The Explorer was parked outside of the emergency room. Jon went for the wheel, but Kent clamped a firm hand on his shoulder.
“I’m driving, Chadwick,” he declared.
Jon pulled away from him angrily.
“I’m the one who found it,” he argued.
“And that matters because… ?” Kent asked snottily.
Kent towered over him threateningly. Jon may have been older than Kent, but Kent must have outweighed him by fifty pounds.
“Fine,” Jon said with reluctant resignation.
He went for the passenger side, but Olivia was already riding shotgun. He looked into the backseat, but Tori and I were already there. He had no choice but to squeeze past us into the third row.
“I hate riding back here,” he complained. “Don’t blame me if I puke.”
Kent turned around and glared at him. “You do and I’ll make you eat it.”
“Just drive, Kent,” I scolded.
“Sure. Where to?”
“Anywhere I can get some decent clothes,” Olivia complained. “We look like we just escaped from prison.”
She wasn’t far from wrong. We were wearing the dark red scrubs that Luna had given us the night before.
“Target,” I said. “We can find everything we need there.”
Olivia sat bolt upright. “I will NOT wear clothes from Target!”
Kent squeezed her knee and said, “It won’t matter. You’d look good in anything.”
Tori rolled her eyes and said, “Okay, Jon, you can puke now.”
“Just go with it, Olivia, okay?” I said. “We can’t go driving around looking for clothes.”
Olivia bit her lip and pouted. “Fine.”
With that rocky start, we were under way.
Tori didn’t say a word to me. She didn’t even look my way. I wanted to think it was because she was as nervous as I was. (I kept looking to the sky in case a dark plane decided to swoop in.) But I knew the real reason. She was pissed. At me. She expected me to back her up in her decision to head straight for Nevada, and it burned her that I didn’t. It took a lot to earn Tori’s trust. My fear was with that with one decision I had lost it and would have to start from scratch to get it back.
The shopping malls were a few miles from downtown. At first there didn’t seem to be anything unusual happening there. The parking lots were full of cars, shopping carts were scattered everywhere, and colorful flags whipped in the wind, promising big savings on back-to-school supplies. Everything was normal…
…except there were no people.
“It’s just so eerie,” Olivia said in awe.
Kent parked directly in front of the big Target store. There was no reason to look for an official space.
“Everybody get something to wear,” I said. “Remember, it’s warm now but that won’t last. Think of it like going camping.”
Olivia gave me a stern look. “I have never, not once, gone camping.”
“What about food?” Jon asked.
“No room,” I said. “We’ll pick it up on the road as we go.”
“I guess you thought this through,” Kent said.
“Just using common sense,” I replied and got out of the car.
Tori got out and strode for the store without a word. Olivia was right behind her. She actually had a little skip in her step as if excited about going shopping, even if it had to be at, god forbid, Target. She may not have been a camper, but I’d lay money on the fact that she was a shopper.
“Was Tori serious about going to Nevada?” Kent asked.
“I am,” Jon answered.
“I don’t care about you,” Kent snapped.
“Yeah, she was serious,” I said.
“Then she’s going on her own,” Kent said with a sneer.
“Look,” I said, “if Boston looks like Portland, we’ve got to do whatever we can to find other people.”
Kent actually looked as though he was giving that some thought.
“Is it possible?” he asked. “I mean, could other cities really have been hit?”
“Yes,” Jon said.
“I’m not asking you!” Kent barked.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “But it’s possible. How could you think it isn’t?”
Kent shook his head sadly. “I don’t. I just don’t want to believe it.”
“If we decide to go to Nevada,” I added, “you’re coming. Olivia too. We have to stay together.”
“I told you, you’re not in charge,” Kent said, looking me square in the eye with defiance.
I held his gaze and said, “If you want to go off on your own, that’s your call. But Olivia needs all the friends she can get. Do what you want, but she stays with us.”
We sat there staring at one another as if it were a test of wills. Kent may have been two years older than me, but after what we’d been through, that no longer mattered.
“She can do whatever she wants,” he said abruptly.
“Good answer,” I said and got out of the car to head for the store.
The manual doors were open, and the store was ours. The lights were out, but it was midday and there was enough light coming in through the big windows up front to provide low, gray light throughout the store.
I grabbed a shopping cart and went straight for the men’s clothes area, where I grabbed underwear and socks. I also found a pair of jeans and two T-shirts, one short sleeved and one long. There wouldn’t be room for a whole bunch of heavy clothes, so I decided to go with thin layers. I also grabbed a zippered hoodie to replace my old dirty model. The first one I picked up was bright blue, but I thought better of it and grabbed a black one. I didn’t want to be any more of a target than I already was.
Next stop was the shoe section, where I picked out a pair of light cross-trainers. I started for the changing room to try everything on, but stopped. What was the point? Nobody was around. I took off my scrubs right there in the aisle and put on the new clothes.
From there I went to the luggage area and picked out five identical soft gym bags, one for each of us. I tried to imagine what they would look like full and picked a size that I figured would fit into the back of the Explorer. I took one for myself and put in an extra pair of socks and underwear.
The pharmacy was next. I grabbed Tylenol, a toothbrush, toothpaste, hand-sanitizer, disposable shaving razors and deodorant. In the camping department, I grabbed a small flashlight and a camp lantern, with batteries for both. I also picked out a headlamp, a couple of solar blankets, waterproof matches, and a rain poncho. I glanced at all the cooking gear but figured that food would have to be eaten raw or out of a can. I grabbed a pocketknife and made sure that it had a can opener built in. Finally, I picked out a heavyduty sport watch. Normally I used my cell phone to check the time, but the battery had long since died. It had become a useless piece of junk that I reluctantly had to trash.
I packed all of the gear into one of the gym bags and found that I had plenty of room left over. With my shopping done, I wheeled my cart to the cash registers at the front of the store.
Kent and Jon were already there. Kent had on a red shortsleeved shirt, khakis, and a light green sweater, looking every bit like the preppie that he was with his bleached-blond hair and deep tan.
Jon, on the other hand, still had on his scrubs. “Don’t you want new clothes?” I asked.
“I like these,” he replied with a shrug. “Who cares what I look like?”
Certainly not him.
I tossed them each a duffle bag and watched as they filled it with the items from their cart. They had grabbed pretty much the same things that I had, except that Kent also had aftershave and mouthwash. Jon had pads of writing paper and a box of pens. I guess you can tell a lot about somebody by the stuff they think is essential for survival.
Tori arrived next, wheeling a cart with more clothes than I would have liked to see, but I figured they’d fit in the bag. She wore new jeans as well, and an oversized dark green sweater. It looked big on her, but it must have been more comfortable with her injury. I had to smile when I saw that she was wearing a new, clean University of Southern Maine baseball cap. She had pulled back her long, dark, wavy hair and tied it into a ponytail that she put through the back of the cap. It’s how I remembered her from home. It made me feel as though we had gotten back to normal, at least in some small way.