“You didn’t hear him coming?”
“No. I had earbuds on.”
“Earbuds?”
“I was listening to music on my phone, or else he wouldn’t have gotten so close to me with that box cutter. I guess I was lucky I felt him coming anyway and turned around before he could really do a lot of damage. Who knows what he was going to do. Maybe cut my throat. What about you?”
“I was down here taking a nap.”
“Oh. Because we were so loud.”
“It’s okay. I’m used to it.”
She stopped halfway to the TV and looked back at him.
“What is it?” Greg said.
“Why weren’t we affected? Something turned Barnes crazy. My neighbor Don Taylor, too. And Mrs. Landry across the street. But nothing happened to us. You, me, or that woman in the SUV. I also saw a kid named Brody earlier. He didn’t look affected, either.”
“I don’t know. I was just trying to survive Barnes.” He touched his bandaged head again almost instinctively. “What did the TV say?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
She shook her head. “I got the feeling it all happened so fast that no one knew what was happening and no one had time to figure it out.”
“Because they were too busy trying to kill each other. Or not get killed.”
“Yeah. I think that pretty much sums it up.”
She remembered the frozen stares of the two anchors, the woman with too much makeup on the home shopping network, and the others. The calm before the storm, as it turned out, before the hurricane ripped through the city.
But was it just the city? Was the rest of the state affected?
The nation?
The world?
Step one: Know your objective.
Step two: Gather intel.
Step three: Formulate a plan.
And finally, step four: Execute that plan.
She had step one down pat but was struggling with step two. It was going to be a little difficult to accomplish that one if she couldn’t leave the house. Worse, she didn’t have any connections to the outside world.
It was times like these that Emily realized just how much dependence she had on her little gadgets. When was the last time she bothered to actually memorize someone’s phone number? Or opened a reference book for information? Or did something besides hop onto the Internet and Google it?
“Something happened, something bad,” Emily said. “But not to us. Why not us?”
Greg shook his head. “I dunno. I just renovate people’s houses.” He let out a big sigh of frustration. “This whole thing’s way over my head.” He nodded past her. “Maybe there’s something on TV that’ll give us some answers.”
She didn’t actually believe that—if her phone wasn’t working anymore, what were the chances the TVs were still broadcasting?—but she kept those doubts to herself. Instead, she resumed leading Greg across the room.
“This is your husband’s?” the contractor asked.
“Uh huh.”
“It’s one hell of a man cave. What does he do? If you don’t mind me asking?”
“He owns a security company called RistWorks.”
“Rist? That’s your last name. Ristler.”
“Yes.” Then, before he could ask her any more personal questions she’d rather not answer, “Greg, do you have family?”
“In the city? No. I moved here to partner up with Barnes. I was seeing someone, but it never got too serious.”
Good, she thought, because lack of family or a girlfriend meant Greg wasn’t going to run out on her. She should have felt guilty about how she was using him, but she didn’t. Besides, by staying here with her, he was saving himself, too. If the streets outside already resembled a killing zone and they were way out here beyond the city limits, she couldn’t imagine what it was like inside the city limits right now.
The TV remote was where she’d left it. Emily put the nail gun down on the table and picked the remote up and flicked the big screen on.
The first channel that popped up was the local news, except there was just static instead of picture.
“That’s not good,” Greg said quietly as he stood beside her.
Understatement, Greg. Understatement.
Click!
More snow on the TV screen.
Greg didn’t say anything this time, and neither did she as she clicked again.
A black screen with the words: TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES. PLEASE STAND BY. scrolled across the screen.
At least it was better than just static.
Click!
More static.
Click!
An empty black screen.
Click! Click! Click!
A sea of white snow or empty black screens (in some cases, empty blue screen) greeted her with every click of the remote. A familiar phrase from an old song sprang to the forefront of her mind: “57 Channels (And Nothing On).”
Except it wasn’t 57 channels. It was more like a hundred.
Or maybe two hundred.
Finally, she gave up and put the remote down. “There’s nothing out there.”
“What does this mean?” Greg asked.
“I don’t know,” Emily said. “I don’t know.”
And that scares me, she thought but kept it to herself.
First the phones and now the TV.
Gone. All gone. Just like that.
She could see the hallmarks of an attack when she saw one, and this was definitely one.
Who? was the question.
Better yet: How?
Greg drank one of Cole’s cans of Red Bull, then chased it down with a bottle of 5-Hour Energy. She’d never seen Cole do that and hoped the combination of two energy drinks one after another didn’t have some side effect that would make Greg useless. That would make all her efforts to keep him here with her for naught.
Emily had given up finding anything on TV so left it tuned to one of the 24-hour news channels, hoping something would pop up other than a blue screen with the words Please Stand By.
