Tim looked stumped. “Now what?”
Grandpa started climbing.
We all shrugged at each other, then followed.
The ragged links of the old fence cut into my fingers as I moved up and over the rattling obstacle. Tim and Milly dropped down beside me on the other side. We stood in a large courtyard that had been a smooth slab of asphalt before the years, weeds, and earthquake had gotten to it. It was empty, except for something big and fat squatting near the back of the fence.
Milly flashed her headlamp at it. “What is that?”
“It’s an M-1.” Grandpa helped David off the fence.
She wrinkled her nose. “What’s an M-1?”
“It…It’s a tank,” David said reverently.
Tim lit it up with his headlamp. “What? That big bush over there?”
Grandpa was already moving toward the building. “It’s covered with a camo net.”
“Tell me we’re taking it,” David begged.
Grandpa grunted. “The batteries are dead, the fuel is likely contaminated, and we’d need transmission fluid and oil for the final drives—not to mention grease for the tracks. And with no 120-millimeter ammo…it’s basically a seventy-ton paperweight.”
David grumbled his disappointment.
We followed Grandpa along the back of the building until he came to a place in the wall where the stone ended and the structure became smooth. He pushed aside the weeds and overgrown bushes, revealing a tall, black, iron door.
Tim smiled. “Ladies and gentlemen, Grandpa Donner is, in fact, James Bond.”
“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” Grandpa pressed his fingertips into a groove in the door and a panel popped open, exposing a ten-digit keypad.
David shook his head. “That’s not going to work. No power.”
Grandpa gave him a smug look. “Wanna bet, smarty pants?” He punched in a code. “It’s not electric.” The door clicked open. “It’s push button.”
David gaped. “How old is this place?”
Grandpa shoved open the heavy iron door. “Older than your Great-Aunt Patty.” He ushered us all inside a long, dark hallway. “I was the custodian here when I joined the ROTC thirty years back. They closed it not long after that. Locked up the doors and turned the top floor into a roller rink. But they never bothered to change the key code.”
Tim snorted. “Well, thank you very much, incompetent Uncle Sam.”
We walked down the long corridor, our footsteps echoing against the painted cement walls. We passed military posters, cork assignment boards, offices, storage rooms, utility closets, bathrooms, and even a small kitchen.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. I’d attended a dozen skating parties on the hardwood floor above our heads and not once had I even imagined what lay beneath my rolling wheels.
“Should be just in here.” Grandpa pushed against an old wooden door. It creaked open into a dark, musty expanse that felt empty and dead. Then our collective headlamps lit up an immense room full of floor to ceiling green metal shelves.
Tim sucked in a breath. “Anybody else gettin’ goose bumps?”
David gaped. “Long past that stage.”
My stomach clenched. Automatic rifles loaded down every shelf.
“There’s enough firepower in here to start a war,” David breathed.
A chill crawled over my skin. Is that what we were planning to do? Start a war?
Grandpa pulled a dusty tarp off an old piece of machinery. He pushed a button, turned a crank, and the machine sputtered to life. Like magic, the lights overhead lit up like a Christmas tree.
It was such a relief to be standing in the warm, secure glow of electric lighting after weeks in the dark that I just stood there, unmoving for several seconds.
We all took a good look at the room around us. There were bins of grenades, caches of rocket launchers, and walls full of armaments I’d never seen before. There were helmets, boots, uniforms, and stacks upon stacks of automatic weapons.
Grandpa threw open the lid on an old metal tool box and pulled out a pair of wire snips. “I’m gonna go make a discreet door in that fence out there. You kids start grabbing guns and ammo.”
Grandpa left, and David and Tim started loading their arms with weapons. Milly found an empty storage bin and started filling it with ammo clips. But I hung back.
Finally, Tim looked up at me. “Come on, Sera.”
I shook my head. “This isn’t a good idea.”
David glared at me. He was holding two automatic rifles in his arms. “Don’t even start, Sera.”
Milly paused in her ammo gathering. “What? What’s wrong?”
