If Darkness Takes Us Read online

  IF DARKNESS TAKES US

  BRENDA MARIE SMITH

  CONTENTS

  Share Your Thoughts

  Our Southern Fried Guarantee

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part II

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  III. Present Day

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Share Your Thoughts

  Our Southern Fried Guarantee

  Do You Know About Our Bi-Monthly Zine?

  Also by SFK Press

  SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

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  If Darkness Takes Us

  Copyright © 2019 by Brenda Marie Smith

  * * *

  Published by

  Southern Fried Karma, LLC

  Atlanta, GA

  www.sfkpress.com

  * * *

  Books are available in quantity for promotional or premium use. For

  information, email [email protected].

  * * *

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information retrieval or storage system, without the prior written consent of the publisher.

  * * *

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  * * *

  ISBN: 978-1-970137-83-5

  eISBN: 978-1-970137-84-2

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2019942234

  * * *

  Cover design by Olivia M. Croom. Cover art: old woman by fantom_rd; pylon by kstudija. Interior by April Ford.

  * * *

  Printed in the United States of America.

  To Aaron & J.D.

  * * *

  Never has a mother had more inspiring sons.

  “All you young, wild girls

  You’ll be the death of me,

  The death of me . . . ”

  * * *

  —From the song “Young Girls,”

  as performed by Bruno Mars

  PART ONE

  ONE

  NO MATTER how desperately a mother loves you, she can only put up with so much. And so, the day came when Mother Nature lashed out against us.

  I understood where Nature was coming from. My family never listened to me either, which is why I didn’t tell them about the guns I’d bought.

  The whole thing started with the train wreck.

  On a Friday in early October, the young adults in my family went to the Oklahoma-Texas game up in Dallas—a big football rivalry around here. They dragged my husband, Hank the Crank, along with them, leaving me in South Austin with my grandchildren.

  At the time, I was glad to see Hank go. He’d been making me crazy since he retired: hovering like a gnat; micromanaging my coffee-making; griping at me for reading instead of waiting attentively for him to spout something terse. Lord, I needed a break from that man. The three-day trip to Dallas seemed perfect.

  I wasn’t a built-in-babysitter type of grandma, and I only saw my four grandkids together as a group on birthdays and holidays. For weeks I’d been excited about spending a long weekend alone with them.

  A cruel trick sometimes, getting what you ask for.

  After dinner as dusk turned to darkness, my seventeen-year-old grandson, Keno, started tinkering with a little robot he was building for school. Milo, who’d been playing Frisbee out back with Harry the dog, slouched inside, closing the door quickly before the whimpering dog could get in.

  Harry pressed his nose against the door glass, smearing it with dog slobber, and giving me a pleading look. I shook my head at him.

  “Keno,” Milo said, “let’s play a game on the Wii.”

  “Hmm?” Keno kept tweaking the robot. His real name was Joaquin, but we called him Keno because he was clever with numbers, a fact that endeared him to his gambling granddad. But science was Keno’s true love.

  “The Wii! Let’s play the Wii!” Milo said, exasperated.

  “I bought a tennis game for you guys,” I said.

  “Tennis? I don’t wanna play tennis.” Like so many twelve-year old boys, Milo would have preferred a game with explosions.

  “Come on,” I said. “It’ll be fun.”

  I’d already set things up, so I switched on the TV and console and gave a quick demonstration of how to play—or more like how to flub up—the game.

  “No, Nana. Not like that.” Milo grabbed the controller from my hands. Keno set his unfinished robot aside and jumped up to join Milo. Soon they were bouncing around in front of the TV and laughing, swinging their arms all over the place.

  “I wanna play,” said six-year-old Mazie from her seat on the floor, surrounded by her dolls and their regalia. “Why can’t I play?”

  “You can play next, Mazie. Tasha, don’t you want to play?”

  “Naw,” said fifteen-year-old Natasha, not looking up from where she sprawled across an easy chair, flicking the screen on her iPhone, her long legs draped over the seat’s arm.

  “You don’t want to miss out, do you?” I said, but Tasha was too absorbed in texting to answer me. “Tasha, I’m talking to you.”

