‘Right on!’ Jake replied.
Jake shouldered the heavier backpack. My shoulder still hurt plenty.
We had water, food, first aid stuff, some extra clothes (for full-grown men, but no matter), some flashlights. I couldn’t remember what else had been packed.
And we climbed, single file, up the stairway to the hatch.
We were leaving our Greenway and we didn’t have a moment to reflect or give gratitude to it. But of course, we were grateful.
‘Wait!’ Chloe shrieked through her mask. ‘What about Luna?’
‘Shoot!’ Astrid said. ‘She’s still asleep! I’ll get her. You guys go ahead.’
We climbed up.
It was dark up there.
Hard to see and breathe, with the mask on.
Hard to move, with all the layers on.
Henry clutched one of my hands, Caroline the other.
We made our way slowly over the pitted roof to the ladder.
‘Dean, you go first,’ Jake commanded. ‘Then the kids, then Astrid and me.’
The rungs were slippery. It seemed like there was a fungus growing on the rungs’ rubber foot treads.
But no one fell.
We waited for a moment at the bottom of the ladder, for Astrid. Then she came, wearing a new backpack.
‘Where’s Luna?’ Chloe asked.
‘Look,’ Astrid said and turned around.
Luna’s sleeping head stuck through the top of the backpack.
‘This way,’ Jake directed us.
And we followed him through the parking lot, away from the store.
I didn’t try to talk, it was too hard with the masks.
I was holding Caroline’s hand on one side and Henry’s in the other. Astrid was holding Chloe’s hand and Jake walked ahead of us.
Our little lights zigzagged the ground in front of us as we trudged through the parking lot toward the bus.
The ground was slick in places. The grass in the little sections near the light poles was all dead. The hail- crushed cars were slimy with rust and this weird white foam.
No wonder Jake had come back and no wonder the cadets were so eager to be inside. It was creepy out in the dead world.
There was some of the feathery white foam growing on the tyres of the bus. Besides that, it looked fine.
We heard it first. A giant
I looked up. Over in the direction of NORAD, there was a giant fireball in the sky.
‘Ooooh!’ the kids yelled.
It did look far enough away to be fireworks.
Then, in the space where the fireball had been and in a circle around it, there was light. The sun had come in.
At first I thought, maybe this was good… Maybe they’d found a way to clean the air.
Two more explosions came. They were bombing the sky.
And then hot winds raced toward us over the ground and I knew that we were going to die.
ALEX
I SAW THE VILLAGE INN! I saw the 7-eleven! We were in Monument! The chopper was equipped with searchlights and there it all was, Monument, from above.
There was the roof of the Greenway – our roof! I was so happy. I just kept seeing Dean’s face in my imagination. He was going to be so excited to see me!
The first bombs started exploding in the air above NORAD just as we touched down on the roof.
‘We’ve got maybe five minutes!’ Captain McKinley shouted.
We all scrambled out of our safety harnesses and raced across the scarred and hail-beaten roof to the hatch.
It was actually open, which was weird, but in the moment didn’t seem weird, it just seemed terrific – getting in was the part I’d been worried about.
Niko and I rushed down the stairs.
‘Dean! Astrid! We’re here!’ I shouted.
And then I saw the little girl.
The little blonde girl.
She was just standing over the bodies of Robbie and Mr Appleton, her wrists tied together.
‘Little girl!’ Captain McKinley called, coming down the stairs. ‘We’re here to rescue you! Where are the others?’
He didn’t know. He didn’t know who she was!
‘You!’ Niko shouted. ‘How did you get here?’
Captain McKinley moved past us into the store, yelling for Henry and Caroline.
‘Where are they?’ I screamed at the girl. ‘You tell me! You tell me right now!’
She was crying. I was crying.
‘They left!’ the girl said. ‘They went off the roof. They killed my uncle Payton and they left!’
Inside I could hear Captain McKinley calling, ‘Henry! Caroline!’
‘Captain McKinley!’ I screamed.
He came running.
‘What is it? Where are they?’
BOOM came the sound of another bomb exploding over NORAD.
‘They’re gone,’ I sobbed. ‘They left the store!’
His face fell then. It went all grey.
‘Right. Of course,’ he said. Hard like a stone.
‘I’m sorry!’ I cried.
‘Let’s move out.’
DEAN
JAKE WAS IN THE bus, trying to get it to go. But the wheels wouldn’t turn through the white stuff. They were disintegrated or something.
Astrid was next to me, the children huddled at our sides.
We would watch the bombs until they took us. That seemed to be the right plan.
Each detonation shook us and each detonation punched a hole in the sky. They were coming closer.
The light streamed in, in those pure, straight beams. ‘God light’ was what my mom had called it.
I thought of my mom and my dad and Alex, and I was full of love for them.
I drew Astrid to me. Astrid was so beautiful in her gas mask and all her layers and the little kids, too, and Jake – now standing on the steps of the bus, his chest heaving, his head thrown back to look at the firebombs – was beautiful, too. And I thought of how perfect we all were at that moment. And had always been.
