If the Light Escapes: A Braving the Light Novel

by Brenda Marie Smith

“Keno! Wait!” Alma hollers from behind me, but I can’t stop.

  I don’t even know where I’m going. It’s getting dark out here, and I’m just running.

  “Please stop, Keno!” Alma calls from half a block behind me, but I keep racing down the street. Neighbors stare at me as I run past, but I ignore them, even Bobby Carlisle, who’s heading out for patrol with his Kalashnikov.

  “He all right?” Bobby shouts to Alma as she runs past him. “Get home. It’s dark.”

  “Give us some time, okay?”

  “Only a little,” he says.

  I’m two long blocks from home, and I plunge into the park on the east side of our neighborhood. I plop down on the bottom end of the slide, slapping my hands over my eyes and catching my breath.

  Crickets are chirping like maniacs, and there’s a chorus of tree frogs coming from the empty swimming pool that’s covered in slime. It’s peaceful out here. If I could stay here for a year, maybe I could calm down.

  “Your mom’s still mad, I guess?” Alma says as she reaches me. Her black-brown eyes lock onto mine, and I want to fall into the depths of them. She takes my hand and pulls me up. I scoop her strong little body into my arms. She strokes my back and then leads me over to sit on the swings.

  “I knew it was my fault. I told you!”

  “Keno, it’s not!”

  “Mom thinks it is.”

  “She didn’t mean that. It’s her grief talking.”

  “No, Alma. She means it.” I yank at my hair, tears spewing out of me, all the grief and shame rushing back like it never receded.

  “Stop it!” She’s got a grip on my arm that won’t quit. “I know how much you loved Tasha, whether anyone else knows it or not. Your Nana knows it. Uncle Eddie knows it.” Alma soothes me while I shudder and cry.

  My mind’s flooded with images of Tasha. Blood all over her and all over me when I carried her home in my arms. Carried her home to die. Tasha crying, “Don’t let me die!” But the nurses didn’t live here then, and none of us knew how to save her—not Nana, not our neighbor Sonja, and definitely not me.

  “All this time,” I blubber out, “when I dreamed Mom might come home someday, I thought she would comfort me… that we would comfort each other.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Alma says softly, turning my face toward her. I can hardly see her through the tears and snot rolling out of me, but I feel her love, stronger than the sun and worthier of my trust than that ball of fire that fucked up our lives. “I’ve got you, baby.”

  I stand up and hug Alma to me until I can’t breathe, my tears running into her soft black hair. It takes me a while to slow down.

  Alma steps back and gives me a cute, crooked smile. “Race you to the monkey bars!” She takes off quick, getting a head start. I speed after her, but she beats me there and scrambles to the top of the bars. “I win!”

  “You’re fast,” I say, and we laugh. I climb up from the inside, swinging myself around, but I’m too tall for these kiddie bars. Alma’s upside-down face is suddenly in front of me, surprising the heck out of me. She’s hanging from her knees above me.

  “Hey, babe. Your face is all red,” I tell her.

  “My mom said it’s good for your complexion.”

  “Is it? I better try it then.” I feel for the Glock in my hip pocket. Still there, still loaded, safe and secure. I climb up and hang from my knees beside her, only, since I’m taller, my head hangs lower than hers. “Can’t really look you in the eyes this way,” I say. “Does my complexion look better now?”

  “A beautiful shade of pink.”

  A huge sliver of moon rises to the east, lighting up the park and Alma’s face with an orange-yellow glow. We pull ourselves up and sit wrapped together on top of the monkey bars like we rule the planet, gazing into our dark subdivision, on the southern edge of our emptied-out city, in the middle of the scary-as-fuck world.

  “Keno? Alma?” Bobby Carlisle calls from the street.

  “Yeah, Bobby?” I shout.

  “Y’all come home. Now!” Uh-oh.

  “We’re coming.” I jump down from the bars, and Alma slides into my arms.

  “Watch out for those trees behind you,” Bobby says.

  Oh shit. The tree line.

  The crickets and tree frogs have gone silent. I hear Bobby cock his rifle thirty yards away. For a split second, Alma and I gape at each other, and then we run.

