Deep Shadows (36 page)

Carter laughed and jumped up from the table. “I'm going to meet Kaitlyn.”

“Now?” Shelby checked her watch. “Curfew is at—”

“Dark. I know.” Carter picked up his own dishes, and headed toward his house. “I'll be home in plenty of time,” he hollered over his shoulder.

Shelby rolled her eyes, and then she pinned her gaze to Max.

“I didn't do anything.”

“Exactly. I'm going home to do some work—” There it was again. She hesitated and backtracked. “Housework. But when Bhatti leaves, you come and get me. We're going back there to dig up whatever it was he buried.”

And before Max could argue, she was gone.

F
IFTY
-N
INE

C
arter could tell his mom didn't like Dr. Bhatti, but he seemed like an okay guy. And his cooking was better than his mom's, even on a good day when the power was on. He felt a tiny bit guilty thinking that, but even his mom joked about what a terrible cook she was.

He waved at Ed and Rhonda, who were sitting out on their front porch. Funny how suddenly he seemed to know everyone in their neighborhood. But when you dug a latrine with someone, you were instantly closer to them. For instance, he knew that Rhonda had recently had her knee replaced. She'd been putting it off, but the doctor had convinced her to do it before the heat of summer.

“Lucky thing I did too,” she had explained to Carter. “I don't think anyone will be getting a new knee anytime soon.”

Ed had chuckled at that. “You got in under the wire, dear.”

At first Carter thought it was weird that they could joke around when everything was so bleak, but Ed had said, “Laugh while you can, son. Laugh while you can.”

This conversation had taken place a few hours earlier when he'd stopped by to check on the progress they'd made on the latrine roof. He wasn't scheduled to work on it, but he was curious. The roof was at a slant, to allow rain to slide off. Carter glanced at the sky. No chance of rain now. He missed his weather app. Something could be to the west, heading toward them, and gone again before they had a chance to put out every bucket they owned.

Laugh while you can.

That idea had stuck in his head, and then Kaitlyn had crossed his mind. Jason had said that she lived two blocks over from him, and she had mentioned living on Sandstone Street. He knew where that was. Maybe he would just walk by.

Suddenly he was there, trying to look casual, and he spotted Kaitlyn and her mom sitting out on the front porch. Kaitlyn was reading a book, and her mom was making something with yarn and two big needles—knitting. Carter could remember Max's mom doing that.

Carter stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, and Mrs. Lowry looked up and nudged Kaitlyn. When she saw him, she slipped a bookmark into her book, set it on the table next to her, and said something to her mom. A smile lighting up her face, she ran out to meet him.

“Hey.”

“Hey yourself.” Her eyes crinkled into a smile.

Her blue eyes reminded Carter of ocean water. He almost slapped his forehead at the idea. Why was he starting to think like he was inside a poem or something?

“What are you doing out?”

“I guess I wanted to stop over and see if the oven worked.”

“It did! Dinner was actually good.”

“You two come up here,” Kaitlyn's mom called. She was bigger than Carter's mom, round, and the same height as her daughter. She had blond hair that must have once looked like Kaitlyn's, but now it was cut short and pulled back from her face with hair clips. Her voice was loud enough that no doubt the neighbors heard every word she said. “I made some lemonade, and there are still a few of those chocolate chip cookies left from last week.”

“Lemonade?” Carter asked.

“It's sugar-free,” she assured him.

He'd explained to her that he had diabetes the day before. She'd asked a few questions, but she had seemed completely cool about it.

“No ice,” she added. “Still—it tastes pretty good.”

He followed Kaitlyn up onto the porch. He thought it would be awkward, but it turned out her mom was a teacher and comfortable being around teens. “I accepted a job at the middle school. That's one of the reasons we moved here.”

She stopped knitting and cocked her head to the side, same as he'd
seen Kaitlyn do a dozen times. “I'm not sure that school will be in session, though. We might just have a longer summer break than we planned.”

Her attitude was good, that was obvious enough. The fact that she was a teacher explained her loud voice—no doubt she was used to shouting to be heard in a classroom. What Carter remembered about middle school was not exactly calm and order, though there were a few teachers who managed to handle the preteens well. He suspected that Mrs. Lowry would be one of them.

Kaitlyn brought out a checkerboard, and they set it up on the floor of the porch.

“Can't remember the last time I played a board game,” he confessed.

“We used to have game night once a week.”

“And we still will,” her mother interjected.

“It's every Thursday.”

“Tomorrow?” asked Carter.

Kaitlyn looked at her mom. “Sure.”

“You should join us, Carter. Can't say that we'll have pizza and Coke, but we'll rustle up something. By the way, I want to thank you for the venison. The little oven you kids made worked great. I was able to roast all of the meat, boil some potatoes on our gas grill, and make a fairly good meal.”

“It fed us and our neighbors on both sides,” Kaitlyn said. “I'm so psyched that it worked.”

“You knew it would.”

“I thought it would, but you never know until you try it on something real.”

“Kaitlyn met the challenge,” her mother declared.

Carter choked on his lemonade, nearly spewing it out all over the checkerboard. Kaitlyn patted his back, and Mrs. Lowry lowered her glasses and watched them both until she was sure he was all right.

They continued the game, and Mrs. Lowry resumed knitting. Then the quietness of the night was broken by the sound of music.

