Blackout b-1

by Robison Wells

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  THEY ARRIVED IN SAN DIEGO to find the city under a rough lockdown. Aubrey drove through roadblock after roadblock, and though everyone eventually let them pass, she was almost wishing that they wouldn’t. Jack had exchanged enough worried glances with her that she knew he was onto something. Maybe turning themselves in would be the best course of action. They’d be arrested, but they wouldn’t get shot. Hopefully.

  Unless Laura and Dan turned on the military at the roadblocks, which they almost certainly would. They were on the run, trying to do something wrong—Aubrey didn’t know what yet—but it had to be criminal. She’d completely given up on the lie that there was any secret stash of supplies somewhere. Aubrey and Jack were transporting fugitives.

  Aubrey and Jack were fugitives, too. But maybe they could get some leniency. They didn’t know what the others were planning.

  But it would be their word against the army. During a time of war.

  How much longer could they run?

  Laura steered them through the city. Streets were blocked with heavy cement road barricades to prevent cars from going in a straight line, and the skies were patrolled by helicopters. Aubrey’s eyes were getting tired and blurry.

  “Can we pull over, guys?” she asked.

  “We’re not far,” Laura said, “and then we can get out and relax.”

  Aubrey nodded, and tried to keep her eyes on the road. They were going through residential neighborhoods, climbing a hill in the darkness. She couldn’t see much else besides what was right in front of her.

  Jack took her hand. The sky might have been getting lighter in the west. Was it morning already? She needed sleep.

  They continued on a few more blocks, and through another, even tighter roadblock. Laura had the story this time—that she had a grandma up here. Aubrey had no idea if it was true, but Laura gave the name and the soldier waved them through.

  “Okay,” Laura said, sounding plenty awake. “We need to make sure that the site isn’t compromised. Aubrey, can you come with me?”

  “Hey,” Aubrey said sincerely. “I can barely see. I need to close my eyes for a little while.” She pulled the car over to the side of a wooded street.

  That seemed to throw Laura for a loop, but she thought for only a few moments before patting Jack on the shoulder. “You and me, ’kay?”

  Aubrey and Jack kissed, and she was sure he said something to her, but she was too tired to understand the words. As nervous as she was around Dan, she leaned back and closed her eyes. She didn’t dare fall asleep, but she needed her strength. If Dan tried to hurt her, she could disappear, but only if she had the energy.

  “You get tired?” she asked him. “I swear, this virus . . .”

  “I used to. Not so much anymore,” he said. He sounded nervous. “The doctor back at the base gave me some pills.”

  “I wish there were pills for sleepiness.” She opened her eye and looked at him. “I mean, aside from meth or something.”

  He laughed.

  “So you can turn invisible?”

  “I can,” she said. “With limits.”

  “Pretty awesome.”

  “You know what I used to do with it?” She was talking now mostly to keep herself awake.

  “What?”

  “Shoplift. That was my big contribution to society.”

  “Like, steal jewelry?”

  “Nope,” she said, enjoying the reclined seat. “Just crap. Clothes. I stole school supplies, if you can imagine it. Pens. Paper. Notebooks. I always really wanted to have a nice stapler, so I stole one.”

  He laughed. “Rebel.”

  “As bad as they come. Who would have thought we’d end up here?”

  He paused. “Where?”

  “Running from the army,” she said, suddenly a little more alert. He was testing her.

  “What do you think we should do next?” he said. “I mean, I know what Laura thinks. What do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” Aubrey said, shaking her head. “Maybe go to Mexico. Maybe something else.”

  “Don’t you have a family back home?”

  “I have a dad,” she said. “Who sold me and Jack out for beer money. I’m in no hurry to see him.”

  “What about Jack?”

  “He has family. Well, parents.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” Dan said. “I mean, is Jack like family?”

  She paused. She wasn’t expecting that question, especially not from someone like Dan.

  “I . . . I don’t know. I mean, yes, I think. The closest thing I have.” She turned in her seat. “What about you? Family?”

  “My old man was from Denver,” he said. “But he died a couple years ago.” Aubrey had read something like that in Dan’s military file—that he was from Denver.

  “What about your mom?”

  “My mother?” he asked, with a little smile. “Old. I don’t see her much—haven’t seen her in years. She didn’t like the way my dad was raising me.”

  “She in Denver, too?”

  “No,” he said. “Chicago.”

  Aubrey sat upright in her seat.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Haven’t you heard?”

  Dan’s face went pale. “Heard what?”

  “Where’s the smartphone?”

  “Laura took it with her.”

  “You need to find a computer,” Aubrey said, opening the car door. It was dark, and she was incredibly shaky on her feet, but she pointed to the house in front of them. Dan was out the door and at her side, holding her up by the elbow.

  “What happened to Chicago?”

  “It’s not good.”

  Dan almost carried her the remaining steps up the path. The house was completely dark, and as Dan strode forward the cement porch buckled upward, splintering the wooden door in half.

  A man in his underwear ran out into the living room.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Where’s your computer?” Dan demanded.

  “We’re not going to hurt you,” Aubrey said. “Please tell us where it is.”

