The Nuclear Winter

by Brian Thompson

  Man, the guy had to have been through a war or five. Life had dragged the crap out of him from the way his wrinkled brown skin laid across his bones and his gums pulled away from his big yellowed teeth. I’d never seen a person so old and broken down before not even in the hospital. He had to have been born during the Great Depression if not earlier. A hundred years ago wouldn’t have been a stretch. But what did he want with us?

  “Who are you?”

  Old Guy spun my chair around as if I wasn’t in it. I weighed at least one hundred and — how did he do that? He stared at my face from beneath his ball cap and didn’t blink. I caught a whiff of his breath which smelled like strong medicine. Beneath his shirt was a large, pale yellow jewel on a short chain. That was…I couldn’t remember the name for gold beryl, but even money it kept him alive. For some reason, him being so close made me uneasy. Afraid.

  “You knew the rule,” he said to my mother while staring into my face. “You should’ve killed her in utero. No legacies.”

  What? I spat on Old Guy and called him names I’d never regret. He smiled. Of course, he did. What did he care how many multi-syllabic curse words I called him? I struggled to wrangle myself free. The sharp-edged handcuffs wouldn’t budge. Pretty sure my wrists were bloody beneath my bodysuit from all the tugging. Mom needed to kill him for what he’d said about me. If she hesitated, I would.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Old Guy hobbled to a rhythm: the thump of his cane’s brown rubber bottom against the hardwood, quickly followed by the click of his right shoe’s wooden heel and the scrrrch sound of his left foot dragging across the hardwood. Thump, click, scrrrch. He paced between Mom and me. Old Guy’s staggered stride measured a couple seconds which left me a small window to eliminate him. Once my powers returned, if they returned, I couldn’t hesitate.

  My belly trembled from the brief thought of murdering this man. Murder. Not badly injuring or knocking him out so he can later make a full, healthy recovery. I was thinking about separating his soul from his body — literally removing a human life from the planet. Was I crazy? Seriously, I wasn’t a killer. Once we got free, he’d be easy to overpower. I’d do that instead.

  Suddenly, a sharp prick hit my lower back. Too thin and long to be a knife. Cool liquid oozed into my muscle. Warmth flooded my skin, and I shook. What I really wanted was to curl up and fall asleep, which I fought if that was what the shot was designed to do. Moses injected Mom with the same drug. She gritted her teeth and exhaled, but otherwise, she appeared to be normal.

  “An adrenaline suppressor, I’m guessing.” She gasped for breath. “No powers.”

  Meaning it canceled out her boost. Made sense why she wasn’t as affected as me. Her condition made her used to it. “Good thing,” I slurred. I thought he was drugging us for something far worse, like a black-market organ auction, a sex trade, or something. “Why?”

  Old Guy wagged his finger. “Needed you more cooperative.”

  Cooperative? “For what?”

  Nobody answered. I groaned all the cuss words I could string together in one labored breath. “Tell me the truth. Or on my life, I’ll burn this whole place down.”

  He motioned to Moses, who unlatched our cuffs. The padded inside of my gloves were slick with blood and sweat, and I couldn’t wipe them off. We were free! Sort of. Neither of us was in any condition to fight, and Moses could teleport. We’d be swinging at air. And the senior citizen had a gold emerald. All I remembered about those was they granted the wearer an ability. His, obviously, wasn’t teleportation.

  But if he had, say, [XW55]strength, he could end the fight before it got underway. Nothing about his demeanor suggested he’d hesitate to punch a woman or a teenage girl in the mouth. Powerless, my bark was way worse than my bite, and everyone in this room knew that. He ordered Moses to secure the outside perimeter downstairs.

  Moses vanished in a column of gold smoke. The lingering rotten egg smell made me gag again. No amount of hand fanning made the stench go away.

  Still sitting, I rubbed my wrists through the bodysuit armor, and the cuts stung. “Geez. At least your son has manners — ”

  “What?”

  “Moses…Frank. He’s your son, right? Looks like you around the nose. Must get the rest from his momma.”

