Monument 14

CHAPTER FOUR EIGHT POINT TWO

We were shaken awake around eight.

It wasn’t that thing that happens where you’re dreaming that you’re running through a forest chasing a fox or something and suddenly a tree grabs you and starts shaking you and you begin to wake up and realize it’s actually your mom shaking you and your alarm is going off and you’re late for school.

Not at all.

This was: You’re in a sleeping bag on the floor of a giant superstore and suddenly the floor starts pitching and heaving and you’re getting bounced around like a piece of popcorn in a hot pan and things start falling off the shelves and everyone is screaming and scared out of their minds and you’re one of everyone.

It was more like that.

And here’s the hilarious part—it was a FORESHOCK. Apparently, that’s what happens when you’re about to experience an 8.2. It’s an earthquake so big it sends messengers ahead.

“Get to the Pizza Shack!” Niko shouted. “Under the tables!”

I grabbed Alex with one hand and picked up Ulysses the first grader with the other and ran for it. Stuff was falling off the shelves or had fallen. From the Food section and elsewhere you could hear glass bottles crashing off the shelves and onto the floor.

The rest of the kids were right behind me. I saw that all the big kids had grabbed one or two little ones. Astrid was escorting Josie. Tripping and falling and hurrying as best we could, we made it to the Pizza Shack and got under the tables. They were bolted down, which was why Niko wanted us there.

“We’ll be safer here,” I told Alex and Ulysses, whose nose was streaming wet snot.

“Hold tight to the table legs,” Niko shouted.

“This is dumb,” Brayden growled. “The earthquake is over. Why are we hiding here—”

And his voice began to shake.

Because the ground had begun to shake.

And he sure did grab himself a table leg.

The quake was less scary than the foreshock, in my opinion. We were ready for the quake. We were awake already.

We started shaking and shaking and you could hear things falling and crashing all around us.

It’s a miracle the store didn’t cave in, but, as we would discover, the store was built like a safe. It held. Rock solid. Pretty much everything was tossed to the floor and lots of the shelves toppled over, but the damage to the store was not as bad as it could have been.

“Is everyone okay?” Jake asked.

“Um, I would say, no,” Astrid answered. “The world as we know it is gone. We’re locked in a Greenway and an EARTHQUAKE just smashed the store to pieces!”

She was furious and she looked gorgeous.

“I know that, Astrid!” Jake snapped. “Obviously everything has gone to hell but I am supposed to be in charge so I just thought I’d ask!”

The kindergarten twins burst into new sobs. I saw that they, like Ulysses, had lots of grime and mucus on their weary little faces. All the little kids looked pretty bad off.

“Jake is doing the best he can so why don’t you back off, Astrid?” Brayden said.

“Screw you, Brayden! You’re the last person I want to be stuck here with!” she answered.

Josie had her hands over her ears. The little kids were crying and Chloe was starting to scream.

“All right, everyone just settle down,” Jake said. “Astrid, you’re out of control. Pull yourself together!”

“Excuse me,” Henry said to Jake. “Me and Caroline have decided. We want to go home.”

Henry and Caroline wanted to go home. Like it was some sleepover that had gone wrong and now he’d like Jake to call their parents so they could get picked up.

“Yeah! I want my nana!” Chloe yelled.

“Guys, we gotta wait for Mrs. Wooly,” Jake said calmly.

But the little kids were in a full-blown meltdown now. Crying, noses running, snorting with sobs, the works.

Ulysses was near me and he nodded his head, agreeing with the shouts and demands and wails of the other kids. These tears, fat like jelly beans, plopping out of his eyes and running down his face, were so profuse they were actually washing his face because he kept wiping at them with the sleeve of his sweatshirt.

“It’s going to be okay,” I told him.

He just shook his head and cried all the harder.

I got up. Determined to go find a godforsaken Spanish-English dictionary.

“Don’t go yet,” Niko told me. “More aftershocks.”

He was right. The floor started to pitch and I dropped down and ducked under the nearest table. It just so happened to be the table Astrid had ducked under, too.

This was certainly the closest I’d ever been to her. I held the center pole under the table. Her hands were just below mine.

Her head was bowed and it was all a blur of blond hair and purple sweater until the tremors stopped.

She looked up at me and there was this moment of plainness between us. Like she saw me and I saw her. She looked scared and young, like a little girl, and there were tears in her eyes.

I don’t know what she read on my face. Probably that I was totally hers. That I loved her with everything worthy inside me.

I guess she didn’t like what she saw, because she brushed away tears with the back of her hand and turned away from me. Her jaw was clenched and she looked like she wanted to punch me in the throat. That’s the truth.

I got out from under her table.

“Screw this,” Sahalia said. “I’m going home.”

“No, you’re not, Sahalia,” Jake said. “Mrs. Wooly told us all to stay here and stay together and we’re gonna do exactly that.”

“Are you kidding?” Sahalia said. “Mrs. Wooly’s not coming back. We’re on our own. And frankly I’d rather take my chances out there than stay here with you losers.”

Alex spoke up. “How are you going to get out? The gate is down.”

Sahalia pointed to the wall, past the Pizza Shack, near the Grocery section.

Duh.

There was a door with a red, illuminated Exit sign above it.

How had we missed it until now?

“They have to have emergency exits,” she said.

Then she walked over and pushed it.

“Let me,” Brayden said.

“Bray!” Jake yelled, but Brayden had already sprinted over.

He bashed his weight against it.

“No good,” he said. “It’s locked.”

“Like I said,” Jake repeated, eyeing his friend. “We’re staying here until Mrs. Wooly comes back.”

“I’ll find a way out,” Sahalia said. She stomped off.

“Excuse me, but Sahalia is my neighbor,” said Chloe. “If she’s going home, I’m going with her.”

“Me, too,” said Max. “I can hitch a ride.”

Jake was losing patience.

“You heard what Mrs. Wooly said! We stay here until she comes for us. It’s simple.”

“But why does Sahalia get to go?” whined Chloe.

“Sahalia’s not going anywhere,” Jake answered. “The doors are locked!”

“But I want my nana!”

Jake bent down and got up in her grill.

“Stop talking about going home. There is no going home until Mrs. Wooly gets back.”

“But I want—”

He poked Chloe in the chest.

“Stop it.”

“My nana—”

He poked her again. “Stop.”

She stopped. Then she rubbed the spot on her chest where he’d poked her and glared at him.

So we were lucky that the Greenway was solidly built, but, man, the mess was incredible. Almost everything had been tossed from the shelves. The shelving units themselves hadn’t fallen over, since they were bolted down. That was nice. But everything was a mess and most things made of glass were history.

We all picked our way through the merchandise, headed back to our sleeping-bag “home” in the Media Department.

“Gonna be a big cleanup,” Alex said to me.

“It’ll be good,” I said. “Something to keep us busy until they come for us.”

Alex shrugged.

The bigtabs that had been on the walls of the Media Department were now on the floor of the Media Department.

Pretty much everything in the Media Department was now on the floor of the Media Department.

The display wall itself was hanging partially off the concrete wall behind it.

The bigtabs were lying facedown on the floor, overlapping like roof shingles. Bits of black glass and plastic framing were scattered all over the place.

Everyone was standing around, forlorn and crestfallen, looking at the debris as Alex and I walked up.

“We just had the one crappy television,” Brayden complained. “And now it’s toast. We have no way of knowing what’s going on outside!”

“I think we need to start thinking about an exit strategy,” Astrid said.

“Shhh!” Alex interrupted her.

“No, I really do,” she continued, surprised that Alex would cut her off.

“I hear the TV,” Alex said.

We all shut up. If you listened very closely, there was a buzz, a hum. A tiny, tiny hum.

Brayden and Jake stepped forward and began digging through the bigtabs.

“Careful,” Alex said. “You could get a shock!”

Jake found the TV.

He stepped back over the mound of dead bigtabs, holding the TV carefully at its sides.

The screen was smashed. Strange, glowing inkblots of color surged over the monitor helter-skelter.

Alex took the set and placed it on the floor.

He pushed along the lower edge of the frame. That was how you changed the channel—something I didn’t remember since we’d switched out our TV for a bigtab when I was, like, seven.

Alex made some adjustments and the static got louder and louder.

Then a voice came on.

“Yes!” Jake said.

The little kids cheered.

