Zhukov's Dogs (36 page)

I bolted inside. My bag was by the door, and I threw it over my shoulder as I flew up the stairs. I gave a shout back to the others. “Grab only what you need and get out through the back!”

They didn’t ask for an explanation before taking off. Halfway up the stairs to the third floor, I heard the bottles hit our house. Someone shrieked downstairs. The children cried.

I took the rest of the stairs two at a time. Val’s door was open, and I raced inside to gather the pillowcase of medicine, grabbing the bottle of pills Val kept stashed on my way out the door. Bottles continued to crash against the walls. Smoke billowed into the house, but I wasn’t ready to run, yet.

“Nik, let’s go!” Val shouted up the stairs.

I ignored him and fled into the war room. There were boxes of ammunition stored in the shelves amidst various sized guns. I shoved three pistols into my bag along with as much ammunition as I could fit.

I sped back down the stairs, jumping the last five before the landing on each. The entire wall facing the street was engulfed in flames, the fire rapidly eating away at everything it touched. The first floor was the worst. Chunks of charred ceiling had begun to fall in, but there was Val, waiting by the stairs like an idiot. Under one arm, he had half a dozen blankets, and under the other, he had some of the rifles from the basement. I didn’t waste time scolding him for waiting around.

“Where are the others?” I asked.

“Already gone. We’re meeting by the canal,” Val replied.

We fled through the back door and into the cold, night air. It scorched my smoke-filled lungs and burned my eyes. I didn’t dare look back at Second Avenue, but the sound of our neighbors screaming was enough to make my skin crawl. Cries and desperate pleas for help, either from those left inside or pouring into the streets, rang through the underground and blurred with the wail of distant sirens.

“Boys! Boys we’re over here!” Gemma shouted.

The light from the fires carried to the bridge, where Gemma waved her flashlight along the ground as she called to us. She had also grabbed an armful of blankets and, from the look of it, a couple bags of bread. Anya and Benji were there with her, along with Fritzi and the children. Val dropped the things he’d taken from the house so he could throw his arms around Anya. She shook as she sobbed against his chest, and I heard him repeating, “It’s okay,” as he stroked her hair.

“What about everyone else?” Benji asked with a quiver in his voice.

I wheezed, coughing around the smoke still in my lungs. Gemma explained so I could catch my breath. “We were the only ones in the house. Everyone else is still out there in the city… Almost everyone…”

When she told Anya and Benji about what happened on the train, Anya wailed into Val’s shoulder. I looked at the fires burning in the distance. My mind went into auto-pilot, and I let the training I’d been given for handling disasters take over.

“We’re not safe here. We need to move,” I said, my voice still half a wheeze. “Benji, you know this city better than anyone. Can you think of somewhere we can hideout?”

Benji reached into his coat and withdrew a thick, green notepad. He adjusted his glasses and came forward to show me what turned out to be a condensed collection of city blueprints. It was extensive and something I might have applauded him for making if we hadn’t just run from a burning building.

“There are a couple of options,” Benji said as he flipped through the pages. “A mill half a mile down the river? The workers are on strike. There’s also an elementary school nearby. We could crash there for a bit and relocate in the morning.”

“What do you have in Oxford territory?” Val asked.

As Benji paged to a different section of the notepad, Fritzi spoke up against it. “What are you thinking? That’s ground zero.”

“Exactly. Half the area is evacuated already, and it’s not like there are more Grey Men there than anywhere else in this city,” Val said. Fritzi continued to protest, but Val was already looking over Anya’s head at the blueprints.

Benji pointed out an ammunition factory and said, “Here. It’s on the edge of Oxford, so it’s not like we’re walking in and tying ourselves to one of the pillars or anything. Besides, they’re not going to expect people to go back once they’ve left.”

“All right,” Val said, releasing Anya to start picking up the things he’d dropped. “Benji and Gemma, you two need to get hold of everyone else. Call them and tell them where we’re going and tell them to meet us there as soon as possible.”

Hee & Lian Ammunition wasn’t far from the bridge, and like most of the factories in the city, it was along the canal. After I told the others about the Grey Men I’d seen on Second Avenue, they were keen to stay out of sight. We hurried along the water and avoided the main roads as much as possible until we were in Oxford territory.

Things were quieter in the Oxford District. Homes and shops had been abandoned in haste, leaving so much behind; it looked as though every living soul had simply become invisible, a district full of ghosts. The light from the fires on Second Avenue, fires which had grown, reflected off the copper rooftops of factories and made the roads along the waterfront glow orange.

Waiting by an enormous metal door to one of the factories was Tibbs. He flagged us down with the flashlight in hand. “Man, am I glad to see you guys! The entire city’s dark! What the hell’s going on?”

“I don’t know. There are Grey Men burning Second Avenue, though.” Fritzi panted.

