Dry

by Neal Shusterman

  “Hey, I asked you a question!” the meathead calls to him. And now with a car between them, Henry gives him an answer.

  “Go screw yourself.”

  Then Henry gets in, slamming the door hard.

  The meathead is more stunned than angry. “You know, I don’t even think you go to Santa Margarita High School!”

  Henry starts the truck, and I jump into the passenger seat.

  “We have to wait for Jacqui!” I insist.

  “We don’t have time!”

  It’s like something’s snapped in Henry. If his name even is Henry. I have no idea of anything anymore. He throws the car into reverse, and we smash into the Toyota behind us that’s boxing us in. He throws it in drive and does the same to the Audi in front of us. Then he reverses into the Toyota again, forcing the cars apart to give us space to pull out.

  And then I finally see Jacqui. She’s running toward us. And she’s carrying the ÁguaViva box!

  “Nooooooooo!” yells Henry when he sees her. Finally he’s created enough damage and made enough room to pull the truck away from the curb. He lurches forward, scattering people heading toward the buses. By now the soldiers have taken notice—and the one who made the trade is chasing Jacqui, but she’s too fast.

  Henry swings a violent U-turn that takes down a little crepe myrtle tree on the island between lanes, and we’re beached there, spinning our wheels, kicking up leaves and pink flowers.

  It gives Jacqui enough time to reach us. She throws the box in the back, and, realizing Henry has no intention of waiting for her to hop into the cab, she climbs the bumper and jumps into the bed along with the box and whatever other junk Uncle Basil has back there.

  Henry stomps on the gas, cursing, and rather than telling him what to do, I reach over and engage the four-wheel drive.

  Now when he hits the gas, we lurch forward, making sawdust of the little tree, and careen away from the school, leaving gawking people, and frustrated soldiers who don’t seem to be following us. They’re just glad we’re no longer their problem.

  “Are you insane?” I scream at Henry. “You nearly killed us back there!”

  He looks at me with those wild, snapped eyes. “Killed you? Killed you? I just saved your lives! At least you could show some gratitude!”

  “Slow down!” I demand. He’s so frenetic, he can’t seem to find a lane. If there were more cars on the road, we’d have totaled the truck by now.

  He grips the wheel tightly, looks straight ahead. “All right. All right,” he says, taking a deep breath. He steadies the car, eases up on the accelerator. “All right, all right. It’s all under control now. It’s all good.” Then he turns to me. “There were body bags, Alyssa. Some of them were already full, but there were stacks and stacks and stacks of empty ones.”

  “There were?” says Garrett, wide-eyed, like someone just proved to him that the boogeyman was real.

  “Do you see why I had to get us out of there, Alyssa? Do you? I had to save us, because if I didn’t, no one else would have. Do you see?”

  I nod. “Just keep your eyes on the road.”

  He turns to face forward. “All right. All right,” he says again, tamping down his panic. Pretending it wasn’t panic at all. He’s not driving well, but who would under these circumstances?

  And then Kelton says, “There’s nothing scary about a body bag. They’re for transport and to prevent the spread of disease. I have one in my room; I use it for laundry.”

  There’s a rap on the little back window of the cab. Jacqui’s hair is windswept and she doesn’t look happy back there.

  “Stop the car,” I tell Henry. “Let Jacqui back in.”

  “I will be happy to let her in once we’re far enough away from that place.”

  And apparently twenty more yards down the road is far enough away, because he eases on the break, and pulls over to the side of the road. Jacqui hops out of the truck bed and storms to Henry’s window.

  “Get the hell out, I’m driving!”

  “In the back seat or not at all,” Henry tells her.

  “Not gonna happen,” says Jacqui.

  “Fine, then not at all,” and he throws the car in gear and pulls out, leaving her behind in a cloud of dust.

  “God DAMN it!” yells Jacqui, running after us.

  “You can’t just leave her here!” I yell.

  “I’m not!” he tells me, now calm as can be. “This is a negotiation and I’m playing hardball.” He stops the car to let Jacqui catch up with us. “If you want to tie down a loose cannon, you can’t give it much rope, follow?”

