Earth: Population 2 (Paradise Lost Book 1) (7 page)

As night fell, I sat on my bed in the twilight, refusing to turn any lights on for fear the aliens would see my golden-lit apartment from the street. I’d bitten all of my fingernails to the pink part, and there was no nail left to bite off unless I wanted to draw blood. With my computer on my lap, I studied the markings on the rock and scoured the Internet for anything similar, but I found nothing to compare them to. Twitter still lay dormant, and no sites had been updated since everyone had disappeared.

I jumped as a car alarm sounded from the parking lot below. I crept to my bedroom window and peered over the sill. The headlights on Ellen’s silver Buick flashed on and off.

I scanned the parking lot. We only had a few working streetlights, and the dim glow illuminated nothing out of the ordinary.

Yet, something had set it off.

A dandelion-shaped tail disappeared into the shadows on the other side of the street. I clutched the windowsill, nails digging into the chipped wood. They were out there, and they were looking for me, or the rock, or both.

Slowly, I locked the window, reached up and pulled down the yellowed vinyl curtain that had come with the apartment. Could they climb the walls?

Panic crawled up my spine. I couldn’t stay here. The Sparkies—which was what I had decided to call them—would find me sometime, especially if they swept each building systematically. I wouldn’t put it past them. To engineer an asteroid shower, the Aurora Borealis, and the disappearance of mankind was no easy feat. Their resourcefulness and intellect surpassed my own, which left me no chance.

Unless you get off your butt and leave.

Snuggling under my reclaimed sheet amidst all my Gale Williams’ posters and the only home I’d ever known provided me with what little comfort I had left. I wasn’t ready to leave.

CHAPTER SIX

ALTERED HORIZON

June 25, 2013, 9:14 a.m.

Day 2

I awoke to silence so complete, it threatened to suffocate me.

Where were all of the alarms? Had everyone woken up and shut them off?

Hope surged inside me, and I ripped off the sheet. Maybe yesterday had been a nightmare. “Mom?”

I burst into the living room, expecting Mom to be watching
Good Morning America
and drinking a diet Pepsi, like always in the morning. My stomach pitched as reality dragged me down and squashed my hopes. Her chair stood empty, exactly where I’d last seen it.

So why had all of the alarms stopped?

I jogged back to my room. My alarm showed no time. When I checked behind the nightstand, the cord was still plugged in.

A jittery feeling came over me, and I fought to keep the panic away.
Bad news.

We’d lost power. That’s why all of the other alarms had stopped.

No more mac ’n cheese.

I could live with cold food for a while. But, eventually, I needed power to fuel my laptop and turn on the TV—my two windows to the world. Not that they were helping much.

I dug in the cabinets and found a stash of batteries and a flashlight. At least that would help if I needed to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

Opening the fridge, I checked the milk. It seemed fine, despite the power being off all night. It might be the last milk I’d ever taste if the cows had gone where everyone else had. A deep ache of melancholy came over me as I poured the cereal and watched the white liquid fall into the bowl. Checking the cabinets, I determined I had enough food to last another day or so if I watched my rations. We never had extra money to stockpile. After that, I’d have to chance leaving the apartment.

At least, now, I had guns.

After making sure they were loaded and ready to fire, I paced around the apartment: first the kitchen then my room then the living room. Back and forth. Back and forth. If I wasn’t careful, I’d go crazy.

The only room I didn’t enter was Mom’s. Her door still lay slightly ajar, as I’d left it when I checked for her yesterday morning. Normally, I gave her privacy, but the threat of loneliness weighed me down. I missed her so much, her absence tore me apart.

I pushed the door to her room open. Stacks of clothes lay piled on her bed, some pairs of jeans so old they were more my size than hers. She always slept in her wheelchair, so she used her bed for storage. Heaps of tattered magazines lay strewn against the back wall. Cracked picture frames cluttered her bookshelf, along with ceramic knickknacks of all shapes and sizes, enough to decorate three rooms, never mind one. A collection of deflated balloons from my birthdays as a kid hung draped over a hanger on the corner of the shelf, the top one with a picture of a pink Pretty Pony saying,
Congrats! You’re turning three.
Jars filled with bottle caps, elastics, tacks, and pencils were stacked to the ceiling.

