“I’m good for now with the shower. I still need to clear the snow. But I’ll take a little siesta after lunch.”
“Don’t worry about the battery, we have a few days of sun coming our way. Take the shower. You need it,” she said, and with a devilish smile, added, “plus, you’re turning a little ripe.”
“Nice. Always an ulterior motive.”
“I do what I can to survive around here,” she said and headed back into the bedroom.
Chapter 38
“Dinner’s almost ready,” Kate said to Alex as he opened the door to the basement.
“I’ll be right up,” he called and headed down the stairs.
The smell of baby powder hit his nose as he flipped on the light and headed straight to the bulkhead door. A paint can tied to a shoelace hung precariously from the end of the crude lock mechanism’s bolt. Even if an intruder managed to relock the door on the way out, there was no conceivable way for them to re-hang the paint can from the outside. Plus, the paint can’s lid was loosened and would likely open if the can was tipped, making a complete mess. The baby powder on the floor around the bulkhead door stairs served as the final, unavoidable telltale. A fine layer of undisturbed powder extended in a roughly six-foot circumference around the base of the short abbreviated stairway.
Alex walked over and unlocked the bunker door, turning on the light as he stepped in. He glanced around quickly, noting that everything was the same as yesterday. The Power Cube indicated it was up to sixty-eight percent. Not as much as he had hoped. Three predominantly sunny days had given them about fifteen percent of their charge back. Six days of constant cloud cover had drained nearly fifty percent of the charge, and he felt like they had been pretty conservative with their power use. A few more weather cycles like this, and the system will hit bottom. And every time it hits bottom, the batteries won’t hold as much charge during the next charge phase.
Alex locked the bunker and walked upstairs. When he reached the kitchen, he had to admit to that the stew smelled pretty damn good. The bowls had been arranged on the table, along with Kate’s recently invented pancake-style biscuits. Alex saw the obligatory canned vegetable side dish in a small saucepan set on a mat in the middle of the table.
He couldn’t imagine what their neighbors were eating, and he didn’t want to think about it. The kids were already seated, looking eager to eat. Two months ago, barley stew would have led to a revolt. With the days of unlimited snacks long gone, the kids anxiously milled around the kitchen before dinner. They ate without the constant prodding that had become a daily dinner ritual for Kate and Alex.
“Everything set downstairs?” Kate asked as she began ladling out the chunky brownish-tan stew.
“Yeah. Good to go. The batteries are almost back to seventy percent,” he said. “Smells great, hon.”
“I know—kinda looks gross. Not much I can do to dress it up. I threw in some carrots, but the orange chunks aren’t really helping.”
“Looks good, Mom,” Ryan added reassuringly.
“Thank you, my favorite little man,” Kate said, giving him an appreciative smile.
Emily couldn’t contain herself. “He just said it looked like dia…”
“Never mind, sweetie. It’ll be delicious, and we are very, very lucky to be eating this. Let’s be thankful for our abundance and to your mom for making us dinner,” Alex interrupted before she could complete her sentence.
Everyone thanked Kate at the same time.
“Eat up. Dinner’s a little late, and we need to close up shop down here,” she said.
Spoons hit the soup bowls as he gazed at the long shadows cast by a few of the trees at the rear of their property line. He turned his head and looked across the table, past Kate and out of the great room windows. The sun had already ducked behind the Walkers’ house. Even without seeing the sun, he knew that it was probably only a few degrees over the artificial horizon formed by the thick trees to the southwest. They had about fifteen minutes to finish eating.
“Is seventy percent enough for the batteries?” Ryan asked.
“Yeah. We’ll be fine. I think we have a small storm brewing later tomorrow and part of Friday—then some decent weather for the weekend. We should all make sure to take showers tonight—clean off. We might set the thermostats a little lower to keep the furnace from running as much,” he said.
“They’re already set pretty low. Fifty-seven in our room,” Kate said.
