Текст книги "The System"

Автор книги: Shelbi Wescott

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

CHAPTER ONE

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

Lucy sat among the growing lupines, their purple buds stretching to the sky and swaying in the cool spring wind. From the grassy and flower-covered hill, Lucy admired the towering Grand Tetons in the distance and the still waters of Jackson Lake. She watched the glassy water ripple toward the shore and always—despite knowing that it wouldn’t happen—expected to see a fish jump or a vacationer kayak past. Some earthly expectations were hard to overcome.

The log cabins of Jackson Lake Mountain Lodge were all empty. There were no dead bodies to move, no smells to overcome, no rotting surprises left to discover around the corner. The virus, unleashed by bioterrorists, claimed the residents of the small Wyoming town before vacation season opened, and so the cabins were the perfect discovery after long days on the road. Each cabin was deceptively rustic on the outside and luxurious on the inside; they offered a welcome respite from travel for Lucy King and Grant Trotter as they made their way from Portland to Brixton, Nebraska.

The duo had landed their hot air balloon in central Oregon. Grant might have known how to fill the balloon and sail it out and over the congested city and suburbs, and he might have known how to follow the wind, but landing was a skill he had yet to master. Lucy had a fist-sized bruise on her leg that was finally fading to a respectable shade of yellow. and her jammed finger no longer ached. She would have teased Grant about his inability to think through the landing part, but he had looked embarrassed and ashamed after they crawled out of the overturned basket.

From there: they slept in an empty house, stole a green Toyota Camry with a full tank of gas, and followed the highway all the way into Idaho before stranding themselves right outside of Boise. It was easy to push away the thoughts of what had happened to the world as they drove down nearly deserted back roads and empty towns.

Grant and Lucy had not seen another living soul since leaving her brother Ethan back in Oregon. Ethan wasn’t alone: he had Darla and her young son Teddy, both of whom he had befriended at the Portland airport amidst the tragedy and chaos of Release Day. While Grant and Lucy had thought of their Oregon contingent often, they knew that Darla, who had worked with industrious diligence to free Lucy from the high school where she had been kept captive, would care for Ethan in their absence.

The hardest part was not knowing. So, they trudged forward, focusing on the goal at hand: Nebraska.

As they moved forward across state lines, in and out of cities, they would occasionally spy a flutter of movement, a shadow dancing across a curtain or something shifting in the corner of their eye, but every search for survivors ended with disappointment. The shadows were from the wind, and the movement just figments of their imaginations. No, the world was quiet; people were gone.

But reminders of their existence were everywhere.

When they got to Boise, they saw that the absence of human life was causing more than just empty cities and abandoned vehicles. Pipes had burst, streets were swamped with sewage and debris and, in many places, fires still smoldered. All around them was evidence of those who perished after the Release—evidence of a former life. Even though it had been only two weeks and two days since the world succumbed to terrorism, it felt like years.

From Boise, they walked, bicycled, hiked, and eventually found two more cars with enough gas to get them across state lines. When they drove into the Yellowstone National Park and stumbled upon the Jackson Lake Mountain Lodge, Lucy and Grant knew they had to rest. Road weary and hungry and struggling with basic hygiene, the empty cabins beckoned them.

What was planned as a single overnight recouping of energy turned into a three-day spiritual and emotional renewal. Nebraska was calling them, but the beautiful snow-capped mountains, late-night fires in the comfort of king sized beds, and lazy mornings by the lake were exactly what they needed. The resort town appealed to them most of all because it was easy to forget the world was empty. The reminders of death and destruction were few and far between: dead fish and dead birds, not dead people. Although finding dead people wasn’t as alarming as it had been when the virus first broke out. In larger cities and smaller towns, they regarded the dead like any other inanimate object: fire hydrant, mailbox, body.

The shells of people who were once living, breathing, alive, were just part of the landscape of their changed lives and nothing more.

Lucy heard footsteps behind her, and she grabbed a single lupine in front of her and ran her hand over the stock, stripping it of flower petals. She loved the way the stalk felt against her hand, the rough bumps against her skin. Without turning, she picked at the fallen purple petals and cleared her throat. “I left you a note on the counter…I didn’t want to wake you,” she said.

Grant sat down beside her and nudged her in the side with his elbow. “You don’t have to leave me notes. It’s not like you’re ever going very far. I think I can probably figure it out on my own.”

She smiled at him and looked outward toward the lake. “I always leave notes when I’m going out. My momma taught me well.”

Stretching his legs out in front of him and leaning back on his elbows in the grass, Grant looked over at her and examined her profile, the backdrop of Yellowstone behind her. “It’s beautiful here.”

