If Darkness Takes Us Read online

  I pointed toward the kitchen wall, where keys dangled from hooks.

  “This thing?” Mazie asked, showing me a pad that you hold a pot with.

  “No.”

  “These things?” She waved two kitchen tools in the air.

  “No.”

  With great patience and good cheer, Mazie showed me about a dozen items until she grabbed a ring of car keys off a hook.

  “These keys?” she said.

  “Yes, but no.”

  “Yes, but no? What does that mean, Nana?” Milo said, joining in the mystery game.

  I pointed toward keys hanging on the wall.

  “Other keys?”

  “Yes!” I nodded.

  Mazie and Milo yanked key rings off their hooks and laid them on the table. I picked through the keys and chose two. I wasn’t sure which one was correct, but I poked at the two keys and held up one finger.

  “What do the keys go to, Nana?” Mazie asked.

  I pointed to the backyard.

  “The Mint!” exclaimed Milo.

  “No,” I said.

  The kids scanned out the window.

  “A car?” Milo asked.

  “No.”

  “Our storage shed!” Mazie said.

  “Yes, but no.”

  They looked at me, at each other, then out the back door.

  “The Mint storage shed!” they cried. They snatched up the keys and took off.

  Soon they were digging in the Mint shed, calling out, “There’s gasoline!” “And fertilizer!” “Here’s some chicken feed.” “What’s this? Bleach!”

  “Yes!” I screamed to the kids in the yard behind mine. Keno and Eddie arrived at the shed, slapping high fives with Mazie and Milo and hooting about the bleach.

  “Yay, Nana!” Mazie hollered, and raced back to smother me in kisses while I cried.

  “Oh, don’t cry,” she cooed. “We got bleach now, so don’t cry.”

  FIFTY-FOUR

  TODAY I’M SITTING in Hank’s rocker on the patio, my wheelchair parked beside me and my glass of cloudy water on the table near my hand. I’m listening to beautiful bird calls and the whir of a machine in the neighborhood. I’m daydreaming about making love to Jack, feeling his lean muscles and the beat of his heart.

  The dog next door starts barking. Why? He’s about the only dog we have left.

  A group of strangers pass by the side fence, staring at my house. They don’t seem to notice me, and am I ever glad. But where are the patrollers? I wait until the strangers are out of sight, then I holler, “Kids!” but no one responds.

  Moments later, people start shouting inside the house. Did they see the intruders? Are they fighting with them? My heart is hammering. I want to run or hide, but I can’t. The loud talking goes on forever.

  The back door bursts open, and Mazie flies out to throw her arms around my neck.

  “Nana! They’re back! Oh, they’re back!”

  “Who?” I say, anxiously patting her lifeless hair.

  “Mama! Daddy! Aunt Erin and Grandpa!”

  “What?” My heart sends an electric shock through my body.

  The door opens again. Keno, Eddie, and Milo appear, grinning wildly and crying. They move aside, and out step four skeletal, filthy people, the strangers who passed by. I don’t know these people. Why are they here?

  I’m shaking with fear. “Mom!” “Mama!” two skinny women cry and proceed to choke me with hugs until I screech.

  “Better give her some air,” says my caretaker as she runs up. “She needs air.”

  The women draw back fast and examine me sadly, their dirty faces covered in tears. “Oh, Mama,” one of them says and strokes my face. She has dark hair.

  “Mom, what’s wrong? What happened to Mom?” The yellow-haired one looks at the others accusingly.

  “We don’t know,” Eddie says. “We think she had a stroke.”

  “You think? Didn’t you find her a doctor?”

  “We don’t have a way to get her to a doctor, Aunt Jeri,” Keno says.

  “How could you let this happen?” the blonde woman says.

  “We didn’t let it happen. What are you talking about?” Keno says.

  “Mom, we’re kids!” Milo says.

  “Yeah, we’re kids!” Mazie shouts, frowning at the woman.

  “Leave them alone, Jeri,” the brunette says. “The kids look healthy. They did great.”

  “I guess you had it hard, didn’t you, kids?” says the blonde.

  A tall man wraps his arms around Mazie and Milo and begins to cry. They cry with him, and Mazie keeps saying, “Daddy. Oh, Daddy.”

  “Wayne went home with Pam,” the blonde says. “He’ll come down here soon. They wouldn’t let us leave Waco. They kept us all in an auditorium and wouldn’t let us leave.”

