Annihilation (The Seamus Chronicles Book 1) (7 page)

“I’m developing a loss-less power reactor that creates a huge amount of energy from a very small amount of catalyst.” No one has ever really asked me this directly before, so my answer is not well rehearsed.

“How did you learn about all this stuff? Grace says you’re like some kind of physics genius but she doesn’t know how you got so smart.” My new, if temporary, assistant is holding a box of circuit boards and looking at me intently.

“Well, I’m not sure how I got smart. Genetics is the best guess. As for how I learned everything, the Internet is amazing. When I was eight, I asked my dad about a nuclear reactor. He couldn’t answer my questions, so we searched online. The pictures of atoms with the nucleus, protons, electrons and neutrons were all so clear to me. Everything made sense except that I saw something missing. Reading and research lead me to dark energy and I thought it was pretty obvious how it fit. The rest has just been building blocks to get where I wanted to go.”

I am secretly excited that she talked to Grace about me.

“And do you think you will ever be able to do it?” Sofie is trying not to sound skeptical, but failing.

“Actually, I finalized the design last week. I know it will work, I just need a few more days to put the design into implementation.” I’m very proud of myself. She has no idea of the breakthrough she will be witnessing in the coming weeks.

“Cool. I look forward to seeing this invention of yours working.” With that, she has another armful of equipment and is headed up the stairs.

The last experiments are powered down and I have a chance to carry at least half of my things up to the car. Everything fits well in the overheads with a little bit of space remaining for any last-second things. It’s almost three and I think we’ll be done packing early.

Tomorrow we leave New Hampshire, probably forever.

Part 2

I’m seething. I don’t know why I am so mad, but I am, and everyone can tell. I’m trying to pass it off as having to get out of bed at 5 a.m., but we all got up at the same time. It’s just the front seat; it doesn’t mean anything. But why is Sofie there? If it were Grace, would l be this mad? Probably not, because that would mean Sofie would be sitting in the back with me. If it were Liam, forget about it; I would be bouncing off the walls in rage.

Mom always says she loves to ride in the back. It makes her feel like a celebrity. Dad wants a private jet, but Mom wants a driver, even if it’s for our beat-up minivan. They go well together with their caviar dreams. Right now, I feel like a child. It seems like Dad has the car segregated, just like when he and Mom take us places. Grown-ups are in front, kids in back.

We are living up to the term “kids,” too. There are three DVD screens and we have been bickering for an hour about what to watch and on which screens. I wouldn’t mind watching what they want to watch, but I’m being difficult just to be difficult. I really need to rein it in. Deep breaths.

“You know what? I’m sorry for being difficult. Go ahead and watch whatever.” I may have given Dad a heart attack with my honesty. Grace and Liam don’t know what to do with me. They may start fighting just to maintain a small shred of normalcy.

“It’s just that I feel weird that we left in kind of a rush and didn’t get to say goodbye to our stuff.” I’m staring out the window as I say words I haven’t thought about but somehow know are true.

“Seamus, it’s not like you didn’t know we were leaving. We spent yesterday packing and we’ve been talking about it for a few days. I thought you had plenty of time to say goodbye.” Dad is defensive and I can tell he feels bad that I am hurting.

“It came pretty fast for me, too.” Grace is trying to hold back the tears. “We spent most of our lives in that house. Sure, we’ve been places, but we always got to go home. And that felt good.”

“I just wanna see Mom.” Liam is a people person. He likes people but he
loves
his family, and I think that not having Mom around has been killing him. This is a rare occasion when he has nothing else to say and stares blankly out the window.

“I know what you mean, buddy, I can’t wait to get to California either.” Dad has a forced smile but you can almost feel how badly he misses Mom.

“All I can think about is the adventure. This is interesting to be able to see these different parts of the country. You don’t get this experience when you fly over in an airplane.” Sofie is quiet and working hard to keep her eyes and mind on the scenery whizzing past.

“Sofie, is that Canada over there?” Grace is trying to shift the topic, but this is not the right direction. Our family is all together and sad about leaving our house and anxious about meeting up with Mom. Sofie has nothing left. She left her house days ago and everyone in her family is dead.

“I’m angry because I didn’t get to sit in the front seat.” I’m not sure where this is going or how it will help. It seems like no one else can figure out what to say either. “Isn’t that ridiculous?” I continue. “I know there is no reason for it to matter and it’s a silly thing to care about, but for some reason I do.”

