Blackout b-1

by Robison Wells

  The ranger looked confused and opened her mouth to speak, but Laura motioned for Brown to stay quiet.

  A voice broke the silence. “They’ve instituted martial law.”

  Laura, startled and embarrassed, saw Alec sitting motionless on a rock about twenty feet away. His pale skin and sunken features made him appear ghostly in the dim light.

  Laura let go of Brown’s foot and stood. “You heard something?” Alec had kept both of the rangers’ radios, and had listened for hours while they hiked.

  Alec shook his head. “They’ve ceased all radio traffic.”

  “They know we’re listening?”

  “Probably.”

  “Then what?”

  “I got some information from her,” Alec said, nodding slightly toward Brown. “The military seems to have figured out two things: they know our network is made up of teenagers.”

  Laura sat on a log near Alec, leaning forward. “Have they caught anyone?”

  He nodded. “She doesn’t know anything about it, but they must have. Because the other thing they’ve figured out is that our abilities are caused by a virus.”

  “What? But they’re not.”

  “Remember that crap she was spewing last night about the police taking teens?”

  Laura nodded.

  He took a swig from his canteen and then continued. “They’re doing it because teens—American teenagers—are getting abilities. And, since the government can test for it, that means they must have captured someone; they must have some strain of the virus to compare it to.”

  “But it’s not a virus,” Laura said again. She didn’t catch it. She was injected with it as a baby. Her parents told her.

  Alec rolled his eyes. “It must have mutated. How long since your abilities manifested?”

  Laura was flustered now. This wasn’t how it was supposed to work. She was supposed to be superior to everyone. “Uh, I don’t know. Two years?”

  “See, you should have had them before that—they were supposed to come around age twelve or thirteen. Mine came late, too.”

  Laura was trying to think clearly, but this was the first significant problem in their plan she’d encountered. Every chase, every attack—those were things she could handle. But this was different. The entire system was flawed. And everything hinged on this.

  Alec was still talking to Laura, but stared at the ranger. “I think it was broken from the beginning. We didn’t get our powers when we were supposed to. We got physical side effects, which we weren’t supposed to. And now it’s spreading like a virus.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “We do a better job of hiding. We go for targets that will slow their study—hospitals, labs, the damned CDC if we can get it.”

  “Should we speed up our attacks on the scheduled targets?”

  “I’ll think about it,” he said. “I wish I knew how the testing works. How do they know if someone has been tested? Complete quarantine? Some kind of identifying mark? If it’s something simple like a tattoo, then we need to get ourselves tattoos. If we can look like we’ve been tested, then we can walk around without suspicion.”

  Laura pointed at the ranger. “What do we do with her? She’s seen everything. She heard us talking. She saw what I did to the other one.”

  “It will be useful to have a hostage,” Alec answered. “They’re probably trying to find us right now.”

  “We won’t be dealing with police,” Laura said, almost surprised that she was arguing with Alec. “It will be the US Army, maybe special forces. They won’t be negotiating for hostages.”

  “Then we’ll kill her,” Alec said.

  Laura stood. “We could have just left her there, by the cars. What good did bringing her do? She slowed us down—and I won’t be able to carry both her and Dan if we need his powers.”

  “You’re right,” Alec said. He slowly stood from his rock, twisting his neck and back to stretch the muscles. “But I want more information from her.”

  “What more does she know?”

  Alec took a step toward Laura. Alec was the highest rank of the three of them and Laura knew she was pushing it.

  Alec smiled. “I don’t know. Let’s ask.”

  He brushed past Laura and knelt beside Brown.

  “Leave me alone,” she whispered. “I don’t know anything.”

  Alec, his back to Laura now, didn’t respond. He simply sat there and stared at the girl. Laura didn’t want to watch, but couldn’t look away. She knew what Alec was doing—playing with Brown’s mind. After a tense moment, Brown looked puzzled and smiled nervously.

