“That’s right. And then Brayden went to get the men’s guns from where we had hidden them and he fell…”
“Yes, that was the shot you heard.” Josie stepped in. “Brayden shot himself in the shoulder. Fortunately, he’s okay. He’s going to be just fine.”
The kids looked so puzzled, you could almost see question marks spinning in their eyes.
“But there were two shots,” Max protested.
I looked at Josie.
“No,” she said. “That was just the ricochet.”
“The what?” Chloe asked.
“A ricochet,” Josie repeated. “Like an echo.”
“I don’t think so,” Max said, crossing his arms.
“Where’s Robbie?” Ulysses asked.
“Well, that’s the thing,” I said, bending down. “Robbie left. He wanted to go and find our parents as soon as possible.”
“And get help for Mr. Appleton,” I added. I just didn’t have it in me to tell them he’d died.
I looked at Josie and my look conveyed: Let them accept the bad news about Robbie first, then we’ll tell them about Mr. Appleton later.
It must have conveyed that, because she said, “Yes, Mr. Appleton is sleeping now. A very deep sleep. We must not disturb him.”
Caroline and Henry started crying. Ulysses was already dissolving in tears.
“But there is good news,” I said, scrambling. “Robbie left Luna behind. He said he wanted Ulysses to have Luna, because he’s such a good boy.”
Ulysses buried his face in Josie’s shirt.
“Let’s call her now,” Josie said. “Luna! Luna!”
The kids started calling Luna in their sweet little voices.
Josie looked up at me.
“Breakfast,” she said. “Something with a lot of protein.”
* * *
By the time I had fed the kids their breakfast of egg-and-cheese Hot Pockets, Niko and Alex had Jake all geared up. I brought a tray with food on it to them, where they were getting ready, in the Media Department.
Jake wore layer upon layer of sweatpants and sweatshirts—M through XXL. He looked like a padded dummy. They hadn’t wrapped his head yet so he sort of had a pinhead effect going on—this very round, puffy body with Jake’s regular-size head poking out and grinning at us all.
“What are you doing?” Max asked.
The kids all laughed at Jake. He looked so silly.
Niko shot me a look that said, You didn’t tell them?
I sighed and shrugged my shoulders. We’d had plenty to tell them, already.
Jake had a backpack, which I saw was stocked with jerky, trail mix, and water, as well as two extra flashlights.
I knew he also had one of the guns.
God, I hoped it was enough to keep him safe.
Alex was finishing the hookup of the video walkie-talkie.
The walkie-talkie was strapped to Jake’s torso by layer upon layer of duct tape. This gave the chest section of Jake’s ensemble a weird, girdled look. The camera side of the walkie-talkie pointed out. An earpiece was wired up Jake’s neck, taped down to his skin, as if he was a narc going on a drug bust, or maybe an FBI guy.
“How do I look, booker?” Jake asked me.
He looked like a fat super-gadget-oriented exercise fanatic.
“You look tough, man,” I answered.
“Liar.” He laughed.
It was good to see him with some purpose again. He still looked pale and bedraggled, but at least he was smiling.
All the kids gathered around, but still gave us space to work. Josie patiently explained what was about to happen.
The kids were amped.
Chloe squeezed Luna hard. That dog was going to have to get used to a lot of love.
She was a good dog, just licked Chloe’s face until Chloe released her.
Alex switched on the walkie-talkie and then crossed to a bigtab. It was one that had been in a box, so it hadn’t been damaged at all by the quake. Now, it was plugged in to the power system and had a cable slotted into its AV IN port, which ran to the other walkie-talkie.
Alex turned it on, and suddenly an image came up—it was Caroline and Henry, who happened to be standing right in front of Jake, huddled together and sucking their thumbs.
“Hey!” they said in unison, seeing themselves on the bigtab.
We all cheered.
Jake turned his body, and as he did, the image on the monitor panned across us.
