Blackout b-1

by Robison Wells

  “I have no idea what freesia even is,” Jack answered, and then was hit by a sudden pang of worry. She was going in alone. “I’d hug you, but I don’t want to smell like you. You’ll be harder to track.”

  “I’ll be okay.”

  Jack nodded. “If you need something—anything—just say the word and I’ll get you out of there.”

  The microphone sounded in Jack’s ear. “Cooper, this is Rowley. Everything is set on our end. We have eyes on you. Over.”

  “They’re ready,” Jack relayed for Aubrey.

  She nodded, taking a deep breath, and then headed across the dark lawn.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  AUBREY LIKED THE SMELL OF the perfume. It was one thing she’d never had—one thing she’d never stolen. She and Nicole had raided a Victoria’s Secret once for lotions and body wash, but that was the closest Aubrey had ever come.

  She focused on the smell as she walked, not wanting to think about what lay within the school. She was invisible now—she’d “gone dark” as the captain kept referring to it—but that didn’t give her a lot of comfort. She’d been found before when she was invisible. The broken school almost certainly didn’t have any cameras, but she was wearing perfume with the express purpose of being recognizable. She was fairly sure that if she walked through a room of people, no one would notice her, or the smell, but what about when she was gone? Would the scent linger? Was she leaving a trail for others to follow—or, at the very least, a trail that would make people suspicious?

  As she reached the school, she could hear voices inside, and smell the pungent smoke of a campfire. She wondered what else had happened in Salt Lake. These people were homeless, but had they been homeless a month before? Were they just normal people trying to survive?

  She climbed a pile of rubble and then ducked through a smashed window that seemed to serve as a main entrance.

  “Hey, Jack,” she whispered. “I’m going in. You can probably still see me.”

  It was weird talking to him, knowing that he couldn’t communicate back. Still, it felt good—like she wasn’t alone.

  “I’m in some kind of classroom,” she said. “English, by the looks of it. Lots of books on the floor. Ugh. Great Expectations. I hated that one. I can smell smoke. I should tell them they can burn these.”

  She moved through the room, its ceiling slanted at a sharp angle, and out into the hall.

  “Man,” she breathed. “What happened to this place? This building is majorly destroyed. I don’t know how anyone would dare to live in here.” She crept down the hall, past a man sitting on a desk. He looked like some kind of guard. A camp lantern sat next to him, illuminating his face and casting long dark shadows down the corridor.

  “There’s someone watching the hallway. He must be guarding the entrance—I haven’t seen anything that looks like it could go down into the basement yet. I don’t think he’s a Lambda—too old. Maybe in his thirties? The gun’s a .38 revolver, like that one that Matt’s dad used to have. The way this guy’s holding it makes me wonder if he’s ever used one before. Probably just defending the family.”

  A chill went up her back as she said those final words. This was likely a guy who lost his house. Maybe he was guarding against more terrorists, or maybe he was guarding against robbers who wanted to steal their supplies.

  No, that sounded too apocalyptic, and the world wasn’t like that. She hadn’t heard much news in the last few weeks, but civilization wasn’t completely falling apart, was it?

  “I wish I had your eyes,” Aubrey said to Jack, walking farther down the hall. The lantern lit up most of what surrounded her, but it wasn’t enough light to really see what was in the damaged classrooms to her sides. “I don’t know how many people are here. I can hear snoring. There’s a baby crying.”

  She kept moving down the corridor, remembering the layout the soldiers had shown her. The basement was smaller than the main floor, a few classrooms and the cafeteria.

  At the end of the hall she began to make out another shape in the darkness. A man, watching the other direction—she was behind him.

  “There’s another guy with a gun,” she said. “He’s barricaded—lots of debris surrounding him, like a bunker. He’s afraid of something.”

  Aubrey was getting tired, and the darkness strained her already-poor eyesight.

