Unbound

by A. R. Shaw

  “Well, it’s not pretty, but no one’s getting through there. Still, I wish we had a few two-by-fours to close up the extra space,” Sloane noted.

  “How about this, Mom?” Wren said, holding up one of Harper’s inspirational signs from the wall. This one said, Find Joy in the Journey.

  “Perfect. Not sure I agree with the sentiment, but it’ll work for this. Are there any more of these around?” she asked while covering up the extra space on the side of the table.

  “Yeah, here’s one from the kitchen,” Wren said.

  Sloane checked the long sign; it was adorned with a depiction of many endearing farm animals and below the pictures it said, We don’t eat our friends. She couldn’t help it; she started laughing her head off.

  “What’s so funny? Don’t judge them,” Wren admonished her mother.

  She wiped her eyes and shook her head. “I’m just finding joy in the journey, that’s all.”

  “Mom!” Wren said again.

  “I’m outta dog snacks,” Mae called from the mudroom door. “We need something more.”

  Sloane quickly screwed the sign above the last one, fully enclosing the opening.

  “Perfect timing then,” Sloane said.

  “Let me get some fresh water for him before you let him out. Wren, get something to block the stairs. Let’s keep him on the main floor.”

  While she heard Wren pushing furniture around, she searched the cupboards for a bowl to fill with water. Again, she wasn’t sure if the water from the tap was still sanitary but it looked clear and didn’t seem to have a foul odor. She’d try it out on the dog first. If he suffered any ill effects, well… then she would know for sure.

  “I think he’s nice, Mom. He’s licking my hand through the door,” Mae said.

  “He just wants to eat your fingers,” Wren cautioned.

  “Wait a minute. We need to show him we are the giver of good things. We’re going to feed him and give him water and keep him happy so he’ll think we are his family. We’ve seen he can attack, so let’s remember that. Girls, get behind me,” Sloane directed.

  After she placed the water and more food on the tile floor in the kitchen, she pulled out the Glock again, just in case. She’d hate to kill the dog, but she also couldn’t risk an injury to herself or one of the girls.

  She stood by the mudroom door with her hand on the door handle.

  Please let this work.

  She opened the door with big smiles but held the Glock handy. “Hi buddy. Want some more food?” she said as if she were talking to a cartoon minion. The once ferocious dog panted and held a silly grin on his canine face. “I bet you want some water, too.” She kept up the voice as the big black dog followed her. It stopped when it saw the girls standing behind her, and a wave of panic flooded her. Mae lowered her hand to let him sniff her. “Careful,” Sloane said.

  He began licking any remaining cookie residue. Wren then lowered her hand but with slow, shaky fortitude. The dog sniffed her too, and Sloane felt somewhat relieved. She walked into the kitchen, calling the dog, “Come here, boy. Come get the water.”

  He followed her into the kitchen and sniffed. He then began lapping up the water. She removed the trailing belt that she’d used as a leash earlier.

  “Great. Now what?” Wren said.

  Sloane breathed a sigh of relief. “Now we keep him on the main floor. Let him have the run of the place. If anyone other than one of us tries to get in here, they’re toast.

  “We’ll keep the basement door shut too and we’ll feed him whatever is left in our refrigerator or freezer until it runs out or goes way too bad even for the dog. I don’t want him to get sick.”

  He looked up at her like he was in love and she patted him. “You’re my hero.”

  “Can I name him?” Mae asked.

  “Uh, sure. Well, let’s see if he already has a name.” She looked at the metallic tags dangling from his collar while he tried to lick her face. Then she remembered those teeth were earlier connected to Doug’s flabby thigh. “Ugh,” she said, wiping off the slime. “Looks like he’s from Seaside and his name is Ace.” Suddenly the dog sat down on his haunches.

  “Is that your name? Ace?” Mae asked.

  “Ah, geez; his tail’s wagging now,” Wren said and patted his head.

  “He’s someone’s lost pet. When things get back to normal, we’ll try to find his owners. Don’t get too attached,” Sloane warned them.

