by J. L. Esplin
She looks at me with this little crease between her eyes. Then says, “Your brother is kind of crazy.”
I snort out a laugh, surprised that I’m not the one she’s calling crazy.
“He’s not, actually,” I say, though I don’t know why I’m defending him.
She pulls her sleeves over her fists, shoulders hunched against the wind. “He is definitely crazy,” she says, shaking her head. “But he was right about the water. There’s not enough of it.”
I unclench my jaw enough to say, “Yep.”
“So what I’m wondering is, why weren’t you planning to stop at the reservoir in the first place?”
I put my hands low on my hips like my dad does when explaining things, trying to look confident, like I know what I’m talking about. “It’s out of the way,” I say.
“Yeah, going out of the way for water sucks. But so does dying from dehydration.” She says it like she’s weighing the two sucky options evenly, which only shows how stupid the second choice is.
“Right,” I say shortly. “Which is why I changed my mind.”
She doesn’t react to my attitude, just looks over her shoulder at the shelter. I follow her gaze. Will is lying down opposite Stew now.
“Perfect,” I mumble, breathing out a sigh.
“How out of the way did you say it was?” she asks.
Maybe she actually gets it. Maybe she understands why I’d ignore all common sense and lead us ninety-six miles across a desert with less than two gallons of water, rather than walk the extra miles to the reservoir and back.
“It’s a sixteen-mile detour,” I tell her.
Her eyes jump back to her brother, curled up under the tarp. “One hundred and twelve miles,” she says, almost to herself.
“If you’re adding up miles, you might as well subtract the two and a half we’ve already walked.”
She chews one side of her lower lip, then says, “It might take us longer than three days to walk that far.”
“It won’t,” I say quickly.
“Seriously? You want us to walk over a hundred miles in three days? That isn’t realistic—”
“Will doesn’t have to do it,” I blurt out, just so she’ll drop it.
She frowns. “What do you mean?”
“The detour. Will doesn’t have to do it. Neither does my brother. And neither do you. It only takes one person to walk to the reservoir to refill our canteens.”
That’s the solution I came up with while staring out at that battling sagebrush. Because there’s no way Stewart can walk an extra sixteen miles. He couldn’t even go two miles without taking another break. And if I’m being honest, the way I’m feeling now, I don’t know if I can walk the extra sixteen miles either. But I’m not going to think about that right now.
Cleverly’s looking at me like she’s trying to decide if this is another one of my dumb decisions, so I turn and head back to the tarp.
I’m actually looking forward to dragging Stew out by his ankles more than I should. But a few steps from the shelter, Cleverly shouts, “John!” her voice sounding panicked. I look back, and she’s got one hand shading her eyes, blocking the wind, and the other is pointing north. Back toward the direction from which we came.
I stop, my breath catching, squinting my eyes to make sure I’m seeing what I think I’m seeing. Rolling south down the 318, in a swirling cloud of dust, is a silver pickup truck.
6
IF THINGS WERE different, I wouldn’t think twice about waving down that truck and asking for help. But having a gun pressed to your forehead kind of changes how you see the world.
That morning, the day our world changed, Stew and I had linked together some longer extension cords, plugged one end into the generator, and moved the box fan into the family room. It was rattling like a freight train, tilted back, leaning against a chair so the air would blow up toward the ceiling and not disturb the cards we had laid out on the family room rug.
“You’re cheating!” Stew yelled, throwing down his hand for the second time.
“Will you knock it off—I’m not cheating! You’re being a bad sport!” I rolled forward, gathering up my chips, careful not to let him see the card I had hidden under my knee.
The rattling fan, the fighting. That’s probably why we never heard the truck pulling up our drive, probably why we heard nothing at all until the knock at the front door, and the doorbell ringing.
We both kind of jumped. But it was followed by big smiles of relief.
“They’re back!” Stew shouted. And we leapt up, slipping on cards and shoving each other in our race to get to the door.
