End of the Road

by LS Hawker

  The screen of his phone illuminated his face. He turned on the flashlight feature and shone it in front of him.

  Jade’s mental paralysis shocked her, how this hadn’t occurred to her. Berko was a steely-eyed missile man, she now saw, even as sick as he was. She stood and bumped into Elias.

  “Sorry,” she said. They walked single file toward the server room. Berko got there first.

  “It’s locked too,” he said.

  “No shit,” Elias said. “How are we going to get in there?”

  “We’re just going to have to . . . break the door down,” Jade said.

  “Yeah? How are we going to do that? These aren’t wooden doors. They’re reinforced steel. Unless you have a blowtorch I don’t know about, there’s no way we’re getting in there.”

  “So what are we going to do?” Berko said.

  “Nothing,” Elias said. “We’re not going to do anything.” And he dropped to the floor, sitting against the wall, resigned.

  “You’ve got to be the one with the solution,” Berko said. “You’re military. Don’t they do like survival training or something like that? How to escape stuff?”

  “I didn’t go to magician school,” Elias said, irritated.

  “There has to be a way out.”

  This was too heavy for a group of twentysomethings to bear.

  In future history books, she would be remembered as the woman who destroyed civilization.

  Again. Her own self-importance. Her, her, her.

  She wanted to punch herself in the face.

  And who was she kidding? History books? How was that going to work? With no control over Clementine, the country would end up a Matrix-style wasteland, but the computer would not set up any cozy little tanks for them. No, it would be Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Since she’d never experienced true catastrophe, her only frame of reference was pop culture. And that would be a thing of the past.

  Without technology, Jade was worthless. She couldn’t do anything without it. She had no real-world skills she could use. She thought about the AIP cartridge at her folks’ house, and how far away it seemed. But without power, without access to the computer system, what good would it do them?

  Elias stood. “I’m going to go down to the kitchen and see how much food and water we have. Figure out how we’re going to ration it.”

  “What difference does it make?” Berko said. “Do you really think they’re going to ever let us out of here? Because I sure as hell don’t.”

  “I’ll be back,” Elias said, as if Berko hadn’t spoken. “I’ll also look for something for your head, Berko. Turn off your phones to conserve the batteries.” He walked away from them down the hall.

  Jade’s impulse from another life, another time, would have been to make some crack about who did Elias think he was, giving them orders? But jokes now seemed pointless.

  Across from the lab was a sitting area with two chairs, an end table, a useless lamp, and a ficus tree. Berko walked over to it and sat in one of the chairs.

  How long would it take without tech for the country to dissolve into chaos?

  What would Martin tell her family—if he planned to tell them anything at all? And Berko’s, and Elias’s? How would they explain to Clementine what had happened? Tears came to Jade’s eyes at the thought of her mother further deteriorating, and dying without ever knowing what happened to Jade. And Dad would have to go it alone in the awful new world with Clem.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  As Jade and Berko sat in the dark silence, Jade sensed air moving, and thought of standing in a ripe wheat field, the wind blowing. Remembered being out in the fields, riding the combine with her dad when she was little. Riding in his pickup truck on the way to . . .

  She sat straight up and listened. Then heard a sound unlike the electric whirring of the server fans. Barely perceptible—a quiet but discernible whooshing sound.

  She grabbed Berko’s wrist. “Do you hear that?”

  “What?” came Berko’s listless reply.

  “I hear air,” she said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Elias came walking back down the hall, packets of peanut butter crackers and water bottles in his arms. “I think we have enough food to—”

  “Ssshh,” Jade said. “Come here. Listen.”

  Elias didn’t argue. He froze in place and cocked his head. “What is it? I don’t hear anything.”

  “Air,” she said. “Ventilation shafts.” Jade remembered riding in her dad’s pickup truck on the way to one of his HVAC jobs, replacing a furnace. Crawling through the dusty ducts and sneezing.

  “The ventilation system has to lead to the surface,” Elias said.

  Berko started breathing hard. “Unless they plugged all that up at the surface,” he said, sounding panicky.

  “We need to figure out how to get into it,” Elias said, crouching and setting the food and water on the floor in front of Berko. “We need to look for vents. There’s one of those LED emergency lights in every room. I’ll go grab three so we each have one. No telling how long they’ll last though.” He dashed down the hall, disappearing into the darkness.

  “How are you feeling, Berko?” Jade said.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Why don’t you try to eat something?” she said, opening up peanut butter crackers for him.

  He took small bites followed by sips of water.

  Elias reappeared with LED lights.

  “Okay,” Jade said. “Let’s everybody be quiet for a minute. Listen for air. Listen and feel for it. That’s where the vents will be.”

  “But the vents will be too small for us to get into,” Berko said.

  “Then we’ll have to enlarge the openings,” Jade said.

  “What are we going to use to enlarge them?” Berko said.

  “Let’s find them first.”

  “What are these walls made of?” Berko said. “Because if it’s concrete, I believe we are royally screwed.”

  “Berko, no offense,” Elias said, “but if you ask one more question, I’m going to punch you.”

