“Sounds exciting,” Dylan responded.
Olin looked at Connor. “Sometimes when babies are adopted the parents will amend the birth certificate to include their names instead of the original parents’. Something about creating continuity for the child. I didn’t really get it, but . . . you were young when your mother remarried, right? So maybe that’s what happened.”
Connor had never heard of an amended birth certificate, but he also had no reason to doubt Olin. Could that be what had happened? It tied in nicely with the facts he already knew, and it certainly made more sense than the idea that his mother had had an affair.
Okay, but so what? This wasn’t going to help him get his parents back. Of course, he’d known that when he came to the mall. This whole exercise had been action for action’s sake. But now it was worse than that. He had put Olin and Dylan in danger, not to mention himself. Or Tom, who would have made it safely to the second floor before the blast if Connor hadn’t pulled Dylan aside to ask her a question he knew was irrelevant.
He was acting like an idiot.
Don’t do that to yourself. You couldn’t have known.
That was true, but it didn’t make him feel any better.
“That site of yours. TruthSeekers,” Connor said, desperate to think about anything else. “Why did you put it up?”
“Why did you hack it?”
“Dylan, come on. Answer my question.”
Dylan crossed her arms over her chest, then defensively said, “It was just a bit of fun. Bigfoot. Vampires. Who’s going to believe that, anyway?”
“Sites like that—okay, maybe not yours, exactly, but sites like it—they change how people think. You have to be careful—”
“Hey, Connor,” Olin said, cutting him off.
“What?” As soon as he asked, he realized he didn’t need to. It was obvious what Olin wanted to draw his attention to.
On the sidewalk ahead of them, someone swung a baseball bat at the window of a Best Buy, smashing it. He climbed in, followed by a swarm of others, and emerged a minute later carrying a laptop. As Connor watched from inside the car, the mob emptied the store of TVs, monitors, iPads, cellphones, and a whole assortment of boxed electronics he couldn’t identify from his vantage point.
Along the way, one of them must have set the business on fire, because it wasn’t long before Connor saw flames inside the shop. He flashed back to the mall they had just fled, then willed the memory from his mind.
Olin hit a button, and all of the car’s doors locked. “We should be all right if we stay here.” He didn’t sound confident.
“As if we have a choice,” Dylan said. She was once again leaning forward so she could get a better view.
Connor tried to reason his way through the situation. To his surprise, he realized he had been good at finding his way out of tough spots lately. But he couldn’t see a way out of this. Every street in every direction was bumper to bumper. Even if a cross street magically cleared, there would be no easy way to get to it. There were three lanes going east, and they were stuck in the middle one. There was nothing they could do but inch their way along.
Connor could tell Olin’s whole body was tensing up. He was gripping the steering wheel so tightly his fingers had turned white.
Then a small group of men—three, it looked like from here—turned their attention to a car at the end of the block. They began pounding on it, rocking it. Connor cracked his window so he could hear what was happening. They were telling the driver to open the door, get out. The man with the baseball bat went over to see what was going on. After a minute, he nodded, handed his laptop to one of the other men, and held the bat up threateningly. Presumably, the driver still refused to get out of the car, since seconds later the man with the bat swung it at the driver’s side window. The group of men got the door open, dragged the driver out, kicked him as he rolled over, and went to town on the vehicle.
Connor had no idea what had set them off, and it scared him. Was the attack random? Just part of the chaos from the blackout? A byproduct of the fear people were feeling? “We can’t stay here.”
“I can’t leave the car. My dad will kill me if anything happens to it.” Olin was still gripping the steering wheel as tightly as he could.
“Your dad’s not coming back,” Connor said. “We have to get the hell out of here now.”
Finally, Olin loosened his grip on the wheel. “What do you mean?”
“I didn’t mean anything. I’m sorry. But we’ve got to go.”
“You meant something.”
“Olin, please. If they come this way . . .”
“What happened to Olin’s parents?” Dylan asked.
Connor saw the men move to another car. Through the cracked window, he heard them demand this driver get out, as well. This was random. “Olin! Come on!”
Other drivers—some with families and friends—began abandoning their vehicles. Perhaps that was what Olin needed to see, because he finally said “Okay” and opened his door. Dylan and Connor quickly followed suit.
“Which way?” Dylan said.
“Right now, let’s just get as far as we can from whatever’s going on here,” Connor said, and began moving away from the man with the baseball bat. It seemed everyone who had abandoned their vehicles had the same idea. A sizable crowd of frightened drivers and passengers was now hurrying away from the mob, some carrying crying children.
Olin and Dylan followed Connor down the street, trying not to lose each other in the gathering dark and the crush of people. They turned left at the first intersection, and the crowd thinned some.
“How far are we from your friend’s?” Dylan asked Connor.
“Two miles. Maybe less.”
“In this direction?”
“Yes.”
Olin looked over his shoulder. Connor guessed he wanted to make sure the man with the baseball bat and his
