Protecting Our Home

by Colton Lively

  “Yeah,” she said, picking fragments of glass out of her hair. “Is he dead?”

  It was a simple thing to confirm. Already as white as alabaster, the kid still had his eyes open, but no pulse or breath. Cody recovered the police weapons and, guided only by a sense of propriety, locked them inside the tray of an open cash register. “He was trying a hold-up when those two cops interrupted,” Cody explained to Mary as she inched toward him. “Kinda glad he wasn’t professionally trained.”

  “Yeah, me too,” said Mary.

  As she appeared, Cody’s panic mushroomed suddenly, but she saw the terror on his face and said, “It’s wine, honey. Just wine. I’m okay.” They hugged hard, but there was too much to do. “See to that guy,” she said, motioning to the bloody-faced storeowner on the ground.

  “Sir, are you conscious?” Cody asked, moving toward him.

  “Yeah,” he managed to say, spitting blood and at least one broken tooth onto the floor. “That sonofabitch was gonna…”

  Directly getting down to business, Cody stated their situation. “We need some basic supplies. Then we’re going to get our kids and head out of here. Can you help us?” he said, helping the man to his feet.

  He was woozy and a little unsteady but managed to blink away the discomfort. “Guess I owe you, don’t I?” Three minutes later, Cody and Mary had shoved cans and bottles into every spare corner and side pocket of their bags. “What are we gonna do?” the owner asked them. “I mean, us regular folks who aren’t Rambo and G.I. Jane?”

  Cody had nothing for him but the most rudimentary advice. “Reload your shotgun, find cover, help people if you can, but be prepared for the worst.”

  “The worst?” he scoffed, gingerly touching his damaged face. “Brother, this is the worst, ain’t it?”

  They would leave the back way, rather than navigate around bodies and risk tear gas exposure. “Thanks,” Cody said simply. “Stay safe.”

  Only a chain-link fence stood between the back lot of the grocery store and the school’s soccer field. “Okay, this way,” said Cody, leading his wife to a corner where some of the fencing had already been damaged. “Guess some of the kids use this as a shortcut.”

  “That guy was nice,” Mary said. “The owner. He didn’t have to give us all that stuff.”

  “He was good to us,” agreed Cody, “but he was dead wrong. This ain’t the worst.” He lifted the stretch of fence, and ushered Mary underneath, shoving bags and duffels after her. “This ain’t even close.”

  7

  Flannigan Unified High School H-hour + 4 (5:10 pm EDT)

  As they crossed the soccer field, the deepening smell of burning wood and paper left Cody and Mary in no doubt that the town’s many fires would soon be out of control. It wasn’t until they came closer to the school buildings, a broad U-shape with the big sports complex at its open end, that they saw what was happening: there were serious fires among the buildings, entirely absent any response from the emergency services.

  “If no one can call,” Mary had already realized, “responders can’t show up to help. Right now, even if they knew, no one can even move.”

  “Or be in twelve places at once,” said Cody. “They’re going to lose some of these buildings.”

  The fire had begun somewhere in the facilities building that formed the northern side of the U-shaped trio. Likely sparked by kitchen appliances, their components incinerated by the power surge, it was spreading with savage speed, threatening the whole campus.

  Farthest from the growing conflagration was the slab-sided gym building. “They’re supposed to evacuate to fresh air and stay outside,” Cody remembered. “Where the hell are they all? In there?”

  “Could have all gone home,” Mary speculated. “It’s been,” she checked her watch, “nearly four hours since the spike.”

  “Even the kids with cars would have been stuck here,” he pointed out.

  “I’m really hoping there weren’t groups of school kids trying to navigate through the middle of Flannigan today,” said Mary, shuddering at the memory of gunfire and the two inert, bloodied cops laying on the floor of the grocery store. Had any of that been real? Had her husband actually just saved her life by killing a madman wielding a shotgun? Not now. We’ll figure that out later. First, find the kids.

