11
Crossroads Shopping Center
Columbus, Georgia
Local Time 2213 Hours
Joey Holder sat in the back of the six-year-old Cadillac Zero had hotwired and stolen from the house where they had spent last night. The Cadillac belonged to the doctor who owned the house in one of the more affluent gated communities on Columbus’s north side. Normally the security would have kept thieves—and them, Joey admitted; he couldn’t quite cross the line and think of himself as a thief—out of the area.
But many of the power outages remained in effect throughout the city’s suburban areas. Several of the houses around the doctor’s home had been lighted by generators. Knowing that the “borrowed” home they’d spent the night in had so many neighbors had worried Joey. He knew that if he hadn’t been drunk when they got there just before dawn and too tired to go any farther, he might even have argued with Zero about staying.
Well, maybe not argued, Joey admitted to himself as he stared at the darkened strip mall in the shadowed parking area that Zero steered the big car through. But I would have pointed out that we could have gotten caught.
They hadn’t gotten caught, though. This morning they had stuffed themselves with food, played pool, and looted the house. The cream and gold Cadillac was only the iceberg tip of the things they had taken.
Stolen, Joey reminded himself. The others continued to refer to the thefts as borrowing, but he couldn’t do that anymore. During the last couple days, the guys had gone completely out of control. Zero had led the way.
Joey hadn’t taken anything except the food and drink he’d needed to survive. And the liquor and beer, he thought, belching and still tasting the latter. He’d played pool in the game room and looked through the assortment of video games in the home-entertainment center, but without power, the game systems remained inert. He couldn’t help noticing that several of the games were ones Chris and he had seen advertised on television but had never been able to afford.
Zero had slept most of the afternoon and early evening. But as soon as full dark came, he’d roused and grown irritable, wanting to go out. RayRay and Bones had griped, already half wasted because they’d gotten up before Zero, and said that they should stay in, pointing out that they had plenty of food.
Reports were starting to hit the radio news about people who were getting busted by police and the Georgia National Guard for squatting in houses where the owners had either vanished or were away. Twice, homeowners had returned to find their homes invaded by vagrants and squatters and had shot them dead. One of the squatters had been a thirteen-year-old boy. It wasn’t just the thieves getting whacked, though. Seven homeowners had been killed so far, and dozens of others had been injured.
After listening to the others in the group, Zero had pointed out that everything they’d said was true. Then he’d added that if they only had a generator to power the stove, microwave, water heater, and hot tub, they could probably stay for days. So he’d hot-wired the Caddie and they’d come to town looking for a generator.
Joey had felt certain the generator thing was just an excuse. The longer they’d gone without finding the aliens Zero said took all the people, the more Zero had gotten upset.
Zero pulled the Caddie through the parking lot in front the darkened strip mall he’d selected as their target. That was what he’d called it, Joey remembered. Their target. Like he was some kind of general in one of the video games they’d played at the arcade center.
The strip mall had only a couple dozen shops. This part of Columbus had fallen on hard times. The little center’s clientele had been lured away by newer and larger malls, and the businesses here lingered rather than thrived.
Across the street, the blue-and-purple neon glare of a strip club flared against the night. The sign announcing the Peeping Tom Club showed flashing neon outlines of a naked woman dancing. The banner that read LIVE! NUDE GIRLS! ran along the bottom.
The basso throb of the multiple generators that kept the power surging through the club filled the night and laid down a heavy bass line for the screaming heavy metal rock music that ripped over the neighborhood. Cars, pickup trucks, and motorcycles filled the gravel parking lot to overflowing.
“Hey, man,” RayRay said, his eyes gleaming and filled with the reflected neon lights. “We get done here, maybe we can go check out the action over there.”
Joey wasn’t interested in that at all. During the past few days, he’d been thinking of Jenny and had—unbelievably—started getting homesick. He wanted to see Jenny. Even more, he wanted to see his mom. He knew she had to be worried. Columbus was slowly being restored to law and order. Joey knew the excesses of his little gang soon had to come to a stop or they’d be locked up, but there was still a lot of craziness out there.
“Kind of amazing,” Derrick said. “I mean with the way those people will make sure a place like that stays open and even go there when so much of the city is still a wreck.”
“They don’t care,” Joey said. He knew that because part of him still wished he didn’t care. Not caring—if a person could do it—seemed the best way to go right now. But he was having more and more trouble doing that. He went to sleep at night thinking about his mom and Chris and Goose, and they were always the first things on his mind when he woke in the morning. The alcohol he was drinking no longer blocked those thoughts.
He’d even started praying for them, though not for himself, because he didn’t think he deserved it after everything he had
