“I guess they’re mostly college students who don’t have anywhere else to go.” I hefted my backpack up and down, testing the weight. “Got everything you need? Winter jacket, snow pants, toiletries?”
“I think so,” she said, patting her bag. “That’s the good thing about going to school outside of your own country. You don’t lug a whole bunch of unnecessary crap across the ocean.”
“Good to hear.”
Jacob emerged from the bedroom, dressed head to toe in the ski gear we usually used during our Christmas ski trips out to Breckenridge. One of his cameras—a film one, not a digital one, swung from a lanyard around his neck. He balanced his pack on his back and extended his arms out. “Eh? What do you think? Prepared enough?”
“Beautiful,” I said. “But it’s not cold enough out for that jacket yet. You’re going to start sweating as soon as we start walking.”
“Yeah, I couldn’t fit it into the pack.”
“Give it to me.”
I squished Jacob’s jacket into a spare pocket of my own pack and patted it down. Then the three of us looked around the apartment for anything we could have missed.
“What about the water?” Jacob asked, nudging one of the big five-gallon tanks that I’d pulled out from underneath the counter. “We can’t carry that on a bike.”
“And once people see that we have it, they’ll go nuts,” I mused.
“I have a wagon,” Nita announced.
“A wagon?”
“Yeah, like to pull kids in,” she clarified. “I babysit for one of the ladies on the first floor for extra cash. We could tie it to the back of someone’s bike and lug the water like that.”
“And we could throw a tarp over it so no one sees it,” Jacob added. “Right, Georgie?”
“That’ll work,” I said. “As long as people don’t get too curious, we should be okay. Are we ready to go?”
We all performed one last scan of the apartment. Jacob looked forlorn, shoulders slumped, mouth tilted downward. He didn’t want to leave. Nita, on the other hand, buzzed from her coffee jolt.
“I’m good,” she said.
“I guess I’m good too,” Jacob said.
I hefted one of the five-gallon jugs over my shoulder to carry downstairs. “We can load up the wagon in the lobby. Let’s go.”
Five blocks later, I realized that I had left my engagement ring on the bathroom counter. Briefly, I considered going back for it, but in the grand scheme of things, the diamond wasn’t worth it. Hopefully, Jacob wouldn’t notice its absence from my finger for a while, what with the metal splint wrapped around the next one over. The argument was inevitable, but I filed away the thought. We had bigger things to worry about.
In one night, the streets had already been reduced to havoc. The wrecked cars had finally been abandoned by their owners, picked clean by scavengers in the night. Shop windows were no more. Shattered glass crunched beneath the tires of our bikes as we rode through the wreckage. People hopped in and out of the broken windows, emerging from the stores with bags full of nonperishable food, toiletries, and medication. Most places had already been picked clean, the shelves in the dark businesses starkly empty. In one alleyway, two mothers argued over a gallon of water, each claiming that their children needed it more. Our red plastic wagon, leashed to the back of Jacob’s bike seat, bounced over the cracks in the sidewalk with the weight of the water jugs. I swallowed hard and faced front. We couldn’t afford to hand out our limited supplies.
The bikes had been a good idea. While everybody else patrolled the city on foot, we whizzed quickly through conflict. We passed three street fights in two blocks, speeding by the aggravators before they had looked up from their fists. But when we proceeded through the busiest part of the city on our way to the Masons’ expensive uptown apartment, where the intersections grew larger and more dangerous, we met our first bout of trouble. Without warning, Nita skidded to a stop, dropped her bike, and darted through the maze of stone cars, disappearing behind a white Mercedes with the hood bashed in.
“Nita!” I called, nearly running the front wheel of my bike into the demolished Mercedes. “Where are you going?” She didn’t reply, so I swung my leg off the bike and put down the kickstand. “Stay here,” I told Jacob. “Don’t leave the bikes. Try not to talk to anyone. If someone asks you if you have water or food, say no.”
