by Angela Scott
We weren’t falling as I had feared, but every mega swear word came ripping past my lips.
Cole used the right brake line to turn us, heading us in the direction the compass said we needed to go. No falling. No dying. Nothing dramatic.
With my eyes open, I saw everything.
Just as Cole had said, we had a bird’s eye view and from what I could see, it wasn’t pretty.
I should’ve been terrified by our height, and probably in any other situation I would’ve been, but the entirety of what I saw forced that worry momentarily from my mind.
Except for the small wealthy neighborhood on the hill that appeared untouched, the fire had scorched and destroyed everything. Soot covered the highway. No trees. No brush. Only charred remainders.
Jeez.
I craned my neck and looked in both directions. My breath caught in my throat. My heart hurt.
Complete blackness covered the entire mountain. Not a sign of green anywhere.
The balcony of the mansion had given me a dismal feel of our situation when I looked out over everything, but this … this was different. Being a mile or more in the sky gave me a view that I wouldn’t have had any other way.
It was a full kick to the gut kind of depressing.
Cole guided us over what had once been the town where I’d found Bob and had lived in Walmart until the fire had forced us to leave.
There was no town.
Nothing remained untouched by the fire’s wrath. Walmart and all the buildings around it were gone and only smoky blackness remained. Every structure destroyed. Not even a skeletal structure to indicate the town’s existence. Just rubble.
I rubbed Bob’s back a little more, though he had fallen asleep. I needed to rub his back.
Yes, I had expected this.
But it didn’t make it any less hard to look at it.
Chapter 46
The descent, the approach, the earth rushing up to meet us, waiting to crush us like a flyswatter to a fly. The bounce. The roll. The shift from side-to-side. The fear of losing control and rolling, tumbling, colliding, and then — BOOM — bursting into a cinematic ball of flames.
Of course, we didn’t burst into flames.
We only bounced a little, shifted even less, and then rolled to a perfect stop in what had once been a high school football field. The parachute, in a totally anticlimactic way, slowly floated to rest on the ground behind us.
A perfect landing without all the drama my mind had conjured. Simple. Concise.
I couldn’t believe it.
We were alive!
“So, what did you think?” Cole clambered from the trike, unbuckled his helmet, and placed it on the seat after giving a victory punch in the air.
I hadn’t released my death grip on the bars. “Not sure yet.”
“Oh, come on.” He squatted beside me and undid my seatbelt. He gave me his hand to help me from the seat since I still had Bob strapped to my chest. “That was incredible. You’ve got to admit flying through the canyon with the rock face on either side of us and the river below was everything dreams are made of.”
Navigating the paramotor through the tight space of the canyon had been nothing but a heart-attack inducing experience, complete insanity—two descriptions that fit Cole perfectly.
I punched his shoulder. “Why did you do that anyway? You’re not experienced enough to do something like that. We could’ve died.”
“But we didn’t.” He smiled at me as he carefully eased Callie from the backpack and tied her leash to the paramotor. “It was a smart move. I couldn’t get enough altitude to go over the mountain peaks. To fly all the way around the line of mountains would’ve taken forever. We would’ve had to make several stops for gas and add unnecessary miles to our trip. We wouldn’t be here right now, but look!” He swung his arms open wide. “We’re here!”
Here? What did that even mean. We had only been in the air a few hours, so “here” meant very little. Nothing looked familiar.
The stupid range of mountains gave me a bit of security and direction to a point. Not only had I climbed up one side of them and then down the other, we’d flown through them. Heading to Kansas meant we had to cross them one more freaking time. As much as I hated the paramotor, I was grateful we didn’t have to climb its charred remains.
We were on the other side, again. Even with the mountains to the east, it didn’t mean much. Everything looked so different from up above. How far north or how far south we’d flown, I couldn’t quite tell. Once lakes lay to the west. Now they were gone. Evaporated. Hills disappeared, flattening out or burrowing into the ground, causing small valleys. Cities with their tall buildings looked the same as their smaller town counterparts — desolate, destroyed, or vanished all together.
I watched for signs of life as we flew — a moving car, an airplane, a person, an animal, anything — and I didn’t focus so much where we were going since Cole had all of that mapped out.
As I looked around me at the mangled metal bleachers, the dilapidated school building, the rubble, the debris, the faded mascot on the fifty-yard line, and the barely readable WESTLAND HIGH at either end zones, my heart seized.
No.
No, no, no.
He didn’t.
He couldn’t have.
“What did you do?”
He gave me an odd look, taking a step back. “Not sure what you mean.”
“Here! Of all places, why did you land here?” My breath burned in my chest, my hands balled into fists, and if I didn’t have Bob strapped to me, I might’ve either attacked Cole and pummeled him to death or collapsed to the ground and bawled.
How? Why? What was he thinking?
He held his hands up. “Wait. Don’t lose it on me just yet. Let me explain.”
I shook my head. From the look on his face, I gathered he was slowly sensing that I wouldn’t accept just any explanation, but he attempted anyway.
“Remember when you said you wanted to go home?”
