Anyone?

by Scott, Angela

  Great. His response didn’t help me at all. “You’re not going to try and convince me you’re a real person?”

  “What would be the point? Anything I do or say can be taken as real or not, depending on what you want to believe. I guess it’s up to you to decide.”

  I let out a frustrated breath and shifted my anxious cat in my arms. “Forget it. It doesn’t matter.” I moved toward the gap, but stopped again. “Please go get some help. I’m not giving up, and I make a horrible survivor, but if I can do it, I know you can. So don’t do anything crazy, okay?”

  He sighed. “I’ll try.”

  “No, like Yoda advised, ‘Do. Or do not. There is no try’, except don’t do the ‘do not’ part, okay?” Just shut up already. I didn’t know what I was saying anymore. Maybe I was losing my mind. I shook the thought off before it took root.

  His lips curled in a semi-grin, then he coughed into his hand and wiped the spit off on his pants. The grin disappeared. “Okay.”

  I tried to shove Callie through the gap first, but she meowed and clawed her way backward, getting as far away from the hole as possible. “Stop it!” I jerked on her leash, but she arched her back, thwarting my efforts. “Fine, I’ll go first.” I’d drag her out if she gave me no other choice.

  I pushed my backpack through the hole, doing my best to get it out of the way so I could crawl though without being hindered. Early afternoon sunlight swallowed my backpack and part of my arm, but in those few seconds the light touched my exposed skin, an intense heat branched out from the tips of my fingers all the way to my shoulder.

  I screamed and yanked my arm inside. A hand to a hot burner, steam raising from a teakettle, touching the metal surface of an iron—none of it compared to the sensation that pricked my skin and heightened my nerves.

  And I hadn’t done anything, but reach outside.

  He knelt next to me and moved to take my hand, but I jerked it away and cradled my seared limb to my chest. “No, don’t touch it!”

  “What did you do?” He tried again to touch my arm, but I shot him a look and he backed off, raising his hands like a white flag.

  “Nothing! Ahh... it hurts!”

  “I won’t touch you, but you’ve got to show me what’s going on so I can help.” He inched closer, but kept his hands up. “I promise. I won’t touch.”

  I eased my arm from the safety of my chest and balanced it in the air, not wanting to bump it against anything. If he touched it, I would kill him, but he didn’t even attempt to grab my shaking arm.

  After a moment, he released his breath and ran into the house. Callie’s leash slipped through my fingers and she took off after him, using my injury to her benefit, but I didn’t care. Good for her. No wonder she didn’t want to go first through the gap in the garage door. She’d be a fried cat right now, if she had.

  The burning pain continued to throb. I tried to replay the scene over in my head: Did I touch the metal garage door? Did the sun reflect off something, intensifying its rays? My mind ran wild searching for logical explanations but ended up settling on “this is impossible,” and “this makes no sense.” No one gets sunburned in seconds. No one. And if the sun was that hot, then the house and everything surrounding it should have gone up in flames, spontaneously combust—but it didn’t. Thank heavens.

  But we didn’t get tornados or electrical storms or bowling ball sized hail either.

  He skipped the two garage steps, jumping over them, and skidded to my side. “Put your arm out.”

  Heck no! “What are you going to do?”

  “It’ll help, I promise.” He held his hand out in front of him, palm up as if waiting for a gift to be placed in it. “Come on, trust me.”

  I took a deep breath, held it, and then laid my arm in his outstretched hand. I bit my lip when my sensitive skin made contact with his, but didn’t yank my arm away. If he had an answer to end my suffering, then I’d play along.

  “This should help.” He used his teeth to unscrew the cap to a bottle of water before pouring the cool liquid over my burns. “How’s that feel?”

  “Better.” Not by much, but it did help some. The fiery feeling seemed to dissipate a little.

  “It’s only a mild burn, no blisters or anything, so that’s good news.”

  “Good news?” My eyes about popped out of my head. “Maybe it is, but how did this even happen in the first place? I got sunburned in less than ten seconds! That’s the opposite of good. It’s bad, very bad.”

