ANYONE ELSE?: (ANYONE Series Book 2) A post-apocalypic survival novel

by Angela Scott

  “Or not,” he added. “All of these notes are months old. We know nothing.”

  My frustration percolated beneath the surface. “Weren’t you the one who stood on the balcony yesterday, insisting there was a world out there, and now you’re trying to convince me there isn’t? I don’t understand you.”

  He stared at me. “I could say the same thing. You insist nothing is out there, and now you are.”

  Oh, my god. Oh, my god. Oh, my god.

  I was on a freaking merry-go-round nightmare, going in circles.

  “To walk from here to Tulsa will take…” He stopped talking and seemed to calculate invisible numbers in the air using his fingers. “It will take roughly three hundred and sixty-nine hours, or one thousand one hundred and twenty-three miles. That’s not taking into consideration weather conditions, out-of-the-blue natural disasters that seem to follow us, or the need to stop and sleep or scavenge for supplies along the way.”

  What the—? Three hundred and sixty-nine hours. What? How?

  “But if the great flat states are where you think we should go, and you’re sure of it, then by all means let’s do it.”

  I’d gone from such a high to such a low in the span of ten minutes or less. I said nothing for a long time.

  “Is that what you want?” Cole persisted.

  To walk over a thousand miles and hundreds of hours to a place I had never seen, and had no idea still existed — did I really want that?

  “Do you know what I really want, Cole?” I looked at him, trying to keep my tears and emotions in check.

  He didn’t speak, only watched me, quietly waiting.

  “I want to go home. That’s what I want. I just want to go home.” I took a deep breath and swallowed hard, forcing my feelings to the dark crevices of my very being. “But since I can’t, then the least you can do is give me Kansas.”

  Chapter 44

  “Nope. No way.” I shook my head more fervently than perhaps I’d ever shaken it in my entire life. “Not happening.”

  “You haven’t even let me—”

  I cut Cole off. “No.”

  He tilted his head to the side; a sign of exasperation. “Do you even know what it’s called? Ever seen one before?”

  “No and no, but I’m still fairly certain that my answer is … wait for it … no.” I nodded. “Yep, my answer is still no.”

  He placed his hand on the contraption, eyeing me. “It’s called a paramotor, and it could be a good thing for all of us.”

  I rocked the stroller, keeping Bob from waking. “It could get us all killed.”

  What is he thinking? He’s not. He’s not thinking at all. He can’t be.

  I had to remind myself not to rock the stroller too much in my heated aggravation.

  “Tess.” He walked around what I would view as a metal-framed hobbyist nightmare and not a mode of transportation at all. “This could shave distance and time off our traveling. There’s a lot of possibility here.”

  “Like dying.” I shook my head again. “There’s a great possibility of dying if we use that thing.”

  “Do I have to remind you that we’ve almost died several times already and we were on the ground? Whether we’re in the air or not, there’s no guarantee.”

  I eyed the strange three-wheeled, double-seater apparatus. “I don’t know if you realize it or not, but your argument sucks.”

  Callie jumped onto one of the seats, turning in a circle before making herself comfortable. She looked at me and yawned.

  Dumb cat.

  Cole smiled. “See? Callie thinks it’s a good idea.”

  “Again, your argument for flying a dune-buggy-like machine isn’t good. My cat isn’t the smartest of mammals. She’s nothing like a magical deer. I don’t trust her.” I shrugged. “I’m also having my doubts about you right now.”

  “Ouch.” He feigned hurt. When I didn’t apologize, he shrugged it off and walked around the structure, dragging his hand along the frame almost affectionately. “This paramotor trike is one of the best on the market. Top of the line. Its owners put a lot of thought and money into this one, too. Very nice.” His last two words were more for him than for me as he said them with such awe. “Very nice,” he repeated.

  He seemed to know more about the flying thing than I expected, but still not enough to make me say yeah, let’s do this. The idea of being even several feet off the ground didn’t set well with me. Too much risk.

