by Peter Telep
“Is there radiation out there?” Julie asks. “Like fallout or whatever?”
“The air’s breathable,” Hollis says. “We don’t need suits unless we get close to ground zero in the city.”
“I want a suit,” Keane says. “When you’re exposed for a long time, you get sick and die like my father.”
“It all depends,” says Hollis. “No worries, though, I’ve got all the gear we need. And oh, yeah, take these. Ear pro. Put ‘em in.”
He hands each of us a pair of foam earplugs. Guns are way louder in real life than they are in the movies, so we’ll have protection but can still hear each other talk.
We jog down the corridor, with beams from the soldier’s lights slashing across the walls and floor.
One soldier brings up the rear, with the three of us in the middle. Hollis and the other grunt take point.
At the next intersection, the ceiling rumbles like a T-rex is trampling overhead.
I can’t help but grab Julie’s hand. It’s nothing manly or romantic. I’m having a panic attack.
And she is, too.
Wait a minute. What the hell are we thinking?
I come to a dead stop, and Julie nearly drags me over. The soldier behind us alerts the others.
“What’s wrong?” Hollis asks.
“You work with my Dad. So you know Tommy.”
“I know the major.”
“And you know he’s here.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So we’re not leaving without him.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“The detention center’s on the north end,” Hollis says.
“They locked him up?” I ask.
“What do you think? He’s an alien here.”
“Well he’s not a criminal!”
“They did it for his own protection.”
“You think he’s protected now?” Julie asks.
“Doesn’t matter. My orders are to get you out, not him.”
I fold my arms over my chest. “Good luck with that—because like I said, we’re not leaving without Tommy.”
Hollis looks at me. “We’ll drag you out of here…”
I throw my hands into the air. “Come on. You know we can’t leave him.”
He sighs, wrestling over the decision.
“Hollis, please…” Julie says.
Finally, he curses and regards his men. “Take Keane and Julie to the bike park. We’ll meet you there.”
“Sounds perfect,” Keane says, grabbing Julie’s hand.
Julie worms out of his grip. “I’m going with you, Doc.”
“Cool.”
Keane smirks. “Then I’ll see you there.”
We look at him, trying to make him feel guilty for leaving.
“All right,” he groans. “Let’s die together.”
Hollis snickers. “Kids...” He jumps into his persona, and flits off in a ball of static.
Meanwhile, his person waves us on. “Stay close. There could be more coming up behind us.”
We reach the end of the corridor, where Hollis boots open a door leading into stairwell.
Rounds chew into the door jam—
And the soldier behind me drops in a heap.
I steal the barest glance at our attackers:
Khaki-colored head and neck wraps.
Mirrored goggles.
Black body armor and leather kilts.
They’re a strange cross between Robocop, middle-eastern terrorists, and desert samurai.
“Go, go, go!” Hollis screams, pounding up the staircase to pass me.
As I practically throw myself down the stairs to join Julie, Keane, and the other soldier, Hollis unleashes a volley of rifle fire that rattles the walls.
The nomads return fire, their rifles sounding like popcorn or firecrackers.
Hollis hammers them again. Three shots, six, a dozen, the bullet casings clinking to the floor.
A breath of silence... then...
Footfalls draw near. It’s Hollis taking the stairs two, then three at a time. “Hit the deck!” he cries—
As an explosion rocks the stairwell behind him, sending us hollering and tumbling down to the next landing.
We crash on top of each other, the wind knocked out of us. We’re like a pile drunken teenagers in a bounce house.
I climb off of Keane while Hollis gets Julie to her feet. He shoves open the next door, sweeps the corridor with his rifle, and then gives us a hand-signal to follow.
I’m still trying to see straight. I rub my eyes, cough, and then fall in with the rest.
At the same time, my hands are itching for a rifle, but this isn’t one of my games, where I can open fire on anyone who turns a corner. Actually, it’s probably a good idea that I’m unarmed. I’d probably shoot myself or one of Hollis’s men.
So I just stick close to Hollis as he leads us toward a bay area and the eight-wheeled rover thing parked near the wall. It’s like a golf cart with seating for six and reminds me of a scene in an Austin Powers movie. Hollis works the control panel, and we climb aboard, two in front, three in the back. I ride shotgun.
“I’m walking point in my persona,” Hollis reports as he stars the rover. “Clear so far, but that could change. You sure you want to do this?” he asks me.
“Positive.”
“You know the major won’t approve.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s expendable. Just like me. He wouldn’t want us risking our lives for him.”
“Mister Hollis?” Julie calls from the backseat. “No one’s expendable. Now please, can we go find Tommy?”
Hollis glances sidelong at me. “Oorah.”
He works the accelerator with his right hand, and then grabs the steering bar, and we’re off like a herd of turtles—
Because the battery on this rover is dying.
Hollis slams his palms on the steering bar.
“This is all on me,” I tell them. “I bought a pepperoni pizza instead of plain cheese like I always do. I jinxed us. None of this would be happening.”