It’d been over two weeks since the Yardleys had left. Two weeks of uncertainty, two weeks and still no power. A fifty-pound boulder that had been weighing on my shoulders, gone with a single knock at the door.
Stewart got to the doorknob first, yanked open the door, both of us out of breath.
But it wasn’t Davis Yardley on the porch. It was a man we’d never seen before. Relief turned to something else.
It’s funny how your body warns you when something isn’t right, even before your brain understands why. And the first thing your brain does is try to explain away your body’s reaction. Calm down, your brain says. You are overreacting. He doesn’t look scary. He’s smiling at you, nodding hello.
“Name’s Clayton Presley,” he said, holding out his hand for one of us to shake. I hesitated, then reached past Stewart and took it. His handshake was firm, his fingers warm and dry.
“Did Mr. Yardley send you?” Stew asked, his forehead creased in confusion.
Presley frowned a bit, like he was trying to place the name. Then he hooked his thumb through one of his belt loops and shook his head. “I’m just out checking on folks in the area. Down from Ely. Actually surprised to find people still out here.” He looked over his shoulder at nothing, then back at us. “Your dad around?”
My body was back at it again, heat blooming from my chest. And this time my brain didn’t argue. Our place was a mile back from the highway, and the last house before you hit a long stretch of nothing. You wouldn’t come out here unless you knew where you were going.
And there was something else. Something about the way he asked about our dad. People who don’t know who we are, people who haven’t known me and Stew since we were babies—well, I’d expect him to ask about our parents. Either one of them. He knows it’s just our dad.
“We’re expecting him home any second,” I lied, moving to stand fully in front of my brother. I felt vulnerable, standing there in nothing but a pair of basketball shorts. I wasn’t even wearing shoes. But I tried not to let it show.
I looked back at Stew, nudged my head toward the back of the house. “Why don’t you run and get him a drink.”
Stewart’s eyebrows drew together in a frown. “Bottled water, or—”
I widened my eyes at him, and he shut up and took off down the hall. Not toward the kitchen off to the side, but back to my dad’s bedroom first.
I looked back at the man on our porch. He seemed around Mr. Yardley’s age, younger than our dad. Average height with light-colored hair and scruff on his jaw. The corners of his mouth were dried and chapped. Behind him, parked a ways down our driveway, was a silver pickup truck.
His gaze followed mine. “Not much to look at, but I paid cash for it.”
I wasn’t exactly wondering how he paid for his dumb truck. I was wondering why he’d use up gas driving way out to the edge of nowhere to check on some strangers.
He smiled and said, “You boys got everything you need out here?”
I shrugged. “We’re doing all right.”
“Is that a generator you got running?” he said, leaning to look past my shoulder.
That rattling fan. “We got a small one,” I admitted, because there was nothing I could do about it at that point. I brought the door a little closer.
Stewart came back right about then. He ducked under my arm, leaned between the door an
d me, and handed a water bottle to Presley.
“Here ya go,” he said, breathless.
Presley’s eyebrows shot up because it was cold, wet with condensation. And too late, I realized I should have answered Stew’s question, told him to grab a glass from the kitchen and pour the man some of the warm, flat water from one of our water tanks.
But it wasn’t important. What was important was that pressed against Stew’s back, sticking out of his waistband, was the grip of my dad’s semiautomatic pistol.
“Wow,” Presley said with a chuckle. “Can’t remember the last time I had a cold drink.”
I watched him take a nice long swig, then said, “We were kind of in the middle of something. Is there something else you want?”
He swiped the back of his hand across his mouth and eyed me for what felt like a full minute. “Nope. Like I said, just checking on folks in the area.” He looked down at the water bottle in his hand, pressed his mouth into a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “But it looks like you boys are doing just fine.” He held up the water bottle, taking a few steps backwards. “Thanks for the cold refreshment.”
