Storm

THIRTEEN

As we drove south on the interstate, I told Jon, Kent, and Olivia what we had seen at Fenway Park and that Feit was alive. I explained how Feit told us that the battle between the two military forces was about changing the course of the planet. The Air Force believed that the SYLO forces had put us on a path that would mean the end of mankind and that the only way to save the planet was to reset civilization.

Nobody said a word. Nobody questioned. It was just as well. It wasn’t like I had any answers. I was only repeating what Feit told us. SYLO and the Air Force were nothing more than tools. There was no way to know who was using them.

I think the reality of what we had just been through and what we had learned had finally settled in and left us all in shock. The fact that Chris and his cowboys turned out to be Air Force villains wasn’t the worst of it. The mysterious device being built in Fenway Park was a minor footnote. The attack by SYLO on Fenway was the least surprising of all. It made sense that the Navy was far too huge to have been crippled by one battle. None of those revelations bothered me as much as the most important bit of information we had gotten from Feit.

In their quest to “reset” civilization, the Air Force had wiped out three-quarters of the world’s population. It was a reality that was hard enough to accept, let alone understand.

I thought back to the fleet of black planes we saw high over Boston, headed out to sea. Were they on their way to another target city? Were millions more killed that night? The possibility was too horrific to believe, but from what we’d seen in Portland and Boston, it could very well be true.

As we traveled along the empty interstate, we saw more of what we had witnessed on our journey to Boston. There were thousands of abandoned cars, though no other signs that we were in the middle of a war. There were no downed fighter planes, no burning buildings. No wounded. No bodies.

No life at all.

The full picture of what had happened was beginning to become clear. The black Air Force planes had passed over like minions sent by the angel of death and vaporized anyone who wasn’t lucky enough to have been deep in some basement and safe from their reach. Unlike what had happened to the boat that Quinn had been on, and some of the buildings in Portland and Boston, the sweep left structures intact. The weapon was selective, and it selected people. Animals too. We didn’t see any dogs or cats or skunks or most anything else that breathed.

There were still some birds in the sky. It must have been more difficult to target flying objects. For one horrifying second I imagined that the world would soon become a giant aviary. It was like something out of a horror movie.

Everything we were seeing was like something out of a horror movie.

I felt numb. It was impossible to accept such a huge loss of life. I kept searching for other answers. Other possibilities. Other explanations.

I came up empty. The harsh truth was that we were members of a very small club. We were the survivors of the most heinous crime ever committed.

What we couldn’t know was what the future held.

“We gotta get gas,” Kent said. “We’re sucking fumes.”

He pulled off the interstate and drove to a gas station.

“What’s the point?” Jon said. “It’s not like the pumps work.”

Tori looked at me and said, “Get a gas can.”

She seemed to know what she was doing, so I didn’t question. I went into the convenience store that was attached to the station and found a can. I also grabbed a handful of Tootsie Pops. Why not?

Outside, Tori had gotten the hose she took from the Target store in Portland. I’d forgotten all about that. She went to one of the abandoned cars and popped open the gas door. I placed the tank on the pavement below it and unscrewed the cap. Tori fed one end of the tube into the gas tank and sucked on the other. She squinted, waiting for the first taste of gas. When she got it, she quickly spit out the little gas that made it to her mouth and jammed the end into the container. The suction had started the stream, and gas flowed from the car into the red can.

Tori wiped her mouth with her sleeve, and I handed her a Tootsie Pop.

“That’s for taking one for the team,” I said.

Tori grimaced and tore the packaging off the candy. “You’re up next,” she said and gratefully started in on the pop.

Kent walked up to us with his hands in his pockets. I tossed him a Tootsie Pop. It hit him in the chest and fell to the ground.

“Nice catch.”

He picked it up and stared at it as if it was something from an alien world… and maybe it was. We hadn’t been thinking much about anything that was considered normal in our previous lives. Like candy.

“So?” Kent asked. “Anybody know how to get to Nevada?”

I laughed. Tori did too. Kent finally joined in. It was a brief moment of silliness that we desperately needed.

Tori got it back together first.

“We’ve got to gear up again,” she said. “We’ll get a road atlas.”