“Quiet,” Niko said.

“Shhh, you guys!” Astrid added.

It was a man’s voice. Sounded like an interview.

“Entirely unexpected as this area is not on a fault line. It’s unthinkable, really. And a quake of this magnitude is unprecedented. There is no doubt in my mind that it was triggered by yesterday’s megatsunami.”

Alex sat down in front of the TV. We all just took random places nearby, except for Chloe, who said she was going to get some food.

The voice on the TV changed.

“Excuse me, Professor. We have breaking news. There are reports coming in of a leak. A chemical leak. Chemical warfare compounds.

“There are reports that several chemical warfare agents may be leaking from NORAD’s storage facilities.”

“Quiet! Quiet everyone”—the voice was yelling to people in the studio, it seemed—“This is from NORAD: Attention, residents of Colorado and neighboring states. At 8:36 a.m. today, Wednesday, September 18, 2024, chemical weapon storage facilities at the North American Aerospace Defense Command Department have been breeched. Residents in a five-hundred-mile radius of NORAD are urged to get indoors and seal all windows immediately.”

Niko stood up. He looked wired, flushed. Panicked almost.

“Guys, we have to cover the front gates.” Niko said. “Right now.”

We zigged and zagged through the store, cutting our way through the fallen boxes and crashed-up merchandise. Niko started giving orders left and right.

“Jake, get plastic sheeting. Brayden and Dean, get duct tape.”

“Plastic sheeting, like what?” Jake asked, panic in his voice.

“Shower curtains could work,” Alex suggested. “Or plastic drop cloths, like painters use.”

“Alex, help Jake. Figure it out. Astrid, keep the little kids out of the way.”

“Don’t stick me with the kids,” she protested. “I’m just as strong as you guys are!”

“Just do what I say!” Niko hollered.

She did.

Brayden and I found the duct tape and cursed that we didn’t have anything to carry it in, like a cart or a basket. The most either of us could carry in our hands was, like, ten rolls.

“I have an idea,” I said. I stripped off my rugby shirt.

“What are you doing, Geraldine?” Brayden asked. His voice was flustered. “Screw you, I’m going.”

He took off with his ten rolls.

I made knots in the sleeves and started loading the tape into it. Maybe it would have taken as long to find a bucket or a bag or something but I got at least thirty rolls in my shirt.

When I made it to the gate, Niko and Jake were trying to push the bus back from the gate, to make more space to work in. It didn’t budge.

“Forget it,” Niko said. “We’ll work around it.”

Brayden was ripping open the packets of plastic sheeting.

“I’ll do that,” Niko said. “Go back for more tape. We’re going to need lots more—”

I arrived and dumped out the rolls of tape.

“Excellent,” Niko said. “Open ’em up.”

I started to tear the plastic wrappers off the rolls when Brayden elbowed me in the ribs.

“Nice abs, man,” Brayden said. “You work out?”

He started to laugh. Jake stopped unfolding the sheeting and was on Brayden in about two strides. He shook him. Hard.

“We’re gonna die from friggin’ NORAD and you’re busting on the booker about his friggin’ physique? What’s wrong with you? Come on, man!” Jake let go and Brayden stumbled backward.

I struggled to untie the stupid knots from my shirt.

Now I knew what Jake thought of me. The booker. Okay. Whatever that meant.

Meanwhile, we had sheeting to put up.

“This is going to be much faster,” came my brother’s voice. He came sliding over to us on the linoleum, holding two staple guns and a box of industrial-size staples.

Jake and Niko manned the staple guns. Me, Brayden, and Alex held the sheeting taut.

Two layers of shower curtains. One layer of wool blankets (Alex’s idea). Then three layers of plastic drop cloths. The whole thing sealed along the edge with multiple layers of duct tape.

Astrid came striding over, trailing little kids. They swarmed past the bus and looked at our makeshift wall.

“Not bad,” Astrid said.

“It’ll do the trick,” Jake said.

He grabbed Astrid and got her head under his arm.

“Hey, kids,” he said. “Free tickles!”

The kids chirped and crowed, trying to tickle her.

“Let me go, you jerk!” she said, but with a laugh.

She pulled away from Jake, pushing the kids away.

“Get off me, you little monsters!” she shouted good-naturedly.

Her shirt rode up during the scuffle and I caught sight of her lower back. Tan, muscled, gorgeous.

She was in better shape than me. By far.

“Let’s get more blankets,” Niko said. “And do another layer. Then I want to see if there’s some plywood and make it more sturdy.”

I wiped the sweat off my head and the air felt nice and cool on my forehead. It made me realize something and the something hit me like a fist in my gut.

“The AC,” I whispered. Then I shouted, “The AC!”

The AC was on. The huge industrial AC unit was sucking in the air from outside. It was why we all felt so nice and cool after working so hard.

“Son of a bitch,” Niko said.

^{CHAPTER FIVE} INK

“Where’s the main controls?” Niko asked Astrid. “Do you know from when you worked here?”

“There’s some kind of security office in the back,” she stammered. “In the storeroom.”

The little kids clung to Astrid so she stayed behind while the rest of us raced with Niko toward the back of the store.

We headed through two giant metal double doors into the storeroom.

It was dark back there. Most of the storeroom was filled with crashed-over boxes and toppled shelving units. Lots of smells mixed together: fruit juice, ammonia, electricity, dog food.

Set into the back wall were two giant loading bays, each with two huge metal doors.

I hadn’t even considered that there would be loading bays but of course there would be. Safety gates had come down over the huge doors, just like up front.

To one side of the big, cavernous space was a booth with the words Operations Center on the door. It had had glass walls before the earthquake, but now it just had glass debris scattered everywhere.

“Bingo,” said Brayden, king of stating the obvious.

The door to the Operations Center was locked but since the glass in the door had been smashed to pieces, Niko just ducked through the jagged-edged door.

There was a row of security cameras, seeing into every corner of the store, though most looked focused on the Media Department.

“This is awesome,” Brayden murmured. He pointed. “Look, you can see into the women’s changing rooms!”

“Focus, Brayden,” said Jake. “We need the controls for the AC.”

Alex pointed. There were four panels, built into the wall. One controlled the solar harvest system on the roof. The function lights were steady green, which confirmed what we already knew: We had power.

One was about the gates. A flashing override message read, “Remote Trigger—Riot Gates.” And one had to do with water pressure. That seemed fine.

And there was the one we needed: AC.

We all scanned the panel.

It was all numbers and zones. Percentages and lots of icons that were impossible to decipher. One looked like a lightning bolt. Another looked like an upside-down smiley face. One looked like someone mooning you, I’m not kidding. It was a totally indecipherable.

“Oh man,” Alex said anxiously.

Brayden started pressing elements on the flat screen randomly.

“Don’t—” Alex started, but Brayden cut him off.

“One of these buttons will turn it off!”

“But you can’t just press them all like that,” Niko objected. “You could just be—”

As if on cue, the AC picked up intensity, blasting us with cold air.

“Making it worse.”

Brayden threw up his hands.

“We’re going to have to find the unit and shut it off manually,” Niko said. “That’s the fastest way.”

“It’s probably on the roof,” Alex said.

We all looked at him blankly for a moment.

“I’ll go,” Niko said.

“Me, too,” Alex added.

I couldn’t let my little brother go and not go myself.

“Me, too,” I said.

“I’ll be right back,” Jake said. “Wait!” He ran off into the store for something.

“How do we get on the roof?” Alex asked.

“Up there,” Niko said, pointing.

A perforated metal staircase ran up a wall and led to a hatch in the ceiling.

The hatch was open and yellowish sky shone through.

“What the—?” I stammered.

“Sahalia,” Niko answered. “She must have found the hatch.”

I was about halfway up the stairs when Jake came bounding toward me.

“Here,” he said, handing me three industrial-strength air masks. He’d gotten them from the Home Improvement Department.

“Thanks,” I said and looped their straps over my shoulder.

“I guess you better get some for you guys,” I suggested. “Just in case.”

Jake raised an eyebrow at me giving him a direction, no matter how gently put.

“Already on it, man,” he said.

I stepped through the hatch, up onto the roof.

How can I describe what I saw?

First off, the roof was covered in hail and the surface had huge pits in places.

More importantly, there was Sahalia. She was sitting on the ledge of the roof, looking out at the sky. She had a box next to her. A home safety fire-escape ladder. It was still unopened.

