Build a Better Apocalypse

Book 1

Beyond the EMP

E.E. Isherwood

Connect with E.E. Isherwood

http://www.eeisherwood.com

Copyright © 2025 by E.E. Isherwood

All rights reserved.

Cover illustration by Covers by Christian

Editing services provided by Mia at LKJ Books

Special thanks to my super advanced reader, Heather. I’d also like to thank the great advanced readers in my Patreon group who see it all first.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Prologue

Dark Site. Location Unknown. Five Minutes Ago.

Doctor Sinclair stood inside the door of the research wing, far underground. This was a part of her facility, but she wasn’t sure what was going on inside, since the sprawling complex covered several square kilometers of tunnels and levels. Oddly, a priest greeted her, not a fellow scientist.

“What brings you down here, Doctor Sinclair?” the frocked man asked with a bit of shock at her unannounced arrival.

The young woman took a moment to observe the guy’s attire, always wary of the presence of clergy within the confines of the research complex, a beacon of science in a world driven more and more by hyperbole and feelings. Their participation and observation of all experiments within the compound made her think her bosses were worried more about superstition than science…

“Sorry for disturbing you, Your Excellency—”

“Father Humphreys will be fine,” he corrected.

The man was probably in his sixties, about twice her age, but he was a picture of health, with thick, jet-black hair, clear skin, and surprisingly few wrinkles. Though this was far down on her list of observations, she had to admit he did not remind her of the typical, stodgy clergymen that had been nosing around since day one.

“Is everything working upstairs?” he asked, recovering immediately from the interruption.

“Y-yes,” she stammered, unable to explain why he made her feel insecure. She was still the boss of everything within the ring, and though she knew of the space, this live experiment was not on her official schedule. “We are good up top, but that’s not why I’m here…”

“Really?”

A whistleblower had told her to pop in unannounced, and now she knew why. She walked over to the glass, recovering her own bureaucratic assertiveness, and tapped on the pane with her index finger. “Why the bloody hell are there children down here?”

Faith’s job was to supervise everything that happened inside the complex, but none of the dozens of ongoing experiments were supposed to deal with young kids. Azura might be paying to keep the lights on, but she never signed on to this—to have children near the supercollider.

“This has all been approved by your bosses.” The priest motioned to the experiment floor, viewable through a large pane of one-way glass. “As you can see, the tykes are quite happy where they are…”

She took a moment to study what was going on. The interior chamber was fifty feet across, about the size of a small gymnasium, with a dozen different well-lit play areas, so the children could move around and keep busy. One of the youngest, a little girl, stood in front of a plastic kitchen set, pretending to bake in the oven and cook on the stovetop. The child looked about five, blonde with two pigtails, wearing a little yellow uniform. By all appearances, she seemed happy and healthy. Beyond her, six other children played in their respective areas, each dressed the same.

“But why are they in there?” she pressed. “They aren’t part of anything…are they?”

He gestured toward some viewing monitors hanging on the wall. A young female researcher sat at a desk below them, plucking at her keyboard and occasionally looking up at the screens.

“Ms. Sinclair, I assure you this is all quite safe. Here, on these monitors, you can see the control group. They are observing the children through seven windows, lined around the room.”

There were seven boxes on the screen, each showing what looked like a prison cell, with one man inside, and a giant window with a comically-oversized red button in front of it. She turned back to the children and saw seven tall windows, three on the left wall and three on the right, with one on the opposite side.

“There are men watching the children?” she asked with abject horror.

“I assure you, this is not what you think. The windows are one-way glass, so the prisoners can’t interact with the test subjects. Their only task is to hit the red button in their chamber if they see anything untoward happening with the subjects.”

“You mean the children?” she snapped.

“Yes, the children,” he corrected.

“So they’re criminals?” she asked, searching for how to sound even more horrified at the explanation given by the religious man. “Why wasn’t I told this was going on here?”

So I could stop it.

“Volunteers have been the staple of medical experiments for generations,” he said in a voice trained to smooth over fear. “If anything goes wrong, even a sneeze we don’t like, we can press this failsafe and take care of any threat.”

He showed her a glass cover over a pull-down handle, a bit like a fire alarm. It was blue, with the word ‘terminate’ on it.

Father Humphreys turned and brushed her toward the door. “Have you seen enough?”

She was too stunned to answer, but she didn’t move an inch.

He blew air from his mouth as if unsure how to counter her stubbornness, but he instead turned back to the children to watch them for a few moments. Then, seemingly figuring out what to say, he went on. “This experiment is critical to the next phase of humanity’s journey, Doctor. I’m sure this can’t be a total surprise to you, as we were up front about our methods during the vetting process to get us in here—”

“Azura requested this lower concourse, and I knew there were going to be second-order experiments, but not like this…”

As the top administrator, everything went through her. There were dozens of clients operating in her facility, all using different wings, levels, and equipment. ‘Second-order’ referred to the fact they weren’t using the collider itself, but they did tap into the computation time of the server farm.

“You are right to be concerned, of course. To have these criminals, many of whom have done great harm to children like these, in such a place can seem like we are simply asking for trouble…”

He was silent for a few moments, but she knew not to take his bait. The public face of the church was much different than the one she’d been exposed to of late, the version with countless experiments across numerous scientific facilities. Friends and colleagues had all talked about the uptick in religious patronage of these endeavors, and now she wondered how many of those involved terrorizing children in deep bunkers like the one slipped into her facility. Still, she didn’t want to bite the powerful hand that fed her…

Not yet.

“Rest assured, this is a very simple experiment, and totally safe. Each, uh, observer has a security button attached to the one-way viewing window.” He looked at her as he tapped the glass. “The children have no idea we are here, either.”

That hit home. Why would the children be worried about honest researchers like her? The whole reason she got into science was to help humanity, to help improve the future of children like them. She had a million questions lined up to get to the bottom of this, but as she turned around, a claxon screamed to life in the room, making her jump in fright.

“Great ghost!” Father Humphreys exclaimed, also shocked by the emergency alarm. His jaw unhinged as he saw something in the children’s room.

A brick of molten lead dropped into her stomach.

She spun around.

“Oh my,” she whispered.

The little girl at the play kitchen was gone. Her yellow uniform sat on the floor. Though she hadn’t been paying close attention to each one, the open design allowed her to see two or three other uniforms now on the ground, empty as well.

She turned to the monitor and saw the prisoners furiously pressing their red buttons.

“What’s going on?” she begged. “Is this part of your experiment?”

He ignored her. Instead, he rushed over to the woman’s desk and got right up to the screens to look at the prisoners.

“Why are you looking at them?” she asked, fighting the feeling she’d witnessed a horrible industrial accident, not an experiment. “I only care about those kids!”

“They’re all still here,” he croaked.

The six orange-clad inmates frantically pushed the huge red button at the window of their cells and also banged on the glass as if to make sure they were heard.

“Show me the third shift,” Humphreys calmly requested of the woman at the desk.

Like Dr. Sinclair, she wore the standard white uniform and white coat, though she was sweating so severely, it probably wouldn’t be white for much longer. She tried to type but kept screwing up.

“Calm down,” Faith soothed, putting her hand on a colleague’s shoulder—a woman who was apparently far more frightened than she was. “Everyone needs to stay professional…”

Though she wasn’t involved, Dr. Sinclair was supposed to oversee the entire lab. Whatever happened down here, it would be on her.

“Yes, ma’am,” she replied, focusing on striking each individual key, so she didn’t make mistakes. Finally, she changed the video feed to show a different set of inmates.

“Tell me what I’m looking at,” Faith inquired, warming to the idea she had to take control of this debacle.

The woman spoke to her with less fear. “We have three groups of prisoners that run through the test subject area. The first is the one you see now. The second is sleeping. The third is having personal time. I’ve switched the cameras to the ones who are supposed to be asleep.”

By all appearances, the men in the other cells were calm and bored, like you might expect at your typical prison.

“And show me the second shift,” Father Humphreys requested.

Another seven inmates showed up. One of them was a woman, who was the oddball among the criminals. She was relaxing on her bed, doing nothing, like all the others on the alternate shifts.

“Father, you are going to tell me what this is—”

She turned to find the priest on a red phone.

“Yes, ma’am, it’s urgent,” he implored the person on the other end, his hands shaking violently from the excitement, or shock. “I need to talk to anyone there.”

Dr. Sinclair hurried back to the window, melancholy at not seeing the exuberant children running around anymore. She tried to piece together how this experiment had come to be. It had only been a year since the supercollider had begun operating, and in all that time of visiting billionaires, politicians, celebrities, TV crews, and, recently, priests, she’d never imagined this was how her research space was being used. Whatever else happened, she was going to figure out who authorized this disaster…

She turned back to Humphreys, who bounced from foot to foot like a child waiting for someone to answer his call.

“Father, what, exactly, happened to them? Did the experiment work? Where did they go?”

He purposedly twisted, so his back was to her.

“Father?” she asked, getting miffed at his games.

“Ah, there you are!” Father Humphreys burst out. “No, shut up! Listen. I’m at one of the observation bunkers, and I—” He went silent. “I’m not the first?” He looked over his shoulder, not to her but to where the children were supposed to be. “It’s really happening? It was successful? Uh-huh. I understand.”

He set the phone in the cradle with extreme gentleness, then turned to her. Tears filled his eyes as if he’d been given terrible news.

She was done being respectful.

Faith got right up in his face.

“Father, the next words out of your mouth are going to be an explanation for what you’ve been doing here. Where did the children go?”

The priest wiped his running nose with his sleeve. “Dr. Sinclair, you want answers, but I can’t give many. We’ve been hoodwinked, child. The prisoners have been gaming us this whole time. They have killed all the children right under our noses.”

She glanced between the intern, the priest, and the empty room.

“But how?” she implored.

“It doesn’t matter. I’ve been instructed to break the glass.” He scurried over to the clear plate protecting the blue handle.

“Kill them?” she blurted.

“It’s the only way. Whatever they did, we can’t let them walk free to do it again. Other children depend on us…”

Though she respected the role of the clergy in life, she didn’t trust this particular priest. There was something he wasn’t telling her, that much she could read from him.

“How does killing them—”

Humphreys broke the glass, causing her to jump back by reflex.

“Wait a second,” she pleaded. “This can’t be right.”

“It has to be now!” he screamed. The older man throttled the handle, almost pulling it off the wall. “These criminals were on death row. This was always going to be their fate.”

She had little sympathy for hardcore criminals, but her sense of trust was down to zero. How could she know if those men were actually criminals? What if they had no idea they were part of a sick experiment? Once she lost trust in the priest, nothing was off the table.

Still, the deed was done.

The video intern recoiled from the screens, giving her a first hint of what the priest had done. When she looked, she found it hard to watch, too. The subjects in the cells were already on the floor, gasping for air.

“Good riddance,” Humphreys whispered.

The intern sucked in a breath. “Do you hear that?” she whispered.

A hissing started throughout the room, not unlike a tire losing air.

“No!” Humphreys howled before turning to a camera tucked into the corner of the ceiling. “I did what you said!”

“Father, what in the hell is going on?!” she screamed, finally breaking through her calm, collected boss exterior.

He looked at her with the glitchy eyes of a trapped man facing his own execution. “They told me this experiment succeeded everywhere,” the priest sobbed. “All seventy-two facilities around the world. I had no idea…”

“What are you saying?” she replied, now wracked with a splitting headache.

The priest fell to his knees, but not to pray.

The younger girl tumbled out of her chair while clutching her throat. “The gas wasn’t supposed to be for us…” she coughed out.

It took Dr. Sinclair an extra second or two to catch on. The door to the hallway was open…

“Is this gas going to kill everyone here?” she mumbled. Was her whole facility being snuffed out as a result of this one experiment?

Her heartbeat went erratic.

Pain radiated throughout her body.

“We are all betrayed,” Humphreys wheezed. “They don’t want any of us to tell the truth about what happened here.”

How was it she was about to die in her own science station, and she had no idea why?

“What’s the truth?” she gasped.

No, that was too complicated. There wasn’t enough time. She figured there was only one question worth the rest of her short life.

“Where are the children?”

But no answer came.

CHAPTER 1

The Florida sunshine had never seemed brighter than the day I was finally a free man. Free from work, that was. I retired to the Sun Coast of Florida a couple of weeks ago, and today, I was driving home the first real splurge of my entire life.

I’d finally gotten my dream car. With the top down on my factory-fresh Corvette, I didn’t even mind the feeling of living inside a shower stall, given the terrible humidity that came with a home near the beach.

I had to tell someone about it.

I clicked a few buttons on the computerized dashboard and heard the high-dollar speakers broadcast a ringing phone. After the third chime, it went to voicemail.

“This is Joey Greene. I’m not in right now, but leave a message. I’m probably at my awesome new job.”

I laughed at his quip about a new job, but hung up. I’d sold him my trucking company to complete my retirement, so I knew all about it. Part of why I called him was to check up on how his first Monday alone and in charge was going. I didn’t leave a message since I could call him later in the day, to make it a real surprise. In the meantime, I would spend the rest of the morning and afternoon relaxing on my back patio.

On the seat next to me was my date, a pile of books.

“Nothing to do for the rest of my life but read, drive fast cars, and, with a little luck, find a woman who enjoys the same.”

Today, I only planned to do the first two. Most of my belongings were still on a moving truck, coming from Chicago, and I would need at least a month or two to settle into my new house. I’d come to Florida in my old pickup truck, pulling a little U-Haul trailer, to paint and prep the house for the rest of my stuff. However, today was my day to celebrate and chill.

“Retired at last,” I said into the roar of road noise.

I sped south along Bayside Road, making for home after a visit to the North Pointe library to pick up those paperbacks.

My trucking company was in the capable hands of my nephew.

My new house was ready to be stocked with my stuff.

The moving truck was still two days away.

I’d been in the house for such a short time that the bills hadn’t even begun to stack up. That gave me forty-eight hours with no responsibilities whatsoever. The last time that had happened…

I had to think hard.

…maybe I’d been about thirteen.

While I daydreamed back to a simpler time in my life, I’d failed to notice two gray darts shooting across the sky until they were on top of me. A pair of military jets screamed out of the west, from the direction of the ocean, and zipped over my head not much higher than treetop level.

“Get some, boys!” I cheered. It never occurred to me the military might do a lot of drills in the area, but my realtor had mentioned several big military facilities were in Florida, including MacDill Air Force Base a hundred miles north in Tampa Bay. She’d said the Blue Angels did a lot of flying up in the panhandle. I wouldn’t mind an airshow from time to time.

When I put my eyes back on the road, where they belonged, I noticed a fellow traveler coming up behind me. He was cruising at a speed almost as impressive as the planes flying above…

“Whoa there, buddy,” I said to the rearview mirror.

The white Mustang closed the distance to my bumper in seconds, and he had to be moving at over a hundred miles-per-hour. I only had a couple of seconds to react, and I almost veered onto the shoulder to let him go by, but he jinked into the opposite lane and threw on the brakes, decelerating wildly on my left side.

I was ready to cuss him out, but when I turned and saw the blonde driver, with the glossy red lips, the shit-eating grin, and hair flying wild behind her in the open-top convertible, I found myself smitten.

Between the wind noise, our overpowered motors, and multiple exhausts, there was no way to hear words.

“Nice car,” I mouthed.

For a few seconds, we rode together, each with our brand-new cars. Hers was one of the few models on the road that would make me sweat in a stand-up, throw-down drag race. The modern Ford Mustang Shelby Super Snake had the widebody conversion, putting it low to ground, even with the twenty-inch wheels, a lot like a European supercar. I knew the engine upgrades under her hood were probably worth almost as much as I paid for my entire Corvette.

I waved approvingly at her and her steed.

She didn’t look exactly like Christie Brinkley, and I was far from Chevy Chase, but I couldn’t avoid comparing the moment to a similar scene in National Lampoon’s Vacation. She smiled back, then put the hammer down, resuming her getaway from the police.

I looked behind me. There were no cops in pursuit, but she sure drove like it. The woman swerved back into my lane, then powered away at speeds way too fast for where we were.

Excited by the moment, my own speed had drifted to almost 80, so I dialed it back, since the speed limit was only 55. The last thing I needed today was to meet the local sheriff…

I put her image in my mental notepad, hoping to see her and her Mustang another time, but I shook off the encounter for now and resumed sight-seeing.

My new home was in the sprawling suburb of giant subdivisions located between Fort Myers and Port Charlotte. I’d left North Pointe minutes earlier. That place was an oasis of retail and government buildings in the sea of homes, with a hospital, a city hall, and half a dozen car lots. That’s where I’d bought my 2019 Chevy Corvette ZR1 Mustang-slayer. She was dressed in Sebring Orange, which I had to order special, since it was next year’s model and wasn’t officially available for sale. I knew a guy who knew a guy…

It was about five miles from North Pointe to my subdivision, and the entire journey was a straight line on Bayside Road. Wouldn’t you know it, my new racecar was built for 52-year-old men with 16-year-old lead foots who were simply minding their own business when they happened upon straight-line roads like this one…

I could have given the woman a healthy run. My speedometer went up to 220 miles-per-hour, and it wasn’t hard to abuse the accelerator. Plus, the faster it went, the better it sounded. The engine didn’t care if you needed to talk to someone or shout to a pretty lady in the next car. Its burly growl was one of its best features, though even I was borderline considering earplugs if I was going to drive fast.

“If I was going to,” I laughed.

The landscape shot by.

On my left, there were a few lone houses here and there, but it was mostly a big forest on that side. However, the right side of the road was packed solid with houses all the way to the coast, which was about two miles away.

In my 750-horsepower monster car, the trip seemed to be over in seconds. Ahead, at the intersection of my street, there was a tall billboard with an orange fish advertising the Yucca Reef Community—the place I now called home. To my left, across one of the endless canals in this part of Florida, I got a good look at the three short streets that had been built at the edge of the forest.

However, instead of going left toward my new home, I worked the oversized brakes to bleed off my speed, then I leaned into a tight right turn. While the part of my brain that was eternally sixteen wanted to punch the gas and rip the tires, I was heading into a quiet neighborhood with the potential for lots of kids to be running around, so I took it slow.

The street, Poseidon Pier, ran in a straight line all the way to the coast. Ahead, way down at the end, there was a three-story wooden observation tower at a small beach.

I pushed the speed between 25 and 30 to get there. Now that I could hear again, I turned on the music, instantly playing my favorite songs from my phone—a feature set up by the tech-savvy installer at the car dealer.

Cheeseburger in Paradise played at a respectable level.

Along the way, I waved and nodded at anyone I saw, much as I had done with the woman in the white convertible, hoping that I might get to know them one day. While they didn’t technically live on my street, we were all tied together, and I planned on doing a lot of walking to keep in shape, so being friendly with the natives might pay dividends down the road.

Planning ahead was part of my lifestyle, and I got a lot of that from reading the books I did. Looking to my right, the books had shuffled around on the seat, exposing the covers of many of those in the middle of the stack. I mostly read books about EMPs and grid-down scenarios, and how men and women worked together to survive their unwanted return to pre-industrial societies, but I enjoyed any book that had to do with the end of the world.

I passed through a final intersection to reach the shore.

The beach itself wasn’t a big one, more likely the sand was shipped in by a developer so the residents believed they were getting extra value for buying in the endless suburban sprawl, but they had provided about 100 yards of white-sand beach, instead of the tangled, swampy trees and bushes that lined the coast north and south of it.

There was a small group of vehicles parked there, and I saw a handful of people at the water’s edge.

My purpose for going there was, I admit, a bit of a vanity project. Instead of parking among the three cars already there, I drove onto the sand and parked about midway between the crushed gravel lot and the water. I shut it down and got out, but I left the accessories on, so I could listen to the next Jimmy Buffett song.

A couple guys at the water looked over and waved, but I had no doubt they were thinking I was an idiot for breaking the parking lot rules.

“I promise this isn’t a normal thing,” I said to myself, as if to justify what I was doing. At the same time, I walked around the back, admired the Sebring Orange paintjob, still without blemishes, and let my eyes feast on her curves as if she was a busty model doing a naughty photoshoot. When I completed my revolution of her, I pulled out my new phone.

“Now, how the hell does this thing work?”

Despite needing help getting my music to play in my car, I wasn’t a newbie to phones or technology, but my previous phone had been with me for the better part of ten years. It was slow and bulky and had none of the latest and greatest apps, but it had all my work contacts, and I didn’t want to risk losing them with a new phone. However, when I retired, I finally moved into modern times by getting the most up-to-date phone I could buy, assuming I was going to keep that one for another ten years.

I stood there and studied the tiny boxes for several minutes. The first picture I successfully took was of my work boots.

“Aha!” I declared.

When I looked up, intending to frame a shot of my baby with the sea behind her, I was at first a bit miffed to see the people in the shallow water were going to be in the way. However, I caught sight of another person I’d not noticed earlier. She was a redheaded woman lying on a beach towel to my left. If I changed the camera angle to capture her, I could get two shapely women in one frame…

Before snapping the picture, I adjusted my position a third time, figuring I could get a little closer to the ‘Vette and cut out both distractions. As much as I admired the female form, I wasn’t a guy who took creepy pictures of them.

Now with my camera angle fixed, I lined up my shot.

The sand was perfect, the sunlight angle was perfect, and…

“What in the—” I gasped.

I lowered my camera, not sure what I was looking at. The best way to describe it would be a blue see-through wave of energy rushing toward us from out in the Gulf of Mexico. It moved fast, hundreds of miles-per-hour, and was going to reach us in a matter of seconds. It seemed to span from the water to the clouds, if not higher, and it was visible as far as I could see to the north and south. The giant curtain pushed through clouds, dissipating them instantly…

The people at the waterfront saw it too. They screamed and shouted, running from the waves to the sand as if there was any way to get out of its path.

After the initial surprise, my heart raced, my mind went to work, and I realized this unusual sight could be, and probably was, a big threat.

I was out in the open, exposed.

In the center of the beach.

The wall of blue smoothly approached from beyond the giant bay. I wasn’t at the edge of the open ocean, but was inside a giant harbor, ringed by land and islands on the far side, maybe five miles out there.

The energy wave would cross the bay in an instant.

My eyes shot left and right, looking for anywhere I could hide, but of course it was impossible. The best I could do was move closer to the ‘Vette, hoping against hope I could hide behind the frame and at least deflect a little of the incoming tide. While I had almost no time to wonder what it was, I did reflect on what it could do, since I had those survival stories on the brain.

Were we about to be struck down?

Fried by the energy?

Beamed up like in the movies?

I had enough time to look straight up the wall as it arrived. It was a towering structure, ten miles tall.

It rushed over me. Silent. Ghost-like.

Then, equally as fast, it was gone.

CHAPTER 2

“Dude, did you see that?”

The people from the water had run over to me. At first, I thought maybe I’d done some time traveling, since two of them were wearing outfits that could best be described as white cloaks and togas from Greek history.

“No, I missed it,” I joked to the short-haired guy, unable to contain my giddiness at having seen and survived a phenomenon like the one we’d all witnessed.

“We’ll make it do it again,” another guy—also dressed in Greek, with long brown locks—mused.

I took stock of my fellow beachgoers. Besides the two men in what I hoped were costumes, there were two young women in modern clothes, and a much older man in a suit carrying a fold-out camp chair. When I noticed the men had been in the light surf, and I remembered what they’d been doing out there, I finally put it together.

“You were being baptized,” I stated as fact.

“Right on,” a long-haired guy replied.

“That’s right,” the older gentleman added.

The girls snickered a little.

“What did we just see?” the first guy asked.

Put on the spot, I thought about it a little while they gathered closer. To my surprise, the man in the suit continued walking toward an old powderpuff blue Volkswagen Bus, probably to dump off his chair. One of the girls rushed away to catch up to him, leaving me with an audience of three. Before I answered, I remembered my manners.

“I’m Frank, by the way.”

“Richter,” the long-haired guy answered.

“I’m Tomas,” his partner seconded.

“And I’m Trin,” the young woman added. She appeared college age, maybe a little older, and was dressed in shorts and a Tampa Bay tourist shirt, suggesting they might not be from around there.

“Well, guys, I don’t really know what that was.” I pulled out my phone, worried the beam might have shorted a circuit. To my mild surprise, it wouldn’t turn on.

As if starting a bank run, the three of them rushed for their phones. The girl brought hers out, but the two guys pawed at a big purse hanging over her shoulder to find their phones. All three of them soon stood with black screens, showing me they were dead.

“Okay, let’s not get hasty here,” I rallied. I pulled out the key fob for my Corvette and hit the remote start feature.

Nothing.

I ignored the implication, hoping the battery was fried in the engine or the fob, or the link was busted. However, when I hopped in to press the button and the gas pedal, it also refused to turn on the vehicle.

“It was working two minutes ago,” I said to myself. “In fact…”

I didn’t want to put voice to my realization, but in all the excitement, I’d barely taken note how the music turned off as the blue beam went by. Jimmy had been in the middle of a beach riff when he’d gone silent…

“What’s wrong, mister?” Tomas asked.

A shrieking engine roared to life. Not mine, but the classic van. I looked over and saw the old guy waving to his friends frantically.

They started to move off.

“Hold on, wait,” I pleaded. “If the phones aren’t working and my new car isn’t working…”

The two guys ran for the van. The girl hesitated, as if sorry for what her friends were doing, but I waved her away. “It’s okay. I’ll figure this out. I don’t live far from here.”

“Okay, sorry, mister.”

“Frank,” I reminded her, not sure why I’d bothered.

The girl ran for her friends, and the van tires shot rocks as the driver got them off the lot and onto the main road.

It left me alone on the beach, save for the woman on the beach towel. She remained there, lying face up, unmoving, probably asleep. It was tempting to go tell her what happened, but now that it was over, it seemed a waste of time.

For a moment, I took pleasure in the stillness and quiet, though the gentle tossing waves ensured it was never absolutely silent. At the same time, my mind kicked into overdrive, recognizing what must have happened. An obvious lesson every book sprawled over my front seat would describe in similar ways.

An EMP.

It was the only explanation. An electromagnetic pulse was quite common in modern movies and television shows, so it was easy to recognize the effects of one. A burst of energy would travel into modern circuits and wiring, frying anything with a microchip in an instant. That would include phones, check, automobiles, check, and all the other modern pieces of technology.

As if to mock me, a huge plane droned overhead, coming from the north. It was over the land, behind the beach, so I turned to face it, curious about how it had survived. Sure enough, it sped across my field of view, moving at a good clip for a plane with propellors.

But it was a giant plane. It was so big, in fact, it was hard to get a correct perspective on it. I couldn’t tell its elevation, other than to say it was lower than where passenger jets flew but higher than those two military planes I’d seen earlier. Five thousand feet, maybe.

It was white, with three engines on each wing, and it had a design that made it look like a flying plus sign, with square wings that complimented the square design of the fuselage. It was a beast, maybe a football field wide. Stranger still, there was a flat disk underneath, about half as wide as the giant wingspan, as if the plane was carrying a flying saucer. Despite its size, I could barely hear the engines, though I could easily make out the spinning blades.

“How are you still flying?” I mused.

I easily believed a modern military jet could survive an EMP, given modern pulse-resistant hardening, but the giant plane didn’t seem to be military, nor did it seem to have much in the way of an outer shell. If anything, the plate under the wings should absorb energy, making it even more susceptible to being zapped.

But what did I know? I was a reader of fiction, not a scientist.

The big plane lumbered to the south, then was gone. I was tempted to go to the top of the lookout tower to see where it went, but there was a ‘keep out’ sign plastered on the stairs, and it didn’t seem overly sturdy to me. Besides, by the time I climbed to the third level, the plane would probably be too far away to see.

I turned my attention back to the ‘Vette. If this was an EMP, I might never be able to move the car again. It would have been better if I’d driven straight home, as then I might at least keep my eye on it until things got back to normal…assuming they ever would.

There was nothing to take out of the car.

I left it where it was and walked to the parking lot. There were a couple other cars parked there, but no one had come out running from the woods, so I assumed those people were either far up or down the coast, perhaps hiking or using kayaks to get around. They might link up with the sunbathing woman and decide the same thing as me, that they had to walk home.

After quickly making my way to the pavement, I got on Poseidon Pier and this time looked to the far east of me, about two miles away. This part of Florida was flatter than the farm fields of northern Illinois, and that was saying something. It meant I could see my destination even from where I was. I was sideways relative to the tall sign with the orange fish, but it was there.

I didn’t jog home, but I did walk fast. I was dressed in my usual Florida retiree fare, which consisted of a loose-fitting Hawaiian shirt, khaki shorts, and my favorite pair of leather work boots. I didn’t take a hat with me, since I wouldn’t have been able to keep it on while driving the convertible.

At least I had my shades.

The first few blocks were peaceful. That would have comforted me in any other situation, but an uneasy feeling crept up my spine, getting closer to my primitive caveman brain with each step—the part that warns of danger and preps the flight-or-fight response. By the time I reached the second stop sign, I knew my surroundings were all wrong.

“Hello?” I called out, half-hearted in the attempt.

I looked north and south at the intersection. I guessed I could probably see about eight miles of streets from my position, but there wasn’t one moving person in my view.

Sure, cars might be out, but that only meant people would be on foot, like me. And people in their houses would be running outside, asking about the power loss, checking on neighbors, right?

I tried to imagine my own street. If an EMP had struck while I was sitting inside, it wouldn’t take me long to notice the lights go off or my phone to stop working…right?

Maybe if I was reading in silence on my back patio it might take me a little longer to figure it out, but there was no way a ten-block radius of Florida consisted of nothing but people who read paper books.

“Hello!” I shouted.

I listened to absolute silence. Now that I was away from the water, the quiet was more distinct. There were no sounds of engines, no kids laughing, no lawnmowers mowing.

I was not a guy who let the panic in, but I had to admit anxiety was affecting me. I tried to remember every detail of the blue beam, but nothing hinted that it was an EMP with any special properties, like keeping people inside their homes.

Picking a random house, I rushed to the front door and pushed the doorbell button. Of course there was no sound.

I pounded on the door.

“Hello! I need to talk to you!”

I waited for half a minute before backing into the owner’s perfectly manicured lawn. The houses around here were large, bright, and spendy, with varying distances between each one, but the roofs tended to be flatter points, so they were low-profile when the hurricanes came through. I tried to look in the giant windows of the one in front of me, but heavy drapes prevented me from seeing inside. Instead, I ran to the next house and repeated the process. I was five homes down when I realized I’d gone back toward the beach instead of toward my house.

“This is too weird.”

Unsure of whether I should retrace my steps and see the same thing, I ran into the back yard of a house without a fence, intending to go to the next block. However, a canal ran behind this house, making it impossible to go over there. Strangely, a little metal motorboat sped by, bouncing against the bank without a person driving it.

Trailing behind, lurking with two beady eyes, one of the local animal residents seem to chase after the boat. The alligator didn’t even look over to me as he skittered by.

“Sonofa,” I fumed through a clenched jaw.

The empty boat gave me an idea.

I ran back to the street, headed for home, but I was looking left and right until I found what I wanted. An open garage door stared at me from a house on the right side, so I ran up to the entrance and looked inside. I intended to knock and possibly go inside the house, to see if people were being silent and still because they had been incapacitated or injured in some way.

A tan minivan sat in there, with one of its sliding doors open. Breathing hard, I walked closer, to get a look at the interior. I don’t know what I thought I’d find, but I did not expect to see a child seat with its straps tightened over an outfit of clothes, but without the kid.

How? Why?

No one was in the back, so I looked toward the front. Again, I had no idea what to expect, but I was overcome with déjà vu as soon as I saw a locked seatbelt and a woman’s dress on the front seat.

One was unusual, but two was a pattern.

I stumbled out of the garage.

Looking around, willing myself not to find another datapoint, my eyes found what they didn’t want to see. It was like adjusting a filter in my mind. Initially, I’d been searching for the effects of an EMP, but now I was searching for a more sinister set of signs.

“Oh shit,” I blurted.

There it was.

I ran like hell for about a minute, closing the distance to an old blue van. It had run off the road and struck the base of a thick palm tree, crumpling the front end and busting out the glass on the front and sides. The engine was in the back, so there was no hissing steam from a broken radiator. When I got there, I expected to find that small group from the beach recovering nearby, but no one had gotten out of the van.

When I looked inside, I immediately spotted the Greek togas.

The outfits of the girls were in there.

A man’s suit sat in the front seat.

All had been left where someone had previously been sitting…

I stumbled away from the scene of the crime.

My breathing was fast.

“Stay calm, Frank,” I told myself. “There has to be an explanation. You just have to find it.”

CHAPTER 3

“Stay positive,” I reminded myself, unafraid anyone would hear me talking. In fact, I hoped I would be heard.

I walked into the middle of the abandoned roadway, then I put two fingers between my lips and whistled with bleeding-ear volume. I’d honed the skill after years of needing to call my mechanics over the noise of a busy garage.

This time, no one came hurrying to find out what I wanted.

There was no reply.

No moving people.

Nothing.

I was startled when a flock of black birds rose over one of the houses and crossed the street. They headed for me for a second or two before veering west, away from me. I was tempted to give it a supernatural slant, like the person responsible for killing everyone was giving me a warning.

Whoa. Were they all dead? Why had that been the idea that popped in my mind? It wasn’t possible, and I had a way to quickly prove it. Driven to speed, I ran back to the beach to talk to the one person I knew would be there…

But the woman on the towel was gone. I ran past my car, through the deep sand, and found her beach towel right where it had been, but nothing else around it. Had she disappeared, too? Her bikini wasn’t there, but there was a fair breeze, maybe it had gone into the water?

I looked around, not seriously searching for the swimsuit. I wanted to find it, but I didn’t. Before long, I got the heck out of there.

I walked east again, toward home, numb to the empty houses going by on both sides. As I put one foot in front of the other, I thought back to all those books I’d read about the end of the world.

Most of them were about EMPs, a subject on which I would consider myself something of an amateur expert, but I did read a lot of books where the world ended in other ways. Alien invasions. Interdimensional shifts. Time travel. Even a couple books on what the church-folk called the Rapture. While we’d definitely experienced an EMP, as evidenced by all the dead cars, my phone, and the power, an electromagnetic pulse would not account for the missing people.

Before I realized it, I’d reached Bayside Road again. To the south, there were more trees on the eastern side of the roadway, and yet more houses on the right side. Far down the highway, about five miles away, a little slice of sky touched the road in the suburban zone known locally as South Pointe. To my left, also five miles away, was the town of North Pointe. They balanced each other—

“What the—” I said with shock.

A police cruiser had run off the road and tipped on its side near the woods at the northern edge of my subdivision. The lights and sirens were off, if they’d been on before the crash.

I didn’t know what drove me to check it out, but it was an official vehicle, so I figured it was worth a look. I had to run another few hundred yards to reach it, and when I got close enough to see the state of things, I knew I wasn’t going to find anyone inside.

The windshield had cracked open.

The front end had dug into the dirt as it tipped down the gentle incline next to the roadway, illustrating to me how fast it had been going. If anyone had been in there when it fell over…well, I wasn’t anxious to see their condition.

I walked through the grass a bit and came around to the top part of the car, allowing me to look inside. As expected, there was an empty clump of dark clothing, shirt and trousers, slung against the steering wheel. The badge and shirt patches made it clear a member of law enforcement had been at the controls.

I climbed up the tire and gingerly balanced myself on the door. The writing on the side said Miami-Dade Police, which suggested it had come a long way. There was no glass left in the side windows below me, so it was easy to confirm no one was in the back seat.

Looking around, I took a moment to appreciate where I was.

To my left, the woods. They extended for miles north and south as well as several miles to the east. It was an oasis of nature plopped in the middle of an ocean of unchecked development in this part of Florida. Unlike the impenetrable, brambly, leafy forests of the Midwest, this particular area was more like a patchwork of widely spaced pine trees, with lots of little shrubs, bushes, and open spaces. I was lucky enough to buy a house that backed up to that refuge, assuring me I would never have neighbors back there.

My house was visible from on top of the car. In fact, I could see all three cul-de-sacs of my subdivision from my vantage point. The first one, with the most houses, was Albacore Anchorage. That street ran next to Bayside Road, separated by a small, 30-foot-wide canal that surrounded most of our neighborhood. The next street was Barracuda Bay. It was surrounded by canals and only accessible by a bridge on the far end. I lived on the third and last street called Clownfish Cove. My street was slated to have a canal around it, like the other two, but the developer was still in the process of staking out its boundary, so all I had for a border next to the woods was a grass field and some construction flags.

I sighed heavily, weighed down by what was taking place in my otherwise boring subdivision.

“Is anybody out there!” I shouted, channeling Pink Floyd.

No one answered.

Crestfallen, I was about to jump down when I had a moment of clarity. If there was no one left in the car, what would it hurt if I took the deputy’s shotgun? However, when I looked inside the front seat, there was no weapon where I expected it. Things were twisted and displaced, leaving me unsure if there had ever been a gun in there. Maybe I’d seen too many movies where the cops carried shotguns in every vehicle.

On the climb down, I was a bit sad about not collecting any new weapons, but that was one problem I didn’t have back home, so the second I hit the turf, I walked into the woods.

On the way, I carefully surveyed each street as best I could, searching for any signs of survivors. There was no movement on Albacore, though I did see what I thought were some piles of clothes in the back yard of one of the nearby homes.

There were no moving boats on the canal separating Albacore from Barracuda, and there were no people moving around on the middle street. Likewise, there were no boats on the canal separating Barracuda from my street, so I walked into my back yard, studiously avoiding the property of my neighbor—an older gentleman and his elderly wife. I liked to respect the property lines, even though neither of us had a fence.

Unlike the neighborhoods I’d gone through to get home, the homes on our three streets were a lot closer together, since they were designed to be cozy cul-de-sacs in high demand. I walked between my house and the next one, figuring there was about twenty feet between them. I’d owned my lot for less than three weeks, but I’d lived inside for even less than that. As I stood on my own driveway, I realized I knew none of my neighbors. It wasn’t that I was a shut-in or anti-social, far from it, but I’d been so consumed with getting my house ready after it had been built from scratch that I’d spent the bulk of my time painting the rooms, drywalling my garage, and putting on other final touches that were outside the scope of what the builder provided. My intention was to get all that done before the moving truck arrived later this week.

My shoulders slumped as I wondered if that life had been totally canceled. Would the moving truck ever arrive?

I looked far down the street, willing a truck to show up.

A minute later, everything was the same.

My block consisted of nine houses on my end of the cul-de-sac. Everyone wanted to live on the quiet end, so most of the houses of the quarter-mile-long street were here. However, there was a group of four homes in the middle of the block, separated from our nine by two empty lots on each side that were currently in various states of construction. At least one of those should have been swarming with busy workers on any given weekday, but, obviously, there were no workers now.

Movement caught my eye about midway down the road, beyond the last house on the right side, in the open lots. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I knew I saw it…

I was tempted to run down there and check it out, but I made myself think through what was happening…

“Frank, old pal, you are going to be in shock soon. This is too much to take in. The whole world gone but you? Not good, man.”

I took a step backward.

“You’ve got to keep it together. Think things through. Be like Ish in Earth Abides. He wakes up with a similar problem, so pull it together like he did.”

Using one of my favorite books to center myself did make me a bit calmer. To further make good on my inner voice, I went in through the front door and headed for the mudroom. When I got to the small space, I flicked the switch out of habit, then laughed at myself. The light remained off, as expected.

