Hidden Realms

by Dean Murray

  Giving up the vanity of a proper comb was one thing, but there was no reason to be ridiculous. “Toothbrush goes,” she said to the pile. Her hand curled around the thin blue brush, tightening to a fist when she spotted the figure standing behind her. She gasped, heart in her throat, and then glared at the man who’d snuck up on her. “Don’t do that.”

  Hunter stared at her, too long, and she ran a hand self-consciously through her hair. It had dried into loose waves, falling carelessly over her face. She tucked it behind an ear, standing to brush bits of glitter from the front of her jeans. “I went ahead and grabbed the other pack, if you want it.” He nodded, noncommittally. “You know,” she added, “there’s plenty of water in the kitchen if you want to clean up before tonight.”

  His eyes roamed over her, taking in the new clothes and flushed cheeks.

  “Did you have any luck?” she asked.

  Hunter raised an eyebrow, stepping closer to her pile of supplies. “Don’t believe in magic, but you believe in luck?”

  She crossed her arms. “Is that a no?”

  He slid the toe of his shoe against the heap, tipping an emergency candle free of the stack. “I was able to secure some gasoline. Other cars were out there, but several roads are impassable, so we’ll take the containers where we require them. We leave now.”

  Now. She pressed a hand to her stomach. “Not at dark?”

  His gaze came up to meet hers, suddenly too close in her family’s living room, the center of Mackenzie’s old world. “You’ve changed your mind?”

  “No,” she squeaked. She cleared her throat, tried again. “I just thought you had a plan.”

  He nodded. “This will work. As long as we can get to the site before seven, I think you’ll be safe.” Her brow drew together, but Hunter turned, heading toward the kitchen as he continued. “There will be room in the car for whatever you might want to take, but you should carry light, in case we need to leave it on the road.”

  She grabbed her pack from the floor, following him through the hall. “I’ve got it down to about ten pounds. It’s the water really, that’s the main weight.” He stopped by the basin, glancing up at her. “But I can do it,” she said. “No problem.”

  Mackenzie was beside him when he grabbed the hem of his shirt, dragging it over his head with one arm. She swallowed, stepping back to glance out the window instead of at his lean, muscled torso. It wasn’t that big of a deal. She’d seen bare man chest before.

  He unwound the band that covered his wound and dropped it to the floor, bending over to splash cold rain water over his skin. Wet man chest. Awesome. She crossed her arms tight over her middle, curling her fingers into her ribs and forcing her eyes back to the kitchen window. She’d been through the start of an apocalypse; she could handle being around an attractive guy. It was so not a big deal.

  Chapter Eight

  Mackenzie tossed her bag through a back window, opening the driver’s door of her father’s ninety-eight Accord while Hunter poured part of one container of gas into the tank. Their eyes met over the sedan’s roof. “What?” she said. “My car, I’m driving.” He didn’t argue, but his blink was too long to be agreement.

  The lid of the fuel tank popped closed and Hunter picked up both partially filled jugs to put in the trunk. Mackenzie slid in behind the steering wheel, clicking her safety belt into place before turning the key. “Honestly,” she said through the open car window, “I don’t know why you’d expect it any other way.” She smiled, painfully aware that she had about five seconds of courage left. If he didn’t let her drive the car, keeping her mind and hands occupied, there was no way she’d be able to do this. “Come on,” she chirped, “there are monsters out there.”

  Hunter chuckled, the sound unnatural in the debris-scattered lawn of her family’s lifelong home. But when he slipped into the seat beside her, she had the strangest feeling that was a show too. That somehow he wasn’t ready to go.

  She looked at him again in daylight, and saw the clean, smooth skin of his hands, scuffed but uncut jeans. She shifted the car into gear, wondering where Hunter had been in the two weeks since the monsters had attacked. Not hiding in a basement like her, certainly. But he couldn’t have been fighting them this whole time, not in the shape he was in. She bit her lip, hoping he’d holed up to study them on the internet, watching their patterns of movement through a slit in his window frame. He was an expert, right? He knew what to do.

