Survivor Stories

by J P Barnaby

  “Hey, I brought breakfast. Are you okay?”

  Tears slid from the corners of Anthony’s tired, frightened eyes. He didn’t even bother to wipe them away. He simply took a step back to let Patrick in the door. Patrick took that as a welcome and stepped into the living area. He set the food and drinks on the only chair with nothing in it and then moved boxes off a small table and the other chair. Anthony stood by the door as if he hadn’t noticed. It took a minute for the boy to take those few steps into the room with him, both physically and, it seemed, mentally.

  Patrick laid out the contents of the bag, balancing the hash browns on top of napkins so they wouldn’t touch the dusty table. He pulled the drinks from the carrier and set them out. By the time he’d laid everything out, Anthony stood next to his chair.

  “Hey, I know things seem bad right now, but they’re going to get better.” Patrick reached out, paused, and then let his hand rub the outside of Anthony’s arm.

  Anthony turned his gaze to the window near his makeshift bed.

  “I found an open Wi-Fi signal from one of your neighbors.” Anthony’s gaze never left the window. Patrick wondered if it were easier for him to talk to it than to Patrick.

  “I’ll give you the store’s password. You can use it,” he told Anthony, his voice almost a whisper, unwilling to break the tenuous grip the boy seemed to have on himself.

  “I checked my e-mail and there wasn’t anything from Jay. There was nothing from Chase. Nothing from my parents. I checked their Facebook pages and only Chase posted anything about me leaving.” He shook his head, and the pain in his expression brought a lump to Patrick’s throat.

  “What did it say?”

  “It said, ‘I’m glad he’s gone. Hashtag-Downer.’ That’s what he always called me, ‘Downer.’ And nothing on my page, or anyone else’s page. I just checked again and there’s still nothing. They don’t even care that I’m gone.”

  Anger welled inside Patrick. “You said you left your phone so they can’t text or call. They didn’t send you any messages on Facebook or anything?” Even when he’d lived in Ohio for school and then after, he still kept up with the people in his life, especially his dad and brother. What kind of family cut off their kid like that? No wonder Anthony left.

  “I didn’t log in,” Anthony admitted. “I don’t know all the settings and didn’t want to take the chance that they could use it to find me. That’s how they found Aaron.”

  “Who’s Aaron?”

  “Aaron’s my older brother. He… he got kidnapped when he was younger, and I don’t know exactly how, but I guess they traced the GPS on his phone and found him. Not in time, though.”

  “I’m so sorry, Anthony.”

  “He’s not dead. He just wishes he was.”

  Just like Bren.

  He couldn’t stand the pain in Anthony’s eyes, so he kicked the chair out and asked the boy to sit down.

  “We have a lot to do today, Anthony. You need to eat.” Patrick paused for a long moment before adding, “Please.”

  Anthony sat down and reached for the sandwich, now almost cold in its greasy paper wrapping. Patrick opened his too because he couldn’t think of anything to do to erase the pain in the kid’s face. God, if this was what having kids felt like, he was glad he’d stayed single and childless.

  “What do we have to do today, Ferb?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” A smirk ghosted around the corners of Anthony’s mouth.

  Patrick let it go. “Well, we’re getting in a shipment of liquor, and it has to be checked and put away. I also want to show you some other things about the store.” He unwrapped his sandwich. “I forgot to tell you last night that there are security cameras in most areas of the store, and we have a motion-activated alarm. So, once you come up here, you need to stay up here, or you’ll set off the alarms and the police will come. I hate to make you a prisoner, but at least for now, can you do that for me?” Patrick took the first bite of his cold sandwich. The eggs congealed in his mouth, and he quickly sipped his lukewarm coffee.

  “Great, I traded a basement for an attic.” Anthony flicked the straw in his soda. “Well, at least it’s got a better view.”

  “I don’t even know you,” Patrick pointed out. “I can’t trust you with keys to my store yet. What do you want from me?”

  Anthony shrugged, a halfhearted, spastic thing as he took another drink of soda. He didn’t seem to have any other hostile comments.

