A white coating instantly covered the room and got into their hair and eyes and clothes. She heard a distant noise. It was someone coughing, but with her ears still ringing she couldn’t be sure if it was her or one of the others, or if she was mistaking the ringing for coughing. It was hard to tell, but it cleared up a bit when she shook off the thick white layer of dust and stood up.
Luke and Ted, similarly covered in a blanket of white powder, looked as if their ears were also ringing.
Ted shouted, “What?” at her, but she shook her head. She hadn’t said anything. Had she? He looked just as confused.
She helped Carly and Vera up from the floor. They were both fine, but like the others, covered in white and looked lost. Carly’s bright red hair had turned a strange shade of pink. Kate had to suppress a slight giggle.
She felt a tap on her shoulder. Will stood next to her. He pointed at the bright parking lot beyond the rubble, then nudged her in that direction. She stumbled over piles of brick, wooden beams, and what was left of the ceiling and wall.
She could smell sunlight, and it kept her going until she finally staggered out into the parking lot and the bright, warm sun. Away from the Archers, away from the swirling white and red mist.
When she turned back and saw what remained of the store, it took her breath away.
More than half of the building had collapsed in on itself, leaving a huge pile of rubble in its wake. It reminded her of those old film reels of cities devastated by carpet bombing during World War II. In a sense, she guessed bombs had hit the Archers store, except these had been controlled explosions masterminded by Danny. The cave-in had created a jagged wall around the back section, where the employee lounge was located.
Will appeared behind her. “Danny can be a real painter when he puts his mind to something!” he shouted.
“Too bad he doesn’t put in as much work on his jokes!” she shouted back.
He grinned.
“What now?” she shouted.
He glanced at his watch, then shouted back, “We have ten hours of sunlight left! Let’s make the most of it!”
Danny and the others fumbled their way out of what was left of the employee lounge behind them.
“Everybody good?” Will shouted at them.
Danny gave him a blank look. “What?”
“Everybody good?” Will shouted again, louder this time — if that was possible.
Danny shook his head and shouted back, “I can’t hear a thing you’re saying! But if you’re asking if I’m good, then fuck, yeah!”
Vera stuck out her thumb and smiled, apparently agreeing with Danny.
It made Kate laugh. It felt strange, but at the same time, so deliriously fantastic.
CHAPTER 18
LARA
Lara sat up and looked toward the covered window across the room. It was dark inside the travel agency, but what she couldn’t see wasn’t as important as what she had felt or heard.
“Did you hear that?” she whispered.
Tony was sitting half-asleep on an armchair across from her, but she knew he had been dozing on and off despite his best efforts to stay awake. It was hard not to with the stillness of the city around them at night.
“What?” he said, trying to sit up straight.
She stood up and tiptoed quietly to the window, careful to keep her voice down. “I heard something. It sounded like an explosion.”
“I didn’t hear anything.”
“I felt the ground move, too.”
“I must have dozed off…”
She peered out the window, careful not to move the curtains. She couldn’t see very much in the darkness, but there seemed to be a slight brightening in the distance. It quickly faded as she tried to adjust her eyes to make out more detail.
“What is it?” Tony asked behind her.
“I’m not sure.” She tried to pick up the light again. “It’s gone now. It was there, just for a brief moment…”
From the corner of her eye, she saw movement and quickly stepped away from the curtains. Shadows flitted past the window, moving too fast to see their silhouetted outlines properly. But she knew what they were.
One, then two, then a dozen. They seemed to be moving in the same direction.
Toward the explosion…
Tony was watching her from across the room, the golf club resting across his lap. Her roommate Tracy played on the University of Houston’s golf team, and they found her golf bag inside her closet. When they had decided to leave the city, they had armed themselves with Tracy’s golf clubs. Neither one of them knew anything about guns, and the steel clubs seemed both dangerous and innocuous enough.
They had been traveling most of the day on a dirt bike Tony had found near her apartment, stopping only to get fuel and to hunt for supplies. There was something about riding on a bike that was tiring, but with the highways so congested, it was the only way to travel through the city. They had been on it for four hours before calling it a day.
The travel agency they were hiding in now was the perfect spot to spend the night — small and hardly noticeable between two bigger buildings. There was a door and a window at the front, so they had pushed a desk against the door and covered the window.
She padded back to her bedroll on the floor. It was pitch-black inside, with just a little moonlight filtering through the curtains. They had solar-powered flashlights in their packs, along with food and bottles of water. Supplies weren’t hard to come by. There was plenty of food left behind, most of it still good, though she doubted that was going to be the case a month from now. Gasoline proved more difficult to find. Without power to pump the tanks the gas stations were useless, so Tony had siphoned gas from cars along the way using a plastic tube.
She sat back down on her sleeping bag.
“Could have been thunder,” he said.
She shook her head. “It was an explosion.”
“Okay, it was an explosion.” He sounded tired. “Get some sleep. Let’s try to start on the road earlier tomorrow. Maybe we can get out of the city by afternoon.”
She nodded and lay down.
It had been slow going at first, with the dirt bike constantly running out of gas, and roads brimming with vehicles left behind by people fleeing the city. The rest of Houston beyond the Downtown area had been exactly as she and Tony expected. Depressingly deserted in the day and terrifyingly silent at night.
Around midnight, she drifted off to sleep, waking the next morning to sunlight on her face and Tony snoring lightly in the chair next to her. She sat up and watched him for a moment, the golf club clutched tightly in his hands. They had run across plenty of other weapons along the way, but for some reason he insisted on keeping the golf club.
“It feels right,” he had told her.
“It’s a golf club,” she reminded him.
“Yeah, but it’s a nine iron.”
“You don’t know what that means.”
“I know it’s better than an eight iron. It’s got an extra iron. That’s pretty good.”
They had a good laugh over that.
She glanced at her watch and then back at Tony. She thought about waking him, but he looked so peaceful, and he hadn’t really gotten a lot of sleep the last few days.
Instead, she sat back against the wall and watched him sleep for a while. For the first time in a long time, she allowed herself to enjoy the loneliness.
“Let me teach you how to ride,” Tony said.
“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”