Thunder and Acid: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller Page 2

  She poured half the can of beans into two bowls. Most for Maddox, a few spoonfuls for herself. She’d gladly give him everything if it meant he’d survive, but if she starved…Well, it wouldn’t serve him any, would it?

  Once in a while, when the boys were sleeping, she imagined that she was in front of a TV camera, wrapped in a scratchy wool blanket with Maddox clinging to her leg and Hunter cradled in one arm. “It’s just awful,” she’d say, “everything that’s happened. We’ve all lost so much. But I just give thanks to God that I have my family. The rest of it… it hurts to lose it. Everything’s gone, you know? But we were blessed. We survived, and we are blessed.”

  The cameraman would pan out, a wide shot of the debris field in front of her house, and the reporter would sign off with hope tilting her voice higher at the end.

  Each time she had that fantasy, Lerlaine hated herself for it. But it gave her comfort. More than praying did. So, she went back to it again and again, hating herself a little more each time for the delusion. No one was coming. There would be no benevolent stranger knocking on the door.

  Reality hit her hard and unforgiving. There would be no cameras. No helpers. No scratchy FEMA blanket. Just him.

  She closed her eyes and swallowed the sob that almost got past her lips. For several seconds she choked on it, until the convulsion passed, and she could wipe her eyes again and turn away from the counter with the two bowls. Maddox still carried on, but he’d quiet down once she put food in front of him.

  At least long enough to eat.

  In the dim living room, she found her little pumpkin red-faced on the couch, his face wet and snotty as he gasped for air. He’d been good for her and stayed where she’d put him but hadn’t been happy about it.

  Now, he reached up for her, his little fingers grasping at air. Save me, he said. I don’t know what’s wrong, but please, Mama, save me from it. Not with words. Never with words. The doctors warned her, what seemed like a lifetime ago, that he would need time. Time to speak, time to learn. Time they no longer possessed.

  “I’m here, Pumpkin.” She tried to soothe him with her voice, attempting to hide the raw scrape of her parched throat. “Mama brought you something to eat. Come on.”

  She eased the bowls onto the coffee table and slipped her hands under his little shoulders before lifting him onto her lap. Cradling him against her with one arm, she kissed his forehead. He wailed again, the sound stabbing at her ears, and pushed against her as if to get away.

  He didn’t like being held, and never had. But she kept him on her lap anyway and endured his little fist as he pounded at her shoulder. She sank down by the coffee table and reached for the bowl, tipping it to show him the beans. “See?” she whispered in his ear. “Hungry?”

  It was lucky, in a way, that she’d had so many cans. Maddox was picky about what he would eat, like most kids on the spectrum were. Somehow, he’d gotten a taste for baked beans, and she’d just been happy that wars at dinner time lessened, so she’d stocked up.

  Maddox’s crying eased into a weak kind of mewling, subsiding only when she gave him a spoonful of the beans. He ate in relative silence for a while. She should have relished it—the quiet. But it gave her time to think. About the lack of food. The lack of water. The looming threat of starvation.

  She’d held out for as long as she could, but now they had to move or die. There was only one place to go.

  His face loomed in her thoughts. Worn ugly from the sneers and scowls. His voice, always cruel. His fists and how they always seemed to find the best place to land a punch. The way he spit into a can while his eyes crawled over her body.

  The awful smell of him when he’d been drinking and pushed himself on her. She shuddered and scraped at the bowl to slip another spoonful of beans into Maddox’s mouth.

  She hadn’t gone far enough away. If she had, she wouldn’t have to make this decision now. But she hadn’t, and she did. Maddox accepted the last little bit of beans from the bowl.

  Hunter twitched in the bouncy seat where he’d been sleeping for much too long. If they didn’t go, her children would die ,and she would die with them. Maybe that would be better. The sweet relief of fading away from this life. Maybe they’d be together in heaven. Maybe God had spared them, but only long enough for her to make peace with it.