I knew Mom had a problem, I’d seen those hoarder shows on TV. As long as she kept her collections in her room, I let her be. This junk was all she had besides me, and I couldn’t always be there for her, so it was.

Staring at the mess, failure slapped me in the face. Had I done the right thing allowing her to accumulate so much? She couldn’t even wheel her chair around her room. Maybe I should have pushed her to live a more normal life. Maybe, if I had, she’d have learned to walk with her fake leg. Maybe she’d still be here today.

Determination hardened inside me like hot lava rock cooling after an eruption. I had to stop blaming myself in order to focus on finding a solution to this mess.

The only reason why you’re alive is because of that stupid rock. Even if she could walk, she’d have disappeared with everyone else.

I climbed over garbage bags filled with who knew what to the dusty books stacked by the magazines in the back. The edge of a beige photo album poked out from underneath some tattered newspapers announcing Michael Jackson’s death. She must have kept them thinking they’d be worth something someday. If only she’d known how worthless all this stuff was at the end of the world, when all you wanted to do was be with the people you loved.

I pulled the album free and opened to the first page. A picture of me as a toddler with pigtails riding a painted horse on a merry-go-round stared back. Mom stood behind me, her hand protectively against my back. She looked radiant with her wavy shoulder-length auburn hair, sparkling green eyes, and slim figure. That was before the accident, before she lost her leg. That was the mom I liked to remember.

I must have sat for hours looking through that yellowed photo album. By the time I reached the last page, my legs ached and my back ached against the frame of her bed. I took one last look of my elementary school graduation picture, taken a month before she lost her leg. She hadn’t added any other pictures of me and her after that, as if the accident had stopped time.

I put the album back where I’d found it—because she could always tell if I’d moved any of her collections—and returned to the living room for lunch, a peanut butter sandwich on stale bread and a can of peaches.

My laptop beckoned, but I couldn’t squander the few hours of battery life left playing
Spider Solitaire
or watching
Pirate Crusader
for the thousandth time. I booted it up, and my screen background of Captain Jay Dovetail brandishing a sword came on. The Internet icon flashed at the bottom of the screen with an X through the center.

Dammit!
I’d lost the Internet. Running my hands through my hair, I tried to calm myself as the world wound down around me. What next? Water? Sewage?

This recent loss confirmed the fact I couldn’t hide in the apartment much longer. A thick reluctance to leave built up inside me. How much of my situation did I blame on Mom, and how much of it was my own fear keeping me here in “Nowheresville,” as Hailey put it?

My stomach growled. I shut the laptop down and scoured the kitchen.

Since I couldn’t boil water, the box of dry pasta was virtually useless unless I wanted to crack my teeth. My other options were cold SpaghettiOs or dry pancake mix. I chose the SpaghettiOs.

As twilight fell, strange lights reflected off the blinds in the living room. I put the empty can of SpaghettiOs aside and peered through a crack where the blinds had bent crookedly when I’d fallen against them one night while trying on a pair of secondhand boots. Another Aurora Borealis lit the sky. This time, a bright fluorescent green disappeared into a reddish haze. When I stared long enough, I could make out the same lines of the torpedo-shaped ship as I had before. The shape could have been right over the southern part of town or hundreds of miles away.

If I left, I’d have two options: get the hell away from it, or find out the truth once and for all. If I chose option one, I could possibly live for months on pillaged can goods, traveling from house to house and evading the Sparkies. But what would that get me? A solitary, depressing existence, hiding in dark rooms for the rest of my life?

Option two was way more dangerous. But, a gut feeling whispered that ship held my answers. If I was going to find out what happened to everyone, including Mom, then the Aurora Borealis on the horizon would be the only logical destination. Even if it was the most dangerous.

My resolve hardened as I watched the insubstantial lines paint the sky. I didn’t want to live like this, always hiding in fear. Tomorrow I’d leave the relative safety of everything I’d ever known and head south. I’d always wanted to travel past the town’s horizon. Or had I?