That thought brought us back to our harsh reality. We had to collect supplies again, just as we did in Portland, since we’d left everything we owned at Faneuil Hall. The first time we’d done it, it felt like an adventure. We had high hopes of rejoining civilization in Boston, and it had been a little bit of a rush to take whatever we wanted. Now we were faced with a new normal, and that meant we might have to be raiding stores for a very long time.

This time felt less like an adventure and more like a curse.

Kent took the gas can and dumped the fuel into the Explorer. He and Tori then moved to siphon another car. While they worked, I went to Olivia and Jon, who were sitting in the Explorer. They were talking about something, maybe even arguing, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying, and they immediately stopped when I opened the door.

“Trick or treat,” I said and tossed each of them a Tootsie Pop. “Early Halloween.”

“Thanks,” Jon said and ate his hungrily.

Olivia wasn’t as enthused. “I don’t eat candy.”

Figures.

They both seemed upset, and I had a pretty good idea why.

“It’s okay, Jon” I said. “You did what you thought was right.”

What I really wanted to say was, “Why the hell didn’t you believe me?” but that would have been piling on.

“I’m sorry, Tucker. What you were saying about Chris seemed so… incredible. But I’m with you now. I hope you believe that.”

I couldn’t bring myself say, “Sure! No problem!” Truth was, he was on thin ice with me. He had almost gotten us killed. It’s hard to let something like that go.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, which meant absolutely nothing.

Olivia was staring straight ahead, as if her mind was miles away.

“You okay?” I asked.

“So many people,” she said, sounding dazed. “Gone. It’s just… impossible to imagine.”

“We still don’t know what happened to your mom,” I said, trying to give her hope but realizing how hollow it sounded.

She gave me a sad smile and said, “You’re a glass-half-full kind of guy, huh?”

“I try,” I said. “C’mon, be crazy. Eat a lollipop.”

I held the candy out to her, and she grabbed my hand. She held me tight and looked right into my eyes.

I felt as if she wanted to tell me something but couldn’t bring herself to do it. She was tortured, but we all were. My fear was that she was going to say something like “I love you, Tucker,” which I might have welcomed at the beginning of the summer, but not since Kent had admitted he had a thing for her.

And since Tori kissed me.

The last thing we needed was that kind of drama.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Take it. There’s plenty more where that came from.”

I gave her a big smile, trying to break the tension.

Olivia returned my smile and took the pop.

“For you, I’ll even eat sugar.”

The moment had passed, but I was struck by the insanity of our situation. We were alone in a near-dead world. We were all we had. If nothing else, we had to know that we could rely on one another. Without that, we would end up joining the three-quarters that didn’t make it.

Kent and Tori finished topping off the gas tank, and we all climbed back into the SUV.

“Now what?” Kent said. “Do I just drive without knowing where we’re headed?”

“I’m hungry,” Jon declared.

“I need a shower,” Olivia added.

Everyone looked to me. Whenever there was a decision to be made, I was expected to be the mediator. It wasn’t a comfortable position. If things went bad, I’d get grief, and so far there was very little that had gone right. But we couldn’t just sit there staring at one another.

“We have maybe four hours of daylight left,” I pointed out. “I say we find a store and gear up again. We’ll get a map. Then we should find a place to spend the night. A hotel or something.”

“And tomorrow we’ll head for Nevada,” Tori said.

“Why?” Olivia asked. “Do you seriously think we’re going to join up with a merry band of survivors and take back the world?”

Tori opened her mouth to answer, but no words came out. Olivia might not always have the big picture in mind, but those few words had put the plan under the harsh light of reality.

“Seriously,” Kent said. “For all we know, the Air Force has already found them and wiped them out. They have radios too. They could have heard that broadcast.”

“So what do you want to do?” Tori asked, peeved. “Crawl into a hole and hide?”

“Not me,” Jon chimed in. “I want to keep moving.”

“But if we’re moving, there’s a better chance of being spotted by those black planes,” Olivia warned. “Hiding out sounds good to me.”

“Not to me it doesn’t,” Tori shot back.

“So then go!” Olivia shouted. “Maybe it would be better if we split up.”