She checked her phone every few minutes, waiting for Cole to call back and trying to call him. Neither things happened. At least she could still keep the mobile charged, which she did the first chance she got. The biggest reason phone batteries drained was the direct result of the device trying to find a signal.
But it couldn’t find one. Not a damn thing.
What is going on out there?
“Still nothing?” Greg asked from across the room. He was on his second can of Red Bull.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
He shrugged, but she knew what he really wanted to say: “I’m sorry your husband is out there, and probably dead. Or crazed.”
“I don’t hear anything out there,” Greg said, maybe hoping to change the subject. “Why is that?”
“The walls.”
“They’re soundproof?”
“No, but it’s a lot thicker back here. Let’s just say Cole didn’t exactly adhere to specs when he had this room built.”
“No wonder you didn’t hear us beating the crap out of each other upstairs. I must have screamed a half dozen times.”
He touched his bandaged temple and winced again. She wanted to tell him he should probably stop doing that.
“I definitely called Barnes all kinds of names when he tagged me the first time.”
“I was asleep.”
“You do that a lot?”
“Not before, but these days…” She sighed and sat down on the couch and stared at the screen. It read the same text as it did the last time she looked: Please Stand By.
“Two months?” Greg said.
She looked over. “What?”
“You’re two months pregnant?”
She pursed a smile and nodded. “Yes.” For effect, Emily reached down and touched her stomach.
“Boy or girl?”
“We don’t know yet. Co
le and I want it to be a surprise.”
She gave Greg a long look. It didn’t occur to her that she had never really done that even though this wasn’t the first time they’d met. But like most people that came and went in her life, Emily had learned long ago to compartmentalize. Not everything was worth remembering, and not everyone was worth reading. Contractors came and went, and she hadn’t expected Greg or Barnes to be any different.
Greg wasn’t exactly a young man. He was in his early thirties, and she knew early on when he and Barnes came over to price quote the job that Barnes was the more experienced of the two. It was the other man who did most of the talking, and in the days since they had begun the renovation, she usually saw Greg with his earbuds on, listening to music. Like most men who had known each other for a while, the two rarely wasted time with inane chatter while they worked. If Greg hadn’t told her they were best friends, she wouldn’t have figured it out. Unless, of course, she’d paid closer attention to their silent interactions, which she hadn’t.
She did that now, attempting to really understand a man who could very well decide if she made it through this—whatever this ended up being—or not.
Step one: Know your objective.
Step two: Gather intel.
Fortunately, Greg was too busy looking at the metal door and didn’t notice how hard she was scrutinizing him.
“Have you ever been married?” she asked.
Greg shook his head. “Not yet.”
“Close?”
“Once, but…” He shrugged. “It didn’t work out.” He turned back to her. “Is marriage all it’s cracked up to be?”
“I guess it depends on whether you’ve found the right one.”
“Did you? With your husband?”
“I think so, yes.”
He grinned. “You’re not sure?”
She smiled. “Yes, I’m sure.”
“That’s good,” he said almost absently as he looked back at the door.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Maybe we should find out what’s happening outside. We’ve been in here for a while, and there’s nothing on TV.”
“It’s safer in here.”
“Maybe, but there’s no answers in here. That’s what we want, right? Answers?”
She nodded. He had a point.
Step two: Gather intel.
“How long have we been in here anyway?” Greg asked. “An hour?”
“About two, I think,” she said, glancing down at her watch. “It’ll start to get dark soon, so we’ll have to be careful. And quiet.”
“I’ll go first,” Greg said, walking to the door with the golf club held in front of him like a sword.
Emily sighed and got up. She didn’t really want to go back out there. Whatever was happening, it couldn’t touch her in here.
So why was she going out?
Because step two was to gather intelligence.
And also, she didn’t want Greg to get himself killed.
Chapter 6
The soft click of the metal door closing behind her was a lot louder than she remembered. Of course, it could have just been the pervading silence, not just within the walls of her house but also beyond. It sounded very much as if all of Arrow Bay had gone to sleep about two hours before it usually did every night.
She looked down at her watch’s illuminated hands: 7:17 p.m. They’d been inside the backroom a lot longer than she had thought, though it’d only felt like a few minutes.
She could see the lights in her front yard, equipped with dust-to-dawn automatic sensors, already beginning to glow to life. The same for the houses across the street and the solar-powered streetlights along the roads. Even if the power were to go out tonight—and she had a feeling that was coming next—then they would still have light. She wasn’t entirely sure if that was a good thing or not, though. If they didn’t have power to see with, then neither would those affected by whatever had befallen her neighbors.
Greg’s white van was parked on the curb where she last saw it, and though she couldn’t really see him, she was almost certain the headless mailman was where Don had left him. Mrs. Landry, too, lay just beyond one of her windows.
The impossibly quiet streets didn’t offer up any hints as to what had happened while she was hiding in the backroom.
