Autumn in the Dark Meadows (The Autumn Series) (11 page)

“Only ten more floors!” I exclaimed in a falsely cheerful voice and paused to lean heavily against the railing.  “We’ve already climbed six hundred and twelve steps so far!”

“Leave me here and save yourself!” Shad said, flailing his arms.  Rissi laughed and grabbed one of them, pulling him to his feet.  He looked at me as he blinked sleep out of his eyes.  “Six hundred and twelve steps.  The things I do for a hot shower.”

The last ten flights of stairs took forever because of frequent breaking.  By the time we burst into the hallway on the thirty-sixth floor, my sides were aching, and my knees wobbled.

Vonna met us in the hallway.  “Welcome to my personal heaven!”  She ushered us into the suite, leaving the door open behind us.

The smile died from my lips as I entered the room.  It was more than just a room.  I looked around in amazement.  It was beautiful.  The room was about five times the size of the room Rissi had been sleeping in.  There were several floor-to-ceiling windows, all slanting in, making up the inside of the pyramid.  The bed was massive and freshly made with crisp white sheets.  A large green cactus stood next to a giant wardrobe made of dark wood with elegant hieroglyphic carvings etched into it.  A wide purple couch squatted in front of one of the large windows, looking out onto the still city.

“Nice!  A hot tub!” Shad called from the other side of the room, and I hurried over to look.  A few steps up, the hot tub had its own corner, directly underneath one of the slanting windows.

“This suite is amazing,” I said to Vonna.  “It’s a shame it’s thirty-six flights up.”

“Helps keep it secret,” she said, winking.

“That’s Rissi,” I said, motioning to her.  “Her brother Ben came with us from Hoover.  He’s been outside digging, so you haven’t met him yet.  He’s on his way up though, with...” I paused, unsure of how to describe Sam.  “Um, with another girl from Hoover.  Come say hi to Vonna, Rissi,” I urged her, but she didn’t turn away from the table she was standing in front of.

“Rissi?” I walked over to her, and the rest of the table came into view.  I saw why she was transfixed.  Candy bars, bags of chips, bottles of soda and other sweets were piled high.

“Your rations?” I asked Vonna, and she nodded.

“I broke into some of the minibars a while ago,” she said, grinning.  “Thought it might come in handy some day.”

“I think I’m in love,” Shad said, appearing behind us to stare at the pile of goodies.

“Are you sure you want to share all this with us?” I asked.

“Of course I do.  You all came when we needed help.”  Vonna shrugged.  “Consider it a thank you.”

We decided to wait for Ben and Sam to arrive.  Shad said Grey wouldn’t be able to leave the ballroom for a little while, but he’d be up when he could.  We sat around the table, fidgeting like it was Christmas morning.

Shad suddenly grabbed a bag of M&M’s and ripped the side open so the colorful little candies scattered across the table.  “Oh man, check it out!  The bag just spontaneously burst open all by itself!”

Rissi’s eyes went wide, and she looked at me desperately.  I laughed and said, “Oh fine, go ahead.  Don’t wait for your brother.”

She snatched up a green candy and popped it into her mouth.  A grin spread across her face, and she giggled.  “I forgot what it tasted like!” she said, laughing.

I picked up a red one and let it dissolve slowly on my tongue.  I was instantly brought back to a memory of the last time I’d eaten M&M’s.  At the warehouse store back in Los Angeles.  When I’d first met Karl.  And Sam.  Strange how experiences like this lined up.  That day couldn’t have been more different from this one.  Yet, Sam was here.  And so were the M&M’s.

Ben and Sam finally arrived, and we moved the food to the floor in front of the largest window and the big purple couch.  Sam was barely limping anymore.  When I asked how she was doing, she said, “Oh, it hardly hurts at all.  I think walking around on it so much outside helped work it out.”  She unrolled some grape-flavored Fruit By The Foot and offered me a large piece.  As I ripped it off, she stuck her tongue out at me.

“Is it purple yet?” she asked around her tongue.  It indeed was very purple, along with the rest of her mouth.  I nodded, and she laughed hysterically, then covered her purple-stained teeth and lips, embarrassed.

It wasn’t long before we were high from the sugar and calories, telling stories and laughing at each other.

“Rissi, do you remember when you locked me out of the house ‘cause you were mad at me?” Ben asked.  Rissi nodded sleepily from her perch above us on the purple couch.  She’d already eaten her fill and was laying down, her orange-powder-covered fingers brushing the floor by an unfinished bag of Cheetos.

