by Peter Telep
Another cry. Was that Boonwalla?
“Stop firing!” Tommy shouts at the top of his lungs.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
We’re racing up to see what happened with Blink, and in all the chaos, I get what seems like this random memory:
“So what’s the deal?” Keane asks.
We’re on that amazing yacht, sailing back from the Canary Islands after rescuing my father. It’s an awesome night, with the stars shining so brightly that they look fake, like bad CGI.
“What do you mean, ‘What’s the deal?’” I ask.
“I mean what do you do here?”
“I don’t know. I get up, eat breakfast, go to school, come home, and do homework. After that, maybe I play some games, eat dinner, watch TV, and then go to bed.”
“That’s it?”
“Yup.”
He makes a face. “Sounds boring.”
“It is boring.”
He thinks a moment. “Why do you go to school?”
“I thought they had school on Flora.”
“They used to… before the withering.”
“Oh. Well, we go to school so we can be smart and get a good job and live a happy life, duh.”
“And so the government can control you.”
“Uh, no…”
“Uh, yeah. It was the same on Flora. My dad told me. It’s an old story. They want you to get a job so they can sell you junk you don’t need and control you.”
“We don’t buy junk.”
“You really need Star Wars socks?”
“Why not?”
“Yeah, right. So what if money didn’t matter, Doc? What would you do?”
“That’s a hard question. I wish I could be like my dad, but I don’t think I’m smart enough.”
“And that means you’ll never get a good job, never have enough money, and never be happy.”
“Because there are no Gods.”
“No, because you’re listening to them.”
“So what’s your plan?”
“To do whatever I want.”
“And that’s it?”
He lifts his brows and nods.
I laugh. “Good luck with that.”
“Doesn’t take luck.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Takes courage.”
I let the word hang until we’re just sitting here, in silence, listening to the drone of the yacht’s engines…
And then I’m thinking aloud: “I wish I could do something like Tommy.”
“Be a soldier?”
“Be a leader. Inspire people. Be strong instead of scared all the time. Teach people to do cool things.”
His eyes light up, and he begins to nod. “Then that’s who you are—and everything else is a lie.”
“You didn’t think this stuff up, did you.”
“No, my father told me all this. After the bombs, he said no one could hold me back any more.”
“Like his immortal said, when the world ended, your life really began.”
Keane looks pleased that I remember those words. “My father taught me to be strong, even though I sometimes forget.”
“My father keeps me in a box.”
“Then it’s time to make your own decisions. It’s time to be strong no matter what happens.”
This might sound weird, but I feel like this is more than just a memory of me and Keane on the yacht.
It’s as if Keane is connected to me right now, despite all this distance, and he put this memory in my head. I’m not sure why. Maybe to pump me up and get me ready for what we’re about to find…
I take a deep breath and try to clear my thoughts.
We’re slogging through the warehouse, about to enter the office where the shooting occurred.
Okay. I’m a leader who knows what to do.
We rush inside.
The girls gasp.
My stomach drops. The room spins. “Blink, what have you done?”
“I don’t know!” he screams. “You tell me!”
Landry lies on his side, shivering hard. A dark blood stain spreads across his hip. More blood seeps between his fingers as he clutches his neck.
Boonwalla lies flat on his stomach.
Meeka charges up to Blink and rips his rifle away. “How did you get this?”
“When they left,” Blink answers, fighting for breath. “I heard them talking. They were gonna steal our stuff and take off. That wasn’t happening. Not on my watch!”
“Your watch?” Meeka shouts. “Are you insane!” She grabs him by the neck and shoves him against the mound of debris.
I trudge over to Boonwalla, hunker down, and roll him over. Two horrible gunshot wounds have torn apart his face.
He’s gone.
“Landry’s not breathing anymore,” Steffanie says, lifting her ear away from his face.
I clamber to my feet. “Blink? You just killed them!”
I’m shocked over what he’s done, but not shocked that he could do it. His hearing is way better than most people’s, and jumping between his persona and blind body taught him to judge distances like a boss. So even without eyes, he honed in on his targets.
And murdered them!
“They would’ve killed us!” he argues.
“You don’t know that!” Meeka hollers.
“Doc, SITREP?” Tommy calls from below.
I’ll give him a situation report. But not yet.
We all just sit there for a moment.
Shocked. Breathing. Blown away.
Blood pools around the bodies.
Not bodies. People. Landry and Boonwalla.
Fathers with families. Even if they planned to steal from us, they didn’t deserve to die.
And there’s Blink—their judge, jury, and executioner—rocking to and fro with a horrified look on his face. He’s removed his helmet and scratches his head with both hands, digging for something buried deep in his skull.
“Doc, you hear me?” Tommy yells again.
“Yeah.” I shift over to the hole. “The nomads are dead.”
“Did Blink kill ‘em?”
“He did.”
“My fault. I left that rifle case open. He get shot?”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
“Roger. Secure his rifle.”
“Already done.”
