Hell's Children: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller (8 page)

S
tanding
near the door to the teenager’s apartment with Pete and Tony, Jack considered the best way to make his pitch—provided the boy was back home. According to Pete, he’d locked his door and left three hours ago.

“Do you remember if he was armed?” Jack said.

Pete shrugged. “He might have been.”

“How could you not remember?” Tony said.

Pete sat on the stairs and folded his arms. “Because I don’t.”

“You’re not coming?” Jack said.

He shook his head. “If he has a gun, he could freak out and shoot us.”

“If you’re so scared,” Jack said, “how did find him in the first place?”

“Mandy saw him when she was checking doors.”

That was odd. “Where were you?”

“Downstairs waiting. He went out the front, so I didn’t get a good look.”

Jack couldn’t believe it. “You let a little girl roam the floors by herself?”

“I told her to run if she didn’t feel safe,” Pete said. “Get off my case.”

Tony didn’t hold back. “Man, you’re a little baby, that’s what you are.”

“Oh yeah?” Pete said, standing up. “Say it to my face!”

Tony shoved him, and Jack had to step between them. “Knock it off. We’re here for a job.”

The two boys glared at each other a moment more and then settled down.

“Come on,” Jack said, and went to stand outside the door. “Keep your gun holstered, but be ready, and … Wait a minute—you any good with it?”

“I shot it a bunch of times,” Tony said, puffing his chest out fractionally. “It’s easy.”

Jack realized a gun safety lesson was needed if they were going to keep people from accidentally shooting each other. One more task for his ever-growing list.

After a brief hesitation, he knocked on the door. He tried his best to look non-threatening, knowing whoever answered would see him through the peephole. Hard to do with a rifle looped over his shoulder.

They didn’t have to wait long for a response. The peephole darkened, and an angry, male voice shouted from inside, “Who the hell are you?”

“Uh, my name’s Jack, and—”

“I said I’m not joining! Go away!”

Jack quirked an eyebrow at Tony, who shrugged.

“Right, um, we never asked you to join. Maybe you meant someone else?”

“Don’t care—leave me alone.”

“No problem, but before we do,” Jack said, choosing his words carefully, “why didn’t you join that gang or whoever it was that asked you?”

“Because I didn’t. And don’t think I can’t see that gun you’re carrying.”

Feeling like an idiot, Jack unhooked the rifle and passed it to Tony. Then he unclipped his holster and passed that over, too.

“See that?” he said. “No guns. It’s dangerous out here. Only reason we have them. Let me in and we’ll just talk, okay? My voice is hurting from all this shouting.”

About ten seconds later, the door opened fractionally, secured by a chain. A boy of about fifteen stared angrily out through the crack.

“That’s all of you?” he said, angling his head to see if anyone was hiding.

“There’s another of us over by the stairs,” Jack said.

The boy said, “There’s not a drop of food in the house. Even if you search, you won’t find anything.”

“We don’t want your food,” Jack said. “That’s the point of all this—we have food already. What we don’t have enough of are teenagers. Just little kids.”

The boy pulled a face like he’d heard something strange. “What do you mean little kids?”

“Not too many,” Jack said, wishing he’d kept quiet about them. “They don’t eat much. We’re leaving in a day or two for a safer place. If you want in, we could use you.”

The boy still wore that strange expression on his face. “You have a lot of children?”

Just as Jack was thinking maybe the boy was the wrong type to join them—if he hated children so much—the sound of a crying child carried from somewhere deep inside.

Smiling like he’d solved a puzzle, Jack said, “There’s always room for more.”

* * *

T
he boy’s
name was Brad, he was fifteen and a half, and he had a seven-month-old brother named Tyler. The apartment they were staying in belonged to Brad’s father, who’d died back when hospitals were still admitting victims.

“What about your mom?” Pete said.

The older boy had freely volunteered the stuff about his dad, but no more.

“No need to answer that, Brad,” Jack said, throwing Pete an angry look. “Pete’s sort of a bull in an etiquette shop. Says the darnedest things.”

Brad smiled briefly. “No, it’s fine. She got the Sickness a month after my brother was born. I buried her, then came here after we ran out of, uh …”

A sudden tenseness invaded the room.

“It’s okay,” Jack said. “Like I said—we’re not here to rob you. Tony, place my pistol on the table for Brad to pick up. Be careful with it. Always treat a gun like it’s ready to fire.”

Tony smirked like he knew everything already. He unholstered the gun and handed it directly to Brad, who took it warily.

Jack bit back an angry retort. He’d deal with it later.