  “Who wouldn’t let you leave?” Eddie asks.

  “The National Guard,” says Mazie’s daddy. “Said it was martial law.”

  “That’s what we found when Pete and I went looking for you,” Eddie says. “They got hold of us, too, only they kept us in a warehouse, but after a couple of months we escaped.”

  “Wow,” the blonde says. “Don’t they have martial law here?”

  “No,” Eddie says. “In Waco, local assholes are throwing their weight around.”

  “Yeah, well,” says Mazie’s daddy, “I guess they got tired of feeding us, because they let us go last week.”

  Keno steps over to my caretaker. He stands behind her, snuggles his chin into her shoulder, and wraps his arms around her to stroke her belly. She leans into him and sighs.

  “Mom,” he says. “This is Alma. She’s my wife.”

  His wife?

  “Your wife?!” the new people shout.

  “Keno, you’re too young to be married!” the brunette says, aghast.

  “I’m eighteen, Mom. And we’re already married. So. . . .”

  Good for you, Keno, I think.

  “But Keno,” the woman says, tearing up. “How could you get married? Who married you?” She turns to look at me. “Mom, did you know about this?”

  I nod my head yes, even though I didn’t know, just to give Keno some backup. Keno gapes at me, but he has a smile in his eyes.

  “We married ourselves, Mom,” he says.

  “Well, it’s not legal! What about the law?” the blonde says.

  “What law?” says Eddie.

  Keno walks slowly away from his wife—Alma, so that’s her name? He goes to his dark-haired mother and hugs her. But no one is welcoming Alma to the family. How very rude of them.

  An old man stands behind the others, shuffling his feet and staring at me with bloodshot eyes.

  “Bea,” he says dryly, as if something is stuck in his throat. He steps up and stoops before me, taking my hand. “I was afraid you would have a stroke. Looks like I was right. I know I drove you crazy, being protective of you, but you never were any good at taking care of yourself. I’m so glad to be home.”

  Home? He thinks this is his home?

  “Maybe you know,” I say. “No one knows, but maybe you know.”

  The old man’s brushing tears off his face, blowing his nose into a filthy rag. “Maybe I know what?” he says.

  “What happened to the frogs? We used to have frogs.”

  “Frogs?” He stands up and frowns. The tears stop running down his face. “I haven’t seen you in more than a year, and all you can say is, ‘what happened to the frogs?’”

  I guess I’ve hurt his feelings, but if he’s so easily upset, I don’t want him to live here.

  “Dad,” Eddie says, “she doesn’t understand.”

  The hell I don’t! This old man is butting into my life and expecting things of me without so much as a how-do-you-do. Insulting me about taking care of myself. Who does he think he is?

  “Keno,” the brunette says. “Where’s Tasha? Gosh, you’ve grown so much. I bet she’s grown a bunch, too. Where is she?”

  Everyone stops moving, almos
t stops breathing. My grandkids, Eddie, and my caretaker—Alma—drop their heads to face the patio.

  “What?” the woman says. “What’s wrong?” She sounds panicked.

  Keno takes her hand. “Sit down, Mom.”

  “Sit down? Why?” She darts her eyes around, then stares indignantly at Keno. “Keno, tell me why!”

  Keno looks at his mother, then looks hard at me and swallows.

  “She’s dead,” I say.

  “Mom,” Eddie breathes. “That was harsh.”

  “She’s dead? Is Tasha dead?!” the woman howls, glaring at us with lost eyes.

  “Yes, Mom,” Keno says, crying. “She, uh, she got pregnant and—”

  “Pregnant!” The blonde shoots daggers at me with her eyes.

  “She had a miscarriage, and she bled to death,” Keno whispers. He latches on to his wife while his mother whirls away and sits down hard on the patio floor.

  Then everyone is crying and wailing and moving around, yelling things at one another, scurrying away and returning. I am lost here. I don’t know who’s doing what, except Eddie holds my hand a while.

  “Oh, God, I can’t breathe,” the dark-haired woman says. “Tasha! Oh my God!”

  “Mom, how did she get pregnant?!” the blonde woman shouts.

  Well, the usual way, of course.

  “Tasha didn’t listen to Nana. She snuck off and got pregnant,” Keno mutters.

