He considered waking up Trina. She’d understand that he needed company. He wouldn’t even have to tell her about his dream. But she seemed so peaceful at the moment, breathing softly. With a quiet groan to himself he gave up on the idea, knowing he’d feel too guilty about depriving her of valuable sleep. Not only did they have a lot of walking to do the next day, she had the added burden of looking after little Deedee.
Mark flopped back down, shifted around until he got comfortable. He didn’t want to dream. The raging waters, the screams of people drowning. The frantic, unbearable fear of fleeing it all. Even awake he could see that room beneath New York City where they’d first met Lana and the others. Alec’s weathered face as he explained to them that after surviving such massive sun flares, their biggest and most immediate worry now was the surge of a tsunami. The flares must have been devastating, inflicting catastrophic damage worldwide and unleashing the heat of hell itself.
Which meant a quick melting of the polar ice caps. Which meant sea levels rising at an alarming and apocalyptic rate. Which meant that the island of Manhattan would be a dozen feet underwater within a few hours. He explained all this to them while they huddled in a room far underground, where the water would seek out and drown everything in its path.
Back in the present, these thoughts tormented Mark for at least another hour—and he knew if he dreamed it would only get worse. He was scared of being scared.
He drifted off despite his efforts. Sleep came over him like cold, crashing waves.
CHAPTER 20
The Lincoln Building, one of the tallest, newest, grandest buildings in New York. One of the few with direct access to the subtrans system.
That’s where Alec keeps telling them they need to go. He says he has a full subtrans map saved on his phone, but he’s visibly worried about them being able to make it in time. Mark was able to see, even in the dim light before they headed out, that Alec has major doubts—which is contrary to the overall persona of the hardened man he seems to be. Mark would’ve guessed the man could be caged with a dozen hungry lions and he’d still only have a smirk on his face as he decided which one to kill first.
The Lincoln Building, Mark tells himself. Get there; then you can go find your family.
They are all running down one of the countless seemingly endless tunnels below the city. Alec in the lead, then the woman he said he’s had the pleasure of working with for a dozen years: Lana. A boy about Mark’s age named Darnell is next, then a girl named Misty—another teenager, but older, maybe eighteen—then a dude, also older than Mark, but short and loaded with muscles. Misty refers to him as the Toad, and he actually seems to like the moniker. Mark and Trina are next, with a boy named Baxter bringing up the rear. Baxter is the youngest of them all, maybe thirteen, but Mark can tell he’s a tough little sucker. Insisted on being in the back, said he wanted to protect everyone from surprise attacks.
As they run, Mark hopes he has enough time left in life to become friends with the kid.
“I hope he knows what he’s doing,” Trina says quietly next to him. They are jogging along side by side and Mark finds himself having the ridiculous thought that it’d be nice if they were on a beach, the sun just setting on the water. He thanks the powers that be that Trina can’t read his mind.
“He does,” Mark insists. He also doesn’t want her to know how he’s almost trembling with fear of what might happen at any second, which is making it hard to run. Almost seventeen years of life, and he never knew what a coward he was.
“Tsunami.” Trina says the word like it’s the evilest thing to ever come out of her mouth. “We’re in the middle of the subtrans system in New York City and that’s supposed to be our biggest worry. A tsunami?”
“We’re underground,” Mark replies. “And our city is right by the ocean, in case you forgot. Water drains downward. Ya know, gravity and all that.”
He can sense her giving him a nasty look, and he knows he deserves it. His nerves must be finally getting to him to be such a smart aleck. He tries to save himself the only way he knows how—honesty.
“Sorry,” he mutters. The run is getting to him and he’s breathing heavily. “I’m just scared out of my mind. I’m really sorry.”
“It’s okay. I didn’t really mean it like a question. I’m just … I don’t know. Saying how crazy this is I guess. Sun flares and a tsunami. A few hours ago those words weren’t even on my radar. Not by a long shot.”
