Desolation (Book 2): Into the Inferno

by Lucin, David

  He moved his head from side to side in an attempt to crack his neck. The whites of his eyes had gone red, and gray stubble painted his cheeks and jaw. From all appearances, he hadn’t slept in days. As he neared them, he took a blue plastic glove from his pocket and fitted it over his right hand.

  “Hello there,” he said and snapped the glove in place. “You must be the newcomers I’ve heard about.” His voice was hoarse, and his accent sounded Southern. Georgia, maybe.

  Sophie answered for the group. “You in charge here?”

  The man patted his stomach and bellowed a laugh. “Oh heavens no. Me? I’m nothing more than middle management.”

  “This a FEMA camp?” Sophie asked.

  “Yes and no,” he said. “Sort of. That answer your question?”

  “Not in the slightest.”

  He boomed another laugh, then held out his gloved hand for a shake. “It never does, but I can assure you, we’re an official organization—of sorts. Call us a hodgepodge of whoever the heck was left after this mess. FEMA, National Guard, local police, municipal government, everything. My name’s Lionel, by the way. Lionel Washington. Formally of Metro Phoenix’s Street Transportation Department. Once upon a time, I signed the paychecks of all those nasty folks who processed your parking tickets. Now . . .” He rested a finger on his chin. “Well, I’m not sure. A little bit of whatever’s needed, I s’pose.”

  “You some kind of germaphobe, Mr. Washington?” Sophie pointed to the glove.

  “Just a precaution,” Lionel said. “We’re running low on hand sanitizer inside, as you can imagine, Mrs. Beaumont.”

  Sophie didn’t flinch at the use of her name. Jenn used to hate facial recognition tech. Before the bombs, all it did was tell adscreens on busses and around campus to show her discounts for women’s clothes and softball equipment. Now, for once, it had done something useful: it brought them to Ed.

  “You have my husband,” Sophie said. It wasn’t a question.

  Lionel’s smile faded. “That’s right. I’m surprised someone found you. Thrilled, but still surprised.”

  “Is he alive?” Sophie asked. She undid a button on her shirt, then did it up again.

  Jenn held her breath and waited for Lionel’s response. It only took a second, but it felt like minutes had passed when he finally said, “He is. He’s been injured—a gunshot wound—but he’s hanging in there. As stable as my third and current marriage, I’m told.”

  Sophie signaled to Dylan with a finger. She made to pass Lionel and head for the gate, but the combat drones swiveled their turrets toward her, and she froze.

  Lionel stood there, his feet planted, and held out his hands apologetically. “I hate to do this to you, folks. I know you’ve had quite the journey, but we have a procedure we absolutely must follow.”

  “Procedure?” Carter said slowly, struggling with the syllables. “What kind of procedure? Let us see Ed!”

  He took a long step forward. One of the combat drones matched his move. Its spidery leg landed on the road with a clink that gave Jenn goosebumps.

  “Decontamination,” Lionel said. “For radiation.”

  Jenn touched her hair to make sure it was still as thick as when she left Minute Tire yesterday morning. It felt fine. She didn’t have any scabs or welts, either. “We came from Flagstaff. There wasn’t any fallout up there.”

  Lionel brushed his mustache the way Gary did when he was conflicted or second-guessing himself. “That may be so, but we’re not taking any chances. There was some fallout closer to the blasts, beneath the mushroom clouds, not to mention the ionizing radiation from the bombs themselves and the residual radiation blowing in from the coast.”

  The coast? Were San Francisco, San Diego, and Los Angeles hit with ground bursts? Gary said they were used against “hard” targets like the underground missile silos at Nellis Air Force Base. Maybe ports or naval bases were hard targets as well.

  “We have food and water and a place to sleep inside,” Lionel continued, “but the price of entry is, unfortunately, full decontamination.”

  Jenn wondered what that entailed. Her heart jumped at the prospect of a real shower.

  Lionel’s smile returned. With his gloved hand, he reached for Jenn’s wrist. To her surprise, she let him take it. As he rubbed his thumb on her palm and brushed away a layer of fine dirt, he said, “Might be nice to clean up, anyway.” He released her and angled his body, inviting her and the others to enter the camp. “After that, we’ll get you some fresh clothes. Then, Mrs. Beaumont, you can visit your husband. All of you can. He’s been here for days already, so he’ll keep for another hour. I’ll make sure to tell him you made it.”

