He didn’t need to be safe and cautious. Didn’t want Niko’s suffocating motherly BS. Down to his jeans and his sweater, he shouldered the backpack and he ran.
He ran in the street, for the most part. On the lawns when the street was blocked. The white foam made the road slippery in places, but when he fell, he whooped with delight. He was running offense and no one could stop him.
God, it felt good.
He was free again and he was moving.
God made him to move.
He felt the black junk in the air in his lungs after a few blocks. He wondered if inhaling the blackout cloud would have long-ranging effects, but who cared?
Alex said the blackout cloud hung over the detonation site, magnetized to stay there. Maybe he was inhaling tiny magnets. Felt like secondhand cigarette smoke, though. Itchy.
But he ran on.
By the time he got to Bowstring Road, his chest ached. Maybe he should have kept the stupid fleece face mask.
Some of the houses he passed were junked up. Some were burned. There were some bodies on the lawns, some spilling out of cars, some who died crawling out the windows, but he wasn’t going to think about them, not again, not for a second.
Because he was huffing now, every time he stopped. The shadows moved with his breath—in, out, in, out.
Better to keep moving. He was spooking himself out.
Coming around the corner of Bowstring Road, there had been a massive crash. Three cars rammed into one another, all snarled together. A pickup truck on its hood. All windows spiderwebbed. And the whole thing mossed over with the white foam.
Who’d hit who? You couldn’t even tell and then Jake felt hands on his shoulders and heard a horrible sound right on his neck: breathing and snarling.
Jake whipped around and there was a man. God, the stench! Jake pushed him and the man fell back.
The guy was big—taller than Jake, but he was slow.
“Get back!” Jake shouted.
He had to be type O—he had that deranged expression on his face, and looked like he wanted to kill, not rob.
His face was gaunt, his eyes huge and his teeth bared. He was bald and had tattoos everywhere. Jake could see he’d been exposed for too long. Spill had been almost two weeks ago.
“Leave me alone,” Jake said.
The man snarled in reply.
Jake remembered he had the gun. He reached back, slipping the bag off his shoulder. The gun was at the top.
What was that smell? Maybe the man’s clothes, which were covered in dark stains that had to be blood. But maybe they came from his mouth. The stench had a rotting sewage smell to it and Jake wondered what the guy had been eating.
His mouth was open, and Jake saw a slick patch on his chin.
Jesus, the man was drooling.
Jake backed away and slipped on the foam from the car crash.
The man threw himself at Jake, falling towards Jake, hands in claws, reaching for Jake’s face.
Jake kicked him.
Hard, in the center of the chest.
The guy’s breath came out in a rank OOF and spit got on Jake, too.
Jake scrambled to get up. He was shaking. The man was trying to get up, reaching for Jake with one hand.
Jake ran.
He could’ve beat the guy to death. Kick his head until he died or, even better, just take out the gun and shoot him through the heart.
Weird feeling, to know you could kill someone and you wouldn’t get in trouble for it.
It would have been a mercy, even.
People would praise him, even.
But it was easier to run.
Over his shoulder, Jake saw the guy turn his head up and wail.
Focus now and just get there, Jake told himself.
He ran up Bowstring and turned onto Leggins Way.
The guy was nowhere to be seen. Maybe being type O and staying outside that long made you stupid. Maybe the guy’d forgotten about him, or just knew he couldn’t keep up.
An O who’d been exposed since the spill was not as big a threat—knowing this made Jake smile a bit.
Made his chances of making it to Denver better, if that’s what he ended up doing. Too soon to tell, and he would go wherever he wanted.
17285. 17325. Yes—17355.
Lindsay’s house had a broken window, but he saw plastic sheeting fluttering near the hole. The sign had said, Mommy, come home, right? There was a chance she was there.
He went around to the back, turning on his headlamp now. If there was anyone hiding around back, he’d rather get a glimpse of them before being attacked.
“Lindsay?” he called softly. “Linds?”
In the backyard, their love seat swing thingy was overturned. Jake stepped on something, a broken rake, and it swung to the side and hit the house.
Then he heard Barksly. Jake smiled. He had forgotten Lindsay’s giant, dopey labradoodle.
Barksly loved Jake and Lindsay loved Barksly and, somehow, that she put up with a dog so sloppily enthusiastic had made Jake feel more confident around her.
The barks were coming from inside.
Jake stepped up onto the back porch. It looked exactly the same as he remembered it, down to the scuffed soccer cleats and shin guards discarded next to the door.
“Barksly,” Jake called. “Where are you, boy?”
Inside, the dog went nuts.
Jake knocked. No one answered. Duh. He tried the door and the knob turned easily. That seemed very bad to Jake and he prepared himself to be about to find Lindsay dead with her family.
If that was so, he’d rescue the dog and be off to Denver, then. No need to go to his own house. His dad would be long gone already—he worked in Denver. Would have been there on the day of the spill.
Would be good to have a dog. Would warn him when monsters like that O guy came out of nowhere.
“Lindsay?” Jake called, entering slowly. “Barksly?”
The dog was in the basement. The door was right in the kitchen. Jake could hear the dog scratching at it and trying to throw himself at the door—but tumbling down the stairs in between hits.
“Take it easy, Barksly!” Jake called.
The handle was locked.
Jake looked around. He’d get the dog out first and then explore the rest of the house. If there was anything horrible, the dog would find it first.
He opened a drawer and found a meat tenderizer—the kind with a big metal cube that was flat on one side and covered with little pyramids on the other.
Didn’t take Jake more than three strikes to knock the handle clear off.
Barksly was going insane.
Jake stuck his finger into the hole from the door handle and pulled it open.
Here, he realized he’d made a mistake, because as Barksly tried to push through to Jake, Jake realized the door had been sealed in sheets of plastic.
“Get back,” he told the dog. Instead of letting the dog come out to the kitchen, Jake pushed through, pulling loose the tape on the side of the plastic.
He entered the basement and grabbed the dog’s collar and tried to pull the door closed as quickly as he could.
He had breached the air.
That could be deadly for anyone downstairs, if there was anyone alive downstairs.
Barksly was all over Jake. “All right! Down, boy. Yeah, it’s me, but get down.”
He had to get off the stairs or the big, dopey dog would make him break his neck.
He came down the stairs and saw, now, that the space was inhabited, for sure.
Jake had been in the basement before. It was a big room with a mirrored wall running on one side, some exercise equipment, and one of those highly padded leather sofa sets for watching the bigtab that hung on the opposite wall.
No windows = a good place to hole up.
Now there were candles lined up against the mirror, and dark plumes stretching up the glass from candle soot. The exercise equipment was all pushed to the side and on it, and on the floor under it, Jake could see boxes of food, canned stuff, and a few dishes and cups. Some trash.