“You weren’t useless,” she tells me.
“We had to have our asses saved by the Queen of Darkness,” I remind her.
“Would it have been better if you actually pulled the trigger and killed that boy?”
That gives me pause for thought. My father always told me you should never draw a weapon unless you are fully prepared to use it. I was not prepared. And maybe that’s a good thing.
We catch up with Jacqui and Garrett, who have already gone upstairs and are checking out our game room. Jacqui’s in the middle of a game on the classic Twilight Zone machine. “My life, in convenient pinball form,” Jacqui says, slamming the flippers and keeping the metal ball bouncing. Garrett’s examining a Pac-Man console, and declares it lame.
“Forgive him, Lord, for he knoweth not what he says,” I say to the ceiling. Alyssa challenges him to a game. He plays it once and is addicted.
I notice that Jacqui, however, has given up on her own machine, with a ball still in the chute. She’s sprawled out on a beanbag, looking even more feverish than before.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine,” she says. “Leave me the hell alone.”
I go to the bathroom and come back with some Advil for her. “The antibiotics will take a day or so to kick in. This’ll bring down the fever.”
She takes the bottle and downs three with a swig of water. She doesn’t thank me this time. Maybe she rations gratitude the way the rest of us ration water.
I go downstairs to watch TV with my mom for a bit. She’s not watching the news; instead she’s watching Back to the Future, which you can’t not watch when you channel surf across it. Doc Brown’s talking about the 1.21 gigawatts needed for time travel, but mispronouncing it “jigawatts,” which always bothered me.
It doesn’t surprise me that she’s not watching the news, which always emphasizes the gloom and doom. We get enough of that from my father. My mom generally subscribes to the more positive, optimistic school of thought, and my dad believes the doomsayers are underplaying the truth. I guess you could say they balance each other out.
Mom lowers the volume and turns to me. “You need to make things right with your father,” she says.
“Now?”
“It will only be harder later.”
And I know she’s right.
I find him welding something new in the garage. Some sort of hybrid shovel with an ax at the opposite end. I’m not sure whether it’s a tool or a weapon. It doesn’t look very practical for either. I stare at his back for a while, cogitating, unsure of how to begin.
“—Dad,” I finally manage.
He disengages the welder without turning around. “Yes, Kelton?” he says frigidly.
“I need to talk to you about what happened at the beach.”
“Let me guess—the desalination plants failed and people rioted.”
“Was it on the news?”
He lifts his visor and shakes his head. “There are too many things to report now for the news to catch it all. But if you look at the history of crisis mismanagement, it’s an easy prediction.”
“Yeah, well, we didn’t actually see it go down, but by the looks of it, it was pretty bad.” I clear my throat and finally get to what I’m really there to say. “I’m sorry I put you on the spot back there. But you really didn’t give me much of a choice.”
“We’re leaving tomorrow morning,” he says quickly, neither accepting nor rejecting my apology.
“The bug-out?” I say.
He nods. “It’s time.”
“But what about Brady?”
“We can’t wait for him anymore, Kelton.” I can tell that this was not an easy decision for him. “I have to believe that he took at least some of the lessons we taught him to heart,” my dad says, “and that he kept his own emergency supplies—maybe even has his own bug-out.”
“What about Alyssa and Garrett?” I say, less worried about Jacqui than I am about them. But I knew the answer before I asked.
“We can’t bring them,” my father says firmly. And this time I know there’s no getting around him.
“Then let them stay here,” I suggest. “There’ll be water and food—and we can teach them how to use the security system.”
Dad considers. He doesn’t shut me down, which is a good sign. I give one more push.
“We can’t just throw them out on the street. . . .”
Then he meets my gaze, but rather than his typical bone-chilling glare, his eyes are different. Shimmering and glassy. Vulnerable. An honest display of emotion that I’ve never seen before. And in this single look I feel as if I’ve opened his personal .zip file; suddenly years of compressed emotional information comes bursting out, and I’m hit with an overwhelming truth. This is what lies beneath his indignation. All of the larger-than-life doomsday toys I adored as a kid, the anger and manipulation that pushed away Brady and threaten to push away my mother, are all just the threads of a veil woven to hide his own terror.
As a kid you idolize your parents. You think they’re perfect, because they’re the yardstick by which you measure the rest of the world, and yourself. Then as teenager they just piss you off, because you realize that not only are they not perfect, but they may be even a little more screwed up than you. But there’s that moment when you realize they’re not superheroes, or villains. They’re painfully, unforgivably human. The question is, can you forgive them for being human anyway?
Like an exposed raw nerve, he just stands there, holding that bizarre hybrid terror tool, and I realize that thing is the physical manifestation of everything he fears. And I don’t know what to say except, “The booby traps work.”
He’s caught off guard by that. “They do?”
“Yeah, Jacqui almost fell into one. Never saw it coming.”
He snaps out of his zip-file state and smiles, as I hoped he would. “Awesome!” he says, like some little kid. “I mean, it’s reassuring to know that it worked.”
“She thought it was really cool,” I tell him. “Even if it almost maimed her.”
