Burnout (The Invasion Chronicles Book 1) (22 page)

Caleb’s eyes had been getting wider and wider as Grandpa spoke, and at the end, he glanced between Lydia and Ava.  Lydia only nodded, spreading her hands in an expansive, what-can-you-do? sort of gesture.   

“He’ll do it,” she said seriously. 

“Totally,” agreed Ava.  

“Rule fifty, dude,” Zack finished.   

“Y-Yes, sir,” Caleb stammered finally, reaching up to rub at the back of his neck.  Then he shook his head and firmed up his posture.  “No more secrets,” he promised, and stuck out his hand.  Grandpa regarded him with a level look for a moment, before reaching across the table to shake it firmly.   

“What’s rule fifty?” Ava asked, curiosity sparking in her eyes.   

Zack turned toward the sound of her voice and winked.  “Three or more people think someone can kick your ass, there’s probably a reason why.”   There was a tiny, fierce smile playing about his lips, and the lines of his body had completely relaxed, as though—threats aside—he already knew that things were going to work out.   

Then again, maybe he did.     

“All right, then.”   The last of the tension evaporated, and Lydia breathed a silent sigh of relief.  This she could handle.  Their situation was still precarious, but at least now they could work together.  Grandpa leaned back, slinging one arm around Ava’s shoulders and squeezing gently.  “First order of business, we need to decide where we’re gonna go.  We can’t stay here anymore.  Last night proved that.”

“You have an idea, Grandpa?” Lydia asked. 

“We’re good on ammunition for a little while, but unless either of you boys have a cache somewhere in that truck, it’s not gonna last forever.”   

Caleb gave a quiet, humorless laugh.  “Yeah, I wish,” he muttered.  “We’re running pretty low, too.”

“You can trade ammo for 
anything
,” Zack chimed in.  He tilted his head slightly, a thoughtful look settling on his face.  “That and toilet paper.  Toilet paper’s solid gold, these days.   

“What about Cleveland?” Ava asked, looking between Grandpa and Caleb.  “Mike, we heard you and Jim arguing about whether we should head for that green zone.  Caleb, I know you said a bunch of the green zones weren’t even real, but we can’t just stay on the road.  Can we?”   

Caleb shrugged.  “I mean, me and Zack have been doing okay.  Between him and Lydia, now, we’ve got a better shot than most people.  But we’re not safe.  Nothing’s 
safe 
anymore.”   

“Cleveland’s a three-hour drive from here,” Grandpa said, rubbing the whiskers on his chin.  Caleb snorted. 

“You haven’t seen the highways around the city.  It’ll take two days just to get through 270.” 

“That long?” Lydia asked in surprise.  As soon as she did, though, she recalled the pictures she’d seen on the news before all the comms failed.  Highways and roads clogged with thousands of cars as people fled the cities, routes left impassable and cut off.  Even if a good portion of them were fuse tech or combustion powered, there would be countless cars that were completely dependent on the highway and street guidance systems for movement.  Finding clear paths would be next to impossible.  “Never mind.” 

Caleb scrubbed his hand over his hair.  “It’s not a bad idea,” he allowed.  “We can’t stay here.  Even if Cleveland’s closed, at least we’re on the move.”   

Grandpa nodded.  “Sounds like we have a plan.”    

Caleb blew out a breath, reaching over to ruffle Zack’s hair.  Zack let out an irritated squawk and slapped his hand away.  Even so, both boys looked incredibly relieved, tension lifting off of them like fog burning off under the sun.   

“Well, if it’s gonna take us a few days, we better get started,” Caleb said.  “Gonna be a long trip.  You’ve got to get packed, see if we can squeeze anything else out of your foodsynths, we gotta see how we’re gonna load the vehicles up…if you don’t want to take any of the cars you have here, I can try and find something close that I can hotwire.”  At Lydia and Ava’s startled looks, Caleb gave a sheepish shrug. 

“Cop’s kids,” he reminded them.  “Spent a lot of time at Dad’s precinct when we were kids.”

“So you learned how to hotwire cars?” Lydia asked dubiously. 

