Summer Lane - Day Zero

Elle was pleased with his answer.

“Before we go to Sacramento, there’s somewhere we need to go first,” she said. “My Aunt and Uncle, they had a home in the Tehachapi Mountains. I left it to come back to the city to search for my family. If they’re still there, they’ll be able to help us get to Sacramento.”

“You have living family members?” Flash asked. He tilted his head. “Lucky.”

Elle wasn’t so sure. She didn’t even know if Aunt and Uncle were still alive.

“We go there first, and then we go north,” Elle stated. “What do you say?”

Georgia reached for a cigarette — she seemed to have an endless supply.

“Sounds good to me,” she said.

“I’m in,” Jay added.

Pix and Flash raised their hands.

Elle nodded. She would go with them to Sacramento, and if they betrayed her, she would leave. It was a simple plan. Either way, she was escaping the Klan. She was escaping the memory of a dead family. She was escaping Day Zero.

“Do notdo this, Elle,” Aunt said.

Her pretty white hair was mussed. It was the middle of the night, and Elle was standing at the doorway, her backpack over her shoulder. The night was cold and brisk.

“I have to!” Elle replied. “I can’t just stay here. Maybe she’s still alive.”

“Your mother is dead,” Aunt answered, her voice firm. Almost cold. “If you go back, all you’ll find is an empty apartment.”

“I have to try. She would come looking for me if it were the other way around.” Elle shook her head. “Explain it to Uncle. He’ll be mad at first, but he’ll understand.”

“He’s seen the city. He knows what it’s like.”

“I know.”

“The city is death.”

Elle flinched. Her mother had said that very thing to her not so long ago.

“I’m sorry,” Elle said, fighting tears. “I have to go.”

Aunt folded her arms across her chest. She wasn’t going to hug Elle, and she wasn’t going to cry. Aunt was too hardened for that — too much like Elle.

“I’ll be back,” Elle promised.

Aunt said nothing. She didn’t believe her.

“Goodbye,” Elle whispered.

She stepped over the threshold.

She left the safety of Aunt and Uncle’s home behind.

“I had a six-month sentence,” Georgia said.

It was mid-afternoon, and they were inside Elle’s apartment, gathering every last scrap of food and supplies she had here. It had taken everything in Elle to show them where she lived — show them her dismal stash of supplies. But now that she was leaving… well, she needed all the supplies she could get her hands on.

They couldn’t go back to the underground basement and scavenge food.

The Klan had taken it.

“What did you do?” Elle asked.

“I sold drugs for my older brother. You know. I was all cute and innocent-looking—” she batted her eyelashes with dramatic flare “— and he’d send me outside to do the exchanges. I got wise, and I started selling my own drugs on the side.”

“And then you got arrested, which wasn’t so wise,” Elle remarked.

“Yeah.” A shadow fell across Georgia’s face. “It was a mistake. All of it was.” She sighed. “I grew up in Atlanta. It’s a nice city, you know? A couple years ago my mom moved to California with her new boyfriend, and that’s when things got real bad.”

Elle opened the cupboards in the kitchen.

“We all make mistakes,” she said. “Welcome to the human race.”

“Well…” Georgia gave Elle a sly look, gesturing to Flash and Pix on the other side of the apartment, going through their own packs. “Those two were in juvie for credit card hacking. Like, major hacking.”

“That explains the nicknames,” Elle commented. “They don’t really seem like the criminal types, though.”

“They’re not. Their foster parents were using their brilliant little minds to hack bank accounts and everything else.” Georgia smirked. “Ironic thing is, Pix and Flash ended up in the correctional facility, but the foster parents didn’t get any time. They got off without anything.”

“That’s stupid.”

“That’s the justice system, sweet pea. Everything was blamed on the twins.”

Elle rolled her eyes.

“Like I said,” she sighed. “Welcome to the human race.”

She peeked over her shoulder at Jay, who was gathering Elle’s stash of ammunition from the closet. “What’s Jay’s story?” Elle whispered.

Georgia picked up a can of peaches and studied the label.

“Wish I knew,” she shrugged. “He won’t tell.”

“He’s keeping secrets?” Elle zipped her backpack shut, doing a final sweep of the supplies in the kitchen. “How bad do you think he was?”

“I don’t know.” Georgia threw the peach can into her own pack. “The thing is, most of the kids in juvie weren’t bad, they were just… lost . Like me. We didn’t mean to get off track, we just didn’t have anybody there to tell us we were doing the wrong thing.” An expression of profound sadness spread across her face. “It took the end of the world to change us.”

Elle bit her lip.

“The end changed everybody,” she whispered.

Jay slammed a duffel bag on the counter.

“That,” he announced, “is a freaking huge bag of ammunition for a girl your size. Where did you get all of this?”

“I’ve been collecting it,” Elle replied. “We don’t have much food, but we’ll have plenty of ammunition.”

“For two guns,” Georgia chuckled. “That’s overkill.”

“If you’ve got something good, don’t waste it,” Elle said. “Ammunition and food are the two most important things we could bring with us. The ammo goes. The blankets stay.”

“But it’s cold out there, Elle,” Pix complained.

“Trust me, you’re better off with more bullets than blankets,” Elle assured her. “There are bad people out there — people worse than the Klan. We want to be able to protect ourselves.”

“What about this bag?” Georgia asked.

“We’ll divide the ammo up between our packs,” Elle said. “And then the rest of it can stay in the duffel bag. Jay, you can carry it because you’re the strongest.”

Jay rolled his eyes.

“Right, stereotype the big guy.”

“Hey, it’s not my fault that you’re the oldest and the strongest,” Elle said. “We’ll all have an equal load to carry, believe me.”

It took just under an hour to finish packing. Pix, Flash and Georgia were each loaded with a backpack. Jay carried a bigger pack and the biggest duffel bag filled with Elle’s salvaged ammunition. Elle had already assembled her pack. It contained all of the necessary items: Water, purifying tablets, knives, matches, bandages and alcohol for cleaning open wounds, along with needles and thread.

“So.” Georgia blinked. “Are we ready? Can we go?”

Elle looked at the apartment and the view of the Santa Monica Beach. Sadness squeezed her heart like an icy fist. She would probably never come back to this place. She would be separated from the city that reminded her of her family for the rest of her life.

“Yeah,” she said. “We can go.”

Flash and Pixwere the first out the door, followed by Georgia. Jay lingered for a moment.

“It’s going to be okay,” he told her.

Elle met his gaze.

“Yeah,” she replied.

Elle walked out of the apartment last, shutting the door behind her. She climbed down the dark, dusty staircase, and met the others on Ocean Boulevard below. The salty sea breeze rustled her hair. She looked up at the city.