“That’s going to be a hard habit to break,” I said to no one.

There, in the dark space between my kitchen and the garage, was the room where I did my laundry and kept my boots, but it was also where I kept three lockers full of guns and ammo. It was stuff I didn’t trust to the movers, but I affectionally thought of it as everything a growing boy needed to protect himself.

Rifles, shotguns, pistols, and all the ammo and accessories to go with them. For this mission, I grabbed a small pistol and an inside-the-waistband holster, then selected my pump-action Remington 870 tactical shotgun for a second weapon. After loading both, and standing there for a few moments to catch my breath and check myself for shock, I noticed a small cross sticker that had been placed there by a prior owner. I’d gotten all three lockers at an auction and liked the distressed look of them, so I’d never cleaned them up by removing old paint and the odd sticker.

Seeing the cross, however, gave me pause. Without really thinking it through too much, I ran my finger over the small shape.

“Lord, if you’re up there, I could really use an assist today. Please don’t let me be the last person alive…”

Bolstered by my prayer, I hurried to the front and went out my door, leaving it open since there didn’t seem to be a point to closing it.

I ran down my driveway and into the circle. I ran past the seats and shrubbery in the island in the middle—an area decorated by the developer to make people feel at home. I ran past all the empty residences, tempted to shout but afraid I would scare whoever I was trying to catch by that construction house. I had plenty of time to investigate each property once I had this sorted.

I moved fastest as I crossed the two empty lots, but then I veered right to go behind the first partially finished home, a two-story model. Since this area was pan-flat like everywhere else, I rounded the back of the house to find an open view all the way to the next lot. The builder hadn’t gotten to the landscaping in the back yard, nor had they done anything at the canal edge behind the house, which was always the last step.

There was no one there.

Confident I hadn’t been dreaming about seeing movement, I trotted behind the two houses and came to the corner of the last one. Beyond the house, for a few hundred yards, there was nothing but open space to the end of the road where it joined with Poseidon Pier and turned right. Other than a few telephone poles and about twenty stakes marking out the remaining properties, it was a flat, grassy field.

That meant whoever I’d spotted had to be close to the last house, as there hadn’t been enough time for them to run into the forest beyond the giant field.

I took a calming breath, then peeked around the corner, ready for anything.

“Well, I’ll be a monkey’s brother.”

The golden retriever looked at me expectantly, then put his head down. Below him, next to where he was sitting, a woman’s outfit lay sprawled on the grass, as if someone’s laundry had blown off a clothesline.

Only I knew it wasn’t laundry.

The dog did, too.

“Come here, pup,” I said.

The dog got up and met me.

I’m not too ashamed to admit that’s when I finally let go of the waterworks.

CHAPTER 4

I cried on the coat of that poor dog for a good ten minutes. He whined quietly at the same time, doing what I imagined was mourning the woman who had been walking with him. Together, we let it all out, though it made me even sadder to know the dog probably had no idea who else in his family was gone forever…and that I didn’t, either.

My sister lived in Chicago with her husband. She was in her late forties, a bit younger than me, and she and her husband were in good shape. If this was happening up there, and they’d somehow survived like me, I had full faith they could endure.

Their son Joey, my nephew, also lived in Chicago. He was capable, too, though he’d spent a lot of his time lately learning to run my company. All those lessons would mean nothing in a disaster situation, so I hoped he would pivot to survival and forget about the company.

It wasn’t much, as family went, and they were far away, but they were high on my mind as I hugged that dog. With nothing tying me down in Florida, and in light of the massive disruption now taking place, maybe getting back to them was my next move.

Tapped out of tears, I finally paid attention to my new companion.

“What’s your name, boy?”

As I got a good look at him, I realized I’d seen him before. He lived with the family two doors down from me, on the canal side of the road. I’d never gotten a chance to introduce myself to them, but it was hard to forget a beautiful creature like…

“Mr. Puppers?” I said, more as a question than a statement. “That’s your name, boy?”

He gave me a sloppy lick on my chin.

“I guess, so,” I laughed.

Not sure what to do in the moment, I gave another bear hug. “Come here, Mr. Puppers, let me give you a big one. You’re not alone. I’m going to—”

I halted my words. Even though the dog couldn’t write down my words and hold me to them, I didn’t want to say what was on the top of my mind, which was that I was going to reunite him with his family.

“I’m going to be your temporary buddy, okay?”

His tail wagged with fury.

“You like that?” I said with excitement, scratching behind his ears.

We played around for a few moments, then I remembered the weight of what I was dealing with. When I stepped in front of the home, with Mr. P trailing behind, I faced the depth of the cataclysm.

“No one is home,” I said to my new pal.

I wanted to investigate each house and confirm for myself whether that statement was totally true, but I found myself hungry for lunch, and it provided a nice excuse to avoid such a horrible task.

As I walked back, I plotted in my head which houses I was going to hit and in which order. I was going to start on the side opposite the home of Mr. Puppers, as I wanted to save that for the end, since I knew it would be hard on him.

How hard would it be to not know what was going on around you?

I laughed.

Again, I realized that he and I were almost in the exact same boat. Sure, I knew a little more than him, but not in any way that mattered. People I knew and loved were potentially gone, and I had exactly the same understanding about the why as my dog friend.

None of the houses were particularly remarkable, at least in terms of being able to tell if someone might have been home before the event, except the giant two-story home three doors down from my place, on the side of the street with the woods. I came upon it on my right as I walked back toward the circle.

In all the times I’d driven by, I’d only gotten a glimpse of the occupant of the house, a young man with blond hair and an expensive taste in automobiles. His red Ferrari was parked haphazardly at the end of the driveway. About twenty other expensive cars littered his front yard, all the way up to a lifted, charcoal-gray Jeep Unlimited that had one tire propped on the front step.

Unlike other homes, the owner had opted to have mature palm trees planted in the front yard, giving the sprawling property the feeling of belonging to a wealthy drug lord. He also was one of the only homes on the block to have an in-ground pool already installed in the back yard.

Mr. Puppers walked toward the house and waited, perhaps assuming I was going to head to the front door, based on how intently I was looking at the property. However, I waved him to me, and we continued our walk.

That was going to be an interesting place to search. I would have a unique opportunity to ‘catch residents in the act’ and see if the disappeared crowd had been in the house playing cards and drinking lemonade, or if they’d been doing drugs and conducting themselves in all manner of misbehavin’. Given their lack of concern for parking, and the fact they were still in the house late on a Monday morning, I suspected the latter.

“You hungry?” I asked my furry friend.

He looked at me expectantly.

It was only when I walked in my house that I realized I wasn’t really set up to feed a big golden like him, and I didn’t want to go to his house and get real dog food, for the reasons I’d been thinking about.

“I’ll find you some grub,” I said in a kind voice.

He ran inside and jumped on the one cushioned chair I’d brought with me. It sat next to a card table that was currently doing duty as my kitchen table. All the good furniture was on that moving truck.

“Oh, wow. You are very polite,” I commended him.

Now he was drooling. He was obviously a smart dog and understood food was on offer.

I looked in my kitchen cupboard.

“Oof. You might re-think being friends with me. I don’t have anything suitable for you.”

I did a lot of eating out while I fixed up my house, since I didn’t have much in the way of cooking utensils, pots, pans, silverware, and so forth. Those were all on the moving truck, along with everything else that made a home a home.

“How about a Pop-Tart?”

It was dumb, but given the choices from my lame selection, it was probably the best he was going to get. When I gave it to him, he crushed it in his teeth and swallowed it in about five seconds. There were numerous crumbs that fell to the floor, but he was eager to hop down and do some cleanup.

“Wow. You liked that?”

He looked at me with anticipation.

I still held the other one, but repeated the feeding sequence, getting the same result.

“We’ll get you some real food in a bit,” I said.

For my own food, I had to eat Pop-Tarts, too. The electric range wasn’t working, so I couldn’t cook anything. The microwave was dead, so that narrowed my options. I had some meat in the freezer, but I didn’t have a grill.

I ate one of the cinnamon tarts, but my appetite was elusive, so I gave Mr. Puppers his third treat of the day, which he accepted with slobbery grace, including self-cleanup, before hopping back on the chair.

“All right, you can get down from there,” I said right away, motioning for him to not get comfortable.

We switched places. I took the chair, and he laid down next to me.

“You relax for a bit. I need to make a few notes.”

I pulled a notepad off my counter. Whenever I was in a tight spot at work, I often found it beneficial to create a list of tasks to help get me out of the jam. This time, when I tapped the pen to pad, I didn’t think there was enough paper to capture an event this dire.

“Number one,” I said as I wrote down the same. “Find supplies for Mr. Puppers.”

I shared a look with the dog. I only had one friend. He needed my support.

“Number two. Start prepping the house for the long haul.” Even if I was going to head to Chicago, it would take time to get ready. During that time, I needed to keep up with hygiene, clean water, food, and weaponry. While I hadn’t gotten the chance to really think it through, I knew the municipal water wouldn’t be on forever, if it still was…

To satisfy my curiosity, I went to the sink and tested it.

Water came out of the tap.

Inspired, I found a bowl and filled it with water for the pup.

He ran over and threw his face in it, instantly tipping it over.

“My bad,” I laughed.

I got a different bowl that was shaped more like a dog dish, so it wouldn’t spill.

While there was water running, I needed to fill the tubs, so I had a reserve. If I’d planned to stay, water would be critical to my long-term survival. Unless the disaster ended somewhere down the highway, it would likely be way harder to find once I was on the road…

Back at the chair, I wrote more.

“Third. Go out and find other survivors.” I tapped my pen on the sheet, thinking. Unless I was part of a grand experiment, maybe a post-apocalyptic Truman Show-type scenario, I doubted I could have been the only person to survive the disappearances. I intended to search the nearby houses at a minimum, but I had to plan a way to search a wider area as soon as I had the time.

“Fourth. Figure out what happened.” I looked back to Mr. Puppers. “What should I write for that one, do you think?”

He merely looked at me, one ear up. I had a sneaking suspicion he was holding out for more Pop-Tarts, not trying to wrap his head around what happened to the Fort Myers metropolitan area.

I looked at my list again. Those were the top-level numbers. Each of those could potentially have dozens of sub-points. Number two was potentially a big list below the heading. I’d read endless books on surviving an EMP, including what to stockpile, how to organize a neighborhood for defense, and how to deal with troublemakers on the outside. However, none of the books could prepare for what to do when I was totally alone.

While I’d been in my head, ignoring him, Mr. P had moved into the hallway. Curious, I followed him.

“Where you going, boy? Don’t you get any ideas about sleeping on my bed, by the way. I don’t have shit in my house, yet, but I did spring for a new bed already. My old one was only fit for the dump.”

Mr. Puppers investigated one of the empty bedrooms before sniffing around the bathroom. I’d left everything undecorated, except for the fresh paint jobs, so there wasn’t much for an inquisitive dog to explore.

However, when he reached my room, he stiffened and looked ahead.

“That’s one room I can guarantee you won’t find any lost clothing,” I remarked, a bit more glib than I felt inside. I’d retired a perfect bachelor at fifty-two, so there was no Mrs. Douglas in there. The last few years had been tough at work, so there hadn’t been any free time for the dating scene. The same was true for the last few weeks in Florida, but I had high expectations I’d get a chance to do some light dating once I’d settled into my new retired life. “Guess that’s not going to change anytime soon, is it?”

He didn’t answer.

When I walked in, I realized I’d been wrong.

There was a pile of clothes on the floor.

And, worse, a pistol.

CHAPTER 5

“That’s not good,” I said in a muted tone. It was obvious the person was no longer around, but a lifetime of dealing with shady characters in less-than-perfect neighborhoods had given me a healthy sense of doubt when facing potential criminal situations.

I looked into my master suite bathroom, wondering for a moment if an unsavory character could have known I’d be coming home. They might think ahead and bring a pair of shorts, flip-flops, and an extra gun. Then they might hide out in the dark room and get the jump on me. It seemed unlikely, but still possible.

Mr. Puppers nosed around the clothing, but didn’t flash any warning signs that I could detect. Not knowing how to direct him where I wanted to go, I pulled out my Springfield XD-S concealed carry pistol, made sure the safety was off—there was always a round in the chamber—and made my way to the bathroom. I didn’t have a flashlight on me, so I had to use the light from the main room to search inside.

My breathing pumped faster as I opened the shower door, but it quickly fell when I was certain no one was inside. The room was empty.

Back at the pile, I took note of the Ruger LC-9. Not a bad model pistol. I snatched it up and stored it in my locker, making sure to lock it when I was done. We met back in the kitchen.

“Well, dog, I think maybe that was a real person, not a trick.”

Mr. P looked up at me expectantly, then at the cupboard.

I shook my head. “I didn’t say anything about Pop-Tarts.”

He went to hang-dog mode, like I’d taken one of the tarts right out of his mouth. I’d created a monster by feeding him the human delicacy.

The rest of the house was already searched, so I was moderately confident there were no criminals hiding within. However, the presence of the gun prompted me to speed up my search of the neighboring homes, if only to confirm for myself they were empty.

I started with the home on my left. A young woman and her toddler daughter lived there, I’d at least waved hello to them a couple of times as we passed in our vehicles, but I’d never gotten the chance to speak to her. When I went inside, the home was sparsely decorated, though it was quite tasteful, like the occupants had money but chose to only buy the bare minimum of furniture, seating, and so on. Mindful of the intruder, I secured the back door and leaned a glass end table against the sliding door, so I would know if anyone tried to open it from the outside.

There were no little girl clothes on the floor, which made me happy, but I did see the woman’s workout outfit in a side room that doubled as a gym.

“Sorry, ma’am,” I said respectfully.

I found a set of keys and locked the front door on my way out.

It set the tone for what I’d intended to do for each of the other houses.

The next home had its garage door open, revealing a brand-new, pull-me-over-red Mercedes S-class convertible inside a spotless garage. I’d seen a beautiful Hispanic woman washing it on her driveway a couple of times, but I’d been coming or going in my truck, so I’d never done more than wave to her. I didn’t know if she was married, lived with her family, or anything else about her.

I walked in through the interior door and found myself faced with a shocking sight. No, not more bodies, but the home had apparently been occupied by the publisher, editor, and writer of Cat Fancy magazine, as the entire living room was a shrine to kitty cats.

Throw pillows had cat faces on them.

Framed photos on several walls contained scenes with cats in them.

Hundreds of little cat statuettes and stuffed animals were meticulously placed all over the room, on shelves, on windowsills, on countertops.

Mr. Puppers sat next to me, unimpressed.

“Is there a real cat out there?” I asked him.

He responded by doing nothing.

I took that as a good sign. The last thing I needed was to care for a cat along with my dog buddy. It wasn’t that I was against helping, but there would be no end to it.

Walking in, I realized the endpoint of my thought. With everyone gone, there would be cats and dogs from here to downtown Fort Myers that would need help. Those outside when the event happened might be alright, but those locked indoors would be doomed to slow starvation over the next week or two.

The thought made me shudder.

I leaned a fragile cat statue against the back door, found the keys on a hook, locked up the house, and then left through the garage again. I unhooked the safety strap from the garage door opener, so I could lower the big door behind me.

Mr. Puppers became excited as I hopped onto the porch of the house with all the cars on the lawn.

“What do you think, bud? You have a friend who lives in here?” I knew he lived across the street from this home, so it seemed possible the owners could have been friends. Mr. P might have been anxious to see his pal.

After listening to the door for a few moments, waiting for barks or other animal excitement, I tried the handle and found it unlocked. Inside, it smelled like a potent mixture of spilled beer, marijuana, and women’s perfume.

There was lost clothing everywhere on the floor of the kitchen and living room, though their scattered placement made me wonder if they’d been tossed off before the event happened, rather than after. I could imagine a wild party of drunken youngsters. I wasn’t a fan of drugs, but I’d had my share of beer bashes over the years. If only I could ask someone what had gone on here.

There were no dogs around, but Mr. Puppers seemed on edge as he followed me around the house. I found more clothes upstairs, including some on a tussled bedspread that were almost certainly from the night before…

I also found my first find of importance.

“Hello, Dolly,” I remarked, picking up the AK-47 that had been sitting in the corner of the master bedroom. It was painted gold, like it belonged to Saddam Hussein, but otherwise, it seemed functional.

Could I take it?

Should I?

I’d been spooked by the person in my house…so my thoughts went immediately to self-defense. It seemed prudent to take the gun and store it at my house, if only to deny its use to any criminals around the area. If, by some miracle, the owner came looking for it, I would happily give it back.

In a moment of lightheadedness, I had to sit on the edge of the bed. My heart raced and my pulse was gunning for top gear.

“Easy, Frank,” I said to calm myself down.

When my breathing and heart continued to soar, I loosely thought I might be having a panic attack. The first of my life.

I was a forward thinker. I liked to plan ahead in my business, or when I drove over-the-road back in the day, so I was certain what to expect at certain checkpoints, be it driving, business management, or when dealing with difficult workers. Sitting with some guy’s random gun, knowing I was completely on my own, must have triggered a physical response in my body.

There were no more police.

No military.

No FBI.

No counterintelligence.

No one was coming to save me…

I looked to Mr. Puppers and imagined him talking to me. For some reason, I imagined he had an Australian accent.

‘Crikey, Frank, you have no idea if any of those things are true. Maybe the boys in blue will drive up the street in five minutes. Then you’ll feel stupid for thinking these thoughts.’

“Yeah, maybe,” I replied out loud.

‘So chill out, mate.’

I laughed and settled a bit.

When I was ready, I stood up and regained my footing. It was concerning to experience the ups and downs of my emotions, but the dog was right. I really had no idea what was going on beyond what I could see with my own eyes. That’s why I had to keep going.

Too soon, I was on the way downstairs again.

I tied a drape onto the handle for the hurricane door at the back of the house, so it would be impossible to open the door from the outside without cracking the glass. Again, I did this so I could walk around the back of the houses and easily see if the door had been forced open or broken.

“That ought to hold ‘em,” I snickered.

Mr. Puppers didn’t laugh. He didn’t seem to get my jokes. However, he sat in the hallway toward the front of the house as if listening to noises coming from the street.

“Alright, we’re leaving,” I said, imagining he was bored being in the home with the strange piles of clothes. When I walked by the pup, I waved him to come with me to the open front door, but he stayed where he was. “Let’s go.”

I motioned for him to come to me, but he didn’t move.

I walked outside, listening for what it might be. At first, I imagined I could hear a deep howl, far in the distance, like a tornado siren set a few tones too low. However, after a slight breeze kicked in, I no longer heard it.

“Come on!” I insisted.

The dog ran through the door, and I closed it. I didn’t have any keys, so I had to leave it unlocked for now. With enough time, I could set up hidden signs on the doors, like the old paperclip in the jam trick, to tell me if anyone had breached the entrance without my knowledge. That might become necessary…if this wasn’t a temporary disaster.

I walked to the next house with a little less pep. The single-story home was the last one on the street I knew was occupied. If I recalled it correctly, a younger couple lived there, but I’d only seen them a time or two, and it had been night both times.

Unlike the last house, Mr. Puppers seemed to have no hesitation following me to the front porch. He trailed me around the back to check the patio door and stuck right by my side as I came around the garage back to the front. All the doors were locked.

“We’ll come back to this one,” I advised.

I didn’t bother with the construction homes, since no one was living there, though I’d trek up there at some point, if only to confirm how many construction workers had been present.

The two of us crossed the street and went up to the front porch of another single-level home. This one was occupied by a sixty-something couple, though, like everyone else, I only knew them from a few brief sightings and waves while driving by.

Funny, now that I looked back on it. I was retired, with nothing but time, but I was too busy to get to know my neighbors. I had my excuse, and I had been doing things, but meeting the people living on my street should have been the first thing I did when I signed on the dotted line as the owner of my home.

Too late now, it seemed.

The front door was open, so I pried my way in.

“Hello? I’m checking to see if you’re—”

A woman’s pajama top and bottom were in the front room, on a couch, with a laptop on top of them. The owner of the computer must have been sitting there looking at it when the event came through.

The décor of the place was rustic, with lots of little knickknacks and wooden signs on the walls with statements like “Gone Fishin’” or “I’d rather be gardening.” A few pictures showed a gray-haired man and a barrel-shaped woman in happier times. I knew absolutely nothing about them, but I saw them as farther down the same line of retirement that I’d been hoping for.

A nice home.

Quiet surroundings.

A good woman by my side.

I exhaled heavily.

Mr. Puppers nudged me.

“What is it, boy?” I asked, glad to be distracted.

He took me into the kitchen, and I got the picture.

“Didn’t you just have your lunch?”

His ears went up.

“You know that word, lunch, don’t you?”

I peeked into the cabinets of the large, modern kitchen. There was plenty of food for a pair of retirees, but nothing for a dog.

“Come on, I think I know where we’ll find you something…”

I located the keys to the house and locked it properly, dropping the keychain in my pocket so it joined the others. Mr. Puppers lived two doors down, I knew that much, but I wasn’t thrilled about what I was going to find there.

Could the dog possibly know, too?

We walked to the next house, another single-story ranch home, but it was locked on all doors, suggesting to me the occupants weren’t in there. If I remembered correctly, the man had his own security company, or he did video cameras… I remember he parked his business truck on the driveway once in a while.

Mr. Puppers sat on the front lawn, whining. I immediately assumed he was anxious to go to his home and see what horrors awaited him, but he was instead looking across the street to the two-story home I’d checked out previously.

“Can’t look at your house, can you?” I said with a little too much defeat in my voice. I was mentally exhausted from the search of the homes, and I hadn’t been doing it for more than an hour. The overbearing sense of isolation—the sense that a war had been fought in the snap of a finger and I was the only survivor—left me with a potent mixture of anxiety, sorrow, and guilt.

Turning to the two-story where Mr. Puppers lived, I took a stabilizing breath before nudging the dog in the direction we had to go.

“Let’s get this over with.”

CHAPTER 6

We crossed the front lawn of Mr. P’s house, passing four pink flamingo lawn decorations sticking out of the grass. The dog nosed the stakes of a couple of them, perhaps trying to decide if any other dogs had come through and left a calling card. However, he quickly followed me to the garage, which happened to be open.

He ran inside, going directly for the door into the house.

I took a bit more time. I’d never met the couple or their two teen children, but I was aware of them from a few of interactions I’d had with the family as they got in and out of their late-model SUV, which was now parked neatly in the garage. They were both younger than me, maybe in their late thirties or early forties. I thought their kids were in high school, but I wasn’t certain on that point. However, the family was obviously big on sports, as the shelves along each side of the two-car garage were packed with sporting equipment, balls, bats, several bikes, lacrosse gear, and even a couple of kayaks hanging from the ceiling.

I followed the path of my anxious friend.

Mr. Puppers nosed a spot on the door that had discoloration and grime, as if he’d done the same act many times before. He then pawed the door on an area scraped clean of white paint.

“No one came running to let you in, did they…” I commented, not happy to point out the obvious.

We went into the kitchen together, but he made a straight line for the family room and points beyond.

The kitchen was new, like all the houses on my street, but it had a few tasteful decorations to make it feel like a home. Behind me, above the door to the garage, a fancy-lettering sticker said “FAMILY.”

I clenched my jaw.

There was no reason to think anyone would be left alive in the house, but I had to hope, for Mr. Puppers, that there was, so I followed him into the rest of the house.

He was on the floor, lying next to a pair of women’s running shoes.

“I’m so sorry, buddy,” I said, getting down to his level and stroking his soft coat.

I realized they weren’t part of a set of clothes but were by themselves. It was dangerous to assign emotions and motivations to my new canine friend, but it seemed as if he was using them as a memorial to morn the owner of those shoes, wherever she was. Had it been the woman I’d found him with or someone else?

My stomach turned into a hard lump of iron.

Nothing good was going to come of this…

“Come on, let’s keep look around some more,” I advised. It was becoming clear we weren’t going to find anyone, anywhere, around here, but I wanted to complete my survey of the home, if only so I knew what was inside in terms of resources. Slowly going through these homes had given me a greater perspective about the potential scale of the disaster.

In fact, getting back to Chicago was looking less likely the longer I explored. What if there were no people between Florida and Illinois? How would I feel then? Could I mentally accept that I wasn’t the last person in my area, but I could potentially be the last person in America?

I zoned out until I walked into a home office.

My puppy friend nosed a pair of khaki shorts and a black shirt sitting on an executive office seat. A pair of headphones, a watch, and a phone also sat on the big chair. A blank computer screen and computer sat on the desk in front of him.

Mr. Puppers had been content to lay down next to the woman, but he yanked the black shirt off the seat and tossed it around a few times, as if to play with it. He dipped his head in a play bow, tail wagging, then he pounced on it again.

For my part, my heart cracked to see what he was doing.

It gave me a chance to observe the pile of clothes up close. In addition to the obvious pieces, there was also a pair of underwear inside the shorts, as well as socks and slippers on the floor.

The black shirt fell to the floor face up. A cartoon image of Kermit the Frog was on the front. The face was almost blacked out with a black box, like he was in witness protection.

Despite it all, I had to chuckle.

“I think we would have gotten along…”

While the family dog said his good-byes, I had to busy myself with looking around the desk area. Several programming books were on the shelves and my best guess was that the guy worked from home for a web designer firm called “Lucky Luke’s.”

I quickly found paperwork confirming the guy’s name was Luke.

More banking paperwork showed his wife was Melanie and his kids were Tyler and Rainey.

Looking down at their survivor pup, I wondered about the logic of saying the names of his family members. Would it confuse him? Was there any possible benefit? I wanted to do right by the poor dog, but, honestly, I had no idea what was right.

In the end, I kept the names to myself.

We searched the rest of the house, found no one else who had been there, though I quickly figured out from pictures on the hallway walls that both kids went to a local high school, and, being the super sleuth that I was, I figured both kids had been there when the blue beam of destruction came through.

“Okay, boy, let’s grab the good stuff and head back to my home.”

I thought it was going to be difficult to get him to leave his missing people, but once I grabbed the bag of dog food and rattled a couple of his bowls in my arms, he followed me like the Pied Piper. I experienced a bit of guilt for doing it, but it was probably for the best.

There was one last house to search, but I found the front door locked, so I didn’t press the issue. The house next to me was another single-level place that was owned by an elderly couple named Drummond. Of all the people on the street, I’d at least talked to them a few times, given that they were next door to me. It also helped that they were both retired and were always home.

The guy had a career as a police officer.

The woman had been a full-time homemaker.

If I remembered the exact number correctly, they’d had eleven children, who were spread all over the country.

I knocked on the door, but didn’t really expect anyone to answer. Not only because the rest of the street had disappeared, but the man’s Lincoln was gone. They only had the one car, and they’d always parked it on the driveway, and it wasn’t there at the moment.

“We’ll come back to this one,” I said.

Mr. Puppers looked at me attentively. Or, more accurately, he stared longingly at the bag of chow dangling from one hand.

“Come on…”

The next few hours were spent arranging my house to accommodate my new pal, as well as prepping for a night on my own. I could barely believe my luck at having a guard dog who could alert me to any trouble, but I didn’t want to depend on him. He’d done fine on no leash walking around our street together, but there was no predicting what he might do in the middle of the night when I was asleep.

I opened the garage doors of my house, detaching the mechanical drives so I could pull them up manually. The three bays were almost empty, save for a pile of moving boxes in bay two and my trusty pickup truck in bay three. However, it gave me a sense of security to set up a chair in the middle of the garage, looking out on my driveway and along the length of my street. If there was even a hint of movement in my field of view, I was going to see it.

If there was something worse…I could run inside.

That gave me pause. What would be worse than having every man, woman, and child disappear in an instant? My human brain was incapable of dreaming up a scenario that led to all of them coming back, leaving it open as to what would constitute a worse scenario playing out on the street.

Aliens?

Could aliens have taken everyone into their spaceships? That would certainly provide a clean explanation.

The blue beam had come by.

Me and the people by the water were still there.

I sat up in my chair.

“Wait a second!”

I’d been so consumed by the tragedy that I hadn’t even thought through what I’d seen with my own eyes.

“First, the blue beam on the beach. Those people were obviously still there, as was I. At the same time, the music turned off. The power went out…and there was a plane in the sky.”

I tried to remember with my mind’s eye. Was the plane there before the blue light? Was it there after?

My fingertips pressed to my temples, as if to draw out the memory, but it was futile. I couldn’t remember the exact sequence.

“Well, what do we know for sure, Mr. P?” I asked.

I’d gone back to Luke’s house and brought back a large dog bed for him. It sat directly next to me in the open garage, so I could look down on him when necessary, and pet him when the whining got to be too much.

He looked up at me with large brown orbs, but with no answer.

“The people drove away in that old van. That’s an easy one. Anything older than the early eighties should be able to survive an EMP, since it doesn’t have any of the modern electronics.” I paused again to think. “Somewhere between leaving me at the beach and hitting that palm tree, they disappeared.”

I’d ended my sentence with a sense of the dramatic, as if I’d discovered an important point.

“Unless that blue light had a time delay, it couldn’t have been what sucked up all the people.”

But was the blue light? The EMP? Did the music in my ‘Vette shut off when it came through, or did it go off after that? I was pretty sure it went off at the same time...

Wow, I realized I’d been terrible about observation in the moments when it really mattered, but I had to cut myself a little slack. No one in human history had ever seen anything like that wave of energy, and my entire focus had been on that while it was going by.

“I don’t suppose you have anything to add about what happened?”

He gave me a blank look, but I could read his mind.

‘Look, mate, there I was minding me own business, right? Waiting patiently for me mum or dad to play with me…and then nothing. It was whack!’

“That’s for sure,” I replied.

Later, after I fell asleep in my chair, I woke up when the dog growled.

It was completely black outside, save for the moonlight.

Mr. Puppers was a bit outside the garage, looking toward the side of the house. I got up and hurried over to him, expecting trouble.

When I peeked around the corner, it took a few moments to compute what had him so worked up. A white blanket covered the woods behind my house. The moon made the ground cover stand out, almost as if it was glowing.

I took a few steps along the side of my home.

Everything was silent in the world.

It unsettled me to listen to nothing. It wasn’t normal to be so quiet in the suburbs. Even the bugs had stopped their business.

Mr. Puppers didn’t move from his spot, but I walked a few more paces to be closer. Part of me wanted to retreat back into the garage and forget whatever this was, but a bigger part of me wanted to explain what was going on. Could this be part of the answer?

My brain said it was aliens. It had to be. They’d finally come back for those of us who were leftovers.

I walked into the middle of my back yard, putting me about twenty yards from the edge of the phenomenon. The ground was moving, I was sure of it, but how?

A few steps closer.

Was it a blanket of snow?

The woods as far as I could see in the night were covered by it.

A few more steps.

My heart slapped my ribs.

“Hello?” I whispered.

The sheet moved, especially the part closest to me.

I got all the way to the edge of the woods. The position gave me the ability to see into the ground cover next to the trees and bushes. Part of the white blanket even came onto my lawn, revealing what it was…

“I can’t believe it.”

Every shore bird in Florida had come to roost in the woods behind my street. They huddled close together and barely moved, as if the whole gigantic flock had joined together to hide.

A cold shiver ran down my back and along my arms.

“What do you birds know that I don’t?”

CHAPTER 7

I spent the rest of the night in my comfy chair listening for any sound at all. Any sign that human beings were elsewhere in the city, or in the skies, or on the ocean, but I fell asleep at some point.

When I woke up, my head was on fire with a migraine. That was an affliction I rarely got, so it threw me off guard. I shielded my eyes from the morning sunlight.

“Ugh. I should have drank last night, so this hangover had a reason…”

I laughed at my own joke, trying to stay positive. I’d set my shotgun next to the chair, I kept my XD-S on my hip, and I’d moved out my AR-15 and tons of ammo to a hiding spot in the corner of the garage, on the off chance I needed a backup weapon. It was nice to know none of them had been necessary…so I could maintain the upbeat attitude.

‘Cheers, mate,’ Mr. Puppers said to me without getting up.

Mr. Puppers was lying on the driveway, right out in the open. Florida days were wet and sticky, and even though the nights only tended to cool down a little, the lack of sunshine made it almost comfortable. Still, the inside of the garage was already stuffy and a walk in the fresh air sounded good to take the edge off my headache.

The headache shouldn’t have surprised me when looking back inside at the cockpit of mayhem where I’d spent the night. The chair was nice, but it was no place to catch good Zs. Instead, it turned out to be a great place to pick up painful muscles, joints, and migraines.

“Did the birds leave?” I whispered as his ears perked up with my arrival. “Nope.”

The white birds were still in the forest behind my house, but they were livelier in the daylight. Some hopped around or flew up and down the branches of the trees, making the white carpet move more than the night before. A precious few of them were in my yard, pecking at the new grass planted by the builder a few weeks ago.

Other than the rebel flock, the rest of the street was absolutely still, with no movement besides a garden flag in the front flower bed of the last house on my right side. It blew gently in the breeze.

Rather than dwell on what was lost, I wanted to get busy. It was in my head to start organizing for a trip to Chicago, but I was also terminally curious about what was left in my immediate surroundings. I resolved to take a trip to other streets, then, eventually, to either North or South Pointe to see an actual town. Maybe I could find a police station. Someone in-the-know. A working radio.

Though I didn’t have any particular rush, I didn’t want to walk everywhere. I remembered seeing a hybrid bike and a child’s trailer in the house next door, so I went and got it, then wheeled it over.

Me and Mr. P sat in our spots looking at it.

“You think you could get in there and take a ride?” I asked my friend.

He breathed with a little excitement.

“Wanna go for a ride?”

Now he stood up and walked toward the trailer, perhaps confused how it was going to work.

“Give me a few minutes to prep.”

Inside, I found some aspirin and downed a glass of tap water. The municipal water was still working, for now, which was a relief. I’d filled my big tub with water, but there was a lot more I could do for water reserves, such as filling the tubs in the homes belonging to my lost neighbors. With a little luck, I could probably have fresh water for six months using those tubs. As backup, I could tap into the nearby pool. In a pinch, I could purify the water in the freshwater canal.

Food. Water. Shelter.

The essentials of life.

Then security, to protect those three.

These were necessities no matter the disaster.

Finally, way down the list, was entertainment. A way to make the suffering worthwhile.

I had the food and the water and the house, so scratch those off the list. I did have an ample stockpile of guns and ammo, thanks to a lifetime of enjoyment of the shooting sports, but there was another important element to security. The only way I could ever be secure on Clownfish Cove was if I knew what the rest of the world was doing.

If the aliens took every soul on the planet but me, it would make life a whole lot simpler. No need to worry about being ambushed. No need to think about defense against people. Hell, no need to wear pants anymore.

But if there were still people out there, I had no doubt they would eventually find their way to my quiet slice of suburbia. I would need to harden my house, figure out a more sophisticated defense system, and I would probably need to move to a property on the next street, so I had a waterway around all four sides of my block.

To that end, I had to go out and learn what I could.

It was mid-morning before I had it all together. I took the back door off the kid trailer, so Mr. Puppers could lie down or sit in the back while having the ability to see outside. I lashed my backpack to the front of the trailer, so it wasn’t on my back. That gave me freedom to wear my tricked-out Bravo Company RECCE-16 Carbine AR-15 on a sling, over my back, ready to deploy at the first sign of trouble.

I pumped the pedals and rolled down my driveway.

“Hang on, pal!” I advised.

We were both quiet passing by Luke’s home. A couple of the shorebirds played around near the pink flamingo decorations, perhaps mistaking them for the real birds.

The tires rolled quietly on the asphalt as we passed the construction homes. A couple of white pickup trucks were parked in the dirt in front of one of them, with men’s clothes and hardhats scattered around next to them. I’d assumed we’d see them and there they were.

At the end of the street, the only way to go was to the right, onto a bridge over the canal that ran between my street and Barracuda Bay. Poseidon Pier would take me out of the subdivision, but I turned right immediately, to check out my neighboring street.

“Anyone home!” I shouted several times as I kept moving.

I rounded the circle at the end and retraced the route.

No one came out.

Other than a few scraps of clothing in front yards and on driveways, there didn’t appear to be any sign anyone had ever lived there. It could have been a bunch of empty model homes ready to be occupied.

I didn’t want to go down Albacore, but I did anyway. Once again, I called out over and over to get the attention of anyone inside the endless tract of homes. I even waited several times to see if people would ever come out…

I hadn’t given it much thought before taking Mr. Puppers, but I quickly figured out he didn’t enjoy riding in the trailer as much as I assumed he would. The longer he was in there, the more he whined and groaned.

The bike took me to the main intersection under the giant sign with the orange fish. The happy clownfish was the face of our community, but now it represented only one resident.

Me.

“You can get out, bud,” I said to the dog.

He jumped out as if he’d been waiting for the okay.

“See you later, Orangey,” I mused, assigning a random name to the mascot on the billboard.

I turned right. There were police stations and government buildings to the south, my left, but I’d been to North Pointe the day before, so I was more familiar with that town. I also knew where to find the places I needed.

First, the city hall. If anyone had any clue what was going on, it would be there. Also, if there was anyone left alive up there, I assumed they would congregate at the city center.

Second, I was going to find a police station. Obviously, I wanted information, but, if I was the last person around, I might find some useful weapons. If I was alone, great, but there would also be wild animals, eventually including packs of feral dogs, so it was never too early to stock up on firepower.

Third, if there was time, I wanted to find a working vehicle. I figured there were plenty of old cars in the homes sprawled around me, but what better place to find one than the car lots where people would trade in their old dogs for a new model.

Mr. Puppers ran next to me. I didn’t sprint on the bike, but he seemed content to run at a relaxing pace, so that’s what I did.

We passed a few dead cars on the road, including the ditched police cruiser. We also passed seemingly endless rows of houses on the left. I looked down each street on the way, hoping to see someone walking, driving, or riding bikes like me. The only movement I caught was a couple of dogs running behind one home, and a random cat crossing a street.

When we got closer to the edge of North Pointe, we reached a final east-west canal that went under a bridge on Bayside. I pulled the trailer over to the side of the road there, so I could take a drink of water and catch my breath before going into the main part of the town.

Below me, about fifty alligators swam in tight formation as they headed under the bridge, toward the west. Some of them were huge, like fourteen-footers, which I was told by my realtor was gigantic for Florida. There was also a giant one in the middle, who, if I could even guess, was twice as massive as the next nearest one.

The blue energy beam had disrupted the animals, too, even if it didn’t make them disappear.

I shuddered at the thought of all those dinosaur-creatures crossing the road where I was, instead of under it. Or, worse, if they had snuck into my garage or back yard, instead of a bunch of birds.

None of my guns seemed large enough to fend off such monsters.

I also didn’t want Mr. P to get anywhere near them.

“Let’s keep going,” I advised.

The first intersection in the town was flooded with dead cars from three directions, as if the traffic signal had held everyone back at the same time. The only way that didn’t have any vehicles was the south, where I was coming from.

A small strip mall sat to my right.

A bank was on the corner to my left.

Two gas stations, one on each corner, were across the intersection.

Again, there wasn’t a living soul.

The left fork would take me back to the car lots.

The right fork would take me toward the high school and grocery store.