Sahalia was staring straight ahead.

Niko and Alex were standing behind her, staring in the same direction.

I stopped in my tracks and the masks slipped from my fingers when I saw what they were seeing.

In the distance, near the mountains, a thick streak of pitch-black rose up, twisting like a ribbon through the air. It went up in a line, up until it reached cloud level, and then it gradually expanded out, shaped like a funnel.

It looked like a stream of ink being poured up, pooling in the sky.

Cold water from the hail was seeping into my sneakers and wetting the bottoms of my pant legs. I didn’t care.

The black cloud was growing and growing, this ball of nighttime spreading out over the horizon.

“What is it?” Alex murmured.

“Ask Brayden,” Niko answered.

Sahalia murmured, “They made something evil over at NORAD.”

The ink cloud was now as big in the sky as the mountain range behind it. It looked like an inverted mountain, tethered to the ground by its long black plume.

“AC units,” Niko said. “Now.”

Brave Hunter Man had spoken.

We scrambled to obey.

The units were easy to find. They stood right in the middle of the roof. Four giant, van-size boxes. They had slits in the sides to let in the clean air and then metal ducts branching out from each machine and connecting into one giant duct. The giant one went in through the roof of the Greenway.

“Shoot,” Niko said. “The ducts.”

The ducts were the problem. They had taken a major beating in the hail. They were battered and perforated. They had big holes in them and were sucking in the regular air along with the processed air from the units.

“Even if we shut off the unit, the bad air will come in through the broken duct,” Alex said. There was panic rising in his voice. He was getting scared.

“We gotta seal off the vent,” Niko said. He turned to Sahalia. “Go get a sledgehammer. If it’s too heavy to carry, get Jake to bring it up.”

“I can carry a stupid sledgehammer,” she sassed.

“Well, go get it then!” Niko yelled.

She hurried to the hatch.

Niko stepped over to the giant duct, about four feet away from where it went into the roof. He shimmied up on top and jumped up and down. BOOM. The metal echoed. BOOM. And it gave, just a little.

“Help me,” he said to me and Alex.

My brother and I got up there and we started jumping on that duct together. It might have been fun, if we weren’t watching a black cloud spread like an oil spill over the sky.

We jumped and together the three of us started to make a dent in it. (Pun unintentional, I promise.)

Sahalia came dragging the sledgehammer. We got off the duct.

Niko took it and WHAM. He started beating down the metal. The sledgehammer was much more effective than our jumping. The muscles in his back were straining and I really had to respect the guy. Niko was strong and tough.

The light went very, very green. Everything looked alien and underwater.

BAM. BAM. BAM, went the sledgehammer, denting down the air vent.

The chemical cloud was sweeping the air along in front of it like a summer rainstorm. Only this air was bitter and my eyes began to sting.

“You guys, go,” Niko shouted. “I’ll be right there.”

“No!” I said. “You need our help—”

Suddenly I realized I’d left the masks by the hatch.

I ran to get them.

I guess Alex and Sahalia thought I was making a run for it. They followed me.

I grabbed the masks, and Alex and Sahalia slipped past me and into the hatch. They started down the stairs, coughing and cursing.

“I’ll be right there,” I shouted.

I turned to start back to Niko…

When I felt sick.

Sick in my throat and body and mind. I felt like my blood was on fire. I was so scratchy and irritated I wanted to kill someone. I really did. I wanted to kill somebody and the somebody I wanted to kill was Niko.

I saw him there, hitting the vent with that sledgehammer and I wanted to throttle him. End his whole noble, heroic no-sense-of-humor thing.

I lurched at him with the mask.

I roared at him.

Then I fell over, facedown in the hail. I’d been tripped.

Someone had me by the foot and I was furious. It was my brother. He had an air mask on and he was pulling me into the hatch.

I swung at him. I’d kill him. Tripping me like that. I’d rip his head off.

I grabbed handfuls of hail and I threw them at him.

He dragged me toward the hatch and pulled me in.

I started beating him with the mask I was still holding. He wouldn’t let go of my leg and was dragging me down the stairs.

I swung at him, wanting him to lose his balance. I tried to get his mask off. I grabbed his hair and pulled. I bit my brother on the arm and drew blood.

I saw red, like people say they do. A sheet of blood red was over my eyes and I couldn’t think. Just pummel. Pound, tear, destroy.

We reached the bottom of the staircase and Alex tried to squirm away from me. I launched myself at him.

Jake tackled me.

I hit the cold cement and I cursed him and raked at his face.

“Jesus Christ!” Jake cursed. “What happened up there?”

I roared at him. I had no words.

“What happened to your brother?” Jake demanded of Alex.

Alex was crying. I had made him cry.

“He’s an animal!” Jake said, pinning me to the ground with his knee in my stomach. My arms were behind my back, somehow. In addition to football, Jake had also been on the wrestling team. And he had maybe fifty pounds on me—I was pinned.

We didn’t hear Niko until he was standing right beside us.

“I sealed it,” he said. “It’s done. But we’re gonna need to cover the hatch with plastic sheeting and the loading-bay doors back here, too. I’ll get the staple guns if you guys get the—”

I must have growled or barked or something.

He gestured to me.

“What’s wrong with Dean?”

I swear to God, I wanted to rip his throat out.

CHAPTER SIX THE GATE RATTLER

Jake strained to keep me pinned. Rage hammered in my heart. I wanted up!

I heard this weird whine. A panicky whine.

It was coming from Brayden.

“What is he?” Brayden said. His upper lip was curled back in an expression of disgust. “What is he? What is he made of?”

“What are you talking about?” Jake said, still struggling to keep me pinned.

Jake must have weighed two hundred pounds. I was flattened against the cold cement floor.

“Look at him!” Brayden cried. “There’s smoke coming off him. He’s straight from hell!”

“What are you talking about?” Alex said. He sounded scared. He sounded like he was crying but I couldn’t see him from where I was pinned.

Brayden was pulling at his hair, looking all around.

“It’s everywhere!” he cried. “Smoke from hell.”

He backed away from us and huddled against a stack of giant boxes.

“Brayden, there’s no smoke,” Niko said. “Everything’s okay.”

“There is evil everywhere!” Brayden wailed.

“Dude, you’re flipping out,” Jake said.

Niko went over to Brayden.

“Don’t touch me!” Brayden screamed.

“Look,” Niko said to Jake. “His pupils are completely dilated.”

“Get away from me,” Brayden said.

“It must be the air.” Niko came over to look at me. “The air went all green. We must have been breathing in the chemicals. Some kind of psychotic agent in the air.”

Niko looked funny, too, though I wasn’t quite up to saying so.

He had blisters around his eyes, like a raccoon mask. And his hands, when he touched me, were covered with tiny blood blisters, like he was wearing red lace gloves.

He started to cough. It sounded wet in there.

He coughed into his hand and came up with a blob of red phlegm. Then he caught sight of his hands and he looked at them with this expression of puzzlement so exaggerated I started to laugh.

Not a cool, ironic laugh but kind of a mad cackle.

I’m telling it like it happened, okay?

Brayden was seated on the floor, curled in a little ball, sobbing hard, jagged sobs.

Good.

I closed my eyes and listened to my heart beating. It was loud, like I had the heart of a gorilla.

All I could say was “Agghrr…”

I was trying to say Alex. But it didn’t come out.

“We’ve got to get cleaned up,” Niko said. He had his shirt off and was examining his skin. A tapestry of blisters was developing over his skin. It followed the underlying veins. He was starting to look like a biology class illustration of the circulatory system.

I tried again. “Agghhrr…” I wanted to say I was sorry.

“We need soap and water,” Niko said. “And I think I should take some Benadryl.”

“I’ll get it,” Alex offered.

“Sahalia, you should change, too,” Niko said. Sahalia looked freaked out. Her makeup was running down her cheeks. She headed toward the doors back into the store, giving Brayden a wide berth.

“Hey, would you mind getting us some clothes, too?” Niko asked.

She looked back at all of us.

“Sure,” she said. “Whatever.”

I tried to say, Let me up, I’m fine. But what came out was grrrrag. I strained against Jake’s bulk.

“Chill out, Dean!” Jake shouted in my face.

Alex skirted by. He glanced at me, then looked away. He had welts across his face where I had clawed him and there was blood caked near his nose. His eyes were red.