  They were a hundred yards from the gym, able now to see that the U-shaped trio of teaching buildings would shortly be consumed by flames, when a voice called out.

  “You guys parents?” It was one of the school staff, a balding man in a white shirt smudged by perspiration and events. “We couldn’t just let the kids go,” he explained as they came closer. “Everyone’s in the gym.”

  The man was at the end of his rope, Cody saw as he introduced himself. “We’re looking for the Russell kids—Emma and Jacob,” he said. “Are they here?”

  The man shrugged and pointed toward the gym. “Try in there, maybe you’ll see them. But be careful, the lights are all out.”

  “Figures,” said Cody, and led the way into the gym. Opening the double doors, he was met by a deeply strange scene. Three thousand children were sitting in the bleachers or groups on the basketball court, in a gloomy semi-darkness. Intending to host all of the school’s sports events under lights, the gym’s designers hadn’t thought windows a necessity; as a result, the kids had been forced to endure nearly four hours without the sun, reduced to modern-day troglodytes. They clustered in self-supportive groups, mostly talking quietly, although some were crying, and arguments flared up here and there. The kids looked haggard, already worn out, and worried for their families and each other.

  “What the hell…” Cody began but focused instead on their objective. “All right, where do we find eleventh and ninth grades?” He began approaching people, both staff and students, but no one had taken a proper roll call, and the different classes had become mixed up. “You don’t even know who’s here and who’s not?” Cody barked at a young teacher.

  The woman instantly started crying again. “We couldn’t print the class lists… nothing would turn on…”

  “Take it easy,” Mary advised, pulling Cody away from the distraught teacher, who was surely as much a subject of this mayhem as everyone else. “They’re already terrified. No one needs to see some angry welder coming in here and bullying them.”

  Cody tensed his jaw, then deliberately tried to relax it. I already killed one asshole today. If I don’t lay eyes on my kids in two minutes flat…

  “That’s Penny Landsdale,” said Mary decisively, and before Cody could even turn around, Mary was striding across the basketball court, dodging kneeling children and errant school bags. “Penny?”

  Her eyes reddened, the teenager nevertheless brightened when she saw Mary. “Wow, I…” she began, “I thought maybe they weren’t letting parents in. Nobody has come for us.”

  “Nobody?” Mary said, kneeling with Penny and a group of five other girls her age.

  “A few parents showed up at the beginning, but the teachers said all the cars have stopped working. Is that true?”

  Cody caught up and almost yelled his only question. “Where’s Emma?”

  Penny pointed to the front row of the bleachers, where a desk sat and some kind of paper-based administration was underway. “There. Is it true about the cars?” she repeated.

  “Cars, buses, planes, trains,” Mary told her. “Everything is shut down.”

  “What are we gonna do?” said another of the kids. “You guys, you’re… leaving town?”

  “The big bags full of supplies and the tent clued you in, huh?” Mary said, trying to bring an iota of levity. “Yeah, my husband has some kind of plan.” Speaking of which… “Cody?”

  He’d reached the desk by the edge of the court, where he’d physically picked up the only person who seemed to know what they were doing, a blonde who’d been taking names and trying to organize a mass, distributed sleepover.

  “Emma, thank God,” Mary cried and joined the embrace. “Are yo
u okay?”

  Sobbing with relief, Emma reappeared from inside the folds of Cody’s jacket. “Yeah, yeah, I’m okay.”

  “Jacob?” was Cody’s next question.

  “With his friends on the other side. I told them to keep families together, but they wanted everyone arranged by class or age.”

  “Doesn’t sound like they were ready for this kind of thing,” Cody observed. “Why on earth schools don’t practice more for emergencies, I’ll never know…”

  “Not now, honey,” Mary said bluntly. She kissed Emma’s forehead. “Let’s find your brother.”