Straight took me toward the civic center and the little downtown area, which was where all the tourists went to buy their T-shirts, shells, and Florida gear. I pedaled as fast as I could, finally getting a little winded from the effort. When I rolled up to the city hall, which was a nondescript two-story office building with a small assembly hall and attached police station, I hopped off my ride and parked it near the main doors.

“Wow, this town absolutely reeks!” I commented.

It smelled like the black liquid that drains from the bottom of a dumpster that has been cooking in the heat all day. It was hard to tell where it was coming from, but I wanted to be out of it as fast as possible.

“Let’s go in.”

A sign on the door showed a dog symbol with an X through it.

“It says you are welcome to come inside, and to please take a dump on the carpet, if possible,” I joked.

The dog looked at me in his usual way, though I imagined he enjoyed my joke. Without fanfare, I opened the door, and we went inside. It was a relief to be out of the stench.

“Hello?” I called out.

A welcome counter contained all the information I needed about what I was going to find in the building. A line of about ten people had been cued up at the reception window, and they’d been converted into piles of clothes, the same as everyone else.

“Well, this sucks,” I whispered. Louder, I yelled, “Is anyone left?!”

Not even crickets came back.

I took notice of a pile of newspapers sitting on a table inside the office. With no one to stop me, I crawled through the open window and grabbed one of them. Then, not wanting to leave my buddy alone, I went back through the window halfway before realizing I could open the door from the inside and prop it open.

“Let’s go over here,” I said, pointing to the main reception area.

Yep, there were more piles on the chairs, but I found two that were empty before I sat down. My friend needed a little coaxing to climb up, but I assured him the people in charge really wanted him on the furniture, so he finally jumped up.

I got to reading the headlines, whispering them as I read.

“Governor signs order to prepare for Hurricane Aurora. Hmm. That sounds like we might be in for a storm.”

Mr. P had no response.

Moving on, the next headline was in smaller font.

“Delphi Industries main launch tomorrow.” A small picture of a rocket next to a launch tower gave the article some much needed detail. I knew about the powerful rocket that was primed to launch on the other side of Florida, but it wasn’t anything I really followed. If I recalled, they were in competition with another space launch company called Tikkanen-something-or-other. They mined asteroids in outer space, I thought.

The next one was more curious.

“Search for Nuclear, Astrophysics, and Kronometric Extremes (SNAKE) turns on power for the first time tomorrow.”

I quickly checked the date of the paper. It was the Sunday edition, which meant it was talking about the next day, Monday, which was the day before today.

The last headline on the front page was less interesting and didn’t hint of extraterrestrial missions or science experiments.

“UN extends olive branch to Tanager administration. Details forthcoming.”

I had no idea what that was all about. Instead of reading each of the inside pages for research, I decided to put the paper into my pack for later reading. While I had daylight, and some energy in my legs, I wanted to get around town to see it all with my own eyes.

When I stepped back outside to the quiet world, I convinced myself that I wouldn’t be alone for the rest of my life. Somewhere out there, a survivor or two must have made it, like I did.

A survivor?

It struck me in an instant. There was one other person I did see alive the previous day, and that person hadn’t left a calling card of missing clothing.

“Come on, pup!” The dog became excited. “We’re going back to the beach.”

CHAPTER 8

I’d ridden five miles to the town and gone another few miles south before Mr. Puppers finally slowed down.

“You’re in really good shape, pup,” I said, giving him a break while I pulled over and stood next to my bike. “Go get a drink.”

I took him over to a canal, which required us to walk down a short incline next to the subdivision street. There were hundreds of miles of roads in the area and most of them had a canal next to or crossing them, so water for the dog was plentiful.

While he took his drink, I caught a whiff of that nasty dumpster smell again. It only lasted a second, then a stiff breeze cleared it out. Not convinced it wasn’t me, I smelled my shirt to be sure I wasn’t the source. After all, I’d not taken a shower in three days, and I’d been doing a lot of walking, running, and bike riding.

Luckily, my shirt came back clean—at least, it didn’t stink like a dumpster. I was sure I was overdue for a shower.

We walked back to the bike, always on the lookout for anyone around us, but, as usual, there was no one around of the human persuasion. There were a few dogs and cats running loose, but they seemed occupied with each other and stayed away from the two of us. I was cool with that, as I didn’t want to accumulate too many pets until I had a better grip on what was going on.

Mr. P rode in the trailer for the next leg of our journey. Instead of coming back on Bayside Road, which was the main two-lane highway up and down the coast, I took one of the subdivision streets that ran along the woods and swamp next to the harbor. Along the way, I caught glimpses of clothing in and around the woods, not to mention in several cars that had come to a stop in the middle of the road. A few looked as if the driver had pulled over…

I put on the brakes to look at one such vehicle.

It was a little black Pontiac Fiero. The two-seater, mid-engine vehicle was built in the 80s, so I didn’t expect it to have survived the EMP, but it had been pulled to the side of the road next to a section of trees not far from the beach where I was heading.

There was a little red dress on the passenger seat and a man’s outfit on the driver’s side. I could imagine the pair on a date, perhaps going to a picnic lunch at the local beach, when the blue light zapped through.

But if he disappeared, how did he park the car?

I chewed on it for a minute before coming to the obvious conclusion.

“They parked here because they were going to walk into the woods.”

Mr. Puppers didn’t answer me from the trailer. I’d stopped and he was free to get out, but he preferred to stay in there and relax.

I got back on the bike and started pedaling again, sure I was reading the scene correctly. Any car going too fast when the driver disappeared would probably end up running off the road, but it wouldn’t apply to cars already stopped.

We got to the beach some time around lunch. I pulled out an apple and a ham sandwich that I’d prepared before we’d left the house. I also gave Mr. P some kibble, hoping to give him a little energy for the afternoon shift.

The redheaded woman’s beach towel was still spread out on the sand, though the wind had roughed it up a bit. I ran over to confirm my suspicion—there was still no bikini lying there. I’d taken that as a sign she was still alive, though I had to admit maybe she’d gotten up and then disappeared…

“Want to climb to the top?” I asked the dog. “I need to see if I can spot any missing bikinis.”

He was already done with his food and lying in the shade next to the abandoned car. He came with me at a slow pace, but when I made like I was going to walk the steps of the observation tower, he balked.

“You don’t want to go up?”

Puppers looked at the steps, then at me, and if I was reading his dog-like expression, he was telling me to get bent.

“Fine, party pooper. You stay here and guard the stairs.”

I headed up the wooden stairway, though I turned around to see if he was going to follow me after all. The dog did move closer, but instead of going up the steps, he plopped down in the shade.

There were three levels to go up before reaching the top. I had no idea what it had been used for originally, but the small cubic room at the top had been abandoned long ago and every teenager for the past twenty years had been in there to spray paint graffiti on every surface.

I stayed along the railing, looking out on the ocean bay.

Immediately, I caught sight of a black ship far out there, by the barrier islands. There was a straight between two of them that went out to the high seas of the Gulf of Mexico, but the ship sat in the passage between them. It was facing me, so I couldn’t make out what kind it was, or whether it was moving, but it did seem to lean a little to one side, toward the northern island, suggesting it was in a bit of trouble.

If I’d thought there were people on board, I might have found a way out there—using one of Luke’s kayaks, perhaps. But from where I stood, it was too far for me to do any good. Given what I knew about the missing people from miles around, the ship was probably empty, too.

Mr. Puppers barked one time, making me look straight down at him, but he remained lounging where he was, looking casually back toward the houses rather than at the pretty view of the seashore.

“What do you see?” I whispered, not wanting to give myself away if there was a threat.

The worry lasted for about sixty seconds, but the dog made no additional effort to warn me of trouble. He even set his head on the sand, heading for a nap.

To my great disappointment, there were no other boats on the water, no jet-ski engines whining, no parasailers, no sailboats, no swimmers. It was essentially empty water in front of me. Worse, there was no bikini anywhere on the beach. Or was that better? If she wasn’t zapped away, she had to be around, right?

I was getting nowhere.

While looking out on the beautiful scenery, I was struck with a heavy dose of loneliness, which was unusual for me. I wasn’t a loner in any sense of the word, but I’d been out and about on solo vacations many times. I’d done years behind the wheel of a big rig, which was the height of loner-ism for most drivers. I could take the lonely…but this was different.

There was no coming home after a long trip to find friends and family.

There was no one waiting in a distant town for me to swing through and pay her a visit.

There wasn’t even anyone on the TV to keep me company in a small-town hotel at the end of a long highway.

It was just me.

I leaned over the railing, with my elbows on the beam and hands folded. I was tempted to pray at that moment, but what would I say?

“Dear God, if you don’t mind, could you bring everyone back for me?”

Or better yet…

“Dear God, I think you forgot to take me with everyone else.”

I laughed at the idea. I’d read survival books about the Christian Rapture. In those stories, Jesus selected his followers like he was sorting out and hand-selecting cherished donuts at the bakery. He didn’t simply cut a check and buy the whole building to get them all. No, this was something else entirely.

In the dark recesses of my imagination, I wondered what it would feel like if Jesus did buy the whole store but purposely left me out of the purchase, a rotten donut left on the bakery floor forever…

Yikes.

As I stood there deciding on the proper prayer request, I looked down at my Corvette and noticed a sheet of paper on the front seat, tucked a bit under the headrest.

“No way!”

I ran down the stairs at top speed and met Mr. Puppers as I came off the last one. He ran with me as I hurried to the car and yanked the paper from its perch to find someone had hand-written a message on the sheet. The words at the top of the page were clear, since they’d been wedged in the headrest.

DEAR SIR. YOU WALKED AWAY BEFORE I COULD GET YOUR INFORMATION.

The next line was smudged, as if water had gotten onto the paper.

I WAS ON THE BEACH WITH YOU.

Below that, the smudge was even worse.

I’M LEAVING MY ADDRESS.

I could see the numbers as dots and the name of the street as a long streak. There was no possible way to know what she’d written.

We’d been so close.

My heart took a few moments to accept the loss. If the woman had tried to find my address in the car, she wouldn’t have found anything. I hadn’t even put the insurance card in there yet. That led to a second problem, in that I didn’t have a pen to write a reply.

To remedy the situation, I walked over to a four-door Toyota Camry. The doors were locked, so I made the decision to break the back window and get inside. That allowed me to grab a pen from her center console.

DEAR FRIEND. I LIVE AT THE END OF THIS STREET. WALK 2 MILES ON POSEIDON, LEFT ON CLOWNFISH. ALL THE WAY TO THE END.

I sat there looking at what I’d written, wondering if it was a mistake to broadcast my exact address. There was no one around to read it, but what if someone came along and found it—someone who might be a criminal looking to capitalize on one man living alone.

Regrouping, I wrote a new note.

DEAR FRIEND. I LIVE NEARBY. COME TO THE INTERSECTION OF BAYSIDE AND POSEIDON ANY DAY AT NOON. I’LL FIND YOU. I AM ALONE.

I allowed the last part, since I wanted her to know I wasn’t part of a group. If a bad group did show up at the intersection, I could hide and let them pass on through. If it was a lone woman, I would make contact. I’d given her a once-over while she was sunbathing on the beach the previous morning, but the only two facts I knew about her for sure was that she painted an attractive figure while lying on her beach towel and had red hair. Age, appearance, and everything else about her was a mystery.

But then, that wasn’t much different than anything else going on in my life the past two days. I’d ridden all over the community looking for one sign of another person, but all I’d gotten was this soggy note.

For all I knew, the woman wrote the note, placed it on my car, and then disappeared. That would be a cruel joke, as I would probably check the intersection each day at noon for a lifetime if I thought she was the last woman on the planet.

I shuddered to think of what I was really saying.

“Come on, dog, let’s get the hell out of here.”

Like a well-oiled machine, me and the dog saddled up on the bike and then I drove him straight home along Poseidon. I got tired the farther I went, as if the beach had drained energy from my tank. By the time I pulled onto my street, I was bushed.

I stopped at the last turn, and Mr. Puppers jumped out. Undoubtedly, he knew where we were.

“Let’s go home,” I said, exhausted.

It was still mid-afternoon, so I had plenty of time to do more chores to fill in the rest of the day, but I didn’t relish the idea of doing them alone. The scale of the worldwide disaster was growing on me, and it suddenly seemed not only possible I was the last person alive, but also probable.

We passed the construction homes.

Mr. P ran on my right side as we crossed along the two empty lots. When we reached the second house, the one with all the cars, Mr. Puppers veered into the parking lot in the yard and ran toward the front door.

“Oh, man, come on!” I was too tired to go after him, so I continued to ride the bike toward home. I went around the right side of the circle and stood on the pedals to look back. The golden was on the porch, standing and pawing at the front door.

What now?

I kept going around the circle and went back the way I’d come. When I reached the red Ferrari, I pulled over the trailer-and-bike combo to go see what he was doing.

“What is it, boy? Did little Timmy fall down the well?”

I was the only one laughing at the old joke.

He whined as he scratched at the door.

I’d left it unlocked, so it seemed worth checking out.

Of course, I took my weapons…

Just in case.

CHAPTER 9

He rushed inside the moment I opened the door and ran the length of the hall toward the spacious living room, but he doubled back in the hallway, slid to a stop, then seemed to listen some more.

“Oh, you gonna make this difficult, are you?” I chuckled.

He cocked his head, ears perked like radar dishes.

I listened for a moment and heard nothing, though I expected his sense of hearing was a hundred times better than mine. I half-heartedly tried to get him to come outside, but then I went back in and knelt in front of him.

“What do you hear?” I asked softly.

He whimpered a little.

Something was bugging him. I got up and closed the front door, expecting him to stop hearing whatever it was, but he maintained his posture even when I returned.

“Okay, you’ve got my attention.”

I looked down, wondering. I put my ear all the way to the tile to see if I heard anyone downstairs. However, I thought that would be a waste of time, since my realtor had explained almost no one had basements in this part of Florida, since it was practically impossible to keep the water out, given the flat topography and proximity to the ocean.

It took me a few seconds to cancel out the drum beat of blood flowing through my ears. All this activity had me over-excited.

But I did hear a voice. Faint, yes, but it was there.

“You are amazing, Mr. Puppers!”

He stood up and ran around in a circle, celebrating.

The hallway was lined with expensive tiles, but a careful inspection assured me there was no loose flooring leading to a secret chamber. I ran around opening every door on the level, thinking I’d missed a stairwell, but that led nowhere. I banged on the floor with a broom handle.

“Help!” a faint scream came back.

She was alive.

It was definitely a woman.

A living person.

For the next fifteen minutes, I picked at tiles on the floor, checked inside kitchen cabinets, and even moved every piece of furniture on the main level, assuming there was a secret entrance.

Finally, beaten, I yelled at the floor.

“Where is the door?”

I listened for a response and heard the woman yell a word.

I wasn’t sure I heard her right, so I called back. “Underwear?”

“Understairs!” she screamed even louder.

“Oh, right,” I laughed.

Mr. Puppers followed me back into the hallway toward the front door. The right wall backed to the kitchen, but the left wall was directly under the stairs going to the second floor. The wall was decorated with wainscotting, like most of the house, but I quickly noticed one section that had fingerprints in a certain spot. When I pushed the narrow panel, a latch was thrown.

“Shit!” I cried out. A hidden door swung inward.

A dark staircase beckoned me.

I hurried to the trailer and backpack to grab my LED flashlight.

I set my Remington over my shoulder and pulled my pistol. It wasn’t my first day on the planet, and this seemed like a setup if I’d ever seen one.

“You wait here,” I told the dog.

He followed me into the narrow staircase.

I stopped and looked back at him. “You aren’t going to listen to me, are you?”

‘Sorry, mate,’ he whispered. ‘Me mum and dad are missing, and they could be down there.’

I appreciated how lost we both were. Maybe it was better to share the risk down the staircase.

Unlike the rest of the home, this staircase was made of concrete, as were the walls and roof of the thin tunnel going down. It looked as if it had been built in secret, not as part of the main structure. I could imagine a host of horror movie endings as I aimed my light into the pit.

“Hello?” I tossed into the dark.

A woman answered hoarsely, “Yes, I’m here!”

“Thank God,” I said to myself. I wasn’t the only survivor.

The voice spoke in a burst of too-fast-to-understand Spanish. She finished in English, though. “Please help!”

“What’s down there?” I asked, not sure I could trust whatever response she gave, even if I was glad to hear her. “I should tell you, I’m armed.”

“Are you going to hurt me?” Her voice carried lots of fear and pain.

“I’m a neighbor from down the street,” I reassured. “I’m not here to hurt anyone, but if you need help, I’m willing to...”

“I live next door!” she exclaimed. “My name is Carmen Perez. Friday night, I was kidnapped by the asshole who lives here! Please hurry before he comes back!”

That didn’t help my nightmares.

“Today is Monday,” I said to the darkness.

A moment of pause.

“It’s been that long?” she asked. “There are no clocks down here.”

“My name is Frank, by the way. What is this place?”

“So…thirsty.” She choked up. “Please, Frank, come down here and let me go. It’s too embarrassing to say what’s around me.”

I didn’t want to play hard-to-get, given what I knew about her condition, but there was the matter of the whole world going to pot outside, so now wasn’t the time to be too trusting.

“Look, ma’am, you’re going to have to give me a little bit more. There has been a natural disaster outside and everyone is gone. I’m a little suspicious of voices in a dank cave.”

“Dank cave? Everyone’s gone? What the hell are you talking about? Please help.” She sniffled. “I’ve been hanging on this…marital aide…for three days.”

What did that mean?

“I’m coming down in a second…”

My light beam blazed in a tight pattern into the void at the bottom of the stairs. Was it a trap?

I walked a few paces and grabbed an eight-by-four-foot rug from near the kitchen, rolled it up tight, and set it in the secret door. This was my way of ensuring the door wouldn’t close on me, if it was operated remotely.

Getting more paranoid, I ran into the kitchen and yanked silverware out of the drawer. I stuffed a handful into the edge of the carpet, the side hanging over the stairs, so if anyone came by and yanked the carpet out, the knives and forks would tumble out and alert me.

I tried to think of what I was missing even as I went about halfway down the little staircase. My beam of light went into the edge of the room, revealing standing furniture I initially saw as torture devices. When I came totally down the steps, I observed wooden racks, chains hanging from the ceiling, and walls full of items hanging on hooks.

And motion.

I jumped half a foot in the air.

Yep, worst nightmare confirmed.

A thirties-ish woman in her underwear was tied to a giant panel sitting at about forty-five degrees, arms and legs secured to each corner.

“Please,” she sobbed, “I need to get out of here. The police have to arrest that sicko!”

I looked back. Mr. Puppers was on the staircase, but he refused to step foot in the chamber.

“Good dog,” I said over my shoulder. “Make sure no one sneaks behind us.”

There was no way to know if he understood me, but it made me feel better. Anyone listening upstairs would assume I had a capable partner guarding the steps.

After confirming where she was, I didn’t shine my light directly on the brunette lady anymore, to give her a tiny bit of privacy.

There was a white robe hanging from a hook on the wall, so I grabbed it and tossed it at her, center of mass.

“I’ll try not to look at you,” I reassured.

“I don’t care. Please get me out of this hellhole!”

The woman broke down as I untied her legs and then one hand at a time. I expected her to wrap herself in the robe the second I unlatched the final lock, but she stayed exactly where she was.

“Are you good?” I asked, knowing for sure she wasn’t.

She lifted her head an inch off the table. “I can’t move.”

I tugged the corner of the robe to cover more of her front.

“You are unlocked,” I clarified. Getting bolder, I put my arm behind her shoulder to try to lift her up.

“It burns!” She shook her head. “I have the worst pins and needles…”

“Oh, sorry.”

We waited a bit.

“Thank you for rescuing me, and trying to help me off this thing, but can you give me a few minutes? And will you please turn around when I’m able to move, so I can get dressed?”

I looked around, wary. There’d already been one secret door in this house of horrors. What if there were more? What if she had a weapon hidden nearby, ready to attack me and make me the prisoner? With all this in mind, I stood next to the stairwell, certain the upstairs was still open, and my dog lookout was still on duty.

“What did you mean about outside? How did you get past that guy and his dickhead son, Trevor? Are they home?”

I chuckled. “Lady, I don’t know how you are still alive at all, and I don’t say this because you were undressed, but I can’t express to you how much I’ve wanted to see another living person today…”

She was stricken with silence.

At the same time, I was overcome with emotion at the gravity of all this being real. She was a living, breathing person. And, I couldn’t deny, a good-looking one, too. It was too good to be true. I broke a half-minute of silence by carrying on.

“You somehow missed what happened outside. So did I. The asshole who put you down here might have saved your life.”

“It burns so bad!” she cried out.

I turned back to face her. From where I was, she was almost in the dark. That made me stay wary, but the fact she wasn’t jumping off the table to get a gun suggested she was for real.

“Want a little more help?” I asked.

“No, I’ll get this. Keep talking.”

“About what’s outside? I wouldn’t know where to start. I’ve been alone since yesterday. It might be better if you saw it for yourself.”

“Alone? You mean alone in your house, right?”

“No, alone in the whole city. You really have to see it.”

“The city…” She paused. “That’s impossible.”

I hadn’t expected her to take me at my word. I wouldn’t have believed it either, if someone I’d recently met had tried to tell me the same.

“I’m beginning to think this whole weekend was supposed to be an elaborate practical joke, but it all went wrong.” She cursed in Spanish for a moment. “I mean, I knew we didn’t get along as neighbors, but I never imagined the son would have asked his dad to come assault me…”

“I’m really sorry that happened.”

“Thanks.”

“I wish you were right on this one and it was a practical joke, but I assure you that’s not what’s going on. When you get upstairs, prepare yourself. All the people are still in the house.”

“Trevor’s dad?” she whispered.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. He might be up there, but I promise you he won’t be a threat to you ever again.”

She appeared out of the darkness, causing me to spring back and bump the wall next to the stairwell.

“Whoa!” I blurted.

Carmen walked right past me, wearing denim shorts and a light blouse, limping bad as if one leg was still asleep. “I’ll see this for myself.”

After I recovered my wits, I appreciated her style. Not one to take it lying down, she’d gotten right up and headed upstairs to prove me wrong.

Sadly, I knew there was no punchline.

Mr. Puppers and I followed her up.

CHAPTER 10

“Please don’t go outside until—"

Carmen stood in the natural light of the hallway, head spinning left and right as if to decide which way to go. She cupped one hand over her eyes as she’d been in the dark for a very long time. When she caught sight of something to her right, she went deeper into the house to check it out. I knew what it was.

“Is this your ‘end of the world’?” she asked, shrugging it off.

I came closer to her. She’d dressed in the dark, and I’d averted my eyes when she was in her underwear, but now I got a better look at the person I’d rescued.

She was younger than me by a solid decade, perhaps in her mid-to-late thirties, with long, curly brown hair. I wasn’t sure if she’d left her shoes off on purpose, but the bare feet and exposed legs revealed a woman who had been blessed in the femininity department. A pair of white denim shorts hugged her midsection in a pleasing way, and her gray top was so tight I could see her brassiere plain as day.

“Yeah, these people were—” I tried to say, assuming she’d spotted all the clothing piles in the living room. However, I stopped talking when I realized she’d passed right over them and went to the sprawling back window. She pointed outside, beyond the swimming pool.

“Are those why you think the world is over? What is this, some kind of joke?” She spun up with a few phrases in Spanish that I didn’t really catch and certainly didn’t understand. “First, I get kidnapped. Now, this.” She gave a sassy thumb-point over her shoulder as she turned toward me.

The white birds were still out there blanketing the ground inside the woods behind our homes. Any other time, seeing so many birds acting so strange would certainly make me wonder what was wrong in the world, but this time, they were merely a side effect of the problem, not the cause.

“No, ma’am, I’m actually afraid the problem is right here.” I pointed to a woman’s set of clothing at the end of the sofa.

“What? A dress?”

“No, look closer.” I waved her to join me at the scene of the crime. “The necklace. The fancy computer watch. The hair clippy things.”

I pointed to the items spread out near the sofa, close to the woman’s black dress. Her shoes were on the floor, with a pair of pantyhose sagging down the front between those and the dress.

Carmen shook her head. “I don’t get it.”

I pointed to the other missing people.

A man sat on the other end of the sofa.

Two women seemed to have been sitting in one of the recliners.

A lone pair of swim trunks were in the middle of the tile floor, closer to the kitchen. Lots of clothing items were mixed together near the kitchen table, and a hundred drink cups, bottles, chip bags, and other snacky items waited for guests that were never coming back.

“Can’t you see it?” I asked in a kind way. She’d come out of that dungeon in a world far different than the one that existed when she’d gone in. I was sorry she’d been kidnapped, but it was hard to be gentle about the grim facts.

“No, that’s…insane.” She looked at me with wide eyes. “You’re insane, mister.”

“I realize this is hard to grasp, if you didn’t see it yourself—”

“Because I was locked up!” she interrupted.

“Right. Sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“This is… I have to go.” She held up both hands next to her head and leveled them out, as if calming her mind. “I’m going to assume I’m free to go?”

I stepped aside, so she could make a straight line to the front door.

“Thank you,” she whispered as she hurried by. When she saw Mr. Puppers, who’d been indifferently watching me talk to the new woman, she made a point to go around him. I suspected she was too mad to be seen petting the lovable blob of fur, so I didn’t hold it against her.

Carmen got to the front door, then ran for it.

I didn’t give chase, but I did trace her steps and go outside, if only so I could see where she might have gone. I thought I caught a glimpse of her going into her front door.

The dog came into the sunshine and sat next to me.

“Well, I guess that’s that,” I said.

I was far less distressed than I’d been earlier and much of my sense of exhaustion was also gone. I’d missed the woman at the beach, and I’d been seriously beginning to think I was the last person on earth, so seeing a living, breathing woman took a huge load off my chest.

We waited for a couple minutes.

“I guess we’ll go home and tidy up a few things,” I finally said to my buddy. “Then I think I’m going to do another round to the houses on the street.”

It had been two days since the blue beam and whatever came with it, so I’d given everyone enough time to come out of their homes or return to them. While I’d refrained from forcing my way into the locked houses, I was now compelled to investigate every dwelling, if only to confirm there weren’t hidden basements or hidey holes where other survivors might be stuck. It was also time to establish what resources were available to me…and now Carmen.

Where there was one survivor, there had to be more. If we could get two bikes, plus the trailer, she and I could cover a lot of ground in the local neighborhoods.

I’d walked slowly into the street, heading for home.

“Frank!”

Carmen stormed out of her front door, now wearing shoes as well as carrying the biggest revolver I’d seen in a long time. The pretty woman couldn’t have been taller than five-foot-three, and the polished chrome gun sparkled in the sunshine while she struggled to aim it at me.

I guessed it was a Colt Python. A beast of a revolver with at least a six-inch barrel. My blood pressure ramped up at seeing the huge thing facing my way, but I tried to play it cool. I’d saved her. There was no way she would use the gun on me.

Right?

“I’d been holding my bladder for three days, so I needed a moment to myself, but then I realized what I needed even more were some answers. You’re going to tell me what’s really going on,” she spat.

She got closer, crossing her lawn until she approached her mailbox. In combination with her girl-next-door outfit, the gun looked absolutely out of place in her tiny hands. Still, she tried to hold it up and in my direction, which was not a sure-thing, considering the long barrel and lumberjack-sized body of the weapon.

It took both her hands to steady it.

“That’s a nice gun you’ve got there,” I said in a friendly way. “I know you’re scared—”

“No! Do not talk to me like I’m a little girl who needs to be calmed down. My phone doesn’t work, the TV is off, and nothing in my house will turn on. My car doesn’t start. Whatever this is, it isn’t the end of the world!”

Her eyes were bugged out, and her expression suggested she was in the throes of panic.

“I would never talk to you like a little girl,” I assured her. “I broke down yesterday, I’m not ashamed to say, when I found this friendly character walking around, lost. I thought I was the last one. The last person in the whole city. The only reason I’m not pissing my pants right now is that I’m way too happy to know you are a real person in this with me.”

“A real person?” She broke down into Spanish for a moment before catching her breath. After looking around and seeming to appreciate no one else was on the street watching her outburst, she took a cleansing breath. “What else did you expect? Where is everyone, really?”

I shrugged. “I’ve been from here to North Pointe, did a loop around the whole town, then came back a different route. Not once did I see a living person.”

Now, her hands were quivering. I’d once held a pistol almost as large as that one, and I’d quickly determined it wasn’t useful for me outside of target shooting and intimidation. It wasn’t the type of weapon you wanted to hold all day long, not unless you made a shoulder strap.

I chuckled to myself at the image of a pistol shoulder strap.

“How is that even funny?” she said, breathless.

“Look, if you put the gun aside, I’m happy to share everything I know. You can come over to my house and we can get a bite to eat. I’ve got a run on Pop-Tarts, if you like those.”

“Pop-Tarts?” She had to let the hand cannon droop, then she lowered it to her side, holding it in one limp hand. “This has to be a joke.”

“I wish—”

“Shush!” she sniped.

Thinking about it for a second, she set the gun in the grass with a gentle crouch, as if it could accidentally go off. Then, when she stood back up, she walked around me.

“Where are you going?”

“Shush!” she repeated. “I’ll prove what this is…”

Carmen ran to the Drummonds’ house and tried to ring the bell. When that didn’t work, she banged on the front door.

“Hello? Can you come out, please?”

She banged some more, then looked at me as if I’d tricked her.

“I’ll find someone!” she yelled.

Her unkempt hair trailed behind her as she trotted over to Luke’s house, the home of Mr. Puppers. The dog became agitated when she pounded on the front door, but of course no one came to answer.

She ran to the next house, then the one on the end.

Not satisfied, she jogged to the other side of the street, tried the house on the end, then hurried across the lawn of the house where she’d been kept hostage for the weekend. The cars parked in the yard seemed to surprise her, so she detoured and looked in several of them before deciding they were also empty.

Carmen ran directly past me.

“Penny, come out!” she screamed. The frazzled woman ran to the house next to mine and used both fists to bash against the front door. “Come on, Penny!”

“You know her?” I asked in a loud voice, glad to know the name of my missing neighbor, but also really trying to help the poor girl. “I never met her, formally, but she seemed like a good mom.”

Carmen held both hands against the door for a few minutes, obviously traumatized by what she’d found. I heard her take a deep breath before she walked back into her own yard.

“You can try that house,” I said, pointing to mine. “But I’m already here.”

“No, I recognize you, Frank. You drive that old truck. You’ve passed me, and we waved to each other. At least that isn’t a lie.”

“Thanks, I think.”

“I’m not ready to accept your claim,” she explained, her chest heaving from the running around. “It could be coincidence everyone is gone from the street today.”

“I have the keys to Penny’s house. I’ve been in there. Did she do a lot of fitness stuff? I found her clothes in her home gym.”

Carmen’s eyes lit up, but only for a moment. “Her clothes? You mean…like in there?” She motioned toward Trevor’s house with all the cars.

“I’m really sorry,” I answered.

“And this is everywhere?” she whispered.

“I’m more than happy to take you all over town. There are piles of clothes everywhere.”

“Everywhere?” she repeated.

I only nodded.

She tugged at her curly locks, and I saw her eyes turn feral.

“No, no, no!” She stepped away from us. “This has to be a mistake. Why is this even happening? I shouldn’t even be here. I was supposed to be in Miami. Maybe it is safe there?”

I shrugged. Maybe the attack knocked out Florida, or it only knocked out Fort Myers. Who was to say. However, as it had already been over forty-eight hours since the blue beam cut across the land, and there had been no rescue flights or government flyers raining from the sky, I was already leaning toward this being a worldwide disaster.

There was no way I was going to tell that to her, though. I wanted her to slowly walk her way into the cold water, rather than push her into it in one splash.

“Do you want to go in and talk about it?” I inquired.

She looked up.

She glared at Mr. Puppers.

“No! This isn’t real. I know it!”

“Well, actually…” I tried to say.

“No!” she shrieked.

In one smooth dip, she picked up the monster revolver and ran onto her driveway from the grass. I imagined she was going back to the house where I’d found her, but she instead cut between her house and that one.

“Where are you going?” I called as she ran for it.

“I’m going to figure this out!” she yelled back.

I had no idea what that meant, but she wasn’t joking around. She ran to the tree line where all the birds were waiting. They cleared a path—some running, some flying—as she approached at high speed.

“Where is she going, do you think?” I asked Mr. P.

‘Mate, with that gun, she can go wherever she wants.’

We both laughed.

Carmen stopped when she’d gone about fifty feet into the blanket of white. I assumed she was going to figure out she was being counterproductive and come back…

The boom of the giant gun reminded me of a tank.

I imagined a shockwave coming all the way back to me.

Birds scrambled to get aloft and away from her in a giant circle for hundreds of yards.

Once clear, Carmen ran farther into the woods.

It struck me that I’d been proven wrong on absolutely every action she’d taken since I’d met her. Maybe that was the proper way to handle the end of the world.

If so, perhaps I was the one who was crazy. Was my breakdown still coming?

CHAPTER 11

I was tempted to go after Carmen in the woods, but I was stopped by the need to prepare myself for the radical new possibility there would be more people out there. It couldn’t be a coincidence that despite the whole world disappearing, there were two people alive on my humble little street. If there was even one person alive per street, there would be thousands of survivors in the surrounding miles.

While it was true I’d been all around town looking for people, I could imagine there were a lot of scared residents hiding in their homes, afraid to come out and say hi to the crazy guy ferrying a dog on his bicycle.

I couldn’t have been carrying more firearms. My Springfield was safely under my shirt, tucked into the holster inside my belt. The tactical shotgun was over my shoulder, ready to be pulled when needed. My AR I kept to the right side and near my front, on a sling, so I could grab and go if I needed to shoot something. I doubled-checked all three before getting back to work.

Supporting Carmen as part of my team gave me the drive to go to the locked houses and break in. If there was no one inside, I would leave a note and offer to pay for any damages. On the off chance the world righted itself, that would be one fee I’d be happy to pay. However, if I got inside and found survivors who were incapacitated or kidnapped, like Carmen, I was certain all would be forgiven by the homeowners.

I got a hammer and some other tools in a small duffel and went all the way down to the second-to-last house on the right. I’d already spent a little time in the last house, owned by the older couple, so I figured it was time to check out this one.

Once inside, I immediately knew it was owned by young techie people. There was a nice TV on the wall, a sleek all-in-one remote that took care of the television, slick-looking speakers all over the place, and a modern gaming system set on a custom shelving unit.

Wedding pictures lined the hallway to the bedrooms, and it showed a happy Black couple standing in their formal attire at the beach.

Kaira and Levar. Married, 2013. Cocoa Beach, Florida.

The guy had a wide smile, a cropped haircut, and he was about two feet taller than his bride, who was a thin rail of a thing, but with a smile somehow even larger than her husband’s.

“They would have been good to have right now, wouldn’t they, pup?” I asked the dog, still talking to him despite the presence of another survivor in the area.

‘Did they have any mates for me to play with?’ he woofed.

“Let’s keep looking around,” I answered.

There were no photos of any pets, so I didn’t have high hopes. There were no photos of kids, either, which strangely made me sad. I could only imagine waking up to find your children gone, left only with their clothes.

There were several plastic totes stacked against the back wall of the master bedroom, suggesting they were still in the process of moving in, like me. All of the houses were less than a year old, as explained by my realtor, so we were all basically new neighbors.

That’s part of what drew me to the street. There was an appeal to be part of a new block, rather than drop into an existing one, where friendships and cliques had already been established.

I hit paydirt when I searched under their bed. Hidden among more cardboard boxes, I found a black pistol case with room for two weapons inside. One of them was there, a Glock-19 chambered in 9-millimeter, but the companion was missing. I thought about taking it to store it in my locker, but I instead took out the weapon and stuffed it in one of the vent ducts on the kitchen floor, so it was there in case my stash was compromised.

Always plan for the worst, I reminded myself.

“I hope you guys are still out there,” I said to yet another wedding picture standing on their big wooden bedroom dresser. After a brief search, I didn’t believe there were more obvious weapons to be found.

Everything else in the house was spotless.

The kitchen looked like it had never been used.

The family room furniture still had that new smell.

The three-car garage was almost totally empty, save for a large workbench with cordless tools and spools of wires sitting on it. All his rakes, shovels, and hand tools were on a huge pegboard system attached to the walls that looked like it had been planned to the hole by a person obsessed with perfection. The floor was smooth and covered in gray epoxy, making the whole place feel more like a high-tech clean room than a place where oil filters splashed dirty oil all over the place.

After taking a mental note of what I’d seen, I went out the front door, doing my best to hide that the lock had been broken, and went to the next home in the line.

“Should we skip this one?” I joked.

It was Mr. Pupper’s place. We did not need to go in there. I was certain if he’d heard anyone screaming in a secret tunnel, he would have reported it to me.

“Let’s check out this one.”

I had the least hope for treasure at the home of the two elderly retirees. The guy had seemed friendly enough when we waved to each other, and I though he’d said he’d been in law enforcement, but I got no sense he was much interested in that life any longer. I’d told him I kept a lot of hunting and camping gear, “for survival purposes,” as a test to see whether he thought along the same lines…but he’d merely smiled and continued taking his trashcan to a little nook on the side of his garage. Over the course of my life, living in many different places, I learned to never let on right away what my opinions were on the following matters.

Politics. Nope.

My fondness for prepping. No way.

Any religious beliefs whatsoever. Not a shot in hell!

However, if any of those subjects came up accidentally, and I learned they shared some of my leanings, it almost always meant we would become best buds. My friendly attempt to feel out my neighbor had come to nothing.

If only there’d been more time…

Despite the rush of finding Carmen, I was already starting to feel her absence. I listened for her to come back, I kept watching across the street and behind the houses, assuming the birds would fly around if she was coming back, but there were no signs.

At the door, I cracked a small window and reached inside to open the deadbolt. Unlike Levar’s house, where I had to break the door lock, this allowed me to minimize the damage and make it less inviting to thieves searching for open homes.

The inside of my neighbor’s home was simple, a lot like Levar’s place, but it had none of the high technology. The TV was a flat panel, but it was smaller and sat on an old coffee table in the corner. They somehow used the speaker of the television for sound…

The spare bedrooms had boxes and totes, most of them empty, as if they’d moved in and placed all the items into the house already.

I did a quick sweep of the bedroom, found nothing, and headed for the kitchen, where I found the door to the garage, so I could peek out there. There was one small window inside, but it was covered by cardboard, making it almost totally blacked out. However, even with a little light coming in from the kitchen door, I could tell the place was filled to the brim with junk.

“Hang out here, pup. I’m going to open the garage door to get a better look at all this stuff.”

I picked my way through what I could only describe as a hoarder’s stash. Cardboard boxes, stacked shelves, piles of boards. It was a real mess in there. It was even difficult to walk, there was so much.

As I’d done for mine, I unhooked the garage door opener so I could lift the two-car door manually. The third car garage slot had its own separate, smaller door, like all the three-car garages on the street.

When the door went up, I turned to face the mess.

It had transformed into a goldmine.

“Holy cow…” I whistled to myself.

Mr. P came trotting out of the dark, uninterested in the stuff around him. Instead, he found the sunshine on the driveway and laid down in it.

“Do you realize what this is?” I asked him.

I walked back in, seeing everything with a fresh set of eyes.

