Storm

FIVE

We were about to step into the unknown.

When we escaped from Pemberwick Island, our destination had been Portland, a town that most of us were familiar with. Now we were faced with the reality of hitting the road to seek out places that would be strange and different even under normal circumstances.

We began with a clear mission but were now flying blind, reacting to events as they happened. I had the disturbing sense of being adrift. It was like our pasts had been erased. I had expected that my future would be spent on Pemberwick Island, working with my dad and one day taking over his landscaping business. That was now somebody else’s life, somebody who no longer existed.

With that solemn thought in mind, we did the only thing that made sense to prepare for such a journey.

We went shopping.

Or maybe it should be called looting because we weren’t going to pay for anything.

Jon knocked the first item off our list by choosing a car from the doctor’s parking garage. Most were expensive and big. More importantly, the keys were in the ignition. There were five of us now, so we needed another row of seating as well as cargo space. Jon picked a big old Ford Explorer.

Once we had wheels, there was no reason to hang around the hospital, so we had to say our good-byes to Luna. Her last medical treatment was to change Tori’s dressing.

“Are you sure you won’t come?” Tori asked.

“Positive,” Luna replied with confidence. “Besides, I’m thinking you’ll eventually be back this way. This is your home.”

I didn’t point out to her that we no longer had a home.

Luna removed the bandage and the cotton packing, then cleaned the wound and replaced it all with fresh bandages.

“It’s healing nicely,” Luna said. “Keep it clean, change the bandages as often as you can, and you’ll be okay before you know it.”

Tori leaned forward and hugged the doctor. For her, that was a dramatic statement. I’d only seen her show that kind of emotion with her father. It reminded me that Tori had now lost both of her parents. Her mother abandoned the family when she was young, and her father was killed by the SYLO attack on the rebel compound on Pemberwick. Tori was now an orphan.

Though my parents were still alive, I felt like an orphan myself. They had betrayed me and the people of Pemberwick by helping the SYLO invaders. I would never wish that they were dead, but in some ways that might have been easier to deal with.

“Keep listening to the broadcasts,” Jon said. “You might get some new info.”

“I will,” Luna assured him. “You’re a good friend, Jon. I’ll miss you.”

Jon wiped his eyes so we wouldn’t see that he was tearing up.

“We gotta go,” Kent said. “Who knows how long it’ll take to get to Boston, and I don’t want to roll in after dark.”

We all shared hugs and hopeful words that we would meet again, then left Dr. Kayamori to man her lonely outpost. Alone.

The Explorer was parked outside of the emergency room. Jon went for the wheel, but Kent clamped a firm hand on his shoulder.

“I’m driving, Chadwick,” he declared.

Jon pulled away from him angrily.

“I’m the one who found it,” he argued.

“And that matters because… ?” Kent asked snottily.

Kent towered over him threateningly. Jon may have been older than Kent, but Kent must have outweighed him by fifty pounds.

“Fine,” Jon said with reluctant resignation.

He went for the passenger side, but Olivia was already riding shotgun. He looked into the backseat, but Tori and I were already there. He had no choice but to squeeze past us into the third row.

“I hate riding back here,” he complained. “Don’t blame me if I puke.”

Kent turned around and glared at him. “You do and I’ll make you eat it.”

“Just drive, Kent,” I scolded.

“Sure. Where to?”

“Anywhere I can get some decent clothes,” Olivia complained. “We look like we just escaped from prison.”

She wasn’t far from wrong. We were wearing the dark red scrubs that Luna had given us the night before.

“Target,” I said. “We can find everything we need there.”

Olivia sat bolt upright. “I will NOT wear clothes from Target!”

Kent squeezed her knee and said, “It won’t matter. You’d look good in anything.”

Tori rolled her eyes and said, “Okay, Jon, you can puke now.”

“Just go with it, Olivia, okay?” I said. “We can’t go driving around looking for clothes.”

Olivia bit her lip and pouted. “Fine.”

With that rocky start, we were under way.

Tori didn’t say a word to me. She didn’t even look my way. I wanted to think it was because she was as nervous as I was. (I kept looking to the sky in case a dark plane decided to swoop in.) But I knew the real reason. She was pissed. At me. She expected me to back her up in her decision to head straight for Nevada, and it burned her that I didn’t. It took a lot to earn Tori’s trust. My fear was with that with one decision I had lost it and would have to start from scratch to get it back.

The shopping malls were a few miles from downtown. At first there didn’t seem to be anything unusual happening there. The parking lots were full of cars, shopping carts were scattered everywhere, and colorful flags whipped in the wind, promising big savings on back-to-school supplies. Everything was normal…

…except there were no people.

