by Doug Goodman
“Alyssa, stay and watch while we figure this out,” Aidan said.
“Why do I have to stay here? I can do anything you can do.”
“Can you climb a house?” Aidan asked.
“Do you want to climb a house?” Kirk added.
“Fine.”
Routing the cable from the converter box took almost two hours; none of the boys were electrical engineers, or even handymen. But by ten pm, they tossed the cable down. They ran the line back to the house (thanks to the extreme couponing family, they had more than enough cable) and connected it to the vent fan. In fact, the photovoltaics were large enough that by 3 am they had also connected the air conditioning unit. By 5 am, they were no longer sweating.
By 7 am, the wargs were following the lines back to the house.
They listened to the wargs crawling through the first and second floor, knocking over furniture, tearing up walls, and sniffing along the floorboards. Then the wargs entered the hallway below the attic, and everyone stopped moving. They had no way to muffle any sound. They watched the attic door and stretched their hearing as much as they could.
There was silence.
Then some movement.
Sniffing.
Suddenly, the sniffing stopped.
All eyes were on the attic door. The long black cord snaked from the cable splitter to the attic door.
The coax budged with the smallest movement. Like a little mouse raising its head off the ground. Then the splitter slid, ever so slightly, towards the attic door. Further, further it slid. Everyone watched as the splitter dragged across the boards. It made a small noise of metal being dragged across wood. Behind it, the lines were beginning to go taut. One line went to the vent fan; the other, the air conditioner.
They were caught in a Catch 22. Move and the wargs would hear them. Don’t move and the wargs would rip out their air conditioning and vents.
Aidan, who was close enough to the attic door that he had to move his foot so the splitter would not get caught on it, gripped and re-gripped the rifle. Alyssa and Peter held Colt. Kirk and Jaxon watched and waited.
Aidan rolled over to the attic opening, stomped it open, and put bullets in the wargs. The first one died on the spot, but the second one took two shots to the head before it went down. Aidan quickly scanned for any other wargs, then fell back against the floorboards, breathing heavily.
They were fortunate none of the other wargs came back that day, but they knew they would return the next day, so they moved the carcasses two doors down (they were not yet ready to eat warg) and covered their tracks with bleach. They also rerouted the cable so that it came up the side of the house and through the attic, rather than through the house. Then they cleaned the cable to get rid of their scent.
When they finished at 11 pm, they came back to the attic to find the vent and A/C not working.
“The power just went out, like it did yesterday,” Colt said.
Aidan had everyone check the lines, but Kirk was the first one to say it.
“Our lines are fine. We’re not the only ones wanting power.”
Jaxon concurred. “Somebody cut our cable.”
“No way,” Alyssa said. “Why would they? We can share the power.”
“A few solar cells are barely enough to power our A/C and vent fan during the day. Nobody is going to want to share this,” Kirk countered.
“Let’s go check it out,” Aidan said.
Sure enough, Kirk was right. A new cable dangled over the brick house, and theirs was cut and lying in the bushes.
“What do we do?” Peter said.
“I think you know what we’re going to do,” Aidan said, and climbed up on the house, rifle slung over his back.
Jaxon raised the cable to him, and Aidan started to cut the cable.
“I wouldn’t do that if I was you,” a voice came from above. Aidan looked up and saw a man, his wife, and their baby. The man and wife both had guns pointed at him. The baby was breastfeeding. “That’s our power now, son. You need to go find your own.”
The funny thing was that all Aidan could think was who are these people? He didn’t recognize them. They were not that much older. Aidan thought they might be in their early twenties. Maybe they were from out of the neighborhood, like most of his friends. Hell, Aidan wasn’t living in his house. They were living in the attic of people they never met. For all he knew, the young couple with the baby were at a party on Black Friday and they found refuge in the nearest house.
Aidan dropped the pliers and said, “I don’t want any trouble.”
“If I see you here again, I will shoot to kill. That’s my power and my power alone.”
“Okay.” Aidan backed away slowly.
“Leave the rifle.”
