by Eric Walters
“I think we need to stick together,” I said.
“I won’t be long. I’ll move fast and be back in less than an hour.”
“I think Emma’s right, we should stay together,” Ethan said. He was sounding worried and a little scared. I didn’t blame him at all.
“Why can’t we take the canoe with us?” I said. “Ethan and I can carry it so that you’re…you’re free.”
I didn’t say free to do what, but it was just assumed. She did have her gun. That was reassuring. She was reassuring.
Mom could take care of us, although I couldn’t help thinking about how much better it would have been if our dad had been with us, too. He’d never let anything happen to us…but what was happening to him? How was he doing? I’d been so focused on us through all this that I hadn’t given much thought to him since that first night.
Mom thought for a second. “Okay. Say nothing about where we’ve been and where we’re staying,” she said as we glided toward the shore, where people looked like they were waiting for us. They didn’t look anything except friendly, but I was still worried.
We got into the shallow water and I jumped out to pull the canoe in.
“Let me help,” a man offered as he waded in. Before I could say anything he grabbed the tip of the canoe and dragged it to the shore.
“Thanks for your help,” my mother said. She offered a big smile as more people started to gather around. “Can you tell us what’s been happening here?” she asked.
“Nothing good,” another man said.
“No power, no phones, no transportation,” a woman said. “Is it different where you came from?”
“The same. Although we came from just down the lake. We’ve been paddling for the last two hours.” I stared down at the ground, trying to keep a neutral expression while listening to my mom make this story up.
“And it’s the same there?” the first man asked.
“Exactly the same. We were visiting with my aunt when this happened. We had to leave our car there but we wanted to come back to our condo,” my mother said. She pointed to our building.
“Has there been any violence where you were?” the woman asked.
“What sort of violence?”
“There’s been a lot of looting, people smashing windows and breaking into stores,” she answered.
“But that’s just been to get food and water,” the first man said. “People have to eat and drink. You can’t blame them.”
“There are lots of other things you can blame them for,” the woman said. “People have been fighting, taking things off each other. Has that happened where you came from?”
“It’s touch and go, but we haven’t seen anything yet.”
“Then it might have been better to just stay there. People are leaving the city in droves. I’m getting ready to leave,” the woman said. “It’s a long walk to my house but waiting here isn’t good.”
“We should probably get going too,” my mother said. “We’ll check our place and then we’ll head back ourselves.”
“Is there room for anybody else?” the woman asked.
“Sorry. This canoe is really too small for even the three of us. We have to go.”
“You can leave the canoe here if you want,” another man offered. His friend nodded. “We’ll watch it.”
There was something about them that I didn’t like, and I think our mother saw it too.
“We’re going to take it with us,” she said.
“You can trust us,” he said.
“Thanks for the offer but we’re going to take it.”
“No, you need to leave us the canoe,” the second one said.
They came forward threateningly. One of them placed a hand on the canoe and tried to grab it. I wouldn’t let go.
“Leave us alone!” my brother yelled.
“It’s their canoe,” another man called out, defending us.
“Yeah, leave them alone!” the woman shouted out.
“Look, we need it!” the man yelled, still trying to wrestle it away.
“And so do we,” my mother said. She pulled the pistol and aimed at them. The two men looked shocked but backed away. Everybody backed off.
“You’re pulling a gun on us?” the first man asked.
“You haven’t given me any choice. Go,” my mother said.
They hesitated.
“Go, now!” she ordered, and they stumbled away, looking over their shoulders as they moved.
I felt frozen to the spot. I had never seen my mother pull her gun on someone—or look so fierce. I glanced over at my brother, who looked just as shocked as I felt.
“Come on, Ethan,” I said. “We got this.” My brother and I flipped the canoe up onto our shoulders. Water splashed out and onto my head as the weight settled in.
Our mother picked up the two paddles and led the way, still holding the pistol. Still wearing our life jackets we crossed the road and went up onto the sidewalk. We circled around the building toward the underground parking area. The door was still wide open. We started down the incline and gravity was now working in our favor, although the light wasn’t. It was getting darker with each step and—there was a beam of light. My mother was shining a flashlight to show us the way. What else would I expect?
“We’re going to put the canoe back in our storage locker. It should be safe there, at least for a little while.”
We circled down and past our car. “Can we take some of our stuff from the car?” Ethan asked.
“There’s some canned food that we’ll take for sure. We’ll take things from the car and from the condo but we’ll have to decide what’s most needed out on the island. We can’t carry everything so we’ll take what’s most important.”
—
With the canoe locked up we climbed up the stairwell. It was dark and empty and smelled of concrete dust, which didn’t seem any different from the last time we’d walked down. We finally reached the seventeenth floor, where some light filtered into the hallway. Where was that coming from? That question was answered as we passed by the open door of one of the units. The front door handle was shattered and the door splintered.