  But the plain fact was that she hadn’t made peace with it. She wanted to live; wanted her children to live. To have a chance to endure long enough to reach the other side. She grabbed her bowl and fed Maddox her share as well before retreating to the kitchen and dumping the remains of the can into the bowl. He ate, gaunt little cheeks ballooning with each bite, until he downed the entire can.

  As he finished, she gathered up her courage—or her desperation, maybe, but it didn’t matter—and knelt before him with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “How about we go outside?”

  Maddox’s hands flapped, and he reached up for her in the same way he had before, his hands opening and closing. Yes, please, let’s go outside!

  Lerlaine dressed him for the cold, wrapped herself in her winter jacket, and layered on a scarf. After easing Hunter into his car carrier, she layered extra blankets on top, shoving down the pain as he opened his tiny dark eyes before suckling at nothing and drifting back to sleep.

  She hauled the carrier to the stroller and snugged it down, shoving her emotions down with it. Better to feel nothing than the alternative.

  One deep breath at the door, and she threw it open. On any given June afternoon before, the sun would have hit them full in the face, scrunching her eyes and drawing a wail from Maddox. The blast of damp, thick air would frizz her hair and bead sweat across her forehead. Not today.

  Instead, it was barely above fifty and dark enough to mimic a cloudy sunset. A distant, dull glow brightened a smudge of sky to the west, but no warmth of sun’s rays penetrated the gloom.

  Lerlaine began to walk, one hand on the stroller, the other gripping Maddox’s tiny hand. He kicked at the ash where it piled on the ground, sending up puffs of what was still loose. A few times, she leaned down to tug his scarf over his face, but he didn’t like it and always pulled it down when she looked away.

  The world hung still and expectant like a graveyard—silent, but looming with growing fear. The trees that had made Lansing green for so many summers were now bare, broken, or fallen entirely. As if all the life had drained away.

  A memory of Lerlaine’s grandmother in the days before she died sprang to mind. She’d always been deathly thin, but she became a skeletal husk in the final days, dry and wan, with brittle hair and cracked skin patchy with sores. Alzheimer’s was a cruel mistress.

  At twelve, Lerlaine thought it was like her grandmother had already left, and that her body just hadn’t realized it yet. Lansing was like that now. Whatever had made it a place was gone, and the rest was just rotting away for lack of anything to keep it alive.

  Cars dotted the side of the road, wrecked or clogged by the ash until they choked and sputtered to death. Houses of neighbors she’d known for years were now scattered piles of debris like the towers of blocks Maddox loved to build and kick over. A few bits and pieces standing defiant in the face of the toddler’s wrath. Broken, sad reminders of what they’d been.

  Thanks to the wind, ash heaped up against anything still standing and caked into every crack and nook. As they walked, chunks of compressed ash dropped almost soundlessly from broken trees, shaken loose by the barest of disturbances to thwump to the ground in a puff. The breeze gathered up the new clumps, sending them spinning into some new resting place. The little swirls were everywhere, rising and falling like ghosts unsure where they belonged.

  When Maddox slowed, his scrawny frame exhausted from walking, Lerlaine picked him up and settled him on her hip. He laid his head against her shoulder, and she hoped that he would sleep, and that her occasional coughing didn’t jostle him too much. There wasn’t much further to go.

  The road turned to dirt the last half mile
or so, leading up a scraggly hill. At the end, she stood, heaving for breath, before a double-wide trailer, listening to the hacking growl of a gas generator. A tarp shielded Ray’s old race car out front, ash piled in the dips and valleys. She entertained the idea of stealing it for a long time as she calmed her nerves and slowed her breath.

  Can’t seem too desperate. Not that he wouldn’t know. After all, she’d never have come here if she wasn’t desperate, right? But she needed at least a scrap of dignity.

  Even if she managed to find the keys, which were somewhere inside, no doubt, where would she go? Any direction would be a gamble, and probably one with losing odds. With no food or water, she’d only be delaying the end.

  Ray, on the other hand, had a shed full of supplies, a freezer full of meat, and a cupboard packed with jerky and lard. It would be hard, sure. But they would survive here. It would be worth it in the end. Whatever he wanted, it was a price she could pay if it meant her children lived.

