A loud shout broke the moment. “Get away from my sister!”
A small body slammed into us, knocking Micah—and me—to the ground.
Horrified, I untangled myself from my brother’s bitter enemy and surged to my feet. “David, wait—”
“You don’t touch my sister!” David raged.
Micah stood. At almost six feet tall, he towered over my brother like a colossus.
Undeterred, David glared up at him, his headlamp casting ghoulish shadows over Micah’s face. “Ever!” With nothing else for a weapon, my brother hurled the ladle at Micah. It hit the taller boy in the face and bounced to the ground.
Micah clenched his fists. Thinking he was about to surge forward in retaliation, I reached for his arm, but he surprised me once again by taking a step backwards.
His retreat only made David more confident. “If you ever,” David seethed, “come near my sister again, I will—”
I made the mistake of stepping in between them. “Micah wasn’t hurting me!”
My brother looked at me with a mixture of disgust and betrayal. “You’re defending him?”
“No! I…I mean—” I glanced at Micah. What did I mean? “I was upset and he—”
“I was trying to help,” Micah interrupted. “No harm done.”
David lit into him again. “You don’t get to decide what harm looks like!”
“Shut up, David,” I gritted. He didn’t know when to quit and he was pushing his luck with a boy three times his size. I turned to Micah. “Just go.”
“Are you gonna be okay?” he asked me.
It was a sweet question, and I felt my cheeks heat up. “I’ll be fine.”
He nodded. “Okay, then. I’ll see you later.”
“Over my dead body!” David shouted past me.
I watched Micah walk away and the world went dark again. I turned on my brother. “What the hell is wrong with you?!”
“What’s wrong with me?” David seethed. “I come looking for you to share some good news and I find you wrapped around that son of a bitch!”
I could see the situation through David’s eyes. He wanted me to give him a reasonable explanation for being in a body lock with his mortal enemy, but I didn’t have one—at least not one that he’d understand.
“He was helping me,” I said weakly. It was the best I could do.
“Helping you what?” David sneered. “Get over your dead boyfriend?”
“That is a horrible thing to say.”
“It’s a horrible thing to do.”
He turned to leave, then I realized what he’d said. “Wait! What good news were you coming to tell me?”
“The landslide’s cleared.” He threw the words back over his shoulder. “We’re heading out to find Dad.”
Chapter Six
The next morning, we set out for Seattle.
Grandpa had no illusions that the interstate would look any better than our local streets, so he planned to drive as far as he could and then we’d hike the rest of the way into the city. We loaded backpacks full of water, MREs, and flashlight batteries into the Kittitas County Sheriff’s SUV, and climbed into the cab—the boys in the back seat, Milly and I in front with Grandpa. We headed to the Shell station near the roundabout on Highway 903 to siphon gas and meet up with the rest of the convoy.
“Whacha got there, Double D?” Tim asked in the back seat.
“It’s a yellow scarf I found in the donations box. Did you know that in tenth-century France, they painted traitors’ doors yellow to warn decent people to stay away from them?”
I rolled my eyes. David hadn’t spoken to me since the Micah incident. I didn’t blame him. If I’d caught him wrapped around Naomi Laswell—the girl who’d called me carrottop for years—I’d have a hard time forgiving him, too. The right thing to do was apologize to him. The problem was that I’d felt better since crying all over Micah. I’d slept without nightmares for the first night in two weeks. I wasn’t sorry for finding comfort in Micah’s arms. Not one little bit.
“Nossir, I did not know that,” Tim replied. “But why’d ya bring it?”
“I was thinking Sera might need it.”
Milly gave me an odd look. I shrugged and played dumb.
We rumbled through town with our high beams cutting through the darkness. The plow on the front of the truck made easy work of the little bit of ash and debris still on the streets, but we had to drive slowly and cautiously anyway. Cleanup crews had cleared the big stuff, but occasional fractures in the asphalt required some creative steering.
