The Pulse

by Holly Hook

  Table of Contents

  The Pulse

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Pulse

  (Barren Book One)

  (A Post Apocalyptic Novel)

  By Holly Hook

  Prologue

  Food isn't something you'd expect when you're waiting for someone's last breath.

  But it was there, spread out on the kitchen table as Dad held the front door open for me. He forced a smile and waved me inside the house, the house that I dreaded stepping into with every ounce of my being.

  "Hey, Laney," he said. "Grab a snack."

  The last thing I wanted was a bite to eat. But Dad was waving me towards the food like he was trying to distract me from the obvious.

  Mom.

  The house was quiet and the tiny room she was spending her final days and hours in was exactly four feet and six inches down the hall. The door was open, letting in light from the hallway, but the room was still greenish and sickly from the sun trying to filter in through the thick curtains. It was a joke, trying to keep the sun out when it had already done its damage, first with a strange mole, and then another and another until Mom finally went to the doctor too late.

  She’d spent the last few weeks in the hospital. Today, sometime earlier this morning, she had come home in the ambulance.

  “There are sandwiches here,” Dad said, gesturing again towards the food on the table.

  “I don’t want sandwiches,” I said. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to run. But most of all, I wanted to see Mom.

  Dad stared at me in silence. “Do you want to see her?”

  I knew what the right answer was. “Yes.”

  He motioned for me to follow. I walked over the four feet and six inches and turned the corner to the little room, holding my breath.

  The first thing that caught my eye was the thick curtain and its horrible checkered pattern. Green and light green. It was draped over the window, keeping out the sun. This room used to be a big walk-in closet, but it was the only one we could keep the sun out of and the coolest one of the house. Mom wanted it cool. She was always too hot and this was no exception.

  I stepped inside.

  A small form, a tiny, frail and almost skeletal form, lay in the bed. Mom’s arms were resting on her chest. They had been skinny before. Now they were bones with a skin lining. Veins crisscrossed, purple and ugly.

  Those strange moles had taken over her body and sucked the life out of her.

  There was a chair next to her bed, near where her hand was lying. Dad motioned for me to enter the room and I sat in the chair. Mom’s eyes were closed. Mostly. What I could see was white, milky. Her chest rose and fell, then rose and fell again. Her hair was thin. Graying. For a moment I was convinced this was someone else lying here and they had made a mistake.

  This was someone other than the Mom who had taken me to the park every Saturday up until I started high school and said I was too old for that stuff.

  This wasn’t the Mom who had hugged me when I came home from school crying because Josh had stolen my lunch and I had to go hungry all day.

  This wasn’t the Mom who smiled when she got home late and then took us out for our weekly pizza.

  I breathed in. So did Mom. The air smelled of sunscreen, which I had faithfully worn every day, all day since the doctors told her the news.

  And then she was still.

  I counted.

  Ten seconds.

  Fifteen.

  Dad hung in the doorway. The seconds dragged out, longer and longer, until she took a breath again at twenty-four. Dad had explained to me that Mom might still be able to hear me, but when I opened my mouth to speak, no words came out. Her body was shutting down. I had no sign that she knew I was here, even when I held her hand.

  Mom breathed in again, and again, and then went still.

  I counted again.

  Twenty-five seconds.

  Another breath.

  I squeezed Mom’s hand. It was cold, not like a hand at all. This hand had combed my hair. Picked flowers. Guided me when I learned how to draw cartoon characters off the TV.

  Now those things were painful.

  Agonizing, because they were gone.

  The room closed in. Dad closed the door most of the way. I felt like I was going to suffocate.

  Thirty one seconds.

  Then five.

  Why couldn’t her breaths come evenly? Was this normal when someone—when someone—

  I eyed the veins in Mom’s arm.

  Thirty-nine.

  Ten.

  Her chest fell and the air in the room changed as if someone had stolen the life from it. It was colder. Emptier.

  I counted again. Twenty-five…

  Thirty-two…

  Forty-five…

  Chapter One

  One year later

  It was the last day of my life.

  Well, sort of. Everything that happened after the day of the big field trip really didn't count, because the end of the world does that to you. June second. That was the final date that ever mattered. When there's no civilization left, the calendar means nothing.

  You see, there is a big, big difference between living and surviving. One makes you wonder if it's worth it to go on. One makes you give up your dreams and your hopes, but your fears? You always get to keep those and they grow to take up the voids that hope and love left behind.

  Yes, the last day I lived was June second, the day of the field trip to the Huge Arizona Collider. Mrs. Taney's Physics classes both packed together on the same bus and rode across the Arizona desert to the mine that now housed a multi-million dollar research center that was trying to find dark matter particles. Ghost particles. Something like that.

  The field trip saved my life, by the way.

  There are many times I wished it hadn't, that I had stayed behind at the school and sat in Mr. Lace's detention room, which he opened up on occasion for people who had forgotten their permission slips. I would have signed up to sit there if I had known the Collider was buried in an old mine before I boarded this bus. My agony would have been much shorter.