“It sucks” is the best Mark can come up with. He just doesn’t want to talk about it anymore—the more they do, the more his insides twist with distress and worry.
Alec slows down when they reach the end of the latest tunnel. He stops and turns to face them. Everyone is breathing heavily and Mark’s entire body is soaked with sweat.
“We have to go through one of the newer subtrans sections now,” Alec says. “There’s bound to be people out there, and who knows what kind of mood they might be in. Sometimes folks get downright nasty when they think the world’s about to end.”
Now that their little group is calming their breathing a bit, Mark can hear faint sounds coming from behind their leader. The hum of a crowd, people talking and bustling about. A few disturbing noises mixed in as well: distant screams, crying and wailing. The isolation of their dank little storage room doesn’t seem so bad now.
Lana picks up the line of conversation. “We just need to get through it. Walk fast, but don’t look like you know where you’re going. We can’t afford to carry anything—empty your arms and pockets or we might get attacked. We’ll just have to hope we can find things in the Lincoln Building.”
A few of them have been carrying packets of the food Trina found earlier. They dump them on the ground. The act seems to suck some of the life out of Trina.
“We’ll go through this door,” Alec says as he looks at his phone—the battery has to be close to dying. “And then jump onto the tracks. If we stay off the concourse maybe we’ll come across fewer people. Straight for about half a mile; then we can enter the doors of the stairwell for the Lincoln Building. That sucker goes all the way up to the ninetieth floor. It’s our only shot.”
Mark takes a quick look around and sees that the others are fidgety and nervous. The Toad is hopping up and down, which seems ridiculously appropriate.
“Let’s go,” Alec says. “Stay close together, tight. Defend each other to the death.”
Trina groans at that, and Mark really wishes the man hadn’t said it.
“Go, go, go!” Lana shouts, whether from frustration or to psych them up, Mark may never know.
Alec opens the door and walks through. The others follow as a blast of heat surges past and washes over them. Mark feels as if the oxygen is being burned out of his chest; he fights for each breath until he gets used to it.
He enters the larger tunnel on Trina’s heels. They’re on a narrow ledge a few feet above the actual tracks for the trains—Alec and Lana have already jumped down, are reaching up to help the others. One by one they take hands, leap off the edge, land with a thump and a jolt to the legs. Mark looks up. Light is spilling in from the stairs that eventually lead up to the devastated world above them. He studies the people milling about on the landing across from where he stands, every one of them with their gaze locked on the new arrivals.
What Mark sees up there makes his heart want to stop.
The place is packed. At least half of the crowd is wounded in some way. Cuts and slashes. Terrible burns. There are people lying on the ground screaming. Children of all ages, many of them hurt, too. That’s what breaks Mark inside the most. Two men are fighting brutally in one spot, pounding each other, scratching and clawing. No one even makes a move to break them up. There’s a lady slumped on the edge of the landing and her face is gone, replaced by melted skin and blood. Mark feels as if he’s been given a glimpse into hell.
“Walk,” Alec orders once everyone is down on the tracks.
They do, staying as close together as possible
. Mark has Trina on his left, the boy named Baxter on his right. The kid looks terrified and Mark wants to say something to help him feel better but can’t find the words. They’d be empty anyway. Alec and Lana are right in front of Mark, their body language daring anyone to be stupid enough to confront them.
They’ve made it halfway across the main section of the concourse when two men and a lady jump down onto the tracks and stand directly in their path, forcing them to stop. The strangers are dirty but look unhurt. Physically, anyway. Their eyes are haunted by things they’ve seen.
“And where do you think you’re going?” the woman asks.
“Yeah,” one of her friends adds. “You seem mighty important. You know about some place to go that we don’t?”
The other man steps up closer to Alec. “Not sure if you’ve noticed or not, but the sun decided to belch all over us. People are dead, sir. Lots of people. And I don’t like how you think you can just march through here and pretend everything’s okay.”
A few other people are jumping down from the landing, congregating behind the first three strangers. Blocking their path.
