“See any police?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “Wait. Yes. On Day Creek. I think I saw a few up by the 210 freeway.”
This interested me. “We’re they blocking the on-ramp?”
“Not sure. I could barely tell. We were kind of far away when we turned to come here.”
“Why would they block the on-ramp?” Aaron asked.
“Freeway’s jammed,” I said.
No one said anything as we were in our own thoughts for a few seconds.
Jenna broke the silence. “Oh. I almost forgot.” She reached into a trash bag, that was mainly filled with clothes and feminine care products. After foraging for a moment, she brought out a pair of Batman Walkie-Talkies. Brand new, still in the box.
“I bought these for my nephews, for Christmas. But, since I don’t know when I will see them again. They live in Oregon.” She hesitated. “So, I thought we could use them, since the phones are down, while we are in separate houses. I just thought we weren’t supposed to leave for a few days. We couldn’t talk. So...” She handed them to me. They were black and yellow, with the Batman logo on the back.
“Perfect,” I said.
CHAPTER NINE
11/12/2024 - 11/14/2024
I awoke the next morning to the sounds of children laughing, talking and arguing while trying to remain, unsuccessfully, quiet. Sounds from the kitchen. Pots being removed from cabinets. The refrigerator opening. A coffee maker dripping. A movie was being played at an audible level consistent with the ineffective whispering of the children. On the couch, I laid flat on my back, one arm covering my eyes, the other across my chest, doing my best to ignore these noises. I felt somewhat hungover and dry-mouthed. Where did we smoke at? It must’ve been in Zero’s room, my office. I, after a lengthy internal debate, gave up any pretenses of sleep and sat up.
Alicia and Kaitlyn were making breakfast. They appeared to be getting along fantastic. Kaitlyn was wearing a long shirt and shorts, that made her short legs look even shorter, yet at the same time positively adorable. Kaitlyn saw my appreciative gaze and asked if I wanted some coffee. I nodded a positive. Alicia was at the stove and gave me a sarcastic smile, her red hair reflecting the overhead kitchen light, as she continued cooking bacon and eggs.
“Have fun last night?” Alicia asked while Kaitlyn brought me a cup of coffee. I just nodded, and Alicia made a noise that sounded like “haff.” A half-laugh, half-sigh.
I sat at my counter height dining table, on one of the stools. Most of the lights were on, even though it was mid-morning at the earliest. With the cardboard blocking all the windows, there was precious outside light entering the home, which I immediately thought was a positive. Inside, it could’ve been midnight for all we knew, like in a hotel room with thick blackout curtains.
Sitting down and sipping my coffee, I finally noticed the cartoon Jane and Natalie were watching; Watership Down. Now that I was awake, the volume was turned up to a reasonable morning level. They must’ve pulled the Blu-Ray out of my collection, as I doubted it was in the box of cartoons Zero found next door. They probably thought it was just a regular Disneyesque cartoon. My first instinct was to say something about the film to Alicia, as I wasn’t sure it was appropriate for a five and six-year-old. But, they seemed to be engrossed in its story and were laughing hysterically at the bird, with the strange Eastern European accident. So, I let it go.
“What’s he doing?” Natalie said, in between laughter.
“Huh?” I asked. But, the girls ignored me. I didn’t realize it was a rhetorical question and I noticed that both kids eyed me with suspicion. When they turned ever so slightly at my “Huh?” their eyes spied me quickly, and then looked to each other and, finally, back to the cartoon. It seemed they weren’t sure what to make of me. I had said not one word to them besides “here” while handing them a blank paper and crayons yesterday, when they arrived. It was Alicia who volunteered them for cardboard duty.
With coffee in hand, I sat next to them on the floor. They didn’t move when I sat down, with my back resting on the red couch, but I did sense them flinch a tad. Jane sat cross-legged three feet in front of the TV, a doll completely naked with golden hair, held in the crook of her right arm. I hoped it wasn’t one of those artificial life dolls that you had to feed and then it would poop the “food” all over the place. Next to Jane, furthest from me, was Natalie. She laid on her stomach, elbows out in front, chin in her hands.
