by Alex Barnett
Lydia half-threw her body over Ava and the stranger, crouching low on the van's roof. Eric and Emily pulled the other stranger in through the barricade while Andrew and Jill waited to shove the furniture back into place and seal up the hole. For the second time, the night lit up in a pale blue glow, the barely-there whine of the laser weapons unsettling and strange after the thunder of the old-tech rifle.
"Enough, enough, enough! Hit the shield!” Grandpa bellowed. Eric turned and raced for his house, right by the edge of the barricade, and the small clean-burn generator that had been set up right by the storm drain.
“Everyone clear!” he shouted. Emily grabbed the taller stranger’s hand and pulled him away from the barricade, as Grandpa and Jim Perry hustled Lydia, Ava, and the stranger’s brother off the top of the van. Lydia hit the ground with a thud, stumbling forward a few steps. The stranger fell in a heap, and his brother immediately jerked away from Emily.
“Z! I gotcha, I’m right here,” he said urgently, crouching down to grab his brother’s hand.
As soon as they were all clear of the barricade, Eric threw the switch on the generator firing it up with a loud hum. Lydia held her breath as a row of green lights flashed on the front panel, blinking once, twice, and then staying on. An arc of light the same shade of green flashed through the barricade, traveling along yards and yards of wire wound carefully through the furniture, boxes, and sheets of plastic and metal siding that made up the wall between them and the outside world. Sparks hissed and fizzed in some places, bright bursts of blue and yellow, but the wiring seemed to hold the generator’s charge. In seconds, the green glow expanded outwards from the wires, bright in the swiftly deepening darkness, until there was a softly humming wall of pale green light that encased a stretch of their barricade that reached between Eric’s house and Emily’s on the opposite side of the court.
It wasn’t really light, Lydia knew—closer to plasma energy than anything else. Older generations tended to call it a force field, some leftover term from the days before Invasion, when such things were purely fiction. It was one of the oldest post-Invasion techs available, scavenged in the first years after victory had been declared. It was part of the fire suppression systems that all old-style and “classic” houses were fitted with, anything that used wood or plastic instead of synthesized metal. Eric and Jim Perry had spent almost two weeks stripping the apparatus out of the only unoccupied house on Meadowbrook in the early days of summer, and after it was adapted to the barricade, Eric made them all take shelter in Emily’s basement the first time he fired it up. Just in case.
It was meant to be a last resort, an emergency measure—the generator and wiring wasn’t really meant to function the way it had been rigged to. But while it was activated, they had an almost impenetrable shield across the most vulnerable part of their barricade. Lydia held her breath, listening for footsteps on the pavement. They’d put most of the pack of Burnouts down, but she knew there’d been at least a few more. A high pitched whine pierced the night air, followed by a loud thud against the van. Thick bolts of energy like green lightning sparked through the shield’s glow, and Lydia heard the unmistakable sound of a body hitting the ground.
“Mierda!” Ava swore, even as Lydia flinched back.
They drew together, staring at the shield-encased barricade as more Burnouts smacked against the van and the furniture in a frenzy. The shield held every time, repelling the things with a shock strong enough to put them down. Permanently.
"That all of them?" Grandpa demanded.
"Hard to say," Jim Perry said.
Lydia edged closer to Grandpa, peering out into the street through the small gaps in the barricade. The Burnouts were sprawled on the concrete like broken, nightmarish toys, blood streaking the asphalt around them. Those awful, inhuman eyes were fixed straight ahead as the silvery glow of the veins started to dim. Eventually it would fade to dull, gunmetal gray, etched into the Burnouts’ skin like bizarre tattoos. Some were close enough that she could make out facial features as they twitched and jerked, dying the way they should have months ago. She could see one she’d shot, its face ruined and half-blown away. Saliva gathered thick and fast in her mouth, and she turned away before her mind could start matching features to faces, and faces to names.
"Let's go! Everyone move," Grandpa barked. "Every Burnout in the neighborhood heard that! Jim, Eric, I need you up top...everyone else, back to Andrew's place. Move!"