“Georgie, you know I’m a terrible liar—”
I hopped over the hood of the Honda that had gone toe to toe with the Mercedes. “I can’t leave her by herself. I’ll get her back as soon as I can.”
“But—”
I left him there. As a stocky guy, Jacob was less likely to get harassed in the streets, but Nita was a petite woman, and her firecracker attitude wasn’t an infallible defense should someone attempt to take advantage of her.
“Nita!” I called out into the junkyard. No answer. I climbed on the hood of a delivery truck, shielded my eyes from the sun, and looked around. There. Nita knelt on the ground a few cars over. I leapt down and slipped through the fenders to find her. “Nita, you can’t do that—oh my God.”
Tears shimmered on Nita’s olive skin as she looked down at the body of a middle-aged woman. The pavement was stained dark with blood. My stomach roiled, threatening to eject my caffeinated breakfast. I swallowed a mouthful of bile.
“I thought she was still alive,” Nita said, weeping freely. “Why is she here? Why didn’t anyone help her?”
I tried to pull Nita away from the body, but she shrugged me off. “Nita, I’m sure someone tried, but it was probably someone who had no idea what to do to save her. The paramedics wouldn’t have been able to make it out here.”
“It’s wrong.”
I knelt beside her, trying my best not to look straight at the body. “I don’t want to be the one to tell you this, but we’ll probably see more like her. We can’t stop for everyone. The more we stop, the less safe we’ll be.”
Nita fiddled with something at the back of her neck beneath her long dark hair. She unclasped a necklace, a gold chain with a matching cross, and laid it on the woman’s chest like an offering.
“Come on,” I said, lifting Nita from the ground. This time, she let me help her up. “We should keep moving.”
Chapter Five
“What happened?” Jacob asked when Nita and I emerged from the pile of cars. He had been snapping photos of the debris in the streets, but when he saw the tear tracks on Nita’s face, his camera fell to bounce against his chest. He took Nita by the shoulders. “Are you hurt?”
She shook her head, picked up her bike, and rode a few feet away from us. Jacob turned to me with a questioning look.
“There’s a dead woman,” I said. “Nita didn’t realize. She thought—” I couldn’t finish the sentence. The image of the woman’s bloated face was etched into my memory. “Have you seen anyone?”
“A couple kids ran by, but that was it.” He studied my expression, looking for hints. “Are you going to be okay? You look pale.”
“I’ll get over it. She won’t be the last. Kids?”
“Teenagers,” he replied. “They went into the corner store, but they’re gone now. I think they came out with a few packages of donuts. Do you think we should grab some food too? I’m getting hungry.”
“Not here,” I told him, straddling my bike again. “We shouldn’t go into the stores unless we have to. It’s not safe. I’m sure your parents have something to eat.”
“Good point. Let’s keep moving.”
We continued on, catching up with Nita. She let us drift ahead of her. Jacob led the way, most familiar with the route to his childhood home. We rode in silence, unable to voice our dark thoughts aloud. Every so often, I caught sight of another unlucky soul that hadn’t made it through the night. Each time I did, I glanced over my shoulder to check on Nita, but she kept her gaze trained on the back tire of my bike, unwilling to accept the dysphoria of the world around us. It was real now. There was a body count.
&
nbsp; A few blocks later, we reached the radio station. Miraculously, the windows were intact. I stopped pedaling as we cruised past it then planted my feet altogether. Nita drifted to a halt beside me. Jacob looked over his shoulder, saw that he had lost us, and pulled a wide U-turn to compensate for the play wagon’s poor turning radius.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“I was just wondering if there’s anything salvageable inside,” I said. “I have my key. I can get in.”
“Why would we need radio stuff?”
“No phones, remember?” I hopped off the bike. Jacob held it upright by the handlebars. “Radio’s the most basic method of communication. If I can find some spare parts—” I tested the handle of the door. It was unlocked. Someone had already been here.
“Georgie, I don’t think this is a good idea,” Jacob said.
“Shh. I’ll be right back.”