“Just get out,” Hollis says, reading a digital instrument panel. “Someone forgot to recharge this thing. We’re back to running!”
“It’ll take forever to get there,” says Keane.
“How big is this place?” I ask.
“It’s big. Like... big.”
“Like how many people?”
“Thousands...”
“Almost ten thousand and growing,” Hollis corrects. “And if we jog, we’ll be over there in a half hour—Earth time, that is.” He issues another of his trademark winks and rushes off, with all of us in tow, and Keane swearing under his breath.
As we run, my thoughts drift to Ms. Martha lying there in the dining hall. She looked really bad…
Keane charges up and says, “Hollis is lying, you know that, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s no way we can get there in a half hour...”
I just look at him, and then increase my pace. I don’t care if Hollis lied about that.
Tommy says that when you’re riding your bike up a mountain, you don’t look at the top. You just focus on the ground three feet in front of you.
And so I do.
Until we turn the next corner, where Hollis stops at a door on our left and works the glass control panel. He waves us into a maintenance room jammed to the ceiling with heavy machinery.
We double-time through the maze of pipes and humming compressors and machines having something to do with air filtration. We reach a rusty hatch on the other side, like the waterproof hatch on an old WWII submarine, with a wheel to open and close it.
“Where are we going?” asks Keane.
“Short cut,” Hollis says, gritting his teeth as struggles with the hatch wheel. “Ye of little faith.”
“Hey, I didn’t know about this, because obviously it’s not authorized.”
Julie slaps palms on the hatch wheel to help Hollis, and th
e wheel finally breaks loose with a muffled clunk. Once the hatch creaks open, Hollis’s light shines on a curving, rust-streaked wall inside.
We lift our feet one at a time to pass through the hatch and find ourselves in a tunnel even larger than the one in the bike park. The wall’s coated in a layer of thin dust, and the floor feels gritty with sand.
“Old aqueduct,” Hollis says. “Been here for thousands of years. No records of who built it. Probably the First Ones. Anyway, Martha and her team constructed the Palladium on top of it, and the pipes on the south end were restored to bring water down from the Highlands.”
“How’d you know this was here?” Keane asks suspiciously.
“Martha’s an old friend. She thought something like this might happen.”
“You mean the attack?” I ask.
“Exactly. Because of what this place represents.”
I frown. “And what’s that?”
“A second chance.”
Hollis slams shut the hatch and spins the wheel.
We’re about to head off when Keane stops. His eyes look pitch-black. He shivers hard then focuses on us. “I just went to the Hood. It’s all over the Community.”
“What is?” I ask.
He stares coldly. “Ms. Martha is dead. And people are saying the attack has something to do with you and her. Like they’re looking for you. Like all of this is your fault…”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I’m not sure how to deal with death.
Mainly because I never have.
My mother died, but I never knew her. Only Grace.
Dad said his parents passed away when he was in college, and Grace’s parents live in Seattle in some hippie retirement community, so I haven’t been to a grandparent’s funeral—or any other funeral.
We’ve never had a dog or cat or other small animal we’ve had to bury because Mom has terrible allergies, and Dad says we don’t have time for animals anyway.
However, when I was in sixth grade, I did win a goldfish at a church carnival. I gave it to Julie to make her like me. The fish died. She cried and hated me for giving her a sick fish.
The truth is, my only experience with death has been through games and books and Blu-rays.
For example, in one of Dad’s favorite movies, one that I’ve mentioned before, Captain Kirk says that how we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life.
I get that. I cried when Spock died. I understand that you need a plan to cope with loss, but I’ve been lucky. I’ve never known the pain of real death. It always happens to someone else. Someone like Keane. He lost his entire family, and now his boss. I’m unsure what to do...
“Keane, I’m really sorry about all of this.”
He doesn’t respond. Just that icy stare.
But then he reacts out of nowhere—
Lunging for me. Locking hands around my throat.
My air’s cut off.
He drives me toward the wall, where my head snaps back and bangs on the stone.
His grip tightens. I feel the pulse in my neck.
I seize his wrists, but even with all my strength, I can’t free myself.
I should kick him, stomp on his foot, but the world grows dim around the edges. I’m a sick gold fish. Only seconds left. Maybe Julie will cry for me too.
The soldiers shout and move in.
Hollis raises his arms—but he moves in slow motion, like he won’t get to me in time.
I’m not seeing straight. Must be... the lack... of air. Like my ribs... are broken again.
Vision blurry. Darkness coming.
What’s happening?
Without a conscious thought, I’m in my persona, standing beside us.
Maybe this is a fight or flight mechanism, a reaction to stress that Keane never told me about.
The same thing happened when Steffanie was about to kill me. I wound up in that tree looking down on us. Maybe this is the wreath’s way of trying to protect itself?
I’m not sure, but now I’m tuned in to my own reality TV show starring me and Keane, and he’s like some demonic skeleton with his claws on me. And yep, I don’t look so great on TV. Kind of blue, really.
You know, this would be a good place for a commercial break to create a little drama.
Or I could just shut up and rescue myself.
