If Darkness Takes Us Read online

  “It just—Ka-boom!—a big ball of flame. No one had a chance.”

  “Bea?” He put his arm around me. “What do you mean?”

  “Huh?” The weight of his arm on my shoulder. His earnest face in front of me. Everything was a jumble. “I gotta get up.” I mopped my wet cheeks with my fingertips. Jack grasped my arm to steady me and helped me to the door.

  When I opened it, he said, “Why don’t I walk you up the stairs?”

  “Thank you, but I’m gonna sleep in that recliner over there.” I nodded toward the recliner, and my world started spinning. “Whew!”

  Jack gripped my arm tighter. “Let me help you.”

  “No, no, I got it.” I tried to shirk his hand away, but he guided me over the threshold, sliding his fingers down my arm to squeeze my hand, light and fast.

  “I got it,” I said and wove my way to the recliner. As I flopped down into it, Jack whispered good night and reached in to lock the knob-lock as he closed the door. His boots clicked on the patio tile as he clomped away.

  “You okay down there, Nana?” Keno asked from upstairs.

  “I’m fine. Sorry.” I was as dizzy as a spinning top. I planted my foot on the floor as the room movement slowed and I passed out.

  That was the night I had my last drink for a while. I couldn’t allow myself to get plastered like that, blabbering like a maniac in the middle of the night. Plus, I was getting far too morose, and I was almost out of booze at the Pico house anyway.

  A killer hangover awaited me come morning. I felt like my head had been nuked.

  TWENTY

  MEL LEWIS’S nephew biked into our neighborhood to check on his family and invited them to move to Bastrop, where all the pine trees had burned up. The fires had created lots of newly cleared land, and people were using it to plant food.

  The Lower Colorado River was there for water and fishing. Because so many people were camped out and the wildlife had thinned from loss of habitat, hunting had been forbidden. Park rangers were trying to enforce it, though I couldn’t imagine how.

  Mel convinced two other families to move east with him and his grown sons. “The gov’ment can’t fuck with us so easy out there,” he said, whatever exactly that meant.

  I was ashamed to admit it, but I was glad to see our neighborhood empty out. It wouldn’t be long until I could open my stockpiles for some sort of systematic distribution.

  Keno and his water team went on another mission. Naturally, Tasha went along. Darla joined in too this time. In fact, the crew added wheelbarrows and more teens, including Chas. A recipe for trouble. I would have to trust that Silas and Jack could keep the kids in line.

  This time I didn’t try to stay awake. Whether this meant I was getting more sensible or more jaded on the dangers we lived with, I didn’t know—probably I was just worn out.

  Again, I went to the patio at dawn to make breakfast, but I heard no squeaking wagons on the street, saw no heads above my fence. Damn it. Breakfast was ready. Mazie and Milo woke up, but still no returning water questers.

  I fed the kids and fixed myself a plate, but I froze in my chair, not eating. I tried to remember prayers but was too distracted, straining my ears in the silence. Even the birds seemed quiet.

  Finally, when the sun had been up more than an hour, I heard wagons rolling, wheelbarrows rumbling, and feet slapping fast against the concrete. After the preternatural silence, this manic activity sounded as loud as the train wreck. I jumped up and rushed to the gate with Milo beating me there and Mazie squeaking questions.

  Keno led the pack, balancing a wheelbarrow full of gallon jugs. When he saw Milo peek through the gate, he hollered, “Open it, Milo!” and the whole crowd clambered through, huffing and puffing, pulling and tugging, until the vehicles and people were inside.

  “What the hell happened?” I asked, trying to count moving heads.

  “Ask Chas,” Keno said, clenching his fists and glowering at the pony-tailed kid.

  “Shut up, Simms!” Chas shoved Keno two feet backward.

  Silas and Jack grabbed Chas and pulled him to the back hedge. “Everyone, take five gallons of water and go home,” Jack shouted.

  What in the name of God? I rushed to Keno. “Are you alright?”

  My red-faced grandson muttered, “I’m fine.”

  The yard was full of men and teens talking loudly. “That was some fucked-up shit,” someone said.

