Blackout b-1

by Robison Wells

  Several of the students began to creep away, crawling for safety or to escape. Jack saw two girls sprint from the school bus toward the denser brush.

  And then the thing tried to run, thundering out of the parking lot and onto the empty road. Jack saw a soldier fire something else from his rifle—slower than a bullet and arcing like a thrown baseball. It hit the ground behind the creature and exploded in yellow fire and smoke. All the way up on the hill, Jack felt the shock wave thud into his chest and pass through his body.

  How could this be happening? And what was that thing? Was it a terrorist? That seemed like the only explanation, though it didn’t make any sense. Everyone assumed the terrorists were Islamic fundamentalists, or political extremists, or environmental activists. No one thought they were . . . monsters?

  As the smoke cleared, the thing was struggling to stand.

  Another grenade was launched—that’s what it had to be—and this one was a direct hit.

  Jack realized his hands were clutched on the sides of the truck’s cab, his knuckles white and the sharp edges of rusty metal digging into his skin.

  As the cloud of smoke and debris drifted away, the creature wasn’t moving.

  He didn’t look menacing anymore. Just a man—just a kid, like Jack—lying motionless on the road, next to two craters in the asphalt.

  Four soldiers moved out to check on him, and suddenly the rest of the army was back at work—corralling the kids who were trying to crawl away, and herding them all into some semblance of a line.

  Jack realized suddenly that he was hearing screams. They’d been there all the time, he was sure, but he’d just noticed them now that the guns had stopped. They weren’t frightened screams, or calls for help—they were wails, like uncontrollable sadness.

  Few of the students would stand. Jack wondered how many had peed themselves, and then realized how stupid that was—someone had just died. Some teenager had just turned into some kind of monster and had then been gunned down, blown up, by the United States Army.

  Jack watched as, one by one, the students were pulled from the ground, checked against paperwork, put in some kind of handcuffs, and led onto buses. There were medics there now, removing the bodies of three dead or, hopefully, unconscious soldiers. A truck beyond the floodlights took the motionless monster—now a regular boy—away.

  The soldiers made a final sweep of the area—in and out of the barn, up into the brush, down through the river—and returned with a few more terrified kids.

  And then they left, the buses in a tight convoy surrounded by Humvees.

  And Jack was all by himself.

  He stumbled to his knees and puked over the edge of the truck’s bed, his whole body shaking.

  What had he just seen? That was the homecoming dance—that was everybody he knew, all gone. When did teenagers at a dance become criminals?

  No, not criminals. Police handle criminals. The army fights enemies.

  A bunch of boys in hand-me-down suits and girls in skimpy dresses were enemies of America?

  What was that thing, that monster? That must have been why the army was there. But then why did they take all the others away? Was the army protecting them or arresting them?

  Jack didn’t dare drive his truck to the barn—he didn’t want any lights to make him a target—but he made the decision to hike down the grassy hill.

  He moved slowly, instinctively using the slow, toe-to-heel footsteps he’d been taught over a lifetime of hunting deer and elk. The dark felt claustrophobic and heavy, like the night air was wrapping around him, crushing his chest. His breathing was rapid, even though he was hardly moving a mile per hour, and his heart raced.

  When he got to the end of the brush, he stopped. The barn was wide open, the lights still on and crepe paper and balloons still adorning the doors.

  A paper sign with the painted words “Hawks Forever” hung just inside the barn.

  There were bullet holes in the sign.

  Now that he was looking for them, he could see the holes everywhere, tiny dots of light punched through the wooden walls of the barn.

  No one was here. The teachers were gone, and the DJ, and the local cops. Everyone had been taken.

  It was a good thing he didn’t have a date, Jack thought, and then began laughing until his laughs turned to sobs and he fell to his knees. What had happened here? What was happening to the world?

  What would happen tomorrow?

  He wiped his face, ashamed of himself even though there was no one to see him cry, and stood. Quietly, he crossed the lawn and entered the parking lot.