“There you go, Brad,” he said. “Your first gun. Even if you don’t come with us, you can keep it. I’ll show you how to use it before we leave, give you some basic safety—”

Brad released the magazine, cleared the chamber—already empty—put the magazine back in, and racked the slide. It was a single-action semi-auto, so there was no need to decock it. After engaging the safety, he placed it on the table near Jack.

Pete had looked ready to bolt the entire time the older boy was manipulating the weapon. Jack was spooked, too, but hid it better.

“I used to shoot with my grandfather,” Brad said, grinning. “He was a police officer way back when. He said if every gun’s loaded and ready to fire, may as well keep it loaded and ready to fire.” He reached behind his back and pulled out a small, black pistol Jack couldn’t readily identify. “Glad you’re not here to rob me. Bet you are too, huh?”

Brad laughed, and Jack and the others laughed nervously with him.

“The reason I came here,” Brad said, “is because … well hold on. May as well show you.”

He got up and the others followed him to the kitchen. He opened a cupboard and inside were about twelve big cans of baby formula in different brands. “Dad only had one when I got here, for when Mom visited. They were getting along better after Tyler was born, with everything so crazy. It was like their marriage problems didn’t matter anymore. Anyway, I was able to add all these cans … well, you know how. Door to door.” He shook his head and his voice grew hard. “Pretty unfair, if you ask me, what happened to everybody.”

Jack nodded. “If you join us, there’s security and smart people. Good people. You need help. You can’t keep leaving your brother alone to go out.”

In the end, Brad agreed to come with them, and set about packing the things he wanted to take. Namely, the clothes on his back, the cans of formula, and a stack of cloth diapers. Jack wrapped the cans in three sheets, then split the load up so Brad didn’t have to carry anything but Tyler.

Struggling with his burden, Pete said, “Why’d you give me so much? You think because I’m Asian you can make me carry everything around. That’s racist.”

Jack laughed. “No, Pete. If you were a Sherpa from Nepal,
that
would be racist.”

“What’s a Sherpa?” he said. “First hobos and now Sherpas. You think because I’m Asian I know everything. I knew you were racist.”

“I’m black,” Tony said, “and
I
know what a Sherpa is. I read a book about Mount Everest one time. Teacher acted like I did something special, reading a book on my very own. Hey Brad—you believe this guy, thinking he’s got it worse than us?”

Brad snorted. “Don’t drag me into it.”

On the way back to the Welcome Center, Tony and Pete went back and forth about various degrees of racism and which race had it worse, each trying to outdo the other on how they’d suffered over the years. So long as they weren’t insulting each other, Jack was content to let them. He did wonder why anyone would care about such trivial things in a world with so many new dangers.

Then, tracing it back, he realized maybe that was the point.

Back at the Welcome Center, everyone gathered around Brad and the baby. It was like Brad was a celebrity, old as he was. What a difference a year made. When he took off his jacket, his muscles stood out starkly. He was tall, too—bigger even than Blaze—and in some ways it felt like having an adult around. That impression quickly evaporated when they talked to him. Despite his size, he seemed unduly shy and embarrassed by the attention, and fussed with Tyler the whole time.

Lisa reached out and played with the baby boy, smiling in a way Jack hadn’t seen since before the Sickness.

Out of nowhere, a peculiar jealousy came over him. He watched Lisa’s face as she tried to engage the fifteen-year-old. Brad barely looked at her, and her manner switched from curious and excited to gentle and kind. At one point, she glanced at Jack and shrugged as if to say,
I tried.

“Any news about the safe?” he said.

“Best news ever,” she said, smiling proudly.

While he and the others were away recruiting Brad, she’d glued a plastic coaster in place of the dial. After first measuring out the combination locations—extrapolated from a portion of the busted dial—she was able to accurately use the combination and open it.

Everyone cheered and agreed she was a genius, and that night they celebrated with beans over sauceless spaghetti.

The next day, Jack was anything but pleased. Three of the children Greg and Tony had brought home the day before were missing. That would have been a concern all its own. But then they returned with eleven
more
children, all of them between about five and ten years old, bringing the total number of mouths to feed to twenty-seven.

I
n the months
since Jack had last seen the twins, Greg had learned how to drive. The twins had tried to check on him, but the roadblocks—still there at the time—had made that impossible.

“Twenty-seven people,” Jack was saying, “and only three of us know how to drive a car.”

“But a bus?” Lisa said that afternoon when he told her his plan. “Really? They’re huge. It takes practice.”

“Then I’ll practice.”

Before dark, Jack found a number of cars that fit the keys Pete had recovered. Of these, he picked five that had full or almost full tanks, and enlisted Pete to help get them going with the car and jumper cables from the other night.

