Текст книги "State of Emergency"

Автор книги: Summer Lane

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Chapter Seven

Long story short, it takes us about two and a half days to get to Bakersfield. By the time I drag my sorry butt to the other side of the city limit line, I’m willing to take anything – even a skateboard – over my aching feet. I’m soaked to the bone, freezing, starving, half mad with dehydration, and the headache I had in the Grapevine is back in full force, slamming against my skull like a sledgehammer.

As for Chris, he and I went for about twenty-four hours without speaking.

Well, I guess I went without speaking while he carried one-way conversations. Anyway, by this point we are both so hungry and cold that Chris has agreed to scope out the Emergency Camp – but only on the condition that we don’t show ourselves unless we’re positive that it’s safe.

Whatever. I’m turning into an ice cube so I don’t care anymore.

Bakersfield is basically a big flat city in the middle of a desert. Today there’s not a soul in sight, but I’ve gotten used to the absence of people over the last four and half days. We take an off ramp into the heart of the city, right where there’s a big blue and yellow sign that says Bakersfield. Everything is flooded with water. Any buildings that I see have the windows punched out. All the restaurants and grocery stores are especially ravaged.

Other than the deserted landscaping and abandoned city, I can look out to the left of the freeway and see big open fields. John Wayne’s oil fields, my dad would always tell me if we drove up north on the freeway. Apparently the big man with the gun made some extra cash drilling for oil out in the middle of nowhere.

Typical cowboy.

“Where is it?” I ask, confused. “Where are all the people?”

“If there’s a camp here,” Chris observes, “it should be near the city center…maybe.”

He doesn’t look too sure. We walk down a curving road that goes right underneath the Bakersfield sign. After a few hundred feet we come to a cluster of hotels and restaurants. I almost scream with surprise.

There are people everywhere!

Big chain link fences are surrounding the entire shopping center, marked with signs that read EMERGENCY RELIEF CAMP. Men, women and children are sitting around the edges of the fence, most of them wearing garbage bags to shield from the rain. There are military trucks parked on the asphalt and officials wearing black uniforms standing around the buildings.

“This is an Emergency Camp?” I say, disbelief flooding through me. “Everybody here’s wearing garbage bags!”

“Those are ponchos, actually,” Chris corrects, a wry grin on his face. “And don’t move. What do you see there?” He points to the outer edge of an old motel. An official is standing next to a soldier in a light blue uniform. Both of them are armed.

“What are they armed for?” I whisper.

We sink back into the shadows of the trees, watching the camp through the leaves. “Good question,” Chris says.

I spot an elderly woman moving around the parking lot, fenced off and guarded by the black uniformed men. There are stockpiles of supplies. Some people are climbing up and down the outdoor stairwell of the old motels. Others are milling around the fast food restaurants.

“This is weird,” I say.

“This is wrong,” he replies. His hands tighten into fists beside me, and I can feel his entire body tense. “Follow me.”

I do, even though I have no idea what he thinks he’s going to do. As far as I can tell, there is no ENTER HERE sign anywhere around the camp, and there’s certainly no Red Cross truck. Something is seriously whacked.

Chris leads me through the park across the street from the shopping mall turned relief camp, pausing behind a parked car on the curb. We kneel beside it and, since it’s almost nighttime, stand up and approach the fence. My heart starts beating faster, even though I couldn’t say why I’m getting anxious. I just am.

Chris turns and follows the curve of the fence, going around the shopping center, ducking behind every other abandoned car on the street. So far nobody has noticed us. They’re all staring at the puddles on the ground or sitting motionless with their eyes closed.

Like a bunch of zombies.

Chris raises his hand and makes a fist, the signal to stop.

I almost run headlong into his back just as he drops to the ground in a crouch. We’re on the other side of the parking lot, looking out over the shopping center. The fence covers a lot more ground than I thought, and the weird thing? There’s no open space. No exit, just a gated entrance with a few guards hovering around it. There’s also a lot of wicked-looking barbed wire looped across the top of the fence.

 It’s like…a cage.