  The asphalt was littered with shell casings. Dozens. Hundreds.

  He kept moving out to the street, to the two craters blown into the roadbed. They looked like large potholes, only more violent, with grapefruit-sized hunks of asphalt scattered in all directions.

  There was blood. In the darkness he might have mistaken it for spilled motor oil, but he’d seen where the gorilla kid had lain—where he’d died.

  Jack turned away, feeling the nausea welling up inside of him again.

  And then he saw her. A flash of blue and brown—a dress—entering the building.

  He paused, frozen for a moment, frozen because everything felt dangerous. But it was just a girl. Someone the army had missed.

  Jack hurried to the barn, his eyes darting back and forth between the door and the ground—he didn’t want to step on any shells and scare her. He wanted answers, and maybe this girl would have some.

  He stopped at the entrance, his stomach in his throat.

  He peeked inside.

  The girl sat at one of the round tables near the door, facing away from him. Her dress, blue and long, was covered in a layer of dark brown mud, and scratches up the back had torn and frayed the material. Her hair and neck were just as filthy. A long red scrape ran up her shoulder and under her dripping brunette hair.

  She wasn’t wearing any shoes.

  She looked exhausted, her forearms resting on the table and her head hanging down. Jack guessed she must be in shock—one of the few who’d seen what happened but managed to stay hidden.

  He wondered if he should say something, but was afraid she’d panic. Instead, he stepped inside the barn and began walking in a wide circle around her, staying far enough away to be non-threatening until he was in her view.

  Her eyes were closed.

  Aubrey.

  He wondered how he hadn’t recognized her before, but he wasn’t used to seeing her in anything approaching a dress like this. The only times she ever wore a dress were to church, and for years those had just been the same floral prints she’d bought at his parents’ thrift shop.

  “Hey,” Jack said, trying to sound as calm as possible.

  Her head popped up, eyes open and terrified. They settled on Jack. She stared for just a few seconds and then bent over again.

  Even now, after all that had happened, she didn’t want to see him. What had he ever done to her?

  “You okay?” he asked, a slight harshness to his voice.

  Aubrey lifted her head, but didn’t really make eye contact. Instead she gestured around the room at the destroyed decorations and spilled food. She pulled out the chair beside her, and Jack thought she was offering it to him until he saw the two bullet holes punched through the back.

  “Do I look okay?” she said. “Is any of this okay?”

  Jack came over anyway, staring at the sharp, torn metal edges of the folding chair.

  “How did you get away?”

  She pointed to her dress and then shook her head, plainly upset with herself. “I ran and fell in the river, like an idiot.”

  “Better than being out here,” he said, sticking a finger through one of the jagged bullet holes.

  He tried to imagine what she would have looked like if she hadn’t been filthy with mud, if her makeup and hair weren’t soaked.

  She probably would have looked like one of Nicole’s Barbie-doll clones, he thought. This was
n’t the same Aubrey Parsons he used to know and—well, it wasn’t the same Aubrey Parsons he used to know.

  Jack sat down across from her. “Do you know what happened?”

  She shook her head. “I know what I saw, but I have no idea what it was.”

  “What did you see?”

  “I saw Nate Butler turn into some kind of monster—like he was made out of rock, like in a movie.”

  “That was Nate?”

  “You saw it?” She looked surprised.

  “Yeah,” Jack said. He held up keys to the barn—keys he didn’t need, since it was left wide open. “I was waiting for the dance to be over so I could clean the place up.”

  “Then you know what happened.”

  “I guess.”

  She looked so different. Even filthy, she was a different person than the one he’d known. Aubrey Parsons should have been wearing a T-shirt and jeans, not a strapless dress.

  He stood, then walked to a small alcove by the front entrance. Rows of hangers held jackets and shawls—no one had been able to gather their belongings before being forced outside. He pulled out one of the boys’ coats—thick, sheepskin, exactly like one Jack had always wanted. He then rooted around in the bags left on the floor below, digging through leftover decorations and extra boxes of cookies before he found a pair of girls’ sneakers. Finally, he grabbed one of the shawls.

