by Tarah Benner
Seeing so many reinforcements puts me on edge. They must be part of Malcolm’s grand plan to bring down the compound, though I still have no idea what that could be.
Even if he gathered all the drifters within a 100-mile radius and rushed the compound, they wouldn’t be able to make so much as a dent in the structure. The founders anticipated being attacked after Death Storm, so they built the compounds to be able to withstand anything from a hail storm to a storm of bullets.
Any drifter siege would end in bloodshed. But then again, a bunch of hostile survivors at our doorstep would raise a lot of questions the board doesn’t want to answer.
The closer we get to the restaurant, the more my discomfort grows. Near the outskirts of town, the buildings are spaced farther apart, which means there’s very little cover.
A few abandoned cars are still parked along the street, gathering dust and sand and getting buffeted by tumbleweed. Every building we pass looks more dilapidated than the one before.
When we reach the fast-food restaurant with the creepy dancing burger mascots, I know we’re getting close. Harper draws her gun and leads us toward the filling station just across from the restaurant, and I pick up the pace.
We duck down behind one of the defunct gas pumps, and Harper glances up at me. I know she’s waiting for me to take charge and formulate a plan — which is what I’m here for — but I still feel off-kilter and nervous for reasons that have nothing to do with the Desperados.
Trying to regain my composure, I clear my throat and flip on my interface, zooming in to see the entrance to the restaurant more clearly.
The last time we were here, the drifters had a lookout posted up on the weathered wooden porch, but I don’t see anyone. An Indiana license plate has come loose from the mosaic of rusty plates and street signs decorating the front of the restaurant, and when the breeze kicks up, the faded scrap of metal rattles against the wood siding. It’s the loudest thing for miles.
The last time we were here, we left five dead drifters behind. There’s no reason the Desperados would leave the base unguarded. It feels like a trap.
“Do you see anyone?” Harper whispers.
I shake my head, staring at that loose license plate.
“No one?”
“Nope. And I don’t like it.”
“You think it’s a setup?”
“Could be.” I flip off my interface and do one more scan of the deserted restaurant. “Let’s go around back.”
Harper rises into a crouch and surveys the wide stretch of concrete where the crumbling parking lots meet the road. Then she takes off at a run.
I brace myself for the crack of a rifle, but nothing happens.
We skirt around the dumpsters and the old rusted-out pickup truck and reach the back exit without incident. I try the door handle, expecting it to be locked, but I’m surprised when it turns in my hand.
My heart rate picks up a little. I glance down at Harper. She meets my gaze unflinchingly, which gives me the strength to draw my gun and fling the door wide open.
The sudden gust of air stirs the dirt lining the kitchen shelves, and for a moment, it’s impossible to see anything through the cloud of dust shimmering in the late morning sunlight.
I step inside, keeping my gun aimed at head height, and Harper takes my other side.
The cramped kitchen looks just the way I remember it, except for the pots and pans lying on the ground. Then there’s the trail of smooth tile gleaming through the layer of dirt where someone dragged the dead bodies up from the basement.
Harper closes the door behind us, and it takes a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the dim lighting. I listen hard, but I can’t hear anything going on down below.
Nodding at Harper, I inch toward the basement door and pull it open. It creaks a little, but there’s nothing I can do about that.
As soon as I step onto the narrow staircase, I can hear Harper’s ragged breathing in my ear. It mixes with my own thunderous heartbeat and becomes a single frantic cadence as we make our way down.
When the wall dips and opens onto the landing, I flatten myself against the battered drywall and take several deep breaths.
This is it.
In one motion, I whip around the corner and take aim, but there’s no one to shoot.
Behind me, Harper lets out a disappointed sigh.
Everything is gone. The wooden tables from upstairs are still scattered around the basement, but all the drifters’ computers and equipment have disappeared.
Other than the dried blood staining the dirty floor, a few bullet casings, and the chair lying on its side where Owen was bound, there’s no evidence that the drifters were ever here.
“Back to square one,” I mutter. “Jayden isn’t going to be happy.”
“Their new base has to be nearby,” Harper says in a tired voice. “Why else would they still be hanging around this town?”
“It doesn’t matter. It could be anywhere. It would take us weeks to check out every building.”
“Do you think Owen is still around?”
The sound of my brother’s name causes a painful tug in my chest, and I drag in a deep breath to alleviate the dread building inside me. “I don’t know.”
I don’t want to voice my worry that Owen is gone for good. The thought of having a brother out there whom I’ll never see again is almost worse than thinking he was dead all these years. Seeing him again stirred some long-buried hope inside me that maybe I could have a family again. I don’t want to face the horrible possibility that Owen is just the Desperados’ cowardly yes-man.
“Let’s check out his house,” I say, eager for a new plan to focus on. “We can’t exactly start poking around random buildings with all these drifters around.”
I can tell Harper thinks it’s a long shot, but she nods and leads the way up the stairs and out the back exit.
As we make our way down the street toward the little row of houses where Owen was staying, the conspicuous lack of people makes me think we should have guessed that they’d relocated.
