Desolation (Book 1): Desolation

by Lucin, David

  A chill wormed its way up Jenn’s spine. Usually, the Go Market and other big-box stores in town loved blackouts; it gave them an excuse to exploit people’s worst fears and double the price of bottled water and canned food. It worried her that at least one had already closed its doors.

  Deciding that the police didn’t know any more than she did, she darted across University Avenue and made for the parking lot. As she stepped onto the curb on the far side, a man’s voice cut in behind her. “Hey! You!”

  Her heart skipped a beat. Was he talking to her?

  She ignored him and threaded two pine trees. The gravel of the nature strip crunched beneath her shoes with each step.

  “Hold up!” the voice called out again.

  Jenn paused and put her hands on her hips. What now?

  One of the young officers jogged toward her. His right hand hovered above the gun hanging from his belt. “Where you off to in such a hurry?” he said, coming to a stop at the edge of the road.

  Jenn cleared her throat. “My boyfriend’s place.”

  The officer took another step forward. His eyes scanned her ankles, hips, and hands. “Where’s he live?”

  “McKay Village,” she spat. The words sounded sharper and more hostile than she wanted. She’d met her fair share of testy police officers, but never in Flagstaff. Up here, the police seemed friendly, unlike in Phoenix, where they were wound tight and quick to pull the trigger. She supposed that came with the job. The flood of migrant workers and jobless vagrants from all over the Southwest during the depression had driven Phoenix to the brink. Each new government-subsidized modular housing complex brought in more trash, more drugs, and more violence as far out as Jenn’s suburban neighborhood of Peoria. She expected Phoenix police to be suspicious, but those in Flagstaff played in softball tournaments and volunteered at clothes drives. Liam even hosted a World Series viewing party for Gary’s block last year. Seeing the cops this edgy reminded her of home.

  The officer pointed at her and said, “All right. But stay inside when you get there.”

  “You got it,” she replied with an exaggerated nod, then continued to Sam’s place.

  * * *

  A few groups of five or more clustered in McKay Village, where Sam lived. Ringing the quad, which, Jenn learned, used to have grass but now had the same bluish gravel as Gary’s yard, were four three-story buildings covered in faded cream or brown stucco at least a half-century old. On the inside, though, the apartments were fully renovated a few years before Sam enrolled at NAU—new bathrooms, new appliances, new furniture, everything. Each unit even had its own built-in SmartHome system. The door to Sam’s place felt like a time machine that transported Jenn to her childhood, a time before the depression and the war, and a time when her parents both worked, she had her own bedroom, and gunshots didn’t wake her up at night.

  She made for the building on the far side, pretending she belonged here. To some extent she did, but she could never afford to live in McKay Village. Here, she rubbed elbows with some of the university’s more elite students—ones whose parents hadn’t lost their jobs to an AI, like Jenn’s father, or to someone working for pennies on the dollar in Africa, like her mother. She resented them for winning the economic lottery, though she grudgingly acknowledged the hypocrisy of that. Sam fit into that category, but he was different; his heart was with her, not with the one-percenters.

  Sam sat on the bench outside his building. In his white runners and khaki shorts, he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. When he spotted Jenn, he jumped to his feet and ran to her.

  Her breath caught in her chest, the same as it did last winter when he sat next to her in Anthropology 109. Good thing he’d switched majors that September and was taking first-year classes again. Also a good thing Jenn skipped so many lectures. Otherwise, she might not have needed to ask him for a week’s worth of notes.

  He wrapped his arms around her, and she did the same to him. She rested her head on his chest as he squeezed her tight. “Are you okay?” he asked. “My phone won’t turn on. I tried calling from Dougie’s but he didn’t have any service.”

  “I’m good,” she said, smiling up at him.

  They walked over to the bench. “What took you so long?” Sam asked. “I was just about to drive over to Gary’s.”

  “Had to make a pit stop at Liam’s. You remember him, right? The cop that lives down the street from Gary.”

  “Gary mentioned him. I haven’t met him, though.”

  Jenn sat and ran her fingers along Sam’s jawline, shaded uncharacteristically in a layer of dark stubble. “What’s this? Don’t tell me you’re growing another beard. You need to get some sun first or else you’ll end up looking like a vampire again.”

