The Summer the World Ended (33 page)

“I’d have had to kidnap her.” His gaze became distant, and his voice quieted.

“You were gonna leave me there?”

Dad gnawed at his finger for a few seconds. “I knew it would happen, but not this fast. I… figured you’d be at least eighteen before…” He sighed. “Your mother made her choice.”

“She’s dead.” Riley let her head tilt forward until it touched her knees. “Amber’s dead. Kieran’s dead. Cora at Hernandez Grocery is dead. Sergeant Rodriguez is dead. Camila and Lyle and Wayne and Jaime and little Jesse… They’re all dead.”

Riley shut her eyes.

“I’m sorry, Squirrel.”

“They’re all dead.” Her voice came out barely audible.

Her father whispered soothing, meaningless things into her hair. None of it reached her brain as anything more than the presence of sound. The Internet had never shown up. She hadn’t gotten a chance to talk to Amber―now she never would. No tears came at the realization, but the hollow space in her chest grew. She tried to remember what her friend looked like. Random images of their last few minutes together in the Perkins parking lot felt like years ago.

“Dad,” she said in a hoarse whisper.

“I’m here.” He pulled her tight for a second and kissed the top of her head.

Riley gathered her hands together at her chin. “Did Amber suffer? Were they scared?”

“For an event like this, the government wouldn’t bother warning anyone. All it would do would create panic and add a short period of terror and misery before the nukes hit.”

She trembled, imagining Amber and her parents stuck in traffic, trying to flee population centers. Fights in the street, men grabbing anything female they can get their hands on. Amber’s imaginary scream made her cringe.

“I don’t think Jersey got hit directly. It’s possible they’re not dead. I don’t know.”

“Huh?” Riley lifted her head to make eye contact. “Jersey wasn’t hit?”

Dad smiled. “The missiles didn’t have any change for the tolls.”

Riley gaped at him for a second before tears slipped out with a giggle. “You’re an asshole.”

He chuckled. “I’ll try to find out as much as I can when the colonel is back on comm. Chances are, NYC was a primary target, which puts Jersey in a heavy fallout zone. The most likely scenario is that they weren’t incinerated by the initial blast, but are experiencing high doses of radiation, chaos, panic―”

“Stop!” yelled Riley. “Please… just stop.”

“Uh…” Dad winced. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking. Uh…” He scratched his head. “Look, I don’t wanna lie to you, but―”

“You don’t know.” Riley took a deep breath and let it out in a long, shuddering exhale. “Hiding from looters in their basement is better than evaporated. Thanks for trying to give me a little hope.”

Dad patted her shoulder. They sat for a few minutes without saying a word before he put on the headset and resumed broadcasting his call for survivors every fifteen minutes. Riley huddled against him, lulled to sleep by the sound of his voice reverberating through his chest.

ay Six.

With the lights off, the eerie red glow emanating from the box on the wall made the bunker seem like it belonged in Hell. Riley curled up at her dad’s side, sharing the cot. He snored, but she didn’t mind, as it lulled her into a fitful sleep punctuated by horrible images of Kieran disintegrating in a wave of nuclear fire or Amber being chased through an alley by the pervs from
The Last Outpost
. Riley dreamed of climbing the ladder to a smoking wasteland and stumbling through the scorch mark that used to be Dad’s house. Beyond the charred husk of her Sentra, Mom appeared as an angel to bring her back home. She started running toward her, arms outstretched, but the old man from the funeral burst through the white light and tore Mom’s wings off, screaming that she didn’t deserve them.

Riley shot upright, her face wet, equal parts devastated and furious.

Dad shook coffee grinds out of a metal tin into a glass beaker by the mini-kitchen. The hot plate smoldered and gave off the stink of burning silicon.
Dream.
She covered her face with her hands for a moment to take a few breaths.
Mom deserved her wings.
With a sour face, she wandered to the toilet, indifferent to Dad being up and about. He added water from an electric kettle, replacing the stink of silicon smoke with the fragrance of coffee. Dad kept his eyes down until the sound of a flush broke the silence.

She got up and went to the shelf, picking through the bottom row where Dad had stashed a number of articles of clothing. Most of it looked military in design, and all of it was for an adult man. The plain ochre boxers would fall right off her, the tank tops as well. Forget the fatigue pants. Fatigue jackets on the other hand might work, though they’d be more like a long-sleeved dress.

“You should change, hon. You’ve been wearing the same shirt for a week.”

When I put this shirt on, Kieran was alive.

Riley looked up at him with a ‘so what, who cares’ expression. “None of this stuff will fit.”

“Look in your bag.” He smiled. “Coffee?”

“Yeah.”

He handed her a metal mess kit cup half filled with harsh black coffee, and joined her at the folding table for another breakfast of MREs. Again, she cradled the food in two hands. He dropped another iodide pill by the cup. Riley stuck it in her mouth like an automaton and reached for the coffee.

“We’ll be okay, Squirrel.” Dad ran his hand over her head as if stroking a cat.

She shrank inward, exacerbating the similarity of her posture to the animal from whence her nickname originated. After the entrée pouch crinkled empty, she looked up at him. “I’m scared.”