By now I don’t even want to sit in the front seat. I’ve gotten over my jealousy and feel like calmly sitting in the back helps me be more mature. “Or I did.”

“I’m sorry for forcing a seating arrangement. I just thought that if we did things like we always have, with you three in the back, it would be a little more normal.” It’s Dad’s turn to kind of stare blankly out the window. “And I gotta say that with your bickering and arguing it has felt like every other road trip to me.”

“Sorry, Dad.” Grace is half-hearted with her apology. She’s not sure if she is supposed to feel bad about fighting or if it is a good thing to make this feel like every other road trip. Liam is just sitting in silence and has nothing to add.

We ride in limbo like this for a long time. I’m not sure what the others are thinking, but I am debating the value of efforts to make things feel like they used to. Life will never be the same. Pretending like nothing has changed will not help us survive. Dad may have already shifted his brain, but the rest of us need to get there. Our new cares are food, water and shelter. But it’s hard to adopt that mindset while I sit here in the plush leather seats of a stolen Cadillac Escalade.

“Dad, where are we?” Of course it’s Liam who breaks the silence.

“We’re on I-84 in Connecticut. New York is next.” Dad is so proud of his knowledge of the U.S. interstate system and how it flows through states across the country.

“Is Connecticut part of New England?” Liam is thinking about geography, which I guess make sense on a road trip.

“Yes.” Dad does not elaborate or provide insightful commentary. Sometimes we can get him talking about random things and he’ll tell us stories that mix fact, fiction and opinion. It can be really entertaining, but he doesn’t seem in the mood for it now.

“How is our average speed?” I ask, self-noting my interest in measurable facts.

“Not bad, we’re at about one hundred. Considering the time we spent slogging through those back roads to get to the highway, we’re making good time.” Dad is proud of the car’s ability to record data. He can be simple at times.

“Where do you think we are going to stop tonight?” Sofie is coming out of her funk.

“I would love to push through to Indiana, at the very least.” Dad has a plan but I know he is notorious for overestimating time and distance. “We’ll need to stop for gas soon. That will likely dictate how far we are able to get before nightfall.”

“Are you worried that we won’t be able to find gas?” Liam asks.

“No, Liam. Gas didn’t disappear. I just don’t know how easy it will be for us to get it out of the tank and into the car.” Dad is frustrated, but I don’t think it’s just with Liam’s question.

Then I see it. Up ahead there is black smoke rising in the sky. It looks like it is coming up directly from the highway. I can’t tell how far away it is. While the possibilities are not endless, I can’t even guess at what is causing the smoke. Things don’t just blow up or catch on fire. There hasn’t been a lightning storm, so I know that it’s not a fire sparked by “natural causes.”

A quick glance at the navigation screen shows that we are coming up to a river. What if there are a lot of survivors and they have joined together on the other side of that river and won’t let anyone across? What if humankind is making its last stand in Newburgh, New York?

The Escalade is slowing down, but I don’t see anything. “Seamus, could you and Liam get a couple of the rifles loaded and at the ready?” Dad is on high alert and his head is on a swivel. I see him move the sidearm from the center console into his waistband. Since we have had the guns he has been saying, “never John Wayne it, weapons needed to be stored and secured properly.” I guess the rules still don’t apply for him.

“Dad, do you really think that there are a bunch of survivors holed up in Newburgh trying to keep other people from crossing the river?” I don’t know Newburgh from anything, but it seems like a pretty random place to me.

“Seamus, West Point is just down the river from here. We are coming to the closest major bridge across the Hudson River. If there are any remnants of the U.S. government fighting to protect what they consider an uninfected population, I think that West Point would be a pretty logical place to be. They could effectively shut down and defend this bridge with a handful of people.” Dad was never in the military, but I know I never thought of tactics like this.

My amazement at how Dad can think of a defensive strategy for the remaining vestiges of humankind must be similar to how he feels when I talk about my reactor. They may be baby steps, but I’m understanding more and more why he has always told me that I can’t know everything. It doesn’t matter how smart you are, if you are not exposed to certain basic things, you can’t know anything about them.

We’re down to 65 miles per hour and it feels like we are crawling. In the car there is silence, as if we may hear something that will tip us off to impending danger. Liam and I are holding loaded rifles in the third row. Grace is defenseless in the middle row and Sofie is staring intently out the front window.

