by Platt, Sean
“What now, Dad?” said Trevor.
“I wanted to get a car.”
“And now?” said Piper.
“I still want to get a car.”
They came to the edge of the wood. It was a poor thicket, really just a handful of unused lots where the trees had yet to get chopped. But it was enough for concealment — especially given that no one seemed to have interest in anything but the road.
It was bumper to bumper, mirroring the riot they’d fled the previous afternoon. The only differences were the number of lanes (the road had two, and both directions were occupied by cars wanting to leave) and the civility. There wasn’t any, really. But Meyer thought that might be okay. If these people wore their fear on their chests and openly panicked, maybe they wouldn’t explode into chaos like the expressway had. Alternatively, there might be nothing to stop them from exploding into immediate chaos.
“How are we going to buy a car now, Meyer?” The wooded area was on a slight rise, and Piper was watching the people across the packed street above the hoods of the jostling, honking line of vehicles.
“I said ‘get.’ Not ‘buy.’”
“So, what, you’re going to steal one?”
“I’ll write them a credit chit if it’ll make you feel better. Slip it under the door, and they can cash it later, after they’re done murdering each other for food.”
He’d been joking, but the comment shut Piper down. Another presence appeared at his side. Meyer looked over and saw Raj beside him.
“You know how to hotwire a car?” he said.
“Not since cars had ignition wires.”
Meyer tried to keep the condescension from his stare. The boy was only trying to help.
“No, I don’t know how to ‘hotwire’ a car. But unless you expect to find an ’04 Camry in there, that doesn’t matter.”
Raj had no rebuttal. Meyer sighed.
“Look. We have two choices. I’d love to find an unused vehicle in there somewhere — something that was a second car, and the people who own it took another and left it behind. But that means finding the key fob transponder if we expect to start it, and I don’t think it’s going to be that simple, even if we break into the house and root around.”
“We can’t break into someone’s house!” Lila said.
Raj put his hand on her arm. “What’s the other choice?”
Meyer firmed his jaw. “We take one that someone’s already using.”
Piper was staring at him. Meyer looked over.
“No,” she said.
“We have to get to Vail. We have to.”
“They have places they need to go.” She nodded at the line of cars. “They all do.”
“They’re running in circles. They don’t know where they’re even going. They just think one of those ships is going to park over Chicago, and they’re looking the things in the eye for the first time. They’re not thinking smart, Piper.”
“But you are.”
“We’ll put a vehicle to good use. These people are just panicking.”
Piper nodded. “Oh, that’s right. Whereas you’re thinking smart.”
“Don’t argue with me, Piper.”
Something snapped. Her husky, often-sexy, often-demure voice rose, becoming too loud for early morning. Despite the engine noise and shouts of fleeing people below, Meyer thought they might be seen, making themselves into unwitting targets.
“Don’t give me your superior bullshit, Meyer! You are not dragging someone out of a car by gunpoint! Just because you think you know something they don’t, that doesn’t make you … ”
“I do know something they don’t. I have all along.” He kept his voice calm, fighting anger fused with frustration. Maybe just a bit of fear. If they couldn’t get a car, they were stuck. And they couldn’t be stuck, no matter what. They had to reach Vail. They had to get to his Axis Mundi. Anything else was unthinkable.
“You wouldn’t have wanted anyone to take our van.”
He flashed back to the teens in New Jersey. The panic had barely begun, and they’d already been ready to rumble. “Didn’t stop them from trying.”
“Doesn’t mean we should do the same.”
“How else are we going to get out of here, Piper? We actually have somewhere to go! What’s really going to happen, here? We’ll strand someone where they should have fucking stayed all along?”
“That’s their decision to make,” she said.
Meyer looked at the line of vehicles and the gibbering people yelling from their home doorways and car windows. For a few very clear seconds, he saw them all as sheep, running in pointless circles fueled by fear. Clogging the way for the shepherds, with places they needed to be.
“Fine,” he said. “We’ll find another way.”
But he had no idea how.
And with a thousand miles left to their haven across packed roads, time was quickly thinning.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Day Four, Morning
Chicago
One significant advantage of this panicky lot versus the rioting expressway, Piper thought as they moved down the berm toward a snaking line of cars and pedestrians: no one seemed to notice them at all.
Everyone here was probably less than a quarter mile from home (the early birds had fled at the front — the Meyer Dempseys of outer Chicago, perhaps), and were therefore properly stocked. They were in their own vehicles, probably fully gassed up, with the kids’ electronic games jammed into the back seat to keep them entertained through an apocalyptic family trip. There might come a day (and perhaps it would be soon) when neighbor would turn on neighbor and each would take what the other had. But for now, it seemed that most homes had remained their owners’ castles. And most people’s parked-in vehicles remained their oases on wheels.
The Dempsey family had no such oasis. But that was the Dempsey family’s problem.