“Good. You grab a zip tie out one of them packs and you cuff that boy. Police up the rest of those weapons, too. After that, you go. Leave the bodies to me.”
It’s amazing the way Tommy thinks clearly at a time like this. Me? I’m still trembling. It takes a moment for Tommy’s orders to sink in. “Solid copy. Roger that.”
I’m back on my feet and walking toward Blink. He already knows it’s me:
“Get away, Doc. You’re not locking me up.”
“Oh, yes I am.” I grab one of the backpacks and dig into the front compartment for the plastic zipper cuffs.
Blink wrenches himself out of Meeka’s grip and raises his fists. “So what now? You gonna kill me, too?”
Steffanie rushes over, and both girls leap on Blink and slam him down, onto his belly. I’d forgotten how violent they can be. They hiss and bare their teeth like grren as they twist Blink’s arms behind his back.
“Ow! Stop!” Blink cries. “I didn’t mean to! I’m just scared. I can’t see! I can’t see anything!”
“That’s no excuse!” Steffanie says.
Once I get the cuffs around his wrists and pull them tight, the girls roll him over.
“Please, you can’t,” he says, beginning to cry. “I’m already in a prison. I’m already there!”
“I’m sorry, Blink,” I tell him.
We all look at each other, speechless, as the shock settles around us once more…
And now it’s even harder to breathe.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Last Tuesday my father got the ingenious idea to teach me about our homeworld.
“It’ll be fun,” he said. “You’ll learn a lot
,” he said.
And you know where this is going…
So he launches into this lecture on geography, topography, gravity, and weather patterns across various regions.
I need duct tape to hold open my eyes, but I do remember something about days being twenty-nine hours long and the moons being called Aster and Calla.
Excellent. That’ll really help us now.
According to the girls, we’ll be crossing the City of Violet in broad daylight because the sun won’t set for another six hours. Monkshood snipers posted in the buildings can easily spot us, but there’s nothing we can do about that.
All we can do is clear our heads and march with our packs down the subway tracks, toward the platform where we left our bikes.
The girls have it even tougher since they have rifles slung over their shoulders and extra magazines stuffed in their packs. I volunteered to carry the pistols, and I have one holstered at my hip, although Meeka made sure that while the magazine’s full, there’s no round in the chamber. To fire, I have to rack the slide so that a bullet leaves the magazine and moves into the pistol’s chamber. Leaving the chamber empty for now is a lot safer for an inexperienced shooter like me but more dangerous if we’re confronted—since it requires that extra step before I can shoot.
“I just thought of something really obvious,” Meeka says. “We can’t jump, which means we can’t connect with the grren, which means we can’t tell them what we need.”
I curse and say, “They’re smart. We’ll think of something.”
“Sounds great—but what if we can’t find Brave or Mama Grren?”
“Yeah,” Steffanie says. “If the others don’t recognize us, they’ll attack. Maybe we should go looking for a caravan.”
“Just get me up there,” I tell them.
At that moment, my head tingles, and I feel like, for just a second, Keane’s in my thoughts again.
What the hell’s happening? What is this?
And the strange thing is, Keane asks the same question in my head… and then he’s gone.
“Well, at least we’re armed,” Meeka says.
“What?” I ask, still distracted.
“I said we’re armed, in the case the grren won’t play.”
“We won’t shoot them,” I warn her.
“You’re right,” she answers sarcastically. “We’ll be dead way before that…”
Steffanie interrupts us to say she’s feeling a lot better. She jogs ahead, her flashlight slashing through the darkness. Maybe she’s adapting to Flora faster than me because she was raised here, or, more likely, she’s just in better shape.
I drift closer to Meeka. “Look, I’m sorry for screwing up your life.”
Her voices tenses. “I told you, I’m just here for her.”
“I get that.”
She grabs my hand and squeezes tightly. “But I lied. I’m here for you too, even though you’re trying to ruin your own life. I’ve played this game before, Doc, and it’s not pretty.”
“You think I’m an idiot.”
“I know it’s hard. Trust me, I do.”
I release her hand. “All of this…. It’s all my fault. I should just let her go.”
I stop short and place my hands on my hips. It’s all too much: Julie gone, Grace dying, my parents trapped, the nomads murdered… And on top of all that, stronger gravity. I close my eyes.
Meeka slides her arm across my shoulders. “If you want to do something to feel better, just listen to yourself, not your father.”
“You really hate him, don’t you?”
“I just hate that he’s controlling you. He’s making it worse, not better.”
“Hey, guys?” Steffanie calls. “Can we hurry up?”
“We’re coming,” I answer.
Meeka smiles faintly and takes off running.
I break into a jog behind her but quickly fall behind.
By the time we reach the platform, my legs burn and I’m drooling and gasping.
“I said four to five hours at normal pace,” Meeka reminds me as I ascend the ladder and cross onto the platform. “But we’ll be slower because some people can’t keep up.”
“Some people are still getting used to the gravity,” I shoot back.
“Six hours,” she says.
“Less than five,” I tell her. “You watch.”
