Doomed (40 page)

“That sounds really good, thanks.” I smile at him.

“Did you see anyone?” Theo asks, levering himself into a sitting position so he can eat.

“No one. I didn’t hear anything, either, even when I peeked into the parking lot. I think they’re gone.”

My entire body relaxes, and I bite into my sandwich—turkey and cheese—with a lot more relish than the sad, soggy thing deserves.

An hour later and we’re back on the road again (big surprise), heading toward Hugoton, Kansas, and this time we’re in a Toyota minivan. The guys were exceptionally disappointed with my choice, but it’s not like there was so much to work with in the parking garage. And besides, there’s not much in the world more nondescript than a silver minivan. I swear, half of America drives one.

I really wished we’d had more time to stick around the office building. I know it was just a holding pattern—we weren’t going anywhere or doing anything—but Theo needs more rest. He’s stretched out in the back right now, arm bandaged and high on the painkillers Eli found in the doctor’s office. He’s dozing, but when I glance in the rearview mirror at him, I can tell he’s uncomfortable. Not that it’s a hard guess—he
was
shot, after all.

Eli’s driving and I’m sitting next to him, trying to sleep, since I’m next at the wheel. It isn’t working. Every time I
close my eyes, the last few days play in my head until I feel like screaming. Like crying. How did I go from being a seventeen-year-old girl worried about my calculus grade to a cold-blooded almost-murderer?

My stomach twists and turns, and I shift uncomfortably in my seat. If I feel this bad, how is Eli feeling?

I glance at him out of the corner of my eye. His mouth is grim, his fingers tight on the steering wheel, and I think he looks a little green. “You okay?” I ask.

“Yeah, why?” He doesn’t look at me, keeps his attention firmly on the road.

“I don’t think Theo or I ever thanked you for—”

“Don’t!”

I freeze. “I’m sorry,” I say in the most soothing voice I can muster.

“Jesus, don’t apologize, either. Just don’t thank me.”

“You saved our lives.”

His grip on the wheel tightens even more—I can tell by the way his knuckles drain of color. “I don’t want to talk about it. I’d do it again, but that doesn’t mean I want to dwell on what I did. I just want to forget it.”

Me, too. I start to tell him I don’t think it will be as easy as it sounds, but he chooses that second to glance over at me, and his eyes are so tormented that I don’t say anything. I just reach for him, squeeze his shoulder.

He shrugs me off, but before I can be embarrassed or hurt, he takes his right hand off the wheel and grabs on to mine like it’s a lifeline, squeezing so hard that I have to work not to wince. Eventually his grip eases a little, but he doesn’t let go. We drive like that for a long time, holding hands for
comfort and watching the road in front of us as we chase it down, one mile at a time.

Eventually I flip on the radio. We haven’t listened to it at all today, and while I don’t really want to know what’s going on, I figure we need to. We listen to the only station we can find for a while before the panicked voice of a radio commentator fills the car. “We’ve just received some …” His voice breaks. “Just received some devastating news here, for Europe and the whole world. The Dungeness Nuclear Power Stations in Kent, England, have suffered a mass breach. Nuclear radiation began leaking yesterday at a higher rate than expected, and early this morning an explosion rocked the plant, releasing a never-before-seen amount of nuclear radiation into the atmosphere. A mushroom cloud the size of which we’ve only imagined in sci-fi movies hovers over England.

“Mass death is being reported, though no one has been able to give a numerical estimate yet. Those who did not die outright are suffering burns and radiation poisoning at such a high level that death is imminent.

“Again, for those of you just tuning in, the Dungeness Nuclear Power Stations in Kent, England, have suffered the worst nuclear accident in history. While they are the first since Pandora’s Box was opened four days ago, they surely will not be the last. Already, low levels of radiation are leaking from plants all over the world as their cooling systems fail, and it is only a matter of time until they all meet the same fate as the Dungeness Station.