  Old Guy whirled around and swung his cane like his next move was to brain me. It was the first time I’d gotten a good look at it. There were chips, dents, and flecks of dried blood up and down the black shiny surface. Either he liked to gnaw wood or hit things, or people, hard. At its end was a jewel…a fading green emerald. Uh-oh.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  Spit particles flew from his mouth. “You said something about my son!”

  Arms stretched out, Mom left her chair and positioned herself in front of me. “Swing that cane at either of us, Peters, and your next breath will be your last.”

  She’d never defended me before. For all the times Principal Harris called her about what I’d done in school, she’d immediately blamed me. Yes, I’d done it. Never stopped anyone else’s parents from blindly standing up for them no matter what they were doing. She didn’t do that. Cutting class? She’d believe that. Smoking, too. Defacing property, cussing, sleeping in class, mouthing off, holo-messaging — I’d really done all of that. The only other thing that got her temperature rising was when I got caught kissing Bryce.

  I guess she did love me after all.

  He froze in position like he thought about following through on his threat. To kill or not to kill. Mom could fight, and I could roll out of the way and cheer her on. I guess it depended on how strong he was. From the looks of it, he couldn’t fight a strong wind. But looks could be deceiving, especially with two emeralds, not just one.

  The cane slowly eased down his hand back to its original position in his palm. I breathed again. Mom helped me to a standing position, but I used the chair to bear my weight. I hadn’t been cancer weak in days, but I guessed my time was running out. “What’s your problem?”

  “We used to call them…you…legacies. The children we weren’t supposed to make because of the danger. Every one of you has turned out defective. Jade, Iain, you.”

  His insult stung. Defective?

  “Not defective, Lucy. With problems. His sociopath son was one of them.”

  Okay, I called Moses his son by mistake, and he’s ready to slaughter me, but she calls him a sociopath and he does nothing? “What kind of problems?”

  The words were hard to hear. Other than being crazy, he said his son, Iain, had suffered from multiple sclerosis and Jade had split personalities. And then, there was me. What was my problem? So, I was a little overweight, but who isn’t?

  Oh, right. That.

  Wait a second? I had bone cancer because of my bloodline, and she didn’t want to tell me? All of this was too much to take in. I’d experienced it up close and personal, and I hardly believed it. My flamethrower hands, Mom’s flying and strength — I could be losing my grip on reality. Or, it could all be real, and I lacked the ability to deal with it.

  “I want to go home. Now.”

  “That’s not possible, Lucy.”

  “Fine, Mom. You can stay here. I’ll run away, go into the system, live in a group home or on the street until I die. I’ll figure it out. I’m done.”

  I moved to the door. The steel rectangle didn’t have a handle. Not much use for one, I guessed, when you had a live-in teleporter. I patted the walls to locate a hidden emergency escape and, to the best of my ability, I couldn’t locate one. None of the empty rooms had exits either. I peered through the darkened window, and all I saw were the tops of buildings and an open skyline. We had to be fifty stories in the air. There was no escape.

  “You’re wasting your time,” Old Guy said. “I wouldn’t have gone through all this trouble just to set you free. We need one another.”

  My head dropped to my chest and tears flooded my eyes. “For what, man?”

  Nothing made sense until Mom piec
ed it together. “To find your father.”

  I pounded my fists against the window, and the reinforced glass didn’t budge. He was using me as bait. “Good luck with that. He doesn’t know I exist, and he thinks Mom’s dead.”

  Old Guy grinned. If his teeth weren’t rotten, he either soaked them in mud every night or never brushed them. “That’s what she wanted us to think. He knows she’s alive. He always did. I figure he has a clue you’re around, too.”

  I could only hope.

  Mom’s hands flared at her sides. “I don’t know where he is! I was going home to find out.”

  “He hasn’t been there in years. You don’t follow the news much, do you?”

  Old Guy cast projections of online articles and blogs in front of us. Dozens of them. Each headline told a story of a miraculous, unexplainable event. A three-story office building had caught fire. No casualties. Barely any injuries. A commercial flight had lost both engines and somehow made an emergency landing without incident.

