Moving quietly to the first door, Jake put his ear to it and heard faint rustling behind it that sent chills up his spine and alarms blaring in his head. He took a deep breath and released it slowly, then he raised his hand and knocked softly.
“Is there anyone in here?” he asked in the friendliest tone he could muster. “My name is Jake, and I don’t mean you any harm. I’m just out here trying to survive like you. So, if you’re in there, maybe we can—”
The doorknob turned, and the door flew open. Jake jerked back with a gasp, crashing against the wall as he aimed the flashlight into the room, fully expecting to see some maniac coming for him. But a moment passed, and no one sprung from the darkness.
Someone cleared their throat, and Jake lowered the flashlight to reveal a young girl of about ten or eleven standing there with a fearful yet defiant look on her face. She was dressed in a plain T-shirt and jean shorts, and she had a head of dark curls pulled to the side with a hair clip. Her hand gripped a long kitchen knife, and she looked like she was ready to swing it.
“We’re running out of food and water,” she said in a small voice, her tone firm and confident as if she were trying to sound bigger than she actually was. “But we’ve got things to trade for it.”
“We?” Jake stammered as his panic was replaced with surprise. “Trade?”
“Me and my brother,” the girl said with an impatient tone. “We’ve got guns to trade, and some bullets. I don’t know how that whole thing works, though I figure you might.”
Jake recovered from his initial surprise and knelt down, eyes searching the girl’s face. “Where are your parents?”
“It’s just our mom,” she said with a shrug. “She went to work on Thursday, and she never came back. Hey, do you know what day it is?”
“Tuesday, I think,” Jake said after a moment, amazed that he had to give the simple question such thought. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Alice,” the girl said, “and this is my brother Timothy.”
Alice stepped aside and gestured to a little boy of about six who sat on the bed, staring at Jake with wide eyes.
“You’ve been here alone this entire time?” Jake asked, unable to keep the shock from his tone.
“Yep,” Alice said. “Mom puts me in charge a lot since Dad’s been gone, and we don’t have a regular babysitter. The last one kept bringing her boyfriend over and stinking up the house with their smoke.”
“Oh, really?” Jake chuckled. “Well, you seem like a pretty capable little girl. Hey, I have a friend with me. She’s a really nice, super-cool lady named Marcy. Why don’t you come upstairs and meet her? We’re trying to get out of the city, so maybe you could come with us.”
“No thanks,” Alice said. “We’d rather stay here and wait for Mom. But if you’re interested in those guns…” Alice tilted her head and raised her eyebrows.
“Why don’t you show me where the guns are?” Jake wiped the smile off his face and took on a more business-like tone. “And if they look good, I’ll consider trading for them. We’ve got soup and stuff upstairs. So, you can have dinner with us, look over the food you might want, and we can conclude our deal. Sound good?”
Alice stared at Jake with rich brown eyes. The little girl hid her emotions well, but Jake saw the fear and uncertainty deep within her expression. Maybe Alice would open up to Marcy once they got upstairs, maybe she wouldn’t. One thing was for sure: there was no way he was going to leave the kids down here on their own for another minute.
“Okay,” Alice said with a firm nod that made her look ten years older than she really was. “We can start there and work toward an agreement. The guns are in my Mom’s room.”
Jake stifled a laugh at Alice’s innocent maturity, and he wondered about the mother who had raised such a confident little girl. Then he stepped aside and let Alice by.
Chapter 7
Sara, Gatlinburg, Tennessee | 7:32 p.m., Tuesday
“We can’t thank you enough for dinner,” Natasha said as she put down her fork and leaned back in her chair. Her plate was swept clean of spaghetti and meatballs, and she’d downed two slices of garlic bread as well. That’s what Sara liked to see, happy guests with happy bellies.
“You’re welcome,” Sara said, looking back and forth between Dion and Natasha with a smile. After they’d saved the dog together, Sara had warmed up to Dion and, in turn, Natasha. They seemed like genuinely good people, and she hoped they became great allies in the days ahead.