  “Are we still good? You still want to stay?”

  The kid ignored Patrick’s question and said instead, “Kevin told me about the cameras last night when I went out for food. I won’t come down… well, unless I hear something.”

  Patrick searched Anthony’s face, but the boy just kept eating. Had he heard them fucking last night? Had he come down? He’d had a few beers before Danielle showed up and they decided to christen the beer with their own personal happy juice. Anthony’s expression didn’t change when he reached for his Coke, so Patrick decided to let it go. He wouldn’t be having sex in the store again anyway. He was already going to catch hell from Bren.

  Then what Anthony said really started to sink in.

  “No fucking way.” Patrick kept his voice firm, allowing no room for argument. “If you hear anything, you keep your ass upstairs. In fact, when you come up, take the cordless with you so you can call the police if anything happens. The doors lock from the inside with a manual lock, so you can get out if you need to.” He leaned forward and caught Anthony’s wide-eyed gaze. “There is nothing, and I mean nothing in this store worth your life. Do you understand me?”

  His heart pounded as he tried to get his meaning through to Anthony. There’d been enough carnage in that store. Something in him ached at the thought of Anthony hurt or even killed by an intruder. God, he’d left the cameras off last night, left the store without setting the alarm. Some big badass protector he was.

  “Okay, Jesus.” Anthony sat frozen, the straw halfway to his mouth.

  “I’m not kidding, Anthony. You call the fucking police.”

  “Okay.” Anthony rolled his eyes.

  It was less than Patrick wanted but probably all he’d get.

  Then, under Anthony’s breath, he heard, “God. Good thing you didn’t get the strokerritto.”

  Patrick blew out a sigh and ignored it.

  “I’m usually here every morning by eight a.m. After you’ve been here for a while, let’s say a thirty-day probation, I’ll give you the codes and a key.”

  “You don’t have to do that. I can stay up here until eight.”

  “I know, but I don’t want you to feel like a prisoner here.”

  “I’m less of a prisoner here than I was at home.”

  Patrick couldn’t decide which broke his heart more—the words or the matter-of-fact way Anthony said them.

  “Would you mind doing me a favor today?” he asked.

  “It’s not like you’re giving me a place to stay or anything. What kind of favor?”

  “Some guys are coming to fix the air-conditioning at my parents’ house. My brother… well… he doesn’t leave the house. If they need him to go outside and look at something, he can’t.”

  “You mean he’s agoraphobic?”

  Patrick shook his head. “Stubborn is more the word I’d use. Would you mind staying at the house for a bit and talking to the guys? If you have questions, you can use Bren’s phone to call and ask me.”

  “Sure. Is it okay if I bring a book?”

  “You probably should anyway. My brother isn’t much of a conversationalist.”

  They finished their breakfast in silence, and Patrick waited while Anthony threw on shoes before they headed together for the store downstairs. He didn’t try to break the boy’s mood but simply let him work in peace and watched out of the corner of his eye as Anthony folded in on himself. If he could get that kid’s mother in a room for five minutes, he’d give her some serious lessons on parenting. Something
else had happened with that Chase kid, and he was sure Anthony would tell him in time. But the other one, Jay, he just couldn’t figure out. Why get the kid to drive all the way up here from Chicago just to meet him in a bookstore parking lot? Worse, why blow him off because he missed the meeting by a day? If the kid really did want Anthony to stay with him, why not just give out his home address? The questions frustrated Patrick to the point that he didn’t want to think about them anymore. It wasn’t his business anyway.

  “Patrick?”

  He looked up to see Anthony watching him from near the front coolers.

  “Yeah, kid?”

  “How many hours did you want me to work each week?”

  Shit, he hadn’t even thought about it.

  “I don’t know. Let me grab the schedule and work something out for this week.”

  He stepped into the small office behind the counter and grabbed that week’s schedule from the pegboard next to the time clock. Realistically, he needed Anthony for about twenty hours a week, but he couldn’t get the boy’s haunted expression out of his head, so he worked in an extra day. The store did okay business, not enough to warrant the extra time, but he’d justify it to himself and Bren later.

