by Skylar Finn
“I’m a black gay boy,” Walt said when she asked him about it. “I can spot trouble from a mile away because it’s usually coming for me.”
The days passed and turned into a week. No word came from the news or the government. No one knew why or how the EMP bomb was set off, or if the United States was the only target. No one knew how far the consequences reached or if there was a safe haven in any part of the country. The military had not been deployed, at least not in L.A., and the hours began to drag on. It seemed as if nothing would ever go back to normal.
Ailani surfed every morning. It was the one perk of the EMP blast. She had time to go back to the water, her one and only true love. She had her pick of Trip’s surfboards, and she rode all of them at least once, but the fishtail was her favorite. She took it out at dawn and stayed on the beach for hours. The water, at least, had remained unchanged. The tide went in and out. The waves crested and fell. The sun went over from east to west. It was comforting to count on nature when there was nothing else to count on.
Sage, the other surfer Ailani had met on her first day at the beach, showed up regularly too. She and her boyfriend were staying in a camper they’d parked on the shore, far enough from the water to not get washed away by the tide.
“Other than emptying the septic tank, we’ve been doing okay,” she said one morning as they floated side by side, waiting for another set. “We did the whole ‘sell all your belongings and live out of a van’ thing a few years ago, so we’re used to being off grid.”
“You have electricity and clean water?”
“We have solar cells like your friend Trip,” Sage explained. “We set ‘em out on the beach to soak up the sun, and it powers everything inside. As for water, we never installed plumbing. We have a huge water filter instead. I don’t think we ever expected to put salt water through it, but” —she spread her arms wide to indicate the massive ocean— “that’s one thing we can’t get enough of. How are you doing at Trip’s house?”
“The toilets started backing up.” Ailani trailed her fingers across the surface of the water. “I guess Trip didn’t think about the fact that waste management isn’t operational right now. It doesn’t matter if Trip’s toilets have the power to flush if the city doesn’t have power to process it, you know?”
Sage wrinkled her nose. “Ugh, that probably doesn’t smell too good, does it?”
“Thankfully, Trip’s house is huge.” A decent set came up, and Ailani turned around and flattened out on her board to catch the next wave. “We’ve all agreed to only use the toilets in one wing, and live in the others.”
“Rich people. You got lucky.”
“I know.”
Ailani paddled, caught the incoming wave, and surfed it until it faded out. The swells weren’t great that morning, only two or three feet high, but it was still a fun ride. Sage rode another little one in as Ailani paddled back out. They met again.
“You could dig a latrine,” Sage suggested. “It’s kind of gross, but it’s better than waiting for your toilets to blow.”
“I have no idea how to do that.”
“It’s pretty simple.” The sun emerged from the clouds, and Sage tilted her face upward to light up all of her pores. “You did a big hole in the ground and poop there instead of inside. You said Walt spent some time with preppers in an off-grid commune, right? I bet he knows how to do it.”
Ailani shook the water out of her hair and laughed. “Walt digging latrines? That’s something I’d love to see.”
“It could happen,” Sage said. “Just make sure you do it far enough from the house, and be careful. You’re going to hit water pretty quickly this close to the ocean. Sounds wild, but I’d do it somewhere in the front yard, farther from the beach.”
“I have to run it past Trip first.”
Sage glanced behind her to find Trip’s massive house on the shore. “Better make it quick. I’d hate to see that pretty house go down because the toilets overflowed.”
“Yeah, I know how to build one,” Walt said to Ailani’s great surprise when she mentioned it later that day. “Kind of. At the commune, they had composting toilets, but it’s basically the same thing. Dig a hole, line it, throw some peat moss down there, and you’re open for business. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before.”
“Do you think Trip would let us do it?”
“He will if he knows what’s good for him. Let’s ask.”
They found Trip in the living room with his friends. The saltwater pool was up and running since it ran on its own filtration system, and the other people living in Trip’s house had started to use it to stay relatively clean. Being salty was better than being filthy, and the bathtubs weren’t safe to use anymore.
