The Freeze (Barren Trilogy, Book 3) Page 6

  “What if the army shows up?” the man asked. They had stopped out there. They might be by the busted fish tank. I could smell the dirty water from here. It was riding in on a breeze. Someone's hot breath landed on my neck. “They're taking everything. And why is there a Westman Grocery truck out front? We need to check that out. Maybe the drivers are still here.”

  “They ran out back,” the cruel woman said.

  “Are you sure?” the man asked.

  There were three of them out there.

  All armed and dangerous, but there were three.

  And they were about to check back here. After that, they would open fire. Most, if not all of us would die while we cowered.

  The man coughed. “We still haven't checked the strorage. There might be good stuff back there.”

  The little kid started crying again, loud enough for everyone to hear.

  I lost it. I charged forward and screamed, “Run!”

  It got everyone moving. People stampeded for the plastic curtain and I was the first to burst through, Jerome right behind me.

  The pale morning light was permeating the whole store, gray and dismal. I ran past an expanding puddle of tank water and around a stand of pet toys. I caught a glimpse of a tall woman and a fat man to the side, who stood there in shock as I ran past their aisle, a whole screaming river of people behind me. Both held guns. We were all out in the open. I didn't know where Alana and the others were. Jerome ran next to me, his long legs carrying him forward. Alana babbled somewhere. She was right behind me.

  And then, a shot rang out and a woman screamed.

  It sounded like the one I had been speaking to right before these people burst in.

  I didn't look back. There were thuds as people tripped. Another shot followed as Jerome and I bolted past the frozen foods. Past the pharmacy, where the prone form of the old man lay next to the vitamins. More shots. Automatic gunfire. The reek of smoke filled the world and the front entrance stood there unguarded, the pale sun of the early morning streaming in through the door. It was death, but I had this hoodie on. I might be able to tolerate being out.

  I burst through the empty check out counters and stopped for a second, only long enough to see that Alana and Jerome were right behind me. I reached into my pockets for the keys as more gunfire rang out. The cruel woman shouted something and it stopped. She yelled about too many bodies and a mess and how she wasn't going to clean it. People separated and ran through the checkout. Some were splattered in blood. One man was limping. The guy with the tribal earrings stopped at a candy stand, searching around for his girlfriend.

  She wasn't anywhere.

  Reality hadn't hit him yet.

  “Come on!” I shouted at Jerome and Alana as I spotted Gina limping through the counter, tears streaking her cheeks and jaw held tight in pain as she ran on her foot. Tony and Mina followed.

  But there was no Christina and Jasmine.

  “Out!” Tony shouted.

  My shield went up and the world deafened. I ran out of the store and around the truck. People were scattered. Christina and Jasmine must be lying in pools of blood, bleeding to death and it was because of me. Of course. I killed people all the time.

  I wanted to laugh. I was going insane.

  People ran around us. Still no Christina and Jasmine.

  I realized I didn't hate them as much as I thought. I did laugh. All of this was just some big joke.

  “Laney!” Jerome slapped me on the back. “I see everyone. Get in!”

  Christina jumped into the open truck, pulling on Jasmine's arm. She closed the door behind her. Another shot sounded from inside the store. They were alive. I could let the horrible numbness and insanity go and I could move. I followed Jerome around the truck and climbed into the drivers' seat as someone in the back dropped the door. I heard pounding. Other people wanted on. We were going to get crowded if we didn't move.

  I shut the door right when a man pounded on it. “Let me in!” he shouted, calling me something he probably wouldn't have in normal life. “Let me in!”

  We had to go. Jerome clicked on his seat belt.

  I started the truck as the guy continued to pound and other people either ran for their cars or beat on our truck. The light outside was brownish now. The sun was about to get dangerous, even though the smog. Some of these folks might not have shelter. A couple of kids were running across the grass to a gas station that already had busted windows. They must be no older than ten.

  The sight would be stuck in my mind forever.

  “We can't save them all,” Jerome yelled.

  I put the truck into drive and punched it forward, careful that no one was standing in front of us. I pulled my hoodie down over my face as much as I could and squinted in an effort to keep as much sun off me as I could. Jerome did the same. The others were safe inside the back of the truck. They had shelter. We just had glass.

  “These hoodies had better work,” I said, mostly to chase away the things I had seen as we rolled across the parking lot. I turned the truck to avoid all the cars and I had to go across the grass in order to get back on the street.

  And meanwhile, we left the murder and the carnage and the couple split in half behind.

  Chapter Six

  That couple could have been me and Jerome. I'd been an idiot, letting myself get too close to him when we hadn't even found a safe place yet. That bullet could have struck Jerome or me, leaving only one of us to run out of the store without death imminent. The shadows had returned to everything, especially now that the sun was up and casting them through the thin smog.

  “Is is just me, or is the sky just a little more clear?” Jerome asked, craning his head to see.

  “Be careful,” I told him. “Don't get burned.”

  The road was clearer now that most people had sheltered for the day and I was even able to get back on the freeway by driving on the grass. The hoodies were doing their job. I didn't feel any burning on my arms and on my legs, for that matter. I kept my hands in my sleeves. The sun cast pale light on the seats behind us, making us cast shadows that threatened to grow larger and devour us.