  Sloane walked to the mudroom and grabbed the front door keys on the hook she noticed before. “We’ve got to get going now. We’ll come back later, let him out to go to the bathroom, and bring him more food. We’ll throw a ball and play with him a little too. For now, though, we’ve got to work on our own house. Let’s go.”

  He followed them to the door and once they locked up, Sloane looked through the window and Ace ran back to his food bowl. She knew it wasn’t an ideal situation but it would keep the house secure for now—at least from Doug, anyway.

  7

  Security

  * * *

  She had no idea this day would come with so many distractions. She found herself continuously looking toward Nicole’s house, hoping to get a reassuring glimpse of the girl.

  After pulling the still submerged rifle out of the tub of water, she began drying it as well as possible. She had done the same with the pistol, which she had identified as a Colt 1911 by the engraving on the slide. Then she dumped the plastic tray of rounds onto the dry towel for Mae, whose job it was to dry each one thoroughly. Wren watched for movement again while Sloane worked.

  “Hand me those cotton swabs, Mae,” Sloane said.

  “Do we have to get it all?” Mae asked, frustrated with the task.

  “Yes, or they’ll rust and then be useless to us. After this, we’ll have to oil them down with my cleaning kit.” Never in her life did she think she would be sitting on the bathroom floor, pulling apart and drying an AR-10 as if her and her daughters’ lives depended on it. No, her dreams began a lifetime ago, when she studied in Paris and wanted nothing more than to live there. Instead, she ended up meeting Finn, falling in love, having two beautiful daughters, and teaching French at the local high school. Though she’d never change those parts of her life, she would certainly have changed Finn’s death during the pandemic. So many of her dreams were now shattered and, regretfully, never to be.

  “Mom, I’m hungry,” Mae said.

  Sloane was too; though she’d stored enough food for them for three months, she was concerned about using the surplus too quickly. I’ll have to keep an eye on that. They were using so much more energy than they would in a normal day, she could see why the girls might be hungrier.

  “We’ll get something in a few minutes. Let’s put these on my bed; the opened window will dry them a little more,” she said. Sloane then turned to her other daughter to question, “Anything new, Wren?”

  “No Mom,” she answered.

  Sloane decided they should use up some of the plastic encased crackers and peanut butter they’d rescued from the rising floodwaters the day before. She pulled out a few paper plates and smeared a few spoonfuls onto the little squares. This will have to do for now.

  She glanced at her own blown out sliding glass door on the first floor. That’s got to be next. I can’t sleep without securing the door.

  She brought the snacks, aboard paper plates, to both girls. Wren stood near the master bedroom window and glanced briefly at her as she placed the plate on the nightstand. Sloane again glanced toward Doug’s house. “Nothing?”

  “No. It’s so hot, Mom. I wish we at least had a fan,” Wren complained.

  “Yeah, that’s a problem but not a priority right now. I’ll have Mae relieve you after you eat and then you and I can cover our own door,” Sloane said.

  “Okay, thanks, Mom,” Wren said.

  Sloane skipped her own lunch only because she had too much to do. She raced downstairs to the garage and retrieved the extra battery for her electric drill.
She knew once the charge was out, that was it. Without electricity, they were worthless. Maybe Larry or Brian has one, too. It was imperative she get her own house secure for tonight. She also knew she might be using a hammer and nails to secure the Baker and Miller homes, but that would have to do.

  She looked around her own garage. What do I use to secure my own door? Before Finn’s death, he’d intended to build another shed in the backyard. For four years, unused sheets of plywood and two-by-fours lay against one end of the garage. At some point, she ceased to see the pile; it remained there, seen only by her subconscious. The flooding waters jostled the items around, and now the wood was damp but still usable for this purpose. She worked her way past her inoperative minivan and the plastic totes full of items too young for the girls but too memorable to part with. After creating a path through what seemed like her life, she located the damp wood. This will have to do.

