by Carol Snow
Fingers of panic crept up my spine. “I just want to go home.”
“That’s not an option,” Mrs. Hawking said. “Not now.”
“Of course it’s an option!” When I stood up, the metal legs of my chair caught against the edge of a carpet remnant, but I managed to grab the chair just before it tipped over. “Give me a phone. Someone must get service out here because Henry sent me a text. I’ll call my brother. He’ll come get me.”
Mr. Hawking cleared his throat and took a moment to glare at his son, whose attention was fixed on the table.
“There’s no reception here,” Henry said. I didn’t look at him.
“We didn’t want you here, Daisy; I won’t lie,” Mrs. Hawking said, like that was some big revelation from a woman who had once told her son in front of me that he should widen his circle of friends. “But now that you’ve arrived, you can’t leave.”
My eyes darted around the room, looking for an escape route. But even if I could get out of this house, I’d never find my way back to the road.
“Will somebody please tell me what is going on?”
The Hawkings sat in grim silence for a long moment before reaching wordless agreement. Mrs. Hawking broke the news. “We’re facing a possible tee-ought-walkie.”
“Probable,” Mr. Hawking amended.
“A probable tee-ought-walkie.” Mrs. Hawking nodded.
My head was starting to hurt. “Tee…”
Henry said, “Those are initials: TEOTWAWKI. Pronounced tee-ought-walkie. It stands for…” He glanced at me before setting his attention back to the table and lowering his voice to an embarrassed mumble. “The end of the world as we know it.”
“Like … the song?”
He shook his head and looked at me sideways. “No. For real.”
I searched for amusement in his dark eyes but came up empty. “Don’t go getting all Hunger Games on me, Henry.”
“This isn’t a game,” Mrs. Hawking said, her habitual scowl deepening.
These people were impossible. “Hunger Games isn’t a game,” I informed her. “It’s a book. Also a movie.”
“Is that right?” she said. “Well, while you and all the other Pollyannas have been reading books and watching movies, we have been getting ready for the inevitable moment when TSHTF.”
When I squinted with confusion, her husband translated. “When the, er, sewage hits the fan.”
All of a sudden, I understood. How did I not catch on earlier? All that toilet paper should have tipped me off. And before that, the outdoorsy stuff and the paranoia. But the thought never crossed my mind because I had once believed that Henry told me everything. And this was a big thing not to mention.
“You’re preppers!”
Mrs. Hawking loosened her neckerchief and undid her top button. It was seriously hot up here. “We prefer the term ‘self-reliant.’”
“You can’t seriously believe the world is ending.”
“When it comes to the fall of Western civilization,” Mr. Hawking said, “it’s always been a question of when, not if. Societies grow and thrive—and then they collapse, sometimes gradually, and sometimes in response to a cataclysmic event. Look at Rome.”
He waited for my response, but all I could think was, I’ve never heard him talk so much. And also, I’d like to see Rome someday. London and Paris, too. But first I had to get out of here.
Mr. Hawking continued, “We were overdue for a societal collapse, especially when you consider all the possibilities for our demise.” His stubbly face shone with sweat. “An undervalued currency could cause a run on banks. A massive earthquake could destroy infrastructure and overwhelm resources. Thanks to the efficiencies of modern transportation, a flu pandemic could sweep through the entire planet in a matter of days.”
Henry’s parents exchanged a look I couldn’t read.
There was another crack in the distance. I gasped.
“Squirrel hunting,” Henry explained.
Getting back to the subject at hand, Mrs. Hawking tapped the table. “EMP.”
Mr. Hawking looked skeptical. “Theoretically, our enemies could use a nuclear device to set off a burst of radiation that could send out an electromagnetic pulse that would shut down the entire electrical grid.”
“Asteroid,” Mrs. Hawking said, as if ticking items off a list.