Tibbs took Joey and Brian from her so Fritzi could catch her breath. The children she’d been carrying were instructed to keep quiet so as not to draw attention, but they had been whimpering and sniveling the entire trip. He bounced the boys, puffing his cheeks out to try and make them smile. Fritzi took Zoe from Benji and kissed the top of her head.

“It’s okay, kids. We’re all going to be okay,” Fritzi said. It wasn’t often I heard her take on such a comforting tone, and it managed to help me relax a bit.

Tibbs kept shaking his head, even as he tried to make the boys feel better. The sad crease in his brow, and way his hands shook as he bounced the kids, betrayed his real fear. “Michael is setting up inside,” he said. “Nobody else is here yet, though.”

“Let’s just get out of the street before someone sees us,” I said, ushering everyone toward the door. I understood they were all shaken, but I also understood it was no coincidence the Grey Men chose to burn Second Avenue out of every street in Seattle.

Inside the two-story factory were dozens of conveyer belts, overturned boxes, and monstrous pieces of machinery. Like the rest of Oxford, the stillness of the abandoned space was haunting. Michael had gathered six heat lamps together in the center of the room. The dark red light they cast over him, as he sat with his knees pulled to his chest, made the boy look much older than thirteen.

Michael jumped to his feet the second he saw us. He ran across the factory, cheering. “I knew you’d make it!”

“Of course we made it,” Val said, grinding his knuckles on top of Michael’s head. Michael laughed and pushed Val’s hand away before hugging Gemma. When she was released, Val asked her, “Any word from the others, yet?”

Gemma looked at her phone and shook her head. “Nothing. I’ll go make calls again to find out where they’re at.”

Val wrapped a blanket over her shoulders before she walked off. Thanks to how fast my blood was pumping, I hadn’t noticed the dropping temperature.

“Did the heat go out with the lights? I thought they came from two different sources,” I said, confused as to how this was possible.

“They do. The heating generators at the station work off steam power, and the power plant draws from the canal,” Michael explained. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“This has never happened before,” Fritzi mumbled. She’d been stroking Zoe’s hair nonstop, like some kind of nervous habit. She was better at keeping her panic in check than Anya, who sat by the heat lamps with her back to us, shoulders shaking as she sobbed quietly.

“We’ll go check out what’s going on at the power plant once everyone gets here… Nik, what exactly did you see back there?” Val asked.

“Grey Men. I’d say fifty of them. They were throwing firebombs at every house on the block.” I was reluctant to voice the obvious, but I feared even Val might be too shaken up to admit it. “I’m not the only one who thinks they were there for us, right?”

“What?” Fritzi gasped.

Tibbs abandoned his goofy expression for a scowl. “You think they’re torching the city because of us?”

“Lee says Grey Men open fired on their group while they were on the train. That happened right before the Grey Men started burning Second Avenue,” I said.

Val wrapped one arm around his chest and brought the other up so he could rap his fingers against his collarbone. The rhythm was loud and completely erratic. I stepped closer to him, and his tapping settled.

A loud popping noise made everyone jump and dive for a weapon. The emergency lights in the factory flickered on along the grating in the floor and cast long, shadowy bars over us. The small television sets suspended from the ceiling flickered to life. Loud static feed screeched over the PA system. We moved closer together, prepared to take on whatever was coming after us this time.

The static died abruptly, replaced with the rapid rhythm of five high-pitch pips. The same pips always preceded an important announcement. They repeated three times before the televisions flickered, and a woman appeared on the screens, her voice coming through the PA system.

“Good evening, Seattle. This is Tessa Trench bringing you an emergency announcement, straight from our nation’s capital.”

“All the way from the capital?” Val mused. He must have thought it was because of something they’d done, that maybe they’d caused enough commotion to draw a national response.

Oh, how wrong he was. I knew what was coming. I couldn’t explain how, but I knew this was about me. The broadcast flipped. So did my stomach. I recognized the presentation hall and the redhead behind the podium.

“Good evening, Seattle,” Aiden began.

Hee & Lian Ammunition—Seattle, WA
Friday, November 20th, 2076—7:00 p.m.

turned to Val, whose eyes were glued to the screen, just like everyone around me. Thinking fast, I seized him by the arms, pulling his attention back to me. Everything was about to fall apart. I had to stop it.

“Val, I need you to listen to me,” I stammered.

“Whoa! Calm down, what’s wrong?” he asked, holding me at a distance and staring at me with deep concern in his eyes. Concern and not detest. How long would that last? There was no time left, I just had to say it and hope that somehow, he might understand. I opened my mouth, finally ready to tell him the truth, when it was too late. My military ID plastered every television screen in Seattle.

“Nik… Is that you?” Tibbs said from somewhere very, very far off. Val yanked free of my restraint and stared up at the screen. I could see his shoulders sag as it all hit him.

“
The man you see here is Lieutenant Colonel Zhukov of the Youth Infiltration Division,”
Aiden said. His face looked hardened, and I could see him pause to grind his teeth before continuing.
“He was dispatched to the Seattle underground on November 10
^th
,
and we recently lost contact with him.”