Todd (5 page)

Supplement with vitamins,
he
answered himself.
There are tons of them at the store.
He didn't even
know what vitamins they needed. Again, he felt the longing for his phone, for
instant answers.

Fake it. Do your best. Or go to
the library.

Fine, but how long could they
survive that way? Years? Decades?

The concept was a brick wall. The
escaped dog ran headlong into it.

It wouldn't be decades. They would
be rescued. It simply wasn't possible that every human being on Earth had
vanished. But if that were the case, then why just sit here? If there was
somewhere to go, why not go there?

Because we don't know which way
to go. Should we head to Canada,
or Mexico?
What if it hit all of North America, and we
need to wait for someone from overseas? Are we going to sail a boat across the Atlantic?

He and Brenda had always told the
kids: if you get lost in a store, don't move. Stand still and wait.

But what about the empty news
desk? What about his failure to reach anyone in the country? What about—

Doesn't matter. We can't just
go running like chickens with our heads cut off. We need to wait. Set up a
signal on the roof. An entire human population just vanished.
Someone
will
come looking. Make sure they see us; until then, survive.

"Okay." His hands were
shaking. He rubbed his forehead, trying to get himself back under control.

Todd was oblivious, fiddling with
the plastic handles on the generator box.

"We need more gas."
Without power, none of the pumps would work. Where else could they get gas?

Something in his head clicked,
some bubble of intuition fluttering up from his subconscious. There was gas
everywhere; they were surrounded by it. Every car in the city was loaded with
it. They just needed a siphon.

He grabbed Todd's shoulder.
"Come on."

"What? Where are we
going?"

"Back to the hardware
store."

"
Again?
" The
implicit accusation in his son's voice nearly triggered him, made him want to
give up and scream. Even if he got the generator going, he was building a house
with toothpicks, here. Did he really think—

But he couldn't afford hysteria;
some part of him recognized that. Things were falling apart too fast. They had
to get what they needed while they still could. There would be time for
second-guessing later. He ignored Todd's incredulity and urged him to the front
door.

When they stepped outside, he
smelled smoke.

16

The black column to the west, over
610, was bigger—more of a wall than a line. They could see it from the house.
When the wind shifted, the acrid stink was unmistakable.

Todd's nose wrinkled. "Ugh.
What's that smell?"

"It's fire," Alan said.
They got in the car.

"It smells bad."

"Yeah. We'll have to watch
it." As he pulled out of the driveway, he caught a glimpse in the rearview
mirror of something blue, moving.

He slammed on the brakes. Todd
squealed, protesting the sudden stop, and Alan shushed him, eyes riveted to the
mirror. It had been a flicker of a shirt tail, or a dog's collar; something
alive. Just a quick flash. But it was gone now. It might have run behind the
house.

"Wait here."

"What—?"

"
Wait.
" He jumped
out and ran around the side of the house, then to the back, and saw nothing. He
checked under their deck, and both the backyard doors—the one up on the deck,
and the one below, on the patio. They were locked.

"What the hell?" he
muttered. He'd seen something moving. Maybe the wind, rustling the trees?

Yeah. Last time I checked, we
didn't have any blue trees.

His desperation overcame his
common sense. "Hello?" he shouted. "I saw you! It's all right!
Come out!" Blue... maybe it had been jeans? "Come on!" He
trotted farther into the backyard, peering at the other houses. "It's all
right!"

Suddenly he thought of Todd, alone
in the car.
It was a trick. They got him. Whoever they were, they got him.
It
was some crazy, some nutcase who'd survived the attack like they had; or it was
some kind of scout for the bad guys, who wouldn't hesitate to grab an
unprotected child.

Alan bolted out of the yard, heart
thundering. He'd told Todd a hundred times to scream if someone ever tried to
take him. He would scream, and Alan would know.

Right?

"Todd!"