We don’t encounter a single drifter all the way to Owen’s street, and when the cluster of ramshackle houses comes into view, it almost looks like a movie set. Shutters are hanging by a single hinge. Loose pieces of siding are flapping in the breeze, and Owen’s windows are all boarded up.
We go around back to the door he led us through the last time we were here, and my heart sinks. It’s locked.
“Wait here,” I whisper.
I stow my gun and walk around to the side of the house, trying to fight the sinking feeling that Owen left without intending to return. A few garbage bags are strewn across the yard in tatters, as though he just dumped the trash outside to be scavenged by desert animals.
I don’t even want to think how he disposed of the bodies we hauled out of his place last time. Instead, I focus on the windows, counting from the back of the house until I reach the one leading to Owen’s bedroom.
When we were kids, he always slept with the window open. If he were still living here, he’d want to nail the boards so that he could slide it up and down at night.
It’s a long shot, but it’s worth a try.
As soon as I reach Owen’s window, somebody knocks on the other side of the glass. I stumble backward in surprise and draw my gun, my heart nearly beating its way out of my chest.
Then Harper’s muffled voice floats through the wall. “It’s okay. It’s just me.”
I let out a burst of air when her face appears between the boards. The window groans as she pries it open, and I get a big whiff of musty old house.
“What the hell?” I ask, unable to contain my excited smile. “How did you get in?”
“One of the boards was loose around back, and the window was unlocked.”
“Seriously?” Now I feel like a moron.
“It was a tight squeeze, but . . .”
Without warning, the two-by-four in front of my face shudders. I realize Harper aimed a kick at
the bottom board to drive it loose, but her kick wasn’t quite strong enough.
“Careful . . .”
She doesn’t listen. She grunts and aims another side kick, and this time, it splinters the wood. I’m impressed, but I have a bad feeling about this.
The third kick breaks through the board, and, sure enough, she nearly tumbles out of the window. I grab her leg to stop her momentum and catch a glimpse of her proud smile as she bends down to offer me a hand.
There’s no way she can hoist me up and over the sill, but I find a foothold on the protruding water spigot and manage to pull myself through the window.
I summersault into Owen’s bedroom, and when I sit up and get a good look at the place, disappointment trickles into my stomach.
The room looks completely abandoned. The twin bed shoved up against the wall is draped in a torn yellow sheet, and four empty drawers are hanging out of the beat-up dresser.
“Eli . . .”
“Yeah?”
Harper’s eyes crinkle in sympathy. “The house looks sort of . . . empty.”
“Empty?”
I can’t believe it — I won’t. Owen can’t really be gone.
Pulling myself into an upright position, I turn away from Harper and go to check the rest of the house for myself. The floor responds to my footsteps with loud, tired creaks, as though it’s stretching after a long nap.
The living room looks the same as it did the last time we were here — shag carpeting, scratchy couches, creepy cat figurines from the previous tenant — but there’s a definite feeling of abandonment hanging over the place.
Wandering into the kitchen, I’m startled by the loud snap of floorboards and the tick of the cat clock hanging near the stove. It’s unbearably loud.
There are a couple empty glasses scattered around the porcelain sink, but the dusty film inside tells me they’ve been there for a while.
I open up a few of the cabinets. There’s no food, no whisky — no clue that Owen was ever here.
“Eli . . .”
I don’t turn around. I can’t face Harper yet. I don’t want to accept that Owen left without so much as a goodbye. I won’t accept it.
I tear past Harper without looking at her and head back to the bedroom.
I pull apart the dresser and ransack the closet, looking for something of Owen’s to latch on to. I find a few stray socks and a ragged feather duster — probably from the house’s original inhabitants — but no evidence to suggest that anyone was living here recently.
“Eli, he’s gone,” says Harper in a soft voice. “I’m sorry.”
The thickness has returned to the back of my throat, and it’s making me feel trapped. Harper is hovering right behind me, but I don’t want to see her feeling sorry for me. I can’t stand it.
“This is just like him,” I sigh. “Running as soon as things get . . .”
I snap my mouth shut and clench my jaw. All my resentment toward Owen has built up like poison in my system, and I know if I keep letting it stew, I’m going to lash out at the only person nearby.
I sink down on the stained carpet and lean against the scuffed wall. I want to get out of this house. It’s dirty and depressing — nothing but a painful reminder that my one living family member is gone again.
“He probably had to leave,” says Harper quietly, kneeling down across from me and trying to catch my gaze. I can read her concern in my periphery, but I just can’t look into those warm gray eyes.
“You mean run.”
“Well . . . we did kill those drifters. Malcolm’s crew might have been suspicious. If they thought Owen had something to do with it, he might be on the run.”
“Owen’s been on the run his entire life,” I snap. “That’s why he joined the Desperados in the first place — to escape any real responsibility to find me and build a life for us.”
“You can’t tell me he didn’t want to find you,” says Harper. “You’re his brother. And you can’t blame him for joining Nuclear Nation. He was only thirteen. He was looking for a family . . . same as you.”
“Yeah. But he stayed with them. Even after everything . . .”