  “Do you even know how to fly one of these?” I thought it was a fair enough question to ask. No point in discussing it any further if he didn’t.

  “Not exactly.” He kept a hand on it, as if by removing his hand, the entire thing might fly away without him. “But I’m willing to learn.”

  “Well, that’s settled. It’s a no-go.” I turned to walk out of the massive garage. “I thought you were looking for supplies? Food? Batteries? Water?”

  I knew the answer before even asking. He’d left almost an hour before to search other homes in the wealthy neighborhood for anything useful for our long trip to the Kansas-Oklahoma area. He’d come back, full of excitement, and totally empty-handed.

  Something was definitely up by the way he had acted; I just hadn’t expected this.

  “Unlike planes, you don’t need a large take-off area. It pretty much uses the same kind of fuel as an automobile, with some minor adjustments, of course. Not a lot of training is required. Some, but not a lot. It has an in-depth manual.” He held up a soft-covered booklet which rested on the seat Callie didn’t occupy. “I’ve also played a lot of video games with flight simulation, so I have a rough idea of how something like this works.”

  I stared at him.

  “It’s not a big deal,” he continued. “It’s much more stable than a helicopter, and with the double parachute system, it’s practically crash proof. If one fails, you just engage the other and glide down to earth nice and easy. I think we could totally do this.”

  “Cole, it’s not going to work for us. It’s not. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Don’t you understand?” He turned and gave me his full attention where before his attention was solely on the paramotor. “We could travel at least twenty miles an hour. Maybe more depending on wind velocity. To travel that same distance on foot, with a baby needing diapered and fed every couple of hours, would take us six or seven hours at best, and that’s with me being on the conservative side.”

  He was insane.

  “We have a cat. We have a baby.” I pointed to the two-seater. “Where are they sitting? There are no doors. No roof. How are we packing supplies? What about running out of gas? The wind will be right in our face. What if a tornado comes and sucks us right into its vortex or the ground is on fire and we have nowhere to land or the parachutes get all tangled up? Huh, what about that?”

  My questions were endless. So much could go wrong. What he asked was crazy!

  Cole chuckled. “You’ve never flown before, have you?”

  “What?”

  He shrugged. “It’s okay to admit you’ve never been in a plane and that you’re scared. I get that.”

  “Are you kidding me?” I took my hands off the stroller and approached him. “First off—” I snapped my arm in the direction of the paramotor and pointed. “That is not a plane. It’s metal bars, a few wheels, and a parachute.”

  “It has a motor, too, so technically—”

  “It’s not a plane. It’s a toy. And secondly, neither of us know how to fly it, which means we’ll die. We will plummet to the ground and die. Lots and lots of mangled death.”

  He nodded, looking at me. “So, you’ve never flown?”

  It was as though he hadn’t heard a word I said.

  “No, I haven’t.” My fists clenched into tight balls. “But that’s not why I’m freaking out here. Do you not understand how dangerous this is?”

  He released his breath as if appeasing me. “Tess, look around us. It’s all dangerous. All of it.”

  “No, no
, no.” I wagged a finger at him. “Not all of it. We’ve had some pretty close calls, but jumping into a flying machine would take danger to a whole new level.”

  He nodded again. “I understand.”

  Yet, somehow, I doubted he did. “Do you? Do you really?”

  “Yeah, I do. You’re scared. New things make you nervous and afraid. If you’d rather walk for hours and hours and maneuver over broken roads and bridges, then I guess that’s what we do.” He raised and lowered his shoulders. “I mean, if you don’t think getting a bird’s eye view of things, checking out the lay of the land to avoid certain disasters, knowing if towns are still towns, or wanting to make really great time, then I guess we walk.”

  I closed my eyes, thinking. “It’s not that I want to walk for days and days, and it’s not because I’ve never flown.” I opened my eyes. “Okay, maybe a little has to do with that, but we don’t know what we’re doing, and I’m pretty sure that when it comes to flying we probably should.” I nodded to the stroller. “And we have Bob to think about.”

