“I know he does—”
“All I’m saying is that some guys don’t try.” She drew open the lapels of her coat to reveal her belly again. “This is a perfect example. When I told Sebastian that I was going to have the baby, he switched schools to get away from me.”
“Why did you?” I asked her. “Decide to have the baby, I mean.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. It was such a shit show when I found out about it. Part of me wanted to own up to the responsibility of it. I made a mistake. I screwed up, so now I have to deal with the consequences.” We lugged ourselves up another flight of stairs. “Then another part of me wanted to piss everyone off. Jacob got into all kinds of trouble when he went to Saint Mark’s, but he played on the football team, and he was a straight-A student, and he was a boy, so it didn’t matter if he acted up. My parents went ballistic when I told them about this. They even said I’d have to get rid of it.”
“I thought your parents were super Christian.”
Pippa rolled her eyes. “It turns out that having a pregnant teenage daughter wasn’t their idea of how Christianity is supposed to go. They were more concerned about our family’s reputation than what God might think of me.”
“That’s shitty.”
“Yup,” Pippa agreed. As we rounded the seventh floor, her feet began to drag, so I propped more of her weight over my shoulder. “Anyway, I figured I’d have the baby and give her up for adoption. Let some couple who actually wants her get a beautiful newborn.”
“You’re not keeping her?” I asked. Jacob hadn’t mentioned that Pippa was considering adoption.
“No way,” she replied. “I’m seventeen. I don’t want a kid, not right now, at least. I want to go to school and study abroad and have a life. Could I do that with a baby on my hip?”
“Probably.”
Pippa nodded appreciatively. “That’s true, but I don’t want to. This little girl deserves more than constantly being reminded that she was a mistake. I don’t want that for her.”
“You put a lot of thought into this, haven’t you?”
Her expression sobered, her mouth setting itself in a determined pout. “When I’m not studying, it’s literally all I think about.”
She missed a step and tripped. I caught her around the waist before she could tumble down the flight of stairs, and set her gently on her feet. She grabbed my wrist, her pulse hammering against mine.
“Georgie?” Her voice was suddenly small and timid, a vast distance from her usual tone of showy confidence. “What do you think is going to happen?”
“With your baby?”
“With the world.”
I considered my answer, wondering if I should tell Pippa something to make her feel better or give her my genuine opinion. She wasn’t the same as Jacob, who loved tradition and normality so much that he couldn’t wrap his mind around the situation at hand. She was strong and practical, and she deserved an honest answer.
“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. “It depends on the scope of this thing. First off, who did it? My best guess is that the blast was an act of terrorism to send the United States back to the dark ages, and it worked. A lot of people are going to die in the next few weeks, Pippa.”
“The hospitals aren’t running either, are they?”
“No,” I said. “No, they’re not.”
She looked down at her stomach, running a hand over the swell. “It might be you and me after all, little one.”
Floors below us, a door slammed shut, echoing up the stairwell. Jacob was on his way up. The Mason family reunion was imminent, and the four of them together was like watching an avalanche in slow motion. Someone always got buried.
“Come on,” I said. “It’s going to be a long day. You should rest while you can.”
When we finally made it to the apartment, we found Nita wrapping gauze around Jove’s finger at the dining room table while Penny attempted to wrap the leftovers from breakfast in individual aluminum foil packets. Penny dropped a sausage and ran to her daughter.
“Pippa!” She hugged her tightly from the side so as to avoid Pippa’s extra passenger. “What took you so long to get home?”
“I was stuck in the elevator at school.”
Penny sniffed the air around Pippa’s hair. “Is that why you smell funny?”
“I don’t smell funny.”
I left the mother-and-daughter duo to chat about the limited bathing options and walked over to Nita and Jove, eyeing Jove’s injury. “What happened?”
“He burned himself on the grill,” Nita said with a quirk of her eyebrow that boasted disapproval. “He was trying to fry up more bacon after Leti left. I told him that the heat was too high.”
