Children of the After: The Complete Series: A Young Adult Postapocalyptic Action and Adventure series (2 page)

The time was upon him, and Jack’s nervousness quickly turned into fear and self-doubt. He needed to go outside. He knew that with a certainty unlike any other, but the fear of what might lie beyond the door frightened him. Simply opening the door could kill them if Sam’s guess about poisonous air was right. He was supposed to keep them safe, not get them killed. But he had to go. He just had to.

Looking around the survival vault, he could not believe that he would ever
not
want to leave this place. He had spent weeks staring at the door wanting nothing more than to exit it, and now he felt secure here. Safe. They were all safe here, and he knew it, but it was time.

All five bunks in the shelter were empty, and the rows of emptied food canisters upon the shelves were more familiar to him now than even his bedroom had been just months ago. The LED lighting of the space was dim, threatening a total loss of light in the days or weeks to come, but even so he walked past the bench he had been seated on earlier, and strode to the door without so much as catching a toe. Vaguely he listened to the shuffling of feet behind him, both Sam and Will following him towards the door. He turned to meet their eyes.

“Sam, you close the door behind me as soon as I’m clear. Don’t lock it, just close it quickly. Whatever you do, just keep Will inside. OK?”

“OK,” she replied, with tears threatening to fall. Jack had heard her voice catch even with the short reply, and he understood her fear. It had his stomach in knots too. None of them knew what had happened outside. None knew what to expect. Jack looked down to Will.

It was strange looking at him. Sure he was only seven years old, but his face and demeanor had changed greatly in the last months. His childhood had been robbed from him, twisted, and given back a darkened nightmare within a steel cage filled with darkness, yet empty. As Will looked up to him with large eyes, Jack could still see his little brother as he had been months before, annoying and blissfully loud, but that was gone now. He still wore the striped pajamas of red, white, and blue, and fuzzy puppy slippers that he had been fond of before the vault, but aside from his outfit, Jack feared that Will’s former carefree self had vanished. The child that looked up at him, grasping their sister’s hand, was not holding to her in fear. No, he clung to her as if to keep
her
from harm. As if he was
her
protector. The world, or lack thereof, had changed him, and it frightened Jack. Will deserved to be a child.

“Look out for your sister, and don’t let her come outside unless I come and get you. OK?”

“Yes, sir!” Will said with slight grin as he saluted with his free hand.

Knowing this could be his last chance, Jack collected them both to him and wrapped his arms around them tightly. He reminded himself that if he didn’t go, they would starve. He prayed he wasn’t condemning them to an earlier fate by his actions.

Kissing Will’s forehead, just as their father had been known to, Jack released them both and turned quickly to hide his own emotions. Lifting the cover to the keypad beside the door, he pressed the green unlock button and keyed in the six digit code. His own birthdate.

With a shudder and a hum, the LED lights of the shelter went black as a loud metal on metal clang reverberated through the structure as dust broke loose from the walls and ceiling and rained down upon them. Jack reached out in the darkness and felt for the handle upon the vault door and, giving it a tug, a hissing sound filled the air as he pressed the door outward. Little did he expect what happened next.

With unimaginable force, the door flung wide, ripping free from his grasp as he was flung bodily out from the vault, crashing into some unseen object beyond as light exploded before his eyes. Howling wind roared through the darkness as the metal door groaned on its hinges and smashed back into the outer wall of the vault over and over, before breaking free altogether and falling to the floor, its hinges having failed.

Jack scrambled to his feet, dizzy from the blow to his head, and leaned into the wind whipping all about him, as the darkness was momentarily replaced by dazzling light. It was night, not day as they had presumed. With the familiar smell of rain in the air, an image of his surroundings was temporarily etched into his vision as the light vanished, only to be replaced by peals of thunder that shook everything around him. Gone. Their home was gone, and in its place a desolate nightmare remained.

