Pulse ; No Power

by Skylar Finn

  Instinctively, the group put up their hands, as if Walt was actually a cop.

  “Good,” Walt said, aiming the gun at the ceiling again. “Here is what’s going to happen next. The six of you” —he gestured to Trip’s supposed friends— “have exactly five minutes to pack up whatever stuff you brought with you here. Don’t take anything that doesn’t belong to you. I’ll give you each a bottle of water and two protein bars. Then you will leave Trip’s house, and you will not come back. You are no longer welcome here. If you attempt to resist or return to this house at any given time, I will make sure you regret it. Trip, is this acceptable to you?”

  Everyone turned their eyes on Trip. His friends varied from hopeful to helpless. Eden begged silently with her eyes for Trip to forgive her lapse with his Vicodin. Adam’s gaze flickered between Trip and Walt, trying to figure out when the bond between the two men was forged. Israel looked defeated. He knew Trip’s answer before it came out of his mouth. For too long, he and the others had been taking advantage of the successful actor. Time had come for the tables to turn.

  Trip wrote one word on his notepad. Yes.

  “You heard the man,” Walt said. “Or rather, you read what he wrote. Five minutes. Pack your things.”

  No one moved.

  “Now!” Walt ordered.

  They jumped at the sharpness of the command. Then they shuffled out of the room. Some of them, Eden and the two nameless boys, threw Trip one last pleading look as they left, hoping he might change his mind. Trip ignored them. He didn’t watch them leave, instead inspecting the extent of his bruising in a handheld mirror. Ailani was the last one left.

  “Ailani, can you help me supervise?” Walt asked. He kept his eye on the group heading down the stairs. “I don’t want any surprises downstairs.”

  Before Ailani agreed, she rested a hand on Trip’s shoulder. “Are you okay?” she asked him. “Is this okay?”

  She wanted Trip to have a chance to answer without the pressure of so many people watching him. He wrote another note on the pad.

  They aren’t really my friends, and they’re endangering us.

  “You might never see them again,” Ailani warned.

  Good riddance.

  She surprised herself by kissing his forehead, one of the only non-bruised parts of his face. It wasn’t in any way a romantic kiss. It was more motherly than anything else. For some reason, she felt the need to protect Trip. It had always been her duty, though she never realized the full extent of her responsibility on the movie set.

  It took a little longer than five minutes to evacuate Trip’s friends from the house. For one thing, they dawdled as they packed up their belongings, begging Walt to reconsider. They tried everything. They threatened him. They pleaded. They bargained. It was like watching each of them surf through the five stages of grief and back again in no particular order. Ailani snuck away to the wine cellar to fetch the promised water bottles and snack bars. When she returned, Walt had made the actors and models line up along the wall of the foyer.

  “Hands out of your pockets,” Walt ordered. “I want to be able to see them at all times.”

  Once Ailani handed out the water and snacks, Walt commanded the group to leave the house. He forced them to walk in single file down the front steps and across the lawn, taking the shortest path to the gate that kept Trip’s estate safe from the neighbors. Ailani took the lead, and Walt brought up the back. Ailani opened the gate manually and held it as the banned actors and models took their leave. Eden, the last one in line, fell to her knees and grasped Ailani’s shirt.

  “Please,” she sobbed. “Don’t do this to us. I can’t survive out there! I don’t know how to make a fire or shoot a squirrel. Do I look like Katniss Everdeen to you?”

  Ailani swallowed the lump in her throat. She knew what it meant to cast all these people onto the streets. They would either find a way back to their old homes, if those homes hadn’t already been claimed by others more desperate, or they wouldn’t find a place to stay at all. They would struggle to find food and clean water. They might get injured or die. In some ways, Ailani and Walt were playing God. They were making a decision to keep provisions for themselves rather than sharing them with others. They were putting themselves first, and by doing so, possibly condemning the others. Could Ailani deal with that for the rest of her life, however long that may be?

  She pulled Eden’s hands off her shirt. “I’m sorry. You can’t stay here anymore. Take my advice. Don’t be stupid. Learn how to survive. That may or may not include sticking close to your brother and his friends.”

