by EE Isherwood
“I hear what you’re saying, but things have changed. There’s been an accident, Trevor.” I spoke louder, so the partygoers could hear me. “If you want to get back to where you live, you’re going to have to hoof it out of here. All the cars are dead from the EMP, which could have been an intentional attack. It killed the cars, your phones, and all the power. Anything with technology has been zapped dead, at least for now.”
My cautionary words sent Trevor’s friends running for their expensive cars. A young blonde girl in a black bikini threw open the door of a Lexus sedan parked farther up the driveway. After several tries to crank it over, she cried out in frustration. “My dad’s going to kill me!”
The same result took place in a silver BMW, a blue Porsche 911 convertible, and an oversized Jeep Unlimited parked in the grass almost at Trevor’s front porch. After establishing all their vehicles were dead, the young people gathered behind Trevor, as if waiting for a cult leader to give them their next instructions.
“Trevor, what’s going on? This isn’t funny.” The bikini babe remained next to her Lexus and spoke to him from across the yard.
Trevor finally lowered his pistol, but instead of answering the girl, he looked square at me. “Nobody’s going anywhere until you come clean about fuckin’ with our rides. Like Mitsi said, this isn’t funny, Pops.”
I did my best to laugh while I ignored the rock in my stomach. “We’re using first names, remember, Trevor, my man? I’m Frank, not Pops.”
I’d dealt with assholes like him my whole life. Certain shipping clerks, dock workers, and insurance adjusters acted like small-time bullies lording over their tiny kingdoms. The key was to show no weakness or fear, but also give them multiple ways to avoid locking horns. It wasn’t like the playground, where I could belt him in the nose and be done with it. I needed him on my side, not working against me. “And I promise you, no one screwed with your stuff. Our phones, cars, and electronics are out, too. You’re welcome to check out the dead Corvette in my garage.”
Trevor’s eyes narrowed, as if he’d stumbled down a path of logic but didn’t like where it kicked him out. He brushed his wavy blond hair with his free hand, giving me a moment to notice how bad he was sweating. It was early afternoon, and a typical sticky day in South Florida, but he’d only been outside for a couple of minutes. It looked as if he’d been shoveling dirt for the entire morning.
I appealed directly to his friends. “I know this is confusing, but I’ve been to North Pointe, so I know there are real problems beyond our neighborhood. Every car between here and there is dead, just like ours. If the power stays out for the rest of the day, the night is going to be darker than you’ve ever seen it, and people are going to get scared. We have eight good hours of light left, so you’ll want to head home right now to avoid being caught in that darkness or chaos. Go in groups, if you can, to protect each other.”
A few of the young people nodded as if they understood my message.
“Everybody, chill. There’s no need to believe this nobody. Someone has to have a phone that works?” Trevor turned and pointed to the pair of guys standing by his front door. “Right?”
Both shrugged. One of them held out his phone, showing a black screen, his message clear.
The leader harumphed and paced back and forth again.
“Don’t worry, bros, I have you covered. We’ll go back inside and wait this out. I’ve got a fridge full of beer, a bar stocked with liquor, and a pool that needs bodies. If this is an emergency, like Frank says, then we might as well enjoy it.”
His words didn’t have the effect he was probably going for. The girl in the bikini pulled a big beach bag out of her Lexus and began dressing in regular clothes. A trio of girls in little black party dresses walked next to the giant palm tree in the middle of the yard, but they were headed for the street.
“Wait!” Trevor screamed while he waved the gun around like an idiot.
The walking girls jumped with fright.
“I’m sorry, ladies,” Trevor said in a soothing tone as he lowered the gun, “but why are you listening to this guy? Didn’t you have fun last night? Doesn’t Trev know how to take care of you?”
“But he said this is everywhere,” one of the girls replied. “We don’t mind walking home. Really.”
Trevor wiped his nose with his bare arm, which was another giveaway I’d learned to identify from half a lifetime in truck stops.
