The Storm (The Barren Trilogy, Book #2) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  End

  The STORM

  (Barren Book TWO

  (A Post Apocalyptic Novel)

  By Holly Hook

  Chapter One

  Room 414.

  I held the hotel brochure that Dad had left me in case I needed to call him in an emergency and his cell phone was dead. If the end of the world didn't count as an emergency, I wasn't sure what did.

  The phone number was right there on the paper, under pictures of indoor swimming pools, bars with happy people, and big, comfortable beds that most surely wouldn't have any bedbugs. He had written it in permanent marker two days before he left in his Jeep to go board the plane that would take him to New York for that business meeting.

  Across the country, to where the beams of death hadn't killed almost everybody.

  Maybe.

  But even over there, the ozone layer was still screwed up. Two thirds gone, maybe more. I glanced to make sure none of the thick blankets I'd hung over the windows had fallen off. My black one from junior high hung over the living room window, letting in almost no light except for a tiny sliver on the coffee table. I'd hung several towels over the window in the bathroom, which I couldn't avoid, turning it into a dark closet. My bedroom was no exception. The window faced the dangerous sun in the evenings so all of my bedding had gone for that purpose.

  I felt like a vampire.

  The sun had been had enough here in Arizona before. It was beyond deadly now--deadly enough to burn you alive if you stayed out for more than a few minutes. I had seen what it could do to flesh.

  I set Dad's brochure down on the counter. Holiday Inn. There was a chance Dad was still there especially if the EMP had knocked out power in New York and no vehicles other than antiques still worked. He had always been a careful guy, unlike Mom, who always had a sense of adventure on our camping trips. Dad would be proud of the way I had turned our house into a fortress and of they way I rubbed sunscreen across all my exposed skin. It had been a ritual ever since Mom had found the strange moles on the back of her arm and waited two months before she went to the doctor.

  It had been even more of a ritual since she died with me holding her hand one year ago.

  I did another check in through the house, making sure none of the blankets had fallen off the windows. Yesterday, after I had first hung everything up, the black one had fallen out of the living room window and I spent thirty terrifying seconds getting it back up again. Sun could reflect off other surfaces, UV rays and all. They could bounce off oceans and lakes and even walls, hitting you even if you were in the shade. It wasn't a risk I was going to take. My skin was peeling from the burn I had gotten during our Physics field trip gone wrong. It was no longer hurting, but I knew the damage was done.

  I would have to check for moles now. Every day, I would check for new moles.

  And then what? There were no doctors left on this side of the planet. The cosmic rays had made sure of that.

  I eyed the brochure again along with the number I couldn't call. When the giant star named WR 104 blew up across the galaxy, the beams of death it sent out knocked out all the electronics on this side of the planet. My cell phone no longer worked and Dad's might not, either, depending on exactly where the beam had landed. The emergency radios said there was a checkpoint in Oklahoma City where the army was picking up survivors from the western side of the country.

  Only one out of ten thousand of us had survived on the same side of the world as the blast if the guys on the emergency radios were right.

  Nine of us remained in the town of Colton, and only because we'd been checking out the Huge Arizona Underground Collider when the radiation hit. The rest were bodies.

  Nine. We had thrown the tenth into the sewer system. We had to. David was going to kill someone if we hadn't. This wasn't a world of kindness anymore.

  We might even be the only nine left in Arizona. Or on the western side of the country, for that matter.

  I tried not to think about it, especially since I was alone in my empty house right now.

  Or about last night. Oh, God--last night.

  I had helped Alana and the others get her mother and her little brother out of the van that had been serving as their casket until we figured out what to do with them. The Arizona ground was too hard to bury them--at least with any equipment that we could find. Tony had found a construction ditch right outside of town. The Cat we'd brought from the Collider was still working probably due to some government shielding around the motor. There had been dirt piled next to the ditch, like the workers had been digging out a ditch for a new pipe before they died. It was the logical choice. The best choice and of course, the hardest one.

  I hadn't slept much since then.

  We had all watched as the dead people of Colton vanished under dusty, dry earth in that ditch once meant to sustain them. Swollen. Putrid.

  Jerome's mother and stepfather. Tony's parents. Mina's older brother. Alana's younger one and her mother. All of them vanished under the dirt. Every time I closed my eyes, that image roared back into my head along with the Cat's spinning wheels and low motor. It had been as bad as watching my relatives carry my mother's casket to the family crypt in the cemetery. No. Worse. There hadn't been any flowers for this. Even my guinea pig, Chester, had vanished under dust. His empty cage still remained in my room, sad and silent.

  I really, really needed to sleep.

  But when I flopped down on my bed and passed out, swollen faces and dead eyes filled my nightmares.

  * * * * *

  I woke to a loud knock on the door.

  I opened my eyes. The house was pitch dark. Electricity didn't work anymore--the power stations on this side of the world had all quit with the EMP and there was no one left to man them anyway--and the bed I lay on had no blankets. There wasn't much need for those anymore other than keeping the sun away.