“It’s just so eerie,” Olivia said in awe.

Kent parked directly in front of the big Target store. There was no reason to look for an official space.

“Everybody get something to wear,” I said. “Remember, it’s warm now but that won’t last. Think of it like going camping.”

Olivia gave me a stern look. “I have never, not once, gone camping.”

“What about food?” Jon asked.

“No room,” I said. “We’ll pick it up on the road as we go.”

“I guess you thought this through,” Kent said.

“Just using common sense,” I replied and got out of the car.

Tori got out and strode for the store without a word. Olivia was right behind her. She actually had a little skip in her step as if excited about going shopping, even if it had to be at, god forbid, Target. She may not have been a camper, but I’d lay money on the fact that she was a shopper.

“Was Tori serious about going to Nevada?” Kent asked.

“I am,” Jon answered.

“I don’t care about you,” Kent snapped.

“Yeah, she was serious,” I said.

“Then she’s going on her own,” Kent said with a sneer.

“Look,” I said, “if Boston looks like Portland, we’ve got to do whatever we can to find other people.”

Kent actually looked as though he was giving that some thought.

“Is it possible?” he asked. “I mean, could other cities really have been hit?”

“Yes,” Jon said.

“I’m not asking you!” Kent barked.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “But it’s possible. How could you think it isn’t?”

Kent shook his head sadly. “I don’t. I just don’t want to believe it.”

“If we decide to go to Nevada,” I added, “you’re coming. Olivia too. We have to stay together.”

“I told you, you’re not in charge,” Kent said, looking me square in the eye with defiance.

I held his gaze and said, “If you want to go off on your own, that’s your call. But Olivia needs all the friends she can get. Do what you want, but she stays with us.”

We sat there staring at one another as if it were a test of wills. Kent may have been two years older than me, but after what we’d been through, that no longer mattered.

“She can do whatever she wants,” he said abruptly.

“Good answer,” I said and got out of the car to head for the store.

The manual doors were open, and the store was ours. The lights were out, but it was midday and there was enough light coming in through the big windows up front to provide low, gray light throughout the store.

I grabbed a shopping cart and went straight for the men’s clothes area, where I grabbed underwear and socks. I also found a pair of jeans and two T-shirts, one short sleeved and one long. There wouldn’t be room for a whole bunch of heavy clothes, so I decided to go with thin layers. I also grabbed a zippered hoodie to replace my old dirty model. The first one I picked up was bright blue, but I thought better of it and grabbed a black one. I didn’t want to be any more of a target than I already was.

Next stop was the shoe section, where I picked out a pair of light cross-trainers. I started for the changing room to try everything on, but stopped. What was the point? Nobody was around. I took off my scrubs right there in the aisle and put on the new clothes.

From there I went to the luggage area and picked out five identical soft gym bags, one for each of us. I tried to imagine what they would look like full and picked a size that I figured would fit into the back of the Explorer. I took one for myself and put in an extra pair of socks and underwear.

The pharmacy was next. I grabbed Tylenol, a toothbrush, toothpaste, hand-sanitizer, disposable shaving razors and deodorant. In the camping department, I grabbed a small flashlight and a camp lantern, with batteries for both. I also picked out a headlamp, a couple of solar blankets, waterproof matches, and a rain poncho. I glanced at all the cooking gear but figured that food would have to be eaten raw or out of a can. I grabbed a pocketknife and made sure that it had a can opener built in. Finally, I picked out a heavyduty sport watch. Normally I used my cell phone to check the time, but the battery had long since died. It had become a useless piece of junk that I reluctantly had to trash.

I packed all of the gear into one of the gym bags and found that I had plenty of room left over. With my shopping done, I wheeled my cart to the cash registers at the front of the store.

Kent and Jon were already there. Kent had on a red shortsleeved shirt, khakis, and a light green sweater, looking every bit like the preppie that he was with his bleached-blond hair and deep tan.

Jon, on the other hand, still had on his scrubs. “Don’t you want new clothes?” I asked.

“I like these,” he replied with a shrug. “Who cares what I look like?”

Certainly not him.

I tossed them each a duffle bag and watched as they filled it with the items from their cart. They had grabbed pretty much the same things that I had, except that Kent also had aftershave and mouthwash. Jon had pads of writing paper and a box of pens. I guess you can tell a lot about somebody by the stuff they think is essential for survival.