I pulled the door open and peeked inside. The windows were heavily tinted, blocking out most of the sunlight. I peered through the gloom. The control room was empty. The station had evaded most of the trouble from outside, though someone had tugged the control panel free from the desk. I inched forward to look through the glass into the studio. No one there. I exhaled the breath I’d been holding.
Something shattered in the back room. I knocked into one of the rolling chairs, sending it spinning across the room. The wheels skittered across the plastic covering over the carpet. It stopped in full view of the door to the break room. I waited, feet staggered, ready to make a run for the door if I needed to.
“Who’s there?” I called out.
There was a beat of silence. Then:
“Georgie! Georgie, help—!”
“Nate?”
Without thinking, I kicked open the door to the back room and barged inside. Nate cowered on the opposite side of the room, hiding beneath the shelves where we kept all the extra bits and pieces to keep the station equipment running.
“Nate! Hey, are you okay?”
“Behind you!”
His warning came a second too late. Someone stepped out from behind the door I’d just come through, and the indisputable click of a cocking handgun echoed in my right ear.
“Don’t move,” ordered a low, deep voice. Too deep, almost as if the person it belonged to was trying to sound tougher than he actually was.
I slowly raised my hands to eye level. “Okay. Take it easy. You don’t have to hurt anyone.”
“Do you work here?” asked the voice.
“Yes.”
“You know how radios work?”
“Yes.”
“I need you to build me one. Your friend—” Nate quivered across the room “—is useless. Doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.”
That wasn’t true. I knew Nate. His knowledge of radio was immediate and unchallenged. He could’ve built a basic radio with the materials in the back room in less than five minutes. The only reason he wouldn’t have done it was if we were running low on parts and he needed them for himself. I guessed that the owner of the gun had absolutely no idea what he needed for a working radio. Even if we did hand over a crystal radio, he’d need to find or build a transmitter to reach anyone.
“Now!” shouted the voice, brandishing the gun. The weapon flashed in my periphery.
“Okay,” I said, keeping my tone level. “Just relax. I’ll do it. I’ll build you a radio.”
Several things happened in the next second. The person behind me sighed, the gun dropped a fraction of an inch toward my shoulder, Nate’s eyes widened, and I blinked before turning my head just enough to gauge the placement of the firearm.
In the following second, I reached back, grabbed the wrist that held the gun, and yanked it forward, planting my right foot. Using the gunman’s own momentum, I flipped him over my hip. He was surprisingly light. I slammed him so hard against the floor that the impact shook the walls of the break room. His breath whooshed out of his chest in a sharp gasp. The gun came up, and for one wild moment, I stared directly into the barrel. Panicked, I aimed a kick to the side of the gunman’s head. When the toe of my boot connected with his temple, he immediately went slack, and the gun clattered to the floor as the person passed out. My chest heaved as I stared down at him.
“He’s just a kid,” I muttered, kneeling next to the unconscious teenager. He was seventeen or eighteen maybe. His long hair and dirty jeans implied that he’d seen trouble long before the blackout started.
“Is he dead?” Nate breathed.
“No!” But I checked his pulse to make sure. It beat firmly against my fingers. One blow to the head wasn’t enough to kill someone, but the kid would wake up with a roaring headache. “He won’t be out for long. We should get out of here.” I looked up at Nate, who was still frozen under the shelves. “Are you okay?”
“Give me a second. I just had a gun pointed at my face.”
“So did I.”
“Yeah, but I’m not harboring secret jiu jitsu skills,” he replied, backing up against the wall as I approached him. “Where the hell did you learn to do that?”
I held out a hand to him. “My dad taught me basic self-defense. What are you doing here anyway?”
Nate grabbed my hand and let me pull him to his feet. “Same thing you’re doing, I’d guess.” He turned to the shelves and began rummaging through the cardboard boxes of spare diodes, copper wires, capacitors, and speakers. “This shit is going to blow over in a couple of days. Phones are down, which means everyone’s totally screwed communication-wise.” He held up his handful of goodies. “Except for people who know how to work a radio.”
