by Tracy Deebs
“Go back to the truck, Pandora.” Eli’s low, serious voice breaks into my reverie, as does his grip on my elbow as he shoves me behind him.
“Stop it, Eli! I’m not going anywhere. Now you take that side and I’ll take this one,” I say pointing to the register. “Look for a map and see if there’s any stuff left we can use. They probably took everything, but you never know. They might have missed something.”
I head for the magazine rack at the front of the store. There’s nothing there, though, so I continue on along the front corner. I pocket a few packs of gum that are lying, discarded, on the floor. Grab a couple of cigarette lighters, as well—in case we need to start a fire—then move down the counter, looking for a map.
I’m almost at the end when I see her. A young woman, not much older than I am. She’s flat on her back behind the counter, eyes wide open, cheeks stained with tears. And a shotgun-bullet-size hole where her heart used to be.
I scream and Eli comes bounding up the aisle. I scream and scream and scream. He sees her, too, and pulls me against him, burying my head in his chest. “It’s okay, Pandora. It’s okay.”
How can he say that? How can he even think it? Things are never going to be okay again. The tears are back, and this time I don’t have the will to stop them. Everything that’s happened, everything we’ve been through, kind of coalesces inside me. It breaks me open and I cry.
“Let me take you to the truck, Pandora.” Eli sounds so subdued, so different from his usual irrepressible self, that it only brings home how fast things are changing.
Theo bursts through the door. “What’s wrong? What did you do to her?”
Eli stiffens against me, and I force myself to bring it under control. The last thing we need is another fight, especially with that poor woman lying there, only a few feet away.
“He didn’t do anything,” I say as I pull away from Eli. I wipe my eyes, then point. “She’s dead. The looters killed her. Or somebody did.”
Eli’s jaw is granite hard as he walks behind the counter, ignoring Theo. “What are you doing?” I ask, watching, horrified, as he steps over her.
“Looking for a weapon.”
“Wait a minute. You want a gun? You saw what just happened to her and you still want a gun?”
His green eyes are implacable when they meet mine. “More than ever. It’s getting bad. We need to be able to protect ourselves.”
He crouches down, and when he stands, there’s a gun in his hand. I have no idea what kind—guns aren’t my thing—but it’s relatively small. It looks like it could be a toy, but the box of bullets in Eli’s other hand proves that it isn’t.
I turn to Theo, expecting him to protest, but his face is blank again. I’m growing to dread that expression. “Put it in your bag,” he tells Eli. Then asks, “Did you find a map?”
“Not yet.”
He nods, then starts picking through the discarded papers on the floor. Like we’re not in a room with a dead body. Like that woman doesn’t even exist.
And that’s when it hits me. She doesn’t. In this rapidly evolving world, where the only thing you can count on is yourself, she means nothing. And her death means even less.
Still, she meant something to someone, and leaving her lying there like trash hurts me deep inside. I walk over to a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY and push it open. Inside there are boxes of food the looters were in too big a hurry to look for, I guess. But overlooked cases of beer and chips aren’t what I want right now.
On the back shelves I find something that will work, grouped with a bunch of other merchandise that’s probably slow moving in a convenience store. I grab one of the packets and open it as I walk back into the main store. “There are supplies in the back,” I tell the guys. “You might find something we can use.”
Then I flick open the small space blanket, the kind campers use, and walk behind the counter. I close the woman’s eyes and slowly drape the blanket over her, murmuring a clumsy prayer I barely remember from my childhood.
“Come on, Pandora, let’s get out of here.” Eli walks by me, carrying a case of water.
“Did you find a map?”
“Theo did.”
I nod, then step away from the girl. Go into the back and grab a second case of water. It’s the last one.
Then I walk out the door. I want to look back, but I don’t let myself.
Moving forward is the only way to survive.
28
We pull into the huge Orinoco complex at the end of Los Alamos Boulevard a little before eleven. There are a bunch of buildings and parking lots, and behind them, stretching far into the desert, is a huge solar array. It looks so similar to the one in the picture that I know we’re in the right spot.
Theo drives around a little and we get a feel for the place. “So, what do you think, Pandora? Where should we start?” he asks.
I wish I knew. But the place is gigantic and, like the aquaculture farm, we don’t know what we’re looking for. I try to remember more about my visit with my father. Why we were here, what we were doing, where we went, but it’s all a blur. I remember Dr. Susan, and I remember the solar arrays, but that’s it, really. Except for the large bag of M&M’s she gave me from her desk. I ate the whole thing in one sitting and got the worst stomachache ever.
So maybe that’s it. Maybe we start with her, since she’s what I remember most. “Which of these buildings looks like it would house offices?” I ask. “And have a directory?”
Eli points to the building in the center. It’s the biggest, and unlike the others, it’s lined with windows. Plus it has a sign in front that says, ORINOCO SOLAR, HARNESSING THE POWER OF THE SUN FOR ALL OF US.
Duh. “Well, then, I guess that’s where we’re starting.”