I could barely believe it. The couple had installed industrial-grade shelving rows inside the garage, so there were a few long aisles with can goods and dry goods on each side of the walkways. On the concrete floor, the man had large plastic containers labeled ‘water.’ The back wall was his workbench, which was almost as long as the garage was wide. A narrow open area behind the bench, however, seemed to have electrical boxes, or old computers, hanging on racks.

“Sir, I salute you!”

I found a large metal box on the workbench and had an immediate suspicion about what it was, though it really would be too good to be true. I’d read a lot of books about EMPs and one way to protect smaller electrical items was to put them in Faraday Cages, which were designed to resist outside electrical charges and protect whatever was in them. I popped the lock and propped it open.

A small yellow shortwave radio fell out. It looked modern but simple, with a twist knob for a dial and a small, printed background that showed the available bands…

I couldn’t pass up the chance to check for information, so I turned it on.

It started with an eerie howl, as if I was listening to a drafty window on a windy day. As I slid through the dial, I alternately heard static and the howl. The speaker wasn’t large, so I had to put it to my ear and concentrate on the noise.

At several points, I thought I’d heard someone talking, but when I re-oriented and focused, the howl was back.

“You ever heard radio like this?” I asked Mr. Puppers.

His ears perked up for a moment, but only for a moment.

“Fine, I’ll listen to this and figure it out while you relax.”

‘Don’t let me stop you, mate,’ he laughed.

At one point, the signal came through particularly clear to me. I strained to hear the howl, hoping to discern what was making the noise. As I listened, my mouth became a dustbowl. I heard a strange voice. A melodic chant, perhaps, but it sounded miles away from the microphone.

Mr. Puppers couldn’t have cared less.

I looked outside, hoping Carmen would show up.

Someone had to hear what I was hearing.

When I put my ear back to the radio, the voice was gone. No matter how closely I listened, the howl was back, and it was only a howl.

“Sonofa—” I started to say.

Then I heard an actual voice.

“—the conspiracies were true. They never believed me, did they, and now where are they? Where is anyone? Where are you, my loyal listeners? The invasion is on. The end is near. They got us.”

“What the hell is going on?” I whispered.

The voice was gone.

Unlike most of the other frequencies, this one was silent while the man was silent. There was no howl in the background.

I waited and listened, desperate to hear the man again. It didn’t surprise me to hear the other stations off the air, but the fact there was at least one still working held out some hope for me. If I could find out where he was located, that would be one more person I would put in the ‘alive’ column for the Fort Myers area.

“REACH FOR THE SKY, MISTER,” a man’s Southern voice said from behind me.

I froze. Could I get out my pistol before I turned around?

“Don’t try a thing. I know what you’ve got. I’ve been watching you.”

“May I set this down?” I asked, casually, not wanting to draw attention to the functional radio, lest he take it from me.

“Real slow, yeah.”

I did as instructed.

“May I turn around?” I asked. I needed to see him, so I could test whether there would be an opportunity to fight back.

“Slowly,” he warned. “I’m not afraid to use this thing.”

Given the green light, I turned a few inches at a time, intending to get to a sideways angle, relative to his position, so I could take out my pistol from my side and regain control of this situation.

When I saw him, a young, thin white guy with spiky blonde hair, I knew exactly who he was.

“You were in the police cruiser,” I deadpanned.

“What gave it away?” he snarked while showing his handcuffs and powder-blue uniform. Those descriptive handicaps didn’t prevent him from holding the officer’s shotgun with all the authority of a law enforcement officer.

“I was wondering where his shotty went,” I answered.

“It was a her, actually. And she’s gone.”

“Everyone is gone,” I chuckled. “Can I put my hands down?”

“Not yet. I need to get out of these handcuffs.”

“You want me to use my feet?” I pressed, not happy to have a gun on me. He was in a pickle, I could see that right away, but I always leaned on my sense of humor to keep things from getting out of hand.

“No,” he said, not laughing. “I want you to walk with me back to that police car, and you’re going to find the key for me.”

“Why didn’t you do it yourself?”

He shivered as if it was thirty degrees out.

“I’m not touching one of those bodies,” he answered.

“It’s a pile of clothes,” I reasoned.

“No, not just clothes. I know what happened to everyone,” he said with gravity.

“Maybe we could work out a deal,” I said after a brief pause to make him sweat.

“I’m listening.”

CHAPTER 12

I looked around the houses, hoping Carmen wouldn’t choose that moment to come back, as I didn’t want her involved. There would be two unstable people, each heavily armed, with me in the middle.

The rail-thin kid was a hundred pounds soaking wet and at that moment, his clothing was literally dripping with water. I decided to distract him with questions while I walked ahead of him along the canal. “You been swimming?”

He didn’t laugh. “Man, you have no idea what I’ve been doing for the past twenty-four hours.”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

Mr. Puppers walked behind us, about twenty or thirty feet back, as if unsure if he was supposed to be on this walk. I tried to pass it off as a stray, so the convict wouldn’t try to hurt him to get at me, though he’d said he’d been watching me, so maybe that ship had already sunk.

“You first,” he insisted. “Why are you still here, of all people?”

“No offense,” I chuckled.

He didn’t reply.

“Got it, no joking around. The fact is, I don’t really know what made me different. I was down at the beach yesterday morning, when the blue beam zipped through.”

“Blue beam?”

“You didn’t see it?”

“I was in the back of a blacked-out police cruiser. What do you think I saw outside?”

“Point taken,” I said to be agreeable.

Thin guy had taken the guns off my back, and I’d left them in the open garage of my neighbor. Of all the weird things to worry about, I was hoping no strangers would come along and see the stash of goodies in there, or my favorite firearms. Once I was done helping the convict, I could get back to them as fast as possible.

We walked toward Bayside Road, with the calm canal water on our left, and the forest full of jittery birds on the right. The birds were gently squawking and chirping, as if talking to each other in low voices, but I tried to tune them out so I could hear if Carmen showed up from out there. Where had she gone?

“Anyway, obviously, I had to walk home after that, and I saw house after house with no one in them. Cars emptied out. Boats with no drivers. I’m not going to lie, it really freaked me out. I was seriously beginning to think I was the last person left alive.”

“You didn’t act surprised when I showed up. You weren’t grateful, like I’d saved you from a life of loneliness. Why is that? Are there more of you?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer, but he’d been keen to notice. It also suggested that he’d either been lying about spying on me, or he’d been elsewhere when Carmen showed up and shot the birds.

“I might have been a little happier if you didn’t have that gun pointed at me… Anyway, I’m happy to tell you I’m not really alone.”

“Oh?”

“There are two of us. Me and this guy.” I turned and pointed to the golden retriever. Like a good dog, he’d kept up with us, though he was still many paces behind.

He looked at him.

“Ah, I get it.” He released a long, beleaguered sigh, as if the conversation was taking a lot of his social energy. “I could have stayed in my hiding spot forever, probably, but at some point, you have to accept that you can’t live in total isolation.”

“Is that why you came to me?”

We started walking again, now getting close to the highway and the wrecked police vehicle.

“I came to you because you were the only person I could find. I came out of my…hiding spot and went door-to-door. I was ready to give myself up, I never wanted to be a fugitive, you know? However, the real reason was that I didn’t hear anyone come to see why the police car never showed up. No one reported the accident. No one ever drove by. No one ever came out of their houses. It was…absolutely silent.”

“And it freaked you out,” I clarified.

“Hell, yeah, dude. Didn’t you freak out?”

I remembered breaking down when I found Mr. P. That had been between me and the dog, and I’d revealed it to my neighbor Carmen when she needed some encouragement, but I wasn’t going to share that moment of vulnerability with a total stranger.

“Yeah, something like that. I wasn’t relishing the idea of living out my years alone. I’ve read books where the characters do have to live long times on their own, survival stories, but I never imagined that happening to me. This whole thing… I’m usually pretty good about knowing what’s going on, but this one has me stumped.”

“What’s to know? I heard the officer’s radio before he zapped away…”

He left it hanging there, and I turned into a sea lion, eyeing a reward fish at the water park. Since he held the gun, I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction, at first, but then I decided I couldn’t let the opportunity pass.

“What did the radio say?”

He chuckled. “I’m glad you asked, since I know what you want. I’ll tell you, but you have to get the key to these cuffs.”

We’d arrived at the overturned vehicle. It had crashed going to my right, so the green-and-white car’s top was facing us as we came to the edge of the forest.

“Clever,” I answered. “I’ll do this for you, but tell me, what are you going to do when I let you out? Kill me?”

“No way, I’d never do that.”

“Are you going to tie me up? That’s a problem, because I have a dog to take care of.”

“Maybe I’ll tie you up together,” he egged me. A second later, he gasped. “I’m not going to tie you up or kill you.”

“That’s good to know. How about we re-negotiate a little? I’ll happily let you out of those cuffs—I mean, you could easily do this yourself—but I want you and I to then work together.”

He squinted, as if trying to read my mind.

“Why would I trust you?”

That made me laugh.

“What?” he pressed.

“You don’t trust little old me? I mean, seriously, what are the chances the world ended and we are both serial killers…” I left the old joke hanging out there like a wet sock.

He took a step back. “Wait. What? You’re not really—”

I put my hands up again. “Whoa! Sorry, I’m joking. It’s a terrible habit of mine. I’m trying to lighten your mood, so you don’t pop me by accident.”

He cracked a tiny smile. “Oh, yeah, that’s funny.”

I’d pushed it too far.

“Full disclosure, there was another survivor, besides my dog. I found him or her a little before you found me. That person asked me the same question.” I didn’t want a random criminal to know I’d found a woman, on the off chance he was a sex predator or woman-hater. However, it wouldn’t hurt my chances of survival if I made it clear I wasn’t totally, one-hundred-percent alone, in case he really was a murderer looking for an easy mark.

He looked behind us.

“Don’t worry. They are out doing other things right now.”

“They’re gone?”

“For now. I’m sure they’ll be back,” I fibbed.

“Oh, I get it. You’re hoping to trap me or something. Use me as slave labor?”

I laughed out loud, couldn’t stop myself. “Kid, that thought wasn’t even in my vocabulary until you said it. Does that happen a lot where you come from?”

“Prison, man, I was going to prison. I figured that was going to happen to me all the time…”

“Look, I’m messing with you. You really don’t trust me, do you?”

“Well, being on your last car ride tends to make you trust no one.”

“Let’s agree to part ways when I unlock you. If you want to come to Clownfish Cove and help out, I’ll be there. If not, the whole rest of the city is yours…”

“And you won’t come looking for me?”

“How about you take the north half of Florida and us non-criminals will stay in the south.”

“I’m not really a criminal, but your point is taken. It’s a deal. You get me the key; I walk away to consider my options.”

I crouched down to inspect the interior through the broken front windshield. Since the car had slid onto its right side, all the gear had fallen to the grass now at the passenger window. The officer’s uniform was scattered, but her badge sat on top, looking up at me. I pulled the trousers over, noting the officer’s handgun underneath.

My pulse quickened at seeing it.

The man watched me, but without his full attention. Instead, he kept looking at Mr. Puppers, careful to seem disinterested, but I suspected he wanted to pet him.

“What’s your name?” I asked, trying to keep things conversational.

“Nate, short for Ignatius. Yours?”

“I’m Frank. Nice to meet you.”

“Same.”

“That’s my friend Mr. Puppers,” I added, knowing he was waiting for an invitation to pet him.

“Oh, that’s cool,” he gushed as he put hand to fur.

I returned my attention to the vehicle. I passed on grabbing the gun and instead reached into the pocket, where I found a bunch of keys.

Nate knocked the barrel of the shotgun against the top of the truck to get my attention.

“Don’t try anything, mister. I may look like I’m twelve, but I’m a mass murderer, remember?” He cracked up, showing he was playing me now.

“Frank,” I reminded him as I pulled out the key and showed it off. “Ta-da!”

He withdrew the barrel. I noted that he never pointed it directly at me, seeming to work hard to aim it anywhere else. Part of me wondered if it was even loaded, but that wasn’t a question I wanted to test in the field.

“Okay, leave it on the ground and walk away. Thanks, I guess.”

“I can leave?” I asked as I tossed them at his feet.

We stood close, about five feet away. I got a good look at his straight-up hairstyle and narrow face, with a few red blots of acne still decorating his skin, like he was younger than I would have first thought. His eyes were unlike anything I’d ever seen, with his left eye being blue and his right being brown.

“Just go way over there, so I don’t accidentally shoot you.” He pointed toward the canal tunnel where it went under the highway. From where we were, I could see all three streets in my neighborhood, though there were no residents who could call the police. Content to watch this play out, I walked toward the tunnel.

Nate only took a few moments to free himself, and he called me back over before I’d even made it halfway there.

“Frank, I appreciate your help, but I think I need a little time to decide whether to join you. Cool?”

He was testing me.

“You can do whatever you want. There is a pistol in that truck, if you want it. If you hide it under your shirt, the bad guys will underestimate you.” I raised my shirt to show him my own pistol tucked into the hidden holster.

He let the shotgun point downward at his side, like he didn’t need it anymore. “You were armed the whole time?” he said with surprise. “I took two whole guns off of you!”

“I had three,” I chuckled. To myself, I resolved to get an ankle holster, so I could carry four guns. Four is three, and three is two, and all that…

“As I said, I’m not good at being a criminal.”

“What were you in for?” I asked, knowing that no real criminal was going to blurt out their crimes to a stranger.

“I’m a government whistleblower!” he said with fake fanfare and whistling. “I turned in a whole department of city government down in Miami—caught them all taking bribes and whatnot.”

“From drug dealers?” I asked.

“No, worse. From the feds.”

“Wow, that sounds like a big deal.” I did a double-take. “Wait, if you caught them, why are you the one being locked up?”

His laugh came from a million miles away. “You been living under a rock? You think the Tanager administration was going to give me a medal or name a park after me?”

“This is a federal crime?”

“No good deed goes unpunished.”

“I’m sorry, but you don’t look like you would work in government in the first place. You look more like…”

“A drug dealer?” He sighed.

“I was going to say you look like you could still be in high school.”

“Well, a lot of people think I do drugs as well as deal. I think that’s why the judge threw the book at me. My mama always joked that I had a face like I’m a troublemaker. I think it’s my eyes.”

“No, I trusted you immediately,” I laughed.

“See?” He was a sport about it.

“Take the pistol.” I could work with a whistleblower. He didn’t seem like he’d been lying, but I recognized maybe he’d picked that nothingburger to dull the edge of his real crime. Still, it wasn’t like I had a lot of people to choose from. “Take your time about coming back.”

He walked over to the truck and reached in to get the pistol. I was hoping he would change his mind about leaving, but he backed away the second he had it.

“I appreciate your help,” he said, “but I’m convinced they are going to send someone after me, so maybe it’s for the best I don’t join with you right now.”

I shrugged with feigned indifference. It would be nice to have another person, for a hundred different reasons, but he was going through something, and I was going to give him the time to figure it out.

“Me and Mr. Puppers will be right over there.” I pointed down the canal we’d come from and to my street. The white birds were still thick in the woods around us, but there were fewer of them closer to the roadway. Seeing it from a new perspective, I wondered if they were staying under the cover of the trees for a reason.

“Thanks.”

“Before you go, I have to know. What was on the radio?”

“Oh, right. I was supposed to tell you.” He laughed a little. “I guess a deal is a deal.” He bent to one knee and petted Mr. Puppers as he spoke. “I was in that car heading to the federal lockup in Tallahassee. The deputy was listening to talk radio, or whatever, and I wasn’t much paying attention until a newscaster broke in and said there had been a declaration of war.”

I’d returned to the vehicle, so I was about twenty feet away. Close enough he could read the question on my face right away.

“The United Nations attacked us,” he deadpanned.

“Impossible.” I was sure I would have heard about the world government massing to attack the United States.

“I’m just telling you what I heard.”

“Are you sure you weren’t listening to a conspiracy channel? You sure it was the news?”

“Pretty sure. Anyway, the UN kicked America out, then declared war live and on the air, and they said they were unleashing a new weapon that would make the neutron bomb a thing of the past. Whatever it was, it would remove the population but leave everything else intact.”

It took me ten or fifteen seconds to run that mess through the garbage disposal before I could reply.

“Well…shit. I guess they did exactly that, didn’t they?”

“Moments after the declaration on the radio, the car was in the ditch. The driver was gone. At that point, I didn’t care what was playing on the radio. I had to get out of there.”

“Wait, you heard the broadcast after you crashed?”

“Yeah. When the driver was gone, the car veered off the road. I slammed into the back of the seats and got real dizzy. Maybe I was knocked out for a while, can’t really recall.” He pointed to a bump on the side of his forehead. “I still heard the radio broadcast as I climbed through the broken partition and went out the front…though it threw some sparks and turned off before I got all the way out.”

“That was the EMP,” I guessed.

“Is that what this new weapon was called?”

“No, EMPs don’t make people disappear, I’m certain of that.” I spoke mostly to myself for a moment. “Maybe there are new models capable of doing this…using a new kind of neutron bomb in some way…they did mention neutron bombs, right?” I snapped my fingers. “Maybe they used two different weapons.”

He shrugged and stood up. “I’m not sure it matters. The world is empty, and the lights are off. Whatever you call it, we’re totally screwed.”

“You won’t come back with me?” I tried not to sound desperate, but I really wanted to know every detail of that car ride. “Mr. Puppers could use more friends.”

He laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind, but no, I’m going to find a new hiding spot. One that isn’t soaking wet.”

Nate pointed to the canal tunnel under the road.

“You hid in there?”

“Yep, as soon as I got out of the truck, I hid under there, in the water. I figured they would send a helicopter to chase down a missing prisoner, you know?”

“Smart,” I answered.

“But I need to get dry clothes and think through what I want to do, next.” He brushed his fingers through his pineapple-top hair. “I can only do that on my own.”

“Well, don’t take too long.”

“Why is that?” he asked, sticking out his shoulders and gripping the shotgun tighter as if I’d threatened him.

I tried to be cool about it, but I still had the fresh memories of being completely alone.

“You seem like a good kid.”

He looked taken aback.

I waved Mr. Puppers over to me and parted ways with the other human.

Whatever he decided, I’d respect his wishes.

CHAPTER 13

Nate didn’t change his mind. I watched him blend into the houses on the other side of Bayside Road, making good on his desire to do his own thing. It was tempting to take it personally that two potential allies had chosen to run off, rather than join up, but I tried to look at it from their perspectives.

Carmen had been locked up in a basement for three days. She comes out and sees a changed world, having to trust the word of a random guy who unlocked the door. It could be a while before I saw her again.

Nate had been a different type of prisoner, locked in the squad car. He’d witnessed the effects of the blue light and EMP directly, so the shock wasn’t as bad for him when I came along. However, I was still a stranger in an unfamiliar world, and he obviously came with some trust baggage from tangling with the federal government. Who could blame him for being cautious?

Maybe I’d been the one who was too trusting, hoping either or both of them would hang around Clownfish Cove. It seemed logical that we should stick together and fortify what we could, stockpile supplies for the future, but not everyone thought like me.

Still, as I walked home, my mind was already back to the endless tasks staring me down.

I needed to get back to my big guns. Being armed was going to be crucial from here on out. I’d been lucky with the survivors, so far, but all it would take was one person with ill-intent, and I would be dead.

That gave me reason to stop in my tracks.

I stood next to the canal, near the woods and the curious shore birds, and realized how vulnerable I was. Any idiot with a rifle could take me out from a distance and steal everything I owned. Whatever supplies I could assemble for myself, he or she could take them over with a single bullet.

I turned around, hopeful Nate would be standing back there, but he wasn’t. I regretted not working harder to win him over to my side, impressing upon him how much danger we were all in while we were alone.

Mr. Puppers huffed, as if asking me to make up my mind about which way we were headed.

“We’re going back,” I whispered, now on high alert.

We continued along the canal. The rows of homes on the other side passed by, and I wondered if there were people looking out from the dark windows. Even now, were their bad guys sizing me up?

I walked around the corner of the canal where it made its turn south, between my street and Barracuda Bay, and there were no boats coming my way, no one walking in the back yards, and no vehicles approaching from any direction, same as always.

When I walked into Drummond’s garage to get my shotgun and rifle, my mood immediately improved. Having those guns wasn’t the answer to the larger problem of safety from distant predators, but it did give me confidence I could handle trouble if it came right up to me.

Like Nate?

I laughed to myself. That guy had managed to surprise me.

What could I do to make sure that didn’t happen again? I knew exactly what I wanted, so snooped through the garage filled with supplies…

Defending the street by myself was impossible, so I had to pick where I was going to build my keep, with the intention of defending that as best I could against any intruders. But I didn’t want to defend one house at the expense of the rest. I had to confuse anyone looking from the outside, so they weren’t quite sure where I was or what I considered important.

I picked through boxes of canned goods, surplus camping supplies, and piles of boards and lumber that might have been intended as window coverings in the event of a hurricane. Even as I made my way over to the third bay, the one with the biggest pile of junk, I heard static on the radio.

“I left it on,” I told Mr. Puppers, who had chosen to lounge on the driveway outside rather than come into the cramped garage with me.

Back at the radio, I lifted it to my ear to hear a male voice talking in a calm tone.

“Residents of Florida. Your savior has arrived! The Sino-United Nations forces have established a beachhead on the eastern coast of your state, and we will be crossing soon to establish relief stations along all transportation corridors. Stay in your houses. Help is coming. Message repeats.”

I rolled the dial selector and heard the same message on almost every frequency. I wasn’t sure how they were doing it, since the EMP had certainly knocked out broadcast stations, but I figured the rescue force had powerful transmitters. However, when I got all the way down to the edge of the FM dial, I heard a different voice.

It was the same man I’d heard earlier. I caught him mid-sentence.

“—nothing they say. The United Nations has no jurisdiction here. And how did they get here so fast? Why is the rest of the nation dead? Who launched the attack?” He paused for a long moment. “If you have been listening to me from the beginning, you already know the answers to those questions.”

I listened intently for the answer, but he didn’t say anything. After ten or twenty seconds of waiting, I figured he must have shut down his transmitter. I was going to turn off my receiver, to save the precious batteries, when I heard the man finally finish his thought.

“It was aliens,” he deadpanned.

I waited again for a minute or two, but that must have been his last word, so I shut it down to save the power.

“Aliens?” Maybe it was possible, sure, but was it likely?

Curious, I walked out of the garage and looked up. Were my neighbors somewhere above, on a spaceship bound for Alpha Centauri? Were humans being rounded up as slaves in some galactic black market? Most of the books I’d read were about terrestrial disasters, not alien invasions, so I wasn’t sure how to process the information.

What would I do differently on the ground, assuming aliens were up there? Should I be out finding a better hiding place, rather than working on hardening the nearby homes? If they had the technology to beam human beings on board starships, was resistance even possible?

Looking back, could an alien race have blasted the earth with a blue beam of energy that zapped everyone away, followed by a second beam that killed all the technology? That would ensure there would be no way to fight them, that was certain. Maybe the military would survive, but average people would never have a chance.

And yet, here I was. Still alive.

I noticed my breathing was a lot faster. The thought of an alien invasion, and not being able to protect myself from it, weighed heavily on me.

Maybe the right play was to grab a shovel and go dig a hideout in the woods. I had unlimited food in the nearby houses, lots of weapons, and water was everywhere in this part of Florida. I could probably survive out there for a long time…

I realized how spun up I’d gotten myself after hearing the broadcast. However, as I stood there at the edge of the garage, considering what to do, I wondered if the broadcast itself was a lie. What if there was no alien invasion, but the real culprits wanted us to think there was? Get us to hide in fear, run away, avoid all confrontation. Why was I trusting a random anonymous voice on the radio? Heck, if my brief interaction with Nate had taught me one thing, it was that even the government was capable of betraying its own citizens, even those intending to do good, so why trust them…

Silently, I laughed.

There was no doubt I was having the same trust issues as both Carmen and Nate. My book-reading of late was full of world disasters, with small groups rescued by average people, not the governments. My real-life experiences were the same, with endless examples of trouble caused by inept officials making my life miserable in Chicago. All that combined to make me trust Nate, a crook in the back of a police car, far more than any ‘official’ voice I might hear on the radio.

I calmed myself.

Mr. Puppers looked at me, unaware of my internal conflicts.

“You keep watch, okay?” I pointed around us. “Tell me if you hear anyone coming.”

He blinked, then put his head down again.

“If a bad guy shows up again, you have to warn me, got it?”

I wondered if Mr. Puppers had known Nate wasn’t a bad guy.

If only I could ask him.

As I got a grip on myself, I realized why many of the books I read often had characters who did the wrong things to survive. While it was critical to know the basic formula for survival, things like food, water, and shelter, left unsaid was probably the most important skill, which was the ability to think critically.

Now, with a clear head, I knew I couldn’t trust anything said over the airwaves. My best chance of survival was to concentrate on the things I could control, such as my guns, hardening my house, and protecting all this gear left by the Drummonds. Running into the woods to hide would give all that up without so much as a harsh word.

I pulled out several large tarps, ground cloths, and tent stakes stored in the garage by the camping gear. Then I returned to Levar’s workbench and borrowed one of his big spools of unsheathed wire, which I brought back to Drummonds’ place.

“Guys, thanks for letting me use your stuff,” I said to the two men I would never meet, but who were potentially keeping me alive. It seemed proper to at least acknowledge them.

Once I had it all set out on the driveway, I got to work doing my first real defensive task.

I worked until dinnertime.

When I was done, I called Mr. Puppers over to me. I’d gone up the street to stand in a place where a bad guy might arrive, so I could see what he would see. I chose to go to the last pair of houses in our group of nine, as there was no way I could also protect the four construction houses by myself. They were too far away.

“Not bad, right?” I asked him.

‘No, mate, I think you nailed it. Now, if you don’t mind, how about a Pop-Tart to celebrate?’

“You’ve really gotten attached to them, haven’t you?”

I had a few boxes of the breakfast treats, but once they were gone, they were gone. At least, until we found more in the cupboards of our neighbors, or, if we got lucky, one of the grocery stores would still have them on the shelves.

The dog had distracted me from my big reveal.

“Ta da!” I said, waving to the end of the street.

I’d tied the wire at the corner of the Drummond house, ran a line to the light pole standing in the middle of the circle, then continued to the corner of the house on the other side of mine. I hung a dozen different tarps from the wires and tied the bottoms to stakes driven into the soil. I also ran lines between the back sides of the three homes and hung shower curtains, drapes, and sheets, basically whatever I could find, so anyone standing in the woods would not be able to easily see me walking around in my protected area.

With time, I could improve the wall with heavier items, perhaps using abandoned furniture, dumpsters, or even abandoned cars. However, that would take time and manpower, and I was short on both.

I shared a dinner with Mr. Puppers, then worked on tidying up the loose ends as darkness neared. I put extra time into the back windows and doors of my house, using some of the plywood from Drummond’s garage to hide the inside of my kitchen from anyone trying to look through the back.

As darkness became complete, I decided to call it quits.

I chose to keep my flashlight off, except when I was inside, to cut down on the chances anyone would see me. I considered keeping a light on somewhere, as a way to guide in Carmen or Nate, but I figured that might also draw in other strangers, so I chose to remain hidden.

It really made a difference when it was one person.

I had to keep risks at an absolute minimum.

“All right, let’s wrap up this day,” I said to Mr. P as I shut Drummond’s garage door. “I’ll go through the house and be right out.”

I shut the door from the inside, so I could latch it securely, then I walked through the piles of junk near the third bay. I had to use my light, as it was far too crowded to feel my way through in total darkness, but my light shined off the concrete floor in what looked like a long, rectangular void underneath the pile of lumber. Curious, I bent down to check it out.

My jaw fell open.

“How did I miss this?”

I pulled at a black cloth covering part of the pile.

One of my prayers had been answered.

CHAPTER 14

It took some time to clear off the outline of the vehicle hiding under the drop cloth. The man must have had it in there since the day he moved in, and then he stacked it high with boards and supplies, so it was almost impossible to know what he’d hidden in plain sight.

“Dog, we’re going for a ride tomorrow.”

It was a 1970 Chevy El Camino SS. I’d only pulled the cover on one side, but it was enough to identify what it was, see the expensive blue paint job, and know the tires seemed aired up and ready to go, as if the truck was operational. The back of the old vehicle looked like a pickup truck, with an open bed stolen from one, but the cabin and front end looked like a hot rod from that era. The chrome trim, custom mag wheels, and pristine interior suggested it could go fast and look good doing it, like classic cars were designed to do.

Part of me wanted to jump inside and fire it up, if only to confirm the old car had withstood the EMP, but I was willing to bet that part was true. The thing stopping me was noise. If anyone heard me revving a car motor, they would zero in on me like mosquitos. I would wait until tomorrow, start it up, then, assuming it worked, go where I needed to go.

As excited as I was, a more practical problem reared its head. I’d been going nonstop all day from the moment I’d woken up until now. Before I got totally exhausted and made mistakes, I had to set up my sleeping arrangements with my puppy pal.

I again went into my garage and found my sleeping chair. I laid out my guns, got a glass of water, a snack, and a pillow. I’d wheeled one of my rolling trashcans down to the construction homes and filled it with cinderblocks, then tied it off and laid it sideways in front of my chair, so I wasn’t as visible from the street while I was sleeping.

I’d been debating sleeping in the garage or inside the house, but I chose to be where I could hear any noises and react, rather than hiding in a closet or tub and avoiding a fight. Fortunately, I felt decent about my hasty defenses for tonight. Before I got too comfy, I did a mental checklist of all the noise traps I’d sprinkled around Clownfish Cove.

The guy in the house at the end of the street had an almost infinite supply of fishing line, so I’d gone crazy with it. I put dozens of runs at the edge of the woods, with tin cans and bells attached and hidden, so I’d hear anyone who snapped those lines. I’d also run a few strands across our street, beyond my tarps, on the off chance they came at me right up the middle. And then I’d put some closer, right outside my garage and between my house and my neighbors, so I would have a final chance at hearing them. If someone got that close before tripping the primitive alarms, I’d probably wake up shooting.

“You have one job tonight, Mr. Puppers, okay? Wake me up if you hear anyone out there.”

With enough time, I could put specific types of cans and bells on each different run of line, so I could know in advance where the threat was trying to breach my defenses, but for this first night, I’d been far more interested in getting a basic perimeter set up just so I could get it done.

That’s why I was bushed.

My last thoughts were about other defenses, for bigger problems. I’d need to block off the street, so vehicles couldn’t come at me. I’d have to work on a way to deter cars and trucks from coming through the woods, maybe with fallen trees, hidden ditches, or sharp things to pop tires. And then there was the boat threat…

I woke up to the sunlight.

“Whoa!” I said as I shot up in my seat, surprised at a heavy weight on my lap. “Mr. Puppers?”

The sly dog had stealthily crept onto my chair in the overnight hours and made himself comfortable next to me, with his head and arms on my lap. At first, I was going to push him off and complain about how he should have been on the floor keeping watch, but then I appreciated how we’d both been exhausted from our day, and he’d been comfortable enough to hang out with me.

“Good dog,” I said, scratching behind his ears. I couldn’t love on him for a second longer than necessary. “But I have to get up.”

We both climbed out of the chair.

“Hang on,” I said, grabbing the AR off the table.

I tiptoed to the edge of the garage, weapon in hand. In the harsh light of morning, I made an appraisal that no one had snapped the fishing line on the side of my house, which was enough to give me the green light to run inside.

“Feel free to do your business in the grass!” I chuckled. “I’ve got to hit the head.”

I’d called the bathroom ‘the head’ for years, after working with so many ex-military drivers. I’d alternately called it ‘the tarlet,’ ‘the dumper,’ and ‘the thundermug,’ depending on who was around.

We met back in the garage.

He brushed his paw across his forehead. ‘Phew, I didn’t think I was going to make it, mate.’

“Feels good, doesn’t it?” I mused, maybe imagining his paw rather than seeing it for real.

Breakfast seemed like an immense treat to Mr. Puppers, but mine was unremarkable. I needed to take the time to grill up the meats now thawing in the many freezers on our street, but that would take a lot of time from other tasks, and it would also create smoke and scents that would attract attention. Instead, I chomped on some bread slices and ate a red apple from among the few I’d found in Luke’s home.

“Knock, knock, Frank,” a brief flicker of a memory said to me.

Last night’s dream came back to me like I’d snapped my fingers.

I’d slept hard overnight, hard enough I didn’t even know when a dog laid on top of me, and I didn’t remember much in the way of specifics of my dream, but I did recall standing on a cliff, overlooking an ocean. I couldn’t say where it was, but it wasn’t Florida, as there were no high cliffs in a state designed like a giant sandbar. I had to shake myself into the moment, rather than dwell on it for too long. I had to get to work.

After a brief walk around the perimeter to check if any of the more distant fishing lines had been cut, I returned to my neighbor’s garage and his old hotrod. If it worked, I was going to have a way to travel all over the area and, hopefully, find some help.

Inside the cluttered garage, it took me a good portion of the morning to clear off the junk from on top of the car and I finally managed to get the drop cloth off, giving me a look at the old truck from all directions.

The blue caught the light in specks of silver sprayed into the color. I’d been around fast cars and big trucks my whole life, so I was certain the owner had spent a pretty penny on this paint.

After clearing out the junk from in front of and next to the treasure, I managed to clear enough space to look under her dress. I popped the hood and knew I was seeing a rare treat. The 454-motor looked as if it had been dropped into the bay the day before. All the parts were clean and overbuilt for the big block engine.

“If this thing runs…watch out.”

I looked around, realized Mr. Puppers wasn’t there, and then felt dumb having talked to an empty garage. I stood on my toes and looked across a pile of gear to the dog lounging in the grass next to the driveway. I wasn’t sure how he was already sleeping again or how he was keeping watch over me, but I had to trust the process.

The third bay had its own garage door, a single rather than a double, but I kept that door down until I was ready to fire her up. The second she rolled over, I intended to take her out on the town.

First, I had to take down the wire and tarp wall on Drummond’s side of the circle, so I didn’t have to run through it with the car. There was a strand of fishing wire across the road by the houses on the end, but I figured I could drive around it.

“Yo, Mr. P! Come over here.”

‘Lunchtime, mate?’ he asked.

“We’ll grab some when we get back,” I assured. I’d been working hard in the garage all morning and even though I was hungry, too, I wanted to get this baby on the road as quickly as I could. When we came back, we’d have a nice lunch to celebrate.

The dog got up and shook himself off before approaching. I could tell he wasn’t a fan of the clutter, as he stayed at the edge of the mess, but he let me pick him up and set him in the back of the pickup.

As I got into the driver’s position, he came through the open back window and plopped into the passenger seat.

“You like sitting up front, huh?” I asked, noticing he was sitting on a bag from an auto parts store. That threw up a red flag.

Inside, I found a brand-new oil filter, air filter, and a six-pack of Christmas Tree air fresheners to hang from the rearview mirror.

“It looks like he was about to do an oil change.” I looked at the receipt in the bag and found it was from three years ago. “Wow. I guess he brought this project car with him to this new house.”

None of the houses on my street were that old, so it made sense.

I took a moment to consider what to do, then hopped out. I popped the hood, unlatching two metal wires holding it shut, then I pulled out the oil dipstick to check. It was black, which meant I needed to change it, but the level was normal, suggesting I could get away without doing it that instant. When I sealed it back up, I tossed the bag of parts onto the workbench and got back in.

There where no keys inside the car, or on the workbench, so I thought to check in the house. I figured the owner wouldn’t hide keys in a distant part of the house, so I focused on the drawers of the kitchen.

“Gotcha!” I crowed when I found them in a junk drawer.

When I looked down, I noticed a sheet poking out from under the side-by-side refrigerator. When I pulled it out, four fresh hundred-dollar bills were taped to the back with a hand-written message on the front.

“Francine, thanks for watering our garden and for checking up on our house while we have fun in Africa. We have been waiting to treat ourselves our entire lives! Please thank Raymond and yourself for being there for us. Oh yes, and please use the bills attached as payment for your time. God bless. Mildred says hello! See you soon.”

So, that was it for them. If they were in Africa, the chances of them ever coming back were essentially zero. It did not make me feel any better, however, as it somehow made me feel as if the weight of all the supplies had been shifted to me. Before the note, I was a tourist visiting this goldmine. After the note, I was essentially its owner.

“I’ll take care of your stuff, I promise,” I said, setting the note inside the junk drawer, where it would be hidden.

I walked back into the garage, seeing everything in a new way.

Puppers watched me anxiously, his tongue lolling to one side.

“I’m coming,” I announced, shaking off the bad news and climbing in. The two long guns came in with me, and I set them between the shifter and the dog.

When I turned the key, it struggled to roll over, as if it had been a long time since anyone had disturbed it. I let off, allowing the starter a rest, then I tried it again.

It turned over with a roar.

“Unbelievable,” I gushed. It sounded healthy as a deep grumble pumped from the exhaust system. When I gave it a little gas, the engine responded with a healthy growl, like it was supposed to.

I put it in reverse and backed through the open bay door.

The paint job was even more interesting than I’d thought. The deep blue color seemed to shimmer with bits of silver in it, and there was also a thick white racing stripe down the middle of the hood and over the top of the cab.

It sounded fast.

It looked fast.

But was it?

I put on the three-point harness belt, which was obviously added by the previous owner for safety. Mr. Puppers sat back in his seat as if he was familiar with the concept of riding in a car.

“Hope you don’t get car sick,” I mused.

When I rolled into the street and started forward, the sixteen-year-old version of Frank Douglas rolled out with it. I hit the gas and chirped the tires as we lunged forward. In seconds, we’d passed the nine houses at the end of the block and then sped past the remaining four construction homes in the middle.

The wind tossed my hair around.

After being mostly alone and cooped up for three consecutive days, I was ready to feel some wind. It immediately took me back to being a teenager, roasting tires in my dad’s Mustang, abusing cars belonging to my friends when they’d let me take them for test drives, and then doing the same when I had my own sports cars. That passion for speed and automotive muscle had been with me from the beginning, and it was why I’d recently purchased that obscenely overpowered Corvette.

I raced around the corner at the end of Clownfish to test the handling. As expected, it sucked, and the tires squealed the whole time. Vintage cars might look nice, but they handled like bricks on wheels, since modern suspensions hadn’t been invented yet.

On the straightaway, however, I tore through the gearbox until she was up to almost sixty miles-per-hour. I was tempted to blow across Bayside Road without slowing or stopping at the sign, but I opted to instead do a check-stop, slowing only enough to confirm there were no cars coming from either direction on the empty road, then gunning the motor again.

I crushed the gas pedal on the next stretch of straightaway. Normally, I wouldn’t get caught dead speeding to such an extent on a subdivision street, but the empty world reminded me the normal rules didn’t apply any longer. There were no people around, therefore there was no risk to them, so I could push the car to see what she could do.

The wrecked blue van zipped past me on the right, a relic of that fateful first day.

No warning lights came on, even as the needle hit 100. I savored the speed for a few seconds, then I let off the gas and let her roll for a bit. Ahead, another four-way intersection came at me fast.

Had it already been three days?

I slowed down as I arrived at the four-way intersection of 40th Street and Poseidon. There was enough space to see the cross-streets, and to confirm there was no traffic coming at me, but I didn’t want to blow through this one.

I stopped when I got to the stop sign.

The engine simmered, as if wanting to go fast again.

