The strange case of the missing children seemed to give Peter Williams’ claims of a white light abduction more cred—which really pissed off Mayor Skaggs. People were starting to listen to the bus driver, prompting more and more claims of family and friends being carried off by a mysterious white light. Several neighborhoods started buddy systems. Some people were even locking themselves in their homes to keep from being abducted themselves.
Finally, after a tense week, Mr. Williams led a small group that stormed the sheriff’s office, demanding an investigation into the “White-Light Abductions.” Mayor Skaggs had shut the group down fast, citing a city ordinance that prohibited public incitement. He’d demanded that my grandfather lock up every one of the agitators. Rather than go to jail, the people had quickly recanted their claims and dispersed, ending the white light conspiracy movement—and any hope I had of finding answers.
My mother was among the 551 missing.
Grandpa believed she’d fallen through the floor and into the basement, where her body now lay buried beneath tons of stone and rubble, too deep to be recovered. I didn’t correct him. Mr. Williams’ story about the man from Naches was never far from my mind. Maybe someday Mom would come walking back into town without a stitch of clothes on.
David and I were living with our grandfather now, in his house on Third Street. With their own home destroyed and their parents out of town, Milly and Tim had decided to stay with us. Every night, I had the same nightmare about oceans and dragons and, every morning, I woke to darkness and forced myself to think of a reason to get out of bed. Today, I got up hoping that we’d finally clear a path to the interstate.
I stepped back from my shovel to adjust the mask covering my nose and mouth. All able citizens had been split into four groups: search and rescue, forage, cleanup, and support. I was on cleanup. My team was part of the main effort to reconnect Roslyn with I-90.
A massive landslide on South Avenue had obstructed the outlet at the neck of the valley. A team had been using dynamite on it for most of the day, so every now and then I’d hear a loud BOOM! It shook the ground beneath my feet, bringing back memories of the quake. After several hours, my nerves were raw.
Using snowplows, front loaders, backhoes, shovels, and sometimes bare hands, cleanup teams like mine slowly dug out the town, loading the ash and debris into trucks, then dumping it into the Willamette Ravine. It was a filthy, miserable job, made more difficult by the protective masks we had to wear.
Doctor Reinkann had declared the masks mandatory for cleanup crews in particular, to protect us from something called silicosis, some horrible lung disease that caused a lingering, painful death. The sweaty, smelly masks made it impossible to be heard without shouting. Over the past few days I’d seriously considered ditching the miserable thing and taking my chances with the lung disease.
I picked up my shovel and started back at it. My team was working on a winding part of Bullfrog Road that ran alongside Prospector Golf Course. Crank lanterns lit the zone and, between those and the headlamp Grandpa had given me, I could almost pretend it was daylight. By the time actual night fell, the hard, tedious work, always left me drained. I just kept telling myself that every shovel I lifted put me one step closer to Seattle and my dad.
David walked up, pulling a large cooler strapped to a wagon. The lanterns threw shadows across his face, deepening his scowl. He’d been assigned to the water purification team, arguably the most comfortable job to be had. With the power out and the pumps down, the city’s only water source was the Cle Elum River, currently a useless sludge of ash.
Of course, David assumed he’d been given the job because he lacked the size or strength to do anything else, not because he was one of the few people in town smart enough to operate and maintain the city’s complicated water purifiers. While the rest of us were sweating and hauling ash, my brother spent most of his time clean and indoors—and grumbling about discrimination.
He handed me a ladle of water. I clicked off my headlamp, tugged my mask down around my neck, and drank. The cool, clear water felt good going down my gritty throat. I wanted to tell David how much I appreciated it, but I knew better. Thanking him would only give him an excuse to launch into another tirade about how a monkey could do his job.
I handed the ladle back without a word.
Mr. Chaney, our vice principal, walked up. He and I were on the same cleanup team, along with Milly, Grandpa, Tim, and several other people. “How are you, Sera?”
“Okay,” I replied. Miserable, I thought.