He pulled Lydia to her feet. "Are you okay?" he whispered, gripping her arm tight. Lydia could only nod, her gaze flashing out to the street as Grandpa let go to demand the same thing of Ava.
They ran for the Royce’s house, while Eric and Jim headed for Eric's place. The window of his guest bedroom was their secondary lookout point, providing a decent view of the street below. Eric hit the switch on the generator as he and Jim passed, and the shield died away with another high-pitched whine. A few more wires sparked hard, but the device seemed to shut down without incident.
Lydia and Ava darted into the Royce’s house and were pulled off to one side by Jill Royce, Emily DeSantos, and Iris Perry. The group crowded into the front hall, Andrew slamming the front door and leaning against it, holding the rifle to his chest. Grandpa was right beside him, still holding the laser. They all stood there, panting in the silence of the front hall. Then, almost at the same moment, Andrew and Grandpa whirled around and brought their weapons up at the two strangers, who were half-collapsed against the archway leading to the living room.
"Um....hi?" the taller one offered weakly.
3
"Let me see your hands, right now," said Grandpa, stone cold and glowering. "Who are you?"
The strangers were younger than Lydia thought—the taller one was maybe nineteen or twenty, and his brother couldn’t be more than a year or two older than her and Ava. The older one was good looking in a square jawed All-American kind of way, tall and leanly muscular, with buzzed black hair and smooth, copper-brown skin a few shades darker than Ava’s complexion.
"My name's Caleb," he said calmly. His words had the odd, sing-song accent of the southern areas of the tristate—something that wasn’t quite a Kentucky drawl, or a West Virginia twang. With the accent, and the Buckeyes logo splashed across the stained front of his gray sweatshirt, he had to be an Ohio native. "Caleb Reed. This is my brother, Zack. Look, sir, we don’t want any trouble."
Zack Reed was about the same age as Lydia and Ava. He was several inches shorter than his brother—maybe an inch or two taller than Lydia’s own 5’6”—and not as broad shouldered. His features were sharper than Caleb’s, with a crooked mouth and a tilt to his eyebrows that gave him an inquisitive expression, but there was no mistaking the two were related. He wore a Captain America hoodie that was a couple sizes too large for him, also dirt-and-blood spattered. His hair was a riot of short, tight black twists and weirdly, he was wearing a pair of decent-quality sunglasses.
"Where the hell'd you come from?" Grandpa demanded. Emily and Iris tried to draw the girls away from the confrontation, but Lydia refused to go, fastening her gaze on Grandpa.
"Okay, we were just…man, can we please put the guns away? We were just looking for a place to hole up for the night, okay? Our car’s running low on charge and we stopped a couple blocks over…I was trying to pop a battery off of one of the cars in the street. I made too much noise, or somethin’, and before we knew it, there were Burnouts everywhere!" Caleb's eyes never left the barrel of Grandpa’s weapon. He shifted to one side as he talked, trying to shield his brother with his own body. "I swear we don't want any trouble. We probably would've died if that girl hadn't yelled—I was gonna run right past your place."
Grandpa's gaze flicked to Lydia and Ava at that, and they shrank against each other. Lydia shrugged one shoulder, wincing when she saw the muscle in her grandfather's jaw twitch. There were rules. Things they were supposed to do if they ever saw other survivors, plans brought about by too many reports of looters. Survivors who ha
d gone almost feral. Who would steal from camps of people and leave them with nothing. There were reports of people who had been killed for their food and water.
"They were gonna get run down," Ava said bravely. "I couldn't...Mike, I couldn't just let it happen."
"We're talking about this later," Grandpa warned, before looking back at the boys. “Either of you been exposed?”
Lydia held her breath. No one had been able to find out much about how the Burnouts became what they were before the things had managed to overrun anyone who was trying. There was a technological component to it—that much was obvious from the physical changes. Some kind of nanotechnology, some undiscovered leftover from the Invasion era…at least Lydia hoped so. She didn’t like to think about the possibility that someone could have known about tech that could create a Burnout and not destroyed it. One of the things military scientists had been able to learn was that it took some degree of exposure to a Burnout’s blood to become a Burnout yourself.