“Hey, little man, do me a favor,” Jake said to my brother. “Get me some rope so I can tie up the Hulk over here.”

There is something very wrong with being tied up with rope your own brother brings from the Sporting Goods section.

After they tied me up, Jake took Brayden back into the store. He and Niko thought maybe the air in the storeroom was still polluted.

Niko stripped off his clothes and threw them in a trash can. He told Alex to do the same. They took the antibacterial soap and spring water that Alex had brought, and stripped and washed down. They just stood there on the cement floor and scrubbed down together.

“Are you okay?” Niko asked Alex.

“I think so,” Alex said.

“That was pretty scary.”

“Yeah.”

I hated hearing that. I hated hearing Niko comforting him. He was my brother. I should be the one comforting him. Only I had attacked him, you see.

“Here!” came Sahalia’s voice, and some garments came flying through the door.

She had picked out pink tracksuits for us, complete with fluffy pink slippers.

I was starting to feel like myself again.

“Guys,” I croaked, my voice horse and scratchy. “Guys…”

Niko stopped dressing to cough into the trash can.

“Are you okay?” Alex asked Niko.

Ask me, I wanted to say.

Niko nodded, wiping spit from his chin.

“The blistering is going down. Washing was a good idea. I think if I’d been up there any longer it could have been really bad.”

Alex nodded sympathetically.

“Guys!” I said from the floor.

“Okay, Dean!” Alex snapped at me. “Just wait!”

Niko examined his chest. The blisters were fading away. Vanishing almost.

After they’d both dressed, they came over to look at me.

I saw Alex had my glasses sticking out of his shirt pocket. He must gave grabbed them during our scuffle. Pretty considerate, after I’d tried to tear his scalp off.

“You’re feeling better?” Niko asked me.

“Yeah,” I croaked. “Well, I feel like a buck fifty. But I feel like myself.”

“Who is the president? What day is it? What’s Mom’s favorite flavor of ice cream?” Alex asked me.

“Cory Booker. Wednesday. She’s lactose intolerant.”

They let me up.

When we came out of the storeroom and walked back to where the others were waiting, we must have looked really funny in our pink sweatsuits.

Astrid started to ask us if everything was all right, then she burst into laughter.

“Hey, kids, look, it’s the ladies’ track team!” Astrid announced with a flourish, and they all cracked up.

Jake and Brayden joined in laughing. Alex, too.

But I still had some weird stuff happening in my body.

What I wanted was Astrid. She looked so good to me I wanted to take her, in a dark and terrible way.

Pardon my bloodlust. It’s just a little something they whipped up over at NORAD.

I swallowed. Tried to get my breath back.

“We made you guys some pizza,” Max said.

“Then we ate it all so Astrid’s making you some more,” Chloe added.

While Jake, Niko, and Brayden filled Astrid in on what had happened, I took a look at my brother, who I had really done a number on. The shopping cart of medical supplies was still in the Pizza Shack area, so I poked around, but I didn’t see what I wanted.

“Alex, please, come with me,” I said. “So I can fix you up.”

I knew what I needed to do the job right: Bactine. Our mom swore by it. She never used anything else to clean scrapes or cuts or what have you. She even carried it, in a small travel bottle, in her purse.

So I motioned for Alex to follow me and we headed back toward the Pharmacy section.

I felt horrible.

I had clawed him across the face. So brotherly of me. And he had a huge bruise developing along his jaw. Such familial tenderness. His eyes were red from crying. Because of me.

I rummaged through the fallen merchandise until I found the good stuff. I also grabbed a bag of cotton puffs.

“It wasn’t me,” I said, swabbing the first of his many scrapes. “Something in the air made me go crazy. You know I’d never attack you like that.”

Alex nodded, looking at the floor.

“Please,” I begged. “Say you forgive me. I feel so horrible. I couldn’t feel any worse.”

Tears welled up in my little brother’s pale eyes.

“It’s just…,” he said, his voice getting thin. “It’s just that I wasn’t scared before…”

And now he was.

Thanks to me.

“I don’t understand what’s happening,” he said. “Why you acted like that. Why Niko got those blisters and Brayden started seeing things.”

“We’ll figure it out,” I told him. “And I won’t… I won’t let myself get exposed to the chemicals in the air again. I promise.”

“But, Dean, if you can’t go outside, how are we going to find Mom and Dad? How will we go home?”

I could have lied. But Alex was smarter than me.

“I don’t know,” I said.

After I got him cleaned up we walked back together toward the others. He had forgiven me, but he was still kind of stiff with me. Wary, I guess. Or maybe he was just physically sore from the beating I had given him.

As we approached the Pizza Shack we heard: “I did too go to Emerald’s!” from Max.

There was this big disconnect between what the big kids were dealing with and what the little kids were thinking about. For example, while I was patching up my brother after having tried to rip him apart due to a chemical compound–induced mania, Max, Batiste, Ulysses, and Chloe were discussing Emerald’s, a strip club located near an off-ramp at the outskirts of town.

“He’s lying. You never went to Emerald’s. They don’t let little kids in there,” Chloe protested.

“They do if your uncle’s the bouncer!” Max countered.

“What do they do in there, anyway?” Batiste wanted to know. “Our church is always trying to get those sinners to repent. But I don’t even know what kind of sinning they’re doing.”

“Probably cursing,” offered Chloe.

“Tons of that!” said Max.

“That’s a sin.” Batiste sighed.

“And drinking liquor?” Chloe asked.

“Totally,” said Max. “They have these little glasses in all kinds of flavors like watermelon and peach passion and hot apple. But they taste horrible. Sweet and horrible. I had three of them one time and then I puked them all up, right on the bar, and my mom said if my uncle ever takes me there again, she’s gonna call the cops.”

“Drinking is a sin,” said Batiste.

“Wow,” Chloe murmured.

“I don’t want to go back, anyways,” Max continued. “Boring. Just a bunch of moms dancing around in their string underwear. Big whoop.”

I stifled a laugh.

“What?” Chloe said. “What’s so funny?”

“Oh… Alex was just telling me a joke,” I said.

“Tell us!” she demanded. “We love jokes.”

Alex shrugged, lost. “I forget.”

“Come on!” they pleaded.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “How do you make a tissue dance?”

“How?” Max said.

“You put a little boogie in it!”

Nothing. Not even a groan.

“That’s the worst joke I ever heard,” said Chloe.

“I don’t even get it,” said Max.

Alex and I left the grade schoolers to discuss the finer points of adult entertainment and went over to where the big kids were gathering. We crossed past Josie, who was sort of slumped in a booth. Still not saying much. Well, anything.

“How are you, Josie?” I asked.

Alex nudged me toward the other big kids. He wanted to hear what they were thinking about the chemicals. I did, too…

“I don’t understand,” Astrid said. “It made Niko blister up, Dean turned into some kind of a monster, and Brayden started having hallucinations. But Sahalia and Alex and Jake were fine?”

“It doesn’t make any sense but, yeah,” Jake said, scratching his head.

“Maybe they attack based on age or something…,” Brayden said.

“I noticed that the effects seemed to wear off very quickly,” Alex piped up. “It makes me think they attack the central nervous system.”

“That anyone could make this kind of poison is just horrible,” Astrid said. “The people at NORAD should be shot.”

“Hey! That’s my dad you’re talking about,” Brayden said.

“But why would they make such awful things?” Astrid asked us. “I mean, a chemical that makes people turn into savages? Or makes them blister up and die? It’s evil.”

“They made them to protect us.”

“Protect us from what? From who?” Astrid demanded.

“From our enemies!” Brayden answered.

“It’s inhumane,” I spoke up. “Just making those compounds violates the Geneva Convention. It’s illegal.”

“Nothing’s illegal if the government itself is doing it,” Brayden asserted, like an idiot.

“That’s just amazingly wrong,” I said.

“Hey, Brayden,” Astrid said. “What exactly does your dad do for NORAD, anyway?”

I’d been wondering that exact thing. I had sort of fantasized that Brayden’s dad was like a janitor.

“That’s classified, Ass-trid,” Brayden replied.

Then we heard some rattling.

Chinka-chinka-chink.

“Hello?” came a distant voice.

We jumped up.

Someone was at the gate!

Beyond the plastic sheeting and the blankets, someone was rattling the gate.