“You ever seen this before?” I asked.
“No,” Natalie said, not immediately. But, with her hands underneath her chin, it came out as a slow, “Noooo.”
“It’s one my favorite cartoons,” I replied.
Jane turned to me and asked, “You like cartoons?”
“Of course,” I said.
“Me too,” Jane replied. That seemed to seal my entry into the kid’s club.
The three of us sat and watched Watership Down. As we watched, I couldn’t help but notice the parallels between the plight of the rabbits on screen and that of our own. We had created our own warren of outcasts. Unfortunately, we did not have a Fiver amongst the group who had a premonition of the ‘attack’ and advised us to leave. I was looking for connections when there were none. The rabbits in Watership Down were on a fantasy adventure. We were stuck in a stuffy house, watching cartoons.
“Breakfast. Come on over,” Alicia said. The kids sat there ignoring her, entranced by the images on my OLED TV. “Natalie! Jane! Breakfast!” This time with a stern, motherly tone. Jane and Natalie both jumped up.
“Oh,” Jane said. “Can you pause it?” To me.
“Sure.” I found the remote and hit pause, and we all ate an excellent breakfast.
Soon Drew and Zero were seated at the dining table eating their breakfast as well. Everyone appeared upbeat, considering the circumstances. It felt like a vacation or summer camp, rather than a voluntary prison to keep us safe from radiation exposure.
Zero, Drew and I, ended up on the couch watching the end of Watership Down with the kids, as it came to the climax.
“Eww,” Jane said as the rabbits were fighting each other and blood flew everywhere.
“Holy shit,” Zero exclaimed and turned to look at Alicia to verify if she heard his swear. She hadn’t. “What kind of cartoon is this?”
Drew said nothing, as he still was in the thralls of a hangover.
“It was made in the seventies. I used to watch it with my mom. It was one of her favorite books,” I said.
“You watched this with your mom?” Zero asked.
“Yeah,”
“How old were you?”
“Probably the same age as Natalie.”
“She wouldn’t let you have a phone, but let you watch this?”
I said no more, as we were shushed by the two girls.
The rest of the day consisted of more cartoons. A board game, The Game of Life, which Alicia won. Some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch. Another movie, The Goonies, which the kids had never seen. Then chicken noodle soup with crackers for dinner.
At 6 p.m. the Batman walkie-talkie spoke, and everyone jumped as we forgot it was there.
“Hello?” Jenna’s voice said. Then a click and static. Then quiet.
I picked up the receiver which was on top of the entertainment stand, next to the TV.
“Hello,” I said.
“Blake?”
“Yep. How’s it going over there?”
“Pretty good... Bored.”
“Yeah. We’ve just been watching movies.”
“Same here.”
“When you are done speaking, say ‘over.’ That way I know when it’s my turn. Over.”
“Sure. No problem... Oh. Over.”
There was a long pause, and when I turned around, thinking of what to say, I noticed everyone was staring at me.
“You wanna talk to anyone else? Over,” I asked.
“Sure... over,” Jenna said. I looked over at the group and held out the w
alkie as if to say “anyone?”. Eventually, after an agonizingly long pause, Alicia got up and grabbed the walkie and went into the kitchen to converse with Jenna.
I left the room, and as I did, I heard Zero mutter to Drew, “That was awkward.” In Zero’s room (my office) I smoked one of my remaining cigarettes.
The next day was more of the same, except for one noticeable exception. The house had become, almost unbearably warm. It was a problem, I had considered, but was hoping the weather would cooperate. Unfortunately, in Southern California, you could get days in November where the temperatures approached summer levels of heat. The thermostat in my living room read eighty-three degrees, at 11 a.m. The first instinct was to turn on the air conditioner, which Zero suggested, but that would defeat the purpose of sealing the house in the first place. With no movement of air inside the home and seven people in a one thousand square foot area, it was beginning to smell like a locker room.