All of us sat in reverent silence as we followed Washington Avenue past the Eagles Lodge and the burnt-out remains of Marko’s Place. We drove beneath the tattered banner for Coal Miner Days stretching from sidewalk to sidewalk, then swerved around the fallen, ten-foot totem pole that had overlooked the Snohomish Woodcarvers shop. We slowly passed the Brick Pub—now just a mountain of red bricks—and rolled by the collapsed Purple Anntix store. I started fingering a length of my hair, braiding and unbraiding it, trying to keep my mind focused on something other than the wreckage lit up by our high beams.
Several vehicles waited for us in the parking lot of the Shell station. Deputy Hester was there in his Dodge pickup with the dented fender from hitting a bear last spring. Vice Principal Chaney leaned against the door of his ancient Chevy Suburban. Charlie Eagle and Vivica Davis were riding together in Charlie’s CRV—because they had a secret romance that the entire town had known about for months.
We waited in the cab while Grandpa got out of the SUV to coordinate with Deputy Hester and the others. I could hear Tim and David talking in the back seat about what they planned to do in Seattle. Tim hoped the phone lines would work so he could get ahold of his parents in Texas. Like me, my brother just wanted to see our dad.
A Jaguar came zipping into the parking lot and jerked to a halt. The driver’s door popped open and Steve Skaggs got out.
My heart sank. Just what I need.
Then things went from bad to worse. The passenger door eased opened and Micah slid out of the car. I heard David exhale loudly. I couldn’t catch a break.
“What’re they doin’ here?” Milly questioned.
Tim snorted. “Probably hopin’ Seattle Cannabis is still open.”
“Or maybe,” my brother added smoothly, “Micah is hoping to make out with Sera again.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, knowing that Milly would not let this one slide.
“What?” she blurted. She gave me a dramatic, slack-jawed look. “And how long has this been goin’ on?”
“Yes, Sera,” David said, “how long?”
“Wait,” Tim interjected, “I thought she had a thing for Eric Hawk?”
“Yes, but he’s dead now,” David replied.
Milly looked confused. “Wasn’t it Micah who put you in that smelly ol’ dumpster?”
“One and the same,” David quipped.
Tim grunted. “I guess the heart wants what the heart wants.”
“Could everybody just shut up, please!” I shouted.
Stunned silence filled the cab. I slumped lower in the seat, burning with embarrassment. I couldn’t deny that Micah and I had shared a moment, but I wasn’t about to explain myself either. So, I sat there like a guilty lump, silently detesting my brother.
Grandpa climbed back in behind the wheel. “We all set?” Nobody answered. He looked around at each of us. “What’d I miss?”
“Ask Sera,” David replied.
Grandpa’s eyes settled on me. “Sera?”
“Nothing,” I snapped back. “Everything’s just fine.”
His mustache twitched at my tone. “All right.” He threw the SUV into gear and headed toward Interstate 90 and the Issaquah Valley, the other vehicles following close behind.
I kept my eyes focused out the front windshield. Soon I’d be with my dad, safe, warm, fed. The nightmare of the past two weeks would be nothing but a distant memory we all tried hard to forget. Milly reache
d over to pat my hand, smiling her kind smile when I looked over at her. However it had happened, I was glad Milly and I were now friends.
When we finally took the entrance ramp onto west Interstate 90, my heart dropped. Milly let out a breath. The freeway was an obstacle course of wrecked cars, fallen trees, and bent light poles—like an apocalyptic demolition derby. I stared at the dented green sign that read Seattle 77. Seventy-seven miles might as well have been a million.
“Difficult,” Grandpa said, “but not impossible.”
Our convoy rumbled forward, weaving through the frozen traffic, pausing often to clear obstructions and push aside cars. Most of the vehicles were empty and we scavenged what we could from them—food, water, car batteries, treasures from gloveboxes. Although we found signs that people had been camping in their cars, we didn’t see anybody else on the freeway.
The ash covering the ground got shallower the further west we drove, but the darkness only seemed to deepen. Every turn of the tires weighed heavier on my hope. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected to find outside of Roslyn, but it wasn’t this bleak, lifeless landscape being revealed, bit by bit, in front of me. When our headlights finally illuminated the next sign for Seattle, we all groaned. We’d been at it for hours and the city was still forty-five miles away.
