Sky on Fire

I shrugged and took off my mask.

The air had a taste to it. A stingy taste.

But it was much easier to talk, easier to see, and also, in a way, easier to think because you didn’t have to listen to your scary breathing right in your ears.

Batiste took his off sheepishly. Max and Ulysses muttered together about fairness.

“What do we do now?” Sahalia asked, her hands on her hips.

“I guess we just wait,” I said. “Niko, you tell us when you can drive, okay?”

Niko’s head was lolled back on the seat.

I went up to him and put my head on his shoulder.

“Niko? Niko!” I called.

And then I heard him snore.

“Oh, this is perfect!” Sahalia complained.

“Niko, we need to get going,” I said. “Niko, wake up.”

Niko sat up and looked around, as if confused.

“Just let me sleep for a few minutes,” he muttered. “I’m so tired.”

He hadn’t slept in … well, in more than 24 hours, maybe as long as 36 hours. But still.

It was murder, waiting. We gave him 10 good minutes.

“Okay, Niko. Time to get up!” I shook him.

“I can drive,” Sahalia said.

“What? No, you can’t!”

“My stepdad lets me drive all the time,” she insisted.

“That’s a horrible idea. This is a bus. A big school bus.”

“I can drive,” Sahalia shouted.

“Let her drive,” mumbled Niko. And he fell back asleep.

* * *

Okay, well, Sahalia wasn’t terrible at driving the bus. She went maybe a little faster than Niko, but I didn’t care. Josie was sedated. The kids were terrified and Niko had drugged himself into oblivion with Benadryl—the faster we got to DIA the better.

We were passing a burned-up commuter bus when a masked figure lurched out in front of us.

Sahalia braked but she hit the guy. His head cracked on the side of the bus and then he was gone.

Sahalia wrenched the steering wheel too far to the right and suddenly we were lurching down the embankment.

The terrain near the highway was fairly sparse—not a lot of trees or vegetation. Rolling hills with some dead underbrush. The underbrush slowed the roll of the bus, I think.

It didn’t crash, just slowed to a stop. Sahalia was basically standing on the brake, too.

The kids were crying.

Niko staggered up from where he’d been sitting.

“What happened?” he shouted.

“Sahalia drove the bus off the road,” I said. Then, when she gave me a look that would kill, I added, “By accident.”

“Okay,” he said. He seemed pretty wobbly on his feet.

He coughed and more blood appeared on the inside of his mask.

He looked out at the area. It seemed pretty deserted.

“I think we’re safe enough!”

I nodded. I knew what he meant.

Niko meant we were safe enough to sleep for a while.

* * *

“We’re hungry,” Max complained to me.

They had said they were hungry before, but that was when we thought we were going to be in Denver in a few hours. Now it looked like we were staying put for the night.

“So eat,” I told him. “The food’s over there.”

I pointed out an open bin filled with food.

Why did the kids need my help to rip open a bag of trail mix?

“You guys have to take care of yourselves! I am not in charge of you,” I said.

He had started crying.

I sighed and put my hand out to Max.

“Sorry,” I said.

I thought he would shake my hand, but instead he fell toward me and then I realized: He was giving me a hug.

Hard to tell, with all the layers. But I think it made him feel better.

Then he said, “We’re so hungry.”

“For God’s sake, Max, if you’re hungry, eat!” I said.

“But how?” he asked.

“What do you mean, how? Open your mouth, put the food in, and chew!”

He tapped on the plastic eye panel of his face mask.

“How do we get the food in?”

I felt stupid. I hadn’t thought of that.

I went back to try to help them. They ended up just lifting the edges of their masks and jamming the food in.

I saw Max’s skin get red and blisters came up, so after he’d had the chance to shove a couple mouthfuls of trail mix in, I took it away from them.

They lay down to sleep.

I tried to stay up and keep watch, but I was as tired as everyone else.

I do not know why no one came poking around the bus.

Maybe it was because the bus looked so crappy from the outside.

It was covered with splotches made by the paste that Robbie had the little kids use to seal any cracks or dings. The windows were boarded up.

It probably looked like it died a long time ago.