  Jacqui catches up with us, spewing wholly original combinations of foulness. Henry is not fazed.

  “In the back seat,” he says. “Or I drive off, and we part company for good.”

  Disgruntled, Jacqui hops in the back, pushing Garrett into the middle, and slams the door. “Remind me to kill you in your sleep, Roycroft.”

  And then I remember she wasn’t there when the jock blew Henry’s cover. Henry, having found his comfort zone again, remains unfazed.

  “So who’s Roycroft?” I ask.

  Henry doesn’t even hesitate. “An asshole who traded me his letter jacket for two bottles of ÁguaViva.”

  “Wait, what?” says Jacqui. “You mean you’ve been lying to us all this time?”

  “I never said my name was Roycroft—you just assumed. And I just went with it.”

  “So what is your name?” I ask.

  “You know my name.”

  “Not your last name.”

  “We’re on a first-name basis, so why does it even matter?” Then he turns around to glance at Kelton. “So how do we get to the bug-out?”

  * * *

  SNAPSHOT: 13 RIDGECREST, DOVE CANYON

  Herb was relieved to see his niece and nephew this morning, and glad they were okay—but he worries about his sister and brother-in-law. They would never have sent Alyssa and Garrett here without them. There was clearly something his niece wasn’t saying—and who was this new girl? She was not one of Alyssa’s usual friends. Kelton he could deal with. Everyone had a weird-but-mostly-harmless neighbor kid to contend with. But this Jacqui had a red flag vibe about her.

  He closes his eyes and steadies himself against the banister at the bottom of the stairs. The ache of his fever, and the weight of his own body, is telling his brain that the staircase might as well be Mt. Everest. He takes a deep, shuddering breath, and sighs. One crisis at a time. He can’t wring his hands over his sister now, or about his niece’s choice of traveling companions.

  Besides, the fact that Alyssa and the others haven’t come back is a good sign. He heard the unmistakable sound of his truck driving down the street. He’d bet a pretty penny that they were in that car when it left.

  He takes the stairs one step at a time, pausing for a breath between each one, all the while chiding himself for trusting the tap water once they switched the source to the old tank on the hill. Everyone in the neighborhood was so full of their own cleverness at having jury-rigged a solution to the Tap-Out. And so they drank. And Herb drank. And Daphne drank. They sated themselves on stagnant water that had been sitting untreated in a dark tank for who knew how long.

  It didn’t taste bad. Didn’t make you spit it out, grimacing. Yes, it was a little bit earthy, but that was all. He wondered if anyone had the good sense to boil it first before drinking it. Probably not. There’s a false sense of security when you turn on a shiny chrome tap in your own kitchen. Yes, you expect it not to taste quite as good as filtered water, what with all the fluoride, and chlorine, and whatever the hell else they treat the water with—but you don’t expect it to kill you. How could anyone have known?

  Now the community has been unusually quiet. It took a while for him to realize that such a semblance of peace was the biggest indication of how bad things had really become. No one’s coming out of their homes, because, like him and Daphne, they’re just too sick and weak.

  Halfway to the top of th
e stairs now.

  He holds a bottle of ÁguaViva in one hand and grips the banister with the other. The only reason he’s still able to stand is that he’s been keeping the ÁguaViva down. Yes, it goes right through him, but while it’s coursing through his troubled intestines, some of it must get absorbed. It gave him the strength to keep himself mostly together for Alyssa and Garrett. They didn’t see how hard he was struggling just to stand. Besides, the sight of them did give him an adrenaline boost.

  Now he’s paying for that though, as wave after wave of weakness hits him.

  The top step. He stands there catching his breath, and trying to ignore the throbbing in his joints. He thinks this might be the last time he attempts the stairs.

  For a while. Just for a while.

  He steps into the master bedroom, where the stench has gotten worse. He’s already changed the sheets twice today. He doesn’t know if he has it in him to change them again, but he knows he will.

