by Hugh Howey
“June?” His dad said it like it was a question, like he wondered how much Daniel’s hatred of him would grow if he tossed that out there.
“Were you gonna call? Were you—what was your plan, exactly?”
His dad took a bite of the cold Pop-Tart, crumbs sprinkling down on a nice shirt that hadn’t been worn to do nice things in quite some time. “I’ve been working through things,” he said. “I got to where I needed to be close to home to get any better. I just wasn’t there yet.”
“You needed to be close.” Daniel tasted the words and wished he had something stronger than water to wash them down.
“I’ve stopped drinking,” his dad said, almost as if he could read Daniel’s mind.
“Lemme guess—ever since the storm closed the liquor store down?”
His dad looked down at his tired boots. “It’s been since June,” he said.
Daniel stepped back toward the door. He turned a bucket over and sat on it, then dug in his pocket for the other pack of Pop-Tarts. He chewed on one dry corner and on his dad’s words.
“I really was working up the courage to see you guys. I promise.” He looked past Daniel and toward the house. “Is Hunter—?”
“At his girlfriend’s since the night of the storm.”
“Girlfriend?”
Daniel shrugged. He wasn’t about to tell his dad about his brother’s relationships.
“Zola looks good.”
They chewed their Pop-Tarts.
“Why did you come here?” Daniel asked. “I’m sure you have other places you coulda gone.”
His dad took a sip of water. “I guess I couldn’t handle not knowing if you guys were okay. If the house was okay. Before, I mean I used to cradle the phone for hours, you know? I’d dial the number and just rub the send button and think of how easy it’d be to press it and hear your voices, even if you were just yelling at me. You were always that close—hell, I was always that close to doing it, but then the storm hit. My boat—” The old man looked away, the morning sun glistening in his eye. “When the marina went, I thought I was a gonner. All of ‘B’ dock tore loose and surged into town. It was a mess. There were only a few of us dumb enough to be there, and we were lucky no one died. The boats, though—”
Daniel’s father fell silent. The chainsaw out front bit into something thick and struggled.
“I’m glad you didn’t die,” Daniel said. It was as much as he could be thankful for. “I’m gonna go help Carlton. You can—” Daniel wasn’t sure what his dad could do.
“I might work back here, just clean some stuff up around the yard. If your mom will let me, I’d like to look at the roof.”
Daniel peered at the rest of his Pop-Tart, no longer hungry. For some reason, he wanted to tell his dad about the girl down the street. He didn’t know why. He waved goodbye rather than say anything and turned out of the toolshed, breathing in the fresh and gasoline-free air outside. As he walked toward the house, he saw Zola’s face pull away from the kitchen window. The chainsaw in the front yard whined as it finished its work, buzzing through open air, the throttle taking it to dangerous places before it was released and wound itself down.
19
Daniel walked around the house, through the destruction and quiet desolation left in the hurricane’s wake, and realized how quickly he was getting used to this new environment. The limbs of old oaks, the bramble of foliage, the scattered shingles and wet clods of insulation sucked from broken homes. It was a new normal. The world had been roughed over and changed by the storm.
Rounding the garage, he found Carlton and his mom struggling with heavy logs chopped free from the torso of a fallen giant. Daniel headed for the front stoop, where a pile of work gloves lay beside two plastic cups of water, neither cup sweating with the promise of a cool, refreshing drink within.
He tugged a pair of worn leather gloves on and went to help haul more of the seemingly endless supply of firewood to the swelling debris pile that now meandered partway around the cul-de-sac.
“You okay?” his mom asked, obviously aware of where Daniel had chosen to eat breakfast.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Where’s Zola?”
“Bathroom,” his mom said. She looked over his shoulder and lifted her chin toward the door. Daniel turned and saw his sister coming out on the stoop. She padded down the brick steps and knelt to sort through all the too-large gloves. Daniel looked back to his mom.
“Is there something we should be doing to get in touch with Hunter?” he asked.
