Coffee first. Save the world later.
Espresso machines gurgle. Grinders hum. I slurp the poignant aroma and stand in line, humming, swaying to the acoustic music. I’ve never been a Starbucks groupie—the type of girl with long hair, skinny legs, a selfie-fetish, and an addiction to pumpkin spice lattes. I’m the girl who envied the Starbucks groupies and their vast collection of friends, and sat alone in my hole-in-the-wall coffeehouse with a big book and sixteen-ounce cup of coco-nutty coffee.
The café itself was once a house, white and beautiful with a large front porch and old hardwood floors. People crowd the space, all bundled in heavy coats and scarves that unify their bodies into a single, rounded, shapeless type. The women behind me chat about their book-club in deeply southern voices. A heavyset man inspects the display of fudge with his lips pinched into a conflicted grimace.
I’ve missed normal people.
The end of the world has changed a lot, but coffee remains the same. Women are still chatty and fat men still like their sweets. Maybe we stay the same because routine and ignorance keep us safe from what we know will hurt us. Maybe we’re all afraid of the new beginning that follows an end.
Justin, the cute barista with curly hair, calls my name and hands me a paper cup. “Have a nice day,” he says. His words bait a smile to my face.
First sip spreads heat through my core like an internal blanket. I lean against the wall and savor each gulp, the foam, the texture, the bitter aftertaste. Goodbye, damp chill. Hello, comfort.
“Are you crazy?” Jack hisses. He appears in the under-caffeinated sequence, as clandestine as Tom Cruise in any spy movie. His bandaged hand clamps onto my shoulder and drags me out the door.
Dillsboro is blanketed in murk, frozen by the cold front that moved into the valley last night. Clouds clot the sky, bullying the mist. Cars sling rainwater as they swerve past. I fight to keep my coffee from spilling as Jack pulls me across the icy sidewalk, past storefront windows opaque with fog.
“Let go,” I yell and rip my arm from his grasp. “You can’t do this, treat me like I’m your kid.” Coffee steam merges with my ash-white breath as I take another sip. No regrets, here.
“One rule. We have one rule, Julie. Don’t go into stores and businesses unless given permission by Abram or me. You broke the rule!” He slips on an ice patch, and his face turns blood-red, maybe from embarrassment or anger, maybe from a lethal combination of both. “There are cameras everywhere. You could’ve just compromised our location. Do you realize how serious this is?”
I unbutton my jacket to show him the belt of weapons fastened around my waist—handmade grenades, a gun, two knives, mace. “Nash hacked into the store’s security system and turned off the cameras. I made my own bombs. This was a well-thought-out coffee run.”
He bites his bottom lip, choking on stifled laughs. “You made your own bombs?”
“Yes.”
“To go on a coffee mission?”
“I like coffee. And my bombs are awesome.” I flaunt a sip of the latte and twirl past him. “You must feel awful for underestimating your brilliant girlfriend.”
He jogs in front of me and pulls my face into a brief, sweet kiss. “You’re awesome.”
“Flirt.” I swipe the stocking cap off his head and slide it onto mine, and then laugh when he slips again on the slick pavement. “How’d you find me?”
“I saw you through the coffeehouse’s window on my way back from the downtown bar. Went there to watch the news. As of yet, the Feds haven’t released our faces to the public.” He loops an arm around my waist and smirks. “Our lives are so normal.”
To the people driving past in their ice-slinging cars, we’re a couple who probably met as kids at the Baptist church down the street and fell in love, two lovers who’ll stay where they were born and live a blissfully simple life in their home-sweet-home. Wouldn’t that be nice—to close my eyes and exist without thinking about the apocalypse and whether or not my boyfriend will stay alive?
Jack gulps a mouthful of my coffee as we follow train tracks away from town. “Ugh.” He coughs. His face contorts with something close to offense. “What’d you put in the espresso?”
“It’s a latte. I put milk in it.”
“Why the hell would you do an awful thing like that?” He laughs and holds my hand while I balance on a frozen rail. “So this is how it feels…”
“To do what?”
