Dry

by Neal Shusterman

  “What do you think’s going on?” I ask Kelton, hoping that his extensive knowledge of useless military factoids will come in handy.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “It’s too soon for martial law. . . .”

  “English, please.”

  “It’s when the military takes over,” he says. “It means that government brass thinks the local police can’t handle the situation by themselves.”

  “Well, that would be a good thing, right?” I say, really wanting to convince myself. I push back onto the seat of the bike. “It means we’ll be safer. . . .”

  Kelton attempts to smile. “Could be,” he says, even though I get the feeling he doesn’t believe it could be a good thing at all. “Maybe.”

  Maybe. I’m so sick of maybe!

  Maybe it’s martial law. Maybe FEMA will bring in water trucks. Maybe everything will be fine tomorrow. Living in this world of complete uncertainty is more and more frustrating. So I ride forward and follow the transport truck. It’s not just that I’m angry, it’s because I have to know. I need to kill the maybe. Kelton is on the same wavelength, because he’s pedaling right behind me.

  We ride past lower campus, the football stadium, and then the tennis courts, just waiting to see where the truck will stop. But it isn’t until we pass the aquatics center that we get our answer.

  It’s not just one truck, but a whole bunch of military vehicles. They’ve got the swimming pool on total lockdown . . . because high school pools were the only ones that were excluded from the Frivolous Use Initiative. They’re the only pools left that still have water.

  The perimeter of the aquatics center is now guarded by soldiers with automatic rifles. And spidering into the pool are a dozen thick fire hoses—which seem to be sucking up water and depositing it into a series of tanker trucks. Then one of the military guards spots us and locks eyes. I don’t look away, but I don’t get any closer either. It’s like somehow I’m the enemy.

  “I should’ve guessed it,” Kelton says, upset at himself for not knowing everything in the history of everything.

  “Those idiots think we’re going to drink that?” I laugh. “I have friends on the water polo team. I’ve heard stories. They’d have to pay me to drink that water.”

  “If they can filter the salt and fish guts and whale turds out of ocean water, I’m sure they can manage anything left behind by the water polo meatheads,” Kelton says.

  And for some reason this strikes a chord, piquing a memory. Something that Garrett said when we were pushing that broken cart in Costco. . . .

  I gasp, and Kelton looks to me, wondering why.

  “Garrett’s friend Jason has a huge fish tank! I’ll bet he went to his house to ask for water from it!” Though Garrett’s always been hard on himself, he was never much of a sulker, so it makes perfect sense that he’d try to fix the situation rather than run from it. I reach for my phone and realize I don’t have it. I left it to charge on my nightstand. Stupid.

  “Can I borrow your phone? I should tell my parents. They can get there quicker.”

  He hands me the phone, but after a few moments of blankly staring at the screen, I realize that I don’t even know my parents’ numbers. In fact, I don’t know anyone’s number by heart, except my stupid eighth grade boyfriend’s, who is the last person on this or any other planet that I’d call.

  I don’t want to admit to Kelton my current uselessness, so I just say, “We’re not that far. Let’s just go.”

  • • •

  We circle the block that Jason lives on twice.

  “You don’t know where he lives, do you?”

  “Just shut up, okay?” I snap, because I only kinda sorta know where Jason lives. “There’s a huge tree in the front yard,” I tell him. “Like, ridiculously huge.”

  But there are no trees that big anywhere.

  “I’m sure it’s this street,” I say, after the third time around.

  Kelton thinks about it. “So let’s do some detective work,” he says. “If the tree was that big, it probably was a huge violation of association rules—and believe me, my family knows about that, because everything we do is a violation.”

  “Your point?”

  “My point is, not everybody doubles down on their violations. . . .”

  I finally get it. “A stump! We’re looking for a stump!”

  And five houses up, there it is!

  Kelton smiles, pleased with himself. Under other circumstances it might have been annoying, but he deserves a moment here. Someone else might have just thought I was lying, or not remembering—but he accepted that I was telling the truth and went from there.