“Let’s see if they have any food!” someone shouts.
Alec rears back and punches the man standing in front of him. The guy’s head snaps back and blood sprays from his nose; he collapses to the ground. It’s so sudden and shocking that no one moves for a second. Then several people charge into Mark’s group, screaming and shouting.
Chaos ensues. Fists are flying, feet kicking, fingers grasping hair and yanking. Mark is punched in the face just as he sees Trina yanked away by a man. Rage explodes inside of Mark and he fights back at whoever hit him, swinging his arms wildly until he connects twice. Then he pushes the guy away to see a man on top of Trina—he’s struggling with her on the ground, working to get control of her arms as she desperately tries to fight him off.
Mark flies in, throwing his body at the man. They tumble off Trina and roll onto the ground. The man punches Mark and Mark punches back, barely feeling where he’s been hit. Then they’re in a tangle, squirming, arms flailing, kicking. Mark breaks free, crawls away, checks to see that Trina is okay. She’s gotten up, runs over and kicks at her attacker’s face but slips when she does it, lands on her back. The stranger goes after her, but Mark’s on him again, diving shoulder-first into his gut. The man grunts and curls into a ball as Mark climbs to his feet, grabs Trina by the hand. They both push out of the crowd, then look to see what’s going on with the others.
Everyone’s still fighting, but at least no one else has joined in from the landing above. Mark sees the Toad punch a man; Alec and Lana are fighting a man and a woman off of Misty and Baxter. Two other people run away from their group. It might almost be over.
That’s when it happens.
There’s a rumbling sound that is low at first but begins to build in volume. The tunnel trembles slightly. All the fighting stops immediately; people get to their feet, look around. Mark’s doing the same, trying to find the source of the noise. He’s still holding Trina’s hand.
“What is that?” she shouts.
Mark shakes his head, keeps sweeping his gaze around the tunnel. The floor vibrates below his feet and the rumbling sound gets louder, becomes an outright roar. His eyes fall upon the stairs that lead up from the subtrans concourse just as the screams erupt—countless, countless screams and the blur of panicked movement in the crowd.
A monstrous wall of filthy water is pouring down the wide steps.
CHAPTER 21
Mark woke up. Not with a scream or a shout, and he didn’t bolt upright or gasp or anything as dramatic as that. He just opened his eyes, and realized right away that they were moist with tears and his face was wet. The sun had come up, shining brightly through the trees.
The wall of water.
He’d never, never forget what it had been like to see it rushing down those stairs like some kind of living beast. And the horror of watching it sweep away the first people at the bottom.
“Are you okay?”
Trina. Great.
He quickly wiped at his face and turned toward her, hoping that somehow she didn’t know he’d been bawling his eyes out while sleeping. But one glance at her killed that hope. She looked like a concerned parent.
“Um, hey,” he murmured. He felt so awkward. “Good morning. How’s it going?”
“Mark, I’m not an idiot. Tell me what’s wrong.”
He looked at her, trying to communicate with his eyes that he didn’t want to talk about it. Then he saw Deedee, leaning against a tree a few feet away, peeling the bark off a twig. Her face wasn’t necessarily happy, but at least that look of utter gloom was gone. That was a start.
“Mark?”
He turned back to Trina. “I just … I had a bad dream.”
“About what?”
“You know what.”
She frowned. “But what part of it? It might help to talk about it.”
“I don’t think so.” Mark sighed, then realized he wasn’t being very nice. She was just trying to help him feel better. “It was right before the water rushed in at that concourse. When we fought off those wannabe gangsters. I woke up just as the bad part began.” The bad part. Like everything before that was a picnic in the park with Grandma.
Trina’s gaze fell to the ground. “I wish you could stop having those dreams. We made it, and that’s all that matters. Somehow you need to let go of the past.” An apologetic expression came over her face. “I mean, easier said than done. I guess I just wish you could let go of the past. That’s all.”