“You turned off my show,” she mumbled.

“And then I went outside to get the mail, and you locked the door behind me,” Ben said, shaking with laughter.

“You were so bossy,” Rissi said dejectedly, and we all cracked up again.

“What did you do?” I asked Ben.

“I did what any other well-adjusted fifteen-year-old boy would do.  I called the police.”

“You what?!” shrieked Sam, and we all collapsed on each other, laughing hard.

“Dad was so pissed when he came home from work and found three cop cars and half the neighborhood gathered outside while we tried to persuade a five-year-old to unlock the door.”

Vonna shook with laughter so hard, her soda can slipped from her fingers and landed on the floor, fizzing over onto the carpet.  I jumped up and grabbed a towel from the bathroom, but she waved me away as she fell back, clutching her sides.  “It’s all right,” she managed.  “We’re moving to the Palmetto anyway!”

We were still laughing when Grey appeared in the doorway.  He stared in bewilderment at the six of us gathered in a circle on the floor around a pile of trash and still untouched junk food.

“I could hear you from the stairwell,” he said, smiling.  “Made the last ten floors a lot easier.”

“Well, Doctor,” Vonna said, “Laughter
is
the best medicine.”

We all dissolved into giggles again as Grey settled himself on the floor across from me.  Shad picked up the towel I brought from the bathroom and draped it over his forearm, then said in his terrible British accent, “Tonight, good doctor, sir, we have a special menu planned by our executive chef, just for the occasion.”

He picked up a bag of Fritos.  “We will begin with a light appetizer of chipped corn and an aperitif of your choice, grape or l’orange.”  He spat out the last word in mangled French and motioned to two unopened cans of soda.

“
Avez-vous un pinot noir?  Ou peut-être un chardonney
?” Grey asked Shad seriously.

Shad paused for several moments, staring at Grey, then simply said, “
Nein
,” the German word for “no.”

It was Grey’s turn. His whole face brightened, and his laugh shook the room.  He grabbed the towel from Shad’s arm and flung it in his face, then took an orange soda and cracked it open.

“Your French has a little German in it,” Grey said chuckling.

Sam chimed in.  “Did you take French in school?  Don’t most doctors take Latin?”

Grey nodded as he pawed through the pile of food.  “I took both.”

“Where did you go to school?”

“UCLA, and Cambridge,” he added, settling back against the wall with a Clark Bar.  “I exchanged there for a few semesters.”

“Wow, like in England?” Sam asked, impressed.  “You’re pretty young to already be in college.”

“I was, uh, a little ahead,” he said modestly.  His eyes met mine as he took another swig of his soda, and a small thrill ran through me.

“That’s so cool.  What were you doing in LA when The Plague struck then?”

“I was at UCLA for that semester,” he said simply.

“Man, I would’ve stayed in England,” Sam said bitterly.

“What high school did you go to?” Ben asked her.

“Santa Monica High.”

“Are you kidding? I went to Samohi, too!”  Ben exclaimed.  “I can’t believe we went to the same school.  That’s crazy!  Were you a junior?”

“No, a sophomore.  I never saw you.  That’s so weird!” she exclaimed.

 Ben and Sam stared at each other until she looked away purposefully.  She dug through the junk food pile and unearthed a package of Ho Hos.

Shad’s eyes lit up when he saw the package. “Sam, what might a guy do to persuade you to give him those Ho Hos?”

She looked at the unopened package in her hand and at Shad’s longing eyes and said, “Oh, the power I hold in my hands!”  She moved the bag to the right and left and laughed as Shad’s unwavering eyes followed the movement.

Shad didn’t crack a smile as he said, “Don’t tease a hungry man.  You could talk me into trading Greased Thunder for those Ho Hos.”

Ben, Rissi, Grey, and I all groaned in unison.

Sam looked confused.  “What’s Greased Thunder?”

"The fastest horse in the West,” Shad answered, not taking his eyes from the bag Sam held.

“Don’t you mean Greased Lightning?” Sam said.  We dissolved into giggles again and Shad threw up his hands in defeat.

“The horse’s name is Thunder, but Shad insists on calling him Greased Thunder because he’s supposedly super fast,” I explained to Sam while trying to catch my breath from laughing.

