Deserted

by Israel Keats

  Leo ran inside. “Mom? Dad?”

  There was no response. The house had never felt emptier.

  He walked through the living room and glanced down the hall into his parents’ room. The drawers were open, piles of clothes on the bed. They had packed and left in a hurry.

  Leo walked to his own room and saw more open drawers. Some of his things were dropped to the floor. So they had packed things for him too, but where did they go? He returned to the living room, where James was waiting.

  “Nobody’s home?” James asked.

  “No. It looks like my folks packed up their stuff. Mine too.”

  “Yeah, I guessed that.”

  “But where did they go? And why wouldn’t they wait for me?” Leo wondered. “I mean, it’s just not like them. If they had to leave, they’d wait for me to get home.”

  “They thought you were at school,” James reminded him. “They probably figured you were evacuated with the rest of the students.”

  Leo groaned. He immediately regretted skipping class this morning. “Of course they did.” He slumped down into a chair. “So we don’t know why anyone left, and we don’t know where they went. What now?”

  “Let’s try to find my mom. I bet she can tell us where they sent everyone.”

  “What makes you think she’s even still there?”

  “She probably is,” said James. “She’s an engineer at DPI. Even if they were evacuating the whole town, I’m guessing people working there would have stayed around.”

  Leo nodded. DPI was pretty much the largest company in Fullerton. It was an energy company that provided jobs for most people in town. He figured James was right—if anyone was going to stick around to learn more about what had happened to the electricity, it was probably the people at DPI.

  Leo and James rode through the empty streets, weaving around the stalled cars, looking for any signs of life. The DPI buildings were on the north end of town surrounded by security fences. They reached the gate and pushed the buttons on the intercom, but none of them worked.

  “It must have gotten knocked out with the power,” Leo said.

  “You’d think they would have a backup generator,” James said. “Or at least a way to open the gate by hand.”

  “Well, if they do I don’t know what it is.” Leo shielded his eyes against the sun and stared at the building. The parking lot was still filled with cars. “Maybe everyone is locked in there, but it sure looks empty inside.”

  “Let’s go in and look through the front door.” James eyed the fence. It was lined with barbed wire.

  “We can’t climb over that,” Leo said.

  “Nope,” James agreed. He grasped the gate with both hands and shook, making it rattle. “There’s no way they didn’t leave a single security guard behind.” He started shouting. “Hey! Is anyone there?” There was no response.

  James gave up. “Seems like they could have at least put up a sign. Even if my mom is in there, I have no way of letting her know I’m out here.” He shook his head. “This is so weird.”

  “Let’s ride back to my place,” Leo suggested. “Maybe my parents will be coming back—maybe they were just out looking for me.”

  The look James gave him told Leo that he didn’t believe that, but he didn’t seem to have any other ideas. “Sure, okay,” he said finally. He gave one more disappointed glance toward the DPI buildings.

  They rode back on side streets, past dark houses and buildings. Even the police station looked closed. If the police station was closed, what could be open?

  Leo looked at the familiar red bulb at the top of the town’s water tower. He was so used to seeing it, he usually didn’t even notice it. He braked and James stopped behind him.

  “What is it?” James asked.

  “I have an idea.”

  Chapter 4

  They left their bikes near the tower and walked over. The lower part of the ladder was in a metal tube-like cage, which was locked. But the legs of the water tower had smaller crisscrossing beams to support them.

  “So, how do we get up?” James asked.

  “Watch.”

  Leo leaped up and grabbed the lowest crossbar. He let himself swing for a moment, hoping it looked like he was just gathering momentum. In reality, Leo had never done this before. He’d heard of kids at school doing it before, and some of his friends claimed they’d done it. So in theory he knew what to do.

  As his legs began swinging higher, he hoped to himself that it was as easy everyone else made it seem. He swung his feet to the crossbar and locked his ankles around it, then shifted his hands and feet until he reached one of the water tower’s large legs. The bar ran up at an angle. He reached up for the next cross bar, which angled the other way. He went hand over hand again until he reached the platform. He clambered over the railing and took a deep breath.

  He looked down and saw James was already halfway up. He was also breathing hard when he reached the platform. Leo flexed his hands. The narrow crossbars were hard on the palms.

  “How many kids have died doing this?” James asked.

  “None that I know of,” Leo said. “But I heard about one guy who broke an ankle.”

  “If that happened to us, we’d have no way to call for help,” said James.

  “I guess not,” Leo admitted. “But look, we can see most of the town from here.”

  There was the blue roof of the pizza restaurant his parents owned, and just down the street was the playground he’d played at as a kid. Both were usually busy this time of day, but now there were no signs of life at either one.

  “It’s a ghost town,” said James.

  “Yeah,” Leo said quietly. Then he noticed movement out of the corner of his eye.

  His gaze darted to a house just a few blocks away from his own. The yard had a high wooden privacy fence around it, but from up here they could see right in. The blinds were drawn closed in most of the windows, but in one of them on the lower level he could see there was a dark gap in the blinds. He watched it for a moment, and then suddenly the blinds snapped closed.