Theo nods, but doesn’t pull the truck up to the door. Instead, he parks it a couple of buildings away and we walk through the empty parking lot, backpacks over our shoulders. If last night taught us anything, it’s not to leave the most valuable stuff we have in the car.
My backpack’s heavy, as it has my laptop, the atlas, and some water bottles in it, along with my clothes, but I don’t complain about the walk. Theo’s caution has served us well throughout this whole trip, and I’m not going to start questioning it now.
“How are we going to get in?” I ask, as we approach the front door. “It doesn’t look like they’re open.”
“That’s because it’s Saturday,” Theo comments.
“And here I thought it was because there’s no electricity or anything else,” Eli says.
I laugh. I can’t help it, but really? I point at the solar array. “Does that look like they need electricity? They can probably generate enough power to light up half the state from here.”
“So, why aren’t they?” Eli asks.
I don’t answer because I can’t. Why isn’t this electricity being used to light up parts of the state right now? Why isn’t solar energy being used to power a lot more than it is? If it were, we might not be in this situation. It’s not like a worm can shut down the sun.
“Because the worm took down the grid,” Theo explains as he walks up to the locked front door. “It’s not just the power plants that are affected. It’s the whole delivery system. So there’s no way to get the power out even if there were power to deliver. That’s why the nuclear power plants are such a problem.”
So strike my previous thoughts. It seems like this worm is omnipotent, after all.
“But what about here?” I ask as something occurs to me. “Would these buildings still have electricity if they’re wired directly into the solar array?”
“Probably. Why?”
“Because,” I say, just as Eli picks up a giant rock and smashes it through the window on the right side of the door. “If they do, the alarm will probably still be working.”
Seconds later, said alarm begins to shriek, lights flashing on and off throughout the whole building.
“Shit.” Theo kicks the glass out as fast as he c
an, then ducks through the window. Eli and I follow him.
After checking the area near the door, he runs behind the welcome desk and starts yanking open cabinets. “What are you looking for?” I ask.
“The control center for the alarm.”
I roll my eyes. “What does it look like?”
“This,” he says triumphantly, dropping to his knees to dig in a bottom cabinet. He plays around for a minute, and the alarm quiets.
“How did you do that?”
“I told you,” Eli says from where he’s leaning nonchalantly on the counter. “He’s a boy genius.” Again it doesn’t sound like a compliment. “So, Pandora.” He shifts his attention to me. “We’re in. Now what?”
“Now, we find Susan’s office.” I start rummaging through the drawers until I find a list of employees and extension numbers for the switchboard—the same kind of list I used when I temped at my mom’s office last summer. If we’re lucky, the extensions here will be like the ones in her building, and the last four digits will reflect the numbers of the people’s offices.
I skim the list quickly, come up with three Susans. I write down their phone numbers and say, “We’ll have to check all of these, see which is the one I remember.”
“How will you know?”
I shrug. “I don’t know if I will, but hopefully something will give us a clue as to what we’re supposed to be doing.”
“Hopefully,” Eli mutters beside me. I look at him sharply, but he just shrugs and smiles, his dimple on full display. I shake my head and start down the hall closest to us.
We wander the building for half an hour before finding the first office. But two minutes in and I know it’s not the right place—not unless Dr. Susan figured out a way to be in her midtwenties again.
We head back down the hall, passing a series of conference rooms. Each has some pictures on the walls, so I go into the biggest one, hoping to find a photo of Dr. Susan that proves we’re not on some kind of wild-goose chase here.
What I find instead shocks me.
The photos are on a wall labeled SOLSTICE BENEFACTORS, and there are two backpacks on the floor under one of the pictures. That picture is the same one I have in my backpack. The one of my father and me in front of the solar array.
Under the photo is a small brass plaque that reads, MITCHELL AND PANDORA WALKER, SOLSTICE BENEFACTORS.
“This is it,” I say, my voice cracking. “This is what he wanted me to see.”
Theo comes up behind me, rests a hand on my shoulder. I sink back into him, letting him take some of my weight as I try to come to grips with this irrevocable proof that my father really has done this.
“What’s in the backpacks?” Theo asks, practical as always. I’m just glad he gave me a second to get a grip before he asked.
“Let’s find out.”
I pick them up, hand one to him and one to Eli. They’re heavier than I expected, which I have to admit piques my curiosity.
The guys pour the contents out on the huge table in the center of the room, and then we sit around sorting through them, looking for I don’t know what. Something to jump out at us like the pomegranates and scream, “I’m the code, I’m the code,” I suppose.
But nothing does, though it becomes evident within a couple of minutes that my father put these backpacks together to help me do what I need to do. Each has a flashlight, a small first-aid kit—one of which has a full course of antibiotics while the other has a strange little suction thing that Theo says is for snake bites, a box of granola bars, an extra pair of socks, a pocket knife, and a space blanket much like the one I draped over that poor woman at the store. Not to mention that they’re solar backpacks, equipped with charging equipment for my MacBook and the guys’ iPads.
There are even a couple of bags of M&M’s, which make me smile, despite everything.