“It is,” she replied.

He reached out without looking and tried to grab a flower, but he missed. His hand brushed against Lucy’s leg and she didn’t flinch away. His closeness no longer affected her like it might have before the Release; they just existed, two parts of a whole—two people on a mission, working together. They enjoyed sitting like this, in silence, one of the most beautiful places in the world enveloping them into a feeling of safety and peace. If they left here, they would lose that. If they left here, they would have to admit that the world had ended. Sometimes it was nice to forget.

“Okay, my turn. I’ve thought of one.”

Lucy smiled. “Male or female?”

“Male.”

“TV or movies,” she asked.

Grant looked above at the clouds and squinted, thinking. “Mostly movies. Some TV. Before he got big.” Grant couldn’t contain a subtle smirk. Lucy caught the intonation and rolled her eyes.

“You gave too much away…I swear. Pop culture is my party trick. You won’t ever win.”

“You think you know already? That’s like three clues. That could almost be everyone in Hollywood.”

“Tom Hanks,” Lucy answered and she crossed her arms over her chest.

“Whatever. You’re right. I gave it away…no need to show off,” he replied and he tossed a handful of grass at her, but the wind carried it off before it could land. They settled into silence; the Guess-Who game, a variant on twenty-questions that they played during their car rides, ending anti-climatically. Then Grant sighed, and he dropped his voice down to an almost whisper. “We’ve been here three days.”

“I know.”

Lucy didn’t want to look at Grant and see the pressure to leave this place in his eyes. She knew if she saw him, saw his brown eyes and the eagerness, that she would stomp back to the cabin, pack her bag, and climb back behind the wheel of their third vehicle—some silver hatchback that still smelled like cigarette smoke and fast food—and drive straight to Nebraska without a second thought. But something was keeping her rooted in this place; a certain type of contentment that only the wilderness could provide.

Grant never pressured Lucy to make decisions. He never blindly conceded to her wishes either, and he didn’t storm forward with his own agenda. Even when Lucy wished that Grant would just take control, he refused. She admired his maturity while simultaneously feeling aggrieved that it required her to be mature, too. It would have been easy to fall into some angst-ridden teenage moodiness. Discovering your father may have helped plan the extermination of the human race wasn’t an emotional picnic. Here though—sitting among the flowers and the mountains—reality seemed more beautiful, less dark.

“I don’t want to rush you—”

“Us,” she corrected and shot him a sideways glance. “It doesn’t have to be just my decision.” He was staring right at her and she turned back to the lake and kept her eyes trained straight ahead. Nebraska—the idea of it—seemed dark and far away. It was only an eight-hour drive, and there was the potential that her family was close, but when Lucy thought of what she’d find there, the comforts of their log cabins seemed safer. And safe was good.

“Yes, it does,” Grant replied with a half-smile. “It really does.”

Lucy reached out and grabbed his hand and gave it a squeeze. She couldn’t begin to verbalize how grateful she was that Grant understood the enormity of this last leg. And she couldn’t admit to him that she was losing her nerve.

In the end, she had championed the trip, relished the idea of storming into the great unknown. There was an exhilaration born from the adventure, but they’d been on the road long enough that the novelty had worn off; now, with the truth so close, she longed for Oregon and Ethan and mornings of fixing Teddy breakfast and helping him discover the chapter books of her early childhood—Little House on the Prairie or anything with Ramona Quimby or The Boxcar Children, CS Lewis or Roald Dahl.

If her family was safe, they would have come for her. The fact that they hadn’t should have been a clue. Her heart tugged her back toward the known.

Grant seemed to sense the trepidation in her silence. He lowered himself to the ground and then tucked his arms under his head.

They sat like this several times over the past few days. Grant sprawled out staring at the sky, Lucy tucked up, knees to chest, shedding the flowers of their petals.

“We can’t stay here forever,” Grant said.

“You have to admit it’s tempting,” Lucy replied.

“Come on, Lula,” he admonished kindly, using her best friend Salem’s moniker for her. It was endearing and sad all wrapped up into one. They had been there together when Salem succumbed to the virus, and the images haunted Lucy every time she closed her eyes.

“I think we give it another night. Just one more? Sit by the fire, make a good meal. And I want to know it’s our last night. I want to enjoy it. I don’t know what lies ahead…and I want to have one good, big, night.”

“We’ll be in Nebraska by tomorrow, then?” Grant asked, his eyebrows raised.

She shuddered. Then shrugged. And finally nodded.

