If Darkness Takes Us Page 7

  Once I’d gathered my wits, I fixed us sandwiches with the last of the bread and cheese. I made the kids eat tomatoes for the Vitamin C. They resisted, but they still looked scared, and I think they knew I was doing my best to protect them. I started a low fire on the barbecue and cooked a big pot of navy beans with a ham hock in it, the only meat left in the house except what was in cans. When it was almost dark, I boiled rice and stir-fried veggies—the last in the warm fridge—or the insulated cabinet, I guess it had become.

  Milo came home sporting a grin a yard wide.

  “Freckles lives at that house where the old motorcycle is.”

  “A Belding,” I said. It figured.

  After sunset, I saw no more glow on the horizon or in the sky. I kept looking for it for days.

  Over those first couple of weeks, we kept to ourselves. I felt more like I was holding my family together when we stayed apart from our neighbors, most of whom I barely knew.

  At this point, we were all in limbo—or more like denial—thinking the government would arrive soon or the power and running water would return. I fully expected Hank to waltz in the front door any minute and start bitching about something. He’d only taken two weeks’ worth of his blood pressure meds with him to Dallas. He had to come back soon.

  Fretful grandmother logic.

  While we ate dinner that evening, I told the kids, “Our project for tomorrow, and for as long as it takes, is to go through this house from top to bottom. We’re going to organize everything we have and make lists of it all. This house is jam-packed with stuff. A lot of it should be helpful to us, either to use or to trade with neighbors for things we need.”

  “What about the other house?” Milo asked, screwing up his face thoughtfully.

  “We’re going to wait to start using things in that house. I have to figure out how to do it without letting the whole neighborhood know how much food we have.”

  “But they need it, too, don’t they?” Keno said. His big green eyes appeared sad.

  I sighed and looked at my plate. “They do. But we can’t take care of them all or there won’t be enough for us. I have to think up a plan.”

  “You can’t share the food,” Tasha said. “We’ll run out. And they don’t deserve it.”

  “Whatever do you mean by that?”

  “They didn’t hoard food like you did, so they’re shit out of luck.”

  “Tasha, where did you get the idea that I ‘hoarded’ food?”

  “The whole family said you hoard stuff.”

  “They made jokes about it,” Milo said.

  “Did they? What kind of jokes?”

  “Oh, if they couldn’t find something, they said you probably hoarded it.”

  I wanted to run to my room and cry. “It’s not hoarding if you’re buying stuff for an emergency. It’s stockpiling. And don’t you think it’s good that I did it?”

  “Well, yeah,” Tasha said. “But it’s still weird.”

  I shook my head and tried to let it go. I sat there cleaning under my fingernails with an untwisted paper clip.

  “So, the question is, how do we know who to trust, and how do we decide who to help and who to leave unfed? It’s breaking my brain trying to figure this out.” It was like playing God, and I hated the idea of it.

  “Think it over,” Mazie said, surprisingly. “You always say to think things over.”

  I gave Mazie a kiss on the cheek. “That’s right, honey. We should all think it over.”

  I would think it over for weeks.

  As the kids settled in to bed upstairs, I let Harry in the house. He immediately started coughing so hard it made him choke. Damn it. I thought he would have coughed up all the toxic crud by now. Were the poisons still in our air?

  I got my stethoscope and petted Harry while I listened to his lungs. I heard sounds like crinkling cellophane, exactly like the crackling I’d heard in my own chest when I’d had pneumonia years ago.

  “Kids,” I hollered up the stairs. “Come down here, please.”

  Milo groaned loudly.

  “Why?” Tasha asked.

  “Because Nana said so,” Mazie replied. Smart girl.

  The kids reached the bottom of the stairs and stopped in a cluster, eyeing me warily. “Come line up here in front of me.”

  “Oh, Nana,” Milo said angrily.

  “Just do it. You first, Milo. Raise up your shirt.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can listen to your lungs.”

  Milo huffed and lifted his shirt over his head.

  “Hold still.” I laid the stethoscope on his chest. “Breathe slowly and deeply for me one time.” I listened, then moved the instrument over his other lung. “Now again.” I moved to his back. “Again,” and, “One more time.”