  "So," David McElroy called from across the bus aisle. "What's this Big Arizona Smasher again?"

  "Collider," Mrs. Taney said from the front of the bus. We rolled over a pothole as the desert rolled by. It looked like an expanse of tan earth with little tufts of green and brown. The fact that we were in the desert meant that, after the apocalypse happened, we wouldn't realize the extent of the damage right away. "How many times do I need to tell you that? The scientists from the university are letting us witness the Huge Arizona Collider, which is in search of some elusive particles that have evaded scientists for decades. We still do not know what most of the universe is made out of."

  Mrs. Taney was an older woman with her hair packed into a tight bun. She was all no-nonsense and you'd better not get caught texting in class. Once, she took David's phone from him used it to demonstrate Newton's first law off the second floor stairwell. He had done everything he could to torment her ever since, including acting like a total idiot when he was really pulling a three point eight GPA. David also had a thing for blaming the way she taught class for his texting. Nothing irritated Mrs. Taney more than having to explain things twice.

  "Collage?" David asked. "You mean, like tho
se pictures people cut out of magazines and put together with glitter glue?"

  Mrs. Taney never got it. "Collider," she said, slapping herself on the forehead. Behind her, the bus driver continued down the desolate road, where more desert waited ahead. He kept his head down like he was dodging a crossfire. The other students sat scattered around the bus. I counted twenty-three of them, including myself. Most of them were from the Science Club, like David, who was the President. There were only a few of us from the Math Team. Me, Alana, and Pepper, who was up near the front with Eric. Mr. Ellis sat right behind the bus driver. He taught Astronomy and went on this trip every year. He looked bored.

  I crossed my legs. I hoped they had a bathroom down in the mine, which was supposed to be several hundred feet underground. Or maybe the thought of being so far under the surface was freaking me out. I'd been claustrophobic for the past year.

  Since...

  "You go, David," I said under my breath. Next to me, Alana Morley smiled. She enjoyed David's revenge as much as I and the rest of the class did.

  David turned to me.

  And grinned.

  An explosion of heat rushed to my face.

  "How's it going, Laney?" he asked.

  "Fine," I managed. David had never really spoken to me before. This was the first time he had done anything besides pass a quiz back to me in class. David was so out of my league, with his class jackets and his perfect body. I was the girl who could fall over in the hallway, pass out, and no one would notice.

  So of course he would talk to me minutes before the world ended.

  But, as I didn't know it at the time, I egged him on. "Keep going," I said. "No teacher deserves it more than she does. Well, maybe except for Mr. Bateson. I don't know if you have him, but he's the one who likes to make people stand in the corner when they talk out of turn."

  "There's something up with the whole science wing," David said. Oh, my god. He was talking to me. We were having a conversation. It was a refreshing breath of air, like the one coming in through the half-open windows.

  "We're almost there," Mrs. Taney shouted from the front of the bus, standing. Her skirt swayed around her. She never liked to say things directly. If she wanted us to quiet down, she would get up in front of the class and say that she was about to start talking, or if she needed us to get our grades up in the class, she would drop a hint that the state was watching the school's scores and was thinking about cutting funding. That was how Mrs. Taney worked. She didn't think we could handle the whole truth or something.

  Unless we had our phones out.

  I had mine safely in my backpack. Dad had told me to keep it with me, though he only called it or left me a text here and there. He was so busy with his meetings, even more now that Mom was gone. Therefore, I usually turned it off later in the day.

  "Almost there," Alana said next to me. "Good. I have to pee."

  "So do I," I said.

  The bus rolled past a gas station called Happy's Gas. We rode for what felt like five more minutes, slowed, and turned down a dirt drive. We rolled up to what looked like a small military base complete with chain link fence. There were two low, gray buildings inside, one of those big yellow industrial tractors parked in the back and a short radio tower. Well, not quite a military base, but a bleak area.

  We stopped at a gate with a guard shack and Mrs. Taney got out, talked to the guy in a booth, and got back on. The gate rolled open and we went through. The guy was reading a magazine. He looked more bored than Mr. Ellis.

  "It feels like we're heading into a prison camp," Alana said.

  "I agree," I told her. "I thought this field trip was supposed to be fun?" Alana had convinced me to go.

  If I had known about the mine...

  The only thing that convinced me that our school hadn't sent us all to some detention center was a colorful sign that read Huge Arizona Collider and Visitor Center. There were a few cars parked in a dusty lot. "I thought this was supposed to be some big thing they spent like, billions on out here?"

  "Maybe the collider was so expensive there was nothing left for the parking lot," Alana said.

  "I'm sure the rest will be cool."

  "Says the math nerd," Alana said.

  "Hey, you're a math nerd too," I reminded her.

  "Sitting with Physics nerds," Alana said.

  "Physics is math," I said. "So maybe they're fellow math nerds."

  "Just with the added bonus of phones falling off stairwells," she corrected.

  "Don't remind me of that," David said as the bus managed to squeeze bounce into a parking spot.