  He took a second bottle of water from where he’d tucked it into his waistband and poured its contents over my burn as well. “I gave up trying to make sense of all this weeks ago. Why does the sky sometimes turn green? I have no idea. Why does the temperature drop to near freezing one day and then boiling hot the next? Not a clue. I don’t think we’re supposed to make sense of it. We’re only supposed to try and live through it, somehow.”

  For a minute, I forgot about my arm. He’d said, “We’re only supposed to try and live through it.” I took it as a good sign. Maybe he’d given up on following through with his plan B.

  “So, it’s not hard enough being the only people left, but now Mother Nature is setting out to try and kill us too? That’s not even fair.” I didn’t even care if my statement resembled a toddler’s. None of this was fair.

  What was next, huh? Hurricanes and volcanic eruptions in our land-locked city in the West? This was the kind of thing people wrote best-selling books about, or made millions of dollars on by producing action-packed movies, starring Tom Cruise. This was far-fetched, not real!

  “I agree it’s not fair, but we have to deal with Mother Nature’s tricks anyway. There’s no getting around it.” He poured the last of the water over my arm. “How does it feel now?”

  “Still hurts, but better.”

  “I know you wanted to get away from me and everything, but you’re stuck here for a while. At least until the sun goes down. You can leave later tonight or try again tomorrow. Everything tends to be better the next day, if you think you can wait that long.”

  “I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”

  He stood, held out his hand to me, and helped me to my feet. “I guess not.”

  “What did you mean by the sky turning green? What’s that about?” I followed him back into the house, careful to avoid any specks of sunshine coming through the cracks in the wood or sneaking in through the partially covered windows.

  He shrugged as he went about closing the drapes and twisting the blinds to block the sun. “I haven’t a clue. I’ve only seen it twice so far. Something to add to the ever-growing list of weird things. Nothing surprises me anymore.”

  “But the sun? Have you seen that happen before? And what would I have done if I were outside when it got this hot?” I grabbed a kitchen towel from where it hung over a cabinet door, drenched it with a bottle of water, and wrapped it around my arm. The cool wetness eased the sting of the burn. “I’d end up with third degree burns, or worse.” A minute in the direct sunlight, and I’d have blisters. Ten minutes or more, my skin would be falling from my bones. Or at least, those were the images my mind created. Vivid and frightening.

  “No, I haven’t seen that before. It’s something new.” He leaned against the counter, watching me. “Whatever is happening out there seems to be getting worse too.”

  “Hungry?” He placed a small pot on top of the kerosene camping stove and proceeded to light it. “I’ve got a can of stew if you’re—”

  “No, no stew.” The waxy essence still clung to my mouth from the first time I’d eaten canned stew—Cole’s offering when he’d found me at Rite Aid. Thinking about canned stew brought the tinged taste to memory. Strange this boy would offer me the same thing. “Anything else would be fine though.”

  He nodded, removed a different can from the cupboard, and began the task of heating the small meal over the tiny flame. “If you’re thirsty, there’s soda in the fridge, warm of course, but you can help yourself.”

/>   “The fridge?” I hadn’t dared open it due to my past experiences. Meat, eggs, and cheese did not keep for more than a few days without cooling temps to hold mold and rot at bay. Remembering caused a shiver to snake across my shoulder blades. So nasty. But soda? I’d risk it for that.

  “Yeah, it seemed like a perfect place to store it. Go on. It’s all good.” He stirred the pot with a spoon, clanking it against the sides with each rotation; a small metallic noise to fill the silence.

  I continued to hug my burned arm to my chest, and used my good arm to open the fridge door. No light came on, like it would have under normal circumstances, but the light from candles and lanterns shone on the treasure of flavored goodness inside. I settled on a orange Fanta, hoping that even though the soda was warm it still might live up to the memories of my past—pizza, orange soda, breadsticks, and salad with vinegar-and-oil dressing.

  My stomach growled. Oh, how I miss Tony’s Pizza Pie!

  Would I ever experience normalcy again? Pizza? Cold soda? A simple fridge light?