  She pushed away the fantasy of stealing his car and knocked on the door. It took almost a minute before the door groaned open. There he was.

  Greasy, unkempt hair hung over Ray’s bare shoulders. He hadn’t shaved in weeks, it looked like. His bloodshot eyes focused on her, full of contempt and hardness. For a long moment he looked her over before he spat a glob of sticky brown sludge into the empty soda bottle in his hand.

  The wad of chewing tobacco shifted beneath his lip as he nodded at her. “About damn time. Knew you’d come crawling up here, eventually. Hey kiddo.”

  Maddox watched Ray uneasily, his fingers tangling in his mother’s scarf as Ray showed stained teeth in a smile that Lerlaine only saw as vicious.

  “Well, get in,” he growled after another few seconds. “You’re letting the damned heat out. No wonder you came back. You’re too stupid to make it on your own.”

  Revulsion and pain stirred in Lerlaine’s belly, but she forced it down into the pit of her stomach and slipped inside.

  It was the only way.

  CHAPTER TWO

  LANA

  Horse Creek Base, New United States

  Thursday, June 17th, 7:15 am EST

  “Throw your arm over mine when I come in low.” Derek squared off to face Lana, rubber knife in one hand. “Start with that, okay?”

  She nodded and unfocused her eyes the way he’d instructed when they first started training together in the mornings, taking all of him in. Her breathing came deep and easy, and she waited for him to move. But in the span of a few heartbeats between waiting and the sudden twitch of his body, she managed to see it all again.

  Jessup, on the ground, blood spattered on the inside of his mask. That terrible, wet, hacking as his lungs filled with blood. His eyes, focused on her one moment, then on nothing the next. It was so real, so present in her mind, every detail carved perfectly in front of her, that she moved on autopilot. Not really seeing Derek at all.

  He came in low, like he’d said, one arm at his chest, the other coming upward with the knife toward her gut. Lana stepped into him, twisting to throw her arm over his so that she trapped it against her side. The maneuver left her facing nearly away from him, her hip pressed against his thigh. It was slow and clumsy, but she was learning.

  “That’s good.” He put a hand to her opposite hip and tugged her up a bit. “But you want your hip up here, level with mine. Feel that? How it seems like it fits right there?”

  Their hip bones knocked together, and his hand warmed her skin even through the green fatigue pants she wore. His warm breath smelled faintly of toothpaste as he leaned in, the muscle of his arm flexing firm beneath hers. He was solid, dependable. Gentle, but instructive. He liked her. It was obvious.

  In the abstract, she admitted he was a good-looking guy, built like a fighter, with that kind of jaw people called ‘chiseled’ and a dimple on his chin. He kept his hair army regulation buzzed, showing off a nicely shaped head—which wasn’t true for all the soldiers in Horse Creek—and his brown eyes were tinged with honey, almost amber. Before, she’d have taken one look at him and declared him hot. Combined with his kindness, he was the total package. Lana could see that.

  But she didn’t feel it. Not one bit. “Okay.” She stepped back. “Again. Faster this time.”

  Derek took a step back and squared up. His body tensed.

  Jessup gasped for air.

  Lana twisted her body, trapped Derek’s arm, her hip thumping against his.

  “Perfect. Just like that.”

  “Again.” She let him go. “Faster. Like you mean it.”

  He rubbed his jaw as he took a step back. “It helps to go slow for a while. So your body can learn to move right. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “I’ve been hurt before.” She settled into the closest thing to a stance he’d taught her. “I’m not some delicate flower that’s gonna get bruised, Derek. Faster.”

  He pursed his lips, then gave her a nod and bent his knees. This time there was almost no warning. He lurched forward.

  Jessup’s eyes widened with a last burst of pain before death claimed him. She hadn’t told him that she loved him. She didn’t know if she did or not, but she hadn’t told him, and didn’t he want to hear it in the end?