  Jack took the clothes to Aubrey. “Here.”

  She picked up the shawl and wrapped it around her shoulders.

  “No,” he said. “Use that as a towel. Wear the coat.”

  Aubrey paused, then did as he’d instructed, whispering, “Thank you.”

  SIX

  AUBREY WAS FREEZING. THE SHAWL wasn’t much of a towel—it hardly absorbed anything—but she was glad to wipe the mud from her face. As embarrassing as it was to be seen like this, she was glad it was only Jack, not one of her new friends. Jack had grown up with her in the hills around Mount Pleasant—he’d seen her much messier.

  “So what do we do now?” she asked.

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  Jack was trying to put on a good game face, but she could tell he was scared. Why he was being kind to her was something she couldn’t begin to understand.

  “Do you think we can go back into town?”

  “Did they say why they were here?” he asked. “I mean, I assume it was partly about Nate. . . .”

  “Maybe it was all about him?” she said hopefully.

  Jack just shrugged. “If they only wanted Nate, why take everyone else away even after they—after . . .”

  “You can say it,” Aubrey said, her voice emotionless. “After they killed him.” She wondered if she was in shock. Nate brought her to the dance, after all. She’d seen him moments before he’d . . . whatever he’d done.

  But this had to be related to her as well, to what she could do. When she’d first begun disappearing, it had freaked her out. Why did she, of all the people on the entire earth, have some bizarre evolutionary quirk? Now she knew she wasn’t alone. Nate was something strange, too. He wasn’t at all like Aubrey, but definitely something . . . inhuman.

  And the military was here to find them.

  Aubrey would have thought the army had better things to do than look for a seventeen-year-old invisible shoplifter and a boy who could . . . turn into rock? Was that what he had done?

  She picked up the coat, shawl, and shoes. “I’m going to clean up.”

  “’Kay,” Jack said. “But hurry. If they were rounding people up, you and I are going to be missing. They’re going to look for us.”

  “Where should we go?”

  “My house, I guess,” he said. “Maybe we can figure out what’s going on.”

  Aubrey nodded and turned toward the restroom, its door decorated with crepe paper and a poster-board sign that read “Hotties.” Her hand lingered on it as she pushed the door open.

  This was her first dance.

  Ten minutes later they were in the field beside the road, trudging through two-foot-tall alfalfa. The rough stalks scratched Aubrey’s ankles and snagged the frills of her dress, but it was ruined anyway.

  Aubrey explained everything she’d seen and heard, lying where it was necessary so Jack wouldn’t learn of her invisibility. She said she’d overheard the soldiers checking the students’ identities, seen the soldiers tightening plastic bracelets onto the students’ arms. Jack asked a lot of questions that she had no answers to.

  They didn’t dare drive, even though Jack had his truck and Aubrey knew where she could find the keys to Nicole’s convertible Mustang. The plan was to stay off the road, get to Jack’s house, and figure out what was going on. The soldiers had said the students would all be released the next day, and if that was true, Jack said, he’d just turn himself in. Aubrey said she would, too, but it was a lie. She’d disappear. Run. Get as far away as possible.

  Where would she go?

  “This won’t get out of hand,” Jack said, confidence in his voice. “Name me a house in this town that doesn’t have at least two guns, probably more. Parents aren’t going to let the government lock up their kids.”

  Aubrey nodded. She knew it was true of most parents. Her dad . . . well, she’d be lucky if he was sober enough to say good-bye as she was taken away.

  “Lake Powell was attacked,” Jack said, and Aubrey stopped.

  “When?”

  “I don’t know. Today some time. That’s the closest.”

  She shook her head. “No. There was that sabotage at Kennecott.” People thought she was dumb—not caring about current events was almost a point of pride among Nicole’s friends—but she was still Aubrey. She still read, even if it was alone, in her room. She still cared.