  “What?” She tucked her phone under her arm and grimaced at me.

  “I want you to join the rest of us.”

  “Whatever.” She went back to her phone.

  “Watch your attitude,” I said, but the little twerp ignored me.

  The boys played virtual tennis while I flipped through the latest magazine from Greenpeace on my laptop, half enjoying the kids and half worrying about the overly warm, acidic oceans. I wanted to be
in a good mood, so I put the laptop away.

  I sat back to savor my grandkids, the children of my daughters. Tasha and Keno looked so much like their mother, Erin—same dusky skin and dark hair, same Roman noses and big eyes, though Keno’s were green and Tasha’s were brown. Milo and Mazie were light-haired and blue-eyed like their mom, Jeri, but their round faces and big features came straight from their father. My three stepsons had no kids, none that I knew of anyway.

  “Y’all want a snack?” I said. “I’ve got some—"

  A hideously loud crash-bang rang through the night. My heart took a flying leap. A brilliant light flashed across the sky and lit up the room through the rattling windows. We all shot to our feet. Milo and Mazie screamed.

  “What the—” Tasha cried.

  “Holy shit!” Keno shouted. I was too shaken to say a word.

  An ear-smashing roar and clang rose from the direction of the train tracks, a few blocks away. I often heard loud bangs from those tracks, but this cacophonous crunch of metal on metal, coupled with an endless screech, sounded like a train wreck.

  To the frantic rumble of the unrelenting noise, the kids and I ran out the front door. A fireball shooting high above the tracks was so bright it nearly blinded me. It illuminated South Austin’s tree-covered sprawl like a phalanx of klieg lights at the Super Bowl.

  A great gust of heat slammed into us, filling my lungs with scorched air. I coughed and slapped at my head, thinking my hair might have caught fire, while I frantically counted my grandkids, half-expecting to see them ablaze.

  Blinking fast, trying to clear remnants of white flame from my vision, I shouted, “Get in the house. Now!” Keno herded them inside.

  Neighbors also rushed out their doors to gape at the fire. We’d had so many fast-moving fires around Austin lately due to the drought—whole neighborhoods catching flame in mere minutes. And at the crossing, I’d watched many trains pass bearing warnings: “Hazard!” “Flammable!” “Poison!”

  The head of our neighborhood watch, Jack Jeffers, jogged toward me beneath a cloud of smoke that looked green in the glare of the halogen street lamps. A shower of sparks and embers rained down a block or two behind him.

  “Y’all better evacuate, Bea,” he said. I looked him in the eye and swallowed.

  “On my way, Mr. Jeffers. Thank you.”

  He ran off, yelling to others along the block, “Please evacuate now! That fire could spread fast.” I squinted toward the fire. I couldn’t see much with so many trees in the way, although it looked like the fire was on the tracks and not the houses that sat nearer to us. But it could spread like... well, like wildfire.

  My old, shaky heart lurched along inside me. I ordered myself to calm down. At least the rest of the family was two hundred miles away in Dallas. That helped. But my grandchildren. God. How could I be calm and get them out of here if I was on the verge of a heart attack? It had been ages since I’d managed a bevy of kids in an emergency.

  “Put your shoes on,” I said to the grandkids, who were staring out the window when I hurried back inside. “Grab the bags you brought with you and your jackets. Let’s go for a... for a ride.”

  Mazie, that wispy little blonde thing, cried out, “Ow! My eyes!”

  My racing heart plummeted. I bent down to the child, my hands shaking as I pulled her to me. The skin around her eyes was bright red where she’d rubbed it raw. She blinked at me, having trouble keeping her eyes open.

  “Someone, get a wet washcloth. Quick!”

  Tasha darted into the bathroom. Lately she never volunteered for anything, but she adored her little cousin.

  “Mazie, do your eyes hurt? Can you see?” I held my breath, dreading her response.

  “There’s pink spots all over,” she squealed. God Almighty, did she burn her retinas?

  “Does the pink go away when you close your eyes, honey?”

