The Perseid Collapse (45 page)
“Dude. Is this a rescue?” said the kid, lowering his hand slightly. “Are you, like, Special Forces or something?”
“I’m not Special Forces or the military. Where’s room six twenty-two?”
“Six twenty-two is locked,” he said. “It’s the only one we couldn’t get into.”
“Where is it?” he said.
“Around the corner. At the end of the hallway. You’re not with the military?” he said.
“How many times do I have to tell you? My son lives on this floor,” he said, stepping over him.
Alex flashed his light around the corner, seeing the door to six twenty-two directly ahead. Everything was starting to look familiar again. He knocked first, calling out his son’s name and trying the handle. Nothing stirred beyond the door. More students wandered into the hallway, muttering about the military.
“Does anyone have a spare key?” said Alex.
“The RAs took off when the bomb hit. We searched their rooms, but didn’t find any,” said a boy from the dark.
“He kind of disappeared,” said another kid.
“What do you mean?” Alex asked.
Someone muttered, “I wouldn’t say any more.”
“You want to see my driver’s license?”
“That would be a start,” said one of the girls.
“Shouldn’t all of you be hiding in your rooms? I am still holding a rifle, right?”
“Nobody’s come up here with a specific name before. You might be legit.”
“Might be legit?” said Alex. “Strong SAT scores apparently don’t translate into strong survival instinct.”
Alex removed a red chemlight from his vest and snapped it, throwing it to the floor. A crimson glow illuminated the weary students. He shook his head and opened a small pouch on his vest, tossing his identification at the young woman who appeared to be in charge.
“He’s totally military. Look at the gear,” uttered a voice.
“Ex-military,” said Alex.
“He could be a merc. Paid to rescue whoever that kid is.”
“You guys play way too much Call of Duty,” said Alex, pounding on the door while several students examined his license with flashlights.
“He checks out—for now,” said the girl, handing his license back.
“Thanks for the endorsement. So where’s my son if he isn’t here? Can I get the young man who spoke up earlier?” said Alex, knocking on the door again.
“I remember seeing him here late Sunday night. Around eleven maybe? A bunch of us were hanging out in the hall, and he came by. Said something about a girlfriend at Boston College. He was gone after the blast.”
“I saw him heading for the far stairwell right after the shockwave hit. He had a backpack and some kind of bucket,” volunteered another student.
Alex knew exactly where to find his son.
“Is there a second lock on these doors, maybe above the handle?” said Alex.
“No. Just the handle” said someone.
Alex kicked the door, causing everyone to back away a few steps. The door didn’t budge.
“You should shoot the door,” stated one of the kids.
“Good idea. Clear the hallway!” he yelled, pointing the rifle at the door and activating the visible red laser.
While the students broke into pandemonium, tripping over each other to get clear, Alex steadied the laser and fired three bullets into the space between the handle and the doorjamb. The hallway fell deathly silent after the last shot, everyone frozen in place.
“Holy shit. Did he really just shoot the door?” said a kid on the ground to his left.
“He totally shot the door! Dude, your silencer doesn’t work for shit!” yelled a student hidden in one of the rooms.
Alex kicked the door, knocking it against the interior wall. He took a step and stopped. The room smelled like Ryan. Like their home. Alex deactivated the Surefire light and stood there, remembering everything the way it had been—before. He felt like a distorted time-traveller. The past forty-eight hours expanding over eternity.
“You need this?” said a young woman, holding out his red chemlight.
“Thanks,” he mumbled.
“Is everything okay? You don’t look…the same,” she said.
“I’m fine,” said Alex, walking forward.
He swept the Spartan interior with his rifle light. A crumpled blue comforter hung off Ryan’s bed, draping the tile floor. An empty plastic bin lay tipped over on the bed. Most of the cardboard boxes stacked on the floor were unopened, his priorities upon arrival clearly focused on a young lady at Boston College. A few books and pictures covered his desk. One picture of the Fletchers and—Ed was going to love this—several pictures of Chloe. He couldn’t believe how badly they had underestimated that relationship. He threw the chemlight next to the bin on Ryan’s bed and deactivated the rifle light.
Alex sat on Ryan’s bed and leaned back against the cinderblock wall, wondering if he could take a small nap. Just the thought of closing his eyes for a few moments caused him to sink down the rough wall to the mattress. He dug into his front pants pocket and pulled out a dark tab, ejecting a small pill directly through the foil into his mouth. Designed to release its contents upon contact with saliva, he held the P-STIM under his tongue for thirty seconds, kick-starting the amphetamine boost. It worked immediately.
He lay there calculating the time it would take him to reach Chloe’s apartment, no longer contemplating sleep. Moving cautiously, a 3.1-mile walk through the back streets of Brookline shouldn’t take him more than an hour and a half. Two at the most. His watch read 2:37.
Plenty of time.
He took the family picture from the desk and removed the picture from the silver frame, straining to see the image in the dim red aura. He knew it well enough. The four of them in cushioned wicker chairs, on the wide porch at the Chebeague Island Inn. He stared at the picture, unable to put it away.
“Nobody’s coming for us?” said a girl standing in the doorway. “You’re really just someone’s dad?”
The gravity of the situation came into sharp focus, weakening his knees. He’d been so single-minded kicking his way into their lives that he hadn’t stopped to consider their predicament. The kids were stranded, waiting for a rescue that would never arrive. He folded the picture and tucked it into the pouch holding his license.
“You need to seriously consider leaving this place,” said Alex, brushing past her.
“And go where? What happened out there?” she said.
Alex stopped outside of Ryan’s room and glanced around the hallway at the flashlight-illuminated faces. They were just children. He swallowed hard, barely able to meet their stares. How many had shown up for early orientation? Hundreds? Thousands? His thoughts drifted to the parents experiencing the ultimate nightmare just days after sending their babies into the world. They’d said goodbye this weekend, unaware that some of them would never see their children again. The odds were long against most of these students surviving. Without food and water, they would have to venture into the city.
“What’s going on in the city? What’s wrong with you?” she demanded.
“Nothing,” he said flatly. “Has anyone here been outside of the towers? I mean outside of the building?”
“We didn’t think it was a good idea. The shooting started yesterday afternoon and got worse all night. That’s why we blockaded the stairwells. We figured we’d wait for the military or police to start evacuating us,” she said.
“Taking their sweet-ass time, too,” said a kid holding a baseball bat over his shoulder.
“You guys don’t know, do you? Holy shit,” he whispered.
“Know what? What don’t we know?” said the young woman, directing her flashlight in his face.
“The power outage isn’t confined to Boston. It’s everywhere. We’ve been hit by an EMP,” said Alex, pausing. “Nobody is coming for you.”
THE END
The Perseid Collapse: Event Horizon
, Book Two in
The Perseid Collapse Series,
will be available in the spring of 2014.
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Steven Konkoly is the author of
The Jakarta Pandemic
,
Black Flagged
,
Black Flagged Redux
,
Black Flagged Apex
, and
Black Flagged Vektor
Table of Contents
PART III “ROADS LESS TRAVELLED”