by Alex Barnett
She wished she could still believe that God was still listening to prayers.
#
They were halfway to Eric Grant’s house when two things happened at once.
First, Mike Carter slammed Eric’s front door open and rushed out onto the porch. Even from a distance, Ava could see his craggy face was contorted in sheer terror.
Second, at least three Burnouts were suddenly thrown through the air on the other side of the barricade. Ava gaped as they fell back down to the earth, crashing to the street outside the barricade with a sick, wet thud.
“Lyddie!” Mike shouted, desperation like Ava had never heard cracking his voice. He raced down the steps, and now Jim and Eric appeared in the doorway behind him. They followed a half-second behind, confusion and concern on their face. With a start, Ava realized that Mike had to have seen Lydia and Caleb jumping the fence in Eric’s backyard.
“Shit,” Zack hissed. “Go, go, go! They keep yelling, this’ll all be for nothing.”
Ava was already running. Other shouts filled the night as the rest of their group spilled out of Andrew and Jill’s house, drawn by Mike’s cries. She sprinted across the court, catching up to Mike as he was about to scale the van.
“Wait!” she gasped, lunging forward. She clutched at Mike’s wrist, grabbing onto his arm and holding tight. He fought her for a moment, trying to shrug off her grip, before seeming to realize who it was.
“Ava!” Mike’s eyes were wild, more fear in them than she had seen since the Burnouts first appeared. “Lyddie—she—goddamn it, Ava get inside! I’ve got to get her!”
Ava braced herself, tugging on Mike’s arm, struggling to get him to look at her. “You can’t! Mike, please—Eric help me!—Mike, you can’t. You can’t go out there!”
Eric Grant skidded to a halt beside them, huffing like a bellows. He was bug-eyed and pale, darting nervous looks at the barricade, but he surged forward and shoved himself between Mike and the van. “She’s right…damn it, Mike, you’ll get us all killed!”
“You guys better look at this,” Jim interrupted, from where he was peering between one of the gaps in the barricade.
“What? What’s happening?”
With that, Mike jerked out of Ava’s hold, shoving past Eric with a strength that belied his age. Before any of them could protest he was scrambling up onto the van’s roof, crouching low against the chairs welded to it. For a single, agonizing moment, Ava thought he was going to jump down into the street. As she watched, though, he sagged against the chair, sinking to his knees on the metal roof. Exchanging an alarmed look with Eric, she scurried up onto the van herself, ignoring the clamor behind her as more of their group arrived.
She followed Mike’s example, crouching low by the chairs, but she needn’t have bothered. Her heart leapt into her throat. The Burnouts had all turned away from the barricade and were surging back out into the street. Lydia and Caleb were just ahead of the pack, sprinting. Ava zeroed in on her friend, watching as Lydia raced up the street, just praying, praying, praying that this would not be the last sight of her. That Lydia would not be one more person Ava loved who never came back.
Unconsciously, she reached over and grabbed Mike’s hand, squeezing it tight. A broken, wounded groan escaped the old man, and when she looked at him, his anguished eyes were glued to his granddaughter’s retreating form. But he did not try to follow. He did not do anything to draw the Burnouts back.
Lydia and Caleb made it to the corner that turned onto Brookhaven, well ahead of the pack pursuing them…but would they be able to keep up the pace? What if there was a larger group waiting for them? Ava watched in breathless terror, holding onto Mike’s hand so hard it felt like she might bruise him.
Lydia did not look back.
11
Mike climbed back down off the van without a word. Ava followed in scared silence, watching him. Her fear for Lydia was an electric current thrumming through her. Her palms were slick with sweat and the lump of ice in her stomach was growing with every breath. The others crowded around Mike as soon as his feet touched the ground. Emily and Jill were dead pale, while Iris looked as though she was about to cry. Jim slipped a heavy arm around his wife’s shoulders as Andrew snatched his ball cap off and twisted it in his hands. Eric just stared at the barricade in disbelief, his pale, watery eyes flicking to Mike’s face.
