by Connor Mccoy
Beyond The Grid
Beyond The Grid Book 1
Connor Mccoy
Copyright © 2018 by Connor Mccoy
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.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter One
Jacob abruptly put the brakes on, slowing the car just as it hit the dirt road coming off Virginia’s State Road 219. He gently chided himself for slowing down this far from the place that he soon would call home. He was being too eager. He wanted to disembark as soon as possible, but that just would leave him and his wife with a longer trail to walk to the homestead’s front door. However, he could not help himself. He had been waiting for this day for years. Now he was here!
Jacob turned to the young lady in the passenger seat. “You want me to pull up?”
The woman shook her head, swishing her long hair around. “No.” She unlocked her door. “Actually, I wouldn’t mind running to the front door!”
Jacob chuckled. “A race, huh?”
After opening his door, he rose from the car seat but banged his head against the roof. “Shit!” he whispered. This car was too low to the ground. At almost six feet tall, Jacob Avery was an ill fit for this four-door car. Oh well. He had been planning to get rid of the car anyway, as it would not be a proper fit for their new life.
Once he stood up and quickly shook his legs, he dashed after his wife, although with her head start, Jacob was unlikely to catch up to her. Domino’s thin but fit frame made her a quick and nimble gal. Jacob could not recall catching up to her unless she wanted him to do so.
However, this time he finished just a few steps behind her in the shadow of the homestead’s porch, to his own surprise. Domino was leaning against the wooden support post, catching her breath. Usually, she could run for a longer distance without petering out. Was she alright?
“Guess that was a hell of a run after all,” Jacob said.
Domino wiped a slick of sweat from her forehead. “Guess so, huh?” She rubbed her stomach as she took a look at the home siding. “Damn, this place needs a little work, don’t you think?”
A little work? The homestead before them certainly could use more than that. From a distance, the house looked fine, even charming, with the wrap-around porch and sloping roof, topped by a second floor with its own sloped roof. But upon closer inspection, the wooden panels were in a clear state of disrepair, and the white paint was faded, frayed. The porch gutter also hung loose from its moorings.
“That’s what makes it perfect.” Jacob peeled off a loose sliver of siding. “We can remake this place into what we want. It’s going to be ours from bottom to top.”
“And, of course, it came with a cheap price tag,” Domino said with a grin.
“It had to.” Jacob peeled off another loose piece of siding. “If we wanted to start our new life out here, we had to take what we can get.” He pivoted off his right heel, turning himself toward the view of the Blue Ridge Mountains beyond the porch.
Domino left the post, her wooden heels making soft clomps on the porch’s surface as she approached her husband. She knew what he was thinking. “It’s beautiful,” she said with a sigh, “No more graffiti. No brick walls.” She waved her hand in front of her face. “No car exhaust.” She fished her hands around Jacob’s right arm, covering the ink tattoo that ran across his forearm. “No noise,” she said with a soothing whisper.
That last part especially appealed to Jacob. There was no one around for miles. They were a few yards off the nearest road. This property was bathed in blissful silence. It bore no resemblance to their old life in the busy suburbs of Washington D.C. Who cared if the house looked as if it had taken a beating?
His wife released her grip, uncovering his tattoo. Jacob had given up a lot to buy this house. He recently had had laser surgery to remove a tattoo that ran down the left side of his face. He could have taken off the tattoos on his arms as well, but he was not willing to spend another year up in the D.C. suburbs. It was time to leave.
The money Jacob would have used to remove his other tattoos instead went toward buying this farmland. He could live with the tattoos for longer, for years if necessary. With the expenses to come, from renovating the house to building the wooden fences that would surround his crop rows, Jacob could not imagine he would have money to remove the rest of his tattoos anytime soon.
Domino patted her stomach. “Jacob, I think our dream might be coming true sooner than you think.”
Jacob gazed at Domino. His eyes widened. Was she really hinting at what he was thinking of?
Domino grinned. “I have been feeling very hungry lately. Think I’m eating for two now?”
Jacob couldn’t believe it. He had been so focused on purchasing this homestead he didn’t figure his family was about to grow. Thank God I didn’t wait another year to buy a place out here, he thought.
“What do you think our first is going to be like?” Domino asked.
Jubilee’s fist slammed into the punching bag. Brandon held onto the bag with all of his strength. The bag was suspended from the ceiling by a chain, but Jubilee’s blow easily would have sent it flying into the back wall without someone to hold it. Brandon was intrigued. A nine-year-old boy bracing a punching bag against the strength of an athletic fifteen-year-old girl? He was curious to learn which of them would give out first.
The force of Jubilee’s blow slid Brandon back a few steps. That was a good hit, but not unexpected. Brandon knew his sister’s blows well. He had witnessed many of them over the past few years. Thankfully, he never was on the wrong end of any of them. He wouldn’t want to, even if he wore protective training gear.