“We got passed around to whoever had time to watch us.  Learned a lot of things.  It’s why I know guns.”  Zack waved a dismissive hand.
 
 

Grandpa had been nodding along to Caleb’s list, and now he squared his shoulders.  “All right, let’s get moving.”

“Reed, you know what we’ll need better than any of us.  I want you to take a sweep through the other houses.  Grab anything you think’ll be useful, or just come tell one of us if you need help moving something.”

“All right,” Caleb agreed.  “Z, you coming?”

“Think I’ll stay here, if you don’t mind.  I wanna talk to Lydia some more.” 

Caleb nodded his assent and checked the charge cartridge on his blaster.  “How long we got?” 

“Long as we need, but we’ve got to get out of here before sunset.  I want miles between us and this place.  Be careful.  You hear anything—”

“I will shoot it a lot while screaming for help.” 

Grandpa’s eyes crinkled in amusement despite the situation, and Lydia bit back a laugh.  Caleb clapped his brother on the shoulder and vanished down the hall.  A moment later, they heard the front door open and close again.

Grandpa turned around to face them, his weathered features set in what Lydia and Ava had always called his
soldier face
. She and Ava both straightened under that gaze, throwing their shoulders back and lifting their chins.  He led them back into the front hall, Zack trailing at the rear quietly with his cane out.  “Clothes, blankets, clear out the medicine chest.  Grab a couple of sheets out of the linen closet.  Think warm, and layers.”  He strode over to the closet tucked under the staircase, yanking it open and pulling two duffle bags out.  He tossed one to Lydia, passing Ava the other.  “I’m going to load up the Jeep.  I’ll take care of what we need out of the kitchen.  Got it?” 

“Got it,” she and Ava said at the same time.  Grandpa headed toward the garage door off the kitchen, and she and Ava listened to his fading footsteps for a few seconds, before shouldering the duffle bags. 

“Let’s go,” Lydia said.  “Zack, you wanna help?”

To her surprise, he shook his head.  “I think I’ll wait down here for a minute, see if your grandpa needs help with anything.” 

“Suit yourself,” Ava said. 

They darted up the stairs, with Lydia in the lead.  And it wasn’t until they had tossed the bags onto her bed that she realized why Zack hadn’t followed them upstairs.  In that moment, it hit her:  they were leaving.  She was leaving her home; leaving the house she had lived in since she was five.  Who knew when they would be coming back? 
If
they were coming back?  For a bare second, her feet froze to the floor in the center of her bedroom. 

There were her posters and pictures on the walls.  Her (now useless) laptop still sat on her desk, and her clothes bulged out of the dresser drawers.  Her bed, with its purple sheets and bright blue
Dr. Who
comforter—the one Ava had teased her mercilessly about and then bought her the matching pillowcases for last Christmas—was still rumpled and inviting.  Her softball and soccer trophies gleamed on the shelves. 

It was more than that, though. 

There was the doorframe in the kitchen where Mom marked her height growing up.  There was Grandma’s good china in the kitchen cabinets, the pattern she’d picked out as a young bride.  There was the trunk of Christmas decorations in the basement, full of childish paper ornaments covered in glitter, and hand-blown glass baubles from Germany, and a sparkling glass star that had been in their family for almost a hundred years.  There were her mother’s things in the bedroom just down the hall.  All she had left of her mom, now.  Their entire
lives
were in the house.  How was she supposed to just pack it up in ten minutes?

She couldn’t. But she had to.

Their options for clothes were somewhat limited.  Lydia’s mother usually took her shopping in September, and most of last year’s fall and winter gear was too small.  Ava had a suitcase full of shorts, t-shirts, and one pair of jeans, and very few of Lydia’s clothes even came close to fitting her.  They gathered together what they could, rolling shirts up tightly and shoving them into one of the bags.  Somehow, Lydia doubted that clothes would be nearly as hard to come by as food and water would be.  Ava turned one of the pillows on her bed out of its case and ran across the hall to the bathroom, where Lydia heard her shoving the remaining toiletries—soap, toothbrushes and toothpaste, their swiftly dwindling supply of tampons and maxi pads—into it. 

