Pod (15 page)

Two things happen.

The first thing is that Dutch is literally swallowed by the fog. It closes in around him and turns a darker shade of gray. Next there are all these small bursts of electricity that move up and then down his body, like he’s being
scanned
.

It’s over in ten seconds. Dutch is oblivious. He disappears into the gray.

Dad and I look at each other. Suddenly my eyes roll back into my head. I clutch at my throat and collapse to the floor. I rip off my filter and gasp for air, kicking my legs like I’m in one giant spasmodic convulsion of death.

Dad kneels beside me, his hands pressing down on my shoulders screaming, “Josh! Josh! Take it easy! Relax! Try to breathe! Oh, Jesus!”

There’s so much pain—so much pain in his voice that I have to stop. He has a pacemaker with a dead battery. I shouldn’t be doing this to him. I sit up and say, “I’m just messin’ with you, Dad. I’m fine.”

He tears the mask off his face. I swear the look he gives me could melt lead. For a second I think he’s going to actually haul off and hit me. Then, out of nowhere, he smiles. The smile turns into a laugh. Then I’m laughing with him. Tears are streaming down my face, I’m laughing so hard. It’s crazy like that for a while, the two of us on the floor busting a gut. Then, like a cloud passing in front of the sun, it’s over. We stand up.

Dad says, “Thanks, I needed that.”

“Not a problem,” I say.

“But don’t ever do it again.”

“Okay, but you scared the crap out of me first.”

Dutch materializes out of the gray. He scratches at the door. I smile, knowing there’s a steaming yard biscuit out there somewhere waiting for the POD commander’s foot.

I open the door to let Dutch inside. For some reason he just sits there. The fog crawls up to the opening. Dad yells
at me to close the door. Thin gray fingers curl around the jamb, then retreat. Without thinking I reach into the gray and grab Dutch’s collar. The fog is on me. My arm starts to tingle. Dad screams, “Let go! Let go!” But I won’t. I lock fingers around the leather strap. My hand is starting to disappear. Darkness clouds my eyes; then a split-second blinding flash explodes like a flare in my head. I pull one more time. Dutch gets up and walks inside.

Dad slams the door and locks it. “Are you okay?” he asks. He’s looking at me like I just missed getting hit by a train.

I’m shaking. I look at my hand. Thankfully it’s all there. A tingling sensation is moving up and down my arm, although it’s fading fast. And the flash—that was freaky. But what would telling him accomplish, other than getting his panties in a bunch?

“I’m fine,” I say, showing him my hand. “All five fingers, good as new.”

He studies me. “You sure?”

“Yes.”

“What were you thinking?”

I shrug. “It seemed like the thing to do.”

The air has a strange smell, kind of orange and earthy. I take a whiff of my arm. The smell is there, weak but definitely there. I bend down and sniff Dutch. He’s covered with it. Maybe this is the smell of the planet POD. A shiver sweeps over me.

Dad says, “You sure you’re okay?”

“Other than feeling a strange desire to eat your liver, I’m fine.”

He frowns. “All right, then. I’m going to make some breakfast. But no liver for you.”

Dad walks into the kitchen. I peer out at the fog one more time. The sun is coming up, which brightens the stuff a shade or two. But it’s still just as thick. The way it boils reminds me of tear gas I see in action movies, just before SWAT guys in battle gear storm the bus.

That gives me an idea I’d rather not have. Maybe it’s time to storm the bus.

I head for the dining room, my arm still tingling.

The Pirate Makes a Plan

How could I be so stupid?

I stare at the note, as if by concentrating hard on the letters I can find Richie and stab a hole in his evil heart.
I have something you want.
Just the thought of him taking Cassie makes my blood boil. I need to get her back. Now that the sun is finally up I can do something about it.

Last night was spent under a truck on Level 4. No way was I going to sleep in the Volvo. I went down to Level 2 and fetched the horse blanket out of the drug dealer’s car. Then I found this spot and tried to sleep, which was so not possible. It was the longest night of my life. The horse blanket isn’t as warm as my sleeping bag, and it smells worse. I found some extra clothes and tried piling them on top of me, but they fell off every time I moved. No matter what I did, the cold seemed to find me. When I finally
drifted off for a minute, the terrible screeching sound came. There was no way I could fall asleep after that, so I just shivered in the dark and thought about what I need to do and how I’m going to do it.

I crawl out from under the truck. My body aches from all the cold in my bones. I take a deep breath and look out at the new day. The air has a weird smell I can’t quite figure out, like a mix between flowers and dirt. Better than gas and radiator fluid, that’s for sure. There’s a cold fog outside with a strange color, gray with smudges of yellowish blue. It’s so thick I can’t see the spaceballs, which is fine by me. In a way it’s kind of fun to watch, how it moves and swirls just outside the walls of the garage without coming in. Maybe it’s alien fog, or maybe it’s just the way things are in a city that doesn’t breathe anymore. There’s a broom in the bed of the truck. I try an experiment. I stick the broom handle out into the fog. Right away the swirls wrap around it; then electricity flows up and down the handle like mini–lightning bolts. It freaks me out, so I drop the broom. The swirls follow it down. I hear it land, but I don’t see where. Experiment over—definitely alien fog. But whatever the spaceballs are up to, I’m not going to waste time thinking about it.

They have their to-do list and I have mine.