Reaching up to his head he felt the cut and warm blood near his temple and staggered back towards the vault, small arms and hands reaching out of the darkness to grasp at him and drag him within once more. It was a ruin. A wasteland.

Collapsing within the open doorway of the vault, Jack looked up with defeat in his face, his shoulders sagging as another flash of light played across the horrified faces of both Sam and Will. They had the same glimpse of outside that he did. They knew it was gone. Though none of them knew the extent of the damage, they each had had hope destroyed and it showed plainly on their faces. Seeking more information would have to wait until morning, or at least until the storm abated. Jack leaned heavily against the wall next to the now open door.

“I’ll get some bandages,” Sam half yelled over the howling storm outside before vanishing into the darkness.

Will kneeled closely and looked at him with an odd stern expression on his face, seeming to be working out some inner turmoil before he spoke.

“No alien monsters is good, but I don’t think I’m gonna get my candy,” he said matter of factly.

Jack couldn’t help but smile in the light of the situation. Their shelter was no longer secure. Their home outside appeared destroyed. They had no food. Yet Will was concerned about candy he had hidden in the pantry months ago. Perhaps there was still some kid in him yet.

It was only a couple of minutes before Sam returned with a small first aid kit in hand that Jack recognized from the wall of the meager bathroom within the security vault. Jack watched her carefully open the container as she selected a small pump-style spray bottle of disinfectant which she cautiously sprayed over his cut, before wiping away both blood and the spray with a piece of sterile gauze. Just like their mother had done when he skinned his knee as a child. Sam blew softly upon the wound to ease the burning from the antiseptic spray, before opening a package of adhesive butterfly strips which she used to pull the cut closed before covering the whole thing with gauze and medical tape.

Not wanting to disrupt her work or distract her, Jack sat still in silence as she finished up, watching Will, who was watching them both in return. When Sam finished she sat back, looking at him and their little brother, before her look of concentration faded to once again be replaced by worry. Jack knew her expression was much the same as his own but now, more than ever, they needed a plan.

* * * * *

Sam felt his arms squeeze around her and Will tightly, and opened her eyes in time to see Jack press his lips to Will’s head. Just like Dad did. Her eyes began to water. He was telling them goodbye. She could not, no, would not believe that this would be the end, and as such she only watched, keeping her mouth shut firmly as he turned quickly to hide his own tears that threatened to escape him. She knew he was trying to be strong for them. He was trying to do what Dad would do, and she was proud of him for it.

Listening as Jack punched in the code that would unlock the door, she gasped slightly as the lights went dark, the last of the battery reserve finally failing in an effort to release the locking mechanism. With a loud clank, she felt more than saw Jack shove the door open as a wall of air blasted her in the face causing her to close her eyes. When they opened again, Jack was gone.

Clinging to Will’s hand she dragged him to the side of the doorway, as again and again the great metal door slammed into the wall of the shelter with no sign of Jack in the darkness beyond. Cold wind howled as a flash of blinding light illuminated the portal through the wall, and she saw Jack fighting to stand as blood trickled down from his head. Beyond him, nothing but an ominous sky filled with angry clouds and lancing rain, and then it was all gone.

Flinging herself into the doorway, releasing Will’s hand to grasp at both sides of the door frame, she screamed Jack’s name into the darkness, her voice becoming lost in a thunderous boom that made her knees quiver. But she didn’t give up.

Seeking with her eyes in the darkness she noted a variance in the blackness, like a shadow moving among the dark abyss, and reached out to grab its advancing form. Grasping at Jack’s track sweatshirt, she narrowly stumbled backwards over Will, who also sought to drag their brother in out of harm’s way. Vaguely she noticed that the LEDs had illuminated once more, though scarcely so.