“Stop!” I ordered. “Nobody’s splitting up, so just… relax.”

There was a tense quiet in the car.

“We can’t do this,” I said. “We can’t turn on each other. Like it or not, we’re all we’ve got.”

Everyone stole looks at one another as if the reality had finally sunk in that our entire universe consisted of… us.

“Let’s not look too far ahead,” I added. “One step at a time. All right?”

There were a few grumbles of reluctant agreement.

“Good. Let’s go to the next big town. We’ll find a store, gear up, and then find a place to sleep. I don’t want to spend the night in this car.”

That was one thing that everyone could agree on, so Kent started up the car, and we were off.

The next big town was Springfield, Massachusetts. I’d been there once with my father to visit the Basketball Hall of Fame, but I was nine, so there was very little that I remembered about the city. Kent pulled off the interstate, and within minutes we found a Walmart.

“Seriously?” Olivia complained. “First Target, now… this?”

Nobody commented.

Walmart was open for business. Or at least it was open. The five of us grabbed carts, split up, and went on another shopping spree through the deserted superstore.

On this trip I was less worried about comfort and more concerned with practical items. I picked up a flashlight, a couple of headlamps, and some camp lanterns. Batteries too. I had always taken electricity and light for granted. Not anymore. I also grabbed some water-purification tablets in the camping area. There was no way to know if we’d always find plumbing with running, filtered water. The last thing we needed was dysentery. There was a big first aid kit in the same area, so I put it into my cart along with a waterproof box of matches and a compass. I took another hoodie, a T-shirt, and extra socks and underwear. In the grocery area I took a bunch of ramen noodle boxes and freeze-dried food packets thinking we could boil water over a fire and have a hot meal. My last stop was in the book area, where I found Tori thumbing through a large road atlas.

“This is pretty detailed,” she said. “Every page is a map of a different state. But it’s also got fifty folded satellite maps of each state. “It’s not Google Earth, but it’ll do.”

She dumped it into her cart and moved on. I took note that she had restocked with several boxes of ammunition. Gotta love Walmart. Where else can you buy candy and bullets?

We all met at the front of the store, and I was relieved to see that Olivia had chosen much more wisely this time. She only had a pair of jeans, a sweater, socks, and underwear. We all stared at her near-empty cart.

“What?” she asked defensively. “I couldn’t find anything I cared to wear.”

Everyone had been equally practical, for whatever reason. Jon had thought to grab several walkie-talkies and replacement batteries. Kent had stocked up on bags of trail mix, beef jerky, and Gatorade. Everyone picked up headlamps and lanterns. We were in and out of there in half an hour with our supplies packed into individual canvas bags.

“Okay, Mr. Practical,” Kent said. “We took that step. What’s next?”

“We gotta find someplace to spend the night.”

“I have an idea,” Jon said.

Jon hadn’t been offering much. He was still the new kid and wasn’t all that social anyway. And he had nearly gotten us all killed, so hearing him volunteer an idea was strange.

“Let’s find another hospital,” he suggested. “There’s food and beds, and if they have a radio I can probably figure out how to get it running on the backup batteries.”

“You want to hear the broadcast again?” Tori asked.

“I want to make sure there still is a broadcast,” he replied. “It’s been over a week. I don’t want to drive a couple of thousand miles for nothing.”

“That’s really smart, Jon,” I said.

Jon beamed proudly, as if he had re-earned my trust.

For the record, he hadn’t. But he did have a good idea.

It didn’t take us long to find a huge hospital called Bay State Medical Center. We drove around until we found the entrance to the emergency room, the most likely place for a radio. We left the car in front, grabbed our gear, and headed inside.

Jon led the group as if he knew where he was going. I guess when you work in a hospital, you get a feel for how they’re set up. Within minutes we were behind the reception desk. Jon scanned the area and headed straight for a closed door. He opened it and…

“Gotcha!” he proclaimed.

There was a radio setup very much like the one at Maine Medical Center.

“Give me some time,” he said. “As long as they’ve got emergency power, I can fire this up.”

“I’m starving,” I said. “Let’s hit the kitchen to see what hasn’t spoiled.”

