The Burst [A YA Apocalyptic EMP Survival Novel] (Barren Trilogy Book 1)

by Harley Vex

  The three of us would be lucky to find scraps.

  Slowly, the fire died down and the orange light that danced on the surrounding landscape faded. We snacked on old, stale chips. David would have left us far behind by now. I could lower the hood of my plastic suit now that the sun had gone down, and we passed around a water bottle in silence. At least that was refreshing and safe, having come from underground.

  “Should we check?” Jerome asked out of nowhere.

  We had been sitting for maybe two hours at that point, going in and out of the sleep that we desperately needed.

  “Check what? The ashes?” I asked. I should have known that escape wouldn’t be easy and would probably kill us.

  Alana poked me in the ribs, though I could tell from her half-hearted motion that exhaustion was threatening to pull her into a coma. “You’re doing it again.”

  “Being realistic?” Yeah, that wasn’t what the others needed right now, but I couldn’t help it.

  “Did you forget?” she asked. “The bikes.”

  Then I remembered. “Bikes?”

  Jerome pushed himself off the ground to the tune of the crackling fire. “Yeah. Those three tied to the back of that SUV. We grabbed the keys off the bodies, so we should be able to unlock them and take them. If there’s a good time to ride, it’s when the sun is down and we don’t have to worry about overheating.”

  It hadn’t been that hot since the burst, but I had to admit that he had a point. “Okay. I forgot. But the bikes will get us somewhere faster than walking would. It’s possible that David took them, just to make sure we’d have a hard time getting out of here.” Anger seized me. I balled my fists. David wasn’t just a sadistic individual, molded by a screwed up childhood. He was a smart psychopath. He knew what to say to control his entourage, and he had the brawn to make it work.

  Alana got up and helped me to stand. “Please. Don’t bring that up. I hope they got out of here so fast that they didn’t bother with the bikes.”

  We circled the burning station, and I knew whether the pumps had survived would make or break this plan. The roof had collapsed into Happy’s Gas at this point. But when we circled, I realized that the awning that covered the four pumps themselves was still standing.

  And the SUV was the only vehicle parked near a pump. On the back, the three bikes shone, reflecting the flames.

  “Are you kidding?” I asked. My heart soared.

  “Not at all.” Jerome walked over to the bikes, then looked back at us and motioned like he was wiping sweat off his forehead. “Careful. It’s just a tad hot over here, and I don’t know why.”

  He stood just fifteen feet from what used to be the doorway to Happy’s Gas. And that meant being close to that now-collapsed doorway and the dancing embers that covered the wooden frame. The front glass windows had blown out and partially collapsed as well.

  There would be a lot of places like this out there now.

  Maybe even all of Colton would be like this, too. Burned. Empty. And above all, useless.

  Jerome unlocked the bikes, and Alana rushed over to help him. It turned out that there was one man-sized bike, a sleek blue one complete with containers for water bottles, and two bikes for women that were bright yellow and magenta. Alana handed me the magenta one, and I got on and adjusted the seat up so that my knees wouldn’t die.

  “I can’t believe this,” I said. “We have bikes that fit? Coincidence.”

  “Sometimes good things happen,” Alana told me. “And more good things might happen when we get back to Colton.”

  I swallowed, knowing that one of those good things wouldn’t be finding anyone alive. And that meant Alana’s and Jerome’s families.

  I frowned, hoping to ease into this gently. “Colton. It’s not in the alive zone that the guy on the radio was talking about. It’s no farther east than we are right now. In fact, it’s north of here.”

  Alana just looked at me, and I knew she was still in that horrible denial phase. It would make the blow so much worse when she got to Colton, and for her sake, I half-hoped it had burned, thanks to the wildfires and lightning strikes the burst had caused.