Inviting them to the cabin for dinner was going to tell her a lot about them, and she could get Todd’s opinion of them as well.
“We know you only stored food for the kids, and Jake,” Dion added, “so we hate to eat into your supplies.”
“It’s really not a big deal at all,” Sara said, genuinely. “Jake’s not here, and this is all from our perishable stores, so they’d go bad in a few weeks anyway. Well, maybe not the pasta, but the meat for sure.”
“Well, we’re grateful,” Dion said with a wide smile. “And thanks for letting us contact our people. I’m sure it put everyone’s minds at rest back home. Now we just have to wait out these storms until we can get back to them.”
Sara smiled and began picking the plates up off the table, but then Todd jumped up from his seat and picked up his and Dion’s plates.
“I’ve got it, Mom,” he said, taking them over to the sink before coming back for the rest.
“Thanks, Todd.” Sara sank back in her chair with a sigh. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the storms are going to calm down any time soon.” She pulled her laptop closer and turned it around so Dion and Natasha could see.
The couple peered across the table where Sara had the Weather Channel open to study storm activity over and around the Smoky Mountains. The Cosmic Link was sketchy due to the severe weather brewing outside, although enough of a connection came down to send basic communications and check the news.
“That doesn’t look good, does it?” Dion asked.
“It looks really bad, honey,” Natasha said, reaching over to take his hand. “There’s yellow everywhere with some really big swaths of red and orange.”
“We’re right here,” Sara said, leaning around and pointing to a spot covered in orange. “As you can probably tell from what’s going on outside.”
The rain and wind were battering the house in frightening swells, tearing at the shingles and shaking the walls. It wasn’t as bad as the other night, just enough to send little frills of panic up Sara’s spine.
“Don’t worry,” Sara said, ignoring her fear. “The cabin is tough enough. We may want to hunker down in the cellar though.”
“We should probably be getting back to our cabin, then,” Natasha said with a worried look at Dion.
“No, no,” Sara said, fixing them with a serious look. “You’re not going anywhere tonight. Just stay here until the storm settles. You don’t want to be out in this stuff.”
“We couldn’t impose on you.” Natasha shook her head firmly.
“She’s not going to take no for an answer.” Dion shot Sara a good-natured smirk. “She was determined to get that puppy off the roof of that house, and no one could stop her.”
Sara smiled wanly at the compliment, even as she couldn’t get the image of the floating corpse out of her head. “You wanted to save that puppy as much as me.”
“True, but there was no hesitation with you.”
They’d told everyone what happened at the flooded house, except for Zoe. While Sara hadn’t been very descriptive about the corpse part, Todd could understand and appreciate what had happened. Even with her abbreviated description of the events, Todd’s face had gone white with horror at what his mother and Dion had been through.
Immediately after getting the dog down from the house, Dion had driven them up to the Gardiners’ cabin, picked up Natasha and a change of clothes for Dion, and taken them all to the top of the hill. Sara had made their introductions, taking Todd aside to assure him tha
t the Gardiners seemed like good people before she stripped off her clothes, tossed them in the washing machine, and stepped into the shower. She didn’t like the idea of leaving that bacteria-laced water on her skin. After she was done, she let Dion shower as well, and they’d all settled in to get to know one another over dinner.
The puppy barked and chased Rex around the couch, breaking Sara out of her thoughts. She glanced over to see Zoe giggling and chasing the dogs before she realized she couldn’t catch them. She changed direction, hoping to catch Rex as he came around the corner of the couch, but the artful shepherd slid past her with a playful yelp.
“I only have one question,” Dion said, brow wrinkled in question. “How the heck did the pup get up on the roof?”
“That’s a very good question,” Sara said, then she lowered her voice. “I’ve been turning it over and over in my head.”
“You have a theory?” Natasha asked.
Sara nodded, sure of her idea. “I think one of the owners realized what was happening, grabbed the puppy, and tossed him up there. But maybe whoever tossed him didn’t make it themselves.”