Each backpack also has two bottles of water, an aluminum water bottle (empty), and some iodine tablets that Theo says are meant to purify water. I’m not sure why we’ll need them, as the water is still running, but the fact that my father included them in these survivalist care packages scares the hell out of me. We’re only four days in—how much worse are things going to get?
“This doesn’t make sense,” I say. “If he created this whole game just to watch the world blow up, why is he giving me clues? Why is he trying to help me beat it?”
“Maybe he doesn’t really want the world to end,” Eli suggests.
“Then he should have thought of that before bringing us to the brink of nuclear holocaust!”
“Whoa, chill out. I’m just trying to say, maybe this whole thing is an attention grab. A way to further an agenda. Stranger things have happened.” He stands up, stretches. “Look, I’m going to go see if I can find the employee break room. Maybe there’ll be a vending machine and we can get some food. I’m starved.”
I watch him go, sauntering out of the room like he has all the time in the world and not six and a half measly days. How does he do that? Stay so calm when all I want to do is scream?
I spring to my feet, hands clenched into fists as the words pour out of me. “I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m not you. I don’t want to be a hero! I just want to be normal again.”
“Is that what you think? That I want to be a hero?” Theo stands up, walks toward me. “Believe me, Pandora, there’s not an hour that goes by that I don’t wish I was back at home in my room. Even with the lights out it would be better than being in the middle of nowhere, trying to figure out the twists and turns of your father’s brilliant but demented mind.”
“We’re not doing anything, anyway.” I sweep my hand across the table, knock some of the stuff to the floor. “No one wants to die in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico. Just go. Just—”
I break off as I realize Theo isn’t even listening. He’s picking up all the items and shoving them back into the backpacks.
“Oh, don’t stop the drama now.” He looks over his shoulder. “You were going to say I should save myself, right?”
“You’re being an asshole.”
“And you’re being a baby. Get over yourself. Does this suck? Yes. So what? That doesn’t mean we should just give up.”
“I didn’t say I was going to give up. I said you should get out of here while you still have the chance. I was trying to be nice.”
“Don’t do me any favors.” He zips up the backpacks and then comes to stand next to me, his face only inches from mine. “Look, that game says we’re going to die in seven days. And maybe you’re okay with that. But I’m not. I have shit I want to do with my life, and that does not include sitting on my ass while the world blows up around me.”
“We can’t stop it!”
“Why not? Because there’s nothing in the backpacks? Boo-fucking-hoo. We haven’t been to Susan’s office yet. We haven’t been out to the solar array. We haven’t even checked the damn picture.” He slams his hand against the picture in question for emphasis, and it crashes to the ground, glass shattering.
The loud crack of it echoes in the room, snapping the fury between us until all that’s left is the quiet aftermath of the squall.
Theo looks sick. “Pandora, I’m sorry. It’s just—”
“I know. You’re right. I know.” I squat down next to him to help clean up. “I didn’t mean to lose it like that.”
“You’ve got the right to a little freak-out,” he said, his strong fingers brushing against mine. “Just don’t quit. We’ll get there. I promise you, Pandora, we’ll get there.”
I nod, and I’m shocked that somewhere deep inside, I actually believe him. Because if one thing’s become abundantly clear in the last few days, it’s that Theo doesn’t know how to fail.
“Here, throw the glass in this.” I reach for a nearby trash can and hold it out to him, but Theo doesn’t notice. He’s looking at something he picked up from the wreckage.
“What’s that?” I ask.
He hands it
to me, a triumphant look on his face. “A letter. Addressed to you.”
I take it with shaking hands, start to open it. But at that moment, Eli bursts through the door. “A bunch of unmarked black vehicles just pulled up to the front door. We need to move. Now!”
29
Before I even process Eli’s words, Theo’s up, grabbing the backpacks and my hand. Then we’re running. Down the hall and three flights of stairs. Out the back door.
I start to flee into the parking lot, but Theo holds tight to my hand as he drags me against the building. We race along the perimeter, Theo in front, me in the middle, and Eli in back, until we get to the corner, where Theo stops dead. Flattening himself to the building, he peers around the edge. “Damn! There are four of them at the truck—including that jerk from your house, Pandora.”
The information has me reeling, as there’s only one “jerk” Theo saw at my house—Mackaray. “That means they’re Homeland Security,” I tell them. “What are we going to do now?”
“The only thing we can do,” Eli says, heading back the way we came.
Theo and I exchange frantic looks, but we follow him. If he’s got a plan to get us out of this, I’m more than willing to go along. It looks like Theo is, as well.
We get to the other edge of the building, and after checking to make sure it’s safe, Eli slips around it. “What are you doing?” Theo snarls. “You’re getting us closer to them—”
“Shhh.”
Eli creeps all the way to the front edge of the building, and Theo and I follow him, even though I’m also beginning to doubt his sanity. We wait, plastered against the building, as eight agents stand around staring at the window we broke earlier. Guns come out, and then most of them are slipping through the same hole we used to get in.
I want to run now, while they’re inside, but Theo holds me steady against the building, his hand around my wrist. “What are we waiting for?” I demand, and Eli grins at me. It’s a wicked, wild thing, filled with a strange elation I don’t understand.