CHAPTER FIVE

DEAN

DAY 12

I decided to make the Train and the Living Room into more of a contained unit—a little home within the bigger store. That way we could light it and heat it when needed, and make it cheerful and less scary for the little kids.

It was a good big project. I needed a big project to distract me from what had happened between me and Astrid.

First I took my flashlight and went to the Toy Department. I had noticed that the row dividers there, unlike most of the other ones, appeared to be on wheels. They were locked down, of course, but they could be moved.

I unlocked one from the aisle that held the board games. The divider had shelves (as opposed to hooks). That was great, I realized—we could use the shelves for supplies.

I got down and figured out how to unlock the wheels. Then I pushed it back to the Train.

It was hard work. The row divider was tall (maybe seven feet tall?) and heavy and unwieldy. It didn’t roll well, of course, so I had to push it at an angle, like a bad shopping cart.

I was sweating and my chest was heaving by the time I got it to the Living Room.

It was long and would make up one wall of the three-sided room I was planning to set around the Living Room.

Astrid and the kids were over in the Kitchen. Probably having lunch.

I didn’t want to feel left out, but of course I did.

I focused on my plan to reconfigure our living arrangements.

We would end up with the carpeted living space outside the berths, where our “kitchen” and main supplies would be. And then we’d have the Train, with our beds, right there. We would only need to go out to go to the Dump and get more supplies.

There was probably a part of my mind that was aware that I was moving forward as if we would be staying in the Greenway for a long, long time, but all I could think of in the moment was that I wanted to show Astrid that I had good ideas and that I was smart and independent and I could move really heavy things.

That’s the truth.

* * *

By the time I wrangled the second divider to the Living Room, Astrid and the kids were back from the Kitchen. Astrid and I ignored each other.

She wordlessly handed me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and I wordlessly ate it and got back to work.

PB&Js are delicious, but I guess that’s common knowledge.

The kids were trying to play a board game under the Christmas tree lights. Caroline was lying on her side as she played. She looked wiped out.

“Dean, come play Monopoly with us,” Chloe commanded. “Caroline and Henry just aren’t getting it.”

“No!” I snapped.

The three kids’ heads popped up and Astrid looked at me, a question in her eyes.

I guess in the Greenway, a sharp tone from any of us O types required immediate risk assessment.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Forget it.”

I walked away.

Let them stare.

Monopoly belonged to me and Alex. It was our game and they would never understand. There were strategies and traditions and they would never get all its complexities.

I didn’t want them to play it.

I strode to the Toy Department for another divider, thinking that I would never play Monopoly with anyone besides Alex, ever. Ever, ever, ever, ever.

It was possible I was behaving somewhat like a child.

And it was probably for the best that I was working on a big project that required me to move heavy objects.

Picking out a third divider gave me some trouble. I got one halfway there, but a wheel got stuck and wouldn’t roll, so I had to go back for another.

As I was on my belly in the Toy Department, working on unlocking the latches on a new divider, I heard Astrid’s quiet footsteps come up behind me.

“Dean,” she said. “I’m sorry if I was … too mean or something before.”

She didn’t sound sorry, she sounded worried.

Looking up at her, from the floor, I could see her belly under the bottom edge of her thermal top.

There was that rise. The little bump.

It suddenly kind of hit me that she was pregnant. That maybe I should remember that and give her a break if she acted … hormoney.

“Can you please just come?” she said.

I sat up and looked at Astrid.

She was sort of chewing on her lip.

“Caroline fell asleep and when I went to move her … She’s hot. Really hot.”

* * *

“It’s not my fault,” Chloe noted as I approached. She was loitering outside the “bedroom” she and the twins shared. “I’m just saying, just because of the whole rat thing, not everything is my fault.”

Two crib mattresses took up the entire floor space of their bedroom.

They had covered the mirror with crayon drawings of houses, trees, families—all the normal subjects of little kid drawings. The circumstances of our living situation made them all more poignant, of course.

The one that really killed me was a drawing by Henry with three people. I say people, but they were basically just smiling, potato-shaped ovals with lines for arms and legs. Long, spider-legged fingers sprouted from the ends of the arms and overlapped—the three figures were holding hands. The one on the left had a small red blob on its head. The one on the right had long red scribbles for hair, and the one in the center had brown skin and two black knots on the top of her head.