by J. L. Esplin
#7. Do you have a radio?
#8. Do you have batteries?
#9. Matches? A reliable light source?
#10. Sanitation supplies?
I filled in my answers.
We were prepared for this. My dad had made sure of it. We had everything on the list, and then some. So I didn’t know why the fluttering in my chest had turned to a pounding.
Then I heard something through the disorderly room. My dad’s name.
“Don’t get started on Lockwood again. He didn’t predict any of this!”
It came from the front of the meeting, near those silent reading tables, but I didn’t look up this time. I just made my hand into a fist, fingernails biting into my palm.
“At least he practiced what he preached,” someone answered, “which is more than a lot of us can say.”
“The man isn’t a saint. He’s a pack rat—”
Stewart stiffened beside me, and my head shot up, chest inflating with air, but Mr. Neilson stopped me, covering my fist with his weathered hand. “You know what I always admire about your dad?” he said to us in a low voice, the weight of his hand heavier than I expected. “Up against a hothead like Mike Johnson who doesn’t know up from down, Jim never takes the bait. Just stays cool as a cucumber.”
A heart-leaping whistle broke through the chaos, sharp and high-pitched, and Mr. Neilson’s hand left mine.
Mrs. Rudman was standing red-faced on a chair in front of the bookcases. “The power may be out,” she said in a stern voice, trembling with anger, “but this is still a library. Quiet!”
Seizing the moment, Mrs. Clarke dropped the cat poster and hurried to the front of the meeting. “Excuse me, everyone. I know tensions are high right now—”
“I came here to get answers,” Mr. Johnson shouted, “not a lecture from my neighbors—”
“I agree,” Mrs. Clarke said smoothly. “If you would take a seat, then I think we can all agree to give Mr. Ramsey the floor, and get our questions answered. And, parents, let’s have the children play in the courtyard. They don’t need to be in here for this anyway.”
“Is she talking about us?” Stewart asked, as parents began breaking up the game of tag and ushering kids out of the library. He leaned forward on his folded arms, heel tucked beneath him.
“Nah, she’s not referring to you boys,” Mr. Neilson said, “just the kids running around screaming.”
“What a relief,” I said dryly, as if I wouldn’t rather be goofing around in the courtyard than listening to a bunch of adults have a shouting match. But then I caught a hint of Mr. Neilson’s expression and immediately regretted my sarcastic response.
Definitely not cool as a cucumber.
“John,” Mr. Yardley said, the directness in his voice catching me off guard, his attention off the questionnaire and on me for the first time since sitting down. “You should stay and listen to Mr. Ramsey.”
He’d said it like he was apologizing for something. Sorry, John, but you have to stay here and be “head of household.”
I agreed with a shrug, like it didn’t bother me.
Stew straightened. “If John’s staying, I’m staying.”
“Parents,” Mrs. Clarke called from the front of the room, “do not get upset—of course, I am not referring to your little ones. Nursing babies, toddlers can stay.”
“Well, there’s your answer, Stew,” I said, his eyes narrowing at me, “you can stay.”
“All right,” Mr. Ramsey started as the room quieted, giving Mrs. Clarke a nod of thanks. “As I was saying before, the Western Interconnection is a power grid that spans more than the eleven westernmost states, parts of Mexico, and up through Canada—”
“So, you’re saying the whole grid is down?”
“What I’m saying is, we’ve already confirmed blackouts in Arizona, California, Utah, Idaho…”
There were a few gasps as the list went on, and though news of this had already spread, hearing it again was just as shocking as when Mr. Yardley first told us. Still, I tried to focus on the fact that, when the blackout started, my dad was outside this area, all the way in North Carolina.
I figured that was a good thing. Wasn’t it?
“Does that mean the whole grid is down?”
“Well—”
“What could cause an entire power grid to go down?”
“Zombies,” Stew said in my ear. I gave him a sharp look, not in the mood. “What?” he mouthed, his hands up in a shrug, like he wasn’t even kidding.
