by Alex Barnett
“You can make it help us!” Ava insisted. Lydia looked at her friend in confusion, before she realized what Ava was getting at.
“I can’t switch on the generator.” She didn’t have to be able to see something to manipulate it, but she didn’t think she could manage that kind of control right now. Her powers felt stretched to the breaking point.
“I can,” Ava said, grabbing Lydia’s arm. Lydia felt her eyes go wide, her whole brain stuttering to a stop at the implications of what Ava was saying.
“No,” she said, turning away and firing into the crowd of approaching Burnouts. “No way!”
“It’s our only chance!” Ava protested.
“You’ll die. Ava, you’ll Burn!”
“Lydia, listen to me.”
Despite the Burnouts, despite the situation, despite everything, Ava grabbed Lydia’s shoulder and forced her to look at her. Ava’s face was paler than Lydia had ever seen it, tearstains streaking down her cheeks. Her clothes were coated with dirt and there was a bloody patch spreading on one of her knees. But her best friend’s eyes were hard and determined, black as coal in the darkness.
“I can do this,” Ava said. “We can do this. I trust you Lyds. Trust me, too.”
Lydia bit her lip, staring at Ava for a few precious seconds.
Her friend was right; it was their best chance.
“Go!” she whispered.
Ava smiled…and then turned to scramble up onto the barricade.
She slipped over pieces of metal that were rain-slick and unsteady now that the Burnouts were battering themselves against the makeshift walls. Lydia had to force herself to turn away and keep laying down cover fire—to trust that Ava could make it. She listened desperately for her friend’s footfalls on the barricade, kept glancing over her shoulder to track Ava’s progress.
“Ava! What the hell are you doing?!” Grandpa bellowed, taking a half step back towards the barricade.
“It’s okay!” Lydia screamed back, shaking her head. “Trust us!”
Whether he listened or not, Grandpa was forced to turn back to the Burnouts, fending off a large man in a police uniform with the butt of his rifle before taking a few hasty steps back.
“We can do this,” Lydia said to herself, firming her grip on the blaster. She aimed,
fired with renewed vigor. Burnouts swarmed from every direction, more and more slipping through the hole in the barricade. Silently, she tried to count—to estimate how many bodies she would be dealing with.
“We can do this,” she said again, looking up as Ava pulled herself onto one of the cars next to the van and began leapfrogging her way over the top of the barricade, nimble as a squirrel.
Her heart hammered against her ribs at the thought of what she would have to do to make this work. Her powers were already hurting, already pushed to their limits. She would have to be strong enough to push them further.
“We can do this,” she prayed when, a moment later, her best friend leapt from the relative safety of the barricade top, vanishing from sight.
She had to be strong enough.
“Please.” Aim. Fire.
She was strong enough.
“Please.” Aim. Fire.
For Grandpa, for Ava, she would always be strong enough.
“Please.” Aim. Fire.
“LYDIA! NOW!” Ava’s voice sounded between the thunder of guns going off, and then she heard the whine of the generator. Wiring in the barricade sparked and sputtered, some connections ripped out…but then the shield shimmered into existence with a crackle of energy.
“Everyone down!” Lydia screamed at the top of her lungs. Caleb and Grandpa whirled to look at her, their skin sickly in the green glow of the shield. She saw shock on her grandfather’s face, and then a flash of understanding. Caleb seemed to realize what she was going to do as well, and lunged at Zack and Iris, tackling them both to the ground.
“Now Lyds, NOW!”
And then there was nothing left, but to trust. She closed her eyes, drawing in a deep breath against the pounding in her head. The familiar prickling, electric heat was a fire now. It burned when she reached for the power she’d been touching since she was a child, raced up and down her spine with pain that made her want to scream. She had to pull at it in a way she never had, before, had to force it to do what she wanted. It responded, though, as it always had. Her ears rang with a piercing, shrill whistle, and the pounding in her head seemed even faster than her tripping pulse.
I love you. Be brave.
She let go.