Tori arrived next, wheeling a cart with more clothes than I would have liked to see, but I figured they’d fit in the bag. She wore new jeans as well, and an oversized dark green sweater. It looked big on her, but it must have been more comfortable with her injury. I had to smile when I saw that she was wearing a new, clean University of Southern Maine baseball cap. She had pulled back her long, dark, wavy hair and tied it into a ponytail that she put through the back of the cap. It’s how I remembered her from home. It made me feel as though we had gotten back to normal, at least in some small way.

“Do you want to go to USM?” I asked.

“No,” was her curt reply.

I didn’t press.

I gave Tori a bag, and she filled it with her extra clothes, along with various girl-specific items that I didn’t examine too closely. She also had some extra gauze pads, cotton, adhesive tape, and alcohol. It was a grim reminder that she wasn’t yet whole. Her one unique item was a ten-foot length of flexible rubber hose. “What’s that for?” Kent asked.

“Gas,” she replied. “We can use this to syphon it from other cars.”

It was probably the most practical thing that any of us had gotten.

Olivia arrived wearing short-shorts, a tank top, and flip-flops. That was the good news. She was also wheeling a shopping cart overflowing with clothes.

“I’m surprised,” she said happily. “I had no idea that Target carried such a variety of really nice things!”

The four of us stood there, staring at her blankly.

“What?” she asked, genuinely confused.

I held up the final duffel bag.

“Whatever fits in here comes with us,” I said. “Whatever doesn’t, stays.”

Olivia glared at the bag as if she were a vampire and I was holding a crucifix.

“That does not work for me,” she said, shaking her head petulantly.

“Doesn’t matter,” Jon said with a superior tone. “There’s only so much room in the car.”

“Then… then… we’ll strap a bag on top!” she declared.

I was going to argue with her but decided it wasn’t worth it.

“She’s right,” I said. “Get a big bag, Olivia. We’ll strap it to the roof rack.”

“Seriously?” Tori said, peeved.

“Why not?” I said. “You can do the same thing if you want.”

“What I want is to get going,” she snapped at me. “I’ll get some straps for her.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Yeah, thanks, Tori!” Olivia said.

Tori ignored her.

Ten minutes later we had Olivia’s oversized duffel strapped securely to the roof and four smaller bags stowed in back. It was a strange feeling to have walked out of the store without paying. I felt as though we were doing something wrong, but it wasn’t like anybody cared.

“Can we get on the road now?” Kent said while locking down the last strap.

“We have to make one more stop,” Tori announced.

“Where?” Kent asked, peeved.

“We need guns,” was her simple answer.

There was a moment of stunned silence.

“We do?” Olivia finally said in a very small voice.

“We have to defend ourselves,” Tori responded quickly.

“You don’t really think a gun could shoot down one of those planes,” I said, incredulous.

“It’s not about the planes,” Tori answered without looking at me. “I’m worried about who we’ll run into along the way.”

“She’s right,” Kent said. “That dude from the Old Port was ready to blow our heads off.”

“But… guns?” Olivia said, sounding squeamish. “I’ve never even picked up a gun.”

“I have,” was Tori’s matter-of-fact answer.

I remembered how she had held Quinn and me back with a shotgun while protecting her house, right after her father had been arrested by SYLO. Between that and the way she took a SYLO soldier out with a Taser, I was confident that Tori knew how to handle a gun.

“I hate to admit it, but I agree with Tori,” I said.

“Why?” Tori snapped at me defensively. “Is it so hard to believe that I could be right about something?”

She was still pissed at me.

“No,” I said calmly. “Because you may know about guns, but the rest of us don’t. I don’t want innocent people getting shot… like me.”

“I’m with her,” Kent said. “I’d feel better if I had a weapon.”

“You sound a little too enthusiastic,” I said to him. “We aren’t playing here. Guns kill people.”

“Guns don’t kill people,” Tori said. “People kill people.”

“People with guns kill people,” I said. “But I think you’re right. We have to be able to protect ourselves.”

We drove to the shop where Tori’s father bought his guns. Other than her giving directions, it was a quiet drive. I’m not sure if that was because we were on our way to pick up lethal weapons, or because of the tension between Tori and I. She didn’t have to like me, or trust me, but I didn’t want her to be carrying around so much anger… especially if she was also going to be carrying around a loaded gun.

She directed us to a small shop that carried all sorts of sportsman gear. Unlike the other places we had entered, its front door was locked.

“Guess we’re out of luck,” Kent said.

Tori picked up a rock the size of a bowling ball and heaved it through the glass of the front door. The rest of us watched, dumbfounded.

