Happy Birthday to You (Birthday Trilogy, Book 3) (21 page)

Matt and Ryan both fell to the ground,
and Ryan looked up at the Penn Station ceiling, realizing he had escaped death
by a mere second.

“Oh my God,” Ryan said.

“Oh my God,” Matt repeated. “That was…
you almost…”

“I know. How can I ever thank—”

The subway doors opened up, and hundreds
of people rushed inside, in the process trampling over Ryan and Matt. Matt
tried to get up, unsuccessfully, while Ryan died when the bottom of a high heel
struck the side of his head.

When the subway car pulled away, Wallace
had a warm seat all to himself. He didn’t know what had happened to Ryan and
Matt, and he didn’t care.

It was each man for
himself
now.
 

12.

I looked in the back seat, feeling more
paranoid than ever. I could’ve sworn I saw a twitch.

“You did not see a twitch,” Liesel
reassured me. “We’ve been out of Santa Barbara for two seconds and you already
think your spell’s wearing off. Trust me. It hasn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“He’ll be out for a while, Cam. Trust me.
At least the rest of the day, if not longer.”

“I can feel him breathing on me,” I said,
trying to forget the man’s face was turned away from me.

“No you can’t.”

“This is so insane what we did. Do you
realize that?”

“If it’s a way we can save humanity, then
I don’t see anything insane about it.”

“I mean I don’t even know this guy. He
could be innocent.”

Liesel put her feet up on the dash and
looked out her window. “Cam, I can’t vouch or not vouch for this guy. I wasn’t
there. I met him once, in the beginning, before I… you know.”

“Before you left?”

“Yeah. He seemed all right. Could he be
responsible for my mother’s death? Possibly. But why Hannah thinks he is solely
responsible is beyond me.”

“Leese, she’s letting out her anger by
destroying the world. I don’t think she has a lot of reasonable thinking going
on.”

“Still though,” Liesel said, “it seems odd
she would care enough about this man to make us kidnap him.” She shrugged and
sighed. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that we get this guy to
Hannah, wherever the hell she is.”

“Yeah, what’s the plan with that, by the
way? Am I just gonna keep driving north?”

“For now, yeah.
Head
toward Sacramento.
I have a feeling she’s gonna be up there.”

“You have a feeling?”

“Yeah. We took a vacation near
there
once. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“She wanted you to call her when we
kidnapped him, right?”

“Right.” Liesel sat upright in the
passenger seat, stretched, and then grabbed her phone. She turned around,
lifted up the phone, turned on the camera application, and started snapping
photos of the doctor’s quiet body in the back seat.

“What are you doing?”

“What do you think?” Liesel asked.
“Proof. For Hannah.”

“Oh.”

“Duuuuuuuh,” Liesel said with a smile.

I still couldn’t believe how lighthearted
Liesel was acting considering the terror that was currently sweeping the world.
She was acting as if we were taking a fun day-trip somewhere, completely
unaware about the millions of deaths occurring at this moment all around the
globe.

“OK, I got twenty photos. That should be
enough.”

“I would think so,” I said. “How much
proof does Hannah need?”

“Enough. Trust me.” She started dialing.
“OK, here goes nothing.”

“Can you put it on speaker phone?”

Liesel held the phone out, and I listened
to the rings on the other end. I expected Hannah to make us wait awhile. But
she picked up after the second ring.

“Alicia?” Hannah asked over the phone.

“Yeah, it’s us.”

“Took you long enough. I figured you guys
would’ve kidnapped our little friend Dr. Rice hours ago.”

“Well, we’ve got him now, that’s all that
matters.”

“Oh really?”

“Yeah,” Liesel said. “It was difficult,
but we got him. He’s in the back seat.”

Hannah didn’t say anything for a moment.
Then she started giggling. “How does it make you two feel,” Hannah said, “to
know that at this point in time, there are no children left in the world?”

“
What
?”
Liesel asked. I too couldn’t believe it.

“Mmm hmm,” Hannah said. “According to my
calculations, the youngest people on the planet right now are eighteen years
old.
That movie
Children
of Men
?
It’s now a reality!”

I brought my hands to my mouth and tried
my best to drive in a way that wouldn’t run us off the cliff. I had been so
concerned with our little mission to get the corrupt doctor that I had
momentarily forgotten that Hannah started making everyone in the world grow a
year older not by the day but by the hour.
 

“Wait…” I said. “That means…”

“You know what that means, Cameron,”
Hannah said. “By noon, you and your beloved will be the two youngest people on
the
planet
!”

I turned to Liesel. We both stared at
each other for a moment, not wanting to believe her sister.

“I’m gonna be the youngest person on
Earth?” I asked.

“It… it can’t be,” Liesel said.

“Oh, let me assure you both, it can,”
Hannah said. “Good luck trying to talk to anyone in the coming hours. You’re
gonna
be looked at as freaks!

That was it. I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Oh yeah? Then what the hell does that make you then?”

Hannah laughed. “The very freak that
started this all.”

“
Hannah
,”
Liesel said, smashing her hand over my mouth to keep me from saying another
word. “Let’s try to be civil about this. We have Dr. Rice. We’re heading north.
Tell us where you are, and we will get there as fast as we can.”

“Send me proof you have him.”

“Of course. I have pictures.”

“Send them now.”

Liesel pulled the phone close to her chin
and sent Hannah six of the twenty photos. She brought the phone down to her lap
and waited.

“Well?” Liesel asked. “Is that enough?
It’s him. I promise.”

