The man jutted his chin, scratched the beard running down his neck, and advanced on Laura. Down the upstairs hallway, Alden thumped into the tub. The man whipped up his head, mouth parted, and raised his gun.
Tristan squeezed the trigger. The roar of the gun clouded her ears. The man fell. Blood misted the tile. He writhed. She shot again. He went still.
"Jason?" A voice called from outside. "Hey, Jason?"
Tristan kept still. She'd flipped on the porch light when Laura had knocked and the porch beyond the open door was empty and well-lit. Tristan moved from the landing and clicked off the upstairs lights, then hunkered back down behind the railing. Laura raised her head and glanced back at the dying man.
"Don't move," Tristan hissed.
"Jason?" the outsider called again, voice pinched.
The man's blood spread over the stone in a widening circle. An edge of the pool hit the front mat and absorbed into the weave. Tendrils of red advanced along the grout joints.
Motion stirred the darkness beyond the door. In perfect silence, a silhouette rose up the steps. The man hung outside the doorway, peered inside, and slipped inside the house. He wore a ratty green jacket and the face of a hunter. A steel revolver glinted in his hand, pointed at the ceiling. He glanced down at Jason, then Laura, then looked straight up into Tristan's eyes.
She shot him in the stomach. He fell, screaming. Her second shot tore into the wooden floor six inches from his chest. Her third took him in the head.
Quiet enveloped the house. Outside, men hooted. A gunshot cracked the night. Glass shattered; a rock tumbled over the living room carpet. Laura screamed. Another rock burst through the den window. A third thumped the outside wall. The men hooted louder, higher. Tristan smelled blood, spent gunpowder, the powerfully rotten stench of the man named Jason's punctured guts. Her knees were growing store and stiff on the wooden landing, but she didn't move.
Windows smashed upstairs. The backyard gate creaked open and banged against the fence. Feet thudded in the grass. Another window broke. Laura dragged herself from the entry and curled against the wall. A shot slammed into the upstairs wall, followed by three more. The yard went silent.
"Beau!" a man yelled. "Hey, Beau! You all right?"
Others called out for the dead man, a half dozen hooting his name into the night. "Beau! Beau!"
The voices cut short. The rocks stopped clunking into the walls and windows. Cricketsong drifted through the broken panes. The silence stretched on for one minute, two. Tristan shifted her aching legs. She strained her ears. Two minutes became five. What were they waiting for? Were they going for fire? Had she run them off, unwilling to lose any more members? Were they waiting for morning to regroup and kill whoever was inside?
The hallway creaked. She whirled. Alden stood in the gloom, face pinched with fear. "Are they gone?"
"Go back to the tub," she murmured.
His eyes tracked to the pistol. "You shot them, didn't you?"
"Go back to the tub. I'll tell you when it's safe."
His jaw worked, but he turned and disappeared down the hall. A moment later, skin squeaked on porcelain. Laura hadn't moved since crawling to the wall. It was too dark to see if she was still bleeding. With a sudden pang of anger, Tristan hoped she was: she was the one who'd brought these monsters here.
Tristan regretted the thought as soon as she had it. It wasn't Laura's fault she'd been attacked. She was just trying to save herself. Even so—it was her fault the men were here. If they pressed the attack, and something were to happen to herself, to Alden—. She stared at Laura's unconscious body and thought for a long time about leaving her by the door while she went to her parents' room and led her brother to the attic.
Instead, she waited. For hours. Head hurting from lack of sleep. Jolting at every scrape of leaves. Until the black patch of the open door turned first gray and then green as the sun revealed the wild-grown lawn. Even then, she waited twenty minutes more before she rose—she could barely force her legs to straighten—and stalked from window to window, gun in hand, scanning the yards for outsiders. She saw nothing but grass, fences, the dead neighbors' still-green tomatoes.
"Are they gone?" Alden stood on the landing. He had a pocketknife in his hand.
Tristan gazed down on the silent yard. "They must not have wanted to lose anyone else. Either that or they're horribly disloyal. Whatever the case, we've got to move."
