by Alex Mersey
A large sheet of aluminum roofing was caught in the current, bobbing along much slower than he’d feared. The tension in Sean’s gut unwound as he watched it float by, a good meter from Beth’s back, who was the last straggler at a stroke or two behind Alli.
Alli’s piercing cry ripped at his skull, and suddenly her arms were flailing, splashing up the water so he couldn’t see what the hell was happening. Beth lunged for her with a scream.
Sean dived in, striking out past Lynn as she reversed direction. He waved her back. “Stay with Johnnie,” and didn’t look to see if she’d heard. Beth was now entangled with the panicked Alli, he still couldn’t see what caused the alarm, and then they both went under. Shit.
Alli popped up just as he reached the spot, choking and spluttering, splashing wildly. Sean dived deep, the salt water stinging his eyes as he searched for and found the cloudy shadow in the murky depths. Beth was already flapping her way to the surface, but he hooked an arm around her waist just to be sure and floated to the top with her.
She gasped for a breath and croaked, “Alli.”
“I’ve got her!” He crossed the short distance to where Alli was still spluttering and flailing, although less frenzied. Her teeth were chattering. And she had that glassy-eyed feverish look of someone going into shock. What the hell had happened?
He didn’t make Beth’s mistake, trying to restrain a panicked person in the water. “Alli, listen to me. I need you to calm down so I can help you. Can you do that?”
She didn’t acknowledge with words or even a nod, but her eyes were on him and her jerky movements subsided slightly.
Good enough. He waded around Alli so he could wrap his arm around her, jamming her high up on his chest to keep her head above water. She immediately struggled, as if regretting her decision to trust her life to him, but she was low on energy and the weak effort quickly tapered off as he used shallow kicks and his free arm to swim. Beth tagged them, too out of breath to speak, clearly at exhaustion point.
When they reached the shallows, Lynn was there to help. That’s when he noticed the blood spilling from Alli’s thigh to stain the water.
“Lynn,” he said sharply.
“Yeah, I see.”
“I’m okay now, thanks,” Alli said, shivering so hard, her voice quaked. But she extracted herself from their clutches, determined to walk out of the water on her own. “That was so stupid. I thought I felt something bite…” She glanced down with a frown, saw the blood seeping from the ugly gash and her knees buckled.
“Hey, steady there.” Sean caught her, hooked her arm over his shoulder.
Lynn took her other side and between them, they walked Alli to dry ground with Beth stumbling after at their heels. Johnnie sat a little further up, hugging his knees, watching with big eyes. The poor kid looked about as ragged and close to breaking point as the rest of them.
Beth grabbed the First Aid kit from her backpack, ashen-faced as she dropped beside Alli. “How did this happen?”
“I don’t know,” Alli said weakly. “It felt like something bit me.” She looked at Sean with abject terror riding a fresh wave of panic. “Are there things in the river that bite?”
It didn’t take a genius to figure out where her mind had gone. Shark bait.
“No, of course not.” He stepped aside to make room for Lynn, peering over her shoulder. The gash was five inches long and split wide. No teeth marks. “That was a sheet of aluminum roofing in the water,” he told them. “It might have been dragging a cable beneath the water that whipped about in the current.”
Lynn handed Alli a couple of aspirin to chew on while she tore open a packet of bandages and uncapped a tiny bottle of surgical spirits. “This is going to sting, but we have to clean the wound out.”
Beth wrapped her sister in a hug. “It’ll only hurt for a second.”
“Liar,” Alli mumbled, then went rigid as Lynn splashed the spirits directly into the cut. The scream followed like an afterthought.
Sean rubbed his dripping hair out of his face with a shaky hand. He felt worn out, scraped to the bone, and he’d never had a stomach for blood and gore. Alli’s scream was the holy trifecta, stripped his nerves raw.
He left Lynn bandaging the wound and made his way up the dune see what their imminent future held. But the view from the top was no different from when he’d looked out over from the Manhattan side. Mounds of ash and rubble for as far as his eye could see.
- 12 -
Chris
Chris had never suffered from claustrophobia before, but his brain screamed now as they walked the smooth, raised Maglev track. The curved tunnel walls inched closer and the air grew thicker with each endless mile. They were down to the spare glow stick and it was already at half its glow. He didn’t want to think about the stick burning out before they reached the supposed exit hatch. Except for the couple of hours sleep they’d grabbed when the first glow stick had gone out, they’d walked through the night and a big chunk of the day and he was beginning to doubt its existence. Then again, he figured they were barely covering a half mile on the hour. They’d started out at a decent pace, but Williams hadn’t been able to keep it up.
He heard the rattle of the pill bottle at his back. Williams chewing on the pain killers like candy. He didn’t know what to worry about first: the man overdosing and passing out or the Vicodin running out.
He glanced over his shoulder, swinging the glow stick around to shine over Williams. “Should we stop for another rest?”
Williams shook his head. “Keep going, it’s not much farther.”
“That’s what you said an hour ago. And the hour before that and the hour before that and the hour—”
“I get the picture,” Williams grunted.