The vice principal lifted his mask to drink the ladle of water David offered. A big man, he savored his drink with one hand while mopping sweat from his brow with the other. Finally, he sighed. “Thank you, David.” He handed the ladle back.
“You’re welcome,” David grumbled, but it was hard to hear him through his mask. He might have said something rude, which wouldn’t have surprised me a bit.
“I wanted to thank you, young man, for alerting everyone to that ash cloud,” Mr. Chaney said.
Although Mayor Skaggs had tried to take credit, Grandpa made sure that everybody knew it was David who’d sounded the alarm.
David fidgeted with the cooler.
“You saved a lot of lives,” Mr. Chaney added.
My brother’s silence became awkward. Finally, I spoke up for him. “He was glad to help.”
The vice principal smiled at me, then pulled his mask up over his nose. “Well. Back to work.” He ambled off toward the dump truck.
I turned on David. “You could at least be polite.”
“Don’t play holier-than-thou with me, Sera,” he replied through his mask. “I’m not in the mood.”
“You’re not in the mood?” I retorted. “I end every day with ash caked to my skin and my clothes, and stuck between my teeth! But, hey, it could be worse—I could be on the water purification team!”
He tugged down his mask. “I saved these people,” he growled. “And the only reason I’m not cleaning Porta Potties right now is because my arms aren’t long enough.”
He was determined to be miserable, so I started to walk off and leave him to it. Then Steve Skaggs strolled up with his mask down around his neck, Cody and Luke in tow.
The look in my brother’s eyes changed from irritation to seething hatred.
Steve snatched the ladle from David’s hand. “Hey, Little Stinker, you helpin’ the girls out with water? Where’s your dress?”
Cody and Luke laughed.
“I left it with your makeup case,” my brother replied.
Steve loomed over him. “What did you say to me, Little Stinker?”
David glared up at him. My brother had never backed down from a fight in his life—not even when Micah Abrams had dropped him in a dumpster on the first day of school. Micah had come away with a broken finger, though David had ended up spending a full class period sitting in rotting garbage before somebody’d finally fished him out. That incident earned my brother the nickname Little Stinker.
Raising my shovel in front of my chest like a polearm, I stepped between my brother and Steve. “Leave him alone, Skaggs.”
Steve cocked his head at me. “Look, guys, it’s Little Stinker’s dog.”
I felt my face go hot. “This dog bites,” I retorted. Hopefully he wouldn’t call my bluff and find out that I could never hit him or anybody else with a shovel.
Steve reached out to touch a strand of my hair. “Is that a promise, Red?”
“Just let ’em do their jobs, Steve,” a deep voice called out.
Micah Abrams stepped into the circle of lantern light. Tall, dark-haired, and broad-shouldered, he stole all the air out of my lungs. I hadn’t seen him since that first day in city hall. I knew I shouldn’t be—and my brother would hate me if he guessed—but I felt relieved that he was alive.
Steve sneered at his friend. “What’s your problem now, Abrams?”
Cody shoved Micah backwards. “I think that quake shook some screws loose.
”
I looked on in surprise, realizing there was trouble among thugs.
“Maybe we shoulda left him in that hole,” Luke jeered.
Micah gestured at my grandfather working a few yards away. “The sheriff’s standin’ right over there, guys.”
The three boys looked over to where my grandpa and Mr. Chaney were pushing a car to the side of the road. They immediately adjusted their postures from menacing to casual.
“Unless you feel like spendin’ the night in jail,” Micah added, “you should probably leave the sheriff’s grandkids alone.”
Steve jabbed his finger into Micah’s chest. “I’ve about had it with you, bro.”
Micah raised his hands. “Just lookin’ out for ya, man.”
Steve glared at Micah, and then turned to his two cohorts. “Come on, guys.”
Cody and Luke sniffed at Micah, then followed Steve off into the shadows.