He was in the back seat, playing
with some old Happy Meal toy. Alan tore his door open, panting. "
Todd?
"

"I found Vegatron," he
explained. "He was under your seat. He can still shoot. Look." He
squeezed a button and shot a foam pellet at Alan's shoulder.

Alan sagged. "Did you see
someone?"

His son's grin faded.
"No."

He rubbed his temple.
You're
losing it, Alan. Get it together.
He looked around one more time, but the
only thing moving was the smoke, drifting closer.

He got back in the car and started
driving.

17

From the 610 bridge, he could see
the fire.

It was a lurid glow, welling
behind the western skyline. If it had started with a crashed car, it had since
spread up the embankment and caught the trees, jumping from house to house and
growing fast.

Todd didn't even notice it; he was
captivated by his plastic robot, muttering to himself and periodically thumping
against the back of Alan's seat. Alan didn't point it out.

There was no point in getting the
siphon now. They couldn't go home. They had to get away from the fire.

Alan glanced east to gauge the
road that way, and suddenly noticed how dark the eastern sky was. He was no
storm chaser, but he'd lived in the midwest his whole life. He knew a wall
cloud when he saw one. Yesterday's forecast came rushing back to him.

Fire on the left, tornado on the
right.

"Shit," he breathed.
Todd ignored him, still absorbed by Vegatron.

He needed to know which way the
fire was spreading. He needed to know if it was safer to drive north or south.
He needed radar, weather reports, a birds-eye view from a helicopter.

He needed his goddamn
smartphone.

Something
thunked
off the
roof of the car: a chunk of hail. It got him moving. He went north, back toward
the hardware store.

The glow of the fire paralleled
them as he drove. It must have been fanning out, spreading in multiple
directions. He wanted to go faster—his speedometer went past 100 mph, which
should be able to outrun a storm or a spreading fire—but he was hamstrung by
all the dead cars clotting the road. He had to crawl the car around them,
rolling painfully over curbs and through parking lots, as the fire grew
brighter on their left.

Todd looked up, suddenly returning
to reality. "What is
that?
"

"That's the fire," Alan
grunted. A glance in the rearview mirror showed Todd's face paling.

"Is it gonna get us?"

"No. We're almost at the
river." The words surprised him; he should've realized it earlier. They
were only a few miles from the Mississippi.
If there was a better natural fire block than that, he didn't know what it was.

"Is it nighttime
already?"

"Nope. It's just getting dark
because of the storm." The clock in the dash said
3:14 PM.
He
flipped the headlights on.

Another hail stone clanged off the
roof.

"Can hail put out the
fire?"

"I don't know. It would sure
be nice."

"Dad?"

"Yeah." The sky overhead
had gone black. The sky to the left was red and pulsing. Alan thought of
dragons and volcanoes; the mouth of hell.

"Vegatron can either shoot a
missile or fight with his hands. But I was thinking if he had a cannon on his
shoulder he could shoot missiles and fight at the same time. He could even grab
an enemy and hold them still, then fire the cannon right in their face!"

The hail picked up, banging into
the windshield, rattling the roof like a drum. They hit a mercifully clear
stretch of road; as far as the headlights would show, the empty cars had
drifted off the pavement.
Thank God.
He eased it up to 45, his eyes glued
to the street.

"And if they tried to fight
back, he could pull them into a bear hug. He is really strong, he has strong
arms because they're made of metal, so when he—"

"All right," Alan said.
"Okay. Shhh." His heart was its own generator now, humming in his
chest, making every nerve thrum.

Then something exploded from that
red glow to their left. A blast of fire curled skyward, the dragon belching
flame. "Jesus," Alan said, every nerve screaming. "Okay.
Christ."

"Dad!"

"It's okay," he lied.
"It's all right." He brought the speed up further, pressing his luck
to 60, but a sudden heap of tangled cars loomed out of the blackness. He hit
the brakes.

Nothing happened. The tires slid
on the hail without slowing.

