Chapter 8
CHAPTER
EIGHT
Driving down the suburban streets was eerie. If you looked past the overgrown yards, fallen leaves decaying in teetering piles, and the utter silence, it was almost normal.
Cars were still parked in the driveway. Garage doors were closed. The blinds were drawn. Basketball hoops were still standing tall, nestled up against the end of driveways—it was easy to imagine kids playing there, chasing a ball down the low incline to catch it before it hit the street.
Blake wasn’t as familiar with these streets as the city itself.
Wrong tax bracket. But he could see the appeal.
The houses had breathing room. The streets were lined with the big azalea bushes the area was famous for.
Close enough to DC and its amenities, but far enough away that kids could play in the street safely, and you didn’t need to factor traffic into your morning commute.
As winter waned, bits of spring were beginning to creep through. A flash of a leaf on a barren branch or a patch of grass looking a little less withered and brown.
The noise from the truck echoed around the streets, and Blake winced. It was too obtrusive for the quiet Craftsman and Victorian architecture, the sweeping porches drenched with charm. It felt wrong. Like they were disturbing a grave site, rather than homes abandoned before they could be destroyed.
The fact that they were still standing was impressive.
Either the fighting was far more insular than they thought, or the aliens hadn’t yet expanded this far.
Maybe they didn’t need to. Anyone with half a brain cell fled as far and as fast as they could.
He could picture family SUVs two-wheeling it out of their driveways, making haste for the closest refugee camp they could find.
At least he hoped they did.
He was crammed in the back of the truck with Beaumont. They were squished together on the bench seat, hoping the press of their bodies was a suitable substitute for a seatbelt. He wasn’t even sure if the truck had them. Someone like Judd probably took them out to ‘make it go faster’.
Alvarez was in the front passenger seat, his gun trained out the open window as he scanned the streets.
A man named Tyler was driving. He was wiry, in his forties, and were it not for his vivid red handlebar mustache and his bald head, he was completely forgettable.
Until he opened his mouth. He had a thick Bostonian accent that was so unfamiliar to Blake.
He had difficulty understanding anything he was saying.
Beaumont told him he had been a police officer when he hastily introduced them, but that was it. Tyler spent most of the drive with one hand on the wheel and the other playing with the ends of his mustache.
Zoe rounded out the team. She was a tall woman with dark skin, sharp features, and a look that made Blake feel small.
Her hair was braided into neat rows, and she carried a couple of handguns under her puffy jacket.
He thought she might be around his age, but he got the feeling she wouldn’t tell him if he asked.
Beaumont didn’t give him any information on her, and he was glad he sat between them.
It was a very quiet ride south. Not that Blake minded. He spent the entire time with his breath fogging up the window. It was his first sight of the world since he stepped onto The Judge all those months ago, and he wasn’t sure if he was disappointed or glad to see it relatively unchanged.
There were definitely fewer people, although Blake was surprised to see some. They watched them drive by like wraiths, their brows drawn. He thought they should stop. Maybe offer help, but Tyler didn’t slow down, and Alvarez made sure his gun was noticed.
For the first time, Blake wondered if he’d been selfish not to ask Gabriel what things were like out here.
He hadn’t told him much, and Blake assumed it was all like the cities—distant gunfire, explosions, and the stink of death and burning plastic.
But he never considered that people were still living here.
Outside of the city, in a purgatory of fear and survival.
He shifted in his seat and leaned into the whipping wind from Alvarez’s open window.
It smelled clean. Like right before a storm, when the air was heavy with expectation.
The sky gave no hint as to its next move—the clouds were gray, so uniform it was impossible to tell if it was just winter’s encore or an incoming storm.
No one else seemed concerned. If he had been in the truck with Team Oh Shit, he might have asked. No doubt Judd would have cracked some kind of joke. You made of sugar, sweetie? Afraid a little rain will melt you? And then Victoria, or Phin, would smack him, and Gabriel would pretend not to laugh.