“An asteroid could do major damage,” Mr. Hawking agreed. “As could a nuclear bomb. Or a flood. Or a heat wave. When you consider all the possibilities, it’s astonishing that our society has lasted as long as it has. And yet, most people go about their merry ways, expecting things to always be the way they have always been. The only sensible course of action was to be prepared to G-O-O-D at a moment’s notice.”
“Get out of Dodge,” Henry explained.
“We’ve been preparing for several years,” Mr. Hawking said. “As any sensible person would. And even now … the compound … we thought the renovation would be finished, or at least further along.”
“But why leave now?” I said. “Society is messed up, sure, but it could be around for another hundred, two hundred years!”
The Hawkings shook their heads, even Henry.
“Everything was fine at home,” I said.
More head shaking.
“There was no asteroid,” I said. “Or earthquake or flood or … the electromagnetic thing. There has been no apocalypse.” When they continued to look at me with doubt, I added, “I may not be as smart as your son, but I would have noticed an apocalypse.”
“The world has not ended … yet,” Mrs. Hawking said. “But the enemy is among us, and the enemy is…” She closed her eyes and covered her mouth as if the sentence were too painful to continue.
“What?” I demanded.
“A lemur,” Mr. Hawking said. At least I thought that was what he said, though when my brain tried to make sense of it, I rejected the interpretation.
“I thought you said a lemur.” I waited for him to clarify.
“Well, lemurs,” he said. “Plural.”
I was surrounded by crazy people. There was no other explanation. I thought of the adorable little animals with the striped tails and enormous eyes. “Are these … exploding lemurs?”
“Of course not!” Mrs. Hawking snapped.
“It’s not the actual lemurs we fear.” Mr. Hawking really, really needed a shave.
“I’m a little afraid of the lemurs,” Henry muttered.
Mrs. Hawking said, “The danger lies not in the lemurs themselves, but in the disease they carry.”
“What disease?”
Henry’s voice cracked. “Madagascar plague.”
Nineteen
HENRY’S PARENTS HEADED out to perform their Very Important Compound Tasks and left us alone in the bonus room without even telling us to leave the door open. Because, conveniently, there was no door.
I stayed in my hard chair while Henry wandered over to the pushpin map of the world. “You’ve heard of the Madagascar plague, right?”
“Of course. It’s the disease that turns you into an animated talking animal.”
His look turned stern. He didn’t say anything.
I tried to remember news articles I had read, headlines I had seen. The disease sounded vaguely familiar. “Is that the one where people vomit blood or the one where they can’t breathe?”
He ran his fingers over a cluster of pushpins. “Both. A bunch of cases first showed up last year in Madagascar. People thought it was bubonic plague because they’ve had outbreaks of that as well and the symptoms are similar, but it turns out to be something entirely new.”
“It sounds horrible. And I feel awful for the people who are getting sick in … wherever Madagascar is. Australia?”
Henry raised his eyebrows. I took that as a no.
“It’s not my fault the American education system stinks at geography. But, Henry, there’s no deadly epidemic out there. You’re hiding out for nothing.”
He stopped to look at me. “Nobody wa
s out sick from school?”
I thought of all the empty desks at school. “Sure. Lots of people. There was this flu-ish thing going around—nothing deadly, just a nasty virus. After Gwendolyn disappeared, I went over to this girl Bethany’s house because she’d been out of school, and I wanted to see if she had gone away, too. But she was just home with a really bad cold.”
Henry nodded. “That’s part of the reason why people don’t know how serious this is.”
“You’re going to tell me a toxic lemur was to blame for Bethany Bratt’s runny nose. And that her runny nose was more than just a runny nose.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Right before the plague hit, there was an outbreak of another virus—not technically a flu, but it came with a fever, body aches, cough … all the usual symptoms. People were flooding doctors’ offices and the ERs. That’s a big part of why the first plague patients weren’t quarantined. Everyone just assumed they had the other thing. Did you hear about anyone at school getting seriously ill?” he asked.
