Protecting Our Home

by Colton Lively

  It was Mary, the navigator, who pointed it out. “East, you mean, back down the 26?”

  “Yep.”

  “Back, in other words, the way we came?”

  “It’s only twenty miles,” Cody said. “Every other way is screwed right now. We’ll go east to Eustis, and…”

  Mary tapped the map in frustration. “But the directions you gave me were to take Route 3 and…”

  “Plans have changed, honey,” he said, peering at the darkened road ahead of them.

  “That’s gonna add… I don’t even know, maybe fifty miles to the journey,” she calculated, looking glumly at the map. “We’ll need more gas, and we won’t be there until well after dawn.”

  “We could go back to the checkpoint,” Cody offered, “and see whether getting attacked by a bunch of amateurs with assault weapons has improved the Guards’ sense of humor.” He leaned over to address the youngsters. “Anybody feel like that’s a good plan?”

  “Nope,” said Jacob for them both.

  “Emma, you with us? Feeling all right back there?”

  “I was fine until this little idiot decided to sit on my chest.”

  “I was trying to save your life, princess,” muttered Jacob. “You’re welcome.”

  “Wish people didn’t have to save my life so often,” said Emma. “I’m starting to feel like the damsel in distress.”

  “Anything we can do to help?” asked Cody, his mind very much split between the teenage concerns in the back, his stony-faced wife in the passenger seat, and the dimly lit, wreck-scattered road ahead.

  “Let’s see,” Emma asked, reinforcing her main concern, “if we can put an end to the shooting.”

  “I second the motion,” her brother added.

  “Because I think I remember saying something about how nobody should be shooting at me. I did say that, right? I didn’t just dream it?”

  “You’d better believe you said it,” remarked Cody.

  “Pretty darned loud, too,” Jacob remembered.

  “Need me to say it again? ‘Cause I will.”

  “No need,” Cody informed her.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Thing is,” Emma pointed out, “it keeps happening.”

  “So, we’ll avoid it. And the only way of keeping safe right now is by adapting to circumstances,” confirmed Cody.

  “Yay, let’s hear it for adapting,” said Emma weakly, unconvinced that any plans they might make would genuinely shield her from the craziness sweeping her world. “And let’s hear it for good old Flannigan, too. See you again soon,” she said, falling into a worried micro-nap as they headed back east.

  Mary was also silent, but she was creating one of those deliberate conversational gaps, which Cody always understood to mean: That was an important decision, but you chose to keep me out of it.

  With nothing to add and no new information with which to calm his daughter, or mollify his wife, Cody focused instead on the darkened road ahead of them. One lane or the other was frequently blocked, but he kept up a good pace, heading back east. On the horizon, as they approached, a band of orange light emerged and brightly occupied the space where their town should have been.

  “Oh, man,” he heard Jacob say, but the others watched in silence, gradually realizing that from one end to the other, the town of Flannigan was on fire.

  14

  2 miles west of Flannigan, NH H-Hour + 11 (Midnight)

  While Emma tried to sleep, and Mary navigated by flicking a lighter and peering at the map for a few seconds, Jacob and his father continued a quiet but intense debate.

  “It’ll only take a minute,” said Jacob. “I’ll be super quick, I promise.”

  “What do they say on that British drama your mom likes so much? The one set in the big country house with all the rich people?” asked Cody rhetorically. “Oh, yeah. It’s, ‘Out of the question.’”

  “But there’s a serious need…”

  “I understand the need. I’m talking about the risk.”

  “What’s the worst that can happen?” asked Jacob.

  “Today?” his mother cut in. “What’s the worst thing that can happen on a day like today? You’re really asking that?”

  From under the jacket she’d placed over her head, Emma groaned. “Oh my God, just pull over and let him pee.”

  Jacob burst out laughing. “Maybe you missed the first part of the discussion.”

  “Huh?”

  “I don’t need to pee. But we need a radio.”