  “All my kids, come in the house!” I cried. “The rest of you, please go home.”

  “Sorry, Bea,” Silas said as he herded the others through the gate, taking Chas by the arm and tugging him down the street. My kids and Jack followed me to the patio.

  “Fuck this shit,” Jack said as he collapsed into a chair. “We’d have to do this every other night to keep enough water for the neighborhood. Too damned dangerous and too much work.”

  “We woulda been fine if Chas wasn’t there.” Keno lowered himself to the patio tile.

  “Leave Chas alone. It wasn’t his fault!” Tasha said.

  “Was too,” Keno said.

  “Quit arguing and tell me what happened.”

  “On the way there,” Keno said, “we saw those same guys watching us, and Chas hollered, ‘What are you looking at?’”

  “Idiot,” Jack said.

  “Sounds like it.”

  “We had to run to get away from them,” Keno said.

  “I lagged behind so I could blow my air horn if those guys tried to follow us,” Jack added. He probably couldn’t run too far either, I thought.

  “It’s not Chas’s fault those guys were there,” Tasha said.

  “He didn’t have to antagonize them.”

  “Whatever.” Tasha tromped into the house and up the stairs. Darla followed her inside but stopped and sat down at the table.

  “Then,” Keno said, “when we came back those guys were waiting. They had a bunch more guys.”

  “Silas was our scout,” Jack said. “He saw them, but they didn’t see him. He came back and told us, and we had to wait them out.”

  “No wonder you were late.”

  “They left just before daylight. We hustled the rest of the way,” Jack said.

  “Practically ran with all that water, two or three miles,” said Keno.

  “There’s got to be a better way to do this.” Jack popped his gimme cap against his knee and slapped it back on his head. “We need to leave people at the well to guard it if we expect to keep it for ourselves.”

  “We could take turns living in that barn,” Keno said. “Part of it has a decent roof.”

  “Maybe,” Jack said, “but we need a truck. I should ask my friend Sam to help us with his GMC.”

  “You could.” I started pacing. “But you’d have to share water with him. You’d probably have to come up with the gas.”

  “Yeah, but we could put eighty or a hundred five-gallon bottles on that truck. Even if we give Sam half, that’s still forty, fifty bottles for us. Two hundred gallons should last several days. I’ve got gas in my shed. I’m sure others do, too. It’d probably only take a gallon per trip. We’ve all got gas in our cars. Keno, I can teach you how to siphon gas.”

  “What’s that?” Keno asked, and Jack guffawed.

  “Do y’all want to eat?” I asked.

  “Naw. See ya later.” Jack moseyed away.

  “Milo and Mazie, go inside,” Keno said.

  Milo snapped his head toward Keno, ready to argue, but he saw Keno’s stern expression and stopped.

  “I need to talk to Nana,” Keno said. “Go on.”

  “What is it?” I asked as Mazie and Milo slinked inside. Keno watched the door until the kids were clear of it. I sat down.

  “There’s another reason we were late.” Now he sat up straight. “Out at the well, we were filling water bottles, and Chas and Tasha disappeared.”

  “What? How’d you let that happen?”

  “They waited until I was busy, and they snuck into the woods. Didn’t come bac
k for two hours. Some of us went looking for them, but it was so dark. And we couldn’t shout their names, only whisper.”

  “Well, what were they doing?”

  Keno looked away. “What do you think?”

  My heart kicked me in the chest. “How . . . how do you know what they were doing?”

  Keno swung his head around and studied me for a minute. “Tasha’s clothes were all messed up. She had leaves and sticks in her hair.”

  “Shit.” I shot up and whacked the table. “Shit!” Mazie and Milo appeared in the window then ducked away when I glared at them.

  Of all the people for Tasha to fall for.

  I marched up the stairs to Tasha’s room and banged on her door, shouting her name.

  “What?”

  “You are banned from going on water trips!”

  “Leave me alone!” she yelled. I was happy to oblige.