“They came!” shouted one of the little kids. “They’re here for us!”

“Anybody home?” came the voice from outside. “Hello!”

We rushed to the gate. Everyone started clamoring at once: “Hi! Hello! We’re in here! Who are you? Hello! Hello!”

“Open the gate!” the voice shouted. “I hear you in there.”

“Yes, yes! We’re trapped inside, we want to get out! We want to go home!” shouted all the little kids in a big jumble.

Chloe turned to Niko and commanded him. “Take down the plastic. He’s here for us!”

“Don’t you touch it!” Niko growled. I’d never heard him so intense.

“Well? Open up! Come on! I’m hungry!” came the voice from outside.

The little kids were still bouncing with excitement, but I saw the others stiffen.

Listening real attentively. Something about his tone.

“We can’t open the gate,” Jake yelled. “It’s stuck.”

“You can! You can open it if you try! Come on!”

Chinka-chinka-chink.

“We’re locked in,” Jake tried to explain.

“Who’s in there?” the voice shouted.

“We’re kids from Lewis Palmer!” Jake continued. “We took shelter here from the hail and—”

“Open the gate, little kiddos!” the voice shouted.

“We can’t open it, dude!” Jake yelled. “It’s some kind of a security gate. But we want to get a message to our parents—”

“Get them a message?” The voice started to laugh. “Sure. That’s a great idea. I’ll get them a message. Open the gate, so we can make a message!”

There was something very, very off in this voice. I exchanged a glance with Alex. He knew it, too.

“Like I told you, we can’t!” Jake yelled again.

“Open it, you little twits! Come on, I’m hungry! Just open it. Open it.”

“We can’t—”

“OPEN THE F GATE! OPEN IT!!! OPEN, OPEN, OPEN!”

And the man outside started rattling the gate again. Chinka-chinka-chink.

I could see the fear wash over the little kids. Their faces, one moment ago bright with hope, went cold and pale.

Caroline and Henry, standing behind me, each clutched on to one of my legs at the exact same moment. I pried them off and crouched down, hugging them to me.

When the man outside shook the gate, our wall of plastic and blankets bobbed with the air pressure.

“Our wall,” I said to Niko. “Is it going to let the air in?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so,” he answered.

“Go away,” Jake shouted, his voice gruff.

“LET ME IN!” the man shouted. “BY THE HAIR OF MY F CHIN, LET ME IN OR I’LL HUFF AND I’LL BLOW YOUR EFFIN’ GREENWAY DOWN!”

He was shaking the gate now.

Chinka-chinka-chink. CHINKA-CHINKA-CHINK. CHINKA-CHINKA-CHINK. Wobble-wobble-wobble went the sheeting.

Astrid stepped in front of the little kids.

“Come on, guys,” she said. “Who likes puppet shows? I’m going to do a puppet show for you guys.”

No one moved.

Obviously their failure to move had nothing to do with their feelings about puppet shows. They were rooted to the spot in utter horror and shock.

“OPEN THE DOOR, YOU LITTLE SONS A BITCHES!”

“Go away!” Jake yelled. “Go away and leave us alone!”

CHINKA-CHINKA-CHINKA-CHINKA-CHINK.

“Guys!” Astrid yelled. “Free candy! Come on. Whatever toys you want! Let’s party! Come on.”

She was working so hard.

“OPEN THE GATE OR I WILL KILL YOU. I WILL TEAR YOUR LITTLE KIDDO HEADS OFF AND I WILL MAKE A SOUP OUT OF YOUR LITTLE SMART-ASS KIDDO BRAINS AND—”

I started to sing.

Yes, sing.

“I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy. Yankee Doodle Do or die.”

I let go of Henry and Caroline and started marching, like I was the leader of a parade.

“An old old something something la la la, born on the Fourth of July.” So maybe I didn’t know the words, exactly.

Alex joined in. Astrid, too. All three of us marching like idiots.

“You’re my Yankee Doodle sweetheart, Yankee Doodle do or die.”

I led the three of us, making up the words somewhat and we walked in front of the gate, getting between the eyes of the little kids and the plywood, just trying to break the terror spell of the monster outside.

Who now started to yell, “YOU SINGING ‘YANKEE DOODLE’? ‘YANKEE DOODLE DANDY’? I’LL F KILL YOU!”

Niko joined in and that guy, I am here to tell you, is entirely tone deaf.

But the little kids kind of snapped to. We caught their attention.

“Yankee Doodle went to town a riding on a pony. I am a Yankee Doodle guy.”

And the kids started marching and I led the parade, the saddest parade in the history of the world, away from the front of the store, away from the monster outside, and right to the stupid cookie and cracker aisle. We ate fudge-covered graham crackers for a good long while.

CHAPTER SEVEN BLOOD TYPES

The kids fell asleep, after a while. It was maybe three in the afternoon—hard to tell inside because the lighting was the same all day long. I don’t know what time it was, but Astrid had told them it was time for a nap and the kids dropped into their sleeping bags like the walking dead.

The twins slept together, and Max and Ulysses moved their bags next to each other. Chloe and Batiste were sort of the odd men out. Batiste tried to snuggle up to Chloe, but she wouldn’t have it.

“Quit it, Batiste,” she said. “You smell.”

She pushed him away.

“It’s a sin to push,” Batiste mumbled.

“Yeah, well. It’s also a sin to try to hug someone who doesn’t want to be hugged!”

“No, it’s not!” Batiste protested.

“Yes, it is!”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“No.”

“Yes!”

“Come on, you guys,” I said, trying to be sane.

“Hugging is not a sin!” Batiste yelled.

“It is too, if the girl getting hugged doesn’t want it!” Chloe countered.

“Hey!” Astrid hollered. “Shut up!”

Then Chloe hit Batiste in the stomach, which I admit was not entirely displeasing to me, because that Batiste was an aggravating kid.

Then Batiste said it was a sin to punch someone in the stomach.

He cried for a while, and gradually his cries gave way to the shallow rhythm of sleep breath.

It was a relief to have them asleep. Astrid and I sort of looked at each other and smiled. The moment had a weird feeling of middle-aged family life, with the two of us cast just where I’d like us to be, in about twenty years, but, of course, with about five too many kids.

“You’re good with kids,” she said to me.

“Not really,” I said. “You’re good with them.”

Good conversation, right? I was really connecting with her.

“Counselor of the year, Indian Brook Day Camp. Three years running,” she said, brushing a loose tendril of blond hair behind her ear.

“That’s really something,” I said. Again, with the skills.

She shrugged and walked away, over to the broken television, where the rest of the big kids were sitting and listening.

Everyone looked up when we came over, except for Josie. She was sitting with everyone, but was just staring ahead. There but not entirely “there.”

“He’s talking about the compounds,” Alex told me in a whisper.

Whoever the anchor was, he had a very deep, reassuring voice. Nevertheless, what he told us was terrifying.

“Residents of the southwestern region of the United States,” he told us. “Please be advised: There has been a breach of the chemical-weapons storage units located at NORAD in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

“The compounds attack based on blood type. People with blood type A will develop severe blisters on all exposed skin. After prolonged exposure, the internal organs will begin to hemorrhage, leading to organ failure and death.”

I looked at Niko. He was type A. Personality and blood type, apparently.

“People who have type AB blood suffer from paranoid delusions and possible hallucinations.”

Brayden buried his head in his hands.

“There is confusion as to the effects on people with type B blood. It is possible they will suffer from long-term reproductive difficulties and sterility. But there is hope that people with type B blood suffer no consequences from exposure.”

Alex and Sahalia had been on the roof and showed no symptoms at all. They were type B. Jake, too, as he had been exposed in the storeroom and showed no signs.

My brother would be okay. That was some comfort to me.

“People with type O blood, which is the most common blood type, will become deranged and violent. Avoid these people at all costs. Containing them in a closet or basement is advised, if possible.”

I felt everyone look at me.

My face went hot.

I was type O. Me and the gate rattler.

Awesome.

“Fortunately, the compounds wear off very quickly. If you are exposed, get to a safe place and flush your skin and mucus membranes with clean water. The effects subside within ten to twenty minutes. Prolonged exposure will lead to irreparable damage to all blood types except for type B.”

The voice went on to advise us to stay indoors and await help.

“Like we have a choice,” Brayden scoffed.