“Answering that question would require a lot of speculation,” Mr. Ramsey said, “the kind of speculation that isn’t helpful. Let’s work with what we do know—”
“Who cares how it happened,” Mr. Johnson snapped. “I just want to know why the power isn’t back yet.”
“Yes, what is the holdup, exactly?”
“Let’s keep it orderly,” Mrs. Clarke said. “One question at a time! Mr. Ramsey, when can we expect the power to be back on?”
“Well, I suppose it could come back anytime. But”—he interrupted the collective sigh of relief—“if you aren’t prepared for the worst, then I would start considering your options.”
“What do you mean?” Mrs. Clarke said. “What options?”
“Well, if you don’t have at least a three-month supply of food and water—”
“Three months?” Mrs. Clarke said over the shouts. “Are you saying we won’t have power for three months?”
The room erupted then, but all I could do was watch Mr. Ramsey. He rubbed his jaw, his eyes concerned, like he was just coming to the realization that a lot of us didn’t understand something about this blackout.
“Listen,” Mr. Ramsey said, putting both hands in the air this time. “Listen,” he repeated. “Even if the power comes back on tomorrow, food production, shipping, everything has already come to a halt across the entire western United States. There’s already a fuel shortage in Ely, we can assume that’s true of most cities. And with no fuel, nothing is moving up or down our highways. Think of it like a chain reaction. And way out here in Middle-of-Nowhere, Nevada, we’re on the end of that chain.”
He paused, like he expected more interruptions, but at that moment, all I could hear was the pounding in my own ears.
He cleared his throat. “Now, you were given a questionnaire when you walked in. If you’ll flip it over and take a look at the back…”
I looked down and turned the paper over for the first time, surprised to see it was mostly blank. Except for the words written at the top: PLAN OF ACTION.
“This is where you can work out a plan for your family. Think about the answers to those questions on the front. If you don’t have at least a three-month supply of food and water, then consider the first one. For a lot of you, that question might be the most important. It represents mobility. As you’ve probably noticed by the low turnout here, a lot of folks have already taken advantage of it.” He paused for a moment. “‘How much fuel do you have?’ Enough to temporarily evacuate your family out of Lund?”
* * *
I sat by the window on the drive home, staring at the blur of sagebrush and dust.
“Why don’t you boys come over for dinner again tonight?” Mr. Yardley said. His hands were gripping the steering wheel, his eyes fixed on the empty stretch of highway in front of us.
“Our dad will be home before dinner,” I reminded him.
Stewart was silent.
Mr. Yardley looked like he wanted to say something else, but he didn’t.
When we got home, Stew went straight to his room, which was fine by me, because I went straight to mine. I picked up everything off the floor, made my bed, cleared off my desk.
The state flag was still there from the morning my dad left town, and I made a split-second decision about it. I unfolded it, got some thumbtacks, and hung it on my wall properly. Like Dad said I should.
I stood back and stared at the emblem.
Against the opposite wall, the wall I shared with my brother, a
tennis ball thumped. A steady thump, thump, thump. My heart beating twice as fast.
Dad would be home that night. I let myself believe it was possible. I let myself believe that a massive power outage on one side of the country wouldn’t affect travel on the other side of the country. One side grinding to a halt, but not the other.
I let myself believe it, until I couldn’t anymore.
It was late, probably past midnight, when a knock sounded on my door.
Lying on top of my comforter, I took a breath and stopped all the overwhelming thoughts in my head, forced my mind to be still. I rubbed my palms over my eyes, wiped my nose on my sleeve. “I’m awake,” I called in a steady voice.
My brother cracked open the door, and I made room for him on my bed. I gave him my pillow and tucked my arm beneath my head.
“We’re going to be on our own out here for a while,” I said.
“I know,” he whispered back.
My hand was on the flashlight resting against my leg. I thumbed it on with a click, lifted it, and shined it at the flag, at the words in the upper left-hand corner. BATTLE BORN.
