by Lucin, David
“Please, let’s go to Gary’s,” he pleaded.
She jerked her arm free and wiped her eyes. Then, her hands balled into fists, she ran. If Sam wouldn’t help, she wanted to get as far away from him as possible. He was the wave pushing her back.
Someone had let the service door close. With shaky fingers, she reached for the doorknob, but two arms wrapped around her. She screamed and cursed and threw elbows, but the door, the path home, grew smaller as Sam pulled her away.
When her feet touched the ground, her knees nearly gave out. The tears flowed freely now, and she smelled Sam’s deodorant. A minute ago, she hated him, but the familiar scent conjured feelings of trust and safety. No, Sam wasn’t like her father; he was more like her mother. At the ocean, before Jenn stepped into the water, Mom told her to shut her eyes tight and take a deep breath before going under. She reminded Jenn of what she’d learned in swimming lessons. It might seem scary at first, she’d said, but Jenn could do anything. Sam thought the same way.
She relaxed, then spun around and buried her face in Sam’s chest. He pulled her close and rested his chin on her head. “Don’t worry,” he said. “They’re okay.”
Jenn tried to believe him, but she needed to see for herself. “Will you come with me?” she mumbled into Sam’s T-shirt.
“Yes. Of course. But you have family here, too.”
People were watching them now, and Jenn felt a pang of self-consciousness. She checked if anyone else had passed out or thrown up. No one had. Just her.
After swallowing the burn in her throat, she said to Sam, “What do you mean?”
“Gary and Maria.”
“What about them?”
“You can’t leave them behind.”
Jenn’s cheeks warmed. Before leaving, she’d have to pack her things, so she could say goodbye then. She pictured the look on Maria’s face—her bright blue eyes, permanent smile, and the hose wrapped around her ears. And Gary, his lopsided mustache and the ugly polo shirts. He always tucked them in, and it looked terrible. She imagined standing at their front door, ready to leave, as they stared at her from the living room.
If not for Gary and Maria, Jenn would have stayed in Phoenix, where, even in the suburbs, she was afraid to go out alone. Here, in Flagstaff, the air was cool, it snowed a little in the winter, and almost all the drug addicts and criminals had moved into the city. It was quiet, thanks to most of the businesses having closed during the depression, but at least it was safe and stress-free. Most of all, she’d met Sam in Flagstaff. Gary and Maria were to thank for that. She tried to make it up to them by helping around the house, but the truth was, if not for Jenn, the Ruiz family would have had plenty of surplus income, maybe even enough to afford real meat a few times a week.
She owed them and couldn’t leave Flagstaff now. “No,” she said. “I wouldn’t do that. Do you think I would?”
“No,” Sam said. “That’s my point.”
“Okay. How can we help?”
Sam brushed a strand of hair from Jenn’s face. “I’m thinking about Maria. She’s got, what, four spare oxygen tanks?”
“Four including the one we hooked up this morning.”
“Right,” Sam mused. “That’ll last her how long? A day or two?”
“If they stretch them, probably two.”
“So she’ll need more.”
She patted Sam on the chest. “Okay then. So let’s go to Gary’s and see if we can help get Maria some oxygen tanks and whatever else. Then, after that, we’ll see about Phoenix.”
“Good idea.” Sam squeezed Jenn’s hand. “Besides, who knows? Maybe your parents will come to Flagstaff.”
How hadn’t she considered that yet? Her parents kept their old red Nissan even though they struggled to afford the insurance payments. The car looked like scrap, but it ran like a dream. Jenn drove it around all last summer, a testament to its resilience. The air-conditioning didn’t work, but her father said he’d jump in and drive it across the country without hesitating. It’d get them to Flagstaff if it wasn’t damaged in the attack.
“You’re right,” Jenn said.
“Exactly. Let’s stay here for at least a day in case they come up. If we drove down now, we might pass them on the highway and never even know.”
“Good point.”