To the left and right, the street went straight for miles. Other than a few dead cars along the route, I couldn’t see any evidence suggesting that people were out there. Instead of turning, I drove forward, not really knowing where I was going until I got there.

My orange ‘Vette was exactly where I’d left it.

The cars on the parking lot were still there, too.

I parked at the edge of the sand, not wanting to risk getting stuck. I turned off the motor, grabbed the keys as well as my AR, and went over to my modern masterpiece of engineering, then found the note tucked into the seat cushion.

DEAR FRIEND. I LIVE NEARBY. COME TO INTERSECTION OF BAYSIDE AND POSEIDON ANY DAY AT NOON. I’LL FIND YOU. I AM ALONE.

My note was still the same, but someone had written under it with a pencil.

I WILL BE THERE TOMORROW AT NOON. PLEASE BE THERE.

“Crap!”

I’d been so pre-occupied with everything going on at Clownfish Cove, I’d forgotten today’s lunch meeting.

I looked at my wind-up watch.

It was 12:15.

“I’m late!”

CHAPTER 15

The El Camino purred as I clutched through the gears on my way back to the meeting place near my house. I didn’t slow or stop when I crossed through the middle intersection, nor did I do more than glance north and south when I went through. As expected, there were still no signs of life in either direction.

There were signs ahead, though, as I could see an old work van parked on Bayside Road, exactly where I was going.

Had the woman found a truck? If so, that would be helpful. It would also mean she was resourceful, which would also be great. I would—

As I sped along the route and got closer, I realized there were several people at the intersection. It was hard to see clearly with my eyeballs shaking from the high speed, but when I was a few hundred yards away, the picture came together.

“This ain’t gonna be good.”

I only had a few seconds to figure out what to do, but there were two men in black overalls manhandling a struggling woman right there in the open.

My pulse thumped behind my eyes, causing my vision to tunnel.

They’d seen me coming for two miles, so there was no possible way to get the jump on them, but the woman thrashed in their arms with such violence that one of them seemed to be trying to punch her in the face. I had no idea who she was, or what the situation was, but my male brain tipped directly to “protect the woman” mode.

I went as fast as I could for as far as I could, then I booted the brake pedal as far down to the floor as I could get it. The El Camino bucked and protested as all four tires clawed at the pavement for who-knew how many yards. I’d been eyeballing the whole thing, and praying aloud as I gripped the steering wheel, but it ran out of steam about twenty feet from the action.

Puppers had fallen off the front seat and onto the floorboard.

My tunneled vision got even narrower.

Red hair flying.

Woman struggling.

She wrote me a letter.

I grabbed my rifle and rushed out.

Neither of the thugs seemed to be armed, or at least neither of them was aiming a weapon at me, so I took the initiative and rushed them.

“Drop her!” I commanded.

The man threw another punch that connected with her jaw. Her face contorted with the strike as she yelped in pain, causing her long hair to splash across her eyes.

“Stay away, asshole!” the puncher yelled.

The other guy had his arms wrapped around the woman’s waist, as if to keep her from running away, and it seemed obvious they were intending to put her in the van. However, the puncher finally figured out I had a weapon and abandoned the action, running for the van.

“Come back!” the second man screamed to his buddy. “What about her?”

My heart thundered against my ribs. Was the running guy going for a gun? What was inside their van?

We were alone.

The whole world was gone.

There was no law.

There was me…and two potential kidnappers in the middle of an empty land.

And then I saw it… The running man had drawn a pistol from his trousers. In microseconds, they’d amplified a potential abduction into a potential murder. If I’d been unarmed, this would have gone a far different way.

I lined up the guy’s back in my red-dot scope as he put one foot inside the van and then I fired the rifle three times. I couldn’t see the rounds go in, since his uniform was black, but I knew he’d been struck when he collapsed at the entrance to the sliding door.

No one was more shocked than the guy holding the woman. He stood up and shoved her at me. “You can have her!”

He turned and ran for the van, digging at his pocket.

I knew he had a gun.

It would have been a simple shot, but the redhead woman reached for me as she tumbled from the push.

“Help!” she wailed.

For half a second, I thought that maybe she was part of this ruse. It was common in the books I read to use women to lure the “chivalry is not dead” character into a trap, using his honor against him. Far too late to make a difference, I appreciated how I’d let myself tunnel-vision into this situation, not caring whether it was a trap.

Another lesson for future reference.

I tried to sidestep her to get a bead on the guy, but she adjusted, too, as if I had to keep my eyes on her to complete the rescue.

“Please!” she begged.

There was no way I was going to fire next to her body.

The man hopped into the van, dragged in his bloody friend, then shut the door.

I had a couple of seconds to decide what to do.

“They were going to take me!” she cried. “Why did you pass me by the first time?”

Had I missed her?

She tried to throw her arms around me, but I rebuffed her attempt.

“Look, ma’am, I need you to get in my car.”

She looked offended.

I backed away as the van’s engine fired up.

“They’re going to run you over,” I clarified.

She looked over her shoulder and then at my car. I motioned for her to follow me the short way to the El Camino, but she still couldn’t seem to decide whether it was the right choice. Tears jumped out of her eyes in all directions like popped kernels of popcorn.

I hopped in, tossed my gun next to me, and started the motor.

The van lurched forward as a man’s arm came out the window, armed with a pistol. He fired wildly a few times as the vehicle fled the scene.

She didn’t even react.

I couldn’t understand her obliviousness.

I moved the El Camino about ten feet, stopping next to her.

“Get in!” I insisted.

“I don’t know what they want me to do!”

“Who cares what they think!” I shot back. “You’re free.”

I chuckled to myself, full of frustration. With each passing second, the van was getting away. I couldn’t allow that, as they knew approximately where I lived. Plus, they’d proven that no matter where they were in the city, woman-abducting thugs would never work to restore law and order. Quite the contrary.

“Look, you have two seconds to either get in or wait for me to come back.” After I’d said it, I realized it would probably be smarter for her to wait, but she’d already gotten the door open before I could change my mind.

She shoved in next to a golden pile of fur.

“This is Mr. Puppers,” I said without looking over. The second the door was closed, I mashed the pedal, threw around the gears, and turned us southbound on Bayside Road. The old van was several hundred yards ahead, but I could tell by our relative speeds and type of vehicles that I would have no issues catching it.

“I’m Jodie Palmer,” she said in a distant voice.

I realized far too late that I hadn’t reacted normally to that gun hanging out of the window, either. I was pumped full of adrenaline and so determined to fall into the ‘save the woman’ trap that I’d completely shrugged off those flying bullets. Was I in shock, too?

“How did those guys find you?” I asked, concentrating on the road, not what just happened.

“I saw you drive by with your dog from inside that orange fish subdivision,” she monotoned, “so I got into the road to wave you down as you sped away, thinking you were coming to get me for our noon meeting, but you must not have seen me. What I didn’t realize was another truck was coming from the other way, and those two men jumped out before I could hide again.”

“Did they come from this way or the other?” I asked.

She pointed behind us.

“Did they show up right away, or after a little time?” I had to piece together the crime scene, to know if they’d spotted me near the ‘orange fish subdivision,’ too.

“A little time,” she commented. “I stood there for five minutes, hoping you would come back.”

That made me feel about one percent better. I’d driven through the intersection fast, but I had checked both ways for traffic and didn’t see any, so they must have been on a side street. Whatever their purpose, it wouldn’t help my cause to leave two criminals with free rein over my neighborhood. At best, she knew where I’d come from initially, so she almost certainly knew within three streets where I lived. At worst, she’d told them…

“You can just leave this be,” she suggested. “I don’t want to press charges.”

I silently chuckled. If only she knew that was no longer an option. However, I didn’t reply to that effect, as I suspected she was in shock.

“This isn’t about you, ma’am. These men committed a crime on my…turf. If I don’t do something about them now, they’ll come back when I least expect it.”

“I want this to be over…”

I was getting closer to the truck. Black diesel fumes chugged out of its tailpipe as the driver tried to get away, but it didn’t have the horsepower to outrun the purpose-built hotrod.

“What are you going to do to them?” she asked.

Was I going to kill them? In the moment, that’s exactly what I wanted, but her question made me temper my reaction. I’d fought back out of self-defense, and the guy getting shot was a result of that. However, now I was pursuing them…

“I’m going to make sure they never come back,” I said, still unsure what I was going to do. “Jodie, can you hold this wheel straight?”

She gave me a blank look. I had a moment to observe the woman. She was older than me by a few years, with blue eyes, a soft face with pleasing symmetry, and wavy reddish-brown hair with streaks of gray throughout. She was small but fit, wearing tasteful white shorts, a stretchy denim tank top, and new sneakers, like she was an active grandmother.

When our eyes met, I smiled. “Take a deep breath. This is the easy part.”

“It is?” she whined.

“Yeah. Just hold the wheel straight. That’s all.”

She reached over mechanically and held the steering wheel with two hands. She looked forward, as if ready to steer where the truck needed to go. However, we were already going where I wanted.

I grabbed the rifle from under her arms and over the dog and then stuck it out the window. With my now-free hands, I was able to line up the rear tires of the van.

“What are you doing!” she cried out.

The car veered a bit, causing me to bang my elbow on the windowsill.

“Steady!” I pleaded.

“Are you going to shoot?” she asked.

But there was no reason to answer. Instead, I lined up the barrel again, remembering that I’d already shot three times, and then I let go of three more.

The van steered in front of me.

“Hold it steady,” I reassured.

The van weaved from one lane to the other.

I lined up again.

“Nice and easy,” I reminded myself.

I squeezed off three more. I knew I struck the back of the van, but I was aiming for the tires to blow them out. Before I could line up the next volley, the truck threw on its brakes.

I had to go back inside and hold the steering wheel as I slowed, too.

“Did you get him?” she asked.

Her eyes were closed.

She was definitely in shock.

“I got this now,” I assured her.

My arms went taut as I followed them through a right turn, into more houses. Instead of accelerating, the van veered left onto someone’s lawn and skidded to a stop in the front yard of the next house. There were two similar trucks parked at the third house, suggesting there were more of these people.

I jammed the brakes and slid to a stop in the middle of the street. I pulled the gun off my lap and aimed it out the window again, using the sill to steady the barrel.

The driver got out and ran for the next house.

I had about five seconds to decide what to do.

Shoot him?

Let him go?

Jodie had asked what I was going to do to them… Was it still self-defense? Was I still reacting at a caveman level to their attempt to harm a woman I didn’t even know? The man I’d shot might not even be dead… He’d shot at me from the window.

I didn’t see him now.

“Are you going to—” Jodie began.

The running guy still had his pistol in his left hand, across his body, but he aimed over his stomach and fired at me. Little did he know, he’d solved my morality-soaked brain in an instant.

I lined up my target and fired back.

“Please, no more shooting,” Jodie grumbled.

I missed with the first and second shot, but I clipped his leg with the third. He cried out in pain, but he flailed to the ground, still shooting.

Again, I didn’t react to those incoming rounds. What was wrong with me? I didn’t feel at all like Superman, but I was acting invincible for some reason. Before I got myself killed, I needed to end the threat. I used both hands to steady the gun, and my pounding heart, then I put two finishing shots in his body.

He slumped to the grass.

A man appeared at the front door of the target house.

He held no weapon, so I didn’t fire at him. That would be a clear change from self-defense to something less-than-legal.

“They tried to rape my friend!” I shouted.

I hit the gas and let the gun fall inside the door. I stayed low, looking forward, hoping to carry us out of there with speed rather than violence. If either of the two guys were still alive, I wanted there to be evidence of why I’d visited such violence upon them. Maybe that would deter the others from seeking revenge.

The street turned right ahead, and I realized I had no idea where I was going. I was outside of my immediate neighborhood and inside the sea of homes that made up the suburban coast of western Florida.

If I’d driven us into a dead end, I would have to go back the way we’d come. I would have to drive by men who would be ready for me.

I prayed for anything but that.

CHAPTER 16

We made a couple lefts and rights, taking us deeper into the complex web of streets, moving fast but always checking behind.

“I don’t suppose you know where we are?” I chuckled, trying not to betray the anxiety clawing at my insides.

“No,” she wheezed. “I live closer to the beach.”

“Where we met?” I absently wondered aloud.

She had to think about it. “Yes, I guess.”

We made another right turn, and I knew immediately it was a cul-de-sac. I rushed to the end, not a hundred yards, whipped around the circle, then thundered back to the main road.

“I’ll go right,” I commented.

“Okay,” she answered.

“So, Jodie, what do you do for a living?” I asked in a breezy tone, putting my arm on the windowsill, pretending I was simply out enjoying the day with her. The Superman feeling was fleeing fast, leaving me drenched in sweat and aware of how focused I’d been on protecting this person.

“I’m retired. I was an accountant, but now I stay home and watch my grandkids all day.” She spoke mechanically, but with a touch of pride at that last part.

“Sounds tough,” I remarked, knowing that kids could be a challenge.

“I enjoy it,” she replied, before tearing up. “I did, anyway.”

The next few turns were confusing. Instead of a cul-de-sac, a short street took us to a left turn and then another left turn immediately. In seconds, we were back at the road we’d started on. I went right, to the west, trying to stay consistent in heading toward the coastline.

“I’m going this way,” I said, knowing she had no idea where I was driving us, nor did I. My brain was still running the shooting over and over in my head, as if unsure if I’d done the right thing. Maybe I should never have shot them at all. Perhaps I should have tried to talk to the two men, instead of leading with a rifle…

But it only took a few turns for me to shake off that feeling.

Those two men had escalated this fight by attacking Jodie at the intersection. I’d only intended for them to let her go, by force if necessary, and I wouldn’t have shot them if they’d simply driven away. However, they’d sealed their own death warrants when they pulled those pistols.

We checked mirrors as we hit the new street.

No one was back there.

That either meant they weren’t coming after us, or they were coming but couldn’t find us. As I went from street to street, picking my way through the dense subdivisions, I fully expected to continue our shootout with the men in the coveralls.

“Who were those guys?” I asked, trying to keep her mind occupied.

We drove over a big canal.

“I have no idea. I didn’t exactly talk to them.”

That made sense. In my effort to engage, I wasn’t using my full logic.

“They looked like…” My first reaction was they looked like they worked at a funeral home, with their black uniforms, but even I knew better than to speak that way after such a close shave. “…like they were evil handymen, maybe.”

“Are they going to get me?” she squeaked, evidently not appreciating my lame attempt at humor.

I glanced over, nodding to the black Remington. “If you need it, you can use my shotty. Just flick off the safety and then it’s point and click.” I reached and did the safety for her.

“What’s happening to the world?” she wondered aloud.

I squealed the tires as we turned right at what seemed like a major intersection, going north and south. It said 40th Street, which I knew was the same one I’d often crossed on Poseidon Pier. If so, it meant we could get home.

“Where did you go after the beach?” I asked. “You know, on that first day?”

“I heard you come to the beach, and I even looked over when you parked on the sand, but then I fell asleep again for a few hours. When I woke up, my car was dead, so I walked home. While on the way—”

“You weren’t sleeping,” I cut in. “I came back to the beach about fifteen minutes after the blue wave, but all I saw was your empty beach towel.”

“Oh, right. I meant I’d been sleeping for a few hours before that. I woke up when someone whistled close by.”

“That was me,” I reflected, remembering how it had felt to whistle and have no one respond.

“Are my grandbabies really dead?” she asked.

That was the big question. I could come up with imaginary excuses, reasons for how it might happen in one of my books, but dare I say anything that might lead her to false hope? What was she looking for from me?

“I honestly have no clue where they went. I hope they’re still alive, since I’d barely even met my neighbors.” I was going to leave it at that, but I was being insensitive to the woman I’d so chivalrously rescued. “And I’d really love to meet those grandkids of yours.”

She might have smiled a bit, but it was hard to tell.

We were now barreling along the two-way street at seventy miles an hour. I did have to weave around a few dead cars, but there was no one walking or driving on the street, so speed was allowed.

I saw the familiar intersection, slowed a bit to confirm where I was, and then zipped across Poseidon Pier without turning right. When she saw me pay special attention to the road, she figured out why.

“That’s the street where you had us meet, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but I can’t lead them to my house.” The only way those old vans would have ever caught us was through bad luck, or when we stopped, since they didn’t have the engines to otherwise run us down.

“We can go to my house—unless you think they’ll find us there, too.”

The woman seemed intelligent, if a bit shocked at the encounter. She’d figured out immediately that a threat to me was the same as a threat to her. We were in this together.

“I could let you out, so they wouldn’t see me and you together.”

I figured I’d at least give her the option of walking away from this.

“No, I’ve been trying to find your group since I put that note on your car. You aren’t what I expected to show up, but, believe me, I’m more than happy you came when you did.”

I leaned back and tried to relax a smidge.

“What did you expect?”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but with that bright orange car, I expected you’d be a rich oil sheik from the Middle East, not a character who looks like he works in a pot dispensary.”

I laughed out loud.

“Is it the shirt?” I asked.

Today, I wore a flowery Hawaiian shirt with Jimmy Buffett’s smiling face plastered all over the place, each one under a little palm tree. While I wasn’t fond of the wacky tobacky, I did partake in the occasional brew, often accompanied by my favorite tunes from the JB collection.

“Yeah, I guess,” she chuckled, finally unloading some of her tension.

“I get that a lot.”

“Plus the mustache, I guess.”

My nephew liked to call me Magnum P.I. because I looked a little like the actor, Tom Selleck. I never thought of him as a flower power hippy, but he did like to wear the same shirts as me, which was why I never took offense to the comparison.

My sister, on the other hand, always said I was too ugly to be Tom Selleck. She, I argued with to no end.

I pushed my relatives out of my mind, not knowing their fate.

“I assure you I do not work in a pot dispensary and never will. I’m an ex-trucker who now runs his own shipping company.” I paused, realizing what I was saying. “Actually, I just sold it to my nephew. I guess I don’t have a job.”

“A vagabond,” she teased.

I looked over and saw her smiling a little. It was nice, even as the wind whipped her hair around.

“Do you have room in your garage for a car?” I asked.

“My car is parked on the driveway, so yeah, I do.”

She found her bearings after driving a few more streets and was able to get me to her house without further trouble. We checked in every direction possible before turning into her block and then into her driveway, always wary of the men in the vans.

“Can you get the door up?” I asked.

It gave me a moment to look at the high-end Toyota minivan parked where she said. It was the type of car a grandma with lots of grandkids would need to go around town.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Does it work without power?”

“No, we’ll have to go in.”

We went inside and into the garage, so I could unhook the automatic door opener and pull it up manually. Using the light of day, I was able to park the El Camino inside and then shut the door behind me. When the engine was off, we ran to the front windows to check one last time if anyone had tracked us.

“See anything?” I asked.

I came up behind her as she stood in front of a different window. I noticed her shorts had hearts sewn onto the rear pockets, giving them some visual interest when looking at them…

She stepped back. “Nothing.”

I finally let out the tension I’d been holding inside.

“I think we’re good.” I smiled.

“Are we really safe?” she whispered.

“Let me do one last check,” I answered.

I hurried into the hallway and opened the door to what I assumed was a bedroom at the corner of the house, but she yelled out when she realized what I was doing. Inside, three tiny outfits were on the carpet, one empty diaper sat on a changing table.

“Not in there,” she warned. She ran fast enough to bump into me as I closed the door.

“Sorry,” I said.

She choked up as she placed her hands on the wood. “My grandbabies disappeared from in here.”

“Who was watching them?”

Jodie pulled herself off the door, then opened it again. She pointed to a rocking chair, set against the front window, facing away. “My husband was in that chair. He was home from his day job at the hardware store, so he wanted to have some time with the kiddos. If I would have been here—”

“Then you’d be gone.”

She sniffled. “Maybe that would have been for the best.”

“Don’t say that,” I protested.

She closed the door again and made me follow her to another room. This one had a TV in one corner and two recliners next to each other on the other side. She pointed to one of the chairs and the book on top of it. “I’ve been reading the Bible these past few days, looking for any sign that this is the Rapture, but I can’t find anything that says everyone on Earth will go up at the same time.”

“We’re not up,” I commented, not wanting to delve into why I would have been left behind if all the good people had gone up. I mean, I wasn’t a bad person, sometimes I was even pretty good, so what did it mean if I wasn’t in the sky right now?

“But everyone else is. This whole street. The next one. A hundred streets south of here and a hundred streets north. I went out looking for them. All the people are gone. That can’t be the work of the Lord. This has to be something else.”

“Does the Bible have any other theories at all?”

She picked up the book and leafed through it for a moment. “I admit, I’m not that good with a Bible. Maybe it does explain this. Maybe it doesn’t. These past few days of reading haven’t given me any clues, no matter how much I try.”

I respected her for being religious and stuff, but she’d hit upon a bigger issue, for the moment.

“You haven’t prepared for anything over the past few days?”

She shrugged. “What do you expect me to do? I’m a nobody. I don’t have a lot of money to buy supplies. I don’t even have a car, like you do.”

“I’m not rich, either,” I replied. I did come into a bit of money from the sale of my business, but I’d spent my life living in crappy apartments and dumpy little homes so I could save up and finally get a few items ticked off my dream list.

Nice home in Florida to retire, check.

A top-notch sports car, check.

A companion—

I didn’t let myself finish the thought. Jodie was obviously not that person, given the loss of her husband in the disaster. She was pretty, and resilient, but what would I have to talk about to an ex-accountant? In fact, I was coming around to the idea there would be no making nice with the ladies until this whole EMP event somehow resolved itself. There simply wasn’t time for anything but preparations…

“But what I was specifically thinking about was accumulating supplies so you can ride this out in your home. I think it is safe to go to your neighbors’ houses and borrow food and supplies. Find guns, if you can. Search in garages for old cars, like mine. You have to stay alive.”

“But why?” she asked, serious. “I’m old. I’m done for.”

“How old are you? I’m fifty-two. You can’t be much older than me!”

“It’s not polite to ask a woman her age,” she protested, tongue-in-cheek.

“I mean it. There is no reason for you to give up.”

“Did you look in the same room I did?” she asked sadly.

“That was rough, I’ll admit, but what if they’re still out there? How bad would it be if it was just you and me against the world, and I was about to rescue them, but I needed an extra pair of hands to hold the steering wheel?” I tried to call back to our wild car ride, but her eyes clouded over instead of appreciating my point. “Jodie, what I’m saying is that sixty or a hundred, you can never give up. Surely, there is a passage about not surrendering in your Bible?”

“It does prohibit suicide, murder of self, or I’d go straight to Hell.”

“That’s not really what I meant.” I thought of what to say in return, but I realized she’d given me a clue to her state of mind. Despite the pleasing exterior and banter between us, her heart was in that room with the baby outfits. Maybe it always would be.

“It would be easy, too,” she went on, drone-like. “There’s a bottomless pit not two streets over.”

“Come again?” I answered. “You mean an open sewer?”

“Nope. It stinks like a pile of used diapers—believe me, I know—but the opening goes down into a black void. I’ve thought about jumping in and ending all this, but, as I said, it wouldn’t lead me back to my babies.”

I was going to let it go, but she’d ticked my interest.

“You said it smelled bad. I ran into a foul stench a couple of times over the past few days. Once in North Pointe and once by the beach. I thought it smelled like the slick muck that drizzles out from the bottom of nasty dumpsters.”

“Yeah, dumpster or diapers, we’re really describing the same thing. And the one I’m talking about is close to the beach where your orange car is.”

“Then it might be the same place. Will you show it to me?”

I was certain there was a rational explanation for a bottomless pit in the Florida suburbs, but I didn’t mind having an excuse to get her out of her house for a little bit.

She was living inside a cemetery.

CHAPTER 17

We left right away.

I insisted she carry the pump shotgun, as it was the easiest to use. We would go searching for another gun for her as soon as possible, but that was secondary to her mental health.

We walked through the back yards of her neighbors’ houses, heading west, toward the coast. A few of them had fences we had to go around, but there was always a path along the canal behind the rows of homes, as if neighborhood regulations ensured it.

“So…accountant, huh?”

“Yeah, don’t go falling in love or nothing. It’s not as exciting as you think.”

She was teasing me.

“I don’t know. Counting has always been fun for me.”

“Me too,” she agreed, either playing along or speaking the truth. Who could understand the mind of someone who volunteered to live inside a spreadsheet? “Graduated college with a degree, worked in about ten different companies over the years, always shorter and shorter times, as the world changed. Glad I got out when I did. The company I worked for dumped the whole department about a year later and outsourced the whole finance wing to some overseas conglomerate.”

“Yuck. I hate to hear stories like that. My company is all-American. We do have some non-native drivers, but they all have the proper papers and do good work for us. My accounting team is local to Chicago.”

“For now,” she prodded.

“Forever, I hope,” I answered. I spoke from the heart, but the reality was it was out of my hands. My nephew could do whatever he wanted to turn a profit. I’d sold it to him to finally get it out of my hair.

It was nice running my own show, but the truth was I missed being behind the wheel of a long-haul truck. Just me and the open road. If I ever soured of soaking up rays on the beach, I was going to get a little RV and spend more time out driving.

We had to get out of the back yards and cross one of the many streets in the area. Looking under the bridge, I wasn’t sure how Nate had spent even five minutes hiding under a similar span, but then my life hadn’t been in danger from the police, so his motivations were certainly different. I watched in the shadow of the crossing when I noticed the water was choppy, but only where it was under the street.

“Wait a second,” I said.

I went down the bank and stood as close to the water as I could. At first, it was difficult to see if anything was down there, but it soon became apparent there were a lot of gray-colored blobs in the water. It was as if a school of fish had chosen—

They weren’t fish.

“Are those…manatees?” I asked. I’d seen them on a promotional video shown by my realtor when I’d first asked about the area. They were large, fat mammals, almost like legless cows. Now there were about fifty of them all crammed in a tight group under the bridge.

“They sure are,” she replied. After studying their activity for a few moments, she became confused. “Why are they doing that?”

“I have no idea. I should mention that I literally moved here from Illinois about three weeks ago. This is all new to me.”

“That doesn’t happen,” she said dryly.

I pointed up. “Neither do blue beams of light.”

I thought back to home.

“Hold up. There are about a million birds roosting in the woods behind my house. Most or all of them are white shore birds. Is that normal?”

“I’ve never heard of that,” she allowed.

“And this isn’t normal,” I went on.

“Not at all.”

We walked up and over the top of the roadway. When we went back into the grass, I was struck in the face by that smell.

“Oh, wow. That’s raw sewage multiplied by dirty diaper.”

“It really is terrible today,” she answered.

“Are we close?”

She pointed ahead.

“That’s it?”

The hole was at the end of the canal where it stopped at a road. I was ready to tell her that it’s a tunnel where the water drains into the ocean, since we were close to the beach, but I checked myself, since the smell was overpowering.

We walked along the bank and neared the target. It was a square patch of black on the surface of the water, maybe thirty feet across, but it had a track on two sides, so a square lid could slide sideways. The giant metal lid was there, seeming to float about an inch above the water, but it was next to the hole, not on top of it, as if it had been left open.

I was still convinced this was part of the Florida wetlands system oversight, or whatever government agency dealt with water, but the stench coming from the hole soon became overpowering.

“How is it getting even worse?” I asked, covering my nose with my shirt.

“I think it gets worse every day,” she said, using the crook of her arm the same way.

Unlike the traditional dumpster stench, for as bad as that was, I now recognized a wet undertone of death carried in on the breeze.

“What am I looking at?” I wondered aloud.

“A pit to Hell,” she suggested.

I laughed it off, not believing it for a second. However, if there ever was a pit to Hell, I was already convinced it would be the same eye-watering, puke-inducing square doorway I was looking at right then.

We went along the bank of the canal until we were next to the black opening. The rocky shore gave me a bit of elevation over the edge, but I couldn’t get close enough to look straight down. I didn’t dare get any closer as I was afraid one slip would make me fall down the incline and straight into the gaping maw of stench.

“It’s probably the outlet to the ocean,” I suggested, using my own guess from a few moments before.

“You think? Did a dead whale get caught down there?”

That suddenly made sense.

“Sure, why not? The blue beam disrupted a lot of wildlife, I’m sure, in addition to us people. A whale probably swam up the other end of the tube, got himself trapped, then didn’t know how to escape. Once it died, look out!”

It was a cozy solution, but I didn’t think either of us believed it. For scientific reasons, I picked up a heavy rock and chucked it into the hole. I leaned in, hoping to hear it smack the water at the bottom, but it never made a sound.

“Let’s try that again,” I said.

Taking an even bigger rock, I hefted it over the side. Like the smaller rock, this one went in, but I never heard it hit any water.

“Boy, I would take a peek if I had a rope,” I said.

Jodie chuckled, then pointed behind us. “Even your dog won’t come up here.”

I glanced behind her. Sure enough, Mr. Puppers had stopped following us at the last bridge. He nervously eyed the gaggle of manatees but seemed to have no interest in getting closer to the foul odor.

“Want to go on a ride with me?” I asked.

“Away from here?” she coughed.

“Yeah, I think we’ve seen enough.”

We rounded up Mr. P, passed the weird group of swimmers, and made it back to her place.

“So, where are we going?” she asked. “Back to your group?”

I didn’t want to break it to her that I had no group, not unless you counted people who I knew but that had run out on me.

“I want to go north, into town, to see where that stench was coming from up there.”

“Aren’t there more important things to do? You just said we need to collect food, supplies, guns, whatever. We’re laying low from those guys in the vans, right?”

“That’s all important, yes, but I can’t go back to my house yet, because I don’t want to lead anyone there with the car. I might have to leave it at a different house…though they might find it there while I’m at my real one. I need some time to think this through.”

“Is it worth the risk of going out?”

“We made sure they didn’t follow us and—to be honest, Jodie—sitting and waiting isn’t really my style. While we are up in town, we can search for things we need, but I also want to see if we can find another one of these tunnels. Maybe they are clogging up in some way. I don’t know a thing about how things work in this state, but if there is a problem, who do you think is going to fix it for us?”

I looked around to make my point.

“Us?”

“Yep.”

I thought back to one of the books I’d read several times over the years called Earth Abides. In that classic story, the main character observes how the world of man falls apart after a cataclysmic apocalypse, not unlike the one we were experiencing. One of the many lessons was that there were single points of failure in manmade systems that with a little maintenance could be saved to run a little longer on autopilot. While I had no illusions I could clear whatever was clogging the tunnels, I did want to understand the problem better.

Left unsaid was that it was a mission. A reason to go out and do things. I’d told her sitting around wasn’t my style, which was true, but seeing those empty clothes in the nursery affected me in a way I didn’t fully understand. Like I’d lost something in there, too.

We reversed opening and closing the garage door, checking the streets for roving vans before leaving. Once on the way, and clear of her street, we both exhaled giant sighs of relief.

To get there, I drove a random route, which was not easy to do in a suburban world where every street looked exactly the same and few of them were placed on a grid pattern. There were no signs pointing the way, either. If we were being followed, they would have to be geniuses to prevent us from seeing them, since we had to turn around perhaps ten or twenty times.

When we got to North Pointe, nothing had changed from my previous trip on the bicycle. I took her near the civic building, and we were both hit with the thick, nose-bleed stench.

“It’s close,” she choked out.

I had to drive up and down the streets near the city hall building, but I soon found the black drain on the ground. I knew as soon as I saw it, however, that it wasn’t anything normal.

“This is in the middle of the street,” I warned.

I parked the car about fifty feet away. The stink of the open hole made my nose weep with each step closer. Mr. Puppers made like he was going to come with us, but he turned away about halfway there.

Jodie stuck with me until I was at the edge.

Like before, there was a square opening about thirty feet across. A sleek lid made of stainless steel had slid to the side, along the cross-street to my right, revealing the gap. It would take a tractor and chains to pull that huge sheet back over the hole.

We walked to the edge, but I didn’t allow myself to get a step closer than necessary to look down. I was able to confirm there wasn’t water at the bottom of this one, though I couldn’t say for sure what was down there, since there was no light.

“I’ve heard of flood control systems,” she said. “Giant tunnels that big cities use to channel water and control flash flooding in neighborhoods.”

I looked at her with surprise.

“Well, my husband read about it once. He was very excited when we saw similar tunnels on a trip to Las Vegas.”

I had no idea if that was true.

“Maybe the EMP popped the lids open,” I reasoned.

Whatever they were for, keeping the stink out of the city had to play a significant reason for them to be in operation. Not only flood control, but stink control.

We backed away and more or less ran to the El Camino. I couldn’t say why, and I didn’t ask her if she’d felt the same thing, but the safety officer in my brain wanted me far from that nasty pit and as fast as possible.

Mr. Puppers hopped in the open door.

“You want to find another one?” she laughed.

“No, two toilets are enough for one day.”

As we drove away, I wondered what other big public works had been affected by the EMP. Would Hoover Dam fail and flood everyone? Would the locks on countless rivers stay closed forever, causing the waterways to jump their channels? Would it even affect satellites and space stations? Would we soon have to worry about those falling on our heads?

“Since we’re here, can we stop by my church before we look for supplies or head back?”

“Does it smell better than this?” I asked, still shaking my head from the odor that wouldn’t leave the cabin.

“As far as I know.”

I wasn’t pleased with her uncertainty.

CHAPTER 18

Jodie’s church was a few blocks up from the car dealership where I’d purchased my Corvette, so pulling into the parking lot there seemed a bit like closing the loop on one long fever dream. It started with driving my new car to the beach happy as a clam, then walking home—when it turned into a nightmare. From there, it became a strange hallucinogenic trip, with various people popping in and out of hidey holes and panel vans, and now it was getting brighter, as if things were about to return to normal.

The lot was sprawling, a hundred yards square, leading up to a large structure that screamed mega-church, complete with a giant metal cross sticking out from the top. The sign on the door was unfamiliar to me. Instead of saying First Baptist Church, or St. Whoever, this one simply said ‘The Light’ in big block letters.

There were only a few cars in front of the building, but I drove us right up to the door, over the sidewalk. There was no reason to expose ourselves on foot any more than necessary.

“I need to figure out a way to keep anyone from stealing our ride,” I said to make conversation. “Wouldn’t want to come out to find it gone.”

There were likely many vehicles of the pre-1980 variety out there, but they would soon become hot commodities, collected by the survivors to get them around in a new world.

I looked back as she went in. Across the lot, and across the four-lane street running north and south at the edge of North Pointe, there was a large hospital, painted white, which sat with a view of the harbor. It occurred to me that’s where I needed to be, collecting medical supplies, rather than in a church. Soon, even the hospitals would be gutted by survivors. I knew that from almost all the books I’d ever read on survival.

Mr. Puppers waited at my feet rather than follow Jodie, who’d already gone inside.

“Come on, silly,” I said to him.

We both went into the spacious lobby, well-lit by sunshine coming in through plentiful sloped skylights.

Jodie didn’t wait for us to catch up. She went through large doors into a darker chamber that was where the congregation gathered. It had a few skylights, too, as well as large stained-glass windows on three sides, so we didn’t need a flashlight.

“Wait a second,” I commanded.

She came back to me.

“Here, keep this with you.” I offered her my shotgun again. “Neither of us should be unarmed when we separate.”

She looked at it for a long time before taking it.

“Thanks.”

She hurried up to the foot of the altar and dropped to her knees.

I sat on one of the last benches, intending to give her space. She’d obviously suffered heavy losses from the…attack? Accident? I still had no idea how the end of the world had happened, which was disturbing in itself. The best way to prepare for what comes next is to know how you got there. For me, three days in, I still didn’t know.

I had assumed all my reading would have given me a head-start on surviving any apocalyptic scenario the world could throw at me. But I’d been assuming there would always be lots of people around. A pool of manpower to help defend our homes, collect needed resources, and fight off those who would take it. Here, sitting with a stray dog and a lost grandmother, I got the sense I was miles behind everyone else on my grand plans.

Those thoughts gave me the itch to wrap this up. I couldn’t go back home, yet, but we could be searching local stores for loot, we could check out homes for weapons, and we could stop by the hospital for whatever medical supplies looked useful. In short, there were far more productive ways to use my time.

I let Mr. Puppers sit on the bench next to me, and he chose to sit upright, so he could see Jodie up front.

“You don’t like her, do you?” I whispered.

He said nothing.

“You know, she’s grieving, because she lost her family. I would think you would know something about that.”

He again showed no indication he understood me. However, I picked up on the fact he had scooted closer to me, even as I continued to stroke his fur.

For a few moments of peace, it was nice.

Despite being inside a church, I did not feel religious. Maybe it was the fact the building reminded me of an old Walmart, or maybe the loss was too terrible for any church to absorb, but I only experienced emptiness while sitting there. In the movies, churches were supposed to be islands of calm, even fortresses against evil, but this place seemed to contain the exact same level of darkness on the inside as the world outside.

I used the moment to pull out my notepad and write down a few points that came to mind since I’d found my new friends.

Were we going to have problems with those grates?

Was there even one person alive in the town of North Pointe? If not, did it make sense to move my home base to the town to be closer to resources?

Along those lines, did it make even more sense to stay hidden in the anonymity provided by a million homes in the suburban sprawl, but move from Clownfish Cove and go one street over, where I could have water surrounding the street on all sides? That sounded smart on paper, but I would have the same problems there if I didn’t find more stragglers like Jodie to help out. And we hadn’t even talked about having her help out.

Though I wasn’t lacking in self-esteem, I could admit to myself it had tested my worth to have two out of the three people I’d met run away immediately.

Finally, after many minutes, Jodie stood up and came back.

“You could have prayed with me,” she suggested.

“I said a few prayers back here,” I fibbed. I hadn’t gone to church since I was a kid, except for a few select times over the years when I wanted to impress a potential lady friend, so praying wasn’t high on my list of survival tasks. I’d say grace here or there over dinners, but that was about my limit. Writing ideas in my notepad seemed far more practical. “Did you get any messages from on high?”

She shook her head.

“I’m sorry,” I said, meaning it. “I meant no disrespect.”

“None taken,” she replied. “I usually find myself at peace when I talk to God here, but this… This has been too terrible to understand. What do I even pray for? What is better for my grandchildren? That they aren’t dead or that they are dead?”

I stood up, sensing she was about to lose it. I didn’t take her in my arms, as I wasn’t on such personal terms with her, and she kept a standoffish stance, but I did touch her arm for a second.

“Jodie, you did the right thing, okay? God hears your prayers for help, and he’ll know exactly what needs to be done. It’s best not to try to overthink it.”

She blinked away tears. “How do you know that?”

How, indeed? I was talking out of my rear end.

“I’m guessing, but it seems logical.”

“Maybe,” she allowed.

I let her stand in front of me for a few moments before stepping toward the door. “Should we get out of here?”

“Did anyone every tell you that you were an answer to a prayer?” she asked.

“No, but I’ve had women call out to—” I checked myself from completing the joke, remembering she was having a crisis. I struggled to think up a better ending. “I’ve known some religious women.”

“Well, it sounds like you know what it means to answer someone’s prayer, anyway.”

I had no idea if she was talking about my joke or her own life.

“Seriously, I do. I drove over-the-road for many years, and I’ve seen some terrible stuff in accidents, so I know all about it.”

In the back of my head, I figured I should start praying again, given the circumstances, but I still wasn’t feeling it inside the unsettling church building.

We all filed out.

“Frank, thank you for taking me back to my house and for bringing me here. I know you have other things you’d rather be doing.”

