At the End - a post-apocalyptic novel (The Road to Extinction, Book 1) (6 page)

I stood up, my brow scrunched.

“The International Planetary Defense
Administration,” he said when he saw my confusion.

“Oh, right.” I sighed. I can’t believe I had
forgotten that . . . so many associations and administrations.

“So you want to go into town, eh?” Jelly
spoke up. I could tell he didn’t like that idea.

“It’s not that far to walk,” I said.

“I ain’t walkin’ that far,” Jacob spat.

“How else are we going to get there, a
car?”

“You’re damn right a car.” Jacob smiled as
he fiddled with the door handle. “I know how to unwire the fake
engine noise. We’ll be as silent as a computer.”

Jelly sighed in relief. “Sounds great to me,
dude, show us the way.” He grabbed his gear. We did the same.

Jacob spun around and headed outside. Jelly
followed. Tortilla put a hand on my back as we left a few strides
behind them. “It’ll be okay, we’ll be okay.”

I turned back and stared at him. “I know.” I
felt a rush of comfort and warmth, and I stood on my tiptoes and
kissed his cheek. He blushed. I turned around and fell in line.

When we came through the garage door, cinder
and ash scattered as we tramped around. The two cars were melted,
bent, and pliable. “Awesome. Just incredible,” Jacob said. “You
ruined my cars.”

“And saved your life,” I chimed in
again.

“And melted my cars . . .”

“What about your neighbors?” Tortilla spoke
up, running a hand over the softened neo-plastic that used to be a
hood.

“Yeah, they didn’t make it . . . they’re
gone.”

We left the piles of goop and ash behind. We
were all furtive except for Jacob. He didn’t care anymore, if he
ever did. He just strolled on over to his neighbors, as if he
wanted to be captured, but I didn’t think he did. He broke a window
into the house with a rock, climbed in, then went around to unlock
the door for us. In the garage, two neo-plastic Fiat Tracksters sat
in idle disappointment. One of the coupes was fiery red and the
other was aquamarine.

“Which one do we want?” Jacob asked.

“The red one,” Jelly said. He ran to the
door, opened it, plopped down in the seat, and started feeling the
wheel like it was the only thing in the world that mattered. I
think I saw him pet it for the briefest of moments.

“Yeah, sure. Whatever.” Jacob went to the
hood. “Pop it, bro.” Jelly popped it, and Jacob started to tinker
with the wires.

“This is so slick,” Jelly said when we
walked over. We piled our backpacks and the bows into the trunk.
“This must be brand new, a few weeks old at most.” It was good to
see Jelly so ecstatic.

Jacob slammed the hood down. “Too bad you
don’t get to drive it.” He disappeared inside the house and came
back jangling a set of keys. “Haha, suckers!” He laughed in a
squeal that hurt my ears.

“Where did you find those?” Jelly asked,
excited, but saddened that he didn’t find them first.

“They were hanging on some hooks in the
kitchen. Now scoot over.”

Jelly got out and went around to the
passenger’s side, flipped the car seat forward so that I could duck
into the back, and eagerly jumped in after I was buckled. Tortilla
got in on the driver’s side.

“Are we ready to have some fun?” Jacob
asked, also excited. He put the magnetic keypad in its holder on
the dash and tapped the green ON switch. The car came alive with
lights, silent, deadly to anyone listening to music, or looking the
other way. That’s why all electric cars had those fake engine
noises. Jacob checked the car’s vitals. “Full batteries, baby.
We’re ready to fly.” He pressed the garage door opener. Soon we
were looking at the bleak driveway.

“Don’t kill us, please,” I pleaded.

But it was too late; he had already pounded
the GO pedal. We burst forth out of there like a fighter jet.

“I—I read an article on the Trackster. It
can keep a speed of 300 kilometers per hour for over three hours.
No other car in the world can do that,” Jelly said. “Uhrm. It’s one
of the few cars that have a rectenna built right on top. This slick
ride will go forever, as long as the bill is paid. The batteries
will never deplete, though I suppose they could die.”