All around, in all directions. She let go completely, imagined a great wave sweeping the Burnouts towards the shimmering green energy barrier, a noose snapping tight around them, a door slamming shut. She forced the power out of her, drawing the Burnouts against the barricade, staggering when she felt their bodies slam past her. Hands clawed at her, tried to grab, tried to Burn, but she pushed them all away.
The shield’s crackle grew to a whine, grew to a screech, and now the light really was blinding. It sizzled and sparked, enough voltage to stop an elephant, a herd of elephants arcing through every Burnout that touched the barrier. The things jerked madly as more and more were shoved against the shield, but they never screamed. Even now, even when they were dying, the things didn’t make a noise.
A terrible flash of white burst across her vision, the pain in her head so bad it was impossible to even scream. Dimly, she registered a thick, hot wetness suddenly coating her upper lip, and her mouth filled with the taste of copper.
She pushed and pushed until there was nothing left to give, nothing left in her, and then she dropped to her knees in the street. As though from far away, she heard footsteps pounding towards her.
“Mike! Mike, help!” someone shouted, and Lydia blinked hazily until Caleb’s face swam into view above her. She was lying on the ground, half-cradled on Caleb’s lap, dizzy and shaking. Her stomach churned.
“Av-A’a,” she mumbled, the word barely falling from a tongue that seemed too thick to work. “Wh’rs Ava?”
She half-turned her head, her muscles rolling with an odd, disconnected looseness. The barricade was half-destroyed…and piled with bodies. A few stray sparks fizzled from wires, popping and sizzling in the sudden quiet. Lydia shivered, the intensity of the pain in her head not fading. Not even a little bit. Her vision swam in and out of focus and the nosebleed was clotting slowly. She fought as hard as she could, desperate to see if Ava was all right. If Grandpa was all right. She needed to see them, but the dark spots in her vision were growing louder. The noises on the street were growing fainter. She tried to speak one more time, to get her tongue to obey her, to raise her head enough to look for her family…but it was too much. She felt herself slumping against Caleb’s chest. Everything faded to black.
15
When she opened her eyes, she was lying in her bed. For a moment, she could only blink up at the ceiling in hazy confusion while the world arranged itself into proper order. She was lying in her bed. Someone had removed her shoes and drawn her bright purple bedspread up to her shoulders. When she frowned and rubbed at her forehead, she found a round pain patch stuck to her temple, the slightly warm, satiny-smooth texture familiar after years of school sports. She pulled it off with a quick wince, glancing at the color to determine how much of the medicine was left in it. It had faded from fire-engine red to something that could barely be called pink—how long had she been sleeping?
She could hear the murmur of voices somewhere downstairs, and in the cloudiness of her mind, it took her a moment to register the urgent, angry tone of them.
“You’re not listening!” Caleb’s voice boomed, making her jump. She immediately regretted the motion, her head giving a warning throb even with almost a whole patch of analgesic in her.
In an instant, it all came flooding back to her.
The Burnouts, the desperate escape from Andrew and Jill’s house, getting cut off from the truck outside the barricade. God, Andrew, Jill, Eric an
d Emily were all dead…and Grandpa and Ava…Grandpa and Ava were…
Lydia lunged out of the bed, nearly falling when her blankets and sheets tangled around her knees. She avoided falling to the floor by a hairsbreadth, and stumbled out her door into the hall.
“Grandpa?” she called, her voice high and frantic. Her head protested every movement, but her heart was in her throat, the need to see if her family was all right roaring through her like fire. “Grandpa?! Av?!”
She flew down the hallway to the stairs, taking them two at a time, though she was none too steady on her feet yet. She almost face-planted in the front hall, catching herself at the last moment on the bannister. A flurry of footsteps sounded from the living room.
“Lyddie!” Grandpa came rushing out into the front hall, his eyes wild and worried. Ava was behind him.
For the second time in only a few hours, Lydia felt all the weight of the world dropping off her shoulders. They were alive.
They were alive.
She reached for her grandfather, throwing herself into his arms the way she had when she was small.
