The Last Day
of Freedom
A prequel to The Natural Order
R.J. VICKERS
Cover art by Amber Elizabeth Lamoreaux
Copyright © 2015 R.J. Vickers
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
www.RJVickers.com
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[email protected] This book is dedicated to Daniel, who has supported me every step along the way.
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Chapter 1
Marcus looked weary and dejected when Tristan met him after school.
“What’s wrong?” Tristan asked, ruffling his brother’s floppy black hair. “You’ll be fine. You’re strong.”
Marcus shrugged and started doggedly along the path towards home.
“Don’t you want to pick up a puzzle?” Tristan asked. He was trying his best to keep up a cheerful countenance, not allowing his tone to betray the fear that gnawed at his stomach.
Again Marcus shrugged.
Tristan waited until they had passed beyond the school fence and left the shouting kids behind before grabbing Marcus’s arm and shaking him gently. “Something’s wrong. Are you going to tell me, or do I have to force you to?”
Marcus nibbled on his lip, staring at the cracked concrete. “What if it doesn’t work? What if I die?”
“You won’t!” Tristan realized he was almost shouting, and took a deep breath to calm himself. “Dad doesn’t even know for sure if you need the transplant.” Tristan knew otherwise, but he hated the idea of Marcus going to the hospital with the thought he might never leave. “Remember? That new doctor said they’d need to do another biopsy, just in case. That’s all you have to do. A stupid little biopsy.”
“That’s what he said last time.”
Tristan put an arm around Marcus’s shoulders and gave him a rough sideways hug. Marcus ducked out of Tristan’s embrace and continued his disconsolate progress down the street. Tristan hated how small and frail Marcus looked. Two years ago, he could have passed as a regular kid. Now, though, he was visibly sick.
Tristan would have given Marcus his own heart if it made him well again.
When they passed the mall, Tristan dragged Marcus towards their favorite game shop. It had become a tradition of theirs to pick up a new puzzle every time Marcus was scheduled for another hospital visit—it was Tristan’s promise that he would stay inside and keep his brother company while he recovered, no matter how tempting the weather outside.
“What do you want?” Tristan asked, eyeing a puzzle that looked like the blueprint of a futuristic flying machine.
“I don’t care,” Marcus said.
Tristan punched him lightly in the arm. “Lighten up! Are you going to make me do the puzzle by myself?”
Eventually they decided on a historic map of the world, with South America squashed into an almost unrecognizable blob and Antarctica sprawling over nearly a third of the world’s surface. As they left the shop, Tristan crammed the puzzle into his backpack and gave Marcus a worried frown.
“What’s got you so scared?”
“Some guys at school,” Marcus mumbled. “They’re saying their teacher had a heart transplant and then just died. Right in front of the class!”
Tristan shook his head. “I never heard anything about a high school teacher dying. They’re just trying to mess with you.” He knew the kids who had picked on Marcus in the past—he wanted to pound their pimply faces to mush.
“Hmph.” Marcus clearly did not trust Tristan’s conviction.
They were quiet the rest of the way home. Tristan wished he could do something more for his brother, assure him that he truly had nothing to fear. Though Marcus was twelve, he was still tiny and emaciated. He was brave as hell, but his first two rejected heart transplants had taken their toll. Tristan wished Marcus’s future was simply a matter of surviving the next transplant before everything improved. But it was never that simple.
At home, Tristan dug in his pocket for his key while Marcus fetched the mail. “Want to play a game?”
Marcus shook his head. “I’ve got homework.” He was at the age where he still took homework very seriously.
“Fine. I’ll be upstairs.” Tristan dropped the puzzle in the living room, riffled through the mail, and then took the stairs two at a time to his own bedroom. From his window he could see the budding trees all along the street, two trees still bare, the others blushing with pale flowers in an early display of spring. He sank down at his desk and took out his math textbook, but he was having trouble concentrating. He and Marcus both knew that Marcus’s chances of survival lessened with each transplant his body rejected. If he’d had his way, he would have spent the evening playing games and drinking hot chocolate with Marcus, both of them trying not to think about what was to come.
When it began to grow dark outside and the streetlamps flickered on, Tristan ventured downstairs to see whether his dad had returned home yet. More and more in the past year he claimed to be trapped in meetings until long past dinnertime; he returned smelling strongly of beer, his tie unknotted and his hair disheveled.
As Tristan expected, there was no sign of his dad downstairs, nor of his car in the driveway. He dug in the cupboard for a can of tomato soup—he was no cook, but he was good at making Marcus’s favorite comfort food, grilled cheese with tomato soup.
“Is there more cake left?” he called over his shoulder to Marcus, who was huddled over his Spanish workbook in the sagging armchair pushed to the brightest corner of the living room. He wanted to take his brother’s mind off the operation tomorrow.
“I think Dad ate it,” Marcus said sulkily. “Or maybe you did.”
“Did not!”