My dad was right. That flag did look pretty good on my bedroom wall.
* * *
The Yardleys were at our house the next day.
“We brought dinner,” Mr. Yardley said, carrying in a pot of cooked pasta. “The only problem is, we have no pasta sauce.”
“I kept meaning to get more sauce,” Mrs. Yardley said, holding tight to Freddy’s little wrist as he tried to wriggle away. He squealed as she pulled him back, grabbing him under the arms and lifting him to her hip.
“Don’t worry. We got a whole shelf of pasta sauce in the garage,” Stew said.
Mrs. Yardley smiled in response. And then for some reason, she put the back of her hand to her mouth, shut her eyes, and burst into sobs. Freddy took one look at his mom and stopped wriggling. He stuck out his lower lip, his clear blue eyes brimming with tears.
“Geez, it’s just sauce,” Stew said as Freddy let out a wail. “Take as much as you want.”
Mr. Yardley put his arm around his wife and kissed the side of her head, rested a hand on her pregnant belly. Then he looked at me. “Let’s go talk, John.”
Out back, the sun was setting and the sky was streaked with shades of red and orange, like the distant mountains were on fire.
The view didn’t exactly help ease the feeling of dread growing inside me.
“We have plenty of food and water,” I started to say, “enough to share—”
“It’s not just that, John. Lizzie could go into labor any day now. She’ll need help.”
I nodded like I understood these things.
“I’m just trying to decide if I should be talking you into coming with us,” he said, “or talking you into staying here on your own.”
I knew it was coming. I knew they’d have to leave. But my heart still dropped when he said it. I told him, “You don’t need to do either. We’re staying here.”
“All right,” he said after a pause. And while we watched the sunset fade, we went over everything. He wanted to make sure we were really prepared for this. Stew and I had plenty of food and water, and we had that generator. How much fuel did we need to keep the generator running? How much fuel did we have stored on our property? How much fuel did Mr. Yardley need to get up to Ely, to Mrs. Yardley’s sister? How much fuel did he need to get back here, back to us, after the baby was born and it was okay to travel?
I tried not to let my mind go too deep into all this. Tried not to think about how my dad should have been talking about this stuff with Mr. Yardley, and not me. Tried not to think about how long we’d be on our own. And at the end of it, he gave me a way out. “Are you sure you can do this? If you’re not sure, we can figure out something else.”
I’d never felt more unsure in my life. But I just scrunched up my forehead like I was giving it more thought—then I nodded. “I’m sure.”
His lips pressed into a smile. “You know, John, you’re a lot more like your dad than you think.”
“If you say so, Mr. Yardley,” I said, like I agreed with him.
He took his eyes off that sky, regarded me directly. “John. You can call me Davis, all right?”
Some things Davis and I never went over: What to do if I was startled awake in the middle of the night by a stranger. What to do if in one night, the food was gone, the water was gone. Everything was gone.
4
BETWEEN US AND Brighton Ranch is this stretch of highway that my dad calls “the actual loneliest road in America.” Highway 50 in Nevada holds the official title, but my dad says the second it was named the Loneliest Road in America, state officials put up signs and used it as a marketing campaign to attract tourists. This was way back in the 1980s, so maybe there was nothing better to do back then but visit an uninhabited length of asphalt. Anyway, my dad calls Highway 50 a tourist trap, and he calls State Route 318 the actual loneliest road in America. Except for a rather unpopular reservoir with a campsite near one end, there is nothing but this highway, dirt, and some poky-looking plants. No gas stations, no bathrooms, no fast food.
The highway is mostly flat and mostly straight, the kind that tapers off to a pinpoint on the horizon that you never reach. It cuts through a wide desert basin covered in woody, silvery-green sagebrush. Sometimes you’ll see what looks like a tree, but it’s actually just big sagebrush. They’ve got these crumbly-looking trunks that have been twisted and bent by the wind, like freakishly large bonsai trees in need of a good pruning. Rising from both sides of the basin are distant, barren mountains.
