Нора Робертс - Year One

“Maybe you got lost?” Eddie suggested. “If you’ve got people, we can help you find them.”

“They’re dead. All dead!”

Flynn took her knife out, laid it on the ground. “The rest of us have to live. We’re going to walk to the houses nearby, see if anyone is alive and needs help. If no one is, we’ll take supplies if we can find them. Come with us. There are more like us where we live now. More like Eddie, too.”

She grabbed the knife, got to her feet. Her hair, nearly the same color as Flynn’s, nearly the same color as the bark of the tree, hung in matted tangles. Her eyes, big and dark, projected belligerence more than fear.

“I can leave when I want.”

“Okay.” Flynn turned and started to walk. Though it made him nervous to have some wild girl with a knife behind him, Eddie fell into step with Flynn.

“Does the dog have a name?” she asked.

“He’s Joe. He’s a great dog,” Eddie said. “And Lupa’s a good dog, too, for a wolf.”

Flynn didn’t bother to glance back. “Do you have a name?”

When she laid an unsteady hand on Joe’s head, the dog sent her a happy, tongue-lolling grin. Her lips nearly curved, nearly smiled for the first time in weeks.

“Starr. I’m Starr.”

* * *

Using the back entrance of the hospital—out of sight from the road—they loaded up the truck. Kim kept watch in the front of the building.

Since the last trip someone else had gone through. Someone more interested in opiates and morphine than sutures and bandages and antibiotics. Jonah loaded in an EKG machine, a fetal monitor, and—remembering the twins’ delivery—scavenged all he could from the NICU. Poe rolled out more on a gurney, and Aaron followed with more, including an autoclave.

As before, Jonah ignored the dried blood spatters on walls, on doors. At least this time there were no bodies to be carried out and burned in a mass pyre.

But the stench of death took a long time to fade.

“It’s a good haul,” Jonah decided once they’d loaded the box truck. “Poe, can you drive this?”

“Sure.”

“Aaron, let’s see about taking an ambulance. It wouldn’t hurt to have one, and whatever we can load inside from the rest of the fleet.”

Poe pulled around the front. “They’re trying for an ambulance.”

“Smart.” Kim hopped in.

“Yeah. I’m feeling better about them.”

“Max trusts them, and that goes a long way. I want to hit that mall, Poe. It’s too good an opportunity to miss. How much room have we got back there?”

“Enough, especially if they can get … And here they come. Nice.” He shot Kim a smile, pulled out behind the ambulance.

* * *

Max stood in a room full of computers, switches, and monitors while the man and woman with him—armed with flashlights—talked about grids, junction boxes, amps, transformers, overhead and underground cables.

He understood them less, he thought, than they understood him. And for the most part that was not at all. They had tools, and obviously knew how to use them, and ignored him while they did.

Chuck, in his new version of a basement, sat muttering to himself while he performed surgery on the guts of a computer. The gist of the muttering, as far as Max could tell, involved getting the computer running on a jury-rigged battery long enough for him to hack into the system.

Things were fried, compromised, undermined. A shutdown, as far as Max could discern, that had rolled like a wave, killing the power not only in the station but across that grid, burning out every transformer.

Max didn’t know about watts or amps or outdated cables, but he knew about power. About how power could be used to ignite.

He ignored the talk about going down to the bowels again, fusing something, clamping off something else, and studied the board in front of him.

He held out a hand, imagined transferring power. Flipping a switch, lighting a light. Too much, too big, he realized, and narrowed the point. A step, he thought, one candle in the dark.

He hesitated a moment, another moment. What if this push of power destroyed what progress skill and technology had managed so far? Knowing how to light a light was far from knowing how the light actually worked.

He narrowed a bit more. Starting an engine, he thought—he didn’t know how to build one, but he knew how to use what he had to bring one to life.

Faith, he thought. Believe. Accept. Open.

The monitor he faced blinked on.

The discussion—not an argument, but a tech-heavy discussion—rolled on. Max tapped Chuck’s shoulder, gestured to the monitor.

“Can you work with that?”

“What? Huh? Whoa, baby.”

Chuck shot his rolling chair down the counter. His fingers dived toward a keyboard, stopped an inch away. “Man, it’s the first time I’ve ever been nervous with tech. Hold on to your hats, boys. And girl.”

Drake Manning gave Chuck a punch in the arm. “How’d you get it on?”

“I didn’t.” Chuck took a hand off the board long enough to wag a thumb at Max.

“You wooed it on?”

“You could say that.”

“Son of a bitch.” Manning—his belt showing worn notches from steady weight loss, his graying hair in tufts under a Phillies ball cap—let out a cackle. “How long will it hold, Mr. Wizard?”

“I don’t know. It’s my first day on the job.”

“I’m in. I’m in.” Chuck did some jazz hands over the keyboard. “Yeah, baby, haven’t lost my touch.”

“Can you get the power on in here?” Manning demanded.

“Do bears shit in the woods? Give me a mo or so. Jesus, I’ve missed this. Missed the hell out of this.”

“That.” Manning leaned over Chuck’s shoulder, tapped a section of the monitor. “Just that. If we bring everything back on line, we’ll end up blowing the system. Just this station. We’ve got everything shut down. Bring it on line, and we’ll test it. One step at a time.”

“And done. Probably.”

Manning let out a breath. “Try the lights, Wanda. Just the lights.”

When at the flip of the switches they flashed on, Chuck pumped a fist in the air. Manning just pressed his fingers to his eyes. Then he dropped his hands, looked at Max. “At the end of your first day on the job, I’ll be buying the beer.”

He turned and met Wanda’s grin with one of his own. “Okay, team, let’s get the lights on.”

* * *

In the parking lot of the mall, cars lay on their sides, or on their roofs like turtles on smashed shells.

Crows, vultures, rats pecked and gnawed on carcasses of dogs, cats, deer. And what had once been human. The air reeked with the stench of decay and garbage.

Jonah drove past the remains hanging from a noose. A cardboard sign still draped around the neck.

UNCANNY BITCH BACK TO HELL

As he circled the lot, he saw no signs of life other than the gorged birds and well-fed rats. At some point, he thought, they’d send a crew of volunteers to burn or bury the dead, clean up the garbage, dispose of the piles of feces.

He pulled up at the front entrance, in front of shattered glass doors, and wondered what made some portions of the human race so foul.

He got out as Poe pulled in beside him.

“They’re long gone.” Kim got out, standing with her face like stone. “The bodies have to be at least two or three weeks old.”

“Could come back,” Poe said.

“Why? It’s a big, empty world. Plenty of other places to desecrate and destroy. I wish we hadn’t come.”

When her voice cracked, Poe put an arm around her. She stiffened her shoulders. “But we did. We should get whatever we can.”

“The dead deserve better.”

Jonah nodded at Aaron. “We’ll give them better. We’ll come back as soon as we can, and give them better.”