“Lyds?  C’mon, we gotta get your Grandpa’s room.” 

Lydia’s eyes landed on the cork bulletin board above her desk.   She couldn’t bring much with her; Grandpa wouldn’t want them to waste valuable space on useless
things
. But she couldn’t just leave everything behind.  She dashed over to the bulletin board—a typical teenager’s collage of sports schedules, concert ticket stubs, and pictures.  Dozens and dozens of low-tech paper pictures.  She yanked them off one by one: frozen, smiling faces of family and friends.  The last family picture they had taken before Grandma died, all of them, gathered together on the front porch.  Her softball team at the state championship last year.  Ava at her last track meet, her parents’ arms thrown around her shoulders. 

She gathered them into a pile and pushed them down between a couple pairs of socks and a long-sleeved shirt.  It wasn’t enough.  It would never be enough, but it was all she could do.  She looked around her room again, trying to see if there was anything else she couldn’t stand to leave behind. 

“Lyds!” Ava sounded impatient now. 

She heard the rattle of Grandpa raising the garage door, the sputter of his Jeep Liberty as he started it up.  Lydia dropped to her knees and flailed one arm under Ava’s bed until her fingers connected with Ava’s sketchbooks and pencil box. 

There.  It would have to be enough.  She shoved the items into the bag and shot another look around the room, her eyes lingering for a moment on the piles of books in the corner. Even if she’d had time to sort through them, there was little room left with Ava’s art supplies in the bag.  There were volumes she would have liked to take—treasured novels she’d read over and over, books her mother had read to her when she was little—but it was more important to take Ava’s things.  She still had Grandpa, after all.

Ava had nothing.   

She stood up, racking her brain to try and think if there was anything truly useful she was forgetting.  She tried to keep that thought, tried to look at it as just gathering necessities, not as losing the last few remnants of her normal life.  “
Don’t think about it
,” she told herself firmly.  “
Just don’t think about it
.”

“Coming!” she called.  She hefted the full bag onto her shoulder and tucked the other under her arm.  They’d cram clothes for Grandpa and some of the sheets and blankets from the hall closet into it.  She paused by her bed on her way out the door, steadfastly refusing to turn and look again at the room…there was no point. It would just hurt too much.  With a sigh, she snatched her comforter off her bed and strode out of the room.

Unlike Lydia’s, Grandpa’s room had been stripped bare of everything but the mattress and box spring, and a low, velvet-covered stool, in one corner.  The covering was threadbare and worn in several places, faded nearly pink from the rich red it had once been.  It was part of the bedroom suite that had been Grandpa’s wedding gift to Grandma, sitting in front of a beautiful, old-fashioned vanity for as long as they’d been married. 

The vanity had been drafted into the blockades like everything else, but the stool still sat in the room.  A silver-plated tray was set carefully on top of it, with a holo frame that displayed a digital copy of Grandma and Grandpa’s wedding portrait, a perfume bottle, and a delicate gold ring.  The perfume bottle—an older brand of lilac scent Grandma had loved—was just sitting there as though she might come back someday to spritz some more on. 

The girls stared at the items on the stool for a few long moments, before Ava quickly grabbed the frame, popping out the small disc that contained the wedding photo, as well as a few strips of baby pictures of Lydia and her mother.  The frame’s power source had long since given out, but as long as they had the disc, they had the pictures.  She placed it carefully on the pile of shirts, pants, and socks they’d gathered for Grandpa, and then tucked the bottle of perfume into one of the bag’s side pockets.  She picked the ring up last, holding it out to Lydia with a questioning look.  Lydia took it without a word, turning it over in her hands for a moment, before putting it in her pocket. 

That only left her mother’s bedroom.

She’d left it last, deliberately.  There wasn’t actually much she wanted out of there…she and Ava had gone through all of Jennifer St. John’s clothes already, picking out what they could wear. She hadn’t been able to make herself go in there after they stripped out the furniture, couldn’t stand to see Mom’s keepsakes tossed down in a pile on the floor.  She couldn’t leave without making sure she wasn’t leaving anything truly important, though. 