  I kept my hoodie very, very low over my face and the coat I already had high on my collar. I had just a little space to look through but it was better than having my face blister and dying from shock. I was also sweating to death, even though it must only be in the thirties or forties outside. It was even colder than it got in the desert on clear nights. There were no bank signs or anything that were on to tell us what the temperature was, but it was getting worse the closer we got to the city.

  Only a few cars were out now, passing us on occasion. We were still driving between twin shores of parked cars and trucks that people had abandoned. Another food truck passed us, one with two creepy smiling doughnuts on the side—and it was being driven by a pair of soldiers. They were out and about right now, so we had to be careful.

  “I haven't seen the helicopter come back,” Jerome said.

  “I'm glad you're trying to watch for me,” I said. “Be careful with your eyes. The sun can ruin those. I've read all about it.”

  I counted the mile markers when I could see them. The sun was a pale orb behind the smog. It was starting to thin now. I wondered how long it would take for us to see blue sky again. The world was just starting to heal itself in some ways, but it would get worse in others before we were out of the storm. Or the freeze. We just kept going from one danger to the next.

  A couple of pale flakes flew at us, turning to messy water droplets on the windshield. The world clouded up.

  “Is that snow?” I asked.

  Jerome squinted. “I think it is.”

  I had seen it only a couple of times in my life at home, when the weather announced a winter storm warning for an inch we were supposed to get back in Colton. It coated the sand and dust in white for one morning before melting away forever, like a ghost that you weren't sure you were seeing. The roads had turned to ice that night, leaving everyone una
ble to drive anywhere. I remembered when Mom got me up that morning—I was eight—and guided me to the window where I stared like I wasn't sure what I was seeing.

  This wasn't magical now. This was frightening.

  The flakes got stronger and thicker and for a few minutes, we were driving through a rain of them. It was like driving through white fog. It was almost disorienting. But then we emerged on the top of a hill and the flakes thinned. The road was dusty, with the remains of them blowing around our tires. I lowered my hood a bit to see. The road still looked dry, but if this kept up, it might freeze like the rain had.

  “I think that's the city,” Jerome said, pointing. “Laney—we've reached the city!”

  The flakes cleared all the way and I dared to lift my hood a bit.

  He was right.

  Sprawling over what looked like the whole world ahead was New York City—and it was bigger than I had ever imagined. Skyscrapers were like tall, square mountains surrounded by smaller ones. The tallest of them were gathered the farthest away, right in front of a steel-gray expanse that was the ocean. It was like all the buildings in the country had gathered together and grown upwards.

  “It's huge,” was all I managed.

  It was still far away, maybe dozens of miles, but we were getting closer. I felt overwhelmed just looking at the place. How did people find their way around? How did they know where to go and how did they learn the layout of their city? I'd heard about subways and taxis. Now I knew why they existed.

  The traffic got a tiny bit thicker now that we were closer. Another family, one swaddled in thick winter clothes, passed us and didn't give us a glance. They moved away like they were scared we were going to cut them off or something. Food trucks were bringing fear out in people. I knew why.

  The buildings around us got closer and closer as we passed exit after exit. We came to the limits of a small city that started with an H. They were all blurring together after driving across the whole country and had stopped having meaning. New York was the only place that mattered because Dad might still be here.

  “Nice place,” Jerome said. “I read somewhere this city did a good job of getting their crime down. Well, before the apocalypse.”

  “Things are different now,” I said. We drove through a second snow squall and I slowed down to twenty-five, terrified of the slides we had gone through the other night. The squall blocked the city from view for what felt like twenty minutes. People around us slowed, too, as the road got covered and only the tire tracks told us we were still on it. Jerome grabbed onto the door handle. I was glad he was confident in my abilities.

  But if I could, I would have done the same thing because I was not confident in mine. But the squall ended at last and we punched out of it and onto road that cleared more every second.

  “I think we're driving into a winter storm,” Jerome said.

  “That's nice,” I said. I'd heard about those ones the Northeast got in the fall and winter where they got twenty inches or something crazy. “This is going to be a bad place to be.” I thought of Alana in the back of the truck. I wished she'd come up to sit with me instead of Jerome, because at least I could start gradually putting some distance between me and Jerome if he was in the back. I'd just had a reminder of how fragile this was and I couldn't let this break me. But he was insisting on spending more and more time with me. He must not have seen the young woman fall in the store. He must not realize that it could have been me.

  “I agree,” Jerome said. “I wished we had the radio up here. I think Gina still has it in the back of the truck. I hope she got batteries while we were back in that K-Mart.”

  The buildings and skyscrapers gradually got bigger. They were growing slowly, like an approaching mountain range did. I could see the water beyond them a bit better. There was a dark cloud hanging over it and more haze underneath that. Another squall. The water was gray and white now, like choppy surf must be.