  “Shotgun,” she said, getting a little closer. “Pump-action. If it was brighter I could probably tell you the model. This guy is more alert, and he’s holding the gun like he means business.”

  “Okay, I’m passing the barricade now. He has a flashlight pointing at a smashed portion of the floor.”

  She paused for a long time. This was what everyone was scared of. This was the demon, and the floor plan that the Green Berets had wasn’t correct—it didn’t include this hole in the floor.

  And her eyesight was going.

  “Jack,” she said. “The maps are wrong. There’s this hole in the floor. I’m not sure where it leads. They’ve covered it mostly with a piece of plywood, and the wood is weighted with bricks. There’s a hole big enough for me to go in, but I don’t really want to yet. I’m going to follow the map and see if I can see more of what’s here.”

  She walked carefully around the hole in the floor, peering into the darkness below. All the images of demons she’d ever seen appeared in her mind. Leathery wings, horns, fangs, long tails. The balrog in The Lord of the Rings. Chernobog in Fantasia.

  “Jack?” she asked, even though she knew he couldn’t answer back. “It’s a little scary down here.”

  She took a deep breath. “I’m okay, though. Don’t send in the cavalry yet. I’ll find this thing.”

  As brave as she was trying to sound, part of her wanted to walk out that door—to the other side of the building, where there wasn’t Jack, or anyone else who could find her. She wanted to be done. She could find a place to live like this—she could disappear into the night and not be putting her life on the line.

  She could not climb down into the basement with a demon.

  “I’m moving past the hole,” she whispered, the waver in her voice unstoppable at this point. “I’m heading farther down the hall toward the stairs.”

  Something ran across the rubble, and she froze. It was a rat, or a mouse, or a squirrel. Did they even have squirrels in the city? She didn’t really know anything outside of her hometown.

  “Jack? When we get out of here, our next mission should be to Hawaii or something. And no demons.”

  She reached the stairwell and found it blocked by debris—through her tired eyes it seemed a blurry mass.

  “It’s collapsed, Jack,” she said, as she took a couple of tentative steps onto the fallen bricks and beams. She moved away, and glanced at the wall. “There’s been some gunfire here. The wall over the hole got hit by a shotgun blast. Two of them, it seems like. Birdshot. Nothing that went through the brick.” She forced a terrified laugh. “I don’t know about you, but if I were hunting a demon, I’d use slugs.”

  She started back toward the hole in the floor. It looked to be the only way down.

  “Then again,” she said. “I guess I’m hunting a demon and I’m not armed with anything. How did we get into this?”

  She stopped at the mouth of the hole, and looked back at the man with the shotgun. He was staring right at her, though he had no idea she was there. All she could see of him was the bright flare of the flashlight, but she knew that he was eager to fire.

  “I should take his gun,” she said. “But then he’d freak out, and this whole school would clear out. It would probably wake the demon.” She took a long slow breath and rubbed her eyes. “I can barely see anymore, Jack. I’m going down the hole now.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  “DAMMIT,” JACK YELLED INTO THE mic. “She fell. She’s in water.”

  “Is she okay?” Rowley answered.

  “She says she is, but the water is gross—there’s oil in it, and mud. I think it’s from broken pipes, and
runoff from the street. She’s covered. I can’t smell the perfume.”

  “I’m moving the team up to get ready to follow her in,” the captain said. “Keep me posted.”

  Aubrey wheezed. “Jack, I don’t know how much more of this I can do. I’m getting really weak. I almost lost it there—I almost reappeared.”

  Jack relayed the information to the captain.

  “And Jack,” Aubrey said, her voice straining to be flippant. “I was really liking these jeans. They’re ruined.”

  There was another noise in the basement—another set of breaths that were slower and calmer than Aubrey’s. It didn’t sound like a demon. Or maybe it did.

  It was down there, with Aubrey, the two of them all alone.

  “This is Cooper,” Jack said into his radio. “There’s another person down there. I can hear it breathing.”

  “How big?”

