Sky on Fire

“Who are they?” Max whispered.

“They’re travelers,” Niko answered. “Just like us.”

I looked at Sahalia and we smiled.

“They’re trying to get to the airport. Just like us,” Niko repeated.

I cannot say how far we walked, that last march. If we had been closer to the highway, I could have calculated it with the mile markers. I imagine we could walk a mile in 30–40 minutes.

When we left Mario’s, it was 8:32 a.m. We stopped for protein shakes and water at 11:15. Then we walked again until 1:30.

Maybe 5 miles?

Well, let’s say 5 miles +/− 2 miles from Mario’s we saw a light in the distance. Much brighter than the emergency lights on the side of the highway. This one was shining in a circle, spinning its head around, like a lighthouse light.

It was a beacon.

“What is that?” Max asked. “Are we there? Is that the airport? Are we there?”

“I don’t know,” Niko said.

We picked up the pace.

Sahalia smiled at me. A big, real smile.

Batiste squeezed my hand.

We could hear a man’s voice on a loudspeaker. We couldn’t make out the words, but you could hear that it was some kind of a message, because the cadence repeated.

As we drew closer, we saw people gathered around the light. They stood a ways apart from one another, in small groups. Some groups were just couples and some groups had as many as 8–10 people. Most of them wore layers and face masks. There were a few people raving and acting dodgy—they must have been type AB.

We made our way up to the group. Slowly, edging forward. Niko had Sahalia push Max. I guess he wanted his hands free in case we needed to fight. He was probably wishing he still had our gun, but I didn’t say anything.

No one moved toward us or anything.

The other people looked as ragged and filthy as we had before Mario’s. We definitely looked the best out of everyone. Relatively clean, with the two cool orange Army face masks (no one else had those).

I felt like if Mario could have seen us, he would have been proud.

The message came on again: “You have reached an assembly point for the emergency evacuation of the Four Points area. Remain here until the next bus arrives. Buses will arrive every hour on the hour.”

I was so dazed, hearing that.

We had made it.

Sahalia let out a big whoop of joy. She hugged me and kissed me right on the mouth!

Ulysses went to Max and hugged him and they cried together, and Batiste was hugging me from behind as Sahalia, now with her arm draped around my shoulders, gave another big whoop!

The other people joined in with her. Maybe it took her elation to set them off, but suddenly everyone was laughing, crying, and hugging one another, where before Sahalia had made that sound, they were reserved and defensive.

And then I saw Niko. He had sunk down to his knees and had his face in his hands.

I went over to him.

“You did it,” I said. “You saved us.”

“Yeah,” he moaned. “But I lost her.”

* * *

The bus came, just like it said it would, on the hour. Okay, it was 12 minutes late but who cared!

It was a school bus. But painted Army green.

The door opened up and the driver (not Mrs. Wooly, of course not) was a soldier wearing an Army air mask.

“Welcome aboard,” he said with his metallic-sounding voice. “We’ll have you safe and inside in no time.”

We filed onto the bus. Somehow Sahalia had broken the ice and the people from the different groups were starting to talk to one another.

A man with a beard asked me where we were from. When I said Monument, he couldn’t believe it.

“That’s over 60 miles away!” he exclaimed. “We had a hell of a time and we’re just from Castle Rock.”

I shrugged. But I was happy inside.

“How’d you do it?” he asked.

“It was Niko,” I said. I pointed to Niko, who had Max on his lap in the seat across from me.

“No,” interrupted Batiste, who was sitting with me. “It was God.”

* * *

The bus went so fast, Dean! The road was entirely cleared. We were in a military zone now and everything was different.

When we passed through the places with big stores and office buildings, it looked like there had been a war. There was bullet spray on the walls, and burned out Jeeps and some of the buildings were on fire.

I saw bodies stacked into a great, long pile. For burial, I hope, not burning. Though I guess at this point, nobody cared.

The closer we got to the airport, the more cars there were. All the fields around the airport were just filled with cars. Cars parked at crazy angles, not like a tidy parking lot, but like a jigsaw puzzle. Crammed in every which way.

Large drifts of the white moss-mold enveloped the cars in places. The moss grew in waves, up and down, ebbing and flowing through the cars. It looked like an art installation, actually. An ocean of car bodies and mold.