  “It’s ready.” He motioned to the table, and I squashed my memories, and sat my bottled soda on the flat surface. He waited for me to scoot out one of the chairs before he approached with two steaming bowls, placing one in front of me and the other on the opposite side of the table.

  Instead of sitting down, he went to a cabinet, took down a box of crackers, and grabbed a warm soda for himself from the fridge. Orange, just like mine.

  The hot tomato soup wasn’t pizza, not by a long shot, but it hit the spot and settled the ache of my belly. “Thanks,” I said. “It’s good.”

  “It isn’t much, but it’ll do.” He lifted his spoon to his lips and blew across the surface before placing it in his mouth. His face pinched together, for only a flicker of a moment, and he lowered the spoon.

  “You okay?” He kind of looked like he might throw up.

  He nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just give me a second.” True to his words, it seemed to pass and he smiled at me to ease my worry. “Go on, eat. You’re too skinny.”

  Me, skinny? Maybe, but he obviously hadn’t looked in a mirror lately. I had a good twenty or more pounds on him. He was the one needing to eat.

  “Please.” He motioned to the bowl.

  I slurped my soup from the spoon and drank the warm bubbly soda as though nothing had happened. “What I wouldn’t give for an apple or a piece of bacon right now.” I dipped a cracker into my bowl. “Something fresh and not processed.”

  Normal conversation in an abnormal situation.

  “Everything fresh is dead.” He showed no emotion, a straight-faced fact giver, and took a small sip from his bottle. “All of it.”

  “Yes, I’m totally aware, that’s why I said it, but wouldn’t it be nice if something fresh wasn’t? I could go for a thick piece of homemade bread about now. What about you? What do you miss most?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t miss any one thing over anything else. I pretty much miss it all.”

  I nodded. Now that I thought about it, I pretty much missed it all too. Food. People. Even standing in really long lines or being shoved around on over-crowded school buses. I missed lettuce, peaches, warm showers, indoor plumbing, traffic jams, and barking dogs. All of it. The noise and taste of living. We weren’t living right now. Not really.

  He reached across the table and held out his hand to me. “I’m Dylan.”

  If Cole were here, he’d have pointed out my social foibles with some smartass remark about rudeness and my lack of grace, but since he wasn’t, I took Dylan’s hand and shook it. “Tess.”

  “I wish we could’ve met under better circumstances, Tess,” he said as he released my hand. “But I’m not sure our paths would have crossed any other way.”

  “Yeah, probably not. I’ve never been to Denver.”

  He smiled. “I haven’t been back here since I was a kid. Maybe twelve years ago, I think?”

  I leaned forward. “So, what does it look like between here and Denver?”

  He placed his spoon down next to his bowl. “Looks about the same as it does here, though some places are worse than others.”

  “What did you see?” I scooted forward even more. “Before everything went crazy, I mean?” We had several hours to kill, until the stupid sun and its death rays disappeared from the sky. I might as well try to use the time to cipher useful information from the guy.

  His eyes lowered and the fingers of his right hand traced the checkered pattern of the Formica tabletop. “Everything happened really fast. Probably a lot like what you saw here. It was as if pieces of the sky caught on fire and then came crashing to the ground, destroying everything.”

  Orange and white streaks had tarnished the otherwise clear sky and the ground shook below my feet as Dad rushed me to the bunker. I’d had only moments, seconds really, to take in what was happening—my demolished house, the mushroom clouds of smoke, and the neighbors’ cries. Not enough time to come to any conclusion, but enough to know all hell had broken loose.

  “It seemed to go on forever,” he continued, still tracing the lines in the table, not looking at me at all. “But maybe it only lasted ten or fifteen minutes. I can’t be sure. Most everyone at my college campus panicked and took off running through the snow—some to the dorms, others to the art building or library, but a whole lot more stood in the square, transfixed by the flecks of fire in the sky.”

  He glanced at me, quiet for a moment. “Nowhere was safe, not really, and I think somewhere in my shocked mind that knowledge kept me from standing there. I started running, away from everything and everyone, not sure why exactly. I tossed my backpack on the ground and ran—my track scholarship kicking in, I guess.”