  “I have cash,” the man said. “Just leave us alone.”

  “Tell us where the computer is,” Dan shouted.

  The man pointed down the hall.

  Dan almost ran, leaving Aubrey to rely on the walls to support herself. She got to the room just as the start-up screen began to glow.

  “It’s not good,” Aubrey said again.

  “It’s the third-biggest city in the country,” he said, seething. “Second-biggest financial district. Second-largest labor pool.”

  “What are you talking about?” Aubrey sat down in a chair behind him. She heard the man in the other room calling the police.

  “Kraft Foods, McDonald’s, Motorola, Sears, United Airlines, Abbott Labs. Railroads. Ports. Tech companies.”

  He opened a browser and began typing into the search bar.

  “It was supposed to be off-limits. It was supposed to be off-limits.”

  The pictures were worse than Aubrey had feared. The entire city was on fire. A thousand columns of smoke all merging into one.

  “That bastard,” Dan seethed, his teeth clenched. “It was supposed to be off-limits.” He smashed his hand into the end table, punching the wood over and over until it had broken and his hand was a mess of blood and cuts.

  He went back to the search engine, his blood dripping on the keyboard. He pulled up a blog.

  It was purple lettering on a pink background: “Susie’s Musings.”

  The posts were all short, and he scrolled through them, his finger leaving a red dribble down the screen.

  “There it is,” he said, leaning back in the chair. “I try to save his worthless life, and this is how he repays me.”

  Aubrey read over Dan’s shoulder.

  User: SusieMusie

  Mood: Pissed off

  Have you ever seen that movie Chicago? Erica = Roxie, and Sara = Velma.
Both should be locked up ASAP. They’re both crazy and they deserve each other. They are a severe, SEVERE pain in my butt.

  He smacked the screen, leaving a handprint. “Seventh word is the target. Eighteenth word is the time frame. Thirty-first word is additional notes. Chicago, ASAP, severe.”

  “What does that mean?” Aubrey said, but Dan was up out of his chair. He pushed past the bewildered man and charged back out the front door. The man tried to grab Aubrey and she disappeared just long enough to slip from his grasp, then reappeared and ran after Dan.

  “Where are they?” Dan said to Aubrey.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Spray that stuff,” he said. “That perfume.”

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  JACK SMELLED IT ALMOST IMMEDIATELY. A strong—a very strong—whiff of Flowerbomb.

  “I’ve got to go,” Jack said, turning away from the rocks that overlooked the Coronado Naval Base.

  “Do you have a count yet?” Laura asked, peering into the darkness.

  “Why are we doing this? I thought we were going for supplies.”

  “We’re doing this first.” She had hold of his wrist.

  “I can smell the perfume,” Jack said. “They need us back there. Didn’t you hear that big crash a couple minutes ago?”

  “What big crash?”

  “We need to check on them,” Jack said, pleading.

  He’d listened to the whole conversation, ever since he heard Aubrey get out of the car. He didn’t want to take any chances, especially leaving Aubrey with Dan.

  “How many boats?” Laura said, squeezing his arm.

  “I don’t know—a hundred. A hundred and fifty.”

  “Count them,” she said.

  “I can count them five minutes from now.”

  Laura got in his face. “You can hear everything going on over there. You tell me why we need to get back.”

  “Because Dan freaked out and someone called the police,” Jack said.

  Laura paused. “Why would he freak out?”

  “Something about Chicago.”

  “Oh, hell.”

  She shoved Jack back onto the rocky outcrop and he landed with a rough thud. His head wound screamed with pain. With all the strength he could muster, he rolled onto his side and moved to his knees. He could hear Laura running, pushing through trees and smashing through a fence that they’d carefully climbed over only minutes earlier.

  He followed, staggering to his feet and pressing one hand to his head as he chased after her.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Dan shouted.

  Aubrey was there. She was breathing hard.

  “Because it was too late.”

  “Too late for what?”

  “Too late to save her.”

  “I’m only in this for her.”

  There was a massive thud, and the sound of cracking wood. Aubrey gasped.

  Jack pushed through the broken fence and saw them in the front yard of a badly damaged house. A man in his underwear was standing in the street. Aubrey was standing away from the fight, and her eyes connected with his. “We have to get out of here. I’m coming to you.”

  She faded from view.

  Laura pointed a finger at Dan. “Alec only followed through on what he’d always promised. You help us or your mother gets it.”

  “Gets it?” Dan said, with an incredulous laugh. The entire lawn, sidewalk, and trees all lifted a foot into the air and collapsed back in a crash. Jack fell on his face, and saw the trees surrounding the house tipping at dangerous angles.

  A siren sounded in the distance. No, it was three.

  Where was Aubrey?

  “My mother ‘gets it’?” Dan said again, walking toward where Laura had fallen. “How dare you? What did she ever—”

  Laura leapt forward, smashing into Dan’s chest, and Jack heard the distinct sound of bones breaking.

  “You’ve never been committed to anything,” Laura spat at his groaning body. “You know how worthless a team is when you have to blackmail your muscle? What did you think would happen when you tried to kill Alec in an avalanche?”