  “Don’t yell at Nana!” Mazie says, covering her ears.

  People disappear, and I’m left on the patio with a screaming heart and only Keno and Alma, who start making dinner. I want so bad to comfort Tasha’s mother, but she seems to be gone. My emotions exhaust me. Maybe I fall asleep, but I don’t even know.

  The next thing, Hank’s yelling at me again, looming over me, giving me heart palpitations. The sun’s falling toward the horizon.

  I see Jack outside my fence, watching me unhappily with questions posed on his lips. I shake my head at him. He continues to watch. Other neighbors gather beside him. The woman with oily hair blows me a kiss.

  “Bea!” Hank says. “How could this happen? You just let these kids run willy-nilly and do whatever they wanted?”

  I am hating this old man more by the minute. I suppose he blames me for the EMP, too, and for the environment going to hell, and for the fact that we don’t have enough food to feed his sorry ass. I don’t have words to tell him how offended I am. I have thoughts, but I can’t make my mouth pronounce them.

  All these demanding people who have the nerve to come here and stare at me with their blame and judgment and accusations. These people who weren’t here to help because they just had to go to a goddamned football game? Aren’t they supposed to be my family? Why are they treating me this way?

  “Bea,” Hank says, “you should come inside and go to bed.”

  To bed? Whatever for? He just got here, and he’s already bossing me around.

  “No!” I say.

  The young Mexican woman—what’s her name again?—she steps to my side and crosses her arms, staring at the others in a show of support for me. Keno regards her proudly with a sad sort of love in his eyes.

  “Nana kept us alive!” Milo spits out, yanking off his crooked sunglasses. He stands next to the young woman and crosses his arms, too.

  “She had lots of food and water,” Mazie says. “She taught us how to sew and cook and grow gardens.” She stands between Keno’s wife and Milo, her fists on her hips.

  Keno says, “It’s not Nana’s fault. She saved us, and the whole neighborhood, too.”

  “She saved the neighborhood? Bea did?” Hank says with a skeptical laugh. “She gave away food I paid for—food she should have kept for this family. Bea, come inside! This is too much for you. It’s too hot out here.”

  So now he’s going to punish me for giving away food he thinks he bought?

  “It’s hot inside, too, Dad. Hotter, really,” Eddie says. “And she didn’t give away your food.”

  I look at Hank, who is scowling at me. My daughter Jeri refuses to return my gaze. I look at Eddie and my four grandkids, whose eyes are full of love for me and grief for all the rest.

  I look at Jack, who’s watching me alertly, lovingly. I look back at Hank, who’s turning redder and redder with anger.

  I’d always known I would have to confront Hank if he ever came home, but now I have no words. Still, there’s no time like the present, before Hank gives me another stroke.

  “Jack?” I holler. “Jack?”

  “Yes, Bea?”

  “Jack who?” says Hank. “Jack Jeffers?”

  “Jack, come take me home. Now, Jack. Take me home now!”

  “Home?!” Hank shouts. The others make startled noises.

  “Coming, Bea,” Jack says.

  I turn away from the rest of them. My heart swells with warmth as Jack comes through the gate, and his eyes meet mine.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  I’M LIKE A BROKEN RECORD, the way I repeat our story to myself nonstop. My brain works better than it did right after the stroke, but too many things still escape me. The sun and the darkness haunt me. I have no control over anything.

  Jack is my shelter and my saving grace.

  Night after night, we just sit in his house and hold each other. It’s so nice . . . I end up crying sometimes. I find it hard to believe that I deserve Jack and his love. I blame myself for so much that’s gone wrong.

  When I’m upset, Jack tells me that I have saved my family and all these neighbors—that they, that he, would not be alive without me. I try to believe him. . . . I try.

  But, goddammit! I knew something important about the water, and I can’t shake it loose from my mind.

  There’s an old man who scowls at me when he spots me outside. There are two women who see me and look away. They all live in the house behind mine now. I feel like I once knew them, but I’m not sure they ever knew me.

  All my life, I tried to control things, although now, I can’t remember why.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  An author can craft a novel, but it takes a village or two to produce a good book. I give all credit to whatever is good about this novel to the myriad folks who’ve helped me from its inception through the polished and published product. All errors are my own.