And then for the good news. Ha.

The anchor told us it was thought that the chemicals would disperse in between three to six months.

“Six months!” Astrid exclaimed.

He then reassured us that government operatives were hard at work deactivating the blackout cloud that now enveloped the area within an eight-hundred-mile radius of Colorado Springs. It was a magnetic cloud and would hover above the detonation site unaffected by rain or wind.

And then the anchor said this: “Good citizens of the United States of America, we are in the midst of the greatest crisis our country has ever known. But if we have courage and patience, if we persevere despite the great odds against us, we will come through this calamity. Good night, stay safe, and God bless you.”

Then the whole report started again on a loop.

Somebody (probably Niko) had dragged beanbag chairs into the Media Department, so that’s what we were sitting on. It was me, Jake, Brayden, Astrid, Niko, Alex, and Sahalia. Niko, who, I was beginning to realize, had a hard time sitting still, was starting to clean some of the earthquake mess up, but only in our area.

We were all just kind of sitting there together, taking in all we had heard. Everything that had happened.

I was wondering what blood type my parents were.

Praying for B.

Reproductive failure and sterility. Yes, let them both be type B.

“Hey, Niko,” Jake drawled. “What do you think about the air in here? You think it’s safe enough?”

“Yeah, we don’t even know what type the little kids are. It’d suck to wake up in the middle of the night surrounded by blood-thirsty kindergarteners,” Brayden said.

“We definitely need to keep our air supply shut off from the outside,” Niko said.

“Hey,” Sahalia said, “are we going to, like, suffocate if we’re cut off from the outside?”

“Not with this quantity of air,” Alex said. “The volume of air in a space this size is substantial.”

“Maybe we could like set some air filters,” Jake said. “In case some of that outside air is coming in…”

“I wonder if there are any plants inside,” I said. “Or maybe some seeds. If we had plants, they would filter the air and give us oxygen.”

“I’m more worried about power,” Niko said. “I’m worried the blackout cloud is going to affect the solar harvest system on the roof.”

“Great,” moaned Brayden. “That’s all we need. To be shut up here in the dark!”

“I’ve been thinking about it,” Alex said, standing up. “The blackout cloud is what will determine how the power goes. Right before my brother attacked me up on the roof, did you see how the light went green?”

How screwed up is it that; me trying to kill Alex had now become a common reference point in all of our lives.

“If the light really did go green,” Alex continued, “or even yellowish, then the blackout cloud is designed to block blue and red spectrums, which are the ones that allow for plant life. The solar panels will take any spectrum. So if only yellow gets through, that’s okay. They can still run.”

He was pacing now. Something he does when he gets really excited.

“God, you’re a geek—” Sahalia moaned.

She looked so much older than my brother. It was hard to believe they were both thirteen.

“I’ve been thinking about food,” I said, cutting her off. “There’s a lot of fresh stuff we should eat before it goes bad.”

“What we really need to do is clean up,” Niko added. “We need to put everything back on the shelves and throw away the broken things, so we can fully take stock and prepare our—”

“Nobody’s thinking about getting out of here?” Astrid interrupted. “We’re just going to live here now? All one big happy family, like for the rest of our lives?”

We stopped talking.

Astrid was slung on a beanbag chair, one foot rhythmically tapping an overturned display case.

“Not for the rest of our lives. Just until things kind of get somewhat normal out there,” Jake answered.

“What about our parents?” Astrid asked.

There was a long quiet. I studied my hands. The skin was dry and I had some cuts I hadn’t even noticed. My hands looked rough.

“They’re dead? We just assume they’re dead, now?” There was an edge in Astrid’s voice. An unhinged feeling.

“We’ll just hide in here and eat candy when they could be dying outside. My mom could be getting attacked by a monster like the guy out front. Or my dad is paranoid and hiding comfortably under our kitchen sink.

“Or maybe my dad has my mom locked in the basement, because maybe she’s type O and she went after him with her favorite chef’s knife. Or maybe she’s got him locked in the basement. No, wait. We don’t have a basement. I guess they’re dead. I guess they’ve clawed each other to death by now. And my brothers…”

Her voice caught in a sob.

“Eric’s only two and a half. Probably don’t need to worry about him. He’s probably dead already…”

Jake stood up and walked over to her. He put a hand on her shoulder.

“It’s okay, Astrid,” he said.

She melted into his arms.

“Don’t you care?” she choked out. “Isn’t it driving you crazy to think of what is going on out there?!”

He held her in his big football-player arms and she wept.

I was up on my feet. I had propelled myself to my feet and I started walking to the Home Improvement aisle, without even knowing where I was going.

Alex followed me.

I stormed off into the Pet aisle, kicking some fallen doggie treat boxes out of my way.

“Dean?” Alex asked. “Do you know what type Mom and Dad are, by chance?”

I shook my head.

“I’m sorry that I have B and you got O,” he said.

“That’s stupid,” I said. “I’m glad you are type B. It’s the least scary of them all.”

“Sterility is definitely the best one,” he replied. “Because it’s highly unlikely that I would be a father, anyway. It’s highly unlikely I would ever want to, even if I could, after all of this.”

I looked at him. Sometimes the way his brain worked just amazed me. He could deal with anything, as long as he could look at it scientifically.

“Anyway, I just wanted to say I’m sorry you got the worst type.”

And satisfied with our discussion, he walked away.

Alex, I will tell you, was just like our dad. Looked like him, thought like him, hiked up his pants the same way.

Our dad was an engineer and a land surveyor, employed almost exclusively by Richardson Hearth Homes. He loved his work but hated the developments he helped build. All the houses with their customizable elements—countertops, appliances, façade colors—he said they were for people who were mall-minded. It was a phrase of his. Similar to small-minded, but mall-minded.

Mall-minded people were people who’d grown up working at one national chain store to earn a paycheck they’d spend on crappy products and bad food from other national chain stores.

It was kind of revealing about my dad. He looked down on his neighbors, but built the very homes they lived in. A weird paradox. And we lived, always, in one of his developments. Apparently we couldn’t afford not to—they gave my parents such a steep discount.

What my dad did love was the technical aspect of his work. Surveying, measuring, working with machines and computers—all that stuff he was great at.

Alex was like that, too. He thought in terms of numbers and figures and trends.

When he was a little kid he was scared of everything. Dogs, trucks, the dark, Halloween; you name it, he was scared of it.

Our dad had taught him to analyze the things he feared.

So going trick-or-treating with him, when he was little, was like listening to a technical debriefing:

“That’s not a real witch, it’s a plastic figurine with LED lights for eyes and a prerecorded screech track. Those are not real gravestones; they are PVC molded into the shape of tombstones, with creepy sayings on them that were written by a gag writer. Those are not real demons coming down the street, those are the high school kids dressed in costumes they got at Walgreens or possibly ordered online…”

And all the while Alex’d be squeezing my hand like it offered his last link to sanity.

I had liked being his protector—the one who made him feel safe. Which was why I felt even worse about having attacked him.

Before, we had always made a good team—he was super-smart. I was super-stable. Kind of like our parents, actually.

Where our dad was brilliant and angsty, our mom was grounded and optimistic.

She loved books. That was one thing she and I really shared. Our house was full of old books. She’d buy them by the boxful, especially as people started using their tabs more and more for reading books.

Our mom had started buying books with a mania, as if she was afraid people would stop printing them at all.

She had multiple copies of her favorite books. I think she had eight copies of A Room of One’s Own (sort of indecipherable to me) and five Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (a great read).

Mom was always telling me about her ideas for novels but never started writing any of them.

Once I asked her why she never wrote the books she told me about.

“Oh, sweetie,” she had said. “I try. But, somehow, after I tell you about the idea, it’s like the air is out of the balloon and I don’t need to write it anymore.”

So instead of being a writer, she took care of us.

And worked retail during the holidays.

Alex and I foraged for some snacks and eventually went back to the Media Department.

Little Caroline woke up crying and Astrid went to her. She picked her up and hugged her.

“I had a nightmare,” Caroline sobbed. “I want my mommy.”

“I know, I know,” Astrid said, holding her close.

“Hey, thanks for waking me up, Cryoline,” Chloe teased. “Now I need to go pee. Who’s going to take me?”

“Saying Cryoline is name calling, Chloe,” Batiste noted. “That’s a you-know-what.”