  When we reach Bobby in the street with his Kalashnikov aimed into the park, I stand between Alma and whatever danger Bobby sees. I scan the trees behind the swings and monkey bars, half a football field away.

  Before the sun zapped us, those trees would’ve seemed pretty. Tonight, they’re creepy. I’ve been too worked up about Tasha and Mom to even think about watching the tree line. As bad as things sometimes get around here, I’m still not totally used to life post-apocalypse and the never-ending vigilance.

  “I don’t see—”

  “Shh!” Bobby aims his rifle at something.

  I shudder and run my eyes back and forth among the trees. With all the different-sized trunks in the deep shadows, people could be hiding in there and blending in.

  “There!” Bobby hisses, pointing to the north edge of the trees. And I see—what? Feet. Two pairs of feet—one in boots, one in white sneakers. At least that’s what I think I see, but it’s so far away. Then the feet with the sneakers move, and metal flashes in the moonlight. Behind me, Alma gasps. I pull my Glock, flick off the safety, and aim.

  “Run home, kids. Now!” Bobby whispers.

  “But, Bobby, you need backup.”

  “Then get to cover. I’m firing a warning shot.”

  I grab hold of Alma’s waist, and we take off across the street. I catch a glance from Bobby as we duck behind a dead SUV.

  BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!

  Shit, that was five shots. I raise up enough to see dirt flying near those feet in the trees. The feet jump around then disappear.

  I point my Glock again and feel for Alma to be sure she’s still ducking. “Stay down,” I say.

  “I’m staying.”

  And we wait, Bobby and I with our guns aimed, Alma crouched with her hands over her ears. The eerie green lights rise up to sway a surreal dance in the northern sky, and still we wait.

  At last, Bobby lowers his rifle. “Y’all go home. This isn’t a safe place for a therapy session.”

  “’Kay, we’re going, smartass,” I say with a smirk. He chuckles, and we sprint for home.

  When we tell Uncle Eddie what happened, he grabs his rifle and heads toward the door.

  “Told you we need more nighttime patrollers,” he says. “I’m gonna organize folks to scour our perimeter every morning and evening—to check the woods in the park, the train tracks, the field behind Jack’s house.”

  “I’ll take some shifts.”

  “Good. You can bring Milo.”

  I just sigh.

  After lying in bed wide awake for a couple of hours with green light pulsing through the window and Alma cuddled up sleeping beside me, I slip out of bed and go downstairs.

  I’m wandering around in a daze when I see Nana’s wind-up radio. Makes me think of her before her stroke, when she would listen at night for news that might tell her what happened to my mom and the rest of the family. I saw her crying once when she thought she was alone. Made me love her even more.

  The radio’s got AM, FM, and seven short-wave bands. Being cut off from the rest of the world makes us hungry for news, but the only broadcast Nana ever found is this guy named Rick, who gets on his short-wave every night from more than a hundred miles away.

  I take the radio to the patio, wind it up, and listen while green lights swirl overhead.

  We got ourselves a wild light show goin’ on around here. I imagine if you can hear me, you got one, too. It’s a c
razy universe, people. I just hope there’s still room in it for us.

  Most of you know that I’m Rick, I am ab-so-lutely skinny as a stick, and I’m comin’ to you live from Clifton, Texas, thirty miles west of Waco. Farm country, U.S.A. Our little town has been goin’ through some shit, folks—people dyin’ left and right. We’re not s’posed to cuss on ham radios, but I’m way past carin’ ’bout that. If someone comes to arrest me, maybe they’ll feed my ass. I mean, I hardly even have an ass anymore.

  Ooo-wee! Sorry, folks.

  A couple of ranchers here have old diesel tractors that still run, but the rest of us work the ground with horses or by hand. Folks are tryin’ to breed more work horses, but it’s gonna take years before we’ll have enough. And feedin’ those horses will be hard as hell. I’m just gonna keep pushin’ my plow by hand. I can handle my few acres of garden that way.

  I had to fight with birds over my figs. Next year, I’m campin’ out around my fig trees and will spend my days chasin’ off birds. Maybe I’ll catch me some quail or some doves. Now that’s some good eatin’ there.