"What? Why?"
"Because two of their people just died. They'll come back for us. Tonight, I bet."
"But this is our house."
"We're not going to leave it for good." Tristan pulled the drapes. "Just for a week or two. Long enough to convince them that we're gone. Or that we never lived here in the first place."
Alden crouched behind the railing. The men lay in the foyer, long done bleeding. "What if they come back and they burn the house down?"
"Then I'd prefer not to be in it at the time." She put her gun into her waistband. Broken glass was everywhere. Cleaning it up would give it away that they lived here, but if she left it out, Alden could cut himself so easily. She gritted her teeth. It was a different world. She could try to keep Alden safe, but babying him would only leave him unprepared to face it on his own. She needed him to be competent for selfish reasons, too: to watch her back, to stand guard while she slept, to go for food or help if she got sick.
"Go pack up," she said. "Clean up anything that makes it look like we've been living here. And do not cut yourself, or I'm rolling you in bubble wrap and storing you in the basement."
"Why do I have to clean up?"
"Because I have to make sure Laura doesn't die. Would you rather stitch her up yourself?"
Alden made a face and disappeared into his room. Tristan gathered up the dead men's guns and closed the front door. She set the guns on the marble island in the kitchen and knelt beside Laura, whose skin was hot and dry. Black blood crusted her scalp and ribs. She moaned, pulling away from Tristan's touch.
"Come on," Tristan said. "Let's get you up in a bed. We're leaving this afternoon and I need you rested."
Laura hung onto Tristan's collar and let herself be hauled to her feet. She clung to the banister on the way up and half-collapsed into bed. Tristan stripped her shirt over her head. Laura gasped, eyes flipping open. Blood seeped from a gash on her ribs; the shirt had scabbed to her side.
"Should I clean this?" Tristan said. "I don't know what I'm doing. I might hurt you."
"If the alternative is dying of infection, then hurt me away," Laura said. She rolled onto her side to give Tristan better access to the wound.
Tristan left for a damp rag, rubbing alcohol, Neosporin, and one of her dad's undershirts. She swabbed the cut and wrapped the shirt around Laura as a bandage. "Okay, that wasn't hard at all."
"I don't need stitches?"
"If you do, you're doing them on yourself." Tristan went to the bathroom to wash the blood and Neosporin from her hands. She couldn't stand when they were dirty. A bit of grime, and she hated to move them, let alone use them, letting them dangle from her wrists until she could insert them under running water and return them to normalcy. She padded to the bedroom. "What happened? Who were they?"
Laura pulled the covers to her chin. "You haven't seen the Empty Skulls?"
"I haven't left the house in weeks. The news stopped running. I had no idea it was so bad."
"It's total Mad Max out there. The Empty Skulls seized the ARCO down by the train tracks. The Safeway. At first all they did was defend their turf, but now that there's nobody left, they're ranging around town as they please. I got jumped while I was raiding one of your neighbors. I figured it was so quiet out here nobody would have thought to scavenge it yet."
"You're by yourself?"
Laura nodded, then winced. "Honestly? I figured you'd bit the dust like everyone else. But I had nowhere else to run."
The drapes flapped in the breeze through the broken window. "Do you think they'll be back?"
"It's okay. You didn't have a choice." Tristan was shocked to find she no longer believed that. Everything was a choice. Including the choice to put others at risk to make yourself safer. Nothing had forced her to let Laura in. That, too, had been a choice. It could turn out to be a very bad one. "I need to go pack. Holler if you need anything."
Downstairs, she found Alden pointing the revolver at the broken kitchen window. "Put that down."
He gave her an annoyed glance. "I've seen the movies. I know how to use it."
"Oh my God. Put that down before you kill us both."
"What happens if those guys come back? I should go hide in the bathtub again? That's so stupid."
"Alden! I'm not your mom. I don't know what I'm doing. Sure. If they come back, you can use the gun. But right now, I want you to put it down, and I don't want you to touch it until I have time to sit down with you and explain a few things."