The light was dim. It was hard to make us out totally, but there we were. Dirty, I noticed. We all looked a lot dirtier and scrawnier on camera than we did to my eye.
Maybe I’d just gotten used to our level of grime.
“This is awesome,” Jake said.
He bounced up and down and the image bounced up and down on the screen. He got all up in Max’s face and the image on the screen zoomed in on a very happy Max, sticking out his tongue and making a silly face.
“Okay,” Alex said. “Say something.”
“What up, what up?” Jake said. “I am broadcasting to you live from the Greenway on the Old Denver Highway in Monument, Colorado!”
The volume was way too low, but we could hear his faint, tinny voice coming out of the walkie-talkie.
“See if you can hear me,” Alex said.
Alex sat on the ground next to the walkie-talkie.
“Can you hear me, Jake?” he said into it.
“Yes. Jesus, it’s loud in my ear,” Jake complained with a grin. “Man, this is awesome. I feel like an astronaut!”
Niko stepped forward.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Niko said. “We know it’s dangerous out there, Jake.”
“Dude,” Jake said. “I got it all under control, Niko Knacko.”
“Niko Knacko,” Max echoed with a smile.
Jake was back. Fun-loving Jake.
This was what he had needed, I thought to myself. Jake needed a chance to be a hero again.
Astrid appeared.
“Brayden’s temperature is rising,” she said. “I don’t like how he looks. He’s thrashing around.”
“Then there’s no time to waste,” said Jake. “Let’s get this thing going.”
Astrid looked away.
“I’m going to go sit with Brayden,” she said.
“I’ll keep you company,” Sahalia said.
Sahalia seemed subdued and quiet now. The two girls went off together.
Astrid couldn’t meet Jake’s eyes.
“See you soon, Astrid,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said.
“Let’s get your head wrapped,” Niko said to Jake.
Alex and Niko had figured out a system of an air mask, with several of those fleece ski masks with the eyes and nose cut out, over the top of the whole thing.
Niko brought the heavy rubber air mask down over Jake’s face.
Jake put his hand up and futzed with the earpiece and the microphone, getting them in a comfortable place under the mask.
“Jake, can you hear me?” Alex asked as Niko began putting the ski masks over Jake’s head. It was hard to get them over the air mask.
“It’s okay,” Jake said, trying to wave Niko off.
“No,” Niko said. “Just give me a second.”
So Jake stood still while Niko fitted the fleece balaclavas into place.
“Can you say something?” Alex repeated.
“Testing, testing, one-two-three,” Jake said. His voice came muffled—both through the mask and through the small speakers of the walkie-talkie.
Alex looked at all of us.
“It’s a go,” he said. “We’re a go.”
“Okay, let’s go,” Niko said.
Everyone started to walk toward the storeroom to see Jake off.
“Wait!” I yelled. “You guys can’t all go back there.”
“Why not?” Niko asked.
“There’s stuff back there,” I said, willing him to remember that Jake and I had stowed Robbie’s bl
oody, destroyed body back there.
“Oh yeah,” Jake said, the sound muffled through the mask.
“And the compounds.”
“You’re right,” Niko said. “Alex can help Jake up onto the roof.”
This meant Alex needed to outfit himself with a gas mask and a couple of layers of clothing, too.
“Guys,” Chloe said to the kids. “Let’s get chairs and popcorn and treats for the show!”
The other kids ran, giggling and excited, to go bring over comfy furniture from the Living Room.
Ulysses was the only one of them who still seemed sad about Robbie and Mr. Appleton. The rest of them were psyched to be watching TV.
“Good luck, Jake,” I said, while we waited for Alex to gear up.
Jake shook my hand, then Niko’s.
“Hurry back,” Niko added.
* * *
The kids were still off foraging for snacks, when, on the screen, Jake walked past Robbie’s body on the air mattress. I stood in front of the monitor to block it, just in case one of them came back.
On the bigtab, I saw as Jake and Alex walked up the metal staircase leading to the hatch.
Alex pulled a big metal pin out of a socket and the hatch swung down.
