by A. R. Shaw
If you’re going through hell, keep going.
Wnston Churchill 
1
Night before Dawn
Sloane Delaney and her daughters abandoned the first floor of their two-story home along Horseshoe Lane altogether. A tsunami wave—caused by a massive earthquake along the Pacific Rim—hit after some phenomena no one could yet explain, sending floodwaters that overtook their neighborhood situated in the once-picturesque setting of Cannon Beach, Oregon.
The displaced seawater had receded from the first floor, leaving an indelible layer of thick, brown, chocolate pudding-like sludge along the painted sandstone walls and Italian tiled flooring. The wayward sea currently hid at a lazy standstill below in the basement like a freeloading relative, getting stinkier by the day. It wasn’t done with them yet. The basement was full of it, only having ebbed an inch since the day before.
And yet, on the queen-sized bed she used to share with Brady, Sloane slept in peace for the first night since the fateful day that she’d married him a few unpleasant years before. She wasn’t worried about marauders storming the neighborhood or anyone breaking into her food stores like she should be. She hadn’t even boarded up her blown-out sliding glass door yet. Any opportunistic person—or hungry animal, for that matter—could waltz into her disaster of a house and take everything left of value. Those worries could wait. Sloane wanted to enjoy the one solitary, peaceful night given to her because of what had happened to her husband earlier in the evening. Across the street, in the sodden backyard of Larry Baker’s house, Brady lay dead—murdered, in fact, by a single gunshot wound to the head.
She wasn’t the murderer, and she didn’t plan it, yet she had hoped that it would happen. Brady had sent her, unwillingly, directly across the street to gather information on Trent Carson’s plans to leave town, with several other neighbors, to a hideout he knew of.
Trent was guarded with his information. They’d been friends once, but that was before her marriage to Brady. None of her friends and neighbors liked Brady much, especially not Trent, and a short time after the marriage, she didn’t like him either.
Then Sloane informed Trent of her own fake plans of heading to Hillsboro. She had hoped Trent would catch on to her hint when he advised her to be careful on Route 23. She told him she’d planned to take Route 30 instead. She and Trent both knew Route 30 didn’t go anywhere near Hillsboro. Her act of going along with his advice was cunning desperation; she knew Brady was listening to her every word. Unfortunately, Trent didn’t realize the ploy and ended up thinking she was in on Brady’s mad plan to steal one of the few running vehicles from Larry Baker, Trent’s next-door neighbor. Trent ended up shooting Brady in Larry’s backyard that night when he’d refused to drop the shotgun he carried.
Immediately after taking Brady out, Trent hurried across the street to Sloane’s driveway, warned her to stand down, and drop the concealed weapon he knew she carried onto the ground. “Is he dead?” she’d asked. That was really all she wanted to know.
“Yes,” Trent said with what she’d call a little trepidation in his voice.
“Good,” Sloane said and didn’t care what Trent did to her for her part in Brady’s scheme to rob her neighbors of their only working vehicle. Her only thought was that Brady being dead ensured her daughters’ safety now. She no longer had to endure his mistreatment of her and the girls.
The verbal abuse started shortly after they were married. The threats and physical abuse escalated over the past year to include Sloane’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Wren, and her thirteen-year-old daughter, Mae. She’d never forgive herself for not saving them sooner. They were already scarred from losing their father to a pandemic flu four years prior.
She was hospitalized in the ICU for weeks with the virus without knowing where her daughters were. When she finally escaped the hospital three weeks later as one of the lucky few to recover from the pandemic flu, she found her twelve-year-old and nine-year-old living alone in their house. Those were vulnerable years in a young girl’s life in normal times, marred with insecurities and night frights. The Carsons and Bakers had done their best, under the circumstances, to keep track of them and bring them food. Unaccompanied and not knowing that their father had died or that their mother was desperately trying to get home to them, the girls were scared to death.
She was broken after Finn, her first husband, died. She felt utterly lost when she discovered that even her distant, extended family in Hillsboro had perished from the flu as well. So when Brady came along and offered stability as a family again, she did it for the girls’ sake, thinking it was the right decision. She wanted to replace the things they’d lost. She wanted to fix them. Ultimately, her decision couldn’t have been more wrong.
After Trent left her alone in the neighborhood the night before, she retrieved her Glock off the ground, returned to her home, and locked the main door. The girls had waited inside, so Sloane ushered them up the stairs and into her own room. She locked the door and looked into their frightened eyes, which beckoned her for answers. “He’s not coming back,” she said. “He’s gone for good.”
All three of them cried tears of relief as they cuddled on the big bed, and Sloane held them until they fell soundly, and safely, asleep. Afterward, she remembered what Trent said to her before he left. “Help yourself to anything you can salvage.”
She had responded with a thank you and said that, in return, she’d keep an eye on their houses. She knew what tomorrow and every other morning would bring to them, so she pushed herself into a peaceful slumber. There would be days of dreadful labor and danger ahead of her and the girls. If they were to survive this—and they would—she’d meet it willingly, and never again would she succumb to a weakness of mind or an empty soul to fill the void Finn’s death left in her heart.