We passed a Traffic Advisory Sign:
TUNE IN TO 1610 AM FOR TRAVELER INFO
There wasn’t a signal in Roslyn; I doubted there’d be one out here. I reached for the radio anyway.
“It won’t work,” David warned from the back seat.
“It never hurts to try,” Milly answered. “Go ahead, Sera.”
I clicked the knob. Static filled the cab. Afraid to hope, I held my breath, punched the AM button, and slowly turned the knob until the display read 1610. Nothing but static. My heart sank and I clicked off the radio.
“Told ya.” My brother never knew when to shut up.
Several hours later, we reached the east summit of Snoqualmie Pass. The number of abandoned cars on the freeway multiplied, creating a winding maze that separated the vehicles in our convoy. Most of the vacant cars we passed were wrecked and piled on top of each other, but some just sat in the middle of their lane as if they’d been parked there.
“Where did the drivers go?” Milly murmured.
“That depends on who you ask,” David grunted.
Tim sniggered. “Haven’t ya heard, Mills? A big white vacuum cleaner came and sucked ’em all up.”
Milly threw him a look over her shoulder. “That doesn’t help, Tim.”
While the boys laughed in the back seat, I kept my attention glued out the front window, anxious for any sign of life beyond our truck. It felt like we were the only people left in the world. For the first time I started to worry about what we’d find in Seattle. A few minutes later, we cleared the car maze. Nothing but dark, empty road stretched out in front of us. I frowned and glanced at Grandpa. He was focused on his rearview mirror and the fact that he couldn’t see the headlights of the cars behind us anymore.
Our headlights flickered over a wide shadow ahead of us on the pavement and I narrowed my eyes.
What is that?
And then I knew. “Hole!” I shouted. “Hole in the road!” I grabbed the dash and braced for impact.
Grandpa Donner slammed on the brakes and yanked the wheel hard to the left. The SUV jerked, lunged, did a three-sixty in the slippery ash, before slamming sideways into the center divider. We came to a jarring stop.
“Sorry—sorry! Is everybody okay?!” Grandpa asked.
Heart pounding, I stared out the front window at the long dark gap of missing pavement just feet in front of us. I did a quick mental check of all my limbs. Other than a tweaked neck, I felt fine. I looked over at Milly. Her eyes were wide and she was breathing hard, but she looked okay, too.
“We’re good,” Tim said from the back seat.
“Yeah,” David said. “Fine.”
Grandpa threw on his siren and flashing lights to warn the others coming up behind us. We all spun in our seats to see if everybody got the signal.
Deputy Hester, in his Dodge pickup, had been behind us since leaving the Shell Station in Roslyn. His headlights flickered as he emerged from the car maze. The lights bounced, then shifted sharply to the left. We heard the roar of an engine as his four-wheel drive kicked in against the slippery ash. His truck thrust forward and screeched to a stop behind us.
Mr. Chaney’s suburban swerved, as did Charlie’s CRV, then they both pulled up in line behind Deputy Hester.
Steve Skaggs was another story. His Jaguar emerged from the maze of cars and, instead of slowing down, picked up speed. He raced right up to the hole—as if the rest of us pulling to the side was an invitation for him to take the lead. When he finally slammed on his brakes, it was too late. With a high-pitched squeal, his tires tried to gain traction in the slick ash. The car fishtailed. His headlights shimmied, then dropped out of sight. His taillights shot up like red UFOs and held there, bouncing in midair.
I sucked in a breath. Micah!
I couldn’t get out of the car fast enough.
Multiple headlamps flared to life as everybody swarmed the site. I hurried to Steve Skaggs’ car, the smell of burned rubber and asphalt filling my nose. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Steve’s rear mag wheels were smoking and hanging in midair, six feet off the ground. His Jaguar had dropped forward through the hole in the freeway. Its undercarriage had caught against the thick, jagged pavement—that, and the way the Jaguar’s fragile hood propped precariously against the opposite lip, had saved him. But it wasn’t over yet. The whole mess creaked like it was about to give up the fight.