“Hey, I get it,” Grant said. “And I don’t blame you,” he added. “But—”

“I know,” she interrupted him. “I know. Tomorrow.” Giving them a time frame made it real and tangible; in twenty-four hours she would be in a different state and searching for her family.

Grant didn’t move from the ground. “Did you travel much? As a kid?” he asked, sensing her discomfort and changing the subject. “Have you ever been here…before everything?”

“Yellowstone?” Lucy asked, and then she shook her head. “We didn’t travel too much.” Traveling with six kids was a nightmare; all promises of joyous family vacations ended in disaster and yelling. Once they had gone to Disneyland, but it was in the pre-Harper era, as Lucy was embarking on her first year of junior high. The twins cried the entire plane trip and Galen never stopped talking; once they arrived, Ethan and Lucy kept trying to pretend like they were spending the day by themselves. They migrated ten steps forward, backward, or to the side, assuming the identities of older teens enjoying a day of independence. Once, Maxine called to them to join them in a line, and Ethan yelled back, “Stop talking to us! Creep.”

How much she had longed to be free from her embarrassing family during that particular vacation. Many of their Disneyland pictures captured Lucy’s pre-teen angst perfectly; pouty lips, crossed arms, nary a happy thought in sight. Ethan whispered in her ear while they climbed aboard Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, “It’s not like we even need them for anything. I know how to get back to the hotel. We should ask to split up.” The request was met with icy glares and too-loud lectures about the importance of family.

“Someday I’ll be dead and you’ll wish you enjoyed Disneyland with me,” Maxine had said to Lucy with an extended finger, her voice loud enough to solicit bemused smiles from passersby.

Lucy blushed then as she blushed now, thinking back on her youthful impertinence.

“Did you?” Lucy returned the question.

Grant nodded. “Only child. Divorced parents. For a few years they really tried to top each other. Indoor water parks. Hawaii. Each trip helped them feel a little less guilty. Like, hey, we can’t screw him up too badly, I mean, we took him to Sea World and Six Flags in one summer. What kid wouldn’t want that? And sure, I was at fun places, but my dad barely spoke to me. Then my parents got remarried…”

She raised an eyebrow and Grant shrugged.

“Yeah, as a kid you’d dream about that happening. And then it did, and I’m not sure it was better. I’m not sure they remarried for the right reasons. Or I should say, my dad didn’t remarry her for the right reasons. My mom never gave up hope…never stopped loving him.”

Lucy hesitated. She wanted to ask Grant about his mom. He mentioned her occasionally, but he hadn’t offered up any details of his life beyond small jabs at his dad and passing recollections about his life pre-virus. Grant spoke more about the art of pole-vaulting and mentioned his hopefulness that a movie director survived the apocalypse because how could there be a world without movies?

But Grant’s mom seemed taboo. A topic of conversation they could not traverse together. In the past eight days alone, Grant had broken down and cried twice. Both times seemed out of the blue and Lucy couldn’t pinpoint the trigger for his grief. He had seemed uncomfortable afterward too—ashamed that she had been a witness to tears—however, Lucy let the moments run their course, always quick with a comforting squeeze or a random story to change the mood.

“That’s enough of that,” he exhaled. “So, Lula, what’s on the docket for our last day in paradise?” Grant asked.

“You know how I feel about making decisions,” she replied. But then she smiled. “What I really want to do is take a nice warm bubble bath.”

“Order a pizza and watch television.”

“Yeah, so we’re both delusional,” Lucy teased and poked the end of a lupine stalk into his arm. He grabbed it and she tumbled forward after it, laughing.

Then Grant let go and she tossed it to the side; she let her eyes wander to the mountains and the lake.

“Let’s walk up to the lodge,” Grant said with authority. “There’s a piano. I’ll start a fire. We can raid the kitchen and see if anything non-perishable survived.” He stood up and wiped the dirt off the seat of his jeans.

Lucy looked up at him, squinting into the late morning sun. After a moment, she replied, “It’s a date.”

The lodge was a small wooden building located a short walk from the lakeside cabins. Defunct Christmas lights were strung around the perimeter and a wood carving of a buffalo greeted travelers at the entryway. There were twelve-foot doors, with inlaid carvings that told an old story about a black bear traveling along the peaks of the Tetons. Lucy ran her hand over the wood and it was silky smooth to the touch. Then they swung the lodge doors open wide and entered the musty lounge; dust covered every surface—the spring cleaning prior to the summer opening interrupted by the virus.

Grant built a fire in the wood-burning fireplace in the center of the room. He arranged dry logs, conveniently stacked next to the side of the fireplace, and shoved in stacks of lodge brochures to add to the kindling. Then he reached into his pocket and produced his Zippo lighter, lit the corner of the paper, and stepped back to admire the flames as they licked upward, engulfing the wood in a whoosh and filling the area with warmth.

