Unbound

by A. R. Shaw

  11

  Planning

  * * *

  Once the doorways were all boarded up and the draining hoses rechecked, they went inside each house and retrieved all the automobile batteries. They also emptied the refrigerators, freezers, and pantries and then separated items into three categories—for humans, for the dogs, and too far gone for even the dogs.

  Most of the refrigerated produce, like moisture-rich radishes and lettuce, was long spoiled. Dogs would eat even fuzzy, bendable carrots if they chopped them up and used them in homemade dog food. Sloane remembered Brian Miller explaining how dogs only really needed three basic ingredients. Their food consisted of a third each of protein, grain, and vegetable. His mother had always cooked his boyhood canines’ food once a week, opting for chopped chicken, rice, and whatever vegetable young Brian refused to eat at the evening meal. They kept it in a container in the refrigerator and doled it out twice a day to the dog.

  Never before was Sloane more thankful for the yammering of Brian Miller. This story came back to her as an epiphany. She could use all the leftovers and categorize them into portions, dishing them out morning and night.

  In each kitchen, after separating what would go to the dogs, they made sure to combine these thirds into a large bowl before mixing them up thoroughly. The vegetarian household of the Carsons posed little problem as they still found leftover tofu to use for the protein and even what looked to be a thawing tuna casserole in the deep freezer. Ace didn’t seem to care and these things easily mixed together. That evening as they put the dogs away in each home, ensuring them of their good fortune, they fed them the lavish treat and gave them each a blanket to sleep upon.

  Ace went back to the Carsons’; Oakley, the lab, to Larry’s house; Baxter went to the Millers’; and they kept little Sally at their own home. Sloane made sure to alternate the opened windows and added solar lanterns in a different room of each house. They also checked the bags on Brian Miller’s blueberry bushes as the sun began to fade away. There was a third of a cup of water in each bag. Though it wasn’t much, it was a successful experiment that she would expand on. Although the hot days of summer were scorching, she recognized she could count on finding ways to survive by utilizing a few tricks.

  That evening, as they ate the last of their own salvaged leftovers, she and the girls felt the sore muscles they didn’t know they had before. Tomorrow, she would venture upstairs into her attic food stores.

  “Now what, Mom?” Mae asked. “We’re armed. We have the canine brigade and we’ve boarded up the other houses. What’s our next priority?”

  Her girls ate at the makeshift table while she watched the street below. She chewed a few more times than necessary, stalling. “Security is always our number one concern. We’ll have different problems each day, like we did this morning. We can’t become complacent. What works today may not work for tomorrow, so we have to adapt and plan for contingencies. As for the houses, we still need to finish draining the basements. They’ve gone down six more inches today, and that’s great, but we’re already having problems with mold growing on the walls. We’ll have to use bleach to take care of that because it’s really unhealthy for us.”

  She wasn’t watching the girls as she spoke, but when they giggled, she turned and saw that they were watching Sally. Sally stood on her back feet, front paws together, while she waved them up and down in unison. She’d only seen this poodle behavior in videos before.

  “What is she doing?” Wren asked.

  “She’s begging,” Sloane answered. “Poodle breeds do that. They endear themselves for treats. It’s a survival technique.”

  “Have some dignity, Sally,” Mae playfully chastised.

  “You two get some sleep. We have to trade watches again tonight.”

  As the girls turned in, Sloane stifled a long yawn. The exhaustion was hard to escape, but she had to keep going. Their lives depended on it.

  Out there, through the darkened window, each house remained silent. At first, she’d worried the dogs might bark at night and attract attention instead of repelling it. Having the dogs on patrol with her during the day helped run off their energy and exhaustion enabled them to sleep at night. She left the window and patrolled the others on each side of the house. With the lanterns off inside, she had near-perfect night vision and was able to take in every moonlit reflection. Watching, waiting, and hoping the next few days were as easily dealt with she realistically feared that survival instincts would soon send out the worst of mankind. She would guard her place on Horseshoe Lane. She would stand her ground. Even if I have to kill, she told herself…believing herself capable would still take some convincing.

  12

  Doug

  * * *

  “Daddy, I’m hungry.” Nicole whispered the forbidden words.

  Doug watched down the street through the window at the side of the house. He hadn’t seen Trent, but he knew he was there—watching and waiting to come and take what he had saved up over the years. With the kitchen’s butcher knife lying over his lap, he remained vigilant, swaying back and forth in his chair. Nicole had ghosted into the room again. He knew she was there, behind him in the dark. He hated that sneakiness about her.

  “You know the rules, Nicole. You had your meal earlier. That’s all you get today. You can have some more tomorrow. We have to save it. I told you that. We don’t know how long this will last. I saved you last time this happened, after your mother and the rest died, and I’ll save you again. You’ll be okay, trust me.”

  “That was yesterday, Daddy. Don’t you remember? You fed me yesterday. I haven’t had anything today. Not even water. I’m so hungry. I think you forget sometimes, but it’s not your fault…Dad? My stomach hurts and we have lots of food stored everywhere. Can’t I have maybe a little? I won’t eat much, just a small can, I promise.”

