Undone: A Dystopian Fiction Novel

by Chad Evercroft

  “This is insane,” Joe kept saying over and over again.

  “Did the mail guy come?” Tyrsa asked suddenly, turning to Joe.

  He looked at her for a moment as if he didn’t understand her question.

  “Um,” he finally said, kind of shaking his head, “I don’t know.”

  Tyrsa went out to the hallway. The rest of us continued watching the television, our former relief gradually escalating into tight knots of fear.

  Tyrsa returned, cursing under her breath.

  “He didn’t come,” she told us. “So yeah, still no electricity.”

  Oh, yeah, I thought.

  Weird how that had been something that could have slipped my mind. It just went to prove how stressful the situation at large had become. Joe shooed us out of his office, muttering something about having to make phone calls. He seemed to be fighting panic. We shuffled back to our apartment and all sat around the living room. Rick held his head in his hands. Lawrence frowned and kept picking imaginary fuzz off his shirt sleeve. The battery-operated clock we had hanging in the kitchen ticked at an excruciating volume.

  Tock. Tock. Tock.

  “Should we leave?” Beth said suddenly.

  We all looked at her, not sure of what we had just heard.

  “What do you mean?” Rick asked.

  “Leave. Get out of the city.”

  “How? We don’t have a car!” Lawrence reminded everyone.

  “We find one somehow.”

  “Steal one?” I asked, dumbfounded.

  Beth’s face tightened with anxiety and she ground her teeth together.

  “I don’t know!” she cried. “But we do something! We get out somehow! It can’t be safe to just hang around here and wait for people to break down the doors!”

  “She’s right,” Rick interjected sternly. “We find a way. We get a bunch of bikes or something. Travel at night.”

  “That’s crazy,” I said.

  “Crazier than whatever we’re doing now?” Rick asked pointedly.

  “Yes!” I replied.

  Beth and Rick started talking at once and I raised my voice to match theirs. No one could understand each other, but we just kept talking until Tyrsa broke in.

  “Hang on! Everyone, just chill!” she cried.

  She held her hands out, waiting for silence. We shut our mouths and waited. She started again, quietly, but firmly.

  “It’s too dangerous to leave. My dad told me about this. He said that if there’s looting and people shooting each other and craziness like this, it’s already too late to leave. We try to steal a car, we get shot. Even if we did manage to pull it off, we get carjacked right away. We run out of gas in the middle of nowhere. And those are the best scenarios. If we try walking or biking, we’re just asking for trouble. What you’re talking about is called bugging-out, and not even the right kind of bugging-out. You’re only supposed to go if you know exactly where you’re headed, how long it’s going to take to get there, and if you have supplies there. All our supplies are here. We have some security measures in place. Our safest bet is just hunker down here, avoid going to town, and wait it out. More police will come. The National Guard. They’ll bring tanks and tear gas and whatever else they need to stop this city from tearing itself apart. We’ll be okay here. Okay? Does this make sense?”

  We all nodded. Tyrsa sounded so rational, so in control. I even felt calm enough to call Mom to update her on what’s going on. She picked up the phone after just two rings.

  “I was wondering when you would call,” she said, her tone a little exasperated.

  “Have you been watching the news?”

  “Yes. I’ve been worried!”

  “Sorry.”

  I sat outside on the steps. It had gotten cooler, windier, and felt more like autumn. We had one tree in the yard, and its leaves had very gradually changed from green to red and yellow, from its tips, to where the leaves attached at the branches. It looked like the tree had slowly caught on fire.

  “You weren’t involved in any of this, were you?” Mom asked.

  “God, Mom, of course not.”

  “Well, I didn’t think so, but so many were students.”

  “Yeah. But you know me. I like to stay out of trouble.”

  “That’s true.”

  There was a pause in our conversation. It felt weird, like we both might have had something to say, but were avoiding it. I rubbed my nose.

  “So, we’re not going to try to go anywhere,” I said, finally. “It’s not really safe to travel, and we don’t have a car or anything.”