The bridge across the Hudson River is now visible. There are no clear signs of danger. No warning signs to turn back, no bombed-out cars, and no military vehicles blocking the road. There is one road crossing over the highway and then we have a straight shot to the bridge.

As we approach the road going over the highway, the wreck becomes clear. A black charred automobile is up against the bridge abutment in the center median. There are no flames or people around, just black smoke slowly rising up. It’s impossible to tell what type of vehicle it was or when this happened. It’s recent, but not new. There are no survivors and stopping would be pointless.

“Probably the tires still burning that’s causing all that smoke.” Dad sounds exhausted all of the sudden. “I hate to say it, but I’m glad that’s all it is.”

We continue on over the bridge at 65 mph. We’re back to silence, but it is very different from the silence we had while we approached the bridge. Someone died in that car wreck. Were they running from something? Were they running
to
something? Why do we seem to be so lucky when all these other people are unlucky? Not even unlucky,
dying
.

Eventually the Escalade is back up to 110 miles per hour. I’m not sure what everyone else is thinking about, but I realize that I kind of hoped that there were a bunch of survivors defending the bridge. It feels like a better fate than being the only humans left on Earth.

The next hour passes in silence. In the back, we lose ourselves in a movie. Upfront, Sofie is intermittently nodding off to sleep and watching the scenery. I can’t even imagine what Dad is thinking about, but he is driving and working to keep the average speed above 100.

A gas pit stop somewhere in Pennsylvania is surprisingly uneventful. We pull up to the pumps and Dad fills her up. “While we have electricity, should we pay cash for gas?” Dad says loud enough to get through the car windows. For a second I expect him to walk to the cashier booth and leave money. I can already hear him saying, “It’s the right thing to do,” but he doesn’t. He hangs up the pump, hops into the Escalade, and we are off. I wonder if he had this kind of moral dilemma when he obtained the Escalade in the first place.

As we pull out of the rest area Dad tosses his phone back to me. “Seamus, open up Trulia and find the most expensive home in Akron, Ohio.” Trulia is how Mom and Dad voyeuristically watch the real estate market. I’m not sure why he wants to look at a home in Ohio, though, and it seems like kind of a non sequitur.

“Okay, I’ll bite,” says Sofie from the front seat. “Why are you interested in Ohio real estate?”

“Are we going to stay in Ohio for a few days?” asks Liam from the back seat. I seriously wish he would think before he speaks. That is the dumbest thing he could have said.

Dad has learned to not even answer the dumbest of questions from him. “I’m looking for a place to spend the night,” he says evenly.

“Why not just go to a hotel and crash there?” This is the quickest Sofie has spoken since we met her. It’s not a bad question, but she usually waits to see how things play out before she says anything.

“In my mind, ‘hotel’ equals ‘complicated.’ I don’t want to worry about how we program a key or how we find and cook food in an industrial kitchen. It just seems like there is a list of things that could make a hotel a hassle.” Dad is getting tired.

“Well I suppose the rest of us don’t really have a say. But if you ask me, ‘hotel’ equals ‘options.’ I have no idea what’s going to happen tomorrow and the idea of being in a big safe hotel appeals to me.” Sofie is on edge. She used the word “safe,” and I am wondering if she worries about paramilitary groups and government agents the way I do.

After a period of silence, Dad lets out a heavy sigh. “Sofie, I understand your perspective and I’m not saying you are wrong. I just want to stay low-key and easy. We find a house, let ourselves in, and we are good for the night. When we get to California, we can move into the fanciest hotel in San Francisco.”

It’s just dawned on me that low-key and easy is also “incognito.” If we lit up the top-floor of a hotel tonight, that would call attention to us. If there is anyone else out there, we would be sitting ducks. I’m not sure this is part of Dad’s thought process, but I bet it is. Right now we’re playing checkers, and he’s playing chess.

“How does six bedrooms, seven and a half baths in 10,000 square feet sound? 30,000 bottle wine cellar, swimming pool and hot tub. All situated on 20 private acres of hills and fields.” I’m not usually the one to change the subject. I like to grind things out and make all parties admit the truth. This just seems like a case where moving on will solve a lot of problems.

“A swimming pool!” Grace is sold on this one already.

“How far from the highway is it?” Dad is thinking logistics. It would have been better if he included that parameter when he asked me to look for a place. Fortunately I included that variable on my own.

“Not far,” I say with one of my patented sighs.

“How much?” asks Liam. It doesn’t matter and the number will be irrelevant to a 15-year-old, but he likes his questions.