The Nuclear Winter

by Brian Thompson

  “Switch the setting from stun to kill,” he said to my mother. “Know how to do that?”

  “Yeah.” She fiddled with the Ordnance controls before locating the correct switch.

  At least I knew that about her. She attended a marksmanship class twice a month with her girlfriends. I always thought it was pointless since she didn’t own Ordnance herself, but apparently, she was just refreshing her assassin-level skills.

  “Twenty round charge.” He pulled off the inside panel frame near the window and motioned she should do the same. Air flooded the transport. He’d hollowed out part of the chassis to give them space to shoot. “Aim true. These guys don’t miss often.”

  Their faces darkened. They understood what I didn’t. We might get caught, and I had no idea what those consequences were. Torture? Death? Could anything be worse than death? Live dissection?

  He coughed — the same kind of phlegm-filled way he’d done when I met him. “Forget what I said before. Ram through and right turn outside the garage.”

  “Glass is charge-proof, right?” I asked him.

  He answered me with “Resistant.”

  Resistant? What the —

  “At best. Mash the gas, turn right, and clear the opening. Go!”

  Mass vehicular homicide and then turn right. Got it. Unlucky for us, there was a line of transports checking out. At the front was a group of policemen and men with white shirts and black ties and slacks conducting eye scans for identification.

  This was a real problem. I was breaking several laws. Mom’s fake identity would pass. God knows what the old man’s eye scan would turn up.

  He opened his window. “Two at twelve o’ clock. One plus the eye scanner. Both armed.”

  “Four on my side,” Mom told him as he rolled up the window. “Armed. They’re moving back in the line, Peters. No chance we’re getting through.”

  “What happens if we get caught?”

  Old Guy Peters leaned forward and placed his hands on the sides of our seats. “Back up, Lucy,” he whispered. “Slowly.”

  The transport eased into reverse without incident. But we couldn’t climb the incline. Not unless I hit the gas, but the pedal was stuck. Frustrated, I used more muscle and the engine gunned. We zipped backward until I heard them yelling at me, and I regained the presence of mind to brake. The tire squeals drew the attention of the guard on my left side who pointed in our direction. I shifted back into drive, floored the gas, and zipped around the line of transports. Blue Ordnance fire cracked the windshield. A burst of light flashed past my right ear, and pain seared my temple.

  We crashed through the yellow and black security arm on the entrance side. The metal clunked against the transport’s chassis and dropped onto the street. It was a small miracle I didn’t hit anybody. For a good five seconds, I was in the wrong lane. I swerved to the right, adjusting enough to avoid oncoming traffic, and course corrected. Clouds of gray tire smoke wafted behind us, and I smelled the rubber through the vents. Peters let out a howl, like I’d won a gold medal for driving, and my mother said nothing, which was odd for her.

  My right eye stung, and the corner of my vision was cloudy. “I can’t see,” I said to nobody. Neither of my passengers said a word.

  We rolled through a green traffic signal and continued at a regular speed up the hilly street. When I glanced at the rearview mirror, I noticed a wicked slash mark on my face. I’d been shot, grazed, really, which explained the smell of burnt hair and the hot stickiness and stinging at my ear. My first battle wound. I wouldn’t get a badge or anything better than a crazy story to tell my friends. Natalee. She’d hear it. I’d get back to her. First things first. “Everybody okay?” I asked them.

  Old Guy Peters moaned and rubbed the back of his wrinkled neck. “The car deflected most of the blasts, and of all the…” His voice trailed off. He leaned forward into the space between the seats. Steady, calm, but firm, he told me, “Pull over.”

  The road didn’t have a clearly defined shoulder. Only a rumble strip and a bike lane. What was the emergency? I didn’t ask, but I did as he said just as I’d gotten into a driving rhythm. Why did adults make things always sound hard? “Wait until you get to middle school. Things are harder.”

  No, they weren’t. I could’ve handled a little more of my classwork if I cared or if I wasn’t in and out of the hospital with chemo treatments and checkups. Driving was no big deal[XW58] even in an old school “car” like this one — I could handle it.