“Chris…” I whisper, a chilling thought creeping into my mind.

“I know.” All of the sudden his gaze hardens. He swears. “My god.”

“What?” I demand, struggling to see across the street. “What is it?”

“More.” He presses his forehead against his hand, taking a deep breath.

I search the parking lot in frustration, trying to figure out what he’s talking about. All I can see is a bunch of people gathered on the other side of the compound. On our side of the street there’s a big, black plastic covering a bunch of supplies.

“They’re bodies, Cassie,” Chris hisses, turning my chin towards the sheet. “Underneath. Dead bodies.”

I suck my breath in, staring at it. He’s right. The sheet is covering a bunch of objects stacked on top of each other. Little red spots are seen around the corners. Dried blood? I slap my hands over my mouth in order to avoid screaming.

“No. This isn’t happening,” I moan, kneeling like a sick person.

Chris places his hand on the small of my back, smoothing my hair away from my face. He turns my head upward, one hand on each cheek. “We have to get out of here,” he whispers. “Can do you that?”

I manage to nod, horrified.

He smiles like he’s proud of me and grabs my hand. Both of us back slowly away from the camp, but Chris stops me and makes a motion for me to kneel in the bushes and be quiet.

 “Who are these people?” I mutter, shaking. “What kind of army does this?”

Chris wrinkles his brow, bowing his head. Both of us listen to the distant chatter of the conversations between the uniformed men.

“German,” he whispers.

“What?”

“They’re speaking German,” he replies. “And if I’m not mistaken…” he pauses, concentrating on listening. “There’s a little French in there, too.”

“Is this some kind of foreign invasion?” I breathe.

“I don’t know.” Chris points to the men wearing the dark blue uniforms. There is a black patch on their sleeve, over which is a white O. One of the guards turns around, and I can see a larger insignia stitched on the backside of his jacket. It reads: Omega. The O is significantly larger than the rest of the lettering, designed to hold a picture of the continents of the world inside the sphere. “I’ve never seen a uniform like that.” He rests his arm on his knee. “What the hell does Omega stand for?” He nods towards the guys in the black. “They don’t have any ID at all. They could be mercenaries.”

“Omega could be an acronym,” I suggest, my voice quivering. “I don’t know. Chris, please. Let’s get out of here.”

He studies the scene before us for a moment longer before he puts his arm around my shoulders and pulls me down the street, scanning up and down for movement. We reach the Bakersfield sign again and keep walking until we find another freeway onramp, but that’s when we hear the noise.

It’s music.

Chris and I share a glance, surprised. It seems to be echoing down the street. It sounds like pop music. “What’s going on?” I whisper, bewildered.

Chris doesn’t look like he knows. Without a word, be both silently agree to creep down the street and scope out the source of the music. We pass a few empty businesses – some loan companies and a coffee shop – until we reach the corner. I poke my head around the edge of a brick building and stare.

Generator-powered lights are hooked up to the tops of the buildings, and there are people in this area of the city. They are not fenced in, but most of the buildings are covered with weird graffiti. I can’t make out what it says; Chris doesn’t comment. Some more guards in Omega uniformsare patrolling the sidewalks, identifiable by their blue uniforms. There are posters in the window that say something. I can’t quite make it out…I duck back when a trooper turns his gaze towards the corner.

The back of my head presses against a bookstore window. I look up, noticing that a poster is taped to it. I snatch it away, reading the bold lettering in the dim lighting:

State of Emergency

What follows is a list of rules and regulations for dealing with what the article calls the collapse. Confused, I fold it up and stuff it in my pocket just as Chris meets my gaze.

“What?” I whisper.

He shakes his head, motioning for me to follow him. I do, and we both jog down the street, away from the creepy guards and the strange pop music on the city speakers.

“What was that?” I exclaim. “Because it sure wasn’t a bunch of people waiting in line for a Black Friday sale.”

It’s like something you see in the movies, one of those scary films about Nazi Germany. Keeping our backs to the wall of the building, Chris and I exchange glances. This is wrong on so many levels.

