Half Lives

by Sara Grant

  Chapter Twelve

  At first our pace was slow, and then I looked in the car windows. I didn’t mean to, but they were a few feet away and curiosity got the better of me. Maybe I wanted to check for myself. It was completely illogical, but a part of me was clinging to the tiniest shred of hope that this wasn’t for real. I still wanted to believe that terrorists hadn’t unleashed some horrible ripple that was spreading and killing quicker than the speed of a tweet.

  The people in some cars looked fine, except for panicked expressions and their inability to turn their heads and look at us. They were as afraid of us as we were of them. In other cars, I saw people with skin of a pale-greenish colour. Others had blotches and splotches that looked like the combination of a bruise and a blister. I saw one guy vomit, just spew right over the dashboard and coat the windscreen. I gagged and then started running along the roadside. These people were dying. They were only a few feet away from me, and they looked dead already. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. I knew it was happening, but actually seeing the effects of this deadly virus made it even more unbelievable somehow. Panic is not an intense enough word for what I was feeling. Panic times infinity to the power of infinity. I wanted to get as far away from what was left of humanity as fast as possible. Marissa and Tate were soon keeping pace at my heels.

  All doubt about what to do vanished. I channelled my fear into action and ran. I spotted a path that looked as if it might have once been used as a road. I pointed and tore off down the path. Sweat was washing down my body and I was slip-sliding in my flip-flops. When the cars behind me blurred into the landscape, I skidded to a stop. I hunched over and panted for air. Marissa and Tate caught up. Neither of them looked as near to collapse as I felt. This running stuff was easier for a cheer athlete and a hyper pre-teen.

  ‘Take it easy, Icie,’ Marissa said. She rubbed my back but her touch felt icky and contaminated. I ducked from her hand. ‘I got heat stroke one summer at cheer camp. It’s nasty. I think we should take a second and prepare for our hike.’

  Marissa made us cover our heads. At the airport, she’d pinched two baseball caps with the words ‘Grand Canyon’ stitched in rainbow thread. I found my favourite black hat in my backpack. It had the silhouette of Jaws and the line ‘You’re gonna need a bigger boat’ embroidered on it. Marissa slathered us with lotion which she pulled from her massive handbag. It was an expensive face moisturizer but the label said it had some sort of protection from the desert sun’s harsh rays. I traded my flip-flops for my grubby old tennis shoes that were stuffed at the bottom of my backpack. While rummaging through, I spotted Nutri-power Bars, a flashlight, vitamins and a first-aid kit. From my quick inventory, it appeared that my parents had included the main stuff I’d need to survive. I sent them a silent thank you and a wish to see them again soon.

  As soon as we were protected from the sun, I took off. I was doing this race-walk thingy. Mum and I had made fun of the momodels at the Mother–Daughter Breast Cancer 10K for doing exactly what I was doing. ‘Momodels’ is what we called the women with faces plastered with make-up, wearing matching workout wear and doing this wiggle walk. The memory triggered a slight smile and a hollowness in my heart.

  The heat was like a fist shoving me into the hard, rocky ground. We walked in a blessed silence. Then, for no reason I could discern, the Tate tap started to drip, drip, drip.

  ‘What if it’s chemical warfare, you know, like deadly gases that deep-fry your lungs and melt your eyeballs? That grandma looked like . . .’ He glanced back at Marissa who only had to raise one eyebrow to indicate her disapproval, and Tate changed the subject. ‘My dad said that DC and New York were targeted first. Man, all those poor slobs in DC and NYC. They are probably just a big oozing pile of flesh now.’

  I stifled a gasp. He didn’t know anything for sure. And my parents were at the airport. They’d got out. They had to be safe.

  Marissa stopped. Tate was too busy with his gruesome tale to notice, and he smacked right into her. She gritted her teeth and whipped around to face him.

  ‘What?’ he whined. ‘I’m just saying—’

  ‘Well, don’t. Don’t just say. My mom and Icie’s parents live in DC. This isn’t some video game, you . . .’

  ‘Fridiot,’ I filled in the gap.

  ‘Man, Baldy has a bit of a temper,’ Tate muttered. He walked ahead of us now. He wasn’t really talking to us any more, he was just talking. ‘I was just saying that my dad says that no matter what kind of attack it is, the world’s going to go freaking insane. I heard him telling his head of security to lock everything down because there would probably be riots and looting. He also said the US might retaliate with bombs and shit and they might—’

  ‘Tate!’ I screamed to get his attention. He turned and walked backwards. ‘I need you to stop talking.’ I spoke every word slowly, so even Tate, with his limited IQ, would understand. ‘If you say one more word, I swear I will kill you with my bare hands.’

  He pinned his lips together, turned back around, and kept right on walking.

  We put one foot in front of the other and headed towards the spot Mum had pointed out on the map. The landscape looked like a mix between an old Western and a sci-fi flick. Scary and creepy. Screepy. I thought I must remember to tell Lola that one. She’d like it, but the harsh reality of our situation sank in. I might never see Lola again. I quickly tried to squash the thought from my mind. It hurt too much to keep thinking of everything that I was leaving behind – maybe forever.

  Don’t think about Lola, I told myself. Don’t think about anything but getting to the mountain.