  “That was pretty clever,” I admit to him as we head to the house.

  He shrugs with false modesty. “Just a simple deduction.”

  That’s when my own simple deduction is confirmed—because, on closer inspection, I can see Garrett’s bike behind a dead hedge near the front door.

  We hop off our bikes and approach the house. The door’s ajar. It feels weird knocking on a door that’s already partially open, but I do. No response, so I push it open all the way.

  I go in, and Kelton follows. There’s a smell here. Awful. Rotten.

  “Could be a dead body,” Kelton whispers. I ignore him.

  The living room looks pretty normal. Except for the gaudy Roman statue with the leaf-covered genitalia. No accounting for taste.

  “I don’t think anyone’s home. . . .”

  Screw it. I cross the living room, heading deeper into the house. “Garrett . . . ?” I call out. . . . No response. “Anyone home?”

  Kelton hesitates. “You know, it’s perfectly legal to shoot someone for breaking and entering.”

  “Fine—you can say ‘told ya so’ when I’m dead.”

  Kelton initially follows behind me, but then he pushes his way in front—as if just remembering that Eagle Scouts probably shouldn’t hide behind girls.

  We continue down a hallway.  The farther we get, the stranger the carpet underneath my feet begins to feel—the squishier it becomes. It’s wet—and the smell is worse than before.

  That’s when something catches my eye—

  A tropical fish—no, dozens of them. All dead, spread across the floor of the family room. I look up and realize why. . . . The giant fish tank is broken. The enormous aquarium reaches all the way to the ceiling, the collections of rocks and coral that once were a part of the aquatic ecosystem still intact. This is definitely the tank that Garrett was talking about. I move closer to get a better look. A large portion of the tank’s face has been smashed in, violently drained of all of its water—that is, except a thin layer at the bottom, maybe an inch, where a small clown fish sucks in water helplessly, its body partially exposed to the air. I pick it up and move it to another area of the tank where it has a better chance at survival—

  “It was like this when I got here,” says a voice from behind. I spin around and there’s Garrett, standing in the kitchen doorway. “And it’s saltwater, anyway.”

  I’m happy to have found him . . . but it isn’t long until a thousand thoughts cascade through my head, bursting the levees that maintain my patience.

  “Then what are you still doing here?” I say sharply, realizing that I’m pissed he would send us on a wild goose chase in the first place.

  “Dad said he needed more pasta sauce, so I figured I’d borrow a bottle or two,” he explains, avoiding the important questions, as he always does. He looks down and kicks an invisible rock. “Can’t leave empty-handed, you know?”

  “You have Mom and Dad worried sick. You had us all worried sick,” I tell him, which I’m sure he already knows. I exhale my aggravation and look around the room, taking in the whole bizarre scene. “So what the hell happened here?”

  Garrett shrugs. “I think they skipped town and someone must have broken in.”

  “Well,” says Kelton, looking around at all the dead fish, “they definitely didn’t come for sushi.” It might have
been borderline funny in a different situation.

  Kelton then reaches down and picks up a shard of glass. He holds it up as if to inspect it, the shard glimmering in a ray of light . . . and that’s when I notice what he already has. There’s blood on the glass. . . .

  “Let’s leave,” Garrett says.

  Kelton and I don’t need a second invitation. We don’t even bother to take the pasta sauce.

  • • •

  Once we’re back, Mom and Dad don’t punish Garrett, which in itself worries me a little. Instead they’re scouring the house for empty gallon jugs to bring to the desalination machines.

  “You think they’ll let us get more than two gallons?” Mom says, to whoever’s listening, her head stuck in the pantry.

  “We can always go back for more!” Dad yells, probably from a closet somewhere.

  Garrett emerges from the door to the garage with a large container usually reserved for camping trips. “Will this work?”

  “Absolutely,” Mom says. Garrett, in light of not being punished, is now trying his best to be a perfect son. I give it five minutes, tops.

  “Take care of your brother,” Mom says to me. “And be careful of the McCrackens. Remember, they invented ten-foot poles for people like that.”