“What happened?!” Iris demanded, lunging toward Mike. There was wildness in her dark eyes as she looked between the barricade and Mike. The others crowded even closer.
“Mike, where’d those things go? Where’s Lydia?” Jill added, but she sounded as though she already knew.
“Gone,” Mike said. He raised his weapon and gave it a brief check before sliding it into the holster on his belt. “She and Reed led the swarm off.” His words were flat and emotionless. He might as well have been delivering a report. Ava had known him since she was seven, though, had seen him right after Lydia’s grandmother died. There was only a small shake in his fingers, only a slight rise in his breathing…but Mike was barely hanging onto his steadiness, now.
“Ava, sweetie…” Emily began, reaching out to draw Ava to her side.
Ava shied away from it, squeezing her arms around her middle. She thought she might fly apart any minute. The others were just looking at her and Mike, the fear and shock on their faces starting to change. Starting to tinge with sadness, and Ava wanted to scream at them to stop looking like that. Like Lydia wasn’t coming back. Like Lydia was already…was already…
“She’ll be fine,” Ava heard herself snap, glaring at Emily, at Jill and Andrew. At all of them. Anyone who was looking at her like she had just lost someone, like they had looked at her after Mike tried to go after her parents. “She’ll be back soon, and she’ll be fine. They both will.”
Ava tried to make her voice as hard as rock, tried to force out every shred of doubt, as though her belief would somehow protect her best friend. Lydia was strong and fast, and she knew the neighborhood better than almost anyone. She had a gun.
Lydia was a Psio, for God’s sake! If anyone could make it out there, it was her. Ava just had to hang onto that until she got back. Whatever Zack had shown her, Lydia believed that it was worth risking her life to prevent—they’d had no choice.
“What was she thinking?” Jill whispered, tears glittering in her sharp gray eyes. Andrew wound his arm around her waist. The woman looked almost as shaky as Ava felt, and for one of the few times since everything had started, Ava had no problem believing that she was almost seventy years old.
Eric Grant huffed and raked his hands back through his thin hair. “Mike—“ he began, sharing an uneasy glance with Mr. Perry. Lydia’s grandfather, however, cut him off with a sharp gesture. He squared his shoulders, before turning a hard gaze on Jill and Andrew.
“Where’s the brother?” he asked, calm and quiet. An even deeper hush fell over the rest of the group. “The kid…where is he?”
“Right here,” Zack said, his voice ringing out calmly over the court. The whole group whirled around almost that the same time. Zack was standing a few feet away, his back ramrod straight, and his cane off and collapsed into a small package again.
Mike’s expression grew stonier.
“Eric, Jim, I need you up top,” he said, his gaze focused squarely on Zack. “Anything moves out there, you come get me. Everyone else, I want all the weapons and ammo in Andrew’s place. Those things might come back or…or…Lyddie—” Mike faltered, swallowing hard a few times.
“Lydia might need backup when she and Caleb come back,” Emily interrupted. She began guiding Iris back towards the Royces’ house with a gentle hand on her back. Ava tried not to flinch at the supportive sympathy in Emily’s eyes when they passed. Jim and Eric exchanged a look as they nodded their agreement and began climbing the van.
Mike stalked forward like a shark speeding towards prey, and Ava found herself scrambling after him.
“Mike, Mike wait,” she whispered, “you don�
��t understand!” The others followed in grim silence. Ava could feel the tension in the air like a living thing, pressing down on the back of her neck. They were acting as though they expected Mike to just snap or something. It made Ava want to scream.
“Damn right I don’t understand!” Mike snapped. “So help me God, if anything happens to Lydia, I’ll—I’ll…” He broke off, unable to finish the thought.
“Now, Mike, hold up a second!” Andrew jogged after Mike with concern etched on his pale face. “Don’t do something you’re gonna regret.”
“Something I’m gonna regret?” he demanded, and it was only because she knew him well that Ava could hear the tremble underneath the words. “Lydia’s out there! My granddaughter—my little girl—don’t you talk to me about ‘gonna regret’ something!” The glare he leveled at Andrew could have set something on fire. “Get the weapons together, and get everyone in the house,” he ordered.