She smiled grimly, her eyes twinkling. “Like send up smoke signals?” Her voice was full of sad impotence, not humor. She wiped her brow with the back of her arm, both of which were peppered with bits of bark and fine sawdust. “All we can do is trust that he’s okay,” she said. They’ll have power or cell phones or something up before long.”
“Maybe the landlines still work,” Daniel said. He had been against them getting rid of the old house phone the year before, but since it no longer rang, and everyone in the family carried a phone in their pockets anyway, his mom had decided that the cost of the bill no longer made sense.
Carlton returned from another Sisyphean trip to the debris pile. “The landlines weren’t working as of this morning.” He nodded toward the house across the street, the one with the morning coffee drinkers that Daniel had waved to the day before. “The Morrison’s have been trying theirs hourly.”
“When did you meet them?” Daniel’s mom asked.
“They were out this morning. I checked to make sure the chainsaw wouldn’t disturb them. They understood wanting to get an early start, what with the heat and all.” Carlton picked up the saw and flicked a lever on its side. He reached into the breast pocket of his short sleeve button-up and extracted his plastic safety goggles. “They seem like good people,” Carlton added, and Daniel felt less alone and silly for not knowing anything about them. He thought about another person he’d met in the neighborhood that he’d like to get to know better. The day before, working in the yard, he’d wracked his brain wondering how to get out of debris duty and what he’d say if he went over. By the time he’d worked up the courage and memorized a few excuses, he was too hot and sweaty to want to be seen. As he carried another cut log to the growing row Carlton had started between two trees, he realized he should go over there early and get it over with. Just to keep from perseverating about it all day long or waiting until he got nasty with sweat.
He turned back to his mom as the chainsaw sputtered then roared to life once again.
“I need to run down the street,” he yelled. His mother turned from watching Carlton wield the saw, her face scrunched with worry.
“What for?” she yelled back.
A fountain of fine dust sprayed out of the growing gash in the tree; it filled the air with a dry and pulpy mist.
“I need to charge my Zune so we can hear the news,” he said, stepping away and squinting his eyes at the fog of powdered tree.
“Charge it how?”
The saw made it through the bottom, and the tree leapt up as another heavy log fell from its end. Carlton looked poised to lop off another, but powered the tool down when he saw they were trying to have a conversation.
“There’s this gir—” Daniel realized he was yelling over the residual din of the now-quiet saw. He lowered his voice. “Someone down the street has a solar panel rigged up that can charge small devices. I was gonna go plug in my Zune and let it charge while we work.” He looked to Carlton for support.
“Can it do cell phones?” his stepdad asked.
Daniel shrugged.
Carlton dug into his pocket and held out his iPhone. “The charger’s on the table by my side of the bed,” he said.
“Can you do my Blackberry?” his mom asked. There was a sense of desperation there that Daniel wasn’t used to seeing from his in-control workaholic mom.
“I guess,” he said, wishing he hadn’t said anything. He should’ve told them he was going to go smoke
cigarettes, or something.
“You know where my charger is,” she said simply.
Daniel accepted the phone. He was surprised both of them were carrying their phones around, even though there’d been no signal since the storm.
“Check with Zola,” his mom said.
“Mine’s fine,” his sister said. She tugged on a branch. “I put my other battery in.”
“Why do you have two batteries?” their mother asked.
Zola shrugged.
“I was already hesitant to ask about charging up my Zune,” Daniel complained. Which was the truth, but not for the reason he was insinuating.
“See if they need to borrow the saw in return,” Carlton said. He used the hem of his shirt to wipe sawdust off his glasses, which he then pinched with his gloves and inspected.
“Or if they need water. Or anything,” his mom said.