  They fanned out, searching for the larger registers. Jade found the first one, down near the baseboard in the hall across from the lab. “Here we go,” she said. “Is there a wrench or a screwdriver in the lab?”

  “I’ll go look,” Elias said.

  He returned with both, and Jade got down on her knees and loosened the screws holding the register plate in place. She removed it and stuck her head inside.

  The duct would not accommodate her shoulders. She twisted and bent herself but it was no use. The hope that had been building inside her evaporated. And she remembered the last time she’d been inside ductwork she was around ten years old.

  “It’s not big enough,” she said.

  Elias groaned. “But you said—”

  “I know what I said, but—”

  “How big is it?” Berko said.

  “No more than eighteen inches across,” Jade said.

  “I can do it,” Berko said. “I’m the smallest. I’ll go.”

  “You’re not small enough,” Jade said.

  “Let me try,” Berko said. “I can’t do anything else. I want to contribute somehow.”

  “You’ll get stuck in there,” Elias said. “We’ll just have to pry the elevator doors open somehow and go up through the trapdoor on top.” He walked over to the elevator and attempted to wedge his fingertips between the doors. His attempts became more frenzied, and still the doors wouldn’t budge, and finally he was just pounding his fists on the metal.

  He turned, looked wildly around, and let out a roar. He picked up the unoccupied chair, lifted it high over his head, and smashed it repeatedly into the wall, until he crashed through the drywall and splintered the two-by-fours behind it.

  As debris settled, Jade and Berko stood stock-still, as if moving might make Elias turn on them in his wrath. He dropped the chair, breathing hard.

  Jade realized she heard debris
falling with an echo. She lifted her LED light and stuck both her head and the light through the hole. Behind the wall another wall curved, made of concrete, about five feet beyond the drywall. That was weird.

  “Take a look,” she said.

  Elias held his light to the hole, then pulled on the drywall, until the studs were exposed. Then he shone the light into the cavern beyond and stuck his head in. She heard him whistle.

  He reemerged from the hole, drywall dust whitening his hair, looking like a warrior painted up to go into battle. “Something else was here before this building.”

  “Something else?” Berko said. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not sure,” Elias said. “But it’s a good thing, because there’s room for us to move around behind these walls.”

  He stuck his head and arm back in. “Holy Mary,” Jade heard him say inside the hole. “There’s a ladder built into the wall back there.”

  “There is?” Jade said, feeling a thrill of hope, and then an immediate crash. Where did the ladder go?

  “It’s to the right.” Elias backed away so Jade could take a look. She leaned through the opening. She looked the ladder up and down but couldn’t see a terminus at either end in the dark.

  She pulled out of the hole and said, “How far up is it, do you think?”

  “No way to tell,” Elias said. “So there’s one level beneath us—where the storage rooms are.”

  “Okay,” Jade said. “We’re going to need to make another hole. We can’t reach the ladder from here.” She walked over to the sitting-area chairs, where she thought the ladder might be closest to.

  Berko stood and had to grab the wall.

  “Sorry, buddy,” Jade said. She moved the chair, the end table, and the ficus, then removed a framed abstract print from the wall. “Right about here, I think.”

  Elias picked up the chair again and bashed another hole in the drywall, this one six feet high by sixteen inches wide.

  Jade investigated inside the hole. It would be a close fit.

  “I’m going up first,” Elias said. “Berko, you come next, and then Jade last.”

  Jade wanted to argue but for once decided she’d just go along.

  “Wait,” she said. “We need to take this food and water with us.”

  “My backpack is under my desk,” Elias said.

  “I’ll get it. Okay if I empty it out?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  She went into the lab and to Elias’s desk. She cast about underneath it and found his backpack, then upended it on the floor. His tablet fell out, and she briefly wondered if she should bring it. But it was replaceable. As she headed to the door, she spied something that wasn’t: the photo of Olivia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She slid it into the backpack and exited the lab.

  Out in the hall, Jade put the water bottles and food into the pack, then slung it on her back.

  She wondered what would await them at the top of the ladder.

  Elias disappeared into the hole, then turned back and said, “It’s going to be a reach. I can just barely grab it.” He looked back at Berko, the smallest of them, and Jade wondered if his arms were long enough.

  “When I’m on the ladder, Berko, you’re going to need to reach in and grab my hand, and I’ll pull you over. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Berko said faintly.

  Then Elias squeezed sideways through the hole, his right hand clutching the two-by-four stud as he swung to the right. The wood groaned as it bore his weight and then Jade heard a metallic tone as he grabbed on to the ladder.

  “Wait,” Berko said, turning to Jade, his eyes feverish with fear. “I’m going to have to swing in backward. Reach backward to get the ladder.”

  “I guess so,” she said. “Elias will help you.”

  “How am I supposed to get my foot on there?”

  “I’ve got my light stuck in my shirt,” Elias said. “You’ll be able to see. We’ve gotta go. Come on.”

  Berko took a shaky breath and slid through the studs and held on to the farthest right one with his right hand. “Whoa, it’s a long way down.”

  “Don’t look down,” Elias said. “Look at me. Grab my hand.”

  Once he disappeared, Jade stuck her head in so she could see what was happening.

  Berko dangled from Elias’s arm, his feet bicycling frenetically.