Then she struck again. This time Brandon popped off the bag and fell to the soft carpeted floor.
Okay, he didn’t expect that big of a blow. Jubilee was in hard charging form this morning.
Brandon bounced back up. Jubilee was so into her routine she struck the bag again without Brandon holding onto it. The bag nearly flew right into Brandon’s face. Reacting quickly, Brandon rolled across the floor to avoid the swinging bag.
“Hit the pause button!” Brandon cried as he dashed back to the bag. Jubilee stopped.
After steadying the bag, he said, “Okay, go!”
Jubilee hit it a few more times before she stopped to catch her breath. Brandon was so relieved that his grip slipped. He dropped down flat onto the floor, but without hurting himself. He had learned from training with Jubilee how to take falls.
“Okay, I’m ready,” Jubilee said.
Brandon looked up at his sister’s tall stature. Brandon was sweating hard through his orange shirt and baggy shorts, but Jubilee only trickled a few drops down her muscled arms and legs. Her athletic clothing barely looked wrinkled, even from all the blows she just had thrown.
“Are you even human?” Brandon asked.
Jubilee rolled her eyes. “We’ve just started. You know how long I can go on the first round.”<
br />
“Yeah.” Brandon picked himself up. “Forever.” He straightened out his bunched-up shirt. “Mister Valance had to pick today not to come.”
Ordinarily, Jubilee’s trainer, Mister Mike Valance, would be here to shepherd her through her mixed martial arts training, but every now and then he had to take a rain check. When he did, Brandon would step in to help out Jubilee.
“Mister Valance’s daughter is turning thirteen today,” Jubilee replied.
Brandon’s cheeks burned. He didn’t know that. “Fine.” As he stretched out his arms, he thought of how to delay Jubilee from resuming punching. “Uh, have you come up with a name?” Brandon asked.
“A name? A name for what?” Jubilee asked.
“You know, your MMA fighting name,” Brandon replied, “How about, ‘The Jubilation?’” He spread out his arms over his head. “What do you think? I like it!”
With a smirk, Jubilee raised her fists. “I think I’m fine with my own name.”
Resigned to his fate, Brandon held on to the punching bag once more. This small room was built off the edge of the house, accessible through the home’s den, one of their father’s add-ons since he and Mom had moved in here. Their mother insisted that the punching bag not be in Jubilee’s bedroom because the teen would be too tempted to practice on it even through the night or when she should be doing her homework. Brandon could not be happier that his mom insisted on that. His room was next door to hers and he didn’t want to be serenaded with the sounds of pounding and shouting as he tried finishing his homework or working on one his building projects. He was fond of making models or devices with pulleys and tackles. His mom said he had a wonderfully creative mind.
But with today being Saturday, they were off from homeschooling. Instead of their mother giving them their lessons, they were free to indulge in whatever leisure activities they wished, provided their chores were completed.
Pow! Brandon went sprawling to the floor.
Activities that included Jubilee’s training.
A little dazed, Brandon stood back up and grabbed onto the bag. But Jubilee, mercifully, did not throw another punch. She stopped to catch her breath again.
“Hey,” Brandon said, “we should…” He quit talking for a moment to catch a deep breath. He wanted to think of something else that would catch his sister’s interest. “We should go to…to the pond! The bluegills, they…”
“Right. They’re spawning now, aren’t they?” Jubilee asked.
Brandon nodded. “Want to grab some cane poles?”
Jubilee pulled off her gloves. “Yeah!”
Brandon laughed. He was itching to go outside, and with the coming of spring, the bluegill fish in Dad’s large pond already had begun spawning.
Brandon rubbed his face. Cane pole fishing was also somewhat less painful as well.
Brandon was the first out the homestead’s back door. Upon leaving the canopy of the back porch, bright light greeted him, or more like assaulted him. He shut his eyes for a moment. “Ow! Thanks, sun.”
After quickly fishing out his sunglasses from his khaki shorts pocket, Brandon could look around without the sunlight’s interference. Even with as much land as his father owned, the forest still seemed to loom close due to the tall old trees beyond the Averys’s property. It gave the land an almost magical feel.
Jubilee emerged from the doorway with her own cane pole in hand. She had changed into a pair of jeans and a yellow T-shirt with faded dirt stains.
“You should have brought your gloves.” Brandon chuckled. “You could have had a boxing match with the fish.”
“Why fight an opponent who doesn’t have a chance of winning?” Jubilee placed the pole over her right shoulder. “Besides, if I’m going to punch anything in the water, I want it to be a shark.”
“Shark Puncher!” Brandon pointed to his sis. “That could be your ring name!”
The pair jogged out from under the shadow of their home. Brandon cast a departing look at the solar panels lining the roof, at the wind turbine that laid off to the side, gently spinning with the midmorning breeze, and at the small shed that housed a generator wired to their house. Up until the time Brandon had had friends over to the house, he never thought their setup was unusual. What, other people didn’t generate their own electricity? Unbelievable! In the past few years, he had begun understanding how special his family was.