Meyer clearly didn’t agree with that sentiment; he fumed in silence beside her, holding his pack’s straps as if to keep it firmly in line. This was their first end-of-the-world scenario, but Meyer’s life had been survival of the fittest. He’d done poorly in school because he never cared about tests, then claimed control of his destiny by starting his own business at age fourteen, selling hilarious fake how-to pamphlets to students right under the administration’s nose. He’d partnered with promising idea men and women who’d failed at crowdfunding their dreams, reasoning that if the public didn’t want to pay full price, a private investor was justified in spending pennies. Those who didn’t like his deals, he beat to market and drove out of business. All fair game, in Meyer’s opinion.
Everyone had their shots in life. Not taking them was their own goddamned fault.
But Piper had been raised differently. She hadn’t met Meyer until after he’d taken his crowdfunding idea machine further by starting his own platform. His attraction to her gave Piper special treatment. She’d started Quirky Q with Meyer as a fair partner — the way he treated all partners who were reasonable enough to understand that his way was always best. But she’d hidden some of herself as they’d dated then married, because those buried truths were things Meyer, in all his wisdom, would find stupid.
Things like religion. Like belief in a god. Which god, she wasn’t willing to say. Her parents had believed in the Christian God, but Piper herself had always been more spiritual. She kept it all to herself, though, because of Meyer’s overbearing views. He was good to her, but saw belief in “something beyond” as something stupid. Ironic, considering all the time he spent tripping on his drug with Heather, looking into some great understanding that ordinary folks couldn’t see.
Heather. Piper suppressed the thought. No point in ruminating now, considering the situation and Heather’s likely death. It was a shame. She’d liked Heather despite her jealousy. Despite her certainty that Meyer had never stopped loving her, even after he’d started loving Piper.
Heather and Meyer, it seemed, had shared everything. Probably still had, right
until the end. Piper had only shared a part of herself, and she’d only allowed Meyer to share parts of himself. Which meant it might have been her fault. All of it. All of what continued to happen with Heather, because Piper was too reserved to keep up.
The rules had changed — but not those that mattered.
You didn’t take what wasn’t yours. You didn’t rob someone of what they needed to secure your own survival. No matter whether you were Meyer Fucking Dempsey or some poor slob living on the south side of Chicago.
They walked the line of cars for a while, Meyer apparently reasoning that there was little point in securing a vehicle behind a snarl of traffic. They weren’t the only walkers; there were many with packs like theirs and many significantly larger, as if those brave souls planned to head into the hinterlands and live like primitives until this all blew over.
Piper nodded to those she made eye contact with. Meyer stared defiantly ahead. A surprising number nodded back, proving her right: there was at least a little civility left in the world.
Hi, nice to see you.
Wonderful day for an apocalypse, isn’t it?
Oh yes. Lovely day for the end of humanity.
They must have ended up heading west because after a few hours, the sky behind them began to purple and then warm into reds and oranges. The backpacks began to feel heavy, but despite her grunting rearrangements of shoulder straps, Meyer wouldn’t slow. He was pissed. She wondered if he had a right to be pissed, flip-flopping on her convictions with every other step.
Wouldn’t someone take their vehicle under the right conditions? If so, shouldn’t they take someone else’s, if they thought they could get away? But no, that would be wrong. Wrong because those people would be stranded and unable to flee the city. Which didn’t matter anyway for most of them; Meyer was right about that. Most people weren’t going anywhere other than away from Chicago. The Dempseys at least had a destination waiting.
She’d talked to one woman who walked alone, hanging far enough back so that Meyer wouldn’t hear them. He might snap at her to stop talking to those he saw as the enemy (Meyer had always seen others as an enemy to some degree; it’s how he built his wealth), and she didn’t trust herself not to bite his head off if he did.
She’d learned what they’d suspected: Yes, amateur astronomers had begun to circulate their own images of the approaching spheres. Yes, they were now plenty visible as a stubbly rash of miniature BB’s in line with Jupiter. And yes, some conspiracy types had begun circulating a growing theory: If there were only so many alien ships to go around, didn’t it make sense for them to line up over major population centers to get the most bang for their space bucks? Chicago was the fifty-first largest city in the world, and there were around two hundred ships. The theory had gone viral on the Internet for those who could still access it, and on TV and radio for everyone else. It had the obvious feel of something people should have realized days ago, but now everyone wanted out.
Piper had asked the woman, “Where are you headed?”
“Away from the city,” she said.
That, Piper thought, was as legitimate a destination as any other. They were headed to Vail, but maybe this woman would get to somewhere around Naperville. Who were they to say she shouldn’t go?
The same was true of every person in every car. They might head into cornfields. Forests. Mountains, if they could make them. It was none of their business.
Still, she could feel Meyer’s disapproval. All bets were off, he seemed to feel. And he had that pressing need to reach Vail that, truth be told, Piper didn’t entirely understand. Why couldn’t they go into cornfields? Why couldn’t they hunker down in the forest? Yes, he was having that whole paranoid compound built in Colorado, and yes, Meyer seemed to see it as some sort of a spiritual “axis” — something that, she thought with irritation, he’d have made fun of her for. And yes, heading there had been a terrific plan before the FAA had grounded flights, back when they’d planned to arrive on the Gulfstream. Or it had been a good plan when they’d still had their van, back when the roads had seemed passable.