Carter looked up, glanced left and right. “Where is that coming from?”

“Mrs. Hastings, next door. She teaches piano lessons.”

“Every night at this time she blesses us with her music.” Mrs. Lowry nodded toward the house on the east side. “And she says thank you for the deer meat.”

Carter hadn't realized how much he had missed music. Before the Drop, he constantly listened to iTunes—mostly country but some classic rock too. In the last week he'd become used to the silence. Now the melody that rang out through the night touched something deep inside him. The music was gentle, persistent, and stirring.

The next hour passed all too quickly. He lost five games straight. Who would have guessed Kaitlyn was a champion checker player? Then they walked through her newly planted vegetable garden, Kaitlyn pointing out where she had planted what, though very little had sprouted.

Mrs. Hastings switched from playing classical pieces to a ragtime tune that Carter had heard a thousand times coming from the ice-cream truck.

As they sat in the swing together, Kaitlyn told him about the book she was reading.

“I don't read much,” Carter confessed.

“You're kidding, right?”

Carter shrugged, and because Mrs. Lowry had stepped inside, he took advantage of the moment and reached over to twine his fingers with Kaitlyn's.

She laughed and said, “Tell me you're not one of those video game geeks.”

“Guilty.”

“But not anymore.”

“Nope. I haven't played a game in six days.”

“Wow. It's like you've turned over a new leaf.”

“Sort of.”

“We need to find you a book!” She hopped up from the swing, and they wandered inside. They dropped to their knees in front of a bookcase in the Lowrys' living room—a room that didn't look so much different from Carter's.

“You'll love this one.”

“
Alas, Babylon
?”

“It's great.”

“What's it about?”

“Nuclear holocaust. Florida. Survival. That sort of thing.”

“Sounds kind of heavy.”

“Actually, it's kind of relevant,” Mrs. Lowry said, walking into the room. “And the boys I teach always like it.”

Carter started to point out that he had graduated and was a far cry from her middle school students, but instead he said thank you as he'd been taught.

“Kaitlyn, maybe you'd like to walk Carter to the end of the street. Wouldn't want him to be out past curfew.”

Those words slammed Carter back into their reality. For a few minutes—playing checkers, eating cookies, and listening to Mrs. Hastings play the piano—he'd actually allowed himself to forget. As they walked back outside, he recognized the melody of “Amazing Grace.”

“She always ends with that one,” Kaitlyn said. “I like it because we used to sing it nearly every Sunday at my old church.”

They talked about youth groups as they walked toward the end of the street. Most of the neighbors were picking up toys and hustling children inside. When they reached the corner, Carter stepped off the sidewalk and into the shade of a massive live oak tree. Then he did something that surprised him.

He pulled Kaitlyn closer and kissed her.

Carter had kissed girls before—plenty of times. But none of those kisses had been like this one. For a moment he thought they'd experienced some kind of minor earthquake. The ground seemed to shift under his feet. She kissed him back, snuggling into his arms, and Carter's heart felt like it flip-flopped in his chest. All too soon Kaitlyn was pulling away, a huge smile on her face.

“See you tomorrow?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I'm going to check out a volunteer thing, so I'll meet you at the school. Say ten o'clock?”

Instead of answering, he simply waved, aware that a goofy grin had spread across his face and unable to do a thing about it.

He'd kissed her, and she seemed to have liked it.

She
must
have liked it because she was smiling.

Wow.

Suddenly he didn't care so much that the television didn't work or that he hadn't played a video game in a week, or that he had no idea if he'd be attending college in the fall.

Maybe his life was changing for the better.

That thought had just crossed his mind when he turned the corner onto his street. He glanced up and saw their house on the right. And suddenly to the south, the sky lit up and the ground shook.

S
IXTY

S
helby flew out of her house. She stopped only to snatch up the backpack and thread her arms through the straps. She heard a second explosion, ran to the middle of the street to stare up at the sky, and saw—nothing. Glancing around, she spotted Carter at the end of the street and ran toward him.

“What's happening?” he shouted.

“I don't know!” Shelby stood frozen, her heartbeat pounding in her veins. She motioned to Carter to hurry. “We need to get inside.”

“It's not here,” someone shouted. “Heard it over the CB. The fighting is to the south, in Croghan.”

And suddenly Max was there, as he'd always been there—calm, steady, a haven in her storm.

“Are you all right?” Max asked Carter.

“I'm fine. I was walking home from Kaitlyn's and I heard—”

Another detonation rocked the air.

Max stepped closer as the street began to fill with people. “We can see better from the water tower.”

“What do we want to see?”

“If they're headed this way.”

“Why…” Shelby felt all the blood drain from her face, and suddenly the world swayed in front of her.

“Don't faint on me.” Max reached out and steadied her. “I can go without you. I'll come back and—”

“I'm going.” She wanted to tell Carter to stay home, but that would
have been a waste of energy. He had already turned and was pushing his way through the crowd.

They ran down the street, passed the roadblocks, and made a right turn. Though it was nearly dark, nearly past curfew, no one stopped them or paid them any attention at all. They hurried on, and then they could see the water tower, the highest spot in Abney.

She could make no sense of what was happening. As they ran, a dozen images flitted through her mind.

Hiking at Bend and suddenly seeing the aurora.

Climbing the water tower with Max.

Fighting the downtown fire.