SWAB (A Young Adult Dystopian Novel) (6 page)

Her lips blubbered. She didn’t move. I heard a crash from the alley behind the candy shop. That was all the motivation I needed. “Nathan, let’s go. Now. I’ll follow you. Go!”

Nathan struggled to get up onto the seat of his bike. I gave him a one-handed push to get started. “What about Jenny?” he asked as his bike picked up speed. There was a loud scream behind us.

“Just go!” I yelled. We biked as fast as we could down the street, too petrified to look back.

We reached the row of houses we lived on and it looked relatively untouched. There was still a sprinkler going in Mrs. Long’s front yard. It could’ve been just another hot August day.

Our house was the eighth one on the left. Our family’s blue minivan was parked in the driveway.

“Dad’s home!” Nathan cried, his voice echoing the hope and relief I felt in my own heart. My parents were there. They would know what to do. They would keep us safe from whatever was happening.

Throwing our bikes onto the grass, we dashed to the door and threw it open.

“Mom! Dad!” I yelled into the living room and up the stairs. My mom had been sewing when we left that morning.

“Mom!” Nathan called.

The sewing room upstairs was empty. So were the bedrooms. That meant they were probably in the kitchen. Mom was getting dinner ready.

“Mom—” I burst into the room but stopped at the sight of the back door leading to the porch. The screen was shredded, the frame bent in at one corner, gaping like a hungry mouth.

My mother’s body was lying on the floor in front of the fridge. The lilac dress she’d put on that day was damp with crimson. One of her legs was ripped open, muscles and bone showing through the mutilated skin. But that wasn’t the worst part.

Her head was gone.

I screamed and vomited all over the tiled floor.

Nathan ran to her, but I stopped him. We both nearly slipped in the vomit and blood on the floor.

“Her head!” Nathan shrieked. It lay by the pantry door, her beautiful green eyes still open and her soft brown hair falling to the ground.

The sight was too much. We couldn’t even grieve over our mother’s body. We had to get away. The back door was closest. Nathan had gone limp in my arms. I thought he’d fainted, but I didn’t stop to check. Dragging him under the arms, I got us out of the kitchen through the broken screen door and onto the porch.

There, I stopped and sobbed. At times, breath couldn’t come. At others, it came so fast I felt my head get woozy and light. Nathan crumpled into a ball on the wood slats. Through my tears, I saw my dad’s shirt lying in the dirt of the garden we had planted that spring. His jeans were peeking through the leaves of the rhubarb plants.

“Mommy,” Nathan sobbed beside me.

The sight of my father’s dead body snapped me back to the present. I realized we were on our own. There was no one to protect us. Whoever or whatever had murdered my parents could come back. They could be watching us right now.

“Nathan, you’ve got to come with me,” I told him, but he didn’t respond. I forced him to his feet. “I’m going to take you back inside.”

“But Mom—”

“Don’t look,” I told him. “Just hold onto me. I’m going to keep you safe.” I probably didn’t stand much chance against whatever had killed our parents, but I had to at least try. For Nathan.

“Wh-what about D-dad?” Nathan asked.

I took a moment before I told him. “He’s gone, too.”

“Wh-what?” he started looking around.

“No,” I told him, taking his hand. “Look into my eyes and nowhere else.”I didn’t want him to see. His green eyes—bright as the
summer grass, just like Mom’s, but full of tears and pain—stared back into mine. “He’s gone, and it’s just us. You need to do what I say so we stay safe. Can you do that?”

He nodded.

“Good.” I led him by the hand across the deck. At the sight of the broken screen, he started trembling violently. “Do you want to close your eyes?” I asked gently, wishing I could do the same. He nodded again. “Okay, I’ll lead you.”

He closed his eyes, sobs bursting from his lips. I held back the shredded screen and we stepped through the doorway. Our flip-flops flapped against the tile. I led him around the kitchen table, away from the fridge. “We’re almost there.”