  Mrs. Taney got up and clapped. It was her version of a gavel. "Time is ticking," she said.

  Now that I look back, I realize how ironic that was.

  I got up as Mrs. Taney cleared her throat. The thought of the mine hit me again and my chest constricted.

  "The visitor center has a policy of not allowing backpacks into the area," she said.

  Translation: leave everything on the bus.

  The driver slumped over the steering wheel as we filed off, ready for the a nap. The guy must have gotten up extra early this morning to drive us here, only to sit for however many hours we would be down in this place. I didn't see the entrance to the mine anywhere. I had been expecting a large hole in the ground with a shaky elevator.

  I felt like I was going to throw up.

  "Something wrong?" Alana asked as she stepped off the bus behind me.

  I shook my head. "Everything's cool. Peachy."

  "You get quiet when something's wrong," Alana said. "You never tell anyone what's going on anymore."

  Because I don't want to invite anyone into my world, I thought. It was better if people just stayed out. I didn't want to ruin anyone else's happiness. I didn't want them to see what I'd seen.

  My stomach churned harder as everyone else stepped off the bus. I thought about my backpack and the sketchbook I had left behind, the only source of calm I could manage to draw from anything other than numbers. I scraped my shoes into the uneven ground and faced the building. It was low with narrow windows with a red and white awning. I couldn't find the entrance anywhere and for a few seconds, I had the hope that we had arrived at the wrong place and the whole field trip would have to be canceled. But then I found the door, sunk into an alcove behind a potted plant.

  "Look!" David shouted.

  I looked up.

  Squinted.

  A white glow exploded over the horizon, like a huge star was sailing towards us and ready to crash into our planet. At first I thought the sun had shifted there, this was so bright, but I blinked and came to my senses. This new light grew brighter and brighter over the distant mountains and I had to shield my eyes with my hand to block some of it out.

  Pepper screamed. "Duck!"

  A few people hit the ground, swearing. I caught a glimpse of Pepper's yellow and green yarn hat. The sky brightened. All I could do was stand there and stare the best I could. The new star stayed in place, but the sky around it had become radioactive. It glowed. The whole sky was turning white.

  "Everyone inside!" Mr. Ellis shouted.

  No one was listening. It was panic. Alana grabbed my arm and pulled, but the sight rooted me there.

  And then the light began to fade. Blue returned to the sky as the giant new star calmed down, shrunk, and began to fade. The whole thing had happened over about half a minute.

  "Was that a plane?" I asked Alana.

  It was a stupid question.

  She brought her hand up to her head and squinted at it. "I don't know," she said. "We just saw something, really, really weird."

  Some people murmured. Pepper stood from the dust and blinked. "We're alive?"

  "Of course!" David said, thumping his own chest. "Nothing can destroy the David."

  A few people laughed. All twenty three of us stood there on the dust, watching as the star continued to fade.

  "Was that a supernova?" Mylie from the Science Club asked. "Mr. Ellis
?"

  The teacher pulled at his collar. "We need to start the tour. They're waiting and we're late. We'll discuss this later. Get inside." He looked at Mrs. Taney for help.

  She clapped.

  "Maybe the people inside the building will know. Everyone." She turned to all of us. "The tour starts now."

  But no one was listening. Josh even had the bravery to get out his phone and film the strange day-star.

  "Now," Mrs. Taney ordered.

  People muttered and phones went back into pockets. Josh shook his phone, hit it, and stuffed it back into his pocket. I thought about mine back on the bus, hating that I had left it. I wanted to record the strange star in the sky. I could show Dad when he got back from his business trip.

  Then I remembered.

  We were still going deep underground.

  Mr. Ellis and Mrs. Taney ushered us all inside.

  We stepped into the Visitor Center and into a tight, air-conditioned space that was enough to make my heart start racing. My chest hurt from the stress. My blood pressure must be rising to the point where I would have a huge headache when all of this was over. Stress headaches. It was what Mom used to call them whenever I came home from a bad day at school.

  There was a woman sitting behind the counter and posters on the walls of particles and galaxies. The glass frames all looked sharp and surgical. Mrs. Taney tapped her fingers on the counter and Mr. Ellis waited beside her, hands behind his back.

  "Twenty three kids," she told the receptionist. "How many can go down at once?"

  It was a weird question for her to ask. The woman nodded and typed into a computer. "Step through the archway," she instructed. "The elevator will be ready in just a few minutes. You will need to go down in two groups. The elevator only takes ten at a time."

  "I'll be in group two," I muttered.

  "Huh?" David asked.

  "Nothing," I told him. We were sticking together in a group. I might get to do this field trip with him. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad after all.

  We stepped through the archway and past a couple of vending machines. There were more posters of supernovas and galaxies on the walls here in an effort to make this place seem like less of a prison. It didn't do much good. The narrow windows let in sunlight and they were on either side of us. I still felt like I was trapped in a big metal box in a barren wasteland. They could have at least put the collider near civilization.