  “No idea. The breaths are small—smaller than Aubrey’s. I mean, smaller than Parsons’s.”

  “Any idea where it is?”

  “No,” Jack said, annoyed. “And I still can’t find her. She’s down there somewhere, and I think I can hear dripping from her clothes, but the whole place seems to be dripping.”

  Aubrey spoke again, quieter this time. “There’s a bed here—just some dirty blankets. No one is in it. And—it’s warm.” Aubrey’s voice faltered. “I don’t know how to get out of here. I’m all turned around, and I can’t see.”

  “Captain,” Jack said. “You’ve got to go in. It has to know Aubrey is there.”

  “Has it seen her?”

  Jack was panicked now, ready to run into the school himself.

  “I don’t know. All I can hear is that low breathing. Aubrey’s trapped. She can’t see.”

  “We’ll be there in less than one.”

  Jack wished that he could relay the information to Aubrey, but there was nothing he could do. All he could hope for was that she could stay hidden.

  “I know you’re here.” That wasn’t Aubrey’s voice. It was a girl’s. Young, quiet. But there was darkness in the voice—a kind of wicked playfulness.

  “Jack,” Aubrey whispered. “I can’t see anything.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  THE BASEMENT WAS PITCH-BLACK, AND the few bits of light—the flashlight beams coming through from the hole above—were blurred and unfocused.

  Aubrey was dripping wet, soaked head to toe in filthy water. She could taste mud on her lips, and she knew she didn’t smell anything like Flowerbomb anymore. Her only consolation was that she was still invisible.

  She couldn’t even get back out—she could barely see the hole, and it was in the ceiling twelve feet above her. She was trapped until the Green Berets showed up.

  “Jack,” she said. “Send them in. I can’t do any more.”

  She’d failed. She was supposed to give them important intelligence information, but all she could do was confirm that someone was in the basement. She’d failed her test. She’d probably get sent back to quarantine to live in one of those awful dorms.

  She sat on the floor, next to the pile of blankets that was someone’s bed. Loose bricks were everywhere, and Aubrey couldn’t even get comfortable to rest.

  “Come out and play,” the voice sounded, an odd mix of little girl and menacing monster.

  “Jack,” she said, her hands balled into tight fists, her eyes closed. “You’ve got to help me.”

  “You’re not the first, you know,” the little girl’s voice said. “Other people have come here, and they’ve done a whole lot better than you. But you can’t have me. I sent the SWAT team running like scared puppies with tails between their legs.”

  Aubrey picked up a brick.

  “And you think I’m not ready?” the girl asked. Her voice became muffled. “I’m ready. Ready and waiting.”

  “Jack,” Aubrey said, her voice only a hoarse whisper. “If I don’t get out of here . . . just . . . I’m sorry. I tried.”

  There was a sudden crash, and the room exploded with light and sound. The water burst upward and all around, like throwing dynamite in a pond, and all Aubrey could tell was that she was wet. She couldn’t see; she couldn’t hear.

  In a daze, she rubbed at her ears, mashed her palms into her eyes. Things were happening all around her, but she couldn’t make out what.

  Screams.

  There were screams—that was the first thing to break through the mud in her head. But they weren’t the screams of the little girl; they were men, adult men.

  She hadn’t heard sounds like this before. These screams were visceral, like the cries of men whose lives were ending. Like men who were being tortured. Men who had found out their wives and children were dead.

  No one was shooting. Not one person was shooting at the demon. What had happened?

  She cracked an eye and the room was still a blur of brilliant white light burned into her eyes. Flashlight beams danced all around the room as the men reeled and tried to regain their composure before reeling again.

  And in the middle of everything was a tiny girl, certainly no older than thirteen. She wore a gas mask on her face, and every time a soldier made an effort to stand, she would lean toward him, shouting things too muffled by the mask to understand.

  Aubrey’s eyes darted all around the room, looking for some other source of fear—some demon behind the little girl that she was using to mock the terrified Green Berets.

