“Alyssa, honey,” says Vicky Morales, who I barely know, “we trust your decision, dear. We know you’re a smart, honest girl.”
“Well, you’re just brown-nosing now, Victoria!” says Miss Bouman. “Do you really think she’ll favor you just because you’re kissing ass?”
“All right, we’re all in the same boat here,” someone else says. And it’s true. But, as Garrett said the other day, that boat is the Titanic. One lifeboat left, and I’m it. I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all, and although I know this is terrible, I begin to wish I never came here with water.
These people look a lot like the kid at the beach. Their lips are white and raw. They’re anxious, irritated, and their irritation is turning on me like a spotlight.
“Well, what’s it gonna be?” a man I don’t even know says, at the end of his patience. “We don’t have all day!”
But I don’t respond, because for a split second his eyes flit, and I catch that wild look in them—a look that I’m starting to learn how to identify—and I think I know what comes next.
Then Mr. Burnside signals to his wife, and apparently they communicate in that telepathic way that married couples sometimes do, because she comes up behind me and gently takes the backpack.
“Why don’t you go, Alyssa,” she says, this time getting my name right. “We’ll figure it out. Thank you for the water—and I’m sorry you got put in this position. It’s our problem, not yours.”
I don’t argue. I don’t even ask for the bag back. I don’t care. I just want to get out of there.
It’s only after I leave that I remember that it’s Kelton’s backpack, with his name stenciled right on it. If they didn’t already know the McCrackens have water, they sure do now.
• • •
The sun sets and we convene for what I’m anticipating to be the most awkward dinner of my life. Even the food is surreal: corned beef and cabbage with pumpkin pie that’s still frozen in the middle for dessert.
“Don’t ask,” Kelton leans over and whispers. Which is just fine by me.
In spite of the off-grid electrical system that Kelton is always so proud to brag about, the lights in the house are turned off, and Mrs. McCracken has lit candles for the dinner table.
At the head of the table sits Mr. McCracken, who glowers at everyone as if he were a lord presiding over his fiefdom. I imagine he’s one of those overbearing parents who makes you ask to be excused, and only after you’ve finished all your peas and carrots. Though right now his glare is focused more on Jacqui—who’s already helped herself to three servings of corned beef. She stuffs her face, gleefully irreverent, and eventually motions with her fork. “So what’s with the candles?”
“Good question,” Mr. McCracken mutters to his corned beef, but with a tone that tells me he’s talking to his wife. “I wonder that, too.”
“We don’t want to flaunt our electricity to the neighbors any more than we already have,” Kelton’s mother says too calmly.
“It took us six months to install our power system. I’d like to use it,” Mr. McCracken says. “Besides, it’s going to take more than a few scented candles to ward off our neighbors.”
“We wouldn’t have to worry about neighbors if we practiced a little more compassion,” his wife comes back.
“Maybe we should just invite them all over for supper,” he says.
“Maybe we should,” she says, calling his bluff.
He looks around at the rest of us like a prosecutor making an argument to a jury. “You share nothing, or you share everything. There’s no in between.”
“Thank you, Master Yoda,” says Jacqui.
I don’t think this is the first time Kelton’s parents have had this argument, because Kelton is quick to react. “It’s called the psychology of scarcity, and deprivation thinking,” Kelton says, feeling the need to defend his father—although it really feels more like he’s apologizing for him. “Add that to mob dynamics, and you get a mob that will keep taking until you’re just as bereft as they are.”
“Bereft,” says Jacqui. “Good word. You’ll catch up with my SAT score in no time.” Then she grabs more corned beef.
“Well, it’s a bankrupt, self-serving way of thinking,” says Mrs. McCracken.
“But he’s right,” I hear myself say, which is a surprise to everyone—even me. I think back to the way our own neighbors handled the division of those water bottles, and how so many of them were ready to turn against me, the one who brought it. As much as I hate to admit it, I see Mr. McCracken’s point. It’s not like it’s their fault, but I can see how, when people feel a threat to their lives, they’ll exercise any option they have. If you don’t want it to be at your expense, you have to take yourself off the table as an option.
“Either you open your doors wide, or you lock them,” I say regretfully. “People are too complicated to trust with anything in between.”
Mrs. McCracken studies me, perhaps feeling a bit betrayed. Mr. McCracken looks at me, surprised—almost proud—which gives me a queasy, uncomfortable feeling, like my journey to the Dark Side is now complete.
He clears his throat. “It doesn’t matter anyway,” he says. “We’re leaving for our bug-out come daybreak.”
“What’s a bug-out?” Garrett asks.
“It’s an emergency shelter,” Kelton explains. “A secret place to go in the event of a major disaster.”
“So when do we leave?” Jacqui says, through a mouthful of food.
Kelton doesn’t respond, and just from his silence I realize that we’re not part of the McCracken equation.
“There’s only room for us,” says Kelton’s father. “I’m sorry.” And I think he actually means it. To be honest, I myself haven’t even put any thought into a world past this dinner. There hasn’t been time to project any sort of future—even short term. Then Mr. McCracken surprises me.