The tile gave way to soft carpet. We went down the hall and into the living room. I sat Nathan down on the couch facing the window and the street. “Now stay here,” I told him and took a moment to try to still my racing heart and think. “I need to get some things from the house. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Please don’t leave,” Nathan begged, gripping my arm tightly.

“I have to,” I said, pulling his fingers off and rubbing my arm. “I’ll be right back. I promise.” I didn’t want to leave him alone in that room. I didn’t want to face that big house by myself, but I knew that if I was to keep Nathan safe, I’d have to get some supplies. “If anyone comes,” I instructed, “use the self-defense moves we learned in karate. You remember how, right?” I wiped the tears and snot off his chin.

“I don’t know—” he said, unsure.

I lowered my head even with his. “You can do it. I need you to be tough now, okay?”

“Okay.”

I headed upstairs first. My hands shook badly as I flung open my closet door and dug under the stuffed animals for my school backpack. It still had end-of-the-year homework in it. I dumped the folders onto
the floor and grabbed a couple of shirts and pairs of pants off their hangers. Underwear, socks, and the fishing knife my Dad gave me last Christmas went in next.

Then I went to Nathan’s room. His backpack was harder to find, buried under his bed with about a hundred G.I. Joes. After filling his bag with clothes and Maba, his stuffed monkey, I threw in our toothbrushes and some toothpaste.
What else?
The packs were nearly full, but I knew that a couple pairs of socks and a fishing knife would hardly keep us safe.
And what about food?

I didn’t know where we were going, only that we couldn’t stay in the house. I saw Nathan’s fishing pole sitting against the wall in the hall where he’d left it the day before, so I grabbed that, too. I thought about getting mine from the garage, but I didn’t want to load us down with too much.
One should be enough.
I made sure to get my father’s leather work gloves, though. He’d always let me borrow them when I helped him weed. I figured I needed them now.

A trip to the kitchen was inevitable, but I danced around in the hall outside it, unwilling to go in.
I won’t go near the fridge,
I told myself, but the food was in the pantry.

Just go, and don’t look.
I took a deep breath and plunged into the kitchen like it was an icy lake. Moving quickly, I went for the kitchen knives first, wrapping them in a hand towel and putting them into my bag. I decided to put one in my pocket. Next, I got two water bottles from above the sink and filled them to the top. Tears streamed down my face, making it hard to see.

Turning, I made myself move to the pantry. I forced my eyes to look at the white of the pantry door, nothing else. I stopped about three feet from it and had to lean over awkwardly to turn the handle. I felt the weight of my mother’s head move across the floor as I pulled the door open, heard the whisper of her hair against the tile.

With the door open just enough, I reached in and started grabbing things: a box of granola bars, a couple cans of soup, a bag of cereal. I quickly put them into Nathan’s bag, grabbed my dad’s keys off the counter, and left the kitchen forever.

I made us both go to the bathroom and put on a change of clothes. Then, I gave Nathan his bag and put mine on.

“Where are we going?” he asked. His tears stopped, his face hollow and ashen.

“I don’t know,” I answered and grabbed the minivan keys off their hook by the door. “Let’s go.”

When we left the house, we left the door open behind us. But Nathan turned and went back. He closed the door softly and made sure it locked.

“It just feels right,” he said.

I agreed. It was like closing a coffin.

Being out of the house in the open, made me nervous in a different way. Though the street was oddly calm and quiet, I was afraid that my parents’ murderers would appear any moment.
Where are the sirens? The police? The firefighters?
It was eerily still. “Let’s go,” I told Nathan and we walked toward the van. He took his usual seat in the back. We usually argued over who got the front, but I let him be. I sat down in the driver’s seat, which still smelled lightly of my father’s cologne, and turned the key. The engine started, and I tried to remember what my parents always did to make the car go backwards.

“You don’t know how to drive,” Nathan stated the obvious.

I bit my lip. “Dad let me try a few times,” I said, to reassure myself more than him.

“Yeah, in the parking lot, going super-slow,” Nathan pointed out.

“I can do this,” I told him, and put the car into drive. It moved toward the garage. I slammed on the brakes, making us fly forward.

“You want me to try?” Nathan offered.

