Empty

by Suzanne Weyn

  President Jeffrey Waters responded to Senator Rambling with harsh words. “This sort of panicky rhetoric undermines the current military effort to open oil fields in Venezuela and elsewhere. Oil is still abundant and continues to be the best source of inexpensive fuel. Without it, our entire way of life will have to be revamped in a way most citizens will find unacceptable.”

  Mr. Rambling rebutted the president’s words, saying: “The last thing the oil suppliers want is for the American public, the world’s largest consumer of crude oil, to wean themselves from their addiction to oil. We import over thirteen billion barrels of oil a day. Each day! For that reason, it has always been in the best interest of oil-producing countries to keep prices at a somewhat reasonable level. But now things have changed. Many of these oil-producing countries have finally, really, run out of what we have always known was a nonrenewable source of fuel. Those that have some remaining supply are near depletion, though they don’t want anyone to know it. This war with Venezuela is a game of blindman’s bluff, costing American lives. It’s time to stop the madness.”

  Senator Rambling is calling for an antiwar rally in Washington by the end of the month.

  CHAPTER 12

  Niki stood on her back deck and looked down the hill into the floodwaters. The family’s Bayliner motorboat, still tethered to the family dock, was now completely submerged. The floodwaters had risen to just below the five-foot-high platform. But she could still see the boat sitting there below the surface.

  Her glasses fogged, obscuring her view of Lake Morrisey, and she took them off to wipe on her shirt. Contact lenses weren’t coming back into her life anytime soon, and there was no sense fighting the glasses. She needed to see, after all.

  It was tempting to jump into the flooded lake. The water was muddier than usual with the contents from the bottom still swirling, but it didn’t look awful. And she felt disgusting, having been unable to shower for days since the power shortage took out the electric pump to the family well.

  She was hungry, too. In just one day, everything in the refrigerator and freezer was a melting mess. The stove and microwave were electric, so nothing could be cooked. Her breakfast had been a can of cold tomato soup, which hadn’t been too awful, but now she was ready for lunch and didn’t relish the idea of cold chicken soup.

  After his rampage, her father had taken to his bed and hadn’t yet emerged. Niki wondered if he even realized there had been a hurricane.

  Her mother was staying glued to the radio, only moving away from it to rummage for something to eat. Niki had sat with her for two hours that morning, and was now more up-to-date on current events than she’d ever been in her life.

  The war in Venezuela had escalated. Every day, more and more American troops went down to fight for oil. Bolivia had sided with Venezuela, and the fighting had spread.

  A Russian nuclear submarine had been spotted off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada.

  The last BJK-Mart Superstore, in Danbury, Connecticut, had been forced to shut its gates when rioting broke out as customers fought over the sparse goods left on the shelves. The BJK-Mart corporation explained that not only was the high fuel price of trucking to blame, but also the fact that plastic was a product derived from oil and the elevated price of plastic products due to the scarcity of oil had made many of their products too expensive to stock.

  Niki was still staring out at the lake when she noticed someone crossing the water on a Jet Ski. The water vehicle seemed to be heading directly for her. Niki realized it was closer than she’d originally thought. A teen boy was driving. “Tom?” she wondered aloud. It might be him, though she wasn’t yet sure.

  Descending several steps until her bare feet hit the water, she leaned out for a better look. It was Tom, and she laughed with delight at the improbability of his driving out to see her on a Jet Ski. As she waved to him, swinging her arm broadly, she snatched off her glasses and stuck them in the front pocket of her jeans.

  When Tom was in front of her, he idled the Jet Ski. “How are you?” he called.

  Niki had to admit he had the best smile.

  “Where’d you get that?” she asked, pointing to the Jet Ski.

  He put his finger to his lips. “I borrowed it,” he admitted in a confiding tone. “It was floating in someone’s yard, but their house was empty. I’ll put it back when I’m done. Lucky the tank still has gas.”

  “How did you even get over to Marietta?” Niki asked. “All the roads are flooded.”