  As we approached the first mountain, I scanned for any sign. It looked big and barren. Was this the one? Mum had pointed to the middle mountain in the series of three. From this vantage point the mountain range seemed to stretch out forever. One mountain blended into the next.

  We kept walking. How was I supposed to recognize it? Mum said something about an infinity symbol. Now the idea sounded crupid. I began to doubt my memory.

  I noticed two clusters of boulders up ahead where the first mountain merged into a valley before ramping up to the next mountain. As we drew closer, I could see the rocks had been tagged with graffiti. I stopped to study the markings. Someone had drawn a cartoon face in white paint. Maybe it was supposed to be that fat kid from the cartoon Lola liked. The heat and sun seemed to be eating my brain. I couldn’t remember the name of it.

  This Rocks! was painted in green. But there was something painted in silver underneath all the rest of the scribbles. It was hard to tell what it was with the overlapping graffiti and the weather-worn paint. I walked up to the rock. Glittery flecks in the stone glimmered in the sunlight. I placed my finger on the silver paint. The rock felt dry and warm. I traced the line through crisscrossing splotches of paint. My finger looped as the silver paint snaked in a thin, horizontal figure of eight that was as big as my outstretched arms.

  ‘Infinity,’ I said. I pressed my palm on the rock as if I might be able to feel ancient vibrations travelling up through the stone. Its message had been received. This was my mountain.

  ‘This way,’ I told Marissa and Tate, who were sipping water and sharing a can of honey-roasted peanuts.

  ‘How do you know?’ Tate asked, munching and spewing peanuts.

  ‘This is the symbol my mum said would mark the mountain.’ I ate a handful of peanuts.

  ‘Infinity,’ Marissa said. ‘I hope that means we’ll live forever.’

  Or at least through the night, I thought, and snatched the water bottle from Tate before he downed the last few inches.

  The initial power surge I’d felt to get to the bunker eased a little. We were well away from the main road and there wasn’t another person or animal in sight.

  The boulders formed a gateway to what I realized was a dirt road that wound between the two mountains and then snaked up and out of sight. This had to be it. To build tunnels underground they would have needed to drive trucks and equipment
up the mountainside.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I said and marched ahead. They followed. The weight of their survival weighed me down more than my backpack and sweat-soaked clothes.

  Mounds of trash bordered the dirt road. It was mostly smashed wood and bits of plastic, but there was also a burnt-out washing machine and a pile that contained two rusty bedsprings and a roll of orange shag carpet. Tate inspected each pile, kicking at the stray bits and calling out what he could recognize.

  ‘Old Spam tin.’

  ‘Leather shoes.’

  ‘Beer can.’

  ‘Coke bottle.’

  Broken glass crunched beneath our feet. I imagined a group of people our age drinking and laughing around a bonfire. This secluded spot would be great for a secret party.

  The farther we got from the highway, the less I felt as if we were in the US or any earthly civilization. We picked our way through low-lying shrubs and spiky cacti. Marissa screamed and clung to Tate when a brown lizard no more than a foot long and a few inches high darted in front of her.

  ‘Chuckwalla,’ Tate said. ‘They’re harmless.’

  Marissa peeled herself off. ‘Yeah, whatever.’

  Tate would call out ‘Chuck’ or ‘Wally’ when he spotted one of the brown lizards. I would jump a little every time he shouted. I didn’t even like the zoo and thought roughing it was taking the Metro. I tried to shake the image of six-foot hairy spiders and mountain lions that would consider city-girl to be a delicacy.

  Tate plugged himself into his iPod. He drummed his fingers on his leg or thumped his hands on his chest. He clicked. He hummed. He shuffled to his own beat. We found out later he had cradled his prized possession in his hand while his captors literally gave him the boot out the back of the RV.

  Tears stung the back of my eyes. How were we ever going to survive? I didn’t have enough food for the three of us for very long. What about a clean supply of water? Nevada is a desert, after all. Were Marissa and Tate and I really going to be the last survivors on Earth? And, if I didn’t get sick or melt or burn or die in one of Tate’s end-of-time scenarios, how could I possibly live in some bunker while everything else was destroyed?

  I pushed those questions out of my head. All I had to do was find the bunker. That’s it. I wouldn’t think beyond getting to somewhere safe. If I found my parents’ bunker, then I’d figure out how to live one more day. I raced ahead and started the gradual ascent up the mountain.

  Getting to the mountain had not been easy, but finding the entrance to this top-secret bunker was going to be next to impossible. The mountain was ginormous, and I had no idea what we were looking for exactly. We wound our way around the mountain. It could take us days to find the entrance this way. Marissa checked her phone a few times but there was still no signal.

  ‘Hey, is this it?’ Tate asked when he spotted an entrance to a cave.

  I tentatively peeked my head inside. It was a decent-sized cave but it wasn’t marked by an infinity symbol. It didn’t look man-made. ‘No, this isn’t it.’

  ‘Look!’ Marissa shouted. A big horned sheep darted away as she pointed. I walked closer to the spot it had vacated. The sheep had been drinking from a small pool. Water was bubbling from a triangle in the mountainside created by two rocks tilting into each other. The water was framed by three flat stones to create a natural paddling pool. I knelt down. The pool was swarming with wasps and these beautiful blue dragonflies. I cupped the water in my hands and took a huge drink. The water was cool and fresh.