Chapter 37 - Julian
I dream about death. I dream about the broken scream that came from Luna when the doctor told us that her parents and Atlas didn’t survive the crash.
I dream about that savage ache that ripped into my chest at his words.
Tom and Hannah Bolton gave me the closest thing I ever had to parental love.
They filled the void left by my own vapid, self-absorbed parents who never gave two shits about their children.
The Boltons showed me what it meant to have people give a damn about your day, your dreams, your future.
For years, they kept me under their loving wings and showed me what it was like to be wanted, to be a family. And then they were gone.
They left almost as big a hole as Atlas's dying did. He was one of my best friends; actually, he was a best friend to us all. We stood there that night, surrounding a shattered Luna and made a pact to never leave her alone in her pain. I dream about Mars bursting through the stairwell door and the look of devastation on his face before he turned and walked away from us all. The slam of the metal door closing behind him is so loud and final that it pulls me from the dream. I don’t know if I dream of that night because the second anniversary of their deaths is only a few days away or if it’s because I now know Luna will be alone with none of us there.
It’s enough for me to reach for my phone through the blinding headache from my hangover to book us flights home.
My hand splashes down into water. I groan, and my not yet functioning brain tries my other hand, which finds a soaked blanket on the mattress.
“What the fuck? Reid, did you piss the bed?” I growl, but a soft snore is the only answer I get. I peel my gritty eyelids open and look through blurry eyes around the room.
Both my hands are wet as I try and rub the sleep from my eyes and I realize that my entire body is wet and freezing cold. I jerk up to a sitting position to get a better look around the dim room. I keep blinking, trying to process what I’m seeing, but it makes no sense at all.
There’s a lamp floating beside the bed and the sharp scent of brine bites at my nose.
It still doesn't fully register in my brain until I look at the floor-to-ceiling windows. I fly off the bed toward them in shocked disbelief. Water, there’s water up against them - but how the fuck can that be? Our room is on the tenth fucking floor!
I wade through the water, away from the windows until I bump into the bed again, never taking my eyes from the water pressing against the windows. My brain is finally starting to catch up and I start yelling.
“Reid! Reid, get up! Wake the fuck up! Something’s happened and we need to get the fuck out of here, right now!”
Reid groans and rolls over as he mumbles, “Stole all the blankets, fucking cold, man.”
I reach behind me and pat around until I feel his leg and then yank hard on it.
“Reid, wake the fuck up!”
“What?” He snaps back. I hear him gasp in a sharp breath and feel the bed bounce as he scrambles up off it. “What the fuck is happening right now? Did we do acid or shrooms last night? What the actual fuck?”
I slowly shake my head, having no answers for him. “I don’t know but we need to get out of here. Who knows how long that glass will hold?”
“Yeah, shit, okay, have you seen my phone?” He leans over the water beside the bed and fishes around until he pulls up his soaked jeans. “Never mind. I found it.”
I do the same and find my jeans underwater with my wallet and phone completely soaked through.
I sit on the bed and drag them on, shuddering at the feel of wet denim clinging to my legs.
Then I wade over to the dresser where we left our bags.
Thankfully, the water is still a few inches from the top of the dresser so everything is still dry.
Not that it helps, everything will be soaked if we try and carry it out of here.
Fuck, we’ll just have to hold everything over our heads as we go.
I zip both of them up and toss Reid his and then start wading to the door.
“Where are we going, Jules?”
“Fuck if I know, but let’s start with up. I want to get above this water.”
It takes both of us to pull the door open through the water that reaches halfway up it.
I hear ominous creaking noises coming from the windows like the glass is flexing and getting ready to break.
Reid glances behind us at the noise. He turns back with terror showing on his face and we both start moving faster out into the hall toward the emergency exit and stairs.
Stairs are good. Stairs will take us up away from the water.
If we can get to the roof, we will have a decent view and maybe figure out what the fuck has happened since we passed out last night.
The power is obviously out and all exit doors should be unlocked. Right?
We make it into the stairwell and start climbing, happy to be out of the water even as it drips off of our clothing.
“Do you think it was a tsunami? How the fuck did we sleep through that?”
“A lot of shots and a lot of pot is how we slept through whatever happened. It had to have been fast, though. This is an expensive hotel. I can’t see them just abandoning all the guests, unless they tried to get us out and we slept through that too.
” I scrub at my face and grumble. “I would kill for a fucking coffee, a full bottle of water and a handful of painkillers. This hangover is kicking my ass. Every step we climb makes me want to puke.”
We finally reach the top floor and spot the roof access sign. I go to push out the door but Reid grabs my arm, stopping me.
“Hold up. Look.” He points down at a long piece of wood leaning against the door jam and I’m guessing it’s to block the door from closing. Just in case, I grab it and stoop down to set it in place while Reid goes through the door.
“Argggg! No! No, no, no, no!”
I push Reid out of the way to see what he’s flipping out about and I immediately duck and lunge to the side.
Like that’s going to protect me from the fucking cracked moon heading our way.
Reid staggers over to me and we clutch at each other as we stare up in horror at something out of a bad science fiction movie because this can’t be happening. This can’t be real.
“Is…is…is it moving? Is it coming closer?”
