Fever (2 page)

The first thing I notice is how empty the building is. This is meant to be a shelter capable of holding dozens of people, maybe hundreds, but I don’t see anyone on the way down to the lobby. Jack doesn’t seem to sense anyone, either. The whole place is as quiet as a ghost town, when it sabon, whenhould have been busy keeping people safe. Has something gone wrong? It’s hard to think that Hammond would have used his whole main shelter just to protect us.

When we get to the lobby, the toughened glass frontage is covered in dust. Completely covered, so that we can’t see out. The idea of stepping out there when we can’t see what’s going on is a daunting one, but Jack and I look at one another and know that we have to. We throw open the doors.

Outside, it’s as still as the shelter we’ve just left. There’s a layer of ash over everything, thick and grey, drifting like snow in places. We’re in the middle of an industrial park, but there’s no industry. There’s no noise. There’s nothing but a silence so absolute that it makes me want to scream just to break it. We walk out to the main road, trying to catch sight of someone as we get close to the rest of the city, but there’s no one that we can see. No one. Not in the houses. Not in the stores. It’s like the entire population of the city is gone.

“We have to find Grayson,” I say.

“And the Faders, my father, my uncle.” Jack pauses, looking around. “Someone. Other people must have survived. There were shelters. People must have been in them, or there was no point in building them.”

I nod. I know that, even though it’s hard to believe, looking around to see nothing but empty streets.

“You’re right,” I say. “I know you’re right. I know in our future, the apocalypse happened and an entire population survived to rebuild. It’s just…”

“It’s too quiet?” Jack guesses.

I nod. “I guess we’ll just have to keep looking, though we won’t get very far if we try it on foot.”

The first vehicle we come across is a jeep, abandoned by the side of the road. Amazingly, the keys are still in the ignition. Whoever left this left it in a hurry. Jack tries to start it, but the engine just sputters and dies. He tries again. After a minute or two, it becomes clear that it isn’t going to work. Maybe that’s why the owner didn’t mind leaving their keys behind.

            We keep moving, and soon we find a mall, or what’s left of it. Most of the roof seems to be gone from it, while the outer walls are badly damaged. I look at Jack.

            “We’re going to need supplies,” I say. “It could be a while before we find anyone.”

            He agrees, and we head inside. It occurs to me that technically we’re about to loot a store, but I’m not worried about getting into trouble now. Trouble means people. In any case, it’s better than starving. We find a store that has a couple of small backpac">

            I’d feel better if we were both armed too, but there aren’t any weapons to be found. We’ll just have to rely on our abilities if we run into trouble. What worries me is that there are no people here. A mall would be a natural place for people to survive after a disaster, but there’s still no sign of anyone.

            We leave the mall, moving down the street to a car dealership. Most of the vehicles there are in bad shape, flipped over, badly damaged, or simply covered in that fine ash that seems to get everywhere. If it’s in their engines, they’re worthless. Jack picks one of the cars, and quickly breaking into the office gives us the key. Again though, when he tries to start it, nothing happens.

            He pops the hood, and an idea comes to me. I put my hand on the engine, calling up the barest spark of power. It leaps through the engine, and in an instant, the car is running. I have to admit, I’m almost as shocked as Jack when it works.

            “It looks like your power can do plenty more than destroy things,” Jack says. “It looks like, if you can direct the power you call up, it can do a lot.”

            “Maybe,” I say, not quite convinced.

            “It’s a gift,” Jack says. “You just have to know how to use it. And we do have a working car now thanks to you.”

            “True,” I say, and I am a little proud of that. It’s nice to know that I can do something with my abilities other than kill people. “So, where are we heading?”

            That’s the question, of course. Where can we go? Where will there be people? Anywhere? We have to hope so. We have to hope that being here hasn’t changed things already. That there is still a world for us to save.

TWO

J
ack doesn’t hesitate when I ask him where we’re going. Instead, he sets out the situation calmly, clearly.

            “Grayson went after Johnny,” he says, “but we don’t know if he succeeded, or even if he was able to get to Location Ten before things got too difficult. If he
did
succeed, then he might have tried to ride out the apocalypse in Locpanation Ten, but he might also have tried to make it to a more secure fallback position. If he couldn’t make it there, or if something went wrong, then he would have tried to do the same thing. Even if he rode out the initial apocalypse, he might be doing what we’re doing and moving on.”

            “So you’re saying that there’s no way of knowing where Grayson is?” I ask.

            To my surprise, Jack shakes his head. “What I’m saying is that the odds say that Location Ten is a bad idea. There are other places that Grayson is more likely to be, along with Sebastian and my uncle.”

            I get the feeling that Jack knows exactly where those places will be, too. “So where will they have gone?”

            Jack starts to creep the car along the street. We aren’t moving quickly, perhaps because the layer of ash is as hard to drive on as snow or sand.

            “Grayson’s a Fader, and he’s probably with more Faders. In a situation like this, there’s only one place
to
go. Location Thirteen.”

            “Location Thirteen?” I repeat, shaking my head.

            “What is it?” Jack asks.

            “I was just wondering how many of these Locations you have. And if you couldn’t come up with some better names for them.”

            That gets a smile from Jack. “Numbers are more secure. It means people can’t guess anything about them from the name. As for how many… even I’m not sure. A lot. You saw the maps.”

            I nod. We looked at a map of possible shelters for people. A lot of the Locations would have been on it. “So,” I ask. “What’s so special about Location Thirteen? I take it you don’t have a Location set up just for the apocalypse.”

            Though in truth, most of the really solid ones were set up with just that in mind.

            “Location Thirteen is where you go when things turn odd,” Jack says. “When there’s a real crisis, or a major disaster… well, it’s time for Location Thirteen.”