  She swallowed a hysterical laugh, turning onto the next block without bothering to switch on the signal. It wasn’t as if traffic rules still applied. The roads were empty. And that was where they were even passable at all.

  The sight of crushed houses and overturned cars still made her stomach dip, but at least they were moving forward. Mackenzie was terrified, but in the light of day, on their way to actually do something, she was starting to gain ease. Purpose.

  Nothing could change the past; she had learned that the hard way. But the future, well, that was open to numerous outcomes. At the very least, acting was better than waiting. Better than helplessness.

  They drove through a second cross street, and Mackenzie had to take the car over the curb to pass a group of abandoned vehicles blocking the roadway. She slowed as she did so, seeing that they appeared to have been pushed there by a black shingled roof. As in, the top of a house. She tapped the gas pedal and then slowed again, swerving to avoid a pile of lumber and debris that included the front half of a bicycle, a busted microwave, and fluffy pink insulation. She recognized it as the Pink Panther kind, thanks to that summer job at the Home Depot.

  Another cross street approached, and she realized with a sinking feeling that she was never going to find Adamstown. There were no indicators, no familiar landscape or street signs to guide her there. She was driving blind.

  The sun was the only marker she could be sure of. She needed to head east. As long as she kept in that general direction, she should be able to guess where the city was. There would be people. The news had shown looting and the beginnings of gangs and rioting. Those who hadn’t fled could lead her closer to the army.

  “Stay off the main roads,” Hunter said, stopping her intended turn.

  “But—” Her words dropped off as she caught sight of his face. Grim did not begin to describe his expression. His eyes flicked to a side road, narrowed, and then scanned the debris of an overturned semi.

  The trailer lay on its side, back doors open to reveal a cargo of torn cardboard and scattered pallets. If there had been anything of value inside, it was long gone.

  Hunter gestured toward the next block. “There. Make a right and we’ll run parallel with Montgomery Street.”

  Mackenzie wasn’t certain which street was which, but she followed Hunter’s direction, hoping he had a better sense of where they were going than she did. She crossed over lawns and through ditches, barely topping ten miles per hour most of the time. But it was still faster than walking and she felt safer inside the car. It smelled of Riley, of home.

  The streets became clearer in places, the houses less demolished, more power lines standing, and Mackenzie realized that her neighborhood was indeed the epicenter. Aside from the rioting and burning of the cities on the news, West Ridge was possibly the worst place hit. It had been flattened, demolished.

  The bitter taste of fear welled up and she had to push it back, focus on the path. It wasn’t a road, really. Not anymore. After what had happened, they might never see industrial society again. Even if she told their leaders, even if the army defeated the monsters that swarmed this world. Things would never be the same.

  Not after this.

  She passed over a railroad crossing where stopped cars had been pushed from the roadway. She imagined tanks, snowplows, army caravans with troops and weapons and aid.

  But there was no one. There had been no one, not in all the miles they’d driven. Had everyone shut themselves up in their own basement hideaways? Had they evacuated to some safer spot, some notice that
she and Riley had missed?

  Or had Mackenzie been the only one foolish enough to stay?

  “Turn left,” Hunter said from beside her.

  His voice startled her, and she jerked, but Hunter didn’t notice. He was staring ahead at a group of trucks blocking a road that crossed their own. At first, she was relieved at the sight of actual people, but it didn’t take long for Hunter’s mood to sink in.

  These weren’t soldiers, not for her army anyway. They were blocking the road to stop traffic; they’d be gathering supplies like food and water, gas. Stealing them. And, Mackenzie realized as she saw the crowd of abandoned vehicles roadside, securing what they wanted without a care for leaving anyone alive.

  She kept forgetting this was the end of the world.

  Mackenzie sped up, trying not to look in her rearview mirror. If they followed her, she wouldn’t have a chance. All she could do was hope their spider web tactic was working well enough to keep them there, lying in wait for another car, not following her. She took a shortcut through a parking lot, swerving needlessly wide when the door of a truck parked building-side opened, the sun glinting off its mirror.