He set it on the island with a metal click. "Well, why not right now?"
"Because we need to get out of here. They could be back any minute."
"Sounds like a pretty good reason for me to carry a piece," he said sullenly. "Which car are we taking?"
"One in the garage," Tristan said. "I don't want to go outside until it's time to leave."
She packed hurriedly, taking anything the Skulls might want—food, water, Advil, her dad's hydrocodone, cough syrup, NyQuil, vitamins, flashlights and batteries, the guns, the best knives, soap and toiletries, her dad's wrench set, assorted screwdrivers and hammers and pliers, quarts of oil. She didn't take much in the way of clothes, but made sure to take three pairs of shoes and two coats, one light and one heavy, along with several sets of her mom's shirts, jeans, shoes, and coats. They'd fit Laura better.
She woke Laura, helped her down to the car, where she stretched her out across the back seats. Alden piled in the passenger door. Tristan backed out, closed the garage, and drove slowly through the four blocks to the Hausers'; Gina Hauser had worked with their mom, and Tristan had been to enough Christmas parties and 4th of July barbecues to know her way around. She parked in the driveway.
"It smells funny," Alden said inside the front door, which had been locked until Tristan bashed in one of the front panes. It was kind of amazing how easy it was to break into a house. In hindsight, it was hard to believe her parents' place, with its flatscreens, emerald jewelry, and genuine silver flatware, hadn't been robbed on a weekly basis.
"You'll get used to it. Help me get Laura inside."
They arranged Laura on the front couch. Tristan told Alden to keep an eye on the street, then checked the house top to bottom for bodies. It was clean. The Hausers must have left town when the sickness hit. The cabinets had soup, instant potatoes, cereal. She went back to Alden and they unloaded the car together. The sprawling house had five bedrooms, including a ground-floor guest room. She helped Laura to the bed, then chose an upstairs room overlooking the street.
Downstairs, Tristan sat down on the couch to think about their next move and promptly dozed off. Someone shook her shoulder and she batted at the hated hand.
"Wake up, Droopy." Alden grinned down at her.
"Leave me alone."
"Why don't you go use your new bed?"
"Because I'm so tired I'd shoot myself just to get a little sleep."
Alden laughed. "Then go upstairs and sleep. I'll keep watch down here."
A part of her could not accept the words he'd spoken. They were grammatical, logical—after the previous night, they really should keep watch; she'd been right about to toddle off to bed without a second thought—but the concept those words conveyed was too absurd. Keep watch! It was like they'd stumbled into a George R.R. Martin novel. And she had begun to play the part.
She washed her hands again before bed, but when she slid her hand under the stranger's pillow, she could still smell the gunpowder burned on her fingers.
* * *
Laura's cuts looked worse than they were. She had some deep bruises, too—she'd fought one of the men with her bare hands before escaping to the house—but after some water and rest, she was back on her feet in a couple of days. She helped sweep up the dust, gather up the garbage from the numerous dens, living rooms, and bathrooms. The Hausers' place was nice, Tristan decided, lush with wood paneling and antique brass faucets, fixtures, doorknobs, and hinges, but she preferred her parents' house more.
After her initial doubts, Tristan was glad to have Laura around. For one thing, she actually knew something about firearm safety, such as the fact revolvers didn't have safeties. She taught both Tristan and Alden the basics—commonsense stuff like don't point at anything you don't intend to shoot, check to see if it's loaded each and every time you handle it, etc.—and one morning they left at dawn and drove to the lake, where the Empty Skulls might not hear them, and practiced firing off a few rounds. They had brought fishing poles, too, and spent the afternoon fishing the rocky banks until nightfall. Tristan drove back with the headlights off.
"How are you doing on gas?" Laura asked when they pulled into the garage. Tristan had found the keys to one of the SUVs and moved it to the street.
Tristan squinted. "Half a tank."
"But how many gallons do you have when that runs out?"
"None."
"None as in zero? No gallons?"
Tristan smacked her head. "And with the Indy 500 just days away!"