  “I told you, no!” he yelled shaking in anger, pounding his fist into the chair that he had faced directly in front of his lookout window. She dropped to her knees in a sob. He hated it when she cried and begged. He was keeping her alive. She should be thankful. He had to keep her alive and, even if she lost weight, she wouldn’t starve to death and neither would he. “Don’t be greedy, Nicole. Go to bed now.” She left the way she came, silently drifting through the house like a ghost.

  Trent would come and take his food stores, but he was waiting for him this time. He hadn’t slept more than a wink since this all started. Except for the one time Nicole slipped away. He’d seen her walking home with that damn cat. As if they could spare anything for an animal.

  “Daddy, can I keep him?” she had asked.

  Why didn’t she understand what he was doing was for her own survival? He needed to protect his daughter, especially from Trent Carson.

  He hadn’t slept for three days and even then, he dared not shut his eyes for an hour or more at a time. He only watched and waited, keenly aware of the danger Trent posed.

  “Hurry up, you bastard. Come and get it. I’m waiting for you this time,” Doug mumbled.

  “What, Daddy?” Nicole asked a moment later from the hallway.

  “Nothing, Nicole. Go to bed,” he repeated. He hated her staring at him from behind his back. She was just like her mother, Carey. A daily reminder of his failures. Carey blamed him from beyond the grave, he knew it. She berated him from beyond as she did in life. He heard her mostly from the basement, near the bulkhead doorway where he’d stored her body—and those of their other children—four years ago.

  Carey didn’t like it down there. It was too cold in the winter and too damp in the summer months. Nothing would please her. She always complained, even in death. If only she’d stay down there to haunt him, he could live with that. But lately, she’d come up from the basement and spoke to him from the darkened living room. She’d stand behind him, whispering in his ear as his head nodded off. She told him Trent would come in if he slept. He would sneak in and rob them of all he’d accumulated. He will take it all for himself, she
warned him. He would again feel the pangs of hunger, the dread of failing; he’d watch Nicole die before his eyes, and it would be all his fault, like before, she told him. He was an utter failure.

  He had let them die. She’d begged him to do something. She begged him that night when he broke into Larry’s house and tried to steal antivirals. That was the night Trent nearly blew his head off with the shotgun, and she watched it all from their bedroom window. It was humiliating for him.

  She died the next day—but she didn’t stay dead. No, she’d haunted him since then. He couldn’t sell the house. He wouldn’t leave her here by herself. Their other children sometimes cried at night. He could hear them even now in the distance. He couldn’t abandon them in death as easily as he’d failed them in their lives.

  13

  Knock at the Door

  * * *

  The next morning, Sloane again awoke to Mae breathing out the word, “Mooooommm.”

  “Please… stop waking me that way,” Sloane said. Then, startled when she heard Sally yipping at the door, exclaimed, “What? What is it?”

  “Nicole is at the front door.”

  “Why didn’t you wake me earlier?”

  “We’ve been trying to. You don’t wake up easily, Mom…seriously,” Mae said.

  “We haven’t left the room, Mom. She’s been knocking for a few minutes,” Wren said.

  “Should we go down and answer it?” Mae asked.

  “She doesn’t look good. We watched her walk down here. She stumbled most of the way and she held her stomach. I think something’s wrong with her.”

  “Oh my God, he’d better not have hurt her,” Sloane said then flew from the bed, holstered her weapon, and headed for the door. “Is Doug anywhere out there?”

  “We haven’t seen him,” Wren said.

  She tried to think. What can I do for her? It was a terrible dilemma and one she resented being caught in. Her father should take care of her, and yet, he was too far gone to see he was hurting his child, the last remnant he had left of his family.

  It dawned on her that they were alike, she and Doug, but in very different ways completely. They’d both lost something precious during the pandemic and yet they reacted very differently to ensure the tragedy never happened again. She’d made mistakes along the way, but she recognized them for what they were.

  He wallowed in his loss, allowed himself to be consumed by his hatred for Trent, and compensated for his own previous failings with material items.

  Where she planned for catastrophes by filling her attic with survival food and supplies, he hoarded anything and everything, filling his home with objects to insulate the void his dead family left behind. She could only imagine what might be going on in Doug’s demented mind but in any event, it wasn’t good.

  “I’ll go down and answer the door. You two stay up here for now and keep watch. If you see her father, yell down. It might be a trick.”

  Both girls never considered this of Doug and they were frightened.

  “Be careful, Mom,” Mae said as she closed the door behind her.

  “Always, dove,” she said and left them to watch and to listen.

  She approached the door, and instead of the girl standing where she could not see her, Nicole sat leaning against the wall, just beyond the opaque-veiled side window of the door. The girl’s left arm lifted weakly and rapped the entrance once more.

  Oh my God! What has he done to her?

  She slid back the curtain and expected to see blood. Nicole hadn’t noticed her peering down at her. She had her eyes closed, and Sloane thought she must be barely conscious, as she’d gone from sitting to lying on the concrete stoop.