“I damn well know how to cook bacon,” Jove grumbled, swiping his hand away from Nita as she finished tucking the gauze against itself.
“If you’d listened—”
“This is my house.”
“So you keep reminding me,” Nita said as she stacked the rest of the first aid materials back into the box. “But ignorance lives in even the grandest of dwellings, Mr. Mason. Excuse me.”
I wiped the indulgent grin off my face at Jove’s dumbstruck expression and followed Nita out of the dining room and into Jacob’s, which Nita had claimed as her own for the time being. “I can’t believe you just said that to him.”
“Why not?” she asked, adding the first aid kit to a spare pocket in her backpack. “I’m not his daughter-in-law. You are.”
“Not yet.”
“Whatever,” she said. “I figured since you couldn’t set him straight without Jacob getting on your case, then I would have to do it for you. How’s Pippa? Did I hear she got stuck in an elevator? Is the baby okay?”
“The baby’s fine, and so is she,” I answered. “For right now, at least. Who knows what’s going to happen once we get on the road. How’s it going here? Did you get Jove and Penny to pack a bag for themselves?”
“The bacon incident derailed things,” Nita admitted. “On the upside, I convinced them to go, but Penny can’t seem to grasp the concept that we can’t carry things like a foot bath or a heating pad with us.”
“There’s no power,” I said. “Where does she think she’s going to plug those things in?”
Nita picked nervously at a hangnail on her thumb. “I have no idea. Are you sure you don’t want to hit the road just the two of us? We might have a better chance of making it out alive.”
I shot her a look. “Don’t think I didn’t consider leaving Jacob’s parents behind.”
“But that would probably cast a pall over the wedding plans,” Nita added. “I get it.”
I sank into Jacob’s rolling chair and rested my head against his desk. Someone—an adolescent Jacob or one of his immature friends—had carved a lovely anatomically correct cartoon into a less visible section of the polished wood.
“They’re going to be a pain in the ass,” I warned Nita, curling my arms around my head to block out the world around me. “Jacob and I are already at odds with each other, and Jove is going to drive me up a wall. He’s going to make mistakes, dangerous ones—”
Nita forced me over so that she could share the chair with me. “I’ll be your buffer. I’ll deal with the Masons. You focus on getting us out of Denver. Okay?”
I peeked out at her from beneath my arm fort. “Have I ever told you how glad I am that you exist?”
She flipped her dark hair over her shoulder in a show of faux superiority. “Oh, honey. You didn’t have to.”
I shoved her off the chair.
By the time we returned to the main living area, Jacob had arrived and already started an argument with Jove about his injury. Pippa lay on the perfectly white sofa, her back turned to her mother, who was attempting to wipe her daughter’s forehead with a warm compress. A half-packed suitcase lay open in the middle of the floor, filled with things like battery-operated razors, cell phone chargers, and electric toothbrushes. The constant chatter roared
in my ears like some extra-terrible form of tinnitus, cutting off any rational thought.
“You should have waited,” Jacob scolded.
“I was still hungry!” Jove replied.
“Come on, honey, just let me take care of you,” Penny pleaded.
“Mom, seriously, go away,” Pippa ordered.
“Can everyone just shut up for a minute?”
Everyone turned to face me, surprised by my outburst. I usually excused myself when the Masons got too loud for me to handle, choosing to step out onto the balcony instead of riding out the thunderstorm. Other than Jacob, they hadn’t heard me raise my voice before.
I pointed to the suitcase. “This isn’t going to work. First off, we can’t carry it. Everyone needs to find or rig a backpack. Second—” I reached down to toss the toothbrush, charger, and razor out of the bag “—anything that needs a battery or an outlet is useless. Use your freaking brains, people. Pack all-weather clothing and shoes, nonperishable food, camping supplies, that kind of thing. We’re not going to all-inclusive resort. We’re heading up to the woods where—guess what—you’re going to have to shit in a latrine. Then at some point you’re going to have to clean the latrine. Do you get my gist?”