  Adam, up ahead, let the others pass him. “Eden, let’s go. They don’t want us here anymore.”

  So Eden dragged herself up from the ground and went through the gates. The six of them trudged up the road. Walt and Ailani watched them go, but it wasn’t until they had disappeared over the hill that Walt lowered the gun. Ailani kept her eye on the dangerous hunk of metal.

  “Where did you get that?” she asked him.

  “It’s Trip’s,” he answered, tucking the gun into the back of his jeans with a practiced gesture. “I found it when I was snooping around the house.”

  “I didn’t figure you for a gun person.”

  Walt locked the gate and shook it to make sure no one could open it from the outside. “I’m not. Actually, I hate guns. They’re stupid and violent, and most of the people I know that own them only own them to make themselves feel powerful.”

  “And yet you’re toting a gun around.”

  He draped his arm around Ailani’s shoulders and guided her up the driveway. “I never intended on firing that gun, not unless you or I were in mortal danger. Sometimes, you have to make choices you don’t want to make. I wouldn’t touch a gun unless I thought I had to. Today, I thought I had to.”

  Ailani wrapped her arm around Walt’s waist and tucked her head beneath his chin. When the gun tucked into his belt brushed against her wrist, she pulled away. “Where did you learn about guns anyway?”

  “My father.” Walt’s tone changed abruptly as he walked Ailani into the house. “He was a man’s man, the type of guy who thought owning a gun—several guns—made you stronger and bigger than the others. The first time he took me hunting, I was five years old. I hated it. I hated being wet and cold in the woods. I hated the weight of a rifle across my back or in my hands. I hated the look in my father’s eyes when he spotted a deer or a boar. It made me sick. Literally sick.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Ailani said. “You don’t talk about your father often.”

  “For good reason.” Walt locked the front door and set the alarm. Though they were out of water, Trip’s solar panels were still going strong. The electricity hadn’t shut off yet. If someone tried to break into the house, the alarm would go off. At the very least, it would give Ailani, Walt, and Trip some warning to hide from intruders. “My father thought too highly of himself.”

  “You talk about him in the past tense. Is he—?”

  “Dead?” Walt finished bitterly for her. “No, he’s not. But he’s dead to me.” He pulled the gun out of his waistband and inspected it. Now that Trip’s friends were gone, he didn’t hold it the way it was meant to be held. He kept it flat in his palms, not one of his fingers neared the trigger. “I’ve never shot one like this. Other than the basics, I shouldn’t know anything about it: how it feels to depress the trigger, what the recoil is going to be like, anything like that.” He scrubbed his fingerprints off the metal with the hem of his shirt. “But when I held it upstairs, I knew that I could fire it if it meant protecting you, me, and even Trip. That’s what scares me.”

  “Disarm it,” Ailani said. “Take out the bullets.”

  It took him a second to figure out the handgun’s technicalities, but it wasn’t long before he managed to eject the cartridge. He offered both the cartridge and the empty shell of the gun to her. She shook her head.

  “Keep it,” she said. “You know how to use it. If anything goes w
rong, I trust you can handle yourself with the gun. It’s like you said. It’s the end of the world. We do what we have to in order to survive.”

  6

  With significantly less people in the house, the food situation was much less stressful. Later that day, once Trip had had enough time to sleep off the drama of the morning, Walt and Ailani took him to the wine cellar to show him what they had done with the food. After a decent dose of standard ibuprofen, Trip’s swelling had gone down enough to let him talk, albeit with a heavy lisp.

  “It’s honestly fine,” he said through his puffy lips as Ailani and Walt apologized over and over for how things had escalated that morning. “It had to be done. I can’t believe it took me this long to realize what shitty friends they were.”

  They came up with a plan to make the remaining food last as long as possible. By their calculations, they had enough left for about two and a half weeks. That was barring any major blips or emergencies.

  “We could stretch it to a month,” Walt suggested. “But we would be significantly cutting our daily calorie intake. It wouldn’t be comfortable, but we can do it.”

