“They were forcing people to leave and they weren’t kind about it either, yanking them from vehicles and their homes at gunpoint, and giving them no time at all to gather their belongings. They weren’t helping; they were herding. That’s what it seemed like anyway.”
Military people always seemed rather rough. They have to be. “But they took them away from here?”
“Yes... and no.”
He was impossible. “See? That doesn’t help me. Either they did or they didn’t. Tell me which way they went. Did everyone head north to Canada or east toward New York? South maybe? That’s what I need to know.”
He smirked. “No one left Colorado, Tess. That’s what I’m trying to say.”
“You’re confusing me.”
“I’m not meaning to.”
“Then where is everyone? No one is here either! That’s too many people to not be anywhere.” We were going around in circles, and it was driving me crazy.
He slumped back in his chair, glanced at the floor and took a deep breath. His eyes returned to mine, and he finally released the breath he held. “They’re here, Tess. If you look hard enough, you’ll see the graves.”
“They killed everyone?” A load of invisible bricks dangled around my neck and pressed against my chest, heavy and painful. My fingers trembled, and I forced myself to take several deep breathes. Don’t lose it, Tess. Don’t freak out. Not now. Dylan had to be wrong.
“The best way to get everyone out of the area would be by plane, right?” He’d answered my question with a question and waited for me to nod before going on.
Of course, a quick flight to somewhere safe would be the best option since the roads were a tangled mess of rubble, buckled pavement, and debris. It would be the difference between a flight taking a couple of hours versus driving for weeks along a mish-mash of broken highways and back roads.
“Planes came in, Tess. Dozens of them. They dotted the sky like an impressive flock of birds, and for a moment, I wondered if I’d made the wrong decision. Maybe I should have followed the group instead of dodging them.” He sat up straight in the chair and rested his arms on the table. “But when they swooped through the area, over and over, hovering a few miles above everyone, never landing, I knew something wasn’t right.”
“Maybe they couldn’t land.” My brain ran wild, trying to make sense of the insensible. “The roads were a mess, so it’s safe to assume the runways weren’t any better.”
He shook his head “I thought that too, until they started to spray something from the tail of the planes. One plane would fly overhead, drop its load, like crop-dusting a field, and then a second would follow doing the same. One right after another, so quick, dumping it on people, houses, buildings.”
“And you saw this? For real?” I didn’t want to believe what he was saying. How could I? This was nothing but science fiction bullshit. It had to be.
He pushed his chair away from the table, grabbing both his bowl and mine. “You think I’m making this up? Why would I do that?” He strode into the kitchen and dropped both bowls in the sink.
“No, I just... I don’t....” I couldn’t speak clearly because I couldn’t think clearly. “If this is true, then why would they do that?”
“It is true, and I have no idea.” He rested against the counter as if needing a break and stared at me. “The government trying to find an easy solution to a pretty big problem, maybe?”
“And killing everyone is the easiest solution? How’s that a solution at all?”
“Look around us. Look at me!” He motioned to his hat. “I’m sick and dying, so whatever fell from space did more than destroy buildings and wipe out populations of people. It set off some sort of toxic weather-transforming chaos. We’re either breathing it in or it’s seeping in through our skin. Either way, it’s killing us.”
“Toxic?” I shook my head. “Do you mean radiation?”
He shrugged. “If it was radiation, we’d all be dead right now, but something else, something just as harmful, yes.”
I leaned forward. “But I feel fine.”
“You haven’t been exposed as long as I have. For your sake, I hope I’m wrong about all of this.”
For my sake, I hoped he was wrong too, but I didn’t say so.
“Can you imagine if the government had had to care for millions of sick people like me? How would they explain that? How would they even physically do that?”
I shifted sideways in my chair to look at him. “That’s just it, millions of people! We’re not talking about a few thousand, but millions. You can’t kill millions of people and hide that very well.”