“Think nothing of it! Me and Mr. Puppers are here for all your touring needs. We don’t even charge, do we?” I bent down to scratch under his collar.

Jodie went outside first without holding the door for us, showing the same urgency she’d displayed when walking in. It wasn’t a big deal, at first, until I saw her trot toward the El Camino without looking back.

I held the door for the dog.

When we got outside, Jodie had opened the driver’s door and turned back toward me with the combat shotgun drawn.

“Whoa!” I cautioned. “There’s no need—”

“Give me your keys,” she ordered.

The way she held the gun in no way suggested she was an expert.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked.

“Just give me the damned keys,” she insisted.

I reached into my pocket and grabbed them. I figured there were five different times I could have surprised her with my pistol, since she hadn’t thought to ask me to hand it over, but I could tell this wasn’t a pre-planned operation. She was scared.

“Here you go.” I tossed them on the ground next to her, feeling déjà vu from doing the same for Nate. When she reached down, the shotgun waved in all different directions, and I could have easily shot her…

“Whatever this is, you don’t have to do it,” I pleaded.

With the keys in hand, she sidestepped toward the open driver’s door.

“I’m sorry.” She sniffled. “I prayed for an answer to my problem, and this came to me as I was walking.” She stopped before getting in, so she could talk. “Frank, I wasn’t the girl on the beach.”

“You weren’t?” I asked.

“No. They found that note in your car before you did. They found the girl. They wanted me at that intersection, not her.”

“Why?”

“She’s practically a kid. They thought I wouldn’t fight back.”

“You were working with them?” I asked, now starting to think I should use my pistol.

“Yes. No. Not really. Frank, thanks for rescuing me. I really was in trouble, but not in the way you think. The two guys in that van were trying to push me to you, not take me away, but I wouldn’t do what they wanted.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“They weren’t hurting you?”

“They were hurting the girl!” she fumed. “I wanted to go back and save her.”

I was lost.

“They call themselves Cleaners, Frank. They are searching homes and rounding us all up for some reason. I didn’t know how to stop them until I prayed for a solution in there. God brought you to me and you showed me it is possible to fight back.” She held up the black shotgun again.

“Can we do this together?” I asked softly.

She seemed to think it over for a few moments, but then she got in the car and slammed the door. It created another opening for me to shoot her, but I held my position. I couldn’t get a solid read on her loyalties, but she seemed sincere about wanting to help.

“Frank, if I free the girl, don’t think bad of me. I’m really trying to right a terrible wrong.”

“Free a girl?” I took a few steps forward. “What are you going to do?”

“Whatever I have to.”

With that, she turned over the motor, backed off the sidewalk, and sped across the parking lot.

I looked down at Mr. Puppers. He was blissfully unaware of all the ups and downs my heart was going through lately.

“Well, buddy, that’s the third time I’ve been told to get lost. It looks like you’re my only loyal friend.”

My attempts to find people to help me defend Clownfish Cove were getting nowhere.

‘Cheers, mate,’ he replied. ‘Now we have the afternoon to ourselves.’

“You’re a real optimist, aren’t you.”

CHAPTER 19

I played Jodie’s departure over and over in my head, wondering if I should have shot her for threatening to take my car, but, in the end, I was satisfied with my decision. Maybe I did take something out of that church after all, but I didn’t think God would approve me killing a grieving mother and grandmother to save a piece of steel. I’d already seen other vehicles on the road, and I assumed there were many still out there waiting to be found, so it wasn’t worth killing her.

After watching her go, I looked around for where to head next, since it would do no good to sit around and mourn the loss of the El Camino. The hospital loomed large across the street, but I instead became interested in a small restaurant located a few doors down.

“Care to get some waffles?” I asked.

The two of us crossed parking lots as we went south along the main street until we reached the Waffle Grid, which was a little box-shaped restaurant famous for good waffles and late-night fistfights.

The doors were unlocked.

Inside, dozens of piles of clothes were on the floor, in the booths, and behind the counter. Rows of sausages had been cooked to cinders on the big grill on the back wall, though everything was off at the moment.

“You need some ashes?” I joked to the dog.

He nosed around the place, alternately sniffing the empty clothing and the leftover dishes on the tables. When he scarfed a plate of stale pancakes I thought I should keep closer watch on him, but there was no way I could keep track of him around the clock, so I decided to let him go crazy.

“You’ve spoiled your dinner,” I chuckled.

He licked his chops with abandon, having cleaned the plate.

I went into the backroom, careful not to go into the freezer. I’d read too many stories where the lone guy gets himself trapped somewhere, like inside a one-way door, and either dies or has to rely on rescuers to come get him. I wasn’t ready to die in such a pointless fashion and was highly doubtful any rescuers were coming.

Jodie hadn’t given me a clue what she planned to do, but the heavy prayer before saddling up with my shotgun in hand didn’t seem like a journey she was planning as a round trip.

Inspired by her faith, I stopped in my tracks and bowed my head.

“God, please help her do whatever she’s planning, and do it safely. Amen.”

Mr. Puppers looked up at me, perhaps smiling.

The dog always looked happy.

“Hey, a little prayer can’t hurt, right?” I remarked.

‘No shame in it, mate,’ he said in his Australian accent.

“That’s right.”

In the end, I decided to eat bread from the huge rack of loaves the store kept in the back, lathering it with butter and honey. I really wanted eggs, they had hundreds of those, but there was no convenient way to cook them, and I didn’t want to get sick with salmonella…despite being across the street from the regional hospital.

“Boring is safe,” I said to my friend, echoing the sentiment of many survival books.

We stayed in the Waffle Grid for half an hour. Time that I used to write down more points in my notebook. Things I wanted to do with whatever house I stayed in, including collecting water, hardening the doors and windows, and, if I was being really sneaky, placing boobytraps all throughout my property.

Of course, there was always the problem of potential friendly people wandering in. I couldn’t leave traps all over the place that would kill anyone who came along, including little kids, so I thought about how to be selective with my imaginary traps.

Eventually, I left the restaurant, ready to keep up my search.

The hospital was calling my name.

“You want to hang back here and eat a few more waffle platters?” I asked the dog. “Or do you want to come with me over to the hospital?”

He understood the word ‘come.’

He woofed once.

“Oh, so you can talk!” I bragged for him.

‘Only when I want to,’ Mr. Puppers answered.

“Well, come on, then.”

We bounded across the road, careful to avoid the empty abandoned cars on and off the pavement. When we got to the hospital, it was once again a model of what the place looked like when there were live people inside.

Two men had been pulling a big gurney inside the emergency doors. Now there were two empty piles of blue fire uniforms with a woman’s bloody dress on the cart. The wheels had rolled over the clothes of one of the paramedics, though it had stopped there.

Inside, it looked exactly as I’d expected.

Doctors and nurses had left their uniforms everywhere.

The waiting room was full of civilian clothes.

The hallways were a mixture of both.

The rooms were empty of living people, like everywhere else, but even peeking in a few suggested more piles in more areas.

The hospital itself was large, with several floors above the first, but I only snooped around the main level. The one place I did check out, however, was the pharmacy.

“I need five grams of sodium pentothal, stat!” I called out to the empty counter.

The doors were all open, and I had freedom to take anything I wanted. Despite all the years of reading books about various versions of the apocalypse, none of that made me an expert on drugs, so I really had no idea what I needed to take.

Antibiotics, obviously, but what forms did they come in? How would I store them? Were they still good if they’d been sitting in the pharmacy for three days? Did some of them need to be stored in coolers?

I experienced a moment of doubt. I could build anything with my hands, and I was excited to get home and fortify what needed strengthening, but I was struck hard by the reminder I’d missed the opportunity to add three extra people to my crew. What skills had they taken with them, maybe lost forever? Could one of them have been a doctor or nurse? That key type of person could almost single-handedly ensure the survival of members of any group.

As it was, I was basically a monkey at the drug counter. I knew more about flinging my crap all over the walls than I did what drugs to pull off the shelves. Embarrassing, but true.

I decided to grab a bag and stuff bottles and boxes of medications I knew about. Aspirins. Antacids. Antibiotics. I even found some wraps for sprains, toe clippers, razors, and a host of miscellaneous stuff I knew was useful to have, even if I wouldn’t need them in the first five minutes.

As for the rest of the high-value drugs, I decided on a separate course of action.

“Shhh, don’t tell anyone what I’m doing,” I whispered to Mr. P.

I found an empty gurney not far outside the pharmacy and brought it inside. I went into the drug safe and secure cabinets and piled drug bottles and boxes on the cart. I didn’t take everything, but I took one or two of all that I could find, so I had the full spectrum of medications.

The only ones I didn’t grab were those in an unpowered industrial cooler, since those were probably bad.

I walked nonchalantly down the hallway with my treasure, wondering where I was going to put it. There were other gurneys placed throughout the first floor, but none of them had patient bodies, as those had all been zapped away. I figured there was likely a morgue in the basement, but I didn’t want to carry everything down there.

In the end, I found a couple of other gurneys in a line and placed mine in the middle. Then, since it would stick out if one gurney had a fake body in it, I slid the drugs under the padding of all three carts, then I took the sheet off, so they appeared like three gurneys empty and ready to be used.

Unless someone needed one to carry a person, they would have no reason to suspect or test that I’d stored things under them. The drugs were hidden in plain sight.

To be sure of my plan, I found two more carts and placed them in front of and behind the original three. If someone did come along and want one, I hoped they would take those and not mine.

Not satisfied with that precaution alone, I took one of my three and rolled it to the other side of the hospital and put it next to one that had empty clothing on it. Rather than move the clothing, I slid a portion of my stash under that cart padding, giving me a total of four carts with prizes.

It seemed like a lot of work, but I was positive the hospital would soon be gutted, if there were even a few people left alive. Once I had a vehicle, I was going to come back and grab what I could from the gurneys to take it back to my home base. Since I wasn’t sure how long that might be, I had to plan like it would be a while.

The golden retriever had followed me around the hospital, his long nails clicking on the hard floor, but he’d gone to a side door to look outside, as if yearning to be in nature.

That’s when I realized he probably needed to be out there.

I hurried over and opened the door for him. As expected, he went to the closest patch of grass and did his business. We were on the ocean side of the facility, along the northern portion of the building, so I could look out on the wide harbor. Trees lined the shore on the other side, maybe two or three miles over the water, and the waterway ran north and south of us, making it look like a giant lake. Closer to me, there was a fancy marina at the shoreline a bit to the north, and there was a city several miles beyond, across the bay.

Standing there waiting for my buddy, I was reminded there was a huge world out there. People were almost certainly alive in a city that large, and there might even be elements of authority that would come along and report in on what was happening up there.

I had to stay alive until that happened.

Mr. Puppers did his thing and was on his way back to the door when he stopped.

“What is it?” I asked.

He cocked his head, listening to something in the distance. I didn’t hear anything, but I did see a plume of black smoke rising over the center of town.

“That’s new…”

CHAPTER 20

We ran toward the smoke. I went back through the Waffle Grid parking lot, behind a pet clinic, through the parking lot of a little movie theater, and across a few more streets until we reached the source of the fire. As we neared, I suspected I knew what was ablaze, but it wasn’t until we reached the city hall building that I knew for sure.

“That’s hot!” I warned.

Mr. Puppers had a healthy fear of fire. He still followed me, but the second I stopped, he turned around, as if the sensible thing to do was leave.

The little municipal building had been fine when Jodie and I passed it earlier, and it had been good the day before when I got the newspaper. However, without proper supervision, there was no telling what fire hazards had been left untended in the buildings all around the area. If anything, it was a little surprising that there weren’t more fires…

The police cruiser parked in front of the building had also been burned. The sagging hulk of metal sat on melted rubber tires and looked as if the fire had gutted it shortly before our arrival.

A second building, diagonal from where I stood on the corner, was beginning to catch fire as well. None of the town buildings were made exclusively of brick, like you might find in a big city, but were instead made of wood and other materials, to keep them light and airy like you would find at the beach.

The green front of the building caught fire as we watched, and flames rose up through the roof.

“Wow, this thing is spreading,” I warned.

As I watched, the building next to the green one caught fire. I’d been on high alert since noticing the smoke, and I really couldn’t explain what made me run toward the fire, perhaps a need to do something, since the fire department wasn’t around any longer. However, now that I was at ground zero, I realized this fire was more serious than I’d initially believed.

A white Jeep Wrangler caught fire next, its soft top evaporating into smoke as I watched. The seats flamed up, seemingly without embers falling on them…

“Houston, we’ve got a fire problem,” I said to myself.

I pushed Mr. Puppers with my foot to get him moving, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the fire. While the Wrangler flared up, and a tire popped, a loose grouping of clothes caught fire in the middle of the street, as if sparks had jumped over and torched them.

Now, the city hall and two other buildings were ablaze.

I got the sense this was not natural fire.

After seeing a blue beam of energy ripping through my neighborhood, and people disappearing, I wasn’t surprised by the revelation. I looked up, certain a giant was holding a magnifying glass over us, focusing the beam where he wanted things to burn.

“Run!” I shouted.

Mr. Puppers didn’t have to be told twice. As I ran along the sidewalk, he was close behind me. When I looked back, I watched another abandoned car flame up, though only the hood.

My heart screamed for me to run faster.

There was a beam of energy moving around, for sure.

I found the first corner I could go around, then I stopped behind what I thought was a brick building. I had to shove the dog against the wall to keep him there.

We both breathed heavily.

Did the dog know how much danger we were in?

I peeked inside the small corner store to find a hair salon in the throes of flaming up. The roof collapsed, and the black chairs melted in seconds.

“Go!”

We moved two buildings down. My intention was to keep the beam operator, assuming there was one, on the other side of the buildings. The last thing I wanted was to be out in the open, where he could draw a direct line to us.

We both jumped out of our paws when the tires of a car across the street burst open. Like the Jeep, the two-door subcompact had its wheels explode and melt as the paneling sagged and the interior turned orange with fire.

There was no beam of energy to see and avoid. I could only react based on where the touch of death had already moved. I didn’t know exactly what would happen if we stood inside the death ray, luckily there were no bystanders to provide the example, but staying out of it was clearly the wise choice.

The energy weapon came to our side of the street again. It burned through a small kiosk where the local papers were stacked and then it continued into a tiny bookstore. Once the heat ray made it inside, the whole thing went up practically as an explosion.

“Run for it!” I cried out.

I would have admitted it to the dog if he’d asked, but I’d never experienced quite the level of fear as I did at that moment. The ray was invisible, coming from an unknown location, and it was clear me and my innocent pal had stumbled into an activity we weren’t supposed to see. While I ran for my life, I wondered what was so important about the little town hall.

Unfortunately, there weren’t any buildings that screamed out to me as offering protection from the fire storm. As I ran into the shopping district, the buildings seemed even more flimsy than those around the city hall. They were filled with T-shirts, a billion kinds of hats, and aisles of plastic toys designed to appeal to the children of moms and dads on a Florida vacation, willing to open their checkbooks to stock up on the junk. Now it was the fuel for the raging death ray following us…

We reached the corner of the block, giving me a second to decide where to go next. I still couldn’t figure out where the source of the beam was located, but it was definitely in the air. It seemed to zigzag across the narrow stretch of road in the shopping district, setting one building alight on this side, then another on the far side.

There was no way to backtrack.

“Don’t panic,” I told Mr. Puppers, “but this thing has it out for us.”

‘No kidding, mate!’ he said, way too happy for the situation.

I decided to run along the same block, going south, but before I could move, a car erupted in flames at the far end.

“He’s bracketing us in,” I said to myself.

If I waited too long, he could set fires on all four streets, making it necessary to walk closer to the flames and making harder to determine if the beam operator was getting close.

A building erupted with fire on a second street.

Soon, there would be no choices.

Could he see us?

I didn’t peek around the corner again. I stayed where I was, trying to think. If I crossed to the other side of the street, I would give us away.

Breathing hard from the smoke, I looked back the way we’d come.

Maybe I could find a grate and climb into the sewers.

But would Mr. Puppers be able to follow me? Could I carry him? What if he refused? He wasn’t my dog, but I’d grown attached to him over the last few days and didn’t want to lose him.

There was only one option.

“Dog, I sure hope you are paid up on your life insurance…”

He panted from the heat.

I walked back along the block, staying close to the storefronts. The first two were totally gutted and burning hot as kilns, but the third one was an art gallery, and the flames weren’t as thick.

The front door was open, like everything else. It had been a Monday morning when everyone disappeared, so businesses were unlocked. That saved me, since I needed to get the two of us off the street.

The walls were on fire, but there wasn’t much to burn in the middle of the store, as the art installations were already ash. The tile floor prevented further spread of the fire…and it kept things cool for my furry friend.

The backroom had patches of flames along the walls and ceiling, but the door to the back parking lot was open and clear. Mr. Puppers wanted to get out of the confined space, but I held him back.

“We’re going to chill in here for a bit,” I advised, laughing at the idea of chilling inside a fire. Since I had no idea how the energy weapon worked, I had no way to know if it could spot us even inside the inferno. However, the weapon seemed to be built to burn down buildings, not assassinate individuals, so I hoped it was too inaccurate to find us. A bit like evading a shot from a cannon versus a shot from a sniper rifle. Both would kill you, but the cannon would be a lot harder to aim precisely.

It was difficult to do nothing. The fires continued to digest the buildings around us, and the floor shook a few times as neighboring structures seemed to collapse.

It was then I caught a whiff of true terror.

“Oh, not that,” I said to myself.

The rank odor of the open flood control grate found its way into the burning building, overpowering even the fumes of the flames lapping at me from ten feet away.

I suddenly had a premonition of what was going to happen. We were going to make a run for it out the back door, charging as fast as possible to get out of the target zone of the advanced weapon. However, we weren’t going to make it, and it was going to follow us forever, so the only way we could evade it was to go into that black pit.

In my head, I tried to place our location relative to where I remembered the stinky opening, and I figured it was on the next street.

Was that our only option?

Could we survive a jump?

Could Mr. Puppers make it?

I gritted my teeth. Every square inch of my skin was soaked with sweat from the searing heat of the burning tourist boutique, but I was hesitant to go out there. I would almost prefer the building to collapse on top of us rather than have to jump into a black hole that smelled like death.

Mr. Puppers deserved better.

Then I thought I could do him a lot better by leaving him behind. If I could lose him while on the move, he would go off on his own. No one would redirect a powerful weapon simply to take out a random dog. Puppers could run free and never have to worry about me again…

But when I looked down at him, I didn’t want to do that. I admit it would have been too painful to loose a fourth member of my crew. The one member who had been with me from the beginning…

‘I’m with you no matter what, mate,’ he said, echoing my own thoughts.

“I’m with you, too, buddy,” I replied, knowing he had no idea what thoughts were bouncing around my brain pan. He simply looked up at me with his typical admiration, as if I was about to play with him rather than harbor thoughts about abandonment.

I hung out in the burning building as long as I could. When pieces of the roof started collapsing, I knew it was getting close to time to leave.

Outside, I couldn’t see if the beam was still in the area.

Maybe the operator was up there looking through the equivalent of a ray-gun sniper scope, waiting for motion to capture his attention. There couldn’t be many people in the area, so any movement was going to be from me.

Once the second big piece of roof fell in, I knew it was time.

“Are you ready to run for it?” I asked, breathing hard.

My blood pressure spiked to max.

We were really going to do this.

I kept the grate in mind. If there was no other choice in the world, I would grab Mr. Puppers and shield him with my body as we fell to the bottom. If I died, at least he would make it.

At the last second, I prayed for a miracle.

“Lord, I could really use your help on this one.”

I had to pick up Mr. P to get through the backroom, as the carpet had begun to burn, but I put him down as soon as we’d made it out.

“This way!” I urged.

We ran across two rows of parking spaces for the tourists who couldn’t find spots on the narrow street in front of the buildings, but then I ran into another row of tourist boutiques that hadn’t caught fire.

When we came to the front, I saw the flood grate exactly where I expected it. The lid was still open, it was still black in the hole, and it still stunk like decay.

“Come on,” I encouraged my partner.

Mr. Puppers ran next to me as I hotfooted it across the street, angling toward the pit in case we needed to jump in, while desperately hoping that wouldn’t be necessary.

My heart was on the verge of exploding when I ran to the corner and hid at the edge of the first building.

Puppers ran a bit, then turned to come back to me.

“We’re still alive,” I reminded us both.

I looked back at the wall of flames now engulfing the tourist district and the city hall building. From our location, I couldn’t tell if the weapon was still destroying things, or if it had moved on or turned off. All I knew for sure was that we had to keep moving.

As I turned us around, intending to run south, I jumped a foot off the ground when a vehicle appeared at the next intersection.

The horn blared over and over.

It came directly for us.

Directly for the hole in the ground.

I had to step into the street, waving my arms.

Wouldn’t it be funny to get into a car accident and still get thrown in the pit? It was as if my destiny was down there, for some reason. Jodie had mentioned a pit to Hell, which shook me to the core.

Still, I held my ground.

Then, I held my breath.

“Stop!”

CHAPTER 21

I did not recognize the girl driving the El Camino, but I got a closer-than-wanted look at her face as she slammed the brakes and slid to where I stood. The redhead hung her head out the window the second the car was stopped. “Are you Frank?”

“Yeah!”

“Come on!” She waved.

I urged Mr. Puppers toward the car. “Get in, buddy!”

I had no idea if he would listen to me, or understand what I wanted, but he ran and jumped through the passenger-side window as I approached the woman on the driver’s side.

“Who the hell are you?” I asked. “Where’s Jodie?”

I opened the door before she could answer.

“Please scoot over.”

She hopped over the shifter and joined Mr. Puppers on the passenger seat, rattling off a response as she moved. “Jodie sent me. I was the one who left you that note on the beach, not her. She got me away from those guys and said I had to hurry back here and honk for as long as it took to find you.”

As I settled in, I was careful to keep my foot on the brake until I had the shifter in reverse. It wasn’t the time to make a mistake and pull forward instead of backward, since the pit was the only thing in front of us.

“Hold onto something,” I warned.

I reversed down the street, glad to get some distance from the foul odor coming out of the ground. I cut the wheel and let the front end whip around, then I hit the gas, doing a passable version of the J-turn. I hadn’t done one in decades, but it was the type of dumb thing we did as teenagers.

With absolute concentration, I clutched and shifted as fast as possible to create distance between us, the fire, and that beam. I didn’t look back, as it wouldn’t do anything but make me nervous.

We sped through a few more blocks, then we raced through the busy intersection at the southern edge of the town. By the time I crossed the first canal south of the intersection, we were over a hundred on the speedometer. I did check back, fearful I would see a laser tearing through the pavement to get us, but there was nothing back there but a distant plume of black smoke.

“So, who are you?” I yelled over the thunderous engine, coming around to my original question.

The woman was young, maybe in her early twenties, and, looking back on how she’d been lying on her blanket sunbathing, it was easy to see how bad I’d been bamboozled by Jodie. Physically, she was built like the grandmother. She also had long wavy hair, similar to the other woman, but instead of those streaks of gray, it was almost solid red.

“My name is Nichole, but everyone calls me Cookie.”

She sat with one of her long legs folded under her, not using a seatbelt. She wore a pair of red shorts with a white border at the rounded bottoms, and she had a tie-dyed shirt loosely fitting over her bikini top.

“Cookie?” I said with mirth.

“Yeah, I got the name in college, and it has just kinda stuck.”

“Okay, Cookie, now tell me where Jodie went.”

I turned at the first subdivision street we reached, intent on staying lost among the endless homes in the area. Until I started seeing houses spontaneously explode, I was content to think we’d evaded the death ray.

“She’s dead, sir.”

I slowed, then pulled the car over and parked under a group of decorative trees.

“Tell me everything,” I snapped.

She looked at me with sad, hazel eyes, tears streaming down her freckled cheeks. It struck me for the first time that despite driving to find me, she wasn’t doing well.

I spoke in a more even-handed manner. “Please, tell me what you can.”

She petted Mr. Puppers with both hands as he sat with her on the wide seat. My Remington shotgun was gone with Jodie, but the AR was still sitting next to the gear shifter.

“Well, I saw you that first day on the beach when you drove that hot orange Mustang onto the sand. I admit, I was intending to come over and talk to you…on account of your being rich.” She smiled with embarrassment.

I ignored the insult of calling my Chevrolet a Ford.

“You are way too young for us old guys,” I countered.

“You’d be surprised,” she said without further comment. “But, honestly, all that went out the window when my phone stopped playing music. I became distracted, trying to restart it and getting nothing. When I finally looked up, the movie guys were gone, and you were walking away. At that point, I was too pissed to flirt.”

“Those guys in the water were making a movie?”

“Yeah, didn’t you see their cameras?” she asked.

“I guess I was distracted,” I admitted. Then, I realized I needed to address her earlier point. “To be clear, I would not have flirted back. You are half my age and then some.”

“I’m twenty-four,” she replied.

“And then some,” I repeated, laughing to show her I wasn’t being unkind, just a decent human being. I had plenty of guys working in my shop who claimed to date much younger women, but I wasn’t one of them. Maybe ten years younger, but not twenty-eight.

“Whatever,” she said with frustration.

“Sorry, go on,” I prompted.

She kneaded Mr. P’s fur, as if her stress was building.

“Anyway, I got up and left my towel there, intending to go back for it, but the more things I tested, the more dead things I found. I tried my car, but it was dead, too. I couldn’t figure out how that van drove away.”

“Older cars still work, like this one.” I rubbed the dashboard of the El Camino, a truck I was beginning to really like.

“So, still pissed off at my luck, I walked back to the house and found even more dead things there. When I found my roommates…”

It struck in that moment Jodie had probably made up the story about walking home from the beach and finding her grandbabies gone. She hadn’t even been on the beach…

“They’d disappeared, leaving only their clothes,” I said in a kindly, supportive voice.

She nodded.

“Then what happened?”

“Well, you know. I went to my neighbors, but they were gone. Then I started to notice empty cars on the road. I found kids clothes in lots of back yards—little ones, not those away at school.”

“Uh-huh.” Her tension grew visible as she kneaded Mr. Puppers even harder, so did mine. I was reliving that first day, and it wasn’t a pleasant experience.

“So I went back to the last place I’d seen a living human being.”

“The beach.” I chuckled in a consoling manner. “I went back there for the same reason.”

“Yep. I waited as long as I could, then I put that note in your car and hoped you’d come back, like I did, but I didn’t really think it would work. When I saw your note back to me, I screamed with joy. I was so happy to not be alone…”

“I know the feeling. I was happy to get your note, too.”

“But someone else got our notes.” She spoke almost at a whisper. “They found me when I was walking around with a flashlight last night.”

“You were just out on the street, in the open?”

She shrugged. “Sure, why not? I thought I was the only person around…but then I imagined seeing someone walking a bunch of dogs.”

“Dogs?”

“Yeah, I chased them, and I know I heard dogs yapping, but two men in black came out of the shadows and said I had to come with them. They grabbed me real rough and stuff, and I got taken in their van.”

There was a section of my analytical brain that really wanted to point out the laundry list of mistakes she’d made, but the damage had already been done, so there was no good reason to dump salt in the wound.

“Jodie told me this group calls themselves Cleaners.”

“Whoever they are, they knew I was trying to contact a man using my note, and they got excited, explaining they were trying to find leaders gathering survivors together, so they could go out and rescue them…”

She became quiet.

“And how does Jodie fit in?”

“They let us pick who was going to meet you. I wanted to go, but Jodie insisted it be her.”

“But why? Why didn’t they want you to come get me?”

“That I don’t know, but I do know why she came back.”

She was quiet for a few moments before turning away to look out the window while she answered. “Jodie was…abused last night. Not by the leaders, but by the guys driving those trucks. They’d told her if she didn’t find a group they could bring in, I was going to get the same treatment tonight…”

I put my hand on her shoulder as she sobbed.

She turned to me, tears running down her face. “Frank, those guys are freaks. Something’s not right with them, like they’re from the insane asylum or something. They are not here to rescue us…”

I tried to think back to things Jodie had said. It made sense why she’d wanted to stop at the church. She might have been searching for a solution as to how to protect this young woman, and she’d obviously gotten her answer in there.

She’d also been asking if I had a group. Now I knew why.

“So, did she tell them where I lived?” I tried to recall if Jodie knew for sure where I hung my hat. She knew I was off Poseidon, toward the Clownfish billboard, but not the exact street.

“I have no idea, sir. Not while I was around her last night.”

Jodie wouldn’t have known anything about me until our ill-fated noon meeting today.

“And what happened to her when she came back to rescue you?” I asked, even though I knew this didn’t have a happy ending, given that Jodie was dead.

“I think her reappearance surprised those men. Only three of them were in the house when she came in, and they were even more surprised when she blew them away with that shotgun. She gave me the keys and wanted me to get away before she would leave. Unfortunately, one of them managed to shoot back before we could both get out…”

“Say no more,” I soothed.

I tried to start the car, but she stayed my hand.

“Mr. Frank—”

“It’s just Frank,” I corrected.

“Frank. The last thing she called out to me was that her prayers were answered. She said to make sure you knew that.”

“Hmm. I wonder why she would say that?”

She shrugged with a bit of indifference, as if she’d said all she could endure on the matter.

I looked around, not sure what my next step would be. If there were men driving the streets looking for anyone left alive, it meant it wasn’t safe to be out and about, even at night.

“Are there are lot of those guys?” I asked.

“I think so. The men talked about a main headquarters down in South Pointe, and it sounded like there were others waiting for them to sweep this area.”

“Hey, were you in the house by chance when Jodie and I sped by earlier today and shot their guys? Did either of them make it in the house alive?”

“That was you?” She got a little excited. “I was trapped in the front room of that house, actually. I heard you yell out about those guys raping her. Did she tell you that?”

“No, I only said that because she was fighting them when I found her…” I wondered if I’d hit too close to home by yelling that. Maybe I’d set things in motion for Jodie to go back and get revenge.

“Well, the rest of them were really pissed to lose those two men. I heard them running around the house cursing and screaming. One of them even burst through my door…and I thought…he was…”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to talk about it.”

“He didn’t get the chance. They all left to go out and look for you guys.”

I knew how that search turned out. Our evasion didn’t give me the relief it should, however. Those guys might have died, but I knew I’d made a huge unforced error by setting up my meeting with Cookie at an intersection right outside my subdivision. What had I been thinking? Maybe it was shock, but I didn’t want to use that as an excuse. A mistake was a mistake, and it could lead to the end of any hope of my defense of Clownfish Cove.

If they drove all the streets in my area, it would be obvious where I’d set up my defenses. Those tarps would announce my presence like I was blowing a huge horn twenty-four/seven.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” I said to her, meaning it.

I had to rethink my entire defensive strategy, so I could blend in more to the background noise of everyone else who was missing. The tarps were a red flag. A roadblock, like I’d been thinking about setting up, would be a bigger red flag. Simply driving the El Camino around was the biggest red flag of all.

“We have to travel by bike, stay in the woods, lay low,” I said to myself, intent to remember what I needed to write in my notepad. I looked over to her. “But we can survive this.”

Now, I turned the key.

“I know where we can wait out the daylight, then I’m going to take you to my house.”

“Are we going to drive there?” she asked.

“Yeah. We’re going to park the car and hide it, but I want it ready in case we have to get out in a hurry. If these guys are as organized as you say, we have to assume they’ll eventually track us down. At that point, we’ll fight if we’re ready to fight, or we’ll run if we’re ready to run.”

It seemed as if Jodie had made her choice.

“I would much rather run,” Cookie commented.

Which of the two had been right?

“Sometimes, you aren’t given a choice,” I said.

CHAPTER 22

Cookie was an interesting person beyond being a fellow survivor of a cataclysmic event. I spent the last few hours of daylight getting to know her.

She was working as a waitress at the same Waffle Grid I’d been in earlier. Her goal was to save enough money to finish her last two years of college, but she admitted it was too much fun going to the beach every afternoon after her shifts were over.

Her family was from Ohio.

Her favorite Avenger was Captain America. When I asked why, she said he was cute.

Cookie’s favorite summer pastime was an activity she called ‘visiting the ATM at the beach.’ It sounded a lot like a scam as she described it, but it was also where our stories came full circle. She said her and her friends spent a lot of time in North Pointe and on the beaches to find older men with fast cars and lots of money. They would show her a good time for a night or two, showering her with cash, but then they’d break up when the men’s vacations ended, or she would dump them herself. She described it as innocent fun, but I wasn’t born yesterday and assumed there was a bit more to those transactions than she let on.

And I could see she was adept at working the ATM, or maybe she didn’t even know what she was doing, but she flirted on and off, using affection for Mr. Puppers to make comments about how good of a guy I was, or that I was a good dad for taking care of the lost pup, or she was so impressed that Jodie could leave me to go get her.

I didn’t let on that I recognized her game, but I assigned her to a certain bay in my mind, like I did with troublesome rigs in my garage back in Chicago, so I knew exactly who and what she was.

Any woman in her twenties was too young for me.

While waiting in Jodie’s house for darkness to fall, I encouraged her to put on a thicker shirt, so her swimsuit top wasn’t on full display. Once we left the comfort of the deceased woman’s home, we were going to be in mortal danger until we got back to my street—and then safety might still be elusive. That’s why I made the outfit suggestion and made it clear there were no buttons she could push to access my ‘ATM.’

By the time we were in the car, I was confident I’d established the boundaries between us. Not that it was illegal to date her, but I didn’t want to go down that slope. Still, she tried one last time…

“Wait, before you start the car.” She held my arm, preventing me from turning the key. “What if you and I are the last two people on the entire planet, and the only way we can repopulate the whole species is by dating each other. Would you do it then?”

I wasn’t sure how I’d traded energy beams for dating issues, but somehow, it seemed equally as dangerous to me. There was a simplicity to running for your life from a ray-gun from space. Women were a lot more complicated.

“If it came down to me and you, I think our hands would be full keeping ourselves alive. Having kids would be out of the question. Besides, the gene pool would be too small. Who would our kids marry? Each other? It would be a mess.”

She sat stewing about it for a long few seconds.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

I started the car, anxious to be moving on. The truth was, despite how pretty she was, I was far more wrapped up in saving our lives than choosing someone to sleep with. What she didn’t seem to realize was that we were completely on our own. Alone. Sure, it was great not having society’s norms holding you back, but you also didn’t have societal safety nets to support you, like doctors, police, or firemen. Survival was no sure thing.

I was a caveman on the Savannah, eternally watching for lions, hyenas, and snakes. If I turned my head for two seconds to check out the cavegirls, we all died. That perspective tended to sharpen the mind.

The big-block 454-motor rumbled to life, and I let her idle for a few moments, practicing my plan in my head.

First, drive like hell to Bayside Road.

Second, pick my way through the woods, making it harder for anyone to spot us.

Third, hide the El Camino back in Drummond’s garage, putting all the junk back on top of it.

Last, pray those cleaner guys wouldn’t ever decide to come down our street.

I got out and closed Jodie’s garage door, partly out of respect for her house, but also to ensure it was available if I ever came back through. There were a million houses where I could hide out, but this was the one I knew was safe.

Cookie insisted on sitting with her legs folded below her, and she refused to wear a seatbelt, claiming it was safer to be thrown from a truck than to be belted in, but I stopped trying to change her mind when I realized it made her upset.

So, I kept things quiet when I weaved up and down the confusing street network. Absently, I thought about finding a map of the area and forcing myself to memorize routes, but I was caught by surprise when she pushed the button for the cassette player.

Jimmy Buffett came on.

“Oh, I love this guy!” she shrieked.

“Shush,” I warned, knowing how dumb it sounded while the glasspack exhaust pipes roared behind us.

“Oh, sorry,” she said. “I really do love them. It is the perfect beach music. I think I was listening to Oldest Surfer on the Beach when the power went out the other day. How strange is that?”

“Really strange, since I was listening to that exact song when the power went out, too.”

I wondered if she was pulling my leg, maybe trying to butter me up.

“That’s what you were playing when you pulled onto the beach,” she clarified. “Everyone heard it.”

“Was it that loud?”

She nodded and smirked. “Your engine is so noisy, it probably makes you deaf, you know?”

“That’s fair.”

“Still, I do love his music. Me and Gina went down to the Keys two years ago for the Twenty-fifth Anniversary Meeting of the Minds convention. It was amazing.”

“You are a Parrot Head?” It was what Jimmy Buffett fans called each other. I would have called her a parakeet, a term reserved for the younger fans, but there was no hard and fast rule. Hell, rules were the last thing he would want tied to his name.

“Yeah, aren’t you?” She beamed. “You should totally go!”

“I just moved here. I hadn’t really thought about it, but yeah, Key West isn’t that far now. It sounds like a great idea.”

“We can go together someday!” She paused, as if analyzing her words. “As friends, I mean.”

“That’s a deal,” I answered, knowing with almost perfect certainty we’d never make good on that trip. Jimmy was probably gone, along with everyone else. Maybe he’d finally found a place where it wasn’t five o’clock…

I kept that joke to myself, as I didn’t want to pop her bubble.

We finally found our way to the last road before Bayside, but I turned off the car and pulled to the side before we went the last hundred yards.

“You wait here,” I suggested, grabbing my rifle. I missed my shotgun, as it made me feel underdressed to only carry two weapons while sneaking around in the night.

“Um. What? I’m not sitting here alone.”

I laughed. “Mr. Puppers will keep you company.”

“He will?” She melted. “I guess I can guard him.”

“That’s the spirit.”

I hurried to the corner, wondering how I could put the young woman to work for me when we got back. However, I put that aside as I got close to the last intersection and zeroed in on the reason I’d come there on foot.

There were no lights in either direction.

I walked to the edge of the street, confirming my first assessment. There was no light to the north, though a soft orange glow remained on the horizon, possibly a result of the fires raging in downtown North Pointe. To the south—

A light appeared, and it was close.

My heart skipped some beats when I figured out vehicles had turned onto Bayside and were heading in our direction from the south. Perhaps half a minute until they passed my lookout spot. I backed away from the road as I tried to keep myself calm.

There wasn’t enough time to get into the El Camino and get it out of there. Even if I could get in, it would be hard to reverse away from the passing vehicles without using brakes or headlights, since the inky darkness was nearly absolute. There was a thick cloud cover above, so even the moon and stars were hidden, and there were no lights in the houses, on streetlights, or reflecting from a nearby city.

I waited at the corner, using a subdivision welcome sign to keep myself hidden. In less time than I thought possible, three whiny engines bore down on me.

“What are the odds they turn here?” I said with thick sarcasm.

A ghostly red ambiance appeared on the trees across the street and on the fronts of the rear two vans, signifying the trio of vehicles were putting on the brakes.

“Sonofa—” I began, hating that I’d been right.

They were three panel vans, same as the one I’d chased to the house where the women had been kept, and they now slowed and turned at my street corner.

I gripped the rifle for dear life.

I stayed hidden as all three trucks made the turn.

They accelerated onto the side street.

There were only a handful of seconds to come up with what to do. I could shoot the back of the trucks before they reached Cookie, so they would have to stop and deal with me, but as much as I wanted to think of myself as a decent marksman, I didn’t think I could take on three vans’ worth of guys in the dark.

As the headlights illuminated the old El Camino, I expected to see her head sticking up, even from so far away. To my shock, the lights didn’t reveal a young woman’s bright red hair…

When the first one reached and passed my friends, it didn’t slow.

I held my breath as the second truck passed.