  With all her might, she hauled the first soaked wooden sheet up and over the wreckage that was now worthless to them. Once free, she tilted it on its side and went back for another. It would take two sheets to cover the doorway if she overlapped them a bit. Lord knew she didn’t have any nifty inspirational signs to use in her house; if she did, they’d be in French, with an intentional slight to Brady. Les hommes pensent moins, plus ils parlent. Should have done more thinking and less talking, Brady.

  Through the opened garage door, she said, “Mae, go ahead and take over watch for your sister. Wren, come down and give me a hand.”

  Over the next half hour, she and her daughter drilled screws into the perimeter of her own missing sliding glass doorway. Once done, she felt a wave of relief pass over her. Now she could lock up the house securely at night. Barring a broken window, which she would hear, their home would be safeguarded.

  Back to the weapons in the sweltering heat upstairs, she liberally applied the solvent that Trent previously informed her worked best. She added more to the pistol using a clean dry sock and let it soak in while she checked on the girls, who were both watching the neighborhood with bored anticipation.

  “Anything new?”

  “No Mom, nothing—absolutely nothing,” Wren said flatly.

  “That’s good news, my dear. That’s how we want it. We aren’t prepared yet and we’re racing to get prepared. Before long, there will be trouble and we need to be ready.”

  She wiped the solvent off after she thought the job was done, and with another clean sports sock, she rubbed until the sock came away clean instead of black. She had a whole pile of blackened sports socks but had no idea if she should burn them or wash them. She supposed she’d deal with that later.

  Luckily, when Trent recommended the cleaning kit, he made sure she got the one with several bore brushes of varying sizes and a set of cleaning rods. He’d told her she never knew when she might need to clean a larger gun, and as it turned out, he was right; here she was cleaning an AR-10. She stuffed the largest bore brush she had in her kit—.30 caliber—down the bore of the rifle and pulled it out. She repeated the process over and over again and then ran a clean patch down the barrel several times to ensure it was clean and unobstructed.

  Without really knowing how to lightly oil this particular rifle, she relied on what Trent had taught her: to oil all the moving parts, like the bolt and trigger assembly. She looked for areas of wear and made sure to oil those well but avoided the firing pin because he said the oil would only guarantee collection of debris in that area and cause gunk to form.

  She repeated the process for the pistol and cleaned up afterwards. She made sure the rounds were fully dry and then loaded both magazines with their respective ammo. Luckily, the .308 from the ammo can was for the AR-10 and the .45ACP from the soaked cardboard box belonged to the pistol. She wanted to test them out, but that would attract attention. It would have to wait.

  As the day lengthened, she still had to begin the process of draining the basements and she also had to take care of one more task before she could sleep. She dreaded the act and mentally tried to focus on the best method of performing it. Once the girls were asleep that night, she intended to sneak out, remove Brady’s body from the back of Larry’s house, and haul him off into the woods to rot there—out of sight and out of mind.

  8

  Midnight Ride

  * * *

  “I’m tired, Mom!” Mae whined while she stood on one leg and scratched the other with the toe of her boot.

  “We’re all tired. Let’s get this done before the sun goes down and then we can lock up for the night.” She unhooked the green lawn hose and pulled it hand over fist out of Brian Miller’s yard. After handing this coiled bundle to Mae, they searched the other side of his house for any more hoses.

  “I think that’s it, Mom,” Wren said. “We’ve stolen all their hoses now, so what are we going to do with them all?”

  “We’re going to try and drain the basements. We have ten hoses and four houses to drain, so let’s put two in each house and the extras in ours.” She brushed the grime from her forehead with her arm. They were all filthy and exhausted, and there was still work to do. “I have no idea how well this will do the job, but it’s a start. We’ll check them daily and adjust as we go. I’m sure they’ll clog from the debris, but when we check on the houses, that’ll be one of the chores several times a day.”