I didn’t take my eyes off him as he walked down off the porch and out onto the gravel driveway.
“See ya later!” Stew called with a wave.
I elbowed him in the side, shut the door and bolted it.
“Really?” I said, turning on him. “‘See ya later’?”
“It’s just an expression,” he said, though his eyebrows were pinched with worry. He followed me to the front window.
We watched Presley start his truck, back it down our long driveway.
“Is the safety on?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Stew answered, his voice wavering a little.
“I’ll be right back. Yell if you catch one glimpse of his truck.”
I ran back to my room and got dressed. I didn’t care how hot it was. Next time we had a visitor “checking on folks in the area,” I’d be wearing pants, good running shoes, and a shirt that would conceal my dad’s gun.
And before I went back to the family room, back to Stew, I stopped, got down on one knee, just for a minute. Tried to catch my breath. Tried to stop my hands from shaking.
* * *
I didn’t think I’d sleep that night. I didn’t plan on it. Stew and I stayed in the family room, turned off that stupid fan, moved the couch right up against the window. We kept my dad’s loaded pistol next to us the whole time, within grabbing distance on the end table. But hours of night went by, and Presley didn’t return. My brain started to argue with my body again. See, my brain said, I knew you were overreacting. He’s not coming back.
Still, I didn’t think I’d sleep that night. I didn’t even realize I had fallen asleep, until I woke up with my dad’s pistol pressed hard against my skull.
Clayton Presley’s voice in my ear. “I’m sorry, kid, but we need what you got.”
Shock, heat from my chest, my heart pounding. On our knees in the dark. Stewart right beside me, his face as white as a sheet as more headlights came up our drive. Four or five sets of them.
I heard men getting out of their trucks, heard their footfalls on the gravel as they went around to the garage, their muffled voices, laughing, my dad’s name coming from their mouths.
Those fifty-five-gallon water tanks? They were so heavy that I always assumed they were pretty much unmovable. I was wrong about that. Turns out you only need about seven or eight jerks to move them.
“Please,” I said like a whisper.
“I’m sorry, kid,” Presley said again, standing over me, my dad’s gun never leaving my head. “We’ll be out of here soon. We don’t wanna hurt you.”
Nothing he said made sense to me, and I repeated my plea, almost mindlessly, until finally he said, “If you don’t shut up, I’m gonna have to blow your brains out.”
I stopped talking, just focused on every breath coming in and out of my lungs. I strained to hear the voices that were now in the kitchen, strained to recognize any of them. Then came the silence of the generator shutting off. That rumbling hum from outside the kitchen window, going dead.
“Hey,” Presley called out, “stick with the plan!”
There was yelling back and forth, a disagreement, but I wasn’t listening to them anymore. My brother’s head was down, his face buried in his knees, and I could feel his shoulders shaking next to me.
“Stewart,” I whispered, my head near his, sweat trickling down the side of my face, tasting the salt in my mouth. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”
I don’t know why I said that, knowing it wasn’t true. But once the words left my mouth, a stillness came over me. And it wasn’t that I didn’t have any more terrifying thoughts, thoughts of jumping up, attacking this jerk who was holding a gun to my head, holding my dad’s gun to my head.
But I also felt something deeper. A deep need to survive what was happening, for my brother to survive what was happening.
And we did. We stayed there on our knees. We survived the night.
7
“IT’S NOT THE same truck,” I say aloud without thinking.
“What?” Cleverly asks.
I glance at her. Then back to the silver pickup truck heading in our direction. I’m sure it’s not Presley’s. This one’s smaller, older, a bigger piece of crap.
“Nothing,” I say, unclenching my fists, flexing my fingers.
She shades her eyes. “Are they … driving down the center of the highway?”
I squint up the road, a feeling of dread in my gut. “Wow. Like they’re the last truck on earth.”
“My parents wouldn’t do that. Even if they were driving the last truck on earth, they’d stay on the right side of the road.”