“We should leave,” I whisper.

“No argument there,” he replies. “We’ll make a…”

His eyes narrow, staring at something across the street. I follow his line of sight, my muscles seizing up. A man is standing at the entrance of an alleyway, dressed in khakis and a Hawaiian polo shirt. He’s older, with thinning gray hair, a mustache, and round glasses reflecting the harsh floodlights.

He makes a motion to us.

I look at Chris. “What does he want?” I ask.

“He’s not one of them,” he answers, apparently trying to come to a decision about how to respond. Just ten feet around the corner are a bunch of death troopers…we have to play this right. “He wants us to come over there.”

I lick my lips, realizing just how dry my mouth is from anxiety.

“So?”

The man motions again, mouthing the word, “Help.”

Chris immediately takes my arm and sprints across the street without warning. Terror spikes in my system. What if we’re seen?

We make it across the street, stopping to take cover behind the alley wall. Up close the man has an ashy color his skin tone. His eyes are watery, but his expression is tense. “Thank you,” he says, a voice rough and weary with age.

“What’s going on?” Chris asks.

“What isn’t going on, son?” he shakes his head. “Look, you kids need to get off the streets. It’s too late to be wandering around.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask.

“The curfew.” The man looks at me like I’m crazy. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

“No,” Chris says.

“Then why in…” he trails off, sounding tired. “You’d better come with me. If they catch us out here we’ll all get punished.”

A chill slithers down my spine as the man turns and starts walking down the alley. He has an obvious limp, and as we walk, I notice purple bruises on the back of his neck and arms. “Can you tell us what’s happening here?” I ask. “Why are they killing people? What’s –”

The man whips around so fast I stumble backwards and hit Chris in the chest.

“Keep your mouth shut, girl,” he hisses. “You’ll get us all killed with questions like that. Just keep your head down and follow me.”

Chris wraps his fingers around my elbow and presses a finger against his lips, indicating that we should be silent. “Can we trust him?” I mouth.

Chris shrugs.

Why not?

We follow the old man down the alley. He pauses where it connects to another street, checking each direction. There doesn’t seem to be any of those Omega guards patrolling the streets or creepy pop music going on here. Just overturned dumpsters and shattered windows.

The old man makes a quick right and stays close to a brick apartment building. There are trash and food wrappers littered all over the sidewalk. I turn my head to the left and watch a scruffy looking dog run into the street, sniff some garbage, and disappear.

The old man stops at an apartment door. It’s a heavy wooden thing, protected with metal security bars over the outside. He opens both the bars and the door with a key, ushers us inside, and locks everything behind us.

I keep a firm grip on Chris’s arm as we step into a dark, dusty stairwell. The old man says, “Watch your step,” and starts climbing the carpeted steps in front of us. It’s impossible to tell how wide the stairway is, or what color the walls are. Chris and I just follow him until we come to what I guess is the fourth floor.

We walk down a narrow hallway that smells like cigarette smoke. Not a single sound can be heard coming from any room, making the whole thing even stranger.

At last, the old man stops in front of an apartment door, opens it, and motions for us to go inside. Chris walks in first, ready to take whatever surprise is waiting for us first. I follow the old man inside, surprised to see nothing but a small apartment illuminated by the light of multiple candles.

There are books everywhere, and pictures, too. The old man locks the door behind us, takes a deep breath and says, “Now we can talk.” He offers his hand. “The name’s Walter Lewis.”

Chris shakes his hand.

“Chris,” he replies, leaving out his last name. “And this is Cassidy.”

Walter turns to look at me.

“You together?” he asks.

I feel my cheeks turn red while Chris flashes a self-satisfied smile.

“Technically,” he replies. “But I think you owe us an explanation first. Who are you and why did you bring us here?”

Walter wipes his hands on his pants.

“You were out past curfew,” he says. “You could have been shot on sight.”

He walks past me and disappears through a door, popping up on the other side of a short wall. I take a step back and realize he’s standing over the kitchen sink, looking into the living room. The curtains are pulled tight – nailed, actually.

