These were the rituals. This is what the house was supposed to feel like.
Instead it felt like a tomb.
Their house was large and cozy, even if it had paper-thin walls and décor regulations through the HOA. Her parents paid for parks and atmosphere, the promise of safe streets and cozy cul-de-sacs. Whispering Waters, their little neighborhood was called. The name implied peaceful joy, happiness, and comfort.
If only her neighbors had known that the congenial scientist, quick with a smile and always available to offer a ladder, an hour of service or a kind word, was starting a doomsday shelter in his fruit cellar. What would they have thought if they had known that somehow he had predicted the end of the world? That he was clandestinely spiriting away food and water and vaccines and pictures of top-secret experiments right under the noses of his unsuspecting family.
Unsuspecting. It was a true and frightening word.
Ethan had a theory that their mother was in the dark. Otherwise, he pondered, why would she have ever sent Lucy back to school for her homework in the first place?
And while it wouldn’t be the first time in history a man kept secrets hidden from his wife, Maxine’s potential blindness pained Lucy greatly. And it was this lack of knowledge cost her mother both of her eldest children. No doubt their mom assumed they were dead.
And that was even operating under the assumption that her family was alive. It was a stretch and a myth; an idea born from panic and an inability to understand a world where just she and Ethan had survived Armageddon upon the human race.
All these things ran through her brain in a loop and it occupied every second of her time, keeping her alone with memories and flashbacks. She tossed, turned, flung her blankets off, then sought them out and covered herself again. Below, she could occasionally hear a muffled voice. Ethan. Moaning in his sleep. And she kept listening for Grant, a snore or a rustle of the bedsprings—but her parent’s room was silent.
Lucy, back in the room she had dreamed of and wished for while trapped at the school, felt fully alone.
Careful to keep her voice small, Lucy prayed what she could remember from Grant’s prayer at Salem’s memorial and sobbed herself to sleep.
Chapter Twenty-One
Seven days after The Release
Teddy’s high, little voice roused Lucy from sleep.
“My mommy’s making pancakes with syrup,” he said and he poked her in the shoulder with a plastic sword from the King siblings’ communal dress-up bin. “And I’m going to have an orange juice!”
“Oh?” Lucy wondered how this was possible, but she didn’t question the child. She picked up her pillow and flipped it over to the cold side and then rested her head, closing her eyes again.
“I’m a pirate,” Teddy continued.
Then Lucy’s eyes snapped open and she swung her feet to the floor. It was the next day.
Slipping past Teddy, who didn’t seem too fazed by her quick departure, Lucy darted up the hallway to her parent’s room and swung open the door. The quilt on their bed had a Grant-sized indent and a blanket that her mom usually kept at the foot of the bed for decoration was tossed to the floor. But Grant himself was nowhere to be seen. Lucy rushed back down the hall and got held up on the stairs as Teddy made his way down step by step. She grabbed him by the waist and then stomped down with him, Teddy protesting with, “Let me down. Pirates like to walk!”
Darla made pancakes over a refreshed fire. She held a skillet over the flame with both hands and then set it down on floor to flip them.
“Pancakes,” she announced without enthusiasm.
“Where’s Grant?” Lucy asked, setting Teddy down beside his mother.
Darla and Ethan exchanged glances.
“Did you take him outside to bury already without me noticing? You couldn’t have. No. Tell me…where is he?”
Flipping a pancake, the thick batter sticking a bit in the pan, Darla nodded toward the back of the house. “He’s outside,” she answered as if this news was mundane and expected.
“Where did you bury him?” Lucy asked.
“He’s just outside,” Darla said again.
“He’s okay?” Lucy ran off without waiting for an explanation.
She ran toward their kitchen and then out to their back porch where Grant sat by himself on the steps leading down to the backyard. The air was still damp, but it wasn’t raining. He turned to her and then patted the step next to him. His hair was a mess of tangles and his scruffy chin was growing fuller, the whiskers more defined.