Dion stared at Sara as he worked it out in his mind, then he leaned back in his chair and let out an exasperated sigh. “Oh, wow. They got caught in the flood and figured they could at least save him—” Dion’s chest hitched as he choked on his words, shaking his head in a sudden swell of emotion.
Not seeming surprised, Natasha leaned over and put her arm around her husband. “It’s okay. You saved that little guy. He owes you his life. I mean, you did what those owners wanted someone to do, and that’s the greatest honor you could have done them.”
Sara hadn’t thought about it that way, and Natasha’s insight caused a stirring of emotion in Sara’s heart. She glanced over at Todd to see his eyes were glassy as he slid back into his seat and stared into his cup of coffee.
“What are you going to name him?” Sara asked as she swiped a tear from her eye.
“Huh?” Dion looked up at Sara with red-rimmed eyes.
“Every dog needs a name,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone.
“I thought he’d be staying here with you and the kids, and Rex.”
“Look, I’ve already got one beast running rampant around this place. I don’t have room for another. You’ll have to take him.”
Dion glanced over at the fracas going on in the living room, and Sara turned to see. Rex was lying on the rug in front of the fireplace while the puppy bounced around, nipping at the bigger dog until Rex finally just pawed him aside. Zoe giggled incessantly, rolling on the carpet with Rex and making ruff-ruff sounds.
“Settle down a little, Zo,” Sara said, wrangling in her kid. “We can hardly hear ourselves think over here.”
“Aw, Mom,” Zoe said, as the little girl backed up and sat cross-legged on the rug in a slightly more reserved manner.
Sara turned back to Dion. “So, what do you think? He’s a pretty bouncy little guy.”
“Yeah, he is,” Dion said as a grin worked its way onto his face. “We’d been talking about getting a dog, but we weren’t sure if we were ready for the responsibility.”
“Just name the dog, Dion,” Natasha said, leveling her gaze at her husband.
Dion stared at the peppy puppy as it continued to run around on what appeared to be an endless supply of energy. “Astro. I want to call him Astro, because he runs all over the place like a rocket.”
“Not bad,” Natasha said with an impressed expression.
“I like it,” Sara added.
“So, what do we do now?” Dion asked.
Sara turned her eyes upward as a particularly heavy gust of wind set the windows to rattling. “I’d normally worry myself to death by reading the news,” she said, “but the reception is almost non-existent in this storm. We’d serve ourselves better by getting everything set up in the cellar.”
“Can we play Zombie Kidz?” Zoe said, coming over and putting her hands on Sara’s leg. The little girl still wasn’t sold on Dion and Natasha, but she shot Natasha a shy look, seemingly infatuated with the woman’s braided hair.
“If you’re a good girl and help,” Sara said, leaning down and tapping her daughter on the nose. “We’ll play Zombie Kidz as long as you want.”
“Just tell us what we can do to help,” Dion said, and Natasha nodded in agreement.
“Let’s take the mattresses downstairs so we have a place to sleep,” Sara said, standing up. “Natasha and Dion, you can have the king-sized one, Todd will sleep on his, and Zoe and I will take hers.”
They got to work moving the mattresses downstairs. Sara and Todd navigated the big king-sized mattress out into the hall and over to the cellar, while Dion and Natasha grabbed Todd’s mattress from up in his room. Todd opened the cellar door and took the weight of the mattress while Sara tried to keep it upright. They had to bend it a good deal since the alcove going down wasn’t quite wide enough, though they managed without too much trouble.
“Let’s put it over there by the shelves,” Sara said, and she watched Todd carefully as they situated the big mattress in the cramped space. “You okay with everything? You know, Dion and Natasha staying with us?”
“They’re cool people,” Todd said with a brief nod. “Dion is big into college basketball.”
“Well, you love college hoops, too.”
“Yeah, that’s cool,” Todd agreed. “And after what you said about that other guy at the cabin being so crazy, and how Dion helped you get Astro down… You’d have to be a good person to do something like that, right?”