“Be on a date with you. Kissing and coffee are pretty much the definition of a date,” he says with a wink. “Of course, I’d rather take you somewhere super rad, like Budapest or Krakow.” His eyes shimmer with the visage and for a fleeting moment, I can see what he sees, the aged clock tower and cobblestone roads. “You and I sit at an outdoor café in the city square after dark, sipping strong European coffee as street performers twirl fire and stretch accordions. That’s how I would start our relationship, Julie, if the world was bigger than we can touch. I’d give you a memory you’d never forget so even if you decided I wasn’t good enough for your future, you’d still remember me—I would exist in your mind as the man who aced the first date.”
Heat stings my chilly cheeks and makes me sweat. “That’s a nice thought.” But depressing because the world isn’t bigger than I can touch, and Europe is no longer viable. We’re stuck with kisses and coffee on deserted railroad tracks, and twisted, not-normal lives.
“Aren’t dreams supposed to be nice?”
“The nicer a dream, the more hurt it inflicts when it’s proven to be an illusion.” I force away the thought of us at a Hungarian or Polish café, and then jump onto a patch of gravel. Better not to dream too big, hope for too much. Better to be grateful for what’s left and pray it won’t be stolen.
“You’re going to hurt me a lot, then.”
“No, I swear—I’m one of the few people who won’t give you pain. We’ve both been hurt too much to hurt each other.” I stand on my tiptoes and kiss his cheekbone. “Tell me more about your dad. Why are you afraid to see him? What did he do to you?”
Jack shrugs and releases an angst-filled sigh. “Senior year of high school, I came home late after a swim team meet. Dad had locked me out of the house—not unusual of him—so I found the spare key, went inside and found him having sex on the living room couch with a woman I’d never met before.”
“Gosh, I’m sorry.”
“That’s not what sucked.” He pockets his hands, gazes down at the passing wooden slats. “Instead of apologizing for his actions, Dad grabbed a fire iron from the mantel and beat me until I crawled out of the room. Fractured my scapula and thoracic vertebrae, severely bruised my face and back. I didn’t go to school for weeks so … I was kicked off the swim team, failed several exams, and didn’t get to take a girl I liked to the prom.” His focus shifts to the mountains, and his heartthrob voice fades to a haunting whisper. “I’m not afraid of him, Julie. I’m afraid of what I’ll do to him when we get to Albany.”
I swallow the sharp lump in my throat and drift into Jack’s bandaged side. “Is he in your nightmares?” What else can I say—sorry you have a demonic dad or let’s slap him silly? Maybe I should’ve just kissed him and held his hand, not unearth more painful memories.
“Sometimes.” Jack clenches his jaw. “Sometimes he shows up to beat the crap out of me.”
“Not anymore. I’ll blow him to pieces with my bottle bombs. No Mentos in these things.”
He laughs.
****
Cars dot the interstate in steady streams. Road signs rise from civilization, ready to command people who have pretty lives, eat at restaurants, and go to school and work, and then their trendy homes. There’s a shopping mall at the next exit—I’d give a kidney in exchange for a set of impractical clothes and high-end makeup. Have I always been this superficial? Organs are more useful than designer shoes. I should know by now that luxuries won’t save my life any more than they’ll help it.
Metallica music beats, pops, and grinds with such magn
itude it rubs my skin like grains of desert sand tossed up by an aggressive whirlwind. I sink into the vinyl lounge chair and stroke Levi between the ears. He too must hate the music because he emits a grumbling sigh and collapses on the RV’s linoleum floor, paws crossed.
“It’s ruined.” Nash curses and leans back in his seat. He stares at the microscope we salvaged from an abandoned hospital. “My last sample of the virus … it’s ruined.”
“How? What happened?” Tally twists her head to look back at us. She slouches in the driver’s seat, forming an arch that would make Mom give a lecture on posture, self-respect, etiquette and whatever else she could weasel into the talk. “What’d you do?”
“I was performing a viral DNA detection test to better understand the mutated virus’s genetic properties. The solution I was using to break down the viral envelope’s glycoproteins backfired and completely destroyed my sample. Goodbye, weaponized mystery strain.” He ties his long hair into a ponytail and groans. “I wanted to create a vaccination so one day, we might be able to live beyond the dome. Wouldn’t that be nice, to have the whole Earth available to us again?”
“How cute.” Tally snorts. “You actually think we’ll have a life after all this is over.”