Micah turned his attention on me, his hooded, dark eyes revealing nothing. I instantly remembered why I’d had such a big crush on him in middle school. He was two years older than me and Jewish, which, to a white atheist girl, seemed incredibly mysterious. I spent all of sixth grade daydreaming about Micah Abrams.
But then he’d gone to high school and started hanging out with Steve Skaggs. I heard all the rumors about drinking, fighting, robbery. My grandfather had personally arrested Micah five times. But I could get past all that. Then he’d dumpster-dunked my brother the first day of our freshman year and the make-believe romance between me and Micah Abrams ended abruptly.
Micah nodded at David. “Sorry about that, man.” He sounded sorry, but what he’d done in the past made that hard to believe.
David wasn’t buying it. “Are you looking for applause?”
Micah shrugged. “Just tryin’ to do the right thing.”
“Yeah, right,” David sneered. “I guess it was too much to hope that they’d find you buried at the bottom of a ravine somewhere.”
I gasped, shocked that my brother could say something so hateful. I looked at Micah, expecting him to say something vicious back, but he just stood there, as if waiting for more.
“No mask, Abrams?” David quipped. “Well, maybe we’ll all get lucky and you’ll die slowly from the inside out.”
“David!” I gasped.
My brother’s steely glare cut me to the bone. “Do you have something to add, Sera?”
Yes and no. I didn’t know what to say. I stood there with my mouth working. No sound coming out.
A loud scream saved me from myself. It cut through the heavy air and echoed all around us.
I dropped my shovel and took off running; it sounded like Milly. She and Tim had been working beside a wrecked lumber truck, trying to move a large pile of plywood from the middle of the road. I hurried up beside them.
My grandfather charged up. “What happened?”
Pale and shaken, Milly pointed at a wide crack in the asphalt.
I edged closer and peered down into the fissure. The glow of lanterns danced over a figure sprawled inside.
Milly had found a body.
I clicked on my headlamp, illuminating a long, male arm. I bent closer. My heart froze. A scarlet tattoo of a red-tailed hawk swooped down the length of the lifeless limb.
I hid behind the shattered timbers and dented white siding that used to be the Sportland Minimart and bawled my eyes out. I gasped and huffed through my mask until I finally tore the thing off my face. I had managed not to cry for two weeks, but seeing Eric Hawk dead in a hole had shattered my record.
The moment I’d seen the tattoo on his cold, dead arm, I’d known the truth. We were all going to die.
Nobody was coming to help us. The food would run out. The water purifiers could only last so long. We could barely breathe the air, even with our masks on. We would all end up like Eric, dead in a dark, ashy grave.
I pulled my knees to my chest and tried to calm myself. I felt like I was trapped in the font again with no hope of rescue. Who were we kidding? Two weeks with no word? David was right. Civilization was gone.
A throat cleared.
I opened my eyes. A baseball-shaped object floated under my nose. I quickly wiped the tears from my face and switched on my headlamp. It was an apple, clutched in a large, dirty hand. Micah Abrams was crouched in front of me.
“Have it,” he said, like taking something from him was the easiest thing in the world. He wiggled it enticingly. “Go ahead.”
My stomach growled in response. Grandpa was only allowing us two meals a day, just in case we needed to stretch our food supply longer than expected. Without even touching it, I could taste the apple’s sweetness on my tongue.
But I knew it would be a bad idea to accept something from Micah Abrams; my brother definitely would not take it well. Besides, why would Micah offer me his precious piece of fruit? It had to be a trick.
“Don’t trust me, huh?” He grinned. “Don’t blame you.” He sat back on his heels and took a crisp bite out of the apple.
He still wasn’t wearing a mask. “We’re supposed to wear masks.”
“And that is very good advice.” He took another bite, making me regret my decision not to accept the apple. “You should definitely follow it.” He swallowed. “I’m sorry about Eric Hawk. So, you really liked him, huh?”
He was sorry? Why all these apologies all of a sudden—first David and now me? Well, I still didn’t believe him. Bullies were never sorry. They fussed, sniveled, and gave in when they got caught, but they never really felt bad about anything.