  “I used my friend’s dinghy. It’s tied up back there at the empty house.”

  “You floated here on a dinghy?!” Niki cried, laughing in disbelief.

  Tom returned her laughter, shrugging in a way she found charming. “It got me here. I wanted to see you, and plus, I have something else I have to do.”

  “Want to come up?” Niki offered.

  “Not now, thanks. I have this other thing to do.”

  “What do you have to do?”

  “Get on, I’ll give you a ride,” Tom suggested. “You’ll see.”

  “Okay,” she agreed.

  Tom brought the Jet Ski alongside the stairs and Niki came down another three steps before swinging around to settle in behind him. “Hang on,” he instructed, and she wrapped her arms around his waist. Turning the hand throttle, Tom sent them surging forward into the lake.

  Closing her eyes, Niki let the spray of lake water stirred up by the Jet Ski hit her face. Its bracing iciness made her feel alive, almost happy. There had been so much misery that riding so fast now with Tom made her feel that she could race away from it all, as though they might be able to actually outrun all the troubles of the world.

  Tom drove them out to the north side of the lake. Speeding around a jutting lakeshore bend, he set a path toward a wooded island out in the middle of the lake. When they were close, he pulled up to a rotted dock extending off the island, half sunk below the water.

  Getting off the Jet Ski, Tom offered Niki a hand in climbing onto the dry part of the dock. Then he pulled the Jet Ski up into the bushes. “Where are we?” Niki asked.

  “Did you think you were the only one whose family owns property on Lake Morrisey?” he asked in a teasing voice. “This is my family’s vacation estate.”

  Niki stepped up to her ankles in frigid water, and her bare feet sank into a muddy ooze as she gazed around at the trees and bushes, all tangled in vines. They were a blur, so she pulled out her glasses, intending to leave them on for just long enough to take in her surroundings.

  The entire island must have been no more than ten yards long and about eight yards across. At its center was a tumbledown wooden storage shed, its shingled roof nearly crashed in by the heavy branch that lay on top of it. Its one window was smashed. “No kidding? Does your family really own this island?” Niki asked.

  Tom nodded. “It was my grandfather’s. I used to camp out here with him when I was little.”

  Tom pushed at the shed’s jammed doorway until it gave way. He pushed through old camping equipment and boat oars. “What are you looking for?” Niki asked, stepping inside the shed behind him.

  “Here’s one of the things,” he said. Gripping the top of a scratched orange canoe, he pulled it off the two wooden sawhorses on which it had been sitting.

  Niki helped him pull it sideways out the shed door, the two of them struggling to make it fit through the narrow opening. “That’s what you came here for?” Niki asked.

  “Partly.” He walked around to the far side of the shed. “Okay, here’s another part.”

  Niki joined him and saw the bottom side of a small boat. “Is it a rowboat?” she asked.

  “No,” Tom replied as he turned the boat over, knocking out spider-webs with his hands. “It’s the hull of my father’s old sailboat. It’s got two sails—I think it’s called a sloop. He used to take me out, and I could sail it if I can find the other parts. Right now it’s completely disassembled, though.”

  Niki went with him back into the
shed and followed his lead in continuing to overturn beach chairs and deflated floats to dig below moldy blankets, towels, anchors, motors, and just about anything anyone would ever need at a lake.

  “Here it is,” Tom said, pulling out a long metal pipe with nylon ropes wrapped around it. “The mast.”

  “What are those ropes for?” Niki asked.

  “They’re called halyards,” he explained, still digging among the piles. “The sails are attached with them.” After a few minutes more of searching, he unearthed two dirty nylon sails. “Aw, they’re disgusting,” he remarked, unfurling them on the shed’s wooden floor.

  “Did you plan to sail it?” Niki asked.

  “Not today. It has to be fixed up. I’m going to drag the canoe home with me. This sailboat is too heavy, though. I’ll have to come back for it.”

  “You’re going to bring the canoe home on the Jet Ski?” she questioned.

