Sky on Fire

Given my luck, it would not have surprised me if she had rabies from the rat and attacked me.

But, no, she was just hurt and tired.

She took the meat from my fingers and licked them. She had a sort of grateful look in her eyes and her tail wagged twice.

I fed her the rest of the patty and then she took some water.

She tried to go back under the couch but I scooped her gently into my arms.

“Can you hand me the Bactine and the Neosporin?” I asked Astrid.

She handed them to me silently.

“That’s a girl,” I said to the dog. “We’ll get these cuts healed up now. Good girl.”

I put some more ointment on the worst of the scratches. They looked red—more red than Caroline’s bite wounds, but I really didn’t know what else to do.

I had sat on the floor for so long, my knees were creaky when I stood up.

I turned and faced Astrid.

She was just looking at me with this weird look on her face.

“You’re a good guy,” she said. Her voice sounded kind of hollow.

“Yeah,” I answered.

She laughed. It was a dry, self-deprecating chuckle.

“My mom said that when she met my dad she literally heard, like, a bell ringing and she had the thought, ‘This is a good guy.’ Like, she had this sudden recognition.”

I nodded.

“It didn’t stop her from dating a long string of a-holes, I tell you that.”

“Your parents got divorced?”

“My parents never even married. She couldn’t take it, how nice he was.”

“Oh,” I said. The conversation didn’t seem like it was going my way.

“Why do you think Jake left?” she asked, suddenly changing the subject.

“Uh. I think he wanted to help Brayden. He felt bad that when Brayden got shot, he couldn’t do more.…”

“Yeah, I know why he left the store originally. He was being a big hero. Going out scouting. Going on a big, stupid mission.”

There was bitterness in her voice. She was talking about Jake with her usual toughness, but I could almost hear how hurt Astrid was under the sarcasm.

“But after he showed us on the video walkie-talkie thing that the hospital was closed, why didn’t he come back?”

“I don’t know,” I told her.

“I’ll tell you why,” she said. “Because he only ever thinks about himself. That’s the kind of guy I pick.”

Tears started to trickle down her cheeks.

“He doesn’t even know,” she spat. “About the baby. Ugh! What’s wrong with me? I’m just totally falling apart!”

She wiped the tears roughly with the back of her hand.

“And where are the other guys? Have they made it? Shouldn’t they be in Denver by now? Why hasn’t anyone come back for us?”

She sank down to sit on the futon. She was really crying now. I didn’t know what to do, so I sat down, too, and hugged her. It seemed like the right thing to do. It seemed like she needed someone to hold her.

I don’t think I was taking advantage.

Her soft body felt so warm in my arms.

I hoped I wasn’t taking advantage.

“Astrid, I know. It’s horrible. It’s all horrible.”

Lame.

She sobbed and I held her closer.

“I feel like I’m going crazy.” She wept into my shirt.

“Listen, Astrid, if I were you, I’d feel the same way,” I told her. “We’ve lost everything and we don’t know what’s going to happen to us and, if all that wasn’t enough, you’re pregnant. You’re pregnant, Astrid. You have to give yourself a break. You really do.”

She looked up at me. Wet lashes, reddish nose. Her beautiful face just inches away from mine.

She reached up and with her fingertips she straightened my glasses.

I could feel her breath on my lips.

She looked into my eyes.

And then Chloe and Henry came in, arms full of Lego bins stacked three high.

“What’s wrong, Astrid?” Henry said. “Are you sad? Don’t cry.”

He came over to us, pushed me aside, and wriggled onto her lap, wrapping his skinny, freckled arms around her neck.

“Yeah,” Chloe added. “Quit crying.” She emptied a Lego bin onto the floor. “We’ve got a Lego wall to do and it’s not going to build itself.”

CHAPTER SIX

ALEX

42–27 MILES

Mornings outside go like this: You are in the dark and it looks like night. Like a very dark night with no moon at all. But this part of your brain is on a timer, waiting for the sky to get light at the edge. That kind of muddy gray sky, before it even gets light. You’re just waiting for that and waiting for that and it never comes.

By my watch, I knew it was 6:07 a.m.

But it was dark, dark, dark.

Morning was never coming, it seemed.

* * *

Niko was feeling better, thank God.