  “You sound okay, Milo.”

  “I know,” he said and tugged down his shirt.

  I listened to each child in turn. Their lungs sounded clear to me, but I was an amateur. It was what I didn’t know that worried me most.

  “Why are you doing this?” Keno asked after I listened to him last of all.

  “Because Harry has stuff in his chest. I wanted to see if anyone else did.”

  “But we didn’t?” Keno said.

  “You didn’t.”

  “What does Harry have in his chest?” Mazie asked.

  “Mucus, honey. He’s been a little sick ever since the train wreck.”

  “Poison?” Tasha said.

  “Yes, poison. I guess it only affected Harry because he was in the neighborhood for so long after the chemical spill.”

  “Poor Harry,” Mazie said, running up to hug the dog. “Did Nana forget you and make you get sick?”

  Gunfire woke me in the night.

  I’d always heard the occasional gunshot around here—it was Texas after all—but this was a series of shots, then a second series from a louder gun, probably a semi-automatic less than a mile away.

  I was afraid to look outside, but I tiptoed around upstairs, peeking out windows to survey our surroundings. A couple of patrolling neighbors were walking in partial crouches down Pico Street, rifles raised as if on alert. I watched until they were out of my sight.

  I sat up in bed the rest of the night, straining my ears for sounds of danger. I heard no more gunshots but didn’t sleep another wink.

  Gunfire already, and it had only been four days since the power went down.

  NINE

  WE FOUND the solar power manual the next morning. It said the system would only work without the grid if we connected it to some type of fancy, lead-acid battery. I thought I’d set the solar up for long-term electricity generation without the grid—the salesman had assured me of it. I couldn’t believe he’d lied to me like that. I could have easily afforded the $60,000 battery and several spares if I’d known we needed them.

  I felt like an idiot—for trusting that guy, but mostly for thinking I’d set things up right when I hadn’t. By no means the worst thing I’d been wrong about lately, but it still pissed me off.

  We sorted stuff for two days upstairs, where all four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and the game room were. The kids groused and grumbled for the whole two days. I had to ride herd over Milo to keep him working, and Mazie spent most of her time playing with things we unearthed. But slowly, we progressed.

  I put Tasha in charge of cooking on those days so I didn’t have to climb the stairs so often and wear myself out. It had the bonus effect of giving us a break from Tasha’s grumpiness. I had her warm up beans and rice, and later to heat up canned soups. Soon I would need to start baking with the solar ovens stored at the Mint house.

  A good name for the place holding the family treasure: The Mint.

  On the second day of sorting, Harry lay in his dog bed and watched us, droopy-eyed. Milo tried to get Harry to play, but the dog only sighed, and Milo worried. At least Harry hadn’t been coughing, only chuffing now and then. I assumed he was getting better. Probably also missing Hank.

 
; I missed Hank, too—the old Hank, the charming Hank, the one I used to talk to about so many things and who would respond like a thoughtful adult. I only hoped this time apart would bring more of the good Hank to the fore.

  It’s no wonder the world was running out of resources. I couldn’t believe how much rubbish we had in our house—just one of millions of American homes—not things accumulated so much from my so-called hoarding as from our failure to get rid of unused or extra belongings.

  For instance, we had fourteen pairs of scissors. Will someone please tell me what possible excuse there could be for us to have fourteen pairs of scissors?

  And we had four outdated computers, two old laptops, and a couple of newer versions of each. Monitors, keyboards, mice, printers, DVD players, DVRs, TVs, radios, phones, iPods, stereos, game systems, satellite TV receivers, routers and modems and digital clocks.

  Why in the world did we have so many electronic devices, all full of toxic heavy metals, flame retardants, and more? I’d thought I was protecting the environment, but we’d been out of our ever-lovin’ minds!

  Halfway through the second day of sorting, we heard a loud engine. We hurried to the upstairs window to see a junker half-ton truck heading our way. The kids ran outside, and I followed. Neighbors stood on their lawns with their mouths hanging open, their kids jumping up and down. Several men rushed up to flag down the driver.