“I know, I know. Me too.”
He reached out and patted her on the knee, which seemed stupid in that situation, but Alec and Lana were just returning from getting fresh water from the stream.
“How’s she doing?” he asked Trina, shooting a glance at Deedee.
“Really well, I think. She hasn’t opened up yet about much, but at least she seems comfortable around me. I can’t imagine the terror that poor thing was going through after she was left behind.”
That stirred up the anger once again inside Mark. “How could they? I mean … what kind of losers …”
Trina nodded. “Yeah … but I don’t know. Desperate times and all that.”
“Yeah, but she can’t be more than four years old!” He was doing that combination of whispering and shouting at the same time. He didn’t want Deedee to hear, but he couldn’t help it. It made him so angry.
“I know,” Trina said softly. “I know.”
Lana stepped up to them, her eyes showing that she understood how he felt.
“We better get on the road,” she said. “We’ll figure things out.”
The day dragged and dragged.
At first Mark was wary of the people from Deedee’s village, still worried about the direction she’d pointed when they’d asked her where they went. If the girl had been right, that meant they were out here somewhere, doing who knew what. He had no real reason to fear them—they were just people like anyone else. Running from an attack, running from a disease. There was just something ominous about the way Deedee had spoken of them. And he could see so clearly in his mind her pointing at her wound with such an accusatory glare. It all unsettled him.
After a few hours of not seeing any sign of them, he relaxed into the drudgery of walking, walking and then more walking. Through the forest, crossing streams and pushing through the brush. Wondering if there was any purpose in going to this place they sought.
It was midafternoon and they’d stopped for a break. They were eating granola bars and drinking water from a nearby river. Mark thought constantly about how there was one thing they always had. Plenty of water sources. At least there was that.
“We’re getting close,” Alec said as he ate. “We might have to be more careful—they could have guards surrounding the place. I bet there’s a lot of people who’d like to have a nice bunker or whatever it is as their new digs. I bet the place was packed with food for emergen
cies.”
“We sure did have an emergency,” Lana muttered. “Whoever these people are, they better have some good explanations.”
Alec took another bite and pushed it to the side of his mouth. “That’s the spirit.”
“Do they not teach manners in the army?” Trina asked. “You know, it’s just as easy to take a bite after you say something as right before it.”
Alec chomped on his bar. “It is?” He croaked a laugh and little pieces of granola shot out. Which made him roar even harder. He choked out a cough, composed himself, then was laughing all over again.
It was such a rare sight to see Alec acting like this, Mark didn’t know how to respond at first. But then he soaked it in, chuckling right along even though he’d forgotten what was funny in the first place. Trina had a smile on her face, and little Deedee was giggling heartily. The sound of it filled Mark up and washed away the doldrums.
“You’d think someone farted, the way you’re all getting on,” Lana said with a deadpan look.
That sent everyone into an even bigger fit that went on for several minutes, resparked every time it began to die down by Alec making gassy noises. Mark laughed until his face hurt and he tried his best to stop smiling, which made him laugh even harder.
Finally it did settle down, ending with one big sigh from the former soldier. Then he stood up.
“I feel like I could run twenty miles,” he said. “Let’s get moving.”
As they headed off, Mark realized that the dream from the night before seemed like a distant memory again.
CHAPTER 22
Alec and Lana were much more cautious during the next part of their journey, stopping every fifteen minutes or so to listen intently, looking for telltale signs of guards or traps, keeping more to the cover of the trees whenever possible.
The sun was sinking, maybe two hours from fully setting, when Alec stopped and had everyone huddle around him. At some point it seemed like the two adults had decided to stop worrying about people keeping their distance from each other. They were all in a small clearing completely surrounded by thick oak trees and towering pines—older ones that hadn’t been completely consumed by the sun flares—standing on dry, brittle undergrowth. The clearing was in a little valley between two midsized hills. Mark was still in a good mood and was curious about what the older man had planned.
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