Tomorrow.
But maybe not the day after.
Our time was counting down. The closer we got to killing Kostucha and freeing the spirits, the closer we crept to our goodbye. I had to push that thought away or I wouldn’t be able to function.
Morning came around too fast, robbing me of the sleep I needed. Jet knocked on the door until I let him in. I caught him with his key poised, ready to let himself in if I was too slow. He hid it quickly.
“You ready?” he asked by way of greeting. So much for small talk or ordinary pleasantries.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I replied.
With a nod of his head, he turned around and started walking. I mouthed a goodbye to Oliver who was watching from the corner, as always. We had already agreed that he wouldn’t come with me today. There were a lot of spirits he needed to help, and for some odd reason, he trusted Jet.
That made one of us.
I was right on Jet’s heels as we stepped out of the building. The sun was still rising from the horizon like a ball being plucked from the dark depths of the unknown. It spilled its orange glow over the remaining buildings.
And then I stopped.
Seeing a car shouldn’t have been such an earth shattering event, but seeing a brand new Audi S8 in the broken city, certainly was. The gaudy yellow color stood out against the black tar of the road.
“Where in the world did you get this?” I choked out as a cross between a gasp and a sigh of wonderment.
Jet spun the keys around his finger a few times, looking more than pleased with himself. “I found it in a basement parking lot. It took a while to find the keys but my search paid off.” He hit the button on the black remote control, the corresponding beep-beep of the car broke the morning silence and punctuated his words.
“I want to drive,” I said eagerly.
His laughter replied.
“Seriously, come on.”
He shook his head and climbed into the driver’s side of the car. I opened the passenger’s side door and bent over to look inside.
Leather interior.
The car was beautiful. It even still had the new car smell.
“Why can’t I drive?” I asked.
“Because I’m driving,” Jet replied, as if that explained absolutely everything.
“Is this an alpha male thing? Like you have to drive because you’re the man and I’m the woman? Because it’s not the dark ages anymore, you know.”
He tore his eyes away from the dashboard to look at me. His eyes betrayed his trademark amusement/exasperation. “Do you even know how to drive?”
I’d had a few lessons at school before the Event. Sure, I never made it to the licensing stage, but most people left on the planet hadn’t either.
Jet probably didn’t even get a license before the Event.
“Of course I know how to drive,” I lied.
“I don’t believe you. Get in, we’re wasting time.”
We had a stare off.
Jet won.
I got in and slammed the door closed.
It was childish, but we both got over it soon enough. The fact we were travelling in a car – a real car, none of this Crain nonsense – was luxurious enough. But to be travelling in a brand new car was even better. We snaked through the streets like a serpent, sleek and quiet.
And safe.
Nobody could touch us, nobody could attack us. We were surrounded by steel armor and moved with the stealth of ninjas. I noticed Jet still took the back roads, though. He wasn’t taking any chances of someone trying to pull something on us.
Before I knew it, we were on the highway and taking the road out of town. We couldn’t move very quickly, needing to dodge around the cars still remaining on the roads and frozen in time.
We were a yellow beam of light in amongst all the winter death. If I imagined hard enough, I could pretend everything was back to how it was before the Event. The time when adults ruled the world and the biggest problem kids had were the copious amounts of homework.
“Shiii-” Jet said as he hit the brakes… hard. We lurched forward as the car screeched to a halt on the road.
We narrowly missed hitting a stationary car in the middle of the road. There were three of them side by side, blocking the road completely.
“Sorry,” he muttered as we were flung back into our seats. “I thought there was room to get around them.”
“We’re going to have to move one,” I said, the realization hitting me. There were probably bodies in those cars. Perhaps several. Their decayed corpses could be nothing more than skeletons. But they might not be either.
Jet went to undo his seatbelt. “I’ll do it. You can wait here if you want.”
“No, I’ll help.”
I followed him out, bracing myself for the worst. Just like Jet, I focused solely on the car directly in front of our Audi. We would only have to move that one to make it past them.
Like I had warned myself, there was someone sitting at the steering wheel. They had slumped to the side at some stage, their head resting on the window. From the clothes, it looked like he was a male, but I couldn’t be certain. Dried flesh clung to the bones like moss to rocks. His mouth hung open in a wide gape, forever screaming.
I felt sick.
The nausea ebbed over me like waves, the bile rising in my stomach until it knocked on my teeth. I swallowed it down because no matter how horrible the body looked, it probably still smelled much, much worse.
“I’m going to move the gearstick and then we’ll push. Hold your breath while I open the door,” Jet instructed. He was so calm, so collected, so in charge. He really was a born leader, even when it was only the two of us.
I nodded and waited, holding my breath without argument. As quickly as humanly possible, he pulled the door open, yanked the gearstick out of gear, and slammed the door again. The entire time, the gaping body remained staring into space.
With what was left of his eyes.
The nausea rose again. I pushed it away.