We left Jon to work and went hunting for the cafeteria. It took a while to find, but it was worth it. There was a pantry loaded with canned food. We also found sealed bags of taco shells and plenty of bottled water. We would eat well that night.

I opened the cold locker and immediately wished I hadn’t. The smell of rotting meat and vegetables made me gag. I closed the door quickly, grateful that the seal was tight enough to block the smell.

“Get used to that,” Tori said.

We cracked open a few cans and dished out tomatoes, peaches, and some processed meat that I probably would never have eaten in our previous life, but when you’re hungry, most everything tastes good. None of us cared about manners. We all just dug in and ate.

“Vitamins,” Tori said. “There’s probably a pharmacy where we can grab some multivitamins. It’s not like we’re going to be eating balanced meals.”

“Good idea, Mom,” Kent said and gave her a friendly hug. Too friendly, if you ask me, but nobody asked.

When we had eaten our fill, Tori loaded up a plate of food and headed out.

“For Jon,” she said and walked off.

“You know the great thing about eating like this?” Kent asked.

Olivia and I looked at him, waiting.

“No clean up!” He tossed his plate onto the counter. “Who said Armageddon can’t be fun!”

We didn’t laugh.

“Jeez, just trying to lighten things up,” Kent said, irritated.

“I’m going to find a shower,” I said. “Hopefully the water’s still running.”

“Where should we sleep?” Kent asked.

“The emergency room is probably okay,” I said, thinking out loud. “It’s below ground.”

The sun had set, which meant we were once again in the dark. I grabbed one of the camp lanterns and went in search of a shower. It didn’t take long to find one. There was a locker room near the ER that was probably for nurses. At the far end was a three-stall shower. I put the lantern down outside of one stall, stepped inside, crossed my fingers, and turned the faucet.

A hard spray of water sprang from the showerhead.

“Yes!”

It wasn’t heated, but the pressure was good. There were even bottles of body wash and shampoo at each station. After finding a stack of clean white towels, I was good to go. I peeled off my clothes and stood under the cold spray to wash away the grime that had been building over the last few days. It didn’t bother me that the water was cold. It felt great. I shampooed my hair and was surprised to feel that a bunch of grit had accumulated on my scalp. It took a second for me to realize I was washing out tiny bits of Fenway Park. I lathered myself entirely to get every last particle of that nightmare off of my body. By the time I rinsed off, the cold water was making me numb, so I shut it off and stood there to drip dry.

“I’m next,” Olivia sang.

I turned quickly to see her standing in the entrance to the shower area wearing only a towel… which was a lot more than I was wearing.

“Jeez, Olivia!” I complained. “Again?”

I covered my privates with one hand and reached for a towel with the other. By the time I had it wrapped around my waist, Olivia had stepped into the stall behind me.

“I’ll dry your back,” she said.

There were too many emotions fighting for control for me to do anything but stand there like a dummy. I was embarrassed and angry and nervous and, okay, maybe a little bit thrilled that the two of us were standing there together, as good as naked. Olivia gently patted my back with a towel as I stood frozen.

“You shouldn’t be doing this,” I finally said. “If Kent walks in… hell, if anybody walks in.”

“What?” she said innocently. “We’re taking a shower. Like you said, we’re all in this together now.”

“This isn’t what I had in mind,” I said, my voice cracking.

“Oh, relax. We’re not doing anything wrong. Are we?”

Maybe it was just my imagination or wishful thinking, but the way she said “Are we?” sounded like an invitation. Man, I was tempted. I had followed Olivia around like a dumb puppy all summer just hoping to get a kiss. Now we were standing in a dark shower, alone, nearly naked, and she was rubbing my shoulders even though they had been dry for a while.

“I was thinking,” she said. “Maybe we shouldn’t go to Nevada.”

“Why not? It’s as good a place as any.”

“Is it? What does Tori think we’ll find there? A bunch of survivors we can join up with and fight to take back the world from the clutches of the evil Air Force? Or SYLO? Or whoever else may be trying to take over the world? It’s a romantic idea, but is it realistic? Or is she just trying to finish what her father started?”

