D. MacHale - Storm

Once in the clear, Kent drove even faster. Nobody complained. We wanted to get as far away as quickly as possible. Minutes later we were on the interstate, and Boston was in the rearview mirror.

“We’re clear,” I said to Kent. “You can go subsonic now.”

Kent didn’t let up. He was too deep in the zone.

Tori touched his arm gently, making him start as if her touch were electric.

“It’s okay,” she said softly. “We made it. Don’t get us killed now.”

Kent’s eyes were wild. He looked at Tori as if he didn’t even register what she had said.

“Slow down, Kent,” she added more firmly.

Kent finally nodded. I could see the tension melt as he eased off the gas.

We drove on without a word. The only sound was our steady, heavy breathing and Olivia’s soft whimpering.

“I’m sorry, Tucker,” Jon finally said meekly. “I… I… didn’t understand.”

Nobody responded. The terror we had just gone through was still too fresh to suddenly start thinking rationally about the fact that Jon had nearly gotten us all killed.

“Where am I going?” Kent finally asked, staring straight ahead. Tori turned and looked back at me, waiting for an answer.

I looked around at the haggard faces. We may have been kids, but we had also been through more conflict than most adults would see in a lifetime. The fact that we were still alive was nothing short of a miracle.

“We’re dealing with two enemies,” I said. “There are no good guys to side with or help us out. The only people we can trust are in this car, and others like us. The survivors.”

“What does that mean?” Tori asked.

“It means we’re going to Nevada.”

As we drove south on the interstate, I told Jon, Kent, and Olivia what we had seen at Fenway Park and that Feit was alive. I explained how Feit told us that the battle between the two military forces was about changing the course of the planet. The Air Force believed that the SYLO forces had put us on a path that would mean the end of mankind and that the only way to save the planet was to reset civilization.

Nobody said a word. Nobody questioned. It was just as well. It wasn’t like I had any answers. I was only repeating what Feit told us. SYLO and the Air Force were nothing more than tools. There was no way to know who was using them.

I think the reality of what we had just been through and what we had learned had finally settled in and left us all in shock. The fact that Chris and his cowboys turned out to be Air Force villains wasn’t the worst of it. The mysterious device being built in Fenway Park was a minor footnote. The attack by SYLO on Fenway was the least surprising of all. It made sense that the Navy was far too huge to have been crippled by one battle. None of those revelations bothered me as much as the most important bit of information we had gotten from Feit.

In their quest to “reset” civilization, the Air Force had wiped out three-quarters of the world’s population. It was a reality that was hard enough to accept, let alone understand.

I thought back to the fleet of black planes we saw high over Boston, headed out to sea. Were they on their way to another target city? Were millions more killed that night? The possibility was too horrific to believe, but from what we’d seen in Portland and Boston, it could very well be true.

As we traveled along the empty interstate, we saw more of what we had witnessed on our journey to Boston. There were thousands of abandoned cars, though no other signs that we were in the middle of a war. There were no downed fighter planes, no burning buildings. No wounded. No bodies.

No life at all.

The full picture of what had happened was beginning to become clear. The black Air Force planes had passed over like minions sent by the angel of death and vaporized anyone who wasn’t lucky enough to have been deep in some basement and safe from their reach. Unlike what had happened to the boat that Quinn had been on, and some of the buildings in Portland and Boston, the sweep left structures intact. The weapon was selective, and it selected people. Animals too. We didn’t see any dogs or cats or skunks or most anything else that breathed.

There were still some birds in the sky. It must have been more difficult to target flying objects. For one horrifying second I imagined that the world would soon become a giant aviary. It was like something out of a horror movie.

Everything we were seeing was like something out of a horror movie.

I felt numb. It was impossible to accept such a huge loss of life. I kept searching for other answers. Other possibilities. Other explanations.

I came up empty. The harsh truth was that we were members of a very small club. We were the survivors of the most heinous crime ever committed.

What we couldn’t know was what the future held.

“We gotta get gas,” Kent said. “We’re sucking fumes.”

He pulled off the interstate and drove to a gas station.

“What’s the point?” Jon said. “It’s not like the pumps work.”

Tori looked at me and said, “Get a gas can.”

She seemed to know what she was doing, so I didn’t question. I went into the convenience store that was attached to the station and found a can. I also grabbed a handful of Tootsie Pops. Why not?

Outside, Tori had gotten the hose she took from the Target store in Portland. I’d forgotten all about that. She went to one of the abandoned cars and popped open the gas door. I placed the tank on the pavement below it and unscrewed the cap. Tori fed one end of the tube into the gas tank and sucked on the other. She squinted, waiting for the first taste of gas. When she got it, she quickly spit out the little gas that made it to her mouth and jammed the end into the container. The suction had started the stream, and gas flowed from the car into the red can.

Tori wiped her mouth with her sleeve, and I handed her a Tootsie Pop.

“That’s for taking one for the team,” I said.

Tori grimaced and tore the packaging off the candy. “You’re up next,” she said and gratefully started in on the pop.

Kent walked up to us with his hands in his pockets. I tossed him a Tootsie Pop. It hit him in the chest and fell to the ground.

“Nice catch.”

He picked it up and stared at it as if it was something from an alien world… and maybe it was. We hadn’t been thinking much about anything that was considered normal in our previous lives. Like candy.

“So?” Kent asked. “Anybody know how to get to Nevada?”

I laughed. Tori did too. Kent finally joined in. It was a brief moment of silliness that we desperately needed.

Tori got it back together first.

“We’ve got to gear up again,” she said. “We’ll get a road atlas.”

That thought brought us back to our harsh reality. We had to collect supplies again, just as we did in Portland, since we’d left everything we owned at Faneuil Hall. The first time we’d done it, it felt like an adventure. We had high hopes of rejoining civilization in Boston, and it had been a little bit of a rush to take whatever we wanted. Now we were faced with a new normal, and that meant we might have to be raiding stores for a very long time.

This time felt less like an adventure and more like a curse.

Kent took the gas can and dumped the fuel into the Explorer. He and Tori then moved to siphon another car. While they worked, I went to Olivia and Jon, who were sitting in the Explorer. They were talking about something, maybe even arguing, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying, and they immediately stopped when I opened the door.

“Trick or treat,” I said and tossed each of them a Tootsie Pop. “Early Halloween.”

“Thanks,” Jon said and ate his hungrily.