  Derek nearly crashed into her. She twisted at the last second, but not before the rubber knife jabbed her chest. She cursed and shoved him away. If it had been a real weapon, he’d have probably punctured a lung. She’d be drowning already, dying before his eyes.

  “Again. Fast like that. Like it actually happens.”

  He didn’t take position. Instead, he flipped the knife over, holding it in a reverse grip, and tucked it behind his belt. “Let’s take a break.”

  “I don’t need to take a break.” Her words came out clipped and mean as she glanced at the clock in the little makeshift training room. “I’ve got janitorial again in an hour and I’m never going to get off mop duty if I can’t fight. Go again.”

  Derek raised his hands. “Hey—Lana. Calm down. You’re shaking. You need a break.”

  She glanced down at her hands. He wasn’t wrong. They practically vibrated. She realized that the rest of her was, as well, and her breathing wasn’t coming easy and deep now—it was shallow, sharp. She was practically gasping for air, even though her body didn’t feel overworked.

  Awful, wet rasping. It filled her ears.

  Lana pushed the memory away and dropped to the thin mat on the ground as Derek moved to the wall and picked up a canteen. He took a swig before offering it to her as he sank down beside her. She drank and passed it back to him. “I just need a second.”

  “No problem.” Derek agreed as if it had been her idea all along.

  Her eyes combed the room, looking for anything to capture her attention, keep her out of her head. All she saw was the same thing she saw everywhere else, day after day. Concrete walls.

  A few new cracks, but nothing apparently dangerous. The quakes came less frequently now, most slight tremors and nothing more. In a way, it was disappointing. Maybe if the quakes had kept up, posing a real threat to the structure, they’d all be outside.

  A stab of guilt twisted her insides as she thought about leaving. Jessup died to get them here, and gratitude should have filled her heart. But it didn’t. She barely felt anything.

  Not even attraction to the man who’d been openly flirting with her since she met him and who was probably worth it. It was like all the nerves that responded to those signals were numb. Like her sense of touch, she could see the interaction, remember what it should have felt like on her skin, but the sensation was so dull, it may as well have happened to someone else.

  “Any news about topside?” She leaned against the wall.

  “If there is,” Derek answered, “nobody’s tellin’ a grunt like me about it. Patrol’s pretty tight, we don’t range too far. Some comms are up, I think, thanks to your pops, but far as I know nothing’s comin’ in. You getting a little cabin fever?”

  “I just want to kn
ow if my future is ever going to be more than canned peaches, concrete walls, and dirty mop water.” She kicked at nothing. “We do the same thing every single day. Nothing changes. My dad said the ash stopped falling. Shouldn’t we… I don’t know, be looking for people, or… whatever happens next?”

  He rocked back a bit, nodding. “I guess at some point we will.” He shrugged, and glanced around the room himself, like there was an answer written somewhere. “I mean, the general’s got a plan, you know? He’s gonna build us back up, but it’ll take time and it’ll be hard. Probably means a lot of canned peaches, but not forever.”

  He grinned at her like they shared a joke, but Lana failed to muster even a weak smile in response.

  Derek’s gaze fell. “Anyway… we just gotta stick by it, follow the plan. Trust him. He’s gonna whip this country into shape, make everything better than it was before.”

  Lana forced herself not to roll her eyes. She knew the propaganda bit. The New United States. The nation this land was always meant to be. A new start. A new republic. One with all of the strengths of the old, but none of the weaknesses. A nation where every man, woman, and child has a place.

  Derek was already going on about it. “…and just imagine if no one was homeless, if no one went hungry, you know?” He focused on something invisible and far away. “Where you know what you’re supposed to do, and everyone just does it. We all make it work, together. It’s gonna be better, Lana, you just have to put your shoulder to the grindstone and remember that it’s bigger than us, and…”

  She kept looking at him, but his voice turned to noise in her ears. Derek was a true believer; she’d heard the talk before. She wished that she shared his optimism. But between her and any kind of hope for a better future, there was a wall that may as well have been a thousand miles high, every brick carved with her failures