  Sophie’s eyes wandered from Lionel to the gate, then over to Dylan, who blew a raspberry and shrugged. “Fine with me.”

  “Jansen?” Sophie asked. “What’d you think?”

  Jenn peered through the fence again. Outside a white tent, a mother grabbed her child and hoisted him into the air. Both wore blue hospital gowns. Ed was in there. There was a chance that her parents could be, too.

  “I’m game to clean up,” she said. “Let’s do it.”

  Sophie coughed into a fist and spat a yellow glob onto the road. “Fine. Baths and a new wardrobe.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “What’ll happen with our vehicles and supplies?”

  Lionel held out an arm and began walking to the gate. “Staff Sergeant Murphy will put them in lockup for you.” The soldier nodded politely. “We’re not in the business of taking down here. Only helping.”

  13

  Jenn sat on the bench in what used to be a women’s changeroom. The floor, made of a laminate that resembled hardwood, was chipped and scraped. Surrounding her on three sides were lockers. Most hung open, and some were missing doors. The lights were hardly bright enough to illuminate the space. Emergency power only, she figured.

  She finished the soy protein bar Lionel had given her. Her new outfit comprised a T-shirt that fit too big and cotton shorts that were too small.

  To her disappointment, there weren’t any showers, of course. If the water towers had run out in Flagstaff, they would have run out here, too.

  Even without a shower, decontamination was a treat. Jenn hadn’t felt so clean in days. After Sophie agreed to Lionel’s terms, some civilians dressed in yellow radiation suits led her and the group to the gym, where the women split off from the men. Nurses brought buckets of soapy water, and after stripping and depositing her clothes in a plastic bag, Jenn scrubbed herself from top to bottom.

  She savored it. Every second. When Sophie and Valeria had finished and the nurse was jiggling the lock on the stall door, pressuring Jenn to hurry, she continued, careful to work the pink loofah between her fingers and toes. She washed her hair twice, brushed her teeth, and even flossed. Her dentist would have been proud. When she was finally done and saw herself in the mirror, she looked like the woman from last week, and for a few minutes, she forgot about all the violence and the death.

  Next, a doctor came to the locker room, where he checked them over to confirm no one suffered from radiation poisoning or a potentially contagious illness. He paused when he saw the cuts on Jenn’s face but didn’t press the issue.

  Then they waited. And kept waiting. Lionel assured them that decontamination would take an hour at most. More than two had passed.

  Wearing a similar getup as Jenn, Sophie paced between lockers. Her hair, surprisingly voluminous now that it was clean, hung over her shoulders. She touched the spot where her necklaced used to hang. When the nurse insisted it go into the plastic bag with her clothes, Jenn thought Sophie might turn violent. Thankfully, she didn’t.

  “This is horse shit,” she said, then kicked a locker with a socked foot. Jenn jumped, but Valeria, in a bright pink tank top and men’s sweatpants, continued humming something and brushing her hair.

  Jenn understood Sophie’s apprehension. It must have been frustrating to come all this way to find out her husband was alive and the
n have to wait for hours to see him. “It’s okay,” she said. “It probably won’t be too much longer.”

  “Save it, Jansen. That’s what you told me an hour ago.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “I said save it.”

  Jenn sunk into her seat. Across from her, Valeria returned to her hair. There was a trace of what resembled a smile on the woman’s face.

  “You there.” Sophie waved at a female soldier who guarded the entrance to the locker room. “What’s the word? Can you get on the horn with your people and find out when I’m going to be allowed to see my husband?”

  The soldier blinked. She couldn’t have been much older than Jenn. “Sorry, ma’am,” she said in a small voice. “I don’t know. Really.”

  Sophie moved closer. The soldier responded by flinching and withdrawing a step. “Bah,” Sophie droned and threw her arms up. “It’s not your fault. It’s your idiot superiors. And Lionel. What’s his deal anyway, huh?”

  “Who?” the soldier asked. Before Sophie could answer, she touched her ear. “Yes, Sergeant. I’ll send them out now.”