“They don’t have to hide it. They evacuated those who weren’t killed in the initial blasts, and then wiped them out. The bodies are there, Tess—all over the west desert.”
“You saw this?”
“Yeah, I did.” He swallowed hard and took in a deep breath. “And I can’t unsee it.”
I didn’t want to believe him, but I did. My stomach tightened, and I leaned back against my chair with my hand pressed against my stomach. This was too much to take in. “What about the rest of the world? Why aren’t they here helping or stopping our government from doing this?”
“I’m sure the rest of the world is too busy handling the fallout in their own way to care what’s happening here or how it’s being dealt with.”
“How big is this?” It was hard to think about other parts of the world going through this same thing. I thought it had only happened here.
“I don’t know, but we can’t have been the only country hit by this, and even if we were, everyone will be looking for a fast way to fix it, even if it’s only to put a Band-Aid over the top.”
I pushed away from the table and stood. “This is completely nuts! I don’t know what you saw, but you’re losing it.” This wasn’t how the government worked, not at all. Okay, maybe a little bit, but not to this extent. Yes, some officials might be shady and corrupt, but murdering people, lots of people, to fix the situation with no one stepping in to stop it? No, not possible.
He shrugged. “Maybe I am, but let me ask you a question?” I didn’t indicate one way or the other, so he must have taken my heated silence as an okay to go on. “Where is the government now?”
I had wondered the same thing for a while, but there was no way I would tell him and feed into his delusions.
“No one is here fixing anything. Doesn’t that seem the least bit weird to you?” He ignored the fact that I hadn’t answered his first question. “I mean, it would be hard to fix this mess, but no one’s doing anything. Remember the Katrina disaster?”
I nodded.
“The government was slow to come to the rescue then, but they did come. We’re talking months now and still there’s no one here attempting to fix anything. No Red Cross. No National Guard. No rescue volunteers. No one. It’s pretty apparent to me they don’t plan to come either, because it’s too dangerous for anyone to be here.”
“But they did come once. You saw them. The planes—”
“And look what they did.” He threw his hands up. “Believe what you want, but I know what I saw.”
“If they were spraying everyone, how did you walk away? How did you end up so lucky?” There were too many loopholes, too much that didn’t fit. Besides, he didn’t think Cole existed, so how much could I really trust anything he said anyway? He wasn’t reliable.
He opened his mouth to answer, but stopped. A puzzled expression creased his forehead and pinched his brows together. He reached up and touched the space below his nose. When he drew his hand back, blood coated his fingertips.
“Lucky?” He shook his head, his eyes widening. His hands quivered. “I’m far from being lucky.”
By the time I crossed the small room to help, two tiny streams of blood ran from both his nostrils, flowed over his lips, and dripped from his chin. So much blood. So fast.
I caught him before he hit the floor.
“Dylan!”
His eyes rolled back, and I held his limp head in my lap.
“Don’t do this.” What do I do? What do I do?
With shaking hands, I grabbed a dirty dishtowel from a hook and pressed it to his face, pushing harder than perhaps I should have. Blood soaked through the material, wetting my fingers, as though the barrier didn’t exist. The cloth wasn’t working and seemed to absorb the blood like a sponge instead of staunching the flow.
I tossed the towel aside—useless thing—and pinched his nostrils closed, trying to remember how Dad used to stop my nose bleeds as a kid. Don’t tip your head back, Tess. Lean forward.
Gurgles rose in the back of his throat, and I rolled him to his side, lifting him slightly, worried he’d choke to death before the bleeding stopped. He coughed several times, splattering blood over the kitchen cabinet and sides of the fridge, but his eyes remained closed and his body heavy in my arms.
“Come on!” My fingers were slick with his blood which made gripping his nostrils difficult, so I switched hands, nearly dropping him on the floor. It seemed like no matter what I tried—pinching his nose, raising his head, rolling him to the side—nothing worked.
A trickle of blood slipped from his ear, oozing from the dark cavern and down over his lobe. A sob shot through my closed lips. No, no, no! This couldn’t be happening.
