by Richard Bard
Chapter 3
I WAS MIDWAY THROUGH a leap off a building, blasting my M1216 shotgun at two opponents who’d just run past, when my cell phone vibrated in my pocket. It was a burst of three short vibrations, then three long, three short—Morse code for SOS. I think my heart might’ve skipped a beat because my breath caught in my throat. I glanced up to see shocked expressions on my sister and brother, and even with my noise-canceling headphones on, I knew the ring tone that accompanied the code on all our phones was “Danger Zone,” a song from Dad’s favorite movie, Top Gun, programmed to play by an application that synched specific text messages with distinctive tones.
I ripped off my Spider and we all scrambled for our phones.
“Oh my God!” Sarafina gasped. Her face was white.
“No, wait a minute,” Ahmed said, standing up so fast that his chair toppled backward. “I was supposed to go surfing. What about school? My stuff? I haven’t even eaten lunch yet. This can’t be for real—”
I ignored him because the moment I unlocked the screen on my phone, I knew it was real. Mom and Dad had pounded it into our heads over and over again. The alert message would never be sent as a drill. The group text had come from Mom’s phone. I stared at the four characters that would change our lives forever:
Now!
Sarafina dropped her phone on the table. Her hands shook and her fingers danced in the air as if they were playing an aggressive song on the piano.
Ahmed’s rant continued, his words spilling over one another. “Where’s Dad? We don’t even have a car. I love this house. What about my board—”
I tuned him out, recalling Dad’s instructions:
Don’t question. Act!
I snapped off the back of my phone, yanked out the battery, and threw the device as hard as I could against the tile floor. Glass cracked, plastic splintered, and my sister and brother froze. I set my jaw and returned their stares, ignoring the tears spilling down my cheeks. Sarafina’s fingers calmed and Ahmed’s lips tightened. We needed to work together. I knew it. They knew it.
Ahmed blew out a breath behind clenched teeth. His eyes narrowed and a nod told me he was back in control. He removed the battery from his phone and dropped the remnants beside mine on the floor. Sarafina followed suit. That act of solidarity was like the Spider game’s countdown clock reaching zero.
“Move!” Ahmed said, grabbing his laptop and running toward the staircase leading to our bedrooms. Sarafina was right behind him. I jammed the Spider and tablet into my backpack and followed.
“Sixty seconds!” Ahmed shouted as he dashed into his bedroom.
My sister let out a yelp and disappeared around the corner.
I ran into my room and a flush of sadness washed over me when I realized this would be the last time I’d ever see it. I pushed the feeling aside and kept moving. Most of the stuff I needed was already in my pack, but Dad had drilled into us that our survival depended on having everything on the list. So I opened the bottom drawer of my dresser and pulled out a new cell phone, a rolled-up sweatshirt, a Swiss Army knife, and a rubber-banded wad of documents and money. I shoved it all into my pack.
“I hate these long pants,” my sister shouted from her bedroom. “They make me look fat.”
“Don’t forget the barrettes!” Ahmed said.
I pulled on my jeans, laced up my sneakers, and slung the pack over my shoulder. Fighting back a sniffle, I took one last look at my room, memorizing every detail—the action figures on my dresser, the wall covered with my favorite fractal patterns, the model airplanes hanging from the ceiling—
“Thirty seconds!” Ahmed shouted.
I flinched, grabbed my favorite Transformer figure, and rushed out the door. There was one last thing I had to get that wasn’t on the list.
Dad’s life depended on it.