by James Hunt
“Happy?” Kalen asked.
“You have no idea,” Freddy answered.
Freddy opened his eyes back up and they widened with excitement as a thought occurred to him and he gasped.
“Do you guys want to play Agent Match and Dr. Doomsday?” he asked.
Erin and Nancy looked at him questioningly.
“What’s that?” Erin asked.
“It’s a comic book that I read. Agent Match works for a super top secret agency and his nemesis, Dr. Doomsday, tries to destroy the world,” Freddy said.
“That sounds dumb,” Nancy said.
“It’s not dumb, it’s fun!” Freddy exclaimed.
Erin was the only one smiling.
“I’ll play,” she said.
“Okay, I’ll be Dr. Doomsday and you can be Agent Match. You have to stop me from building my Doom Ray and destroying the world.”
Freddy grabbed Erin’s hand and pulled her to a cluster of bushes in front of the cabin. She giggled. Nancy joined Mary and Kalen on the front door steps of the cabin.
“Okay, so this is your headquarters. Now you stay here and count to ten and I’ll go to my base where you try and find me okay?”
“Okay.”
Freddy took off and headed around the back of the cabin. There stood a cluster of trees in the back with a few low hanging branches. He rushed over to them and climbed up along the trees and perched himself as high as he could go.
He heard Erin yell ten and watched her run around looking for him. He could see the top of the cabin, all around the house, and deep into the forest. Beyond the trees he could see the town that Erin came from. It didn’t look dangerous from where he sat. He wondered what his mom was so worried about.
Erin checked around the cabin, peering into bushes, looking around trees, but she never looked up. Freddy smiled at her running around searching for him. After about ten minutes he climbed down the tree and decided to sneak up on her and scare her. She was to the left of him as he quietly descended the tree.
Freddy stepped lightly on the ground. Erin was crouched down looking through a bush when he snuck up behind her and poked her in the back and screamed.
“AHHHHHHH,” Erin yelped.
Freddy fell onto his back laughing. Mary, Kalen, and Nancy came running around toward them, their eyes frantic.
“Freddy!” Kalen yelled.
Freddy looked up from the leaves, dirt, and grass he’d fallen in and saw Erin crying. Nancy came over and wrapped Erin in her arms. She tossed a nasty look at Freddy.
“What did you do?” Nancy asked.
Freddy’s mouth hung open. He pushed himself up off the ground, wiping the dirt from his pants.
“We were just playing. She couldn’t find me, so I snuck up behind her. That’s all. I didn’t mean to make her cry like that,” Freddy said.
Anne came marching toward them, upset. Her hands were stained with bits of berries from some of the surrounding bushes.
“What is going on?” Anne said.
“Mom, I’m sorry I didn’t mean to scare her,” Freddy said.
“Frederick, get in the house now.”
“But, Mom.”
“Now!”
Freddy kept his head down. He lumbered to the front of the cabin. Before he reached the door he gave one last look at the trees around him. He figured he wouldn’t be allowed outside for a while.
Anne marched him inside and took him to his grandfather’s room. Freddy sat on his bed and his mother towered over him.
“What is wrong with you? Don’t you know what those girls have been through? You can’t sneak up on them like that,” Anne said.
“Mom, I didn’t mean to scare her. I swear. It wasn’t supposed to be a big deal. We were just playing.”
“You stay in this room and you are not to go outside. Do you understand me?”
“But it’s not fair!”
Freddy slammed his fist into the bed. His face turned red, his eyes were getting wet. He jumped off the bed and stomped to the window.
“Do not take that tone of voice with me, young man,” Anne said.
“I don’t care! Everyone’s worried about other people. You helped Ray, Grandpa helped those girls, but nobody went back after Dad! Nobody cared about Dad!”
Anne’s face softened as Freddy collapsed to the ground. She walked toward her son, and knelt down. She lifted his head up, tears streaming down his cheeks and he buried his face in her shoulder. Anne stroked his hair.
“It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s okay,” Anne said.
“I miss him.”
“Me, too”
***
Freddy and Erin made up by dinner, although Nancy was still flashing Freddy dirty looks.
Ray was finally feeling better enough to join them at the table. He’d been on his back for most of the past few days from the fever after his leg became infected. He still needed help moving around, but he was eating again.
Once dinner was over Kalen was the first to get up and head toward her room. Anne stopped her.
“Honey, wait. Why don’t we all play a game? I think there are some old board games downstairs.”
“Mom, do we have to?” Kalen asked.
