Hell's Children: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller (6 page)

They drove around and parked in front of the Welcome Center—a large, one-story building that Jack knew had a big room with lots of comfy couches and chairs, as well as a foosball table, a kitchen, and a community pool. Great for birthday parties.

After they parked, the smell of wood smoke had gotten a lot stronger. They left Mandy in the car and approached the front doors. No light came from inside, or any sign of people.

Just as Jack was reaching for the door, a girl’s voice behind them said, “Hands in the air, and don’t move.”

P
ete issued
a high-pitched yelp of surprise, and Jack sighed with relief.

“Lisa, it’s me. Jack.”

“Shut up! Why are you … what?
Jack?
Turn around!”

He turned cautiously around and looked at Lisa Mitchell for the first time in five months. She’d always been pretty, with long blond hair and intelligent blue eyes. Older than her brother Greg by thirty minutes, and Jack by a month, she’d somehow outpaced them when they played soccer and other sports together. For a girl, she was remarkably strong. At twelve years old, she could crush fresh apples in the palm of her hand, spurting juice everywhere.

It was about that time, Jack figured, that he’d secretly fallen in love with her. Because nothing was more attractive than the willful destruction of farm-fresh produce.

In the meager light of the half moon, Lisa appeared thin, tired, and fearful. Something he’d never expected from the brave, brilliant girl who got off on trouncing public schoolers at the national spelling bee.

“See?” he said. “It’s me. I’m here now.”

Lisa leaned in close for a look, blinked in surprise, and then collapsed into his arms crying—which freaked him out a little. Not only had he never hugged her before, but he’d never seen her cry. Then again, the world had never wasted away in death before, either.

“Um … did Greg, uh … you know. Make it?” he said, staring around, seeing it was only her.

“Yes,” Lisa said. “Both of us recovered quickly. Mom and Dad faded fast.” She stiffened in his arms abruptly. “Who the hell is he?”

“I’m Pete.”

Jack said, “Relax, okay? He’s with me. Are you all right?”

The moment passed and she shook her head. “Sorry, I’m … just tired. We sleep in shifts—kids everywhere stealing, too many mouths to feed. Come on, let’s get out of the cold.”

“One minute,” he said.

He went back to the car for Mandy and the gear. It took a while to shake her awake, and when she got out she nearly fell over. She was too big for him to carry both her and the packs the whole way, so he waited until she was steady.

The Welcome Center was about twenty degrees warmer than outside. After the power had gone out, Jack and his dying parents had been forced to wear jackets or blankets most of the time. It felt strange removing his coat.

“Everyone sleeps in the party room,” Lisa said. “There’s a fireplace, but we don’t burn anything in it.”

That was odd. “But I smelled wood smoke.”

“It’s a gas fireplace. We drained the hot tub out back and keep a fire going in it at night. Every few hours, we drop in dumbbells from the exercise room till they’re good and hot, then wheel them inside.”

“How do you move around all that hot steel?”

She smiled tiredly. “We cut the wires from the exercise machines and tied them up. We swing them in when they’re cold and drag them out when they’re hot.”

“Where does the wood come from?”

“Furniture. Pretty easy to break it apart. Pain in the ass to haul it back here. Not to mention dangerous.”

“Because of the gangs,” he said.

She nodded.

He laughed quietly. “Looks like you’re doing all right.”

“I’d rather have my parents back. Other than that, we do our best. I wish you’d come sooner.”

Jack just nodded. Not much he could say to that.

Pete staggered suddenly and righted himself. He looked exhausted. Jack told him to take Mandy in and get some sleep. For once, Pete didn’t give him any lip. He just did it.

“So, the gangs,” Jack said. “How bad are they?”

“Pretty bad. All they do is take. The other day, they came in a group of eight, telling us what to do.” She went quiet a moment, her expression cold. “Six of them left, and Greg and I got two new pistols for our growing collection.”

“Jesus,” he said. “Was it Greg who—”

Lisa held up a hand, cutting him off. “Doesn’t matter. Give me a second. It’s time to wake him up. I’ll tell him you’re here so he doesn’t blow your head off in the middle of the night. Or Pete’s. Oh, and if you need to pee, there’s buckets of water in the bathroom. Just fill the tank and flush. Down that hall and to the right.” She pointed off into the gloom. “If you get thirsty, there’s jugs of boiled water in the kitchen.”

