Elle stood up. The kids on the other side of the building were staring at her. Awestruck? Probably not. They thought she was crazy.
“Okay,” Jay said. “I guess I’m jumping, too.”
He was tall, and his stride was impressive. Elle backed up and watched as he ran toward the ledge and launched himself over the gap, landing in a neat roll near her feet. He looked up at her, eyes sparking.
“You are insane,” he said. “But good thinking, kid.”
The frizzy blonde and the Asian twins followed suit. The Asian girl barely made it, but Jay caught her wrist before the girl could go tumbling to her death.
“You know a place where we could hide out, crazy girl?” the blonde asked Elle. “The Klan’s on the hunt today. We need to lie low.”
Elle thought about her question.
Should she help these kids? They could very well kill her the second she turned her back. Then again, they hadn’t killed her yet, so that was a fairly positive sign.
“I know a place,” she said.
Jay raised an eyebrow.
“Show us,” he replied.
Elle nodded.
A rusty, decrepit fire escape stretched from the roof to the street. Elle swung her legs over the ledge and tested her weight on the metal platform. It shifted a little. She steadied herself and started climbing down. The other kids followed suit. Elle was faster than they were. She reached the bottom, tensely waiting for them to do the same.
“Now what?” the blonde whispered.
“Follow me,” Elle replied.
She peeked her head around the corner of the building. There was no Klan in sight. They were probably making their way up the stairs of the other skyscraper, hoping to trap the kids on the roof.
“Run,” Elle said.
She sprinted swiftly across the street, ducking into the next alley. She checked to make sure they had no pursuers. There was only the distant sound of the Klan’s shouts as they barreled through the empty apartment building, searching for the children.
Chapter Four
Elle didn’t take them home. Her apartment was her secret, and sharing it with total strangers would be stupid. Instead she took them to an old bakery. La Fresh was the name. It was a small shop hidden in an alleyway. At one point, Elle was sure that it had been trendy and hip. Now it was just impossible to find, camouflaged behind vines and creeping foliage.
Elle slipped through the front door. The brass bell on the door tinkled. Chairs and tables were mostly intact, but the glass case was empty. No more pastries. No more coffee.
“How did you know about this place?” Jay asked.
Elle didn’t answer. She didn’t trust them.
“We’ll stay quiet until tomorrow morning,” Elle said. “Then we can go our separate ways.”
She backed into the corner of the kitchen. A broken coffeemaker lay on the floor.
“What’s your name?” the blonde asked.
Elle cocked her head. Should she tell her? What harm could it do?
“Elle,” she said.
“Like the letter?”
“Yeah.” She held up her index finger and her thumb, making an L shape. “Elle for loser.”
Jay smirked.
“I’m Georgia,” the blonde said, thickening her southern accent for dramatic effect. “This is Flash.” She gestured to the Asian boy, then to his sister. “This is his sister, Pix. And the tall loner in the corner is Jay.”
“Somebody should keep a lookout,” Elle said, “in case the Klan tracks us here.”
“You know your way around the city,” Jay stated, turning to Elle.
“We just got here,” Georgia said, sitting on the counter. “I gotta say, this ain’t the L.A. I was familiar with.”
“Where did you all come from?” Elle asked.
“We were in a bunker. All of us.” She gestured to the rest of the kids in the room. “There was a big group of us at the beginning. After the chemical weapons…well, some people went to the surface too soon. A lot of them… died.” Georgia shrugged. “You can’t fix stupid.”
Elle blinked.
“You were in a bunker?” she asked. “For how long?”
“Until two months ago,” Pix stated. She had a pretty, singsong accent. “We didn’t know what we would find when we came up. The statistical probability of us finding an inhabitable urban environment—”
“—Don’t get so technical, Pix,” Jay interrupted. “The bunkers were underground. There were about twenty of us at the beginning — all young, like us. We had everything we needed. Food, water, radio contact, medicine. But it didn’t last. Some went stir-crazy, and we ran out of supplies. The bunker was never meant to support twenty people. We lost almost everyone.”
“Has the whole world gone crazy?” Georgia asked. “What’s the rest of California like?”
Elle could see the fear in their eyes. The confusion. She couldn’t imagine being locked away in the ground for a year, emerging into a world that was completely destroyed. It must have sucked.
“I don’t know what the rest of the world is like,” she said. “But I do know that most of California is dangerous like Los Angeles.”
“What about the military?” Georgia asked. “I thought the United States was all-powerful or something.”
“Apparently not,” Elle shrugged. “What do you guys know about Omega?”
“Not much. Only that they’re everywhere.”
“Almost everywhere. They leave Hollywood and Santa Monica pretty much alone — they like to stay in Beverly Hills and downtown Los Angeles.” Elle looked out the window. “I don’t know who they are or where they came from, but they’re bad. Really bad.”
“We’ve only been in Hollywood for a week,” Jay went on. “There’s no food.”
“There is if you know where to look,” Elle replied, a sad smile spreading across her face. “Some food is safe to eat, as long as it’s sealed. Don’t eat anything that’s been exposed to the air. The chemicals might have poisoned it. The same goes for water.”
Georgia shared a sideways glance with Jay.
“You know a lot,” Georgia said. “How do you stay alive all by yourself, shortstack?”
“I stay alive because I’m all by myself,” Elle answered. “The Klan hunts in packs, and the only way to stay off their radar is if I’m smaller, quieter and faster than they are. Which I am. And that’s why I’m still alive.”
“I have a question for you,” Elle said, turning the tables.
“Ask,” Jay replied.
“What kind of a bunker were you guys hiding in? How many people were there? Were you there with your families or what?”
This time, it was Pix’s twin brother, Flash, who answered:
“The bunker was built underneath a juvenile correctional facility. For emergencies. When Omega came, a lot of the kids in the facility died before we even made it into the bunker.”
Elle released a frustrated sigh.
“So you were all in juvenile hall before Day Zero?” she asked.
“What’s Day Zero?” Jay said.
“The day the power went out. When everything happened.” Elle narrowed her gaze. “You didn’t answer my question. Were you in jail?”
“Yeah, we were,” Georgia said, tossing her hair back.
So. These children were orphaned juvenile delinquents. If Elle didn’t trust them before, she sure as heck didn’t trust them now.
“I hope none of you were wanted for murder,” she grumbled as she retreated farther into the back of the building.
“Nah!” Georgia called. “I mean, before the Collapse? No. After?” A sly smile spread across her face. “Maybe.”
Elle didn’t believe her.
Like her mother always said, Where there’s smoke, there’s firewater.