Lucy walked over to a small bar area and opened up a small refrigerator. The contents were limited, but since the lodge area was without power, the leftover items had spoiled. There was a block of limp, moldy cheese, a bottle of ketchup, and a small collection of individually wrapped butter packets. Lucy shut the door and kept moving. Hand-carved and mounted to the wall behind the bar was a wine rack. Placed into the little cubbies were dusty bottles of reds and whites and blends. She took a glass, wiped it down with a nearby paper towel and then scanned the bottles.

With the fire now crackling, Grant slid onto the piano bench and lifted the lid. He began to play a melody and Lucy spun to look at him. She recognized the song. It was from some indie band that Ethan liked; she always mocked him for his musical taste—listening to bands that steeped themselves in obscurity and thumbing his nose at popular genres. Music snobbery ran amuck on Portland college campuses; three months into his freshman year of college, Ethan abandoned his high school hip-hop loving ways, procured a fake ID, and started hitting up shows at Dante’s or across the river at Mississippi Studios. He’d go alone, which seemed tragic to Lucy. But Ethan loved it.

“Was that Spoon?” Lucy asked when Grant’s song ended. She blushed when he broke into a huge grin. “Was that impressive?” she asked with a hint of self-satisfaction.

“Not so much, actually. It’s not like they’re completely obscure,” Grant plucked out a different tune with one hand, his body still turned to face Lucy.  “I was more impressed that you got Tom Hanks on the second guess.” He grinned. “Are we drinking wine?”

She shrugged. “It’s here. It’s a liquid.”

“How’s our water supply?” Grant spun his body on the bench to shift his attention. Their voices echoed in the absence of other sound.

“Dwindling.” They had each packed enough of her father’s water pouches to last a week; in smaller towns, where the virus took lives in a surge, leaving no time for looters to rise up, it was easy to find bottled water and soda cans. But in the larger cities, where people killed for clean water, there was nothing.

The bioterrorists contaminated the water supply first. Their airborne attack was secondary. Either way, despite her inoculations and Grant’s apparent inherent immunity, they were hesitant to drink tap water. And that was even if they could. In some places, like the cabins, running water ceased entirely—leaving dried up pipes and restricted access. In a pinch, the lake water would suffice, but Lucy hadn’t become thirsty enough to try it. They’d managed well on stolen goods, water pouches, and MREs. It wasn’t luxury living, but they’d encountered limited hardships.

Finding a corkscrew, Lucy spun the screw down into the softness of the cork and then yanked upward, the stopper slipping outward with a pop. Then Lucy poured a glass. She took a sip and felt the bitter liquid on her tongue. In her mind, she predicted wine was just an alcoholic version of grape juice, but she was wrong. Lucy dribbled the wine back into the glass and then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. A tiny river of purple dripped down her chin.

“It was that delicious, huh?” Grant asked. He raised his eyebrows. “If you offer me any of that, I don’t want the same cup.”

“It’s gross.”

“It’s sophisticated. An acquired taste.”

“I’ll pretend you didn’t just insult me because I don’t like wine.”

“Here,” Grant stood up and walked behind the bar. He took the bottle and raised it to his lips and then took a small swallow. “It’s not so bad,” he said, setting the bottle back down in front of them.

They stood in silence; then Lucy moved past Grant to the fire. She sat down on the hearth and rubbed her hands in front of the flame.

When she looked up, Grant was looking at her. He rested his elbows on the bar and scratched the top of his head.

“Have you been thinking about how many other people are like me?” He asked her.

“Catholic, piano-playing, hot-air balloon geniuses?”

Grant rolled his eyes. “Incorrigible.”

“Come on,” Lucy tucked her hands into her lap. “You know I don’t know how to answer that.”

They had been having the same conversations since they left Oregon. It was always variations on a theme: speculative musings, worries about the future, addressing the unanswerable. Sometimes they would know the topic was a repeat and they’d discuss it again out of interest—and out of a human need to say, “I’m still thinking about this. It’s still on my mind.” And other times, it was like they had forgotten they’d traversed that road before, delving deeply into a conversation before realizing that it felt familiar.

Out of their more common topics, they often wondered about Nebraska. What was in Brixton? Would her family be in plain sight? What if they got there and no one was there? Or they pondered life as they knew it: Would they ever eat ice cream again? How long would it take before buildings crumbled? Were there groups of indigenous people in the rain forest somewhere totally protected from the virus and living life like normal? Could there be more people immune and carving out a life in the ruins?

They never talked about Lucy’s dad.