He got everyone up, except for Josie. She was still out cold.

Brayden seemed the same as before. Still not really conscious but not dead either. Sahalia kept squeezing a little bit of Gatorade into his mouth every once in a while.

Sahalia, Batiste, and I had to get out and push to get the bus out of the ravine.

The ground was very muddy, with slime on it from the decaying leaves and grasses.

Niko was mad that Sahalia, Batiste, and I have our masks off, but really, it’s impossible to hear what anyone says with them on. At least when we talked to him or to the little kids, one side of the conversation could be understood.

And of course, we weren’t the best choice to push the bus, but even Niko had to agree that we were the right ones, since we’re all type B.

We rocked and rocked the bus. The wheels had a thin layer of that fuzzy white mold on them, but it didn’t seem to matter. Eventually the bus rolled forward and got traction on some underbrush.

We got back on.

“Ugh,” Sahalia said, wiping some muck off the front of her top layer, a men’s Windbreaker, probably 5 sizes too big. “It reeks out there.”

“I think it’s decayed vegetation,” I told her.

“Whatever, geek,” she said as she plopped herself down next to Brayden.

If we two were the two last people on earth—not, by the way, as statistically implausible as it was a month ago—she would still be rude to me and I would still pretend that it didn’t bother me.

Niko drove. We were driving along the bottom of the ditch, parallel to the highway. The hill we had slid down was not too high. I would estimate 15–20 feet.

I was thinking about Dean. I knew he’d be worried. We should have made it to DIA by now. We should have sent a rescue party by now.

Soon Niko pointed to a big road sign.

We had to pick whether to take I-25 to I-225 or to go right and take the tollway.

“The tollway is more direct,” I said. “But it will probably be more used, because other people would also choose the most direct route. On the other hand, I-225 runs through more densely populated areas, I think, because it gets closer to Denver.”

Niko thought for a minute and then, without saying anything, he took the toll road.

* * *

Oh, Dean.

It’s so bad.

It’s so bad what happened.

We took the toll road and we were making good time. We’d reached Parker, so that means we had gone about halfway to DIA.

* * *

I saw something standing in the road.

The light from the headlights bounced off it and it was a gleaming shape. Like a ghost.

“There!” I said. “Something white.”

I wiped at the Plexiglas windshield and squinted out. I saw it was a girl.

She was wearing a white coat, somehow it was not too dirty, and her face was uncovered.

“Stop! It’s a girl,” I shouted.

She had long blond hair. That white-blond like Max has.

She held up her hands for us to stop. Her hands were bare.

Niko slowed but didn’t stop.

He honked the horn.

“Niko, you have to stop!”

“No!” he shouted. “Too risky.”

The girl opened her mouth and I could see she was screaming for us to stop, though I couldn’t hear her.

“Stop!” Sahalia shouted.

The little kids joined in, too.

Niko slammed on the brakes. “I don’t like it,” I heard him say.

I opened the door mechanism. “Get in!” I shouted to the girl.

Then I saw them coming.

The darkness started moving, is what it looked like. And then shapes came out of it and I saw they were boys. Teenage boys in camouflage. Their faces had been painted, or maybe they’d used mud.

Three of them rushed at me and I pulled the door shut. They banged on it.

Niko tried to back up, but they’d gotten something behind the bus. I didn’t know what. But he kept trying to reverse and crashing into something over and over. (It was 2 motorcycles.)

Two of them rolled a dead motorcycle in front of the bus.

We were trapped.

One of them, I guess the leader, came in front of the bus and tapped the butt of a rifle against the Plexiglas.

He was wearing a scarf tied around his mouth and a black beret on his head. His eyes were rimmed with red and they looked wild.

“Who are they?” Sahalia screamed.

“Cadets!” Niko answered. “Air Force cadets!”

“He’s O. He’s O!” I shouted.

Niko laid on the horn.

“Get out of the way!” Niko shouted and immediately started coughing.

“Out of the way!” I yelled.

“Screw you!” the leader shouted. “We want the bus!”

“Tell them they can come with us,” Niko said to me. He couldn’t yell loud enough for them to hear, through the mask.

“You guys can come!” I shouted. “We’re going to the airport.”

“If they throw down their guns,” Niko added.

“If you throw down your guns!”