  “Look!” He pointed.

  “What?”

  “I just saw someone looking through those blinds. Someone’s there!”

  “I still don’t see—” James stopped when the side door to the house quickly opened.

  A yellow pit bull came bounding over from the backyard and scurried into the house. A girl poked her head out, glancing around the yard. Then she yanked the door closed behind her.

  “Sigrid,” Leo said in surprise.

  James looked at him. “You know her?”

  He nodded. “Sort of. She goes to our school. We used to ride the same bus when we were kids.”

  “Let’s go talk to her,” James said. “She might know something.” Then he hesitated. “I don’t suppose there’s an easier way down?”

  “Not unless you have a parachute,” said Leo. He started back down the same way they came.

  “Ugh.” James followed.

  They made it safely to the ground and biked over to the house. Leo’s heart was beating quickly. He never thought he’d be this excited to see a girl he barely knew.

  Leo punched the doorbell, then realized it probably didn’t work. He rapped on the door. There was no answer.

  “Sigrid! It’s Leo,” he called. Then he realized she may not recognize his name. “From school,” he added lamely. Inside the dog started barking.

  “It’s okay, Sandy,” they heard a girl’s voice say through the door. The door cracked open, and Sigrid looked out at him in surprise.

  “Uh, hey,” he said. “I’m Leo. We go to school together. And this is James.” He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. “He goes there too.”

  She continued to stare at them, clearly wondering why they were standing at her front door.

  Leo cleared his throat. “So listen, do you . . . know where everyone went? I went for a ride in the woods this morning, and when I got back everyone was gone or something.
Everybody except you.”

  Her eyebrows narrowed. “You don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  “Just come inside,” she said, rolling her eyes. She opened the door and let them in, shutting and locking it behind them. The pit bull—Sandy, Leo figured—followed them into the dining room.

  “The army evacuated the entire town after the power went out,” Sigrid explained as she sat down at the table. “They gathered everyone at the schools and loaded them up in transport trucks. They didn’t even give people a chance to go home first—said there was no time.”

  “How is it their vehicles work when all the others are stalled?” Leo wondered.

  “I don’t know,” Sigrid said.

  “They’re the military,” James said. “Of course they have the best technology to withstand anything.”

  “That would make sense,” Sigrid said. “After the Visitors attacked—”

  Leo’s eyes widened. “The . . . Visitors?” he repeated. “That’s actually, like, a thing?”

  “What are you talking about?” asked James, who was clearly even more confused than Leo.

  “That guy who tried to steal my bike earlier mentioned something about ‘Visitors’ too. I thought he was just trying to mess with me.”

  “Wait,” James said, looking back and forth between Sigrid and Leo. “Who are the Visitors?”

  Sigrid sighed and gestured to the chairs across from her. “You guys had better sit down.”

  Chapter 5

  “Early this morning there were these . . . lights in the sky,” Sigrid explained. “Like rings. And then the news said there were spaceships. Aliens. Everyone’s been calling them the Visitors.”

  Leo couldn’t believe it. The guy on the highway had been right.

  “But before they could say much else, everything got zapped,” Sigrid continued. “No power, no telephones, nothing. I heard one army guy call it an EMP—electromagnetic pulse.” She shook her head. “How could you not know about this? It’s all everyone was talking about at school today.”

  “Neither of us were there this morning,” Leo said. He looked over and saw James staring down at his knees.

  “I was playing video games all morning. My mom kept calling me, and I didn’t feel like answering. She was trying to tell me.” James clenched his fists. “Do you know if they evacuated DPI too?”

  “I mean, it sounded like they were making everybody leave,” said Sigrid. “They might have cleared our town because of the DPI buildings. Who knows what kind of stuff they’ve got going on in there. Maybe they thought the EMP made it risky.”

  “I should have answered the phone.” James sighed. “She would have told me what to do. And she probably left a voicemail, but I can’t even check it now. I’m an idiot!”

  “You didn’t know,” Leo said. That didn’t seem to bring James much comfort. Leo tried to change the subject. “If they were evacuating everyone at the schools, why did you come home?” he asked Sigrid.

  “Because of Sandy.” She reached down and rubbed Sandy’s ears. “I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving her. I live with my grandparents, and they both teach at the elementary school. I knew they’d be with those kids in the transport. Everyone was panicking at the school, so I sneaked out an emergency exit. I thought I could get Sandy and bring her back with me in time, but when I got back to the school the transports had already left. I would have gone after them, but I didn’t exactly want to go by myself. I’ve been sticking around here until I can figure out what to do next.”

  “How long until everyone comes back?” James asked.

  She shrugged. “They didn’t say.”

  “Do you know where they went?”

  “Actually, yes,” she said, perking up. “The old Air Force base.”

  “That’s a long way away,” said James.

  “Well, yeah. That’s why I haven’t tried to head there on my own.”

  Leo sighed. “So we can either try to make our way to the Air Force base with no idea of how to get there and no GPS, or we can stay in town and hope everyone comes back soon.” He looked at James. “What do you want to do?”