  Dad swings through the kitchen and grabs the car keys from the bowl on the counter. “Listen to your mother,” he says, having no idea what she even said.

  “Kelton’s not sooo bad,” I say, suddenly realizing how strange that sounds coming out of my mouth.

  Mom and Dad, with empty jugs under their arms, make their way toward the door. “Well, his older brother got out of there the second he could. His shoes left skid marks on the doorstep,” Dad says.

  Garrett holds the door for them graciously, and Mom kisses him on the head.

  “See you in a bit,” I say with a smile. They take Mom’s Prius, since Dad’s car is still convalescing in the garage. It’s moments like these, seeing them together, that make me appreciate the family I have. When you’re a teenager you spend so much time complaining about how lame your parents are, and then they always somehow seem to find a way to remind you that they’re actually not as uncool as you want to believe. And now with the two of them gone, for some odd childlike reason, I find myself wishing I could have given them a hug goodbye.

  6) Kelton

  I decided not to tell my father about the military trucks we saw at our high school. It’s not that I don’t think it’s a significant development, but seeing that we haven’t yet been able to get in touch with my older brother, Brady, there’s no point in rocking the proverbial boat if we’re just going to wait here for him anyway, rather than take off to our bug-out in the mountains. With my dad, the embers of armageddon will quickly grow into a full-on blazing apocalypse in his head. He already got that crazy look in his eyes after hearing about the closures of so many school districts. Which, by the way, is no tragedy to me. Not that I hate school, it’s just that when it comes down to it, I learn more just hanging out at home anyway. I’d probably be homeschooled if either of my parents had the patience to do it.

  To take my mind off of things, I load up my paintball gun and practice in the backyard. I’m hitting every target on point, and I try to tell myself it’s a good omen. The de-sal rigs down at the beach will do their job. No one will go thirsty. All will be well.

  My dad steps out onto the patio. “Don’t forget to exhale with your shot,” he says. He knows his stuff—after all, he did spend twelve years in the Marine Corps. My mom likes to make fun of his career as a jarhead—his “extraction missions,” because technically he worked as a military dentist and never actually left his base.

  After a few more shots, my CO2 cartridge runs out. I go inside to change it, and right after I finish loading the new cartridge, there’s a knock on the front door. My dad answers it—it’s Roger Malecki, one of our other neighbors. The Maleckis just had a baby, so we never see them much. Actually, we never saw them much before the baby, either. We’re not exactly social butterflies in our family.

  “How are things, Roger?” my dad says pleasantly.

  “Ugh, don’t ask,” Malecki says. “The car keeps overheating. Plus we’re having problems with sewage. Whole house stinks.”

  “I hear ya,” says my dad. “You know, the Morrows next door had the exact same problem.” Although he doesn’t offer Malecki any trap seal liquid.

  Then Malecki begins to avoid eye contact. My father has no patience for beating around the bush.

  “What can I do for you, Roger?”

  Malecki heaves a sigh. “It’s the baby. Hannah’s still able to feed her, but she’s getting dehydrated. I’m afraid she won’t be able to breastfeed much longer. We have some powdered formula, but that’s kind of useless without water. . . .”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” my dad says genuinely. “How can we help?”

  “Well . . . we know you have survival supplies. Hell, everyone knows you’ve got enough squirrelled away in there to survive the apocalypse.” Then he laughs nervously, noticing my dad frowning a bit at the word “squirrelled.” As if preparing for the worst is somehow worthy of ridicule. And just then I notice that Malecki’s hands are shaking anxiously, like he went over this dialogue in his head a thousand times, and still screwed it up.

  I know my dad well enough to know that he doesn’t give “hand-outs.” Plus, once you start giving things away for free it’s a slippery slope. And if there’s one thing my dad hates, it’s slippery slopes.

  My dad casually, strategically puts his hand on the door. Not to close it, but to give him leverage in case he needs to. “The key word there, Roger, is ‘survival.’ We have just enough to survive.”