It was clear that the Masons did not. Jove let out a dismissive grunt, though I assumed it was because someone other than him dared to say “shit” in his house. Penny looked horrified at the thought of cleaning up after her own waste. Jacob sank his face into his hands in an attempt to hide his mortification. Only Pippa seemed quiet and listening, though I suspected she had fallen asleep on the sofa. Nita, on the other hand, tried to reel in a satisfied smirk.
Now that I had the floor, I lowered my voice. “If you don’t listen to me, you will not survive. Is that clear?”
Jacob was the first to reply. “Yes. Right, Dad? Mom?”
“It’s clear,” Penny said.
“Uh-huh,” Jove added gruffly. “I still don’t know what you expect us to do. Jacob told us you want to ride bikes out of the city? How are we supposed to get up the mountains on bikes?”
“We could hike,” I suggested, “but I realize that’s a bit of a stretch. Hiking doesn’t seem like an activity the four of you ever engaged in, and it would be especially difficult for Pippa.”
“Hiking sounds terrible,” Pippa agreed, not asleep after all.
“We need a plan,” I announced. “Here’s the thing. When Jacob and I were leaving the theme park last night, we noticed that some cars were still working. They were all older models, which means that they probably didn’t have electrical components. They weren’t affected by the blast. Jove, don’t you show a few cars at an antique show every year?”
“Yes,” Jove replied. “Where is this going?”
“We’re going to drive up into the mountains,” I told him. “We just need a working car that’s big enough to fit all of us.”
“Well, it won’t be one of the Spiders,” Jove declared. “They took me years to rebuild, and they’re worth a lot of money.”
“Dad, the Spiders only seat two people apiece,” Jacob said dryly. “They’re out of the question anyway.”
I leaned against the dining room table next to Jove. For once, we were speaking the same language. “Do you have anything bigger? Something that could make it up the inclines?”
“I have an original Humvee.”
“You do?”
Jove proudly puffed his chest out. “Yes, ma’am. We’d have to go get it. It’s in storage.”
My shoulders dropped. “In storage where?”
“I keep it in a warehouse by the airport.”
Jacob picked up Pippa’s feet, sat beneath them, and began massaging her ankles. “That’s thirty miles from here. It’ll take us three hours to get there on bikes, and it’s in the complete opposite direction of where we’re heading.”
“It’s our best shot,” I said. “We can ditch the bikes once we get the car, and we’ll get up to my dad’s property in no time. It’ll be safer too.”
“What about the roads?” Penny handed the warm compress to Jacob, who leaned over Pippa and pressed it to her forehead. “Aren’t they all blocked by the broken down cars?”
“If we have a Humvee, it won’t be a problem,” I pointed out. “Have you seen the tires on those things? We wouldn’t be confined to pavement.”
“How about gas?” Jove said. “That thing eats it up, and the pumps won’t be working for us to refill.”
“I can siphon gas from other cars,” I told him. “If you want, I can teach you how to do it. We’ll bring extra containers and fill up as many as we can.”
Jove looked impressed by my knowledge of car tricks. “All right then.”
“So we have a plan?” Jacob asked.
“We have a plan.”
We spent another hour and a half preparing for the trip. Nita managed to separate Penny from Pippa. I took Penny and Jove into their room to pick out more sensible clothing for the journey, while Nita debriefed Pippa on how she should take care of herself on the road. Jacob searched the apartment for anything we might be able to use, coming up with a few ancient oil lanterns, a box of barbeque matches, and a four-man tent that the Masons had purchased ten years ago but never used. It was still in the box.
“My dad has a cabin,” I reminded him when he showed me the tent. “But you should bring it anyway in case we don’t make it there. Do you have sleeping bags?”
“Just Pippa’s old princess one,” he said, adding the tent box to the growing pile by the door. “I’ll see if I can find a few blankets to bunch up.”