  He doesn’t announce his arrival. Herb stopped talking to Daphne yesterday. It just became too painful to do once she stopped talking back. So now he silently cares for her, feeding her small bits of soft food, hoping she’ll finally start holding it down, and drizzling ÁguaViva into her mouth, which makes her cough and gag, then comes right back up onto the white sheets.

  He sits on the edge of the bed, touching her pale skin, so thin now he can see the veins beneath. Her eyes are like dull marbles that stare through him. They don’t even blink.

  He listens but can’t hear her breathe, so he puts his head to her chest, listening for a heartbeat. It’s there. Weak. Strained. She’s climbing her own Everest, without even moving. He wonders what he’ll do when he puts his head to her chest and hears nothing.

  Then, as he prepares to get up to change the sheets, something catches his eye by Daphne’s bedside.

  There’s a little orange prescription bottle that wasn’t there before. Did someone leave it here? Who could have done that?

  Herb was never one to believe in miracles. Certainly no miracle came to save his farm, or for that matter, anything else he had lost in his life. But when he sees that pill bottle—and the label reading “Keflex”—he has to reevaluate his whole concept of reality.

  * * *

  26) Kelton

  Strangers. I’m in a car with strangers. Jacqui, mysterious and deranged. Then there’s Henry, who isn’t who he says he is. Even Alyssa and Garrett are question marks. Because it’s like I don’t know anyone anymore. But the biggest stranger is me. Sure, I know my name. I know where I live—or lived, because I don’t know if I even live there anymore. I have all the same memories, but the new memories—the ONE memory that keeps playing in my head along with the sound of that shotgun blast, has rendered everything that happened before that moment completely irrelevant.

  Just before dawn this morning, when it came to fight or flight, my body finally chose fight. When it’s flight, you’re swept away by a force—but when it’s fight, you’re giving in to an even stronger one. I would have done some heavy damage if Alyssa hadn’t knocked me out. At least now I’m filled with confidence that the fight function exists within me. And maybe now that I know what it is, and what it feels like, perhaps I can start to control its power.

  As a result, I do find myself giving in to more violent, destructive thoughts. Like how when that soldier pointed his gun at me, a part of me wanted him to blast my brain into the next county. I wanted Henry to run people over on the way out. I want things to explode and I want everyone to feel the shrapnel as deep as I do. I know it’s wrong. But the feelings course through me, and who am I to try to stop them?

  But then my mother’s voice comes to me. My mother, who might be dead, for all I know. And she says, Things pass. Even big things. And when they’re far behind us, they don’t look big anymore.

  And my father’s voice, too. Sterner, but still with the authority of experience. Everything in life is a lesson, Kelton. Learn from it. Better yourself. Become stronger.

  The best way to honor them is to listen to them. To believe them. But it’s hard, so very, very hard.

  “So how do we get to the bug-out?” I hear Henry ask. And I realize I have a mission. To take the blast. To be strong enough to block the shrapnel from hitting the others. Yeah, a part of me wants everyone to feel the pain, but I’m better than that. Stronger than a shotgun blast. My brother is dead. But I am not. And I will do what I have to do today.

  “We need to find Santiago Creek,” I tell him. “It won’t be far from here.”

  “A creek?” Jacqui questions, now suddenly interested by the notion of water.

  “It’s all dried up,” I inform her. “And besides, it’s an urban creek,” I explain. “So expect a lot of concrete and graffiti.”

  “I thought you said we needed a map.”

  “It would help, but I’m pretty sure I have the waterways memorized. There’s a map with the aqueducts and drainage channels all marked up in our garage.”

  Henry looks at me like I’m from another galaxy, and I start to feel defensive.

  “We’ve been preparing,” I explain.

  “If you haven’t noticed by now,” Jacqui explains to him, “the Tap-Out is like Christmas for Kelton.”

  Which pisses me off, because maybe at one point she would have been right—but now it’s just a nightmare. And she knows that. I shoot her a death glare that, if there was justice, would make her head explode. And for the first time, I think she gets the picture, and actually shuts up.