Aidan acted as if he didn’t hear him and kept backing up.
A bullet bounced within five feet of him. He leaped aside.
“I won’t waste bullets. Drop the rifle, or I drop you.”
“It’s a family heirloom.”
“Unless you want to die for your heirloom, I think it’s time for this rifle to leave your family’s history.”
“Maybe I can offer a trade. I killed one of those dog-wolf things. I call them wargs. You can have the meat. I’m sure you’re hungry.”
“Need bullets more’n meat. Drop it.”
Aidan pulled out the Winchester.
“Slowly!” the man shouted.
Aidan was just a foot away from falling off the ledge, but before he could make his move, giant talons ripped out of the air and lifted the man, wife, and baby up in the air. Like something right out of Tolkien, the eagles lifted the people up in the air, but this time, they dropped them. Man, woman, and babe fell screaming and then were silenced by the front lawn.
Aidan jumped down off the roof. Above him, the roc landed on its victims, pulled off a leg, and gobbled it down. It looked at Aidan with those cold, avian eyes, then returned to its meal.
This was the first time they had to fight off survivors for access to the solar panel, but it would not be the last of what they would come to call the “solar wars of Lakewood.”
Chapter Four – Friendly
“We need warg piss,” Aidan said. “Nothing distracts a warg like a female warg in heat. Even the females have to stop and sniff it.”
“I’m calling bullshit,” Kirk said. “I want proof.”
“I read about it, and I saw it on a Mythbusters about guard dogs.”
“Mythbusters? I’m convinced¸” Peter said.
“Are you crazy?” Alyssa said to Aidan. “Do you know how much danger you are talking about getting into?”
“We are going through bleach like there is some endless spring in the basement, but there isn’t. We only have twenty gallons left. What are we going to do when we run out? Go to the convenience store and pick some up? We were lucky to stash ourselves in the extreme coupon family’s house. But it won’t last us two months. We need another way to keep the wargs away, especially if we’re going to stay here like y’all wanted.”
“I hate to say it,” Jaxon said, “but he’s right. The only problem is how can we tell if a bitch is in heat?”
“Then there’s the part about getting bitch warg vaginal fluid,” Kirk said. “I don’t expect a warg to split her legs for anyone, not even a handsome fucker like you.”
“We get it off their urine,” Aidan said. “And I know which one is in heat.”
“Good. Should be easy from here on out,” Kirk said.
Jaxon and Kirk ran out into the boulevard under full daylight.
“This is a bad idea,” Jaxon said. “No cover and nowhere to run. If a grackle sees us, we’re dead.”
“No way, man. It’s the ultimate in anarchy. We are handing over our chances of survival to Lady Chaos. I love it.”
They stopped at a slanted wooden beam. It was an exercise station for pushups. Jaxon removed a maxi pad from out of the backpack and strapped it to the post. Kirk duct taped the maxi to the po
st. Then they did the same to a few nearby oaks, placing maxis at various heights on the trees.
“Is it just me, or does it seem like every time we go out, we’re doing something with feminine hygiene products?” Jaxon asked.
“I think it’s just you, man.”
Jaxon and Kirk put maxi pads on the tallest of the step-blocks and on the chin-up bars, which were stations spread out over another hundred yards. The longer they were out there, the more they watched the trees for squirrels and the skies for rocs and grackles. Too bad, they weren’t watching the ground.
When Kirk was five, his father gave him a sparkler, and he dropped the sparkler on his foot. The little firework flashed on his feet, burning them. That was how he felt now, like little fireworks were going off all over his feet. By the time he brushed his feet, the pain electrified. It felt like dozens of sparklers had been dropped on his feet and his ankles, and the fireworks were turning from sparklers to Black Cats and M-80s.
“Crap in a casket!” Kirk yelled and jumped away. He looked down and saw dozens of black-headed ants climbing up his legs. He pushed them off, but they wouldn’t budge. They bit him again. As they bit, they twisted his skin. His skin was starting to bleed in dots. Kirk screamed and rolled on the ground. “Get them off! Get them off!” he cried out.