“That’s the dumbest name I’ve ever heard,” she said, chuckling with rest of us.  Then she threw the bag of Ho Hos at Shad.

Despite our exhaustion, we pushed off sleep with an old-fashioned sugar high.  We lingered in the spa suite for another hour, talking about our lives before The Plague as the orange sun set into the mountains, staining the sky red as a strawberry, and filling the room with its warm light.  I was beginning to feel heavy-headed and cozy, and Grey seemed to be inching his way toward me around the circle of friends.

I let my eyes shut and leaned back against the wall behind me, and then found myself standing alone in the middle of an empty street.  The dead cars in the road around me were rusted, their windows fogged.  Dried out palm trees drooped, deflated, in patches of too bright sunlight.  In the distance, I saw a familiar hilltop sign.  It looked as it always did, its crisp, white letters like seabirds against the mountainside.  Hollywood.

I realized my mother’s star was nearby, in the newer section of the Hollywood Walk of Fame, near the Chinese Theater.  I suddenly needed to see it.

As I neared her star, I saw the pointed green tips of the theater’s roofs.  They were untarnished compared to the devastation on the streets around me.  I slowed as I neared her star, looking for the cowboy’s footprints in the cement that I’d stood in during the unveiling ceremony, only a few feet behind her.  I remembered feeling the grooves of the cement footprints through my dress shoes: the pointed toe, the square heel and the spiky holes from his spurs.

I bent over my mother’s star now, much like she did at the ceremony when she posed for pictures so long ago.  I brushed the dirt away, but the star was empty.  Her name was gone.

I frowned.  The Plague had taken away a lot of things, but how had it erased her name from the Walk of Fame?

A sudden squawk from a distant bird caught my attention.  It sounded like a crow from a Hitchcock film.  A chill crept across the back of my neck, and I knew I was being watched.  I was exposed, here in the open.

The entrance to the camp’s secret hideout was in the subway tunnel nearby.  It was several stories below the mall that stood next to the theater.  That would be a good place to hide.

The walk to the subway entrance seemed to take only seconds, while the hike down the motionless, steel escalator stairs felt like hours.  The deeper I went, the more darkness surrounded me, until suddenly a bone-deep cold washed over me.

Karl’s face appeared: brown hair, sculpted face and dark eyes.  If he hadn’t been so vile, he might have been ruggedly handsome.  His face contorted until his pearly white teeth were exposed in a mischievous smile.  I turned away, wanting to run, wanting to find shelter, but froze in my tracks when I heard a familiar voice below me in the darkness.  It was Sarah, and she was calling for me.

I jumped down from the subway platform and onto the tracks and began to run through the darkness after her voice.

I felt my body being rocked.  Sarah’s voice morphed and took on the sound of a younger girl.   I opened my eyes and found Rissi standing over me, gently shaking me awake.

We were still in the spa suite, and bright morning sunlight seeped around the edges of the heavy curtains.  I was stretched out in the large bed, buried in mounds of white linen.  Someone must have moved me here after our junk food fest last night.  My eyes drifted close again.

A familiar female voice shouted, “Wake up everyone!  We’re out!  The diggers cleared the main entrance!”

My eyes snapped open, and Vonna appeared over Rissi’s shoulder.

A voice drifted from the dark corner of the room where the hot tub was.  “So, it’s great and all that we’re out, but how ‘bout we go back to sleep for a little while?  I, for one, am not dying to get outside.  I just got
in
the Egyptian yesterday.”

I recognized Shad’s voice but couldn’t see him.  I sat up and saw he was wrapped in the bed’s massive comforter, nestled inside the hot tub.

“Can we go outside, Autumn?” Rissi pleaded.  “Please?”

“We should probably go see what’s going on,” I said, rubbing my eyes.

Shad groaned deeply from the depths of the hot tub.  “You are no fun, Autumn Winters.  No fun at all.”

I scooted out from under the covers and stood, straightening the clothes I’d slept in, and looked around the room.  The pile of junk food was now reduced to discarded wrappers and empty soda cans.  Pillows and blankets were piled everywhere, marking the spots where others had slept, but all the makeshift beds and nests were empty.

“Where are the others?”

“They were all gone when I woke up this morning,” Vonna said, tying her sneakers.

Grey probably went back to the ballroom to check on his patients early this morning.  But where were Ben and Sam?  I remembered the times when Grey and I disappeared from the group and wondered if something was happening between Ben and Sam.  Surely not.