“It gets it power directly from the
electrical relay plants?” I asked. I had never heard of that
before. Everything was on the grid. Six years ago, the twenty-year
project to put solar panels in space was finally over, with the
completion of the last Solar Station—one of five—that collected
solar rays around the clock. They transmitted electricity as
microwave energy, then converted the energy back into electricity
at the electrical relay plants, where everything I knew about got
its power. Cars were recharged at home, and at the electricity
stations that replaced all of the old gas stations, not directly
from the relay plants. “Incredible. So you never have to stop at an
electricity station?”

“Never.”

“Just incredible,” I said. We could go all
the way to California without stopping; I liked the sound of that.
No, I loved the sound of that. I was enjoying the scenery when
Tortilla tapped my shoulder.

“I don’t believe it,” Tortilla mumbled.

“What? What is it?” I asked. I scanned over
his shoulder, out the window, but I couldn’t see anything.

He jabbed his right index finger toward the
lake, jamming it when he collided with the glass. A yelp escaped
his mouth. “Crap that hurt!” He pointed with his left. “It’s your
axe. I see your axe.”

“I see it too,” Jelly said.

“You have an axe?” Jacob asked, incredulous.
He zoomed along, turning with the winding road with precision.

“Pull over! Pull over!” I yelled. He pulled
the car into a lakeside driveway. We scrambled out of the Trackster
and broke for the shoreline. There it was, floating like the
brilliant alion hacker that it became after it sunk to the depths
of the lake. I picked it up and inspected it. “Yep, it’s mine. See
the initials on the haft.” I showed them where I had engraved ML. I
looked at Tortilla. “Good eye.” I wanted to kiss him again, but I
resisted the urge. I restrained myself, held it all back. I twirled
the slippery weapon with both hands. “I’m back, baby.”

“Were you ever gone?” Jelly asked me.

“My dwarven spirit was,” I responded,
putting my axe in the trunk.

We crammed into the car again, and off we
went, zipping around North Shore Drive. Cars were scattered along
the roadway. “People must have been taken while they were driving,”
Jelly gasped. “While they were driving . . .” He freaked all of us
out when he said that, but no one spoke anything more about the
possibility of abduction while driving.

North Shore was a narrow, two-lane road, and
Jacob was driving faster than I was comfortable with, much faster.
I glanced at the speedometer: 116 KPH.

“Can you slow down, bromigo?” I asked. We
were all tense, I could tell.

“What for? I have it under control. You
can’t even tell that I’m going over 100.”

I cracked my pinky fingers. “Because there
are cars blocking the road. What if we come around a corner and
there’s a car that you can’t maneuver past. You wanna kill us?”

Jelly started clearing his throat more. Too
tense. The road was so curvy; it snaked like a river. We could hit
a car at any moment.

I perched myself between the front seats,
watching, waiting. As we came around a bend, I spotted the dead
car, vacant of a driver.

Jacob dipped the wheel to his left, eyes on
the car in our lane.

“Car! Car! Car!” I screamed. I had never
screamed so fiercely before. I fell back into my seat, still
buckled.

“What the hell!” Jacob shouted.

Another car drove right for us, barreling
down the road as fast, if not faster than us. It honked its horn:
BERN—BERN—BERN! We missed each other by a centimeter, I would
guess. A mere centimeter. Jacob went straight into the ditch and
out again, braking like a madman, not thinking but reacting. We
halted in the middle of the road. My nose smashed the seat in front
of me. Blood gushed for a second, then streamed down my lip.

There were a few groans as everyone settled;
I don’t know if they were mine. “Everyone all right?” I asked. My
voice sounded broken to me. My head swam, and my blurry vision
didn’t seem to want to go back to normal. My nose ceased bleeding,
though, so that was a positive.

“Yeah,” Tortilla uttered to no one in
particular.

“Yeah, I am too,” Jelly replied. He groaned.
It was him who was doing all the groaning, I noticed.

I unbuckled to examine Jacob. He was out,
fainted. “He doesn’t look good. Why did we let him drive, he wasn’t
even functioning properly.”

“He took the key,” Tortilla said. “I don’t
know . . .”

Jelly got out, letting me out after him. We
inspected the Trackster. “What a shame,” Jelly commented. “It was
brand new, and bam, a scratch.” The neo-plastic body was light but
incredibly durable, and even at the scary speeds we were going, the
front bumper was barely even scratched. Neo-plastic, a life-saving
material no one should have ever had to live without; it probably
prevented a million deaths a day. “What a damn shame.” He shook his
head, but it hurt and some more groans followed. He eyed Jacob.
“He’s melted, completely insane.”