If the first day of our confinement felt like a vacation or holiday, the second felt like a day at the DMV. The kids were irritable, the newness of the ‘adventure’ was beginning to wear off, and they emphatically rejected any suggestions to alleviate their boredom. They just wanted to go home. At one point, both were protesting in my master bedroom and wouldn’t leave. They, eventually, fell asleep on their sleeping bags. Thankfully, that bedroom was on the north side of the home and was the coolest room in the house. An hour after they had fallen asleep Drew and Alicia joined them for a nap.
At 3 p.m., eighty-four degrees, Kaitlyn, Zero and I were back on the red couch, watching one of the newer movies from my obsolete, Blu-Ray collection, Star Wars: Episode 9 The Last Jedi, released seven years ago, which I thought was okay, but Zero loved. We had a verbose conversation about the merits of the “newer” Star Wars films, but I won’t bore you with the minutiae. I guess, now, it really doesn’t matter.
Zero was wearing shorts, which completed his outfit and I suggested he should probably put on a shirt, just in case small doses of excess radiation were entering the home. He shrugged and said, “Fuck it. I would rather die of radiation than be miserable.” At that moment, I almost agreed with him.
At 6 p.m., we ate dinner. Eighty-five degrees. More peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. No one wanted soup. We used up all the eggs and bacon that morning. Alicia asked if that was okay and I said “sure” because I wasn’t confident the power would stay on much longer, and we might as well eat what was in the fridge while we could.
Shortly after dinner, Jenna called again and, this time, Alicia answered. Over at the second house, things were just as bad. They had burned through the movies they borrowed from me and were just as hot and bored as we were.
Our generation never really had to experience boredom. Everything was right at our fingertips; movies, books, television, games. We could experience any distraction we wished at any time we desired. Everything was designed to provide us, through sophisticated computer algorithms, an ever-growing match of things we could enjoy. Advertisements based on watch history, browsing history, and purchase history. Calculated news, that lined up to an individual’s political and social beliefs. We never had to experience anything that may clash with what we already believed or desired to see. Modern life had become a box that people were enclosed in, whether by choice or not. It took a conscious effort to fight and break out of this self-imposed container, to free yourself from your own long settled beliefs. With the advent of virtual reality and artificial intelligence, human beings really had no reason to do anything, except remain upset about everything, from the comfort of our own home. People walked around wearing glasses or goggles that allowed them to see reality, not as it is, but as they wanted to see it. Truth mattered less than how an individual felt. News from around the world brought to our doorstep, without any way to process the information. If it upset you, you would just put on your VR glasses and disappear into another world.
One of the best things that came out of my time in the military was the simple unplugging from this Huxleyan world for a few years.
Day three started a little better. Most barely slept, as it only cooled down to seventy-nine degrees in the home. But, everyone seemed to put on a brave face. I think we all knew it was not likely to get any easier; so let’s make the best of it. Natalie and Jane were in a good mood. As if the previous day was a nightmare that never happened. They watched a DVD, Spongebob Squarepants, from Enrique’s daughter’s collection, all morning.
Zero was right there with them and was treated as one of them. He had acquired full membership in the kid’s club, with little effort and laughed without cynicism at the same moments as the children.
Kaitlyn, Alicia and I, made an inventory of the fridge. There wasn’t much left. There wasn’t much food, to begin with. I did have some tortillas and cheese, so we had quesadillas for breakfast. Beyond that, nothing left, except for a few bottles of water and a variety of condiments. We had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch, again.
Which was alright because at 12:48 p.m. the power went out.
Everything went dark.
The young girls screamed.
They were right in the middle of season three, episode ten of Spongebob.
The amount of light in the home was about what you would get from a quarter moon at midnight. The main source of light came from the peephole in the front door. Eventually, our eyes adjusted and we could see gray shapes, with minimal contrast. I grabbed a flashlight and some old scented candles from the top cupboard in the kitchen and lit them and placed one on the dining table and the other on the entertainment stand. Eventually, we had enough light to see everyone without much effort, and the scent helped with the locker room odor.