“I’m going to leave the keys to the house with you, Alyssa.”
“What?” I accidentally blurt out.
“I’ll show you how to use the security system, and make sure you know where all the booby traps are. The whole place will be yours for the duration,” he says. He glances at Jacqui, and reluctantly adds, “All three of you.”
I wonder what his rationale is for giving me the keys to his castle. It makes me think of the way my mom used to always leave a television on when we’d go on vacation so would-be robbers would think someone was home. Maybe this is just an elaborate version of that. Was it Kelton who persuaded him, I wonder—or was it because I corroborated his abysmal view of humanity?
I think about the days ahead. This has to end, doesn’t it? “The duration,” as Mr. McCracken called it, can’t be more than just a week or two—if that. Then, just as I begin projecting forward to a hope of better days, things suddenly get a whole lot worse.
Every phone vibrates and dings in unison, a strange and troubling cacophony. We all lift up our phones to see the identical message, which reads:
EMERGENCY ALERT: MARTIAL LAW DECLARED IN LOS ANGELES, ORANGE, VENTURA, RIVERSIDE, SAN BERNARDINO, AND SAN DIEGO COUNTIES.
STAND BY FOR FURTHER DIRECTIVES.
16) Kelton
It’s all happening just as all the books on prepping said it would. I take no comfort in that. Not even a little. Doomsday scenarios are only fun when doomsday is just a hypothetical. Now I wish that they were all wrong.
Martial law is the last step before everything falls apart.
Now it could go one of two ways: 1) Martial law will be effective; there will be enough military might to counteract the chaos; riots will be flashpoints, rather than widespread; things will break soft, and recovery will be relatively easy. 2) Martial law will fail; the military will underestimate the need, or not be able to scramble fast enough; riots will be systemic and severe; Southern California will break hard, and recovery will take years, if at all.
“So what happens now?” Alyssa asks, before we all bed down for the night.
I don’t share with her the two possibilities. “We’ll have to see,” I tell her.
I know Alyssa is capable, and I don’t worry that she can maintain things here in the house after my parents and I leave, but I do worry about Jacqui. She’ll want to take charge, and I don’t see that as a good thing.
These are the thoughts I take to bed with me that night. I think they’ll keep me awake, but sometimes your own body does you a much-needed favor. I’m so exhausted, I’m out within minutes of hitting the pillow.
• • •
I’m jolted awake by the drone of our motion detector alarm. We have second-generation motion detectors; they only trigger if the moving object is large enough to be a human being—which means someone has hopped our fence. I check the clock. Just before five a.m. I move to the game room, where Alyssa, Garrett, and Jacqui are already up and on high alert.
“What the hell is that?” Jacqui asks.
“Intruder alert,” I say, realizing that sounds far more sci-fi than I mean it to. “Where’s my dad?”
No one responds, but I hear Dad call for me downstairs. That’s when Jacqui goes to a window, and whatever she sees out there makes her turn to me with bug-eyed concern—something I didn’t even know was in her emotional repertoire.
“This can’t be good . . . ,” she says.
I look out the window to see lights—dozens of them in the predawn darkness, constellated like stars. I rub my eyes, allowing them to adjust . . . and now I’m able to make out shapes. People holding flashlights—and they’re all moving toward our house.
“What’s going on?” Alyssa asks.
That’s when I hear pounding.
Bang Bang Bang!
There’s someone at our front door.
“Stay away from the windows,” I tell them, and nearly throw myself downstairs.
My dad’s in the dining room, one step ahead of us, with an array of weapons already sprawled across the table. Guns, ammo, knives, and an assortment of other tactical tools, some of which I don’t even recognize.
I can see my mom in the safe room, frantically moving things to make room for us.
Bang Bang Bang!
The wolves have finally arrived. My stomach goes sour and knots up. I remind myself that the front door is reinforced, and that all the windows are bulletproof. Our house is impenetrable and no one is getting in. But if all of these things are true, why the hell am I so afraid?
“Kelton!” shouts my dad, as Alyssa, Garrett, and Jacqui come downstairs behind me. “Get your friends into the safe room. Then go get your gun.”
But the command doesn’t compute for me.
He reads the look on my face. “Where’s your pistol?”
“It’s right here,” Jacqui says, flashing the butt of the gun, which protrudes from her waistband.
My father looks from the gun, to Jacqui, to me, calculating how this unthinkable thing happened—and perhaps assessing Jacqui’s threat level. Ultimately, he decides that the threat outside our home is more imminent than Jacqui, who clearly will not part with my gun—so my father doesn’t ask how she got it. I’ll get reamed for it later, I’m sure.
Dad opens the electrical panel in the downstairs hallway and throws the master switch, killing the floodlights outside, and any lights on inside as well, other than his own flashlight. Then he attaches infrared scopes to what guns he can, so he’ll be able to see but the intruders won’t.
The banging, which had stopped for a few moments, changes timbre and direction. Now it’s coming from the back door instead of the front door, and is even more insistent than before. Our back door has a captive double-cylinder nickel-silver deadbolt, but my dad has complained that the door frame isn’t thick enough. Deadbolts are only as strong as the frame that holds them.