“Are you kidding me?” Jacob Van Peel said when Ailani and Walt proposed the latrine idea to Trip. “You want us to shit outside? In a hole in the ground?”
“Jacob—” Walt began.
“It’s kind of your only option.” Ailani didn’t have the patience to spare Walt’s feelings for his crush or to sugarcoat the situation for Jacob. “Either we dig a latrine or this whole house blows up with feces. Take your pick.”
Jacob sank up to his chin in the pool, pouting. Another model-esque man—Ailani had forgotten most of their names—handed Jacob a vodka and soda, then rested his chin on Jacob’s shoulder. Trip dangled his feet in the water, contemplating the proposal.
“We should do it,” he said at last, to the groans of his friends. “It’s bleak, but we don’t know how much longer we’re going to be in this situation. We can’t let it get out of hand.”
“So you only listen to your assistants now?” Jacob asked. “What happened to the old Trip I used to know?”
“An EMP bomb went off,” Walt snapped. “Get your shit together.”
Jacob lifted his eyebrows. He hadn’t expected Walt, of all people, to chide him, but Walt’s crush on Jacob was only skin deep.
“Whatever,” Jacob said. “But I’m not digging it.”
“Like we ever expected you to help,” Ailani snarked.
Trip pulled his feet out of the pool and rolled the legs of his pants down. “We might as well get started. Let’s see what I have in the garage to make this happen.”
The three of them—Ailani, Walt, and Trip—gathered materials and got to working. Trip only had two shovels, so they alternated digging. Once the pit was deep enough, they filled it with leaves, moss, and other plant matter that would help human waste decompose. The whole time, Ailani was impressed with Walt and Trip’s teamwork. Neither one of them seemed like the type of person to get down and dirty, but they had no problem getting into the dirt.
“Almost—done—” Tripp huffed as he sawed a hole through a large plank of wood that would cover the latrine at the ground level. “There!”
The square of wood fell away. Trip and Walt maneuvered the plank over the hole they’d dug and secured it in place with homemade sandbags. They had chosen a location toward the front of the house, hidden from view by the large palm trees and thick foliage in Trip’s front yard. It wasn’t perfect, but it at least had some privacy.
“It’s BYOTP,” Ailani joked as they dusted their hands. “Bring your own toilet paper.”
Trip high-fived both of them. “I’m proud of us! Now, we just have to convince the morons inside to use it.”
“They agreed, didn’t they?” Walt asked.
“I suppose.” Trip nudged one of the sandbags into a better position. “But they say a lot of stuff they don’t mean. Jacob especially can be a handful.”
Ailani wiped the sweat dripping from her forehead with the back of her arm. “Why did you let them stay here if you knew they were going to be jerks about it?”
“They’re my friends,” Trip said. “We all started out at the same time. When we first got to L.A., we were nobodies. You don’t dump your friends once you get successful.”
“No,” Ailani agreed, “but you can dump them if they’re a burden to your survi
val.”
Walt clapped Ailani on the shoulder to make her stop talking. “This is getting heavy. The important thing is we’re all together, and we’re getting by. Let’s not start any fights.”
“He’s right,” Trip said. “We can’t turn on one another.”
But it wasn’t long before Trip’s other guests grew restless. Two days later, as Trip folded the last of the clean towels, Jacob cornered him in the master bedroom.
“Yo, Trip,” he said, checking over his shoulder to make sure no one else was around. “You’re running out of booze, man.”
Trip quickly put the towels away, almost as if he was hiding them from Jacob. “Check the storage vault downstairs. I have a ton of stuff down there.”
“We already drank that,” Jacob said. “Where’s the rest?”
“You drank everything in the storage vault?”
“Yeah, man.” Jacob crossed his arms and leaned against the doorway. “It’s been, like, a months since this shit went down. So where’s the rest?”