“That’s certain,” I said. “Probably enough
to be in an institution.”

Jelly laughed. “What do we do?”

Suddenly, a roar flew by us, so deep and
threatening; it promised vengeance. It came from the east, in the
direction of Jacob’s house.

“Oh, no. No—no—no—no—no! What do we do?”
Jelly flew up his arms, clearing his throat over and over. His
panicky movements disoriented me for a second.

“Stop it, Jelly!” I yelled. “Stop it.
Panicking won’t help, so stop. Help me move Jacob to the back.”
Together we lifted Jacob and plodded around the car, every labored
step ached, but we got him into the backseat. “I’ll drive.”

Jelly’s eyes pleaded with me to let him
drive, but he said, “Sure, yeah, all right. You’re the better
driver.” He hopped into the passenger’s front.

I got behind the wheel. I didn’t ask if they
were ready, I clicked the four-wheel-drive button, locked it into
drive, and looked out on the road ahead. I heard another roar and
zoomed away, west, toward Bellingham. The Trackster was smooth. I
had never driven a car like it. Especially since Jacob disabled the
fake engine noise. It was so quiet as I hit 80 KPH. I had heard a
gasoline engine a few years ago, and I don’t know how anyone could
stand such a noise-polluting machine; it was detrimental to my
ears.

Most of the city’s expansion ran North and
South, leaving the lake rather undeveloped, which was nice. I liked
living so close to it. It was so much quieter there. The parks, the
people, for the most part, were all muted in comparison.
Quarter-way up Alabama Hill, the tops of the skyscrapers emerged,
long, bright towers covered in green solar panels. The organic
compounds of the solar cells worked exactly like trees, but twenty
times more efficient, or something like that. They also didn’t
expel oxygen, not yet anyway. They probably never would.

“Jacob is coming to,” Tortilla informed
us.

Jacob grumbled about his head for a bit. “I
screwed up. I screwed up bad.”

Tortilla smirked. “We’re alive. You didn’t
kill us, not yet anyway.”

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Like I’m going to puke my goddamn brains
out,” he answered. He loosened the strap across his stomach and
chest.

“I bet,” Jelly said.

“No, I mean it. Pull over.” But there wasn’t
time. He retched a pool of death by his feet.

“Why? Oh, why!” Jelly shouted. We rolled
down the windows and opened the sunroof. All useless, in the end,
it was so bad; I almost added the granola bar I had eaten to the
putrid smell.

“I’ll just go to the bus station, and we can
figure out something from there.” No one argued. They rarely did.
“There were people in that car.”

“What?” Tortilla said, adjusting his
glasses.

“In the car that drove us off the road,
there were people in it. We’re not the only ones left.”

“I didn’t even think about that,” Jelly
reflected. “It’s so normal for people to drive cars . . . I didn’t
even think about that.”

The conversation ended as we all
contemplated on the fact that other people did survive.

It became harder to maneuver in the city,
much harder. Cars jammed streets everywhere. It was silent,
immobile chaos. The smell was getting to me, dizzying my head. I
pulled into a Little Old Food Mart parking lot a few blocks away
from the bus station. “We can walk the rest. I can’t be in this car
anymore.”

Not a word from them, not one.

“You think we should check the grocery?”
Jelly asked.

I nodded. “Yeah, stock up. They might have
duffel bags that we can use.” The slider doors of the grocery store
opened as usual, a computerized bell rang when they did. We stood
there, gawking.

“It’s empty. All the shelves, empty. How is
this possible?” Tortilla said. His words only earned shrugs. We
went down the aisles: the canned goods, the cereals, the produce,
meats, bakery, all of it was gone. All the consumables. The cooking
utensils, neo-plastic water bottles, aluminum foil—that stuff was
all left alone, barely touched.

“It’s impossible. With all the people
missing the first day, the people left couldn’t have taken it
all.”

Then it dawned on us: people didn’t take all
the food, not all of it.

“So you think?” Jelly said.

“Yep,” I responded. “I can’t think of a
better explanation, can you?” Of course he couldn’t, and if he did,
he didn’t say it. “Let’s get all the aluminum foil, fill some more
water bottles, some medications. You know, stuff we can use.”