  “I can only go up to twenty-nine hours. By law, if you work thirty hours or more, I have to give you health insurance, and neither of us can afford that. I filled you in on the schedule, working days with me, mostly.”

  He handed Anthony a piece of paper with his new schedule. The kid studied it for a long time and then shoved it in his pocket.

  “I can do that.”

  Seven

  “BREN, COME on, man, open the door.”

  The muffled sound of his brother’s voice bored into Bren’s head as he rumbled to consciousness against the musty couch cushions. Sunlight streamed in between the curtains he’d left wide open to the street for anyone who cared to see him passed out in the living room. The brightness scored his brain like a drill bit from hell, sharp and harsh, ripping his head open from the inside. He couldn’t tell if the pounding came from the door or the throbbing of his temples.

  “Dude, you know I have a key,” Patrick yelled, slamming something into the bottom of the door. The wood held, but Bren didn’t want to risk having to replace the damn door, so he rolled off the couch and onto the floor.

  “Fuck,” Bren murmured to no one as his elbow slammed into the coffee table. It took a minute for him to find his feet, and he hoisted himself up with significant help from the surrounding furniture. Shivering, he shuffled toward the door Patrick had just tried to take off the hinges despite his reminder of a key. It took a minute and a few more feet closer to the door for Bren to realize he heard more than one voice.

  He turned the dead bolt, pulled hard on the knob, and staggered back as the door flew open to admit his brother and some teenage boy. His brain kicked in and he recognized the kid from the video. Right. Goddamn it. Not only did he have to deal with Patrick and a hangover, but he had to deal with a stranger too. What the fuck was Patrick thinking? He took consolation from the fact his brother looked like shit too, his eyes bloodshot and his face rough and unshaven.

  Patrick stepped inside, the kid close behind, and Bren closed the door, trying to ignore the beer bottles littering every surface. Some of them were turned on their sides, staining the carpet with his indifference.

  “Jesus, man, it’s ten o’clock in the fucking morning. How are you still wasted?” Patrick stormed past him and into the kitchen. He didn’t need to help his brother find anything because Bren hadn’t moved so much as a chair since their father died. Patrick rooted around in the cabinet, and then Bren heard the pop of air from a garbage bag being flicked open.

  “Mom would be appalled; you know that, right?” The pity in Patrick’s voice warred with the look of disgust on his face. All the while, the kid just stood against the wall, soaking up Bren’s humiliation. At least he didn’t have puke on his shirt. That would have iced the cake nicely. He dropped onto the couch and put his head in his hands. Twenty-six years old and he still needed a fucking babysitter.

  “Yeah, well, Mom ain’t here. Neither of them are here. I’m here. The world got screwed in that trade.” Bren let Patrick continue cleaning while the boy said nothing and watched them both.

  He couldn’t go on like this.

  It was gonna fucking kill him.

  Except for the litter of booze and takeout containers, time could have stopped in the house and no one would have known. Nothing had changed. The same pictures still peppered the bookcase, showing a chronology of their lives. Dust choked the plastic flowers his mother had put in a vase on the table next to the aging couch, a testament to the fact their father’d never had the heart to change anything either.

  He glanced at the pictures and saw the stark contrast to the guy he used to be. He had the same dark brown hair as their father, the same brown eyes, though his were now rimmed with a permanent red glaze. Alcohol and stress had stripped thirty pounds from his already thin frame, leaving him gaunt and sickly. Another bottle clattered in the bag as he turned back to Patrick.

  “How do you even get this shit?” Patrick asked him, picking up another bottle. The kid had shifted into motion by then, grabbing two-day-old Chinese takeout containers from the floor-table area and shoving them in the bag Patrick still held.

  “The grocery service doesn’t just deliver food.”

  “Are you kidding me? You buy beer when you own a fucking liquor store?”

  “Are you going to bring it to me?”

  Patrick threw the last bottle into the bag on top of a pizza box that appeared to be older than the kid who handed it to him.

