Runner Boy Read online

  Runner Boy

  Jay Mackey

  River Sky Publishing

  Copyright © 2019 by Jay Mackey

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  1. 6:10 p.m., Tuesday, November 5

  2. Sunday, October 20

  3. Sunday, October 20

  4. Sunday, October 20

  5. Monday, October 21

  6. Monday, October 21

  7. 6:13 p.m., Tuesday, November 5

  8. Monday, October 21

  9. Tuesday, October 22 – Friday, October 25

  10. Saturday, October 26

  11. Sunday, October 27

  12. Sunday, October 27

  13. Monday, October 28

  14. Monday, October 28

  15. Monday, October 28

  16. Monday, October 28

  17. 6:17 p.m., Tuesday, November 5

  18. Monday, October 28

  19. Monday, October 28

  20. Monday, October 28

  21. Monday, October 28

  22. Monday, October 28

  23. Monday, October 28

  24. Monday, October 28

  25. Tuesday, October 29

  26. Tuesday, October 29

  27. 6:20 p.m., Tuesday, November 5

  28. Tuesday, October 29

  29. Tuesday, October 29

  30. Tuesday, October 29

  31. Tuesday, October 29 – Wednesday, October 30

  32. Wednesday, October 30 – Thursday, October 31

  33. Thursday, October 31

  34. Thursday, October 31

  35. 6:24 p.m., Tuesday, November 5

  36. Thursday, October 31

  37. Thursday, October 31 – Friday, November 1

  38. Friday, November 1

  39. Saturday, November 2 – Sunday, November 3

  40. Sunday, November 3

  41. 6:28 p.m., Tuesday, November 5

  42. Sunday, November 3

  43. Sunday, November 3

  44. Sunday, November 3

  45. Monday, November 4

  46. Monday, November 4

  47. 6:40 p.m., Tuesday, November 5

  48. 5:26 a.m., Tuesday, November 5

  49. 9:19 a.m., Tuesday, November 5

  50. 2:11 p.m., Tuesday, November 5

  51. 2:50 p.m., Tuesday, November 5

  52. 5:04 p.m., Tuesday, November 5

  53. 7:31 p.m., Tuesday, November 5

  54. 7:39 p.m., Tuesday, November 5

  55. 8:18 p.m., Tuesday, November 5

  56. 8:51 p.m., Tuesday, November 5

  57. Wednesday, November 6

  58. February 28

  Author’s Note

  Author’s Note On EMP

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  1

  6:10 p.m., Tuesday, November 5

  I’m running. As fast as I can. But it’s hard, trying not to slip on the wet rocks and mud at the bottom of the creek I’m running in. My heart is pounding so loud it’s all I can hear. I can’t get my breath. I thought I was in shape, but maybe I’m not.

  I slip and go down. Damn, damn, damn. Get up. I’m okay. Keep going. Run.

  I’m carrying too much crap. Don’t have time to ditch anything. I think about dropping the rifle. No, not the rifle. I need the rifle. I hope I need the rifle. If I don’t, it’s because I’m dead.

  Breathe, Brady. Breathe.

  The creek is curving to the left. Good. Maybe it’ll help keep me hidden. Maybe they’ve reached the bridge. The bridge with the body. If they have, they can look down the creek and see me. Running.

  At least the creek isn’t full of water. Just a trickle, really. Some wider pools that I try to avoid. Hard to run. Hard to run fast. As fast as I need to.

  There’s a cornfield up on the right somewhere. I can hide in the cornfield. It’ll give me cover so I can keep going.

  It can’t be that far. I remember from last time I was running along here. Only that time, I wasn’t down in the creek. And I wasn’t running for my life.

  God! Breathe!

  Now I hear it. Rumbling. Damn. How close is it? Still at the bridge? Has the creek curved around enough yet?

  I can’t look back; it’ll slow me down. What am I going to do, anyway? If they can see me, I’m dead.

  Just run, Brady. Run!

  2

  Sunday, October 20

  I’m at home with my little brother and sister, Clark and Claire, the twins. I mean, I’m not actually with them; I just happen to be in the same room with them, in the basement where we play video games. I’m here because my bedroom is in the basement. I’d been banished from the upstairs when Clark and Claire were, like, five, so they could have separate bedrooms. It made sense, since Clark is a boy and Claire a girl and everything. But still, I’m the one who had to give up my room and move down here all alone. My older sister Chrissie’s bedroom is upstairs, vacant since she went away to college. Not that I’d want to move up to her room or anything, but it’s the principle of the thing. I’m always getting the short straw.

  I’m considering asking Clark if he wants to play a video game. He’s four years younger than me, in middle school, and yet he can beat me in just about any game you can name. Story of my life. But I still play him sometimes. It makes him feel good to beat me. I always tell him I let him win. That pisses him off, because he knows it’s not true.

  Claire is here because she just finished working out in the exercise room, which is just off the video game room. She’s been doing stretches, using the ballet barre that my parents installed for her. Like they’d ever put anything in there for me. There isn’t even a treadmill, the one piece of exercise equipment I might consider using.