I only glared at him. “Well,” he went on, a little more hesitant, “surprise?”
I had to sit. I plopped down on the thirty-yard line.
I used to watch the games from the bleachers whenever my friends dragged me to one. I think our high school football team had a two-in-ten record. Not great. Super sad, really. It was hard to cheer on a pathetic team and even harder to admit being a West High Wildcat, but the concession stand popcorn was the best around. In pleasant weather, they held pep rallies outside, too. The homecoming court drove around the track in rented corvettes, and the queen had been crowned not too far from where I sat.
I glanced at the barely standing high school and wondered if Mr. Stanger’s body was still inside. It had to be. Oh, god. It had to be.
I shivered.
And my home — what was left of it — was only a couple blocks away.
Why? Why did he do this?
Bob fussed, and I unstrapped him. “Take him.” I held him up to Cole. “Please, I can’t. I just can’t.”
Cole took the baby into his arms as he stared down at me. “Tess, I thought this would be a good thing. We had to make a stop anyway, and you said you wanted to go home, so I—”
“No.” I shook my head again. “I mean, yes, I said that, but that’s not what I meant. That’s not what I meant at all.” I squeezed my eyes shut.
I did want to go home.
From the moment my bedroom window blew in, I wanted to go back to normal, to where I had a house, a place of belonging, a place to call mine, and both Dad and Toby were alive, and there was school, as much as I hated it, and my friends, and stupid football games, and things were simple.
That’s what I wanted.
I wanted the way things were before.
Not this.
Not this reminder of everything that had been stripped away, and that I’d never have a normal life again.
Anywhere but here would’ve been fine. Anywhere at all.
I was back at the beginning.
I was back at the freaking beginning!
Cole sat Bob on the grass, knelt beside me, and pulled me into his arms. “When you said you wanted to go home, I took it literally.”
No crap.
“I’m sorry.” He pulled me closer.
I turned my face into the crook of his neck. “I know.”
He patted my back. “It’s too late to leave. We need to find gas, food, and somewhere to sleep.”
Great, just great. Visiting my old stomping grounds after a world disaster was right up there on my things I’d love to do along with shaving my head and getting several teeth pulled without Novocain.
“Tess, I’m sorry I brought you here, but the sun will set soon and you know your way around this area. Figuring stuff out should be easy.”
I stared at him. It would be the hardest thing I’d ever done.
“Unless you want to attempt flying in the dark? But if you insist, then I guess we could try it.” He placed a hand on my knee. “It would be like flying blindfolded.”
I brushed his hand off, not in the mood for his kindness. “Why would you think coming here would be a good thing? Why not your hangar? Your hangar isn’t that far away.”
He seemed to ponder on that. “Yeah,” he said. “That definitely would’ve been a better plan, but…” He clapped his hands together. “…now we can look for your dad and your brother.”
I shoved him. I couldn’t help it. I gave him a giant shove and he toppled over. Bob giggled. When Cole sat up, he looked hurt.
My tears started again. “They’re dead, Cole. They’re dead. There’s no looking for them.”
He approached me cautiously, scooting closer. “You don’t know that.”
Why is he not listening to me?
“Everyone died on the mountain. Everyone. Every single person in my group.”
He tipped his head and squished up his face. “Yeah, but you don’t really know that Toby and your dad were a part of that.”
I wiped my eyes with the sleeve of my shirt. I wasn’t going to argue with him anymore, I couldn’t, because he was impossible.
“Aren’t you the least bit curious?” he asked. “Wouldn’t you want to go and just see?”
I shook my head.
“Think about it, Tess. If you guys got separated, where would be the most logical place to meet up?”
I didn’t answer.
“Your home, right?”
Again, I didn’t answer.
“Right?”
He was insatiable. If he were any closer, I might’ve shoved him again.
“Are you trying to torture me? Because that’s what you’re doing.”
He smiled but shifted out of reach. “No, not torture, more like tough love.”
I exhaled in a long huff. “They’re not going to be there.”
He shrugged as if none of this was a big deal. “But at least you’d be certain.”
Chapter 47
So very quiet.
So intensely quiet.
I walked through the familiar roads, looking at the well-known street signs among half-standing and half-collapsed homes of friends and neighbors. The silence intensified and settled on my shoulders. I literally found myself dragging my feet.
Of all the distinct kinds of silence, this particular silence sucked the worst.
It sucked because I knew exactly what it was supposed to sound like — Matt Hallen, the neighbor boy, shooting hoops; Mr. Evans, washing his fancy car in the driveway; Max Johnson, practicing the electric guitar in his garage; The Bracken’s crazy dog barking and pulling on its leash to get at the Bloomquist’s cat; sprinklers watering yards; children playing; the garbage truck; the mailman; cars in general driving up and down the street on their way to various destinations.
I came with no expectations. Even as I had tried to prepare myself, it still hurt.
“Which one is yours?” Cole glanced from one side of the street to the other.
Did it matter? There wasn’t one intact house on the whole block. In the several months since I’d last been here, with everything exposed to the elements, my neighborhood looked like it belonged on a horror movie set. Eerie. Ghostly. Supernatural.
