple abandoned it on the side of the freeway. We brought lots of food! Wow, I’m glad we decided to stop here first. I was hoping you changed your mind and decided that the Visitor Center was a sucky idea. And I brought my aunt. Christina and Jasmine’s relatives left home so we don’t know where they are.”

  “That’s great!” I shouted, running out the front door. Gina had made it and I was happy.

  We all had a good time that night, playing board games and snacking, and better yet, there was no dust storm blasting against Alana’s house. I still hadn’t gone back to mine yet. It would stay empty until I could face it and the hotel brochure still sitting there. That would take a while, but that time would come. I was talking to people. Connecting. Not missing a thing. Meanwhile, Tony and Mina were still out there in Maine, probably with his grandmother. I hoped. Soon, they might make it here as well. I hoped that wherever they were riding this out that they would be fine. Every few days, we'd drive out and check the Visitor Center for them just in case. Whether they made it here or not was out of our control and I had to tell myself that. Life was unpredictable but it was ours.

  We would make it.

  I had hope.

  Thank you for sticking with me this far! This was my first post-apocalyptic series and it was certainly intense to write. If you want to follow me and know when I release my next series, and also when I have something cool like a free book or sale, be sure to sign up HERE for the latest news. You also just might get some free stuff just by signing up...and you can also visit my website at www.hollyhookauthor.com to contact me or see my other titles!

  --Holly Hook

  www.hollyhookauthor.com/books

  Holly Hook is the author of several Young Adult fantasy, science fiction, fairytale, post-apocalyptic and adventure series. She has been writing since very young and publishing her work since September of 2010.

  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  The Freeze

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twel
ve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  End