She shut the door behind her, and stood there for a moment with her eyes closed, pressed against the door so tightly that the knob dug into her back.  Jennifer St. John’s bedroom was never open.  She and Grandpa had never talked about it, never made any sort of agreement to that effect…it just sort of happened.

In the frantic days of building the barricades, every door on Meadowbrook Court had been flung open, people passing in and out of the houses like ants in a disturbed nest as they carried out everything that wasn’t nailed down to be thrown together into the walls that kept them safe.  Lydia had helped drag the furniture out of Mom’s room, her eyes stinging the whole time.  She’d methodically pulled her mother’s books off her shelves, moved clothes out of the dresser and piled them on the floor in Mom’s walk-in closet, carefully wrapped the fragile glass figurines Mom collected on every family vacation in discarded socks and shirts, packed away every trace of her mother while the other members of their group watched her with silent sympathy. 

Mom’s bedroom was eerie now, alien in a way that Lydia had never experienced.  Every sound seemed loud in the empty space, like she was disturbing the quiet of a graveyard. 

No. 

No, she shouldn’t think like that. 

She sucked in a deep breath, filling her lungs until they burned, and held it for several seconds, before letting it all out in one great
whoosh
.  She shuffled dully into the room, dragging her socked feet over the thick carpet.  If she closed her eyes, she could still picture how everything had looked before.  There were still divots in the carpet marking where the furniture sat, still picture frames hanging on the walls—a few physical prints, but most were dark glass screens where digital images had been displayed.  She hadn’t thought to turn them off when the power grid failed, so sure that things would be back under control before the battery backups ran out of juice. 

She scurried over to where Mom’s dresser had been, and the simple wooden jewelry box that had been left sitting against the wall.  Her shaking fingers skimmed over the contents as she dug through glass beads and glittery bangles, and more earrings than her mother would ever have been able to wear.  There were expensive, real pieces mixed in with costume jewelry, and Lydia just wished she could take it all with her for the simple fact that each of the pieces had been worn by her mother.  She stopped when she found a silver chain with a heart-shaped watch on it.   Her mother had had it since college, and wore it every chance she got.  

Quickly, she pulled Grandma’s wedding ring out of her pocket and threaded it onto the chain.  She sighed as she tucked the chain under her shirt, feeling somehow stronger with the reminders of two of the most important people in her life so close. 

When she looked around again, her eyes were drawn to the closet door. It had been her favorite hiding place when she was little: pushed right against the back with her mother’s fanciest dresses hanging around her like billowy curtains out of some fairytale.  She silently opened it, and something in her chest wrenched like she’d just been hit.  All of Mom’s clothes were still there, hanging as though they were just waiting for her to come back and wear them again.  There had been very little in the closet that could be used—hard to build a barricade out of shoes and a couple of little black cocktail dresses—and she and Ava hadn’t disturbed much when they’d gone through Mom’s things earlier in the summer, searching for clothes that would fit Ava.  Silently, she slipped further in the closet, trailing one hand along the sleeves of her mother’s outfits. 

She gripped the sleeve of one of Mom’s favorite dresses, all long skirt and smooth green fabric shot through with threads of silver.  Silently, she held it against her cheek.  If she kept her eyes closed and concentrated, she thought she could still catch a ghost of her mom’s perfume, right at the wrist.  She took a deep breath, chasing the hints of citrus and sage as her throat tightened and the burning in her eyes became too much to ignore. 

She buried her face against the fabric as a single, harsh sob wracked its way out of her.  After that came another, and another.  She cried.  She cried for Jill and Andrew, Eric and Emily.  She cried for Jim and Iris, and what their leaving really meant.  She cried for everything they had lost, and she cried for herself and what she’d had to do to protect the people she loved.  What she would
keep
having to do. 

By the time the tears began to taper off, the sleeve of her mother’s dress was soaked through, and she felt wrung out.  Her chest and throat burned, and her nose was raw, tears streaking her face as she sniffed and hiccupped, trying to get herself back under control.