  Cole smiled. “Oh, I think he’d love it!”

  It was like talking to a teenage boy instead of a grown man.

  “No,” I said. “No. That’s final. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Okay.” He approached me. “If that’s really how you feel.”

  I nodded. “It is.”

  “But before you make a final decision—”

  I thought I already had.

  He placed his hands on my upper arms. “Just look at it one more time.” He turned me, so I stood in front of him, his hands still on my arms, the paramotor trike on display in front of both of us. “Just look at it.”

  I did. I stared right at it, all the while thinking that I couldn’t believe we were still discussing flying it.

  “I don’t accept the idea of super-natural collaboration, like you do,” he continued.

  Super-natural collaboration? What?

  “You know, where you believe something guided us to the house with the maps or that you found a deer with ‘magical powers’ that led us to safety,” he explained as he gave my shoulders a gentle squeeze. “But this—“ He nodded to the machine. “This I can get behind. Obviously, divine intervention put this marvelous piece of equipment here for me to find, and I did.” He spun me around and gave me a little shake. “I found it!”

  Oh, crap.

  “You trust me, right?” He looked with such intent into my eyes, that I worried my brain would fail and I’d nod or say yes.

  He stared at me as he waited for my answer.

  “I used to,” I said. Phew. No brain failure.

  He sighed. “Tess,” he spoke more calmly. “You know I’d never do anything to put you in harm’s way. Ever. I’ve done a damn good job of that up to this point.”

  I knew where he was going. Even though he was right — he’d kept us safe over and over again — he was asking way too much of me.

  “I can do this, Tess. I wouldn’t suggest it if I didn’t believe I could.” He squeezed my upper arms again before dropping his hands to his sides. “But I’ll leave it up to you to decide. It’s your decision.”

  I opened my mouth to speak when he placed a finger over my lips, silencing me.

  “But before you make that decision, I ask that you think about it. Take the whole night if you need to.” He nodded as he removed his finger and backed away, moving toward the paramotor. He stroked it again. “Don’t be quick to decide. Hash out both possibilities in your mind before you take a definite stand on this. And while you’re doing that, I’ll be here with your cat,” he said as he picked Callie up from off the seat. He climbed in and sat down with her on his lap. “We’ll be reading this book, just in case.” He held up the manual for me to see.

  Chapter 45

  Cole tightened the strap under my chin before giving the top of my helmet a gentle tap. “This is going to be awesome, you’ll see.”

  I wasn’t so sure. My heart wasn’t so sure either as it pounded against my rib cage, threatening to break free and save itself.

  “The little guy looks comfortable,” he said as he checked my seatbelt, pulling on the straps so they were snug and secure around both Bob and me. “He’ll probably sleep through the whole thing.”

  We’d placed Bob in a baby sling that I wore with him facing me. The seat belt held us both in. He had laid his small head against my chest and sucked his thumb, completely unaware of the dangers we willingly accepted — well, some a little more willingly than others.

  Because, honestly, I couldn’t believe we were actually doing this.

  With Cole proving his ability to fly the paramotor, safely taking off and landing on three separate attempts, and my fear of heights and possible death as reasons not to fly it, I had to admit that maybe Cole was right. The paramotor trike could help us travel a long distance in a short amount of time.

  If it didn’t kill us.

  With Callie shoved inside a backpack, and Cole wearing it backwards much the way I wore Bob, he climbed into the seat in front of me and strapped himself in. He looked over his shoulder in my direction. “I’ve checked everything several times, as you requested. It all looks great, so the only thing left is to put this thing in the air and make some traveling progress. All you have to do, Tess, is sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride.”

  Yeah, somehow, I doubted I could do any of those things.

  When we’d left Walmart, I’d worried about the small amount of supplies we were able to comfortably carry. It didn’t seem like nearly enough then. Now, with the paramotor, our supply situation was significantly worse. We had to pare down what wouldn’t put too much weight on the trike and make it impossible to get off the ground.