“Sera doesn’t like guns,” David jeered. “But we don’t have time for her gun control soapbox right now.”
“These people are our friends,” I reminded them. “Our neighbors.”
“Is she kiddin’?” Tim asked.
David straightened. “Did you even hear what Skaggs said about me?”
“Every word. But are you really going to shoot him over it?”
“If I have to.”
Milly hesitated. “Surely they wouldn’t really hurt David.”
Tim grabbed another weapon. “I don’t plan to find out.”
“You shouldn’t pick up a gun unless you’re willing to use it,” I said. That was a direct quote from Grandpa Donner and I had no intention of ever shooting anybody.
David glowered at me. “First your new boyfriend and now this? I’m starting to wonder who’s side you’re on, sister dearest. Anybody with half a brain can see right through Micah’s Good Samaritan act. He should have gone with his Skaggs-loving buddies, so I’d have a good excuse to shoot him.”
I clenched my fists. “Like Grandpa would ever give you a gun!” I shot back.
I’d hit him right where he lived and I regretted it instantly.
He turned his back on me and continued to load up.
Milly was starting to look skeptical. “Maybe we should—”
Grandpa marched back in through the doorway. “What’s the holdup?”
“Sera,” David ground out.
I swallowed hard. “I don’t like guns. I’ll help some other way.”
“I don’t like guns either.” That surprised me, coming from a former Navy SEAL. “But a wise man once said that the only thing necessary for evil to triumph in this world is for good people to do nothin’.” He walked up to a shelf and started collecting automatic rifles. “I took an oath—long before you kids were even born—that I would prevent evil from spreading in this great nation. And that oath doesn’t end if the evil happens to be my neighbor. I will protect my family, Sera. With my last breath, if need be. You’ll have to decide for yourself the part you’re willin’ to play.” He turned and left the room with half a dozen weapons slung over his shoulders. David and Tim, their arms full, followed him.
I wasn’t convinced that Frank Skaggs and the others were evil, but I trusted my grandfather more than anybody else in the world. He’d seen three wars and nine deployments. He wasn’t the type of man to take conflict lightly.
Milly stood over her crate half full of ammo clips, watching me, waiting.
I grabbed an empty storage crate and started filling it up.
A few minutes later, Milly and I squeezed through the “door” Grandpa had made in the chain-link fence, taking our twin crates of ammo out to the SUV. When we came around the building, David and Tim were staring up at the sky.
“What are you doing?” Milly asked. We set our bins in the back of the truck and joined them.
Tim pointed up. “You see it, Mills? It’s right there?”
It took me a moment, but then I gasped. Hanging over the trees on the ink-black horizon was the faint but unmistakable glow of the moon.
Chapter Eight
One week later the sun came out—a giant crimson ball against a hazy crimson sky—much dimmer than before. Grandpa Donner called the sky color “apocalypse red”; it reminded him of the oil fields he�
��d seen burning in Saudi Arabia. It cast a peculiar shade of filtered light that never quite warmed your face. Some people took the sun’s reappearance as a sign that things were getting better. All I saw was an unfamiliar orb in an alien sky that reminded me the world would never be the same again.
Despite the sun’s reappearance, we still couldn’t get a radio signal in or out. David had a hard time explaining it. He said rain or snow might help clear the ash from the lower atmosphere and improve the signal, but we hadn’t seen any rain since the eruption.
The acidic ashfall had burned all the vegetation. Now, without normal sunlight, plants refused to grow back and animals began to die. Predators wandered into town in search of food. A mountain lion had dragged off Ken Sheridan’s dog, so people figured it was only a matter of time before they started dragging off people, too. We weren’t much better off than the animals. Hunting was poor. Food was scarce and, with five of us to feed, Grandpa’s pantry was nearly empty. Like a lot of people in town, we had to ask for food from the community food bank to survive.