“I may as well learn to drive a car first,” Jack said and got behind one of the wheels. One by one, he drove through the neighborhood and parked them at the Welcome Center so they wouldn’t get stolen. Driving wasn’t too difficult, he decided, with traffic laws and busy interstates as extinct as the dinosaurs. Like Pete, his biggest problem was not pushing the gas when he wanted to push the brakes.

Nobody knew how long it would take for the batteries to recharge, so they ran the cars all night. Even so, in the morning, one of them wouldn’t start after stopping it. The others were fine.

Brad helped him disconnect and carry the four batteries to Greg’s trunk. Jack added a bunch of tools selected by Lisa, along with five sets of jumper cables Mandy had scavenged from the neighborhood.

For the excursion, Jack tapped Lisa for her brains, and Pete as a second driver. Greg, Tony, and Brad would stay behind to guard the children.

They left shortly before noon.

* * *

S
ince fleeing his house
, Jack hadn’t been anywhere but the apartment complex and surrounding neighborhoods. The only people he’d seen besides the green-haired girl and Brad were the little kids that kept showing up. Now, during the day, there were plenty—walking aimlessly down the road in the cold, milling outside already looted stores and fast food places, or sometimes driving to who knew where. Usually the ones in cars were alone, but once he saw a car packed with youngsters, with an older girl up front. Tempted as he was to flag her down to see if she’d join them, he resisted the urge. The last thing they needed was more mouths to feed.

The bus they’d scraped past the other night was still on the exit ramp off 28, failing in its job to block sick people from making it to that section of the city.

“Now what?” Lisa said, staring skeptically at the huge vehicle. She looked through the doors. “No keys.”

“All your tools and electrical gear are in the trunk. If you can crack a safe, you can hotwire a bus.”

Lisa looked at him like he was crazy. Which, he figured, might actually be true.

The folding doors opened with a solid push, and Jack breathed a sigh of relief that they wouldn’t have to drive around with a gaping hole in the glass. He’d actually never been on a school bus before, though he’d often dreamed of it. Right up there with having his very own hall locker.

The first thing Lisa did was pound a flathead screwdriver into the keyhole. She clamped an adjustable wrench around the hexagonal handle and tugged hard, snapping something inside the keyhole and causing it to turn. Unsurprisingly, the bus didn’t start.

“It was worth a try,” Jack said, smiling to show how much confidence he had in her.

Lisa cast him a withering look, got down on her knees, and peered under the dash using Jack’s flashlight. A minute later, she popped off the housing for easier access. She traced wires for the next ten minutes, exposing them in places to test with a voltmeter.

Jack had always been interested in electronics. He knew the general concepts, Ohms Law and all that, but had never done anything practical with it. Lisa, on the other hand, had built her own radio when she was Mandy’s age. Greg was just as smart, though less competitive, and he tended to follow Jack’s lead on what to do, like with the knife sharpening business. In every way, he and Greg were best friends. Despite that, Jack had always felt closer to Greg’s sister.

“Be careful,” he said. “Much as you’d enjoy my resuscitation skills … well … actually, go ahead and shock yourself. I could use the practice.” He laughed loudly, broadcasting to the entire world that it was just a harmless joke.

Lisa looked up and smiled at him, holding his gaze a fraction longer than could be considered harmless at all, causing his pulse to pound in his ears.

Before embarrassing himself further, he nodded curtly and went outside to see if Pete needed help with anything important.

Five minutes later, Lisa stomped out of the bus and swore.

“What’s wrong?” Jack said, appearing by her side as if by magic.

“The battery’s dead.
Too
dead. Doesn’t make any sense. It should have at least
some
charge, but the needle’s totally flat.”

“Maybe there’s something wrong with the voltmeter,” he said.

To find out, they went to car and tested it on the battery. It worked fine.

“How about the one on the bus?” Pete said.

They went to the back to find out, but the battery wasn’t there. After some searching, they found
three
batteries in a compartment on the side of the bus.

“What the hell?” she said, looking at the glowing meter when she checked them. “There’s a charge.”

For lack of options, they went back around to look at the engine. Lisa was pretty good with electronics, but she didn’t know anything about engines. Jack didn’t either.

“What about that big red button?” Pete said.

Sure enough, there was a big red button in the engine compartment. Lisa shrugged, pushed it, then went back to the front.

“That did it!” she yelled. A minute later, they heard the unmistakable sound of the engine trying and failing to turn over.

“Let’s start hauling,” Jack said.