First things first—
get the gun
. I sneak up to Level 6 and scope out the garbage can for a long time. After ninety-six minutes I’m pretty sure Richie isn’t around. I sprint out, lift the top off the can, reach into the trash, grab the handle, and go. I dive under the nearest car and
tick off eight minutes. All clear. I race to the Volvo to see if my treasures are still in the secret compartment by the spare tire. They are. I stuff them in my backpack and make my way down to Level 4. The briefcase seems heavier every time I pick it up.

I stop and listen at the entrance to each level. I’ve just reached the sign for Level 3 when I hear a sound. A kind of click behind me. I scurry under a car. On the way I bang my head on the muffler pipe, which is hanging by a wire. I wait twelve minutes, watching drops of my blood make small red dots on the oil-stained cement. Some of the dots join together to make something bigger. This isn’t good.

I count another ninety seconds. Nothing. Whatever made that sound, it wasn’t Richie.

Now I’m at the truck where I spent the night. I have a monster headache and a jagged gash over my left eye. I use the makeup mirror to see what’s what. There’s a loose flap of skin the size of a dime. It crosses into my left eyebrow. The wound is full of chunks of rust from the muffler. The little bit of my face that I can see is covered with dirt and streaked with blood. My hair used to be blond—now it’s stringy and the color of mud.
Is that me?
I’ve gone from a zombie to a victim in one of Zack’s slasher videos. I open the first-aid kit, pick out an alcohol pad, and press it against the wound. It burns like fire. My eyes water and I almost scream. Finally the pain shrinks to a dull throb. Then
comes the bandage. Mom taught me to use a butterfly bandage on cuts like this one, so that’s what I do. But the bandage doesn’t stick to my eyebrow. I have to use a patch of gauze so big it covers my whole eye. I tape it down and hope for the best. One last look in the mirror. Ha! I do look like a pirate. I think about taking one of the azithro-something pills, but since I have no idea what they do, I go for the safer bet—aspirin. I shake two pills out of the bottle and swallow them dry. Headache or not, I’m good to go.

But go where? That’s the zillion-dollar question. Do I knock on the door and say, “Yo, Richie, here’s what you want, now give me what I want”? What will happen then? Will he give me my stuff? Will he give me Cassie and let us go back to our parking-garage world? Give me some food and water? Maybe invite me and Cassie to stay inside where it’s warm and they make hamburgers for dinner and drink hot chocolate before bedtime? I shake my head.
Yeah, right!
More like it he’d take the gun and keep Cassie. That is, if Cassie is even alive. I have to face the facts. You can’t trust people like Richie. Give them a gun and they grow a mean streak a mile wide. Like Mom used to say, they’ll hurt you every chance they get.

And then there’s Mr. Hendricks. If he bosses around people like Richie and Hacker, then meeting him must be like walking into a room full of angry bees.

Which means that I need to sneak in. But how? I heard Richie say they have guards at all the doors. I’ve seen some air vents that might work, but they’re up too high. And
even if I found one that I could crawl into, how would I take off the cover from the inside and get down to the floor? It works in movies, but this is real life. Real life has a way of tricking you into doing stupid stuff and then making you pay for it big-time.

I finger the patch on my eye, which makes me wonder: What would a pirate do? He’d find the darkest, scariest tunnel on the island, sneak past the stupid guards snoring next to the fire, and steal the treasure. I’m not sure if the door guards are stupid, but there is a dark, scary tunnel. There’s a stairway marked
Utility Access—Hotel Employees Only
on Level 1. It’s dark, definitely scary, and maybe there aren’t any guards at all.

If I’m lucky.

Flash of Brilliance

I’m feeling … weird.

It’s been this way since I woke up this morning. I blame it on a dream that tortured me all night long—that the fog figured out how to open the doors, seeped into the house, and was oozing up the stairs. I finally managed to get back to sleep, but only after I repeated a thousand times that it is physically impossible for fog, unless it’s made in Hollywood, to open doors.

We’re finishing off the graham crackers for breakfast. Dad is going on about
My Side of the Mountain
, his favorite survival book as a kid. It actually sounds interesting, but I can’t concentrate. That weird feeling is getting stronger by the second. It’s like I’m on that first slow ride up a roller coaster. Now I’m almost at the very top, where the car hovers in that weightless place just before you start to
fall and gravity tries to squeeze your heart through your eyeballs. It’s making me restless, on edge.

Dad stops midsentence and says, “Are you okay?”

I nod but it’s a barefaced lie. My right hand is tingling.

He waits a beat, stands up, carries his plate into the kitchen.

The tingling moves in waves from fingertip to elbow. It’s exactly like yesterday when I reached out into the fog. Same arm, same place. The graham cracker slides from my fingers. Dad has his back to me—he’s putting his plate in the cupboard.

There’s a moment of blackness, like a shutter clicking in front of a camera lens.

Then bam! Another blinding flash. My body shudders. A few seconds later and I’m fine. The almost-falling sensation is gone. If it weren’t so creepy, I’d say I feel pretty damn good.

Dad walks back to the table. “What’s up with the face?” he says, giving me a sideways look.

“What face is that?”

“The one you have when you’re trying not to smile.”

I hold the cracker in my right hand and admire it as if it’s a work of art.

“Dad, without question, this is the best breakfast you ever made.”

I’m sitting in the Amanda chair, gazing out into the swirling soup. It’s thicker than ever. It almost looks angry. If
the POD commander stood two inches from the glass, I wouldn’t be able to see him—or her. The grayness is so complete that I have to wonder, is anything left? Are all the fences and playground slides and porta-potties and road signs dissolved and we’re the last people in the last man-made structure on the planet, a planet soon to be renamed POD II?