  Claire bobs around on the elliptical machine sometimes. “Why don’t you go outside and run, Claire, and get some real exercise?” I’d ask her. That’s the one thing I can do. Run.

  “Ewww!” she always says. She doesn’t like to sweat, she says. Even so, she’s buff for a seventh grader. I’m probably going to have to start beating away the horny little middle school boys any day, if Dad doesn’t do it first.

  Our basement is a walkout, and the video game room is all windows on two sides, so that’s how I see it: a bright flash, like lightning maybe, only brighter. The whole sky—the whole world, at least that I can see—goes white. And then, slowly, it turns colors. First yellow, then sort of red, with the red settling on the horizon. Like the sun is setting, only it isn’t.

  I am subconsciously waiting for the thunder, expecting it to be loud given how bright the flash had been, but it never comes. Instead, I hear these explosions, a whole bunch of them, some bigger than others. Definitely not thunder, and not fireworks either. Bangs. All while the colors change.

  And the lights go out.

  “My phone’s dead,” screams Claire, who’d been texting someone when the flash happened. She runs out, heading for the stairs. Losing her phone is a major crisis for her. The fact that the power is out in the whole house is minor compared to that.

  “Mom? Dad?” she yells, feeling her way up the now-darkened stairwell.

  “Crap!” says Clark. “Just as I was about to kick ass, again.” He, of course, is referring to the video game he is playing with some buddies online.

  “Yeah, but what was that?” I say, pointing outside.

  “Lightning, I guess,” he says.

  “No way, man,” I say, feeling a little panicky. There isn’t a cloud in the sky, so there is no storm. “It’s
like the sun exploded.” That image pops into my mind for some reason; maybe subconsciously I know this is something big, important. “I’m going upstairs.”

  I’m smart enough to feel around in the workroom at the bottom of the stairs for a flashlight, because even though it isn’t dark outside yet, it’s dark inside. When I get upstairs I find Mom standing in the kitchen, looking out the back windows. She’s still in her exercise clothes from that morning, almost matching Claire, who’s standing next to her and is also wearing black tights. Only, of course, Mom is built like a mom, so she’s a lot wider than little Claire.

  “Did you see that?” Mom asks.

  Claire is punching buttons on her phone, not paying attention, so I answer. “Yeah. What was it?”

  “I don’t know,” she says, turning to look at me, her eyes real big, her hand covering her mouth.

  Dad comes rumbling into the kitchen from the family room, wearing his gold “Purdue Dad” T-shirt that Chrissie had given him. It’s like a triple XL, and looks ridiculously big, even on him. “Goddamn power’s out,” he growls. “Fourth quarter of the Bengals game. They were only down ten, and had the ball.” How he can stand to watch the pitiful Bengals is a mystery. Even Clark won’t watch the Bengals with him.

  I wander out the back door to the deck to see if I can find out what made all the bangs, maybe see if lightning had hit something really close. I half think I’ll see smoke coming off our roof, or at least a tree burning in our yard.

  It seems eerily quiet outside, like the birds and the bugs are wondering what is going on, too. I see our next-door neighbor Mr. Marcos heading my way across our backyards. He’s older, in his fifties at least, but in good shape. He looks like he’s just returning from one of his hunting or fishing trips, wearing one of those khaki shirts with the epaulets and the rolled-up sleeves.

  “I think we’re under attack, Brady,” he says, hustling over, alternating between looking at the sky and back at me. I like Mr. Marcos. I mow his lawn for him, and I like mowing his more than ours, maybe because Dad is always on my case about cleaning up the clippings and stuff like that, while Mr. Marcos seems happy with the job I do.

  “Really?” I say, and look up at the sky again to see if I missed something, like maybe parachutes opening or rockets flying at us. But there isn’t anything. The sky has almost returned to its normal color, with just a hint of red down at the horizon.

  “Did you hear the transformers blowing?” he asks as I come down the steps to the yard.

  “I heard something,” I say. “Was that what made all the explosions?”

  He looks up at the sky again. “Yeah, whatever that flash was, it knocked out all the electric. I’ll bet it will be a while before we get the power back on. Did you see all the colors?”

  “Yeah, I saw some. What did you mean, we’re being attacked? By who?”

  He looks back at me and frowns. “I don’t know by whom.” He shakes his head and starts walking toward the front of the house. “Probably by terrorists. I don’t think that flash was a naturally occurring event, you know?” He is wringing his hands, and I immediately get this pang, like a little zap to my spine or something. If he is worried, man, then I am terrified.

  I follow him to the front yard. “It wasn’t lightning?” I know it wasn’t lightning, but I can’t think of anything else it can be.

  “No. Don’t think so.” He looks around at my yard and toward the front porch. “Is your dad home?”

  “Yeah, I’ll go get him.” I find Dad still in the kitchen with Mom and Claire.

  “Dad, Mr. Marcos is here. He says we’re being attacked.”