Alicia was trying to console Jane and Natalie, who looked like they were about to have a nervous breakdown. They had made it this far, but this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. They would not be consoled.
“Are we going to die?” Natalie asked, between sobs, arms wrapped around her mother.
“No. Of course not,” Alicia said, holding her daughter close to her chest. Drew had Jane in his arms.
“Hello... over,” The walkie spoke, followed by a burst of static. It wasn’t Jenna.
I grabbed the Batman walkie from the entertainment stand. “We’re here... over,” I said.
“What’s going to happen to us?” Jane asked her dad.
“We’re going to be fine,” Alicia replied before Drew said a word. It looked like he didn’t know what to say.
“Just checking that the power was out over there... over,” Aaron, whose voice I now recognized, asked.
“Yep. Everything’s out. Do you guys have candles or flashlights? Over,” I asked.
“Yeah. We have the flashlight you gave us and found some candles in the bathroom... over,” Aaron said.
I didn’t respond. Neither did he. Everyone sat in quiet, except for the kids crying. Everyone, waiting for the next shoe to drop. Imagining the worse. I could just imagine the thoughts of the others. What was going on outside? Was the world truly ending?
I went into the office, stepping over Zero’s clothes and sleeping bag, which were thrown across the room haphazardly, and found what I was looking for on the top bookshelf. I smoked one of my last cigarettes (two remained) and sat on the cheap, non-ergonomic, office chair and enjoyed the silence for a few minutes before returning to the living room.
Kaitlyn was alone at the dining table staring off into some unknown thought. Zero was in the kitchen, looking in the refrigerator, maybe searching for something to cheer the children up or something for himself. Drew, Alicia, Natalie, and Jane were as I left them. Parents holding their children close on my red couch. I approached cautiously.
“Natalie. Jane. Do you like stories?” I asked. Doing my best to be consoling and calm.
Natalie turned her head from her mother’s shoulder and caught a glimpse at what I was holding in my hand and asked, “What kind of story?” I gave the book to her, and she
grabbed it with her small hands that buckled under the weight and began investigating the cover with her eyes.
“It’s a book my mother used to read to me when I was your age,” I said. Jane was now curious as well, looking at the book Natalie had in her hands. The book was thick, with a green dust cover that had actual dust on it, which Jane, reaching across her father began slowly wiping away. In the center was a picture of a red dragon. At the top was the title in bright yellow letters.
“The hoe-bit,” Natalie said.
“The Hobbit,” Alicia said.
“What’s a hobbit?” Jane asked.
“You want me to read it to you, and we can find out?” Alicia asked. They both nodded. Jane and Natalie both unhinged from their parents and sat on each side of their mother, as she opened the book.
“This has pictures?” Jane asked.
“It looks like it,” Alicia said. They both leaned over the book looking at a picture of a wizard, in a funny blue hat, walking on a path in Hobbiton. Alicia looked at me and mouthed “Thank you.” I just nodded and sat down at the dining table next to Kaitlyn, and she put her hand on mine and squeezed.
Later that night, after dinner, the candles providing the dancing light throughout the room, everyone sat in a circle either on the couch or on the floor. All the adults took turns reading by flashlight, providing our unique voices to the story and as the heroes in Tolkien’s story were escaping the clutches of the goblins and Bilbo was playing games with a strange creature named Gollum, the doorbell rang, followed by a loud knock at the door.
CHAPTER TEN
11/14/2024
When the doorbell rang, it was as if someone hit the pause button on the movie of our life. Nobody moved. Even the children went still. The outside world had come knocking.
I was the first to react and went to the office and grabbed my Smith & Wesson 9mm, made sure the safety was on and put it in the band of my pants behind my back.
The doorbell rang again. Followed by another knock. This time more insistent, followed by a loud, muffled voice, “This is the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. Please open up.”
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