  “Okay, if you think that’s really the safest option.”

  “Tyrsa said it was, and she’s really the only one who knows what she’s talking about. Her dad is a prepper and taught her a ton.”

  “Oh.”

  Mom sounded surprised. I waited to see if she would say anything about the whole prepping thing, but she didn’t. I sort of wished she would. I don’t know what I expected. Something along the lines of, “You’ll listen to Tyrsa, but you won’t listen to me?” would have made sense, but that was too aggressive for Mom. If she really felt bad about it, she’d just mop around, maybe send a passive-aggressive email. I had never openly rejected her prepping tendencies, but I certainly didn’t encourage them. Besides, what she did wasn’t truly prepping. It was just reading about some new potential epidemic and buying a bunch of surgical masks.

  “If anything changes, I’ll let you know,” I said. “Don’t worry, okay?”

  “Can’t make promises,” Mom replied.

  I could hear her smile in her voice and it softened my heart.

  “I love you, Mom.”

  “I love you, too.”

  I sat outside with the phone in my lap for a little while. The air smelled rich, like warm earth and sweet grass. It was almost like things had gone back to normal, and the town so close by was not swarmed with police officers and jumpy civilians.

  The rest of the day went by slowly, but I didn’t mind. I worked on some homework I would probably not be required to turn in while Beth, Tyrsa, and Rick played cards. Lawrence, who was used to spending his days going on deliveries or watching TV shows on his computer, tried to read but quickly got bored with his book. He watched the card game until he was able to jump in, and then played until the sunlight started to fade. We lit a few candles around the apartment, adding more as the darkness crept in. When we could no longer put off our hunger, we made omelets and fried potatoes.

  When everyone got tired of playing cards, we started heading to bed, but Tyrsa remained curled up on the couch. She had her feet tucked up under her and leaned against the cushiony arm of the sofa, staring into nothingness. The others retreated to their rooms, but I sat on the opposite end, crossed my legs, and pretended to be occupied with my phone. It was very quiet. Occasionally, we could hear what sounded like fire crackers, and what we feared was gunfire. Sometimes, car headlights would shine through the narrow slants of the wooden planks across the windows, casting slices of light in the dark room. They seemed impossibly bright compared to the candlelight I had gotten used to as the only source of evening illumination.

  Tyrsa sighed, and then laughed a little.

  “Having these candles around like this reminds me of when I was little,” she began.

  “Oh?”

  “My dad had this thing where after a certain time, we’d turn off all the lights to save on electricity. We’d light candles and pretend we were camping. In the winter, we’d light a fire in the fireplace and roast marshmallows. I never knew it was because we were strapped for cash. My dad made it seem like just a fun thing we did every night. It was our routine.”

  She smiled at the candles, remembering. The flame reflected back in her eyes, giving them a glossy sheen.

  “What did your mom say when you told her what’s going on?” Tyrsa asked, breaking her nostalgia.

  “Oh, she sounded really worried. She tries to hide it, but I think she’s really scared.
I used to get really frustrated about her whole thing with climate change, but I’m starting to think it’s a way for her to distract herself from her other fears. In a sense, flooding and droughts and storms are less scary than mobs or gangs. They’re...bigger, but easier to understand, if that makes sense. When people turn bad, it’s different.”

  Tyrsa nodded, looking at me intently. She looked like she knew I had more to say, so I continued.

  “My mom has so much fear. It seems like it paralyzes her. She wants to get prepared, get emergency supplies and stuff like we do, but she can’t get organized. She can’t break it down into manageable parts.”

  “My mom was the same way,” Tyrsa said. “With fear. That’s why she left. She couldn’t handle my dad’s prepping because it meant she had to think about all the things that could go wrong. I don’t know why some people just can’t figure out how to balance it.”

  Tyrsa’s voice was laced with anger. She paused for a moment and I thought she had finished speaking, but she kept going.

  “I actually don’t really know why she left,” she said softly.