He looks to his weird tool thingy. “Let me finish this,” he says, the tension between us dissipated. “I’ll be out in a bit, and I can show your friends all the features of the house.”
I decide not to tell him that I already have.
15) Alyssa
“All circuits are busy now. Please try your call again later.”
The voice sounds like Siri crossed with Google Maps. Cheerful, sure of itself, and utterly soulless. I’m trying to call hospitals near Laguna Beach, hoping to track down my parents, but that would require actually getting through to the hospitals. I hang up and try again.
“All circuits are busy now. Please try your call again later.”
So is Verizon as dead as most people’s phones now? How can circuits be busy if most phones in Southern California have run out of juice? I hang up and send a text to Garrett.
Ignore this, I’m just testing the system.
The text goes through. He texts back K, because “OK” is too long for our modern world. Satisfied that at least some cell towers are still in operation, I try one more call. I dial 911.
“All circuits are busy now. Please try your call again later.”
I fight the urge to smash my phone, knowing that the momentary satisfaction will not be worth the loss. There’s a bright side to this, though, that is actually a little bit comforting. Because if I’m trying this hard to find my parents, it’s likely they’re trying equally hard to get through to us. It would be much worse if phone service was working perfectly and we still didn’t hear from them.
I try to take my mind off it all by checking what the others are up to. Jacqui’s still passed out on a beanbag. Kelton’s father is out in the garage making masculine metallic noises, and Kelton seems to be everywhere at once, like a watchdog obsessively checking that everything in his world is secure.
“You okay?” he asks for, like, the third time in an hour, as I pass him on the stairs.
“Yeah,” I tell him. “Still good.”
It’s endearing that he’s worried about me, but enough is enough. Kelton McCracken, endearing? I have stumbled into a very strange universe.
I can see Mrs. McCracken out in the greenhouse, busy with their hothouse tomatoes, and whatever else they’re growing out there. While my mom stress-cleans, it looks like Kelton’s mom stress-gardens. Then I spot Garrett in the dining room, staring blankly out the window. I watch as he picks up a decorative bowl from the dining room table and moves toward the front door. I have no clue what he’s up to. He pushes through the door, and as much as my big sister instincts want to stop him, he moves with such intent, I just watch to see what he’ll do, quietly shadowing him.
He goes out the front security gate and to our driveway next door, where he puts down the bowl, takes the canteen that hangs over his shoulder, and pours its entire contents into the bowl. And now I get it.
It’s water for Kingston.
Garrett just stands there, not wanting to go all the way up to our front door. It’s still wide open, and though I don’t see or hear any of the dogs, they could be anywhere. They could be gone for good, and it pains me to think we might never see Kingston again.
Garrett, turning around, finally sees me. His cheeks go rosy, embarrassed. “It was always my job to make sure Kingston had water,” he says, unable to meet my eye. “But I always forgot, so Mom would do it for me. But now she can’t.”
I can tell that he needed to do this for a whole lot of reasons. And although it’s not our water to give, sometimes doing the right thing means doing the wrong thing first. With that in mind, I realize there’s something that I have to do, too. A thing where the right far outweighs the wrong. But I realize I’ll need an accomplice.
“Garrett, I have a mission for you.”
“A mission?” Garrett is instantly interested.
“I need you to ask Kelton what chess boxing is.”
He looks at me, confused. “I don’t want to know what chess boxing is.”
“It doesn’t matter. I need you to have Kelton show you.”
Knowing Kelton, this should buy me at least an hour out of his scrutiny. And with Mrs. McCracken occupied in the garden, and her husband playing with sharp objects in the garage, I’ll have just the window I need.
Garrett agrees, not getting it, but trusting me.
• • •
We slip back into the house and I immediately locate the little trash bin near the foyer. I dig through tissues, wrappers, and bits of paper until I finally find the pink flyer—the one that was on the door, giving the specifics of the community meeting.
I read it over, this time more carefully. It’s at the Burnsides’ house. It started half an hour ago.
I grab Kelton’s backpack, empty out the school stuff, then, making sure the coast is clear, I go to the bookcase near the stairs—the entrance to the safe room.
I can’t remember which book opens the door, so I have to try a whole bunch of them until I find it. Finally the deadbolt disengages, and I pull the door open, revealing the treasure trove of survival gear. Weapons, tools, canned food, and most importantly, cases of bottled water.
I start stuffing half-liter bottles into the pack. I’m able to fit only ten in. Then I freeze, suddenly realizing that I’m not alone.
Kelton’s mom stands in the doorway.
Caught, I stammer, trying to come up with some kind of explanation, because I know how bad this must look—but Mrs. McCracken’s face softens. She offers a light, encouraging smile.
“You can fit two more in the side pockets,” she tells me, and hands me the bottles. “The meeting’s already started, so you’ll have to hurry.”
I’m so caught off guard, I can’t respond. Then, without another word, Mrs. McCracken steps away from the doorway and quietly disappears into another room, as if she never even saw me.