Jake must have gone first. Then on the monitor, I saw Alex’s masked face. Alex handed up to Jake a bundle of chains and rungs. The safety ladder, I realized. Then Jake extended his hand and helped Alex onto the roof.
Just the thought of Alex being up on the roof scared me.
Jake clipped the safety ladder to the side of the building and then the rungs fell down away from the camera, into darkness.
Jake turned back to Alex and shook his hand.
“Hey, little man, don’t worry.” Jake’s voice came through the walkie-talkie. “I’ll be fine.”
Alex said something we couldn’t hear.
“You got it,” Jake answered.
The kids came running back with pillows and beanbag chairs. Chloe came from the opposite direction with a big bag of popcorn, a bag of miniature candy bars and a six-pack of Mountain Dew. Yikes.
The image moved as he went rung by rung, down the ladder, but it was very dark.
“I can’t see anything!” Chloe complained.
“Me either,” echoed Max.
“Make it lighter!” demanded Chloe.
She moved to touch the walkie-talkie.
“Nobody touches that but Alex!” Niko shouted.
Chloe jumped.
“Where is he, then?”
“He’s pulling the ladder back onto the roof and then he has to wipe down. Now shut up and watch!”
I’d never heard him so stern. But I was glad. I just wanted to watch Jake TV.
It was hard, actually, to make anything out. Every step Jake took made everything shaky, and it was so dark.
“Can you stand still for a moment so we can see what you’re seeing?” Niko asked softly into the walkie-talkie.
“All right, what you’re seeing here is the sky and the horizon.”
Jake stopped and we saw, well, not much, really. A dark sky and a dark ground and a glowing strip of light between them.
To me, it looked like black-and-white footage of the sky before dawn. But I knew it was at least eight a.m. Maybe ten.
“We’re not seeing much,” Niko said. “Are you able to see?”
“It’s dark,” Jake said. “But I can see. I don’t want to turn on a flashlight because I feel like it would attract attention. But I’ll tell you, it’s darker than I expected out here.”
So now we knew something. It was darker out there than we were expecting.
The image jounced with his footsteps. We could see faint spots of color and different areas of grayness, but we couldn’t make out anything.
“I’m in the parking lot. The cars are still here from the storm. They’re all beat to heck. Check this out.”
He brought his torso close to a car. In the light reflected from the walkie-talkie, we got a close-up of the surface of the car. It looked rough and pitted. Wafers of paint sat atop the rusty, flaky surface.
“I think the compounds are eating away at the metal.…”
We could tell he started walking again by the loping bounce of the image.
“Just picking up the pace a bit,” Jake said. “My eyes have sort of adjusted out here. Don’t want to waste any time.”
According to the route we had all worked out, Jake was now heading through the parking lot and across Old Denver Highway. He had maybe a quarter of a mile to go to reach I-25.
Just past it, on the other side of Struthers Road, was the Lewis-Palmer Regional Hospital.
“Okay, now. I can see the highway,” Jake said. “There’s lights, actually.”
“Oh my God!” Josie said, excited.
Alex came running back.
His face was red, fresh-scrubbed, and he wore new clothes.
“Did I miss anything?” he asked us. He went right to the walkie-talkie and took his place in front of it.
“He’s walking through the parking lot,” Niko said. “There’s lights near the highway.”
On the screen we could see circles of light, the size of a Tic Tac, bouncing in the distance.
“There’s the lights!” shouted Henry.
Jake’s footfalls sped up for a moment, and then they slowed.
Suddenly, the image went black.
“Someone’s coming,” he whispered.
“What’s happening?” Chloe said. “Why can’t we see?”
“I think he’s crouching down,” I said.
We waited.
“Ask him if he’s okay,” Alex said to Niko.
“No,” Niko said. “If he’s in danger, they could hear the sound from his earpiece.”
Finally Jake spoke.
“They’re gone,” he said.
“Who was it?” Niko asked. “Could you tell?”