  And Jerome, to my shock, backed me up this time. “She’s right. We won’t find anything good there, other than possibly that prepper’s doomsday stash of supplies. Do you have relatives who live on the east coast? Laney’s father should be over there right now. And I have an aunt and uncle in Chicago. I don’t know how much cosmic radiation they got, but there’s a chance they survived.”

  “I...” Alana was struggling. “I don’t know where my mom and brother were when it happened.”

  Her brain wasn’t allowing the full impact through yet. I knew how that worked. But when it came, it would be ugly. Jerome, I could see, had already accepted the truth. His parents would not greet him. But he’d still have to face it when we got back to town.

  I swallowed. “There has to be someone who will be happy to see you again.” What was I supposed to say? That she’d just find bodies at the best and the burned remains of her home at the worst? And I didn’t want to think about the high school, which had been in session when the burst hit.

  Yes. I hoped for fire, which cleaned up behind it.

  “We should go,” Alana said, turning to her bike. “We might reach the next town by daybreak, and we can see how it turned out. That’ll give us a better idea of how Colton will be.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  We were lucky that the bikes’ tires didn’t need inflating, and the owners had kept their bikes in good shape. Of course they had. The group of friends had been about to brave the trails.

  That meant the bikes were easy to pedal down the road, except, of course, when we came to a hill. And we were even more lucky that the three of us had a bit of light to see by. The full moon shone like a pale orb behind the thin mist that still hung miles overhead. It looked like a big, orange eye looking down on us.

  But it did not thrill me to see that the farther north we rode up the road, the more orange glows showed themselves on the horizon. After seeing what had happened to Dr. Shetlin, I didn’t want to go anywhere near a wildfire. They could move fast, and the chilly breeze warned me that if one came in our direction, it wouldn’t be easy to get away.

  But the fires also cast a general, pale orange glow on the sky. That was enough for the three of us to see the white lines on the side of the road, and to stay within them. I saw no signs of the two tractors ahead of us, which meant that David and his crew had cranked them to the max and probably even reached, or passed, the next town by now. The only sound as we rode was the crinkling of our plastic suits and the bags that we hung off the handlebars of the bikes. We took turns with that, too, since having ammo bang into my knee with each revolution got unbearable after a while.

  We coasted down hills. Dodged a few vehicles pulled to the side of the road, all of which had horrible smells coming from them. Jerome suggested that we not search those cars. Alana and I agreed.

  “I think that might be the retirement town,” Alana said some time later, as the moon sank towards the horizon.

  I was glad the physical activity had kept me awake, because I knew that before we did another day of travel, the three of us would have to sleep. And after pedaling and coasting for another minute, I saw what Alana meant. Square and triangular shapes stood against the pale orange of the horizon.

  Buildings.

  We had reached Rocky Falls.

  I tried to calculate our speed and how many miles we’d traveled in my head, but I was far too tired at that point. Instead, I braced myself. The buildings here were intact, which meant that there would be bodies. And we would have to search them in the dark, with only the weak counter lights to aid us.

  “Slow down,” Jerome said. “We need to make sure David’s not waiting for us.”

  He could have been, for all I knew. So we slowed our bikes, and I was glad they were new enough to stay mostly quiet. The desert was mostly quiet now, with few insects
buzzing, and clicking bikes would have stood out.

  A square metal sign rose from the darkness, standing black against the sky. I couldn’t read the text, but I knew we’d reached the town limits.

  And within the small army of dark shapes, I saw no light.

  “Stop the bikes,” I hissed. “We need to eat again, and then we need to walk them from here. See if there’s any metal buildings, and get into one for the day so we can search for supplies. And no houses, because the dead will be there, and not dried out in the sun.”

  “I think this town has RVs,” Jerome said. “I remember seeing them when our bus passed through. It’s a place that has a lot of temporary residents, I think.”

  “And maybe more weapons,” I said.

  That was good and bad. More weapons meant David would have snatched them, and he had the benefit of that industrial flashlight. But we could find them as well. David wouldn’t have searched every RV and building here, and so far, there was no sign of him or anyone else.