“The Pandora’s Box countdown says six days until total annihilation, but many of the world’s experts believe that is
an optimistic number. As nuclear power plants continue to hemorrhage at an alarming rate, we may only be looking at three or four days before the catastrophic, the unthinkable, happens.”

Eli slams his hand against the steering wheel hard enough to leave bruises. I lean forward, switch off the radio, and we drive the rest of the way in silence. There really isn’t anything else to say.

“We’re here,” Theo says as we drive past a sign that reads, WELCOME TO HUGOTON, NATURAL GAS CAPITAL, and another one, a little farther down the road, that reads, I
HUGOTON, POPULATION 3,955.

“Oh, joy.” Sorry if I sound bitter, but really, it’s hard to get excited about this. Because while Jean may have convinced Theo and Eli that we’re looking for an ethanol factory, I’m more than a little afraid that what we’re actually looking for is a cornfield.

Every other picture has been of the exact area we need to visit—why should this one be any different? Of course, judging by the number of cornfields we’ve already driven by, finding the right one could be the biggest challenge yet.

Things go dim all of a sudden, and I look out the window just in time to see a huge storm cloud, dark gray and ominous looking, slide in front of the sun. Off in the distance—over one of the ubiquitous cornfields—lightning sizzles across the sky. About ten seconds later a huge rumble of thunder rolls through the air above us, shaking the ground with its intensity.

Of course. Because the only thing worse than looking for a specific cornfield in Kansas is looking for a specific cornfield in Kansas in the middle of a thunderstorm. I look at the guys in the front seat, try to see if they’re thinking the same thing I am. Eli looks blissfully unconcerned, while Theo is driving with the same grim focus he always has.

He turns at—you guessed it—Main Street, and as we drive through the streets of Hugoton, I’m struck by how different it is from Colorado Springs. Not just in size, but in atmosphere.

Here, there are no tanks in the street, no men in military trucks, and there doesn’t appear to have been any looting—at least not in the area we’re in.

There are people in the streets here, talking to each other while the occasional car drives by. It’s a tiny town, certainly the smallest we’ve had as a destination so far, though we’ve driven through towns smaller than this on the back roads in both New Mexico and Colorado.

“I guess we could just ask someone,” Eli suggests. “It’s not like there are so many plants around here that no one will know what we’re talking about.”

“What about cornfields?” I ask, still annoyed about the crazy task in front of us. “Should we ask them where to find this one?” I wave the picture around.

Theo and Eli ignore me, which only makes me feel more like a little girl throwing a tantrum. Closing my eyes, I practice some deep yoga breathing and try to calm down. It doesn’t work, but I bite my tongue to keep from saying anything obnoxious as Theo pulls up to two old men sitting on a wooden bench in front of a mercantile-type store.

I’m astonished to realize that it’s still open, and there are still goods on the shelves. Not a lot, but some. And while there’s no electricity, it’s still in good shape, unlike everywhere else we’ve been. I can’t help wondering why that is.

Is it because everyone knows everyone else, and it’s a lot harder to destroy the property of people you work with or have had dinner with? Or is it just that small towns operate on a completely different system of chaos and disorder than large cities do?

I start to lean forward, to ask the men if they’ve had any problems around here at all, but after giving Theo directions—he was right, there’s only one ethanol plant in town—one tells him, “Going out there is just a waste of your time. That plant is closed up tighter than a drum.”

“Yeah,” the other one says, a serious look on his weathered face. “And there’s a storm brewing. Looks like a nasty one. There’s not much left open in town, but you’re welcome to come to my house and sit out the storm, if you’d like.”

His generosity and trust in the face of everything going on humble me. Make me feel even more churlish and childish. And do what Eli and Theo haven’t been able to do—convince me that we really have a chance to win this. My father may no longer see the good in the world, may think that setting us back to zero is the only way to fix things, but that doesn’t mean I have to agree with him.

“Thanks,” Theo tells him. “We appreciate the offer, but we’re in kind of a hurry.”