“How far is it to this ranch?” the girl calls through the wind. She’s holding the boy’s hand and they’re trailing several feet behind me and Stew.
Dad would do both.
I swear, if I weren’t so determined to keep us both alive, I’d pound my brother for putting those words in my mind.
Not that the girl had waited for an invitation to come along or anything.
“Hey,” the girl calls again. “How far is it to this ranch?”
I glare sideways at my brother. “Did you have to tell her about Brighton Ranch?”
Stew shrugs. “You think she would have stopped asking?”
He has a point.
I yell back over my shoulder, “It’s about three days!”
If I tell her exactly how many miles, she might think we can take more than three days to get there. And we can’t.
“Three days?”
I motion for them to catch up to us because I can’t hear her too well back there with the wind roaring in my ears. And as soon as she’s next to me, on my left side with the boy beside her, I feel this weird sense of doom.
The boy looks like he might be eight or nine years old. He’s got one of those kid haircuts that hangs over your forehead and into your eyes—real babyish. The wind is blowing it straight back and his forehead is several shades paler than the rest of his suntanned face. He’ll be burned within an hour. His lips are red and chapped, because he keeps on licking them. One of the stupidest things you can do when your lips are chapped in a dry wind, not that I blame him. Every once in a while, I notice the girl tug on his hand, like she’s trying to keep him alert and awake.
He’ll be the first one to slow us down.
“What are your names?” I finally ask. I don’t think any of us are exactly in a friendly mood, but I guess names are a good place to start.
“Cleverly,” she says. “And this is my brother, Will.”
I must look confused because she says her name again, louder and slower this time. “Clev-er-ly.”
Stew, who’s walking to my right, leans around me to ask, “Like the verb?”
“You mean adverb. And no. Like, named after my grandparents, whose last name is Cleverly.”
Stew and I share a look because we know who she is now. I mean, we don’t know her, but we know the Cleverlys. They live just north of Lund, maybe ten or fifteen miles from here. I wonder
where her grandparents are, what happened that brought her and her brother here, but I decide not to bring it up for now.
“Cleverly,” I repeat. It sounds strange to call her that, like I’m calling out to a teammate to pass me the ball or something. “Clev?” I try, but can tell immediately it’s not gonna work.
“Don’t call me that,” she says, and her little brother snorts.
“Clever?” I try again.
“I know it’s a mouthful, but you must speak all three syllables.”
“She doesn’t like nicknames,” her brother says.
“Will, I like nicknames fine, just not for my name.”
“What if someone needs to shout out your name real quick, to warn you of danger or something?” Stew asks. “Then what do they call you?”
“What are your names?” she asks abruptly. “Or should I keep referring to you as Toilet Water Boys, like I’ve been doing in my head?”
You’d think that if you’d gotten desperate enough to scavenge water out of a toilet bowl, people wouldn’t hold it against you. You’d think.
“You can call him Toilet Water,” I say, aiming my thumb at my brother, who rolls his eyes. “T.W. for short. And you can call me John.”
“How boring,” she says.
“Thanks. I picked it out myself.”
Will grins, but she just says, “How far are we walking today, John?”
She’s trying to do math. But I can out-math her. “A third of the total distance.”
“You’re kind of annoying, aren’t you, John?”
Stewart laughs out loud, the traitor. I can’t remember the last time I heard him laugh, so I let it go. “I’m Stewart Lockwood,” my brother says, leaning around me to raise his hand like she’s taking attendance or something. “Or just Stew.”
“Hi, Stew. Maybe you could tell me how far it is to Brighton Ranch?”
“Sure, it’s about ninety-six miles from our place,” he says without hesitation, which really bugs me. He could have at least hesitated.
Cleverly stops in her tracks with Will beside her, but I don’t break pace, just keep pushing through the wind. “Ninety-six miles? That’s like … that’s like three and a half marathons!” she says as they hurry to match my pace.