“I wasn’t expecting to see you this morning,” Lucy said, breathless.
“I wasn’t expecting it either,” he replied. “When I opened my eyes this morning I wondered why Heaven looked so much like your parent’s bedroom.”
She laughed and leaned into him. But she was overcome with worry—Grant’s original theory, that they were taking longer to die, seemed to ring in her ears. Maybe he was just an anomaly, maybe it could still happen.
“What does this mean? Are you scared that—” Lucy stopped herself from asking the full question.
“Ethan and I talked this morning. The information your dad,” Grant hesitated, “well, the information that they found was very definitive. No survivors. None. Not ever. In every single study.”
“The virus was created with that endgame in mind, I imagine,” Lucy said and she stared out into the sky.
“So, the fact that I’m still here. It means something. It’s not an accident.”
“Like I keep saying…”
Grant smiled. “Yeah, well, apparently I’m superhuman. This surprise replaces the piano playing I think.”
“So…”
Grant nudged her with his elbow and he smiled. “I’m not going to die today Lucy Larkspur King. I think this means you’re stuck with me.”
“You promise?” Lucy asked.
“Pancake time!” came a cry from inside and then Teddy’s little feet pitter-pattered over to the screen on the kitchen door and the little boy pressed his face against the netting. “Pancake time,” he repeated. And they followed him inside.
“We have to go to Nebraska,” Lucy said over breakfast. They crowded around the dining room table with Ethan in his wheelchair. “Dad told us to get there if anything happened and that’s where we need to go.”
“How?” Darla asked, cutting up Teddy’s pancake pieces into smaller bites, even as he shoved her hand away. “The abandoned cars and all the wreckage? You can’t get out of the city. On top of that it’s…what…a month of walking? Two months?”
“Try three,” Grant said as he shoved a pancake into his mouth.
“Ethan,” Lucy turned to her brother. “We have to do this.”
“You’re out of your mind,” Ethan replied, instantly angry, and the table fell quiet. “Really? You want us to go? How can I do that? I can’t go. How can I go? How can I travel like this?” His voice rose and fell as if he were fighting back a wave of tears. “It’s not like you can just put me in the back of a car and drive out of here. It’s impossible. I can’t do it.”
“We can get you there—” Grant said after a long pause. “We can do it.”
“I can’t even take a dump by myself,” Ethan said and Teddy asked what that meant, Darla whispered a reply in his ear and he snickered. “But you guys want to take me on a cross-country road trip? No, Lucy. I need a doctor. I need medicine…and we’re working on that, but I can’t go anywhere. Not for a long time.”
The room grew silent.
“Besides,” Ethan continued, “what’s in Nebraska? Our family? If they’re alive, why aren’t they coming for us? Have you ever thought of that?”
“Dad went to the effort…”
“Writing some coordinates in a children’s book.”
“…to give us help on what to do if we got separated.”
“From something he might have had caused?” Ethan’s eyes flashed.
Darla drew in a sharp breath and then sucked her cheek agai
nst her teeth. “He has a point, Lucy,” she interjected. “I think you’re forgetting what you know to be true here. Nebraska could be dangerous.”
Lucy looked down at her plate. “We don’t know the truth. None of us know.”
“Well, I’m beginning to think that the truth isn’t going to help me,” Ethan replied. He clattered his fork against his plate and reversed his chair away from the table and wheeled himself back into the den. They watched him go and then turned back to their breakfasts, each of them waiting for someone else to resume eating first.
Lowering her voice, Darla leaned in and narrowed her eyes. “You’re just going to show up in this town in Nebraska and knock on some doors until you’re reunited with your family? That’s not a great plan.”
“I don’t have a plan,” Lucy said in a small voice. “But I don’t want to sit here at the house waiting for us to run out of the meals my dad left and not doing anything to try to find the people I love. I’ve already done that. I just stayed at that stupid school waiting for someone to come rescue me.” She looked at everyone and put down her fork. “No more. This is something we can do. No more waiting around, I’m done with that.”