  “Hey,” Sam objected, “just because you have those nice Vietnamese genes and tan in five minutes doesn’t mean you can go around calling people vampires.”

  Jenn smiled at that. Sam had decided she was Vietnamese. Truth was, she had no idea. Adoption agencies, she supposed, didn’t record information about a baby’s race or ethnic background. She and Sam had narrowed it down to Chinese or Southeast Asian and mostly ruled out Korean or Japanese because, Sam said, they were too fair-skinned. The Chinese weren’t very popular, even before they invaded India and Taiwan and dragged the world into a war, so Sam settled on Vietnamese and Jenn went along with it. He always bugged her to take a DNA test, but part of her didn’t want to know. She just wanted to be Jenn.

  “I’m not Vietnamese,” she joked. “I’m Dutch. Jenn Jansen, remember?”

  “Right,” Sam mused. “Anyway, I am definitely not growing a beard. My razor’s dead and I can’t charge it. The power’s off at Gary’s, too?”

  “Yep. At least his car works. Have you tried yours?”

  “Should be okay. Dougie figures they only died if they were running.”

  “Was it plugged in?”

  “No. I couldn’t get a stall with a plug after I dropped you off last night.”

  “Good.” Jenn didn’t know if the cars stalled on the road were dead for good and beyond repair, but losing Sam’s black ’57 Tesla would mean losing an important part of their relationship. The first time she and Sam went out, just the two of them, Sam pulled up outside Gary’s house in that car. Gary, peeking through the blinds, grumbled and insisted that he needed to meet Jenn’s date. She figured he was more interested in vetting the car than deciding if Sam was a good fit for Jenn. In fact, he only asked Sam questions about the Tesla: how the autodrive handled, how far it could travel on a single charge, and so on.

  Later that night, she kissed Sam for the first time, and she did it in his car. Since then, everywhere they went, they took the Tesla. After a while, the number of shoe prints on the front of the glove box became a sort of yardstick Jenn used to measure their time together. Sam pretended he hated when Jenn put her feet on the dash, but he never did anything to stop her. They might have only been shoe prints, but they marked Jenn’s spot in the passenger seat beside Sam. The car wasn’t strictly hers, but they shared it anyway. It was theirs.

  “Why?” Sam asked. “What does plugging it in have to do with anything?”

  “Liam’s wife. Her car was off but plugged in and it didn’t turn on.”

  “Really?” Sam reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. “That’s weird, because my phone was on the charging pad and it won’t start up. But Dougie’s wasn’t and it’s fine.”

  Jenn took out her phone and showed it to Sam. “Same with mine and Gary’s. His was charging and it’s fried. Power surge, maybe?”

  Sam leaned back on the bench. “Maybe.”

  Jenn picked up a stone from between her shoes and tossed it onto the gravel. At the break in conversation, her imagination jumped, conjuring worst-case scenarios: solar flare, meltdown at the nuclear plant, worldwide computer virus, everything. “What the hell is going on, Sam? This isn’t a regular blackout. I mean, Maria’s oxygen compressor didn’t even go nuts when the power went
off. The SmartHome was offline. All these cars. I don’t know.”

  “I hear you,” he said. “It’s weird, for sure. But there’s not much we can do but wait.”

  “Wait for what? I passed a good fifty people on the way here and nobody knows anything. The cops don’t even know.”

  “I know you’re worried, but it’s only been—”

  “What if this is going on in Phoenix?” Jenn interrupted. “I can’t get online. My phone doesn’t have any service. I can’t get a hold of my family, and have you noticed there aren’t any planes in the sky?”

  Sam didn’t respond. He knew better than to engage Jenn mid-rant.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I’m just worried about them.”

  “I know. All I’m saying is, don’t jump to conclusions.”

  Jenn chewed the inside of her cheek. “What if it’s a weapon?”

  “A weapon?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ve never heard of a weapon that can do this.”

  “Who knows what the Chinese have. Or the Russians. Maybe it was Brazil. Could be a computer virus.”

  He rubbed her back and leaned in. “If they could shut off all the power and stall half the cars on the road, don’t you think they’d have done it already?”