  “Ooh-wee! How’d you get that thing to run, man?” somebody said. I couldn’t hear the driver’s response, but it went on for a while since the neighborhood guys kept interrupting.

  The truck sputtered a bit and drove on. We applauded. The story we heard was that truck was so old it didn’t have an internal computer to burn up in the EMP. Its battery was disconnected when disaster struck, so the truck worked fine when the battery was re-installed. It had taken the driver days to find gas, but he’d finally succeeded by scrounging from neighbors. He had to promise to bring them news and as much water as he could find. His truck bed was full of empty water jugs.

  Mr. Jeffers asked the man to come back soon so we could hear about his trip and whether he’d found a water source. Mr. Jeffers said he knew how to filter water through charcoal to clean it.

  My neighbors looked hot, dirty, and disheveled. Most of the men had serious beard stubble. Everyone’s hair was oily. I’m sure my family and I looked equally bedraggled to our neighbors.

  When the upstairs was pretty well organized, except for my hundreds of books, I made pancakes on a griddle I set on the grill. We smeared them with peanut butter and honey. Not bad, though I would never make pancakes as good as Hank’s.

  Oh, Hank. . . .

  As we finished eating, Tasha poked Keno in the ribs. He cleared his throat.

  “Nana,” he said, “me and Tasha—”

  “Tasha and I.”

  Keno frowned. “Tasha and I want to go to our house tomorrow. It’s only four miles away. We can walk there pretty fast, and we can get our bikes. If we can take Milo, he can ride Mom’s bike, and we’ll have three.”

  Of all the things I’d amassed for our long-term survival, bicycles hadn’t been among them. I’d considered turning my exercise bike into an electricity generator, but bikes for transportation had never occurred to me.

  “Yeah,” Tasha said, “we can get jackets and more clothes, maybe clothes that fit Milo and Mazie.”

  “How come they get to go and not me?” Mazie asked.

  “Nobody’s going,” I said. “It’s too dangerous. We have clothes here that you can wear.”

  “Nana,” Tasha pleaded, getting red in the face. “We need the bikes. It’s not fair!”

  “I don’t care if it’s fair or not. My answer is no.”

  The following morning, Keno and Tasha were still after me to let them go to their house.

  “You shouldn’t go! I don’t want you to!” Mazie hollered and ran upstairs, only to come streaking back down, trembling and spouting tears.

  “Harry’s sick! He’s real sick! Come make him better, Nana. Hurry!”

  The kids bolted up the stairs, and I plodded up behind them, short of breath.

  “Harry!” Tasha squealed from up ahead of me.

  “Oh no!” Milo said.

  I couldn’t see Harry yet, but I saw Keno rush toward the dog bed in the game room.

  “Hurry, Nana!” Mazie ran back to me as I reached the top of the stairs. She gripped my arm and dragged me toward Harry, but I stopped when I caught sight of him. He lay in his bed in a pool of bloody vomit with his eyes closed and his breaths shallow, labored, and loud.

  “Oh, Harry,” I said softly, my heart twisting in a knot. What had I done to my dog?

  “What’s wrong with him?” Tasha asked, her face slick with tears. Milo gaped at Harry, then wheeled away and ran to his room. Keno bent down to pet Harry’s head.

  I wiped my eyes on my sleeve and went to Harry, laying my hand on his rib cage, which rattled with his every breath.

  “He’s burning up with fever.” I couldn’t quit cursing myself. It would take a lot of water to help Harry. Could we afford it? Oh, who cared? His life was at stake.

  “Keno, Tasha, go get two big jugs of water. We’ll put him in the bathtub to clean him up and cool him down. Mazie, get a can of dog food, a spoon, and a can opener.”

  Mazie ran downstairs with Keno and Tasha close behind. I sat on the floor and patted Harry. “Milo, honey, can you come help, please?”

  The boy came out of his room but kept his head down, his sandy hair over his eyes—to avoid looking at Harry, I presumed, and also to hide his tears. “Kiddo, go to my room and get the bottle of Tylenol off the dresser. In the bottom of my linen closet, there’s some old towels and washcloths. Bring me all those.”