“I think it’ll be good for everyone. Freddy, go downstairs with your sister and bring us something up. We’ll play it in the living room,” Anne said.
Freddy smiled. He shoved his hands against the table, his chair squeaking as he pushed back. Kalen followed less enthusiastically.
Freddy swung the lantern past the shelves to the box in the corner where the games were stashed. He tore the lid off and started sifting through the choices.
“What about Monopoly?” Freddy asked.
“Well, that would be a good way to pass the time for the next three months.”
“Okay, how about Life?”
“You want to play that one because the one we’re in is so great?”
Freddy dropped the game back into the box.
“Fine, Kalen, you pick,” he said.
Freddy moved away from the box and his sister walked over and looked inside. Freddy stood back, lantern in hand, when something caught his eye on one of the shelves next to him. The light from the lantern reflected off a metallic box on the bottom shelf. He moved over to get a better look, and then set the lantern down.
The box wasn’t large or heavy when Freddy pulled it from its place on the shelf. It had tin foil tightly wrapped around the outside of it. He ran his fingers along the sides feeling the smooth, slick metal.
“Kalen, what’s this?”
Freddy held out the box and Kalen stopped her search of games to examine it.
“Probably something you’re not supposed to touch,” she said.
Freddy snatched the box back from his sister and rushed upstairs. Everyone was gathered in the living room. Ray lay stretched across the couch, Ulysses sat in the armchair, Anne was stoking the fireplace, and Mary, Nancy, and Erin were sitting on the floor.
“What’d you get?” Anne asked.
“I don’t know. Whatever this is,” Freddy said.
“Wait, I know what that is. It’s a Faraday cage,” Ulysses said.
“A what?” Freddy asked.
“It’s a homemade Faraday cage. It protects electronics from EMP blasts,” Ulysses said.
Freddy brought the box over to his grandfather and sat it in his lap. Every eye in the room turned to Ulysses.
“What’s in it?” Mary asked.
“Is it a phone?” Nancy asked.
“A computer?” Kalen asked.
Ulysses peeled the top off the box and his jaw dropped.
“What is it?” Freddy asked.
“It’s a pair of radios,” Ulysses said.
Ulysses pulled them out of the box. They were medium sized, black, and each with a long antenna.
“They look like they’re used for long range communication,” Ray said.
“Do they work?” Anne asked.
Ulysses turned the kn
ob on top and the radio squealed on. The room was completely silent except for the static of the radio. Ulysses scanned the frequencies, slowly.
Everyone leaned forward. Each of them prayed that something would come through the speaker other than the clicks and pops of static. After ten minutes of silence Ray finally spoke up.
“You should turn the battery off, Ulysses. We don’t want to waste it,” he said.
“You’re right.”
Ulysses clicked it off. He put the radios back in the box and handed it to Freddy.
“Go put them back downstairs, Fred.”
Before Freddy could grab them Nancy cut in between the two of them and snatched the box out of their hands. She clutched the box to her chest, protecting it.
“No! We need to keep it on. We need to call for help!”
“Nancy, put it down,” Mary said.
“We can use it to call help for Mom. She doesn’t have to be with those people anymore. We can save her.”
“Nancy, put it down now!”
Nancy handed the box back to Freddy and collapsed into a pile of tears.
“It’s not fair,” Nancy said.
“I know,” Mary said.
Freddy walked back down into the basement. He set the box back on the shelf, but stared at it for a moment. The tin foil shined against the lantern of the light like a star in the darkness. He set the lantern back down and pulled one of the radios out. He turned the knob on and the same hum of static blew through the speakers. He squeezed the talk button on the side. He brought the radio close to his mouth.
“Dad? If you’re out there we need your help. Everyone’s sad. We’re all scared and we need you. I miss you a lot.”
Freddy let go of the talk button and more static blew through. He waited, listening, hoping that he would hear his father’s voice come through to tell him it would be all right, but it never came. Freddy turned the radio off and put it back in the box.
***
The rest of the cabin was sleeping, but Kalen was wide-awake. She lay on her bed staring out the window. Most of the cluster of trees around them blocked out the night sky, but there was one patch of space open where she could see the stars in the cloudless night. She was on top of her sheets, drumming her hands on her stomach.
She thought about the men down there in the town. She thought about what they did to Mary, Nancy, and Erin’s family. She thought about how someone like them hurt her, made her afraid.
Silently, she slid out of bed. The bedroom door creaked when she opened it, sounding loud in the quiet of the cabin. She stood frozen making sure no one had heard her. After a few moments of waiting she didn’t see anyone come out, so she headed for the basement.