“What’s curfew?” I ask. “What’s happening? Do you know anything about these camps? Where are those soldiers from? They were speaking all these languages…” I trail off.

Walter sighs and I hear him pouring water into something metal. When he comes back into the living room, he’s holding a coffeepot and some mugs. “They – meaning Omega – arrived here the day after the EMP destroyed everything,” he says, setting the mugs on a coffee table crowded with magazines. “Started rounding people up, sending them to the Emergency Relief Camp – that’s what they called it at the beginning.” His eyes become hooded, sad. “Most people went willingly.”

He pours some coffee into the mugs and offers a cup to each of us. I mutter thanks and close my hands around the hot glass. “Why are they killing people? And who’s Omega? I’ve never heard of them.”

Walter looks long and hard at me.

“Truthfully, I’m not really sure,” he says at last. “It’s just what these troops call themselves. Omega.”

“Come again?”

“I’ve never heard of them,” Chris replies, looking dumbfounded. And here I thought he knew everything. “What the hell’s going on?”

I look back at Walter for a deeper analysis.

“Your name was Cassidy, wasn’t it?” he asks, furrowing his brow.

I nod.

He strokes his chin, setting the coffeepot down and rifling through a stack of books near an empty fireplace. He pulls one out. “Here, Cassidy,” he says. “What’s the title of this book?”

I wrinkle my nose, disliked being talked to like I’m a toddler.

“World War Two,” I say, reading the red letters.

“Correct.” He sits down on the coffee table, so I join Chris on the sofa. Walter flips through a few pages and adjusts his glasses. “Ah. Now what’s this, Cassidy?”

I peer at the book, trying to make out the black and white images in the candlelight: candid shots of Japanese Americans staring at the camera behind a wire fence. “Internment camps,” I say, looking up.

“Yes.” Walter gets up and walks to another bookshelf. “During the 1940s, Japanese Americans were imprisoned in internment camps during the war. In Germany, Hitler sent millions of Germans and Jews alike to concentration camps where they were either worked to death or executed in a gas chamber.” He stops to take slow breath. “Around the world, periodically, the populace is overtaken by a superior power and either enslaved, killed or freed. What we have in Omega is a force that is doing the first two as fast as they can.”

I blink, all of this sinking in slowly.

“Why? Where did they come from? What country do they represent?” I say slowly.

“No country,” Walter shrugs. “You look around town and you’ll see posters advertising their presence.” I take the poster I peeled off the wall out of my pocket and smooth it out over my knee. He’s right. “They represent not one country, but all,” he goes on. “They seem to be some sort of emergency response force at first glance, but then again, their soldiers range in nationality from American to Russian. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“So who do they answer to?” I ask. “The US? The U.N.? South America? Who?”

“I couldn’t say,” Walter replies. “It’s possible that they’re some kind of branch of the United Nations...but that would come as a surprise to me. I’ve never seen an insignia like theirs before.” He reaches out and studies the poster that’s sitting in my lap. The O in Omega is four times as big as the rest of the letters, and once again, I’m left to look at all the continents of the earth that are crammed inside the O.

“So we don’t know where they’re from,” I say. “What’s they’re purpose?”

“Who gives a damn?” Chris spits. “They’re killing innocent people. Where’s our military?”

“I heard rumors that some of our men were engaged in combat on the East Coast,” Walter admits. “It’s possible that this is an invasion of some sort. Then again, all I know is what I see.”

“How big is Omega? Do we know?”

“Does it matter?” Walter answers, taking his glasses off to wipe them on his shirt. “They are here, and that’s all that’s important. They are killing us. I do not need to why they’re doing it – just that they are.”

“Why aren’t we fighting them? Is anybody even trying?” Chris says, every muscle in his body tense. He looks ready to kill somebody.

“I’m sure someone is trying, boy. But at the moment our country is very weak, isn’t it? We just got hit with an EMP. Everybody’s panicking. Our own government is completely dissolved without a way to communicate with its branches. It has little to no power right now. What can they do to protect us? I’m sure there are military forces on the front lines – wherever that is – right now, but they can’t be everywhere at once. We were taken by surprise.”