  “A radio? This thing doesn’t have one?” she asked sleepily, emerging from under the jacket. Her hair was still arrestingly streaked with green, but she hadn’t thought about it for a few hours. In the darkened interior of the truck, no one could see, anyway.

  “Not a standard feature of this version,” said her father. “It would have gotten fried with everything else, anyway. But Jacob thinks that his friend’s dad might have a working radio.”

  “Or some way to build one,” Jacob added. “He’s a stone-cold geek. Works for an aerospace company, making missiles or something. Said he couldn’t talk about it much.”

  “Wait, which friend is this? Not poor Link?” Mary asked, turning to him. “Honey, after what that family has been through, we can’t barge into their house in the middle of the night and…”

  “No, I don’t mean Link, and I wouldn’t do anything like that,” he said, offended that his family thought him so callous. “Dexter Lewis’s dad. Dude with the ponytail and glasses.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Cody, “that guy… You’re right. He does secret stuff for the military. Something to do with sending enemy missiles off course.”

  “How’d you know that?” asked Mary.

  “Their Christmas party the year before last. Remember? He took some of us down to his basement and showed us bits of a Russian missile from the sixties.”

  “And there were radios down there, too?” Mary asked.

  “Can’t remember,” Cody grinned. “The eggnog was pretty strong.”

  Jacob had been down there with Dexter while the boy’s father was out. “He’s got, like, a little museum in his basement. Lots of shelves with boxes of parts. We’re sure to be able to find something that would work like a radio.”

  “All right, but it still means that the truck will be stopped outside someone’s house for several minutes, and I don’t like the sound of that.”

  Jacob grabbed the back of the driver’s seat and pulled himself forward, the better to make a final, impassioned plea to his father. “We can go in stealth mode. No lights and wait with the engine off.”

  “What if it won’t start again?” said Cody.

  “Dad… I’m just trying to help,” Jacob said, slumping back into his seat.

  “I know that, buddy, believe me. It’s just, I’m trying to keep us all safe. Got to mitigate the risks.”

  “What’s that mean?” Jacob asked.

  “Figure out the dangers and make them as small as I can. So, to deal with the risks of having an engine that’s eighty years old, we try not to ask the old girl too many questions. And I’d need to go with you, in case you run into anyone.”

  “Like who?”

  “We don’t know, and that’s just what I mean,” explained Cody. “It’s an unknown risk. If you and I know the guy has a basement crammed with radio parts, who else knows?”

  “I mean, a handful of people…”

  “And any chance one of that handful has the same idea?” Cody said.

  “Small, but non-zero.”

  “Okay. You’re starting to see.”

  Mary intervened. “If we’re going to Broad Acres and Dexter Lewis’s place, we’ll have to turn right up here.”

  Cody slowed the truck, giving him extra seconds of thought. A working radio would be a godsend, if only for listening to emergency broadcasts, or getting news from amateur ‘ham’ radio operators; they were an enthusiastic bunch who would surely have seized this o
pportunity to make good use of their equipment. Denying Jacob’s request would mean cutting off a potentially vital conduit of news and information, the kind that might have warned them about the National Guard and their roadblock at Colebrook.

  He turned the wheel and acceded at the same time. “All right. We go in ‘stealth mode’ like you said. Emma and Mary, I’d like you to stay in the vehicle.”

  “Aww, you mean I can’t go shopping at the Mall of Geek?” Emma complained. “I’ve been daydreaming about it.”

  “If I make a radio work, will you be nice to me?” asked Jacob.

  “I can’t promise anything,” she said and pulled the jacket back over her head.

  “Of course she will,” Mary said on her daughter’s behalf. “We’ll all bow down to the GeekLord.”

  The Lewis residence was one of the nicer places on their street, a bespoke, modernist place with lots of glass and some surprising angles. “I guess aerospace pays better than welding,” said Cody as they approached with the truck’s lights turned off.