Jet moved to the back of the car and I followed, bracing ourselves to push. He counted us down and I put every strength I had into moving the car. It groaned with the movement, at first resistant to the change. It fought against us every inch we managed to push it.
By the time it was forward enough to allow us a clear path, I was sweating and puffing from the exertion. It probably wasn’t all that hard, really. My body was just so malnourished that it was in a perpetual state of weakness.
“Let’s get going,” Jet said firmly as he started back for the Audi. His eyes never strayed, neither did mine.
He drove a little slower after that near miss. If we got into an accident out there, nobody would ever find us. Not unless people started a mass exodus from the city, anyway. Even then, they probably wouldn’t notice us amongst the other vehicles.
About an hour outside the city the highway diverted through a small town. It was the kind of satellite suburb that those living in could easily commute into the city for work if they wanted to but still live in a small town as well.
The place was a ghost town. The few cars still on the street were frozen, the stores’ doors open just as they were when the Event ran through the place.
Bodies were few, much less than in the city. Nobody had lived here for a very long time. Whatever happened to the kids, it had happened many months – or a year – ago.
“The stores might have some supplies still in there,” I said. We couldn’t take much back with us in the car, but we could still take some things. The trunk was probably empty, it could be filled at least.
Jet shook his head, never taking his eyes off the road. “Already looked. We took what they had.”
I should have known. There were probably few places Jet didn’t know about.
“What happened to the kids here?” I asked, certain he would have the answer for that, too. Nothing seemed to happen without Jet knowing about it.
“The ones that were left came to the ci
ty when we took the supplies.”
“You make it sound like there weren’t many.”
“There wasn’t. We got here pretty late.”
Which meant the younger kids had died because they were left to fend for themselves and they were too young and innocent to look after each other. The older ones would have been ill-equipped to offer very much help.
We passed through the town and came out the other side. The roads were smaller now, winding through the countryside on what would have been a nice drive before the Event. Now, Jet had to weave through the stationary cars and stay alert the whole time for hidden dangers.
“What do you think the other cities are like now?” I asked. There hadn’t been much time to ponder what the rest of the world was like now, not when every day was a fight just to survive.
Considering all the technology we had in the world, it had all failed to keep us in contact since the Event. With nobody maintaining or running the electricity supplies, power was out nearly everywhere. Only those with alternate energy sources were able to keep running.
No electricity meant no computers. With no computers, there was no internet. Telephones, televisions, cell phones, the ordinary postal service, they were all out. We had never been this isolated in our lives.
Jet sighed while he considered his answer. “They are probably just the same as ours. The only countries that would still be functioning well would be those self sufficient before the Event. Like some African tribes or something.”
“Do you think things will ever return to normal?”
“I think we have redefined the word normal.” His gaze flicked to meet mine, giving me a rueful look. “We just have to do the best we can now. All the kids will eventually grow into adults and we’ll start again.”
“But without guidance from real adults, where do we even start?” I asked. I didn’t expect any answers, I knew Jet wouldn’t have them.
Nobody did.
Jet tapped his fingers along the steering wheel. “The older kids remember what it was like, we have to make sure we use that knowledge and rebuild. Regroup. Look after each other.”
“How old are you?” It occurred to me that I had never received an answer to that question when I originally asked it. I always assumed he was my age, but that was only based on looks and the fact he couldn’t be more than nineteen.
“Seventeen.”
For once I was right.
“How old are you?” He turned the question back on me.
“Seventeen, too. I already told you that,” I replied.
“So you weren’t lying then.”
“Why would I lie about my age?” He shrugged in response. It was time for a subject change. “What was your life like before?”
He shifted in his seat, suddenly uncomfortable. I wasn’t sure if I had overstepped some invisible line, but I had a strong suspicion I did. Jet never talked about himself or his past. Which only made me think he had something to hide.
Which was stupid, really. So much had changed over the past year that nobody was the same person they had started out as. Those once so carefree and optimistic had turned jaded and cagey after only a few months.
Whatever Jet was like before, I was certain he wasn’t still.
Which made me only want to know even more.
But I let it drop. I certainly didn’t know him well enough to push the issue. “It’s okay, you don’t have to tell me. It’s none of my business.”
He let out the breath he was holding, forcing it out in a resigned huff. “I was nothing before. I did exactly as my parents told me to and I was terrified of everything. The Event brought me alive.”
I hadn’t expected that.
A bully, a scam artist, a jock. Anything would have been more expected than the person he had just described.
“I guess some people really rise to a challenge in difficult circumstances,” I said awkwardly. I didn’t really know what else to say.
A smile spread across his lips as he stole a glance my way. “And what about you, princ-?”
I shot him a look for almost using my infuriating nickname. Whatever seriousness was running through his mind before, it was definitely all gone now. “I was a typical teenager. I went to school, I gave my parents grief, argued with my little sister, and partied with my friends. I did everything that was expected of me. The Event didn’t bring me alive, it made me realize how shallow and fantastic my life was before.”