  Just silence and the dark shapes against the lifeless sky.

  An eerie feeling swept over me, and now that we’d reached a town, it was clear we inhabited a world of the dead. It looked like an underworld worse than anything I’d ever imagined. The breeze had shifted to our backs, at least, so any reek of death was ahead of us.

  I got off the bike, and so did Alana and Jerome. After we mowed down more energy bars, we walked them along the white line I could barely see.

  A dirt drive veered off to the side, and I knew we’d reached the turnoff for the town. I stopped and hesitated. No sound followed. Not a cough. No footsteps. And no light. Unless David and his crew were sleeping here, the place was empty, and they had already moved on. Or taken another route up towards Colton.

  “Do you think people are sleeping as they travel? David’s people, at least?” Alana hissed in my ear.

  She had a point. “They could be. Only one person has to drive each tractor, and everyone else can sleep in the vehicles they’re towing behind them. I bet they’ll reach Colton by daybreak.”

  “Great,” Jerome said. “Well, that means we can probably see what we can find here. Maybe it’s so gross that David skipped it.”

  Then I stopped right there on the turnoff before I realized why.

  “Do you hear that?” I asked.

  “Hear what?” Jerome hissed.

  “It sounds like a lawnmower.”

  Alana gasped.

  In the distance, something made a distinct chop chop chop sound. I whirled as the sound stayed low, and I realized that miles away, a blinking light was racing across the sky.

  “That’s a helicopter,” Jerome said. “A helicopter! It looks like it’s heading towards where we came from.”

  I searched my plastic bag as my heart raced. We needed light. Something. Anything. I fished out the counter light and clicked it on, waving it in the air. But the helicopter continued on and out of sight.

  It was probably going to the Visitor Center. And with that realization, I lowered the useless light.

  Dr. Marson.

  He had either found a way to the alive zone and sent help, or someone who thought he and his colleagues might have survived in the mine had sent someone to check.

  And we had missed our rescue by hours.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “I can’t believe that,” Jerome said as we stood on the turnoff.

  The helicopter did not come back as we waited. Frustration boiled up inside me as I paced. The rescuers would search the mine, or would they? That would take hours, and would they search the area? Would these people have the resources to scour the desert and all the towns we could have gone to?

  I doubted it. The helicopter wouldn’t fly in the daylight, would it? And at night, we’d be extra hard to see.

  “Well, we can’t stand here all night,” I forced at last. “We have to sleep somewhere and then figure out what to do. And starting a fire won’t work as a beacon. Everything’s burning.”

  Alana sighed. “I think you’re right. We’re too far away for them to find us now. And if we wait, we could run out of food.” She looked in the supply bag, and I knew it was getting low. We had used a lot of energy and needed to eat in response.

  All we could do right now was head into town and keep our ears open. David and the others had cut ahead of us. They would be in Colton by the time we got there, because we had a zero chance of overtaking them on bicycles, propelled by our own bodies and our diminishing supply of calories.

  We had to arm ourselves the best we could, and then go meet our enemy.

  I didn’t want to kill. But I feared that we’d have a fight, and I’d have to get her and Jerome ready for it.

  We needed to find more guns.

  I swallowed as we stepped deeper into the town, which remained a collection of dead shadows in the dark orange night. After walking along the dirt track, we came to a wood-bordered sign that probably said it was an RV park, because just beyond it were the shapes of several things that were probably the vacation vehicles of the rich.

  And I caught a faint whiff of death.

  With luck, most of the retirees had crawled out of their RV’s, looking for help in their last moments. That meant mummification and drying out in the UV light. Less smell. If we weren’t lucky, everyone had crawled inside and stayed there. The burst had arrived during the hottest part of the day, when people retreated indoors.

  “You think we could sleep in one of the RVs for a few hours?” Jerome asked. “I’m sure a few of these are big enough to have full beds.”