She kept the door shut and almost slipped down the stairs in the darkness. She didn’t want to turn the lantern on until she was all the way at the bottom, afraid that someone would see the light through the crack in the door.
She took the lids off the boxes in the far corner of the room. She rummaged through them, looking for a spare key she knew was somewhere amidst the junk.
“C’mon, where are you?”
The floor of the basement was lined with sheets, gauze, and winter clothes from pulling the materials out of their containers. She kicked one of the coats across the floor in frustration.
She let out a sigh and started packing up what she’d torn apart until a small black box caught her eye. She snatched it up. The insides were lined with spare batteries, ammo, and a ring of keys.
She took the keys and they jingled in a lock on a safe against the wall. Kalen pulled the safe door open and a row of guns lined the inside. Rifles, shotguns, and handguns organized neatly together. She picked up a 9mm Glock. She felt the plastic composite around her hand. She gripped the pistol in her hand, remembering what her dad had told her when shooting.
Keep your right hand high on the handle. Thumbs over thumbs. Don’t put your finger on the trigger until you’re ready to squeeze.
She brought the pistol up to her eye and pointed it at different objects around the basement. She kept her finger hovering over the trigger, never letting it touch. She ejected the magazine. It was fully loaded. She shoved it back in and racked a bullet into the chamber. She tucked the pistol behind her back and headed upstairs.
She snuck back to her room down the hallway when a whisper caused her to turn around. Mary was leaning out of her room into the hallway watching her.
“What are you doing?” Mary asked.
“Nothing. Go back to bed.”
Mary stepped out into the hallway, closing the door behind her. She tiptoed to Kalen who kept waving her to go back into her room. When Kalen finally determined that Mary wouldn’t go she pulled her into her room and shut the door.
“Why are you up this late?” Mary asked.
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
Kalen wasn’t sure how Mary would react to the gun, so she kept it tucked behind her back. Mary walked over to the bed and sat herself on the edge.
“I don’t sleep much anymore,” Mary said.
Should she tell her? Should she let her in on what she was planning to do? Kalen figured that Mary had just as much right as she did to hurt the people in town, but she wasn’t sure if she would go through with it.
“It’s because of them isn’t it?” Kalen said, gesturing in the direction of the town.
“Yeah. I keep seeing my mom’s face, or my dad’s lifeless eyes just staring back at me. It doesn’t scare me anymore it’s just… I don’t know.”
“You want to do something about it.”
It was the way Kalen said it that made Mary look up at her. The faint moonlight coming through the window cast pale shadows along Kalen’s figure.
“Do what?” Mary asked.
“Make them feel what you felt. Make them suffer like you suffered.”
Kalen watched Mary’s face carefully.
“How? They have guns. They have more people. They don’t care what they do. They have no conscious. They’re-”
“Animals.”
Kalen wasn’t sure if that was the word that Mary was going to use, but looking at Mary’s face she knew it was the right one.
“You have to hate them as much as they hated you, because that’s what made them do it. They didn’t do it because they were bored. They didn’t do it because they were forced to. They did it because they liked it,” Kalen said.
Mary’s answer came out like a whisper. A realization of what Kalen spoke of.
“Yes,” Mary said.
Kalen pulled the pistol from behind her back. The black metal glowed from the reflection of the moonlight. Mary took the pistol from Kalen’s hand. She laid it across her palm, flat.
“I can get you one,” Kalen said.
Mary looked up at her. She placed the gun down next to her on the bed and got up quickly. She started shaking her head and moved toward the door.
“No, I can’t do this,” Mary said.
Kalen rushed up behind her and grabbed Mary’s arm. She spun her around. Her fingers dug into Mary’s arm, hard.
“Stop it. Let me go,” Mary whispered.
“You want to just hide out here for the rest of your life? If you don’t do something now you’ll die here. Those bikers in town may not be the ones who do it, but someone like them will. They’ll come through here and rape your sisters, then kill them in front of you, and just before they put a bullet in your head they’ll have their way with you too.”
Kalen had Mary’s face less than an inch from her own. Kalen’s teeth gritted together. She could feel the harshness of her words. The sting they sent with each syllable.
Mary stopped resisting, but it wasn’t from Kalen’s words, it was from something she was looking at past her. Kalen could see a faint orange light in the reflection of Mary’s eyes and she turned around.
Through the trees out of the window there was small twinkling of a fire. Kalen moved closer to the
window to get a better look. The flames were in the distance, dancing into the night air.