“No. Now sit down and put your seat belt on, you twit. If I crash this thing, you’d better be safe.”

Arguing felt better. Like things were almost normal. I got the minivan into reverse and pulled out onto the road. I looked into the rearview mirror once to see our home disappear forever behind us.

I woke up from the memory when the sky was still dark. The memory no longer made me cry, but it always exposed the raw, hallow part in me, like ripping off a scab. I wrapped my arms tightly around my chest and decided to get up anyway and get a start on the day. The scarb had taken everything from us. It was time to take it back.

Chapter Seven

A Funny Way of Speaking

The early morning air outside my tent smelled like sage and fresh-fallen rain. I sucked in a deep breath of it. I closed my eyelids as I turned into the rising sun.

“You miss him, don’t you?”

The unexpected male voice startled me. I turned quickly, my legs reflexively in a fighting stance, to see Derrick casually walking toward me in a plaid shirt and blue jeans, his usual white cowboy hat on his head. His dark blue eyes fell on me, and I felt incredibly self-conscious in the short boxers and tank top I’d stepped out of my tent in.

“Who?” I asked, wondering why he was over here at all. He usually hung out over by the Post with the other soldiers. Ray had told me Derrick tried too hard to fit in. He was always trying to prove himself with the guys and was a real show off for the ladies. Cassandra had an alternating crush between him and Ray. Ray had said that Derrick talked a lot with that smooth country accent but rarely had much to back it up. Ray didn’t care for him much, which was enough for me to not like him, either.

“Your boyfriend,” Derrick said, taking off his hat and brushing back his sun-bleached blond hair. When I just stared back at him dumbly, he added, “You know, the one who got kidnapped by the scarb?” He had a funny way of saying
scarb
. It came out more like
scahr-buh
.

He put his thumbs into the front pocket of jeans. He looked like he’d worked on a ranch his whole life. He reeked of sun and sweet straw.

This was getting uncomfortable.
Why won’t he just leave?
I was anxious to get over to check on Travis’s progress with the trucks.

“Well, for what it’s worth”—he stalled, like he was embarrassed or something—“I thought you should know, since we are in the same troop and all, that I believe you.” This got my attention, and I looked into his face for a sign he might be making fun of me. He spoke softly and seriously. “I believe the flying scarb may have taken Ray. I know a heck of a lot of the guys back at the Post don’t think your story is very… accurate, but I don’t see why you would just make it up.”

My mouth hung open slightly, like the hinges of my jaw had come loose.

Derrick played with the toe of his cowboy boot in the dust. “Well, I guess I better get back and help Rico and Jorge at the Post,” he finally said. “I’ll see you at our troop meeting later tonight.”

With that, he put his hat back on, turned, and started back toward town. His figure from the back looked like a postcard. Wild and western.
A gentleman
?
I wasn’t sure.

“See you,” I said weakly to the back of his plaid shirt.
Did that really just happen?
I wondered as I headed toward the lake for a quick clean-up to start the day. An odd mixture of emotions mixed in my stomach: the lingering awkwardness of the whole situation, the uncertainty of Derrick’s real character, and a growing feeling of relief—relief that at least there was one person on this island who seemed to believe me. He was hardly Officer Reynolds or anyone of real importance, but at least there was someone. I was glad he was in my troop. I’d take as many allies as I could get once combat began.

Travis wasn’t much for talking while he worked, which was all right with me. I was too anxious. It’d been two days already.
Is he still alive? Where could he be?
Those questions and a hundred others filled my mind until I thought I would burst. Travis seemed to sense my growing unease, so he tried to talk about school and stuff from
back before the scarb. I didn’t really pay attention to it. Finally, he found something that got my mind off Ray.

“You know, word is the scouts are coming back tonight?”

I nearly dropped the socket wrench I was holding. “What?” I ducked down under the engine to see his face better. “For real? I thought they weren’t expected back until the end of the week!”

He smiled. “For real. Your brother should be home before midnight tonight.”

My heart nearly flew up into the tree tops.
Nathan will be coming home tonight!