“I swear to God, you’re grounded for the next thirty years,” he said roughly. Lydia gave a ragged laugh, and wound her arms around her grandfather’s waist.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, unsure which part of last night she was actually apologizing for. “I had to go with Caleb. I just had to.”
Grandpa’s arms tightened around her, and she could swear she felt his hands trembling on her back. She held him back just as tightly, her eyes stinging as it truly hit her how close they had all come to dying last night. How close she had come to losing the only two people she had left in the world. How many people she had lost. She buried her face in his chest, breathing in the familiar scent of his aftershave until the knot in her throat began to subside.
Ava hovered just behind Grandpa, watching Lydia with laser-like intensity. As she slipped out of Grandpa’s embrace, Ava stepped closer and took his place. She hugged Lydia so tightly it was hard to breathe.
“You ever scare me like that again, I’m kicking your ass,” she said, a murmur of tears beneath the words. Her voice was suspiciously thick.
“Me? You almost gave me a heart attack!”
She stepped back from Ava to find that Caleb and Zack had crowded into the archway between the living room and the front hall. They were all still dressed in the same clothes from last night—dirt and bloodstained. A deep purple bruise had bloomed on Ava’s forehead, and Grandpa’s knuckles were a mess of scrapes and scabs. She doubted she looked much better…but they were alive. That was all that mattered.
The only ones. They were the only ones who had survived. The thought hit her like a punch to the gut. Andrew and Jill. Eric. Emily. They were all gone. She thought she had gotten used to the idea of death. She thought she had learned how to deal with it—how could she not, in this world? After the things she had seen on the news before the comms cut out…after what she had witnessed in the days following the evacuations…
After what had happened to Ava’s parents.
She’d actually thought she had seen the worst of it. The sheer ridiculousness of that assumption was another punch, and a sudden burst of laughter tried to bubble up to her lips. She’d thought she’d seen the worst this world could offer and she’d been so, so wrong. She’d thought she was doing the right thing following Caleb, but had it really helped? She didn’t know how Jill and Eric had died, but she could imagine. Could the deaths have been prevented if she and Caleb had been there? There were too many questions, too many “what if’s” and none of it mattered even a little bit. The others were dead. She bit down on her lips until she almost tasted blood, trying to choke back the tears that wanted to fall. If she started crying now, she doubted she would be able to stop for a very long time.
“Hey,” Grandpa said quietly, as if he had heard the morbid turn her thoughts had taken. “It’s all right…Lyddie, I promise it’ll be all right.”
Lydia ducked her head. “But it’s my fault,” she whispered. “If I hadn’t—” She felt as though each word was being torn out of her.
Grandpa planted both hands firmly on Lydia’s shoulders. “This was not your fault. Don’t you ever think that, you hear me?”
She remembered curling up into his lap once right after she and her mother moved in with her grandparents, and hearing those exact same words. She’d been five years old, almost six, unsettled and bewildered as to why they’d had to move into Grandma and Grandpa’s house…and why Daddy hadn’t come with them. Grandpa’s voice had been steady and unyielding as rock back then, the utter conviction in his words as he promised her that she had done nothing wrong doing more to calm her fears than anything else. She needed that steadiness, now. She fisted her hands in the front of his shirt and looked up at him the way she’d done when she was small, the way she’d always been able to.
“If you hadn’t done what you did, we wouldn’t have had anywhere to run,” Grandpa said, calm and deliberate. His eyes were bloodshot and bleak, anguish and something darker swirling in them. “The boys were right—there was no stopping that swarm. If you two hadn’t thinned out the numbers, we probably wouldn’t have had enough ammo to make it out of Andy’s house.” He stopped, closing his eyes briefly. One calloused hand came up to rest on the back of her head, pulling her in close again. “And you saved us. You saved us, sweetheart.”