“Why are you talking to me?” I demanded.
He smiled. “You’re direct. I admire that. Why am I talking to you?” He shrugged. “Because you’re upset and I wanna help.”
I snorted.
He finished the apple and tossed aside the core. “Listen. I heard about your mom.”
All my defenses shot up. “My mom is none of your business.”
“They found my parents yesterday.” The sudden emotion in his voice surprised me, as did the tears he quickly blinked away. “In the hole where my house used to be.”
“At least you know where they are,” I retorted. It was a mean thing to say, and I instantly regretted it
He looked me straight in the eye. “You don’t know where your mom is?” An innocent question, but his cool expression implied something more. “Are you sure about that?”
I narrowed my gaze. “What do you want, Micah?”
“I told you. I wanna help.”
I didn’t want his help. I wanted him to go away. The dark stare that I’d found so appealing now suddenly felt like a probe rummaging around in my head, trying to dig up secrets.
“Terrific!” I snapped. “The world ends and I draw the school bully as my personal savior.” I bit my lip to hold back a new round of tears. No! I screamed inside my head. You will not cry in front of Micah Abrams!
“What happened to your mom?”
With that one question, he’d gone too far.
“Why do you care?” I screeched at him. “She’ll never be found—is that what you wanna hear? You wanna know all the sordid details of my life, Micah? My dad is in Seattle where I can’t get to him! I’ve spent the past two weeks digging through piles of wreckage and ash and…and dead bodies!” I forced out. “Oh, but sure, an apple will solve everything. It’ll find my father! It’ll—” I choked up. “—it’ll bring my mom back! Go!” I spat at him. “Get out of here! Go find somebody else to shove your fruit at. I don’t need your help, and I don’t want it!” I pushed him so hard he fell backwards onto the ashy pavement.
He lay sprawled there for a moment while I caught my breath. What have I done? Micah Abrams was no longer the boy I’d fallen for in grade school. He was a cruel bully and he would retaliate. Would he throw me in a dumpster, or worse? And then it dawned on me that I hoped he’d come after me in some way. Being angry felt so much better than being sad and afraid.
“And you can tell your friends th
at they better leave my brother alone!” I added for good measure, “because next time I’m going to hit Steve Skaggs right over the head with that shovel!”
Micah sat up. I steeled myself for what I felt sure would be brutal revenge. “Seraphina,” he said firmly. “It’s going to be all right.”
I blinked. Of all the things I thought he’d throw back at me, reassurance was not one of them.
“Listen to me.” He looked into my eyes. “It’s going to be all right.”
Tears spilled down my cheeks. “That’s a lie,” I gritted out. “Nothing will ever be all right again.”
He reached for me. “Seraphina—”
I slapped his hands away hysterically. “Don’t-don’t touch me—don’t you touch me! We’re dead! We’re all as dead as Eric!”
Ignoring my protests, he pulled me into his arms. I fought him, but not hard—I was exhausted, emotionally, and physically. I longed for the white light to shoot down from the sky and steal me away. I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me whole. I needed to wake up from this nightmare.
Micah held me tighter. Somehow, he knew that, in spite of my protests, I needed someone to wrap themselves around me and stop my world from flying apart. He felt warm and solid and, with one big sob, I slipped my arms around his neck, pressed my face into his shoulder, and cried harder than I ever have in my life. I cried for my mother and for Pastor Rick. I cried for Felicity and her husband of five minutes. I cried for David and all of my friends. And then I cried for myself, for the life that had been stolen from me in one great ashy explosion.
Micah never said a word. He just sat there quietly and let my tears soak his coat. When I was done, when I felt like I could finally breathe again for the first time since being trapped beneath the stage, I stayed right where I was—in Micah’s arms. He was an unexpected anchor in the middle of a surging storm and I couldn’t bring myself to let him go.
The Goliath Code (The Alpha Omega Trilogy) Page 6