“I am too.” He pointed up. “There’s enough dirt between us and the outside world to stop any radiation from getting in. The whole place has a faraday cage around it, so nothing bad can touch us.”

Riley reached a trembling hand for the pretzels. “‘Kay.”

Dad caught her wrist. “Your hand is shaking.”

“I’m scared,” she whispered.

At her squirrel routine with the pretzels, Dad put an arm around her and held on. “You’re worrying me, kiddo. You haven’t eaten like that since you were seven.”

She mumbled through nibbles on the pretzel. “I’m scared.”

He patted and squeezed for a few minutes as she snacked, before crouching by his backpack. Riley watched water drip from the overhead copper pipe running to the mini-sink, trying to track each droplet as it plummeted.
What if we’re the last two people left in the world? What’s it going to be like outside if we ever get out of here?
She thought of the thugs from the game.
Is someone gonna try to kill Dad to kidnap me?
She pulled her feet up onto the chair and wrapped her arms around her legs as another fat droplet fell.

Clonk.

The Beretta, plus Dad’s hand, landed on the table in front of her. “It’s fully loaded with one in the chamber. Safe is on. Keep this with you at all times.”

She stared into nowhere. “Okay.”

He leaned around to put his face in front of hers. “Riley? Come on, hon. You’re still alive. I’m still alive. Don’t give up on me, please.”

She let a half-eaten pretzel tumble out of her hand and clamped on to him, trembling. She relaxed after a long while of him rocking her and running a hand over her hair. He startled and glanced at the radio all of a sudden as if he’d heard something. After giving her a kiss on top of the head, he ran to the chair and fumbled with the headset. Riley glanced over her shoulder at the radio table.
I didn’t hear anything. Did the bombs hurt my ears?

“This is Black Sheep, proceed, Colonel.”

Riley sucked down the last of her coffee and stared at the camo backpack. While Dad muttered a series of noises and short ‘yes’s’ and ‘no’s,’ she dragged it over to the cot and opened it.

Six pairs of panties, six sets of socks, two full canteens, four MREs, two pairs of black fatigue pants in her size, four plain white shirts, and a pair of small combat boots. She stuck her foot, dirty and bare, into the boot, testing the size. A little big, but workable. She pulled it off and dropped it.

“So, close to a worst-case scenario then.” Dad grumbled for a moment. “No, there’s been no contact from any of my assets since we went underground. I understand, sir. Six months is very doable. We’ll see you then.”

“Sounds bad,” said Riley.

“Major strikes have hit all US population centers. Manhattan, Trenton, that whole area you lived is…” Dad choked up.

The hollow in her heart grew out to touch her ribs. Numbness colored the world grey.

“I wouldn’t have even known what hit me.” She went to the bookshelf and picked
The Hunt for Red October
. Apparently, Dad
did
have every Tom Clancy book ever written―in chronological order. “Right? Just flash, gone.”

He forced a choked reply. “Yeah.”

“Well, then I’m glad I’m with you.” She snagged the Beretta on her way to the cot and dropped it next to her while taking up her usual cross-legged position.

“It might’ve been kinder,” Dad muttered. “Colonel Bering says society has collapsed. He’s not sure if there will be a rebuilding. The generals are at each other’s throats trying to figure out who’s to blame. Can you believe they’re fingering the Democrats for this? Even after the end of the world, it’s all fucking politics.”

“You want me to die now?” Riley looked over, not feeling much of anything at the idea.

“No. No. Never. I just mean… The world out there now. It’s not a great place to be a pretty, young girl. Some guy sees you and…”

She shivered.
That was just a video game. Even murderers hate kid-touchers.
“Everyone can’t all be rapey lunatics.”

“No, you’re right. Everyone can’t be… but all it takes is one.”

Kieran…
Riley daydreamed about finding him dancing around a bonfire in full Native regalia.
He’s an Apache; he can survive.
She opened the book.
Stop lying to yourself. You’re never going to see him again.
She slid the book up to her knees to keep the tears off it.

At the end of chapter four, she looked over. “Dad? If Bering isn’t coming for us, how long do we have to stay underground?”

“Until it’s safe.”

She glared at the box on the wall. “What do you think it’s like out there?”

He moved from the radio chair to sit on the cot. She leaned against him.

“Hard to say, really. There’s so many variables. It depends on the quantity and yield of the devices used, as well as where they landed. Radiation and post-detonation fires are usually worse than the initial blast, over time. Some areas will have been wiped out, and others will fade slowly as radiation poisoning takes ten times the lives the primary release did. If enough matter was ejected into the atmosphere, it might be a dark nuclear winter out there with no sunlight, no crops, and pockets of survivors without food.”

She shuddered. “Sorry I asked.”

“Of course, since there’s so little out here, we might find it better than we think. I doubt our enemies would waste a full-scale weapon on empty desert… unless they believed all those stories about aliens at Roswell. Really, it’s anyone’s guess until we look.”

“Okay.” She scooted her feet back and forth under the blanket to warm them. “So how long until we look?”