and dad and their newborn baby boy.
I hadn’t even cracked the spine when I heard a trickle of debris falling down the shaft of the ruined elevator. The bits pinged the sides on the way down and bounced off the remains of the elevator at the bottom. I put my hand on the ground to see if there were any tremors that might have dislodged some of the rubble.
Nothing. The floor was cool and calm.
I stashed the book in my backpack and walked over to the elevators. More pebbles or bits of whatever trickled down.
Then I heard a sound that sent a chill down my back.
One of the working elevators began to ascend back up its shaft.
Chapter Nine
Scorched Perses
Someone was at the other end of that elevator shaft. That was certain.
I did some quick calculations.
The chances that it was one of our parents or more kids making their way down to the basement couldn’t be discounted. If that were the case, we should stay here and wait. That was my hope, the story I wanted to tell myself.
But I knew the concrete facts were against me. The debris that had crushed my elevator compartment that first day had been smoky and burning. That meant it had been freshly blasted, which meant the battle had reached the roof of the core-scraper just minutes after my father had left me.
The tremendous blasts had ended while I was saving Darcy, which meant the battle was over. I knew who had won that.
So the chance that it was one of our attackers in the elevator, getting ready to descend into the core-scraper to look for survivors, was far greater. And the chance that they wanted to keep those survivors alive? Zero.
We had to get away.
And we didn’t have a lot of time.
I hustled back to camp. Mandeep and Maria were the first ones I saw, so I shook them awake. I tried to sound calm, but I could hear my voice rising to a high-pitched squeak.
“They’re coming after us. We’ve got to get moving.”
It didn’t take a room light to see the panic in their eyes.
“Now,” I said, firmly.
They scrambled to their feet.
“Gather as much food and water as you can.”
“What about you?” Maria asked.
“I have a plan.”
I actually didn’t have a plan yet, but I quickly ran back to the locker room as one began to take shape.
I passed a storage locker filled with detonator caps and stopped. I remembered a book Elena had once read to me about something called the Russian Campaign of1812. Napoleon, one of Elena’s favorite historical nutjobs, was attacking Russia. Instead of staying and fighting, the Russians retreated but burned everything first, making sure Napoleon wasn’t able to salvage anything he could use to help his troops or attack. Scorched-earth policy , she’d called it.
Napoleon eventually ran out of supplies.
The Russians won.
Running wasn’t enough. I needed to make sure they couldn’t get at anything they could use to follow us. I stared at the teeth of the blast door.
I needed to figure out how to trick it closed and keep it closed for as long as possible.
I tried the handle on the cage door of the storage locker. It was locked. I looked around for anything I could use to break in.
I grabbed a shovel and jammed the metal blade into the space between the panels. I had to lean to one side with all my might, but it worked. The lock snapped and the door swung open. I grabbed a helmet from the nearby lockers and put as many caps in it as I could fit. Then I gathered an armful of flares.
I dropped everything in a pile in front of the blast wall, then picked out one of detonator caps.
In case of an explosion or fire, the wall would crashdown. But there was a keypad on the core-scraper side that allowed someone to open the door once things were clear.
If they knew the code.
I didn’t know the code, but someone else might, and I couldn’t risk leaving it intact.
The pad was just above eye level and stuck out from the wall. I pushed the red ignition button on the detonator and placed it on top of the keypad. I now
I hadn’t even cracked the spine when I heard a trickle of debris falling down the shaft of the ruined elevator. The bits pinged the sides on the way down and bounced off the remains of the elevator at the bottom. I put my hand on the ground to see if there were any tremors that might have dislodged some of the rubble.
Nothing. The floor was cool and calm.
I stashed the book in my backpack and walked over to the elevators. More pebbles or bits of whatever trickled down.
Then I heard a sound that sent a chill down my back.
One of the working elevators began to ascend back up its shaft.
Chapter Nine
Scorched Perses
Someone was at the other end of that elevator shaft. That was certain.
I did some quick calculations.
The chances that it was one of our parents or more kids making their way down to the basement couldn’t be discounted. If that were the case, we should stay here and wait. That was my hope, the story I wanted to tell myself.
But I knew the concrete facts were against me. The debris that had crushed my elevator compartment that first day had been smoky and burning. That meant it had been freshly blasted, which meant the battle had reached the roof of the core-scraper just minutes after my father had left me.
The tremendous blasts had ended while I was saving Darcy, which meant the battle was over. I knew who had won that.
So the chance that it was one of our attackers in the elevator, getting ready to descend into the core-scraper to look for survivors, was far greater. And the chance that they wanted to keep those survivors alive? Zero.
We had to get away.
And we didn’t have a lot of time.
I hustled back to camp. Mandeep and Maria were the first ones I saw, so I shook them awake. I tried to sound calm, but I could hear my voice rising to a high-pitched squeak.
“They’re coming after us. We’ve got to get moving.”
It didn’t take a room light to see the panic in their eyes.
“Now,” I said, firmly.
They scrambled to their feet.
“Gather as much food and water as you can.”
“What about you?” Maria asked.
“I have a plan.”
I actually didn’t have a plan yet, but I quickly ran back to the locker room as one began to take shape.
I passed a storage locker filled with detonator caps and stopped. I remembered a book Elena had once read to me about something called the Russian Campaign of1812. Napoleon, one of Elena’s favorite historical nutjobs, was attacking Russia. Instead of staying and fighting, the Russians retreated but burned everything first, making sure Napoleon wasn’t able to salvage anything he could use to help his troops or attack. Scorched-earth policy , she’d called it.
Napoleon eventually ran out of supplies.
The Russians won.
Running wasn’t enough. I needed to make sure they couldn’t get at anything they could use to follow us. I stared at the teeth of the blast door.
I needed to figure out how to trick it closed and keep it closed for as long as possible.
I tried the handle on the cage door of the storage locker. It was locked. I looked around for anything I could use to break in.
I grabbed a shovel and jammed the metal blade into the space between the panels. I had to lean to one side with all my might, but it worked. The lock snapped and the door swung open. I grabbed a helmet from the nearby lockers and put as many caps in it as I could fit. Then I gathered an armful of flares.
I dropped everything in a pile in front of the blast wall, then picked out one of detonator caps.
In case of an explosion or fire, the wall would crashdown. But there was a keypad on the core-scraper side that allowed someone to open the door once things were clear.
If they knew the code.
I didn’t know the code, but someone else might, and I couldn’t risk leaving it intact.
The pad was just above eye level and stuck out from the wall. I pushed the red ignition button on the detonator and placed it on top of the keypad. I now
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