That was another thing that needed to be dealt with. There was no hiding what she could do, now…they’d all seen. What were they going to tell everybody? Did it even matter what they said, at this point? And what about—
She straightened suddenly, craning her neck as she looked around. “Where’s Jim and Iris?” she asked. There was no sign of the Perrys anywhere behind Caleb and Zack, and she hadn’t heard their voices. “Oh God, did something happen?” She could feel panic trying to well up in her chest again—the barricade was in tatters and the shield was probably beyond repair. What if more of the things had come while she’d been passed out? What if she hadn’t managed to kill all of the Burnouts attacking the barricade?
Grandpa and Ava exchanged a strange, uncomfortable look, and Ava bit her lip. She frowned, taking a step back from Grandpa.
“What?” she demanded. “What happened? Are they all right?”
“They’re fine, Lyds,” Ava said. She wrapped her arms around herself, hugging her middle in a gesture Lydia knew meant she was nervous about something.
“Then where are they?”
Lydia stared around the group, and the panic died down, to be replaced with something cold and raw. She swallowed hard, her throat clenching. Zack’s shoulders hunched in on himself and Caleb’s face was wreathed in sympathy. She could think of only one thing that would inspire such a reaction, if the Perrys were still alive. The one thing she had always worried about in the back of her mind. “They left. Didn’t they?”
“Lyddie…” Grandpa’s posture slumped, the lines in his face deepening.
“They left because of me.” It wasn’t a question.
Abruptly, she turned away, taking a few hesitant steps towards the door. The sunlight pouring in through the narrow windows on either side seemed jarring, somehow. How could the weather be beautiful when so many horrible things had happened? She laced her hands behind her neck and made herself take deep, even breaths. Grandpa’s hand landed on her shoulder and she closed her eyes against the sting of tears.
“What about the others? They Burned. Were they, are they still out there?” She forced the words out in a rush, desperately needing to know the answer, and yet afraid to hear it. She didn’t know how she was supposed to deal with it if it turned out she had used her powers against the others in their group.
She could tell herself that the Burnouts weren’t human anymore, that putting them down was helping them. Giving them peace. Most of the time, she even believed it. But this was different…these were people she’d known practically her whole life. And though her mother and
grandmother had taught her never to be afraid of her powers, she’d be lying if she said she’d never been afraid of what they could do. Who they could hurt if she ever lost control.
Grandpa scrubbed his hand over his face, and in that moment he didn’t look strong. He didn’t look like the invincible figure that had been the rock on which her whole world rested. He looked old. Haggard. Beaten down.
“We found Andrew and Emily,” he said finally. Even his voice sounded hollow, wrung out. “Jill and Eric—they must have been in the swarm. Between taking care of you and then Jim and Iris,” he trailed off, shaking his head. “There wasn’t time to go digging through the bodies.”
Ava made a soft sound in the back of her throat, and Lydia turned away, wrapping her arms around herself in a mirror of Ava’s position only a few moments ago. Grandpa sighed.
“You gotta square up now, girls,” he said softly. “We’re not safe, yet. Eric and Jill…they’d want us to be safe.”
He was right. No one had said anything yet, but they wouldn’t be able to stay on Meadowbrook, not after what happened. Not with the barricades in shreds. They would have to find some other safe haven, and if Caleb and Zack were right about what travelling was like, those were in even shorter supply than they’d thought. Jill wouldn’t want them to risk their lives sifting through what had to be dozens and dozens of Burnouts. Nor would Eric.
“Where did Jim and Iris go?” The information wouldn’t do her any good—there was nothing she could do for them, no way to go after them and try to get them to change their minds. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to…but she felt she had to know, all the same. Grandpa looked torn, but eventually gave in.
“They left as soon as it got light enough to see,” he replied. “They said they were gonna try for the safe zone in Indianapolis we heard about a couple weeks ago. Iris’s brother lived out that way, I guess.”
Lydia sniffed, scrubbing her nose with the sleeve of her softball jersey. A few last flakes of dried blood left a rust-brown streak on the dark yellow sleeve. She nodded to herself. “Did they at least take a gun for Iris?” she asked. Most of the weapons belonged to Grandpa, but Jim would’ve taken his pistol…and she knew Grandpa would’ve divided up the ammunition fairly.