            “That wasn’t where people went when the Others destroyed Location Six,” I point out.

            Jack brings the car around a corner, heading in the direction of the freeway. “That was bad, but it wasn’t the kind of thing I mean. And there were still plenty of other Locations to fall back on . Thirteen is where you go when things get very… .get verweird.”

            Jack can see flashes of the future. He can move faster than most people. He can touch me when there’s power pouring out of me without being burned. He can be healed by my power. What exactly qualifies as ‘weird’ for him? Aside from this whole situation, obviously?

            “So it’s the place where you all go when the situation gets so strange that you need help the other Locations can’t give you?” I guess.

            Jack nods. “Exactly. It’s not normally even a functioning Location. It’s just like a… backup, I guess. If you need other Faders, then normally you go to a different Location, but when things get too strange for that, it has to be Location Thirteen.” Jack sighs. “I guess there are going to be a lot of Faders there right now. I hope so, anyway.”

            “So we go to Location Thirteen too?” I ask. It seems like the only thing we can do now. We were meant to stop the apocalypse. We failed.
I
failed, because I wouldn’t let Jack shoot Wilson Hammond in cold blood. Now all we can do is try to deal with everything that happens afterwards. Try to stop it leading inevitably to the Fever.

            “We go to Location Thirteen,” Jack agrees. He’s still moving the car along cautiously. It’s a nice one, a family car with plenty of space in it, but I guess Jack is mostly used to sports cars and military vehicles. He probably doesn’t trust it yet. “Getting there could be the hard part, though.”

            “Why?” I ask. “Where is it?”

            “It’s not too far from Location Six, where we first tried to Fade you.”

            “The Nevada Desert?” I have a lot of memories of that desert. Not all of them are good. There’s the attempt to Fade me, the realization that my life to date had been a lie, the attack by the Others that resulted in the destruction of the base… it’s going to be hard going back. And not just for personal reasons, either.

            “Jack,” I point out, “it’s a
long
way to the Nevada Desert. If the entire country is like… like
this
, then how do we get there?”

            “It’s clear across the country,” Jack agrees, “but that can’t stop us, Celes. This car will do for now, but we’ll have to keep a lookout for something better to help us make the journey. A plane or a long range helicopter would be ideal, but for now, this car can at least get us moving in the right direction. It’s better than walking, and a lot better than staying still doing nothing.”

            Jack has a point there. We could just sit in Wilson Hammond’s tower, waiting for either the food to run out or the Beast within him to want us dead, but if we actually want to survivepant to su, if we want to do something useful, then the car is what we have for now.

            Jack keeps driving, the road still slippery with ash as we go along past houses and stores, a community center and a library. We still haven’t seen anyone in the street. Maybe there isn’t anyone left to see. What will we do if we’re the only ones left? No, I have to keep thinking that there will be more than that. Even if we came back to change things, I have to keep believing that there are other people out there.

            That’s when I see something that might just be a sign of them. A flash of light, reflecting off the car’s rear view mirror. For a second, I think it must just be the sun, or something reflecting off one of the windows of the buildings around us, yet this seems different somehow. Particularly when it comes again. It’s a flash of light, and it seems to be coming from one of the nearby buildings.

            “Jack?” I say. “Did you see that? That light?”

            Jack nods, and I can see from his expression that he’s already in that calculating space he goes to when danger might be near.

“Yes. Normally, I’d say that we should keep going, because getting to Location Thirteen has to be our priority, but…”

“But there might be people in there,” I finish for him. Despite everything, we can’t just abandon people in the middle of a ruined city like this. They might be hurt. They might need our help. They might also be able to help us.

Jack swings the car around carefully, bringing it up to the curb by the building the light seems to have come from. It’s the old library, the doors of which are hanging open.

“If there are people in there,” he says, “then they might have information about what has happened, but we need to be careful, Celes.”

            “I’ll be careful,” I promise him, hopping out of the car. “But Jack, it’s probably nothing. That, or its just ordinary people. We probably don’t have a lot to be afraid of.”

            Jack moves up beside me quickly. He puts a hand on my shoulder. “We don’t
know
what there is to be afraid of. That’s the point. We have a whole town that’s practically empty. We don’t know what happened to the people here during the apocalypse, and we
really
don’t know what might be in there. After something like this, even normal things are dangerous, Celes. People, animals… they’ll be scared, hungry, probably desperate. So we’re going to be careful.”

            I nod again. I think Jack’s overreacting, because with my powers, I have the tools to stay safe against most things, while Jack is an expert when it comes to violent situations. Maybe that’s why I agree with him though. He’s theing. He’ expert. He’s spent so long now keeping me safe that I’m not going to take risks when he says to be careful.

            We move a little closer to the open door.

            “If there are people there, what do we do?” I ask. “If they need help, then we have to at least try to help them.”

            Jack nods. “If there are people, then helping them is a priority.”

            I’d almost expected him not to say that. I’d thought that for Jack, the mission might come first so much that we’d have to abandon anyone we found. But that’s the thing with Jack. He can be completely hard and focused one moment, totally gentle the next. It’s part of why I care about him so much.

            “If we’re very lucky,” Jack says, “they’ll be able to help us as much as we help them. We have some supplies, but we’ll need more than this if we can’t find a better way to Location Thirteen than driving.”

            That makes a kind of sense. We move up to the doors together. Jack’s very careful not to stand directly in front of them. Instead, he steps to the side of the frame, like he’s expecting something to come out shooting at any moment. He even pulls me there with him when I don’t do the same. This close to him, I can smell the strong, masculine scent of him and feel the thrill of carefully controlled danger that comes just from being around him. Even the power within me flickers, the way it so often does when I’m near Jack. Everything about him calls to me when he’s like this.