  Sorry to go on about food, folks, when I know some of y’all don’t have much. It’s just, I’m hungry, and I got food on the brain. Sometimes, I think life without cheeseburgers may not be worth livin’.

  Cheeseburgers, movies, and my mama. That’s what I miss most.

  CHAPTER 4

  Uncle Eddie rousts me and Milo out of bed more than an hour before dawn to go patrol the neighborhood perimeter, to check the places beyond our streets and yards where the nighttime patrollers don’t go. Damn, it’s early. I only slept a few hours.

  The northern lights are still strobing in the sky, but they’re fading. Milo and I are all bleary-eyed as we trot along the train tracks. We go about a mile to the drainage pond and back without seeing anyone. There’s evidence that people once cooked on the other side of the tracks, but the empty cans are rusty. It probably happened before the sun zapped us.

  While we cross the neighborhood to go to the park, I ask Milo, “Did you ever work it out with your parents to let you stay at our house?” They’ve been hassling him to move into the Mint with them ever since they came home, but so far, he’s managed to squirm out of it.

  “They said I could stay,” he says.

  “Cool, man. How’d you get them to do that?”

  He stops still, catching his breath, and looks me in the eye as I stop, too.

  “I told them I killed Chas.”

  “Shit. They didn’t know that already?”

  “Nope. Dad told Mom that I’m a man now, so I can stay where I want.”

  “They must be mind-blown,” I say. “They might change their minds when they come back to Earth.”

  “They might, but I’m not moving.”

  “Yeah, I wouldn’t want to fight with you over it.” I bump his shoulder with my fist and grin at him. “I never knew a fourteen-year-old man before.”

  “Shut up!” Milo shoots me a dirty look and takes off toward the park.

  For months after Tasha died, Milo brooded and moped around all cranky, refusing to discuss it, while the rest of us cried and moaned and talked about Tasha, comforting each other and “processing our grief,” as Nana called it.

  The thing that finally got him out of that hole was shooting Chas. Milo said it was like helping Tasha, and, crazy as it seems, it brought him back to himself. I probably don’t need to worry about the kid as much as I do.

  We scour the park side of the stand of trees, not finding much—boot and sneaker tracks in the dirt at the place we saw the feet; a spent bullet embedded at the bottom of a tree. Bobby’s bullet, I assume.

  As Milo and I tromp deeper into the woods, I say, “Now that Nana can’t run the neighborhood and tell us what to focus on anymore, we need to start thinking like she did. Looking at the big picture and thinking ahead about stuff we need and how to get it.”

  “Shouldn’t we be quiet?” he mutters.

  “I don’t see why. The goal is to chase off whoever might be in the woods, just like we do when people come onto our streets begging for food.”

  Milo snorts. “Man, that’s different. Bad guys won’t go away. They’ll hide and stay to cause trouble when we aren’t looking.”

  “That’s true. But how do we know those feet Bobby shot at belonged to bad guys?”

  Milo shakes his head at me. “Just be quiet. Okay?”

  So, now that he thinks he’s a man, he thinks he can boss me around? I’ll have to get his ass about that soon, but for now, I shut up.

  We keep going, moving aside bushes and low-hanging branches to be sure we don’t miss anything. We come out the back side of the trees and stare toward the eastern horizon as the sun starts to rise.

  “My mom’s super pissed at Nana,” Milo says.

  “Why? Because of Tasha?”

  “Probably that, too, but mostly because she left Grandpa.”

  “Why is that any of your mom’s business? Nana’s a grown-up. She can choose who she loves.”

  Milo sighs. “Mom wants her parents to stay together.”

  “Well, when I was little, I wanted my parents to stay together, too, but we don’t always get what we want, do we? Your mom needs to get over it.”

  He smirks. “Yeah, in your dreams.”

  We stand there a minute, watching the sun come up. A thin line of black smoke rises above the treetops a few miles east of here.

  “Look, Milo. Something’s burning over there.”

  “Probably another house.”

  “Idiot scumbags who burn down houses. I’ll never understand them. C’mon. Let’s go home.”