“Quiet,” Greg whispered as he walked in front of her, the bright orange nail gun clutched in one hand like a gun. “Too quiet.”
She smiled, knowing that he couldn’t see. Greg’s comment was exactly what someone in a horror movie would say as they and their companions traveled across a dark house. Unlike the automated lights outside, her home still needed someone to turn on the switches. Which was something she hadn’t done when she escaped into the backroom. They also didn’t do it now as they moved across the silent and dark living room. Lights, after all, indicated someone was home. Right now that wasn’t something she wanted the crazies out there to know.
But Greg was right. It was quiet. Too quiet. It shouldn’t have been this quiet. Where were the people? The chaos? Right now she would settle for something. Anything. Even sporadic gunfire would tell her that she and Greg weren’t the only two people still left.
The front door was still intact, the bookcase she had placed over one of the windows exactly where she’d left it. She checked the kitchen to her right. There was a door on the other end which opened out into the slate-tiled walkway. The backyard and boat slip was beyond that. The lights had also come on behind the house, the halos of illumination visible through the security glass.
In front of her, Greg was reaching for one of the light switches on the wall.
“Don’t turn on the lights,” she said quickly.
Greg froze. “Why not?”
“Maybe the reason no one’s tried to come inside before is because they don’t think anyone’s home.”
“You mean the psychos?”
“Yes.”
“Good point.” He pulled his hand away from the switch quickly, as if afraid it might try to shock him.
“I need to check the backyard, just in case.”
“Why?”
“Just to make sure.”
“I’ll go—”
“No,” she said before he could finish. “Watch the front door and windows.”
He squinted at her in the semidarkness. “I should go.”
“I’ll be okay. You can still see me from here.”
He nodded reluctantly. “Be careful.”
“You too.”
She hurried across the living room and into the kitchen, then moved through the darkening space to the back door. The small lights that lined the walkway had come on, providing a winding road to the covered boat slip next to the lake. Two solar-powered lampposts stood guard at the other end. Cole’s eighteen-footer was housed inside the boat house, the white paint of its bow visible from thirty yards away.
But it was the lights on the other waterfront houses across the inlet from theirs, in a subdivision called Pebble Creek, that she focused on. Like hers, the lights on them had begun to perk to life as night began its descent, but the interiors that she could make out remained dark. There were always people who turned their lights off early, but never all of them at once. The same was true for the house to the left and right of her.
She did a quick check of the door and was shocked to find it unlocked. Or maybe she shouldn’t have been so shocked. After all, there was no reason to lock it during the day, and in all the chaos with Don and Greg, it had never occurred to her to lock every door into the house. Retreating into Cole’s backroom was always the better idea.
She quickly locked the door now, not that she thought it would keep anyone like an adrenaline-fueled Don out. All he’d have to do was break the glass on the top and reach in, just like he’d attempted with the front window. Or he didn’t even have to bother with that; a couple of kicks in the right spots would crater the doorknob and give him access to her house.
Emily reache
d for one of the dinner table chairs and slipped it underneath the doorknob. Not exactly the most high-tech of locks, but it’d make it just a little bit more difficult for someone to bust in. If nothing else, they would have to exert more effort, and in her experience, most criminal acts were crimes of opportunity. Make it a little harder for them, and they usually went somewhere else—somewhere easier. Not that she thought Don or George were your average criminals. She didn’t even know what the hell they were, and maybe that was what made them so dangerous.
Step two: Gather intel.
Yeah, she was going to have to work on that one.
She hurried back to the living room, where Greg was plastered against the wall in the dark, next to the door. He was peeking out at the front yard through the curtains. His eyes were darting left and right, searching for something out there. For the psychos, as he’d called them. She guessed that was as good a name as any. Don sure as hell looked and was acting like a psycho earlier. Mrs. Landry, too, so whatever had happened to them didn’t care about gender.
As she moved across the room toward Greg, she remembered Brody, the lanky teen, and wondered again if he had made it. Had he reached the front gate? There was a control panel that controlled the gate, which she assumed the kid would have the access codes for. Or he could have just climbed the ten-foot fence. It wouldn’t exactly be easy, but Brody was tall enough and not out of shape, so it was doable.
“Everything okay?” Greg whispered as she slid against the other side of the window across from him.
No. I forgot to lock the door, and we’re lucky no one came in to lie in wait in the darkness for us, she thought but said, “Everything’s fine.”
He nodded, relieved.
She looked out the window at the front yard. She could make out Mrs. Landry’s body just under the windowsill but chose not to linger on it. She’d already seen all she needed to, and staring at it some more was pointless. She’d liked the old housewife well enough, but it wasn’t like they were best friends or anything.
“What did you see back there?” Greg asked.
“It’s like out here,” she said. “The lights inside the houses I could see across the lake are all dark. Like no one’s home.”
Fall of Man | Book 2 | Homefront Page 5