• • •
Walking down my own street after the events at the beach this morning has me on edge. I have this vulnerable feeling, like if I stand outside too long, something’s going to gobble me up. It’s the same way I feel when I’m waist deep in the ocean and I think I see the outline of a shark. I know it’s all in my head, but the feeling lingers all the same. So I deal with it, and wade deeper down the street. I don’t want to be seen coming out of the McCracken house, because anyone who sees me will know I’m not as thirsty as they probably are. But even if they don’t see me leaving the house, maybe they’ll know I’m hydrated just by looking at me.
There’s a kid coming down the street. My age. I know him, but not well—his name is Jacob something-or-other. I dread the moment he passes. Never have I felt so completely antisocial.
He’s dragging something on the ground. A stick of some sort. It hisses on the concrete as he drags it. He doesn’t make eye contact. He seems as uncomfortable passing me as I do passing him. And I notice that it’s not a stick that he’s dragging, but a golf club. A wooden driver.
“Hey,” he says as we pass.
“Hey,” I say back.
He goes his way, I go mine. I don’t look back. I have no idea what he plans to do with that golf club, but I know it has nothing to do with golf.
The Burnsides’ house is just around the corner. Mrs. Burnside used to have a prize-winning garden. Roses, azaleas, and bougainvillea climbing the trunks of tall palms. All that’s left are the palms, which aren’t dead yet, but everything else is gone. What was once a lawn is now a tricolored mosaic of river stones, creating an image of Kokopelli, the hunchbacked flute player of American Indian mythology—an idea Mrs. Burnside probably got on a visit to Santa Fe, or Taos, or someplace like that. I’m sure her stone-scape will win awards, too.
The door is closed but unlocked. As I enter I see that their large living room is packed with people. It seems for the most part, there’s one representative from every neighborhood family that hasn’t already left.
They’re taking stock of pooled resources, both physical and intellectual. Mrs. Jarvis claims her sister is a legitimate dowser, and can find water for a “nominal fee.” Roger Malecki says he put his entire cactus garden through his Magic Bullet blender, and extracted a gallon of water from it.
Mrs. Burnside sees me hanging by the door, and comes over to me, giving me a hug. “Allison, I’m so glad you came.” I can tell she’s genuinely pleased to see me, so I don’t correct her. “How are your parents? I was hoping to see them here.”
I take a deep breath and say, “They’re not home right now,” which is true, and doesn’t elicit either questions or concern—neither of which I could deal with in the moment.
“Well, please give them our regards, and tell them to stay safe! Things are getting strange out there.”
I heft the pack on my back and take a few steps forward. In a lull in the conversation, I try to get Mr. Burnside’s attention.
“Excuse me,” I say, but not loudly enough, because no one seems to hear me. They go on to talk about the heat, and someone suggests the cooling effect that evaporating alcohol has on the skin—although I suspect any alcohol is being otherwise employed.
“Excuse me,” I say a little louder. “I have some water.”
I have never in my life seen an entire room turn in my direction. Never have I commanded such complete attention.
“You have water?” someone says.
I flip around my backpack, open the zipper slightly, and pull out one of the bottles. “I mean—it’s not enough for everyone, but it’s better than nothing.”
They stare at me. They stare at each other.
“How much do you have?” asks Stu Leeson, with both suspicion and expectation.
Then Mr. Burnside takes control again. “Well, this is good news,” he says, and offers what I think is a bible quote, or at least a paraphrasing. “ ‘And a child shall lead them.’ ” Then he does a head count of the room. “We have seventeen households represented here. How much water do you have, Alyssa?”
“Twelve bottles. Half a liter each.”
Silence for a moment.
Then someone points out the obvious. “That means five of us won’t get bottles.”
“Now hold on,” says Burnside. “That’s not necessarily the case.”
And now everyone has an opinion.
“The math gives everyone seventy percent of a bottle.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“Families with young children should get a full bottle!”
“That’s discriminatory!”
“My wife is pregnant.”
Burnside puts up his hands. “All right, calm down!”
But the genie is already out of the lamp. Everyone begins talking among themselves. I can see alliances forming, lines in the sand being drawn—all within seconds, and all because I announced that I have a limited supply of something that all of them desperately need.
“We’ll pour it into a pot, and every family gets a measured scoop.”
“How is that fair? There are five in my family.”
“So we’ll count everyone and divide it that way.”
“What about pets?”
“Pets? Are you serious?”
“Let the girl decide!”
Everyone considers that.
“Yes,” someone else agrees. “It’s her water, let her decide who gets it.”
And for the second time in five minutes, they all turn to me.
I am not the kind of person who is easily intimidated. I can stand in front of a class and deliver an oral report fearlessly. I can debate anyone into the ground on any subject I’m passionate about. But never before have I held the fate of other human beings in my hands. Suddenly I’m timid. I’m never timid.
“Well . . . I think . . . maybe we should . . . I mean . . .”
And then Stu Leeson shouts out, “Are you seriously leaving this in the hands of a teenage girl?”
And then before I can stop myself, I blurt out, “Well, that makes sixteen instead of seventeen I have to decide between, doesn’t it?”
I don’t mean that. Or maybe I do. I don’t know. Now I have to give a bottle to the Leesons because I said that. But if I do, I’m denying somebody else. Is that fair?
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