We’d heard that Frank Skaggs and his people were still alive. The day after the meeting at city hall, they’d raided the CBC commune. Shots were fired and people were killed, including Apostle Phillip. In the chaos, the entire commune had burned to the ground, taking all of the CBC food stores up in a blaze of fire and smoke. Nobody had seen or heard from Skaggs since. Rumors claimed that he’d set up camp at his hunting cabin near Curry Canyon, while his people were living in tents and eating bugs. I didn’t worry too much about them attacking us. If they got it into their heads to challenge the citizens of Roslyn, they’d find themselves outgunned. Grandpa had sworn us all to secrecy about the armory, but people had been so desperate to get their hands on a gun that nobody asked where they’d come from.
Things began to settle in to what Milly called “a new normal.” Since we had daylight again, we started the task of rebuilding. Smaller outlying communities like Lakedale and Driftwood Acres had reached out to us for support, so there were construction projects going on all over the area. Don Chaney and Charlie Eagle had been tasked with finding a way east to Ellensburg. They’d attempted the trek several times by road, once down I-90, once down State Route 10, and once down Highway 97. Each time, they were stopped by several feet of ash.
Everybody had a job. Tim and Micah helped Vivica at the food warehouse, providing security and keeping records of who got what. David had been assigned to the team trying to design a better water purification system. We needed to clean the ash from the water more efficiently without wearing out the filters so fast. Of course, David resented what he saw as an unheroic job, but he begrudgingly did it anyway.
Milly had convinced Doctor Reinkann to let her work at the hospital, one of the first buildings repaired after the quake. She’d begged me to work there with her, insisting any best friend would do it. So now I spent my days giving sponge baths, cleaning bed pans, and changing sheets. Being friends with Milly could be challenging at times but, in those dark moments when I started to feel hopeless, I was glad I had her to talk to.
We were seeing a lot of cases of what Doctor Reinkann called “early onset silicosis,” especially in older people. This confused the doctor. According to him, the disease usually took decades to manifest and normally responded well to removal of the irritant. But even in the clean environment of the hospital, these patients were getting worse.
I worried about Micah. I didn’t know where he was living and whether he was working in the ash or not—and I’d never seen him wear a mask.
“You’re thinkin’ about him again.”
I was making a bed at the end of my shift. I looked up to see Milly in the doorway of the hospital room, smiling at me. She might be getting to know me too well, I thought.
“I haven’t seen him for almost a week.” Not since Tiger Mountain and city hall. I thought about him a lot, though. I wondered if he ever thought about me.
“We haven’t seen much of Tim either,” she replied. “Viv keeps them pretty busy at the warehouse. Don’t worry.” She winked. “I’m sure Micah misses you, too.”
My cheeks heated. “He probably just sees me as an annoying kid.” He was eighteen after all.
“Mama always says bees can’t ignore honey. And, believe me, girl, when Micah looks at you he sees a big ol’ pot.”
I gave her a sideways look. “I’m not sure how I feel about that comparison.”
Milly laughed. “I need to check on Mr. Ormann. Meetcha out front in ten minutes.”
I went back to changing the bedsheets, but looked up again when I heard the door close. Sharon Webber stood there, her clipboard hugged to her chest. With the Roslyn Grocery demolished and Sharon out of a job, Doctor Reinkann had taken her two months of pharmacology school into consideration and assigned her the task of dispensing medicine.
She gave me a serious look. “I’ve been hoping to talk to you.”
I shook out the top bedsheet. “About what?”
“Your mom.”
My hands hesitated over tucking in the corners, but I recovered quickly. “Oh?”
She came toward me. “There’s something you don’t know—something I’ve only told a handful of people. My family didn’t die in the quake.”
I straightened and frowned at her. “You said your house collapsed and they—”
“They were taken,” she said, then added in a whisper, “by the white light.”
I refocused on finishing the bed.
“Just like Mr. Williams’ family, Sera, mine was taken.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” My hands started to shake. The town still treated Peter Williams like a lunatic and this was a subject I avoided at all costs.