“I know. I don’t want to set that one any lower, but the heat keeps coming on at night. I can feel it seeping out from behind our bed.”
“Our room’s cold because it’s over the garage.”
“I think if we take it down to fifty-four, we’ll be set. I got up to check the room temperature last night when the heat kicked on, and it hit fifty-six. I’ve never seen it below fifty-five in our room, even with the heat off. We’ll have to burrow in a little deeper under the covers.”
“We can try it,” she said.
“So what are the two of you up to?” Alex asked, digging into his bowl of lumpy brown stew.
“Nothing,” Emily said, “just reading a book on Mommy’s iPad.”
Ryan shook his head. “Nothing much.”
“Anything good, sweetie?” he asked Emily.
“Mommy downloaded like five of the Alissa Storm series books. I just started reading the series at the beginning of the school year.”
“That’s the series where Alissa can time travel in her sleep, or something like that?”
Ryan gave him a look.
“What?” Alex asked.
“She sees the future in her sleep, like a dream. She solves mysteries, prevents disasters, stuff like that,” Emily explained.
“Sounds cool, sweetie. Not a word from you,” he said and stared at Ryan, who was on the verge of what Alex could only presume was a statement likely to drive Emily to tears.
“The books are middle school level reading. She’s really doing awesome. I’m going to download as many as possible before the service is interrupted,” Kate said.
“You might want to get them all tonight, Mom. I keep losing my Xbox live connection. I think the internet is close to dead,” Ryan said.
“Doesn’t surprise me. We might be living on whatever is recorded in the two DVRs,” Alex said.
“That would kind of suck,” Ryan said.
Alex just raised his eyebrows. Kate didn’t even notice a word that would have been censored from the kids’ vocabulary a month ago.
“Maybe we should download some books for you, too. After dinner, we’ll sit down and you can pick some books,” Kate said.
“Cool,” Ryan agreed.
The light continued to drain from the room as the sun sunk further below the tree line, leaving an orange glow on the horizon to each side of the Walkers’ house.
“Let’s eat up and secure the perimeter. We can chat upstairs later. If the internet and cable is down, we’re gonna have more quality time together than either of you ever dreamed possible,” Alex said.
“More Scrabble?” Emily asked.
“And we might start to allow bad words, though that might put your mother at an unfair advantage.”
“Nice,” she said.
“Keep eating, guys. Upstairs in a few minutes, please,” Alex said. He caught Kate’s warm smile, and they both relaxed for a few moments.
***
“Your cell phone’s ringing!” Kate yelled over the sound of automatic weapons fire and military radio transmissions.
Alex put down the game controller and got up from the couch in their attic. “Pause it,” he said to Ryan and flew down the carpeted stairs.
Kate stood at the bottom of the attic stairs. “I don’t think you guys should have that on so loud. Especially at night,” she said with an acutely serious face.
“Yeah, I know. I’m trying to find it,” he said.
“Hey, Charlie,” said Alex answering the phone.
“Alex, did you hear anything w
eird a few minutes ago?” he asked.
Charlie’s voice sounded distant, almost muffled.
“Hear what? Are you guys all right?” Alex asked, walking down the hall to the attic stairs.
“Did you hear gunfire?” Charlie asked.
“No, I didn’t hear anything,” he said. “What did you hear?”
“Well, the girls were watching a movie in the bedroom with the volume kinda low, and I thought I heard some kind of popping sounds. Like when you’re driving up the road at the Fish and Game club. I jumped up and turned off the TV. By the time the girls quit complaining—I’m pretty sure I heard a shotgun blast.”
“Did you see anything outside?” Alex asked Charlie.
“No, I rushed everyone downstairs into the basement. I’m starting to think we should just stay down there at night,” he said.
Alex grabbed his rifle and backpack from the top of the attic stairs. The backpack contained his binoculars, night vision scope, and spare ammunition for both the rifle and the pistol. He headed back downstairs toward his office.