Someone who had been attacked by a Burnout...who had been touched by an open wound, or clawed…there was a good chance they were just a ticking time bomb. No one was sure how much exposure was necessary to make someone a Burnout, but no one could afford to take chances anymore. An hour or less, the emergency broadcasts claimed. An hour for someone who had been exposed to start slurring their words, start losing control of their voluntary muscle groups. An hour for a spider’s web of thick, silvery veins to spread across the skin. An hour for a person to cease to be. “Exposed” was just another word for “dead” now.
"No, sir! Your girls saw the closest they got to us. Never touched us!" Caleb said, and it was hard to doubt the sincerity in his voice. Grandpa nodded with a considering look. "Got any weapons on you?"
Caleb hesitated before nodding. The blaster he'd been firing when Lydia had spotted him was tucked into a brown leather holster on his hip. He pulled it out and extended it by the barrel. Mr. Royce lowered his own weapon to take it. As soon as he had it in hand, Grandpa lowered the laser.
Caleb breathed out a sigh of relief, and dropped his hands. When no one objected, he reached over and tapped his brother's wrist. Zack's hands lowered as well. Caleb let the duffle bag slide off his shoulder to hit the floor with a muffled thump.
"I've got a couple other things in there," he said, indicating the bag. "Knives and ammo."
Lydia felt her eyebrows climb towards her hairline at the easy admission, and she exchanged a confused look with Ava. The boys certainly weren't acting like they had any bad intentions. As a matter of fact, they were being awful trusting that no one was going to rob them. Grandpa regarded the two with narrowed, thoughtful eyes.
"All right," Grandpa began. He pinched the bridge of his nose. "You two traveling alone?"
Caleb glanced towards the floor, and his brother frowned briefly. "It's just us," Caleb said finally. Grandpa tilted his head, exchanging a speaking look with Andrew Royce. "Look, we really were just lookin’ for a place to rest a few days." He looked up again, and the hopeful note in his voice was obvious.
"We’re not a bed and breakfast, son," Grandpa said. The words were sharp, gruff...but his voice wasn't nearly as tense as it had been a moment ago. Caleb licked his lips, shaking his head.
"Yeah, no, no I get that, but we can help out. With anything! I can help keep watch. We'll be on our way in no time—as soon as I can make a run out and find a charge for our truck. Just, please? Can we at least stay a couple days?"
Lydia stole another quick look at Ava, raising a questioning eyebrow. Her friend just shrugged. They both knew the others would follow Grandpa’s lead.
“Sir..." Caleb said, before sighing. His shoulders slumped. "We just need a place to sleep."
"They're just kids, Mike," Emily DeSantos murmured. Grandpa looked at Andrew, who shrugged and gave a curt nod.
"You boys seem awfully sure we’re not going to hurt you," he said.
It was Zack who answered, shrugging with a grin that was a little too tense to be careless. "You probably wouldn’t’ve helped us out there just to shoot us in here," he said, speaking up for the first time. He tilted his head thoughtfully. "Unless you've gone cannibal. But I smell food, so I don't think that's likely." There was an odd note in his baritone voice, something that sounded weirdly familiar and unsure at the same time.
"Z!" Caleb elbowed his brother in the ribs.
Grandpa's lips twitched. "No," he said dryly, "so far we've managed to get by on pasta and fruit cocktail."
He passed a hand over his face. "All right...here's how this is gonna work. You're stuck here for tonight, anyway. Tomorrow morning, we'll see if it's even possible for you to go get this truck of yours. You can stay until we work out how to get you moving again...but I'm sorry, kid, we’re going to have to think about whether we can take in extra mouths longer than a couple days. And we are gonna keep you two under guard until we’re sure you’re not gonna Burn. That's the best I can offer."
Caleb looked over at his brother again, who was still staring straight ahead. He took a deep breath, and then nodded. "Fair deal. Thanks."
Grandpa held Caleb's gaze for a moment more, before his face softened. "For tonight—there’s a little bit left over from dinner if you boys are hungry. We're setting up in the living room."