  “Attacked?” Dad says, heading for the door. “Christ.”

  “Lee Marcos thinks there’s a conspiracy behind everything,” says Mom. She looks more worried than she sounds, and she nearly trips over me following Dad to the front door.

  I’m just about to go out the door when Clark comes up from the basement. “What’s going on?” he asks.

  “Mr. Marcos thinks the United States is under attack,” answers Claire, who’s following me.

  “Really?” He looks at me for confirmation.

  I shrug.

  “Cool,” he says, as we both go out the door.

  “Don’t leave me alone,” says Claire, hustling after us.

  Outside in the yard we see Mom and Dad talking to Mr. Marcos. Dad has his huge T-shirt tucked into his jeans, pulling the “Dad” part tight across his belly, so it’s like it’s screaming at you, “DAD.” You can probably read it from space.

  Mr. Marcos is pointing at the sky and looking around, so I gather that he’s talking about his theory of the terrorist attack. As the twins and I near them, Mr. Marcos turns to Mom and says, “You’d better get your candles and flashlights out before it gets too dark. And try not to open your refrigerator. It will stay colder longer if you leave the door closed.”

  Mom nods. I can’t tell if she’s buying what he’s saying or not.

  “I’ve got to go see about Wanda,” he says, referring to his wife.

  He’s just past the crab apple tree that’s between our houses when I see him suddenly look up. “Holy crap!” he yells, and he runs back out toward the street, his eyes locked on something in the sky.

  I look up and see it—a big airliner, flying over our house, really low. I hadn’t noticed because it’s completely silent. I mean, there’s no engine noise, no sputtering, nothing. No smoke or anything either, just this big old plane, the Delta logo plainly visible, coming down way, way short of the airport that’s about fifteen or twenty miles away across the river.

  3

  Sunday, October 20

  Mom screams.

  Dad yells, “Son of a bitch!”

  I stand there with my mouth open. The plane is clearly going to crash. The only question is where.

  At first it seems like it’s coming down on our house. But somehow it keeps flying, wobbling back and forth, but staying up, flying kind of sideways, and it continues like that, crabwise, until it disappears from sight behind the hills and trees.

  We don’t know what to do, so we all stand watching, Dad cursing under his breath, waiting for the crash. When it finally comes, it isn’t loud, but we know. The plane is down. Soon we can see black smoke rising from beyond the hills.

  “We need to do something,” says Clark. “We can’t just stand here.”

  “Nothing we can do from here, and if we try to go over there, near the airport, all we’d do is get in the way,” says Dad, his head down, reaching out to try to gather us all under his wings. He has Claire under his left arm, with Mom snuggling close. He corrals Clark with his right. I try to escape but he snags me by the collar of my T-shirt with his finger, so I freeze in place rather than make a big deal about it. I stand there in a kind of stupor, trying to understand what is happening. Are we being attacked? Has the plane been shot down?

  Mr. Marcos goes running into his house, slamming the door after himself. Then, in just a few minutes, he pulls around in his old Jeep, the one he uses when he goes out to hunt and fish and all that. We’re still standing in the yard, looking up at the sky to see what’s next. He stops in front of our house and yells out the open car window, “Try to start your car.” Then he speeds off, up the steep hill that isolates our little cul-de-sac from the rest of the world.

  “What does he mean by that?” I ask.

  “Maybe he thinks we should go, too,” says Clark. “Maybe we can help.”

  Dad says, “I said we’d just get in the way, Clark. Cool it.”

  “But what about the people in the plane?” asks Claire. “Are they okay?”

  “Claire,” says Mom, “we don’t have any electricity, so we can’t just turn on the TV and watch the news.”

  “I can’t even call anybody,” Claire says, holding her cell phone up. “My phone won’t work.” She’s looking at me. Like I could fix it.

  “Electricity is out,” I say.

  “So, it works on a battery.” She
looks at me like I’m dense. “Duh!”

  “Well, duh. The cell towers and all that need electricity to work, so no electricity, no cell phone, smart stuff.” I smile at her. I have no idea if what I said is true, but it sounds good.

  “No, but the phone won’t even turn on. It died when the lights went out, but not because there’s no cell phone reception.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Maybe we can get some news on my old transistor radio,” says Dad.

  “What’s that?” asks Clark.

  “It works on batteries,” says Dad. “I think it’s down in the storage room in the basement. Brady, you go find it. If it won’t turn on, replace the batteries. I think it works on Cs, or maybe Ds. Get some from the junk drawer in the kitchen.”

  He turns to the twins. “Claire, Clark, go find candles and flashlights. It’s going to get dark soon.”

  “And stay out of the refrigerator,” Mom calls out to us as we start for the house. “The food will spoil if you let all the cold out.”

  On my way to the basement, I check my phone, and, like Claire’s, it won’t turn on. So my smart phone is as useful as a smart rock. It’s now my iRock. At least I don’t spend 99 percent of my time on my phone, like Claire does. She is either texting someone or on Instagram, Snapchat, or Facebook all the time.