  He smiled sheepishly. “That was my plan, yeah. Once I get back to my dinghy I can attach it and float the canoe behind me.”

  “What for?” she asked. “Why do you want to bring it home?”

  “People are stranded all around by me. I figure that any kind of boat that doesn’t need gas would be good to have, and I remembered these were here.”

  “That makes sense, I suppose.”

  “Hey, did I tell you I have a dog now?” He told Niki about the golden retriever he’d found swimming in the floodwaters. “He must belong to someone, but he had no tags. All I know is that his collar says Larry, and he responds to it when I call him that. I checked with the sheriff’s office to see if anyone’s looking for him, but so far there’s no news.”

  “I’m not big on dogs,” Niki admitted.

  “Oh? Well, I like him.”

  “I bet he’s nice,” Niki said, wishing she hadn’t spoken, suddenly worried that he’d like her less for not loving dogs. “Larry is an adorable name. It’s funny on a dog.”

  “Yeah,” Tom agreed, gazing around the island. Suddenly, he laughed. “Don’t I take you to the nicest places?” he joked. “First to an all-out fight between two high schools and now to a snake-infested island.”

  “Snakes?” Niki asked in a small, worried voice.

  “Yeah,” he confirmed. “They live all over the island. But they’re not poisonous. By the way, did I say you look good in your glasses? I never knew you wore them.”

  “How do you know I—?” Niki’s hands flew to her face. She’d completely forgotten she’d put them on. Embarrassed, she whipped off the glasses.

  Laughing, Tom took the glasses from her and gently placed them back on her face. “You look good in them, and you have to see, don’t you?”

  “Do you really think they’re all right?” Niki asked, sure he was just being nice.

  “I think you look very pretty in the glasses,” Tom said, putting his arms around her. In the next second, they were kissing.

  Niki had never kissed a boy while wearing her glasses before. She’d never have thought it was something she’d ever do.

  “Everything’s changing so fast,” she said quietly when they broke from their kiss. “I feel like I’m turning into someone else.”

  “Like who else?” Tom asked.

  “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “Does it sound crazy?”

  “Everything is crazy now,” he said, and then kissed her again.

  CHAPTER 13

  Gwen threw all her weight against one of the two huge trees, the one on top of the other that had fallen in front of the mine shaft doorway. It wouldn’t budge. She screamed in frustrated defeat. She’d been pushing at the trees for at least a half hour without any result.

  After the eye of OscPearl had passed, the storm had resumed, beating against the mine shaft with an even more terrifying ferocity than before. Gwen had rushed back inside and had been there mere minutes before the first tree crashed down and hit the second tree. She had cringed into a ball on the ground, covering her head and ears.

  The two trees made a door that blocked the rain, and at first Gwen had been thankful for the additional protection, no longer fearing that her small space might flood. But now the storm was over, and the trees were stopping her from leaving the mine shaft. Initially, she’d hoped she could wriggle out through the space on top, but she couldn’t even get her shoulders through.

  Gwen’s stomach rumbled and a dull ache of hunger was forming at its pit. Panic seized her, increasing the pain in her belly. What if she survived the storm only to starve to death, trapped here in this old mining shaft? Even if she shouted for help, who knew how long it would be before anyone came by? If it was weeks—and it could be—she’d be dead.

  The small space suddenly felt unbearably claustrophobic. She had to get out.

  Calm down, she urged herself. Breathe. There had to be a way out.

  Searching around, Gwen saw a patch of wood about five feet square from side to side in the dirty rock floor—a trapdoor. Walking over, she realized that it hadn’t been placed perfectly on the opening. And then a dim memory came to her. Luke, Rat, and other friends used to go down into the mine, leaving her on top, usually with a boy named Tim and his sister, Tina. Luke always said they were too young to come down into the mine, and Gwen had been just as happy not to go. The dark, rocky descent made her think of a fearsome entry into an underworld. As much as she would put on a brave face, she always sighed a deep breath of relief when Luke reemerged.