  “Berko. Stop. Bring your right foot to the ladder.” Elias’s voice strained with effort. “You need to be calm.”

  Berko kicked his right leg out and it hit the ladder but bounced off again. He tried again, and this time Elias yanked him forward, where Berko took hold of the vertical edge of the ladder with his left hand.

  “Okay, buddy, I’m going to let go—”

  “No! Don’t let go!”

  “You’ve got this. You’re okay. So you let go of my hand and put it on the ladder. Okay?”

  Berko finally did as Elias said, and Elias shook out his arm and clenched and unclenched his fist.

  Berko’s breath came in quick, ragged gasps as he hugged the ladder.

  “All right, buddy, now you need to start going down.”

  “Down?” Jade said.

  “Yes,” Elias said. “We need to go find Gilby. We can’t leave him here.”

  “He’ll be fine,” Jade said. “We need to get out of here.”

  “We’re not leaving him.”

  Berko carefully picked his way down the ladder.

  “What are we going to use to break through the drywall?” Jade said. “There aren't any chairs.”

  “You were a punter, right?” Elias said. “You’re going to kick the drywall in.”

  Oh, am I?

  But she held her tongue, and as soon as Berko and Elias were on the ground, she tried to squeeze between the studs, but the backpack held her out.

  “I’m dropping the pack down,” she said. “Somebody catch it.”

  When Elias was below her, she let it go and he caught it. Then she squeezed through the studs and looked down. It was a mistake, but she couldn’t look away for a moment.

  “Go on, Jade,” Berko called up. “Piece of cake.”

  Before she made the commitment, she backed out of the hole and took in the hallway, the place she’d spent the past three months, where her Clementine was, and the sharp sting of regret pierced her heart. For so many things. Then she leaned out into the darkness, her right hand on the stud, which creaked, and reached for the ladder.

  She couldn’t hold on to both. She’d have to let go of the stud to reach it. The wood was moist under her hand. She glanced below her, and Berko and Elias looked so small. It was a long way down.

  “Come on, Jade,” Elias said.

  And she let go. Grabbed the ladder, her hand so wet with sweat it almost slipped right off the rung. But she clutched it and got her foot onto a lower rung, and she was descending.

  When she hit the ground, her arms were shaking from holding on so tight.

  “Okay,” Elias said. “Go ahead and give this drywall a kick.”

  “Can’t you just punch it?”

  “All you’re going to do is put that great big foot of yours there and kick harder than you’ve ever kicked in your life. As if your life depended on it. Which, in case you’d forgotten, it does.”

  So they had noticed how big her feet were. How could they not?

  She looked behind her. “The concrete wall’s too far away for me to brace my back against it.”

  “Okay,” Elias said, getting between her and the wall, pressing his back to hers and putting his foot on the wall. “Let ’er rip.”

  Looked like she didn’t have any choice. Berko stood well away, watching.

  She put her left foot against the drywall and pushed on it, gauging how much pressure it would need to break through. The give was minimal.

  “Kick it, Jade.”

  “I’m going to, just give me a second, okay?” she said, testy.

  She pressed her back against Elias’s solid one, bent her leg, aime
d and pushed harder. She heard a crack, but it hadn’t broken.

  “Kick it,” Elias said. “Picture Martin’s face on it.”

  Jade backed up as far as she could, then pictured the Ephesus football field, pictured herself preparing to punt with nine guys rushing toward her. She did, and kicked with all her might.

  “Wow,” Elias said, turning toward the gaping hole in the drywall. “Good kick. Help me widen this hole.”

  He and Jade yanked pieces of drywall away until the hole was big enough to squeeze through. One after the other, they passed between the studs, and Elias put the backpack on once they were in the bottom floor hallway.

  Elias led them, holding his LED light in front of him, the hall had a couple of these lights too.

  “Gilby?” Elias shouted.

  Jade heard a noise. She pressed her ear against one of the doors but heard nothing. Then she realized the sound came from across the hall. Jade knocked on the door. “Mr. Gilby?”

  She heard muffled noises inside. She looked down at the doorknob and realized the electronic locks wouldn’t work without electricity.

  “How are we going to get it open?” she said. “I don’t think I can kick it down.”

  “We’re lucky the power’s out, because I don’t think our keycards would work.” Elias reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet, opened it, and selected a card—a library card from the looks of it. He held it up for everyone to see and then slid it in between the doorjamb and the door next to the knob. He wiggled it up and down, trying to push it in farther.

  “Does that really work?” Jade asked Berko.

  “Why are you asking me?”

  “I’m just asking.”

  She heard a click and the door swung inward.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  This room appeared identical to the one they’d entered—was it only that afternoon? It seemed like a lifetime ago. Gilby lay on his side on the cot. Zip ties restrained his hands and feet, and a strip of duct tape covered his mouth. His eyes rolled toward them as Elias shone his LED on the man’s face.

  “Is that him?”

  “Yes,” Jade said. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her pocketknife, and Gilby squealed behind the tape. “I’m not going to cut you,” she said. Elias held the light while she inspected his bonds. Zip ties. These people meant business. She cut the wrist tie first, then the ankle.