  “Dexter’s mom is a neurosurgeon. He always says that she ‘wears the pants,’ but I’ve never really known what that…” Jacob said, then spotted something large was missing. “Wait… their RV is gone.”

  “You think they took off, buddy?” asked Cody.

  “It’s always parked in the drive. I think they have two other cars. They’re in the garage.”

  The plan clarified itself for Cody. “All right. This isn’t gonna make me a candidate for Father of the Year, but… here, take this.” He handed his son the 9mm pistol, grip first, and showed him the safety catch. “The only reason you touch this,” he said, “is if you hear a sound or a voice that you don’t recognize.”

  “Roger.”

  “I’ll take the shotgun and see if I can siphon some fuel into our cans. You hit the basement and bring back anything that might be useful.”

  “Take this, or you won’t be able to see anything,” said Mary, handing him a lighter. “Guess I’m out of the running for Mom of the Year, too.”

  “I think this year’s award,” Emma opined as Cody and Jacob quietly left the vehicle, “will be decided on whether you got through a global freak-out while keeping your kids alive.”

  15

  The Lewis Residence H-Hour + 12 (01:10am, Day 2)

  Neither of them had considered how they might break into the place, and it left them feeling like amateurs. Jacob tried the front door, found it locked, and walked around to the back while his father tried to make his way into the garage through a side door. “Wait a second…” Jacob said to himself, remembering a curious design feature of the kitchen. “Where’s the doggie door?” In the darkness, without a single functioning street light, he probed the kitchen’s outer wall until he found it. “All right! Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis,” he said, levering his slender frame into the flap, “for buying absolutely the biggest dog you could find.”

  After a minute-long struggle, he flopped onto the kitchen floor and immediately felt like a proper burglar. It was a strange, skin-tingling thrill: I’m not supposed to be here. I’d be in major trouble if anyone found me. But no one knows…

  He flicked the lighter awkwardly, cautious that his inexperience might result in burned fingers. “Dad always said,” he whispered to himself, just to break the ominous silence of this completely empty house, “to be suspicious of teenagers who know how to start a lighter. A ‘sign of moral decrepitude,’ whatever that means.” The kitchen was spacious, lined by upscale appliances, which were now merely expensive ornaments. “The stairs down to the basement should be right over here…”

  In the medieval glow of his lighter, the door to the basement beckoned, and he pulled it open, almost disappointed that it refused to give a spine-tingling, haunted-house creak. Jacob took each step slowly, looking around him as far as the paltry light would allow.

  This was no ordinary basement, he remembered. Mr. Lewis had spent real money expanding and improving his den-museum-workshop until it occupied a large, surprisingly busy space. There were dozens of objects hanging from the ceiling—model airplanes, an experimental rocket-powered kite with bright-purple fabric, and a scene of air combat between a US Navy F-14 and a sleek, modern Russian bomber. “Tupolev Tu-22,” he said, recognizing the distinctive type. “Very cool,” Jacob breathed. “If I were making a model,” he said, pacing past the shelves of paints, glues and plastic parts, “I’d be in a goldmine. But today, I’m making a—Ah, there you are!”

  Under the high back window were two whole shelves of antique-looking radio equipment. “All right, let’s see what we got here.” It was a place of dials and coiled antennae, of stripped-out circuit boards, and batches of vacuum tubes set aside in decades-old cardboard boxes. “Um…” Only some of the components looked familiar, but he grabbed an empty box from the corner and began filling it with anything that might prove useful. It wasn’t until he stopped for a moment that he heard the sound of something breathing.

  Feeling sheepish, Cody tried to close the mangled door, but with its lock busted and frame off-kilter, it refused. “Sorry, Jinny and Abraham,” he said to the absent owners, “but my need is great.”

  He found his son had been absolutely right. Two smart, new vehicles sat in the garage: a white SUV, either a BMW or a Porsche, it was hardly important which, next to what was surely Abraham Lewis’s pride and joy, a Dodge Charger which glinted menacingly when Cody approached, his lighter aloft.

