Blackout: Book 0 Read online

  To my utmost surprise, Jove actually listened to me and turned around in his seat to face the front again. “So where exactly are we going?”

  I reached into the pocket of my jacket again. Next to the knife, there was a folded up picture. I drew it out and handed it to Jove, who unfolded it to look at it. I had the photo committed to memory. I had taken it nine years ago before I’d left for the city. It was a picture of my father’s homestead. It looked quite nice. Peaceful, even. It had been a pretty day. The sunset painted streaks of orange and pink in the sky. The neon colors reflected off a thin layer of white snow. Smoke puffed from the chimney of the cabin. A man in a red flannel coat who had broad shoulders and long legs was frozen in the action of gathering an armful of chopped firewood from our stockpile. He faced away from the camera, but the figure was unmistakeable. Two seconds after I’d clicked the picture, he’d turned to face me. George, put that damn thing away.

  “It’s not far,” I told Jove as he studied the picture. “A few hours up the mountain. It’s self-sustaining, and no one else but me knows where it is. We’ll be safe there.”

  Jove’s fat finger tapped the red flannel. “Who’s this man?”

  “That’s my father.”

  “And is he going to be okay with all of us just showing up like this?”

  The answer, without a doubt, was no. “I’ll talk to him.”

  Jove sensed that that was the end of the discussion. He handed me the photo so that I could tuck it away again. “Let me know if you get too tired to drive.”

  A few hours later, when we had cleared the city and the moon had risen high into the sky, I took him up on his offer. He took the front seat, Nita took the passenger seat, and I joined Jacob to lie down in the back. Pippa and Penny dozed in the middle. Nita had wrapped Penny’s leg tight enough to stop most of the bleeding, but the wound needed stitches, which we wouldn’t be able to tend to until we came to flat ground. Nita and Jove discussed Penny’s wound care up front, giving me and Jacob the illusion of privacy in the trunk.

  He lay flat on his back, his knees pressed against the wall of the Humvee as he stared at the ceiling.

  I nudged his shoulder. “What are you thinking about?”

  “You, mostly.”

  “Nice things about me, I hope.”

  “You left your engagement ring in the apartment.”

  I wiggled my barren ring finger, jostling the splint on my pinky. The tape around the splint was beginning to peel off, gray with the dirt that had stuck to the underside. It was hard to believe that the moment of forgetfulness had happened just that morning. It felt as if years had passed since then.

  “I didn’t mean to leave it,” I told Jacob quietly. “Nita said my finger would swell—”

  “You could’ve put on a necklace,” he interrupted. “Worn it that way.”

  Anger and annoyance nibbled at my conscience. “Sorry, I was a little preoccupied trying to pack up our stuff for the American apocalypse.”

  “It was expensive.”

  “Is that all you care about?” I demanded. Pippa stirred in her seat. I lowered my voice. “You’re worried about the price of a damn diamond right now? It’s not going to matter in a couple of months, Jacob. No one’s going to be bargaining over gold and jewelry. We’re going to be fighting for food and water.”

  “It’s not just the ring,” he whispered back, finally rolling over to look at me. “It’s everything you’ve ever hidden from me. What happened to your mom, the way your father raised you. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me any of that.”

  “I didn’t need to,” I argued.

  “It’s your life, Georgie!” he said. “We were engaged! I’m supposed to know these things about you.”

  “Were?” I repeated. “What’s with the past tense?”

  Jacob’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed anxiously. “Nothing. It seems unlikely that we’re going to get married now. Kinda feels like a big white wedding isn’t flush with the whole end of the world thing.”

  “That’s not it, is it?” I’d known Jacob long enough to figure out when he was using half truths to cover up what he really meant. “If you really wanted, we could march up the mountain, exchange rings that we weaved out of friggin’ grass, and say our vows, but you don’t want that, do you?”

  “That’s not a real wedding.”

  “It would be real enough for me,” I declared.

  He covered his face with his hands and groaned. “I can’t do this right now.”

  “This is the only time we have to do this—”

  “No, I meant this.” He gestured to the space between the two of us, his expression hardening into something cold and empty.

  The Humvee rolled over a ditch, and something sharp from one of the packs dug into my lower back. “You don’t want to do what?”