  He shook his head. “Good thing too, because I’d only made it a few miles away when another round hit the campus. The impact knocked me off my feet and sent me flying. Kind of what you’d see in the movies, only it felt like slow motion. Had I stayed with the others, I wouldn’t be here now. Most of the campus disappeared into a crater.”

  Jeez.

  I slipped another cracker into my mouth, chewing slowly, but kept my eyes on him. Dylan’s account held me spellbound. He knew way more than I did.

  “After awhile, things settled down some, no more rocks from the sky, but people were terrified, coming out to the streets or what was left of them, wandering around as if in a daze, unsure what to do or where to even begin. Parents cried and screamed over the tops of everyone else because the elementary school had collapsed. Most houses had crumbled in on themselves and people began digging through the rubble for survivors, but I just climbed to my feet and ran past them all.” His fingers stilled. “I ran. I should have stopped and helped, but the thought didn’t even occur to me.”

  “Maybe you’d suffered a concussion when you fell?” A concussion was possible. He had to have been in shock too. Nobody could think normally in those kinds of situations.

  He shrugged. “Maybe. Still doesn’t make me feel any better about it.”

  “But there were people, right? You saw them? Heard them?”

  He removed the cap from his bottle of soda, placed it on the table but didn’t drink from it. He spun the cap around in circles. “Yeah.”

  “Okay, that’s good. Where did they go? Those people who survived all this have to be somewhere.” I don’t think I could have leaned forward any further. This wasn’t the end of the world—only a temporary setback. People were out there, somewhere. He’d seen them!

  “I have no idea.”

  I slapped the table, rattling the bottles of soda and surprising myself. “You have no idea? How’s that even possible? Where were you?”

  His gaze narrowed, focusing on me. “Where were you?”

  “I was stuck in an underground bunker for the past couple of months, and didn’t get to see anything. Five minutes, maybe, was all I had before my dad shoved me down there. If you feel as though I’m drilling you, I am, because I have a lot of questions and so far I have ver
y few answers.”

  “Consider yourself lucky then, because I saw more than I’d ever want to, and I still don’t know what happened or where everyone went. Not really. Believe it or not, I have questions too.” He ran a quick hand over the top of his beanie. “Only, I don’t think I’ll make it long enough to get any answers.”

  I slumped down in my seat, and sighed. “Don’t say that.”

  “It’s the truth.” He picked up his spoon and attempted a couple of bites, but never placed the spoon in his mouth.

  I contemplated what to do or say. Nothing came to mind that wouldn’t make me look like a real jerk.

  “Stop staring at me like that.” He kept his gaze down while he moved the spoon around in the bowl, so I had no idea how he knew I was watching him.

  “I’m sorry.” I didn’t feel much like eating anymore, but turned my spoon around in my bowl like he did and tried my best not to look at him.

  “I don’t know everything. I wish I did, for you, but I feel like I have a handful of pieces to a puzzle—not nearly enough to make a full picture.”

  “Well, that’s more than I have.” I rested my elbows on the table. “Anything is better than nothing, believe me, so if you have any idea where everyone went, any idea at all, you need to tell me.”

  “But you want hope, right?”

  I dropped my hands in my lap. “Yeah, I do. What’s so wrong with that? Hope is all we have.”

  “So what happens when I can’t give you any?” His dark eyes followed mine, scaring me a little with his intensity.

  “You’ve already given me some by telling me there are people who survived all of this.”

  He shook his head slowly. “Not are, Tess. Were. There were people.”

  Were? What did that even mean? That didn’t even make any sense. “That’s not—”

  He straightened in his chair, leaning slightly toward me, his eyes on mine. “The military swooped in—jeeps, tanks, trucks, hazmat suits—blasting sirens and yelling at everyone to evacuate. At first, I thought them being there was a blessing because of all the looting and fighting going on, but it didn’t take long to realize they weren’t there to bring order.” His Adam’s apple bobbed and fell as he swallowed hard.