  As we continue north it becomes increasingly apparent to everyone else what I already know: There’s no escaping the military takeover. We pass an open canopy truck crammed full of soldiers. Random humvees are parked on corners. Helicopters tear through the sky overhead. Then we dead-end at a traffic-jammed road. There’s another roadblock up ahead, and soldiers directing people down another suburban funnel that leads either back to the high school, or to an “overflow facility” that will be the last place to see water. There are no roads left in all of Southern California that go anywhere we want to be.

  Alyssa turns to Henry, alarmed. “We can’t get caught in that again.”

  “I thought your doomsday dog was navigating.”

  I don’t know whether to be annoyed or flattered that Henry Not-Roycroft is spending all his mental energy coming up with nicknames for me.

  “Didn’t you say you had the map memorized?” Jacqui says to me.

  “I have the map of the aqueducts memorized, not these roads. And on paper you’re technically supposed to be smarter than me, right? So why don’t you tell us how to get out of here.”

  “Not my neighborhood,” Jacqui shrugs. “But I’m glad we established that I’m smarter than you.”

  “Do you want to find the aqueducts,” Alyssa interjects, “or just snipe at each other until they put us on a death bus to nowhere?”

  “Wait,” Garrett says. “Is it like a concrete ditch where kids skateboard?”

  And now we’re all looking at him. “Yes!”

  “I know where it is! Turn right here, and then left at the ugly cow. Then look for a Jack in the Box. It’s in the back, behind the parking lot.”

  We follow Garrett’s directions and come to a corner where there’s a mom-and-pop ice cream place on the corner. On the roof is the saddest looking plastic cow I’ve ever seen.

  “Should I turn left,” says Henry, “or is there an uglier cow up ahead?”

  He turns without waiting for Garrett’s answer, and we see a Jack in the Box a few dozen yards ahead.

  We pull into the empty parking lot and to the far back fence, where there’s a concrete aqueduct stretching as far as the eye can see in both directions. It’s amazing how places like this can be here, cutting right through your own neighborhood, but for most people, it’s completely off their radar. Unless you’re a prepper. Or a skateboarder. The concrete is mottled salt-and-pepper, stained from the sediment of old storm surges, but Santiago Creek hasn’t had runnin
g water for a few years now.

  We come to a stop, and I can see that there’s no visible entrance—it’s blocked off by a tall chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. My father would know where the entrance would be, but that’s no use to us now.

  “I used to fit in through that hole right there,” Garrett says.

  “That’s not big enough for the truck,” Alyssa says, pointing out the obvious. Just looking at the fortified nature of the fence, even if we had the luxury of time, I doubt we would find an opening big enough, and I doubt even more that Alyssa and Garrett’s uncle has bolt cutters in the back.

  “I’ve seen kids on bikes down there . . . ,” Garrett says. “They’ve got to get there somehow.”

  Another helicopter soars overhead, the relentless beat of its blades making me anxious. Searching for an access point large enough for us might take hours.

  “We’re going to have to bust through it,” Jacqui says, not even trying to hide the excitement in her voice. I question her intentions, as always, but it’s not like we have any better options right now.

  Now all eyes are on Henry in the driver’s seat. He looks back at us, the pressure getting to him. “Even if we can get through, it’s kinda steep.”

  Which is definitely an understatement. I look down into the crevasse and instantly get that sick-to-my-stomach feeling, like that terrifying moment before chickening out of dropping into a halfpipe. Sadly, I have intimate relations with that moment.

  The aqueduct is shaped like an upside-down trapezoid, with a steep downslope that abruptly levels off for twenty yards, then slopes upward again. The flat portion in the middle always reminds me of the racing scene in Grease. Only I’m sure John Travolta is a much better driver than Henry. Hell, his car flies in the end.

  Henry throws the car in reverse and begins to back up, like a bull before charging a matador.

  “Are you sure we want Henry to do this?” Alyssa asks. “What about his arm?”