Once inside, Jack crumpled to the floor, whether in pain or defeat, she couldn’t be sure, but noting the ragged cut on the side of his head, Sam acted without hesitation. Stating her intentions, she spun and carefully picked her way back through the dark and now deafeningly loud vault into the adjoining chamber. Once through the narrow doorway, she traced her fingers along the steel wall until she found what she sought. Pulling the small metal box from its place upon the wall, Sam returned through the wind and relative darkness to both her brothers’ sides, and began tending to Jack’s wound. She remembered he was always a big baby when it came to the burn of antiseptic spray and blew on it, just as Mom used to, before bandaging him up. When her task was finished they shared a look, and she knew they needed to talk. Nothing was as expected.

“Can we get this closed somehow?” Sam shouted above the howling wind outside.

Without a word Jack nodded and made to rise. Not knowing what he intended, Sam simply watched as Jack crossed the narrow room and began removing the pins that secured one of the unused bunks to the wall. A bed meant for their mom or dad. A mom or dad that it was now quite obvious wouldn’t be coming for them.

Noting his intentions she rushed to help him, and together they unfastened the frame and removed it and the mattress from the wall. Dragging the bunk across the steel floor, Sam watched as Will picked up the first aid kit and moved out of the way for them. Struggling against the wind surging through the door, they hefted their makeshift barricade into place. Within minutes the mattress was covering the open doorway, and the frame was wedged into place, temporarily securing the mattress. The storm outside was little more than a muffled growl.

Sighing loudly, Sam turned to face her older brother but her gaze fell upon Will instead, and her heart broke a little at the expression on his face. Freezing mid stride, her eyes locked with Will’s and for a moment it felt like the world paused around them as everything slowed into infinity. Etched there on her younger brother’s features was a mix of pain, disappointment, fear, and horror. None of them had known what to expect, and all of them had come to their own conclusions as to what would lie outside their door. Even so, neither Sam nor Jack had considered Will’s reaction to the devastated home outside. Prior to the security vault, their home had been the center of Will’s world.

Home was where he felt safe and by extension
why
he felt safe in the vault, but now that was gone. Home was not just walls, but was Mom and Dad too, and now all three were taken from him. His world, as he knew it, was broken, and Sam could see clearly through the expression on his face the realization of his childlike perception of a world in turmoil. He was in a familiar place, yet lost. He was with those who loved him, but alone. Poor Will had just seen beyond the meager horrors of his imagination to the real horrors of the world, and was destroyed because of it. Sam did the only thing she could think of.

Like their mother would have done if she were there, she rushed to his side and scooped his small body up off the floor and into her arms, coddling him close to her chest and held him tight. That act alone triggered something within him, and his stalwart painful expression broke like the sobs that exploded from him as tears began to run unchecked from his eyes down Sam’s neck and chest. She knew in that instant that nothing would ever be the same with him. With any of them, for that matter. Mom and Dad weren’t coming back, and it was up to her to do what was right for Will and teach him right from wrong. It was up to her to comfort him, and the realizations brought tears to her own eyes as she herself was once again wrapped within protecting arms as Jack came to join them. They only had each other.

* * * * *

Will watched as Jack opened the big door and was nearly toppled off his feet as wind gusted through the door. The only thing that kept him on his feet was the fact he was holding Sam’s hand. Leaning into the wind he blinked his eyes, realizing that Jack was already out there somewhere. Lightning flashed and he caught a glimpse of his brother not far outside the door, but Sam blocked most of the view as her grip grew immediately more firm and stance more rigid.

Again the darkness came as thunder shook the vault. Sam ushered him to the edge of the doorway hurriedly and he realized that she had screamed during the thunder, though Will hardly heard it. Instead, he focused on the image ingrained in his head, scorched there momentarily by a single flash of lightning somewhere in the distance. He had expected the house to look the same outside the vault as it had when they came in. Perhaps dusty, but the same. Outside the door would be the bookcase that hid the entrance to the vault and beyond that would be the living room with the grey leather furniture Mom liked so much. Antique hardwood floors that were great for sliding in his slippers would turn to tile at the kitchen, and spanning the length of both rooms would be a wall of giant windows where Will could look out over the city. Up here he felt like a super hero. At least he used to.