2
Daybreak
“Mmmooommm!” Mae whispered in a tone far too loud to be a whisper at all that ended up sounding ghostly. Sloane heard the plea from a deep and drowsy state, but what woke her was the moist breath sliding down like a hand over her nose and mouth. She sat up with a start, vaguely remembering the events of the previous night and how they might relate to the morning’s dawn.
“What?” she said, confused, her heart pounding out of her chest. Her hand had already clasped around her daughter’s forearm, and her brown eyes searched the room for her older daughter Wren. Once she saw her sitting nearby, Sloane’s eyes flew to the door. Was the bedroom door still locked? It was closed, and the six white panels faced her, still as intact as the night before.
“Are you okay?” Sloane asked.
“Yeah,” Mae said, startled that she’d scared her mother so badly.
“We were wondering when you’d get up,” said Wren.
Sloane looked into Mae’s sea-blue eyes, so much like her father’s. “What time is it?”
“I don’t know. There’s no power, remember?” Mae reminded her.
She looked to Wren. “You haven’t left the room, right?”
“No, Mom. We haven’t left. We were waiting for you to wake up. It’s really quiet out there,” Wren said, reflecting Sloane’s own brown eyes back to her.
She released Mae’s arm with an apologetic look and a smile. “That’s a sound I want you to both remember,” she said, holding up a finger. “Listen to it. Remember that silence.”
She held their gaze a moment. She’d been a high school French teacher before it all started, and teaching habits die hard. “Silence. That’s what we need. Any sound we hear from now on is potential danger. Remember that,” she said as she slipped her boots on over the cuffs of her jeans and slung a button-up chambray shirt over her white tank top. “Let’s tidy up and have a bite to eat. We have a lot of work to do today…well, every day from now on.”
She opened the nightstand drawer and pulled out her black Velcro thigh holster as her daughters readied themselves for the day. She slid the black waistband strap on her hips and looped the leg strap around the
outside of her thigh. After placing the Glock from her nightstand into the harness, she checked the position for an easy reach.
This was one of the many lessons Trent and his wife Harper taught her after things calmed down from the pandemic, and they’d finally established a semblance of normal life—until now, of course. She’d been to the range once or twice a month and found that the Glock easily fit into her hands. She even enjoyed shooting, once she got past the phase of closing her eyes right before firing.
That was before she met Brady. Since then, she’d kept the gun to herself. She wasn’t sure why. Something always told her to keep the weapon a secret from him, and she did. She’d dreamed about using it, more than once, to solve her problems when the abuse started. However, her daughters always sprang to mind, and since their father’s death, they had no one in the world left alive but her. She couldn’t risk abandoning them.
Sloane reached for her boar bristle brush and pulled it through her light-brown, shoulder-length hair. She then wrapped the extra length at the nape of her neck and looped it through an elastic band. Next, she went over to her dresser and pulled out her black, one-piece sports swimsuit. This is going to be a long day, she thought as she tossed it into a nylon bag and added a small, high-powered flashlight. She pulled the nylon cording tight and slipped it over her wrist.
Mae, already dressed and ready for the day, walked toward the door and was about to open it when Sloane cautioned, “No Mae, only I open the door. Wait for me, okay?”
“Sorry Mom,” Mae said.
“Don’t be sorry. Be safe,” she said and internally groaned. She just couldn’t help stating motherly advice. It happened automatically.
Sloane went to the window and looked outside. Not a soul was visible in the subdued early morning, blue-lit street. No candle lights remained on in the Carson’s house across their driveway. No cars drove down the road. She couldn’t see the rest of the neighborhood from her position in the master bedroom, but what she did see looked calm and quiet.
She headed for the door, stopped, waited, and listened—more to teach the girls about how vigilant they needed to be now than for any other reason. She opened the door a crack, barely making a sound, and stepped out. A crazy thought ran through her mind; perhaps Brady was waiting to get her. Just the thought sent her pulse racing. No longer willing to let him ruin what remained of their lives, she shoved the thought away as she forced her pulse to slow down.
Stepping lightly across the flood-ruined carpet, she walked into the upstairs loft. It used to be their library, where the girls would spend lazy afternoons working on puzzles when they were younger. In recent years, the space became a quiet escape for them to lounge on the overfilled sofa cushions, bobbing their heads to music attached to them with strings while pretending to read the classics their mother always insisted upon. Since it overlooked the main floor the room now served as their new kitchen and living area. Sloane walked over to the banister and looked over the railing while the girls hung back in the opened bedroom doorway.
She kept her hand hovering over her thigh holster. Looking below, she saw only their boot prints left in the hallway by the mudroom door from the night before. Nothing more. No one had tracked in through the busted sliding glass doorway in the living room, either.
“I think it’s clear.” She waved the girls toward her. “Wren, you get breakfast going while Mae and I bring the luggage back upstairs.”
“Are you sure he’s gone, Mom?” Wren whispered, clearly not willing to believe her mother yet.