He let the brakes go and eased
them left, over the opposing lane and into the shoulder. The wreck flashed
past; then an overturned pickup truck leapt into the headlights. He didn't hit
it and ricochet into the ditch, spinning and screaming through a nightmare of
shattering glass. Instead he eased right again, back into the lane.

"Okay." His hands were
shaking like branches in a windstorm. "Just get to the river. Get across
the river." He didn't know if he was thinking it or saying it.

Another explosion went off,
smaller than the first but somehow even more ominous. Todd let out a startled
scream. "It's okay. It's all right. Just close your eyes. We're almost
there." A cross street swam out of the darkness, littered with tangled
metal and broken glass:

The bridge wasn't here. He
knew
that. It was two miles west, along the river. Two miles
toward the fire.
And it was on 169, a major highway. The whole thing would be a disaster,
impassable, maybe in flames itself.

Shit!
That gibbering panic
kicked the door open, burst into his skull, and lit a fire of its own.
Shit
shit
shit
!

So we get out of the car,
he
screamed over it.
Run for the river from here. Cross it on foot.

Really?
He threw back at
himself.
How deep is the river here? Do you even know?
Todd couldn't
swim yet, and Alan couldn't carry him. And there was a storm coming.

They needed a bridge.

Turn east. 169 isn't the only
bridge over the river.
No, but the other one was even farther away, and it
was on 610, which would be just as bad as the 169 bridge.

The hail was slanting left,
bouncing off the pavement and into the ditch. That meant the wind was blowing
toward the fire. That would slow it down. Right? Wasn't that how it worked?

Todd had his hands over his ears,
wincing, his eyes pinched shut.

Alan turned toward the fire.

18

The wreckage began before they
could even see the bridge: cars hurled against each other like rocks on a
beach. He drove around it as long he could—picking his slow way over the shoulder,
arcing down into the ditch—but that soon grew impossible.

He stopped the car, threw it in
park.

"All right, Todd, listen to
me." His son's eyes were riveted to the front windshield, fastened to the
brilliance of the wildfire. It had to be less than a mile away now, looming
just behind the trees. "Todd. Look at me."

His son blinked as if just
realizing Alan was there.

"We're almost at the bridge,
but there's too many cars to drive there. We're going to do like we did
yesterday, when we walked across the street. Remember?"

"Yeah."

"You stay right with me. Do
exactly what I say, exactly when I say it. Please. Can you do that?"

"Yeah." The word
hitched, spiraled upward into a moan of fear.

"All right." When Alan
opened his door, the heat of the wildfire hit him like a furnace blast.

Too late.
The air was
breathable, but hot.
We're too late. We're going to die out here.

He tore his son's door open and
pulled him out. They fought their way across the street, then cut through
backyards and parking lots, making their slow way toward the bridge.

"Dad, we're going towards the
fire! The fire's
right there!
" Alan hauled him forward, scrambling
around lawn chairs, clambering over fences. Hail crunched beneath their feet.

"It's okay." The fire's
crackle was a roar now; Todd might not have heard him. "It's okay."
An answering crack of thunder exploded behind them, threatening to split the Earth
in half.

Todd jerked away and dropped to
the ground, clutching his ears and wailing. Alan scooped him up and kept running.
They hit a bend in the road and started angling north toward the bridge.

A tree across the street burst
into flames.

We should have stayed at home.
We should've gone to the basement.
Better to burn there, to die with Brenda
and Allie.

Alan's arms were giving out, his
back burning. He couldn't carry his son any more.

They reached the bridge.

The wreckage there glittered with
the fire's reflection, hell spilling from every shattered windshield and
headlight. But it wasn't on fire itself. And there was—

oh God oh thank God

—a wall of concrete dividers,
making a walkway for pedestrians, that was largely intact.

"Todd!" His throat
cracked from the heat. He put his son down before his arms gave out and pointed
at the bridge. "There! We're almost there!" He jerked the boy into a
run.