  At one of the Millers’ broken basement window wells, Sloane knelt down and fed a hose through the window, into the seawater trapped below. “We have to feed the hose out into the water, submerging the length as we go. Try to keep it as straight as possible. Then, when you get to the end of the hose, you want to lower it into the water and point the opening up underwater to release any air. Then reach down and cup your palm over the opening so that the water is suctioned to the palm of your hand. Then let gravity do its job.” She looked to where she could lay the hose out downhill. She pulled out a length of seven feet, feeling it heavy with water, and laid it where the earth sloped downhill and into the woods behind the Millers’ house.

  When she released her palm, the water started to drain immediately from the force of gravity and the thrust of her hand downward. “See? It’s not a perfect process, but it will drain. We’ll have to unclog them several times a day and restart the process, but it will work in time.”

  She had another cautionary thought but wasn’t sure how to tell them without scaring them since being terrified of snakes was a genetic trait in their family. “By the way, watch for snakes in the basement.” Both girls stepped back.

  “What?” Wren said with a clip of her tongue. “Snakes? You didn’t say anything about snakes earlier.”

  She tried to calm her daughter. “We must face our fears, no matter how scary. Just be aware there might be frogs, snakes, and anything else that could have come in with the floodwater down there. Look before you put your hand anywhere; it’s better to be safe than sorry.” She just could not help the motherly sayings. They came out automatically at times like these.

  “That’s just great, Mom.” Wren said.

  Her daughter shuddered as they looked around for another opening into the Millers’ basement. Near the locked bulkhead door, there was a cracked window. Sloane finished it off with her boot so she could reach in and do the same thing with the next hose.

  Afterwards, she said, “We’ll do ours and then the Carsons’ across the street; by that time, it’ll be too dark to do the Bakers’, so we’ll wait until tomorrow to start on that one.” She’d planned it this way because she didn’t want the girls to get a chance at identifying the body in Larry’s backyard.

  They fed Ace again after placing the hoses through two cracks in the Carsons’ house. They let him out to do his business and Sloane was a bit concerned the dog might make a run for it, but he returned merrily as they walked into the house. He seemed overjoyed to have his own pad. He’d made himself comfortable on Trent’s former chair, proclaiming this now as his castle. The ferocious dog was now a happy, playful guy. As they said their
goodbyes, they locked him in and Sloane watched as he returned to his chair in the living room, where she knew he had the perfect view over his new domain.

  Back at their own home, as the purple dusk met the evening sky, they quickly placed four hoses at various positions to drain their own basement. Two of the hoses, Sloane fed through to the front yard and the water ran down into the debris-strewn street. She removed several things clogging the storm drain so the water could meander down and escape into the depths under the road. The girls were becoming crankier as the evening wore on. They swatted at bloodthirsty mosquitoes and wiped at the sweaty slime now covering their skin.

  “Okay, inside,” she said and they locked up their home for the night. She had no idea what calamities might be happening to her neighbors on their journey and she worried about them as the sky blackened to night.

  Nicole remained on her mind, too. Her physical condition worried her. Only the days to come would prove whether or not she needed to act. She felt helpless where the girl was concerned.

  “Can we take showers?” Wren asked.

  In an apologetic tone Sloane said, “No, but we can use the water we soaked the guns in. It’s not totally sanitary, but we can towel wash. Just don’t get it in your eyes or mouth. We’ll work on that later, but for now, let’s conserve the water we have.”

  A slight breeze mercifully wafted through the windows. They ate a quiet dinner of tuna mixed with red wine vinegar on yet more crackers. They were using up whatever they managed to salvage from their kitchen before Sloane opted to break into the food stores she kept in her attic. Like Trent’s house, she had the nifty, finished attic. She’d chosen to put her food stores in hers when Brady had taken over the basement as his ‘man cave’. He wouldn’t allow her penchant for hoarding extra food and supplies down there. Instead, that was where he kept his expensive sound system and drank to his heart’s content. She had hated him for taking over her home, but now she couldn’t be more thankful. She had her supplies, unmolested by the floodwaters, and all of his worthless equipment was submerged underwater, along with slimy serpents of the sea. She would enjoy removing every sign of him in the coming weeks but first, she had to remove him.