Silence ensued. I started to wonder if
Hannah was still on the other end. Finally, she said, “Nice work, sis.”

“OK. Now tell me where you are. And we’ll
be there as quickly as possible, so we can put a stop to this, before things
really
get out of control.”

“Alicia… you know where to go.”

Liesel closed her eyes, as if she was
re-living a happy memory. She licked her lips and took a deep breath.
“Graeagle?”

“You know it,” Hannah said. “The
Whitehawk woods. Do you remember?”

Liesel pulled the phone closer to her. “I
remember.”

“Good.”

“We’re probably… I don’t know… six hours
away? Seven, maybe?”

“Good for you,” Hannah said.
“Unfortunately I’m not going to meet with you until tomorrow morning.”

“What?” Liesel looked ready to explode
with anger. “Why not ‘til then?”

“Because, I have to—”

“That’s like another twenty-four hours
from now!” I shouted, butting into the conversation. “You just want to let the
time run out like last time, you crazy
bitch
!”

“
Cam
!”
Liesel screamed at me, pushing my face against the driver side window. She
brought the phone to her side. “I’m sorry, Hannah.”

“That just cost you another four hours,” she
said. “
Noon
tomorrow.”

“What?” I shouted. “You’ve gotta be
shitting me!”

Liesel looked like she wanted to punch
me. She brought her index finger to her mouth and gesticulated for me to shut
the hell up. I obliged.

“OK,” Liesel said. “Noon. Noon tomorrow.
I know where to go. We’ll be there. With Dr. Rice.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Hannah said. “Be
well.” And then the sound of Hannah’s cackling pierced both our ears, before
the call went dead.

Liesel threw the phone down and slapped
me in the face. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, realizing the car
was roaming dangerously far into the other lane, “it’s just… Leese… twenty-four
hours… that’s twenty-four more
years
on everybody we know!”

“It’s twenty-eight now, because you had
to open your dumb mouth! What the hell are you thinking, calling her a bitch?
Until we stop her, we have to be cordial, don’t you understand that?”

“
Cordial
?
To
Hannah
?
I’d rather be dead.”

“Everyone we
know
is going to be dead if we don’t start acting smart.”

My heart was pounding, and I could feel a
bad headache coming on. I couldn’t wait until tomorrow at noon. I needed to see
Hannah
now
. I needed to rip her head
off and feed it to a hungry grizzly bear
now
.

“So let me try to figure this out,” I
said. “If the youngest person on Earth is eighteen, that means everyone has
aged eighteen years since all this started.”

Liesel nodded with disinterest, clearly
not wanting to do the math, and not wanting to know the current status of all
our loved ones.

“That means Kimber… she’d… she’d be…”

“What?”

“Thirty-two.”

“Yeah,” she said. “That’s right.”

“My parents… oh God… they’d be in their
sixties
.”

Liesel nodded again. She turned away from
me.

“And then my grandma and grandpa…” I
didn’t say another word. The truth hit me hard, and the car, again, started to
veer into the other lane.

“Cam,” Liesel said, grabbing the wheel
and pulling the car back into our lane. “Do you want to pull over and call your
family? Just make sure they’re OK?”

“I want nothing more.”

“OK. Call Kimber.”

“Good idea.”

We were out in the middle of nowhere,
with no one around. We had just passed a town called Solvang, but other than
that, we hadn’t seen anything of interest. We also hadn’t seen a car for miles.
I pulled over and put the car in park.

“OK,” I said and dialed my little sister,
who was, incredibly, now, my much
older
sister.

As the phone started ringing, I turned to
my left to see an animal running across the pavement. I only caught the back of
it; it had looked like a large dog.

I turned to Liesel, the phone still
ringing. “Do you think the aging thing is affecting animals, too?”

But before Liesel could answer, I heard
somebody pick up on the other line.

“Hello?” I asked. “Kimber?”

She didn’t say anything for a moment. I
wondered if I had dialed a wrong number. But then I heard the sound of sobs. It
was
her
.
 

“Kimber? What’s wrong?”

“Cameron,” she said, “where have you
been?”

“Trying to stop the madness,” I said,
eyeing Liesel, who was turned away from me, looking out the windshield.

“Cam, you have to come home.”

“I can’t yet. You know I can’t. I know it
must be getting bad, Kimber. I can hear it in your voice.”

“It’s not—”

“I know what’s happening,” I said. “I
know you and Mom and Dad and everyone you know are aging faster and faster.”

“I feel like I’m
dying
,” Kimber said on the other end. I wanted to reach through the
phone and hug her.

“I know,” I said, “but not for much
longer. Hang in there, OK? I promise you, I won’t let anything happen to you. I
just needed to check in, and make sure you and mom and dad are OK. I need you
guys to know that I’m doing everything in my power to put a stop to all
this—”

“
Cam
.”
Kimber started sobbing again, and I knew she had only bad news to tell me.
“Something’s happened. And you need to come home.”

“I told you! I can’t! If I come home,
everyone’s
gonna
die, do you understand? If I turn
around and come back to Reno, the world… is going… to
end
! And I’m not saying that to sound conceited. It’s actually
true! Without my help, the world will freaking come to an—”

“Dad’s dead.”

I had tried to prepare myself for bad
news, but nothing prepared me for this.

“Umm….” I suddenly felt extremely light
headed. “Kimber, what did you say?”

The tears had already started flowing
before I asked my question. But I couldn’t drop the phone. I needed to hear my
little sister on the other end. I needed to keep the conversation going.