“I think so,” Sara said, scooting the corner of the bed in place before turning to the rice bins from their bunker. Those still needed re-arranging to make room for the other mattresses. “I know this is going to sound like the opposite of what we’ve always told you about trusting people, but I felt good about the Gardiners from the start. They’re respectful and willing to help. And they’re aware of themselves, and grateful that we helped them. Not sure if any of that makes any sense.”
“It does, Mom. It felt great helping them get in touch with their people, too.”
“Exactly,” Sara said. “I mean, I’m not giving them the combination to the gun safe, but I don’t see any harm in having them around. And we can’t just throw them out there to get blown off the side of the mountain.”
A ruckus from upstairs told Sara that the Gardiners were coming down with one of the other mattresses.
“You got it?” Sara called up.
“Yep,” Dion replied. “We’ve got it.”
A second later, Sara saw Dion coming down the stairs, carrying most of the weight of the mattress with Natasha carrying the back end. He’d even pinched the material and lifted it so the mattress wouldn’t snag on the wood. Sara and Todd moved aside as the two brought the mattress down and leaned it against the wall.
Dion stood, wiped sweat off his brow, and looked around with a low whistle. “This is insane,” he said, then quickly corrected himself with a flash of a smile at Sara. “I mean, in a good way. You weren’t kidding around when you said you were prepared.”
“We’ve been at it for years,” Sara said. The stock on the shelves represented more than just tangible goods. It was a timeline into their family’s past, and Sara could associate each shelf with some milestone the Waltons had reached over the years. “It’s just something we did as a family.”
Dion glanced over at Natasha, and they shared a warm look before he jerked his thumb toward the steps. “We’ll go grab the other mattress.”
“All right,” Sara said, then turned to Todd. “Let’s get these bins moved around, son.”
Chapter 8
Jake, Boston, Massachusetts | 10:02 p.m., Tuesday
“Uno,” Alice called with a sly grin, and she held up her remaining card and shook it to mock Jake and Timothy.
Timothy frowned as he checked his cards. He was soft-spoken, but he’d been gaining confidence the more they played. The boy pulled a card out of hi
s hand and placed it on the discard pile. It was a yellow two.
Jake raised his four cards in front of his eyes so he could see them in the flashlight light, then he glared at Alice with narrowed eyes. Alice returned the stare and waved her remaining card. Jake could play his yellow nine, but if Alice had a yellow card, she could place it down and win the round. She already had four hundred and seventy-two points, and if she won this round then she’d go past five hundred points and win the game.
Or he could place his wild card and change the color to red.
He decided on the latter and placed his wildcard on the discard pile. “Red,” he said, instantly realizing his mistake when Alice raised up on her knees, threw one hand up, and then slammed her red three down on the discard pile.
“Boom!” she called out, doing a little dance before she sat back on her heels. “I win.”
Timothy shook his head while Jake chuckled and gathered up the cards. He didn’t even need to count them to know she’d easily zoomed past five hundred points.
“You’re a pretty tough player,” Jake said in the somber tone of defeat. “You ever thought about playing professionally?”
“Maybe,” Alice said, grinning. “Mom wants me to be a doctor.”
“Your mom’s a smart lady,” Jake said, pointedly.
“We played Uno last time Mom was home,” Alice said, looking down at the floor as Jake shuffled the deck.
Alice had brought the cards with them from downstairs as Jake had packed up a Smith & Wesson 9mm, a Ruger .40 caliber, and several boxes of ammunition that had been in one of Alice’s mom’s dresser drawers. Once upstairs, Jake covered the windows so no one could see their light, and to block out some of the noise from the storm. Then they’d eaten a short dinner of beef stew, bread, water, and Pop-Tarts by the light of the flashlight. Jake had wanted to start putting together some bug-out packs immediately, but it seemed more important to gain the trust of the kids first. And Marcy needed her rest if she was going to recover from her leg injury.
Weathering The Storm (Book 2): Surge Page 5