As he shoved the parts in a messenger back over his shoulder, I noticed that the cardboard boxes behind him looked too empty. I grabbed his wrist. “Nate, you can’t take all of those. I need some.”
“I got here first.”
“This is my station,” I reminded him. “You’re essentially stealing from me.”
“Come on, Georgie.”
I held out my palm. “Hand it over. I’ll give you what you need to get a radio up and running. Everything else belongs to me.”
Nate stared at my outstretched hand, hiding his messenger bag behind his back. His eyes flickered toward the exit door.
“Don’t even think about it,” I warned. “You saw what I did to the kid.”
He bolted anyway, making a flying leap for the door. Unfortunately for him, I’d been anticipating the move. I slipped my foot in between his legs and hooked it around his calf. He stumbled, failed to catch himself, and hit the ground. I sat on his back and pulled his messenger bag toward me.
“Told you.”
“Get off!”
“Nate, I like you, okay?” I said, fishing through the things he had taken from the station. As I’d assumed, he had taken way more than necessary. My guess was that he planned on selling the stuff he didn’t need to the highest bidder. Nate wasn’t exactly moral. “I told you. I’ll give you what you need to get by.” I placed the basics for a crystal radio by his nose as he struggled to eject me from his back. “Everything else is mine.”
As I finished sorting through the materials, a glint of metal caught my eye. The teenager’s gun—whether it belonged to him originally or not—had settled near the baseboards of the wall, inches from Nate’s reach. Carefully, I wrapped up the radio parts in a spare bag I’d brought inside with me. Then I lifted myself off of Nate, darted across the room, and picked up the pistol before he could figure out what I was doing.
“God, Georgie.” He sat up and rubbed his jaw. A red burn decorated his chin from where the skin had dragged across the gray carpet. He watched as I clicked the pistol’s safety into place and tucked the gun into the back of my jeans. “You can relax. I don’t need that, and I wouldn’t stoop so low as to shoot you over a few radio parts.”
“Sorry,” I said. “You can’t really trust anyone but the people closest to you in a situation like this.”
“You’re right about that.” Nate sifte
d through the parts that I’d left him. “I guess this stuff will do.”
“Are you staying in the city?” I asked him.
“Hell no. My granddad’s got a place out in the boonies.” He packed up his messenger bag and got to his feet. “You think it’s something big too, don’t you? I can tell by the look on your face.”
“What do you mean?”
“This blackout isn’t because of some thunderstorm or fluke,” he said. “There was a blast.”
“You saw it too?”
“That big-ass light in the sky?” Nate asked. “Yeah, I saw it. You and I both know what that is. We’ve talked about it on the show before.”
“An EMP bomb.”
“Yup. Guess someone finally had enough of us.”
“I just didn’t think we’d ever be alive to actually see it happen,” I told him.
Nate drew his messenger bag on over his shoulder. “That’s the thing, isn’t it? We never think.” He jerked his head at the teenager on the floor. “He’s waking up. We should leave.”
As the teenager moaned, we hurried out through the exit door. In the alley behind the station, we clasped hands.
“Good luck,” I told him.
“Listen for my call sign.”
“Will do.”
When he disappeared around the corner, I snuck back into the radio station. The teenager sat against the wall, his head between his knees. When he saw me in the doorway, he waved a hand in surrender.
“I’m sorry!” he cried, his head wobbling on his shoulders as if he hadn’t fully regained control over it. “I just needed—”
“I get it,” I said. “Desperate times, desperate measures. I’m sure you had your reasons, and I have mine. Do you have an extra magazine on you?”
“What?”
“For the gun. Do you have extra bullets?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Hand it over.”
His face bunched up in anger. “No. Why should I?”
“Consider it a trade.” I set something down on the floor between us. A crystal radio that I’d made years ago when I’d first started up the radio station. Usually, it sat on my desk in the control room. “You get your radio, I get your gun.”
Blackout: Book 0 Page 7
