Children of the After: The Complete Series: A Young Adult Postapocalyptic Action and Adventure series (36 page)

“C’mon, guys. Let’s get inside. I think we’ll be OK in the school,” Sam said in a hushed tone.

Will could see that all their moods had changed in an instant. It was back to business as usual. Climbing back the way he had come, Will slid down the hood of the armored truck to the jeep below and retrieved his bag. Handing up both Jack’s and Tammy’s to Sam, he climbed back out and across the top of the truck. One moment Sam was beside him and the next she was on the ground with Jack, reaching up to help both him and Tammy down. Another roar split the darkening night, and Will couldn’t help but wonder what it was that was chasing them this time.

Following Jack’s lead, Will and Tammy both followed him through the maze of razor wire picking out a path towards where Sam stood awaiting them about fifty yards ahead.  Again the roar sounded, this time sounding closer than before and Jack paused, looking both left and right for a way around the latest barrier.  Seemingly unable to find one, Will watched as the razor wire began to move and lift into the air, hovering above them as if suspended by invisible strings. Ducking beneath it, Jack allowed it to fall once more to the ground before they all ran together to catch up with Samantha.

Entering the school brought back so many memories of recess and friends, but the instant that Will sucked in a quick breath in realization, Sam closed the door behind them, shutting out the little light they had, leaving them in darkness.

* * * * *

One moment Tammy stood peering about their new surroundings and the next it was as if all the light was sucked out of the building. Inching towards her friends, she put her hands up, finding Jack’s shoulder and the top of Will’s head at nearly the same instant.

“Still got your light, little man?” Jack asked.

“So long as it didn’t get broke, I should,” answered Will.

Tammy felt the younger boy kneel to the floor and heard him rustling about in his pack. A moment later she could feel him shaking and then a click was followed by a dull light that illuminated them and their surroundings.

“This way,” Sam said, turning back to them momentarily before heading off down the hall.

“Hang on,” Jack replied, turning back to the door.

Twisting the knob to the lock, he secured it with a snick, and turning, they all began to follow Sam down the hall. With tile-covered concrete floors and walls lined with steel lockers, their every step echoed down the hall and back again. Tammy feared that anything in the building could and did hear them approaching already. There was no way to sneak when both your footfalls and your need for light gave you away at every turn.

It became apparent quickly that Sam had already done some scouting here as she passed several rooms without a second glance and led them deeper into the building. Even so, Tammy was nervous. Deep into the hallway, Sam turned left into a room, tugging Will into it with her. Following them inside, Tammy watched as Jack rubbed his shoulder. He had taken a lot of hits. She was amazed he hadn’t broken anything.

Inside the room were piles of boxes and crates of varying sizes. As Will shook his light vigorously, Tammy joined the others in scouring through the room to read the labels. The first several crates she came to were empty and labeled with a combination of letters and numbers that to her were little more than gibberish.

“What’s a TC-4900?” Tammy asked.

“Dunno,” Jack replied.

“Me either,” Sam answered.

“How about a .50 cal tripod?” she asked, reading the next crate.

“It’s part of a gun,” Jack answered.

Moving along, she realized it didn’t really matter what had been in the crates as they were empty now. Turning her attention to the boxes she began sounding out the labels upon them as well.

“I’ve got a box of antibacterial soap,” she said.

“There’s some boxes of sterile bandages over here,” Sam replied.

“We might have hit the jackpot,” replied Jack. “There must be ten boxes of MREs in here.”

“What’s an MRE, Sam asked.”

“Military food. The stuff lasts like forever, and comes with everything from meat to hot sauce and candy.”

“Candy?” Will asked.

“Yup.”

“The hero gets first pick at the candy, right?” Will asked tentatively.

“Sure thing, kiddo,” Jack replied. “But before we go digging around, maybe we should see what else we can find.”

“The other rooms right here are pretty basic,” Sam said. “One is filled with cots, another with what I presume is communication equipment, and the last just has maps.”

“Like if whoever was here was planning an attack?” Jack asked.

