Exodus (5 page)

Each evening since leaving Manhattan, Emily had placed a call to Jacob using the satellite phone she had picked up from the offices of the newspaper where she had worked. Ostensibly it was a nightly routine that Jacob insisted on so he knew she was safe, but Emily thought it was equal part Jacob’s way of helping ensure she remained connected to reality. It would be so very easy to lose sight of her goals out here, alone except for Thor and Jacob’s distant, but always welcome, voice.

The hiss of static filled her ear as she waited for him to pick up her call. The past few days had seen a slow degeneration of the quality of each call she made. Whether that was down to technical problems with the now unmonitored satellite or the red storm’s interference, she could not say. It was worrisome either way.

“Hello, Emily.” Jacob’s voice sounded distant as it ebbed in and out.

Emily quickly filled him in on her day and the disconcertingly violent storm that had forced her to hole up for the night. “What’s weird, though, is that the storm didn’t seem to touch this valley,” she explained.

Usually Jacob would find her revelation too fascinating to resist and offer some kind of a theory. So, when he didn’t offer up his usual attempt at an explanation for the weather phenomenon, Emily asked him if everything was okay.

He paused for a second before answering. “No. Things here have been getting a little…strained,” he admitted. “The shock of what happened has worn off, and we’re beginning to feel the pressure. I…we all left wives and families behind, and I think I held out a little hope that maybe there would be more survivors. Knowing that they are all dead, well, let’s just say it’s taking its toll.”

It would have been easy for Emily to offer up some kind of false hope to Jacob, but that would have been all it was. Instead, she simply said, “I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault, Em,” he replied. “I can handle it. After all, we are all the family we have left now.”

“So, I’m thinking about trying my hand at a little grand theft auto,” she said, changing the subject.

“What?”

“I’m thinking of stealing a car.” She laughed. “Of course, I’m going to have to learn to drive it first.”

“That’s a great idea,” Jacob replied, his voice becoming all but inaudible above a sudden whoosh of static. “Make sure you choose something simple and automatic. It needs to be automatic.”

“It scares the living crap out of me, to be honest, but it’s going to take forever by bike, and I’ll probably freeze to death before I make it even halfway to you. And after my little encounter yesterday, I think I’ll feel safer with four wheels beneath me rather than two.”

“I have every confidence in your ability, Em. Just make sure you find some kind of open area to practice in before you hit the open road, okay?”

She promised she would take her time.

By the end of the conversation, Jacob’s mood had improved.

“Ride carefully,” he reiterated. “I need you here in one piece.”

Emily felt a cloud descend over her after she hung up. She had not given that much thought to Jacob’s plan. What would it be like to be stuck up there in that unforgiving land of perpetual winter? In fact, had either of them really thought through this plan of theirs? Were they supposed to spend the rest of their lives sequestered away in that research station?

The more Emily thought about it, the more she wondered if it was such a great idea to pin all her hopes on reaching the Stocktons. At some point she was going to have to talk with Jacob about his plan for what would happen once she got there.

But that was something she would deal with on another day.

The windows lining the far wall of the living room showed nothing but darkness now. Night had arrived as she’d talked to Jacob on the phone.

Emily caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirrorlike surface of the glass. She stood and walked over to the windows to take a better look. Her clothes were not too bad, a little sweat
stained and a bit grubby, but it was her hair and lack of makeup that really hit home. She had bags under her eyes and her blonde hair was scraggly and knotted. Half-healed scratches from her flight and fight through the forest stood out starkly against her pale skin.

“You look like shit,” she told her mirror image. She surely could not deny it.

The storm had quieted at some point during the night, but red clouds still lurked ominously in the sky the next morning.

Emily heated a pot of water on her portable gas stove and sipped from a mug of steaming coffee as she wandered from floor to floor, room to room of the house, checking for anything that might be of use. In the master bedroom, on the large wooden mantelpiece above the fireplace, she found a framed photo of a couple, the home’s owners she presumed, smiling broadly out at her from the confines of a gold frame. She guessed they were both in their midfifties; she a pretty brunette with faint signs of crow’s-feet creeping in around her eyes, he with salt-and-pepper hair and a day’s worth of stubble across his lower jaw. Behind them was an ocean, deep blue and stretching off to the distant horizon. They both looked so happy. Even now, there was a sense of peace in the air, as if the owners had simply stepped out for a minute. She half expected to open a door and find someone sitting on a bed crocheting.

On the ground floor, she found a set of wooden steps that led from the bottom level of the house most of the way down to the flat valley floor below. The final hundred feet or so was a well-walked path of bare earth that wound its way through an open patch of grass and then into a copse of ash trees. Emily could see no signs of any footprints in the soil of the path, but here and there was some obvious new plant growth, blades of grass pushing up through the earth. Life was quickly reclaiming the path now that there were no humans to trample the young shoots.

Thor was intent on following scent trails, tail wagging as he moved in and out of the trees and then dodged back to follow another. Occasionally, he stopped and lifted his leg against the trunk of a tree or a bush and marked his territory.