  We drove through a third squall, the worst one yet. They were intensifying the closer we got to the ocean. I had to slow down to fifteen and I backed a bunch of travelling people up behind me, but at least this was blocking out the sun. I could lower my hood without the burn creeping over my face. I needed to see, anyway. I moved around a car that was parked sideways right in our lane—the people hadn't been able to find a place to park and had abandoned their car right there—and continued on. This squall lasted the longest out of all three and dropped visibility to what might be less than a quarter of a mile. This was like those squalls people that lived around the Great Lakes got, right? I didn't know much about them but Mrs. Taney had mentioned them one time when she was talking about her trip to upstate New York.

  At last, after what felt like half an hour, we emerged from the squall and the road cleared.

  But we were far from out of the danger.

  “Laney—the army!”

  I slammed on the brakes, but the only good part about all of this was that there wasn't any ice in this spot, so I didn't end up sailing into the blockade of tanks and military jeeps and barbed wire that they had set up across both sides of the expressway. I didn't end up colliding with all the food trucks and other vehicles parked in a nearby carpool lot and I didn't run over the soldiers standing around a makeshift gate that spread across two lanes of freeway. There were already three cars parked there in front of the gate, waiting to get through, and a soldier was leaning over and talking to the driver of the first. She was dressed in winter gear, too, including goggles and thick gloves. The military had prepared for both the cold and the sun.

  I came to a squeaky stop and caught my breath.

  And counted.

  There were about two dozen soldiers standing around and all of them held automatic weapons. There was one in a white coat standing next to the gate. He held a remote with a red button on it. It was to open the gate for people. I hoped.

  The female soldier waved the car ahead and the guy in the white coat hit the button. The chain link fence opened and the car drove through. It closed again as the next car rolled up and the driver rolled their window down.

  “It's a checkpoint,” I said, heart pounding. “Twenty-three soldiers here. And tanks. We can't ram it.”

  “This is bad news,” Jerome said.

  “And we can't run,” I said. “They might be looking for us.” I swore a bunch of times. “We need to cover our faces. Now. Everyone's doing it so it won't look that weird.”

  The sun was coming out a bit. For the first time in forever I was thankful for it. I zipped the coat up over my face and pulled the hoodie over my eyes, which I needed to do anyway. Jerome did the same. We looked like a couple of burglars, which I guessed was fitting.

  I counted two minutes' worth of seconds before the soldiers let the second car through the checkpoint. The car in front of us rolled up and went through the same routine.

  Jerome and I could be dead in a few minutes. If not that, a couple of hours.

  The car went through. I checked the rearview mirror. There was traffic backed up behind us. There was a chance the army wouldn't want to shoot us in front of everyone and cause panic. There was a chance they wouldn't realize this was us.

  So I rolled up to the checkpoint and rolled down the window. The female soldier walked up and eyed me through those soulless goggles.

  “Hello,” she said in a gruff voice. “Where are you taking this truck?”

  I cleared my throat. “My friends and I found it at a K Mart,” I said. “It was about forty miles back, maybe. We had to grab it and go because there was a gang shooting people inside the store.” I let some emotion rise into my voice, which wasn't hard. It was all coming back now that I was reliving it again. “You have to go do something about it. People are dying.”

  “We know people are dying,” she said. “We can't save them all. Where are you going with this truck?”

  I couldn't tell all of the truth. “My friend here is looking for his dad who's in the city on a buisiness trip,” I lied, point
ing to Jerome.

  The soldier looked at her comrades, who stood there doing nothing. They were bored. The man in the white coat waited with the button to let us through. I felt like he was there to decide our fates.

  I cleared my throat. “This truck was what we had to grab. We had to get away from those guys who were shooting!”

  “Okay,” the soldier said. “You can pass into the city, but we don't want you to take this truck with you. Looters will attack you for it. Please park it in the lot to your right. After that, you'll be allowed to continue.”

  She pointed to the carpool lot which had food trucks of all sorts cramming it. There were even some parked on the grass.

  They were taking our supplies.

  They were taking everyone's supplies this way.

  And telling us they were doing it to keep us safe.

  “Can we grab our truck when we come back?” I asked, sounding as innocent as we could. “I'm glad you're watching out for us.”

  “The army will be distributing food fairly through the country in the coming weeks and months,” the woman said, sounding like she was reading from some rehearsed lines. “We're here to make sure that everyone gets their ration. There are some people who are trying to keep all the supplies for themselves.”

  I thought about that five to ten percent who were supposed to survive and about the lucky people, including David, who were inside the bases having this food brought to them. I wanted to say something snarky to this soldier but I kept my mouth shut. We were almost to Dad. We'd figure out food later. It wasn't like it was all gone yet, but it was getting there, and if we had to find something to eat there was always that farm. If I fought, things would be bad. “Okay,” I said. “Just show me where to park.”

  The woman lifted her arm and the guy in the white coat hit the button. The gate creaked open and I carefully drove through, careful not to scrape any of the tanks that were standing guard on either side of the gate. The man in the white coat pointd to the lot, and there was another soldier standing there, a male one, holding one of those stop signs construction workers could be seen holding. He waved me over onto the farthest side of the lot and directed me to park really close to a Meijer truck and the doughnut wagon we had seen earlier.