“Maybe,” Sam replied.

“I know you all want to explore, but this door has a good lock on it,” Tammy said. “Maybe we should wait until morning, when our light won’t give us away, to go and have a look around. We already know that something is out there. Let’s not chance telling it where we are.”

Looking around Tammy watched as her friends nodded their agreement. Will didn’t hesitate to begin pulling at the flaps to a box labeled MRE and within seconds he was tearing open several tan colored, plastic bags, spilling their contents onto the floor.

Tammy realized something then. It wasn’t necessarily her role to physically guide them to saving the world. Perhaps it was simply to offer them ideas or solutions. Maybe
that
is what the prophecy meant by naming a guide.

Covering all but a sliver of the light, all four ate in near darkness until their tummies could hold no more. Having everything from chocolate cocoa to Italian pasta, Tammy watched as her companions explored flavors they had all but forgotten, and enjoyed discovering new flavors from their world of which she didn’t have any memories to compare. With stomachs full, they locked the door and lay down upon the floor of the once classroom and fell quickly to sleep.

Jack awoke in the near black room, looking about for a moment in an effort to remember where he was. Having not been startled awake in the night by whatever had been chasing them, he assumed that whatever it was had given up the chase or simply lost them. Pushing himself up and off the floor, he winced at the searing pain in his shoulder. Reaching up, he poked and prodded at it, noting the boundaries of the basketball-sized bruise. Though it hurt, he refused to complain about an injury that could have been fatal, but wasn’t. Sitting up, he worked his sore shoulder by twirling his arm in circles until at last the muscle relaxed, granting him at least a small measure of relief.

Here and there, slivers and pinpricks of light shone across the room to fall upon the opposite wall, or the boxes and crates piled high about the room. Though most of the windows were covered in entirety, once his eyes adjusted these small beams of light were enough to see, roughly, those around him.

Deciding to let them sleep, Jack picked up a pack of unknown food and tore the bag open. Tipping his head back he let the substance slide out from the pack and into his waiting mouth. A large glob of the substance tumbled into his mouth, and uprighting the package he snapped his mouth shut and began to chew. Pausing, his face scrunched up, he chewed again but more slowly. It was mushy, with chunks of something that burst when he bit into them. Bugs! Spitting and sputtering, Jack sprayed his mouthful of food all about the chamber, hacking and coughing like he had nearly drowned.

Awakened by his ruckus, all three of his companions half rose, turning angered glares upon him, for an offence he had not meant to commit.

“It’s not my fault. There were bugs in my food.”

“That’s so gross,” Sam replied groggily. “You better not have gotten any on me,” she added, running her fingers though her hair.

“What kind of bugs?” Will asked, already too chipper for this early in the morning. “Did you eat any?”

Without even awaiting a response, Will began shaking the emergency light, bringing it back to life. As the room illuminated, Jack couldn’t help himself but peer back into the package he had eaten from. Blinking his eyes he looked again. Nothing. Inside the package was some sort of Tex Mex pasta substance with kernels of corn and even peanuts. At least the crunch and gush was explained.

Grinning in embarrassment, Jack showed them all the contents of the package as they each scowled at him before laughing at the circumstance. Feeling like an idiot, Jack stood up and discarded the remnants of the package into one of the empty crates. Even though he now realized there were no bugs in it, the thought of eating it was one his stomach simply couldn’t handle.

“Alright, alright. Ha ha, Jack thought he ate some bugs but it was just corn and peanuts.  Har har. Laugh it up,” Jack said, thinking they would calm down, but boy was he wrong. “Really, guys? It’s that funny to you?” he asked as they laughed even more. “C’mon, we got a world to save and stuff. Eat some breakfast so we can figure out if we can use anything here.”

“I can’t eat, there might be bugs in it,” Sam said, clutching her throat with one hand and putting the back of her other hand to her forehead as if she might faint.

“You suck,” Jack stated dryly, bringing out even more laughs from his small audience.