  Malecki takes a moment to regroup his thoughts, and tries again. “All right, I get it,” he says. “You have principles and you don’t want to compromise them—but I’m begging you, Richard. There’s got to be something you can do. . . . I mean . . . the baby . . .”

  My dad weighs the possibilities. “I’m sure I could give you a few pointers,” he says.

  “Pointers?”

  My dad motions toward Malecki’s yard. “You’ve got a marvelous garden of succulents. You could grind those up and squeeze at least a gallon out of them. I could even show you how to make a condenser to extract the water.”

  “The cactuses?” Malecki laughs, incredulous.

  My dad smiles graciously. “Cacti,” he gently corrects. “You could have fresh water by tomorrow.”

  Malecki’s smile fades, realizing that my father isn’t joking. “I have a family to look after. I don’t have that kind of time!”

  “Well, if you want water you’ll make the time.”

  But rather than formulating a response, his eyes narrow and his lips curl with rage. He steps forward, getting into my dad’s face. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

  But my dad stays cool. Collected. “Roger, I’m offering you a gift much more valuable than a bottle of water. Self-reliance.”

  Malecki’s expression darkens, and he gets this strange, wild look in his eyes.

  “You’re just going to stand there and let my wife’s breast milk run dry?”

  “How dare you get angry at me—as if your lack of foresight is my fault!”

  “You’re a son of a bitch, you know that?”

  And my dad’s done. He doesn’t suffer fools lightly—and to him anyone who expects others to solve their problems is a fool.

  “Why don’t you come back when you’re ready to behave like a functioning member of society.” He tries to shut the door, but Malecki lunges forward across the threshold, blocking the door from closing.

  “I should smack that grin right off your face,” says Malecki, although my dad isn’t grinning at all. My dad tries to shoulder him out, but Malecki has the adrenaline of a desperate man, and pushes farther in. He knocks my father off balance, and the door swings open.

  That’s when I raise my gun, exhale, and pull the trigger. Three
times. I shoot Malecki square in the chest. Right on target. The force of the blasts blows him back against the door jamb. All his bravado is gone. He wails, thinking he’s dying. Then he reaches to his chest and examines the blue phosphorescent ooze on his shirt. My heart pounds probably as much as his. He looks up to me with this forlorn, bewildered look, as if I really had blown a hole in his chest. Then I reach for my backpack hanging on the rack near the front door. I cram my arm in, shift around, and produce a water bottle I bought at school, when it was something I took for granted. I shove it into his blue, dripping hands.

  “Take it and leave,” I tell him.

  Malecki looks at the bottle of water and goes red in the face, embarrassed, like it wasn’t too late for his humanity to suddenly come rushing back. He turns, and like that, he’s gone.

  In an instant my dad looks to me, his lip bloodied from the scuffle, now wearing this violently charged expression—and I can’t tell if he’s just worked up, or if he truly disapproves of what I did—not that I blasted the guy with paint, but that I gave him my water.

  “This was none of your business,” my father says sternly. “You shouldn’t have interfered.”

  “Yes, sir,” I tell him. “I know, sir.” I always call him sir when he’s pissed off at me.

  Then he closes the door and strides away.

  The thing is, I’m glad I did what I did. Not just because it has always been a fantasy of mine to blast our neighbors with my paintball gun—but because whether my dad knows it or not, I saw what was coming next. What would have happened if I didn’t pull my trigger. Because at the apex of that confrontation, my dad’s hand had instinctively traveled down to his belt . . . where his gun was nestled in its holster.

  PART TWO

  THREE DAYS TO ANIMAL

  * * *

  SNAPSHOT 1 OF 3: ACTIVIST

  Camille Cohen has always had a problem with impassive bureaucracy and authority figures. Back in high school, she was extremely vocal in pointing out hypocrisies in the curriculum, or inequalities in their disciplinary system—and nothing has really changed now that she’s a social ecology major at UC Irvine. The only difference is that now, she sees a path to actually changing the world.