  I suddenly felt very close to Tyrsa. I had never heard her talk about her mom, at least not beyond the bald facts. I wanted to scoot over closer to her, but I stayed where I was, listening earnestly.

  “My dad never really tried to explain it. He just said she was scared about the prepping. For a long time, I didn’t know what he was talking about, because the prepping wasn’t really on my radar as anything unusual. We just had a room with cans and stuff that we weren’t supposed to use. It wasn’t like my dad was obsessed with buying guns and building barbwire fences. When I got older, met more people, I figured out that people had different sorts of lives. Maybe my mom wanted that kind of life instead of what we had. That just made me mad.”

  “Because your sort of life wasn’t good enough?” I asked.

  “Basically. I loved my dad and brother to death. I couldn’t imagine why she would want to leave us. I still can’t really imagine it.”

  I thought I heard tears in Tyrsa’s voice, but her eyes were still just reflecting the candlelight, glossy and clear. She shifted her weight so her body was facing me, one foot still tucked under her.

  “I’ve really tried, Morgan,” she whispered. “But I can’t do it.”

  I couldn’t keep my distance any longer. I moved towards her and she let me put my arms around her. She laid her head on my shoulder and I could feel her take deep, shuddering breaths. She must have known that I loved her. I had loved her from the moment I saw her. It was as if instead of a heart, she had a piece of live coal that radiated warmth through her whole body, which made her eyes smoky, and burned life through her fingertips. Whenever she touched me - a casual hug goodbye or a friendly high-five - her heat soaked into me and made me feel alive.

  I didn’t have many dreams in those days, I took each day as it came, but she was always there in my sights. She kept me getting up each morning, just so I could see her at breakfast. She was the reason I came home after class instead of wandering around campus or working on homework in some drafty coffee shop. She was my illumination, my spark, my endgame. I just wanted to hold her forever, but after a few moments, she gently broke from my arms and gave me an understanding smile.

  “We should get some sleep,” she said. “It’s been a rough few days, and I know I just get more stressed if I’m not rested.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, though I already missed feeling her head on my shoulder. “Same here.”

  Tyrsa smiled and got up. I listened to her run the water in the bathroom, brushing her teeth and washing her face by candlelight. As I waited for my turn, I thought about what Tyrsa had told me, and couldn’t help but think about my own father.

  Tyrsa and I were opposite in that way: she had no mother, and I had no father. However, unlike Tyrsa’s mother, my father hadn’t wanted to leave. He had done all he could to stay, fighting the cancer that multiplied like rabbits in his body. Even though I only knew him for the first four years of my life, I remember him being strong, like athletic star-strong, but none of that had mattered to the illness. For a while, Mom took pictures of him constantly, to preserve his memory for me, but after a certain point, the pictures stopped. I always just imagined Dad going out like a movie star, muscular and healthy-looking. When I got older and saw what cancer did to peoples’ bodies, I knew that image of him wasn’t true. I was glad Mom had stopped taking pictures though. I preferred my false memory to the truth.

  I decided against taking a shower that night. Standing up and washing felt like too much work, so I just brushed my teeth and splashed my face with a little warm water. Lawrence and Rick were already asleep, purring like two great cats. I got into the bottom bunk and stared at the wood frame above me, the mattress squeezing through the slats like puff pastry.

  Tyrsa, I thought, her name sparkling like water in my mind. Tyrsa.

  I woke the next morning to Lawrence shaking me, a toothbrush between his teeth and an angry expression on his face.

  “Hey, dude,” he said when he saw my eyes open. “They’ve shut off the water. We don’t have any water.”

  Chapter 5

  We checked Joe’s office, but found it empty. To our dismay, it looked like he had been robbed, but upon closer inspection, it was clear he had just freaked out. Nothing was missing; everything was just scattered on the floor and across his desk. There was a post-it note stuck to the wall under the TV. Beth read it aloud.

  “Getting out of town. Utilities might be down. Call this number.”