And there was Denver International Airport, its white peaks lit up from inside. Rising up out of the car field like a castle.

Everybody cheered. Well, not everybody. There were people like Niko who seemed terribly sad or deeply in shock. But Sahalia and the kids and I cheered and many other people joined in.

We pulled up to a set of glass double doors. We had made it, Dean. We made it to DIA.

CHAPTER TWENTY

DEAN

DAY 15

I woke up on a satiny bedspread on the floor.

Around me came the snores of the other cadets.

I tried to sit up and my body protested plenty, but the screaming, brain-hole-drilling shoulder pain of the day before was gone.

I couldn’t figure out what time it was. Was it morning? Night?

From across the space there was a light shining. I squinted. It was Kildow, I thought. He seemed to be reading something.

I closed my eyes, just to rest them for a second.

* * *

And then I was being nudged awake by a boot.

Payton looked down at me. He carried a mug of water and was brushing his teeth.

“How’s the shoulder, Deano?”

“Better,” I said.

“Better, sir!”

“Better, sir!” I repeated. I groaned, sitting up. But it was better.

The cadets were eating Pop-Tarts and drinking iced teas for breakfast.

“Show us where the batteries and lights are. We want to get a little more light going. Don’t they have any generators in here? You know, like those portable ones?”

“Not that we’ve found,” I said.

I could lead them to the aisle with the lights but they’d see that all the Christmas lights and the lanterns were missing. Aargh.

“I thought I saw a generator,” Jake said.

“No,” I answered. “We don’t have any.”

“Yeah, near the leaf blowers and stuff.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Ladies, ladies, figure it out,” Payton said. “We’re doing physical conditioning in thirty and I want as much light as possible. Then we do a total inventory on this place. I want it listed down to the tampon.”

“Sir, yes, sir!” shouted Jake.

“Sir, yes, sir!” I echoed, late and sounding lame.

“Dismissed, doolies,” Payton said with a fond chuckle.

Jake led me toward Home Improvement.

“Why did you say we have a generator?” I hissed as soon as we were out of earshot. “They’re gonna be disappointed!”

“I was just trying to get you alone for a second,” he answered. “Look, we’re going to have to kill them.… It’s the only way to keep Astrid and the kids safe.”

“We can’t kill five guys, Jake,” I protested.

“We just need to get that semiautomatic from the black kid.”

“I don’t want to kill five guys, Jake! You don’t know what it’s like!”

Jake gave me a hard look.

“They killed Brayden. My best friend. They killed him! You think we should just forget about that?” Jake snapped.

“Jake, you’re not thinking clearly,” I protested.

“They killed him and I’m going to make them pay.”

“It won’t make you feel better,” I said.

“No, I know that. Nothing will ever make me feel better,” he said. He shrugged his shoulders. “But we have to keep Astrid safe. So we’re going to kill those cadets.”

“No, Jake,” I said. “We just need to get our hands on Anna. We get her as a hostage, maybe we can make them leave!”

Jake looked at me, chewing the side of his mouth.

“All right. Shoot. Yeah, that’s a better plan,” he said.

“Hey!” Zarember came at a run. “Don’t make Payton wait! That’s the first thing you need to know!”

* * *

In the space where the bus had sat, Payton had had his cadets make a little gym.

They had brought over the weights from the Sports aisle, and they had laid down a bunch of rubber mats—the kind you lock together.

Jake had snatched some of the battery-powered lanterns from the House.

We should have just told them about it at the beginning. It was like a time bomb—when Payton found that House hidden away, he was going to lose it.

Jake set up the lanterns and I brought some car batteries and clip-on desk lamps in their boxes. I told Payton I thought there must be a way to jerry-rig them to the car batteries.

“Now there’s some resourcefulness. Look at that!” Payton commanded the cadets.

“Thank you, sir!” I yelled.

Every time I did that I felt like a phony and a fraud.

Because of my arm, my “gimpy arm” as Payton put it, I was excused from physical conditioning.

I worked on getting the lights set up while Payton put Jake and the others through a grueling routine of weight lifting and cardio.

“That’s it, Simonsen!” he hollered. “Get under it. Come on, Zarember, push, push, push!”

Jake actually seemed to be enjoying it.