But he wasn’t with them. He wondered if the tension was thick because of some unspoken disagreement or simply because he didn’t know how to read their silence.
Tyler braked, and the old truck shuddered around a curve.
The suburban streets spat them directly into a commercial district.
It was a single thoroughfare with massive parking lots on either side, strip malls lining the back, while standalone businesses cropped up like the city planner decided there was too much negative space, and the place needed a dry cleaner or a Mexican restaurant to break it up.
It was empty, save for a few cars parked in the lots. Blake didn’t want to look too closely, afraid of what he’d find in their interiors. It was easier to pretend they were just cars left behind because their owners got a ride with someone else.
The truck slowed to a crawl, and Blake had to look over Alvarez’s wide shoulders to see why.
A menacing-looking vehicle was blocking the road.
It was listing at an angle, leaning over a missing front tire.
Blotches of its matte black paint were burnt off and sooty where a fire had tried to consume the beast of a truck.
Blake swallowed as he took in the stenciled words on the side.
It was difficult to make out through the streaks of smoke and torn metal, but it looked like the county’s armored SWAT vehicle.
There was something about seeing such a big, strong vehicle broken like that. It was an uncomfortably sober reminder that even the best of humanity’s defenses didn’t stand a chance.
No one commented on it as Tyler navigated around it. Blake tried not to look. Wanted to close his eyes and see, but not process like he used to, but he’d spent too much time with Gabriel. Had been encouraged to use this ‘thing’ as if it were a gift.
Now he could see that the front driver’s side tire wasn’t missing; it had been torn away. Bits of twisted rim still attached to the axle, rubber clinging to where it had been seated before something strong—something alien—ripped it away.
Worse, all the doors were open. Like the cops inside had tried to make a final stand. Or run.
Blake closed his eyes and didn’t open them until he felt the truck accelerate away.
On the backside of the SWAT truck was a different story.
The road was pockmarked with crumbling potholes and scorch marks.
Cars were scattered, most in no better condition than the truck.
The damage was intense but concentrated.
Whatever happened here, it happened fast. Blake didn’t see any bodies—he wished he could consider that a good sign.
But he knew that didn’t mean the place wasn’t marked with death.
A block past the battle-worn streets, Blake squinted through the windshield. The gray skies had given way to a light drizzle, but Tyler hadn’t turned on the wipers. They might not even work. But Blake recognized the building.
“There,” he pointed, indicating a standalone building beside a grocery store.
The sign looked a little worn, but the red cross was still clear.
Blake felt a bubble of anticipation begin to grow in his stomach as Tyler jumped a curb and eased the truck under the overhang that said Ambulance Entrance on the south side of the building.
“Uh,” Beaumont said as he leaned over Blake to look up at the building. “I think we’re a little late.”
Blake shouldered him aside to look through the window.
Colors and shapes were smeared from the rain, and it took him a minute to realize what he was seeing.
The glass double doors that led off the ambulance bay were shattered.
Thick pieces of safety glass were scattered across the drive and foyer, catching what little light managed to bleed through the clouds.
But it was the big black burn that made Blake’s heart sink. Like a scar across the cream-colored stucco, it snaked out from the doors in a clear burn pattern where the blaze had eaten its way along the entire south wall.
Alvarez cursed. “Waste of fucking—what are you doing?”
The back door rattled as the door hit the lock. Blake’s fingers scrabbled at the lock, only to realize that it didn’t matter. The Clamshell door wouldn’t open unless Alvarez opened his.
“I’m not going to—they could still have meds in there!” his voice sounded too loud after the hours of silence.
“Place has already been ransacked,” Tyler said, his accent crisp. “There’s no point.”
Gritting his teeth, Blake kicked at the door.
Mostly in frustration rather than any hope of it opening.
“Look at those burns? That’s normal fire.
Not Off Former incendiary.” Blake couldn’t tell if Alvarez looked or not.
“Humans looted this urgent care. And they were probably after the hard stuff. Not antibiotics or insulin.”