“Wake up!” I wiped my blood-covered hand on my jeans and pinched his nose with a better grip. Several times, I struggled to get him to sit up. His head flopped backward and his limp body resisted. “You were going to try and get help, remember? No giving up. Please!” Callie meowed from her safe place on the back of the couch, adding to my pleas for Dylan to open his eyes.
Blood ran down his face, his shirt growing thick with it, and both my hands were covered in red nearly to my elbow. “I’ll let you come with me. You can climb a stupid mountain at my side. I changed my mind. We’ll do this together.” Stop bleeding. Come on.
I lowered his head to my lap again, unable to hold his heaviness upright. “Please, Dylan.”
His body shuddered, quaking against mine, mini-seizers, twisting and contorting his features. Then he fell still, his breathing labored.
“We’ll find my dad. He’ll know what to do. I know you think you’ll never find the answers, but we will. We’ll do it together.” My fingers shook as I pinched his nostrils tighter, and rolled his head to the side to allow thick globs to slip from his mouth. “Don’t do this.”
His eyes flew open, but he looked through me. “Go.” One simple word, strained and barely audible. The stream of blood from his ear grew more intense, and the whites of his eyes swirled a deep red as I stared down at him.
I shook my head. “No, we can—”
“Go.”
“I’m not leaving you!”
He coughed and choked up more blood. Crimson tears trickled from the corners of his eyes. “Get out of here, Tess.” His hands trembled.
“I can’t—”
“Now!” He frightened me with his outburst, something I hadn’t expected from him in his weakened state, and my hand fell away from his face. I reached to clasp his nose again, but he batted away my efforts. “Run from here!”
He could hardly move, but he managed to slide to the floor, out of my lap, and squeezed his eyes shut as he whispered, “Go before you can’t.”
I didn’t move.
“Please.”
I scooted backward, away from him, but his blood on the linoleum made getting to my feet difficult, and I struggled to stand. My heart raced, my breath burned in my lungs as I held onto it, afraid to breathe, while I looked at Dylan’s crumpled frame on the floor.
He shook all over; several violent tremors racked his body, before leaving him silent and unmoving.
“Dylan?”
He didn’t respond, but lay face down in his own blood.
I ran from the room, my boots slipping and leaving red streaks in my wake across the linoleum and shag carpet.
Callie shrieked and hissed when I scooped her into my arms, coating her fur in blood. I pressed her to my chest and sprinted for the garage, refusing to glance at Dylan lying there. I couldn’t.
The sun hadn’t quite set, but hung low enough that dark shadows came to life where the light couldn’t reach. Though gambling my own safety, risking a massive sunburn, I couldn’t stay there any longer.
Dylan had told me to run from here, and I had every intention of doing so.
I shoved Callie inside my blood-covered jacket, knelt next to the gap in the garage door, and thrust my hand through the hole.
Only a second.
I yanked it back inside.
No searing pain.
I did it again, leaving it longer, and when nothing happened—the shade saving me—I rolled to my back, and shifted through the opening feet-first.
My backpack remained in the exact spot where I’d left it earlier, though it sat upright instead of on its side as I remembered. But what did it matter? I grabbed it by the straps, threw it over my shoulders, and glanced from side to side. We’ve got to get out of here.
Callie clawed her way up my chest and poked her head out through the opening of my jacket. Her head rested below my chin. She seemed content to stay right there, looking around, and I was grateful I didn’t have to fight her.
Streaks of sunlight danced across the ground, peeking between bent trees and damaged homes. I stuck to the shadows, moving from one dark spot to another, not daring to test out the sun’s strength. Not yet. My arm ached, but in the scheme of things, it meant nothing. It actually felt good to focus on the physical pain, because my mental pain threatened to tear me apart.
I picked up the pace, skipping between buildings, dodging the light.