  “If I could just get lucky with gas, one time,” he said, despairing of the advanced security features on each vehicle’s gas tank. “Gonna need the keys.” It would take more time, but he was going to have to look around upstairs. It unnerved him to ransack a near-stranger’s possessions, but without gas, they were going nowhere. Siphoning from these unattended vehicles was a safer bet than hoping they’d encounter similar vehicles on the road north; many of them would now be the only home available to their owners. With a small number of focused people certain to gradually get their engines running again, and with tanker deliveries suspended for the duration, accessible gasoline would be at a premium.

  Through the garage’s other side door, he headed into the house proper, somehow remembering to wipe his feet before hitting the carpet. “Nice place,” he hummed, trotting upstairs with only his light to guide him. The five bedrooms—who needs five, anyway?—came off a central hallway, with the master bedroom at the end. He began there, surprised not to find the place in greater disarray; rather than leaving in the same dreadful hurry that marked Mary and Cody’s departure, the Lewis family had apparently left for a weekend trip before the EMP had struck. If that were true, the family was now stranded somewhere, hoping for deliverance. At least they had their enormous RV to call home and several days of supplies.

  Cody was reluctantly leafing through the two bedside tables when he heard a shout from downstairs. “Jacob?” There was no answer. Within seconds, the shotgun raised, Cody was at the bottom of the stairs, searching for the sound.

  “Wake up,” said Jacob, poking the sleeping form with his foot. Whoever this was on the ragged-looking basement couch, Jacob knew to be wary and kept the 9mm raised. “Hey!” he said, louder.

  The shape rustled and then sat up suddenly. It was a man of perhaps seventy, reeking of alcohol and other poor decisions. From what Jacob could see, he’d made this basement his shelter.

  “Kids?” he said, then hurried to his feet. “Damn it, can’t you ungrateful brats just leave an old veteran alone for a change?”

  “Huh?”

  “How many are you?” He had trouble keeping his feet, leaning back on the arm of the couch. Then he saw the gun. “Oh, it’s a stick-up, is it?” he laughed, his chest sounding rough. “I ain’t got even a dollar on me. Where’d you get that, anyway? You steal it?” he asked. “You look too young to know which end is the dangerous one.”

  “I think I’ve got it worked out,” Jacob said. “I’m not alone. But you can relax. We’re not going to hurt you.
”

  “Hah!” he said and burped loudly. “I never met a teenager who didn’t think it was just hilarious to keep a sleeping old man or pour something over my head.”

  “I didn’t kick you,” Jacob said. “I won’t even tell you to leave. This isn’t my place, after all.”

  “Well, we can’t be sharing it, can we?” he maintained. “And you’re the one with the gun.”

  “No, you got it wrong. We’re not staying here. Just looking for some things we need.”

  “Hah!” he said again, laughing like a man who had smoked too much for too long. “Ain’t nobody got wheels anymore, that’s what I heard. No planes, no trucks, no nothing. So, how you figure on moseying out of here?”

  “That’s our business,” Jacob said.

  The veteran held up his hands in mock surrender. “Okay, young man, okay. Sounds like you got a plan. But I got a better one,” he smiled conspiratorially.

  “Yeah?”

  “Oh, yeah. All these fancy folks who ain’t home, Lord knows how many… Well, they don’t know it yet, but they just decided to loan their home and possessions to those who need them more.”

  “Like you,” Jacob concluded.

  “Damn straight! And you too! It’s the easiest life there is! You know, I was doing all right,” he said, launching into a truncated version of his story. “The VA got me a place and, you know, there was this and that going on, but I guess I was fine. Then,” he said, introducing the turning point of his mini-saga, “I got into trouble with this cop who didn’t like me hanging out at the library, and he goes and hauls me in, and they said one thing or another was a ‘misdemeanor,’ and suddenly, they were taking away my benefits… in case I spent the money on booze, I guess, so I said…”