  I put the transport in park, unbuckled my safety belt,[XW59] and readjusted myself. Mom was slumped down against the window. Three Ordnance holes had burned through her bodysuit, and its cloaking device was rapidly flickering on and off.

  And her body wasn’t moving.

  Everything became blurs of colored light and slurred words. She was dead. Dead. I had nothing left to live for. For all the fights we’d had, and the times I’d said I hated her but didn’t, I wanted to go with her. She’d be in purgatory or Heaven, and I’d be here. The guy who’d shot me should’ve aimed a couple inches to his right and put me down. I wished he had. Sure, the woman annoyed me a good sixty percent of the time, but what would I do without her? I’d have no connections to speak of.

  I rested my hand on her lifeless arm. Frigid air whisked through the transport’s cabin. A force pushed Mom’s seat so hard it shook once. Then twice. In my stupor, I snapped back to the present. Peters had jabbed her remaining epinephrine pens into her leg. The sight of syringes dangling from her thigh muscle brought me back to reality. That was the answer. Kick-start her abilities, and the healing process would take care of itself. Except she still hadn’t budged. “Did it work?” I asked him.

  He pressed two fingers into the side of her neck. “No.”

  “Do something!” I screamed.

  “Get in the back,” he told me.

  I did it as if my life, and not my mother’s, depended on it. Once I got there and secured myself, Old Guy Peters limped to the driver’s seat. He dropped down, rested his cane near my mother’s feet, and slapped his Ordnance into my hand. “Don’t be shy with this,” he told me. “It’s either you or them.”

  He gunned the engine, and we sped off zipping around transports and ignoring traffic signals. After a few miles, we attracted the attention of one police cruiser. Then two. The flashing lights and blaring sirens were magnets. Three, four cruisers. I stopped counting. The word about us was out, and we were in a full-on, high-speed chase.

  My heart beat hard. Should I try to shoot out their tires like people do in action holofilms? Besides the shake of my sweat-drenched hands, the transport kept hitting bumps. I was lucky I hadn’t already shot myself.

  Gathering up the courage, I located the homemade turret in the transport paneling. As soon as I had poked the firearm through it, the policemen opened fire on us. The transport’s blast-resistant chassis deflected many of their shots. The few that hit the glass cracked it. Old Guy Peters cursed and shouted for me to return fire. I closed my eyes and pulled the trigger. There was no telling where that blast went. The kickback pushed my hand against the chassis’ metal, and I almost dropped the Ordnance onto the street.

  Taking a deep breath, I readjusted, aimed for the closest target, and squeezed off three straight rounds. Sparks flew from the front of the transport I’d hit, and it disoriented the driver enough that he crashed into the transport next to him. Now confident, I emptied the firearm and hit nothing else. The return fire continued. Another direct blast to the fractured rear windshield would probably break it.

  Our transport zoomed onto a highway on-ramp. Old Guy Peters steered us to the angled concrete shoulder. The policemen ceased fire but continued following us. He sped up, the vehicle hit another faster gear, and the distance between us and them widened.

  He’d done it. We were escaping!

  “Hey!” I shouted, looking up ahead. “Might want to actually get on the road there!”

  He ignored me. At the rate of speed and directio
n we were traveling, we were going to crash into a pillar supporting a bridge. In about thirty seconds. No big deal except the senior citizen was playing a game of chicken with an inanimate object. My fingertip edges tingled with hot pins and needles as I gripped Mom’s headrest. She hadn’t breathed in a couple of minutes. If Old Guy Peters didn’t turn off though, it wouldn’t matter.

  I cursed at him. “Get on the road!”

  He still said nothing. What am I going to do? Jumping out of the back seat meant I’d surely die, run over by a fleet of policemen. Staying here meant I could die, not that I would. The old man was toast, and Mom was…I didn’t want to think about it. Her safety belt was secured, and so was mine. The paneling looked as if it may contain self-inflating airbags. All transports had those, right? I resigned myself to whatever injuries I’d sustain from his crazy plan. At least there was a possibility I might survive.

