by A N Sandra
“This whole thing is ruining my life!” Ray cried. Tears were running down his face. “My mom is stoned every day, she’s not herself at all... I have piles of school work to do and I can’t play any games with the good gamers on the web!”
“So you thought it would be better for everyone here to die?” Miss Jan questioned him.
“Everyone isn’t going to die,” Ray said. Sullen denial was smeared across his chubby face. “You guys are all wacko. My mom says you’re all crazy and we should have stayed in Dallas.”
“Don’t bother to try to deal with him anymore,” Joel said harshly. “He can’t be reasoned with. We have to decide what we’re going to do now that we know the outside world is probably alerted to where we are.”
“Just my dad knows!” Ray insisted. His round face was red, and his eyes were full of unshed tears. Under any other circumstances he would have been quite pathetic.
“Your father’s email is certainly being monitored, assuming he’s still alive. But even if he is alive he doesn’t have any private communication,” Mr. Todd shook his head.
“You are so paranoid!” Ray yelled and the tears began to fall. He looked at Joel Harris with tears running down his cheeks. “Your whole family is paranoid!”
“You are so stupid!” Peter yelled back. Duane gripped Peter’s arm to keep him from knocking Ray down.
“Stop now,” Joel insisted. “We have a storm coming. No one can fly here or do much for three days at least, maybe more. We have time to plan and figure out what we are going to do, but we don’t have much time. Every second of the next three days counts.”
Everyone sat silently and Mr. Todd looked around at everything before he made a move.
“We can’t stay here,” he said, finally. “We can’t. But going to Fairbanks wouldn’t be any better. We need to go into the park where we’ll be hard to track down.”
“There are months of winter left!” Miss Jan said. “The kids couldn’t carry enough food for eight days when we hiked here in prime conditions!”
“There are some cabins farther into the park,” Mr. Todd said. “We could go there. But they will find us sooner rather than later.”
“We can shoot down any planes they send,” Joel said, shocking everyone. “We could put together some anti-aircraft artillery with supplies we have here.”
“We could…” Mr. Todd said. “But for how long can we keep ourselves safe that way? They can keep sending forces, and we are just a few.”
“Maybe we need to get to town and then we should split up, making it harder to find us,” Christina said.
“Not a bad idea, but we would need to communicate, and then we would be easier to find.”
“I think we should leave Tawna, Ray, and Lourdes here,” Helena said ruthlessly. “After Ray’s stunt he doesn’t deserve for the rest of us to keep him alive. Plus, if we have to leave here, he won’t help us keep from getting caught anyway. He’ll be more work than he’s worth.”
Dead silence filled the room. The sound of falling snowflakes could be heard through the storage building walls. Helena knew in that moment that everyone agreed with her. She felt victory flow through her veins with her blood. It was almost worth going out in the cold, cruel world where she was certain to die an untimely death to be free of Tawna.
“Maybe we should leave them here.” Mr. Todd finally broke the silence. “We can ask them what they want.”
“Lourdes is the loser then,” Miss Jan said, sounding ragged. “She has grown into a delight to be around for the last several months, and now we leave her because her mother and brother are not as mature as they should be?”
“Ray is twelve,” Joel Harris said. “You can’t hold him responsible for believing his father misses him and would bring him back to the world. When Helena was thirteen she begged Christina to take her in and live there. It was equally impossible.”
“That is not the same thing!” Helena felt betrayed by the comparison that stung worse than a scorpion attack she’d weathered several years before.
“We need to care for all members of this group or we’re going to fall apart,” Joel said.
“Are they really members?” Helena challenged him.
More silence. Helena knew she was winning another small victory. Her father had run the most prominent biotech company in the world, and she was successfully challenging him. Adrenaline made everything seem crisp and extra real and she wondered if this was what it was like to be high.
“We need to split up,” Christina said. “No matter what we do, we’re too large as a group to hide. Joel, take Tawna, Ray, and Lourdes. I’ll take our kids and the Wilsons can go another way.”
“No!” Duane said.
Helena was thrilled with his forceful tone of voice.
“You are not taking Helena away from me.” There was finality in his words.
Helena nearly fainted with relief from stress she hadn’t acknowledged.
“Maybe the smart thing to do is to send the kids off by themselves, right now, before the storm, and put distance between them and ourselves.” Mr. Todd sighed.
“You can’t be serious.” Christina sounded deadly. Her face was white.
“I am. You and Joel and I are the ones they want. They will count on the kids not making it through the next few months of their genetic holocaust.”
“Even Ray?” Helena asked. She really had no problem with saving Lourdes. Much of her ill will toward Lourdes had gone away over the last six months, but she was so angry at Ray that she didn’t trust herself with him.
More silence.
“We can be responsible for Ray, can’t we?” Duane asked Helena.
It was a test. Helena was an A student. She knew a test question, even when it was not asked in the proper format. There was no way she would let Duane down. She looked back at him with her chin up.
“Fine,” she answered, keeping her voice as light as possible by swallowing all her better judgment.
“So, what do we do?” Helena asked, turning back to her father.
Joel and Mr. Todd looked at each other.