“Just making sure.” Chris turned forward again, sweeping the glow left to right, eyes scanning for the hatch ladder, another hour, another half-mile.
His biggest challenge wasn’t the distance, it was the never-ending sameness. Nothing to distract his mind from churning in useless circles.
Dad. The power outage at the Shelter, a bunker built to withstand a direct nuclear hit. He couldn’t even be mad at his dad for sending him away into this clusterfuck; he was too worried about how else the Shelter had been compromised
The world out there above them. What was left of it.
His friends from Jordan High. Lucy was travelling Europe for the summer and Jake was at some survival camp in the mountains, but Mike, Terry, he just hoped they’d evacuated the city with their families in time.
Williams. The wheezing sound he made with every other breath. The man needed a doctor. Were there still hospitals out there? Was there still a world?
Mom. The beautiful, enigmatic vision that faded into a gaunt, scooped out shell whenever he thought too hard about her final days. He loved her. Missed her. But most of all, he’d felt disorientated without her, displaced, as if he’d stepped into someone else’s nightmare.
He shook his head clear.
Normal was never coming back.
The nightmare was over, washed out with cold reality. Mom was gone. Aliens had arrived from another star system to crap all over them. This was the new normal.
He nearly pissed himself when a hand slapped down on his shoulder. He spun about, heart racing. Only Williams. Not that the sight of the man was reassuring. Williams looked half dead. Worse. In the green glow, he looked like he’d died and come back as a sweat glistened zombie.
“You need another chocolate break?”
Williams took his hand back. “I didn’t need the last one.”
“Sure you didn’t,” Chris said. “If I were a girl, I’d be rolling my eyes, you know that?”
“If you were a girl, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“Because your stunning good looks would knock her out speechless?” Chris laughed, a hollow sound rung out with weariness. “I hate to be the one to tell you, man, but you’re not looking too hot right now.”
�
��Because a girl would be smart enough to know better,” Williams grunted. “Never stop. Don’t slow down. That way the weakness can’t catch you.”
“You’re the one who stopped me,” Chris reminded him. “To share pearls of wisdom, apparently.”
Williams rubbed his brow, dragged that hand over his jaw and then pointed. “Look.”
Chris looked, had to blink and look again. The steel rung ladder blended into the shadows against the wall, but it was real. “Well, hot damn.”
The tunnel roof was low, only a meter or so above their heads. A short climb. He held the glow stick up to illuminate the mechanism at the top. “There’s some type of crank lever.”
“You’ll probably have to put some muscle into it,” Williams said, breathing hard between his words.
“I’m not as scrawny as I look.” He’d been training with Williams for a year now, mainly self-defense moves, and it was a long-standing bone of contention that Williams could still flip him with little effort.
The ghost of a smile traced the man’s face. “I know.”
Chris handed over the glow stick and shrugged the pack from his back, suddenly eager to get out of this hole.
He hopped down from the track into the wide gap and grabbed onto a ladder rung just above his head. “If I find any little green men crawling around up there, I’m tossing them down for you to take care of.”
Williams was not amused. “Focus, Chris.”
“You’re right.” The ladder rattled as Chris climbed, echoing in the hollow tunnel, but it held steady enough. “It’s all about the giant lizards these days, huh? Leathery hides and indestructible exoskeletons. Dribbling toxic goo and shooting laser fire from their claws.” He shuddered at the image his attempt at humor had conjured and shut up.
This wasn’t an RPG and the reality might just be a million times more horrifying than what any human mind could create. He hadn’t actually been too worried about what waited up there for them, but now he was.
At the top, he hooked one arm around a rung and reached for the rubber-padded handle attached to the underside of the hatch. The Mount Weather extension of the Metro was fairly new and the crank wasn’t as stiff as he’d expected. The hatch cover, about the size of a manhole, slowly inched up as Chris spun the handle, letting in a thin shaft of light and fresh, forest-scented air.
The cover only lifted a couple of inches, then slid sideways with the cranking. The daylight, even dappled as it was from the thick foliage overhead, blurred Chris’s vision with bright, flickering spots as he climbed over the edge onto a blanket of fallen leaves and mossy undergrowth.
He straightened, stood there a long moment while his vision cleared, breathing in a deep lungful of sweet air. Listening to the sounds of insect life, a bird warbling nearby, the brush of a gusty breeze rustling through the velvety pines. No little green men crawling around. No giant lizards either.
What had his dad said? Half the country’s turned to dust.
If that were true—and Chris wasn’t in the habit of doubting dad’s words—but, if that were true, then they’d popped up into a sanctuary of sorts. Williams hadn’t mentioned anything about the emergency exit opening into a secured military area, but wouldn’t that make sense?
That flutter of hope quickly floundered as Chris turned to look at the hatch cover. The topside was made of natural stone. He scuffed his sneaker into the surrounding undergrowth and uncovered a slab of rock that was a perfect match. He couldn’t tell if the rock was a natural formation of this woodland or put there by design, but he figured no one else could, either, when the hatch was seamlessly in place.
Clever, and a lot of effort to go to if the area were already secured.
At least we’re above ground and the world’s still here.