  “Maybe they’re desperate,” Jenn said. “We’re finally winning.”

  Sam pulled Jenn in tight, and she laid her head on his shoulder. “You’re jumping to conclusions again,” he said. “Let’s get some more information before we start talking about weapons.”

  “Then let’s take a walk somewhere.” She stood and held her hand out to Sam. “Maybe the police station. Hopefully they find out something new by the time we get there.”

  “Sure. Think dropping Gary’s name will get us the inside scoop?”

  “It might. Worth a try even if he’s . . .”

  Near the entrance to McKay Village, a girl fell to her knees. Someone beside her threw her hands over her mouth. A man broke away from the group and jogged toward another.

  “Worth a what?” Sam asked.

  The man ran up to two more students, who grasped each other in a hug. One was crying.

  Sam snapped his fingers in front of Jenn’s face. “Jenn!”

  “Sam,” she said, pointing. “What’s going on?”

  The man cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “We’ve been attacked!”

  4

  The crowds in the quad had dispersed and flowed out of McKay Village.

  Jenn felt cold, freezing, like she’d jumped into an ice bath. She let go of Sam’s hand and darted for the man who’d yelled about the attack.

  “Wait!” Sam said from behind her.

  The man had begun moving away. Shouting for him to stop, Jenn broke into a sprint and caught up. Finally, he turned to her. The blood had drained from his face, and patches of sweat darkened the neck and armpits of his neon green T-shirt. The laces on one shoe had come untied. “What happened?” Jenn said between breaths. “Do you know why the power’s out?”

  “Phoenix.” He wiped his mouth with his hand. “It’s been bombed.”

  An image of her parents flashed in her mind: her mother and father standing on the sidewalk and waving as she drove away with Sam after Christmas break. That was the last time she’d seen them in person.

  “Bombed how?” The words escaped her lips. Intuitively, she already knew, but her instinct rejected that reality. For as long as possible, even if it was only another second, she wanted to believe that this wasn’t real. Phoenix couldn’t have been attacked. Kolkata or Warsaw, yes, and maybe Taipei. Hell, Mexico City. But not here. The war was at least a thousand miles away.

  The man grabbed two handfuls of his wavy hair. “Roof of the library. Look for yourself,” he said, then left Jenn behind.

  A hand touched her arm. “Sam,” she said, “it’s a—”

  “Maybe we—”

  “I want to see it.”

  Sam gripped Jenn’s shoulders with both hands and lowered his face to hers. “We should get to Gary’s.”

  “No.” She turned her head to hide her eyes. “My family’s down there. I need to see this.”

  Sam dropped his chin and exhaled. “Where?”

  “He said the library.”

  They rushed out of McKay Village and toward the towering green glass structure near the center of campus. At fifteen stories high, the library was the tallest building in Flagstaff. It was also the newest, and its clean, shimmering windows lorded over the grays and browns of the aging town below, earning it the nickname Emerald City.

  Students and faculty poured out of the brick buildings on either side of the street. Jenn expected a steady stream toward the library or at least in one direction, but bodies scurried left, right, forward, and backward at random like a colony of ants escaping the nest.

  Someone crashed into Jenn’s shoulder and knocked her off balance. A girl spilled a tablet and her books onto the road. “Sorry,” she said. Mascara ran down her cheeks, and she walked away without picking up her things.

  “Wait!” Jenn said.

  The girl didn’t respond and kept walking.

  Sam pulled on Jenn’s hand. “Come on. We’re almost there.”

  Someone had propped open the automatic doors at the library’s main entrance, and Jenn went inside. She expected the bright white of the LEDs to greet her, but the lobby was dark. The sun streaked through the glass and colored the room a faint green. Nobody manned the help desk, and above it on the left and right, the lounge chairs and desks on the mezzanine were vacant. Normally abuzz with chatter, Emerald City sounded like a tomb.

  “The stairs.” Jenn pointed to a door next to a bank of elevators.

  They darted over and ran into the stairwell. Bounding the steps two at a time, she climbed like she’d find her parents at the top. By the fourth floor, her calves ached in opposition. When she reached the sixth, Sam was almost a flight below her.