Jenn ground her teeth. Sam hadn’t mentioned his family yet. She’d never met his mother, stepfather, or younger sister. Sam hardly ever talked about them, and whenever Jenn asked, he promptly changed the subject. His mother, Barbara, Jenn knew, was a narcissist. Sam used the word “toxic” to describe her. When Sam was only six or seven, she and his father divorced. Barbara remarried soon after, but Sam’s father died in a car accident a few years later. The stepfather owned a cabin near Payson, far outside the city, and he and Barbara spent their springs and summers there, usually with his sister, Nicole. They might have been there now. When she went to ask him, he spoke again.
“Let’s go check in on Gary and Maria,” Sam said. “Maria’s probably freaking out that you’re not home.”
Jenn sniffled, yet Sam’s optimism wore off on her. She imagined her mother and father tearing down I-17 in the old Nissan. The drive only took a couple of hours. The traffic on the highway out of town would be ugly if cars had broken down in Phoenix as they had in Flagstaff, but her father knew all the back routes. He’d find his way and he’d find Jenn.
She just hoped they’d fixed the air-conditioning.
5
Jenn’s mouth tasted like stomach acid and soy bacon, and her sinuses burned. Once down from the roof of Emerald City and outside, she spat onto the sidewalk.
“How are you feeling?” Sam asked.
She hated losing control and told herself she’d have to act stronger. Thinking her parents were on their way to Flagstaff made it easier. “All right. Sorry, that was a little embarrassing.”
“What? No, you shouldn’t be embarrassed. What we saw is hard for anyone, and you’re the toughest person I know. I’m not embarrassed by that.”
She wrapped her hands around his arm as they turned left onto Milton Road.
“Where is everybody?” Sam asked. “It’s like they disappeared.”
A few came down with them from the roof of Emerald City, but the scurrying crowds from earlier had evaporated. Idle vehicles peppered the street in both directions. Less than an hour ago and just a few blocks down, forty or more people had gathered around four police officers at the corner of University and Milton. Now the only sign of movement was the wind blowing pine needles across the pavement. All Jenn could hear was the sound of her and Sam’s footsteps. No cars, no airplanes, no loudmouths using megaphones to protest the draft. Nothing. Campus was usually the busiest place in town. The heart of Flagstaff had suddenly stopped beating.
“At home?” Jenn said. “On my way here, I saw police telling everyone to go home. Maybe they heard about the explosions and left their cars.”
“Yeah, that makes sense.” Sam’s eyes lit up. “Hey, you want to take the Tesla?”
She did. Fortunately, he hadn’t plugged it in last night, but if it died and the power didn’t come on soon, they’d have no way to charge it. They needed to conserve its juice for the trip into Phoenix. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not? We’d be there in like five minutes.”
“Yes, but we have to save your battery for when we really need it.”
Sam kicked a stone. “Well, we can cross that bridge when we get there.”
“No. We should just walk.”
They turned onto Milton. A half dozen cars blocked the intersection, but Jenn couldn’t see the owners. She remembered the woman with her son from this morning and wondered if they’d found a way home.
On their left stood a charging kiosk. Sunlight glistened off the solar panels atop the roof. Four of the six stalls had vehicles attached to them. “Think they were plugged in when it happened?” Jenn asked.
“I dunno. Maybe. Could’ve come
after and tried to charge up.”
“Wait, shouldn’t it be working? It has solar.”
“Battery might’ve run out.”
Opposite the charging kiosk, plywood covered the doors and windows of an old strip mall. The one surviving sign advertised a payday loan shop called Money Now. They walked for less than a block before Jenn spotted movement farther down the street. “You see that?” she asked.
“See what?”
She pointed. “Two people just ran across the street.”
Sam grunted his acknowledgment.
“Yeah,” she said. “I wonder what—”
Before she could finish, another small group, this one of four or five, ran in the same direction.
“There! See that?”
“I see them,” Sam said. “What’s the deal? They’re in a hurry.”