She stopped her descent on the stairs and turned to answer her daughter, “Yes Wren, he’s absolutely gone. We won’t see him ever again. I promise.”
Wren nodded to her.
“So we’re staying here?” Mae asked with excitement.
“We are for now.”
“Yay!” Mae cheered, and Sloane spun around on her jubilant daughter.
“Quiet, Mae! Let’s keep our voices down to a whisper from now on. We can’t let on that we live here alone. We have to make people believe there are many people living here, not just three ladies, or there could be trouble for us. Do you understand?” Sloane asked her, hoping she did. She knew Mae had the same feelings she did now that Brady was gone. The mental bindings Brady had bestowed upon them, making them feel like prisoners in their own home, were finally lifted and she too wanted to shout for joy. Hopefully, that chance would come in time; however, for now she needed to devise a way to keep them alive. Shouting and attracting attention to themselves was not the answer.
Her daughter’s serious face told her she got it. “Okay, we have a lot to do today, but first, let’s get the luggage back up to our bedroom.”
“What do we do with his stuff?” Mae asked.
She thought the right thing to do would be to keep the items that were in the suitcase, but they smelled like him and the shirts they could use would make them look like him. Reminding herself and the girls of a past she didn’t want them to think about was not part of her plan. “We’ll put it in the garage for now.”
While Mae struggled to bring her and her sister’s suitcases upstairs, Sloane carted Brady’s suitcase into the garage after having made sure the coast was clear. She held the woven gray carry-on suitcase aloft from the cement flooring, looking at it and knowing that the contents were all that was left of him. She let go of it and dropped it to the floor to land on its own. She turned and closed the door behind her.
The muck the sea let in, still slippery on the tile flooring, nearly caused her to careen into the wall ahead of her.
Be careful, she told herself. You’re all they’ve got.
“You okay, Mom?” Wren asked from above.
“Yes. I just slipped.”
Despite the opened doorway, the muggy air was already warm and caused her to sweat as she picked up her own suitcase and climbed the stairs. Wren had already laid out their cold breakfast onto the makeshift table. Today’s meager meal consisted of granola with reconstituted milk poured over top. Sloane told herself this would be their first meeting of the McKenna girls. She’d make the changing of her last name back to Finn’s legal as soon as possible, when humanity was up and running again, and silently vowed to never alter her name again.
After she placed her suitcase into her room, she picked up her paper bowl full of breakfast and dug in with her plastic spoon. Between bites she said, “The first thing we have to do today is dive into Trent Carson’s basement to retrieve any weapons and ammunition that may be left.” She motioned across the street with her plastic spoon.
“Isn’t that stealing?” Mae asked her.
“No sweetheart; he asked us to do it. In fact, we are going to take care of the houses for the Carsons, the Millers, and the Bakers until they return.”
“How are we going to get into their basement?” Wren asked. “It’s full of water, just like ours is.”
Wren was the quieter of the two girls. She internalized a lot, and Sloane suspected Wren might realize what really happened to Brady last night, whereas Mae probably thought he merely disappeared into thin air. Poof, bye-bye, see ya, as she liked to say.
“We can’t wait for the water to recede. I’m going to have to dive for it. They probably filled their bathtubs full of water, like we did, to save fresh water before the flooding took place. We’ll have to rinse any wet ammo and guns we find with the fresh water right away to get rid of the corrosive salt water. Then we’ll have to dry it all out and lubricate the weapons. That’s our first priority.” She took another bite of granola and pointed toward the opened back door. “That’s our second priority,” she said when she was through crunching.
“We have to board up the back door?” Mae asked.
“Yes. We have to secure the house as quickly as possible. Then we have to figure out a way to drain these basements.”
“Not just ours?” Wren asked.
“Not just ours. If we leave them filled with this seawater, the walls will start to mold throughout the
houses. We have to get them dry. All of them.”
“Why are we doing this for them?” Mae asked and, as she expected, Wren shot her a knowing look.
She smiled at both girls. “Because that’s what good neighbors do. They help each other. We will also need to secure their homes and make sure no one breaks in while we’re not watching.”
“Sounds like a lot of work,” Mae complained.
“It will be, but we can do it. If we make it look like those houses are occupied, no one will suspect we’re here alone and vulnerable. Do you see?”
They both nodded.
“It’ll be like a game,” Mae said.
“Exactly, it’s like a game” she said, finishing the last bite of breakfast in her bowl.
“Okay. So here are some rules we need to live by. Number one, you two don’t go anywhere alone. You have to stay together. If I’m diving into the basement, you don’t go wandering down the road. We’re a team. Wherever I am, you need to be. If I have to leave you here, you stay together—always. Understand?”
“Yes, Mom,” they both answered with their own trademark flair of sarcasm.
“I’m serious. This isn’t a joke. Got it?” she chastised them.
“Yes Mom; we’ve been through this before. Don’t worry, we understand,” Wren said.
“All right. I will always keep the pistol with me, but I need to teach you girls how to shoot too; you’re old enough. I’m not sure what kind of weapons Trent has down there, but we’ll make do with what he has.”