  But there was nothing. Just a girl, just a gas mask, and six horrified grown men.

  Aubrey struggled to stand, watching the girl to make sure that she hadn’t spotted Aubrey. But no, she was still hidden.

  Aubrey stepped forward, staring mystified at the scene in front of her.

  And then she smacked the girl in the head with the brick.

  FORTY

  IT WAS LATE—OR, EARLY. THEY’D been up most of the night, with only a couple of hours back at Dugway to sleep and recover. But the entire dorm had been awakened for a mandatory meeting in another building. Some people said it would be the meeting. Where they found out what would happen to them.

  Jack stood outside in the cold October morning, looking up at the stars. Training was over, but it was all too clear that he had a long way to go. He could barely do the lowest levels of the fitness test, and he’d only been given the very basics of how a special forces team worked.

  They hadn’t gone through weapons training either, but at least that was one skill he felt he already had. He’d hunted deer every season—and then lived off the venison for the rest of the year. He’d owned his first .22 at eight years old and had a deer rifle by age twelve.

  Still, he wasn’t ready for war. He wasn’t ready to be helping the Green Berets, for crying out loud. He wasn’t even a private. He was a Lambda, outranked by every grunt in any of the armed services. And he was still surrounded by barbed-wire fences in all directions. He still had a bomb strapped to his foot.

  “You’re going to be late,” a voice said. Jack turned to see Aubrey.

  “I was waiting for you.”

  She slipped her hand into his. She’d been doing that lately. So had he. He wasn’t sure what it meant, if it meant anything at all.

  “I wonder what my parents think,” Jack said. “I wonder what they’ve been told.”

  “The quarantine camps have started sending people home,” she said. “I heard that a few of the camps on the West Coast are totally cleared out.”

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Jack asked.

  Without hesitation, she nodded. “It feels right.”

  Jack wished that he felt so confident, but there were too many things holding him back. He still had a family who loved him, a town that he missed.

  And then there was Aubrey.

  She could do amazing things. He’d followed her every motion in the school, tracked her every step, and he’d been amazed at how much she’d changed. She acted like a soldier now, after just one week.

  But she’d almost been caught. And sh
e’d had to fight. And Jack wanted nothing more than to protect her.

  He pointed up at the sky. “I wish you could see this,” he said. “I’ve never seen so many stars.”

  Not just stars. He could discern the shadows on the rims of moon craters, the vague clouds of nebulae, the circular disk of Andromeda, the moons of Jupiter. The night sky seemed to be lit up with Christmas lights, and it filled everything around him with light.

  He wondered how bright it really was—whether he should be able to see each of Aubrey’s eyelashes, the splashes of color in her irises. He used to think her eyes were gray, but they weren’t; they were blue and green and yellow and brown. They were like little impressionist paintings, filled with a hundred colors that created the illusion of gray.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “What?”

  Aubrey grinned. “You’re staring at me.”

  He felt his face flush. “Sorry. I was just . . . My eyes are so much better now.”

  She laughed, and then put her hands to her face. “My pores must be enormous.”

  “No! No, that’s not it at all.” He didn’t know what to say without sounding stupid. He used to be so comfortable with Aubrey, but that was because she was just one of the guys. The one time he had tried to change things, she’d said no. That had been months ago.

  He took both her hands in his. Aubrey’s were cold and rough, from too many obstacle courses and push-ups in the dirt. But he didn’t care. They could be coarse as dried leather and he wouldn’t care.

  He opened his mouth to talk, but she spoke first.

  “Promise me something,” she said.

  “Anything.”

  “They’re going to assign us together,” she said.

  “What? How do you know?”

  She smiled wryly. “Because I spy on people.”

  “You need to be careful.”

  “I’m okay,” she said, turning his wrist and looking at his watch. “Just promise me something. They were worried about one thing—that I’d be in danger and that you’d come charging in, being stupid.”