  “I thought seeing people would make me feel better,” she said.

  Hunter didn’t reply, only gestured toward the sidewalk, where a thin strip of metal coiled into the roadway. Mackenzie drove around it, adding one more thing to her list of things to be cautious about: flat tires and pillagers and monsters and death. Her arms ached with tension, hands tight on the wheel. She wished she’d never left the house. She wished her brother was here. So she could strangle him.

  “Dammit, Riley,” she said, hand smacking the steering wheel.

  A car turned onto the roadway ahead of them, picking up speed as it advanced in their direction.

  “Right,” Hunter said.

  Mackenzie turned, taking the corner a bit too fast for all the debris covering the pavement, and then jerked the wheel as a truck drove into their path. Faster. It was all she could think. Maybe instinct, maybe fear, but something told Mackenzie they were in trouble before her mind had chance to process the cars in her rearview mirror.

  “They’ll try to box you in.” Hunter’s voice was calm. “Don’t go so fast that you do the job for them. Not slow enough they have time to react.”

  Mackenzie’s gaze cut to him. If she hadn’t been so scared she might have rolled her eyes.

  “They are rash, disorderly. Too far outside the city and the main streets.”

  His words were not a comfort. It only meant these men weren’t the threats she should worry about.

  It meant more danger awaited them.

  A motorcycle buzzed past her door, cutting so close in front of the car it nearly clipped her bumper as it moved into her path.

  “Keep going,” Hunter ordered, though he didn’t have to. Mackenzie had seen this on TV. They were going to do whatever it took to stop her, and she wanted no part of what came after that.

  She pressed her foot to the accelerator, speeding past the bike, thunking the man’s elbow off a side mirror. She winced, but didn’t let up, swerving and dodging oncoming traffic—if you could call it that—as this gang of bandits tried to cut her off.

  She came into the business district, open lots and cement-covered lawns. It was just the space she needed to evade her pursuers, leaving them no way to block her in. The band of men knew that, apparently, because the vehicles chasing her slowed, changing course and turning back. Toward their trap.

  As a muscle-tank-shirted guy in the back of a truck waved the last car off, Mackenzie breathed a sigh of relief. But the drive only got worse from there. She began to see traffic. Mostly on foot, but a few bicycles or ATVs. People loitered in the streets, wandered across the lawns of burned and torn-down houses. A small girl, with dirt-smeared face and stringy hair, held up a sign begging for food. It was not her writing; it couldn’t have been. She looked no more than five or six years old. But she’d been left to stand there, alone and hungry. There was no question of her hunger. They all had that look. Not just for food. They wanted rescue. They wanted before.

  Hunter was quiet as she drove through the city’s outlying streets, winding her way closer and closer to Adamstown. Mackenzie assumed he was watching out the window, looking for more threats, but when she glanced at a cross street—where two young, rail-thin girls fought over an old twill jacket—she saw that his eyes were caught on the console beneath the dash. Where her driver’s license rested.

  There was nothing to hide there: brown hair, brown eyes, 124 Oak Lane. But Hunter had that look again, the one he’d given her since she’d brought him through the iron gates of her house. He didn’t trust her. She’d lied to him.

  Mackenzie had made a habit of keeping everything inside since the death of her mother. But there was no need now. Riley was almost eighteen. The world was coming to an end. No social system could keep them apart now. Riley had done that himself when he’d decided to join the army.

  She could tell Hunter. She didn’t have to hide.

  His eyes flicked to hers, catching her, and she squinted back at the road. He hadn’t spoken, but an understanding had passed between them, both of them feeling the uncomfortable truth. They were strangers, despite what they’d been through. She needed him, more than he needed her. And Hunter might never trust her.

  She opened her mouth to speak, but the sound of gunfire in the distance stopped her cold.

  “Turn here,” Hunter said, gesturing toward a narrow side street a half-block ahead. “We’re close enough until morning.”

  Morning, she thought, glancing at the digital clock centering the Accord’s dash. More than twelve hours away.

