Happy Birthday to You (Birthday Trilogy, Book 3) (20 page)

“Get away from her!” I shouted. But
again, neither of them heard me, the doctor keeping all of his focus on Liesel.

I knew there was no way I could think
happy thoughts now. My rage had intensified, and my sanity meter was close to
exploding. I didn’t know this Gus Rice, I didn’t know if he played a role in
the death of Liesel’s mother, but I was sure about one thing: I really, really
didn’t like him.

I started racing down the stairs, so fast
that I almost tripped. I made it to the hardwood floor and rushed into the
kitchen to see Liesel cowering in the corner, a tiny butter knife in her hand,
while the doctor sported a large kitchen knife in his.

“Let her go,” I said again, softer this
time.

“Make me,” he said, madness all over his
face, suggesting he really
did
have a
dark side like Hannah suggested.

“Cameron,” Liesel said, briefly averting
her eyes from the doctor’s knife to me. “Cameron, please.”

I should’ve felt terror in that moment,
but all I could feel from head to toe was an explosive fury. I stepped into the
room and raised my right palm. I was going to try something new.

“I said, get away from her!”

“Cam!” Liesel shouted. “He’s gonna stab
me!”

The man leapt toward Liesel, the knife
going straight for her abdomen. But before he could take a swipe at her, a wave
of energy erupted from my head down to my chest, out to my arm, and then to my
palm. It was so strong I thought my heart was going to explode. The light that
erupted from my palm wasn’t light green this time; it was a harsh dark green that
lit up the whole room with an ominous glow. When the light shot out from my
palm, striking the doctor on the side of his face, I wasn’t able to see much.
The force of the power was so strong it blew me back, out of the kitchen, all
the way into the gigantic foyer.

“Owww!” I shouted again.

I couldn’t move my arms for a moment, but
when I finally felt strong enough to sit up and look into the kitchen. I was
happy to see no sign of the doctor, or the knives.

Instead I saw Liesel, out of breath,
walking toward me and kneeling down.

“Did I get him?” I asked.

She smiled and sighed, wiping some sweat
from her cheeks and forehead and giving me an enthusiastic hug. “You got him,
Cam. Oh my God. You saved me. He was going to—”

“I know,” I said. “I didn’t… you know…”

“What?”

“I didn’t
kill
him, did I?”

She shook her head. “No. I checked his
pulse. He’s alive. You struck him in the head. He’ll be out for hours.”

“That’s good to hear.” I tugged hard on
Liesel’s arm and brought her closer. I wanted to feel her touch. I wanted to
make sure she was still with me. “So what do we do now?”

She took a deep breath. “We drag him to
the back of your car, and hope to God nobody sees us.”

I nodded. “And hope to God he doesn’t
wake up.”

RYAN

He couldn’t stop honking. Even though he
knew it wasn’t going to get him anywhere. The cars weren’t budging. And as the
minutes ticked on, Ryan Henderson realized getting out of New York was going to
be a bigger problem than he realized.

“Dude, what the hell is going on here?”
Ryan’s friend Wallace asked in the back seat. “We haven’t moved in fifteen
minutes.”

“Fifteen? Try thirty.” Matt, Ryan’s other
friend in the car, as well as roommate, massaged his hands together nervously
in the passenger seat. Ryan had only known Wallace since taking a sociology
class with him at Columbia University last January. Ryan had known Matt his
whole life; they went to elementary school, middle school, and high school
together, and played on the Caughlin Ranch High basketball team all four years.
“If we don’t move soon, we might have to make a run for it.”

“Make a run for it?” Ryan asked, annoyed.
“This isn’t a science fiction movie, guys. Aliens aren’t hovering over the city
ready to nuke us to death. This is just a case of people going completely mad
because of a little aging problem.”

“
Little
?”
little Wallace said in the back seat. “This last week was scary, no doubt. Now
it’s just gone insane. I feel like I’m aging every five minutes. Look at me.
I’m already getting bags under my eyes!”

“I think I look better now,” Ryan said,
not trying to cover up his conceitedness. “I always thought I would look better
in my thirties. Now I know.”

“You’re not
gonna
be in your thirties for long,” Wallace said. “Just give this traffic another
few hours. You’ll be forty any moment.”

Matt looked at Ryan with intense fear. He
and Ryan knew about Cameron’s aging diseases, the one that happened last year,
and the one that happened in April. But Cameron had survived both traumatic
experiences, and so Ryan felt strongly that this worldwide aging epidemic would
eventually blow over.

“I know you think this will just go away,
Ryan,” Matt said, looking like he wanted to crawl under a rock and die. “But
I’m starting to think it won’t.”

“Cameron made it through. Twice. Whatever
this is… it doesn’t kill anyone. It just freaks everyone the hell out.”

“But what about all the old people?”
Wallace asked. “A week ago I had three of my four grandparents still alive.
They’re all dead now, Ryan! They’re
dead
!”

“A coincidence, maybe?”

“A total moron, maybe?”

Matt shook his head. “Well, whatever’s
happening, guys, we need to get the hell out of New York. Everyone’s panicking,
and it’s not gonna get any better.” Matt turned and looked out the window. “I
mean, look at that guy.”

The three nineteen-year-olds, now in
their
thirties, watched as an old bearded man ran past them
screaming at the top of his lungs. When he reached the intersection up ahead,
he dropped the suitcase he was carrying and stopped.

“What’s he doing?” Wallace asked.

And then the three screamed, Wallace the
loudest, when they saw the man get struck to the ground by a speeding bus.

“It’s the end of the world,” Wallace
said.

“It’s not the end of the world!” Ryan
shouted. “But we need to get to a safe place! We can’t stay here any longer!”

Ryan, Matt, and Wallace stepped out of
the car, opened the trunk, and grabbed their belongings.