He made his way back down the ladder to where Williams waited in the rail gutter, bent nearly double, an arm crossed over his midriff, elbow propped on the edge of the elevated track.
Williams unbent slowly, too slowly. “How does it look up there?”
“Good. Plenty of trees, a forested area. Nothing out of the ordinary. No sign of carnage, doom or gloom.” Chris hitched the backpack on his shoulder as he studied Williams. “You okay to climb?”
Williams waved him on. “After you.”
“No, after you,” Chris insisted. “I owe you one soft landing and I always pay my debts.”
“You used to be a lot funnier.”
“Oh, so you did notice, all those times you never laughed.”
Williams gave him a look, then turned to the ladder for the hellish climb. Every next rung brought a grunt of pain he couldn’t hide, a short pause to gather another ounce of strength.
Chris fisted his hands at his sides, tension pulling at his neck. He’d always thought of Williams as a bronze statue. The man never showed emotion, never let any sign of weakness slip through his stony expression. And now…Chris knew that the agony he heard was only the tip of the iceberg, the part that had breached and exceeded Williams’ superhuman limit.
After too many painstakingly long minutes, Williams heaved himself over the top and out of sight.
Chris released a shaky breath.
Let’s not do that again.
Ever.
He squirreled up the ladder and did a double-take that nearly cost him his grip on the ladder. “Holy shit.”
The trees, the ground, everything was coated in flaky white. Rays of sun danced off the flakes of ash floating in the breeze like massive dust motes. As if the heavens had opened up and shaken bags of flour down over their small part of the world.
Williams was down on one knee, his face turned into the wind, his gaze trained on the bits of sky that peeked through the white-dusted boughs.
“It wasn’t like this earlier, I swear,” Chris said as he crawled out the hole, breathing in the muck that tickled his throat and itched his eyes.
“You’re sure about that?” Williams said with sharpened urgency.
Chris didn’t need to question it. He felt that urgency, too, all the way to the marrow of his bones. “Hard to miss.”
Some place nearby, upwind, had taken a direct hit within the last few minutes. Had been pulverized, cremated. Like the footage they’d seen on the news. New York. London. Half the country’s turned to ash.
“We need to go. Now.” Williams started to rise, then dropped with a hacking cough. He grabbed his side, choking down the tail end of that cough.
“Jesus…” Chris slung the pack off his back and fumbled with the Velcro straps, rummaged inside for the bottle of water. They’d rationed carefully, but there was still only a sip or two left. He ignored the gritty taste in his mouth as he uncapped the bottle and thrust it at Williams.
Williams spluttered around another cough before he managed to drink. His face had a pasty olive sheen that could no longer be blamed on the green tint of the glow stick.
The thick ash they were breathing in probably didn’t help.
Chris reached inside the pack again for a bar of chocolate, anything to soothe the scratch in his throat, and found something better. He ripped open the pack of surgical masks and handed one to Williams with a smirk. “It’s as if they knew.”
“For a viral outbreak,” Williams said thickly, his voice as hoarse as Chris’ throat felt.
They put the masks on, secured by a thin elastic.
Williams did that half cough, half spluttering thing again, then pulled out the Vicodin bottle and shook the last two pills into his palm.
That jittery urgency pulsed through Chris’ veins, got him moving. He replaced the empty water bottle and slung the pack onto his back as he stood, his sweeping gaze hitching on the hatch opening.
Williams had said both the Shelter and Mount Weather ends of the Metro line were sealed from any possible entry, but it still felt wrong leaving the tunnel exposed like this. Chris went to take a closer look, hunkered down in front of the hatch cover. No handle on this side, but when he gave it a hard push, the cover slid
easily across.
“Chris, don’t!” Williams barked.
Too late. The cover popped seamlessly over the hole cut into the slab of rock.
Williams cursed.
Another uncharacteristic dent in the man’s formidable composure.
“What?” Chris scrambled around to look at him, confused.
“That was our fallback plan.” Williams pushed off that knee to his feet. “In case we run into trouble trying to get clear of this area.”
“Sorry, I didn’t realize—”
“Not your fault,” Williams cut through his apology. “I should have said something before. Come on.” He turned his back to the wind and started walking.
Chris followed, furious with himself for botching their escape plan. “I’m sorry, Williams, that was stupid.”
“Don’t beat yourself up about it,” Williams said. “It was a last resort, anyway. There’s nothing down there for us.”
They hadn’t been walking long, maybe half an hour, when the wind died out and the dust settled sufficiently for them to remove the masks. A short while later, Chris pushed out of the tree line onto a yellow-striped country road, Williams lagging a couple of steps behind.
Woodland crushed the lane from both sides, no buildings visible. No cars Chris could see or hear. He picked a direction and kept going. After the head rush of finding their way out of the tunnel, his own energy had dipped to an all-time low beneath the punishing midday heat. His throat was parched and still irritated from the powdery dust.
Williams’ words came back to him with new meaning. Never stop. Don’t slow down. That way the weakness can’t catch you.
“Chris,” Williams called, grinding their procession to a halt. He squinted up into the sun, then pointed to the woodland across the road. “Colorado’s that way.”