Trip hauled a hamper of dirty clothes into the adjoining bathroom to wash by hand, but he didn’t reveal the gallons of clean drinking water he’d hoarded under the sink to Jacob. “It’s been a week and a half, Jake. And there is no ‘rest.’ If you finished everything in the storage vault, there’s nothing left.”
Jacob dropped his arms in dismay. “You’re kidding, right? Come on, man. This place is huge. You must have something stored somewhere. Weren’t you raised in the south? Did your mammy teach you how to make moonshine?”
“Don’t bring my mother into this,” Trip said. “You drank all the booze. Deal with it.”
He let out a low whistle. “Deal with it, huh? The other guys aren’t going to be happy about this, man. What am I supposed to tell them?”
“That they should’ve joined AA a while ago.”
Jacob turned to leave. “You know, you’re not as fun as you used to be.”
“They drank all the booze?” Ailani repeated to Walt. She had overheard the heated conversation from down the hall, ducking into her bedroom just in time to dodge Jacob as he rampaged downstairs. “Can you believe that shit?”
“Well, they didn’t drink all of it.” Walt flattened himself on the floor and wriggled under the bed. When he emerged, he had a bottle of bourbon in each hand. “I thought it might be a good idea to hide these away before we got desperate.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I have snacks too,” he said. “Jacob might be cute, but he’s an asshole. I’m not putting my needs in his hands.”
“We should check on Trip,” Ailani said. “Make sure he’s okay.”
“Our job hasn’t changed much, has it?” Walt put the bourbon back under the bed. “We’re still supervising Trip Travis and doing whatever he needs.”
“He’s keeping us alive, remember?”
She went to Trip’s room and knocked lightly on the door.
“Go away, Jacob! I haven’t got any more vodka!”
“It’s Ailani.”
“Oh. Come in.”
She found Trip in the bathroom, rinsing his underwear in the sink. He used no more water than was necessary to get the items clean. For a guy who owned a multi-million dollar home in Malibu, he knew how to conserve resources better than any other celebrity.
“I already know we’re out of booze,” he said grumpily. “If that’s what you’re here for.”
“It’s not. I overheard Jacob getting on your case, and I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
Trip stopped washing his things, eyebrows raised. “You came to check on me?”
“Yeah. Is that so hard to believe?”
“Kind of.” He wrung out his underwear and hung them across the shower stall to dry. “We weren’t friends before this EMP thing happened. I guess I didn’t expect for you and Walt to be the most helpful people in the house. Actually, I thought you only came to my party that first night because I said there was going to be free food.”
Ailani grimaced. “Well, I can’t lie. At first, we did come because you had resources, but we weren’t expecting you to invite us to stay. I can’t thank you enough.”
“It doesn’t matter much in the long run, does it?” Trip sighed and dried his hands on a clean towel. “Booze isn’t the only thing we’re running low on.”
“What do you mean?”
“Our food supply is being depleted faster than I expected,” Trip said. “I guess that’s what happens when you have nine people under one roof with nothing better to do. They get bored, and they start eating. It’s not good.”
Ailani’s eyebrows knit themselves together. “How much longer do you think we can last?”
“A few weeks maybe? That’s if everyone starts rationing.”
“That’s not good, Trip.”
“Yeah, I know.” He guided her out of the bathroom. “I’m doing something about it right now.”
“Family meeting!” Trip hollered over the intercom for the entire house. “Everyone needs to come to the living room right now. It’s not optional. We have something to discuss.”
Walt and Ailani were already there, having followed Trip downstairs. One by one, the other actors and models made their way to the meeting, but they took their sweet time about it. Ailani tried to remember their names. Israel was the underwear model who hung off of Jacob seventy-five percent of the time. Adam and his twin sister, Eden, were influencers like Walt, but their reach had spread further than Instagram. Keeping with the biblical theme was Abel, who had played the character of Trip’s sidekick years ago in a movie that never hit theaters and went straight to DVD instead. The last two boys—another model and a no-name actor—had names Ailani couldn’t place. It was the first time she’d looked around and realized Trip was the most successful out of his group of friends. They were hangers-on, using Trip for his status rather than loving him for his personality.