  The ground swelled again, knocking Laura off her feet, and a tree came crashing down, missing her by inches.

  She jumped to her feet.

  “I didn’t try to kill him,” Dan wheezed. “You were supposed to save him. It was your fault.”

  She kicked him, and he screamed as his knee shattered.

  A massive clod of dirt flew from behind her and exploded around her, but she managed to keep her feet.

  “We could have taken it out,” Laura said, pointing toward the bay. “And you had to cry about your mommy.”

  The sirens were getting closer, and were being followed by something louder—something bigger.

  Jack felt himself lifting up, and he turned to see Aubrey reappearing. She had a cut on her cheek.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  They backed away from the fight.

  Three police cars arrived, sirens blazing, and behind them was an armored personnel carrier. It came to a stop and soldiers began pouring out.

  A loudspeaker blared. “Cease and desist. We will use deadly force.”

  Dan was in a crumpled heap, and Laura couldn’t keep her footing with the constant minor earthquakes.

  She threw a punch and it was deflected by a flying paving stone.

  “You want an avalanche?” Dan said.

  And then the earth folded over both of them, like enormous waves, and the entire lot—house and trees and fence and all—sank away down the side of the mountain. Jack jumped back, pulling Aubrey with him, and they watched as the tornado of dirt and wood and stone tumbled to the road below.

  Finally it was over, in a monstrous cloud of dust.

  Aubrey took Jack by the hand, and they stumbled through the remaining yard next to the sinkhole. They reached the street, and the stunned police officers just stared at them.

  “We’d like to turn ourselves in,” Aubrey said.

  FIFTY-NINE

  ALEC SAT IN A MOTEL room across Sinclair Inlet from the Kitsap Naval Base in Washington, an hour from Seattle. From here, he could see the devastation and the navy’s scrambling efforts to get ships out of the narrow inlet and off to sea.

  His team was gone. A suicide mission. It was necessary—and it had been worth it.

  Kitsap had the largest fuel depot of any naval base in the country, a series of fifty-three underground storage tanks spread across the facility. Alec’s team couldn’t hit them all, but he could wreak havoc. Now the base was on fire—huge plumes of black smoke curling up into the early morning air. He didn’t know how long it would go. They’d opened valves—destroyed some—and much of the fuel would have to burn off on its own.

  Alec was no use to them on this mission. He’d planned it, of course, and he’d even assigned a job to himself—a job that he didn’t bother doing. It was nonessential, and it helped them feel a sense of solidarity to make this one final suicide mission. They were all in this together. They’d all taken their deep breaths, they’d all praised their purpose, and they’d all drunk a small toast in honor of this, their final battle.

  They knew what they were getting into. That Alec didn’t die alongside them would never be known to the rest. He was needed for other, bigger things. He didn’t know what yet—he never knew what the ultimate plan was going to be—but he knew the timetable.

  And so he watched Kitsap burn. He expected that soon the entire inlet would be evacuated—it amazed him that a military base of such importance could be surrounded by civilian neighborhoods. But he would wait until he was forced to leave, and he would keep a running mental tally of the ships that he saw leaving their docks. Two aircraft carriers. Four submarines. A missile cruiser. Two destroyers. A handful of other ships that he couldn’t identify. Alec would memorize these ships—memorize the numbers emblazoned across their superstructure—and he would report.

  He’d meet up
with whoever he could contact. He still had a few numbers, even though cell service got worse every day. And he had anonymous email addresses, contacts on the deepnet. He’d tell them what he’d seen, give an accounting of what he’d done, and await orders.

  It had all gone amazingly well. Sixty groups of three. One hundred and eighty teenagers. And they’d brought the world’s grandest superpower to its knees in just over a month.

  Alec took a drink, pouring himself a glass from the same bottle his comrades had used for their final toast.

  He would be a hero.

  SIXTY

  “SIX DAYS, JACK,” AUBREY SAID to the wall. “I hope you don’t mind that I’m still talking to you. It helps me stay sane. It’s nice that they don’t drug the water here. At least, I don’t think they do. I feel like I can still turn invisible, if there was a reason to.”

  She played with the food on her plate. It was chicken and rice, but didn’t look appetizing.

  “Do you think they just put the food from the MRE pouches on a plate? Or does no one in the army know how to cook? Or the navy, or wherever this is. I think it’s the navy.”

  They’d been taken in the back of the armored personnel carrier, with new detonators coded for their ankle bombs. Where they’d gone from there was anyone’s guess. It hadn’t been a very long drive, but the vehicle had been in a warehouse when it opened to let them out. They hadn’t gotten any sunlight.

  That had been the last time they’d held hands.

  “You know what I wish, Jack?” she said, leaning back on her bed and staring at the plain white ceiling. “I wish that I’d said yes. When you asked me to the dance last year. I wish we’d gone, and I wish you’d worn jeans and I’d worn that awful flower-print dress I always wear to church. I should have said yes. I’m sorry.”

  She put the cover back on her food so she wouldn’t have to smell it.

  “I wouldn’t mind having worn some of that Flowerbomb stuff, though. It’s really grown on me.”