Grounded

Chapter 30

Chapter 30

We exit the grid at the cluster of dilapidated buildings near the spot where I'd given the homeless man my bottle of water. Korwin parks the car. This is the deadzone. There's no electricity in this area, so the only light comes from the half-moon. We run three blocks west and duck inside the nearest building. Shuffling toward the back with my father wedged between Jeremiah and me, I notice rows of empty shelves and a few cans of long-expired pet food.

"What was this place?" Jeremiah asks.

"Looks like a grocery store," Korwin says. "We're not even that far out. The deadzone keeps getting bigger. The power goes out and that's all she wrote. People abandon everything and migrate into the city."

We find an office in the back with a door to the alley.

"Give me your sweatshirt," Korwin says to Jeremiah.

He removes the hoody he's wearing and hands it over.

Korwin hangs the sweatshirt off the chair, then dodges back into the store for a moment. When he returns, he pulls the tab back on a can of pet food and buries a plastic fork in it. "Maybe, if they find this, they'll think we've made camp here. It might buy us a few minutes if they search the place."

"Can't we stay here?" Jeremiah asks. "Just for a while. To rest." He gestures toward my father.

Korwin shakes his head. "They'll track the car, then methodically search everywhere within a five-mile radius. Trust me, we're on borrowed time."

We slip out the back door, travel two blocks down the alley, and enter the sewer. My father is too weak to walk the entire way, so Jeremiah and I take turns carrying him on our backs. We follow Korwin through the maze of pipes for more than an hour before emerging in an alley behind a fire station. There is power here, but the lit streets are quiet because of the time of night.

"There," my father says, pointing at an awning-covered door on the side of the building.

Korwin nods.

The door is unlocked. We enter a garage full of fire trucks and climb a flight of stairs. The second floor is populated with men in blue uniforms—playing cards, smoking cigars, eating from waxed cardboard containers.

"It's exactly how I left it," my father says.

Silence. The firemen stare at us expectantly until a stocky young man in the back rises from his chair and approaches. He brushes his hand over his thinning brown hair.

"I'll be damned. Franklin Stark. You look like hell. What happened to you?"

"It's a long story." My father lists in Jeremiah's arms. "Last time I saw you, Brady, you were hiding behind your father's knee. How is your father?"

"Retired but doing okay." Brady's eyes flick over me, and then Korwin, who is still only wearing a pair of hospital pants. All of us are covered in remnants of the sewer. "What happened to you?"

"We need to see Jonas Kirkland," Korwin says.

A flicker of understanding crosses Brady's face. "Upstairs," he says. He waves a hand at the others in the room. "Go back to what you were doing. I'll take care of this." He motions for us to continue ahead of him and then sees how weak my father is. "There's an elevator. We're required by law to have one but none of us ever use it. No sense burning the energy. It's at the front of the building."

"No, thanks," my father says. He leans on Jeremiah and grabs my elbow.

Together, we slowly ascend. On the third floor, a massive steel door greets us. Brady punches a code into a pad. A tight close-up of the man I met at Stuart Manor appears on screen. Jonas.