“We’ll get a good night’s sleep, and make a plan in the morning. No one is coming for us in the middle of the storm anyway. It’s going to last three days, maybe four,” Joel said.
“Even then, they are going to get a satellite to look at every structure for miles around the site where we were today. There are lots of vacation cabins and a few homes that they’re going to have to rule out before anyone comes here. We set these homes on the edge of this meadow on purpose. They’re going to be very hard to see with a satellite. We don’t have a week, but we probably have four days, maybe five,” Mr. Todd said.
“They are really good at doing things more quickly than we think they can,” Duane pointed out to his father and the group.
“So are we,” Mr. Todd said, with a trace of pride.
Four days seemed like nothing at all to Helena. She stood up to leave and everyone else stood up also. Duane came up to her and squeezed her hand.
“We got this,” Duane said softly.
Helena looked up into his eye and resisted the urge to run her hand through his hair. That was supposed to be cliché, but it was a real impulse. She didn’t have anything to say, so she leaned on her tiptoes to give him a very, very quick kiss on the cheek.
Together, they walked back to Helena’s house through the falling snow. The wind didn’t gust around them, so they managed to keep their dignity as they walked together on the shoveled path. At Helena’s door Duane bent down and kissed her lips and she felt a flash down to her toes.
“Goodnight,” Duane said before he turned back to walk to his house.
“Goodnight,” Helena breathed. She stood with her back to the door of her house as she watched Duane walk home through the softly falling snow.
By ten that night the softly falling snow was gone and gusts of wind over a hundred miles an hour were slamming into the house at irregular intervals. Helena’s cozy lof
t was filled with the angry screams of the wind and it seemed like each blast might pick up the house and move it.
“I’m not sorry,” Helena told the storm as if it could listen. “You’re keeping us safe. You think you’re scaring me, but really you’re keeping me safe. No one can come for us as long as you howl.”
“Are you okay?” Peter called up the stairs.
“How long have you been awake?” Helena felt a little betrayed. She had thought she was alone in her wakefulness.
“Mom and I are having cocoa,” Peter said.
“Without me?” further betrayal.
“Come down!” Peter said cheerfully.
Helena felt around for her slippers. She couldn’t be left out even if her feelings were a little hurt.
The three of them sat at the table sipping cocoa while the wind slammed against their tiny but firm house.
“I love you both,” Christina said. “I know I wasn’t the mom you wanted. But you have always been important to me. I promise to make sure you are safe, no matter what the cost.”
Instinctively, Helena reached out for her mother’s hand. Her mother let go of the cocoa mug and they held hands on top of the table.
“Six months ago, no one could have convinced me we would sit here being a family,” Peter said. “But it happened.”
“You made it happen,” Helena admitted to Christina. “I’m still not happy about some things in the past, but I love you now.”
“You were always important to me,” Christina explained. “I thought that you would be so proud of me you would overlook my neglect. I was never good with people, and my own parents died when I was very young. But they were a lot like me, I’m afraid. They were doctors who were caught up in their own world.”
“Everyone’s world is changing now,” Peter said.
“None of us know what’s ahead, but you need to know that I will do everything I can to keep you safe.” Christina told them both. She shook her head. “Most of my professional life I have felt very confident in my work. For the last several months I have felt like an incompetent fool, but I have also felt that being here with you both was where I was supposed to be. The world has been crumbling around me, but I have never felt like I should be anyplace else but with you both, right here.”
“That’s good enough for me,” Helena replied, swallowing back sobs.
“Me too,” Peter said, his voice trembling.
All of them sat in the security of their tiny cabin while the wind and snow swirled in gentle fury outside. For just a few moments they drew strength from each other in spite of the fact that they knew an even bigger storm was about to break over their lives.
Chapter 27
December 30th, Las Vegas, NV
Leading up to New Year’s Eve, Las Vegas was swollen with tourists. And even though it was remote, the city had been forced to take in too many people from Urban Relocation, so it seemed almost as though it were bursting with people it couldn’t really handle.
Joshua, Court, and Brooke each had a suite at the Venetian, which was still decked out in all the Christmas finery it could manage. The evergreen swag and all of the holiday bling didn’t make Joshua sad. Since Christmas was over, it seemed like a whole different occasion. He did call BJ’s cell phone to check in with the family, but there was no answer.
Every day the three of them spent time working out and swimming and absorbing pay-per-view movies. Court didn’t offer to get Joshua high, and Joshua knew it was because they didn’t know when they would be called into the desert to make their deal.
The first day in Las Vegas Joshua drove them from bank to bank, while Court took cash from each one. Joshua never asked how much cash was in the backpacks she kept stuffing, but he was sure it was more money than he’d ever see again.
“We’re going to have dinner at Cut tonight,” Court finally said after she told Joshua to drive her back to the hotel. “I’m in the mood to drop five grand on dinner.”
“It might be more than that,” Brooke said.
“I don’t care,” Court answered.
“I don’t either,” Brooke replied. “I was just commenting.”
“Dinner is going to be worth commenting about. Save your comments for that,” Court told her. “Joshua, you don’t need a suit, but wear your best clothes.”