“You don’t?”
“The world has ended for us,” she says. “Sure, it will begin again one day in the future, but not for us. We’re like Israelites wandering in the desert—our descendants will reach the Promised Land once we die to pay for our mistakes. Accept your lot, Mr. Optimistic. You won’t be getting anything better.”
“We didn’t cause the apocalypse…”
“But we were too dumb to see it,” she snaps. “That was our mistake.”
Sirens blare in the distance, wailing a tune that turns my stomach to rock. Blue light flickers in the rearview mirror. No escape. Can’t outrun them. They’ve found us.
“It’s the police,” Nash states in an equally unnerving tone. “They want us to pull over.”
“No. If I stop, they’ll recognize us.” Tally looks at me with glassy, red-streaked eyes. A vein bulges on her forehead, pulsing, throbbing. “What should I do?”
There was a sniper on the roof and blood on the sidewalk. A bullet sunk into me, breaking flesh with a sound not unlike the parting of kissed lips. Ice, dark and deadly, crept through my veins until I could see and feel nothing, until the world morphed into shadows.
“Stryker?” Tally slams her fists against the dashboard. She pants, heaves, begs me to take charge, and give her an order. “Should I try to outrun the cop?”
“Give me a second.” My fingertips tingle, and a hollow pressure saturates my brain and chest. Lungs grow still. Heart screeches. I turn in my chair to have a better view of the pursuing car’s boxy outline and the shaded face of whoever sits behind the windshield. This can’t be the end of us.
This isn’t how I choose to die.
“Keep driving.” I snatch our radio from the floorboard and press its microphone to my mouth. “Come in, Headquarters-Actual. This is Niner-Zulu requesting backup. Do you copy? Over.”
“Roger that, Niner-Zulu. What is your situation? Over.”
“Sergeant…” I smear the sweat from my upper lip. “We are currently being pursued by a government-issued vehicle. Awaiting orders. Over.”
“Do you have possible escape routes in sight? Over.”
“Standby.” I scramble into the passenger seat and scan the surrounding stretch of tree-lined asphalt for side roads and exit ramps. Nothing. So unless we somehow manage to swing the RV over the median and outrun the squadron of cops sure to follow, we’re screwed. “Negative.”
“Pull over,” Jack says after a minute of uncertain silence.
“Say again,” I wheeze. Pain ripples down my throat and pools in the pit of my stomach. I brace myself against an armrest and claw at the vinyl to steady my hands.
“Pull over,” Jack repeats. “Do you copy, Niner-Zulu?”
“Wilco. Out.” Acidic tears rush down my cheeks as the death sentence resonates. I clutch our radio to my neck and hyperventilate through gritted teeth. “Do what he said. Pull over.”
“If we stop, we die.” Tally stares at me as if I’m about to hang her from a noose. “The Feds won’t give us a spanking. They’ll exterminate us, tear our bodies to pieces with their machine guns, throw us into gas chambers and fill our lungs with poison…”
“Pull over.” I buckle my seatbelt as if it’ll somehow protect me from the dangers she listed. “Stop whimpering like a baby and follow orders, take the risk. We don’t have another choice.”
Tally grips the neckline of my shirt and yanks me close to her. “I swear … if we die … I’ll blame you.” Her hiss is as poisonous as the daggers in her pupils. She presses the brake, and then slows to a halt on the roadside. “There’s always more than one choice. Always.”
Nash mutters a Catholic prayer when Tally rolls down her window. His words saturate the air with a relentless fear, a surrender to death that plagues me with goosebumps. I unsheathe the gun from my holster and conceal it between my thighs. We won’t be taken—I’ll make sure of it.
A policeman appears outside the RV. He’s middle-aged, handsome, dressed in a standard uniform with the Scavs’ crest ironed onto his right sleeve. “Miss, your license plate is expired.” His dialect is formal and pronounced, similar to my old cell phone’s robotic voice. “May I see your ID and registration papers?” He smiles, but his expression remains glacial and stiff.
Tally removes a wad of documents from the glove compartment. “Here you are, Sir. I’m sorry. I didn’t know my license plate was expired.”
“Where are you headed?”