  She caught up with a group of ten or more on the eighth floor. Her chest on fire, she squeezed past and kept pushing. When she checked for Sam a second time, she only saw strangers. He appeared a few moments later, pulling himself up by the handrail. “Wait,” he sputtered, “slow down.”

  Jenn ignored him and turned right onto the next flight. She moved to the side of the stairwell and made room for a girl coming down. Her eyes were puffy and her knees nearly buckled after each step.

  Atop rubber legs, Jenn reached the roof access door. Like the doors to the main lobby, this one was propped open. Sam caught up and followed her out. Fifteen stories of winding stairs, though, sent her staggering to keep balance. Feet firmly planted, she tried to orient herself and determine which way was south. A group of twenty or thirty crowding the far side of the building gave her the answer. A few others were scattered closer to the service door. A man and a woman, library staff from the looks of it, were hugging. The woman had her face buried in the man’s chest. Another man, his blue collared shirt unbuttoned, sat with his arms resting on his knees. He didn’t look at Jenn or Sam as they walked by.

  At the edge of the roof, they squeezed into the crowd to get closer to the ledge. Jenn held her breath and squinted. Below, the university stretched southward. A break in the trees marked the highway in the distance, then nothing but low, pine-covered hills.

  “You see anything?” Sam asked.

  “No,” Jenn said through clenched teeth.

  “Over there.” A woman in a green NAU staff T-shirt sniffled and pointed. “Look that way.”

  Jenn followed her finger.

  And then she saw them.

  They were faint, each only the width of her little finger, but she made them out against the sky: four—no, five—black plumes peeking above the horizon.

  Sam mumbled something.

  Then, for some reason, the library started spinning. The floor, too, started wobbling. Jenn bent her knees to keep balanced but stumbled backward and fell. She tried to stand, but her legs didn’t work. Her e
yes didn’t work anymore, either. Everything went blurry. She felt Sam’s hand on her shoulders. He was talking but she couldn’t hear. The potatoes and soy bacon she made for breakfast came up as the sky crashed down and the world turned dark.

  * * *

  “Does anybody have any water?”

  Jenn heard Sam say it, but she felt like she’d drunk six beers in as many minutes. The smell of breakfast and stomach acid burned her nose. She was horizontal—mostly—her head resting awkwardly on Sam’s thigh.

  Her parents. She needed to get to them.

  She braced herself and tried to push up, but Sam held her down.

  “Easy there,” he said. “You passed out.”

  Both hands on the concrete roof, she pushed up again, this time hard enough to break free of Sam’s grasp. Her knees wobbled and her vision blacked out for a moment, but she came to and faced the service door.

  “What’re you doing?”

  “Going home.”

  “What?” Sam stood and reached for Jenn’s hand, but she yanked it away. “You can’t go marching toward mushroom clouds.”

  Of course Sam wouldn’t understand. How could he? He’d come to college in Flagstaff to escape his family. He wanted nothing to do with them. But Jenn’s parents were everything to her. They stepped in after her birthparents threw her out like a piece of trash and then loved Jenn as if she were their own. So did her brothers, but they were gone. She couldn’t lose her parents, too. Not like this.

  Her lip quivered. “Watch me.”

  “Jenn, wait.” Sam reached out again but she stormed past.

  The first step felt good, so good; she was finally taking control after playing catch-up all morning. But each one after that became heavier and heavier. An invisible weight pushed against her, reminding Jenn of when she was eleven and the Jansen family drove to the coast. Everyone was there, even Jason and Andrew. She’d never seen the ocean before. In fact, she’d never seen it since. Determined, she marched in, but each wave resisted her like she didn’t belong. What business did she have in the Pacific? The desert was in her blood, not salt water. Up to her hips, she was too afraid to go any deeper. She nearly gave up, but a supportive hand from Dad encouraged her to dive in. When she came up, hair wet and heart pounding, her mother was waving from the beach. Thanks to them, Jenn conquered the Pacific that day. She wished Sam would do the same and push her forward. But he grabbed her wrist instead and tugged at her. He wasn’t anything like her father, and she hated him for that right now.