Together, he and Lisa hooked the four batteries to the ones in the bus in parallel using Mandy’s cables. Probably overkill, but it was a big bus with a big engine. The whole time, Pete stared at them from ten feet away, offering helpful comments like “be careful!” and “are you sure about this?” and “you’re gonna get electrocuted!”

Lisa climbed up to try again. Like last time, they heard the engine turn. This time, it kept turning, and a few seconds later the bus sputtered to life.

“I’m letting it run a while,” she said and clomped down the steps.

After about ten minutes, they disconnected the batteries and put them back in the car.

Pete crossed his arms defiantly. “I don’t know how to drive a bus.”

“I told you, I got it,” Jack said. “When we’re ready to move out, we’ll put you in one car and Greg in another. Lisa, how much gas do we have?”

“Tank’s nearly full.”

Pete said, “You only learned to drive yesterday. You don’t know how to drive busses.”

“So I’ll figure it out.”

It took considerably longer to figure out than he wanted. The big problem was learning the air brake system, especially with Lisa offering random advice about all the little things he was doing wrong. Eventually, though, he got the bus moving.

Not hard at all
, he thought, feeling confident.

When he arrived at an intersection and turned right, he knocked out a stop sign, and the back right wheel bumped up over the curb. Lisa, who’d been standing beside him, stumbled down the stairs and crashed hard against the doors.

“Lisa!” Jack yelled and slammed to a stop.

He rushed to help her, noting she’d scraped her cheek. Her shirt had pulled up a little from where she’d slid, and there were scratches along her side.

“For the love of …” she said in a pained voice. “Help me up.”

He reached down and grasped her hand. “Are you okay?”

“I think so,” she said, inspecting her bruised elbow. “This stupid bus is like a giant, rolling building. You need to plan ahead when you turn like that. Go wider.”

“I know, I’m sorry.” He felt like dirt for hurting his friend. “A hundred times, I’m sorry.”

Ahead of them, Pete got out of the car and shook his head, then got back in. Then, inexplicably, he left them there and kept driving.

“Where the hell’s he going?” Lisa said.

Jack frowned. “No idea, but he shouldn’t just take off like that.”

She snorted quietly. “Take him on a bus ride. That’ll teach him.”

At her little joke, he felt a wave of relief. If she could joke, she couldn’t have been hurt too badly.

Lisa worked her elbow and winced briefly in pain. When Jack opened his mouth to apologize again, she leaned in and kissed him lightly on the lips.

“I’m fine. Now, shut up and get us back.”

She went to one of the seats and buckled in.

Why did she do that?

Jack’s heart thudded in his chest. He could barely think, let alone drive. But if he didn’t do something, she’d know how rattled he was and lose all respect for him.

“You gotta release the air brakes, remember?” she said, voice dripping with bratty amusement.

“Yep!” he said, and pulled out the little knob, bringing a loud hiss of air.

There weren’t any more stop sign incidents, and he handled the turns much better, though he’d had to back up once for a second approach. When they pulled into Rolling Meadows, he drove the bus back behind the complex so it wasn’t visible from the street. The fewer people who knew they were leaving, the better.

Before shutting down, Lisa showed him the wires he had to disconnect to stop the engine—different than the two she’d used to start it, and which were now wrapped in black electrical tape.

“I’m all out of twisty connectors,” she said.

“What if we keep the wires connected all the time, then just hit that big red button in the back?”

She nodded. “I forgot about that. Next time.”

When they got to the Welcome Center, Pete acted like he hadn’t abandoned them out there with a possibly disabled vehicle and no easy way to return home. It drove home the realization they needed more drivers.

Jack went looking for Brad and found him sitting in the party room near the fire feeding his brother.

“Hey man,” the older boy said at his approach.

“Hey. I was just wondering: have you ever driven before?”

“Nope. Why?”

“Because we need more people than Greg and Pete who know how.” He smiled to put him at ease. “If I can drive a bus, you can drive a car. In fact, going forward, we need backups for everything we learn.”

Brad nodded. “Makes sense. I can show Tony how to use that gun of his without shooting himself.”

Jack shook his head. “Leave that to me. I’ll set up a class like the one I took with my parents. Speaking of guns: you ever do any hunting?”

“Once, with my dad and one of his friends. We didn’t shoot anything, though. Tell you the truth, I was pretty happy about that. I hate killing anything. Even spiders.”

Jack smiled. “Yeah, me too. But we’re going to have to hunt. You’re big and strong, and you’re at least safety conscious. If I show you how to field dress a deer, you think you can handle it? It’s pretty gross.”

Brad looked down at Tyler and nodded. “There’s nothing I won’t do for my little brother.”