  Sophie planted her hands on her hips.

  “You can step outside, ma’am. They’ll take you to your husband.”

  “Ladies,” Sophie said, beckoning for Jenn and Valeria, who dropped her hairbrush and darted for the door.

  Lionel and two soldiers, Dylan and Carter in tow, met them in the hallway. Dylan wore a T-shirt that barely contained his shoulders and arms. Every time he breathed, it lifted and exposed a sliver of his midsection. Carter, on the other hand, was draped in a polo so big it could have fit a bear. “Looking good, boys,” Jenn said.

  Dylan gave her the elevator treatment with his eyes, which landed on her shirt. “You wanna trade?” he asked.

  “Not a chance.” She poked Dylan’s bicep. “I don’t think even I could squeeze into that.”

  Carter straightened out his polo. “Mine’s comfortable.”

  “Vladdy, I’m surprised they found something big enough to fit you. No, actually, I’m more surprised it’s too big.”

  Lionel stood before the group. “Sorry for the wait. This place doesn’t move as efficiently as many of us would like.”

  “Longest hour of my life, Mr. Washington,” Sophie said. She turned right, down a hallway that spilled into an open room filled with cots, treadmills, and elliptical machines. “We’re all squeaky clean, so I’m assuming you’ll keep your end of the deal and show me to my husband?”

  “He’s at a field hospital. It’s on the east side of the camp. I have a van waiting outside.” Lionel led the way, the two soldiers close behind.

  They entered the room with the cots. About half of them were occupied. In one, an elderly man took a pill and a cup of water from a nurse wearing baby-blue scrubs. His face was red with sunburn, and his lips were white and cracked. Another nurse smiled at the group as she passed. “Afternoon, Mr. Washington,” she said.

  “How’s things today, Angie?”

  “Not bad, considering.” Angie moved to attend to a patient, a teenage girl in a Phoenix Suns T-shirt. Jenn checked the neighboring cots for her parents but saw no one she recognized.

  “Okay,” Dylan said from behind Lionel. “What exactly is it that you do here?”

  Lionel spoke over his shoulder. “I guess mostly I’ve taken on the role of helping with orientation.” He laughed that guttural laugh of his. “I make it sound like it’s your first day of school.”

  Dylan made a face at Jenn while Valeria rolled her eyes and Carter scrunched up his brow.

  Lionel pushed open a door that led outside. Jenn expected a glaring afternoon sun to greet her, but she met the same gunmetal-gray sky as before. The temperature was a comfortable sixty-five or seventy degrees and the air didn’t taste like smoke anymore, but the persistent darkness high in the atmosphere unnerved her. It shouldn’t look this way. Not here. In the Pacific Northwest or England, sure, but not in Arizona in early May.

  A white van waited for them in a narrow alleyway. Lionel opened the door and gestured for Sophie to climb inside. She did, and the others followed. Jenn sat in the middle row with Carter. Lionel took the front passenger seat. Beside him was a soldier, who tapped on the dashboard touchscreen to put the vehicle in manual, then eased down the alley.

  At the end, he turned right, onto a pedestrian walkway. Tan-colored buildings accented with brown or red brick flanked the path. Jenn recognized some of the stores: a Simulation World virtual reality arcade, a Lululemon outlet, a Diamondbacks gift shop. Soldiers, dressed in desert camouflage and their faces covered with masks, stood guard at many of the entrances. White tents were scattered about. The flaps of some were pinned open, and inside were tables and chairs, desks, and a few cots.

  The van drove slowly to avoid hundreds of people who crossed back and forth. Most were in mismatching and ill-fitting clothes, all of it brand new. Jenn assumed it had been liberated from one of the surviving stores—whose target shopper was, apparently, a middle-aged mom. Even some of the men wore women’s shirts and pants.

  “So you came from Flagstaff,” Lionel said, turning in his seat.

  Sophie sucked air between her teeth. “We did.”

  “Down the interstate? I imagine Staff Sergeant Murphy filled you in, but there have been some problems farther north. Did you happen to go through Camp Verde? We’ve heard that—”

  “With all due respect, Mr. Washington,” Sophie barked, “I’m not particularly interested in recounting what we put ourselves through on our way here. We came to get my husband. That’s it. After that, we’re taking him home.”