  “This is Rick the Stick, broadcastin’ from Clifton, Texas. I know city folks have it bad, but we got it bad out here in the country, too. We don’t have medicine anymore. Colds, diabetes, back pain, rheumatism—we got no treatment for any of this stuff. We always kept going with medicine before. Blood pressures are out of control, and that can’t be good. The old and sickly folks are suffering. Bell Jones had her appendix burst and now she’s gone. She was only thirty. Hard to take, watching people die too young...

  “The Gardners have that big ranch out south of town. They’d just finished harvestin’ their hay when the sun went crazy. They had that hay stored in their barn. Well, o’ course, they didn’t have lights in that barn no more. Old Joe took his lantern out there to check on his cows. I don’t know where he set that lantern, but his old stud horse kicked that lantern into a hay bale, and Poof! The whole barn and all that hay burned fast. Old Joe barely got his horses and cows outa there. That stud horse died, and Joe ain’t doin’ so great after breathin’ all that smoke.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  48 DAYS, and no more National Guard, no returning family, no nothin’. How much longer could this go on?

  It was getting easy to tell who had water, food, and medicine and who didn’t, simply by looking at them. I noticed people glaring at my healthy kids, turning away if they saw me watching.

  The water excursions didn’t bring us nearly enough water. The National Guard rations and the veggies I’d let people harvest wouldn’t last much longer. A few more neighbors, including the Gonzales family next door and their passel of kids, walked or rode bicycles off into the unknown.

  We were the only family with barely sufficient water. It was obvious because we’d washed our hair a couple of times. We kept our house reasonably clean. Other houses smelled bad. You could tell if you passed by when their windows were open, which they usually were.

  Though it was mid-November, it was still abnormally warm. I wondered if climate-change deniers would finally see the truth, but I figured some birdbrains would never face the facts.

  The fall garden in the Pico yard was thriving, especially the squashes I’d planted before the CME. The kids and I carefully dripped water over the greens, squash, tomatoes, and peas in the raised bed. Tomatoes and peppers were flourishing in pots and would be producing before long.

  But it was harvest time for the rest of the Mint garden. Thanksgiving loomed next week. It was time to let my secrets out of the bag.

  Yet, I was hesitating, and I wasn’t sure why. My hesitation was hard on the health of my neighbors. They didn’t know this, of course, but I did. I also knew that once you open Pandora’s Box, you cannot unopen it.

  What finally made up my mind was catching the gang of kids digging up potatoes from the Mint garden in the middle of the night. I chased them away by brandishing a broom at them. But I couldn’t get the skinny ribs of that dead child Bucky out of my head. And I was worried senseless that some intruder—or a trusted neighbor, or those wild kids—would break into the Mint and leave us to starve. My grandkids and I couldn’t properly guard the Mint on our own, not in a world like this.

  The next morning after breakfast, I went to see Jack Jeffers to discuss the wild kids. But he met me with his arms crossed in an intimidating stance.

  “Bea,” he said, “tell me what you’ve got in that other house.”

  My lips started to quiver, so I looked away. “I’m terrified to tell anyone.”

  “You don’t need to be afraid of me,” he said.

  “It’s not you I’m scared of... It’s life—this new life.” I exhaled slowly, resigning myself to the inevitable. “Let’s go to my patio and get comfortable. This could take a while.”

  Once I’d related the story of the Mint and the full extent of my stockpiles—except the cistern and cellar—Jack said, “My God, Bea. I’m flabbergasted! What does Hank think of this?”

  “Hank doesn’t know a thing about it.”

  Jack gaped at me, speechless.

  We spent the rest of the day going over my inventory lists—thank God I had printouts—estimating how much food people needed, calculating how long it might last. I didn’t have enough bottled water to share, and there was no way I would disclose the cistern. We’d be forced to continue the water trips and to collect rain. For food, we had fifteen to eighteen months before we’d be dependent on whatever we could produce.

  Overnight, Darla, the grandkids, and I sneaked into the Mint and moved food and water into the cellar as our private hedge against starvation.

  Before we headed over there, Tasha cornered me. “Why are you telling Darla about the cellar? She’ll steal stuff.”

