Robison Wells - Blackout

“They’re arguing,” Jack said, but Aubrey still couldn’t hear it.

Was she losing her hearing along with her sight?

“About what?”

He shrugged, and then motioned for her to cross the road to the next field. “Can’t tell.”

“Why would they do this?” she asked.

“You think they’re looking for us?”

“Who else?”

“Terrorists,” he said, like the answer was obvious. “Whoever hit Lake Powell.” He scrambled down the other side of road. This wasn’t a cultivated field—just rocky undeveloped land. She expected him to offer her a hand, but he didn’t.

“But what about Nate?” Aubrey asked as she carefully followed after him.

“You know more about Nate than I do,” Jack said.

“Hardly anything, really.”

“I’m just saying—”

She stopped, suddenly letting out her fear, disguised as anger. “I don’t understand anything about what he did.”

“I don’t care,” Jack answered. “All I’m saying is you knew him better than me.”

“Well, I didn’t know . . . whatever he was. Whatever he did back there.”

“I don’t care,” Jack said again. He started walking, forcing her to follow if she wanted to talk. “I have no idea what happened with him. I’m just saying that the military has their hands full right now. They’d only stop the dance if people were in danger.”

“What danger?” She wasn’t trying to be belligerent, but part of her wanted—needed—to justify Nate’s actions. If she was anything like him, then he couldn’t be dangerous, could he? Could she ?

“Terrorists hit Lake Powell. Maybe they’re coming here next.” He turned and kept walking away from the road.

“To do what?” Aubrey asked, exasperated. “Blow up a turkey farm?”

“They could target Wasatch Academy,” he answered. “The dorms. Or Walmart.”

“Walmart?”

“They hit malls last week.”

Aubrey pulled the oversized coat closer around her. She’d gotten the dress just before the mall disasters on the West Coast. She wasn’t sure of the final count, but the attacks were staggered—three one day, five the next, six more the day after. Nothing in Utah, of course. It was too small to care about. Well, that was what she’d thought until tonight.

But what about Nate? Did that have anything to do with the attacks?

“Where are we headed?” she asked Jack. She’d just realized the roadblocks were forcing them away from Jack’s house.

He shrugged without turning back. “Into town. To the school. It seems like the most logical meeting place.”

“So we just turn ourselves in?”

He glanced over his shoulder. “You and I know Mount Pleasant inside and out. We can sneak up close, see what’s going on.”

She thought about that for a minute. They might know every alley and broken fence, but they weren’t the US Army. They didn’t have night vision binoculars and who knew what else. And she couldn’t turn invisible with Jack.

“No,” she said, and stopped.

He turned around, annoyed. “What?”

“Let’s go to my house. Check the news. Find out what’s happened.”

“Why?”

Aubrey started to cry. It was fake at first—something Nicole had taught her to help her get her way—but once the tears came they didn’t stop. “My date just turned into a monster, and then they killed him. It’s the middle of the night and you want us to spy on the people who did it. I want to go home.”

Jack hesitated.

“Come on, Jack,” she sobbed. “Let’s go home.”

“SLOW DOWN,” ALEC SAID, SITTINGup straighter in the passenger seat. His head was throbbing, and he’d been trying to sleep, but Laura drove too fast. They were asking to get pulled over.

The escape had gone perfectly to plan—better than he could have hoped. Only a few vehicles had tailed them as they flew out of the Glen Canyon Dam parking lot—Dan had shaken the canyon walls and must have damaged the bridge over the Colorado River—and the Bronco had quickly lost their pursuers in the maze of dirt roads to the west. They exchanged the stolen Bronco for a pickup, and then headed north through the Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument, one of the most godforsaken stretches of wilderness in the country.

Laura drove—she’d had plenty of time that day to rest while the other two prepared for the attack, and both Alec and Dan were worn out and hurting. Dan could usually just sleep off his problems, but Alec’s always resulted in a migraine. Laura, so far as they’d seen, didn’t have any significant side effects. But her mutations were simple—strength, toughness, endurance. She was their tank, their human escape plan.

Human. Alec smiled tiredly. He was better than human now.

He turned on the radio again, the noise sending electric bolts of pain through his forehead.

“. . . expected to be a complete loss, though the damage could have been far worse. The brunt of the explosion took place fairly high up on the dam; had it been lower, the hole would be growing significantly faster and the evacuation process would be that much more difficult.”

“Dammit.” He sat quietly, watching the darkness out the windows. The evacuation process. He had thought that breaking the dam would be like popping an inflatable pool, sending all the water—and boaters—flushing down the Grand Canyon. But for hours they’d heard news anchors talk about the slow descent of the water, like bathwater slowly draining out of a tub.

He punched the dashboard. “Dammit. Dammit. Dammit!”

“It was a stretch,” Dan said quietly and defensively. “You knew that. I was working with concrete, not natural rock; it was over a hundred feet thick.”

Alec didn’t say anything, though of course it was all true. He’d known it going in.

“We killed the dam,” Laura said, her hands tight on the steering wheel. “I don’t see what the big deal is.”

She never saw what the big deal was, Alec thought, but he kept his mouth shut. Not because he couldn’t have out-argued her, but because he had a headache and it wasn’t worth his time. Something caught his attention and he turned up the radio again.

“. . . want to emphasize that the suspects in this bombing are three young people, between seventeen and twenty-five years of age. They were last seen heading west on Highway 89 in a late model Bronco.”

The newsman gave their basic descriptions, which were vague enough to give Alec a little peace.

“So you want solid rock, huh?” he asked.

Dan, lying down in the backseat, grunted a yes. Dan always did better with natural stone than with synthetics.

Alec pulled out his smartphone and began scrolling through lists he’d made over the last several months.

“. . . We have breaking news from Michigan—the power grid in Detroit has been on and off all night, and there have been reports of damage to electrical substations throughout the city. We also have had unconfirmed reports of blackouts in the northeast, including many portions . . .”

“Attacking substations?” Alec said back to the radio. “Weak, guys. Weak.”

Laura laughed. “That’s why we’re the best.”

That’s why I’m the best , he thought.

He continued flipping through the list on his smartphone. He had potential targets researched all over the area—good targets, too. Railroads, mines, even a handful of power plants. And being in the middle of nowhere in Utah hopefully meant there wouldn’t be too many guards.

“Hey,” Laura said, and pointed ahead into the darkness.

Alec peered forward. Bright floodlights illuminated the highway and made his headache even worse. Two vehicles were stopped across the road.