Tristan used his thumbnail to pry open the lid of the soup can and dumped its contents into a pot. Just as he turned on the stove, he felt the ground jolt slightly beneath his feet.
At first he thought he had imagined it. He backed away from the stove, looking warily around. “Did you feel that?” he asked nervously.
Marcus nodded, wide-eyed.
Suddenly the ground heaved more violently than before, throwing Tristan against the counter. His pot of soup tipped handle-first off the stove and splattered on the tiles like a spreading bloodstain. Behind him, his dad’s golf trophy shattered on the floor.
Tristan grabbed the counter and tried to straighten as the floor shifted beneath his feet.
Marcus bolted to his feet. “What’s happening?”
“We have to get out!” Tristan yelled. He cursed as a decorative bowl clipped him hard on the shoulder. “I think it’s an earthquake!”
“I thought—I thought we didn’t get earthquakes.” Marcus threw his textbook onto the table and dashed over to the door.
The plastered walls were cracking under the strain, disgorging billows of plaster dust onto the carpet. Tristan looked around wildly, his stomach knotted. What was he supposed to do?
With a groan, the wall behind the stove caved forward. A wire must have snapped, because a plume of sm
oke trickled out from the wall and swirled into the kitchen.
Then the entire stove burst into flame.
Tristan was standing close enough that he felt the blast of heat. He yelled and jumped back, grabbing wildly for the phone. He had to call 911.
Phone in hand, he dashed for the door. Grabbing Marcus’s arm, he pushed his brother through the doorway into the cool evening air. He punched the buttons and waited, heart pounding, not breathing, as the phone rang once…twice…three times.
“Hello?” said a gruff man’s voice.
“There’s been an earthquake!” Tristan shouted, his voice cracking. “And our house just caught on fire!”
“Third time this bloody week!” the man barked. “I don’t have time for pranks, kiddo.”
“Wait!”
But it was too late. The phone clicked.
“Dammit!” Tristan yelled. He stumbled backwards as the ground jolted once again.
A drop hit his cheek, followed by ten more. The cool breeze had brought a rainstorm, which boded well for their burning house, though Tristan still didn’t have the least idea what to do.
“Where’s Dad?” Marcus asked weakly. “I wanna go to Mom’s place.” His already pale face was white with fear.
“I’ll call Mom.” His hands were shaking; he had to dial the number twice before he got it right. But when he put the phone to his ear, all he heard was silence. “Something’s wrong.” He hung up and listened for the dial tone, but still there was nothing. Tristan cursed. “I think the power’s down.”
Throwing the phone into the bushes, Tristan seized Marcus’s arm and dragged him away from their doorway. “We’ll ask Mrs. Hughes for help.”
When Marcus dug in his heels, Tristan released him and jogged over to the neighbor’s door alone. The ground was still buckling under his feet, giving him a lopsided gait.
Panting, he jabbed his thumb frantically into the doorbell. Then he pounded his fist on the door for a minute straight.
There was no answer.
Mrs. Hughes’s car was sitting in the driveway, the front door slightly ajar, as though she had been called away on urgent business. When Tristan looked closer, he realized the key was in the ignition.
“Tristan!” Marcus shouted. “Can’t we go find Mom?”
Tristan yelped as the cement beneath his feet shuddered and cracked in two. The towering oak at the edge of Mrs. Hugh’s garden heaved, two of its roots snapping free of the ground. Tristan went cold as he imagined the entire row of trees collapsing on him.
They had to get out.
The car was still sitting before him, right in the path where the tree would fall. If Mrs. Hugh came back to find an enormous oak splayed across her driveway, she might thank Tristan for moving the car. Frowning, Tristan pulled the front door open. He didn’t have his learners’ permit yet, but he had driven a four-wheeler before. How different could it be?
“Come here, Marcus!” he yelled. “I’m gonna drive to Mom’s house.”
Marcus didn’t have to be told twice. Ducking his head, he sprinted over the lawn dividing the two houses and flung himself into the front seat of Mrs. Hughes’s beat-up old Buick.
“I’m not completely sure how this works,” Tristan said, sliding into the driver’s seat. “But I’m sure I can figure it out.” As he spoke, the car jolted sideways, the windows groaning fit to burst.
“I don’t care,” Marcus said. “Let’s go.” He sounded close to tears.
Tristan turned the key in the ignition and heard the engine grumble to life. He had seen his dad drive enough times to know more or less how it worked. He shifted the car into reverse and tapped lightly on the accelerator, easing the Buick down the driveway and out into the street. The rain was falling harder now, slamming across the windshield with each gust of wind, and Tristan braked abruptly in the middle of the street, searching for the button that would turn on the windshield wipers. He turned on the right and left blinkers and sent a jet of water spraying over the windshield before he finally managed to adjust the windshield wipers to a reasonable speed. Behind him, the fire in his house had subsided to a weak plume of smoke, the rain dousing the nascent flames.
“You’re sure this is okay?” Tristan asked.