  Milo darted into my room. “Mazie,” I hollered downstairs, “bring a paper plate and a hammer, too.”

  “Okay!” she replied as Keno and Tasha came upstairs, Keno carrying his five-gallon water bottle while Tasha pushed hers up the stairs from behind.

  Harry let out a horrendous string of coughs. How he managed to breathe after that, I don’t know. He glanced at me, a pained look that sent shivers through me.

  I told Keno and Tasha to take the water to the bathroom and pour five-gallons into the tub. I had Mazie open the dog food.

  Harry kept coughing. When Milo returned with towels, I said, “Can you help me wipe Harry off, so we can pick him up and take him to the tub?”

  “What?” Milo’s eyes were as round as bottle caps.

  “I know it’s gross, sweetie, but Harry needs our help. Can you be brave and help me do this?”

  Milo looked hard at me and set his jaw, sniffing away tears. “Okay.”

  I handed him a towel, and together we wiped the dog. Harry whimpered when we stuffed towels under him to clean what we could from his underside. The other kids came back just as Harry launched into a coughing fit that went on for minutes, inducing more tears from the kids and me with every sharp hack.

  “Keno,” I finally said. “Do you think you can carry him to the tub if we help you?”

  “Yeah, I can do it.”

  “I’ll help,” Tasha said.

  “Me, too,” said Milo.

  “Can I help?” Mazie asked.

  “Honey, you’re too small to carry him, but you can help wash him.”

  Keno bent down, slid his arms under Harry, and didn’t even flinch at the slime. When Keno lifted Harry, the dog yelped, and Tasha and Milo jumped forward to support his hind legs. Harry whined but didn’t seem to have the strength to squirm loose. The kids carried the big lug into the bathroom and laid him in the tub.

  Harry squealed as he sank in the water, then he licked the kids’ hands. He slurped a bit of water and barely wagged his tail. Mazie started washing him off, and the other kids helped.

  I put a Tylenol pill on the paper plate and smashed the pill with the hammer, then took a tiny spoonful of dog food and worked Tylenol flakes into the food. I didn’t know if Tylenol would he
lp a thing, but I couldn’t sit back and watch Harry’s fever kill him without trying something. I couldn’t think what to give him for his cough.

  “Stand aside a minute, kids. Let me give this medicine to Harry.” I leaned down and held the spoon toward him. He clamped his mouth shut and turned away. Food was probably the last thing he wanted to see, but I didn’t know how else to get the medicine into him.

  Mazie knelt beside me. “Can I try?”

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  She took the spoon in one hand and Harry’s chin in the other. He blinked at her with doleful eyes.

  “Harry, this is good for you. You have to take it so you’ll feel better.”

  He flicked his eyes to each of us, as though asking, “Is this true?” We nodded and spouted encouraging words. He licked Mazie’s hand then ate the food, wincing as he swallowed.

  We drained the tub of vomity water and poured in the clean water to rinse Harry off as he shivered and wheezed. We re-drained the tub and dried him off. Keno picked Harry up and brought him to the game room couch to lay him on a quilt that Tasha quickly spread.

  “Let’s wash our hands really good,” I said. “And Keno, take off that shirt. I don’t think Harry’s contagious, but just in case.”

  The kids and I washed up then sat around Harry and petted him. He licked our hands. Then he laid down his head, breathed several wheezy breaths, coughed once, and shuddered.

  When Harry didn’t breathe for a long moment, Keno, Tasha, and Milo turned to me—sad, surprised, shocked. I nodded, frowning, and Mazie started shrieking.

  “He’s not breathing. Make him breathe! Nana, make him breathe!”

  “Oh, honey, I can’t.” I reached for Mazie, but she slapped my hands away and began poking Harry’s motionless rib cage.

  “Breathe, Harry. You have to breathe!”

  Tasha grabbed at Mazie’s hands to stop her from poking the poor dead dog. But Mazie just grew more hysterical. “Make him breathe. Nana, why don’t you fix him?”