"You do realize you can't just run out and fill 'er up, right? Not without a running gang battle?" Laura turned in a slow circle, taking in the dusty garage. "Think they got any siphons?"
"Let me go check the siphon-rack."
Laura shook her head. "This is something you need to do. You really don't have anything but what's in the tank?"
"I'm sorry, I'm still a little new when it comes to this whole 'end of the world as we know it' thing."
"Well, let's find us a tube. It's time to get lootin'."
Tristan nodded, careful to keep the annoyance from her face. She hadn't explicitly invited Laura to stay. Nor had Laura asked. Now, Tristan felt a keen and strange resentment at Laura's orders, her intrusion into Tristan's tiny tribe.
Still, she did need spare gasoline. She found a hose in the garage. Laura cut off a three-foot length, then asked for her a towel and a hammer. Tristan grabbed the gas jug for the lawnmower and a disused plastic storage bin. They didn't have to go far. In the dark, cool street, Laura pointed to an SUV with thick ripples of dust on the windows, wrapped the hammer in the towel, and smashed open its front window.
She popped the gas tank, poked the hose inside, and passed the other end to Tristan. "Suck. Then get out of the way, because this stuff tastes even worse than what you're used to having in your mouth."
Tristan laughed and took the hose. They filled the jug, then the bin. Full, it was shockingly heavy. Tristan had to let Laura carry it while she took the jug, the red plastic banging against her knee with each step, the sloshing fluid tugging her off balance.
They stayed inside during the day. Every few nights, Alden kept watch from the upstairs window while Tristan and Laura ventured into the cricket-sung darkness to empty the pantries of the McMansions. At the corner, a red skull had been spray-painted across one house's face, a dripping question mark emblazoned on the skull's round forehead.
Laura joined Tristan and Alden's kung fu sessions the first time she saw them practice. She took to it with the same bravado she brought to everything, but her elbows strayed constantly from her centerline, and whenever they approached real-time speed, her hands flailed like light-mad moths. After a week of practice, she still couldn't reliably block one of Tristan's low-speed punches.
"How do you do that?" She withdrew her arms from Tristan's and yanked open the fridge. She
cracked a beer, scowling over the foam.
Alden tipped back his head sagely. "Ancient Chinese secret."
"Yes, a tightly-guarded secret known as 'practice.'" Tristan fought a smile. Laura had always been more athletic, making varsity in basketball and lacrosse while Tristan couldn't make it through the first few practices. Here, Laura's natural skill was a detriment. She thought she should be good at once and became frustrated when she wasn't.
But it took patience. Dedication. Repeating the same motion ten thousand times until throwing a block was as easy as punching a button in Mortal Kombat. After a few months, Tristan could block with one arm and strike with the other while shifting her hips for extra momentum or stepping aside to slip one of Alden's hallway ambushes. None of that required any thought. She still had to choose which specific techniques to use, but if the fighting style were a piece of software, she knew all the keyboard shortcuts. Laura still had to hunt each command down manually, dragging her cursor through her mental menus until she found the appropriate response.
Two weeks after their move to the Hausers', with the moon bright enough to light the way, Tristan returned to her parents' home. A single light burned upstairs. The doorway was open. She watched for some time from the hedge across the street. She approached hesitantly, creeping across the neighbor's lawn, pausing often. The red icon of the Empty Skulls stood spraypainted on the front door. The bodies had been taken from the foyer. Dark blood crusted the floor. It smelled vaguely fecal—someone had taken a dump in the middle of the kitchen. Mice had added their own leavings to the cabinets, pillaging the two sacks of rice she'd left behind. Another emblem had been painted across the kitchen wall, its crimson dribbles long dried.
Gun in hand, she went room to room. Papers had been strewn about, down pillows shredded, feathers stirring in the breeze through the broken windows. The Skulls had been back for their dead. Must have expected a fight, too. Failing to find that, they'd trashed the place, but halfheartedly, like a dog peeing on the fourth tree of its walk.
The Breakers Series: Books 1-3 Page 43