  Sophie’s words took Jenn aback. She hadn’t considered what would happen after they found Ed. The truth was, she never seriously thought they would find him at all—alive or dead. For her, this was more about scouting the city than tracking down the missing party. Now that Ed was, against all odds, safe, returning to Flagstaff made sense. They’d accomplished everything they set out to do, but for some reason, the mission felt incomplete. Jenn also came down here to get closure about her family.

  But what did she expect? To cruise around the ruins of Phoenix, checking every pocket of survivors for her parents? To drive into Peoria and see her home one last time? For all she knew, it was at the bottom of a crater. If it somehow survived the blasts, the fires almost certainly engulfed it soon after. Could she even get there if she tried? Gangs from the city had already migrated as far north as Camp Verde. The stretches of low-income neighborhoods between New River and Peoria, not to mention the two modular housing districts, were more than likely war zones.

  This was the end of the line. It was a relief, yes, but there had to be a way to do more, to get the information she needed.

  The tablet on Lionel’s lap caught her eye.

  “You have facial recognition tech, right?” Jenn started. “And you check everyone who comes to the camp.”

  “We do indeed,” Lionel said. “Anyone enters or leaves, we know about it.”

  Jenn picked at her thumbnail. This was stupid. She shouldn’t bother. The chances of Mom and Dad finding their way here were—

  “Someone you’re looking for?” Lionel asked with a warm smile.

  “My parents.” The words fell out of her mouth. At first, it was embarrassing. How could she be so naïve? But when Lionel switched on the tablet’s screen, her heart raced. All she could think about was a hug from her father and a wet kiss on the cheek from her mother.

  “What are their names?” he asked. Jenn clung to his use of are instead of were. “I have a wireless link to our server, so I can check right now.”

  She tried to speak, but her lips and tongue refused to work in tandem. A hand, Dylan’s, touched her shoulder, and Valeria offered her a reassuring nod. So did Sophie.

  “Adrian and Meghan Jansen.”

  Lionel tapped the names into his tablet. Each movement of his finger seemed to happen in slow motion. She noticed that she was quivering.

  “Let me have a
look here.” Lionel brought the screen closer to his face. When he shook his head, Jenn almost threw up. “No one by those names.” He held up the tablet for Jenn to see. “Did I spell them right?”

  In the top search bar, she saw her father’s name: A-D-R-I-A-N. That was correct. But her mother’s was spelled M-E-G-A-N. A fresh stream of optimism surged through her, and she sat up straighter in her seat. “There should be an H in Meghan,” she said. “M-E-G-H-A-N.”

  Lionel adjusted his spelling. Jenn chewed her lip. When he shook his head again, she bit down so hard she tasted blood.

  “I’m sorry,” he said sincerely.

  Jenn wanted him to apologize and tell her that there was a mistake, that there were other camps nearby that she could contact to ask about her parents. They weren’t here. So what? That didn’t mean they were dead. It only meant—

  Another hand touched her shoulder. Valeria’s this time. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. Jenn was being silly. No, she was being stupid. How could she have convinced herself they’d survived? Gary warned her about this, and she refused to listen. Instead, she told him off and stormed into her room. The embarrassment from before returned, and now, even in a vehicle with six other people, four of whom she had gone through hell with, Jenn felt completely alone. She wished Maria were here to assure her that everything would be okay. And Sam, too, to hold her tight.

  A minute could have passed. Or an hour. Jenn couldn’t tell. The van slowed to a stop and Lionel said, “We’re here.” The soldier who drove opened Jenn’s door, and she climbed out. Before her was a tall one-story building with tan stucco walls. Pillars of gray-brown brick flanked the front entrance. The sign above the doorway read “Home Plus.” Two soldiers stood guard with a legged combat drone.

  Sophie rushed forward on long strides, and Lionel scrambled to walk beside her. “They’re with me,” he said to the guards.

  The doors to Home Plus slid open with a whoosh. Jenn passed the drone in a wide arc. It shifted on its spidery legs, and the machine gun whirled around. Inside, a blast of cool air struck her face. She shivered, wishing she was given more than shorts and an oversized T-shirt. Then, when she saw a makeshift hospital, she stopped caring.