The path continued into the trees for several hundred feet, winding left and right, occasionally forking off from the main route. Emily stuck with the original path. She was sure the sparkle of water she had seen when she’d arrived had been more toward the center of the woods, and this path seemed to be heading in that direction.

A few minutes later, she heard the unmistakable sound of sloshing water, and, as she rounded a bend obscured by a growth of thick black cohosh atop an embankment, Emily saw the pond. It was fed by a stream that ran down from the opposite side of the valley, its source unknown as it disappeared between the trees. At the sight of the water, Thor gave a joyful, deep bark and took off in its direction. Launching himself from the embankment, he landed with a splash that sent a wave of water high into the air.

A flurry of shapes exploded into the air amid a panicked flapping of wings and quacking. It was ducks, four of them; they launched themselves into the air and took off flapping toward a clump of tall reeds at the opposite end of the pond, their wings
clipping the surface of the water. Thor made a halfhearted attempt at grabbing them, missed, and continued to paddle his way around the pond unmoved by the astonishing sight.

“Ducks!” Emily shouted. “Fucking ducks.”

Apart from Thor, these were the first earth animals Emily had seen since disaster struck. How had they survived? Were they immune like her and Thor? Emily followed the dog down to the pond’s bank. Thor, who had paddled out to the center of the pond, now turned back, making a beeline for her.

“Oh no you don’t,” yelped Emily. She could see the mischievous glint in the dog’s eyes as he headed back to her. She immediately started backpedaling away from the pond’s edge, but she wasn’t quick enough. Thor pulled himself out of the water, ran the last few feet to her side and immediately began shaking himself dry, sending a huge shower of water over Emily.

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” was all she could manage as the freezing water covered her. “Damn dog. You did that on purpose, didn’t you?” Thor answered with another shake that sent more water her way. Dear God, it was cold. So much for the idea of taking a dip. She’d freeze to death before the water got as far as her knees.

“I swear, Thor. If you weren’t the world’s last remaining dog, I’d trade you in.” The threat didn’t seem to cause Thor much concern as he gave a final shake.

Emily brushed as much of the water as she could from herself and looked around. She could see there were several well-walked paths that snaked deeper into the trees. Well, with the early morning bath off the itinerary, she might as well take a look at the other homes she’d seen.

She took a second to orient herself, called to Thor, who had disappeared into a large bush, and headed down the path leading in the direction of where she thought the houses should be.

The earthen path led deeper into the woods. When Emily came to the next fork, she took the one leading up the hill. She couldn’t see the houses through the trees, but, judging by the gradual incline, she was heading in the right direction at least. The path branched off again a few hundred feet farther along, and, sure enough, Emily spotted the first of the two houses in the distance.

It was the smallest of the three in the valley: single story, with two bedrooms, a living area, and a bare-bones kitchen, more like an apartment than a permanent residence. Emily wondered, given the lack of any kind of road or garage for a vehicle, whether it might be a guesthouse for the other home higher up on the ridge.

Other than a few pieces of crockery, the cupboards were empty. A small refrigerator sat against one wall in the kitchen. Emily had pretty quickly learned that opening up the refrigerators she inevitably found in the homes she spent the night in was a bad idea. The food was often spoiled and stank to high heaven after more than a week of no electricity. Delving around in decomposing lettuce and rancid milk looking for something edible was usually not worth the effort or the assault on her nostrils. She pulled the door on the minifridge anyway; there was nothing but a couple of ice-cube trays inside. Emily was about to check the bedrooms when Thor started barking outside.

It wasn’t an aggressive bark, but something had definitely gotten his attention. Maybe the ducks had followed them up the path? She made her way back to the front door and looked out. Thor was standing on the path facing up the hill; his tail was wagging frantically, and he kept stealing glances back at Emily before snapping his head back to whatever had piqued his interest.

“What is wrong with you?” she called as she stepped outside. “There aren’t any—”

Emily stopped midsentence. Standing just a few yards away, frozen to the spot by Thor’s barking, was a terrified young girl.

The kid didn’t stay frozen long—and she could move. Ten, maybe eleven. Tall for her age, wide blue eyes, skinny, in cutoff blue jeans that terminated in tattered threads just above her scuffed knees, muddy sneakers, and a blouse. Her eyes flicked between Thor and Emily as if she was trying to decide which of them to be more afraid of.

“No! Wait!” Emily yelled.

But she was already outpacing Emily, dodging between the trees and leaping over rocks and outcrops. She obviously knew the area like the back of her hand. If not for Thor, the kid would have lost Emily in the first thirty seconds. As it was, she could barely keep Thor in sight as he loped after the girl.

The roof of the third house appeared above a thick hedge just as the path leveled off and switched from dirt to a concrete slab driveway. Emily was just in time to see the girl, long blonde hair streaming out behind her, dart around the corner of the house. Thor followed her a few seconds later.

“Goddamn it, Thor,” Emily yelled between panting breaths. “Stop, you’re scaring her.”

Emily sprinted the remaining fifty feet to the same corner, working out how she was going to approach the kid to convince her she wasn’t a threat. As she rounded the corner of the house, Emily almost tripped over Thor, his body rigid, his ears down, and his teeth bared in a low growl as he stared at the doorway.