We walked up the hill with heavy feet and low expectations. I had not yet returned to my childhood home despite living mere inches from it for the past few months. I wished that Dad’s charade with Sylvester hadn’t kept me from exploring it again. The front door was bashed in. Base One had raided the place. The handmade furniture was overturned, the cabinets were open and barren, and the linens had been stripped from the beds. Dad searched every corner of the place, but there was no sign that a sixteen-year-old boy had been here during the attack.
“Damn!” Dad said. “Where are you, Sylvester?”
“What about the bunker?” I asked him. “Camp Haven never used it, but if you raised Sylvester like you raised me, he would have known it was there. He could have waited out the attacks there.”
A glimmer of hope crossed Dad’s face. “Genius. Let’s go check.”
The entrance to the bunker was at the bottom of the hill, across from DotCom, but a large wooden support beam, charred at either end, lay across the doors. If someone was inside, they wouldn’t be able to get out on their own. Dad grunted as he tried to shift the beam himself.
“Give me a hand, George?”
I took the other end of the beam and lifted it up. Together, we hauled it away from the bunker’s entrance. Dad brushed snow from the metal ring that served as a handle and yanked the rusty door upward. It creaked open, and we peered into the darkness below.
“Got a flashlight?” I asked Dad, stepping inside. “I’ll go check for him.”
He handed over a hand crank lantern. “Be careful.”
The bunker was the stuff of nightmares. There was nothing down here. It was all gray reinforced concrete that could probably survive a trench war. I shuddered as I lifted the lantern and squinted into the gloom. This place brought back claustrophobic memories.
“Sylvester?” I called, my voice echoing off the walls. “Are you in here? It’s Georgie, Amos’s daughter.”
I reached the opposite end of the bunker, but there was no sign of another living, breathing human being there. I jogged back toward the square of light at the entrance and climbed out.
“He’s not down there,” I told Dad, breathing hard as I slammed the doors shut. If I never had to go in the bunker again, it would be okay with me.
“Did you check all the way in the back?” Dad pressed.
“Yes. He’s not there.”
“Damn it!” Dad slammed his fist against a crumbling wall, sending it tumbling over. “Damn it, damn it, damn it!”
“Dad, calm down,” I said. “There’s no sign of his body, so that’s a good thing, right? Maybe he got out of here before Base One could get to him.”
“Or he’s buried under a pile of rubble somewhere.”
“Possibly.”
I pulled the balaclava off my mouth and nose to take an unfiltered breath of air. The fabric bunched around my neck, pressing against my throat like a tightening noose. I took it off entirely and shoved it into my backpack. As I zipped the pack up again, something on the ground caught my eye.
“Hey, Dad. Look.”
It was an unlit match, the red head of it bright against the white snow. A few feet away, another crimson dot stood out against the terrain.
“It’s a trail.”
Chapter Four
The matches were spaced at roughly five-foot intervals, leading through the wreckage of Camp Haven, past the demolished front gate, and into the woods below. We paused where Camp Haven ended and the tree line began. As far as the eye could see, the matches continued down the mountain.
“Do you think it’s Sylvester?” I asked Dad, shielding my eyes from the sun as it pierced through the clouds.
“It could be,” he said. “But I don’t understand why he would go down the mountain instead of up. Why didn’t he just return to the house?”
“Maybe it wasn’t safe to do so,” I suggested. “What’s the plan?”
Dad shrugged his shoulders so that his backpack rested more comfortably. “I guess we follow the matches. Even if it isn’t Sylvester, someone laid them out for a reason. We might as well see if we can help them.”
Without looking back, we started down the mountain, picking up the matches to use for ourselves as we went. The trail wound through the trees in a zigzag pattern to make up for the steep elevation. As we followed it farther into the woods, the distance between each match began to lengthen, as if the person dropping them had started to run out of trail markers. Eventually, the trees began to thin out and the ground leveled off. Dad stopped short, though there were still a few matches ahead of us.
“I don’t like this,” he said. “We’re nearly to the bottom of the mountain, too close to the city. Sylvester would never have come down here. It’s too dangerous.”
From our position, I could see the buildings at the edge of Denver, looming toward the horizon. Like Dad, I had no desire to return there. There was too much strife and devastation to behold. I preferred the quiet safety of the mountains, but my curiosity prodded me forward.
“There are only a few more matches,” I said. “We’ve come this far. There’s no point in turning back now. Besides, what if it is Sylvester, and he’s hurt out here, and we don’t bother to look for him? We can’t risk that.”
Dad rubbed his fingers against each other, like wiping dirt off of them, in a nervous tic. The fabric of his gloves whispered together. “I suppose you’re right. We should try and pick up the trail where it left off.”
“Good. We’re agreed.” I walked forward, picking up the remaining matches out of the snow save for the very last one. It lay right at the edge of the tree line. Beyond that, there were no signs of the person who had dropped it.
“No footsteps,” Dad said, examining the surrounding snow. “No other tracks.”
I had to step out of the shadows in order to reach the final match, but as soon as I did, I knew that I had made a mistake.