“Albany,” Nash says. “To visit parents.” Sweat flattens his beard. He taps his foot, writhes in his seat. Mistake. If any of us appear nervous, the cop will become suspicious and make a call to the station, and then he will know who we are and our bluff will be just that, a groundless, hopeful deception.
I cling to Jack’s ID tags and stroke the indented letters until my panic subsides. “We’ll find you a bathroom in a few minutes, Nash,” I say loud enough for the officer to hear. “You could use the RV’s toilet and flush it once we’re hooked up at the campsite.”
“Uh, yeah. My bladder thanks you.” He winks as if saying very clever and teeters into the vehicle’s bathroom. Why doesn’t the cop stop him? Isn’t there a protocol we have to follow?
“You will get a new license plate.” The policeman steps forward until his beak of a nose crosses the windowsill. “You will drive safely. You will not put other citizens in harm’s way.” His lurid eyes are probes, small and enticing, vivid in color. “Understand?”
“I understand,” Tally whispers. “I will get a new license plate and drive safely. I will not put other citizens in harm’s way.” She straightens her back and shifts her focus to the interstate’s yellow strips.
“Good day to you all.” He tips his hat and returns to his car.
“It’s over.” I gasp once the engine rumbles to life. A crushing weight leaves my body. “Tally, we’re okay.” I shake her shoulders, but she doesn’t respond or move. “Tally?”
“I’m fine.” She slaps my hands and leans away from me. Her face is white as a sheet.
****
A severe silence shears the living room when a key clicks into the main lock. I crush myself behind the leather couch, next to Charlie’s bundled frame, and hold my breath as a silhouette moves through the entryway. Floorboards creak. Keys clatter into a metal plate. Light flickers throughout the house, transforming the shadow of a figure into a middle-aged man. He’s an older version of Jack, shorter, but has the same build, mouth, nose, and hair.
His eyes are dull hazel.
Jack emerges from behind the closed door and presses a gun to the man’s temple. “Hey, Dad.” He clicks back the hammer with obvious spite.
Colonel Buchanan snickers. His face crinkles with an offensive sort of humor. “If you’d called to give me
a heads up, I would’ve made dinner or something.”
“We both know you wouldn’t have done crap.” Jack signals for us to leave our hiding places, and then shoves his dad forward. He was right to be afraid of this resentful version of himself—I might be a bit scared of him, too. “I have questions for you.”
Abram and Tally seal the windows with dark fabric and duct tape. Nash and Charlie reinforce the locks. I’m supposed to do something. What was my assignment? Search Colonel Buchanan’s effects for bugs and GPS chips? Monitor the military base’s security feed on Nash’s laptop?
“We could act like civil adults, sit at the kitchen table with a few bottles of beer…”
“If you want to survive the night, you’re going to answer my questions. I’m not bluffing.” Jack binds the colonel’s wrists with a zip tie. He glances at me, and the hate in his eyes dissipates because we both know a righteous monster is a monster just the same.
“This isn’t a good idea, son.”
“Yeah, well, I haven’t had many of those, right, Dad?” Jack gestures to me. “This is my girlfriend, Julie. She’ll be assisting with your interrogation.”
A few months ago, I would’ve been nervous meeting the father of my boyfriend. Heck, I’d probably spend all afternoon fixing my hair and picking the perfect dress. Now the opinions of others hold little importance because when I lost the illusion, I discovered the face behind my mask was one I liked, felt proud to own. Colonel Buchanan doesn’t have to fall in love with me. I have his son’s love, and soon, I’ll have the answers I need to help fix this screwed-up world. Good enough.
Kirk Buchanan snickers. “She’s a little young for you, boy. How old is she, sixteen?”
“Eighteen.”
He crinkles his nose. “You’ve had prettier girlfriends, Jack.”
I slam a knee against his thighs, and then shove him to eyelevel. The sensation of making someone grunt with pain is strange and uncomfortable, like getting legs waxed. But it is necessary to prove I have a voice, I’m a reckon-worthy force—men will not belittle me by attacking my appearance. “Careful. You really don’t want to piss us off, especially me. I might not look like much but if I have to choose between killing you and saving my unit, I’ll kill you without hesitation. Underestimating me was your first mistake. Don’t make another.”
The Vestige Page 18