Shaking his head, he looked towards his feet as the lock on the door clicked and it flung open wide behind him as Sam, Tammy, and Will all jumped back in panic. Jack grinned. Telekinetic powers were awesome.

“Whatcha afraid of?” Jack asked, returning a little of their laughter.

After that they settled down quick enough, and waiting for them to eat their breakfast, Jack poked his head out into the hall to ensure that the coast was indeed still clear. No threats presenting themselves, he strode to the classroom next door and peeked inside.

Walking into the room he perused all the communications radios and antennae. Noting the generator in the corner, he quickly inspected it to find the fuel tank dry as a bone. Either all the gas had evaporated, or it had been run until it ran out of fuel. Either way, without gas they wouldn’t be getting any electricity.

Leaving the room of now useless electronics behind, Jack crossed the hall to the other rooms Sam had described the night before. Entering what she had called the map room, he took a look around quickly and found her description had pretty much summed it up. Nearing the far wall, he inspected the maps there. Several were world maps and others showed only the United States. All of them had markings in several colors of ink, mostly a smattering of arrows from one city to another, or large X’s that crossed cities off. Looking more closely at the map of the United States to his right, he noted that there was a pattern. From both east and west coasts, the arrows began at the largest cities there and worked inwards towards the central United States. He knew immediately that what he was looking at was the invasion of the aliens. They had started at the cities on the coasts and worked inland until everything was destroyed. The crossed-out cities were those that whoever had written on the map had verified was gone.

Sweeping over the map again, Jack’s head fell. Every city. Every single one was gone. This wasn’t a local thing, not by a long shot. It hadn’t been stopped. Looking to his left, he realized that it was global. Everything was gone. Turning away from the wall of maps his eyes fell on the chalkboard upon the wall nearest the door. Upon its surface were drawn odd shapes and lines that made no sense. Letters were there, but none of them made words, seemingly placed at random across the board. Thinking that whatever it was had been whipped away long ago, Jack turned back to the hall to check on his siblings.

* * * * *

Sam finished up her breakfast of corn bread they had brought with them and some beef stroganoff supplied by the MREs. It was an odd breakfast, but she washed it down with a bottle of water, and began running her brush through her hair as Jack returned.

“Find anything?” she asked.

“I just checked out the rooms right here, I didn’t go down the hall at all,” Jack replied. “But I think I figured out the maps, and if I’m reading them right then it doesn’t look good.”

“What do you mean?” Sam asked, as both Tammy and Will looked up from their food.

“I might be wrong, but it looks like to me that every city, and likely every community has been destroyed. All of them, all over the world.”

“Well. We kind of guessed as much,” Sam replied.

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Will chimed in.

“What do you mean?” asked Jack.

“I mean that people’s bodies weren’t found. That means they aren’t dead. Right? If they were killed when the aliens attacked then there would have been more bodies, millions, no billions of them, but there weren’t.”

“I see what you’re saying, Will, and I hope you’re right. But we have to be prepared for if you aren’t,” Jack tried to sooth his younger brother.

“No we don’t. Jack. They have to be alive. People don’t just vanish,” Will proclaimed.

“Before all this,” Jack said ,waving his arms around, “I would have agreed. But now, buddy, I’m not so sure. We’ll just have to wait and see. OK?”

“You mean, you’ll just have to wait and see. I already know,” Will insisted.

“What else?” Sam asked, trying to change the subject.

“The generator is out of gas so no luck there unless we find some.  Other than that I think we need to do some more exploring.”

“OK,” Sam agreed. “Then let’s go have a look around.”

Without waiting for another answer, Sam stood up and offered Tammy her hand. Pulling the other girl to her feet, they each offered Will a hand and waited for him to pocket three bags of candy before he would budge. Sam couldn’t help but grin at him. Undetermined of whether or not billions were dead or not, he was still a kid and the candy in his pockets was evidence enough for her. When this was all over she looked forward to seeing him just playing instead of looking over his shoulder or worrying about things well beyond his years.

