Patrick, Alex, and I left around noon, giving ourselves plenty of time to get to Stone Spread. We’d have to travel with extreme caution in the daylight. After retrieving the Mustang from the woods, we’d circumvented town, taking back roads until we hit the highway. Then we blazed west across the plains, veering around the occasional abandoned car. We didn’t see a soul. Or anything without a soul.
I sat in the back, the hot breeze blowing across my face. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d ridden in a car during the day.
We hadn’t spoken for the past half hour. The implications of what we were heading to do were so vast and complicated that none of us knew what to say. My thoughts returned to my parents.
Scents came to me first: Lilac perfume. English Leather. That lemon soap Mom used to wash dishes. Dad’s baby-back ribs.
I thought of my first memory, a view from a bucket swing, sunbeams breaking through tree branches and my chubby hand reaching to catch them. Then others cascaded through my mind. Patrick behind me, teaching me how to swing a Wiffle-ball bat. My first school picture, the mustached photographer adjusting my shirt collar. Swaying on a hammock with Alex, naming the constellations, her bare arm pressed against mine. Uncle Jim helping me deliver my first litter of ridgebacks. Aunt Sue-Anne lying next to me in bed, reading me The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Patrick teaching me how to drive. Alex: the Kiss.
It occurred to me that my life was flashing before my eyes. Considering where we were going, that made sense, but the realization only packed mass onto the lead ball weighing down my chest. I looked at Patrick’s profile. He gripped the steering wheel tight with one hand, and his jaw was shifting like it did when he was thinking. I knew he was stewing in his thoughts just like I was.
The signs documented Stone Spread’s approach: 127 MILES.
113 MILES.
97 MILES.
Patrick screeched over to the side of the road. Dust clouded across the windshield and then drifted away. He squeezed the wheel with both hands now. Alex and I were looking at him. He was never like this. I didn’t know what was wrong.
He said calmly, “I need to talk to my brother.”
And then he climbed out and walked several paces into the brush at the side of the road.
Alex and I looked at each other. She said, “Go on, then.”
I got out and walked over to where Patrick was standing, his hands on his hips, staring at the horizon. His hair was matted down with sweat beneath his black cowboy hat. I stood next to him for a while, looking where he looked, trying to see what he saw, but there was nothing out there.
When he finally turned to me, his eyes were moist. I thought maybe he might cry, but then I remembered that Patrick didn’t cry. Did he?
He said, “We will get out there and we will do what needs to be done and save Alex and everyone else, but…”
I tried to swallow, but my mouth was too dry. It was hard to look at him, yet I couldn’t look away. Inside, I felt like I was free-falling.
Patrick said, “Remember when you told the dogs that their most important job was to protect their brother?”
I found my voice. “It is. That’s what we’ve always said.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you from this,” he said. “And … for me … it’s more than just that. You’re more than a little brother to me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean—I raised you.” His voice cracked, and I thought that if he started crying, I might die. “I raised you.”
He shot me a quick look. In his eyes I saw the kind of unconditional love that you hear moms talk about on the morning talk shows.
Before I could respond, he turned and walked back to the Mustang.
* * *
Weapons in hand, we stood on the specified coordinates on the battered-flat plain past the beat-down stables. It looked like what it was—a spot in the middle of nowhere.
Wide-open sight lines all around made for easy surveillance. We’d spot anyone coming.
The Mustang was parked behind us. But not too far behind us.
The black helmet swung by my side. I’d brought it in case the Rebels didn’t show and tried to contact us again.
Dusk was still a ways off, the sun a rich shade of orange behind a heap of fluffy clouds. We weren’t really sure what we were waiting for. But we waited just the same. The Rebels were late. Late enough so I was starting to worry that something was wrong. They didn’t strike me as imprecise.
Alex spoke, pulling me from my concerns.
“So you boys are gonna get your serum shots,” she said. “And then what? You just explode right here?”
“I’m guessing they’ll tell us to get to a more populated area,” I said. “If we disperse the serum out here, the only things it’ll affect are the groundhogs.”
“Not if it’s carried through the air,” Alex said. “Look at the Dusting. That wrapped around the entire globe in no time.”
“I hadn’t thought of that. I figured we’d at least have more time to, you know…” My sentence trailed off. Even the air felt heavy.
Alex swallowed hard, seemed to set aside her sadness. She cocked her head at me. “Play foosball?” she said.
I grinned. “Work out a synchronized-swimming routine.”
“Learn how to bake soufflés.”
We were cracking up now, but Patrick wasn’t. He was steadily scanning the horizon, squinting against the setting sun.
“Throw ceramic teapots,” I said.
Alex: “Riverdance.”
Me: “Become a YouTube star.”
She laughed, smacking my shoulder. “Overcome my fear of clowns.”
Me: “Play Mozart on water glasses.”
Alex: “Cure sleep apnea.”
Me: “Take up competitive dog grooming.”
Patrick lifted his shotgun. “Say good-bye.”
We both turned to him, the smiles freezing on our faces.
“What?” I said.
He pointed up in the sky.
A tiny flame, no bigger than a thumbnail. It grew to a silver dollar. Now we heard it, the rush of air. And then the boom of the sound barrier breaking, only carrying to us now.
A meteor.
Of course.
It rocketed closer. We took a few nervous steps back. It didn’t slow. It was the size of a refrigerator. A VW Bug.
It zoomed in, pushing a wave of heat before it.
It was gonna pancake us right here on these to-the-thirteenth-decimal-place coordinates.
The helmet slipped from my fingers and hit the dirt with a thud.
“Um,” I said. “We might want to—”
And then it was on us, the roar drowning out anything I might have said. We bolted to the side, Patrick jostling us in front of him. At the last minute, we dove and felt the heft of the massive object hurtling behind us.
The earth shook. We landed in the dust, the ground vibrating beneath us so hard it jogged my vision. Turning, we saw the giant meteor plow through the barren plain, cleaving the unforgiving ground, shoving up furrows on either side. It missed the Mustang, but the swell of its wake pushed the car up into a thirty-degree tilt.
The meteor traveled a good half mile, sinking to its midway point, throwing off black smoke.
We were on our feet sprinting for it, waving our hands in front of us to clear the air.
Patrick reached it first.
A familiar popping sound drifted through the smoke and then the rumble of the meteor as it slowly hinged open, shoving earth aside.
At last the dark fumes cleared enough for us to see.
A hole the size of a trash-can lid was lasered straight through the meteor. A torpedo blast? Sunlight shone through it. The cockpit was as scorched as the inside of a chimney. A monitor showing our coordinates gave a dying fizzle and went blank. Charred screens, charred seatlike pods, charred control panels.
And two corpses, as black as midnight, still belted in place. Their suits were heat-split, the helmets crushed inward.
The last two Rebels.
Shot down.
It was impossible to tell which was the one we’d met at our house a few weeks back.
The Rebel on the left had a vial the size of a tennis can clamped in his armored glove. Smoke poured out the top.
Patrick skidded down the embankment toward the meteor, careful not to touch the sizzling exterior. He poked at the vial with the tip of his shotgun, and it crumbled into ash. Inside were two blackened test tubes, the glass cracked and singed. The contents had mostly evaporated. Whatever was left was reduced to useless black puddles.
The serum shots for me and Patrick.
The burned residue of the last hope of mankind.