“It looks like it’s been kicked in,” my mother said.
We passed by a second and third condo that were the same.
“Both of you behind me,” my mother whispered.
She pulled her gun back out of its holster and led us down the corridor. We came up to our condo. I don’t know why I’d expected anything different. The lock was smashed and the door hung limply on the hinges. My mother pushed it open and light flooded into the corridor from the big picture windows. Things were scattered all over, furniture pushed over—
“The TV is gone!” Ethan yelled. “And my Xbox!”
“Those aren’t the things we care about,” my mother said.
“I care about them!” Ethan exclaimed.
“Emma, go and get sheets from the beds.”
“Why do we need sheets if we don’t have beds?”
“Sheets make a big bag to carry things,” she explained.
I pushed open the door to my room. It had been trashed. Every drawer had been opened and things strewn about and smashed. My computer was gone from the desk and my clothes were scattered everywhere. Somebody had gone through all of my things. The covers were sort of off the bed—not like it had been searched, but like it had been slept in. Somebody had slept in my bed. I felt disgusted and upset and afraid, but I didn’t have time to think about anything. We had to just grab what we could and get back to the canoe and back to the island. I didn’t want to be here if they came back.
—
I struggled under the weight of the bundle as I dragged it across the floor to the door of the condo. We’d cleared out all of the food from the kitchen cupboards. There were cans and bottles, boxes and containers. Then we’d added in matches, a lighter, kitchen knives, a big jug of bleach, three blankets, an extra pair of shoes each, a couple of pairs of socks, a change of
clothes each, another fishing rod, and an old bow and a dozen arrows that had been stuffed into the back of my closet, unseen by the people who looted our place. The fishing rod made sense. The bow was more about feeling like it wasn’t just my mother who had a weapon.
Just after I put the rod in, my mother told me to take the folding jackknife from the utility drawer and tuck it into my sock. It was weird, having your mom ask you to carry a weapon.
Each of these items on its own was light. Together they were a heavy burden to carry—physically and psychologically. We were taking away parts of our lives—the parts we needed to survive—and leaving behind everything that was personal. All my clothes, my shoes, the things I’d been given, presents, little treasures that had been so important to me. Was I supposed to take my dolls, my birthday figurines, the cards I’d saved? They had once meant everything, and now it was better to take a knife and a can of sardines.
What choice did we have? We could only carry so much. But I knew that whatever we didn’t take this time might not be here for us when we returned. We couldn’t very well lock the door or bar our apartment in any way—and anyway, the lock hadn’t stopped them the first time.
“We’d better get going,” our mother said.
“I’m ready,” I said. “As ready as I can be. This is just, well…I don’t know what to say…it’s just that I can’t…”
“Believe any of this,” she said, and I nodded. “Stepping through the door into our condo was a step into the fourth dimension I told you about.”
“It felt…it feels unreal.”
“I feel the same way. I’ve been in war zones before. I just never thought my home, my city, and most importantly my children would ever be in one of them.” She paused. “I just wish I hadn’t brought you to this city.”
“Isn’t it happening back home as well?” Ethan asked.
“Probably. But there we had friends. Even with your father stationed overseas we had people who could help us. Here we have nobody.”
“We have each other,” I said. “We’re here to take care of each other.”
She wrapped an arm around both of us and we hugged her back. We did have each other. I just didn’t know if I believed that would be nearly enough.
8
It was easy enough to pretend that we were simply on an extended camping trip, especially when we were paddling around, just the three of us in our canoe. For days now we’d been living out in the woods, sleeping in a tent, drinking filtered water from the lake and eating over a campfire, fishing, swimming—just the way we had planned to before everything happened.
These islands had never seemed very big when I’d stared out at them from our condo window. Now, paddling around them, they seemed like a lot of new territory to explore. As always, my mother was in the stern, my brother in the middle, and I was in the bow. Ethan had argued that he didn’t want to come along on this expedition, that he should just be left on the island. Part of me would have been happy to leave him behind—nine days on a small island together had been more than enough punishment for me—but I knew it wasn’t smart to leave him alone.
For days it had just been the three of us. Occasionally we’d hear a boat passing by, or see a sailboat out on the harbor, and a few times we’d heard or seen people pass by on Main Island, but we hadn’t had any contact with any of them. We’d stayed hidden behind the bushes and trees in our own little hideout.
Ethan spent a lot of time at the edge of the lagoon fishing, and we were all grateful for his success. At least one meal a day was from his fishing rod. We’d had pan-fried fish for breakfast, lunch, and dinner on different days. I spent my time trying to be productive as well. I used the jackknife I now carried everywhere to clean the fish he caught. I brought water from the lake to our campsite and made sure that it went through the filter and was ready to drink. We were taking water from the lake side of the island, where it was open and more free-flowing, instead of the lagoon side. It was also the opposite side from where we’d built our latrine. My mother had used the camping shovel to dig a little hole in the ground that we used to go to the washroom. This was something we always did when we camped.