It was a pretty smart observation. Tori loved her dad. It wasn’t hard to imagine that she’d want to follow in his footsteps.

“What do you think we should do?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she answered dreamily, as if she hadn’t really thought about it.

She came around to the front of me and continued to dry me off, rubbing the towel across my chest. It was making me crazy, but I didn’t stop her.

“Maybe the best thing we can do is head south. Somewhere tropical, like the Florida Keys. Somewhere that’ll be warm and comfortable, even in winter. We can find a house on the beach and fish for supper and sleep in the sand under a palm tree, and while the rest of the world sorts itself out, we’ll be in paradise. Doesn’t that sound tempting?”

She stopped rubbing my chest and looked me square in the eye.

I don’t think the word “tempting” was strong enough. It sounded great. I imagined lying on the beach with Olivia. Olivia was wearing the red bikini.

“Do you want to go to the beach with me, Tucker?” she asked playfully and took a step closer.

I was a breath away from saying, “Hell yeah!” when—

“Really?” came a stern voice from the door leading into the shower.

Tori.

She stood in the doorway with a towel draped over her arm, ready to take her turn. Instead, she spun around and stormed off.

“Oops!” Olivia said with naughty giggle and a shrug.

I took off after Tori. I felt as though I had been caught cheating, though I wasn’t doing anything. Not really. Tori and I weren’t even together. Yes, we kissed. Yes, I cared for her. But we never made it official and… man, I was in real trouble.

The last thing I wanted to do was hurt Tori. She had become my best friend. Why hadn’t I just walked away from Olivia? Because I’m an idiot, that’s why.

“Tori!” I called. “Please, wait.”

I caught her before she left the locker room. She spun to face me, and even in the low light I saw that her face was flushed.

“What?” she snapped, obviously peeved.

“We were just talking,” I said.

It may have been true, but it was a totally lame excuse. What had been going through my mind was a lot more than conversation.

“I don’t care,” she shot back, sounding as though she actually did care. “You can shower with anybody you want.”

“We weren’t showering,” I argued. “I was finishing up, and she was next.”

Tori laughed as if I had just offered the weakest explanation ever.

“And she was in a hurry, so she was helping you dry off so she could get in faster, is that it?”

“No! She was, well, I don’t know what she was doing. She wanted to talk. I didn’t ask her to dry me off.”

“You didn’t stop her either.”

She had me there.

“Look, Tucker, I don’t care. If you and Olivia want to hook up, that’s your business. But be careful. You’re the one who said we’re all in this together. If you piss Kent off, I can’t help you.”

“I don’t want to hook up with Olivia,” I said. “It just… happened.”

Tori scoffed. “Yeah, I saw that.”

She turned and walked away, then glanced back and added, “Put your pants on and meet us at the radio. Jon’s got it working.” With that, she left.

I was torn between the embarrassment of what had just happened and excitement about the radio. I ran back into the locker room to get my clothes and saw that Olivia was in the shower, casually shampooing her hair as if nothing had happened. I have to admit, I didn’t look away at first. I’d never seen a naked girl taking a shower before. Or a naked girl doing anything, for that matter. The sight froze me for an instant. Olivia looked at me and smiled.

That rocked me back to my senses. I turned away and grabbed my clothes.

“The radio is working!” I called to her.

“Be right up!” she called back, but it didn’t sound as if she was in any hurry to finish her shower.

I took my clothes out into the hallway and dressed quickly. Whatever had happened, or hadn’t happened, between Olivia and me meant nothing. The bottom line was that I had been stupid, and it probably destroyed my friendship with Tori. She had trouble trusting anyone since her mother abandoned her and her father. She had no friends in school and spent most of her time alone. I was the one person she finally put her faith in, and I totally let her down. I kept telling everyone how we had to trust each other, and I ended up being the least trustworthy of all. It was a miserable, lonely feeling.

Olivia turned off the shower. The last thing I wanted was to be alone with her, so I finished dressing fast and took off for the emergency room.

Kent and Tori were standing behind Jon, who sat at a keyboard and a computer screen, just as he did in Portland. The sight of an active screen was jarring because I hadn’t seen anything electronic for weeks. I had no idea what any of the numbers or different colored modules meant, but Jon did.