  Jacob met my eyes. “I don’t know you, Georgie. I thought I did, but I watched you shoot that guy. Cold-blooded. No hesitation. There was something dark in your eyes, like you enjoyed it—”

  “That’s fucking ridiculous, and you know it.”

  “I saw it, Georgie!”

  “So while I was putting myself in harm’s way to save the life of an innocent little girl, you were watching and judging me,” I hissed. “I did what I had to do in that moment. What would you have done? Let her go back to an abusive father?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “It would have been a death sentence,” I snapped.

  “I’m not doubting your reasoning,” he argued, glancing toward the others. Penny and Pippa were still asleep, while Jove and Nita continued their discussion unhindered. “I’m saying that I didn’t know you had that in you.”

  “A will to survive?” I challenged.

  “The ability to kill.”

  “You’re oversimplifying things.”

  He didn’t reply and returned to staring at the ceiling of the truck.

  “So that’s it?” I asked him. “You said you can’t do this anymore. What does that mean?”

  “I think you know what it means, Georgie.”

  I stared at him in disbelief. “You’re breaking up with me. Now? While I’m taking your entire family to safety with me? I could’ve gone alone, Jacob, or just brought Nita. Do you realize that?”

  He inhaled deeply and blew out the breath in a hot sigh. “I’m not saying we have to figure it out right now—”

  “No, it’s fine,” I said. “You want to be done? We’re done. It’s as easy as that. Sorry about your ring. I can’t promise it’ll be there when you get back.”

  He turned toward me. “Georgie—”

  I rolled over so that the only view he had of me was my back. I was too angry to cry, but my face burned with pent-up emotions that I couldn’t express in the confines of the back of the Humvee. It had been so quick. One challenging day had driven a wedge between him and me. If we couldn’t get through one day, how were we supposed to get through the rest of our lives? I wanted to hit something, to feel some kind of release. Instead, I balled up my hands and tucked them under my arms, hugging myself together.

  At some point in the journey, I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I remembered was Nita nudging me awake. The Humvee had come to a stop in the middle of the woods, angled upward on a steep incline.

  “Georgie?” Nita mumbled. “Jove needs you to give him directions. You should take my seat.”

  I slipped out of the trunk. Jacob was either asleep or pretending to be asleep in order to avoid talking to me. Either way, I felt a shared pang of longing and resentment in my chest as the collar of the coat he was using as a blanket shifted to cover his face. Nita took my place, and I joined Jove up front with a yawn.

  “Still good to drive?” I asked him as we trundled upward.

  “I’m wired,” he replied. The Humvee’s lights illuminated the road that weaved through the mountains. “I couldn’t sleep if I wanted to.”

  “Good, because we’re about to go off-road,” I
told him. I pointed to a gap in the trees. If you didn’t know it was there, you wouldn’t have seen it. “Make a left up there.”

  As I directed Jove in relative silence, the rough terrain woke up the others. Bleary-eyed, we watched the trees scratch what was left of the Humvee’s windows, occasionally dodging wayward shards of grass. Pippa held her mother’s hand over the center console. In the far back, Nita and Jacob lay on their stomachs and looked ahead. I caught Jacob’s eye in the mirror and quickly looked away.

  “We should be close,” I said to Jove as we rolled up another incline. “It should be right over this hill—”

  Without warning, blinding floodlights illuminated the cabin of the Humvee. I squinted through the windshield. There, where my father’s property was supposed to be, was a sky-high fence with an electrified gate, flanked by a crank-up, generator-powered stadium light on either side. Behind the gate, I could make out several tents set up in neat rows, more light fixtures, and a collection of outhouses on the far side of the campground. The whole place buzzed with the rumble of several working generators.

  Four burly men dressed in boots, neon vests, and ski masks stood at the gate. Each of them held a military grade rifle, though none raised a gun to the Humvee. Instead, the tallest man stepped up to the driver’s side window and peered inside.

  “Evening, folks,” he said, pulling the ski mask down to speak clearly. “What can we help you with?”

  I leaned across Jove before he could answer. “What the hell is this place? Where’s my father?”

  “I don’t know who you are, ma’am,” the man said as he spread his arms out to indicate the land behind him, “but this is Camp Haven.”