“Are you high?” I interrupted in a loud voice.
“Fuck off, bitch.” Trevor’s gun came up again. “What I do on my property is none of your damned business.”
I waved my arms to get the attention of those behind Trevor.
“Hey, guys, the party’s over, and I think for everyone’s sake you should clear out of here.”
Trevor came out into the street and was pointing the gun sideways, like a wannabe gangster. It jacked up the pucker factor, but I still didn’t let on that I was even slightly intimidated. That lack of response no doubt made the guy lose his shit.
“These are my best friends, retard! I’ve known most of them since I started playing hockey in grade school. They aren’t going to listen to you.”
My plan to bring him to our side was hitting speed bumps, but once I’d seen all the young people, I knew there was more on the line than Trevor’s cooperation. He might be a Grade-A ass gasket, but his guests didn’t need to suffer because of his poor choices. It was obvious some of the ladies already intended to leave his party, so my words were getting through.
I dropped my arms, took a couple of steps closer, and fought back any misgivings about facing his firearm. I could draw my Springfield and put an end to his rant in about two seconds, but then I would be the asshole waving a gun in all the kids’ faces. I wanted to diffuse rather than escalate the encounter. “Someone should have talked to you about your drug problem years ago, because it’s clouding your judgment today, when it matters. This isn’t a Grand Theft Auto video game. You can’t wave a gun around and expect to get what you want. Not with us. We’re your neighbors, not random jerks looking to steal your buzz or damage your cars. In fact, I’m trying to save your lives right now.”
“Yeah, right,” he shot back.
“We got off to a rocky start, but let’s start over.” I held out my hand as a diplomatic option. “If we work together, we can get your friends home safely. I promise you that.”
He wiped sweat out of his eyes but said nothing.
“Trevor, you seem like a smart kid. If the power comes on tomorrow, this will all be a bad memory, and you can go back to whatever it is you do in there. I promise I have no interest in stopping you. But if it doesn’t come back on for a while, you might just save a lot of lives by sending your friends home before it gets bad for them. Don’t you want to be the hero?”
His calculating gray eyes crunched numbers over whether I could possibly be telling the truth. Like all bullies, he probably worried more about impressing his friends with bravado than whether I was telling the truth. In a split second, his facial expression broadcast his intention.
“Everyone, inside!” Trevor said as he back-pedaled next to his car.
Those standing in the grass and near the parked cars headed for the door as instructed. The two frat guys on the porch watched them all file in.
“Come on,” I said as I made one last effort to bring them around. “We can work this out.”
“Me and my friends will be watching from inside.” Trevor carelessly tapped the barrel of the Ruger on the rear spoiler of his Ferrari. “You guys better leave our cars alone or the next time I come out with this gun, I’m going to use it.”
It seemed like the guy had a firm handle on most of his friends, but not all of them. The Lexus girl remained at the side of the driveway and the three women near the base of the palm tree didn’t go in, either.
“You’re still leaving, Mitsi?” he asked the girl standing by herself.
“Yep,” she replied in a dry tone.
Trevor sniffled, turned, and walked onto his spacious front porch. He checked over his shoulder the whole way, as if a rush of policemen might try to take him down the second he dropped his guard. When he was inside his doorway with his two goons, he gave me the finger.
“Screw you, asshole!” he shouted, before he slammed the door with the violence of a sonic boom.
Penny appeared at my side, gushing with amazement. “How did you know he wouldn’t shoot you, Frank? That was insane.”
I turned toward her and the others, who had the same question written on their faces.
“I’ve been dealing with kids like him for decades. He’s the kind of person who signs up to work, then doesn’t show up on time. He’s the kind of guy who passes the tests to drive a truck carrying a million dollars of stock, then gets a career-threatening speeding ticket because he’s twitting on his phone.”
“Tweeting,” Carmen corrected me.
“Yeah, that,” I chuckled.
“It was still insane,” Penny allowed.