Something shifted and clicked beneath my boot. A loop of rope, masked by the snow, caught around my ankle and tightened. I was yanked off my feet as the trap’s counterweight dropped, and I dangled upside down, fifteen feet above the ground.
“George!” My father checked the rest of the area for other traps before looking up at me. “Are you okay?”
“A little woozy,” I replied as the blood rushed to my head. The rifle slipped from my grasp and landed in the snow below. My backpack hung heavily around my neck. “Otherwise, I’m fine.”
Dad checked the counterweight, a large sack of sand tied to the opposite end of the rope, and chuckled.
“What’s so funny?” I demanded, but it was difficult to sound authoritative while I swayed back and forth from the rope with a burning red face.
“Oh, I’m just having a laugh at you,” Dad said, fiddling with the knot that attached the rope to the counterweight. “If you had taken my advice, you wouldn’t have stepped into that trap.”
“And we wouldn’t have a lead on Sylvester either,” I shot back. “Can you hurry up? I feel like my head’s going to explode.”
As Dad whipped out a knife to make quicker work of the rope, I revolved slowly on the spot, turning toward the city then toward the woods then back to the city again. When Dad was in my sights again, his back to the city as he sliced at the rope, my breath caught in my throat.
“Dad, look out!”
It was a moment too late. A wooden baseball bat crashed across Dad’s head, dropping him instantly to the ground. A group of five individuals, all wearing solid black from head to toe, had snuck up on us from the city. One of them took up Dad’s position at the counterweight, peering up at me as he worked the rope free. In an instant, I plummeted toward the ground and landed in the snow. The fall knocked the breath out of my lungs. Before I could scramble to my feet, I was surrounded.
“She’s definitely one of us,” one of the cloaked people said.
“And the man?”
“They’re traveling together,” said the first. “It would be a gesture of good
faith to bring them both in. She’ll be more accepting of us that way.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, staring up at the masked faces. “Who are you?”
I received no answer, but rather got a blow to the back of the head with the same baseball bat that had taken out my father.
The ache at the base of my skull disrupted my unintentional slumber, and my surroundings slowly swam into view. I lay in a fold-out metal cot with a thin mattress and scratchy blankets. The pillow beneath my head stank of goose feathers that had gotten wet and never dried out properly. The room was small and had no windows, more like a place for storing cleaning supplies than a bedroom. The outer wall was made of weathered gray stones, which meant the building was older than most of the others in Denver.
I touched my fingers to the bruise on my skull and winced. Whoever had swung the bat had gotten a nice piece of me. The skin was tender to the touch, and it hurt to look in either direction.
“You know, for once, a good ‘please’ might be nice,” I grumbled as I sat up. “Instead of a head bashing.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” another voice said from outside the door. There was a small window with no pane through which the voice spoke. “Unfortunately, others here feel that we need to take certain precautions to keep ourselves as safe as possible.”
“Who are you?” I asked, experimentally rolling my neck out to either side.
The door opened, and a tall woman around my age entered the room. She had short dark hair and wore thick black glasses. She wasn’t armed, and as far as I could tell, she didn’t have any weapons on her person. I guess she wasn’t expecting me to attack her in my current state, but even so, I found it ballsy that she didn’t arm herself in these uncertain times. For good measure, I checked the room for my own weapons, but they had been confiscated from me while I was unconscious.
“My name is Caroline,” the woman said, extending her hand to shake mine. “You’re safe here.”
I batted her hand away. “I was already safe before you nutcases came along and hit me over the head. Where’s my father?”
“In the next room,” she replied. “He, too, is recovering from his head wound, but he hasn’t woken up yet.”
“Well, did you check if he has a concussion?” I asked. “If he’s still unconscious, you could have hurt him a lot worse than you hurt me.”
“Our medical expert has examined both of you and declared that your wounds are superficial.”
My head throbbed again. “Superficial, my ass. Where the hell are we?”
“You’re in a church in Denver,” Caroline said. “It’s our safe house.”
“And who exactly do you belong to?”
A man poked his head into the room. Like Caroline, he appeared to be a normal civilian. “Hey, Caroline? If she’s awake, Marco wants to see both of them in the main hall.”
“Thanks, Max,” Caroline replied. “We’ll be there in a few minutes.”
Max took note of my aggravated expression. “Do you need some help?”
“No, I got it. Thanks.”
“Alrighty.” Max disappeared, leaving me and Caroline alone again.
“Okay, you need to fill me in,” I said to her, attempting to stand. She rushed to my side and helped me up. “What the hell is going on here? Why did you bring me here?”
“I wasn’t a part of the hunting party,” Caroline said, looping my arm over her shoulder. “And as far as who we are, I can’t tell you. That’s for Marco to fill you in.”
“Who’s Marco?”
“You’ll meet him in a few minutes.”
The corridor outside my temporary bedroom was made of the same gray stone. Stained glass windows lined one side of the hallway, but each one was boarded up with two-by-fours and other pieces of scrap wood. My father emerged, supported by Max, from the next doorway. His eyes were a little cloudy, but he brightened when he saw me.
“George! You’re alive.”
“Of course she’s alive,” Caroline said. “We’re not murderers.”