Jaxon felt the fireworks going off on his feet, too. There must have been a hundred fire ants coming at them. They were almost on top of him. Ignoring the excruciating pain in his legs, Jaxon grabbed Kirk and dragged him away from the oncoming ants. They crossed the boulevard and fell behind some juniper shrubs. There, the boys pulled out pocketknives and attacked the ants. They had to kill each one individually and ended up cutting themselves more than the ants.
Pain woke Jaxon. Judging on the amount of sweat on his forehead, he assumed he had been out for an hour. He looked down at his swollen, throbbing legs. Dozens of large, red splotches bubbled on his legs, each one crowned with a painful white head. He thought of the Solarcaine relief back in the attic and started to get up. Kirk stopped him and held his index finger to Jaxon’s mouth.
On the other side of the shrub sat a large, quivering rabbit with long ears and bloodshot eyes. A little bit of brain exuded from a crack between the creature’s ears. The hairless beast looked almost wax-like and bulbous in the afternoon light. It limped on wretched, gnarled feet to the juniper and bit on some grass.
Then it stopped and growled. Jaxon pulled his knife as the gruesome beast leaped into the juniper tree, screaming like a murdered woman. Jaxon rolled on top of the rabbit, which bit at him and bit at him. It was missing half its face, like it was some sort of demon zombie rabbit. Jaxon held it down with one hand while he stabbed it with the other. The rabbit kicked him, and red ribbons of flesh and shirt ripped off. Jaxon kept stabbing the rabbit, and then Kirk started stabbing it, too, but it wouldn’t stop fighting. They couldn’t let it escape, though. If it escaped, the damned thing would bring the wargs down upon them. It had to die. It had to die.
Jaxon slipped his hand from its shoulder to its neck and squeezed as hard as he could. He felt its neck snap in his fingers.
Twenty minutes later, they slumped into the attic with forty pounds of zombie rabbit meat.
Jaxon again refused to let Alyssa touch him when she came to him with the salve.
“What is wrong with you?” She tossed the salve at him. “Do it yourself.”
“Thanks, bro,” Kirk said. “I would have liked it if she rubbed some of that sweet stuff on my legs, but no – you’d rather have Colt or Peter do it.”
“Just shut up,” Jaxon said.
Jaxon and Kirk slept through rabbit stew supper, through the grackles that sat in the giant water oak across the street, and through the drowning sound of bats flying around at night.
When Jaxon woke, the attic was quiet except for the sound of air conditioning. Colt playing with a Rubik’s cube, and Kirk was talking softly to Alyssa, who was only paying him half-attention while she read through the Reader’s Digest. Kirk saw him, and Alyssa followed his gaze.
“I’m going back to the tub,” Kirk said. He passed by Jaxon and opened the attic door. Jaxon saw that Kirk’s legs were covered in welts as big as keloid scars.
Alyssa scooted next to Jaxon. Jaxon looked at his legs, which were covered in salve. “I guess I should thank you.”
“No, Peter did that. You should thank him. You could thank me, but you wouldn’t let me help you. You don’t want me to touch you, like I’m poison or something. You don’t talk to me, either. It’s like you’re ignoring me.”
“No, I’m not trying to ignore you. Trust me.”
“Then you hate me, but why? Because I’m not one of the guys and I break up your little boy group? Or because you just don’t like me? There is something inherently wrong about who I am that you don’t like. Which is it? A or B?”
“How about C, none of the above?”
“So you do have a problem with me. At least we’re getting somewhere.”
“No, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Then what did you mean?”
“Will you stop that?”
“Stop what?”
“Asking questions.” He looked over at Colt, who had moved his attention from the Rubik’s cube to the two of them arguing.
“Why don’t you go downstairs to the basement and help Kirk with the tub, sweetie?”
“Okay, I guess.” Colt took the cube with him.
Once they were alone, Alyssa turned her sharp eyes onto Jaxon. “Spit it out. What’s the problem?”
“Where’s Aidan?”