  No, that wasn’t true.

  She hated what she knew she’d become. High school would be over soon, and then where would she be? Nicole wouldn’t be around to make her popular anymore, and even though Aubrey could disappear and steal a homecoming dress, that didn’t mean she could shoplift her way into college.

  Aubrey had been a straight-A student until she’d become friends with Nicole. Nicole could afford to skip classes and get bad grades—her dad was the richest man in Sanpete County and owned at least half the turkey farms. Nicole would go to college, tuition paid in full, with letters of recommendation coming from the best names in central Utah—mayors, judges, state senators. But Aubrey needed a scholarship, and she was losing it every day, all in exchange for popularity.

  “What happened to the lake?” she asked, turning and continuing to walk.

  “It sounds like the dam broke,” Jack answered. “I didn’t hear a lot of details.”

  She nodded, and they walked in silence for a long time. If only she could talk to Nicole—the one person who knew her secret. At times, their relationship had felt more like a business partnership than a friendship, but they shared the deepest, darkest secret Aubrey could imagine—that she was wrong. Defective. So different that she wondered if she was human at all.

  At first Nicole had joked that it was a miracle, that Aubrey was some angel sent to earth to do good works and fight crime. But it hadn’t turned out that way. Not only was she a criminal, but her anomalies didn’t end with invisibility. Her eyesight was getting bad—and not just something glasses would fix. Sometimes she couldn’t see at all.

  And the headaches were almost constant.

  There wasn’t a day that went by that she didn’t wonder if she wasn’t dying of a brain tumor.

  But the one time she’d gone to the clinic her dad had been there within hours to yank her away, and yell at the receptionists and doctors—and Aubrey—for unnecessary medical care. She knew he wasn’t paying any of the bills they’d sent. He’d never even opened them; they just piled up by the door next to the rest of the mail that she wished he’d look at.

  A brilliant white light burst on, less than a hundred yards away. Jack and Aubrey both dropped to their knees, and she went even farther, flat
tening herself in between a row of the crops. She instinctively started to disappear before she stopped herself.

  “It’s not a military truck,” Jack said quietly.

  Aubrey lifted her head enough to see the light. When it was pointed away from them, she could see someone standing in the back of a pickup.

  “Maybe they’re trying to find us?” she said hopefully. Jack was right—most of this town wouldn’t stand for the kidnapping of their kids.

  “No,” Jack said. “Look how it’s parked.”

  She strained to see, but to her it just looked like the outline of a pickup.

  The beam flashed toward them again and she ducked.

  “It’s sideways,” Jack said. “Like a roadblock.”

  He was right. Whoever was in the pickup was scanning a handheld halogen lamp back and forth across the field, blocking the one and only road to the barn.

  The light hit the cab of the truck briefly, illuminating the man for an instant.

  “He’s got a rifle,” Aubrey said, suddenly chilled despite the heavy sheepskin coat.

  “It’s Lance Halladay.” Aubrey could hear the disgust in Jack’s voice. “I bet Ian Morris is with him.”

  Lance and Ian were two people who made Mount Pleasant a little less pleasant. They were only a couple of years older than Aubrey and Jack, and probably would have been in jail if it wasn’t a small town with a lenient police force. No big crimes, just a lot of public drunkenness and loitering. A ton of ogling and harassment, if that was illegal. Aubrey didn’t know, and the police didn’t seem to care.

  “I don’t think we should go this way,” Aubrey said. The boys weren’t out there to help straggling kids. They were there for . . . she didn’t know. The one thing Aubrey knew was that she was somehow like Nate Butler, and he’d been killed.

  “I think you’re right.”

  They backed out of the field, crawling on their hands and knees through the harvest-ready crops until they felt they were far enough away. Aubrey stood, feeling weaker than ever. Normally she would only stay invisible for a few minutes—fifteen at the most. Tonight, she’d spied for at least twenty-five, and then she’d hidden from the soldiers on and off for another hour as they swept the area for runaways.