Daniel nodded, suddenly thrilled. The idea of making a transaction—from one family to another—released the knot of nerves in his stomach. He ran inside for his backpack with a surge of confidence. He was now going on a mission, not a tryst. This was about survival, not puppy love. He was a sanctioned ambassador with messages and offerings from a not-too-distant familial municipality. There was no pressure to fall in love, or force someone else to reciprocate. All he needed to do was establish a trade route. More formal treaties and arranged marriages could wait.
Daniel gathered his family’s dead gizmos and the various species of chargers with their fat heads and wispy tails. He ran back outside, balancing haste with the fear of stirring an unseemly sweat, and made his way through his new and wondrous wilderness neighborhood to that distant and promising kingdom a few houses down.
••••
The neighborhood streets were everywhere hedged with brush piles. They were like slumbering and camouflaged beasts, lying supine along the pavement’s shoulder. They crowded the black tar, which was still littered with leaves and the smallest limbs, and were deathly quiet and devoid of traffic. While Carlton’s chainsaw dimmed behind him, several others became audible elsewhere. The smell of tree sap and tar and sawdust filled the air. As far as Daniel could tell, this was the new way of things; the world had reverted to some primitive state, and that’s where he’d live forever. Juxtaposing this idea with the fact that people in Atlanta and Chicago were getting up, checking their email, going to work or school, waiting at red lights, hunting for WiFi—Daniel imagined what a Bahamian, Haitian, Mexican or Cuban might feel about such distant and magical realms as the United States. As he rounded the small tangle of limbs in front of Anna’s house, he considered the ridiculous idea that he could just walk from this primitive new island of his to that faraway land of promise. A few days of hiking, of sleeping under the stars, and he’d arrive somewhere to find streetlights and air conditioned houses. There’d be music and roving vehicles. There’d be signals: cell phone and wireless, radio and satellite. He could call people . . . just not anyone back here.
Daniel wandered up the white concrete driveway feeling conspicuous and uninvited, but also primal and in some survival mode that ignored taboo and embarrassment. He was on a mission from his family, he reminded himself, and nothing more.
As he turned down the walk curling from the driveway, he passed a curious addition to the house that had been erected between two large bushes: a small shed. It had a metal roof bent out of a single corrugated sheet with the solar panels mounted on top. The sides consisted of scrap vinyl siding, and it had double doors on massive hinges that stood open. There was a sign above the doors that read, in a neat print: “Community charging station. Help yourself.”
Help yourself, Daniel thought. Did that mean he didn’t have to ask? But now he wanted to ask.
He peered inside the structure to see the black inverter he’d helped solder mounted to one wall, out of any threat of rain. The other side was lined with shelves that each had their own outlets, which were wired up and covered with electrical tape. A scattering of wall warts were plugged in here and there. Two of them had devices attached, little green lights glowing happily.
For Daniel, it was like seeing a neon sign go up on his little island. He was a caveman peering into a fire. He saw at once that the same ingenuity and restlessness that had dragged his species out of their caves and down from their trees to the twenty-first century couldn’t be excised by a storm and a loss of power. Besides, it was his people who had created that power in the first place. And now he was seeing a small piece of evidence that it would all come back. Eventually.
Movement inside the house startled him out of his optimistic revelry. Daniel straightened and turned toward the door. Despite the welcoming hand-lettered sign, he wanted to make sure it was okay, especially since he had so many items begging to be recharged.
Lumbering up the stairs, he found the front door propped open, a screen door shut against the bugs. Daniel knocked on the wooden frame of the door.
“Coming!” he heard someone say. Daniel heard feet stomping through the house. He remained on the stoop and adjusted his backpack.
A tall man with a smiling beard arrived at the door; Daniel recognized him as Anna’s father, or at least the man who had interrupted their soldering and had been working with her on the roof.
“Is that Daniel?” the man said. He pushed the screen door open and Daniel stepped back and out of the way.
“Yessir,” Daniel said, stunned that her father knew his name. But that meant she’s been talking about me, Daniel realized. His heart leapt with the idea that this lovely sprite with magical powers of soldering had uttered his name—
“Ah, yes,” her father said. “I asked Anna who her little helper was, but all she had was a name. Come inside. I’m Anna’s father, Edward.”