“He’s with Peter. They are checking on the pads to see if it worked.”
Jaxon rolled his eyes.
“What was that?”
“That was the problem.”
“What? Spit it out.”
“Look, I don’t want to talk about it.”
“If we don’t talk about it, then I’m going to go on thinking you hate me.”
“What you have is a good thing,” Jaxon said.
She threw up her hands at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?” She threw her hands up again.
“There is no way I know of saying what I want to say without it affecting everybody in the house.”
Jaxon looked around at the crawl spaces that had become their home. All the egg crates, the mats, the wires, and the vent they added.
“Before all this, Kirk had his music, Peter had his gymnastics, I had Wendy, and Aidan had you. I never heard back from Wendy, and that’s fine. I was going to break up with her anyways. But now there’s just…” and he let his hands drop into hers, and she knew. Alyssa stared at his hands. She never in a million years would have guessed. She put his hands back in his lap and didn’t say anything. She climbed down out of the attic.
An hour later, Kirk, Alyssa, and Colt were back in the attic with Jaxon, and everybody was uncomfortable. When Peter said the password, all the tension was sucked out of the room. The attic door dropped, and Aidan came up with a plastic bag that contained something small and round.
“People,” he announced triumphantly, “We have bitch warg urine!”
“Oh, baby, you bring home the best things,” Alyssa jested as she hugged him.
It was then that the trumpets from hell blasted through Lakewood.
They pulled up the attic door and shoved rubber piping into the wooden seams. Except for a small opening in the ridge vents, there was no way of scent getting out. Aidan watched the streets through his riflescope.
“Shit! Shit! SHIT!” he growled. He raised his hand.
“What?” Alyssa.
“They’re coming straight back here. Black Fang is with them.”
Eyes widened, Alyssa began mouthing the words to the Lord’s Prayer, and everyone else tried to slow their heartbeats. To anything that could hear well enough, it must have sounded like a drum line in that attic.
Black Fang and the two other wargs approached Aaron’s dead body. Black Fang
licked it, then went over to the fire extinguisher and sniffed it, too. He barked at the other two wargs, and they approached the Vicksburg house. They growled and snapped and fought against the pervasive smell of bleach, but they moved across the lawn.
Alyssa watched Aidan’s hand lower once, then twice, and she closed her eyes. The sound of shoes running back and forth on the attic told her more than anything else.
Within 30 seconds, Peter and Colt were already down the attic and running down the stairs, no longer mindful of their scent. As they rounded the front door, the ugly visage of a warg growled from the other side of the beveled glass door. But before it could lunge into the house, flames shot up on the porch.
The warg looked up and saw where Aidan and Jaxon were throwing lit Molotovs on the cement entryway. Tendrils of fire curled outward and climbed up the house walls as the wargs barked angrily.
While they tossed Molotovs, Kirk and Alyssa grabbed the backpacks. There was one for every member of the household. Each hellpack had two to three liters of water, a tarp, canned foods (and can opener), whistle, a small container of bleach, FRS radio, flashlight, extra batteries and clothing, and a first aid kit of Band-Aids, gauze, aspirin, and antibiotic cream. In addition, every pack was tailored to its owner, such as the small portable hard drive for Aidan, paperbacks for Alyssa, a harmonica for Kirk, and iPads for Peter and Jaxon and Colt.
Peter and Colt shoved aside the washer and raced to the concrete. Hammer in hand, Peter ran at the wall and hit it as hard as he could. The wooden handle split.
“NO!” he shouted.
Fortunately, there was just enough wooden handle left to grip, though it was split open and cut into his palm when he smacked the hammer against the concrete.
He hit again and again and again. Concrete dust billowed around them in the tunnel. They had no idea when the rest of the gang would get there or whether or not wargs would be right behind them. All they knew was that everything was counting on them busting through the concrete. No matter what.
Aidan and Jaxon flung more cocktails onto the ground. One nearly missed lighting up a warg. Black Fang stood back and watched the boys while the two wargs began to circle.