  Sloane peeked around the doorframe, half-expecting to see Doug trying to ambush her. The day was so new, only a sliver of dawn greeted them yet. She peered down again at the girl who was now resting, having given up on trying to get the attention she sought.

  Sloane opened the door a crack, but Nicole didn’t stir when the hinge creaked. Her skinny legs, in the same outfit as the days before, stuck out like twigs. Her knees appeared swollen, her arms too long for her frame.

  “Nicole?” she spoke to her as she knelt down. “Nicole?”

  She had not yet responded, and Sloane reached a hand out to touch her arm. Her large blue eyes, underlined with dark blue circles and splotches of red, fluttered open, sunken and too big for her face. She peered up at Sloane as if she didn’t recognize where she was.

  “Sloane. Hi,” Nicole labored to say with chapped lips and without moving her body. Her dull eyes again, too difficult to keep open, shut on their own.

  She’s dehydrated.

  “Let’s get you inside, Nicole.” She found herself ignoring the advice in her own head and spoke without thinking, but she couldn’t leave her like this. She holstered her gun to lift the girl and briefly thought, If it is a trick of Doug’s doing, now would be the time he’d attack. She watched for it as she lifted the girl. She was shockingly light for a twelve-year-old child. When nothing happened, Sloane kicked the door shut and locked the deadbolt while Nicole’s head began to slip from her shoulder, dangling down awkwardly.

  She struggled to get the girl to the couch.

  “Mae. Get some water, quick.”

  She laid Nicole down on her once-soft moleskin sofa, now rough and scratchy from the seawater wash.

  “Nicole,” she called while patting the girl’s sunken cheek. She’d lost consciousness altogether.

  How could he do this to her? She screamed inside herself.

  Mae came down the stairs in a hurry, with Sally right beside her. Wren appeared at the top of the stairs and asked, “Is she okay?”

  “Why aren’t you watching?” Sloane yelled at Wren and then chastised herself. “I’m sorry. Please keep looking out. Tell me if you see him.”

  “Sorry Mom,” Wren said, distraught, and disappeared quickly into the bedroom once again.

  Sloane knew her daughter was only worried for young Nicole, but now wasn’t the time. Doug might come out of his demented lair and attack them at any moment. She needed to be forewarned. She’d kill him if he tried to break in. She’d kill him if he tried to take Nicole from them. She’d made the promise. She intended to keep it.

  14

  Nicole

  * * *

  Nicole had waited until the early morning hours to leave. She hadn’t slept at all. Her stomach ached and her bedroom spun whenever she tried to walk. Even as she snuck down the blue-lit hallway, it seemed to tilt and she walked in the corner crevice as the ceiling appeared to suddenly swoop to the side.

  Later, she was woken on the dirty flooring by the snores of her father in the living room chair. He hadn’t left his spot there for days. He reeked—she suspected he’d wet himself or worse. He talked to himself more and more over the past year, but the last several days were the worst she’d seen him. Sometimes he was fine for days at a time; then she’d come home from school and find him crying to himself in the basement. She left him alone; if she didn’t, he’d hit her sometimes. She didn’t think he remembered the episodes but she did.

  The hoarding started when she was a small girl. She hadn’t thought it strange at the time, but it became worse as the years went on. Some of the kids made fun of her for it and she didn’t know what to say to them. No one came over to play with her anymore. She’d heard the whispers of parents refusing to let their children reciprocate a play date. She could come over to their house anytime, but no one would come to her home to play. She couldn’t blame them.

  She remembered what starving was like during the pandemic, but this was worse. He wouldn’t even let her have the stored water and when he’d caught her with her head under the sink faucet, trying out of desperation to drink only a mouthful, he’d slapped her. The shock of it stung her. She loved him, he was her dad, yet he lived in a different world than her in their own home. He didn’t remember much from one day to the next, and she knew if she were to survive, she’d have to leave
him here alone. Leave him to the world he created in his own mind. Once she was well enough, she’d come back for him and maybe she’d be able to reach him. For now, though, she needed to get help for herself. She had to or they’d both die.

  So she lifted herself from her bedroom floor and went through the open sliding glass door he hadn’t bothered to fix. She stumbled through the dawn and wound her way around strewn debris, her vision only a pinpoint within her sticky eyes. She stumbled and fell when the world threatened to defy her as before. The air smelled better outside though, and the chilly morning wind put goose bumps on her bare arms.

  Finally, she made it to Sloane’s driveway, though she barely remembered the trip. Sloane had said the Carsons were home, but she still didn’t see anyone so she had continued on to Sloane’s and knocked on the wooden door. Maybe no one is home. It’s so quiet.

  Then, as before, the horizon twisted. Little white sparks of light flashed in her eyes and then darkness began to close in on her. She slid down the wall, waiting. Maybe they’ll come.

  15

  A Visitor

  * * *

  They’d put her in Mae’s room down at the end of the long hallway and closed the door for now. She mumbled things here and there but had yet to regain full consciousness.