Blackout

by Robison Wells

Page 31

 

  “I grew up in Colorado,” Laura said. “And the only thing I’ve heard about Colorado in the last week is that these terrorists have screwed things up so much that food can’t get in and out of the city. The interstates are shut down. There are millions of people there. What are they going to do without food?”

  “I’m nineteen,” she continued. “I don’t know where we go once they take us out of here, but I’m volunteering. Someone needs to fight these terrorists. ”

  Jack found himself nodding, though that surprised him. Laura’s speech made a kind of ideological sense, but nothing that he’d seen seemed to back it up. The prison was terrible. The conditions were inhumane. They were treated like criminals, not like people who were being protected and cared for.

  On the other hand, the prison had security cameras. Maybe it had microphones listening in on them, too. If so, Laura had just made a friend of the army.

  Jack pointed to her water. “That stuff screws up your brain. They say you won’t be able to do stuff while you’re on it. ”

  She unscrewed the cap and smelled it. “Did it change you?”

  “I can’t do anything,” he said. “Never could. I don’t know why I’m here. ”

  Laura took a swig of the water, and Jack heard someone swear.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  AUBREY LAY IN HER BUNK, watching the door. Breakfast had come and gone, and Aubrey had eaten as much as she could. The food wasn’t anything special—some generic brand of Froot Loops with reconstituted powdered milk, and canned peaches—but she filled up on it. She had big plans for the day, and she’d need calories. She was going to try to find Jack.

  She’d spent hours talking to Alec yesterday. He’d only been in Mount Pleasant for two years, but once she reminded him of what the school was like he’d been able to remember a lot of it—and after talking to him she could recall a lot of the things they used to do together. In the fourth grade she’d played his wife in the very abridged version of Macbeth that the class put on—he was Macduff and she Lady Macduff. She’d been to a birthday party at his house, and they both were in the highest-level reading group both years.

  The whole thing bothered Kara, but it shouldn’t have. It was nice to have Alec there, like a security blanket, but Aubrey wasn’t interested in him. Kara would have known that if Aubrey dared to tell anyone what she was planning for that day.

  After breakfast, Aubrey had gone to the supply shelves and asked for a bottle of water, but the soldier told her she had to get water from the main spigot—they didn’t have bottles they could give out. Fortunately, she’d been able to talk him out of a few granola bars, which she hoped would help her stay on her feet. She was going to be invisible for a long time.

  At nearly nine in the morning, the sergeant arrived for morning roll call. Aubrey climbed down from the bunk and dug through her small pile of clothes for her towel.

  The sergeant read through the teens’ names, and as they were called out, the teens went forward to have their bracelets checked against their picture. There were twenty people in Tent 209 now—every bunk was full—but the process didn’t take too long. Aubrey threw her towel over her shoulder and waited.

  Finally, the soldier read “Aubrey Parsons” and she hurried up to the door. They checked her bracelet twice, matching her with a picture in a notebook, and then marked her off the list.

  “I want to run to the showers,” Aubrey said. “Can I go now?”

  The bored sergeant nodded, and Aubrey slipped past him outside. One of the tents near the fence was entirely dedicated to girls’ showers, but she still had to wait in a short line for a stall to open up. No one she talked to had a good estimate of how many people were in the camp, but even Aubrey’s crude calculations put the number enormously high. She’d seen tents with numbers up in the three hundreds, and her tent was smaller than some—she guessed many of the others were twice as big, if not more. So, assuming there were at least three hundred bunkers with maybe thirty in each—and she figured that was a low estimate—that still put at least nine thousand people in the camp.

  And that meant there had to be other camps elsewhere. Aubrey had no idea how many teens were in the state, but there had to be way more than this. There were probably quarantine camps all over Utah—all over the country. For all she knew, this wasn’t even the only camp at Dugway.

  After a few minutes a girl left a stall and Aubrey hurried into it. They were only allowed one shower every other day, and the showers were timed so she needed to hurry. With only a few minutes left she poured out the entire bottle of shampoo—it was a military-grade kind that she hated—and then rinsed the empty bottle as best she could. In the remaining seconds before the water shut off, she filled the bottle and closed the cap.

  When she emerged from the shower tent a few minutes later she felt refreshed and clean, and she had a water bottle hidden under her towel.

  Aubrey headed south toward the fence.

  It was going to be risky. Granted, it had been days since she’d disappeared and she felt fairly well rested and healthy, but what she was doing today was daunting. It would take longer than she wanted, and so much was unknown.

  Upon reaching the fence, Aubrey turned right and began walking to the decontamination tents.

  The first one that she reached appeared to be in use; a bus was stopped on the far side, and two freshly washed girls were sitting outside the door, waiting for their ride. They looked almost identical, except one was a little older than the other. They had to be sisters.

  Wouldn’t that be nice? Aubrey was enjoying the company of her new roommates—Kara and Betsy were friendly—but she longed for the company of people she really knew. Even Nicole, with her many faults, would have been comforting. In all of Aubrey’s searching, she hadn’t found Nicole’s tent.

  But Nicole wasn’t Jack. He had been a better friend to Aubrey than Nicole or anyone had ever been. Jack had been more like family than her dad.

  She’d promised to get Jack out. She’d turned her back on him once, abandoning him for popularity and clothes and parties, but she wouldn’t do it again.

  The soldiers at the fence eyed Aubrey cautiously as she passed. She smiled at them and continued on to the next tent, and then turned around the corner. Checking her pockets for the extra food, Aubrey took a deep breath and then vanished.

  No one noticed her as she returned to the fence, or as she walked back toward the decontamination tent. There was a third girl on the bench now. All three looked scared and exhausted, and the sisters were holding hands.

  Even now she wasn’t exactly sure what the soldiers would notice, but she’d spied so much in the last six months that she guessed opening the wooden door to the tent wouldn’t cause much of a stir. Aubrey still wasn’t sure what they would see while she was invisible. Would they just ignore it? Would they think it was the wind? Would they not even see it open? All she knew for certain was that she’d opened doors before and it had never been a problem.

  Inside were a female soldier and two more girls dressing. Aubrey hurried past them, moving quickly through the shower room and into the waiting area. Two more girls and three boys were still waiting for decontamination. Aubrey checked their faces—she tried to do that now with everyone she saw in the camp—but didn’t recognize any of them. Finally, she ducked through the last door and stepped back out into the morning air.