  “What’s going on, Alec?” she said.

  His voice was soft and soothing. “What’s your name?”

  Brown paused for a moment, her gaze darting up to Laura. “You know my name,” Brown said. “Take this tape off.”

  “Humor me,” Alec said. “What’s your name?”

  “This isn’t funny,” she said, and her face contorted in another wave of confusion. She shrieked, flailing uselessly against the restraints.

  “Here are the rules,” Alec said, his voice suddenly filled with hatred. “I’m going to ask you some questions. If I like your answer, you’ll be fine. If I don’t, you’ll get more of the same.”

  She froze, her eyes wide and terrified. Laura shuddered to think what memories Alec was stuffing into the girl’s brain.

  “Good,” Alec said. “Now, what is your name?”

  “Gina,” she whispered. “Gina Lynn Brown.”

  Laura watched for a moment, and then turned back to her tent.

  FOURTEEN

  “AT LEAST IT’S NOT BREAD and water,” Aubrey said, looking down at the pouch in her hands. It was military rations—vacuum-sealed tuna casserole.

  Jack smiled. “I don’t know if this is much better.”

  “It’s warmed up. That’s something.”

  They were in another warehouse, this one smaller and without guards. The floor was cement, and along three of the walls were long rows of cots. There had to be at least two hundred, but only about half were occupied—maybe fifty by the kids who had gone through the testing with Aubrey, and about that same number who had already been in the warehouse when the others had arrived. The fourth wall was lined with portable restrooms.

  The center of the warehouse was a hodgepodge of tables and chairs, not in any order. A few minutes before, six soldiers had entered the warehouse with two metal carts, each stacked with military MREs—Meals, Ready-to-Eat—and dense cookies, like power bars.

  A steel catwalk ran along the walls, high up, like in the other warehouse, but no guards were on it. There were only four doors. Two were up at the level of the catwalk, a third was connected to the testing offices, and on the far side of the warehouse was a twenty-foot-tall opening with a retractable metal covering. It was open, but no one was going out there—it seemed to be a long path, like a chain-link tunnel, with walls and roof.

  Matt approached Aubrey and Jack’s table. “Can I sit here?”

  Aubrey nodded. “Sure.”

  Matt inspected his packet—bold black letters declared it to be spaghetti—and then he tore the top open.

  “Have you heard what they said about this place?” he said, looking unenthusiastically inside the pouch.

  “What do you mean?” Jack asked.

  “All the kids in Utah are here,” Matt said. “Everyone.”

  “That’s impossible,” Aubrey said. There were way too many teenagers in the state to fit into one . . . what was it? A prison? A camp?

  Matt shrugged. “That’s what they said. And some kids from Nevada and Idaho, too.”

  “That’s what who said?” Jack asked, after swallowing a bite of food.

  “The others,” Matt said. “The guys in line.” He was ignoring his food now, staring outside. “There’s a kid named Sibley. He’s been here for three days.”

  Jack tore open his cookie. It was thick like a brownie, and a shower of crumbs fell on the table as he
cracked it in half. “Three days makes him an expert?”

  Matt didn’t answer.

  Aubrey looked down at her food and poked at it with her plastic fork. She wondered what her dad would eat without her around to cook for him. That world—her life—seemed far away.

  “I’m one of them,” Matt said, still staring.

  Aubrey speared a noodle and pulled it out of the pouch. “One of what?”

  “Like Nate,” he said. “And Sibley.”

  Jack’s head sprang up. Aubrey felt her heart beat faster but tried not to show it.

  Matt’s eyes met Aubrey’s and then Jack’s. “We don’t have to pretend like that stuff with Nate didn’t happen. We can talk about it. We should talk about it.”

  Aubrey took a deep breath and choked on a noodle. She coughed until the scratch went away. There was a third besides her and Nate? A third and a fourth?

  “You know how I’m on the varsity basketball team?” Matt continued. “Even though I’ve never been any good?”