  “Take Kendra with you,” she said, delegating one of her erstwhile assistants. “Her little brother is in the same class. She knows where they are. I’ve got to try to finish this.” She returned to the paper exercise she’d begun, trying to pair up students who would walk to some of the community’s nearest homes and spend the night there. “The sun’s gonna set soon. I want as many people as possible to get to safety before that.”

  Proud and impressed, but not actually surprised that his daughter had taken control of the impossible when no one else could, Cody watched Mary and Kendra disappear into the crowds and gloom of the gym.

  Without even the light of a cellphone to guide them, it was a torturous journey through knots of scared children. Kendra led them up concrete stairs and around rows of seating crammed with more of the school’s students. “GeekLord?” she called. “Who’s seen him? Anyone?”

  It only took another moment, and then Mary found that a black-haired, bespectacled child was running at her. Once they collided, Jacob held his mother as though he might never let go.

  “We got you, little man,” Mary said soothingly. “This is crazy right now, but we’re going to be okay.” For a long minute, Jacob just let himself cry, certain that he’d be useless to their coming effort without giving his emotions an escape valve.

  Back at the desk, Emma was arguing with the only other member of staff they’d seen, the frightened young teacher. “Nobody is allowed into the facilities building,” the teacher said. “It’s on fire, Emma. I don’t care if that’s the last fresh food in all of New Hampshire. No one is going in there.”

  Almost in defiance of the prohibition, Cody began to entertain a hare-brained plan. A quick dash into the facilities building would give him access to the canned goods, rice, and other perishables they’d need. At this rate, he could see, some three thousand people were going to be without an evening meal, with no plans for what came next. They’d need to grab those stores before they went up in smoke.

  He even went back to the entrance doors to take a look, with important parts of his brain already suggesting that if he sprinted in there and got back without telling Mary, she wouldn’t have time to stop him.

  Then, two things occurred to him at once. Firstly, even if he succeeded, Mary would excoriate him with her unkindest tone—ironically, something he’d always called “The Flamethrower”—probably in front of thousands of children, including Emma and Jacob. And secondly, a rank amateur could see that the facilities building was soon going to be a lethal ruin; tall flames reached upward and outward from the second-floor windows, rendering the roof invisible amid swirling smoke.

  As he watched, the wind took hold of the climbing tongues of flame and twisted them westward, accompanied by an intense burst of heat. Debris from the roof—blackened stretches of cladding and smaller wisps of other material Cody couldn’t guess at—started accumulating in the space between and above the buildings. The fire seemed to be making its own weather, forcing burning cinders upward, where the winds caught and distributed them with reckless speed.

  The prospect of food was forgotten. There was only one thing to do, and he had to do it immediately.

  8

  Flannigan Unified High School

  H-Hour + 4h 35 mins (5:35 pm EDT)

  “Where the hell are all the staff?” Cody demanded of the young teacher when he returned from his recon. “I only see a handful.”

  The answer almost sent him psychotic. “Most of them are adjuncts. You know, paid hourly? When school was canceled, a lot of them just walked home.”

  Narrowly restraining himself from drawing his firearm in sheer frustration, Cody found a more useful way to respond to the emergency. “You got a loudhailer?” he said.

  “It’s in the coach’s office, but it’s busted.”

  “Then help me get some quiet,” Cody commanded, before realizing that bringing large groups of unruly children to silence was a specialty of high school teachers. A mix of clapping, shouting, hollering, and begging gradually reduced the din until Cody could project his voice above it.

  “I need everyone to listen,” he shouted. “Can you all hear me?”

  “Yeah,” came the nervous reply, along with a couple of inquiries from the older students: “Who the hell is this guy?”

  “My name’s Cody Russell. Some of you know my kids, Emma and Jacob.”

  “Who, GeekLord?” said someone with more of a sense of humor than the occasion warranted.

  “I’ve got bad news and worse news. I’m sorry, but your school is going to burn down completely.”