“I couldn’t imagine you as shallow.”
The line between complimenting and teasing me was fine and I didn’t know which side Jet was aiming for. I didn’t have a chance to work it out either as a building appeared on the horizon.
I pointed. “There’s a farmhouse.”
Jet followed my direction. “They have fields. Fields that are full of green stuff.”
We’d found the farms. The same farms I had often wondered if they were only rumors without any substance. They actually existed, cropping up like little rays of hope on the horizon.
Jet turned off the road and followed nothing more than a dirt path in the direction of the farm. He slowed right down, wanting to make sure we didn’t sneak up on them. Not that we could be exactly subtle in the yellow car.
He stopped the Audi at a closed gate, a thick padlock making sure it remained that way. “We’re on foot from here on out.”
“We’d better get walking then.” I unbuckled the seatbelt and climbed out.
“You don’t have to. You can stay here if you want to.” He joined me at the gate. “There’s no saying how we’re going to be treated by them. They might not be friendly.”
“If they don’t instantly hate us, I would think there’s something wrong with them,” I replied. Nobody was friendly anymore, not with strangers. We lived in a world full of suspicion and danger, even those that knew you could kill you for a slice of bread. We didn’t have the luxury of friendly.
“Fair enough,” Jet said, climbing over the gate. I quickly followed, not wanting to be left behind.
We started the walk down the dirt path, staying upright and open so we couldn’t be accused on sneaking up on them. We wanted to talk and it would be pretty difficult to do so if they didn’t give us a chance.
Jet kicked at the ground as we moved. “The soil’s good out here. They can probably get anything to grow.”
I nodded toward the farmhouse. “They have electricity too. They must have a generator.”
“Or solar power.”
“It’s a nice little setup. Maybe-”
My words hung in the air, never to be finished. It was pretty hard holding a conversation when you were being barraged by bullets.
Chapter Ten
Bushes and trees weren’t exactly the best cover for a bullet rainstorm, but they were all we had. Jet grabbed me around the waist, pulling me behind the nearest tree.
We crouched down to the large base, listening to the bullets whistling in the air around us.
Pop, pop, pop.
They punctuated the fear.
My heartbeats.
My sharp breaths.
Jet pulled me closer to him, trying to shield me even though nothing could stop a bullet in its trajectory. He leaned in closer, his mouth right next to my ear. “If you get the chance to run, then go. I’ll follow when I can.”
I shook my head. There was no way I was leaving without him. We went into this situation together and we would leave that way too.
If we left.
“Everly, promise me.”
“No.” One word, said so determinedly it was clear I would not argue the point.
Jet sighed but he didn’t press further. Even he knew when he was on a fool’s errand. He relaxed his hold on me and pulled away from my ear.
Pop, pop, pop.
A bullet nicked the side of the tree, showering me with ripped pieces of shredded bark. I imagined what that same bullet would have done to my body.
It wouldn’t have been good.
Or s
urvivable.
“We just want to talk with you,” Jet yelled out. “We will not hurt you. We are unarmed.”
Pop, pop, pop.
The bullets kicked up the dirt, sending little puffs of brown dust into wispy clouds. They would have been pretty if the bullets weren’t aimed at us.
“Stay here,” Jet ordered as he shifted.
Before I realized what he was doing, Jet was standing. He threw up his hands and stepped out from behind the cover of our trees. I lunged for his shirt to stop him but he pulled away and out of my grasp.
I stopped breathing as the fear took over.
“My name is Jet. I have come to talk to you about how you run your farm. I would like to learn from you,” he said as the bullets continued to pop around us.
How they missed him, I did not know. But they did stop before it went eerily quiet.
I wanted to look around the tree and see what was happening but I didn’t dare. The silence told me they had stopped shooting but that didn’t mean they hadn’t resorted to other weapons.
Like knives.
Or bows and arrows.
“Will you talk with my friend and me? I promise we are alone and unarmed. We wish you no harm.”
The silence stretched out, becoming an unbearable blanket around us. I risked a peek and saw nothing but Jet standing there, his arms still up in surrender.
Then, the voice we had been waiting for. “Where did you come from?” Male. Young. Hardened.
“We came from the city,” Jet replied, his tone of voice nothing but friendly. “We will return there as soon as you wish us to leave. But I really hope we can talk first.”
“Who knows you’re here?”
“Nobody. It’s just the two of us. We have told no-one else you even exist.”
Great, tell our potential murderers that nobody will miss us. Let them know no-one will come seeking revenge or retribution. I hoped his plan paid off.
The boy’s voice wavered when he spoke next. “Are you really here just to talk?”
“Yes.”
“The girl needs to stand up.”
Jet glanced my way, not moving anything except his head. He gave me a small nod. I stood and joined him, mirroring his raised hands.
I Am Never Alone Page 10