I sighed and pointed to the remnants of my childhood home. The front door still lay on the porch just as I had last seen it. “No one’s there,” I said.
Cole walked toward the house. “You don’t know that.”
But I did.
Had Toby been there, or had he even passed through the area, he would’ve propped up the door. It wouldn’t have mattered that the whole backside of the house was destroyed. Placing the door back in the frame would’ve been a Toby kind of thing to do.
“Looks like you lived in a nice neighborhood.” Cole climbed the front stairs but didn’t go inside. “Very suburban-esque.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Did you learn to ride a bike on the road out front?” He nodded toward the street where I stood.
Again, I didn’t say anything.
“How about roller skate?”
I only looked at him.
“Skate board? Unicycle? Drive a car?”
Still nothing from me.
“Okay.” He adjusted the baby carrier and a sleeping Bob. “I’m going in, because I’m really curious.”
He stepped over the fallen door and disappeared inside. A second later, he popped his head out. “Aren’t you curious?”
I shook my head. “Not really.”
I grew up in that house. I knew all its nooks and crannies. I’d experienced all the holidays, birthdays, family dinners, movie nights around the TV, the laughs, the tears — I had the memories. Good memories. To see everything ruined and destroyed, in worse condition than before, would only tarnish the memories I clung to.
He disappeared again, but just as quickly as before, he returned. He held up a picture in a frame. All the glass missing. “Look how cute you were! What were you in this picture — nine, ten years old?”
He’d taken it off the wall. Well, at least that’s where it had last hung. Maybe he’d picked it up off the ground. “Ten,” I said.
“You know how some kids have this odd look about them? The look that says they’re going to be an ugly adult and that there’s no out-growing their awkwardness?”
Where was he going with this?
“You didn’t have that look.” He glanced down at the picture once more and then back to me. “Yeah, you were one of the lucky few, one of the kids who starts out decent enough and stays that way.”
Decent enough. Nice.
I took a few steps closer to the house while holding onto Callie’s leash. A part of me urged me toward my home, like a magnet. A larger part held off. I launched into self-protection mode.
Going inside could be cathartic. Maybe.
“You should really think about keeping a few of these pictures. I mean, we can’t take much on our travels. We don’t want to be weighed down, but a few pictures might be nice to have.” He went inside again.
True. I hadn’t thought about taking anything with me the first time I walked through my destroyed house. I only wanted to figure out where everyone was and what the hell had happened. In the back of my mind, I figured we’d all return and putting everything back in their right places, much the way they do after floods or tornados — rebuild and get back to normal.
Months later, I had no answers. I still had no idea where everyone went, and I knew very little about what took place.
But I did know that no one was rebuilding. Not now. Not any time in the future. No one was coming back.
Because they would’ve been here by now if they were.
Sounds of Cole walking through the remnants of my home echoed in the silence. Shuffling, stepping on broken glass, moving a chair or tipped over piece of furniture — simple noises filled the void.
Cabinet doors banged open. “Hey, you guys have a lot of unexpired canned goods in here. Not bad,” Cole called from the kitchen. “We’ll be eating n
ice tonight.”
No, that wasn’t a good thing. Not really. It meant no one, and I mean no one, had been through this area. No raiding. No pillaging. No supply runs.
Yes, dinner for us, but the implications of the untouched food couldn’t be ignored.
I glanced down the street to the Elliott’s partially standing house. If no one had wiped my house clean of every possible food source, then that had to be the same scenario for the Elliott’s.
I’d be able to find baby food there. Diapers, too.
A sick feeling settled in my stomach.
“I think I found which room was yours.”
The one with a purple wall, girl stuff, and my name on the door? Cole was a genius.
I couldn’t understand how he thought rummaging through my home could possibly be fun for me. All of it seemed like a lifetime ago, as if I’d only dreamed of that life and not actually lived it.
I picked up Callie and walked toward my home, but I didn’t go inside. I sat on the steps leading to the porch and petted my cat
Dad and Toby were gone.
Plain and simple.
As much as I hated admitting Cole was right, I knew that if they were alive, they would’ve come here to look for me. That had been our plan.
Now, I could put any inkling of hope I’d had to rest. I could go to Kansas, knowing I’d at least looked.
Cole sat next to me. Bob, still asleep, rested his little head against Cole’s chest. “I can tell you’re mad at me.”
I nodded. “Just a little.”
He bobbed his head up and down several times. “Understandable.”
“I want to leave as soon as we can. Tomorrow morning.”
“Okay, we can go if you want, but…” He hesitated. “I thought you’d want to stay for a few days. We have time, you know? Kanas will be there a week from now.”
I stared at him. “First, why would you think I’d want to stay here for a few days? And second, with the way this messed up world is going, Kansas might not be there in a week. We need—”
He held up a hand, stopping me. “So, if Kansas won’t be there in a week from now, tell me again why we want to go there?”
I shook my head. “You know what I mean, Cole. Things change constantly. It feels like every day we have to adjust our plans.”