“His generation is all cattle, no hat, as one of my drivers from Texas always said. Plus, he’s holding an old-school Ruger LC9. I could tell the thumb safety was off, meaning it was hot, but the loaded indicator on top of the slide was down, which told me he didn’t have a round in the chamber.”
“Shit, Frank,” Luke replied. “Were you going to tackle him if he tried to shoot you? He could have still loaded a round, right?”
I checked around for a moment, turned my hip toward them, then lifted my shirt a few inches above my belt, revealing the pistol tucked inside my waistband holster.
“I was ready,” I said in a low voice.
“Oh, my,” Evelyn shuddered.
“You’ve had a gun this whole time?” Penny asked with sudden understanding. “Even when we were in town? Why haven’t you used it?”
I dropped my shirt over the pistol.
“Since I carry a concealed weapon, I have a responsibility to work extra-hard to avoid or de-escalate confrontations, so I’m not put into a situation where it’s necessary to fire it. When you and I were up north, I was ready to use this if I needed to defend you or Daisy, but I wouldn’t have done it lightly. Other people might have been armed, too, and that could have started a bunch of bullets coming back at us.”
“But you just put yourself into danger,” Luke suggested, “by engaging with Trevor. Surely, if anyone deserved to have a gun flashed in his face, it was that guy. Why didn’t you whip out your gun for him?”
Someone tapped me on the arm, interrupting our conversation.
“Excuse me, mister,” a young woman said in a soft voice.
“Oh, hi,” I replied. “Can I help you?”
It was the young lady from the Lexus. Up close, she appeared attractive enough, but her eye sockets were dark and sunken like she didn’t get much sleep. Her long chestnut bangs were unkempt, and they further obscured her blue eyes. She came across as a tall supermodel with an eating disorder, or an ordinary girl trying hard to mimic that lifestyle. The T-shirt and shorts she’d thrown over her bikini hung loose, adding to her fallen angel vibe.
“Um, yeah, hello. I’m Mitsi. I heard what you said, and I want to go home, but I don’t know where I am.” She rubbed the side of her neck, seemingly embarrassed. “I, uh, don’t remember how I got here last night.”
As she spoke, the trio of girls who’d left Trevor’s place also wandered over.
“We don’t know the exact way home, either,” one of the new girls added.
“Sure, I guess we could—" I started to say.
Mitsi pointed before I could finish. “Here comes some more.”
Ten or twelve others appeared from behind Trevor’s house. They came from the left side of the garage, and used the cars parked on the driveway as their shields, obviously trying to stay hidden from their angry friend. The escapees were mostly young ladies in party dresses and swim attire, but there were also three college-aged men who were dressed in designer clothes like they’d come from the discotheque.
I looked over to Trevor’s front door as I tried to decide the next course of action. Was he inside watching what I would do? Would it matter if he was? He would probably find it funny I was stuck cleaning up his mess, but I didn’t see it as a chore at all. The kids needed help and I had the ability to give them a hand.
“I don’t have enough bicycles for all of them,” Luke whispered. “If that’s what you’re thinking.”
“No, we’ll need those as our own transportation. I have a different idea for them.”
The new arrivals hustled into the street to stand with Mitsi and the three young ladies. Once they were all together, the looks on their faces suggested they expected me to know what to do.
“How many of you live near the North Pointe area?” I asked.
A few raised their hands.
“And who lives the other way, toward South Pointe?”
Most of the others lifted theirs.
“This is a classic scenario for why we want to take inventory of what we own.” I turned to my neighbors. “If we had a list, I could see who had the needed supplies right away. For now, we can do this the old-fashioned way. Who here has some large plastic self-sealing bags? The one-gallon size would be perfect.”
Penny raised a hand.
“Great. Can you count off these youngsters, then go get one for each? Start filling them with water, okay?” The city mains still flowed, since Evelyn’s flower bed was currently being drowned by the sprinkler, so I had confidence Penny could complete this task for me.