  I’d traveled before, so I’d seen plenty of RVs. Me, Mom, and Dad had been in several during campground cookouts. “Some of them are really nice,” I said. “We just need one that, um, doesn’t have anyone dead inside.” And we’d have to rely on smell to find one.

  We felt our way around, opening RV doors and closing them again. Most had the horrible smell I would never get used to, but at last, I opened the sliding door to one and leaned inside. “No stench.”

  “Than that’s ours,” Alana said, her voice rising.

  “Shh,” I said. “We don’t know if anyone else is here.”

  I climbed inside and felt around. Everything smelled sterile here, and at last, I found a full twin bed. A bed. I never thought I’d be so grateful to find one, or to flop down on fluffy sheets.

  “That sounded comfortable,” Jerome told me from two feet away. He was a shadow in the aisle. “I’ll have to find a place to lay.”

  “This can fit two people,” I said, spreading my arms across the sheets in darkness.

  I could almost hear Jerome blushing. And I realized what I was saying. Then I blushed, too. No. We didn’t have time for relationships when the first order of business was to stay alive. Hell, we might not even be alive the day after tomorrow. It wasn’t worth trying to get close to anyone I wasn’t already close to. I knew how painful it was when it ended.

  “I found a couch,” Jerome said as he walked past me and Alana came up behind him. “I think we all have a place to lie for tonight. When the sun comes up again, we’ll search around. These suits have done their job, so far. And they’ll keep working.”

  “How do we wake up on time?” Alana asked.

  “I have an obnoxious phone alarm that sounds like a countdown to an explosion,” I said, “but I don’t want to use the batteries if we don’t have to. We’ll have to wake up when we wake up.”

  * * * * *

  Jerome was right. The suits had done their job, but I seriously needed a bath when I woke some time later. Though my body was sore and my legs especially so, thanks to our hike and epic bike ride, I was almost glad to see the rusty light coming through the closed curtains of the RV.

  It was a nice RV. One of those with an extender that was fully out, providing more room. These people had set up camp here and must have been outside when the burst hit.

  Alana had gotten on top of the bed on the outside, boxing me in, and I had to clim
b over her to get up and stretch. I found Jerome on the couch, curled up in a manner that almost made me laugh, but then I remembered with a gut punch. We were all small children right now, and didn’t know what to do.

  And no one could ask for their parents.

  We were on our own.

  “Morning,” I said, as Jerome kept sleeping.

  Alana groaned. “Already? I feel like I just feel asleep.”

  “It’s the best time to search the town. And now that there’s light, we can better avoid any bodies.” I hated myself for being so blunt.

  Alana groaned and got up. “I need a shower. Or at least a swimming pool.”

  Yes. The body odor was becoming an issue, and I knew it would be a boost to morale if we could get clean. However, I doubted the water plants were still working. But this was a vacation town. A retirement place. The retirees would have wanted a pool out here.

  Once we poked Jerome and got him up, it was time to suit up again and search.

  I opened the RV door first and stood on the threshold of a day that looked as if the strangest storm was about to descend. The haze had only thickened overnight, hanging high in the atmosphere, and another chill swept over me.

  We also heard no helicopters.

  “What is that stuff?” Jerome asked, looking over my shoulder.

  “I don’t know. The burst did something to the atmosphere. It’s probably acid rain clouds or something,” I said. “If we find any books, we’ll have to look.”

  “Probably something to do with nitrogen. That’s my guess,” Alana said.

  We stepped down.

  Most of Rocky Falls seemed to be an RV park. There must be a good hundred of them, at least, parked in eight rows on the dust and gravel. A central pueblo-style building stood in the center, and it was big enough to house a store and maybe more, like a lobby.

  And yes, there were bodies scattered among the RV’s. Few, though. Most people had gone inside when the radiation hit, as if the RVs could protect them, but a few people had fallen outside. Bright clothing stood out against the drying bodies and the rusty landscape.