I also gathered wood from around the island for our campfires. I knew that sooner or later I’d have to start paddling over to the big island to get more wood. We still had a good supply of deadwood available, but how long would that last? Fifteen days, twenty days…how long would any of this last?
We still had our propane stove, but the fish did taste better over a real fire. Besides, we might need that propane later on. So far the weather had been good, but if it rained it would be hard to cook over an open fire.
I was also spending a lot of time with the bow. When I was younger I’d used it for target shooting in our backyard. Now I’d fashioned a target on a big tree away from our campsite and was re-learning to shoot. It gave me satisfaction and made me feel somehow just a little safer. But safe from what?
We’d developed a ritual. Each day as the sun started to go down we went and sat or stood by the log that overlooked the city. We waited, hoping beyond hope that tonight it wouldn’t vanish, that instead the darkness would be pierced by the lights from thousands of office and condo windows. Each night it didn’t happen. And as the sun set and darkness came we’d see the stars come out. Brilliant in the darkness. There had to be millions of them. It felt peaceful and calm, until I started thinking about what those stars being visible meant.
It was hard not to think about it. Of course, here there were no distractions—no computers, or TV, or social life, or social media, or phone. For the first few days I’d kept pulling my phone out—it felt strange not to have access to the outside world. What were my friends doing? But now all I did was go over the same things in my mind, trying to make sense of what had happened, how it was possible, what was going to happen next, and, most troubling, how long this could go on. It was spring. We could live out here for the next four months if we needed to, but what if it went even longer than that?
I’d finally put my phone away completely. I’d stuffed it into the toe of one of my extra shoes, out of sight, useless but somehow still precious.
“It’s really beautiful out here,” my mother said, snapping me out of my thoughts.
“What?…Oh yeah, it’s beautiful.”
We were paddling in and out of all the little inlets and lagoons, and we’d circled more than a dozen small islands, some of them much smaller than the one we called home. As far as we could tell there was nobody living on any of them. Then again, anybody paddling by our island would have thought the same thing.
While my mother and I paddled, Ethan fished. I wasn’t complaining. He’d already pulled in a couple of small perch.
I’d put my bow and a few arrows into the canoe with us, which didn’t really make sense, but I liked having them close and didn’t want to leave them at the camp. In some strange way they and the jackknife had replaced my phone. I guess I could have hidden them away. We had hidden a lot of things. My mother had made a series of what she called “hidey-holes.” She had dug a dozen small depressions where we put things wrapped in canvas, and then she’d covered them back up so nobody would know they were there. She said it was a “Special Forces thing” to keep a campsite hidden. It was a lot of work to put everything away, but I understood. There was a fine line between being careful and being paranoid. I thought we were just being careful.
While the little islands still seemed deserted, we had seen people on the big island, some of them even riding strange-looking bicycles built for two people to sit side by side. Mom mentioned that they were probably from a bike rental business on the island. As we’d paddled we’d been waved at, yelled at, and two guys had tried to convince us to come in to “talk” to them. Instead we’d gone out even farther.
Now we were coming up to the part of the island where the airport was located. From our condo I used to watch as planes took off and landed, dreaming about flying home for a visit. The sing
le runway had looked so narrow from that distance, flanked by small buildings and anchored by the terminal, with its control tower, I assumed, on top.
The shore near the airport area was lined by large boulders and a high concrete break wall. With the waves crashing up against it, it would have been almost impossible to land there. Making it even harder, even if you could put ashore, there was a chain-link fence topped with a few strands of barbed wire.
“It looks like a jail,” Ethan said.
“Airports are always high-security,” my mother explained, “especially since they’ve become potential targets over the last few years. It’s probably completely encircled with a security fence.”
“That would be even better than being on an island,” Ethan said.
“Even better, it’s fenced in and on an island,” my mother pointed out. “If you had a few strategically placed guards then it would be completely secure.”
Almost as if they’d heard her speak, two people appeared behind the fence, both carrying rifles. My mother changed our course slightly and we paddled farther out to try and get more distance from them. I looked over my shoulder as they watched us.
“What do you think’s going on in there?” I asked.
“Probably just some people trying to make sure that they’re safe from the outside world.”
“Do airport guards usually have rifles?” I asked.
“At bigger airports they have their own little SWAT teams.”
“SWAT?” Ethan asked.
“It stands for Special Weapons and Tactics. Is that who you think those guys with the rifles are?” I asked.
“They certainly look like they’re guarding the perimeter.”
“I wish we had perimeter guards,” Ethan said.
He hadn’t said much today. In fact, he had been pretty quiet for the past few days. Usually I wanted him to shut up, but now I was grateful when he did talk. I knew that just because he wasn’t talking didn’t mean he wasn’t thinking or worrying.