They walked into the party room, and Jack relaxed. He found a spot near a group of children spread around a wheelbarrow full of hot dumbbells. There was a candle burning on the fireplace mantle. In the meager light, the children looked Mandy’s age and younger.

Lisa approached a larger shape lying at the edge of the circle in a sleeping bag. She nudged it with her foot. When it didn’t move, she kicked it, bringing forth a muffled curse, then whispers.

A moment later, Greg said, “He is?”

Lisa shushed him angrily and whispered something else.

Greg got up and came over.

“Hey man,” he said quietly. “Glad you made it. Knew you would, what with your doomy parents and … ah crap, man, I’m sorry.”

Jack smiled. “I know, man. It’s cool. Glad you’re okay.”

“You too, man.”

They talked briefly, catching up a little, enjoying the good news of their mutual survival. For Jack’s part, he was happy he wasn’t alone, and glad there was someone else alive who’d known his parents.

Before leaving, Greg lightly punched his shoulder and said, “Later on, okay?”

“Sure, man.”

The front door opened and closed and the room fell quiet. Jack lay back and shut his eyes.

* * *

I
n the morning
, everyone wanted to know more about the new arrivals. Lisa and Greg quickly introduced Pete, Mandy, and Jack to the group. She introduced each child and gave their ages.

Kimberly was a two-year-old girl with fine blond hair.

Brian was four years old.

Two sisters, Riley and Jessica, were seven and eight, respectively.

Not everyone was so young. The twelve-year-old black kid with the pistol on his side was named Tony. Of them all, he appeared the most well fed, if not slightly plump.

Wondering if he’d come from a gang, Jack gazed steadily at him and said, “You’re eating well.”

Tony smirked. “I used to be pretty fat. Now I’m starving. You got something to eat, I’ll show you.”

Jack smiled. He’d forgotten how overweight people were before the Sickness.

“That reminds me.” He turned to Lisa. “I brought some food with me. Is there somewhere …?”

Lisa nodded. “I have just the place for it.”

Jack grabbed his backpack and Pete’s makeshift pack and followed her into the rental office near the entrance.

“There’s a safe under here,” she said, pulling aside a blanket. “I cracked it.”

He stared at her in amazement. “You crack safes now?”

She smiled, basking in the attention. “I learned last year on my grampa’s floor safe. Easy, once you know how they’re made. There were lots of videos online showing how it’s done. Grampa said if I ever robbed a bank I’d have to pay him hush money.” Her smile faltered and she glanced away. “Anyway, it wasn’t too hard.”

Jack nodded at the safe. “So what was in it?”

“A little money, blank checks, papers, stuff like that. We used it for kindling. How much food did you bring?”

Jack broke it down quickly: ten packs of dehydrated trail food, five pounds of rice, five pounds of beans, seven protein bars, and a pound of beef jerky his parents had made from the meat in the freezer after the power went out.

“Dang, Jack,” she said in awe. “It’s a treasure trove. You’re basically a millionaire now.”

“What’s mine is yours.”

For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, she hugged him and cried again. Jack wasn’t sure whether to put his arms around her or thump her on the back like they did on TV, so he just stood there awkwardly and felt guilty for liking it so much.

“Uh, hey,” he said. “You okay?”

She nodded and wiped her eyes. “Yeah. I’m just … I miss my mom and dad, you know?”

He nodded, feeling his own eyes stinging now. No way was he going to cry in front of her, though.

From the doorway, Greg said, “Hey, you two. Everyone’s asking about breakfast. And by everyone, I mean
me
.”

“Who’s watching the road?” she said.

“Tony and the new girl. What’s her name?”

“Mandy,” Jack said.

“We’ll be there in a minute,” Lisa said.

The safe was nearly empty, but for a few cans of chili and some boxes of spaghetti. Lisa took out the chili, deposited Jack’s contribution, then locked it back up. She cooked the chili in a cast iron pot hanging over the fire pit out back. Ten minutes later they were sitting around a circular table enjoying their meager meals and chatting to fill the silence.