  Aubrey nodded, holding her breath. Basketball season was months away, but the paper had already written about Matt being a potential all-American in both football and basketball. And not just the Sanpete Messenger, but the state papers. There was even talk about Matt getting featured on ESPN.

  “I can’t miss a shot,” Matt said, finally turning his head to look at them.

  Jack snorted, obviously annoyed. Aubrey knew they used to play together. “That’s good basketball. It’s not . . . whatever Nate was.”

  Matt’s face reddened. He spoke slower and more clearly. “No. I mean I can’t miss a shot. I can’t blow a pass, even if the receiver stinks. I sometimes miss on purpose during games so that people don’t find out about me.”

  “Right,” Jack said sarcastically. “I miss shots on purpose, too. That’s why I didn’t make the team.”

  “I’m serious,” Matt said, getting frustrated. He looked around, searching for something, and finally grabbed his heavy cookie. “Point to something.”

  Jack laughed, and pointed at a garbage can halfway across the warehouse.

  Matt rolled his eyes. “Too easy.”

  “Really?” Jack scoffed. “Then try the can by the wall—the red plastic one.”

  Matt turned to Aubrey. “I’m serious. I can’t miss a shot.”

  She smiled uncertainly, and then gestured to a far cot. “Do you see the boy with the shaved head? See his baseball cap next to him?”

  Matt grinned, and then turned and, without any preparation, threw the cookie. It spun through the air, crossing over a dozen tables, and landed squarely in the sleeping boy’s hat.

  Matt turned back to Aubrey. “Can I have yours?” Amazed, she handed him her cookie.

  Without looking, he threw it behind him, over his shoulder, and then turned to watch as it wobbled through the air. It looked like it was going to fall short and to the left, but to Aubrey’s amazement the cookie plunked down into the same baseball cap.

  A few people, who hadn’t been paying attention fully, clapped when they saw what he’d done.

  “I can’t miss a shot,” Matt said again.

  Jack lowered his voice, suddenly serious. “Why are you doing this in here? They’ll find you.”

  Matt picked up his pouch again and looked inside. “They already swabbed my mouth. It’s too late.”

  Aubrey glanced at Jack. Their eyes met for a moment and then she turned to Matt. “How do you know that’s what the test was about?”

  “The guys who’ve been here longer,” Matt said. “They told me that’s what happens.” He set his pouch down on the table and stood. “Come on. I’ll take you to meet Sibley and the others.”

  FIFTEEN

  LAURA KNELT IN THE DRY mountain grass. She carefully rolled her tent into a neat package, and then slipped it into its green nylon bag.

  She hadn’t slept much. She was amazed that Dan had been able to sleep through the forest ranger’s cries, but he’d always had the worst reactions to using his powers. He’d probably be tired for days.

  Gina Brown had known more than she’d let on, just as Alec had expected. Yes, she was just a forest ranger in an obscure part of central Utah, but she’d been monitoring her radio, and even the forest service was being conscripted into service.

  “You need to hurry,” Alec called out to Dan, who was still moving sluggishly around the campsite. “They could be here any minute.”

  One of the most important bits of information Brown had was that this roundup of all the teenagers was somewhat localized—a huge number of soldiers had moved into the West earlier in the week. With Brown’s disappearance, and the collapsed Eagle Canyon bridge only forty miles away, it was almost certain that troops would be on the mountain soon, if they weren’t there already.

  Worse, Brown told of an enormous army base that had sprung up in the desert west of Salt Lake City. Laura had assumed the three of them were in the middle of nowhere—a thousand miles from any of the real action—but now it sounded like they were only a few hundred miles from one of the largest military centers in the United States.

  She glanced over at Brown, who lay awkwardly on her back, staring at the sky. She was quiet now, her mind having been ravaged. Alec hadn’t held back, fully aware of the consequences. So many memories had been inserted during the night, most of them conflicting. Some were horrifically violent and others were reassuring her with warmth and trust. Laura didn’t know if Alec had ever done this before, but the results were appalling. Gina’s cries—cries of intense pain but also of joyful rescue—had gone on for hours until her mind just couldn’t take any more.