  I closed my eyes and waited for the inevitable sound of crunching metal and shattering glass. Instead, I heard a large explosion. A boom shook and rattled the transport, but it was still moving. We slowed down and proceeded on a downward angle almost roller-coaster steep. I cracked one eye open then the other. Our surroundings were dark — an underground tunnel. Liquid splashed beneath the tires, and the headlights illuminated just a few feet in front of us. Not too long afterward, Old Guy Peters parked the transport on a platform. I followed his lead and stepped out. An underground cavern? A cave? The ceiling was high, and the walls were curved and seemingly made of stone.

  “Come here.” He motioned me over to the passenger side of the transport. After unbuckling her, he put his hands beneath Mom’s arms and grunted as he positioned her body out of the seat. I grabbed her feet. Together, we got her to the cave’s cool metal grid surface. The interior lights shone on her face. Being half Cape Verdean and Panamanian, I’d thought she should be more naturally tanned than she was. Still, her skin shocked me by how white it had become. I refused to believe she was dead.

  Old Guy Peters tossed the used needles aside, and he performed CPR. I recited as many Our Father prayers as I could. The thought of his lips touching my mother in any situation freaked me out more than him pumping her chest with his fist, but I let him do it.

  Good thing, because I heard her gasp.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Her next breaths were short. Shallow. Ragged. I struggled to catch air myself while anticipating her chest’s rising and falling. Eventually, it did. This continued. Though I couldn’t keep time, it passed like three years in slow motion. All we’d been through together, after everything, I couldn’t lose her. I couldn’t. It’d break me.

  The humid air smelled of stale water. We were in Ohio, underground. I had no idea how we ended up in a rock cave. From what I remembered, we had nearly crashed into a concrete highway pillar, and then…what? I accessed the communications display in my mask. No signal. Crap. Old Guy didn’t say much, not even when I needled him about whether Mom would live. He said superhuman biology was enhanced, complicated, and “tough to quantify.”

  Not a week ago, Mom told me my survival odds were “hard to accurately calculate.” My bone cancer behaved erratically. As the tumors got bigger and spread, Dr. Keller still wouldn’t commit to survival odds. Until last week when my case suddenly went terminal. Whatever the situation with my sickness, Mom spared little details with me. Aside from the situation with my father, she told it how it was. She knew me. I needed that. If there was a slight chance I’d win a fight, then I’d scrap like an animal. Otherwise, I’d give up. No sense in fighting a losing battle.

  For that, she deserved the same treatment from me. I stood at Mom’s feet. “Answer me. Is she going to live or not?”

  Old Guy [XW60]opened the transport’s trunk and grabbed a vintage flashlight from the storage space to examine our surroundings. He talked to me, I think, but all I heard were the gruff echoes of his mumbling voice and dripping liquid.

  “Hey!” he yelled at me. The stench of his liquor breath arrested my attention.

  “Huh?”

  He pressed a square on his yellow and black flashlight. Its bulb flickered dull orange. I hadn’t paid attention to the blackness. Except for that bit of illumination, we were completely in the dark.

  “Light it up.”

  I turned my attention away from Mom’s condition to hand him a death stare. “What?”

  “The power cell in this thing is dying, and I don’t want to waste the car’s battery.”

  “What’s a ‘battery’?”

  “Forget it and make some fire!”

  After giving him two one finger salutes, I let him know what he could do with his desire to see. I’d rather be in the dark, I told him. Would light help my mother’s breathing? No. Then, why help him? Anyway, his sketchy drug suppressed my adrenaline and hadn’t worn off, which irritated me further. All of this was his fault.

  Halfway through my angry tirade, my hand’s bones burned like fireworks were inside them. The building sensation shut me up. His shot had finally worn off. He’d given it to us at around the same time, so Mom’s powers should return soon, too, which had to be a good thing.

  “Concentrate,” he said with force. “Let your power stretch and unfold inside of you.”

  How? I tried it. Deep in my belly, the fire flared like an invisible twisting rope I tried to wave at and grab. Raising my arm into the darkness like I was in class, I cursed and squeezed my fist hard. Ironically, that’s when it happened. Orange sparks crackled between my fingers, and then they engulfed my hand. My suit glove didn’t melt. No pain.