  Gwen had asked Luke once if he could breathe all right when he was down in the mine. “Yeah, there’s air down there,” he’d answered. “It’s coming from somewhere.”

  If there was air, maybe there was another way out.

  Gripping the trapdoor’s handle, Gwen put all her strength into pushing the door from atop the opening. The space between her shoulder blades cramped with the effort, and her biceps twisted in pain. She clamped her teeth together, contorting her face into a determined grimace until the door was pushed forward.

  Breathing hard, she stepped back to observe her work. The door wasn’t completely off, but she’d pushed it far enough for her to squeeze into the opening. Bending, Gwen peered into the blackness and another memory came to her—the secret flashlight. Luke and his friends kept it stashed on a rock shelf behind the metal steps leading down into the mine.

  Did she have the nerve to go down there? Glancing back anxiously at the tree-blocked doorway, Gwen shuddered at the idea. What was down there?

  But what other choice was there?

  Gwen sat at the edge of the trapdoor opening. Turning, she lowered herself onto the metal ladder, feeling with her sneakers for the rung. Descending four more steps until she faced only dark rock, she groped through the ladder until her hand came to the heavy lantern-style flashlight she’d remembered.

  Could the batteries still be good?

  Clicking on the switch, nothing happened. Then she remembered something else Luke had told her. He always stored batteries separately. “They stay good as long as you don’t leave them inside the flashlight,” he’d told her. Again groping blindly for the rock shelf, she came to a blister pack of C batteries.

  Score.

  Feeling her way down the long ladder, flashlight clutched under her left arm, batteries stuffed deep into the back pocket of her jeans, Gwen felt as though she were disappearing into a world of utter blackness. The shaft opening above took on a grayish glow, lit by the bit of sunlight that filtered into the shaft from the opening, but it was disappearing with every downward step she took.

  At the bottom of the ladder, she sat cross-legged on the cold, damp rock, which instantly soaked the seat of her jeans, and fumbled in the darkness with the bottom of the flashlight. When it was off, she loaded it with the batteries, feeling the bottom of each one with probing fingers to ascertain if it was going in the correct direction. Batteries like this had become rarer and rarer—and more and more expensive—in the past couple of years, but she still remembered how to do this.

  Holding her bre
ath in anticipation, she clicked to the ON position. Gwen blinked to adjust her eyes to the light as she took in her cavernous surroundings. The black and brown speckled rock was veined with bluish-gray lines.

  Stalactites hung from the rocky ceiling and dripped everywhere. There was a sound of rushing water coming from somewhere, but she couldn’t tell where.

  When Gwen breathed out, her breath formed a cloud of vapor.

  Swinging her flashlight all around, Gwen saw that the mine continued on to her right and she headed that way. Along the way, she scanned the walls with her flashlight beam, searching for anything that might indicate that there was light or air coming in.

  After a while, Gwen’s feet ached and she felt sure she had walked at least five miles. This endless underground path seemed to lead nowhere in particular. And now she would have to go back the way she’d come—because there was no way she was going to sleep down here in this cold, wet, dark place.

  Throwing her arms wide in frustration, she swung around in a circle. And suddenly, she froze midswing, because right in front of her was a door made of a highly polished stainless steel.

  Assuming it was locked, Gwen tried the handle just to be certain. And it opened. Pulling the door toward her, she stared in at the improbable sight of a clean, ultramodern living room. “Hello?” Gwen called, stretching forward to see more of the room. “Anybody home?”

  The only reply was the hum of the stainless-steel refrigerator. Drawn by intense curiosity and the promise of finding food and water, Gwen stepped inside.

  The door shut effortlessly, making no sound as it swung on silent, spring-loaded hinges. The room had no windows but was bathed in a pleasant, soft, whitish light from bulbs embedded in the ceiling. Gwen hoped this meant the power in Sage Valley had been restored.

  At the room’s center was a long, black counter space surrounded by high stools. On the right were couches covered in a tweedy, tan material and a smallish TV with about a 32-inch screen. A Ping-Pong table sat to the right of the couches.