  Right as we finish eating the breakfast of eggs and oatmeal that Alma cooked for us on the grill, we hear Grandpa hollering on the Mint’s patio, “This is not right!”

  I step outside to see Aunt Jeri and Uncle Tom talking to Grandpa, but I can’t hear their words.

  Grandpa backs away from them. “Teenagers should live with their parents!”

  “Hank,” Uncle Tom shouts, “do not tell us how to raise our kids. This is what’s happening, so get used to it.”

  “This family’s gone straight to Hell!” Grandpa whips his face around to glare at me, like he needs a new target, but I step back into the house.

  Seems more like Hell has come to us, if you ask me.

  That night, Alma and I hang out with Uncle Eddie where he’s sprawled on a mattress on the floor of Nana’s old bedroom, listening to Rick on the radio.

  Got myself some new friends: the three Jackson kids from next door—well, out here, next door’s half a mile away. Anyhow, these kids brought me some blackberries they picked, just outta the kindness of their hearts. Almost made me cry when Becky—she’s the littlest one—gave me a hug.

  Her brother Jed—he’s about twelve—says he wants to go huntin’ with me someday. He’s killed rabbits before, but I’m gonna show him how to get some quail. And that Timmy is a cut-up, always pullin’ tricks on his brother. I’ve gotten where I really look forward to seein’ those kids. I gave them some of my figs and potatoes, made a little wooden doll for Becky. They’re a bright spot in my life—one of the only bright spots I got.

  One thing that’s not so bright is these radio people who keep talkin’ bout FEMA camps, FEMA camps. There’s all these rumors on the radios that the gov’ment’s herding people into camps, but so far, no one I know has seen one.

  I ask them, “Do you know anyone who got taken to one? Do you even know anyone who disappeared?”

  “Well, no,” they say.

  “Why would the gov’ment bother?” is what I wonder. People been talkin’ about FEMA camps for twenty years. I ain’t believin’ it ’til I see it for myself.

  Uncle Eddie clicks off the radio and blows out his candle. He whacks at his pillow and rolls over with his back to us.

 
; “Doesn’t seem like the government’s organized enough to have FEMA camps,” he says.

  “They’re not,” says Alma.

  And that’s what scares the bejesus out of me.

  No government, evil invaders, running out of water, bad weather, no medicine, no outside help. I could go on all night.

  CHAPTER 5

  After dinner the next evening, Alma and I go to our room to change into long-sleeve shirts before we go do patrol duty. Being shirtless, we can’t resist feeling each other up. I just want to roll around in bed with Alma and kiss her all over and get hard and come inside her, but we don’t have time. All this responsibility crushes us sometimes.

  My dick isn’t crushed, though. It’s so hard it hurts me. Alma with her beautiful breasts all bare and calling to me. Man!

  I turn away and try to think of other shit, like Grandpa. He’s a dick-crusher.

  Out on the front stoop, I load two bolt-action rifles. The half-moon’s already out, so I can see all right. Sometimes the dark is almost opaque. Seems like even Hell wouldn’t be as dark as that, what with the hellfire and all. Though now, these rogue northern lights give us a little relief from the darkness.

  “This gun has a bigger kick than the ones we’ve been shooting.” I hand Alma a rifle.

  “Does it?” she says, like she’s saying, “No shit, Sherlock.” She’s a good shooter, Alma. We used to practice together, but we can’t waste bullets on practice anymore. If we ever see a squirrel, we’ll shoot it to eat, but people already killed all the squirrels around us. I hope squirrels are surviving somewhere. I wouldn’t like a world with no squirrels in it.

  Alma puts her warm hand on my face, I kiss her cheek, and then we head out to patrol around the edges of our neighborhood. It’s four big blocks—people call them square blocks, but they’re long rectangles. Some guys walk in opposite directions, but Alma and I, we go together. We’d be too worried about each other if we didn’t.

  Uncle Eddie’s idea of having more patrollers at night isn’t working out. Between adding daytime patrols and scouting our perimeter, people won’t do extra night shifts. And all the new people Jack was going to train have good reasons why they can’t patrol—kids, age, illness, whatever.