“It might not have been as bad as it was for you. From what he said —”
“They’re still a bunch of thugs, Harper. And now he’s in trouble, and he’s run off.”
I know I’m being harsh and juvenile, but Harper reaches over and puts a hand on my arm. “We’ll find him, okay?”
I finally meet her gaze, and the earnestness in her expression catches me off guard. There’s no doubt in her mind that we’ll find Owen. Even though he could be anywhere and we’re pretty much restricted to a ten-mile radius around the compound, she has absolute faith that he’ll surface and that we’ll be here when he does. I wish I shared her optimism.
Trying to keep my spiraling helplessness in check, I pull my eyes away and stare at the saggy twin mattress and box spring. Mom would flip. The bed doesn’t have a comforter or one of those stupid bed curtains that hangs down to the floor — just that sad, dirty sheet.
Then something else catches my eye. I reach down under the bed, and my fingers brush something hard and smooth. It’s about the size of a shoebox but much more solid. Gripping it around the edges, I pull it into the light.
It’s a small cedar box with delicate flowers carved along the sides. The lid is held closed by a brass latch, and something about it feels achingly familiar.
I brush my hand over the top, and the pads of my fingers come away completely dust free. Someone must have handled it recently.
“Is that Owen’s?” Harper whispers.
It has to be, but I don’t say a word. I have the crazy suspicion that voicing the possibility will make this last shred of hope slip right through my fingers.
Slowly, carefully, I undo the latch and open the box.
The first things I see are Owen’s old army men. I know they were his because they aren’t the green plastic kind that every kid had growing up. These are the cast-iron men that our grandfather gave Owen when he turned eight, with nearly indiscernible features after decades of play. There’s also an Indian arrowhead that Owen and my dad found on a walk, but that’s not what catches my attention.
Underneath Owen’s trinkets are a few photographs. They’re slightly bent from being stuffed inside the box, and the edges are worn from years of handling. But as soon as I see them, my heart speeds up.
The first two photos are blurry snapshots of our golden retriever Millie, but there’s another one of me and Owen holding up two fish we caught on vacation.
As soon as I pick it up, I feel another picture stuck to the back. And when the photo paper snaps apart, the lump returns to the back of my throat.
Staring down at the photo, I can hardly believe what I’m seeing: Owen has one very tan arm slung around my shoulders, and he’s smiling with that easy grin he used to have. I’m squinting in the sunlight, utterly oblivious to the fact that I should make this picture a good one. Owen and I could be carbon copies of the same kid, except he’s about four inches taller and broader around the shoulders.
But what really captures my attention is my mom. She isn’t looking at the camera — she’s looking up at my dad and smiling. He has one arm tucked around her waist, and his other hand is slightly blurry where it trails out of the frame.
By the way he’s leaning, I can tell he set the camera on a rock, started the timer, and ran back to pose for the shot.
I can almost hear my mom telling him to take his hat off for the picture. She was always in charge of the staging: finding the perfect backdrop, making Owen put on a shirt, and trying to get my dad to separate from his baseball cap long enough to see his bright blue eyes — same as Owens, same as mine.
This has to be the last picture ever taken of my family. I remember this day. We’d taken a trip down to Fishlake National Forest — part of our parents’ endless crusade to give me and Owen a normal childhood — and we’d had the whole place to ourselves. It would have
been eerie a few years before, but it was normal after Death Storm.
“You guys look really happy,” Harper whispers, leaning in and resting her chin on my shoulder. It’s such an intimate gesture that it startles me a little, but I try not to move because I don’t want to ruin it.
“That’s just the picture,” I murmur. “You can’t tell, but the mosquitos were murder that year.”
Harper chuckles and points in the box. “What’s that?”
I look down and tilt it slightly. Something metallic shifts along the bottom, and I see that it’s a necklace nestled in the corner — a tiny piece of turquoise and a silver hare hanging from a thin chain.
As soon as I realize what it is, I can barely control the burning in my eyes.
“This was my mom’s,” I say finally. “I can’t believe Owen kept it.”
My mom had worn this necklace for as long as I could remember. She’d gotten it on a road trip with my dad before Death Storm, when he’d deviated from GPS directions because he thought he knew a shortcut.
They got lost, and when my mom grew so irritated that she stopped talking to my dad, he finally stopped to ask for directions. An old Native American woman was selling jewelry near a scenic overlook, and my dad bought the necklace as a peace offering.
When he came back to the car, he handed her the necklace and said, “Please forgive the hare’s cockiness. It was just in a hurry to get there so he could enjoy the weekend with you.”
“You know what this means?” Harper whispers, breaking through my wandering thoughts. “He has to be in the area.”
“What?”
“Owen wouldn’t leave all this here if he didn’t plan on coming back.”
“Oh. I guess.”
I don’t want to get my hopes up, but Harper’s right. Owen’s never been sentimental, yet he went back to the house to save these last pieces of our family. There’s no way he’d leave the box behind after carrying it with him all these years.
Harper leans back against the wall, and I realize I haven’t put down the photograph or stopped worrying the turquoise stone between my fingers. I clear my throat again and tuck the photo into my back pocket.