“Same with my dad,” I say. And I guess that’s why I know we can’t trust whoever’s driving that truck. Once a person starts ignoring normal laws that they used to follow, it becomes easier and easier to break other laws, and next thing you know, you’re doing something crazy, something you’d never thought you’d do. Like robbing kids at gunpoint.
I watch, holding my breath, until the truck passes, and barely catch a glimpse of the two people in the cab, their heads turning to look back at us—it happens too fast to really see them.
“Holy cow, that’s a lot of stuff,” I say.
The bed of the truck is loaded up with a ton of crap—boxes, a mattress, a couple of chairs—all tied in a sloppy mess of ropes. Like they are moving a small apartment across the state.
“They aren’t stopping,” Cleverly says.
I can’t tell if she’s disappointed or relieved.
“I guess we won’t be bumming a ride,” I say. The words are barely past my lips when, through the cloud of dusty haze, the tail end of the truck lights up in a red glow.
Brake lights.
My stomach drops. Okay. They are stopping.
“What do you think they want?” Cleverly says, her voice wavering a little.
“Not sure,” I say, even though my guess is they want whatever we have. It isn’t much, but we do have some food and water to protect, as well as our packs. We’ve got some decent gear in there, gear that we very much need to hang on to. They, on the other hand, have a truck loaded with supplies—maybe scavenged, possibly stolen. Not to mention gas in their tank.
A split-second idea comes to me, and I run for the tarp, high-stepping it through the sagebrush.
“John! What are you doing?” Cleverly calls from behind me.
“I need a prop!” I call back.
I duck under the tarp. “Stewart, wake up!” I nudge him with the toe of my shoe.
He groans and sits up on his elbow, looking irritated and tired. I spot the empty canteen tucked against his side.
“There’s a truck,” I start to explain, and then forget it and just say, “Give me your canteen.”
“Why? What truck?”
“Just give it to me,” I say impatiently. Will sits up, and he looks as groggy as Stew,
but he doesn’t hesitate. “Here,” he says, passing it to me.
I come up against Cleverly and she stumbles back a step. “I don’t think they stopped to help us,” she says. “All that stuff loaded on the back—”
“Yeah, and I’m gonna convince them we have nothing left to take.”
I grip the empty canteen; weave my way through the brush, my eyes never leaving the tail end of that truck. The brake lights have dimmed, the truck idling in the middle of the highway. I don’t want to see the reverse lights come on. I want to approach them before they come to us.
Too late, I remember my hunting knife, tucked away in one of the side pockets of my pack, and I briefly consider turning back for it. But then my feet hit the asphalt and I take off in the direction of the truck, sprinting against the high wind.
“Hey!” I scream at the top of my lungs, waving Stew’s empty canteen in the air. “Hey! We need help!”
The brake lights flash and then dim again. I’m not sure why, but it makes me think they are already having second thoughts about stopping. I push myself to run harder, wind roaring in my ears, not caring that this will probably wear out my energy-starved body.
“Hey!” I yell into the wind again. “Please, help!” My voice cracks mid-yell. The wind makes my eyes water, and the tears stream along my temples, mixing with the sheen of sweat across my brow.
As I get closer, the dusty haze clears, and I catch a glimpse of something in the bed of the truck on top of a pile of boxes that both surprises me and lights a fire in my chest. A bright red metal gas can.
It’s one of ours, a five-gallon can that we use to fill the lawn mower. I know this because my dad spray-paints a black letter L on all our cans, for Lockwood.
These people, whoever they are, have just come from our place. And they took a gas can.
It’s empty. All the full ones were stolen three nights ago.
What else did they take? Did they go through my bedroom, my closet, all my stuff? Did they go through Stew’s and my dad’s stuff?
This gets my blood pumping, and I don’t need it pumping right now. I need to calm down. I need to appear like I’m unaware of any danger that I might be in. I need to seem completely desperate.