But now? Now, wasn’t forging bullheadedly along to Vail just … just bullheaded?
She didn’t want to ask. He was angry, and was resisting all his natural impulses (say, to take what he wanted in whatever way he could get it) out of a sideways sort of respect for Piper. He thought her way was stupid, for sure. But he also loved and respected her. This was how he’d chosen to show it. But he resented her, too. He resented Piper for what he was doing. He resented her for his own loyalty to her, and his own respect for her wishes.
And he was afraid.
That was the worst part — the part Piper tried to ignore for solid minutes at a time as they made their way alongside the slow line of cars. She tried to focus on Trevor, who kept his distance from her, focusing on the hurt she felt over her stepson’s moodiness rather than the worse emotions coming from Meyer. She tried to focus on Lila, who looked green and seemed like she might throw up. She tried to focus on Raj, who kept his hand in Lila’s, remembering how she’d once been in relationships that new and sweet. Not with Meyer, certainly (theirs had always been an adult love, an adult level of infatuation), but in her girlhood, back when she’d been awkward and shy.
Still, her eyes kept returning to Meyer. Seeing his anger for a moment, then seeing the fear below. It was like a visual puzzle: Once she’d seen the solution, she’d never have trouble seeing it again. Or never be able to deliberately not see it. She wanted Meyer to be assured. Confident. Strong. Feeling his anger at her was so much better than sensing his growing desperation. But the longer they walked, the clearer it became. Meyer was like all the others below his thick skin: terrified all the way down to his bones.
Maybe because he knew what was coming.
Same as he’d known to have emergency supplies on hand. Same as he’d known to keep the Gulfstream prepped, with a pilot always on call. Same as he’d known to build the bunker in Vail — the bunker they were never going to reach.
Piper shook the idea away.
Hours passed. The sky grew lighter by degrees. They kept walking, Piper too timid to suggest a rest because she was afraid Meyer was near his breaking point. He saw the world as drowning and Vail as a pocket of air. She could have found a place here, but not Meyer. And she was afraid of how he might react if reminded how unlikely it was beginning to seem that they might ever breathe the oxygen he sought.
But she couldn’t continue in silence, so after an unknowable amount of time she moved into step beside Meyer, then slipped her small hand into his large one. He gripped it in a way that was probably meant to be reassuring, but that to Piper felt like a man clinging to a lifeline.
She looked up. He looked over. She smiled, and he managed to do the same. There was apology in that smile, and a touch of forgiveness, which Piper felt she might have earned.
“I don’t want to pressure you,” she said.
He nodded.
“And I know I’ve messed up your plans.”
His lips firmed. She’d messed them up for now, but the more afraid he grew deep down, the less willing he might be to adhere to her moral code, no matter what she thought. He was still the family’s rudder. When push came to shove, Meyer Dempsey’s words were the history written.
“But I don’t suppose you have any ideas?”
They were coming to a rise. He nodded downward, toward a lot ahead, as if he’d expected what was on the other side and could answer her question with that single, demonstrative nod.
“I do now.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Day Four, Late Morning
Chicago
When Piper took Trevor by the arm to steer him in the group’s new direction, he felt a wash of unwelcome emotion. He’d been avoiding her all day because of last night’s dream, and her touch was both pleasant and awkward at once.
Despite the circumstances, he’d fallen asleep almost immediately (he supposed it was sheer mental e
xhaustion that felled him), and sometime later he’d found himself in a barren, post-apocalyptic battle zone — apparently after the aliens had come and gone. It was just Trevor and Piper. Trevor was holding an enormous weapon like one of the soldiers in the Death Hunt: Earth video game, his hands covered in soot and grime. He was wearing a shirt with the sleeves ripped off at the shoulders, and his arms were, thanks to dream magic, rather large and impressive. Piper had been wearing only underwear and a bra. Toward the end of the dream, there had been a scuffle, and the bra had been compromised. For a few glorious minutes before waking, she’d been running around the rubble with her tits out, making suggestive comments about needing some “manly comfort.”
Feeling her hand on him now — though much higher on him than he’d want if she weren’t his father’s wife — warmed Trevor’s face. He pulled away, and only after flinching thought how it must look to her. He caught her facial expression, warring with the trio of desire, guilt, and shame that he so often felt around Piper lately, but then saw where she’d been leading him and stopped. They all halted, waiting for Meyer to speak.
Lila spoke first. Only, she didn’t speak so much as laugh.
“You’re kidding,” she said.
“Your stepmother wants us to get our car legit, so that’s what we’re going to do.” There was a glance between them, and Trevor saw his father’s eyes soften, blunting what might have sounded like an insult into the mere statement it was intended to be.
Ahead was the huge, shiny expanse of a Toyota dealership.
“Nobody’s going to be working, you know,” said Lila.
“Then we’ll take now and pay later.”
“How?”
“I’m sure the transponders are in there somewhere. They must have an office, right? Where they go and pretend they’re working out a deal, getting special permission from the manager for a can’t-beat, low-low price to get you into a brand new Toyota today?”