“I don’t have anything nice enough for a five-thousand-dollar dinner,” Joshua admitted.
“Go shopping.” Court gave him a Visa with Curtis’s name on the front. “Dinner is at eight. Then we’re going to see Phantom of the Opera.”
That sounded like entirely too much culture for Joshua, but since the world was ending it seemed like a bad idea to turn down any sort of experience. Someday, he might tell grandchildren about the Phantom of the Opera.
Without any false pride, Joshua threw himself on the mercy of the salesman who met him at the door of the high-end men’s wear shop, explaining that he was going to Cut later in the evening. He walked out of the store looking like a different man altogether.
“You clean up well, hayseed,” Brooke said as the three of them waited for the elevator, checking themselves over in the large mirrors in the elevator hall.
“Not as well as you two,” Joshua told her graciously. It was the truth. Court was in a smart black cocktail dress with tiny satin straps that showed off her perfectly formed shoulders and arms. Until seeing Court in that Joshua had never realized that a woman’s arms could be so erotic. Her lovely eyes sparkled, set off by huge crystal earrings, and her lips were… perfect. Brooke wore a soft blue dress and large earrings also. She was almost as beautiful as Court, but knowing that Brooke was a lesbian took a lot of the pleasure out of looking at her for Joshua.
Dinner was sublime. The wine was like velvet, the salads were crisp, the meat… Joshua hadn’t known that meat like that existed. The service was perfect, attentive but not intrusive. The other diners made Joshua feel like he was on the set of a movie.
“I don’t have any more room,” Court said. “How about we take our dessert to go?”
“Good idea,” Brooke admitted. “I want to enjoy it.”
On the way to the elevator Court tripped just a bit, walking too quickly. Joshua caught her elbow to help her right herself. It was very hard to let go of her, but finally he dropped his hand. Not since the eighth grade had Joshua been so connected to someone else by such a simple touch. Only a weirdo gets so worked up over an elbow… even if it is the most perfect elbow in the world. In his other hand Joshua carried a bag with three desserts for later.
“I don’t want to sound rude, but can I just have my dessert now and I’ll eat it alone in my room later?” Brooke said at the door to her room. Joshua fished it out of the bag, and Brooke gave Court an intense look before she disappeared into her room.
Joshua stood by Court as she got out the key card for her room from her tiny black purse. Her perfume was a light musky floral scent. He’d never smelled it on another woman anywhere and he breathed it in as he mentally prepared for her to ask him to hand over her dessert and dismiss him.
“Don’t just stand there,” Court said gently after her key card clicked. “Come take care of me.”
Joshua didn’t have to be told twice. Pushing the door open for her, he felt physical pain from how much he suddenly wanted to take care of her. Setting down the bag of dessert on the entry table, Joshua looked at Court, not wanting to scare away the most perfect woman he’d ever known. She smiled kindly at him and her dress fell to the floor, revealing that the rest of her was as perfect as her arms. Joshua heard himself groan, and she smiled just with the corners of her mouth, standing before him wearing only earrings and black heels.
“I think you’re wearing too many clothes,” Court teased him.
“I think you’re too amazing. I don’t think I can touch you,” Joshua told her honestly. He had never felt more inadequate in his life.
“We’re going to be doing a lot of touching, and I think you’ll make it work,” she
told him.
“I will do whatever you want.” Joshua swallowed.
“I’m counting on it,” Court told him.
Chapter 28
December 31st, Outer Banks, NC
“What happened?” Tilly woke up to an unfamiliar sound. She was surprised to see Maddy sitting up in bed already, looking surprisingly thoughtful.
“The power went off and the generator kicked in.” Maddy had a look of concentration on her face. “We need to get up and get dressed… now.”
“Now?” Tilly fretted. “The power blinks all the time—”
“This wasn’t a blink; the generator came on. It’s a sign that the Hollisters are coming and they’ve cut the power. We’ve had this discussion.”
“All right.” Tilly was doubtful, but she turned on her bedside lamp and started to get dressed. She was trying to button a snug flannel shirt with tired fingers when there was loud banging on the door.
“The internet’s out!” Daniel called from the other side of the door. “There’s no storm, but the power and the internet went out. The Hollisters are coming.”
“Shit.” Maddy pulled her hair into a ponytail and slipped on her shoes.
“That’s about right,” Tilly answered. Her heart was racing but there had been a contingency plan for this moment. The bedside clock read four-seventeen. An unholy hour in Tilly’s opinion, but that couldn’t be helped.
Without more discussion, Tilly and Maddy both left to go up to the computer lab. They met Sugar and Sadie in the hall on the way and all of them had an awkward moment deciding how to file through the door since none of them was fully awake. Travis and Daniel were already there, as well as Donia, one of Doctor Justin’s assistants who was working to make vaccine. The first batch of vaccine had been completed and Doctor Justin’s other two assistants had left to distribute it to family members and others who would be trusting enough to take it. Donia had been left to keep the second batch going. She and Travis were staring into a computer monitor.
“They’re coming,” Daniel said. “They cut the internet and power, but the security cameras are on the internal network for just this reason. They docked a minute ago.”