Caleb’s shoulders relaxed. "Thank you," he said. "That would be...really awesome." He stepped closer to his brother and crooked his elbow slightly. "C'mon, man." Zack's hand flailed out to rest on his outstretched arm, and Lydia came to a realization at the same moment Mr. Royce frowned. The sunglasses suddenly made a lot more sense: unless this was all some incredibly elaborate act to catch them off their guard, Zack Reed was blind.
Caleb must have read the realization on their faces. "Yeah, been kind of hard to keep watch at night," he muttered. Behind him, Zack gave a wry smile and plucked the sunglasses off. His eyes were dark brown, but hazy and unfocused, seeming to look at two slightly different points.
"I keep telling him—I'm the brains of this outfit. He’s the brawn," he said.
"Yeah, whatever helps you sleep," Caleb said under his breath. He led his brother towards the living room, one wary eye on Grandpa and Mr. Royce.
Andrew took up a watch position next to the front door, peering out the small windows that framed the door on either side for any activity in the house where Mr. Perry and Mr. Grant were. With nothing else to do, formal introductions were made and Emily immediately descended on the boys. Within minutes, they were both seated on the couch, with plates of food and glasses of water. Lydia and Ava sank down onto seats opposite them, while the adults talked in hushed tones.
It had been almost three months since they'd seen anyone besides the people on Meadowbrook, let alone people near their own age. Despite the fact that there had literally just been a standoff in the front hall with weapons drawn, Lydia was bursting with questions.
"You probably saved our lives, out there," Caleb said suddenly, flashing Ava a wide, grateful smile before going back to devouring his chicken.
"Oh—uh, no problem," Ava answered, sitting back in her chair, legs crossed.
"Not a lot of people would've risked it. Not now," Caleb continued. "I know what they've been saying on the broadcasts. It's hard to trust anyone these days. Thank you. Both of you."
Lydia caught a flash of metal on his wrist as he raised his fork. He was wearing a delicate chain; thin silver links with a crescent moon charm and a couple of silver stars. The bracelet was fastened tightly enough that the charms were pressed right up against his skin. Obviously, it had been made for a much smaller wrist.
Lydia ducked her head. Stories like the one no doubt attached to the bracelet were all too common. "Yeah, well...glad you’re okay," she said politely. He smiled again, and the easy openness of it struck Lydia, seizing her with the sudden certainty that this was Caleb Reed’s true nature. The wariness wasn’t entirely gone from his face, but the lines of his shoulders were loose and relaxed. Her gaze drifted to Zack,
who was eating more slowly—though with no less enthusiasm—scooping careful spoonfuls of the vegetable medley up from the neat pile on his plate.
It was hard to tell with the glasses (and she knew it didn't matter, anyway), but she was struck with the oddest feeling that Zack's eyes were fixed on her.
4
Lydia woke up the next morning to garish, floral wallpaper instead of the lavender walls of her bedroom. She was also clinging to about six inches of a double bed while Ava starfished out over the rest, snoring loudly. She remembered why she wasn’t in her own bed at the same moment Ava shifted in her sleep, drove her knees into the middle of Lydia's back, and sent her tumbling off the bed. She hit the plush cream carpet of the Royce's guest bedroom with a muffled thump, narrowly avoiding the leg of a bedside table.
"Hmm? Wha'zzat?" Ava’s face appeared over the edge of the bed, red creases from the pillowcase standing out on her cheek and drool clinging to the corner of her mouth.
Lydia flipped her off.
"Rude," Ava mumbled, vanishing again. The bed frame creaked as she burrowed back into the pillows. The house was quiet, except for someone humming down the hall towards the kitchen and a quick peek at the window showed the sun was just rising. At least there were no rainclouds.
"C'mon, get up," Lydia said. She rolled to her knees and poked any part of Ava she could reach. Viciously.
"Five more minutes." Ava buried her head under the pillow, and kicked Lydia when she tried to poke her again. No one was calling for them yet, so Lydia didn't put up an argument.