They continued down the block. Ahead, on their side of the road, two more ran to the Flagstaff Realty office.
“What’s that all about?” he asked, blinking hard.
“Let’s go find out.”
Before she could, a group of ten or more came from behind the building and joined the others at the front. Together, they all rushed the door and piled on top of one another.
Jenn swallowed and picked up her pace. “Hey!”
Sam’s hand touched hers but she kept moving forward.
“Hey! What’s wrong?” she said.
She could hear the group now: yelling, swearing, pleading, crying. It shifted as those in the rear squeezed in and moved toward the door and windows, prompting the displaced to shuffle to the sides and try to get closer.
“Let us in!” someone yelled. “You can’t leave us out here!”
Sam caught up with Jenn. “What the hell is this?”
A woman with frazzled hair, a sweat-soaked exercise shirt, and wide, frantic eyes, shouted, “They aren’t letting us inside!”
“Inside?” Sam echoed. “Why?”
“We were attacked!” she said as a large man wearing red and black plaid shoved her aside. She fell to her knees, so Sam rushed over and led her away from the mob. None of the others even noticed him and Jenn behind them.
Jenn almost bombarded this woman with questions, but she decided to give her a chance to breathe. If she cut in, Sam would only interject and stop her. To Jenn’s surprise, Sam spoke first. “Can you tell us why you want inside so bad?” he said, his voice even and level.
“The bombs,” she stuttered.
He patted her on the shoulder. “We saw them. It’s okay. Just tell us what you can.”
“Radiation,” she mumbled.
Jenn’s heart rate spiked as her mind flashed to the safety videos the Arizona government texted residents in October. At the time, she laughed at the hastily crafted CG images of victims vomiting, losing their hair, and rubbing ointment on radiation burns. But she never paid much attention to what she needed to do during a nuclear attack. Besides, Flagstaff wasn’t hit—Phoenix was, and that was over a hundred miles from here.
“Hey,” Sam continued. “We weren’t attacked, okay? It’s safe here.”
“No.” She wiped her forehead. “There’s fallout. We need to get inside.”
Jenn struggled to remember anything from the safety videos. She knew fallout was radiation, but that was it. Why hadn’t she paid more attention instead of poking fun?
She drove her nails into her thighs. “Fallout?”
“Yeah,” Sam said. His face had gone white, and he swiveled his head from side to side. “She might be right.”
“Right?” she almost yelled. “How do you figure?”
“Fallout. The wind can carry it this far.” He reached a hand down to help the woman up.
Jenn’s stomach knotted. There was a breeze today, but only a light one. How fast did wind blow, anyway? Definitely not fast enough to bring radiation to Flagstaff from Phoenix in under an hour. “It doesn’t make sense,” she said. “All the way up here? Already?”
Sam chewed a fingernail. “Maybe. Don’t you remember those videos?”
“Not really. You actually watched them?”
“I dunno. They said to find shelter and wait indoors. I guess I didn’t think much of it since it happened so far away.”
The woman squirmed. “We can’t stay out here.”
Sam’s face went stone serious, sending a shiver down Jenn’s spine. This woman was terrified, and a crowd of fifteen or twenty threatened to break into a real estate office. Either the whole town, Sam included, had lost its collective mind, or Jenn was wrong. She hadn’t paid attention to those videos, and Sam had. She trusted him. If he feared fallout, Jenn did, too. “Are Gary and Maria okay?” she asked.
“They’re probably inside and safe. Gary can be an asshole, but he’s a resourceful guy. He’ll be fine.”
“Okay. So how long do we have? If we run to Gary’s, we could make it in twenty min—”
“We need to go!” The woman darted toward the crowd pounding at the Flagstaff Realty window.
“She’s right,” Sam said. “I think those videos said within ten minutes. It’s been more than thirty since we saw those clouds.”
Jenn eyed Flagstaff Realty. It wouldn’t work. Others had packed it tight already. They weren’t letting anyone else in. All the doors and windows in the strip mall had boards on them, even those at Money Now. “Fine,” she said, looking for another place to go.