“Yeah, but do you know how to drive in a storm like this?” the first man asks.

“We’ll be careful,” Eli promises. “Thanks again for your help.”

Still, once we pull away from the curb, Theo starts driving pretty fast. “I want to beat the storm out to the ethanol plant if we can. That way, instead of wasting the time sitting around waiting for the storm to end, we can be inside, trying to figure out what we’re supposed to find.”

We ride the twelve or so miles to the ethanol plant in silence. Theo’s concentrating on driving, Eli’s lost in thought, and, as for me, I just keep glancing out the back window at the storm that’s chasing us. For most of the drive, Theo’s done a good job of keeping ahead of it, but in the last couple of minutes it’s started closing in fast.

I turn back around, peer out through the sudden darkness at the huge buildings and tanks looming to the right of us. We’re almost there, the turnoff to the plant only a few hundred yards ahead. I point it out to Theo as a lightning bolt splits the sky in front of us. It’s followed, only a second later, by a huge clap of thunder.

“Hurry,” I tell him. “We can’t get caught out here in this.”

“I know.” His voice is grim, his eyes narrowed in concentration.

“What’s the big deal?” Eli asks. “It’s just some rain—”

He breaks off as something slams hard against our windshield.

“What was that?” he demands, while Theo makes the sharp turn as fast as he can and speeds down the lane toward shelter.

As he drives, the loud bang is followed by a bunch of
other hits against the roof of the car, one right after another, like machine-gun fire.

“It’s hail,” I tell him as Theo slows down the van considerably.

“Maybe we should have taken the old guy up on his offer,” Eli says uneasily, and I realize that, as a California boy, he might never have seen hail.

Before I can answer, more hail hits us, slamming into the windshield, the hood of the van, the roof, the tailgate. From what I can see—which, admittedly, isn’t much—it’s the size of golf balls. Maybe even bigger.

“Shit.” Theo hits the brakes, and the van slips and slides across the muddy road before finally coming to a stop.

“What are you doing?” Eli demands. “We’re sitting ducks like this.”

Theo is too busy turning the wheel and creeping forward, angling the van directly into the hailstorm to answer him, so I say, “Yeah, well, getting hit by hail when we’re stationary is a lot better than getting hit by it while we’re moving.”

“The faster the car is going, the more impact the hail is going to make,” Theo adds.

“You guys should get back here.” I scoot to the far right of the backseat, trying to give them more room. “I don’t think that windshield is going to make it.”

Seconds later, three hailstones the size of baseballs hit the windshield, one right after the other. The last one actually craters the windshield, making a tangerine-size hole in it. Eli jumps and scrambles into the back. Theo quickly follows, and we sit out the storm huddled together as best we can.

Outside, the wind picks up, slamming hail and debris hard against the driver’s side of the van. Rocking us back and forth. Another hailstone slams through the windshield, making another large hole for rain and cold air to flow through. I glance at Eli, and he’s paler than I’ve ever seen him. Not that I blame him. I’ve been in dozens of hailstorms, and this is making me crazy-nervous. I can only imagine what he’s feeling right now.

Eventually, the air cools enough that the hail stops. I breathe a sigh of relief, even though the storm is showing no sign of abating. But I can handle rain. It’s the hail that makes me nervous. All my life I’ve heard horror stories of people dying from getting hit in the head by hailstones. Jules always tells me they’re just urban myths, but I’ve seen enough stories about it on the news to know it’s possible.

“Is it done?” Eli asks. In answer, lightning arcs across the sky, thunder following almost simultaneously.

“Not quite,” Theo mutters, even as he climbs back in the front seat to get a better look at the world around us.

“The hail is over,” I tell Eli.

“But the storm’s just getting started.” Theo points at the sky to the left of us, where new bolts of lightning are ripping through the clouds every second or so. Thunder has become a continuous, never-ending rumble that shakes the truck and the ground all around us.