“No, it’s not!” Chloe countered.

“Yes, it is too!” Batiste said.

“You know, Batiste, you’re being very judgmental,” Astrid noted. “I think being judgmental is a sin.”

“That’s not a sin!” Batiste said, offended. “I know all about sinning, and being judgmental is not a sin.”

“I guess,” Astrid said. “But do you really want to risk it?”

That gave him pause for thought.

I stifled a laugh at his perplexed expression.

Then Astrid said, “Okay, you guys, I’ll take you to the bathroom. Everyone uses the bathroom and everyone washes hands. Then we’ll go find something from the frozen foods aisle for dinner.”

Little Henry asked, “Are we going to the ladies’ room? I don’t want to use the ladies’ room. I want to go in the men’s room.”

“My mom once took me in the ladies’ room,” Max volunteered. “And there was this lady in there crying and she had a ice cube and she was rubbing it on her eye and she said, ‘If Harry hits me one more time, I don’t know what I’ll do,’ and then this other lady came out of a stall and she said, ‘If Harry hits you one more time, you give him the end of this to suck on!’ And she puts a real, actual gun down on the sink. Made of metal, I am not even kidding. And then my momma turns to me and goes, ‘Tell your daddy to bring you to the men’s room.’”

I was getting the feeling that Max had lived a very, very interesting life. I took out my journal to write down what he’d said.

Astrid got the kids organized. She told Henry that they were all going to stick together and go in the ladies’ room, which was good psychology, even if it elicited a round of groans from the boys.

^{CHAPTER EIGHT} WATER

I was minding my own business, writing some stuff down, when Brayden ambled over and kicked the beanbag chair I was sitting on.

“Jesus, Dean, are you a total reject? Are you from the Middle Ages?”

“Brayden…,” Jake said from his own beanbag, a “lay off” implicit in his tone.

“No, it’s just, I knew that Geraldine was weird, I just didn’t understand the total extremity of the situation.”

“I write stuff down,” I said. “I just like to write.”

“Bet there’s stuff about me in there,” he said and he grabbed the journal from me.

“Come on!” I said, jumping to my feet.

He held it behind his back, an arm’s length away.

When I tried to grab it, he’d switch it to the other hand.

It was a scene straight out of first grade.

“I bet there’s stuff about all of us,” Brayden taunted. “Especially Astrid.”

I would’ve killed him if she’d overheard that. But she was off with the kids.

You know, you’d think that being locked in a Greenway during the end of the world would bring out the best in everyone, but—surprise!—Brayden was still an a-hole and a bully.

Brayden tore a page out and squinted at it, keeping the rest held above his head and out of my reach.

“Jeez, man, this stuff is dark,” he said, reading to himself.

“You’re such a jerk, Brayden!” I shouted. “How can you still be this immature?”

“Brayden, drop it,” Jake commanded.

“Don’t you want to know what it says about you, Simonsen?”

“I SAID DROP IT!” Jake shouted.

Brayden jumped. We all did.

Jake was standing, squared off to Brayden, with his hands in fists. His good-natured smile was gone. He was pissed.

“Whatever,” Brayden said and tossed the notebook to the end of the aisle.

“You gotta learn when to lay off, man,” Jake said with a rumble.

“Dude, I apologize,” Brayden said to Jake, palms turned up in an appeal. He shrugged. “For real. Sorry.”

Did I call Brayden a dick under my breath as I scrambled over the fallen books to retrieve my journal?

Of course I did.

And then there came this thin, tinny sound. Like a fire alarm or a siren. But it was coming from inside and it was getting louder.

It was Ulysses.

He was screaming and running for us.

We ran toward him and then we could hear the melee from the bathroom. Shrieking and screaming and inhuman sounds.

Niko pushed the door open.

The little children had gone crazy.

The McKinley twins were hiding under the sinks.

Chloe was sitting on Max and had her teeth sunk into his scalp. There was blood on the ground.

They were screaming and crying and attacking each other.

But Astrid.

She had Batiste by the throat, up against the wall.

Her face was red. The veins in her throat were throbbing, huge. She looked like a bull.

And Batiste was getting killed. He was getting strangled to death and I hope you never see it because it is a horrible thing to see. His face was blue and his eyes were big and his legs were limp.

Niko and Jake were on her in a flash and they pulled her off him. She fought and thrashed and bit and punched and I wanted to watch and I wanted to join in and I could feel my blood rising, hard, when I was jerked out of there by a set of hands.

Sahalia, if you can believe it.

“You stay out of there, rage boy,” she told me.

And I would have ripped her head off, but I had had only a little whiff of the stuff, so I forced myself to walk away. I walked off down an aisle and got myself to breathe.

Niko came out, holding a screaming, writhing Chloe.

“It’s the water,” Niko said. “The chemicals are coming in through the water.”

He was starting to blister up.

“I’m okay,” I told him through my teeth. “I can help.” I took Chloe’s hands. She was trying to claw me. She struggled and cried and tried to bite me. But I was much stronger—stronger than I normally am. The whiffs of compound coming off her were sweet to me. And the fury in her was met with my own fury.

Chloe was such an annoying kid anyway, it was a pleasure to restrain her. I’m ashamed to write that, but it is the truth. I held her fat little wrists with a big, mean smile on my face.

Niko was starting to blister again.

“Go get Benadryl,” I told him.

He ran, tripping, down the aisle.

“Be right back,” he shouted.

Sahalia came out with the McKinley twins, who were clearly hallucinating and freaking out. You couldn’t make out their words—they were just clutching each other and screaming.

Max came behind next, sobbing and pressing his hands onto his bleeding scalp.

“The water’s off,” Sahalia huffed.

Jake burst through the doors with Batiste in his arms. Batiste’s head lolled on his shoulders.

“Clear some space,” Jake said. “He’s not breathing.”

Brayden came forward. I hadn’t realized he was not in the bathroom. He’d been somewhere behind us in the aisles.

A coward.

“I know CPR,” Brayden said and he knelt down beside Batiste. But then he looked up, suddenly clammy and afraid. Maybe the compounds were taking effect. I guess I can give him the benefit of the doubt.

“So do I,” Niko said. He moved into Brayden’s space as Brayden gratefully slid aside.

Niko put his mouth over Batiste’s blue lips and huffed into him, like Batiste was a dying campfire. It didn’t take long, thank God. I don’t think Niko could have done it for long.

As it was, Niko started coughing and it was a wet sound.

A couple of long breaths, a couple of gentle but confident pushes on Batiste’s skinny rib cage, and his eyes fluttered. He took a jagged breath. And then another.

I watched Brayden, watching Niko. It was jealousy on his face, mixed with regret. Maybe fear, too. But mostly jealousy.

Meanwhile, Jake wrestled Astrid out of the bathroom.

Her shirt was torn and she was bleeding from the ear.

“I need like rope or something!” Jake shouted. Astrid bucked and screamed. She elbowed Jake in the side of the head and he lost his grip.

She broke away and lurched from him. She slipped, but regained her balance and ran off into one of the dark aisles.

Astrid cast one last look at us and I read horror in her eyes.

We had five weeping grammar school kids, contaminated to some degree with chemical warfare compounds.

Now, anyway, we knew who was which blood type.

In addition to the beating he’d received from Chloe, Max was also starting to blister up (type A). The McKinley twins were hiding from us—they clearly had the paranoia (type AB). Ulysses was chattering to himself in Spanish, a rapid-fire monologue that made me pretty sure he had the paranoid type—type AB—as well as the twins.

Batiste had type B, the blood type that exhibited no symptoms, as did Alex, Jake, and Sahalia (sterility and reproductive failure—hooray!).

“We have to get them clean,” Brayden said.

“You think?” I sort of shouted at him (type O).

“Screw you,” Brayden said to me.

Ah, I wanted to slaughter him. I really did. I wanted to tear him limb from limb.

Niko looked at me.

“Dean, go,” he said. “This stuff is too strong. It’s affecting you.”

“Yeah, go find Astrid,” Brayden taunted. “You two are perfect for each other.”

Apparently, I bit him.

I have no memory of it.

I woke up a while later, tied up, and lying facedown on a beanbag.

I struggled to sit up, but couldn’t.

I rolled sort of onto my side.

There I saw Chloe, freshly bathed, wrapped in a towel, eating fun-size Butterfingers one after another like a chain smoker and watching me like I was her soap opera.