  Night.

  It was safe. Maybe.

  "Laney?" Alana called. Her voice was muffled on the other side of the locked door. "Are you in here?"

  I breathed a sigh of relief. I kept my doors locked at all times. With even the tiniest chance of David being alive they were going to stay that way. I knew, logically, that he couldn't get out of the sewer unless there was something we didn't know about it, but if he did, I was the next one to go down there. I blinked and the image of Tony and Eric pulling the sewer cover open to drop me in filled the space behind my eyelids. Tony and Eric hadn't wanted to throw anyone down there, but everyone following David had been too scared of him and each other to stand up to him.

  I rushed to the door, tripping over the laundry basket that I had thrown into the hallway. There was no point in keeping the place clean anymore. Numbers were my game, not keeping the place up.

  I opened the door. Alana stood there, a blanket draped over her like she was trying to shield herself from rain that wasn't there. I didn't understand why. It was almost full dark now and there wasn't enough sunlight left to burn us.

  "Just in case," she said. "You never know."

  I had gotten used to the new color of the sky. When the gamma ray burst hit, the rays had ripped apart the ozone layer and crea
ted some chemical reactions in the atmosphere. That led to this red smog that spread over the whole planet if the guys on the emergency radios were right. The smog was blocking out some of the sun's light, but not all of it, and even though it didn't come close to the ground it looked creepy. Right now was no exception. The sky turned a bloody brick color when the sun was setting and it made me feel like I was standing on an alien planet. Not good stuff. Right now, there was a faint glow like old blood behind Alana. The outlines of houses and the power lines stood against it, forming strange shadows and silhouettes. No matter what time of day it was, things were creepy.

  "Did they find gas for the truck?" I asked.

  "Tony's working on it," Alana said.

  "Why do you have that blanket?"

  My best friend's face melted into one of pain. She was much younger all of a sudden like she had gone back to being a child who dragged her security blanket around the house. Alana hadn't had one since she was eight. "I don't want to get burned like all the people in Colton did."

  "That was the radiation." The radiation that had killed almost everyone on this side of the country had come right after the first blast did. The whole ozone thing was nature trying to finish the rest of us off. "You can take the blanket off."

  She made no move to. Before she had seen her brother and mom dead in the minivan, Alana had been the optimist. She'd been the one full of hope and possible solutions. But since that moment, she had changed and it was my job to take over her role. Maybe that was for the best. I might not have lost anyone in this disaster--my mother had died a year ago and it was possible Dad was still alive. I shouldn't be the one dragging everyone else down when I was in the best position. I had only buried Chester last night. Others had buried siblings, parents. I had no right to be down and depressed here.

  "Really," I said. "The sun's down. It's not dangerous right now. You can."

  At last, Alana slowly lowered the blanket but she still held onto it. Yes. It was a security thing.

  "I didn't sleep at all today," she said. "I couldn't. Now Tony wants us all to meet in the park and play a game of baseball. He brought out some beer. I guess nobody's here to tell us we can't, right? He says it'll be a morale booster."

  I didn't want to go out, get drunk, and swing a baseball bat. There was no time for fun anymore. I faced the counter where Dad's brochure was supposed to be lying and let out a breath. But Alana needed this. Maybe the group needed this. People had ways to keep their sanity and this might be a good exercise in that. "Okay," I said. "Maybe we should go but I don't want to be friendly with the people who were against us before." I'd follow Alana for her sake. "Then we need to figure out the truck situation."

  "Mina's working on it," Alana said. "Tony wants you to calculate how much food we have to last out here. I guess we can figure out how much to take with us after that happens."

  She was right. Colton was about thirty miles from the nearest town. Without a vehicle, getting out of here anytime soon wasn't an option. The antique truck was still sitting all backed up on some boulders and we had no way to tow it off. Walking was too dangerous. Me, Alana, Jerome and Gina had almost died getting from the Collider's Visitor Center to the closest town, Marlon, which happened to be on fire. The sun was everywhere in Arizona. It was hard to hide.

  "Come on, Laney. I don't want to go there by myself. I'll think too much."

  So I left my house and stepped into the cool night. I wrapped my arms around myself.

  I hated how quiet town was now.

  The neighbors no longer blared country music out their window on Friday nights. I was sure they were still lying in their house, which thankfully had all the windows shut. No cars or motorcycles revved their motors in the distance. No birds chirped. Even most of the crickets had died, leaving nothing but the plants, and they were starting to look bad, too. The yuccas growing against my house were wilting, finally giving in to the radiation wave that had destroyed their cells and their genetic code.

  I wondered if anything would grow again.

  Our walk to the park was based on memory. No streetlights worked anymore. These ones never would again. Alana and I turned the corner, walked down Main Street where the Cat stood again over the manhole cover we had thrown David down, and made a left at the end of Main. We walked past the High School in silence. Alana kept her head down and her blanket wrapped around her. She reminded me of that Peanuts character, only not dirty. All of us had gotten into the river at the end of last night and shampooed with some soap we had found in the Colton Market. I was looking forward to doing it again.