  “What happens after we run out of food?” Trip asked.

  “Hopefully, the government gets a rescue attempt up and running by the time we’re out of food,” Ailani said. “If not, I guess we’re going to have to see what’s left out there.”

  “I’d rather not,” Walt added.

  “Me either,” said Trip.

  “I’m not a fan of the idea myself.” Ailani uncorked one of Trip’s many bottles of wine and swigged straight from the bottle. “But if we get desperate, we’ll have to do it. We could probably barter with Trip’s wine. I bet some people would be stupid enough to trade food for alcohol.”

  She passed the bottle to Trip. He swirled it around. “This is a vintage red. You’re supposed to let it breathe.”

  “Breathe, schmreathe. Just drink it. Or don’t. You probably shouldn’t mix Vicodin and alcohol.”

  Trip frowned at the wine and passed it on to Walt without drinking. “Let’s focus on preserving what we have now. I propose we stick to Walt’s plan for the first week. If we haven’t heard anything from the state by then, we’ll restrict our calories further. Deal?”

  Walt held up the wine bottle in a salute. “Deal.”

  Five days passed without news from the state of California or anywhere else. Every day, Ailani scanned the radio channels for a hint of civilization. Every once in a while, she found an independent broadcast by an amateur radio specialist. Most of them were hiding out somewhere with a limited supply of food and water, just like Ailani, Trip, and Walt. They occasionally reported news from the outside world, a gunfight on the street or a strand of watered-down gossip from a government official. Any scrap of hope was torn away as soon as Ailani turned off the radio. The situation remained the same: they were all fighting for a place in what was left of the world, and no one was helping them do it.

  Three months ago, Ailani would have killed for some free time away from her job. Now, without the distraction of movie production, she found herself confronting boredom with a whole new perspective on the state of mind. Boredom could kill you, she decided. It could creep up your back and infiltrate your body at the base of your neck. From there, it took root in your spine and spread through the rest of your body like a fast-acting paralysis. Out of everything—starvation, dehydration, possible bodily harm if things went south—Ailani believed boredom might kill her first.

  Being confined to Trip’s enormous house wasn’t nearly as exciting as Ailani once thought it might be. Yes, he had a swimming pool, but it was becoming harder and harder to maintain with each passing day. He also had a home gym, but Ailani could only train for so long before she felt like her muscles were going to fall off. Trip also had an extensive library, but most of the books were either rare editions of classics Ailani would only read if they had been assigned for a class or books about acting. She did read a few of those to understand what shaped Trip and his cohorts as human beings throughout the course of their careers. She learned a lot about mouth exercises and the Meisner technique but didn’t find anything to explain why some actors morphed into assholes while others managed to stay rooted to the ground.

  On the upside, they also had each other’s company. They made a habit of eating meals together, often attempting to craft new recipes from their limited resources. They played cards, told childhood stories, and engaged in Trip’s favorite improvisation games. Walt performed a stand-up comedy routine he’d been hiding in his back pocket for several months but never had the guts to try out at an open mic night. Whether he was actually funny or if Trip and Ailani had simply drank a lot of wine that night, they probably would never find out. Despite days of goofing off, the weight of reality loomed on the edge of Ailani’s mind, no matter how much she tried to push it away. When this happened, she went out to surf.

  Sage, the girl who’d been staying in the caravan with her boyfriend, had disappeared a few days before. She vanished without a trace or saying a goodbye. The caravan was gone too, and Ailani assumed they’d run out of resources on the beach. The beach itself was getting more and more crowded with every passing day. People camped on the shore, bathed in the ocean, and roasted food over bonfires. Ailani wondered where they were getting fresh water and meat to keep them satiated.

  On the sixth day after kicking Trip’s friends out, Ailani headed out to the beach for her usual morning surf. It was one of the few things she still ventured outside to do. Walt had deemed leaving the safety of Trip’s house was not a good choice, but Ailani couldn’t stay cooped up inside for long before cabin fever set in. She picked her way through the campsites, doing her best not to upset anyone’s belongings or step on any fingers. Mostly everyone was asleep. The sun had just begun to cross the horizon. Ailani was the only one who woke up early enough to catch the dawn waves, except for one grizzly man who stood in the shallows with a piece of fishing wire.

