D. MacHale - Storm

She stood up and offered me her hand. I took it, and when I stood up, my head went weak and I nearly toppled. Charlotte grabbed me and kept me from going over. She had to be a foot shorter than me, but she was strong.

“Easy there, pardner,” she said. “You still got some lingering effects. Tell you what. It’s tough negotiating through the dark on foot. We’ll take a boat.”

“A boat?”

“C’mon,” she said with a chuckle, and with one arm around my waist to steady me, she led me away from the freakin’ giant mask. I began to get a sense of the room. It was big with a huge skylight overhead. Once the sun came up, the room would be completely lit. By then we would be gone. By boat. How could a boat be in the desert? Were we still in the desert?

“How long was I out?” I asked as we made our way through the hazy space.

“About twelve hours. Long enough to get you here and settled.” Yeah, settled. Manacled was more like it.

“Where are my friends?”

“I suspect they’re headed to the same place we are.” It was still too dark for me to make out any real detail, but it seemed as though we were walking along a narrow city street with shops on either side of a cobblestone sidewalk. But that didn’t make sense because we were definitely indoors.

It was about to make even less sense.

“Here we are,” Charlotte announced. “Hop in front. I’ll paddle us out of here.”

“Out of where?” I asked with growing confusion.

“Out of Venice, of course,” she said, chuckling.

It sounded like a joke, but we had stopped at a boat that looked very much like a gondola floating in a canal.

“Are we seriously in Venice?” I asked.

“Yup, but not for long.”

Charlotte was obviously having fun with me, and I stopped asking questions. When the sun came up, I’d see all I needed to see. I got in the front of the boat, or the gondola, or whatever it was and sat on a seat that had an ornate cushion. Charlotte picked up a long oar that was yoked toward the stern and pushed us off. In seconds she was churning us along the narrow canal. We passed under elaborately decorated footbridges and slid by open courtyards that had statues in their centers. We also passed dozens of dark shops.

We really were in Venice. Was it possible that the survivors flew us across the ocean in the twelve hours that I was out? I suppose anything was possible.

“Is this ever going to make sense to me?” I asked.

“Any second now,” she replied with a chuckle.

Up ahead I saw light, which meant the canal would bring us outside. Seconds later we slipped through an archway and into a wide pool. The sun hadn’t yet risen, but the sky was bright enough that I could make out detail through the gray haze. It was like leaving a dream, only to enter a more impossible dream. Venice is one of those cities that you see in movies and in pictures and on TV, so it looks familiar even if you’ve never been there. There was a tall brick tower near an ornate footbridge that spanned the pool. Gondola docks with red-and-white barber poles ringed the pool.

It really was Venice.

But it wasn’t. I also saw huge, modern buildings that loomed over us. I saw what looked like a small volcano nestled amid palm trees, behind which were two pirate ships flying the Jolly Roger. In the distance, I could have sworn I saw the Eifel Tower. I was convinced that the tranquilizer was giving me hallucinations.

“Uh… what is this?” was all I managed to say.

“Never been here?” Charlotte asked. “Guess you’re a little young.”

“I don’t think you can be too young to be insane,” I said. Charlotte laughed. “You’re not insane, though this place has driven plenty of folks off their rocker.”

“Where are we?” I asked, with more than a little desperation. “It’s Las Vegas, Tucker. Haven’t you ever seen pictures? Or been to the movies?”

Las Vegas. I’d seen it on the map, not far from the Valley of Fire. Things were suddenly clicking into place. Charlotte was right.

Las Vegas was the city that never sleeps, or something like that. But it sure looked sleepy to me. Every movie I’d seen of the place showed it with billions of glittering lights. But there was no power for that. Las Vegas was dead.

There were huge billboards advertising shows at places called the Mirage and the MGM Grand. Some had pictures of people who must have been superstars, but I didn’t recognize any of them.

Men wore tuxedos and women wore shimmering gowns. They were bright and happy and ready to please.

They were probably dead.

It might have been some great destination for people to have fun and see shows and gamble and do whatever else you did in a fantasyland out in the desert, but now it was just another dark, empty city. The word Charlotte used to describe it totally fit: eerie. Charlotte guided the gondola up to a dock that had ornate columns like you might see in Italy. The real Italy. This was a themepark copy. She tied up the craft and gave me a hand to get out because my head was still spinning… and it had nothing to do with the tranquilizer.

“Let’s walk,” she said. “Newbies always get a little welcome speech. We’ll find your friends in a minute.”

We climbed up to street level from the lagoon, where I got a full view of this section of Las Vegas.

“It’s called the Strip,” Charlotte explained. “It’s where most of the big hotels and casinos are all jammed together in a four-mile stretch. Las Vegas is a big city, but this is where most of the action is.” She paused and added, “Or was.”

We walked out onto the street and took a left, heading toward the Eiffel Tower. As dead as the city was, it wasn’t abandoned. Far from it. People wandered out from the buildings to greet the new day. Some stretched. Some jogged. Others just walked quickly, as if working to stay in shape. There were all sorts of people representing most every nationality or ethnic group. All were in civilian clothes. This was not an army. Most of them were older than me, no big surprise, but I didn’t see any young kids at all. I guess that made sense. Anybody looking to join up with a band of rebels wouldn’t bring their toddler along for the ride.

“Why here?” I asked.

“It’s the perfect place to hide out,” Charlotte replied. “There’s a labyrinth of tunnels that run up and down the strip and connect all the properties. What better place to stay underground and safe from them damned black planes? You know that drill.” I did.

“It’s like a rat warren down there. If those planes ever come looking for us, we can disappear into the depths like cockroaches.”

“Have they ever come looking?” I asked.

“Nope, but you’ll hear more about that at the briefing. We haven’t had a single incident since we started gathering here.”

“Is anybody in charge?” I asked.

“There’re a couple of guys. Good guys. We call ’em the Chiefs. A few have military background, so they’ve kept it all organized. Check this out.”

She pointed down a side street, where I saw a group of people jogging in perfect formation, four abreast, with a guy in green camo pants leading the way.

“It’s like they’re training,” I said.

“They are,” was her reply.

“How many survivors are here?” I asked.

“Last count was six hundred and fifty-two, including you.”

“Exactly?” I asked.

She shrugged and said, “Like I said, we keep it organized.

Everybody counts here. We’re not playing this loose. There’s too much at stake.”

“So what’s the plan?” I asked. “It’s not like six hundred civilians can take on the Retros.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, pardner,” she scolded. “You just got here.”