Andrew pressed his mouth into a thin line, but he took a step back, raising his hands in surrender. Ava took a deep, shuddering breath as Mike turned back towards Zack. Zack was not looking nearly as calm as he had a moment ago, clearly hearing the threat in Mike’s voice.
“Okay, look, I know,” he began, and got no farther.
“What. The. Hell. Are they doing?” Mike demanded. Zack’s bravado crumbled and he shrank back a step. For a moment, he looked even younger than her and Lydia, and so scared.
“It’s our only shot!” he protested. “None of you were doin’ anything, and you don’t know…it was going to be bad, okay? So bad. We did what we had to! Cal didn’t make her go with him!” Zack’s chest was heaving by the time he was done, his cane now clutched in front of him like a shield. Just—did they make it? Ava? They made it down the street?”
Mike froze, and Ava sucked in a sharp breath. Zack shrunk in on himself further, as though he was trying to make himself as small as possible.
Madre de Dios, she’d actually forgotten he couldn’t see.
“They made it,” she said quickly. “They led the Burnouts off…and it looked like they had a good lead when,” she stopped and took a deep breath, “when we lost sight of them.”
Zack seemed to wilt, a great huff of air leaving his lungs as he leaned forward. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, then.”
Ava took a step closer as Mike’s eyes darted between her and Zack, slow realization dawning on his craggy face. “You knew,” he said, a sort of stunned disbelief in the words that made Ava’s chest hurt. “You knew what she was doing?”
“Mike, you gotta listen. Lydia knows what she’s doing.” She lowered her voice, casting a nervous glance over her shoulder. The others were shuffling away, following Mike’s orders for the most part. She didn’t think anyone was in hearing distance of them. “Zack, he’s…he’s like Lydia. He’s a Psio.”
The reaction was immediate. Mike didn’t quite reel back, but his eyes went wide and he immediately looked behind them at the rest of the group. Then he drew Ava close, hustling her and Zack towards his house. Zack stumbled for a few steps before Ava ducked away from Mike and grabbed Zack’s hand, drawing it to the crook of her elbow.
“What did you just say?” The words fell from Mike’s mouth like lead, and his eyes were flat when Ava looked up at him. Without waiting for an answer, he forged on. “What kind? What can you do?”
Zack swallowed, his fingers tightening on Ava’s elbow for a moment. “Precognition,” he said without preamble. Mike’s sharp, indrawn breath was the only indication the old man gave that he had heard. “I know things before they ha—”
“I know what a damn precog can do.” He ran a hand back through his hair, glaring at Zack. Ava grabbed his other hand, pulling him around to face her again.
“He’s telling the truth,” she pleaded. “He knew about Lyds; there’s no way he could have seen her doing anything! Lydia believes him…I do too.” The words rushed out of her in a torrent, tripping and stumbling over each other in a half jumbled mess of Spanish and English that Lydia would have had little trouble understanding. She struggled to put her thoughts in order, to find some way to make Mike understand that the Reeds could be trusted.
Mike took a long, slow breath, staring at her for a long moment with narrowed eyes. Finally, his shoulders slumped and he shook his head.
“We’ll figure it out later,” he said. He turned back to Zack. “How good a shot’s your brother?” His teeth clenched around the words, the muscle in his jaw jumping in rapid pulses. The hand Ava wasn’t holding was still balled up into a fist.
Zack licked his lips. “Good enough,” he replied. “Last few months been a pretty steep learning curve, y’know? Besides. Dad was a cop. Caleb can handle himself. And, um, your granddaughter can, too. You know that.”
“Hrmmph.”
Ava looked down at her hands and rubbed her thumbnail with her index finger, staring at the glossy paint. An hour ago, she had been talking about re-doing Lydia’s manicure, and now she was waiting to see if her best friend was going to come back in one piece.
No. When. When, not if. Never if. Lydia would be fine. They both would.
“Ava?” Mike asked, interrupting her thoughts.
“Yeah?”