  Beth read the number and Rick dialed it into his phone. Tyrsa looked at me with a confused face and I shrugged. This was all very odd. When someone picked up, Rick hit the speakerphone button so we could all hear.

  “Hi, we’re in an apartment, the building belongs to Joe Luck. He gave us this number. What’s with our water, why is it off?”

  “Mr. Luck has not paid the bill,” a voice droned. “He is always late, and so we shut off the water until he pays this month and next.”

  “But he’s gone!” Rick exclaimed. “There’s a state of emergency in effect, things are crazy here. What are we supposed to do without water?”

  “I’m sorry, that’s not my problem.”

  “Not your problem?” Rick exploded. “You know there’s a kid in this building, right? And an elderly woman!”

  “Sir, I’m going to hang up.”

  “The hell you are! We…”

  We heard a click and then a long busy signal tone. Rick stared into the phone, shocked.

  “They can’t do that!” Lawrence cried. “What is this, North Korea or something?”

  “They can do it,” Tyrsa said quietly. “It happened in Detroit, remember? Human rights groups got involved. Some people didn’t have water for weeks.”

  “We gotta call Joe,” Lawrence exclaimed. “He’s the one responsible for this. Why isn’t he paying? What’s going on?”

  We searched the office for clues and found two phone numbers. One was for the office, and the other didn’t work. It just led us to a disconnected message.

  “This is super sketchy,” Lawrence said, crossing his arms.

  “I can’t believe Joe would do this to us,” Beth murmured. “Just…abandon us like this.”

  We checked in with the other tenants and told them what we had learned. Mrs. Gaither said she called her son and he was coming to pick her up that day to take her back home with him to Indianapolis.

  “Do you need anything till then?” Beth asked. “Water or anything?”

  The old woman insisted she was fine, but Beth still left a plastic bag at her door with some cans of juice and a water bottle. Jenny opened her door only after we knocked several times, and she looked upset. Her eyes were pink from crying and we could hear Darcy whining incoherently from inside the apartment.

  “The water got turned off,” Rick said. “Something to do with Joe. We called, and the lady said he didn’t pay. He’s gone. Just took off.”
/>
  Jenny’s hand flew to her mouth in shock.

  “Do you guys need any water or anything?” Rick asked.

  Jenny shook her head, but then froze. Tears filled her eyes, and she nodded.

  “It’s okay,” Rick assured her. “We have plenty.”

  Lawrence raided Joe’s mini fridge he kept in the office.

  “It’s not like that asshole can get mad at us for it,” he said bitterly.

  He found several fun-size water bottles, some cut-up vegetables, and a half-finished six-pack. We gave what we found to Jenny, and tried to gather clues as to where those two missing students had gone.

  “Should we break in?” Lawrence asked tentatively.

  “That doesn’t sound like a good idea,” I replied.

  I put my ear against the door to listen for any movement. Silence.

  “So, no notes or anything in the office? About them taking off?”

  “Nope. And Joe didn’t know where they were before, remember?”

  We all stood looking at the door, trying to decide what to do.

  “I say we break in,” Rick announced. “They might have stored water in there. We’re going to need that for everyone, it’s an emergency. If they come back, they’ll just have to understand that.”

  That made sense. Since Rick was the strongest and it had been his idea, he was responsible for kicking the door in. We stood back while he assessed what he was up against.

  Luckily, the door was old, as was the rest of the house, so one strong kick to the frame was all Rick needed to break the latch. No one screamed or shouted from inside the apartment, so we knew for sure it was indeed unoccupied. We moved inside slowly, like cautious raccoons investigating an unfamiliar dumpster. The place looked very much like ours, except smaller. There was no couch, only two lumpy bean bag chairs, and an old TV set up on cinderblocks. Some empty chip bags and bottles littered the floor.

  I went to the kitchen and opened all the cupboards, but there was nothing there. It was like someone else had already come through and taken anything that might have been useful. Out of curiosity, I tried the faucet. Nothing. Their electricity was off, too. When I opened the fridge, there was no cool gust and only three likely very moldy yogurt cups.