Once they were all up they walked out of the room together, and turning left moved deeper into the school. Classroom after classroom passed with nothing of interest to note. Reaching the intersection further down the hall, they decided to turn left and after several minutes and many passed rooms later, they found an oddity that caught their attention. Though the room looked much the same as any other with posters and whatnot upon the walls and all the desks stacked against the windows, here upon the blackboard was something peculiar.

Looking it over Sam was certain that it was similar to the chalkboard in the map room, but it wasn’t the same. She couldn’t be certain, but something about it looked familiar. Too bad it was all gibberish.

“That’s kind of like the other one,” Jack said, pointing.

“Yeah, that’s what I was just thinking,” Sam admitted.

They both stared at it together for a moment but with no answers forthcoming, they moved on to the next room and then the one after that.

Over an hour passed as they moved room to room and now in the third branch of the intersection, Sam found herself in yet another room staring at yet another chalkboard with odd writings upon it. This time Tammy and Will joined in and all four tried to figure out if it was another language or something, but after several minutes they abandoned the idea and continued on.

Sam pondered the three chalkboards with random lines and apparent scribbles accompanied by letters that seemed placed haphazardly. Unless someone was crazy, running around from room to room just writing random stuff, then there had to be a reason for it. Maybe it was a code or another language disguised as random scribblings. No matter what it was, however, she wasn’t at all surprised when less than thirty minutes later they located another room in the fourth branch of the school’s only intersection. This one, like the others, seemed random. Or maybe not.

Though she couldn’t recall exactly what letters had been on the other boards, she did note that on each board they had similar locations. For instance, this chalk board had an A in the upper left corner, followed by an E with a large space in between them. She was almost certain that one of the other boards had a Y in that same corner along with another letter though she couldn’t recall what. Something here was fishy.

Staring up at the board with her, and shaking their heads, both her siblings and Tammy were just as confused as she was, but it didn’t matter. Sam had an idea.

“Hang on, guys. Just wait here a minute,” Sam said without explanation.

Focusing on the hallway she ported just outside the door and turning she focused on the intersection ahead. Porting again, she then turned and blinked back to the previous room with the odd scribblings. Looking up to the board she noted the letters U and H with space between them and committed them to memory. Then, instantaneously she was out in the hall again and back to the intersection followed by the second room they had found. Here the letters were O, E, and another E, again in the top left corner. She was beginning to think she was on to something.

Into the hall and then down to the intersection she ported before turning once again to port back to the map room. On the board, just as she expected, were three more letters. Looking up she committed the Y, R, and another R to memory as well, before porting in three steps back to her siblings in an instant.

Catching her breath and letting her world stop swimming, Sam picked up a piece of chalk still on the ledge below the board and wrote down all the letters away from any of the other writings.

A.E.U.H.O.E.E.Y.R.R.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Will asked.

“I don’t know. I think it’s some kind of code,” Sam admitted.

“Like MRE?” Will asked.

“Yeah, maybe.”

“All Entities Use Hose Or Everyone Eats Your Ready Rations?” Will guessed.

“I don’t think so,” Sam grinned.

“Maybe it’s alpha numeric, like a phone dial or by position in the alphabet,” Jack suggested.

“So like A is one and E is five?” Sam asked.

“Yeah, maybe it is coordinates or something, like GPS. It would explain all the maps.”

“You might be right,” Sam admitted.

“No,” Tammy said. “It is just scrambled.”

“What do you mean?” Will asked at the same time as both his siblings.

Sam watched as Tammy reached out and took the piece of chalk from her hand. Touching it to the black board she began intricately writing the letters as perfect as she had ever created them before, only she rearranged them to form words. Though her writing was immaculate, she wrote so slowly that Sam was gritting her teeth in anticipation by the time she finished.

YOU ARE HERE

The breath caught in Sam’s throat. Of course it was Tammy to find it. She had taught herself to read English for crying out loud. If anyone could unscramble some letters, it was her.

Staring at the three short words on the chalk board, Sam knew exactly what it was that she had to do. It was a map, though each version was only a portion. If they were pieced together, they would likely give some important information that whoever was here before them didn’t want people to readily figure out.