For the record, they washed the kids with bottled spring water in a big kiddy pool. Then they put the contaminated clothes in the pool and covered the whole thing with plastic sheeting. Vicious, psychedelically destructive, blister-inducing water, all sealed up in a kiddy pool. Pretty brilliant, actually.

My brother’s idea.

They pushed the pool into the baby stroller aisle. That aisle was to become known to us later as the Dump.

“Chloe,” I said as calmly as I could. “Please go tell Alex that I’m okay now and I’d like to be untied.”

She shrugged.

“Chloe, go get Alex.”

“Why should I?” she asked me in a snotty voice.

“Because I’m asking you to,” I replied.

She ignored me, eating the chocolate coating off a Butterfinger bit by bit.

“Chloe!” I said.

“What’ll you give me?”

“Are you kidding me?!”

She yawned.

“Go get Alex.”

“I don’t have to do what you say. You’re not the boss of me.”

“I’m asking you. Please.”

“You’re not asking, you’re telling. No one likes a bossy bear, you know.”

If my wrists hadn’t been getting rubbed bloody by the nylon ropes, I probably would have found this conversation amusing.

“Chloe, fair Chloe, princess of all that is good and kind in this world, wouldst thou, couldst thou take a message to my brother yonder?”

She giggled.

“Say please,” she baited.

“Oh, the prettiest of pleases for the prettiest of fair young maidens…”

“Oh-kay…,” she said and dragged herself off toward the other kids.

It was only then that I noticed that Batiste was in his sleeping bag, just beyond where Chloe had been sitting. He was just lying there, staring up at the ceiling.

“Hey, Batiste,” I said. “Are you okay?”

He didn’t answer.

Alex hurried over and picked the tight knots apart.

“You bit Brayden on the scalp,” he told me with his eyes twinkling. He whispered, “It was awesome!”

“Where is everyone?” I asked, rubbing life back into my wrists.

“We’re still washing the twins,” he answered.

He turned to go back. I didn’t follow.

“See you when we’re done?” he asked.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said.

I heard mild snoring from a sleeping bag farther back in the aisle. I guess they had dosed Max to the gills with Benadryl, ’cause he was way conked out. His blisters looked three shades less angry, so it seemed to be working.

I went over to Batiste. He was naked, just wrapped in a towel inside his sleeping bag. He seemed subdued and cold.

“You okay, little guy?” I asked him.

His hands were like ice.

“I’m gonna get you all set up,” I told him.

I went to the boys’ clothing section and got some warm clothes for him. I even picked out a pair of those dumb chenille slipper socks. I figured he deserved something absurdly soft and warm.

“Hey, Batiste,” I said, holding up the clothes. “Check out your new look.”

But Batiste didn’t move a muscle. So I just dressed him, I don’t know, like you would a baby. Once I had all his clothes on, and the dumb socks, I rubbed his back.

Yes, I did. Be assured that I felt as uncomfortable actually doing it as I do writing about it.

But I could feel his skinny ribs relaxing a little so I kept at it.

I took it as a good sign when, a few minutes later, he croaked, “My throat hurts.”

I went and got some children’s Advil and a Popsicle for him. On my way back, I ran into Brayden. He was carrying Henry wrapped up in a towel.

Brayden pointed at me and said, “You’re an a-hole.”

Why that made me feel so happy, I can’t quite say.

No one seemed to be thinking about dinner and the kids were getting hungry, so I grabbed some freezer foods: dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets, frozen green beans, and two bags of Tater Tots.

Then I had to figure out how to actually cook the stuff.

In the Pizza Shack, there were only these industrial toaster ovens and a microwave. There was no stovetop so I didn’t know what to do with the green beans at all. I just put them on one of the pizza trays and put them in an oven. They came out like straws made of charcoal. That’s my best attempt at describing them. Desiccated, black straws of carbon.

The Tater Tots came out exactly perfect.

The chicken nuggets, on the other hand, were cold inside. The little kids didn’t seem to mind. But Jake put some back in the oven for the older kids. And those dino nuggets joined my green beans in charcoal heaven.

We had mostly Tater Tots for dinner.

After everyone had eaten, I brought dinner to Josie and sat with her while she ate.

I had gotten into the habit of chatting with her. “At her” might be more like it.

Our conversations went something like this:

Me: How you doing, Josie?

Josie:

Me: Oh, I’m fine, thanks for asking. I mean, I’m a little depressed, what with the end of life as we know it. But I’m holding it together. How about you?

Josie:

Me: Yeah, that’s what I thought. You seem to be having a pretty tough time. Hey, you know, I’ve been thinking. We have plenty of clean clothes. And we can’t use the water anymore, but we’ve been using baby wipes to clean ourselves when we get dirty. They work pretty good. You want me to bring some over? You could sort of use a little cleaning off, if you don’t mind me saying so. And the bandage on your head, it definitely needs to be changed.

Josie:

Me: Sure, I could bring over a new one. No problem. I’ll bring over the baby wipes, too. I’d be lying if I said we weren’t worried about you. You know you haven’t said a single word since the bus…

Josie:

Me: Well, I’m here, if you need anything. Just say the word. Any word, actually…

Stuff like that.

Dessert was impossible to screw up: Popsicles.

“Niko,” Alex said, with his mouth dyed purple. “I’m going to take a survey of the utilities in the store tomorrow. Dean and I think we should clean up the Grocery section right away. We should be eating the fresh produce—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Brayden interrupted. “Jake is on it. He’s got a plan for all that.”

“Yeah,” Jake said, “tomorrow we’re going to break into teams and start getting this place in shape.”

Niko nodded at Alex. “Sounds like a good plan,” Niko said.

“We can help clean,” said little Henry. “Me and Caroline are good helpers.”

“I’m a good cleaner, too,” volunteered Max. “I’m good at mopping. I’ve mopped up stuff you wouldn’t believe if I told you!”

I could only imagine.

“Sure.” Jake nodded. “Tomorrow we clean up.”

The problem of toilets came up just after we all laid down in our sleeping bags for the night.

“Ulysses has to go pee,” Max said.

“How do you know?” Jake asked.

“He’s my friend. I understand him,” Max answered.

“Tell him to pee in the corner,” Jake mumbled. “That’s what I did.”

I couldn’t judge. I’d done the same.

“That’s unsanitary,” Alex said.

“He’s scared. He’s not going out there alone. And neither am I.”

“And I need to make,” Chloe added.

“Awesome,” Jake groaned.

This was a moment Astrid would have probably handled, but since she had gone AWOL, we had to figure it out.

Henry and Caroline started whispering to each other furiously. After a moment’s debate, Henry raised his hand.

Jake didn’t see him. But I did, so I said, “What is it, Henry?”

“Well, sometimes me and Caroline, like, if we’re going to a sleepover, we wear pull-ups. So since this was like a sleepover, we got some pull-ups.”

And he pulled out an opened package of size 6 pull-ups.

“So you think we should crap in a diaper?” Brayden asked.

Henry shrunk a bit.

Niko spoke up. “It’s not a bad idea. We could lay a pull-ups or a diaper on the ground and do what we need to do. Then we just close it up and put it in a trash bag. It could work.”

So that’s what we did.

The little kids put them on outright. They didn’t want to be getting up in the night, alone. I’m sure they didn’t even want to think about the bathrooms, given what had happened the last time they went there.

They just started wearing pull-ups.

A little bit of regression, anyone?

(The next day, Niko set up latrines for us in the baby stroller aisle. They were weird things made of a toilet seat on top of a heavy-duty plastic basin, the kind they use at construction sites, which was lined with a plastic bag. Every so often, the bag got knotted up and thrown in a plastic storage tub. Just so you know.)

Around ten, the lights in the store dimmed automatically. This made it feel like night. The sleeping bag didn’t do much cushioning against the hard floor. I made up my mind to drag over a lawn chair or something in the morning.

I ached and ached until I fell asleep.

I woke up to a little voice.

It was one of the kids sleep-talking. I couldn’t tell which kid.

It was a one-word conversation.

One word repeated over and over, with different intonations, with different meanings.

The word was mommy.

Pleading, entreating. Calling, demanding. Beseeching, begging.

I thought maybe I was dreaming until Brayden said, “Shut up. SHUT UP!”

And the calls for mommy stopped.