No students jumped into my mind, but then I remembered history class. “Mr. Vasquez was out for a few days. Someone said he was in the hospital, but I don’t even know if that’s true. But he wasn’t dying. Nobody was. Speaking of Mr. Vasquez, we learned about bubonic plague in history class. You would have, too, if you weren’t holed up in the mountains. In the Middle Ages, a disease could wipe out a huge part of the population, but that was before antibiotics and sanitation. Stuff like that doesn’t happen anymore, at least not in America.”
Henry sighed. “It’s too hot up here. Let’s go out to the woods.”
Henry led me through the foyer and into an enormous, unfinished kitchen. From there, a short hallway took us into an exercise room filled with stationary bikes, a stair stepper, and a rowing machine.
I tapped the handlebar of a stationary bike. “Doesn’t everyone get enough of a workout being outdoors? You know, with all that squirrel hunting and people trapping?”
“These power our generator, along with the solar panels. Mr. Dunkle was supposed to put in a windmill, but he hasn’t done it yet.” He considered. “There are a lot of things Mr. Dunkle hasn’t done yet.”
He opened a door, and the backyard took my breath away. No, I’m serious. The stench flooded my sinuses. I clapped a hand over my nose.
Henry spread his arms. “Welcome to the farm. I don’t know who’s supposed to be cleaning out the chicken coop, but they’re slacking off. The goats don’t exactly help, either.”
The ground was partially covered with pavers; otherwise it was all concrete dust, dirt, and animal poop. Everywhere I looked, there were pails and tools and rubber boots and garbage. It made my own backyard look downright tidy.
As promised, there was a pool. Henry never said it had water in it. Instead, it was a great big white hole, empty except for a skateboard.
“We’re going to use the pool for aquaponics,” Henry said. “Supposedly.”
I hesitated. “Is that like water aerobics?”
He raised his eyebrows. “It’s when you raise fish and plants together in a shared aqua environment so they feed off each other’s waste products.”
I rolled my eyes. “I totally knew that.”
A couple of yards away from the pool, a separate spa, slightly raised and rimmed with fake boulders, did have water, which was good news for the geese swimming (and presumably pooping) in it, as well as for the little goats dipping their heads down for a toxic drink. In addition to the geese and goats (I counted five), there was one depressed-looking sheep, a bunch of chickens, and a giant rabbit hutch.
Keeping my hand over my nose (and watching my step), I went over to the hutch. Two brown bunnies stared at me with their dark marble eyes, perfectly still except for their twitching noses, while more baby bunnies than I could count hopped and squirmed around them.
One of the Dunkle boys came up next to me. It was the one they called Killer, looking the part in green army fatigues. “You like rabbit?” he asked. His voice hadn’t changed yet, but a tiny break gave a preview of things to come.
“Yeah, they’re cute.”
“No, I mean to eat.”
“Wait. You mean you’re raising these to…”
“Perfect food source.” He poked at the mesh with a dirty index finger. “We feed ’em leftover vegetables or bug-eaten plants from the garden, they keep having babies. Coupla months, the bigger babies will start having their own babies. Soon there’ll be so many, we’re gonna have to build another coop. Be eatin’ rabbit every day.”
Beyond the animals was the dirty yellow school bus I had seen through the fence. “Field trip to hell,” I muttered, joining Henry near the edge of the empty pool.
“Who owns this place?” I asked.
“The four families in the consortium. We got it cheap a few years ago when the guy building it ran out of money. The adults liked that it was so far from civilization. They called it the bugout location from the beginning, but we all knew it was just supposed to be a vacation retreat. We were waiting till the construction was done to furnish it. Oh well.”
I lowered my voice. “If the Dunkles aren’t part of the consortium, what are they doing here?”
Across the yard, one of the little blond girls slipped on a pair of oversized rubber boots and clomped over to the goats.