  They pulled into the basement of a two-story parking garage, hiding the car behind a low wall leading the security office. It would be safe there, as long as no one had followed them in. Every other car in the area had been picked clean. Mackenzie grabbed her pack out of the back seat, and, after a final glance at the interior, took her driver’s license in case she were to need identification. The thought of tomorrow—of Riley and the army and finally, finally safety—made her chest ease, and when she straightened to find Hunter over the hood of the car, she knew he could see her relief.

  His head jerked, indicating the garage entrance. She followed him, tugging the pack tighter against her side, and the two of them slipped past the concrete pillars and into the light of day.

  Mackenzie felt cold, though the breeze was mild and the sun shining. The city seemed empty, abandoned, but violence and clashes echoed from downtown. She wasn’t sure how far the sound could carry, but there was no question it was gunfire, shouting. It was the kind of thing you watched on CNN from the safety of your couch, not the kind of thing you lived through.

  Not the kind of thing you dove into willingly.

  They walked around the block toward an apartment building, one of those expensive, orderly complexes that had had white picket fences and lawn sprinklers and rules. Had being the operative word. It was now a mass of shutterless windows and busted glass, shingles torn, pickets sprinkling the lawn like confetti.

  A group of teenage boys hovered outside the building, lingering in the shelter of an engraved block wall proclaiming it, “Easton Estates.”

  “What’s in the bag?” One of them beckoned.

  “Yeah, we need chips,” another called out.

  “Dude, a cheeseburger,” someone groaned from the back.

  “Come on,” Hunter murmured, taking her by the elbow. “We need to get inside.”

  She kept her eyes on the group over her shoulder, watching as a tall boy in a baseball cap elbowed the skinny kid at his side. She could swear she saw a dark shape skitter across the side of the estate sign. The metal lip of the threshold caught Mackenzie’s foot and she put her head down, minding her step as she let Hunter lead her inside.

  Chapter Nine

  The main hall was lined with elevators, but Hunter walked toward the stairs. His fingers rested on Mackenzi
e’s elbow until he had to open the heavy steel door. He gave her a significant glance—there might be something dangerous inside—and turned the handle. The sound of metal passing frame reverberated up the stairwell, an off-white painted tunnel lit with actual full-strength electricity.

  Mackenzie bit her lip, suddenly desperate to push past him and run up the stairs and be away from all of… this. From everything.

  Hunter glanced back at her, gaze flicking to her lip, and then led the way up three flights of stairs.

  The halls were filled with trash. Not debris and storm damage like outside, but actual garbage. Electricity notwithstanding, the city had apparently forgone waste services. Black plastic bags had been torn and chewed, remnants of food packaging and plastic littering the walkway, scavenged by destitute dogs and cats left behind when their owners had fled. Mackenzie stepped over a gnarled shoe, its laces missing and insole torn aside. Where had all the people gone?

  Doors were open, apartments bare. Someone had tried to drag a couch into the hallway, its lavender striped backrest wedged in the threshold. Mackenzie could hear coughing through the stylishly papered walls, the rasp of a sick child.

  At the third door on the right, Hunter apparently found what he was looking for. The lock had been broken, but not badly enough it couldn’t be secured from the inside.

  He held a hand up to Mackenzie, asking without words for her to stay in the hall. She did, unable to even fidget as he checked the rooms within.

  When he finally returned for her, Mackenzie surveyed the space herself. She found a small bedroom, kitchenette, and bath, plus the master bedroom and living room, which split the outside wall. There was a crack in the bedroom window, the scents and sounds of outside curling on the breeze through the room. Its closet door was open, a sleeveless shirt and single beaded sandal strung across a silver-carpeted floor.

  She sighed, returning to the kitchen as Hunter finished securing the apartment door.

  He glanced up at her, backpack clinging tight to her side. “You can rest now. Might as well clean up, grab a bite to eat.” He stepped to the sink beside Mackenzie, turning the faucet to hot. “Good luck, I guess. Electricity and water at the same time.”