  Sigrid watched quietly as both boys thought it over.

  “Well,” James said eventually, “we don’t know when everyone will be back. For all we know they’re already on their way home.”

  “That’s true,” Sigrid said.

  “And,” he continued, “what if we leave right as they’re coming back? We might take a different route and pass them completely.”

  “Then we’d be stuck at the Air Force base by ourselves. Back to square one,” Leo added. “So . . . we wait it out here? At least for a few days?”

  James nodded, and they both looked to Sigrid, who leaned back in her chair. “Well, you both know my plan was already to stay put. You guys could stay here with me if you want. Our kitchen is pretty well-stocked with food.”

  “My house is outside of town,” James said. “I’d rather stay here.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Leo agreed. “Beats being home alone.” He smiled at Sandy, who crossed through the room. “And at least we have a guard dog here.”

  Sigrid grinned. “Best guard dog around.”

  All three were quiet for a moment, glancing around the room. Leo noticed Sigrid’s fingers tapping against the table, and he wondered if she was missing the habit of checking her phone as much as he was.

  “Well,” James said. “We’re the only ones left in town. I say we make the most of it.”

  Leo was about to say something in agreement when they heard James’s stomach growl loudly. His face flushed red, and he gave them a sheepish smile.

  Sigrid laughed softly. “How about we raid my kitchen first?”

  Chapter 6

  After they’d eaten their fill of what they could find in Sigrid’s cabinets, they decided to wander through town. They walked through the streets, checking the buildings for any sign of people.

  “Nothing,” James called from where he was peering into a dark coffee shop window. He joined Sigrid and Leo where they were standing in the middle of the street. Sandy was with them too, sniffing along the curb as they walked. “You know, this is kind of cool.”

  Sigrid raised her eyebrows at him. “We’ve been abandoned in the middle of an alien invasion and you think this is cool?”

  “Well, obviously not that part, but . . . you know what I mean.” James moved to stand in the middle of an intersection. “Usually at this time of day this street is packed with cars. Now, it’s like the town is ours.”

  “Yeah, I get it,” Leo said. “No parents around, no teachers. Even having no phones or TVs or anything . . . it’s different. It feels like the world is on pause.”

  They wandered through the high school again, this time taking their time. They checked out the teachers’ lounge—decidedly not as interesting as the three of them had thought it would be—and climbed up into the rafters of the auditorium just because they could. They spent about an hour shooting hoops in the gym.

  After they were done at the school, they circled through the streets back to Sigrid’s house. It was a small town, so there wasn’t much to explore.

  As they rounded a corner, they heard a crash coming from up the street. They froze. Sandy must have heard it too—she bared her teeth and began growling lowly. Sigrid tried to shush her.

  Two men were standing in front of an electronics store down the street. One of them had wound a jacket around his fist and had punched it through the glass window. The other one hoisted a stuffed backpack over his shoulder. As he moved, his shirt shifted to reveal a gun tucked into his jeans. The first guy cleared the glass away to unlock the door, letting them in. A bell jingled as the door swung open, and Leo was half expecting to hear the shrill sound of an alarm.

  “Easy girl,” Sigrid whispered to Sandy, who was still growling. Leo didn’t blame her—the guys looked like bad news.

  The men were still inside the building and didn’t seem to have noticed th
em. Leo grabbed James and Sigrid by the arms, pulling them backward with him. “Let’s take a different route back,” he said. He figured the looters were more interested in grabbing things than having any kind of confrontation, but he wasn’t about to find out.

  Sigrid looked shaky as she nodded in agreement. They crept across the intersection to keep moving down the street they’d come from. Sandy followed closely behind but didn’t make a sound. Leo was thankful—he didn’t know what he would do if they ran into some bad company like that.

  ***

  They got back to Sigrid’s house as the sun began to set. Though no one had said anything, Leo could tell the others felt just as spooked by the looters as he had. Without discussing, they all made sure the doors and windows to the house were locked. They pulled blinds and curtains closed and tossed towels over windows that didn’t have coverings.

  Dinner was another round of searching the pantry shelves for anything that didn’t need to be cooked to be eaten. This meal was noticeably less fun and carefree as their lunch had been. Leo felt foolish now for thinking the three of them were the only people left in the entire town. And it certainly hadn’t occurred to him till now that anyone left might not have the best intentions.

  He tried to remind himself that staying here was still the right idea. We don’t know what’s out there, he told himself as he chewed on a granola bar. There could be more people like that out in the woods. At least we’re safe here in the house.

  Sigrid got up to pour some dog food into Sandy’s bowl. Since none of the water worked in the house anymore, she’d brought in a pack of water bottles from the garage. She was pouring a bottle into Sandy’s water dish when they heard another crash of glass in the distance. She jumped, spilling water all over the floor.

  Leo and James locked eyes, frozen in place. Leo felt his heart pound in his chest. The broken glass wasn’t in Sigrid’s house, but it had been close.

  They rushed to the front window, each of them peering out through the blinds. The setting sun had cast long shadows across the fronts of the houses across the street. Leo couldn’t see much.