  Cole assured me we’d be okay. We were making at least four times the progress traveling with the paramotor and wouldn’t need as many supplies in the long run. We’d find more along the trip, but I couldn’t help but worry. What if we didn’t?

  Cole was too damn happy for a person in our situation. The Happy Apocalypse. He never seemed to worry about much of anything—even the things he should be worrying about.

  I stretched my fingers within my gloves, trying to work out my nerves and prepare my hands to hold onto dear life for the next hour or two until we landed. I adjusted Bob’s hat and made sure his legs and arms weren’t kinked, but comfortable. He seemed cozy enough in his layers of clothes to keep him warm. The higher the altitude, the colder it got, and I wanted to make sure every inch of him was covered.

  Cole started the engine. The propellers behind me whirled loudly. I gripped the bars next to my seat and squeezed my eyes closed behind my safety goggles.

  Please don’t let us die. Please don’t let us die.

  We bumped along the wide road with plenty of room for takeoff without fear of tangling the parachute in a tree or in the useless powerlines. The wheels bounded over every crack and crevice, vibrating my seat. I waited for that moment, with my eyes still closed, when I no longer felt that sensation.

  We moved slowly at first. With increasing wind against my face, we sped up, gaining momentum. The parachute tugged at the trike as it expanded, and seconds later … pure suspension. As light as a feather.

  I couldn’t open my eyes. I just couldn’t.

  It was easier to face my fears with my eyes closed, though I knew how ludicrous that was. Death would take me whether my eyes were open or not.

  Yeah, I’d never flown before, and I had a fear of heights. I was that kid on the roller coaster, gripping the bar with my eyes closed through the entire ride, making a deal with the universe to keep me alive. I must’ve taken after my mom, since Toby and Dad would ride with their arms stretched above their heads, not even holding on. Even on the merry-go-round, I never let go. Always cautious.

  Now I was in the air, high above the earth, in a contraption that I had serious doubts about—the scariest thing I’d ever done. This was huge for me.

  If only Dad and Toby could see me now.


  If only.

  I had to remind myself to breathe. I had been holding it from the moment we began to move.

  Slow breaths. Nice and easy.

  Passing out and flying unconscious didn’t sound half bad.

  How did people find this thrilling? Who would want to fly something like this for joy?

  I couldn’t understand it.

  I didn’t dare move. Breathing was all I could handle, because I was certain one slight shift, one tiny adjustment, would send us nose-diving to the ground.

  There was nothing exhilarating about this at all.

  Once in the air, we knew there would be no conversation. The engine noise made talking difficult. He’d been unable to work the head sets, so he said, but now that I was in the sky, with a whole lot of questions and a variety of swear words wanting to tumble from my lips, I wondered if leaving the head sets behind was a deliberate choice.

  Yes, I was in the air. Yes, my eyes were closed, and yes, I was completely out of my comfort zone, but here I was, doing it anyway.

  The coolness of the air filled my lungs. Crisp. Clear. Light.

  We were high enough the air didn’t breathe the same.

  Bob began to fuss, wiggling around a little, though not crying.

  Oh, no. No, no, no.

  Perhaps my nervousness and fear radiated through me, affecting him, and I willed myself to be better and do better.

  To comfort him, and to ease my own trepidations, I began to hum. No way would he be able to hear it, but maybe he could feel it with his head against my chest. And just as I had no plans to open my eyes, I had no plans to remove either of my hands from the support beams, which again—ludicrous. Holding onto a falling paramotor was no better than not holding onto a falling paramotor.

  I slowly released one of my white-knuckled grips—Jesus, take the wheel—and quickly placed it on Bob’s back. I patted him and continued to hum, until he settled.

  Okay, we got this. We’re good. Nothing happened.

  Releasing my grip on it hadn’t made us plummet to the earth.

  How about that?

  The trike shifted a little, and though I had no plans to open my eyes –though I had been debating it—they flew open, and I increased my hold on Bob.