  Explosions, shootouts, robberies, natural disasters — the list continued. No matter the situation, there were minimal losses. The locations were spread across the United States: Washington, Texas, New Orleans, Maine. From the foreign countries, I made out places in Russia, Africa, and South America. No pattern to follow except he stayed away from the northeast or our part of the United States.

  On top of knowing Mom was alive, was he avoiding her on purpose?

  “The entries stopped in 2034,” he said. “Since then, he’s been a phantom.”

  Miraculous saves are what my father did for other people? My thoughts about him were validated. “Where is he now?”

  Old Guy rubbed the stubble sprouting from his chin. “The Carolinas. I have a lead.”

  “Vague much?”

  He limped across the room, his back toward us. “It’s all you need to know. We’re not the only ones after him.”

  My father had an archenemy like in the movies? “Who?” my mother asked him. “The Collective is dead except for you.”

  “People far worse than you thought us to be. Politicians. Military. To them, you’re nuclear deterrents, militaristic weapons: a means to an end.”

  “What’s so wrong with that?”

  “Nothing” — he exploded into a coughing fit — “if [XW56]you’re on the right side.”

  I’d seen my mother be unconvinced a hundred times before. She’d put her hands on her hips and look down although she was barely taller than me. Because Old Guy had a little height, she couldn’t look down at him. Skepticism filled her eyes. “What do you get out of it? No one’s around to pull your strings anymore, and you’re too old for women.”

  “Something,” Old Guy said before snapping his left wrist to chest level. He eyed the large, black timepiece strapped to his arm and frowned. “Perimeter checks take six minutes top to bottom. He’s been gone eight.”

  And? “He had to take a whiz, or he called a girlfriend. Relax.”

  Old Guy called Moses on comms and paused far too long. His wrinkled face tightened with worry. Mom appeared to sense the tension and asked him, “How long does the suppression drug last?”

  “An hour,” he growled. “Too long for what you’re thinking.”

  She rummaged through her backpack and counted the epinephrine shots left. Three. Who knew if one, or even two, could jumpstart her adrenal glands? Getting to Isabella wouldn’t happen anytime soon, and it was not like she could go to the local pharmacy and buy them. I read her nervous movements as she gathered them into her hand. She must be thinking the exact same thing. No powers meant we’re dead. “Give us the antidote then! I know you have one.”

  Old Guy pushed down Mom’s hand holding the syringes. “There is none.”

  His eyes never wavered. Maybe he was telling the truth. After all, if we were bargaining chips to him, what good would we be dead? “Save the shots. We’ve been compromised.” He pointed to the immovable door. “The service elevator is this way.”

  We followed him as he staggered toward the front of the apartment. He leaned forward and forced his shoulder into the metal. The thing buckled in the middle and sounded as if a human-sized sledgehammer had struck it instead of an old man’s bones. There was enough separation between it and the frame for us to squeeze through one at a time. Down the hallway and to the right was the service elevator. The button lit up when I pressed it, but I continued to push it. According to the digital display above it, the elevator had stopped on the twenty-fifth floor. The regular elevator was moving up from floor thirty-three.

  Whoever was in that elevator was going to get to us first. “Stairs?”

  Mom and Old Guy eyed me. I wasn’t stupid. I had seen him walk. We stood a better chance of surviving without him. However, he had information we needed. He must live as well. I stood on my toes and bounced up and down until my calves burned. We were fifty-two stories up according to the bronze plate affixed to the wall. The regular elevator stopped on the forty-first floor. The service elevator was on the thirty-fifth floor.

  “Hey, Old Guy?”

  “Call me Peters.”

  I liked Old Guy better. “Who are these guys? Government? Black Ops military?”

  His eyebrows raised. “Something like that.”

  That didn’t compute. “Wouldn’t they be in the regular elevator and the service elevator? That’s what I’d do.”

  We’d have to take the stairs. And, with a guy this old, nobody would expect us to have gone that way. It made sense, and I wasn’t crazy after all.

  “I can’t go down that many stairs,” he said.

