The door swung open a moment later. A wide-eyed and clearly panicked Lauren helped them inside.
“Don’t worry about your boots,” she told them.
Nate and Amy stomped their feet, casting off sheets of snow onto the entryway rug, shrapnel from the fifteen-foot journey between the pickup and the front door.
But the nervous expression on Lauren’s face wasn’t the only sign his sister-in-law wasn’t being herself. Suggesting she was a neat freak was like saying Jack the Ripper had a fondness for knives. It didn’t begin to capture the totality of her obsession.
Lauren stood before them in a clear state of confusion, white-knuckling a plastic laundry basket filled with clothes. Her thin brown hair was tangled about her as though she’d just been through the washing machine spin cycle. She was still in her pajamas: a well-worn, baggy pair of grey sweatpants topped by a Mickey Mouse t-shirt. Lauren was fit for her age. Went to CrossFit classes every Tuesday and Thursday. Said it helped to declutter her mind. But you would never know that now, staring at the woman before them.
“Where are the boys?” Amy asked, her voice calm and diplomatic.
“Upstairs packing,” Lauren replied, touching her forehead, before peeling off for the stairs.
“Ma, where’s my Battle Arena shirt?” Hunter called out from upstairs.
“The blue one?” Lauren asked, one foot on the bottom riser as she rifled through the laundry basket with her free hand.
“No, the black one.”
“I have no clue, honey. Wear your blue one.”
Born five minutes before his brother Emmitt, Hunter had recently become something of an internet sensation. It had started after uploading a video of himself to YouTube, playing a popular videogame. It didn’t seem to matter he was only nine years old at the time and obviously too young to post on the website. At least not to the one point two million fans who now followed him, hungry for new videos every day.
Over the past year, the kid’s natural charisma and love for a game called Battle Arena—where groups of players fought one another to the death on a virtual island—had somehow managed to translate into a tidy little business, enough for the family to move out of their old bungalow and into a two-story job with a finished basement and a dedicated games room, what Hunter called his office. Nate wasn’t sure how playing video games could make you money, but it was hard to argue with the results. It was also hard to argue Hunter’s success hadn’t done something to alter and maybe even warp the existing family dynamic. Forget that now, as a ten-year-old, he was pulling in close to Evan’s yearly salary as a nuclear engineer. Interestingly, most of that warping was affecting Hunter’s younger brother, Emmitt.
As if on cue, Emmitt appeared, lugging a heavy duffel bag down the stairs. On the bag was an image of a cartoon character wielding two silver pistols. He set it by the front door.
“That your bag?” Amy asked.
Emmitt shook his head. He was a redhead, like his brother, with pale, delicate skin and freckles. But where Hunter had a modern haircut, long on top and shaved on the sides, Emmitt’s hair looked more like a red mop without the broom handle.
“It’s Hunter’s,” he replied. “At least, the fuh-fuh-first of many.”
Emmitt had recently developed a stutter. Curiously, it only came out when he tried to say numbers.
Nate felt a surge of frustration rise up his neck and into his cheeks. He had read somewhere that children tend to balance each other out. If one sibling was irresponsible, the other would become more dependable. If one was crass and rude, the other would be kind and polite.
If there were any fundamental differences between the two boys, Hunter’s parents had only served to magnify them. The way they indulged the kid had effectively turned him into a diva. It was a trend Nate had seen more and more these days. Parents afraid of disciplining their children, some even trying to be best friends with their kids. He might not be one to talk yet, given his daughter hadn’t even been born, but already he knew that wasn’t the way he would do things. When your kid’s the one telling you what to do, something’s wrong. In normal times, divas could be irritating. In the present circumstances, they could be downright dangerous.
“Hunter,” Nate called out to his nephew, his voice low and tinged with just a hint of menace.
Upstairs, the sound of rustling stopped. A second later Hunter appeared at the top railing, the boy’s eyes flashing a distinct look of fear.
“You get one bag,” Nate said, holding a single digit in the air. “We also need room for food and supplies. When I return, I want all of you ready.”
Hunter stared back, some of the blood draining from his normally ruddy face. “Okay.”
“Return?” Amy asked, flashing a less than happy look. “Where are you going?”
Nate nodded. “To the plant, to see Evan. Find out what the hell’s going on.”
Amy folded her arms. “You sure that’s such a good idea?”
Nate checked his cell phone and saw there were no new messages or missed calls. “At this stage, we don’t have any other choice.” He reached into his pocket and handed her the pistol.
She looked down at it, unsure.
“Consider it an insurance policy,” he whispered, leaning in to give her a kiss. “Until I get back. Now, see if you can’t get these guys moving. I wanna be back home before anyone in town catches wind the crud’s hit the fan.”
Amy flashed him that disapproving look again and it wasn’t on account of bad language.
Chapter 9
A blast of freezing wind slapped Nate’s cheeks the moment he stepped outside. His first act before leaving for the plant was to gather any unused fuel from his brother’s garage. Fighting his way to the garage door, the snow piled up past his knees, only reinforced how challenging it was to get anywhere on foot in powder this deep. Nate gripped the handle, lifted the door and couldn’t help but laugh. If there was one thing his brother loved, it was filling his garage with equipment he never used. Before him was a pristine John Deere E100 seated mower, not a hint of grass caked on the wheels or side chute. By any measure, Evan’s front yard was fairly small and his backyard was half the size. Next to the mower was a Cub Cadet top-of-the-line snowblower. Beside that on a nearby shelf was a brand-new chainsaw, and below that a gas-powered weedwhacker that might have seen action no more than once. Seeing all of this thoroughly neglected gear, Nate marveled at his brother’s wastefulness. But he was also thankful. Each of them was gas-powered and their sacrifice would be put to a greater good.
He grabbed the syphon and gas can from the truck bed and got to work. In all, he managed to scavenge three and a half gallons. The Dodge, it seemed, would live to fight another day.
With that out of the way, Nate hopped in the truck and headed for the plant. It was exactly five miles away, far enough to provide something of a buffer should anything ever go wrong.
The journey was slow going and Nate was relieved to still see that hardly anyone else was on the road.
As Nate drew closer, he noticed a change in the road. Tire tracks. Several of them, all heading off Highway 72. Which meant a convoy of some kind had passed this way heading for the plant.
On either side of him were open farmers’ fields, covered in a deep, white blanket of snow. The wind had died down a touch, which enabled Nate to spot the massive twin cooling towers of the Byron nuclear power plant in the distance. Thick clouds of white steam vapor that normally escaped through the openings were now gone. While that suggested the plant didn’t have power, it said nothing about the state of the core itself. As he approached the outer gate, two guards emerged from a small structure, their weapons unslung and at the ready.