  But even in the open, Colton had that stench of death that you never got used to.

  Most of the bodies were out of sight, hidden in houses and behind closed windows due to air conditioning. But a few still leaned half out of cars, especially down Eggleton Street where three of them were parked as if the people had been talking to each other before the radiation hit. None of us had gone down that way. The smell wafting from there was horrific and I held my breath until we were well past it.

  The park had a bunch of tiki torches burning, which cast a yellow glow on the dirt and the fake turf the town had put in a few years ago. Cases of beer lay out next to one of the torches and one had already been torn open. A couple of beer cans lay crushed on the ground and Tony and Eric stood there, waving at us. The others were already at the park. Gina waved to me too and she was holding her own can of beer. There were no rules anymore. I had no reason to feel bad about breaking them. We were the Physics kids in Colton High School. The ones everyone called the nerds. The so called "good" kids. I had never had a beer before, even though Dad had let me have a little taste of one when I was four and I hated it.

  I really shouldn't have been there. I should have been off figuring out the gas situation myself, but I remembered the promise I had made to Alana and the others a few days ago. I would try sticking with them until we found our families on the other side of the country (hopefully). I would try to have hope that we'd all make it, even though I knew the opposite was probably going to be true.

  "Count Laney!" Tony called, waving.

  He was completely different now that David was gone. I was cool, not the enemy. I couldn't believe the effect one person had on all these people. It could happen again. I couldn't get too close to them for that reason, too.

  "Hey," I said, stopping with some distance between us. I searched for Jerome to find him standing against the dugout, all relaxed. He was the one all interested in psychology, in what made people do the things they did. I felt a bit better seeing him like that. If he was confident we were no longer fighting, that was a good sign.

  "Look, we're sorry about the whole David thing," Tony yelled, a bit slurred. He'd been drinking, all right. Mom used to say that alcohol made you very honest and now that we were closer, I could see a few more beer cans on the ground. "The dude was freaking me out. I didn't want to throw anyone in the sewer, but I knew he'd turn on me if I said anything."

  "Yeah," I said, turning away. These people had left us in that bathroom at the Visitor Center to be burned by the sun. They outnumbered David even at that time. Tony and Christina and Jasmine and Eric might be friendly now, but only because circumstances had changed. At least the booze would help me figure out where I stood.

  "Come on, Laney," Alana said. "No more fights. Please?"

  "Okay," I grumbled. I'd get through this for her. "We'll have fun." I wondered when a good time to slip out would be. If everyone got drunk enough, I could sneak away into the dark and get to the library. I'd figure out how to gas up a vehicle without working pumps, or I'd siphon some off another car. I'd make sure Alana was having fun first.

  It wasn't too bad, playing baseball at night in a park that was lit by torchlight. It was actually pretty cool and I wasn't too bad at it. The drunker Tony got, the worse he hit the ball and the more Mina laughed at him. He even managed to fall flat on his face when he finally got to the first base. I avoided the beer and kin
d of watched everyone else play, but Alana had a couple drinks by time we were at the end of the first game and I didn't try to stop her. She actually smiled as she scored our team a home run. It was the first time I'd seen her do that in days and it was refreshing, even though I knew reality would be back tomorrow. It always was.

  So between my turns to swing the bat, I counted the hits and finally, the outs.

  Five from Eric.

  Ten from Jerome. He smiled at me with each ball he missed.

  Five to ten percent...

  The number roared into my mind again. It was what the guy on the emergency radio kept quoting.

  In ten years, only five to ten percent of everyone on the planet would still be alive. Food was going to be very, very short soon.

  I stood up from the dugout and turned to leave the park, but Alana noticed. "Where are you going?" she asked.

  "To think."

  "Come on. We're taking a break," she said. "You need a break, too. It's not all work all the time." She still had her blanket wrapped around her every time she wasn't actually playing.

  I turned back to her. "I know that."

  "You know, beer isn't too bad. Once you get used to it." Alana leaned on the baseball bat while Jerome sat down in the dugout which was peeling paint. The wind kicked up. "This is fun. Christina wanted to play some music, but nothing's working."

  I wanted to join the others in drinking and letting the world go. But memories turned into pain when someone died. They always did. I even missed Mrs. Taney, our Physics teacher who yelled at us and clapped her hands like we were all six.

  "Come on," Jerome said. "Remember what you said, Laney? That you'd hang out with us more?"

  "Okay," I said, giving in. "Hand me a beer."

  I had more and more fun as the night wore on and the game rules got to be less and less strict. The beer made everything all warm and fuzzy, made everyone's jokes funnier, and made every stumble and mistake hilarious. I think I had two or three. I'd never done this before. It was fun. Jerome even picked me up and twirled me around like a dancer when I got out team a home run. He was smiling. Alana was smiling. Gina told some dirty jokes when we took a break between games.