Most of the others, minus Jim and Eric, had vanished into the Royces’ house. Jill was slowly making her way towards them, obviously trying to give them privacy to talk. Mike crossed his arms over his chest, regarding Zack silently. Zack shifted from foot to foot, as though he could feel the weight of Mike’s gaze.
“Av, will you run over to the McCain place? There’s one more set of guns by the entryway closet…right inside the door,” Mike said, not looking at her.
“Sure,” she replied, shooting uneasy glances between the two.
There had been a pretty large cache of weapons on Meadowbrook when everything had happened. Granted, most of them belonged to Mike, but Jim Perry and Eric Grant had each owned a pistol. Like Mike, Andrew enjoyed hunting, and had a few different models of rifle, though his weren’t laser-modded. Combined with Mike’s collection, there had been enough to distribute some in four different houses around the court, leaving everyone with easy access to a gun in times of emergency.
“Thanks,” Mike said, running an absent hand over her hair as she passed him, the way he often did with Lydia.
“Hang on, sweetie, I’ll come with you,” Jill Royce piped up. She shot a significant look at Mike as she drew closer, to which he just nodded tiredly. Ava chose to ignore it.
“I’ll just go with—” Zack started, but Mike cleared his throat loudly. “Right, I’ll just stay with you.” He hit the button on his cane handle, and the field shimmered into existence. Mike started to lead him away, and Jill slipped her arm around Ava’s shoulders.
“Ava,” she said, but Ava shook her head, shrugging away from the old woman’s grip.
“Jill…don’t. Please.” Somehow, Ava didn’t think her voice sounded as firm as she’d meant it to.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Jill sighed, “there’s still a chance. She knows the neighborhood. And she’s not alone.”
“Do you really believe that?” Ava asked, raising a challenging eyebrow. Jill pulled up short, her mouth working soundlessly for a moment before she looked away. The old woman took a shaking breath, the edges of it as ragged as if she was choking back tears.
“It was a brave thing to do,” Jill said, not answering Ava’s question one way or another.
Ava ducked her head, clenching her fists so hard that her nails bit into her palms with sharp little stings. She gritted her teeth and told herself for the tenth, the hundredth, the thousandth time, that Lydia would be fine, and she couldn’t blame the others for thinking the way they did. Ava had information that they didn’t.
“Did you leave that gate open?” Jill pulled to a halt again, jerking one bony thumb towards Emily’s house. Ava frowned and followed her gaze. The side-gate to Emily’s back yard was indeed hanging open a few inches, quivering in the wind.
�
�No, we went through the fences when we went around to Eric’s place.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Ava saw Zack suddenly come to a dead stop. She started to turn toward him as Jill headed for the gate, wrapping her thin arms around herself.
“Good God, you’d think a bunch of grown men would be on top of these kinds of things. Last thing we need is this thing slamming around in a storm or someth—“
Zack stumbled forward, one hand going to his head. Then…
“Ava! Look out!” He screamed it at the top of his lungs, turning wildly back the way he had come.
Ava would wonder for the rest of her life if she could have done something.
Reacted quicker.
Screamed a warning to Jill.
Something.
Jill reached for the black metal latch to pull it shut, and a pale, silver-veined hand latched onto her wrist. For an endless moment, Ava just stood there, watching. Her mind refused to process what she was seeing.
It was a man, dressed only in a pair of running shorts and tennis shoes. The horrible, inhuman eyes were gleaming, the silvered veins starting to give off a pale, alien light. In those few precious seconds when she might have been able to help, Ava could just stare. Her throat was tight and frozen, her mouth hanging open.
The man was still wearing a shattered Netglass visor, the white earpieces standing out against his dirty hair. For an instant Ava was seized with an insane desire to laugh. She wondered how long the Netglass had gone on displaying his exercise route and preferred newsfeeds, maybe playing some mindless pop music as he hunted for survivors to Burn. Then, the moment broke. The man stumbled out into the small stretch of grass between Emily’s house and the McCain place, his fingers still locked around Jill’s thin, birdlike wrist. The moment broke.