The last one tapped his brakes, leading me to an immediate heart attack, but he continued on with the others, never slowing as it went by my two friends.

I exhaled a hurricane as the red lights disappeared around a distant bend. After checking the road one last time, I ran back to the truck and found Cookie on the floorboard, holding Mr. P.

“Good job, Cookie. That was quick thinking.”

“I didn’t want him to jump out the window at them,” she answered.

I got in and started the car. “If I had to guess, they were going somewhere specific, and they were in a hurry.”

“Did they know we were at Jodie’s house?”

The only people alive who knew we’d used Jodie’s house were currently in my car. I knew I hadn’t told anyone…

I shook the idea immediately. Cookie seemed like an open book type of person, and I didn’t get the sense she knew how to hide anything. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have admitted to stalking older men the way she did. Her manner of speech and openness tracked with other young people I’d hired in my garage. They were always happy to tell you every little detail about their personal lives, in ways people my age found disturbing.

Once I knew the trucks were gone and behind us, I drove with the lights off as we pulled out of our parking spot and went across Bayside. There were no more lights coming at us, so I drove straight over the highway and down a slight incline until we went into the woods.

Unlike the area around my home, there were no white birds in this part of the forest, so it made the ground a lot harder to see. I had to turn on the amber parking lights, not the headlights, so I could at least see the larger trees to avoid.

I guessed we were a mile up the highway from my subdivision, so now we had to go that same distance through the woods. To make it worse, I wanted to drive due east for a quarter of a mile, so I could use the lights without being spotted from the road. As it turned out, that was the right call, since the ground clutter was thick and one wrong turn could lead to us running over fallen trees and possibly high-centering us on top of one of them.

When we’d gone for about fifteen minutes, I turned off the car, shut down the lights, and sat still.

“What are you doing?” she whispered.

“Our biggest asset in this type of darkness is our ears,” I remarked. “I’m trying to listen for voices or other vehicles, so I can adjust accordingly.” There was no way to sneak up on anyone while running glasspack mufflers, but anyone following or avoiding us would be making sounds, too. By surprising them with a shutdown, I hoped to hear them before they realized what I’d done.

“Do you hear anything?” she asked.

I waited before answering.

“I hear a lot of crickets, but no cars,” I finished.

“Can we go? This place stinks, and this is a lot creepier than I thought it would be.”

The darkness was absolute, so every speck of light from the interior lights or the tame amber glow reflected off tree branches and bushes in a wide arc around us. It made some of the trees look like giants, holding out their arms, ready to surround us.

“I’m with you on this one,” I answered.

When we’d gone a few minutes, I nearly choked on the blast of hot, stinky garbage air that came into the cabin.

“Oh, wow,” she said, waving her hands. “Mr. Puppers, did you have an accident?”

“It wasn’t him,” I said.

“Oh…sorry,” she replied.

“No, it wasn’t me, either,” I chuckled. “There’s a sewer system along the coast that apparently went offline when the EMP struck us. Now all the shields are open, and the mind-warping stench inside is coming out.”

“I did not think anything could smell this bad.” She held her shirt over her nose.

“Yeah, it clings to your clothes,” I admitted.

I used the full headlights as we picked our way through the underbrush of the forest, since I didn’t want to take even a remote chance we might accidentally drive into one of those bottomless pits.

At one point I’d rather not talk about in detail, Cookie hung herself out the window and tossed her cookies.

“It smells so bad!” she shrieked.

My stomach wanted to bail out, too, but I clenched my jaw and drove my way through the nightmare. As we crept farther into the night, the smell finally diminished, telling me we were moving away from it. Strangely, my mood improved as we got out of its grip. It wasn’t only the stink, there was a physical response to such nasty smells.

Cookie came back into the cabin.

The carpet of birds appeared, so I cut the main lights and went back to only the ambers. We were getting close to home.

“Here we go. These birds are some friends I recognize.”

Cookie found some mirth, thinking I was joking.

“It’s true. The birds came here to roost the other day, just after…”

“And they’ve stayed here?”

“Yeah, they stay under the cover of the trees, I guess.” I suddenly put another piece together. “Actually, Jodie and I came across something similar. We saw a huge group of manatees hiding under a bridge.”

“And you said there was a beam from space chasing you?” she asked in a reasonable manner, like it was obvious. “Could these birds have known?”

“They say animals have a sixth sense about disasters, but I always thought that was an old wives’ tale.”

“Well, what do you think now?”

“I honestly don’t know. Nothing makes sense. And I don’t know if the beam was from space, but it was definitely coming from above.”

“The mere thought gives me the willies, and I only saw a tiny part of it when I picked you up.”

I looked over. “And thank you for coming to get me, if I didn’t say it a dozen times already.”

“You’re welcome.” She beamed, seemingly fully recovered from her time retching over the side.

“Now, we need to get to my house where we can take a deep breath, regroup, and plan what we’re going to do next.” We drove through the thick of the birds for a minute or two before I saw our destination. “And there’s my place.”

There were lights moving around on my street, near the circle. I could see them reflecting behind the tarps I’d strung between the houses, proving my plan worked, since I couldn’t see exactly what was going on behind them.

I turned off my parking lights and cut the engine.

“What?” she asked.

“Someone’s already there,” I groused.

“Do you want to go back to Jodie’s?”

I thought it over for a few moments. I could spend my whole life running around the empty neighborhoods, and might even do alright with it, but I would be a lot better off having a base of operations—a place to supply, clean my weapons, store resources. It would be foolish to give up my entire neighborhood without knowing why.

“No, I need to know what we’re dealing with.”

Those tarps hid the circle from observation, so I couldn’t tell who was up there or what they were doing, but the tarps also potentially hid our approach. As long as they didn’t have lookouts yet, I should be in the clear.

‘Should be’ being the key phrase.

My tired heart sped up, knowing the scheme my brain was hatching.

“I’m going to check it out.”

CHAPTER 23

“You can’t leave me!” Cookie protested, quietly slapping the tops of her thighs as she sat in the dark.

“I need someone to watch the truck while I go in,” I replied.

“But it’s so dark and creepy out here. That smell… It’s too weird.”

“You’ll be with Mr. Puppers,” I reminded her.

“Uh-uh.” She pouted. “That doesn’t work twice.”

I could read the panic in her voice. We’d been together for a better part of the day, but I knew next to nothing about her. She was young, and had an immaturity to go with it, though I figured some of that was that I was an old fart who didn’t understand the younger generation. Whatever it was, I hadn’t been able to establish a rapport with her like I’d done with Jodie, so I didn’t know what made her tick. I didn’t know how to appeal to her sense of duty toward our little two-person team.

Maybe it would have helped if I explained things in detail, that I didn’t want her tripping on the fishing-line traps I’d set up, or I didn’t want her being one more person a guard might spot, or I didn’t want to worry about her if a shootout broke out, but the truth was I didn’t want to spend the time wearing her down to see it my way. My best guess was that a vehicle was moving around on the street, either arriving or leaving. If it was arriving, the clock was ticking before they would set up a perimeter, so I had to get across the open back yards before they did that. I’d already wasted too much time.

“Alright, we’ll all go, but you have to follow me exactly, so I can show you where the traps are set.”

We all got in a line and went toward the houses. I aimed for the back of my place, since it was shielded somewhat from the tarps in between the homes. If I played it perfectly, the only people who could see me would need to be inside my house or standing at the back corners, beyond the tarp barrier.

I wanted to jot that down in my notebook. The best way to test your own defenses was to pretend to be the enemy…

When we reached the fishing line, I had to help her step over the invisible strand. Since there was no way to explain it to Mr. P, I had to pick him up and place him on the other side.

The noisy cans remained tied to the tree, hiding in a nook, ready to be sprung by the next people coming through.

“I’m scared,” Cookie whispered.

“Me too,” I exaggerated. “Just follow me.”

It crossed my mind that we could be shot dead, in my own back yard no less, but there was little fear in my mind. Instead, I experienced a profound sense of loss.

As we approached my back patio, I thought about how that was where I was supposed to be at that moment. Retired, maybe reading the last few pages of a good book before going back inside and sacking out. I wasn’t supposed to be living in a dying world, with strangers, running from death rays and evil maintenance men.

My back door was locked from the inside, with a board nailed across the opening so it wasn’t possible to sneak into my own home. I wanted to write that down at some point. I needed a secret passage of some kind, in case this situation ever came up again.

The dog circled around me for a bit, and I was going to shoosh him over against the wall, but he lifted a leg and began doing his business on my lawn.

“Good dog,” I whispered.

We had to wait until he was done.

“Stick close,” I advised them both.

I walked along the back of my house until the corner, then I peeked around. As expected, the tarps blocked my view of the street, so I had to walk between the homes and bend one of the sheets to see through.

A giant four-door pickup truck was parked in front of my house, headlights and overhead light bar both lit up. I couldn’t tell the make or model, but I assumed it was old, and it was lifted with giant mud tires. Maybe an old Ford or Dodge.

“Is it those cleaner guys?” she asked.

“I don’t think so.”

But who was it? The driver had parked there for a reason…

We watched for another minute before I finally saw motion. A pair of legs dangled down from the driver’s side before the person let themselves fall to the street. Even from where I was, it was obviously a thin dude.

“Come on, he had these tarps up for a reason,” the guy shouted to a companion.

A large man ran from Drummond’s yard, straight through the headlights, and to the far side of the circle where the thinner guy was working. It took a bit of time, but I soon understood they were stringing up the line of tarps that I’d taken down when I drove the El Camino off my street.

“I don’t think they’re here to hurt us,” I finally said.

“How do you know?”

“Because I know one of them.”

“Oh…you do?”

I couldn’t jump out and surprise them, so I decided to call out from where I was. If it was an elaborate trap, then I would fight my way out of it, run back to the truck, and be on my way. If it wasn’t a trap, I still didn’t want to get shot by accident.

“Hey, Nate!” I called out. Not loud, but loud enough to be heard.

The guy hopped like a rabbit a few times and jumped behind the bushes in the middle of the circle. The lights on top of the truck were bright enough to light up the entire cul-de-sac in all directions, so I saw him clear as day.

“Who is that?” he shouted. “Frank?”

“Yeah, Frank,” I replied.

“You almost made me piss myself!”

“That’s fine,” I chuckled, “but I don’t want to get shot if I come out.”

“Neither do we.”

“Just the two of you?” I asked, still not moving.

“Yes.”

“There are two of us, plus one puppy friend.”

“Mr. Puppers is with you?” he asked.

“He knows you!” Cookie gasped with surprise.

“Like I said.”

We all came out from our respective hiding spots, but before we got reacquainted, I had him turn off the lights of the truck. Only then did I feel a tiny bit safer.

The introductions went like I expected.

Nate was awestruck by the pretty young woman since they were about the same age. Cookie, for her part, was polite to him, but that was about it. Only when he was sure she wasn’t going to say more than hello, he introduced the man.

“This is Gunther. I only know that because it says it on his nametag.”

The man was well over six feet tall, probably three hundred pounds, and most of it was muscle. The guy had a ten-inch beard, jet-black hair, and a New Orleans Saints ballcap that looked like it had been dragged around the floor of a greasy mechanic’s shop. The big man wore thick trousers and a blue button-down shirt with a nametag hanging at the end of a lanyard.

“Nice to meet you, Gunther,” I said as I shook his hand.

The man’s grip was like clasping an iron bar. He peered into my soul while we greeted each other, and his eyes were as deep and dark as those black pits, like he’d seen some terrible things. However, despite whatever tumult was brewing in there, he didn’t speak a word.

I held his gaze for a moment until he broke our handshake.

“He hasn’t said anything to me, either,” Nate interjected. “His nametag came in handy, though…”

Gunther put his head down.

“Well, we won’t push anyone,” I said, not sure what else to say. I’d been excited to meet a guy who could help me strengthen our defenses, but if he was broken and unresponsive, we might be at a net negative.

I had a young woman who was delicate, to put it delicately.

I had a young man who was potentially a criminal.

And now there was a guy who wouldn’t or couldn’t speak.

How I wished for a better team to work with.

Mr. Puppers brushed my leg, making me look down and smile. It was as if he’d reminded me that the best friend of all was on my team, ready to help. And, by the way, his eyes said, having living people helping you is far better than being alone.

He was right.

“Good dog,” I said under my breath.

“I found him coming out of the water,” Nate said, unprompted. “I think he was on a boat maybe.”

I looked over to the man and he nodded a little.

“Well, all paths lead to Clownfish Cove,” I said, upbeat. “But my friend Cookie and I have discovered our immediate threat, now that most everyone else is gone.”

“Let me guess,” Nate replied. “We might all suddenly be able to work on our diets, now that every fast-food joint is shut down.”

Cookie and I chuckled, but Gunther remained passive.

“I wish it was like that,” I continued. “We don’t know what took all the people, but we have learned…through the sacrifice of a woman who is no longer with us that there are guys in vans who are kidnapping anyone they find walking around. That’s why we had to sneak over here to see who you were before announcing ourselves.”

“I saw them,” Nate reported. “They were a few streets over when I encountered them yesterday. Two old vans driving around. I think they were checking houses. I was on foot, so I could watch them for a little while, but I decided there was no benefit to revealing myself. What with them being four men and me being one.” He didn’t mention his role as a whistleblower or his fear of the government, making me wonder if he’d told Gunther any of his past.

Observing from afar seemed to be Nate’s style. He’d watched me from a distance, then approached when he thought it was safe. As a survival tactic in an empty city, it was probably the best possible choice.

“Well, if those were the same guys, they would have nabbed you and taken you back to their base, which is about a mile south of us.”

“You saw it?” the guy asked me.

“I was there,” Cookie mumbled.

“You, um, alright?” Nate stepped closer to the young woman.

“Yeah, I guess.”

Nate turned to me. “Bro, what should we do? I found this truck in one of the driveways. Maybe we should drive out of this town and never look back.”

With a closer tour of the lifted classic truck, I pegged it as a Dodge Power Wagon.

“Is that a seventy-six or seventy-seven?” I asked.

“How should I know?” Nate laughed.

It had big mud tires, probably 35s, with giant lugs used for mudding. It was a four-door model, with a long bed bracketed by wooden rails, making it seem as long as any pickup I’d ever seen. A giant winch sat in the middle of the fancy aftermarket bumper. Those annoying lights sat on a custom roll bar behind the main cabin. I would really have liked to meet the guy who owned it.

“I would leave in a heartbeat if I thought it was better somewhere else, but, so far, we haven’t heard a peep from the outside. No planes. No ships. Not even a hot air balloon. Anything that could bring us news from far away. I’m afraid if we packed our stuff and began driving, we’d only find ourselves in the same situation as here, but without the benefit of having our own base, shelter, weapons, food, and water.”

“What about a boat?” Nate asked. “Maybe Gunther knows of a boat we could use as our base. That would be safer, right?”

If the man knew of a boat, he made no indication of it. I’d read about boats in my EMP and survival books, so I shared what I knew.

“Boats would be good if they had power and could move around, at least for a little while. But pirates are a real thing, and eventually a bigger, faster boat would capture us. If no boats had any power, we might survive out there for a bit, but eventually we’d be found by those same pirates, probably using sailboats. At that point, you would be hard-pressed to describe a juicier target than a still boat in open water. We’d literally be sitting ducks.”

“Isn’t that the same as being in one of these houses?” Nate asked.

“There are a million houses around here, and they all look the same. They are close enough we could migrate around to different ones, and we would be hidden inside except if someone came in to check each one. They can be torched, but the construction around here makes burning them a lot harder, with the steel and ceramic tile roofs, stucco exteriors, and lack of dry grass and tinder on the ground. We’re basically living in a swamp, you know.”

“So, you want to hide in the houses and wait out the bad guys?”

“Not wait out, exactly, and not hide, exactly. We need some time to gather our resources, harden our street and a few select homes, and be ready for anyone who comes knocking.” I pulled out my notepad. “I’ve been reading about this for half my life, and I’ve been planning the details of how I want to do this for the past three days.”

“You wouldn’t mind if we stayed with you, would you?” Nate asked.

“I’ve come to realize I can’t do it alone.” I looked at each of them in turn. “The only way to survive this mess is to do it together.”

Nate turned to Gunther. “You okay if we hang out with these guys?”

He shrugged.

“He’s in,” he chuckled.

“And you?” I asked Cookie.

“I don’t know what I can do, but I don’t want to be alone, Frank. Not even a little bit. I just can’t handle those Cleaners again…”

I sighed, content to be back on my own street, and glad I was no longer alone, even if it wasn’t the perfect group. Not yet, anyway.

“Then let’s get started.”

CHAPTER 24

Despite my excitement at finally having some help, my evaluation of those three strangers was mixed after our first full morning of work.

Gunther was fine if you gave him a specific manual task, but he often zoned out or walked away, like he was always distracted. I tried talking to him several times, if only to get him to acknowledge he was aware of the problem, but nothing I said seemed to get through. I couldn’t even put him on guard duty, since zoning out could get us killed.

Cookie was useful, to an extent, but she refused to do anything that wasn’t within sight of me, and she confided that while she wasn’t trying to use me as an ATM, old habits died hard, and she was afraid I would push her out the door the first time she made a mistake. She adamantly refused to touch a tool or learn how to shoot a gun, thinking those were areas where she would fail a bunch.

Nate was the solid performer of the group, and I could count on him to do a number of tasks, including one I viewed as the most important, which was outside reconnaissance and, fit for a mastermind criminal, the skill of ‘being sneaky.’ He left several times in the new day, using the bike and trailer to do his thing.

Mr. Puppers also got an A+ for his efforts. I could count on him to play the role of guard dog both in the night and the day. After linking up with Nate and Gunther the night before, I was able to sleep soundly for half the night, with Nate keeping watch while I was zonked.

Two out of four wasn’t bad, for finding random strangers off the street, but it wasn’t sustainable over the long term.

“Guys, come together, let’s see what we’ve got going on here.”

I brought everyone to the middle of the circle, which was our meeting spot since it was the best view of all the houses on the street.

“First of all, thank you for all your help. The four of us have really made a difference this morning. I hope you’ll agree.”

Cookie and Nate clapped with mild enthusiasm, but Gunther merely stood off to the side rubbing his neck, his silence continuing.

“First, we’ve really gotten a handle on the roadblock. Look at that beautiful thing.”

I pointed to the house that previously had all the cars parked in front of it, Trevor’s place. We’d rolled several of the vehicles into the street and parked them in both directions, so it crowded the lane a bunch. Then, to simulate a car that had died during the EMP, we put one in the middle of the road, creating a blockage that only a bicycle could roll through.

Our intention was not to create a barricade that provided one-hundred-percent blockage of the street, but one that slowed down any intruders. They would have to drive in the grass to go around the mess we’d created…or, we hoped, they would simply turn around.

Our patch of Florida was so flat, it was possible to drive into any of the back yards and make a loop around all our houses. The only way to prevent that was by gathering enough cars to block off all access, digging a ditch, or building a wall. Aside from moving cars, none of those were realistic given our manpower issues. And we didn’t collect cars from other streets and roadways for one practical reason.

“As you know, the Cleaners are still out there searching all the streets in the area. It’s only a matter of time before they come down ours, so we don’t want to give them any reason to think people are living here. As it stands right now, I really can’t tell, can you?”

I’d taken down the tarp barriers.

We’d arranged the cars to look random.

None of the houses had anything in the front windows that might attract attention, though the back and side windows were sealed shut, locked, and blocked. Our goal was to get the Cleaners to drive in and then drive out, but if they stayed, we would be ready.

The front windows were exposed and open, but we strategically placed big potted plants in front of them, so we had some hard cover from bullets. I stacked lumber on the upper floor of Luke’s house as well as Trevor’s place, in front of the windows, so there was some protection from gunfire up there, too.

The Power Wagon was hiding in the garage of the house next to mine, the one owned by the woman and her daughter.

The El Camino wasn’t back in Drummond’s garage, though that had been a hard decision. By having two vehicles, it gave us options. If the Cleaners poked around and found it in the garage, it might be lost forever. That’s why I decided to hide it in the woods, covering it with a tarp and tons of branches. If we had to make a run for it, at least we’d have options…

Fortunately, the municipal water was still operational, as we hadn’t had time to really explore how to collect more clean water. I had a list with different options, such as cisterns and holding ponds, or rain barrels to grab rain off the roofs, but we’d been so busy with other tasks that I hadn’t been able to concentrate on those. We already had one swimming pool to use, as well as the canals, so I let this one slide a bit down the list.

“Frank, did you notice the birds this morning?” Cookie asked. “I was keeping watch out your back window and I noticed them.”

“Doing what?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Dying, I guess.”

That was too specific to ignore, so I hurried between my house and Penny’s to get a better look. The sea of white birds was still out there, but I quickly picked up on what she was talking about.

“Come on, let’s check this out.”

I walked toward the woods, but when I turned to my companions, I only found Nate. Gunther and Cookie remained between the houses. Mr. Puppers was nowhere in sight.

I pulled my AR off the sling, aiming it down, but having it ready. Since Jodie had taken my Remington, I’d had to pull my secondary shotgun out of the locker. It was a semi-automatic Benelli M4, way nicer than the pump shotgun I’d lost. I’d learned fast that there was no moment of the day when I could be unarmed, and walking into the woods behind my house was at least a two-gun job.

Going to bed was a two-gun job. I now kept a shotgun and pistol at the side of whatever passed for a bed each night.

Driving was a three-gun job. The AR and a shotgun, plus my pistol.

Meals and recreation were two-gun jobs. I always carried my pistol, but I kept the shotgun close by.

In fact, most of my life now required I show up with at least two guns. The only one-gun situation might be a shower. If I ever got a chance to take one, my pistol would stay within arm’s reach.

I was way overdue for a shower.

Might have to put that on my list for the day…

When we reached the edge of the lawn, there were already a few white spots of feathers, as if birds had been eaten by predators when they’d emerged from the canopy of the trees.

Inside the woods, the evidence of death was everywhere.

There wasn’t a speck of green lower than three feet. The birds had pecked and crunched every blade of grass, every weed, and every low branch. Oddly, they hadn’t gone into my lawn, which remained green even to the border of the woods. Nor had they flown into the trees, higher than the lowest branches.

“It’s like they’re scared to leave the ground,” Nate commented, observing and drawing the same conclusions as me.

“What could have them so scared?” I wondered aloud.

He chuffed. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“Well, yeah, I get it. We’ve witnessed a mysterious burst of energy wash over us, but that was four days ago. That burning ray beam was up in North Pointe, not around here, so why are they still here? Surely, from their perspective, things haven’t gotten worse since then.”

“You don’t think? I’ve seen a lot of animals around here, and they all seem cooked.”

I looked around. “Nothing is happening right now, so why don’t they fly away and find some food?”

“I’ve been wondering that exact thing.”

As I looked at the poor birds, many of them already dead, I wondered if I was looking at a preview of what was going to happen to humanity as a whole. Sure, we would have food and resources for a while, but the company that made Pop-Tarts was gone. The factory where they were made is no longer in production. When those last boxes went bad or were consumed, the long, glorious history of Pop-Tarts would come to a quiet end.

“Maybe we’re the Pop-Tarts,” I said to myself.

“What did you say?” he laughed.

“Oh, nothing. My dog likes them, so I have them on the mind. But maybe these birds are a warning. If we sit around, hunkered down, maybe we’re going to waste away eventually, too.”

“Now you want to drive around?”

“No, not necessarily, but maybe we’ve been taking the wrong tack. I’m not saying we need to go out and look for trouble, but trouble is out there, lurking, doing its thing. How much better would life be if we didn’t have to worry about being picked up by those vans?”

“A lot,” he admitted.

I turned back to the mass of birds. I recognized some swans, cranes, and sand pipers, but there were larger birds I didn’t recognize as well as tiny birds that blended into the mass of feathers now littering the once-fertile ground. Half of them were no longer moving…

There was no way I was going to let that happen to us.

“Hey, Frank!” a woman’s voice called out, seemingly echoing from the back side of the houses. I turned toward them, thinking the voice had come from there, but Cookie was way up by the circle, so it couldn’t have been her.

My eyes were drawn to the woods. A small, dark-haired woman emerged from behind a thick grove of thin trees.

“Carmen?” I said with shock.

“You know her?” Nate whispered.

“Yeah, she’s a…neighbor.”

“And she’s just now showing up?” he said under his breath.

“She was here from the beginning,” I said. “I might have mentioned another team member when I freed you from those cuffs.”

“Oh yeah,” he said.

Carmen was dressed the same as two days ago when she’d run into the woods—the white, hip-hugger shorts and light-colored top. Her clothes were well-worn, as if she’d been roughing it out there, but she seemed otherwise in good condition.

“Hey!” Carmen said as she got to within about twenty feet. “It’s only me and my oversized pistola.”

She held up her hands as she closed the last bit of distance.

A group of birds flapped their wings, trying to get out of her way, which briefly created a burst of stinky air, not unlike the flood control tunnels.

When she arrived, I urged her to come to the edge of my lawn, so we didn’t have to talk in and around such deathly smells.

“It’s good to see you,” I said, meaning it. The woman was gorgeous in the mid-day light, and I let myself look at her, as opposed to the last time when she’d been held in that basement against her will. She hugged me unexpectedly, and I leaned into her, glad for the human contact, and, if I was being honest, I was drawn in by her heavenly vanilla-laced perfume.

She finally pulled back.

“I’m sorry for the way I behaved the other day.”

“No, are you kidding? After all that happened? I’m glad I discovered you in that torture chamber…and that you’re here.”

Her smile was intoxicating.

Nate looked at us like we were crazy, so I tried to head off the questions. “I’m sure Carmen will explain it all once we get back to the street. It was a miracle I found her…”

I guided the pair back to the houses, over the lawn. Birds squawked and complained behind us, and I did feel bad they’d suffered such losses, but I was elated in the moment to have one more person for our growing team. And I couldn’t believe my luck that the two of us were from the same street.

“So, you aren’t going to believe what we’ve done—”

I was cut off.

Carmen had her huge pistol aimed forward.

“What are you doing?” I blurted.

She held the giant weapon with two hands.

“Why is she here?” Carmen snarled.

The gun was aimed at Cookie.

CHAPTER 25

“Wait just a second!” I pleaded as I grabbed Carmen’s arm. She appeared ready to cross the last few yards of distance and put a bullet into Cookie. “Tell me what’s going on here.”

She pulled away, with attitude, but didn’t storm off.

“Frank, I don’t know how you got mixed up with her, but there’s something you don’t know about her—”

“She was captured by some guys who call themselves Cleaners,” I volunteered.

Carmen blinked in disbelief. “How did you know that?”

“How did you know that?” I pressed.

“I asked first…”

“Well, it’s kind of a long story. A ton of stuff has happened since I last saw you…” I wanted to ask her all about what she’d been doing for the past few days, but that would have to wait.

“But she’s working with them,” she whispered.

“No way. She escaped from them. I lost a friend helping her get out of there.”

“What is she saying about me?” Cookie asked in her soft voice. “Should I be scared?”

“No,” I answered, before looking closer at Carmen. “Right?”

She lowered the hand howitzer.

“Can we all agree to talk like civilized people?” I asked loudly.

I motioned for Carmen to walk with me, but I stayed in front of her as we cut across my lawn. Whatever was going on, I needed to get to the bottom of it as fast as possible.

We gathered in my garage.

“Now, everyone, this is my neighbor Carmen. She lives in that house over there.” I pointed to the house two doors to my left, beyond Penny’s place but before Trevor’s. “I, uh, met her shortly after the EMP swept through here.”

Nate shook her hand, but Carmen and Cookie only glared at each other. Gunther didn’t smile or shake her hand, but he nodded. For him, that was like writing a small novel in terms of communication.

“So, Carmen, it’s your turn. Tell me what you think you saw with Cookie,” I said.

“Oh, I will tell you,” she said fervently. “I’ve been running and hiding all over the neighborhood, since I’ve been trying to wrap my head around where everyone disappeared. I thought if I traveled far enough, I would find people. And I did…”

“The Cleaners.”

“Right. They seem to be the only people driving around on the roads with their vans and stuff. I was going to flag one of them down, but they looked like shady men behind the wheels, plus I saw one of them grab an old lady right off the street.”

“That’s what they did to me!” Cookie complained.

Carmen kept talking without looking at the other woman. “So I got curious about where they were all coming from and where they were going. I followed them until I found their hub.”

“We found one, too,” I said.

“A little way that way?” she asked, pointing south.

“Yep.”

“I’ve got to say, Frank, when you found me and showed me the missing people, I thought you were messing with my head. I ran into the woods kind of screwed up in the brain, and I didn’t really figure out what I was doing until spending a night out there, alone. Then, I wanted to find the police.” She shifted her weight, throwing one hip to the side, resolute. “And I did not find a single police officer. I didn’t find anyone at all. House after house, empty.”

“Preach on, sister.” Nate saluted.

Carmen smiled at him. “That’s why I was so hellbent on following those men. I figured they had to be working for someone in charge. Maybe a government department. The FEMA or Florida Highway Patrol—anything!”

“Did you find out who they work for?” I asked quietly, drawn to her story.

“No. They don’t work for anyone I recognized. Their vans have no logos. Their uniforms have no names. As best I can tell, they’re regular dudes. But the main thing is I was at the house when that woman was there.”

Carmen turned to face Cookie.

“I was a prisoner,” the younger woman protested.

“We know that,” I said, believing it was true.

“I saw the other woman drive in, too,” Carmen explained. “She drove an old blue pickup truck.”

“An El Camino?” I asked.

“I have no idea what it was,” she snarked. “It was blue. It was a truck. It did have shiny tires and a nice paint job, if that helps.”

“Actually, it does. That was the truck I was driving when Jodie took off to go save Cookie. To rescue her,” I stressed. “I think she was successful, too, since Cookie came back with the truck.”

“Frank, they are in cahoots. I don’t know why they did it, but they switched at the house to make you think they were fighting those men, but I can assure you, they did not fight them for a second.”

“Uh-uh, she shot them,” Cookie complained, getting upset for the first time.

“I never heard any shots,” Carmen replied. “The blue car rolled up, two guards came out to meet her, she ran inside, a short time passed, then Cookie came back out by herself.”

“That’s a lie! Jodie came into the backroom where they had me and shot three of them dead where they stood. We spoke for a few moments, and she would have made it out with me, but one of the dying men got a final shot that went right through her skull. It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen…” Tears started to flow, despite how hard she seemed to not want them.

I wasn’t anxious to believe Carmen, as Cookie was now part of my fledgling team, even if she wasn’t the most productive member. If I had any reason to mistrust anyone’s story, I was going to doubt the person who I’d only known for a grand total of about fifteen minutes.

“Look, I hear what you’re saying, Carmen, but I’m not sure we can prove this either way. The fact is Cookie has been helping us since yesterday, and we’ve had no problems with her.” I could complain about her refusal to learn how to shoot, but that seemed to bolster her claims of innocence. A real spy would be all about prepping to kill me by learning to use weapons, right?

“It’s your funeral,” Carmen snapped. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you when she inevitably reveals herself and betrays us all.”

“I’ll take that under serious advisement.” I looked at Gunther and Nate, before turning back to Cookie and Carmen. “The truth is, none of us have much of a basis to trust the others. The EMP came with an extra punch, that wave of energy that made people disappear. The second that happened, all of our histories were wiped clean. We stand here with nothing but our hands and minds, ready to help each other survive whatever comes next. I’m glad you all ended up on my street, since I have a lot of gear ready to go, but other than that, you really don’t know if you can trust me either.”

“What are you saying?” Carmen asked, seemingly taken aback. “That we shouldn’t trust you?”

“Either none of us trust each other, or we all trust each other. If we go down the first path, we’re all going to end up alone and on the run, separated from help, from those who care for us. If we go down the second path and throw out a bit of trust at the beginning, we can work together to hold off whatever these Cleaner guys want to chuck our way.”

“Can trust be so easily given?” Cookie asked.

“Yeah, I can’t do that, Frank,” Carmen argued, looking over to Cookie for half a second, as if unsure it was right to agree with the target of her ire.

I looked to Gunther, the strongest guy in the room, but he still refused to speak. His face wasn’t as gaunt as usual, and I thought maybe he was coming out of his funk, but I’d also begun to worry he was truly a mute and had never spoken a day in his life. I really needed someone I could count on absolutely, a lieutenant, and I didn’t have that person.

The only guy I’d built a real bond with was Nate, the police fugitive, but, by definition, he was untrustworthy. I hadn’t told the others about the situation of our meeting, and I was still curious about why he’d been tossed in prison for being a government whistleblower, but I figured he would tell them when he was ready.

Mr. Puppers lounged outside the garage, batting at a little bumblebee hovering near his belly, happily ignoring our grand schemes and emotional baggage. He’d lost his family, too, but he’d glommed on to our little family of lost people…

“Look. I know we all are coming from different directions, but can we all agree that we want the same thing? Peace. Security. Food. A place to lay our heads. If so, let’s get back to work on making that happen.”

“It’s what I want,” Cookie said right away.

Gunther nodded.

“I’ve said my peace,” Carmen relented, hands on hips. “This is my street, so I’m going to go over to my house and get cleaned up, but if you want me to help later, I’ll do what I can. Just put me on the opposite task as her.” Carmen pointed at Cookie.

I sighed heavily. I’d been hoping to win this one, appeal to their shared sense of survival, but maybe I’d aimed too high, given the stakes. Maybe it was enough to ensure the Hispanic gunslinger wasn’t going to put one of those giant bullets through the skull of the younger woman.

“Everyone be cool, alright?”

With that, I motioned for them to leave my garage. Everyone headed out, though Carmen did a U-turn as soon as the others were gone.

“I can’t do any more for you right now,” I said quietly. As pretty as this woman was, I expected her to use those assets to convince me privately what she couldn’t get publicly.

“Frank, I didn’t want to say this to the whole group—”

I braced for her to blast me with her charm. “I’m listening…”

“I saw something else when I was at that house.”

I gave her my full attention.

“I’d been watching it for a while from my hiding spot, so I had a lot of time to observe their comings and goings. They have that house in the front, but they have more behind it.”

“I figured there was a group of them—”

“There are a lot more,” she pressed. “I didn’t want to mention this in front of the others, but they are gathering for some reason. Something big is going to happen.”

“Come on,” I whispered. “How can you possibly know what they are planning?”

“I don’t, but I think you and I should go poke around before there are too many of them.”

“Why would I do that?” I asked, curious despite myself.

She looked over her shoulder to make sure everyone was indeed gone before she continued. “Frank, I can’t pretend I didn’t see what I saw. I want to take you up there and prove that Cookie girl is lying to you.”

“How could you possibly do that?”

“I’ll prove the other woman is still alive.”

Maybe her feminine charm got to me after all, since I found myself thinking her suggestion had a lot of merit.

She pouted her full lips, to put an exclamation point on the effort, but I couldn’t commit to such a plan on the spot, no matter who was delivering the request.

“I’ll think about it.”

CHAPTER 26

I didn’t have to think about it for long. The reality for me was stark. Until I was able to trust my friends, and they could trust each other, I didn’t think we would have a chance of making it. Sure, we could all help move around planters and barricade doors, but we would all scatter if there was ever a real threat, since none of us could depend on each other. We worked in the afternoon as a group, with about the same results as our morning effort, and it wasn’t long before I agreed to Carmen’s request.

I gathered everyone and told them I was leaving to go snoop around the homes controlled by the Cleaners.

“Can I come with you?” Cookie asked immediately.

“No, it’s just going to be the two of us. I need the three of you to keep working on the street. If we even get a hint of those Cleaner trucks coming to this subdivision, we’re going to turn around and come back.”

“But why her?” the young girl asked. “I’ve been with you longer.”

“Because I know where to find a lot more weapons,” Carmen answered before I could reply. “I found a huge rifle when I was snooping around homes…looking for survivors. I think it will really help Frank defend us.”

She hadn’t mentioned guns to me…

“Of course you know where guns are,” Cookie protested with a belly full of snark. She looked at me and spoke with passion. “Frank, please pick me.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t this time.”

I looked over to Gunther and, to my surprise, he nodded and shooshed Cookie away from me, as if to put her to work. I wanted to say thanks, but he was gone in a flash.

“I guess you don’t want me going, either?” Nate, my thin friend, asked.

“I’m walking a fine line here. If we take three people, it will leave only two to watch our stuff…”

“And one of them would be someone you don’t trust,” he completed my thought.

I gritted my teeth. As much as I wanted to be open and trusting, I couldn’t deny Carmen’s return had put doubt in my mind. I didn’t tell any of them that I didn’t really trust Carmen either, but I wanted her to let her guard down around me…so I could bust her if the time ever came. This was why I also avoided any small talk with her, with either of the women, as I didn’t want to become too familiar yet.

Nate gave me a sideways wave as he turned and walked away.

A healthy mistrust was the cost of doing business with people you didn’t know, especially when lives were on the line. I tried to think of all those movies I’d watched over the years when strangers were tossed into survival situations, and they seemed to gel into a family mere minutes after meeting. Reality was a lot more confusing and time-consuming. I would have thought having fewer people around to choose from would have made our shared survival obvious to all, but Carmen and Cookie didn’t seem likely to ever resolve their issue, so going out with Carmen seemed the best way to tie that loose shoelace.

We took bicycles instead of one of the trucks, and we waited until nightfall to head out. I figured by this time, anyone serious about finding people would have guards watching the long straightaway roads, and if they’d spotted the El Camino crossing one of those corridors, they would be able to zero in on us. Instead, we could walk the bikes at intersections and blend into the darkness.

I cracked all the reflectors off the bike wheels and seat poles, so we lessened our chances of being spotted. I wrapped the bike trailer in a black tarp, so it was lower profile, and I put my shotgun—a Bravo Company AR—and supply backpack in the trailer, so we had plenty of guns and ammo for the trip. There was plenty of food and water in all the abandoned houses, so I didn’t need to carry a lot of those, but I did have a few snacks.

“Mr. Puppers is in charge while I’m away,” I joked, hoping to loosen the tension.

“We’ll be fine,” Nate replied.

The three of them watched us ride our bikes out from my garage and down to the far end of Clownfish Cove. After that, I assumed they went back to their preps, guard duty, or sleep shifts.

The previous night, when it was the four of us, I figured out a sleep schedule where Nate and I traded guard shifts, but the two of us couldn’t do it forever. At some point, Cookie, Gunther, and even Carmen would have to be added to the rotation. This was another reason I’d agreed to Carmen’s request to go out. If I was ever going to trust Cookie to watch over all of us in the middle of the night, when we were all sleeping and vulnerable, I had to prove Carmen wrong.

We crossed Bayside Road on foot, walking the bikes slowly so they didn’t draw attention from anyone who might be watching from a distance. There were no streetlights or house lights, and the sky remained cloudy, so there was almost no ambient light, same as the night before.

“So…you don’t have to answer this if you don’t want, but I’m really curious how you ended up in that guy’s basement.”

We were back on our bikes, pedaling slowly to the west.

She took a few moments to think about responding.

“I’m divorced, Frank. My husband was a total singao—um, asshole. When I got free, and used his money to buy my new house, I felt as if the entire world had opened up. A new life for me. Everything was perfect.”

We rolled in the quiet of night for a few moments. I noted there were a few crickets chirping and bugs screeching, but none of the sounds of humanity were anywhere to be found. I thought it would be nice to have some peace and quiet, but it turned out to be eerie, abnormal.