She wandered over to the window and looked outside at the brilliant purple sunset. “Mom and Dad were standing with me on the sidewalk, holding my sweet Sarah Jane.” Her voice wavered. “A blinding white light shot down from the sky, and they were just—”
“Gone.” The word slipped out of my mouth. I instantly regretted it.
Sharon spun toward me. “Eva Gorski said your mother is unaccounted for.” Even silhouetted against the window with the setting sun behind her, I could see the unmistakable look of hope in her eyes. “I was wondering if maybe you…if maybe you might have seen the same thing I did.”
I took a deep breath and delivered my lines. “My mom died in the church. She fell through the floor and into the basement. She’s buried under tons of rock and debris; there’s no way to recover her body.”
Sharon’s expression sank. I felt terrible lying to her.
“I’m sure there’s a logical explanation for what you saw, though,” I added to soften the blow.
She gave me a sober look. “We know what it was.”
Now it was my turn to hope. “You do?”
“Aliens.”
Aliens? I cringed. Great. A whole new way to sound crazy. Then I realized what she’d said. “Wait. You said we?”
“Ava Gorski’s husband disappeared the same way,” Sharon revealed. “She told folks the oak tree in their front yard killed Ted, but she’s since admitted to the White Lighters that the white light took him.” She clamped her lips shut and blinked at me, as if she’d revealed too much.
“The White Lighters?”
She paused, then admitted, “The White Lighters Society. We meet on Friday’s at the old Moose Lodge on West Utah. But you can’t tell a single soul, Sera Donner.”
I shook my head. “I would never.” And I meant it. The last thing I wanted was to connect myself to anything related to the white light.
“The building’s a bit crumbled,” Sharon went on, “but it’s private and secure.
They actually have a club? I thought. “How many of you are there?”
“There’s me, Eva, Peter, of course, and several other people whose names I don’t care to mention right now. Nine in total. We were hoping to make you an even ten—after all, you’re the sheriff’s granddaughter. If you
came forward about the white light, then people would have to listen.” She was still hoping I’d change my story, but I focused on hers.
“Why would aliens want to kill people in Roslyn?”
She laughed like I’d asked the dumbest question she’d ever heard. “Our families aren’t dead. The aliens just want us to think they’re dead so that we won’t go looking for them.” She flashed me a smile. “Endure.”
I frowned. “What?”
“That’s what people say when the white light takes them. Endure. Why would they tell us they’re going to endure if they’re dead?”
My head was spinning. Aliens?
Sharon’s eyes narrowed on my face. “Did your mother say something to you? Before she…fell through the floor?”
I opened my mouth to tell another lie.
A sharp, loud POP! interrupted me. The large window behind Sharon shattered, and her face expanded outward in a blast of red. She crumbled to the ground.
I stood there, stunned.
Bullets were suddenly flying all around me, embedding in the walls and ceiling. One zinged past my ear. I scrambled for cover under the bed.
Gunfire in the hallway. People screaming. The hospital was under attack.
“Pledge or perish!” someone shouted.
Feet running. More gunfire.
The attackers were moving from room to room. It was only a matter of time before they found me.
Something dripped into my eyes. I reached up to wipe it away and my fingers came back warm and sticky. I looked down at my hand—at my clothes—I was covered in Sharon Webber’s blood.
A scream crawled up my throat. I clamped my hand over my mouth. Fighting panic, I took a shaky breath and tried to think clearly. More gunfire in the hallway. I had to get out of the building.
The window.
I slipped out from beneath the bed, doing my best to avoid looking at Sharon Webber. Her blood was spreading into a dark red pool around her body. The thick, metallic smell made me gag. I crawled to the shattered window, careful of the glass on the floor. Another scream. More shots. The gunmen were getting close.
I stole a quick look out the window. The ground was six feet down. Another bullet blew past my head. I dropped to the floor and stared into what was left of Sharon Webber’s face. Muffled voices came from the room next door. I was running out of time.
The Goliath Code (The Alpha Omega Trilogy) Page 10