My mom tries to move the others to the safe room, but Jacqui’s not going—neither is Alyssa, and Garrett won’t move without his sister.
My father loads the weapons and takes off any safeties.
“Richard, what are you doing?” Mom says, horrified. It’s one thing to see the weapons laid out. It’s another thing to see them being loaded.
“Protecting my family.” The pounding on the back door is more frantic than ever.
“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Mom says, her voice quivering.
But Dad is single-minded. He straps on his Kevlar vest. “Get everyone into the safe room.”
My mom is frantic now. “Come with us into the safe room! You don’t need to do this!”
“Like hell I don’t!”
My dad keeps on loading guns, and I can see now that his hands are shaking. The only thing keeping him from imploding right now is his collection of deadly toys.
“At least see what they want!” she yells, desperate.
“You know what they want!”
His gaze finally connects with Mom’s, letting her see him, truly, for the first time in a long time. The person I saw in the garage earlier. Not an indignant, violence-seeking monster, but a human being, honest and raw—trapped in this house with us, and scared to the bone.
He chooses the shotgun and goes into the kitchen, taking a position across the room from the back door. No one has gone into the safe room. Everyone wants to be here. To see what happens. To see how this goes down—as if somehow being here will keep it from happening.
More banging on the back door. The knob rattles violently, but doesn’t turn.
Meanwhile the voices coming from the street grow louder. I hear our security gate come crashing down. I hear someone scream as they fall into a booby trap in our front yard, but there aren’t enough booby traps to stop this onslaught.
Then the pounding at the back door stops.
My dad takes a deep breath and digs in deep. He raises his gun, pointed at the door, preparing himself for whatever comes next. I can’t take my focus from that door—like when I was a kid and was convinced there was a monster in my closet. I’d stare, unmoving, unblinking, to make damn sure I would see whatever came out of there before it could see me. This door is locked, I tell myself. It’s locked. No one’s getting in.
Then there’s a sound that’s familiar and terrible. A deadbolt disengaging. The knob turns. The door opens. We’ve been breached.
And now everything comes in quick, disjointed images, like reality is violently strobing around me.
The door swings wide.
A figure moves forward.
Dad screams and pulls the trigger.
The world explodes with the shotgun blast.
The intruder is blown back against the door frame.
Blood splatters everywhere.
On me.
One eye stings from it.
The intruder bounces off the door frame.
He hits the kitchen floor, face down, in front of the open door.
And in that door—
There’s a key in the lock.
A single, solitary key.
Dad catches his breath, still in shock from having pulled the trigger.
But then Mom steps forward, in some kind of trance . . .
Then Dad drops the gun . . .
And falls to his knees . . .
And now I finally start piecing it all together.
As I realize the body lying face-down on the ground isn’t a murderous, thirst-crazed marauder.
It’s my brother, Brady.
Dad, wailing in agony, rolls him over, confirming the inevitable truth. It hits me hard, but in a strange, hollow kind of way. I lose control of my senses. I’m outside of myself now, watching everything unfold, like an observer wrapped in someone else’s skin.
Mom hurls herself over Brady’s limp body. Her white nightgown absorbing his blood. Dad pats Brady’s face over and over again in denial, as if to wake him up from a bad dream.
“No no no no no no no . . .”
I’m so fixed on the scene that I have failed to realize what’s going on in the house. People have started flooding through the back door.
The neighbors. The marauders. They pass like shadows, scavenging the entire house. Their eyes are wild and rabid. They come armed with shovels and fireplace pokers and baseball bats.
But Mom and Dad are completely oblivious to it. What does it matter? What does any of this matter? My big brother is dead.
Brady got our messages. He knew we were leaving for the bug-out this morning, and, as usual, showed up at the last minute. And when he saw the approaching mob, he tried to warn us, frantically pounding on the door, trying to get in.
We should have known it was him when the doorknob turned. We all should have—because of the key my father always left for him, hidden in the same place it always was since the time we were both little; in a hollow in the back porch railing. The intentional flaw in our security measures.
Alyssa yells to me from behind, but it takes a few seconds for her words to register.
“We need to leave! Kelton, we have to get out of here!”
But I’m not leaving. I’m not abandoning my brother any more than my parents are. My legs are churning and I’m moving past her and toward the center of the room. My hand reaches for something, and I grip it. The shotgun my father dropped.
I load another round into the barrel.
I look into the wolves’ many glowing eyes.
They’re going to die today. Every last one of them.
I take aim at the head of a figure carrying a case of water.
I clamp the trigger.
Then suddenly everything goes black.
17) Jacqui
I’ve never seen anyone get knocked out with a picture frame, let alone a picture of themselves. But hey—there’s a first time for everything. The metal frame was heavy enough, and Alyssa brought it down over Kelton’s head with the right amount of force. Just in the nick of time, too, because Kelton was actually going to do it. He was actually going to start blowing people away.
All I can make out is the blinding flurry of flashlights beaming in every direction. I keep my hands light, fingers to my gun—but I’m not about to waste a bullet unless I absolutely have to.
Dry Page 14