  “Only a little,” Mazie whimpered. Tasha returned with a damp washcloth.

  “Close them tight, Mazie.” I tilted her head back and pressed the cloth over her eyes. “Keep them closed. We’ll see if resting makes them better.” A lot of good this washcloth would do for a retinal burn.

  “I want my mama,” she whined.

  “I know, sweetheart. You can call your mom after we get on the road. Tasha will help put your shoes on.”

  “I don’t wanna go out there!” Mazie hollered.

  “You don’t need to be afraid,” I said, though I was plenty afraid.

  I ran to the kitchen and snatched up a gallon of water, my purse, my bag of medications, and a change of clothes from the dryer. I looked around for my glasses, then found them on my face. I switched off the TV and most of the lights.

  “Ready, kids?” I felt I was forgetting something important, but I couldn’t think what.

  Keno and Milo came sliding down the banister loaded up with bags, two of which tumbled to the floor ahead of them. Tasha clomped down the stairs after the boys, lugging a wad of jackets. She picked up the Barbie doll from the floor.

  “Here, Mazie. Your doll will make you feel better, right?” Tasha said.

  “Maybe.”

  I took the washcloth from Mazie’s eyes and tucked it into her hand. I wanted to cradle her, but we had to get gone.

  “Better, sweetie?”

  “A little.”

  That didn’t sound good.

  The kids and I gathered at the door. I took a deep breath, trying to slow my heart before it raced away without me.

  “Okay, here we go. Do not look at the fire, whatever you do!”

  The three oldest kids stared at me, wide-eyed. Mazie covered her eyes with her hand.

  Though it had only been minutes since the crash, the outside air was smoky and rank. Squealing sirens filled the night, speeding from several directions and converging on the nearest train crossing. Mazie hesitated with her eyes shut tight in the doorway, so I took her quivering hand and hustled her to the car.

  The wind blew from the west, which put our house right in the path of any toxic fumes that might be coming off the train. The fire seemed as bright as a gigantic welder’s arc. I had to close my eyes for a moment before I could see to start the car. My fingers trembled, jangling the keys.

  I backed the car out to aim us to the east just as Jack Jeffers ran past, gesturing at me to roll down my window. “I’d be surprised if our houses burn up,” he said. “Should be okay to come back tomorrow.”

  I was hoping the same thing until I reached the intersection at Dittmar Road, the little boulevard that borders my neighborhood. A throng of squealing emergency vehicles was backing up on Dittmar in front of us, including a slew of hazmat trucks.

  Hazmat trucks?

  “Gotta turn around, kids.” The street was jamming up with cars, so I had to jockey to and fro to get turned around. Jesus, my hands shook so much I could barely accomplish this turn.

  As I drove back down our street to leave the neighborhood by another route, we passed three men in front of the Belding house, unloading an ice chest from their truck. One scraggly guy had a bottle under his arm. It looked like tequila—Jose Cuervo.

  They were settling in to party? Now of all times? Dumbasses.

  The Beldings’ teenage daughter ran out their front door, yelling so loud that we heard her through our closed windows.

  “I’m going, whether you do or not!” She ran ahead of us to jump into a car full of teenagers, who were hanging out windows, shouting and waving.

  Mr. Belding stood on his door stoop in greasy coveralls, his long hair in a messy ponytail. He waved a dismissive hand at the girl and lit a smoke.

  We’d just made it out of my neighborhood when Tasha said, “Where’s Harry?”

  My chest squeezed. Harry was still in the backyard.

  “Oh no! Harry! I’ll have to go back.”

  Why did I have to forget our dog? But Mazie’s eyes! I veered into an empty parking lot and jerked the car to a stop. With kids hurling questions at me, I jumped out and ru
shed to Mazie’s door, yanking it open.

  “Mazie, how are your eyes now?”

  She squeaked a nonverbal response while I cupped her little face in my hands.

  “Do you still have pink blobs or pain?” I asked her. “Your eyes are better?”

  “Yes, Nana.” She wiped tears off her cheeks.

  “Are you sure, sweetie? We can go to a doctor.”