  “You haven’t tried going back to the store in almost a year. We could—”

  “The store that had all the cameras off last night?”

  “Oh shit, Bren, I—”

  “Why did you turn off the fucking cameras?”

  Patrick sighed again. His brother seemed to be doing a lot of that lately where Bren was concerned.

  “Because you didn’t need to watch us fucking.”

  Bren huffed, blowing off the concern as if his brother plowing his girlfriend on camera didn’t matter.

  “I couldn’t see you.”

  “I know. I turned off the one thing you needed so I could feel human for a few minutes,” Patrick shot back, and his expression appeared almost as pained as Bren’s felt.

  “I couldn’t see you,” he repeated. “You were in that fucking store, and I couldn’t see if you were safe. I have to know. I have to call… police… keep…. Can’t… I can’t….”

  “Bren, take a breath. It’s okay. Shhhhh….” Patrick stood next to the couch and rubbed his brother’s back for a minute. “I’m going to get your pills.”

  Before Bren could object, Patrick jogged into the bathroom. It had been their parents’ bathroom at one time, but now the house belonged to Bren. He didn’t want it, but he couldn’t force himself to do anything else with it. It took a minute, and Bren could hear him going through all the bottles of medications Bren refused to take, but eventually he found something. He had a bottle in one hand and a small cup of water when he returned. He shook out a pill one-handed—and then he slammed both cup and bottle onto the table with a force that would have shattered them if they’d been glass.

  “God damn it, Bren.” He dropped the pill back in the bottle. Frustration tightened his entire frame, and Bren looked away. Patrick fell back onto the couch and rubbed Bren’s back again.

  “You can’t take the Xanax while you’re drinking. They won’t mix. Let’s just sit here for a while, okay?”

  “I can’t keep you safe if I can’t see you,” Bren whispered. “Not there. Not in that place. You can’t turn off the cameras. Don’t you have a bed in your townhouse? Can’t you fuck there?”

  “Okay, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Speaking of not thinking, why did you let that kid stay? You don’t know anything about him. He’s a
total stranger, Patrick. Dad would have—”

  “Dad would have helped him, Bren.”

  Bren couldn’t argue with that. It was the truth.

  “He’s seventeen and was about to be living in his car. We were without a stocker. It made sense. No one is using the apartment above the store. I set up one of those inflatable mattresses we used to use when we went camping. It’s not like he has keys, and the alarms are on downstairs.”

  “You really think it’s safe to let him stay?” Bren asked.

  “Yeah, I do. He’s a scared kid.”

  “You do realize I’m standing right here, right?” the kid asked, annoyed.

  Bren lifted his head to glare at him. “Scared kids do stupid things.”

  They looked at each other for a long time before Patrick answered.

  “Maybe if someone had helped Carter Ford, he wouldn’t have come to the store that day with a gun.”

  Bren recoiled at the harsh sound of the name. They didn’t say it often. In fact, Bren never said it at all. He didn’t want to talk about the man who had destroyed their lives, didn’t want to think about him.

  “Just be careful, Patrick, please. You’re all I have left.”

  Patrick wrapped his arms around his brother, holding on for all he had.

  “Still here…,” the kid said, but Bren’s head jerked up toward Patrick.

  “You did set the alarm when you and Princess left last night, right?”

  “I… I think so.”

  Bren recognized the lie and gave him a disgusted look. He pushed away from Patrick and got up to cross to a computer that was set up on the old table they and their parents used to eat around growing up. He moved the mouse and the screen lit up, already at the login for the store’s security system.

  “Don’t you ever go anywhere else on this thing?” Patrick asked. “Jesus, Bren, download some porn or something.”

  The kid snorted at that. Bren had forgotten he was even there.

  “Shut up.” Bren’s cheeks heated as his hands flew over the keyboard, entering the password and bringing up the dashboard for their security system. Patrick never went into the software. If he needed something, like running through the footage to see if the guy with the winter coat in July had stolen anything, or if an employee was pilfering, he let Bren take care of it. It was the only thing he could do to help Patrick with the store.