Be careful what you wish for.

CHAPTER SEVEN

PRISONER

June 26, 2013, 8:32 a.m.

Day 3

I struggled to zip my backpack. The flashlight, extra batteries, cases of bullets, clean clothes, and refilled water bottles were stuffed in so tight, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get anything out again. At the bottom lay the alien rock, my only bargaining chip, wrapped in a holey sock. I glanced to Mom’s room, where the yellowed photo album lay. The binding was too bulky to take with me, but at least I could look one more time.

I stepped over the garbage bags and flipped to the first picture of me riding the merry-go-round. Our smiling faces gave me courage where I feared I had none, reminding me who I fought for. For some reason, I couldn’t leave that picture.

Sorry, Mom.
I slipped the picture out of the plastic. The image felt slick and glossy under my fingertips, like she’d barely touched it before preserving it for all eternity. I stuck it in my back pocket. She’d have a hissy fit, but I needed it.

I slung the shotgun over my shoulder and stuck the two handguns in either side of my pink belt. Listening to make sure the hallway lay silent, I moved the bookcase from the door.

Holding the shotgun in front of me, I stepped into the hall. My sneaker squished into slimy goo. Tracks covered the carpet.

Nervous energy flowed through my veins.
The Sparkies were here.

Pieces of wood littered the hall in front of Ellen’s unit. I remembered her door being closed last time I walked by it.

Forcing myself to move forward, my heart beat like a lead weight, and each raggedy breath I took echoed in my ears.

Pieces of Ellen’s door cluttered the hall. Those little imps had smashed it open and pulled the cheap wood apart from the outside in. I held my breath as I rounded the corner and looked inside her apartment.

They’d trashed the place. Every drawer sprawled upended with the contents scattered all over the floor. Silverware spread at my feet, along with shards from a porcelain vase, withered flowers, and Cheerios—which were in aisle six, by the way. Clothes hung on furniture covered in sticky goo.

I picked up a silver picture frame. Ellen’s middle-aged face smiled back at me. A small child clung to either arm—perhaps her nieces, because she didn’t have children of her own. Anger swirled inside me. So many lives interrupted. I placed the picture on the shelf where it should have been.

As I turned to leave, I spotted her butterfly keychain on the kitchen counter covered in flour from an open bag spilling from the top shelf. I pulled the key chain from the mess and the key to her silver Buick dangled in front of my eyes.

She’d want me to take it. It was the end of the world, for heaven’s sake. So why did I feel so guilty? I wiped the flour off the keys and stuck them in my pocket. Flour was in aisle seven. I recognized that particular bag from a sale they had last week. Two for $2.99. She must have taken advantage of it. I blinked, trying to rid my mind of all the useless information from my job. A lot of help it did at the end of the world.

Holding the barrel of the shotgun in front of me, I snuck back into the hall and climbed down the main stairs. The branch I’d used to prop the door closed lay on the sidewalk, the glass from the front door shattered on the first five steps.

I stepped over the mess and found Ellen’s silver Buick right where she always parked it.
Bingo.

I steered the car down Fairhaven Road, watching for any signs of movement. Even a stray cat or a pigeon would give me hope. But, the streets were as empty as ever. I pulled into the Save ’n Shop lot and parked two inches from the front door in the emergency fire lane in case I needed to make a speedy getaway. This time, I wasn’t even going to try kicking the glass with my sneaker. Feeling all badass like the Terminator, I fired the shotgun at the front glass door. The pane shattered, and I stepped through the wreckage. It made a large noise, but I’d be gone before the imps arrived to investigate. Hopefully.

Without the light music blaring through the overhead speakers, the store lay eerily silent. The only light came from the sun shining through the front glass windows. Shadows covered the back of the store where the deli and bakery sat—two places I didn’t need to visit anyway. The meat and seafood had already started to rot, and the sickly, sweet smell choked me. Al, the store manager, who insisted we throw away every fruit with so much as a bruise, would have had a heart attack.