At one point Pete, who’d been quiet the whole morning, said, “So now what? Just sit here like dummies?”

Greg glared at him. “Why don’t you shut up and enjoy the food we just gave you for free?”

Pete shook his head in disgust and wouldn’t look at anyone.

“His delivery sucks,” Jack said, “but he has a point. There wasn’t a lot of food in that safe. And security’s an issue, especially after …” He looked around at the various worried faces. “I think we should, uh … Tony, was it?” The boy nodded. “You, Lisa, Greg, and Pete—we should maybe go have a meeting.”

“What about me?” Mandy said.

“You get to do the dishes,” he said and got up.

Lisa led them to the rental office and shut the door. Though there were several chairs inside, nobody sat. Pete looked nervous, and Greg kept glancing at him with a frown on his face.

“So, Greg,” Jack said, “what’s the plan to save us all?”

Greg, who’d never volunteered for anything since they’d known each other, and who always deferred to either his sister or Jack, said, “Uh … how the heck should I know?
You’re
the Chosen One.”

Jack almost smiled at that. Ever since he’d confided about his parents’ plan to fast track his childhood, Greg had ribbed him with the moniker at every opportunity.

“If you don’t know how to save us,” Jack said, “why did you call out Pete in there?”

Greg shrugged. “Didn’t like his attitude.”

“I don’t see a lot of people signing on to help us,” Jack said. “We shouldn’t pick fights with each other. Now shake hands.”

Greg’s face grew momentarily hard. Then he sighed and held out his hand. Pete looked at it like he’d never seen so strange a custom before as handshaking, then reached out and grimaced through the experience.

Jack turned to Lisa. “What’s your plan?”

Her lips twitched into a challenging smirk. “I’m waiting to see where you’re going with this.”

“Me too,” he said. “Okay, Pete. You brought it up—got any big plans to keep us alive?”

“Why are you asking me? I don’t have guns and stuff.”

Jack looked at Tony. “How about you?”

Tony’s smiled slyly. “We should make a crew of our own and take stuff, too. If we don’t, other people gonna take everything, and then what?”

Lisa gasped and started to say something, but Jack held up his hand.

“As bad as that sounds on the surface,” he said, “it’s hard to blame him. And though I’ll never steal food from people or force them to join us, I like what he said about forming our own group. We need people, but they have to be old enough to carry a gun.”

“None of us are old enough to carry guns,” Pete said. “We’re not grownups.”

“Even though he’s talking like one,” Tony threw in, laughing and looking around to see if anyone else laughed, too. No one did.

Jack glanced from him to Pete. “We’re not old enough to drive, either. Time to face the facts:
we’re
the grownups now. We need to act like it.”

Lisa pointed outside to the party room. “I’m not kicking out those children, Jack, and you’re not either. We have a duty to protect them and anyone else who needs it.”

He raised his hands in a calming gesture. “Nobody said anything about kicking anyone out. But we have to be realistic. There’s a murderer out there named Blaze, and he’s snapping up all the teenagers he can. What’s more, he’s sucking the area dry of what little food there is. Once he’s done, he’ll have to branch out or his people will mutiny.”

“Can’t mutiny on land,” Pete said.

Everyone turned to look at him—calmly, as if studying a strange bug that had crawled into the room—then looked back at Jack.

Greg said, “How long until that happens?”

“No idea. When he raided my house, they got enough food to feed three people for a year. Mom had quite the survival pantry. Who knows how many other houses like mine he’s found? Or how many people he’s killed?”

Jack went on to describe the scene with the gang at his house, the journey with Pete, and the eventual killing of one of Blaze’s own people. He left out that it had been with
his
rapier. In an odd way, he felt … not responsible for it, exactly, but connected to it on a personal level.

After he finished, Tony said, “What if we joined him? We’d be safe then, right?”

Jack pulled a leaf from his learning excursions with his dad and paused, pretending to think about it long and hard.

“Nobody’s safe anymore, least of all them. Blaze is like Stalin in World War Two. He thought everyone was out to get him, so he started killing his generals and replacing them with idiots. I’m not joining a guy like that.”