I looked at Tori. She kept her eyes on the screen. Just as well.

“Is it the same voice?” I asked.

“Shhh!” Jon admonished.

I listened and was stunned to hear the same woman’s voice coming from the speaker near the ceiling. It was not only the same voice, the radio signal was much stronger, and we were able to hear the entire message.

“We are the survivors. We have been bloodied, but not beaten. To all of those who have been attacked: Know that we will fight back. Join us. We will take you in and keep you safe. Hundreds have already arrived, and more are arriving every day.”

The message was slightly different from the one Tori had pieced together. The earlier message hadn’t mentioned anything about the number of survivors who had joined them.

Jon was frantically writing as the woman spoke.

“North thirty-six degrees. Twenty-six minutes, twenty seconds. West one hundred fourteen degrees. Thirty-one minutes, fiftyseven seconds.”

“Bingo, we got it,” Jon exclaimed while writing furiously.

“Please use caution, for we are being watched. Trust no one. We will fight for our home. We will repel the murderers. We have strength in numbers. The survivors will stand together. Do not hesitate.”

That was it. The message repeated one more time and was replaced by static.

Jon waited a few more seconds to make sure it was definitely over, then powered down the radio. The screen went dark, and we were back under lantern light.

“It’s pretty much the same message on the same frequency,” Jon announced. “Including the coordinates. There were a few additions about how many people they’ve got and to use caution. The message repeated five times.”

“Could it be a trap?” Kent asked. “Like with Faneuil Hall? If we’re not supposed to trust anybody, why should we trust them?”

“It could be,” Tori said thoughtfully. “Or it could be a lifeline. There’s only one way to find out.”

A shrieking scream shattered the quiet of the empty hospital.

“Olivia!” Kent shouted and took off running.

I grabbed the lantern and followed, with the others close behind.

Kent sprinted into the emergency room and nearly knocked Olivia down as she came running out. She had on scrubs and a towel wrapped around her wet head. She was in tears as she ran into Kent’s arms.

“Somebody’s back there!” she cried frantically.

Kent hugged her and looked back to us.

I glanced at Tori, who finally looked back at me. Whatever Olivia had seen, it was more important than the incident in the shower room.

“Do you have the gun?” I asked.

She reached behind her back to pull the Glock from under her sweater.

“Who is it?” I asked Olivia.

She was in a full-on panic and could barely speak through frightened, clutching breaths.

“I don’t know,” she managed to garble out. “A man.”

She pulled away from Kent and ran in the other direction.

Kent said, “I got this,” and ran after Olivia.

“Sure,” Tori said sarcastically. “You go, Kent. We’ll take care of the boogeyman.”

I flicked off the lantern and put my headlamp on. The light it threw wasn’t as good as the lantern’s, but it was focused forward, which meant we weren’t blinded by it. I took a few steps deeper into the emergency room, listening for the sounds of any movement.

“Hello?” I called out. “Who’s back there?”

There was no answer.

I steeled myself and walked forward, slowly.

Tori raised the gun and stayed with me.

Jon trailed close behind.

The light from my headlamp played over the hanging drapes that separated the treatment areas. Somebody could have been hiding behind any one of them.

“We’ve got a gun,” Tori said loudly. “Come out before somebody gets hurt.”

We reached the first hanging drape. I reached out and yanked it aside to see… an empty bed.

“Dude, don’t be stupid,” I called out. “We don’t want to shoot you.”

We reached the second drape. I wished that the throw of the light were wider. I feared that somebody might be lurking beyond the edges of our sight. I reached out and yanked the second drape aside.

Again, only an empty bed.

Jon said, “Maybe she was wrong. It could have been one of those dummies they practice CPR on.”

I liked that explanation. I sure hoped it was true.

We approached the third drape. I reached out to pull it aside…

…but the drape was yanked back before I could touch it to reveal a deathly pale, skeletal man with wide, haunted eyes. His mouth was open as he let out a pained moan.

Jon screamed.

Tori lifted the gun, but I pushed it aside as the man took a step forward… and collapsed at our feet.