“I trust you,” Marcus said.
Hands tight on the wheel, Tristan shifted the car into drive and started slowly forward. He could still feel the ground rippling beneath them—he was afraid that it would open into a deep chasm at any moment and swallow the car whole. Only once he had turned the corner did the shaking subside; Tristan let out a long, tense breath, trying to calm himself.
He could have found the way to his mother’s house in his sleep, never mind that it was in the next town over, but everything looked different from behind the wheel. He wasn’t sure if he was just imagining it, but the car seemed to have a slight leftwards pull, and he was forced to nudge the steering wheel slightly off-center to hold it in line. More than once he found himself drifting close to the curb when another car approached, squinting to make out the headlights through the rain, and when he pulled out of his neighborhood onto the main road through town he realized he was going ten miles below the speed limit.
At the first red light, Tristan slammed on the brakes, stopping the car so suddenly his seatbelt locked. He glanced sideways at Marcus’s pale face, eyes almost lost beneath his mop of dark hair, and tried to slow his breathing. Adrenaline was still coursing through his veins after the earthquake.
Two cars pulled in behind him before the light changed, and Tristan didn’t realize it was green until the nearest one gave him a long, unforgiving honk. It was hard to tell through the rain—the light had blurred into a hazy aura through the windshield, and it was mixed in with headlights and streetlamps and the glowing text from motel signs.
Cautiously Tristan started forward again. Water sloshed onto the sidewalk as he turned the corner, and to his relief he left the other two cars behind. His arms were heavy and numb from fear, and he didn’t trust himself to blink. Would this car be safe if the earthquake started again, or should he have stayed on the path outside the house, where a hundred trees waited to crush him?
It was too late to turn back now.
Tristan crept his way to the edge of town and finally emerged onto the open country road, where at last there were no side roads or cyclists or stoplights to trip him up. He relaxed his death-grip on the wheel just slightly as the city fell behind. The earthquake had truly subsided now, so he had only to navigate the way through the rain to his mother’s house.
The streetlights ended as soon as he passed the last two houses, leaving a yawning black expanse before him, lit only faintly by the light of Tristan’s headlights. The headlights seemed to serve mainly to throw each individual raindrop into relief, which was more dizzying than it was useful.
Tristan squinted through the rain to find the yellow line dividing the road. His hands were sweating, locked in place on the steering wheel, but the rest of his body was growing colder by the minute.
What if another car came up behind and rammed into him?
What if he hit a pothole wrong and popped a tire?
Tristan wished he had called his mother first, wished his dad had been home to take them to safety. The rain thundered down harder than ever, a virtual waterfall across the windshield. Tristan didn’t know the speed limit, but he was still driving far too slow. He would not reach his mother’s house until midnight at this rate.
Gently he allowed his foot on the accelerator to drift closer to the floor. The rain doubled in ferocity, hammering so loudly on the rooftop that it drowned out thought. Tristan leaned forward, cold with fear, and tried to make out the lines on either side of the road. The headlights winked off the road markers, occasionally springing directly before the car, and Tristan swerved to put himself back into the right lane. Each time he caught hims
elf drifting and yanked the car back into line, Tristan’s heart hammered faster than ever. His eyes were stretched wide, as though that would help him see more clearly through the stormy night.
A desperate refrain ran through his head—don’t let anyone come. Don’t let anyone come. Don’t let anyone come. If another car appeared before him, he was afraid he would panic and send them careening off the road.
Suddenly a light appeared in the distance. It was faint and hazy in the rain, but it belonged unmistakably to another vehicle. A truck, if Tristan was not mistaken. He held his breath as the truck drew closer, knuckles white on the wheel.
As the truck surged past, it sent a gust of wind buffeting the Buick sideways. Tristan jerked the car left to compensate and swerved farther onto the other lane than he intended.
Heart pounding in his throat, Tristan nudged the steering wheel right again. He was going too fast.
Another set of lights appeared, closer than he’d expected.
Just as Tristan passed the second car, the lines in the road disappeared.
With a jolt, the car went soaring off the road. Tristan’s stomach dropped as they fell, Marcus screaming, the rain hammering the roof.
He had missed the turn.
With a hideous crack, the right side of the car slammed into a ditch. Tristan was flung sideways, his seatbelt cutting into his side, and Marcus’s scream died in his throat.
As the headlights flickered out, Tristan gulped for air.
Darkness blossomed around him.
He felt as though he was sinking into a pit of tar.
Then he knew no more.
An eternity passed.
Tristan woke to the wail of sirens. Lights flashed all around.
Outside, voices argued.
Hands reached in from above and cut Tristan free of his seatbelt. The effort of holding his head straight was almost too much to endure.
“What’s your name?”
Tristan had a hard time shaping his tongue around the words. “Tristan Fairholm.”
“You have a driver’s license?”
Tristan shook his head.
From behind, a disembodied voice floated into the darkness.
He’s dead.