  “Stop screaming!” he growled. “Focus and hold it.”

  I looked at Old Guy, expecting him to give me another level of instruction beyond six words. Instead, he opened his trunk, threw the flashlight inside, removed a shiny metal flask, unscrewed the top, and poured some liquid on the ground before taking a swig. Perfect time for a drink, at least in his mind, I guess. I was thirsty, too.

  Meanwhile, I admired my torch of a fist. “Is that flammable?”

  “No worries,” he said after another swallow. “You couldn’t light a match right now.”

  Out of anger, I cupped my hand and tried throwing flames at him. He laughed when nothing came of it. The next time, I closed my eyes and imagined a ball. I gasped when I opened them. A clear orange and yellow orb the size of a large marble sat in the center of my palm. It moved in my hand as if it was solid and not a fiery circle of nothing. Rolling it into my fingers, I chucked it at him, and he flinched although I’d missed him by a wide margin.

  He chuckled. “Practice. You throw like a girl.”

  I did as he said. After two dozen failed attempts, I was on the verge of giving up. That’s it. I didn’t have the power to stop whatever was after us. I throw like a girl because I am a girl. We were gonna die. All three of us. In my boiling frustration, I saw Old Guy eyeing my face. He saw tears welling in my eyes. I blinked them free, and he turned away, as if to dismiss my feelings. I had to do the same.

  Around trial number thirty, I grew the fire to the size of a baseball. Couldn’t throw to save my life, but I kept at it, winging shots into the darkness. Their arc curved to the left. Had to be my wrist. I adjusted to compensate. Once I accomplished that, the next challenge was speed. Did it matter how hard I threw? Kind of. When I released, a small flame trail followed and gave it extra push. I did this until my arms were sore, my stomach rumbled, and my throat was dry. Water was above us, and we couldn’t drink it.

  Old Guy had batted one of my errant fireballs to ignite a makeshift torch of dirty rags and a short metal pole. He lit and aggressively puffed a cigarette like it had made him angry.

  “Got another one?” I asked him.

  He pulled a slender white stick from his pocket and waved it at me. “You’re fourteen,” he said.

  “I’ve smoked worse.”

  “And it’s a bad habit. They can cause cancer, you know.”

  I snatched it from him and lit it on the fingers of my sm
oldering right glove. “That’s not funny,” I mumbled. My face perspired from my hand’s residual heat.

  He stated the obvious following a lengthy drag. “Wasn’t meant to be. It’s fact.”

  We would never be friends, but for a tiny second, I’d forgotten everything he’d done to us. Except put Mom in the condition she was. We had one thing in common. I had terminal cancer, and if he was as ancient as he said he was, he’d be in stage four hundred by now.

  “What do you think he will be like when you find him?”

  “Who?”

  “The great Jason Champion. Your father.”

  His name. I finally knew his name. Jason Champion. Nobody could take that away from me. Luciana Champion. Lucy Champion. Either would take getting used to. I’d been Lucy Sandoval my entire life,[XW61] and, come to find out, my last name was fake anyway.

  What did I think he would be like? My greatest hopes and wildest dreams. He’d call me “Lucy” from jump and run to hug me, long and hard, and it would be like he’d never missed all my life’s important moments. I’d trade them all for that. I’d never have to wonder where he was again. The explanations would be overwhelming and thrilling. No room for negativity. Not even my mother knew all of this. I’d hardly describe all of that to someone I did not trust. “I don’t know.”

  A smile escaped his wrinkled face. “Try not to care so much. Makes you weak.”

  Caring made me weak? “That’s stupid.”

  He recited a long list of people he’d lost over the years. Men and women of different ethnic backgrounds. Parents, his wife and son, girlfriends — a lot of girlfriends — acquaintances, friends and enemies and how he’d lost them. He’d made his point. The ones who hadn’t died violently he’d certainly outlived. “Even in fiction,” he continued. “Name one person of significant power, and their loved ones have faced threats. Why do you think you have no ‘family’ to speak of? None of us do! And — ”

  “Stop.”

  “Your mother — ”