Before Sam could answer, a crash, like breaking glass, erupted from Flagstaff Realty.
Jenn flinched. The big front window shattered, and the wave of bodies from the crowd pushed forward. The ones inside had fallen back, but as the first few from outside made their way in, she lost track of who was who. A mass of humanity swirled and spewed out of the building as the yelling grew louder.
“Let’s go,” Jenn said.
They gave Flagstaff Realty a wide berth as they passed. Farther down, another crowd rushed inside Minute Tire. Across the street was a boarded-up fast food restaurant. Past that, office buildings lined the far side of Milton. The fight at Flagstaff Realty had spilled onto the sidewalk, so Jenn settled on the tire place.
“In here,” she told Sam, then broke into a full run.
“Get inside!” she heard a woman yell.
She fell in at the end of the line leading into the shop. With both hands, the man ahead of her pushed someone in front of him. She grabbed Sam’s hand, squeezed his fingers tight, and led him in. As she did, bodies crowded around her from the sides. The warmth of panicked breathing painted her face and neck. She smelled onions, rotten eggs, and a hint of feces.
She lost her footing and nearly stumbled as the weight against her grew heavier. Eyes shut, she pushed forward. Sweat rolled down her cheeks and settled on her lip. She caught herself grinding her teeth.
They broke into a small waiting room with a couch and desk. It reeked of rubber. Sam’s hand still in hers, Jenn turned through another door and entered a shop.
She couldn’t feel the bodies on her anymore, so she exhaled and inspected her surroundings. There were two cars in here: one, a black Ford SUV, rested on a lift, and the other, a red sedan, sat on the concrete floor. On the walls hung shelves with tools, tires, and cans. The whole place stunk of metal shavings.
Fifteen or twenty people had found their way into the shop. It wasn’t crowded. She could breathe and no strangers touched or pushed her anymore.
“Close that door!” yelled a woman Jenn couldn’t see. “Right now!”
Sam let go of her hand and darted for the waiting room. “There’s tons of space in here!” he shouted.
Jenn hesitated for a second as she remembered the feeling of being forced in like toothpaste through the tube, but she followed him inside. Three men wearing blue coveralls braced the front door while a woman bent down behind the desk. Jenn judged her as mid- or late forties. She wore jeans and a white tank top and had a cream-colored blouse tied around her waist. A loose ponytail contained her straight brown hair.
“Yo
u find anything?” one of the men asked.
“Not yet,” the woman said. “Keep holding them off!”
Outside the door, a crowd as large as the one at the Flagstaff Realty office barreled down on Minute Tire. A few banged on the windows, their faces as white as bedsheets and their eyes wide. Fear drove their every move.
“Let them in!” Sam yelled. “There’s room for all of us in here!”
The woman at the desk popped up. “Are you out of your mind? If we let them in, we’ll end up with the whole damn town in here. No way. We need to keep them out or we’re dead.”
Jenn knew how this ended. The mob outside Flagstaff Realty wanted in so badly it broke the window. It’d do the same here. The men in coveralls had two options: they could either let the crowd in and hope nobody else came by or they could abandon the waiting room, retreat inside the shop, and try to stand their ground from in there.
“Let them in,” Jenn said. Sam looked surprised to hear Jenn voice her support, but then he offered her a nod of thanks.
“Heads up!” one of the men in coveralls yelled.
A rock or brick flew over the crowd outside and rebounded off the window. It didn’t break, but the men at the door withdrew for a moment, then leaned into it again.
“They’ll break the window,” Jenn said to the woman at the desk. “At the real estate office up the street. It happened there. There’s only a few of them. Let them in. There’s lots of room.”
The men holding the door looked at the woman, who put her hands on her hips. “Do it,” she commanded.
“What?” one of the men yelled.
“You heard me,” she said. “Let them in here and then lock up. I’ll go find a brace in the shop.”