“Probably not a bad idea if you think you heard shots. I don’t mean this to sound condescending, Charlie, but are you absolutely sure you heard gunshots?”
“I’m pretty sure about the last two. It was pretty quiet in the room at that point…aside from the hysterics,” he said, raising his voice. His twin twelve-year-old girls were obviously within earshot. “My dad was reading in his room. He said it sounded like the Tet Offensive out there.”
“Your dad was in Vietnam?” Alex asked.
“No, and he can’t hear squat, but he swears he heard a gunfight. Small and hard calibers he says.”
“Hard calibers? What does that mean?”
“Hold on…what?” Charlie yelled.
Alex heard someone yelling in the background, and then Charlie’s muffled voice. He yelled something about someone not being able to hear anything.
“Sorry about that,” he said, then lowered his voice. “My dad is driving me crazy. Anyway, he heard booming shots and smaller ones, like sharp cracks. It’s what I thought I heard over the TV. Small pops followed by louder thumps. Shotguns.”
“All right, we should take a look around. Use your night vision. I’ll take a look, too. I can’t see the Murrays’ house, so you should concentrate there,” Alex said.
“Sounds good. Call you in a few.”
Alex hung up and dug into his backpack for the night vision scope. He raised the shade in his office a few inches and poked the scope through, aiming toward Charlie’s side of the block and scanning the area. He increased the magnification and started to comb the area for more detail, focusing on the houses that he could see from his office window: the Coopers’, Bradys’, McCarthys’ and part of Charlie’s. He could see the house occupied by the surgeon and his wife, but the angle was shallow—only two side windows faced him. There was nothing unusual about the neighborhood houses. Most had visible flickering candlelight.
He pulled the shade down and called Charlie.
“Hey. I didn’t catch anything on the scope, but I don’t have much of a view from here. Did your dad say how close he thought it was?”
“He said it had to be across the street, but with my dad’s hearing loss, it could have been in the kids’ bathroom. Either way, it had to be pretty close for him to hear it. His room faces the street. Could have been from down your way, or up past the Bartons’. I don’t know, but I don’t plan to sit around and wait for those criminals to bust into my house and shoot it up.”
“I don’t think anyone’s shooting up houses, Charlie.”
“You don’t sound very convinced, Alex.”
“Let’s sit tight and observe. In my experience, when there are more unknowns than certainties, it’s the best course of action.”
“Sometimes sitting around and doing nothing is the worst thing you can do. We need to take the offensive. Bring the fight to them, on our terms…”
“Charlie, come on. We can’t just storm their house commando-style and blast anything that moves,” Alex said.
“Maybe we can set up an ambush outside their back door. Catch ’em by surprise when they head out,” Charlie said and cleared his throat.
“Too many unknowns. We’d have to set up on their turf, on their timeline. It’s way too risky. These guys may be psychotic, but I don’t get the sense that they’re stupid. Too many things can go wrong.”
“We should at least start going door to door and checking on people. Make sure they’re all right.”
“And stand out in the open knocking on the door of a possible murder scene. That’s definitely not a good idea, Charlie. We need to step up our observation and gather more information,” Alex insisted.
“We’ll see. I’m not gonna sit around forever.”
“I agree, but we need more to go on here. Let me know if you see anything.”
“All right. Later.”
***
Alex disconnected the call and walked over to the bedroom with the backpack and rifle. He found Kate lying on the couch with Emily, a recorded movie playing on low volume. She made eye contact and raised her eyebrows.
“What’s up?” she asked and propped herself up a little more, shifting Emily.
“Not too much,” he said, signaling for her to follow him.
Kate apologized to Emily and got up from the couch, following Alex into the darkened hallway outside of their bedroom. He leaned the rifle against the wall and dropped the backpack.
“Charlie is pretty sure he heard some gunfire in the neighborhood…”
“Are you sure he didn’t just hear you guys playing Xbox?”