Daniel digested all that information, feeling himself sink and deflate as he did so. The conversation between father and daughter took a more realistic aspect: Who was that? A shrug. Some creeper named Daniel.
He suddenly felt like bolting through the screen door and sprinting down the street.
There was thunder on the stairs, followed by the squeak of bare feet on clean floors. Anna ran around the corner, her longish brown hair twirling behind her in fine wisps. “Cool,” she said, beaming at Daniel. “You brought your stuff?”
Daniel hooked a thumb in his backpack’s shoulder strap. The fear and hesitation he’d felt from the risky visit melted. It was as if Anna had been expecting him, or at least anticipating his return.
“Just a few things,” he squeaked.
“Bring ’em outside,” she said, hurrying past him and throwing open the screen door. “I’ll get back to my studies in a little while,” she called to her father.
Daniel smiled meekly at Edward, lifted his palms in a shrug, then turned and pushed open the door that had just cracked back on its springs against the jamb.
“Let’s see what you got,” Anna said. She crouched by the open doors of the little shed and waved her hand impatiently. Daniel hurried over and set his backpack on the walk. He rummaged for each device and paired them with their chargers.
“A Zune, eh?” Anna picked up his music player and squinted at it, then looked up and squinted even harder at Daniel, like she was looking past some glaring flaw to see if she still approved of him.
“I woulda pegged you as an iPod kinda guy.”
The way she said it made it sound as if she might’ve disapproved even further of that.
“What do you use?” Daniel asked.
“I don’t really do music,” she said. She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and stared at Daniel. He saw for the first time that her eyes were green. He memorized that in case there was ever a quiz between them, some marital dispute about how little he truly knew her.
She turned away and reached inside the small house. “Looks like you two are done.” She unplugged the two devices on the shelves and moved them to a separate waiting area.
“Are those yours?” he asked.
/> She shook her head. Her hair was so fine, it laid so silky flat on her head, that Daniel could see the shape of her skull beneath. He admired the way the back of her head curved out like a bowl and swept back to her neck, which was half exposed by the parting curtain of brown locks. Her skull seemed loaded with brilliant nerve endings, like Daniel could just cup it in his hand and feel the electrical shocks zap his palm.
“They belong to the Michelsons across the street,” she said, turning to face him. “My dad has a cell phone, but he hasn’t even tried to turn it on.” She held out a palm and curled her fingers. “Lemme see your chargers.”
Daniel handed them over one at a time. Anna took the time to check the back of each, reading out the wattage and nodding.
“What were you saying about studies?” Daniel asked. “Is your dad making you do schoolwork?”
“Yeah.” She nodded. “School might be closed for you, but mine’s still standing.” She glanced up at the brick face of her house.
“You’re homeschooled?” Daniel asked.
Anna frowned. “You say that like I belong to some kind of satanic cult.”
Daniel laughed. “I’m sorry. It’s not that, it’s just that I was wondering why I’ve never seen you around school.”
“Oh.” She studied the last power brick. “Four point two watts,” she said, “so you have a total of just under seventeen.”
“Is that bad?” He couldn’t believe he was crouched down so close to her, that they were just talking, like they’d always known each other.
“It’s fine. I think the panel and inverter can handle around twenty.” She looked up at the sky, which was scattered with only the barest of gossamer-thin cirrus clouds. “I’d say these’ll be done by lunchtime or a little later.” Daniel handed her the cellphones and Zune one at a time, and Anna inserted the plugs that fit each one.
“So I should come back around then?” Daniel pictured coming over and grabbing the devices without her help. The thought depressed him. He looked across the street at another house full of people he didn’t know. He thought it was likely that a good-looking boy lived there who was also homeschooled and was Anna’s boyfriend. He felt the dangerous urge to ask her if she was seeing anyone—