  Circling around to Mom’s back, I unzipped her bag, removed an EpiPen[XW57], and plugged Old Guy Peters in the stomach. His green eyes widened, and he convulsed. A second before I thought he’d drop dead, he put his cane under his arm and took to the exit. We followed him, Mom behind him with me bringing up the rear. He was always a half level in front of Mom and a full one in front of me. The burning in my side was out of control. I’d have to stop in the next couple of steps.

  Mom paused on the landing between floors. She turned and faced me. “Hold on for a minute.”

  Mind racing, I leaned over the curved gray metal bannister and tried to breathe the best I could. My heartbeat pounded in my ears, but I still heard the pained groans in the background followed by the unmistakable snap of bones. From there, I matched Mom’s pace and held my stomach when I passed a lifeless, bloodied body. Moses. Hardly knew the dude, he’d borderline assaulted us, and his death saddened me. Weird. Mom paused before she knelt and grabbed his discarded Ordnance beside a pool of blood. I found a firearm, too.

  “Luciana!” Mom stopped walking and faced me. “Put that down! You’re fourteen years old, and you think I’ll let you shoot at people?”

  I was honest. “You don’t have a choice.”

  Despite her misgivings, she let me keep it. Old Guy Peters exited the stairwell about ten floors too early and waved us through a gray security door he’d smashed open. The gust of frigid wind told me why he’d done it — a parking garage on the tenth floor. Either the people following us hadn’t checked the building’s blueprint before they stormed it, or they were on their way. We trailed him to an old-school black Cougar transport with four doors. He tossed a set of keys to me…keys? How ancient was that thing to work on a key system?

  He snatched the Ordnance from my right hand. “You can drive, right? It’s not a stick.”

  I clutched the keys in my left hand, figuring the long one would start up this steel dinosaur. What was a “stick” anyway? “Totally.”

  “No! She has to finish Gail’s Law, and she doesn’t turn fifteen for another two weeks.”

  I pressed the button on the key until the transport unlocked. Old Guy Peters opened the passenger door behind the driver’s seat. “It’s a dumb law. She’s not a drunk idiot who’ll plow through a group of kids, all right? What, you’d rather have her shooting?”

  He had a point. Who was to say I’d live to
see fifteen anyway?

  Mom circled around to sit next to me in the passenger seat. The way Old Guy Peters collapsed into the leather seat signaled to me that the adrenaline shot was wearing off, and he’d be back to normal speed soon. “Are you lucid?” he asked me from behind.

  “Lucy. Short for Luciana.”

  Once he sufficiently rolled his eyes and sighed, I figured out I’d misinterpreted what he’d said. “Lucid. Clear. In other words, are you going to kill us all driving?”

  “Y-yeah. No, I mean, I’m lucid. Not going to kill us. That’s what I meant. Nope. All clear.”

  He reached his withered hand forward and touched a jagged-looking slot. “Long key goes here. Turn it clockwise. Be gentle. It’s a 2019.”

  I did as he said, and the engine fired up with a thunderous roar. Its powerful hum sounded different than anything I’d ever been inside. Looked different too — the inside was less digital than I was used to. How did I shift into reverse with no touchpad console? The knob near my wrist? If “P” was for “Park,” which is the gear we were in, then “N” was for…

  Mom knocked my hand aside and pulled the knob back to reverse. The transport lurched backward until I stopped it. “Figure it out on the go,” she said. “We’re short on time.”

  I tapped the brake to give myself time to adjust the mirrors, and I backed out of the spot without hitting anything. Proud of myself, I put the knob to “D” and accelerated. The engine’s ample power raged underneath me, and I fought the urge to push it. Instead, I followed the yellow signs painted on the concrete overhangs pointing to the exit. Mom gave me directions. I didn’t need them. My sweaty hands slipped on the wheel, but my other tour guide had given me one direction to follow, and I had to master it.

  I whipped around the first few turns so hard the tires squealed. I slowed down and readjusted my approach. Near the garage’s exit, Old Guy Peters said, “Stop.” I abruptly did it, and we all jerked forward.