And how some people think we’re oddballs, Brandon thought. That partially fueled Brandon’s desire to indulge in the weird and the strange. He liked thinking of himself as apart from the rest of the human race. Which, given they lived such a self-sustained life out here, they probably were.
Soon they had raced past the line of crops and made it to the pond close to the west border of the Avery lands. The pond’s water fluttered slightly as soft wind blew over the surface.
Brandon fitted the string to his pole. The cane poles easily would drop their lures into the pond. The two of them wouldn’t have to do anything other than sit there and wait for a bite from the bluegill fish below.
Oddly, Jubilee’s attention was not fixed on the pond. She was staring off into the wooded lands beyond.
“Jubes?” Brandon asked, “What is it?”
His sister looked like a wary animal scouting the land for prey. Brandon had seen her like this before when Dad had taken them into the woods. Did she suspect there was trouble out there? The tall fence that lay a short distance away should be enough to keep away predators.
“I thought I saw something fly through the air,” Jubilee said, “I barely saw it.” She turned away. “Maybe it was nothing.”
“You got jittery over a bird?” Brandon asked.
“I don’t know.” Jubilee shrugged. “It didn’t look like a bird. It…oh, forget it.”
Brandon turned back to the pond. Jubilee was worrying over nothing. What could happen here?
Jacob waited until his two children reached the pond before he turned back to the table with coffee in his hand. When the sound of his daughter’s punches died down, Jacob figured a trip to the pond was almost inevitable. The children’s time outside would keep things quiet around here for a while.
He sat down at the table where his wife waited for him. She wiggled her finger in the air. “I see a white hair.”
Jacob sat down. “Liar,” he said. After setting down his coffee, he ran a hand through his very short hair. Even in the sunlight pouring through the window, it was tough to tell if his hair was whitening. “If you really wanted to remind me of my age, you’d just talk my ear off about your plans for Jubilee’s sixteenth birthday party.”
“Oh, is that coming up?” Domino raised her head and looked away. Jacob chuckled at Domino’s mock display of ignorance.
Jacob sat down, maneuvering his coffee so it did not sit on one of the catalogs littering the table. “Boy, this place is messy.”
“Well, somebody needs to make time to go through these.” Domino dangled one of the catalogs from her fingers. “I think this one is, what? Six years old?”
“It’s not that old.”
Domino playfully tossed it at him. “Whatever. You’re a pack rat. You’re afraid you’ll see something you like and that you won’t get a chance to order it again if you throw out the catalog.”
Jacob sipped from his drink. The mess of catalogs before them had served as their pipeline for all the things they could not procure from their life in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The catalogs were not large, but thanks to Jacob’s delays in going through them, they had piled up.
As Jacob pushed aside a pair of catalogs, his fingers grazed an open envelope containing a letter that he absolutely would have disposed of if it was not important. He couldn’t hide a glare at the envelope.
Domino caught his gaze of anger. “Cowell doesn’t have anything on us, Jacob.” She leaned a little closer. “He’s just a pain in the ass.”
Jacob gripped one of the catalogs. “A pain in the ass who could cause us to lose
our children.”
“Like I said, he doesn’t have anything on us,” Domino replied.
Jacob clutched the catalog tighter. “He keeps claiming we’re shutting in our children, particularly Jubilee, that we’re depriving her from interacting with other girls her age.”
“That’s bullshit,” Domino said, “Has he seen Richland High? We had Jubilee in their extracurricular self-defense class last year. She’d still be there if it wasn’t for budget cuts.”
“I know that. I told him that and it went in one ear and out the other. His problem is with Jubilee’s lack of close friends. She doesn’t have a best friend, anyone she’s close to. Her interests just aren’t the same as other girls.”
“Jay, all girls are different. Even the ones who look and sound alike. Nobody can judge her because she hasn’t found her…” Domino chuckled. “…her ‘pack’ yet.”
Jacob chuckled. “Pack? What, girls are like wolves now?”
“Sometimes.” Domino wiggled her eyebrows before taking another sip.
Jacob’s laughter quickly faded. “And then there’s our homeschooling curriculum. He’s been going after that too…”
Domino, setting down her coffee, interrupted him. “Our homeschool curriculum is fine. It’s well within the state’s standards. Don’t worry about Cowell. We’ve raised our kids just fine. It’s far better than bringing up our children in a neighborhood with graffiti on the walls and cursing and guns and drugs…” She sighed. “We built ourselves a nice, safe little world for our little ones. Who could be against that?”
Jacob smiled, though he knew their world wasn’t quite “safe.” They still had to deal with the occasional wild animal that encroached close to their lands. Their grounds also were not totally safe from human intruders, although those were far and few between.