The fire popped.
“You know you can’t risk Ethan’s life by asking him to go with you,” Darla said with her mouth full. “Eat the pancake, Teddy.” She looked at Lucy and raised her eyebrows in expectation of a reply.
“We can’t just stay here. So, then what?” Lucy asked and she turned over her shoulder toward the den. She pushed her chair back away from the table and started to make her way to Ethan.
“Right,” Grant answered. His voice was strong and confident. “Well, that makes it easy.”
Lucy paused and turned to look at him. “What?”
“Lucy and I will go,” he said to Darla.
The offer hung in the room, palpable and tense. Everyone collectively held his or her breath.
Then Darla looked thoughtfully toward the ceiling and then back toward Grant. Her eyes went between the two of them, assessing. Finally, she assented. “It’s not the only way, but I suppose if you’re hell-bent on going…it is the best way. You can drive once you get out of the city. Gas is an issue because you can’t pump without power…but cars should be easy to come by.”
“But you just said—” Lucy started when Darla raised a fork at her.
“Look,” she interrupted. “I’m not going to tell you not to take a risk. And I think you’re crazy, but I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t want some answers. I lost the love of my life and everyone on this planet I cared about with the exception of my son. You think you can do this? Then go.”
“Is this happening?” Lucy asked and she took a step forward. “Everyone is okay with this?”
Shrugging, Darla looked over at Teddy. “I’m not leaving my son. And I’m not taking my son. Your brother can’t travel. Neither of you should go alone. If Nebraska is in your future…then this has to be the way. I don’t think it’s safe and I am petrified about what’s waiting for you there. But if you want to go, I’m not going to stand in your way.”
Inside the den, Ethan flipped through records. Lucy entered and stood near the doorway, the sounds of the others clearing breakfast dishes in the background.
“You know what shocks me most of all?” he said with his back still turned to her. “Why would Dad just walk away from the life he built here? Why leave this heirloom? And his wedding pictures,” he nodded toward an album on the edge of their father’s work desk. “How could he risk losing us?”
Lucy sat down on the couch and leaned her head back—she stared at the white ceiling and the overhead fan above them—the blades decorated with some flowery design that had always looked like an abstract drawing of an owl’s face. She turned to face Ethan.
“I’ll ask him that. When I find him. He’s got to be out there Ethan…I believe that. I think he wants us to find him.”
“And you really want to do this?” Ethan asked.
Lucy exhaled out her nose. “This is our family. Our mom. And I can do this. Please trust me.”
“I trust you. But it’s scary…to let you go. What if you—” he couldn’t finish his thought.
Teddy swooped into the room and made a leap to the couch. He jumped and jumped until Darla came in and swung him off the leather and planted his feet on the ground.
“Legos?” she suggested and he rushed away, shouting about building an all-blue spaceship. Grant came in and sat by Lucy and he gave her a reassuring smile.
Pushing her back against the bookshelf, Darla crossed her arms.
“We heard before the communication ended that the bridge is down between here and Washington. Car backup along all major highways will be impossible to navigate. You could walk out…but Grant is a living testament that you might still run into Raiders…who knows what type of people are lurking at the major entrances and exits to the city.”
“Sounds lovely,” Grant said. “What if we head north?”
“Fine. But still I-84 is a traffic jam up the Gorge. You’re walking out of here and that alone carries all sorts of risks,” Darla explained as she rubbed her temples. “Too bad you can’t just fly out over the wreckage. Land yourself beyond the miles of corpses and cars.”
“What if we could?” Grant asked, alert and looking between everyone, his eyes flashing with excitement.
“Fly?” Darla laughed. “Oh yeah?”
“Well, more like float,” Grant replied and he smiled.