Jon said, “Somehow this makes it seem more like looting.”

Tori reached inside the hole, unlocked the door, and we were in.

It was sportsman heaven. There were displays of every kind of archer’s bow you could imagine, camouflage hunting gear, an entire wall of fishing rods and reels, and guns. Lots of guns. One whole wall was taken up by rifles on racks.

Kent ran straight for the rifles. He picked one up and set his sights on a stuffed deer on the far side of the store.

“Say your prayers, Bambi,” he declared, laughing.

“Stop!” Tori screamed.

Kent lowered the rifle and looked at her.

“What?” he asked, sounding genuinely clueless.

“These aren’t toys,” she scolded. “Put it down.”

She was dead serious, and Kent knew it. He didn’t argue and sheepishly put the rifle back in its rack.

“I hope this isn’t a bad idea,” Olivia said nervously.

Tori went for the counter where the handguns were stored. She seemed to know what she was looking for, so I didn’t bother asking. Instead, I looked around the store for anything else we might need. I spotted walkie-talkies. If we got separated we would need to stay in contact, so I figured they might come in handy. Better still, I found a solar-powered charger that we could use to keep the batteries at full power.

“Over here,” Tori called.

We all joined her.

On the counter were two identical black handguns.

“These are Glock 17s,” she said. “Policemen use them.”

She picked up one of the guns and expertly pulled the chamber back to examine it.

“I’m making sure there are no rounds in there,” she explained.

“Bullets,” I said. “Calling them ‘rounds’ makes it seem less… lethal.”

She ignored me and continued. “It fires a nine-millimeter… bullet.” She pulled out the clip from the grip and showed it to us. “This holds seventeen… bullets.”

“The more, the merrier,” Kent said.

His eyes were wide as he stared at the gun like a kid who couldn’t wait to get his hands on a new Christmas toy.

Tori grabbed several boxes of ammunition from a shelf and placed them on the counter.

“I’ll load two magazines but only put one in a gun. We’ll keep the loaded weapon in the glove compartment. The other we’ll store in the back cargo area, unloaded with the clip separate. When we get the chance, I’ll teach you all how to shoot.”

Kent picked up one of the guns and felt its weight.

“What’s so hard?” he asked. “You point this end and bang!”

He held the gun loosely and pretended to shoot.

Tori grabbed his gun hand and held it firmly.

“If you shoot like that you’ll miss, and the recoil would probably kick the gun out of your hand.”

“How do you know so much about guns?” Kent asked.

“My father,” Tori said as she let Kent loose and started loading bullets into the magazine. “We had to protect our property. Our lobster boats. He wanted me to be totally safe with the weapons in the house, so he taught me well.”

I saw the hint of a tear growing in Tori’s eye, and her voice cracked. It felt like a couple of lifetimes since her father was gunned down by SYLO, but it was only the day before. She wiped her eye quickly and cleared her throat, as if embarrassed to have shown her emotions.

“You a good shot?” Kent asked.

“That’s irrelevant,” she replied, back in control. “These guns are only accurate to ten yards, tops. Even then you have to be good to hit anything. These are for our protection. We’re not going to be playing James Bond. Hopefully we won’t need them, but if we do, we’ll have them.”

“They still make me nervous,” Olivia said.

“Not me,” Jon said. “I’m feeling safer already.”

“Until I check you out, nobody touches these but me,” Tori declared. “Understand?”

She looked at each of us in turn. Everyone nodded, including Kent.

“Now we can go,” she said. “Jon, take the ammunition.”

She swooped up the guns and headed for the door.

Jon obediently grabbed the boxes of bullets.

I had mixed feelings about having the guns. I could see that we might need them for protection. That made all sorts of sense… as long as somebody didn’t do something stupid and shoot one of us in the foot. Or worse.

When we got to the car, Tori put the second gun and the ammunition in the rear compartment near the spare tire. She kept one box of ammunition and put it in the glove box up front. She expertly pulled the loaded magazine from the gun’s grip and placed it next to the ammunition. She then did a quick check of the gun to make sure no bullets were in the firing chamber. Satisfied that it was safe, she put it into the glove compartment and slammed it shut.

Tori was now riding shotgun. Literally.

Olivia opened her mouth, ready to fight for her spot in the car, but thought better of it. With a huff, she got in the back seat next to me.

“I can reach the gun back here if you need it!” Jon announced from the third row.

Nobody responded.

Kent fired up the engine, then turned to face us.

“Are we ready now?” he asked.

“Let’s go to Boston,” I said.

Kent hit the gas, and we were finally on our way.