Jacob arrived dead last, something he probably planned. As usual, he was in his swimsuit. He walked past the sofas where everyone else was gathered, giving Trip a subtle shove as he passed him, and got into the pool.
“Okay, I’m here,” he said. “What is it?”
Trip addressed the group around him rather than Jacob. “We’re getting low on food, which means we need to put together a system. We’re going to have to start watching how much we eat every day. No more than three meals, no snacks, and no second portions. I’m assigning everyone—”
“Hang on a minute,” Jacob interrupted from the pool. “First you want us to shit in the ground, and now you’re telling us to starve ourselves?”
Trip trapped his bottom lip between his teeth then let it pop out before he spoke. “No, that’s not what I’m saying. We only have a certain amount of food left, and we have to make it last as long as possible.”
“Or you could get more food,” Jacob said.
“Where, genius?”
The model shrugged. “This is your house. We’re your guests. Not the other way around. You invited us to stay here, remember?”
“To keep you safe,” Trip reminded him. “Not to eat all my food, drink all my booze, and act like an asshole.”
Jacob flicked water from the pool across the carpet in the living room. “It sounds like we have too many people in one house. Why don’t we vote a few off the island? My tally goes to the assistants.”
Walt placed a hand on Ailani’s thigh before she could get up and start yelling. He subtly shook his head at her and mouthed, “Let Trip handle it.”
“Jacob,” Trip warned.
“No, I’m serious,” Jacob went on. He gestured to the other actors and models. “We all know each other. We’ve worked together for years. They” —he pointed to Walt and Ailani— “only showed up after this whole EMP shit went down. If you’re looking to pin the blame on someone, they’re right there. They probably stole your food.”
Color rushed to Walt’s cheeks, but he kept his head down.
“Shut up, Jacob,” Trip ordered.<
br />
Jacob got out of the pool and, without drying off, opened the pantry where Trip kept protein bars and other snacks. “Lookie here.” He shook the box of protein bars. “Only one left.”
“Don’t you dare,” Trip said as Jacob drew out the protein bar. “Jacob, don’t. I’m serious.”
“I’m hungry,” Jacob declared. He unwrapped the bar.
Trip launched himself over the back of the sofa, almost kicking Israel in the head. He threw himself at Jacob, who grinned right as Trip barreled into him, as if he’d been expecting Trip to lose his temper the entire time. They rolled across the floor, wrestling for the top position.
“Stop!” Ailani shouted. She and Walt were the only ones who got up to intervene. Everyone else just watched. “Jacob, get off of him!”
But the flurry of fists was too intense to get involved with. Trip landed a punch on Jacob’s rib cage. Jacob, in response, smashed his fist into Trip’s mouth. Right away, blood spurted everywhere, and Trip rolled out of Jacob’s range to spit out a tooth.
Ailani lost her temper. She grabbed Jacob by the arm and hauled him to his feet. He laughed the entire time, shaking his hair to fling water into Ailani’s eyes.
“Get out!” she yelled, dragging Jacob to the nearest door. “Get out, you piece of crap.”
“You can’t kick me out.” Jacob leaned against Ailani’s weight and licked his lips. “Admit it, you don’t want to either.”
“You’re disgusting.”
Walt showed up behind Ailani. “Get out before I make you.”
“Walt, don’t be like that,” Jacob said. “We haven’t gotten a chance to know one another yet. I’m sure you’re a cool guy. Hell, you’re hot too. You know, I could up your follower count on Insta—”
Walt planted his hands on Jacob’s bare chest and shoved him through the back door. As soon as he was clear of the threshold, Ailani slammed the door shut. Jacob shouted and pounded to be let back in, but Ailani ignored him. Trip moaned on the floor, covering his mouth with his hands. No one else had done anything to help him.