Jacob, Nita, and I toted the Masons’ bike collection down the stairs and into the lobby. Jove and Penny usually shared the tandem bike, but we decided that I would ride it with Pippa instead. That left Penny with my road cruiser and Jove with Jacob’s old mountain bike. The lobby was empty. Frank was gone. He had either gone to some other floor to help another resident or finally given up on the extravagant high-rise and gone home to his family. I hoped it was the latter. Either way, we lugged the rest of our things from out of the storage room without his supervision. It was all there, including the water, though one of the packages missed a single bottle.
“Frank got thirsty, I guess,” Jacob said, tugging the wagon out from behind the counter. He set to arranging the things he had found upstairs around the water like a reality-based game of Tetris.
Jove and Penny emerged from the stairwell, flanking Pippa’s either side. For once, she wasn’t fighting off her parents. There was already a sheen of sweat across her forehead. My stomach plummeted. Maybe transporting Pippa wasn’t the best idea. She had already been through enough in the past twenty-four hours.
“Are you all right?” I asked her once her parents had joined Jacob in his quest to strap everything to a backpack, bike, or wagon.
She waved me off. “I’m totally fine.”
“Really? Because you don’t look fine.”
“Stop worrying, Georgie.”
“I can’t,” I told her. “So you need to keep me updated. We have Nita with us for a reason. Mostly because she provides much-needed comic relief, but also because she’s a med student. If you feel like something’s going wrong, tell me. And don’t pedal, okay? I’ll do it.”
“You sound like my mother.”
“Pippa, just promise me you’ll listen to me.”
“Fine, I promise.”
Ten minutes later, we were finally on our way. Jacob took the lead, followed by Jove, Penny, Pippa and me, and finally Nita. We looked like a line of misshapen tortoises, each of us forced to slump over the handlebars due to the weight of our backpack. Pippa, of course, was excused from carrying her own bag. I had tied it between her knees instead, out of the way of the pedals. If she wanted, she could rest her feet on the bag rather than trying to keep up with my pace. Very briefly, as Pippa dozed off against my back, I wished that I were the pregnant one. I quickly banished the thought. For now, Pippa had it easy, but it wouldn’t be that wa
y in another few weeks.
There were several challenges in riding with the Masons. One, Jacob and Jove argued constantly about the best route to the airport. Twice, they led us down the wrong road and we had to turn around. Two, Jove was horridly out of shape. His girth spilled over the skinny bike seat, and the gears groaned beneath him. After a few miles, he began to pant like an overheated dog until we had to stop long enough for him to chug a few sips of water. Three, Penny’s shrill voice reached an octave that echoed throughout the entire city, which I feared would draw too much attention to us. We had already been the subject of several suspicious looks from the other people on the streets, but I kept the handgun strapped visibly against my thigh. Once everyone noticed it was there, they turned their heads away from our party.
Eventually, we made it to the interstate, which was more of a mess than I expected. Though the blast had hit after rush hour, there had been enough people traveling at high enough speeds to create enormous pile-ups. Without anyone to tend to the injured, both sides of the road looked like a battlefield. No one said anything. There was nothing to say.
“Pippa, are you awake?” I murmured.
“Yeah.”
“Close your eyes.”
“It’s too late.”
The stench was the worst part. The bodies had begun to decompose, and a number of hungry critters arrived to clean up the aftermath. They were also a convenience. Death drove people away. Other than the six of us, the interstate was free and clear of the living. We rode along the shoulder, which was relatively passable, and tried not to look at the horrors beside us.
The storage warehouse was off an exit ramp, so we didn’t actually have to ride all the way to the airport. Even so, it took us over two hours to get to it. My stomach grumbled in protest. I hadn’t eaten since abandoning my breakfast at the Masons’ earlier. The sun sank below the tree line, leaving us in the brisk purple dusk. The wind dried out my lips, so I drew the collar of my sweater up over my mouth and nose. If I was struggling, my companions were too, though it shocked me that none of them had voiced their complaints aloud yet.
Blackout: Book 0 Page 13