From Up Above Tours was family owned and operated for thirty years. Grant’s uncle was a commercial pilot frustrated by an aggravating schedule that kept him away from his wife and young children and Grant’s aunt was a strong woman with an entrepreneurial spirit and unstoppable business acumen. For years they ran sunrise hot air balloon tours over the Willamette Valley, storing their massive equipment during the off-season in Grant’s family’s storage barn on their large lot with acreage. Abandoned and ready for flight, just miles from Lucy’s home, were a collection of hot air balloons. Grant’s aunt and uncle kept the balloons in trailers next to the stables, where Grant’s horses grazed and slept.
“Horses? You have horses?” Lucy asked and she raised her eyebrows with a knowing look.
“Don’t say it…just don’t. I think the point’s been made.” Then he frowned as he remembered. “Had horses, though. We lost two the night before everything. Not all of them. But if it was just a precursor to everything else then I doubt I have any horses anymore.”
“Wait, wait,” Ethan turned to Grant. “So, you can fly these things?”
“Yes,” Grant replied quickly. Then he shifted his eyes to Lucy and lowered his eyes. “I mean…I’ve helped fly them. I work every summer with the company. Setting up the balloons, assisting with flights. I can do it. I know how. I’ve done it a hundred times over the years.”
“But you’ve never actually flown one solo?” Ethan wheeled closer and looked at Grant incredulously.
“I can do it,” Grant said, his eyes lighting up, moving between each of them – eager to convince. “I’ll need some extra hands, but I can fly us out over the wreckage. Right? That’s all we need?”
“How far do they go?” Lucy asked, imagining a stress-free ride through the skies all the way to Nebraska.
“Depends on how much fuel we take, which balloon, which gondola. I think I can get us like fifty miles. But maybe more, I can push it to more.”
“That’s all?” Lucy crossed her arms over her chest. “That’s not even a start to the trip.”
“Well, I don’t want to walk fifty miles instead if those are our options,” Grant replied.
“Where will you go?” Ethan asked.
“Well,” Grant paused, “we don’t have a choice. We go where the wind takes us. But from here? I’m hoping to catch the wind that travels south. Head toward Central Oregon…plenty of open landing space.”
“This is brilliant, Grant,” Ethan reached forward for a high-five which Gra
nt reciprocated. He turned to his sister with appraising eyes. She looked to Ethan, Grant, and then Darla who picked at the bed of her fingernails with the tip of a paperclip.
“I can’t even believe we’re talking about this as an actual thing,” Darla muttered. She flicked the dirt and grime to the floor and bit off the top part of her fingernail on her right pointer finger.
“A freaking hot air balloon,” Lucy added and Darla smirked—they shared a moment bonding over their skepticism.
“This can work, Lucy,” Grant said, turning to her. “I am promising you.” He lowered his voice. “I will get us to your family.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We’re following a cryptic letter. Nothing more,” Ethan replied. “For now, we’re following the hint of my family. That is what we’re chasing. A hope. In a hot air balloon.”
“A hint, a hope, a hot air balloon,” Lucy mused out loud. She thought of Mrs. Johnston’s alliteration poster and smiled to herself. Yes, fools, all of them, thinking that in the end knowledge of literary terms could ever be useful. You’ll need this for a successful future idiotic educators pontificated. What future?
Apparently for her future she needed to know how to navigate a hot air balloon and they definitely didn’t teach that in high school. She shook her head, exhaled long and low, and then turned to the group. “When do we leave?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Eight days after The Release
The day before the big trip, they planned and prepped and enjoyed their last full day together. Anxious to hear if Spencer would be able to uphold his end of the bargain, Darla had paced the length of the den while brainstorming a backup plan, while Ethan sat morose, dipping into their father’s liquor cabinet again and self-medicating until he had passed out on the couch. Lucy could not blame him for wanting to check out. They could all see that Ethan’s health was deteriorating and without antibiotics and someone to look at his legs, they all feared the worst.
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