I could hear wind whistling up through the hole in front of me. My mind formed an image of a deep, jagged ravine lying directly beneath my feet.
Vivica Davis said what I was thinking. “Dare we hope it’s only a few feet down?”
Charlie Eagle cracked a yellow glow stick and tossed it into the hole. We craned our necks and watched it drop until it disappeared.
Definitely more than a few feet deep.
Shouts came from inside the car. I turned my headlamp toward the cracked driver’s side window and saw Steve dangling from his seat belt. He had a death grip on the steering wheel and he was sweating grenades. “Shut up!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “Shut up! Shut up!”
Grandpa and Deputy Hester fired up some crank lanterns, lighting up the site with an eerie blue-white glow. I skirted around the back of the car to the passenger side to check on Micah. He was sitting calmly in his seat with his feet braced against the dash. Though dangling over certain death, he looked completely relaxed. In fact, if not for Steve’s shouts, I’d have thought they were just two friends having a casual conversation.
Milly crouched down beside me to look in at Micah. “What’s he sayin’?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” I couldn’t hear his calm words over Steve’s wailing.
“Whatever it is,” Tim said, “Steve doesn’t like it a whole lot.”
Micah turned his head and looked at me through the window. He gave me an easy smile and a confident thumbs-up.
I scowled at him.
“That boy is just odd,” Milly stated.
No kidding.
The adults scrambled around the Jaguar with their headlamps and flashlights, trying to solve the problem before it ended in tragedy. Finally, Mr. Chaney came up with an idea. “I think we should all climb onto the back of the car and force the back wheels to the ground. Then we can just pull the vehicle back from the hole.”
“That would be extremely stupid,” David spoke up. He’d been quiet up till then—most likely hoping the car would hurry up and fall, taking Micah and Steve with it.
“The kid’s right.” Charlie was shining his flashlight on the road beneath the Jaguar’s undercarriage. “Look at the cracks in the pavement over here. The combined weight could break it away and send this whole bridge into the ravine.”
/> As if in response, the car creaked and shifted, the nose of the hood denting under the added pressure.
“Okay, everybody,” Grandpa called out. “Let’s move back a bit.”
Charlie Eagle owned his own construction company. If he said the entire bridge could go, then my grandfather wasn’t taking any chances.
Fear gripped my stomach. I cast one last look at Micah—who’d gone back to talking to Steve—and then hurried across the bridge to join the others.
Vivica crossed her arms. “Well, somebody has to do somethin’.”
Grandpa nodded. “We’re gonna pull ‘em out.” The other adults gave him a skeptical look. “Anybody got any better ideas?”
Charlie stared over at the car bathed in lantern light. “The slightest shift could dislodge that hood.”
“Then we best be careful,” Grandpa replied. “Charlie, you open the door on the passenger side. I’ll pull Micah free. Tim, you open the door on the driver’s side, and, Jim, you pull Steve free. We do this slowly and together.”
Everybody scrambled into position while me, Milly, David, and Vivica watched from the sidelines, our four headlamps glowing brightly against the underside of the car.
“Let’s do it,” Grandpa called out.
With a metallic click and then a steady groan, shadowed figures on both sides of the car eased open the doors. The car complained—creaked—shifted—but stayed put.
Milly grabbed my arm. I fought the urge to look away.
“Slow and steady, fellas,” I heard Grandpa coach. “Slow and steady.”
They got the doors halfway open; it looked like the plan would work. And then Steve panicked. He shoved open his door and lunged for Jim Hester’s hand. The entire vehicle teetered off balance. Jim pulled Steve free. The car lurched as the hood screeched off the pavement’s lip.
The Jaguar began a slow, grinding slide into the black abyss below.
I held my breath. The world spun in slow motion. Charlie Eagle flung the passenger door open. Grandpa reached inside. The car dropped through the hole with an ugly groan, taking Micah and my grandfather with it. I heard Milly gasp, followed by the angry crunch of metal on rock far below me.
The Goliath Code (The Alpha Omega Trilogy) Page 7