I noticed a couple of the young guys followed Penny’s tight biker shorts with their eyes, though it was ironic to me since they were already surrounded by pretty young ladies. If they played their cards right, they could be the chivalrous heroes for their attractive peers, but none of them seemed interested in taking charge. Instead, they huddled inside the group of women, as if waiting to be told what to do.
“And who can get a pad of paper and a pen?” I asked my remaining neighbors. “I want to draw these kids a map to help them get home.”
Luke and Evelyn both raised their hands, but I pointed to Luke.
“Can you go grab them, please?”
“You got it, boss,” he replied.
“Evelyn, would you be willing to let these youngsters stand on the other side of your house, out of view of Trevor’s place? That will ensure they aren’t bothered before they can leave our street.”
“They can stand over there, but I don’t want them in my flower beds.” The gray-haired woman still wore her frumpy flower-covered blouse, but she’d changed her slippers and now wore a pair of dingy white sneakers. “Benjamin spent all spring preparing them for me, and careless kids can ruin them in five seconds.”
Inside, I tried to imagine the mindset it would take to think these young people would stomp over her garden, but Evelyn seemed like an odd duck. Maybe kids often smashed her flower beds, and her experience taught her to be insanely cautious about them. I had to be careful not to dismiss her seemingly irrational concerns outright just as I needed to accept not everyone would immediately see things my way.
“Alright, everyone, follow Ms. Evelyn to her place, okay? While you wait, we’re going to pull together some things to help you get home. However, please be respectful of the flowers and stuff in her yard, I bet she works hard to keep them looking so good.”
Evelyn looked at me for a moment, then led them away.
Once I was sure the young people were moving, I headed for my place.
“Where are you going?” Carmen asked.
“I’ll be right back,” I replied. “I have to grab a paper map.”
When I moved in, the first thing I did was buy a fold-out map of Fort Myers. It was an old habit from my trucking days. Paper trumped digital maps while on the road because they didn’t disappear when a phone drained its charge, or a GPS device lost a signal. It was a lesson I tried to instill in my young drivers, with varying results.
“I’ll be back in a sec, too,” she replied before I was out of earshot.
Minutes later, we regrouped next to an ornamental fruit tree on the far side of Evelyn’s large ranch house. Penny used the bike trailer to haul the gallon-sized bags of water, then she handed them out in plastic shopping bags, so they were easy to carry. At the same time, I used my fold-out map to sketch lines and street names on the blank paper, showing each of them how to get home. Finally, I offered them one last courtesy.
“I’ll ride my bike alongside you and make sure you get out of our subdivision.”
“Why are you being so nice to us?” Mitsi asked. “We were with a guy… well, you know.”
“Luckily, him being an asshole doesn’t transfer to you guys. Besides, I was telling the truth before. An EMP disaster only gets worse as time goes on, and we don’t want you guys to get hurt, so we have to get you all home.” Many disaster books said it was critical to be with family or friends in grid-down scenarios, since you wanted to be with people who wouldn’t betray you for a can of beans. I had no family or friends within a thousand miles, so I could relate to Mitsi and her pals being among strangers.
“Well, thank you,” Mitsi replied. “Whatever the reason. My parents are probably worried sick I didn’t come home last night. I broke their curfew, I didn’t call, and now I’ve lost their Lexus, so they’ll probably throw a fucking fit.”
“Nah, I have a feeling they’ll give you a break this time,” I assured her.
“I hope,” she allowed.
“Okay, I have you split into north and south groups,” I said to the youngsters, “so you’ll make it home to all your parents. Stick together as long as possible, since no one will mess with a big group.” I tried to soften the talk of real danger. It had only been a few hours since the EMP went off, so I doubted anyone would interfere with them, but staying in groups was always good advice.
Carmen came around the front corner of Evelyn’s house.
“Hey, girls. I’ve got two pocket-sized cans of Mace. I’d like one from each group to take these.” She held them out, one in each hand.