She chuckles under her breath. “I will.”
Thick blankets of sand cover the bikes, but otherwise they seem okay—if you call being cobbled together from parts scavenged from all over the city “okay.” The girls get to work, digging them out for a closer inspection.
Meeka’s mountain bike resembles a customized chopper straight off the Daytona strip. She’s strapped on these pool hose things for fenders, and small animal bones jingle along the lengths of the handlebars. I didn’t notice this before, but strips of leather with names written on them hang between the bones.
“What’re these?” I ask, reading one: Abbey.
“Friends who died,” she answers softly.
Before I get more depressed, I turn to Steffanie, who’s spinning the front wheel on her bike to clear the sand. The grren doll she tied to the back of her saddle is still there, along with those wire handlebar streamers that look stolen from a Barbie trike. Her rear wheel is way fatter than the front, just like a dragster’s.
My bike is much newer and comes from the Palladium. It’s all stealthy black, with solid disc wheels, weird rubbery tires, and an enclosed chain and gear compartment.
I spot Tommy’s bike, which is identical to mine, only the saddle is much higher, and lying beside it is Julie’s.
For just a few seconds, I’m back on her wheel, and we’re fleeing the Palladium.
Directly ahead, an enormous dust cloud forms over the grren like smog over Los Angeles.
My tires feel mushy and the handlebars shake with a life of their own as the grren charge even faster.
Maybe three hundred feet away and closing...
A powerful, musky scent fills the air.
And then all five hundred grren jump into their personas at the same time. Five hundred become 3,500! The desert lights up in spectacle that takes my breath away.
I blink off the memory.
“We ready?” Meeka asks.
“Good to go,” I answer.
“Once we’re outside, we’ll follow the same way back as last time,” Meeka says. “When we get into the city, follow my line and don’t stray. If you hear a shot, you just dump your bike and run for cover.”
I tap my chest. “The vests should help.”
She nods. “Follow me.”
We carry our bikes into the stairwell, kicking mounds of sand out of our way as we ascend.
At the top, we cross into that old arena where the domed ceiling that had partially collapsed is gone, swept away by the sandstorm.
We’re in the open air now, with a breeze whistling through mounds of broken stone.
The sun’s a little cooler and more yellow than I remember, and Meeka points to the heavy black clouds gathering above the half-melted skyscrapers in the distance.
I’m surprised by the clouds, and Meeka reminds me that even hot, dry places like Arizona have monsoons.
We ride along the crumbling walls and bare foundations of Verbena, the ancient Monkshood commune where those religious fanatics separated themselves from the rest of the city. After the withering, they resorted to cannibalism, and one night Julie and I almost joined them for dinner.
Our next stop is ground zero and the crater caused by the nuclear explosion.
We form a pace line of three, with Meeka doing most of the pulling. She keeps glancing over her shoulder to make sure I’m not being dropped, and I keep giving her looks like, I’m still here! My parents need help! Keep going!
* * *
We finally roll up to the crater’s edge, and Meeka calls for a quick break. I don’t want to stop, but we’re all breathing hard and blinking sweat from our eyes. At least
Tommy filled our canteens before we left Earth.
I gulp down water and allow my gaze to drift across the crater to the opposite end some ten football fields away. The weather’s probably different over there.
Wow, I can’t believe I’m back. I thought I’d never see this place again, but this time, I’m not afraid. My father suspects that the great sandstorms swept much of the fallout out to sea. Yeah, that’s fine, but it doesn’t change how I feel.
I’m angry, very angry—
Because there’d be no crater if my father and his research team hadn’t produced the perfect terrorist weapon, one that turns simple objects like pens, flowers, and cups into nuclear bombs by using “entangled particles.”
There’d be no crater if Solomon hadn’t sold that discovery to the wrong people: the Monkshood.
I imagine the bright light, the roaring explosion, and the blast wave killing millions of Florans.
Little kids get blinded and burned, kids like Meeka and Blink. Thousands more lose arms and legs after being buried for days in collapsed buildings.
Radiation sickness spreads like the blast wave itself, and even people way up in the Highlands like Keane’s father still get sick and eventually die.
No, I’m not afraid of this crater.
I hate it. I hate it with every thought I have.
But I don’t want to forget it.
I dig into my pocket for my phone. It’s a new one I keep in a heavy, waterproof case because I’m an expert at cracking screens and dropping phones in the toilet. My father and Tommy warned us against bringing them (operational security), but I couldn’t resist, and I suspect Tommy knows I have it.
I take a few pictures of the crater and then stand there for a long moment.
“You all right?” Meeka asks.
“Can we go?”
She nods, and in silence, we leave this ultimate symbol of misery behind.
Within minutes we weave through the garbage and debris lying in the shadows of demolished buildings.
Pink lightning flashes ahead of us.
Twin claps of thunder echo off cracked walls.
After a few more minutes, the rain begins... just as we roll up to a familiar car.
I glide over to the driver’s side rear window and use my sleeve to clear off the dusty glass.