  First and foremost, I thank my stellar critique partners, Laura Creedle and Aden Polydoros, who’ve pored over countless drafts of this novel. Without their valuable insights and tireless tolerance of my quirks and hard-headedness, much drama would have been left on the table, the through-line would have been lost, and all kinds of bad choices would remain in the book. Best CPs ever, and awesome award-winning authors in their own right. Lucky me!

  Next, I must thank the great people at Southern Fried Karma Press for hosting their 2018 novel contest and choosing this book as the winner. SFK is small but mighty in their mission to showcase Southern literary voices of the new millennium. They should be commended for their mission alone, but their execution of it is professional and dynamic, making them a force to reckon with.

  Special thanks at SFK go to: Pinckney Benedict, contest judge, development editor, and writer/teacher extraordinaire, for his belief in the novel, his lovely quote to describe it, his great suggestions, and his boundless patience and kindness regarding my questions and emails; Steve McCondichie, Co-Founder of SFK, who made my year plus the many writing years leading up to it by calling to tell me I had won the contest, and for saying, “You have found your literary tribe” (so true, and an indescribable relief); Grant Gerald Miller and A.M. O’Malley for their extremely helpful style edit; Cade Leebron for her thorough sensitivity read and copy-edit; and, April Ford, Associate Publisher, for the interior design and layout, and for coordinating hundreds of details including the book’s many edits, always in a cheerful and supportive way despite her harrying workload. Thanks also to: Gisele Firmino and Nicole Byrne, Marketing Assistants; Emery Duffey, Social Media Coordinator; Alison McCondichie, Audiobook Producer; O
livia Croom, Book Cover Designer; Eleanor Burden, Proofreader; and all the others who helped behind the scenes.

  Editors are unsung heroes and deserve my everlasting gratitude. An early draft of the novel was edited by David H. Morgan, who took me to school on plot, drama, and craft. Cate Hogan did an amazing job of development-editing. Her attention to detail, characters, and the consistency of tone and voice were invaluable. R.R. Campbell gave me a thoughtful edit of the book’s opening, improving it a good deal.

  I started this novel in NaNoWriMo 2013 and wrote more of it in their 2014 event. Thanks to them for getting me going and pumping me up. I workshopped this book like crazy at Scribophile online, in their Candied Sea Urchins group and in a full beta read. Thanks to these folks for catching embarrassing errors and for pressing me to improve the characters and pace.

  This novel was a finalist in the Twitter contest Nightmare on Query Street in 2015 and 2017. It also made the finals in the PitProm contest in 2017. Many thanks to my mentors from those contests: Tracy Townsend, Brett Armstrong, and Peggy Rothschild, all amazing authors and extremely helpful to me. Special thanks to contest host Michelle Hauck for her belief in the book. And I have a great bunch of Twitter followers and a network of friends I can always count on for help and encouragement. I never could have made it without each and every one of you.

  Then I thank the readers of both early and late drafts, a few of whom read it more than once, some of them long-standing friends, others new friends from Twitter: Rosemary Coronella, Aaron Longnion, Julie Benedict, Carla Halpern, Rosario Alcala, George Randall Leake III, Branwen O’Shea-Refai, Mary Holm, Katie Zhao, Jenny Dewes, Mary Shotwell, Joni Gentry Riley, Phyllis Thomson, Kat Turner, Pauline Mattiaccio, and Brooke, who never gave me her last name. Special reader thanks to Michelle Reardon who went above and beyond in her last-minute full edit, and Flor Salcedo, who critiqued the book twice (and quickly) and brought dinner for my family to celebrate the SFK contest win.

  I studied fiction in the UCLA Writers Program, and my teachers there were exceptionally good: Roberta Morris, Caroline Leavitt, and Dennis Foley, all great novelists who helped me immensely.

  I was inspired to write this story after listening to Mike Malloy’s podcasts while huge fires were burning all over Texas and I stared out my window at the dead lawn and parched trees. Blogger Bruce Enberg, aka Prairie2, who’s forever exhorting us to stock up on canned goods, told a story about what could happen as the result of a solar pulse. I interviewed Bruce for more detail and confirmed his views with another scientist on Quora, Malcolm Sargent. I added a speculative element to their scientific facts, but a solar pulse can certainly fry our poorly maintained grid, and the nuclear consequences of that could be beyond devastating. Many thanks to Bruce and Malcolm; any scientific errors are mine alone.