They never speculated about his role in the bioterrorism.

Lucy let those questions stay unasked. Both of them seemed to understand that to admit Scott King was somehow involved meant they were walking straight into the lion’s den. It was a scenario that was too painful to contemplate fully.

“I know, I know,” Grant replied and he joined Lucy by the fire. “I just keep thinking how cool it would be if we just met up with a whole group of people…immune…and then we’d realize that we can start over, you know? Start a little city. Do things right.”

Grant had said that before too. “A little village, where people are kind to each other, and you pay for things with your talents, and no one is in charge, and everyone is valued,” he had mentioned once. He waxed on about taking chicken eggs over to his neighbor’s house to exchange for fresh cow’s milk. A place where everyone was a giant family with no hidden agendas. Lucy thought it sounded like the kind of city in a science-fiction movie where everyone turned out to be robots. His brand of post-apocalyptic socialism sounded nice in theory, but even Lucy knew it wouldn’t take long for people to fight for power.

She had taken AP Government, after all.

“I’m sure you aren’t the only one who survived the virus after exposure. You can’t be.” She said it once and she said it again, for his sake.

“Maybe if we get to Nebraska and we don’t—” Grant stopped and looked at Lucy; he lowered his eyes.

“It’s okay. Don’t stop yourself on my account.”

“If we can’t find anything…maybe we can really work on hunting for other survivors.”

Lucy shook her head. “That never works in the movies,” she replied. “They’d be nice and accommodating at first and then we’d wake up right at the moment where they were about to eat us. Survivors of the apocalypse are always cannibals. We should just go home.”

Home. Oregon was still her home.

“Sure,” he conceded. He leaned in to the fire and grabbed a stick from nearby and poked at a log; tiny sparks flew up into the flue. “Sure.”

They slept in the lodge that night, moving their feathered comforters down in front of the fire and sleeping side by side. Grant polished off half the bottle of wine before curling up into a ball and snoring into the wee hours of the morning. Lucy used pillows from the lounge couches as a mattress, but by the time the sun crept into the mountainous skyline, Lucy found herself flat on the floor—her cheek cool against the wooden boards.

Drool-stained and sweaty, Lucy sat up and rubbed her eyes. Her body was thick and sluggish from exhaustion and dehydration. She poked Grant with her toe, jostling his body and moving him back and forth until he peeked out of one eye and then clamped it shut with a groan.

“Morning already?” he asked.

“Uh-huh,” Lucy replied.

He rolled into a sitting position and lifted his arms above his head. Then he stretched with a loud yawn and plopped his hands back down; his front cowlick stuck straight up, the rest of his shaggy hair falling in clumps around his face.

“Breakfast?” he asked.

“We have our ready-meals. Let’s eat on the road.”

“Oh, look who’s eager now?” Grant smiled.

She shrugged. It was true she woke up with more resolve to leave their secluded hideaway, but she still felt covered in general unease. There was no more procrastination, no more conjecture. It was like she had been standing on the edge of a diving board, waiting for the motivation to fly forward into the water, and finally she realized that if she didn’t just jump someone would have to push her.

She hated being pushed.

“Let’s load up.”

“Okay.” Grant eyed her suspiciously. “No ceremonious goodbye? No morning walk around the lake? That’s so unlike you. I’d thought that you’d have written a eulogy to the mountain already.”

She shook her head, ignoring his playful dig. “I’m ready to see my family. I’m ready to know the truth.”

They walked back to their shared cabin and shoveled their few pieces of clothing, discarded toiletries, and remaining food containers into their backpacks and then trudged in silence back to their waiting car. Lucy did pause to take in the majestic Tetons and the glistening lake one last time; she wanted to write a note in the dust on the cabin’s kitchen counter: We were here. But at the last second she walked away, leaving the dust intact.

Grant backed out of the parking spot and traveled up through the winding roads back to the highway. While the highways were still littered with abandoned cars, this area of the country wasn’t inundated with blockage. There was just enough destruction to remind them that they weren’t just leaving their Yellowstone vacation and heading back to the real world.

“Keep an eye out for an exchange car,” Grant said to Lucy as he picked up speed. “We’ve got about half a tank left which won’t get us very far.”

“How far to our destination? Eight hours?”

“About.”

She drew in a shaky breath. Her hand went to Salem’s crucifix, a habit that had formed the past week.

“We’ve got this,” Grant said and he took his right hand off the steering wheel and reached over to give Lucy a comforting pat. She leaned in to his touch and let his hand linger on her shoulder. “Seriously, Lula…at the risk of sounding insensitive…what’s the worst that could happen?”