I don’t know the answer but I need to protect him. I’ve always needed to protect him. I grab his head with both my hands and turn it away from the moon until our foreheads are pressed together and he’s forced to look in my eyes and then I lie because I don’t fucking know the truth.
“No, it’s not moving. It’s not coming any closer.
We’re going to be okay, Reid. We’re going to get off this roof and either get rescued or fucking swim until we find dry land.
And then… and then we are going home to be with Luna, okay?
Luna needs us, so you have to man up here and help me get us home, alright? ”
Some of the terrorized glaze clears from his eyes. “Luna, yes, we need to get to her. She’s going to be so fucking scared,” he whispers, then pushes away from me and stands. “Let’s go.”
I take his arm and pull him to the eastern-facing side of the building.
All we can see is water covering what was once downtown Vancouver.
I look all over the skies searching for the helicopters that should be swarming the area on rescue missions and come up empty.
Why the fuck is no one out looking to save people?
I get my answer within minutes when a sharp whistling noise has both of us ducking as something flies through the sky two buildings away and makes a loud crash when it hits another building.
We both whirl around and see at least eight more white trails shooting through the sky.
As one, we turn our gazes to the broken moon.
“Those are pieces of the moon. Holy fuck, pieces of the moon are shooting at us!”
I take one more look over the side of the building down at the water and then grab his arm and pull him back to the door.
“Yeah, let’s not be the idiots standing on the roof waiting to get hit by one, right?”
We go back down one floor and then go out into the hallway and search for any doors that might have been left open. We hit the jackpot halfway down and walk into a two-bedroom suite. Whoever was staying in it left a huge mess with clothing thrown everywhere. Don’t care, not here for the aesthetic.
“Reid, grab everything from the minibar and set it on the counter. I’ll be right back.”
I head into the bathroom and search for any type of painkiller.
Bingo! I dig through the toiletry bag sitting on the counter and strike gold with a travel-sized bottle of Tylenol.
I turn to leave but something nags at my muddled mind.
C'mon brain! When my eyes land on the small waste bin, I reach down and pull the plastic bag liner from it.
At the bottom of the bin is a whole roll of plastic bags.
I grab that and a few clean towels and go back to join Reid in the other room.
“Here, take a bunch of these bags and triple them up. Make like six sets of them. We’ll put a dry change of clothes and a towel in a few and some of this food in the others.
Our phones and wallets can go in a bag, too.
I’m going to search for some shoes for us while you do that.
We’re going to need them when we get to dry land. ”
I snag one of the water bottles and a Red Bull from the pile of things he’s emptied from the minibar and start searching through the clothes and half-empty suitcases in the room.
I suck back both drinks and the painkillers in record time and start to feel halfway functional.
Reid does the same and then we get to work.
I find a pair of men’s Nike slides. Not ideal, but better than bare feet if I can’t find anything else.
There’s a clock ticking in the back of my head right now telling me to hurry up and get the fuck out, get to dry land before something worse happens, and it makes my search more frantic than it should be.
Finding nothing else to help us in the room, we grab the bags and move further down the hall searching for more open rooms. Three rooms later we find someone’s gym bag with a pair of running shoes that are only slightly too big but will work for one of us.
I call the search done at that point, my anxiety at an all-time high.
I keep having visions of a massive wave rolling in from deeper in the ocean and toppling the building we’re in.
We tie all the plastic bags as tight as we can so the stuff we've gathered will stay as dry as possible and stuff them inside our packs.
"Ok, Reid," I say in a calm voice – trying to pretend I have a clue about what to do. "We need to go now. We'll head back down to the tenth floor where the water level is and look for a way out."
He doesn't say anything, just nods to say he heard me and we head down the stairwell.
Reid clasps my arm as we stand on the last step before the water and we share a look packed with uncertainty and a little fear.
“We stay as close together as possible. Look for any debris we can use as a float of some kind, and if we need a break, look for broken windows that we can get back into a building through, alright? We can do this, Reid. We’re both strong swimmers. We can do this.”
He swallows hard but gives me a nod. “How do we get out of this building?”
I curse myself for forgetting a step as the clock ticks, ticks, ticks away in my head.
“Right, back up to the next floor. We’ll need to break a window and jump out.”
We climb back up and go into a room facing the direction we need to swim and use a chair from the room to shatter one of the windows.
I use towels to sweep away most of the glass and lay a few clean ones down so we don’t cut the shit out of our bare feet.
Both of us lean out the window and look down, scanning in the direction we are going to try for.
It’s not that far down to the water but my stomach still does a slow flip with nerves.
Reid’s white knuckling the window frame, his face deathly pale, so I try and distract him.
“See over there?” I point. “That’s the direction we’re going to go.
We get around that building and then keep going east. That’s where we’ll find the shore.
We got this, man. Just think of the badass points we’ll get with Luna and the others when we tell them about this.
” I turn and grab the back of his neck and pack my gaze with as much confidence as I can fake.
“We can do this, Reid. I’ll be right there with you. I promise.”
His thick lashes flutter closed for a beat and when he opens them again, his warm amber eyes look determined. Scared, but determined. I'll take it. Before either of us can second guess ourselves, he jumps.