  “Come on,” Alec demanded. He shoved the last of his gear into his bag and threw it to Laura.

  She wanted to ask what Alec was going to do with Brown, but knew that asking wouldn’t help anything. If the ranger was lucky, he’d shoot her. If she was unlucky, he’d leave her there to die—her mind too scrambled to know how to survive on her own.

  Laura looked at the ranger again, and their eyes met. There was no emotion or movement. If Brown hadn’t blinked, Laura would have assumed she was dead.

  “Dan,” Alec called. “Laura. Come check this out.” He had unfolded the map.

  Laura was strapping on the heavy frame pack, adjusting the straps around her chest and hips as she and Dan met Alec.

  “Keep your eyes on the map,” Alec said quietly. “Don’t look up. They’re here.”

  “Where?” Dan asked. He finally seemed alert.

  “I saw movement in the trees to the west, near the two dead pines.”

  Laura forced herself to keep her head down. “You’re sure it’s the army?”

  Alec nodded. “Uniforms.”

  “Why haven’t they shot us already?” Laura said.

  “They’re not in position yet,” Alec said. “At least, I don’t think they are. And maybe they’re trying to figure out what we can do—what our powers are. Maybe they want to capture us alive.”

  “How many?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Alec said with a smile. He jabbed the map. “We’re only four miles from the road if we go cross-country. Laura can do that in—how long?”

  She pursed her lips and looked down the rough slope at the forested terrain. “If the ground is like that, thirty minutes. Maybe forty.”

  “How fast can you do it carrying someone?”

  Laura thought about Brown lying on the grass. When she’d heard that the soldiers had arrived, she’d been relieved, thinking that the girl might live. “She doesn’t know anything else,” Laura said. “She’ll slow us down.”

  Alec almost couldn’t contain his glee. “You won’t be carrying her, Laura. You’ll be carrying me.”

  “What?”

  “It’s simple,” Alec said, grinning. “You can carry me faster than I could run myself. And we’ll be in a big hurry.”

  “Why?” Dan said, annoyance in his voice. “Where will you be going without me?”

  “We’ll be running fro
m you,” Alec said. “And you’ll be chasing after us. I need you to start an avalanche.”

  Dan looked at the long dry grass under their feet, confused.

  “They can’t chase us if the mountain is falling down around them.”

  Dan stammered for a moment. “I’d have to touch it. I couldn’t run.”

  Alec was so pleased with himself he looked like his smile would rip into his cheeks. “You don’t need to run. Just tear this mountain to hell and protect yourself. When the soldiers are taken care of, follow us.”

  Laura had pulled a bag of toiletries out of the frame pack, and had the contents splayed on a rock as though she was looking for something. Alec paced impatiently, barking the occasional order for her to hurry.

  “I’m going to go pee,” Dan called.

  “Fine,” Alec yelled, mock exasperation in his voice. “Take your time. We’ll be waiting here another hour for Laura.”

  This still didn’t feel safe, Laura thought. At any moment, one of them was going to get a sniper’s bullet in the back of the head.

  She looked over her shoulder. She couldn’t see Brown. If the military didn’t immediately move in for her, she’d die in the avalanche.

  “I’ve counted four,” Alec said quietly as he walked past Laura.

  “Five,” she said. She couldn’t be sure they were all different people, though. “Light infantry. M4 carbines.”

  Alec stepped next to her, digging in the frame pack. She peered inside and saw his hand wrapped around the pistol.

  “When it happens,” he said, “we’ll both run—give them two targets instead of one. When I tire out, you carry me.”

  Laura nodded. She took a pair of gloves from the pack—Alec wouldn’t stop her now—and walked to the bush where Brown lay. She knelt down at the ranger’s side.