The very moment the sun slipped beyond the horizon, casting everything in darkness, I held onto the straps of my backpack and started running down the middle of the road. My feet hit the cracked pavement, beating out a painful rhythm that matched my heart. Warm air whipped my hair around my face, and loose strands hung in my eyes.
Tears screwed with my vision, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t know where I was going, but that didn’t matter either. Not now.
After miles of intense sprinting, carrying a heavy backpack on my aching shoulders and with a cat clinging to my shirt for dear life, I dropped to my knees under an elm tree. Lightning had split the large trunk in two and the branches fell in the shape of an M, touching the ground on either side.
Sobs tangled with my jagged breath, and I hit the dead trunk with my fists before pressing my face against the rough surface. Damn it! I wiped at my tears, but only succeeded in smearing Dylan’s blood across my cheeks.
I’d only known of his existence for a little more than a day, and yet, his impact had been huge. His words, his illness... left me reeling.
I allowed the bag to fall from my shoulders, and leaned my back against the trunk of the tree, hugging Callie’s warm little body to me. She didn’t fight me, and I rubbed my wet cheeks against her furry head while I continued to cry. Maybe she’d sensed my need. Whatever caused her to allow my affection, I appreciated it.
Had she rebuked me, I wasn’t sure I could have handled it.
Being alone and afraid really really sucked.
I shuffled along, putting one foot in front of the other. My thoughts rolled around inside my head without latching onto anything for more than a few seconds at a time, which might have been a good thing. The moon lit my way for most of the night, but when it disappeared completely behind dark clouds, I took my first break in hours, and searched through the pockets of my backpack. I knew I’d put a flashlight in there somewhere, but I couldn’t find it. I could have sworn I’d packed it in the same spot as my first-aid kit and knife.
My fingers wrapped around a thick elastic band, something unrecognizable, and I removed the odd item—a headlamp. Ok-ay. I switched the buttons on top and the bright LED lights came to life, forcing me to blink and look away to let my eyes adjust. I don’t remember pack
ing this.
Cole had insisted a headlamp would be the way to go, freeing my hands, but I’d wanted the mini-flashlight instead because the headlamp squeezed my skull. I turned it over several times. No, I hadn’t packed it, but I slipped it on my head anyway and tweaked the beams. Light was light.
The six-foot area around me brightened as I turned my head from one side to the other, taking in my surroundings. Everything looked a lot better in the dark—less depressing. I sighed, but kept the lamp on, the desire to see outweighing the desire to hide from the destruction around me. I’d have to keep in mind the battery life, because this sucker had to get me to Rockport Lodge, and I didn’t know if Cole had packed fresh batteries in his haste to steal my flashlight and replace it with the headlamp.
The tiny beam of light fell on my backpack, hitting it just right, and a brown bottle in the mesh side-pocket gave me pause. What the heck? I knew for a fact I hadn’t put it there. First the headlamp, now this?
Cole had administered the antibiotics for my infection since I had a canny way of forgetting to take my medications. Even though I felt better, he insisted I needed to finish out the regimen to be safe. For once, he’d actually taken the adult approach.
Several pills rattled inside the plastic container, and I whipped my head around, casting light into the darkness.
The reflection made it impossible to see too far into the distance, so I reached up and switched the light off. A few bushes down the block swayed, and my breath caught in my throat. “Cole?”
Both my heart and expectations fell when the light breeze stopped and the bushes stilled. They only moved when the wind blew. Damn.
I wasn’t nuts. He had to have followed me, at least part of the time, because the headlamp and the bottle of antibiotics weren’t in my bag when I’d left him back at the mall. I’d been in such a hurry to get away from him, I hadn’t thought far enough ahead to realize we had split the heavier items—he had the tent, I carried the camp stove; he had the ax, I had the tarp in my pack; he had my antibiotics, I carried his gum. We’d planned to hike to Rockport together, a team, but I’d ruined that by being a stupid teenage girl, determined to prove how right I was.
Anyone? Page 20