Chris leans forward.

“Sounds like these Omega pukes were ready to roll in before this thing even hit,” he states. “They were pretty well prepared for this. We saw more executions about forty miles from here. You think Omega’s responsible for the EMP?”

“We may never know who was behind the EMP,” Walter replies. “And if I were you, I wouldn’t dedicate your time to figuring out why or how. I would worry about staying alive now.”

“But shouldn’t we know why some random army we’ve never heard of before is trying to kill all of us?” I point out.

“No.” Walter narrows his gaze. “Your life has one purpose, now. And that is to stay alive.”

“You were in the military,” Chris says suddenly, leaning forward.

“Yes,” Walter sighs, setting the book down abruptly. “I was a Pilot…a long time ago.”

“During World War Two,” I add, putting the pieces together.

“I was a history teacher for thirty years,” he sighs. “I thought I’d seen it all, too. But this…this is a takeover. They’re killing off anyone they think might get in their way. I saw this once, more than sixty years ago. Never thought I’d see it here. And who knows how far it’s spread?”

I stare at my coffee, suddenly feeling sick.

“You saw this before inGermany,” I say, bringing my eyes up to his.

He says nothing.

“I’m only alive right now because I wasn’t stupid enough to run into the streets when everything went to hell,” he replies, standing up again. “But I’ll run out of food eventually. Not that I’m upset about that. I’m old enough to die, don’t you think?”

I raise an eyebrow.

“Self pity much?” I say before I can stop myself.

Walter rubs his hands on his pants again – a nervous habit, I’m guessing.

“Do you live here alone?” Chris asks, his voice low.

“Now I do.” Walter paces to the window, the one nailed over with curtains. “They took my wife. First day. She went downstairs…haven’t seen her since.”

My throat seizes up.

“I’m so sorry,” I say.

He waves me off.

“It was her decision, not mine,” he answers, but his voice is shaky.

“Thank you for letting us stay here,” I tell him.

“You’re not staying here,” he corrects, turning around. His eyes are bright with tears from speaking about his wife. My heart breaks just looking at him. “I brought you here so you wouldn’t be shot on the streets. If you try to get out by just walking through the town, you’re dead. They’ve got guards posted on every block that leads out of the city.”

“We got into the city fine,” I point out.

“They’re not trying to stop people from coming in,” Walter says, picking up the coffeepot. Pouring a cup. “They’re keeping people from coming out.”

Chris rests his arm against the back of the sofa.

“What are you saying, old man?”

Walter breaks into a wide smile.

“I know a safe way out of the city,” he grins.

“And?”

“And to be honest, I just wanted to see if somebody could really pull it off.”

Chris stands up, drinking the entire contents of the coffee cup in one gulp.

“Details?” he asks.

“There are tunnels under the city,” Walter explains. “My wife…” he clears his throat, “was an architect. She helped build them. They were abandoned about fifteen years ago. I know how to get in, and all you have to do is follow them until you come to the end, which is well outside the city limits.”

“Are you serious?” I exclaim. “Tunnels under the city?”

“All cities have secrets,” Walter shrugs.

“How do we get to these tunnels?” Chris asks, not nearly as impressed as me.

“I’ll show you,” Walter says, “but we can’t do it until it gets dark. It’s too easy to be caught otherwise.”

“Why haven’t you gotten out of the city through the tunnels?” I demand, looking for a trap. “If they’re such a good escape route, why are you still here?”

“Sweetheart, I’m over eighty-seven years old,” he replies, the corners of his mouth curling upward. “I’m not in any condition to be making a daring escape.”

I blush, embarrassed that he even had to point that out.

“Ah, right,” I cough.

“Are you hungry?” Walter asks.

“Starved,” I reply.

“I’ll get some food for you.”

“We can’t take your food,” Chris says, being uncharacteristically kind to our host.

“Boy, I’m dying either way,” he laughs. “No use worrying about me.”

I sigh. Cheery.