I wrap my glowing arm beneath Keane’s chin. I choke him from behind. I don’t want to hurt him.
I give another tug—
But then my muscular arm is torn away from his neck.
I’m thrown across the tunnel. I’m about to scream when I crash into the opposite wall, rebound, and then belly flop onto the sandy floor.
This once perfect persona, the one without pain, feels like a real body that’s been run over by a bus.
“Get up!” Keane shouts.
Wincing in pain, I push up onto my hands and knees.
Now Keane’s in his persona, looming over me.
It was one on one. Now it’s two on two.
Behind us, our persons are still locked in combat, and he’s ready to finish the job, even as Hollis and his men lunge for us…
There’s murder in Keane’s shimmering eyes, and saliva rings his lips.
He boots me in the face.
I’m on my back.
And I’ve been here before, in the boy’s locker room. Three guys pin me to the tile. They want my Darth Vader notebook, and one of them pulls the iPod from my pocket, along with the twenty bucks dad gave me.
I’m too scared to do anything. I keep thinking that if they give me a black eye, there’s no chance in the world that Julie will like me. So I beg them to stop. They call me every name in the book. I don’t care. But for weeks after, I have violent dreams about standing up for myself.
I bolt to my feet, feeling that same anger clench my hands into fists. I take a wild swing at Keane and miss. He punches me in the stomach, even as I turn and land one on his cheek.
His head jerks back. His eyes go wild. He starts wailing on me with both fists so fast that all I can do is block my face.
Julie’s screaming for us to stop.
Hollis and his men are in their personas now…
I duck and throw myself against Keane, using my shoulder to drive him into the wall. Before I pull back, I land a solid blow to his ribs.
He coughs and swings like a blind man, grazing me in the head. The tunnel rumbles and flashes.
I taste something metallic, and yeah, that’s blood.
And then without a thought...
I return to my body—drawing in the deepest breath of my life. My chest aches. Must be my persona reacting to the fight with Keane. But what happened?
Someone saved me?
My back’s to the wall. I slide down onto my rump. Julie’s with me, holding my head up, telling me to breathe, keep breathing, you’re okay, you’re okay. Sometimes she repeats herself when she’s really stressed out.
One of Hollis’s men has Keane in a chokehold.
Hollis grabs Keane by the chin. “You can’t blame them for Martha’s death, because you don’t know anything.”
“I know she’s dead!”
Hollis regards his soldier. “Lock him to the hatch wheel.”
“No, he’s coming with us,” I rasp.
“You mean the kid who just tried to kill you?”
“Yeah,” I tell him.
“I’m trying to help you here, Doc. You need to help me.”
“I will.”
“Then he stays. I’m not dealing with him.”
Still lightheaded and out of breath, I grab Julie’s arm and get to my feet. She helps me across the tunnel, where Keane glares at me.
All I have is the truth, and if that doesn’t work, then so be it. “Keane, I didn’t mean for any of this to happen, and really, I’m not sure what my father did. We got knocked out and brought here.”
“You don’t get it. Ms. Martha was all I had left… But you know what? I don’t care. Lock me up. L
eave me here.”
“It’s not our fault,” Julie says. “And whatever Doc’s father did, you can’t blame him for that. You’re a really smart guy, Keane, and I know you wanted to help us.”
“I gave you the benefit of the doubt, but you...” he starts to break down. “You have no idea what happened! My father... he was so strong... and then he was... and I tried to take care of him. I tried to save him. But I couldn’t.”
I drift over to Hollis. “Please. We can’t leave him behind. He’ll be all right.”
“I’ll shoot him if he tries anything.”
“He won’t. Thank you.”
Hollis nods to his man, who releases Keane.
“I still hate you,” Keane informs me.
“I don’t care. You’re a fighter. Don’t quit.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means you’re right. I don’t know what you’ve gone through. I’m just a geek who had a pretty good life before all this. But Julie and I need you.”
“I’m not your teacher anymore.”
“Whatever, let’s just get out of here, then you can decide what you want to do. Okay?”
“I guess so.”
I ball my hand into a fist and present it to him.
He takes a step back and raises both of fists.
“No, fight’s over,” I say, pointing at my hand. “We bump fists now. It means we respect each other. We agree.”
Tentatively, Keane lowers one fist.
He thinks about it, and then drops his hand. “What if I don’t respect you?”
I’m trying to patch up this wound between us, and he’s making it impossible. I raise my voice. “Bump my fist—or we’re leaving you behind. Got it?”
He sighs. We bump fists. Probably the most awkward fist bump I’ve ever had.
Thankfully, we’re saved by Hollis, whose glowing persona returns to the tunnel and dissolves into his chest. “Just back from a recon. We need to move—right now!”
As his order echoes, the hatch wheel behind us spins and creaks. One of Hollis’s men lunges for it, hangs on, and begins holding back, while Hollis purses his lips and then signals us forward.
“But what about him?” I shout, raising my chin at the soldier clutching the wheel.
Hollis doesn’t answer.
I chance another look back—
Just as the door flies open, throwing the solider behind the hatch.