“Ha ha ha. Seriously, his dad heard it too. Two distinctly different guns. Probably a pistol, and Charlie thinks a shotgun.”
“Well, if anyone knows the difference, it’s probably Charlie. Did you guys take a look around?” Kate asked.
“With night vision. Neither of us saw anything.”
“Did you check all of our doors?”
“Yeah, and I set all of the noise makers. I’ll set up the one on the stairs, and then we should all head into the bedroom. I really hate that we have to live like this in our own house.”
“Really sad is what it is. I wish we had a real alarm, or a dog. I just can’t see us hearing anything asleep with the door shut,” she said.
“I’ll hear any noises downstairs. Don’t worry, hon,” Alex assured her, kissing her forehead.
“You haven’t heard yourself snore lately. You’re sleeping harder than I am now.”
“What are you guys whispering about out there?” Emily called.
“Nothing, sweetie,” he said back.
Alex put a hand on each of Kate’s cheeks and looked into her eyes. He didn’t see any fear. She could be pretty resilient in a crisis.
“We’ll be fine. I’ll grab Ryan, and you make something up so Emily’s not worried,” he said.
“Did you call the police?”
“No. Not yet.”
“You need to call the police and sit on the phone for as long as it takes to get through. Even if they can’t respond right away, it might set the wheels in motion to get someone out here to take a look at the situation. Maybe they’ll get booted from the house, and out of our neighborhood.”
“I don’t know. I’ll call again, but even if I do get through, I don’t see the police taking any action. I’m sure rooting out squatters is pretty low on their priority list. I don’t even know how they’d get out here.”
“That’s not your problem to fix. Make the call, and start the process. If the situation deteriorates further, and the police can’t do their job, then you’ll have a clearer conscience to take action.”
“I guess it would also cover our behinds with the cops if something happened,” he conceded.
“Exactly.”
“All right. I’ll call Ed—then 911. Don’t wait up for me.”
“I love you. Make sure you send Ryan down,” she said and kissed his
lips.
“I love you more,” he said and walked back to the attic staircase.
Chapter 39
Alex sat in bed next to Kate, while she read. Emily’s warm little body snuggled in between them. He had been watching Kate nod off, fighting sleep for the past twenty minutes. The novel slipped off her knees, through her hands, and slid down her red and green flannel pants to its final resting place on her maroon Boston College sweatshirt. When she didn’t stir, he knew she was officially done for the night.
He put his iPad on the nightstand and leaned over to straighten her legs. She stirred from the movement and scooted herself down the bed so her head rested on the pillow.
“I love you,” he whispered, and she mumbled something back to him.
He turned off the light and pulled the comforter up to his neck, slowly drifting away, when a distant thump brought him back. He grabbed the night vision scope and USP pistol from the top drawer of his nightstand and walked toward window at the front of their bedroom. His cell phone rang, and he doubled back to get it. Charlie.
“Hey,” he whispered into the phone.
“I heard it again. Closer this time, and it sounded like a shotgun,” Charlie said.
“I heard it, too. Very faint. Definitely gunfire. I’m checking it out right now. I’ll get back to you.”
“I’m headed upstairs,” Charlie said, and the phone went dead.
Alex raised the window shade a few inches and scanned the neighborhood. The scope provided a clear green image of everything, despite a near complete lack of ambient light among the houses. He searched for any signs of activity, moving the scope one by one over the seemingly lifeless structures in his neighborhood. A few times, he spotted light flickering from a house, which he figured to be candlelight or a fireplace, but saw nothing out of the ordinary in the immediate vicinity of his own home.
He shifted his focus to where Durham Road curved into the other side of the loop, passing over the Carters’ and McCarthys’, and again saw nothing unusual. He saw a faint wavering light inside the McCarthys’ house, which was normal. Passing the scope slowly over the Coopers’ house he stopped. Something was not right.
THE ALEX FLETCHER BOXSET: Books 1-5 Page 30