“Where are we going?” Wallace asked.

Ryan licked his lips. “Where else? The
subway.”

“OK,” Matt and Wallace said in unison.

The three friends started running against
traffic, trying to ignore all the screams and honking and spreading of total
panic. People were reaching out for help, but the boys just kept running on
past, for a whole two blocks. Matt fell, once, striking his cheek against the
rocky street pavement. He started bleeding, but he kept on running.

They finally found the stairwell to Penn
Station, on the corner of 8
^th
and West 34
^th
Street. Matt
and Wallace started racing down the stairs, while Ryan stopped for a moment to
admire the Empire State Building in the distance. Ryan had toured this great
city a year and half ago and decided, after being accepted to nearly a dozen
colleges all over the United States, that he wanted to live in New York for
four years and attend the prestigious Columbia University. But as much as Ryan
loved the city, and he certainly did, he knew this was not the place to be in a
time of worldwide chaos. He tried to stay positive, but inside, he was scared.
He wanted to be back in Reno, back in the arms of his mom and dad. He had
wanted independence all his life, but now, in this turbulent time, he just
wanted to be back home.

He also wanted to give Cameron Martin a
call. “What do you think about all this, Cameron?” he asked aloud, just as the
voice of Matt shook him back to reality.

“Ryan! Come on!”

“I’m coming!” Ryan glanced back at the
Empire State Building one last time, and then started racing down the steps
toward Penn Station.

“It’s crowded,” Wallace said, up ahead of
Mike and Ryan. “We’re going to have to push our way through.”

“We have to take the subway to the end of
the line,” Ryan said. “We have to take it as far as it will go.”

“OK,” Matt said, running out in front of
Wallace. “Come on!
Hurry
!”

They started wading through the hordes of
people, all looking to get the next subway ride, all knowing it was going to be
awhile if they didn’t act like jackasses and just start pushing. The boys
weren’t about to hold hands, so they were soon dispersed so far away from each
other that Ryan couldn’t even see Matt or Wallace anymore. He just hoped he
could find his way to the edge of the platform so that he could get a ride on
the next train.

“Watch where you’re going!” a large black
man shouted.

“Hey, get back in line!” a petite but
vocal old lady screamed.

“Sorry,” Ryan kept saying. “Sorry, sorry,
sorry. I’m trying to find my family.” He figured that lie would’ve worked
better when he was six or seven. Now looking like he was in his thirties, he
assumed there wouldn’t be the same kind of sympathy.

He could finally see the edge of the
platform in the distance as a subway car arrived and people started pushing and
shoving their way onto the platform. It was complete anarchy, and Ryan had to
try to block out the intense screaming. It got so bad that he started to wonder
if staying above ground might have been the smarter decision. But there was no
turning back now. He had to get on the next train.

“Matt? Wallace?”

“Over here!” Matt shouted.

Ryan looked over to see Matt and Wallace
on the right edge of the platform, trying to fight their way inside.

But they were too late. As Ryan
approached it, the huge doors promptly closed, and the subway car zoomed off,
leaving the boys surrounded by ferocious humans, all with one desire: to get
the hell out of New York.

Ryan got closer and closer. He could see
the edge. He knew the closer he got, the easier it would be to secure a place
on the next subway car. He squatted down and tried to move past others, acting
as if he was a little person, or as if he had de-aged a few decades.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Excuse me. Pardon
me. Sorry. I’m so sorry.”

He could see the edge. Only two people
were in front of him now. He turned around to see three hundred people, at
least, shoving against one another as if this was the mosh-pit of a sold-out
concert.

Ryan looked to his right to see Wallace
and Matt standing next to each other, a little bit farther back, but still close
to the edge. He smiled to himself, knowing in just a few seconds he would be
safely on the next subway car.

“Plllllllease,” he whispered to himself,
briefly closing his eyes. “Please just get me out of here safely, for the love
of—”

Before he could finish his sentence, the
loud clangs of the oncoming subway car echoed down the track, exciting Ryan and
everybody around him. As it drew nearer, he could feel the pushing behind him
becoming increasingly violent.

“Stop pushing!” somebody shouted.

“You’re going to hurt someone!” another
person shouted.

All the pushing made its way to Ryan, and
he had to steady myself.

But then the unthinkable happened. Ryan
felt a shove from his right, and he slammed into a person on his left. Then
that person shoved him away, and then somebody else pushed him, and he was
suddenly a living, breathing pinball machine.

When a large, bearded man slammed into
his back, he fell down onto the subway tracks, the panic rushing over him
instantly.

“Oh my God,
Ryan
!” Matt shouted from the platform. He turned around. “Somebody
help him!”

Something was broken; Ryan couldn’t tell
what. It was his shoulder or arm or wrist. He felt shooting pain running
throughout the top half of his body. But as he looked up to see the blinding
light of the subway car coming toward him, he knew all the pain would be
obliterated in an instant if he didn’t do something.

“Ryan!” Wallace shouted. “Get the hell
out of there!”

“Ryan! Grab my hand!” Matt made his way
to the edge of the platform and reached down as far as he could. He was super
tall—almost six-five—and he had the longest, lankiest arms of all
time. But as much as Ryan tried to jump up to his feet, his body wouldn’t let
him. It was like he was momentarily frozen to his spot in the center of the subway
track.

“Ryan! Jump!”

The subway car raced toward Ryan, full
throttle,
no
chance of stopping. He turned to Matt and
nodded, knowing he had one second to save himself.

“OK,” Ryan said as he leapt forward and
successfully grabbed Matt’s hands.

Matt pulled him up and over the edge of
the platform, just as the subway car came racing past. It was so close a call
that Ryan’s feet were almost severed, his right shoe getting blown off in the
process.