  “Stop it! She lives with us. She’ll find out anyway, and we need her help.”

  We held a neighborhood meeting late the following afternoon, when the worst of the glare from the sun was gone. People brought chairs and set them in the intersection next to the Pico house.

  Jack called the meeting to order to the jeers of a bunch of young ones. Likely the taunts were attempts at humor, although Texans don’t much care for anyone who acts like he’s in charge of anything. Jack was either undaunted or oblivious. He said I had important news and would they please give me their attention.

  “I know y’all have been hungry,” I said. “So, if it’s okay, we brought supper.”

  The five kiddos passed out tuna and pickle relish sandwiches on big biscuits, along with plastic cups of water. People eyed me anxiously.

  “Whatcha tryin’ to do, Bea? Bribe us?” said Silas Barnes—not as heavy as he used to be, but still stocky and round.

  “What’s the matter, Silas? Don’t you like food?” said Kathy Zizzo.

  “Love me some tuna fish.” Silas took a gigantic bite. “Got any more, Bea?”

  Everyone laughed. I smiled nervously. Tasha gave him another sandwich and handed out more to those who wanted seconds, which was nearly everyone.

  I sat in a chair facing the others. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t stand up too long, but I have important things to tell you.”

  People nodded and shuffled in their seats, jiggling their legs, wringing their hands. There were twenty-five or more adults, and almost as many kids.

  Jack said, “We’d like to hear it, Bea.”

  “Is it bad?” asked Harvey Zizzo.

  “No, I imagine you’ll think it’s good.”

  I scanned the faces of the gaunt, dingy people before me. They were stone-faced for the most part. The old man who’d almost refused my water weeks before seemed downright angry.

  “It’s hard to know where to start. Most of you only know me in a neighborly, social way, so you don’t know much about me. Some of you know me better, and I may have told you in the past how worried I was about the environment, that we might find ourselves in a catastrophe before long.”

  “How’s that solar power working for you now?” Silas said. People laughed awkwardly.

  “Hilarious.” I smirked at him.

  “Folks, let Bea talk,” said Jack.

  I sat up straighter and raised my voice. “Okay, so even though m
ost of you thought I was a kook—and, apparently, some of you still think so—because I was worried about an ecological calamity, I prepared for one. I inherited a great deal of money, and instead of living high on the hog—”

  “How’d you do all that fancy work on your house?” said some guy I didn’t recognize.

  “Not that it’s any of your business, whoever you are—”

  “That’s Gary Matheson,” Jack said. Good Lord, had he ever changed. He looked ten years older than he had a few weeks ago.

  “Anyhow, not that it’s your business, Gary, but I worked sixty-hour weeks for three years to renovate my house. Anything else not your business you want to know?” I glared at Matheson until he hung his head.

  “So, as I was saying, I bought another house with my inheritance and filled it with food and survival gear and seeds. Lots of all these things.” Faces in the crowd began to light up.

  Then Chas said, “Where’s this house?”

  “I’ll get to that. First, I need to talk about how I want this stuff handled.”

  Murmurs burbled through the crowd.

  “I’m willing to share with you, but I have conditions—”

  “What do you mean, ‘conditions’?” said the angry old man. “You’ve been hoarding food while some of us are starving, and you have ‘conditions’? We oughta take the food away from you out of principle.”

  “Yeah!” Chas shouted, with some back-up hoots from his friends. “Rich bitch, you think you can boss us around just because you have food?”

  Tasha winced and turned away from me. Chas was showing his colors, the little shit.

  “Chas, be quiet!” Lyla Matheson yelled from across the crowd. I guessed this kid was her son. Chas and two other boys booed.

  “That’s enough!” Jack stood tall and straight-shouldered, pointing at the Matheson boy. “You better shut up, buster, or—”

  “Or what?” Chas jumped to his feet and took a threatening step toward Jack. A couple of guys rose to block the kid’s path.

  Sonja Carrera stood up, making emphatic hand gestures. “People! What is wrong with you? Mrs. Crenshaw is trying to help us. These arguments are unacceptable!”