  The reaction was unexpected. Perhaps a third of the students, mostly those with only a year or two left, began cheering as though Flannigan Unified had won the state championship.

  “That includes this building,” Cody said, refusing to rise to the bait, and this time, there was no approval from the school’s seniors. “It’s a matter of time. We’ll be all right until the fire reaches all this wood,” he said, waving around at the bleachers and the court, “but I’m prepared to bet that your fire suppression system is out. No firefighters are coming. So, we have to leave the gym, and we’re gonna assemble on the soccer pitch.”

  “But we’re safe here!” someone tried.

  “Yeah! It’s crazy outside.”

  “What if it rains?”

  “When can we go home?”

  He held up his hands, but the questions kept coming.

  “Who’d you say you are?”

  “Where’s the Principal?”

  This, at least, was a reasonable inquiry. Glancing to the frightened teacher who seemed now to offer virtually the only staff participation in this debacle, he received only the grimmest news. “A big group of the staff went to tackle the fire…” Then she shook her head.

  “I want everyone to get ready to move,” Cody said, trying to project his voice despite the echoing questions and complaints. “Youngest first, class by class. Stick together, and when you get outside…”

  It was no use. Sufficient of the students were skeptical of his plan that they were forming an impenetrable auditory barrier. If no one could hear him, they’d evacuate too quickly, or in the wrong order, for all he knew, trampling each other in the process. With deep reluctance, he reached under his arm to bring out the only tool that might shape the situation.

  The effect of the single gunshot was sudden and absolute silence, and Cody leaped into it. “Shut up and listen!” he yelled. “You’ve got questions and opinions, but now’s the time to do as you’re told. You’ll be safe if you follow my instructions. I want to hear a ‘Yes, sir’ from every single one of you, right now.”

  “Yes, sir,” the kids responded sheepishly. The only person not cowed by the display was Mary, who had the look of someone who’d sooner wrestle the gun from Cody’s hands than let him do that again.

  “One more time?”

  “Yes, sir!” they said with impressive coordination for such new recruits.

  “Good job. You don’t have to be silent, but I want whispering only until you’re outside, okay?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “So, what are you gonna do?” he asked them, almost smiling.

  “Whisper,” they replied; compared to the din, it was a calm susurrus of sound.

  “Appreciated.” He quickly coordinated with Emma and the remaining staff, agreeing on an exit plan. Three thousand kids couldn�
�t safely leave altogether, but they still had to hurry. It took three frantic minutes, with lots of messages passed along the lines of students in an unusually consequential game of “Telephone,” but they were actually getting organized. “Good going, everyone. Okay, we’re gonna open the…”

  Everything shook, even the floor, and there was a horrendous noise from outside. Mary stepped toward him, “Cody, wait…”

  But he opened one of the doors and was greeted by a vision of hell. The facilities building was collapsing inward, suddenly undermined by a terrible change within. Propelled as if by a huge explosion, pieces of debris still hung at the top of their curves, well over a hundred feet in the air. Even before Cody could figure out where they would come down, chunks of flame began to land around him. Some hit the gym’s roof, others landed on the soccer field, and still, more burning fragments littered the parking lot, threatening to start more fires among the many parked vehicles.

  “Jesus. Got to be the propane tanks,” he reasoned and motioned for Mary to join him at the door. “We gotta go, right?”

  “If we moved out now, the kids might get hit by falling debris,” she said, her face ashen as she surveyed the ruinous damage. “But if we stay here and roof catches fire…”

  “…It might collapse on top of us all.”

  He hated having to delay, but there was no choice. “We have to wait just a minute more,” he said to the gym full of scared kids, closing the door firmly and trying to sound calm despite the awful scene outside.

  “What’s going on?” a hundred people asked at once.

  Deciding it was better to level with them all, Cody took advantage of the enforced pause and the commendable level of quiet. “I’m gonna lay it on you. But I have to give a warning: this won’t be easy to hear.”