“Could have fooled me,” Dad muttered.
“Marco will explain everything,” Max said.
“Who’s Marco?”
Neither one of them answered. Instead, they continued to haul us down the corridor until we reached the door at the end. We pushed through to the other side, navigated a small passage, and emerged on the stage in the belly of the church. A group of thirty to or so people gathered in the pews below, each wearing an eager expression. The church itself had not been altered much, though it had been stripped of any religious affiliations, like the drapings over the altar, that were easily removable.
“What the hell…?” I muttered, looking out at the sea of faces as Caroline led me to a pair of chairs in the center of the stage. “This isn’t some kind of ritual sacrifice, is it?”
“No, silly,” Caroline said, sitting me down. “Sit tight. We’re going to start in a few minutes.”
Max helped my father into the chair next to mine. They didn’t tie us down or secure our hands like I expected them to. If I wanted, I could spring up from my seat and make a run for it. Chances were I wouldn’t get very far. The throbbing bump on the back of my head and the crowd below would probably stop me before I could reach the exit doors. I exchanged a glance with my father and saw the same truth in his eyes. We were going to have to wait out the madness for now.
A middle-aged man separated himself from the crowd and stepped up onto the stage. He was shorter than average, with wispy black hair swept back from a deep widow’s peak. Like the others, he wore sensible clothing for the scenario outside: heavy duty cargo pants, an athletic sweatshirt, and black work boots. There was nothing to set him apart from the others besides the obvious respect that the rest of the crowd had for him. They fell silent as he approached us, as if waiting for him to approve of our presence.
“Welcome,” he said, spreading his arms wide. “My name is Marco Coats. Please introduce yourselves to my family.”
“Uh,” I said. “I’m Georgie Fitz.”
“And I’m her father, Amos,” Dad finished. “Do you mind telling us exactly what’s going on here?”
“Certainly,” Marco answered. “We’ve rescued you.”
“I don’t think bashing us both in the head and taking us to an unfamiliar part of the city counts as rescuing us,” I pointed out. “In fact, we were doing just fine. We have people of our own to get back to, so if you could just point us in the right direction—”
“It’s not safe,” Marco interrupted. “Outside these walls is a wasteland. Denver is in ruins, as is the rest of the world. I hope you will accept my apology for your injuries. It was important for us to relocate you without cluing you in on our location, just in case things don’t work out.”
“What things might that be?” Dad asked.
“Let me back up for a moment,” Marco said. “It might be easier if I explain things from the beginning. You see, we are the Denver Legacies.”
The crowd chattered as he announced their title. Some people even let out little whoops of enthusiasm.
“I’m sorry, the who now?” I asked.
“We are the few and far between who survived the destruction of the United States,” Marco clarified. “We are the sons and daughters of the new world. We are the ones who were chosen to restart humanity.”
Silence fell as he finished declaring the group’s purpose. I let out an involuntary snigger. “Chosen by whom exactly?”
Marco lifted his palms to face upward, as if calling down a higher power from above. “By fate. By destiny. And you are one of us.”
“What a load of bullshit,” Dad said, rolling his eyes. “You do realize that you aren’t the only group of people who survived out there, right? Humanity doesn’t need to be rebuilt. It’s still out there.”
Marco’s attention on me wavered, and he shifted his focus to my father. “Are you not a believer, sir?”
“A believer of what?” Dad said. “Whatever crap you’ve com
e up with to make yourselves feel better about the end of the world? No, I’m not.”
“That’s all right,” Marco replied. “Many of our number were skeptical when they joined us. Once you recognize the advantages of being a Legacy, you will begin to understand our way.”
“What exactly is your way?” I asked, wishing more and more that I hadn’t been stripped of my weapons on the way in. If I had my rifle, Dad and I would already be out of here. “I’m a little confused.”
“We are a community,” Marco said. “We care for each other. We provide for each other. We carry the weight of this burden for each other. We search for survivors on the outside and bring them to the safety of our home.”
When he put it that way, the Legacies didn’t sound much different from Camp Haven. They were a group of people that had banded together in order to survive the effects of the EMP blast. They relied on each other, just as the members of Camp Haven had. The only strange part was this whole “chosen by fate” gag that Marco was spinning.
“Marco, no offense, but we have our own community,” I said, trying to keep my voice as level as possible. “And we desperately need to return to it.”
“Shh,” Marco said as he put a finger to his lips. “There is no need to make up stories. We accept you here. You’re one of us. We would like you to sit for the togetherness ritual.”
“The what? Listen, Coats, is it?” I wasn’t in the mood to play nice with this guy. I reserved first name basis for people I actually respected. “I’m not making up any stories. There are other survivors out there, people that I care about, and I can’t hole up all nice and cozy in your church just because you think you’re some kind of chosen one.”
The entire congregation shifted forward as I stood up from my chair. I swayed, still groggy from the head injury, and Marco took the opportunity to plant me in a seated position again.
“You’re confused.” Marco traced my the outline of my cheek with his fingertip. “We are the only ones left on earth. You must stay here and become a Legacy like the rest of us.”
Blackout (Book 2) Page 5