“It was two people. Walking together. They have suitcases. The rolling kind.”
Two postapocalyptic nomads with rolling suitcases. Surreal.
“They were all bundled up so I couldn’t see if they were women or men or anything.”
“Jesus,” Josie moaned. She looked stricken. “They could be anybody.”
It was true. They could be people we knew. But Jake couldn’t stop them and ask them. They might rob him or kill him or God knows what.
But they could have been people we knew (and loved).
Like our parents.
* * *
I looked behind me and caught sight of Astrid. I guess she’d left Brayden in Sahalia’s care.
Astrid was sitting cross-legged on the floor at the back of the group. Luna had her head in Astrid’s lap and Astrid was rubbing the old dog’s head absentmindedly.
On the screen, the lights got steadily bigger. Every few moments they would dip or blink off, as Jake’s motions took his torso away from them, but then they would come back.
“The ground’s real boggy,” Jake said. “The plants are all dead and everything is, like, rotting.”
He slowed.
We could hear his breathing, amplified by the face mask he was wearing.
We all shifted in our seats. Caroline and Henry were gripped on to each other like they were a life raft.
“Here’s what I’m seeing,” Jake whispered to us. “The highway is mostly clear. There are cars every once in a while, but at least one lane is clear. There are some kind of military-looking lights at the side of the road in intervals of, I don’t know, fifty yards apart, maybe.
“There are lots of cars pulled off on the sides. Looks like they’ve broken down, but I can’t tell how long they’ve been there. Could be from the hail, or more recent. The road’s in bad shape. The quake broke it up in places. The quake broke everything up.”
Jake’s breaths were rhythmic and steady. It seemed too intimate a thing, to listen to his breathing like that.
And then it grew faster.
“Just… picki
ng up… the pace a bit…,” he said, slightly breathless. “Hard to breathe in this thing.”
There were a few streetlights on, which was somehow surprising to me.
“Okay,” Jake said. “Just a nice stroll on a nice quiet street.” His voice was nervous.
“The streetlights are on?” Niko asked into the walkie-talkie.
“Yeah, and I’ve got the gun out. Just in case anyone’s watching me.”
Jake walked in the darkness, for what seemed like forever.
The kids ate their popcorn and I wanted to shush them, but I couldn’t even spare the breath.
Jake approached the hospital.
“It’s not looking good,” he said quietly. “It’s dark. No lights anywhere.”
We saw a ghost of a building, windows crashed out.
“The hospital’s dead,” Jake said. “There’s nobody here.”
“Shoot.” Niko dropped his head into his hands. “What are we going to do?”
On the screen, the walls of the hospital seemed to be fluttering, moving.
“What are we seeing?” Alex asked into the walkie-talkie, taking it over from Niko.
“There’s flyers up. Letters, notes, pictures,” Jake said.
He drew close so we could see.
A flyer of a photo of a middle-aged man: “Missing, Mark Bintner. Last seen on Mount Herman Road.”
“Have you seen my daughter?” A photo of a pretty blond toddler.
A hastily scribbled note: “Grandma, I’m still alive! Going to Denver.”
“Everyone’s gone,” Jake said as he continued to scan over the flyers.
There were multiple flyers saying the same thing: ALL SURVIVORS GO TO DENVER TO BE AIRLIFTED TO ALASKA. DEPARTURES EVERY 5 DAYS ON THE FIVES.
“Every five days on the fives,” I said.
“What day is it?” Josie murmured.
“It’s the twenty-eighth,” Niko answered grimly.
There was a photo of a girl in a prom dress.
A photocopy showing someone’s grandmother.
A picture of a woman taped to a paper: “Anne Marie, Find me at DIA!—Lou”
And there, our Christmas card.
“Stop!” I screamed. “Tell him to go back. That’s our Christmas card! That’s our Christmas card!”
Niko told Jake to go back and he found the card.
My mother, my father, Alex, and me.
Standing in front of our house.
Smiling, waving.
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