  As Ailani waxed her board, she watched the man. He was tall and gangly with bright white hair and leathery skin, the marks of someone who spent too much time in the sun without enough protection. He didn’t have a fishing pole, just the single piece of line. To cast it, he whipped his wrist so quickly, it looked like his bones might pop right out of his skin. The hook at the end of the line flew across the water and dropped daintily below the surface. Then the man slowly wrapped the line around his fist to reel it in.

  “Do you catch anything like that?” Ailani asked, tucking her board under her arm as she joined the man in the shallows.

  He raised a suspicious eyebrow at her. “Most days, if I get out here early enough and there’s no one stirring up the water.” He glared at her surfboard. “Like you.”

  “I’ll stay out of your way,” she promised.

  “Where’d you come from anyway?” he asked. “I’ve seen you around in the mornings, but I never noticed your camp.”

  “My friend owns the big house up there,” she said, pointing to Trip’s annoyingly obnoxious mansion. “We’ve been camping there.”

  The man examined the mansion with pursed lips. “Lucky you. Do you have food up there?”

  Ailani hesitated. This was not information to share with strangers on the beach. “Not really. My buddy’s a big athlete though, so we’ve been living off protein powder for weeks. That’s why I was asking you about the fish. I’m dying for some real food. Something with actual substance. I think I’ve getting scurvy.”

  The man grunted in acknowledgment. “If you had scurvy, you’d know. Your teeth get all fucked up. Look—” He pulled back his cheek and showed Ailani an empty hole in his gums where his molar should be. “I figured that out firsthand.”

  “Wow.” Ailani tried to sound impressed rather than disgusted. “That’s rough. How’d you get rid of it?”

  “Started eating my vegetables wherever I could find them,” the man said. “Out of trash cans, stuff restaurants disposed of at the end of the day, rich
people’s gardens. Why do you think I came out here as soon as the EMP hit? Resources, kid.”

  “I wish Trip kept a garden,” Ailani lamented. “I’d kill for a head of lettuce.”

  The man paused his fishing attempt to point at another house down the way. “See that ugly place with the sloped roof? The owners dipped out, and they have a ton of greens in the backyard. I’m willing to share, but it’s gotta be a trade-off.”

  “All I have is protein powder and a ton of antique wine,” Ailani admitted, though it wasn’t the whole truth. “Not sure how much good those would do you, and I don’t want to pull the wool over your eyes and pretend otherwise.”

  The fisherman winked at her. “That’s the mark of a decent person right there. Be careful out in the water. Not sure how safe it’s going to be from here on out.”

  Ailani thanked him and ran out into the surf. As she jumped onto her board and paddled out, she savored the refreshing splash across her face. There was something cleansing about being out in the ocean. No matter the situation on land, Ailani could always count on the water to support her. Something was different today though. There was an odor she couldn’t place, one that seemed to have no cause or origin.

  She cast any thought of the weird smell aside and caught her first wave of the morning. It was a pretty pathetic one. The weather wasn’t doing her any favors. The sets were coming in around one or two feet high. Baby waves. Good for beginners and longboards. Terrible for adrenaline-chasing short boarders like Ailani. Bored with the slow roll of the ocean, she jumped out and paddle farther out for a shot at something deeper. It was useless. Everything coming in was tiny and slow, and that lingering smell was starting to pick at Ailani’s nostrils. She wrinkled her nose. What the hell was that, and was it getting worse the longer she stayed in the water?

  She sniffed her armpits. Nope. It wasn’t her own body odor, but the scent did seem to come at her from all directions. She picked up another small wave and rode it toward the shore on her belly. As she did so, something surfaced next to her and rode along with her. At first, she didn’t react. If it was an animal—a sea turtle or a shark—the worse thing to do was react suddenly or violently. It was safest to be aware of it but leave it be. That way, Ailani could get to shore safely.