Henry said, “My parents and some of the others met Mr. Dunkle at a prepper convention about a year and a half ago. He was in the Special Forces once, which my dad thought was cool. But mostly the families hired him because he’s done a lot of construction work. At least he said he had. He and his family are allowed to live here in exchange for renovating the property. But they’ve been here a year already, and…” He shrugged.
I thought of the paper I’d seen in his parents’ office. “This consortium—is it the same as the Shooting Star Society?”
He stared at me. “How do you know about that?”
“Um…” He wouldn’t mind that I’d used the security code to get into his house, but breaking into his parents’ office might be crossing a line.
He shook his head. “Never mind. It’s probably better if I don’t know. The Shooting Star Society doesn’t exist.”
“But the sun-catcher in your window … at Gwendolyn’s house, too.”
“One of the Platt kids made those for everyone a couple of Christmases ago, gave them to everyone in the consortium. And I think it was just because they were so tacky that no one wanted to hang them, but someone suggested we save them to use as a secret signal in the event of a bugout.”
“But the address in Big Bear…”
He stared at me. “You went through my parents’ files?”
“Not all of them.”
He ran a hand through his dark hair. “And I told my parents they were being paranoid, believing that anyone would ever take the time to go through their papers. They put the shooting star thing on a bunch of papers to mislead anyone who tried to track us down. The address is for an empty lot.”
“Yeah, I know.”
A smile spread across his face. “You tried pretty hard to find me, huh?”
I refused to smile back. I was still mad.
He said, “My parents own that piece of land. We used to go up to Big Bear a lot, and they were going to build a cabin. But Mr. Waxweiler convinced them that Big Bear was a bad place to bug out—too close to LA. Mostly, I think, he just wanted them to go in on this property because he couldn’t afford it on his own, and Mrs. Waxweiler would only agree to buy a bugout location if it looked like a fancy retreat.”
“But how did all the building stuff even get here?” I thought about the scrambling we’d had to do to get here from the bunker.
“A fire road runs in front of the house—connects to the state highway. Goes pretty close to the bunker, too, but it’s shorter to cut through the woods.”
On the other side of the yard, chicken wire enclosed a broad patch set aside for farming—which may be a generous term for a w
hole bunch of random plants crammed together in a few raised beds, but whatever. Another of the little blond girls (I couldn’t remember her name, but I think it began with a K) crouched at the edge of the garden, pulling weeds.
We tiptoed around animal poop to the very back of the fenced enclosure, where two raised white boxes emitted an almost electrical buzz. Guess I’d been right about those beehives.
I remembered the pamphlet I had read while trapped—no, imprisoned—underground. “Did you know that honey never goes bad?”
He nodded.
“And that honey has antibiotic properties?”
Another nod.
“It’s annoying that you always know everything.”
At the far corner of the fence, Henry spun a combination lock around until it popped. He pushed open the gate, and we stepped into the wilderness. White-barked trees reached for the sky, their delicate leaves shimmering in the hot breeze. I took a deep breath: only good smells out here beyond the compound. Above us birds tweeted lovely songs while squirrels leapt among the branches.
Squirrels.
“Are they done hunting yet? Because I don’t want to get shot.”
“Hunting only happens on the other side of the property. We’re good. Besides, Killer never misses a chance to shoot something, so if he’s back at the house, it means fun time is over.”
I wasn’t angry at Henry anymore—just baffled that he had fallen for his parents’ bizarre tale. After all, he was the one who had always said they were paranoid. But maybe it’s easier to tell the difference between sane and batty when you are living in normal society and not holed up in an unfinished McMansion with a tribe of blond conspiracy theorists.
Ahead, gurgling sounds filtered through the dense autumn air. We rounded a prickly bush and took a few careful steps down a hillside, to a clear, shallow stream rimmed with bright green plants.
I dipped my hand into the chilly water. “Is it safe to drink?”
Henry shrugged. “Probably. But we don’t take chances. We have a water filtration system back at the compound so advanced that Mr. Waxweiler says it can make urine taste like bottled water.”