“I know I don’t look it, but I’m kind of a flirt,” she said in a flirty way, before speaking again in a more modest tone. “But that was my downfall. The man next door was charming, handsome, and liked to wash his car whenever I was doing work in my lawn and garden, or washing my Mercedes-S.”

I remembered seeing her a few times in her bikini top, with ripped jean shorts. It was apparently her uniform of choice when doing chores in the yard. I didn’t have much thought of bagging a woman like her—imagine the beautiful but dangerous companion of a cartel drug lord—but now I saw a glimmer of opportunity, like she was advertising her single status.

Internally, I punched my libido with a hard uppercut.

No, Frank, stay on mission.

I replied carefully. “Next door? Isn’t there a young guy who lives there?” I wasn’t going to hold it against her, but the guy, if I was thinking of the right one, was not much out of high school.

“Yeah, that’s Trevor. I mentioned him. He’s the son and he’s a jerk. No, I’m talking about his dad. He has some fancy job up in North Pointe, a big city lawyer, I think. He stays in the house a few days a week. We talked across our lawns a couple of times…”

“So you went for the dad?” I asked, trying to contain my own interest, which, I’m telling you, wasn’t there.

“What can I say? He was charming. But I should have known. Old Carmen has a track record of picking losers. He said we were going into his basement for drinks, but he locked me on that rack, yanked off my clothes, and I’m sure he was going to do worse to me…but he got a call and ran out on Friday night. I begged him to let me go, but he said it was too late for that.”

“That’s so terrible,” I agreed. “And I don’t think you are cursed.”

“I didn’t say I was cursed.”

“No, you said you only pick losers…”

“Oh, I guess I did. I hope I’m not cursed. I happen to also be a hopeless romantic…”

She pedaled ahead of me, seeming to tease.

I dropped behind her, content to watch her shape in the darkness, until I thought of more to say to her. No matter how pleasing the conversation, I had to remember the whole point of this dangerous trip was to discover who was telling the truth, not to let myself be the caveman distracted by the cavegirl again.

“There is one thing I don’t understand,” I said. “Why all the cats in your living room?”

She turned sideways. “Why do I like cats…”

“Your place is full of them!” I reminded her.

“Yeah, I guess I just can’t get enough of them. They’re so cute. Don’t you think so?”

“Allergic to ‘em,” I replied.

She didn’t seem like she wanted to talk about her past, which was fine. We rolled toward the big intersection in the middle of the suburbs, then got off our bikes.

“We turn here, then turn there.” She pointed right, then left. “The house with the guns is down that street.”

We walked across the lane, then cut through a yard to reach the next street. Once there, we re-mounted and continued to a one-story house that looked like all the others.

“I warn you, this house has everything. If you think your neighbor packed for the end of the world, wait until you see this one.” I’d shown her Drummond’s place earlier.

When we went inside, I imagined that we had gone to Drummond’s garage. The owners were even bigger hoarders than he was, and they’d filled the bedrooms with crates of food, pallets of sugar and flour, and, most importantly, a huge trove of weapons.

“There’s the one I told you about.” Carmen pointed to the biggest sniper rifle I’d ever seen.

“This is some kind of fifty-cal,” I said, not really sure. I used my light sparingly until I saw markings engraved in the side saying M107A1.

“Is that good?”

I smiled so big, I’m sure she caught the gleam of my teeth, even in the darkness.

“Oh yeah.”

We stored the bikes in the front room, with a few choice items to take back to Clownfish staged next to them. I was going to take that sniper rifle and ammo back home if I had to carry them by themselves in the bike trailer. They would be a major score.

While in the foyer, basically the only room in the house without stuff jammed inside, I noticed a big newspaper clipping and photograph framed and hung on the front wall.

Allowing my light to shine on it, I got a good look at two good ol’ boys who could have come right out of Appalachia. They had their arms over each other’s shoulders, sporting huge shit-eating-grins, and they were dressed in boots, jeans, and old T-shirts, but the article said they’d won the Georgia lottery the year before.

“Shane and Sonny Kingston won twenty-five million bucks…” I whistled to myself.

“Lot of good it did them,” Carmen deadpanned, not nearly as impressed as I was.

“I guess that’s true, but it will definitely do us some good.” I gently kicked the barrel of the expensive sniper rifle.

From there, we headed out.

The two of us crossed the street, armed a bit lighter than normal, with only my pistol, my Remington shotgun for me, and a pump-action model for her that I’d found from the brothers’ stash. I didn’t bring my AR in the dark as I assumed the spray from the shotty would have a better chance of hitting targets in low light.

The objective, however, was to not get into a fight.

For the same reason, I’d left my pack in the bike trailer. The small LED flashlights were the only things we brought with us for the next leg of our trip.

We went into the back yards of several houses before I found it.

“There’s the boat I saw.”

I remembered seeing the runaway boat on the first day, and I tracked it to where I figured it would strike the end of the canal. It had run out of gas, but I noticed that it also had a pair of oars cinched on the sides.

From there, I paddled with as much stealth as possible back to the east, where I knew we would find the Cleaner turf. As soon as we made a few turns on the water and came closer to the target, Carmen recognized shapes, even in the darkness.

“This is where I dipped into the canal and swam,” she reported. “It’s not far this way.”

“Should we get out?”

“No, we’ll be fine for a while more…” She pointed ahead.

We went underneath one of the many bridges in the area, but we struck something in the water.

A ‘grrrr’ noise erupted.

My heartrate ripped up to full speed.

“Oh, crap,” I mouthed.

The water chopped around us, and I knew we weren’t alone.

I flopped the paddle in the water, anxious to push through.

More angry voices in the water.

Thinking back to the manatees, I didn’t get the feeling these were the same sounds. Not even close.

Carmen shined her flashlight into the murk. If you’ve ever done it, you’ll know exactly what it looks like when alligator eyes reflect light and appear as two beady little dots.

“Frank!” she shrieked.

There had to be thousands of eyes along the length of the canal ahead of us, a sprawling starfield of dots, a galaxy of gators that started right under this bridge.

I paddled for our lives.

CHAPTER 27

“Go back!” I wheezed.

I could barely breathe, the danger level was so far off the chart. Like the strange behavior of the manatees and birds, the alligators had gathered under the bridge in the middle of the night.

If they’d been sleeping prior to our arrival, the whole mess of them were upset at the disturbance. Even as one rolled over, another pair surged upward, slamming chins against the side of the boat. Beyond those, more were on the way.

“Back up!” I repeated, hoping to make it my reality.

I was talking to myself, as Carmen was merely the passenger and wasn’t going to stick her hand in the choppy water to help me reverse out of there.

Looking beyond the bridge, the water started to churn, as if hundreds of swamp dwellers wanted a piece of the boat—and the human-shaped Pop-Tart treats inside. If we didn’t get out of there right away, we were going to be overwhelmed.

Carmen threw herself between my legs, trying to get as far as she could from the edge of the little watercraft. There was nothing I could do for her except continue to swing the oars back and forth, hoping the ends were finding water and not alligator skin.

Dozens of the closer ones moved in while growling. Their calls were deep and full of bass, and I felt them all the way at the bottom of my lungs, not unlike the glasspack exhaust that had been so loud while out on the road.

If there’d been any chance of infiltrating the Cleaners’ homes, we’d blown it. Men hollered back and forth on the street above us, getting closer, like they’d been all the way over at the house. However, stealth took a back seat to ‘living another day’ and I looked up to the bridge railing, wishing someone, anyone, would get there and throw down a rope or two to rescue us from the swarm of teeth.

At the limit of holding my breath, the end of the oar struck deep water, at least on one side. I was able to pull one great stroke, sending the boat backward and with a slight spin. It served as a battering ram to knock one of the swimmers aside, though I imagined that would only piss him off.

The other oar struck another alligator’s head, but I tried to shove off the beast as best I could, using his long snout as my springboard. Again, I figured hitting any of these creatures on the head would only serve to rile them up. They were heavily armored and huge.

“Sorry, buddy,” I told him.

Once clear of that last one, both paddles found deep water and I was able to get a clean stroke that got us to the edge of the bridge again.

More of the animals growled, amplified by the confined space under the street. The muffled din of splashing was all around us, too.

“There they are!” someone above yelled.

Two men ran to the edge of the canal, maybe twenty feet away, next to the bridge.

“Paddle over here or eat a bullet,” the guard warned.

There was no going forward.

We were far too slow to go backward and outrun two armed men.

There was a slim possibility we could get to the opposite bank, maybe thirty feet away, and make a run for it, but the men could run across the bridge and be at the distant shore before we could even jump out, I was sure of it.

“We were out for a romantic midnight serenade,” I calmly called to them, hoping they wouldn’t suspect why we were really there.

“Come over here—who are you—” The man interrupted himself when his flashlight fell on Carmen’s body. “Well, well. A serenade, huh? We’ve had several sightings of this one.”

The flashlight stayed on her cleavage.

For too long…

“Hi, I’m here, too,” I reminded the guy holding the light.

The piercing beam went to my eyes, and the same man spoke.

“You were the guy in the Ranchero,” he said with distaste.

My last-second attempt to portray ourselves as random strangers had crashed and burned.

“Not that it matters, but it was actually an El Camino.”

I paddled toward the shore, ignoring the shotguns under the seat. It would make no sense to get in a shootout with two guys on solid ground while we bounced around on the canal and tried to shoot back. I figured I might have a chance to get the drop on them once I was over there…and away from the alligators.

“We heard you from three houses down,” the guard remarked.

“That’s nice,” I replied, not willing to admit we’d screwed up. How could we have anticipated a fleet of alligators?

Nothing profound came to mind to say to Carmen as I paddled in. She remained sitting on the wet bottom of the boat between my legs. I leaned over, close enough to whisper in her ear, oddly disappointed I didn’t catch a whiff of her vanilla and sugar perfume. “If I get a chance to shoot them both, I’m going to take it.”

The front nose of the boat struck the shore.

“Put your hands up, mister,” one of the guards warned.

“You, lady, jump over the side.”

She spun around with shock. “In that water, no way! I’ll just take a bullet, you comemierda.”

I didn’t need a translator for that word.

The two guys conferred. “Fine, then stand in the back of the boat while facing backward. Stay there until we have your friend in zip ties.”

She separated from me and went to the back. The tiny flat-bottomed boat wasn’t made for multiple people to stand and move around, so she had to balance herself to keep from falling out.

My opportunity to attack slipped away in an instant, as if that had been the plan all along. If I swung around with guns blazing, the boat would rock, and she would fall over. We were no longer inside the den of alligators, but they had spread out behind us as we got out from under the bridge, perhaps waiting for someone to fall over.

Maybe it had happened before.

“If you so much as move funny, I shoot,” the second guard said from slightly up the bank.

“I’m good,” I replied.

The first guy had me turn around, then he cinched my hands behind my back with large zip ties. He found the pistol in a simple pat-down. The shotguns were on the bottom of the boat, far from reach.

“Get out, slowly,” he cautioned me.

I held out a tiny bit of hope Carmen would be a superhero and grab her loaner shotgun and take them out, but these weren’t buffoons, unfortunately. They covered each other, made sure I wasn’t too close to my partner, and they didn’t give either of us any openings to fight back. Soon, we were both in zip ties and being walked to their main house.

The guards didn’t ask any questions, gave me no openings to magically take them out and escape our fate. Instead, they marched us into a normal-looking garage in a normal-looking neighborhood. A couple of vans were parked on the driveway, and even though it was dark out, I figured out it was the same house where I’d shot the guys who had attacked Jodie.

They put us both in a small bedroom that no longer had any carpet but instead had concrete subfloor. Decorations and furniture had been taken out, leaving a construction-white jailcell.

The waving lights of the guards caught a shine on the floor, and I could tell immediately someone had bled in the room.

“Enjoy your stay,” one of the men sneered.

“You can’t just kidnap us,” Carmen protested.

The first guard, who was the younger and darker-haired man, lunged at her, threatening to put a fist through her teeth. Without thinking, I stepped in front of her to block his threatening lunge. He seemed taken by surprise, and he bounced off my hip and fell back onto the floor.

He was on his feet in a flash, a testament to his dexterity and strength. He’d pulled out his pistol, but before he could do anything to me, the other man grabbed him by the shirt tail. “Whoa, my friend. If you want a piece of these guys, you’ll have to get in line.”

The angry man practically breathed fire.

He put the gun away.

He came closer to me, panting. “How ‘bout we take you back to your crocodile friends…”

I couldn’t stop myself from letting out a loud gulp.

“You better not mess with us,” Carmen warned. “We have a lot of friends looking for us.”

Now I had to stop myself from snickering at her bluff. I couldn’t imagine Cookie bursting through the door to save us any more than I could imagine Nate or Gunther doing it. We were alone…

That seemed to get the man’s attention. He moved back toward Carmen. We were both held in zip ties with our hands behind our back, so the guard was able to get close without fear of being slapped or punched. I couldn’t knock him down, either.

He took way too long to leer at her chest before drawing his eyes to her face. “I’m sure you didn’t know this, but the only people we let walk out of here are those who bring in others. You tell me how big your group is, where its located, and what type of defenses to expect, and you might live to see the sunrise.”

Carmen looked over to me, seeking guidance.

“We have twelve people,” I said, picking a number at random. Big enough to be consequential, but not so big they would bring in more of their allies.

The man ran his fingers along his stubbled jaw line, thinking. My pulse thundered behind my ear drums, as if the jury was deliberating my death sentence. My heart went still when he drew a breath to answer.

“I don’t believe you for a second, but keep talking…”

I covered my huge exhale of relief as if I was drawing a breath to answer his question.

“Well, there was only me and a few other people on the first day. We saw the blue light. We saw our friends disappear.”

“It didn’t get you? Were you on the island?”

Was that good? Bad? Would I need to know a specific location to make him believe me? I decided to split the difference.

“I was at the beach, yeah. We saw it all from where we were.”

“Why did you come to the mainland?” he asked. “We aren’t sure how Pine Island survived, but we’re going to help them out sooner rather than later.”

“I don’t know, either,” I said, talking for my life, noting to myself to find out where Pine Island was located, as there were potential allies there. “When I came back over here, I didn’t find anyone, however…” I wondered if I could learn anything from him. “You don’t know where everyone went, do you?”

He scoffed. “I’m asking the questions, idiot.”

The guy backed away to where his companion waited for him. I sized up our chances of getting past them, ran several possible scenarios in my mind, then accepted it wasn’t the time for a final lunge.

“And I don’t really care about where you’ve been. I only care about where you are. Tell me what street you’re on, so I can check it out, and then we’ll talk about letting you go free to collect them.”

“Both of us?” I asked.

“Sure, why not.”

“And all I have to do is tell you the street?”

It was clear whatever ‘rescue’ operation these guys were running, it was not your typical FEMA response. They weren’t hunting us out of charity, there was something else going on.

“Nice and easy,” the guy answered, smiling, knowing he had me over a barrel.

I thought about it for a few seconds, then looked back to him.

“I’ll tell you, but you have to let her go first,” I said.

“What, so she can go warn your friends? Maybe bring them back here? No way. You tell me, I check it out, you live. Simple math.”

“That seems complicated to me,” I argued. “If you go back on your word, we’re dead.”

“Don’t really care. You want a deal or not?”

“Does the governor know you are threatening Florida citizens? This seems really extreme for a rescue operation.”

“The governor knows what we’re doing.” He smirked.

I’d been playing around with him, desperate to think of a way out of this, but the zip ties were tight, we were trapped in the small room, he knew I’d been driving the vehicle that killed two of his co-workers, and they were heavily armed while we had nothing.

“Our base isn’t on Pine Island. Let her go to the island and then I’ll tell you.”

The older guy looked at the younger one with a twinkle in his eye. When the younger one smiled, I knew I’d pushed it too far.

Oddly, the man opened the door to the hallway and spoke to someone in the front of the house.

“Hey, Father, we’re good here. You want to go tell them we’ve got two survivors and are getting ready to interview them?”

A priest? Had I heard that right?

I couldn’t hear the response, but the man gently closed the door.

Then the two men stood there for at least half a minute, relaxed, with arms at their sides, doing nothing but waiting and glaring at us. After a similar length of time, they turned to each other and nodded.

“You should have taken the deal,” the younger guard sneered.

Both strolled our way.

With surprising speed, the man reached over and nabbed Carmen’s arm. She yelped as she was dragged toward the door, but I couldn’t do anything but watch, since the second guy now had his sidearm pointed in my direction.

“Frank!” she cried out.

A primal rage screamed inside my brain as I knew they weren’t taking her out of the room to have a tea party. The guard had broadcast his intentions the moment he’d undressed her in front of me with his eyes.

I struggled to free myself of the cord.

“Don’t be the hero!” the young guard warned.

I was on the verge of throwing myself at them, if only to knock them down and delay their plan by a few extra seconds, but the kid in the black uniform had his weapon pointed to the bridge of my nose.

Carmen was taken to the next room by the older guy. She continued to cuss and yell to make them stop what they were doing.

I heard the slap of a face.

“Shut up, you whore!”

The young guard seemed reflective as he backed into the doorway. Was there an opening for me?

“Son, you know this isn’t right,” I said, trying to sound reasonable. “She’s just a neighbor to me, not a girlfriend. I don’t even have a group. It’s only the two of us. He’ll hurt her for no good reason…”

He was about to leave, but he spoke to me in a quiet voice. “You better hope she doesn’t confirm what you told me, or we’ll just toss you two to the crocs. We brought her in because of…” He made a vulgar hourglass shape with both hands. “We’re only talking to you so you’ll lead us to more survivors…”

He slammed the door.

I blocked out what I expected to come next.

CHAPTER 28

They left me alone, but if they expected me to roll over and take it, they were gravely mistaken. I wasn’t a prolific consumer of social media, but I did like to watch various survival channels, guys and gals who grew their own food, lived off the grid, that sort of thing. However, I’d also come across people who offered advice about specific survival problems, such as being zip-tied.

The wall shook as Carmen fought back in the next room.

“Steady, Frank, focus.”

There were a couple of ways to break the cords, the fast way and the slow way. The slow way was to untie your shoelaces, then re-tie them with the zip cord inside. You rubbed the plastic against the laces as you pulled upward, creating tension, essentially burning your way through the restraint.

The fast way, with hands tied either in front of or behind you, was to hold up your arms, slam them downward as hard as possible against your body, and watch the plastic snap.

I raised my arms behind my back as high as I could manage. This was not a comfortable position for my strained muscles, so my first attempt slamming them down against my lower back didn’t work.

More screaming from Carmen. The wall shuddered harder than before, as if she’d been thrown against it.

I raised my arms again, marshalled all my hatred for what the guards were doing, then slammed them as hard and fast as possible.

The downward force and impact drove my arms apart and it ripped the heads of the zip ties clean off.

The window had plywood screwed over the opening, so it wouldn’t be easy to go out that way. I opted to go for the caveman method. I lined up my foot and jumped with all my weight against the door, near the handle.

It ripped the flimsy lock right off.

I crashed against the far wall.

Carmen screamed even louder.

“Hey!” a man cried out from my left, forcing me to look his way rather than toward my friend. It was a third guard, dressed in the same nondescript black uniform. He sat on the couch, smoking a cigarette, and it looked to me as if he’d been enjoying listening to what his two buddies were doing in the other bedroom.

Red rage filled my eyes, and I pushed off the wall and charged.

“Stop!” he yelled as he threw his cigarette.

I was in the air as he scrambled to pull out his sidearm. I wouldn’t say I was an athletic person, but I’d stayed in modest shape with some recent biking, and I knew how to throw a punch. After thirty years of working around blue-collar Joes, I’d been in a scrape or three.

My fist drove into the side of his face as the rest of my body came along with it. He fell over against the armrest and shrieked in pain while he absorbed my air attack.

Carmen shrieked.

I worried one or both of the other guards would soon be out. How could they have missed the sound of me breaking down the door?

The safety on my brain was turned to the off position. Without thinking, I gouged his eyes even as he pushed me forward. I knew if he got me away, he could pull out his weapon, so I used my right hand to hold the back of his neck.

He tried to punch me with his right, but he was trapped by the sunken couch, and it made it impossible for him to get any power behind it.

By contrast, I drew closer to him and drove my left hand into his throat. It was my weak hand, so it didn’t have the power I wanted, but the guy had flinched by moving his head back, thinking I was going for his eyes again.

My heart valves opened and closed like the pistons on that El Camino, and I had half a second to snatch the holstered gun out from his hip.

“I surrender!” he whined, though still grasping and punching.

“Sorry, guy,” I answered, not sorry at all.

I fired three times point-blank. There was no getting up from that.

Huffing hard, I sprang up and tried to get to my feet. For two or three seconds, I took stock of myself, a bit unsteady, wondering how I’d survived such a suicidal attack. They must have gotten complacent over the past few days, or they thought I was simply an old guy of no importance.

More shrieks in the back of the house injected adrenaline into my veins, doubling what was already there. She was the reason I was able to shoot to kill, to remove all threats to her life.

“I’m coming, Carmen,” I whispered.

I wanted to head directly back there, but I took one wide loop through the kitchen, to the living room, then back into the hallway with the bedrooms. There were guys walking the next street, I saw their outlines near a towering bonfire one street over, but they didn’t seem to be aware of the gun blasts. I attributed it to being so close to his body, or the cushy sofa absorbed the noise, or…

Carmen let rip with a guttural scream, almost inhuman.

…or they were used to screams coming from this house.

I was topped off with rage.

The truth was I didn’t really care who I had to go through anymore.

Carmen was in trouble. A friend. An ally.

Ignoring what might be happening outside, I went to the target doorway. I allowed myself to slow down enough to turn the handle, and then I barged in. Gun drawn, I lined up the first uniform I could find…

It was a guy on the ground.

Confused, I re-oriented on the other guard. He was face-down on the bed.

Carmen crouched between them like a feral lioness. Her ears were bloody, as if claws had torn at them, and her chest had been splashed by someone else’s blood. Her shirt had been shredded on one side, and her frilly shorts were around her thighs.

“What the hell happened?” I asked, unable to process.

“They told me to calm down...” She stayed where she was, panting as hard as I was. Soon, though, she stood up and took a few steps back, like a painter examining her canvas. I looked away as she slid her shorts back up.

The man on the bed was completely still.

The one on the floor was in a death rattle. It looked as if she’d dug her fingers into his neck and ripped out his throat.

“They thought this would scare me.” A bloody knife was still in her hand, and, if the look in her eyes was any hint, I wasn’t certain if she was done killing people.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” I said, testing that she for sure knew who I was and wasn’t still in attack mode. “I’m Frank.”

She blinked a few times, looking at the knife, which appeared to me like one of those giant Marine Corps knives called Ka-Bars. Tough to tell when it was covered in gore.

“Frank, you came to rescue me?”

“Or you were going to rescue me,” I chuckled.

Carmen looked up at me in a strange way. Not admiration, exactly, and not love, exactly, but I could sense that it pleased her greatly I hadn’t run the other direction. However, I didn’t pat myself on the back in front of her.

“The real question is who’s going to rescue us both.” We looked at the bodies. Neither of them were armed, besides the knife, as they’d undoubtedly believed they could handle one small woman.

Carmen hopped over the guy and went to a corner that contained a pile of discarded clothing. I assumed they’d been there since the first day, when everyone went away, but she picked a blouse out of the middle of the pile. “Shit, I hate being right.”

“What do you mean?”

She grabbed a tank top and pair of designer shorts that I recognized. “These belonged to Jodie.”

A cold chill ran through me.

Carmen took my silence in a different way.

“I told you she’d been here, Frank.” She held them up, searching for something. “And see, there are no bullet holes. No blood. No nothing. Cookie was lying!”

It was a compelling case, but I couldn’t get myself to rise to her level of enthusiasm. “Carmen, I just want to get us out of here.”

“We should find someone left alive,” she said as she threw the clothes against the wall. “Ask them where she is…”

“No, that’s too risky.”

She laughed, pointing at the blood all over her chest and face. “Do I look like someone afraid of taking a risk?”

I saw the crazy in her eyes. On the one hand, I was seriously impressed with her survival skills, but that rabid-animal gaze made me want to run from her, too.

“We don’t know how many there are. We don’t know where they are. We don’t know how well-armed they are. Other than the dead men in this house, we know nothing about them.” I waved her over to me. “I don’t know how we got lucky enough to make it this far, but if we don’t get out of this place in the next few minutes, I’m not sure we ever will. Do you want to die here?”

“I want to prove to you—”

“I believe you,” I said with half-certainty. There was no question those clothes belonged to Jodie, but it was less clear how they got there. She’d told me Jodie had been shot, so did they strip her after that, or was there something else going on, here?

There wasn’t time to sort it out or ask around the watercooler.

“I promise to think this through when we get to safety, but we’ve pushed our luck far beyond anything rational. We were supposed to spy on this place from a distance, not fight hand-to-hand inside their headquarters.”

Carmen’s breathing was almost back to normal.

Her eyes came off the edge of the cliff. “Fine.”

I let go of the tension wrapped around my midsection. After killing the man on the couch and running to save her, I needed a second to catch my breath, too.

“You were amazing to take out two of them,” I remarked.

“If you’d lived with my ex-husband, you’d have some fighting skills at the ready, too.”

I didn’t even ask.

She looked at the pistol I’d been holding at my side. “Frank, they took off their weapons and put them in the master bedroom, down the hall.”

We regrouped there. I found my Remington shotgun, her pump-action shotty, as well as my XD-S they’d confiscated from me. I stuffed the loaner pistol in my holster but kept my regular sidearm at the ready. The shotguns were slung over my shoulder, but I also grabbed another shotgun for her, since it was free for the taking.

“This is a bullpup semi-auto shotgun. Good for close encounters.”

“Is this an alien abduction?” she asked with a tiny bit of mirth.

“We’ll see.”

I had to leave eight or nine other weapons lying on the bed, since they would just slow us down. I was certain we were seconds away from being discovered, and we had to move fast to get out of the house and then away from it. However, I had to stop again at the threshold between the kitchen and living room.

A fire had started where the man had tossed his cigarette. Half the couch was already ablaze, and the drapes were going up next.

I ran into the kitchen, searching for a fire extinguisher or water container.

“Why not let it burn?” she asked as she followed.

“If they see the fire, they’ll come running.”

“Oh yeah.”

I scrambled around the big kitchen, checking in the cupboard and near the garage door, but I didn’t see the familiar red cannister of a fire extinguisher. I hurried past the long wooden table in the kitchen again, but this time, I noticed a map sitting there.

“What do we have here?”

It was a map of the entire Fort Myers area, including the islands. Two black lines had been drawn down the coast, bracketing Pine and Catalina Islands, and others off the main coast. An arrow had been drawn on the north end and another drawn at the south end, both pointing down. It looked like they were planning an invasion, like the troops would come from the north, go between the lines, then continue south, toward the rest of Florida.

I folded it up in a sloppy bundle and stuffed it in my pants.

Now the entire sofa was on fire.

“We missed our chance,” I reported as I headed for the front door. “Let’s get out of here.”

It was still dark out, but it wouldn’t stay that way for long.

“We have two choices: steal a truck or run for the boat.”

She looked out the front window with me. The enemy van was parked on the driveway, a three-second walk outside. We’d been caught about half a block down, on the left, giving us about a sixty-second run to the canal.

“I don’t see any guards,” she commented.

“These three guys were probably watching the street from this house. The guys in the other houses must be watching other directions. I’m not sure if they have radios, but if they do, we might be seconds away from a leader calling to check their status.”

I was tempted to go back and search the guys, as working radios would be like gold, but there wasn’t time.

“Or they might notice the fire first,” she reminded me.

“Yeah, that.”

“It would be nice to drive out of here,” she suggested.

“I agree, except they would see us right away and probably give chase. I don’t know about you, but I don’t know my way around good enough to avoid getting stuck on another cul-de-sac, and those vans aren’t exactly speedy. If we got trapped, we’d have to bail and probably jump in a canal—”

“And they’d shoot us easily.”

I shook my head.

“Or get eaten by crocs,” she added.

I nodded.

“So we go for the boat,” she finished.

“That seems like the stealth play…”

Weapons in hand, we slid out the front door and walked casually to the side of the house. I checked around the corner to make sure none of the guards at the houses back there were on their way forward, but it seemed quiet.

Beyond the next row of homes, I caught a glimpse of an unusual guy walking against the backdrop of the giant bonfire blazing on the neighboring street. He was odd due to his flat-brimmed hat and a flash of white on his collar. I might not even have made the connection if the guy in the house hadn’t mentioned the word ‘Father.’

“There’s the priest,” I remarked.

She leaned around to look, and cussed under her breath. However, she stood back and spoke matter-of-factly.

“Yep. Can we go now?”

“Absolutely.”

I waved her to follow me across the gap.

My heart stuttered when a pop sound came from that direction, but it wasn’t a gunshot. I figured it was an engine backfire, which was common in older, terribly maintained vehicles.

Looking behind us while on the move, orange light danced in the front windows of the house we’d left, since the fire was already spreading.

We kept moving.

No one came out of the house next door, nor the one beyond that. When we’d gone several houses down, we crossed the street, cloaked by the fact every light source in the area was currently powered down.

No one yelled for us to stop.

As best I could tell, no one saw us leave.

We ran to the bridge where we’d been picked up earlier in the night and went into a thicket of bushes along the slope on the right side, where we expected to find our ride.

“I hope those gators are—” Carmen’s voice cut off.

She’d disappeared.

Carmen shrieked in a high-pitched voice, terrified.

I only heard the tearing and scraping of clothes and shoes, as one might expect from someone sliding on dirt.

When I reached the spot where she’d been, I saw her sliding down the ten-foot embankment. In the darkness, not far to my left and close to the bridge itself, one of the alligators had crawled out. Carmen had slid on the beast’s muddy tracks…

Below me, and below Carmen, the rest of the monsters waited.

Those beady eyes were now looking up…

CHAPTER 29

The slope next to the canal was normally about three-to-five feet above the water, lower as you got closer to the ocean. Carmen had arrived almost next to the bridge, so the embankment was a lot higher than normal. This only mattered to someone scrambling for their lives to keep from falling in the water.

“F-Frank,” she stuttered in fright, somehow keeping her voice quiet, rather than screaming again.

I threw myself down the bank feet-first, trying to stay out of the mud. I landed on my side, slamming against the shotguns, but I managed to get a hand on her belt.

“Oof!” she wheezed.

I dug fingernails and bootheels into the weeds and dirt, trying to slow us both. She did the same. We slid together right to the water’s edge.

After we checked that we were still alive, and not in the mouth of one of those waiting alligators, we shared a surprised look with each other, panting like crazy.

“That was close,” she whispered.

“You aren’t lying,” I wheezed.

The alligator on the bank above us slithered around, perhaps asking itself how two people could have snuck past it. Below us, a mouth snapped mere inches from her boot. Its primitive brain was no doubt wondering why the food wasn’t all the way into its jaws.

“Move it!” I urged her.

Together, we scrambled sideways along the bank while the alligators in the water tried to track us.

“Go up!” I whispered.

We didn’t stop crawling until we were at the top of the shore, though well away from the landlubber gator. When I righted myself and sat upright, she threw herself on my legs, clinging to me.

A man’s voice came from far away.

“Fire!”

I looked back to find a solid orange glow in front of the house belonging to the Cleaners, now about a hundred yards away.

“They’re going to figure out it was us,” I said.

Carmen was still gazing down at the dark canal, drawing in huge breaths while she gripped me. “Frank, you risked your life for me again. I was going into that water, no doubt.”

“Why do you seem so surprised?” I asked.

She didn’t answer.

More men shouted behind us.

It was now only a matter of time. Were they finding the dead bodies inside the burning house? Would they put two and two together? Did the priest know where we’d been caught, and, if so, was he already telling everyone where our getaway ride was located?

“Carmen, we have to get in the boat,” I said softly.

“No way,” she said, finally sitting all the way up.

I understood her concern. The boat was below us, not far away, but also a few yards closer to the alligator party.

“How about I do this…” Without explaining myself, I went down the bank, ignoring all of those reflective eyes watching me, and snuck my way over to the boat. We were lucky it was still where we’d left it, but I was now beginning to think the guards had been far more interested in my attractive passenger than the boat itself. I grabbed the rope tied to the front, pushed it into the water, then dragged it down the bank about thirty feet.

Carmen duck-walked along the top of the canal embankment, unwilling to get an inch closer to the gathering of teeth. She only came down when I had the boat well clear of those mouths.

“Women and children first,” I joked as she stepped aboard.

“Do you make jokes about everything?” she whispered. She crept along, using her arms to steady herself on the siderails like it might flip over at her slightest misstep. “I’m still shivering from almost falling into that dark water.”

I pushed the boat from the shore and sat in my spot.

“Bah. You weren’t going to fall all the way in. Those crocs probably have better things to eat than pretty little women.”

As soon as it came out of my mouth, I regretted the words. It wasn’t that she wasn’t pretty or a woman, but she’d been the victim of—

Carmen shocked me when she wrapped her arms around me.

“Oh, Frank, thank you for making me feel…safe.”

I let her hug me for a few seconds, I even put a hand over hers to show I appreciated the gesture, but there were now constant sounds coming from the enemy subdivision. If we didn’t get moving…

“I need you to put your tray tables and seat backs in the upright position…” I gently pushed her back to her bench at the rear of the boat, noting to myself that I’d used humor again to steady her nerves, and mine.

I paddled with urgency.

The front of the boat was behind me, so she had to guide me from time to time. I shoved those oars in as hard as I could, but I let up a tiny bit when we made it around the first bend.

“Are we safe?” she asked.

“Soon,” I answered, trying to sound upbeat.

I paddled for a long time before I realized I’d lost the plot of our escape. Between my adrenaline-fueled paddling and a compulsion to put as many turns behind us as possible, I’d sped us to a part of the canal that looked exactly like everywhere else. Worse, it was now getting closer to sunrise…

“Carmen, I’m sorry to say this, but I don’t know where we are.”

“Me either. I think I was in shock after falling down the shoreline. I know it has been a few hours, but I’m still a little shaken from it.”

“Take as long as you need,” I soothed.

Around us, the back of every house was similar to all the others, and it was impossible to read street names while we were in the depression created by the canal system, so our only options were to keep paddling and hope to see familiar landmarks, or get out and go to street level, hoping to find a street name we recognized. I knew Poseidon Pier ran from Bayside Road all the way to the coast, so we’d have to pass it eventually…

Unless we had already gone under it.

“I think I’ll go that way.” I pointed west, away from the smudge of light on the eastern horizon, where the sun was preparing to pop up. “If we don’t capsize in the surf, I’ll be able to find the beach with the tower and get us home from there.”

“I trust you,” she said with conviction.

We sailed for another hour, always trying to turn toward the west, until we reached the open end of the canal leading to the bay. The sun was now up, though still low on the horizon. It put us in danger of being spotted, but it improved our odds of figuring out where we were.

Before we went into open water, Carmen pointed to my belt and the bundle of paper stuck there. “Wait a second. Why can’t we use that map to figure out where we are?”

I laughed, pulling it out. “I’ve been thinking about that all night, but look at it.”

I opened it enough to show her the area where I believed we were.

“This isn’t a map you’d find in a gas station or tourist shop. It looks like it was printed from a digital atlas, like Google Maps. See? There’s the logo, in fact.”

“And we can’t use this?”

“The scale is all wrong. Whoever printed this wanted to see the whole coastline, from Port Charlotte all the way down to Naples. It makes it so the streets are way too small to see individually, though you can make out entire subdivisions, at least. Also, even if we had the streets, we don’t know where our starting position is in this mess—”

I stopped what I was saying to observe some other hand-drawn details I’d missed in the rush out of the house. Besides the thick black lines around the islands, there were thin red markings around groups of streets near the home base of the Cleaners. It took me a few moments to orient on the lines and see what they were for, but when I did, it all jumped off the page.

“Oh no. Look at this.”

The boat floated backward and in circles, but my singular focus was on the map.

“They circled these streets in kind of a grid pattern. You can see the area around their base is thick with red lines, as if they’d searched those blocks. As you get farther away, the lines have gaps, like they hadn’t gone there.”

“Yeah, I see that,” she said, a bit doubtful.

“Well, the key here is this block.” I pointed to three little streets at the edge of the woods, on the far side of Bayside Road. Due to the scale, they were smaller than the head of a pencil eraser, but one thing was obvious. “It is the only one close to their base that doesn’t have a red line around it.”

I looked to see if she picked up on what I was throwing down, but her pretty eyes showed no understanding.

“Carmen, this is our subdivision. It’s at the border of where they’ve been searching, which means that…based on what this map shows…we are next on their target list.”

Now her eyes lit up. “We have to get back there and warn your friends…” She waited a few beats. “And deal with Cookie.”

“Leave that to me,” I cautioned.

I folded the map and handed it to her, so I could start paddling again. We had to know where we were, so the first step was establishing a landmark in the endless sea of sameness.

The little boat was not made to go on open water, since it was flat-bottomed and easily swamped, but the morning air was still, and the water of the bay was almost calm. That allowed me to get clear of the tree-lined bank and immediately see the three-story tower about a quarter of a mile to the north.

“There we go,” I said with relief. I knew the safe house with all our stuff wasn’t far from the tower.

I dug in and splashed the oars as I turned us to the north. It gave me a moment to admire my companion in the morning sunlight now coming over the trees to our left. She’d splashed water on her chest and face, getting most of the blood off, so she looked fresh and spritely in the new day. If this had been any other situation, I might have been inclined to tell her how she looked, or did she have a boyfriend, or any other number of hints that she was my type…but not today.

Those Cleaners must have figured out where we’d gone, and they might be watching us from the shoreline even now. If I let my guard down for even a second to chat up a pretty lady, that’s when we would get attacked.

When we reached the beach, I dragged the boat into the tangle of trees next to the sandy area, so it was ready for the next time we needed it. We then came out of the woods and crossed the edge of the beach on our way to the parking lot.

“That’s my car,” I said in a glib manner, pointing toward the orange Corvette parked in the middle of the sand like it owned the place.

“A bit much, isn’t it?” she snickered.

“There’s no substitute for cubic inches,” I answered, echoing the rally cry of teenager Frank from some thirty-five years ago.

“That sounds hot,” she teased, possibly flirting.

I wasn’t going to touch that with a ten-foot pole.

All I did was look back at her and smile, but then a flicker of light caught my eye.

“What was that?” I asked, stopping us both in the sand and pointing to where I’d spotted the light.

A moment later, another pop of light snapped above the edge of the big island to our southwest.

“I bet that’s Pine Island,” I said, remembering the map.

“So, there are people there,” she said, almost as if filing it away in her mind.

“Yeah. I think they might be trying to signal us…”

I was torn between two options for a bit, but in the end, I chose to go home to my friends before exploring a distant island for more people.

“Come on,” I said, walking away.

“Aren’t we going to signal them back?” she asked. “See how many there are?”

“No time. Besides, unless you’re holding out on me, we don’t have any fireworks to use as signals.”

“No.”

“One problem at a time,” I finished.

We reached the house with all the guns after a brisk walk from the beach. In the light of day, it was even more impressive to see all the gear and supplies stuffed in the already large home.

I was in a hurry to get the bikes and go back, but I pulled out my notepad and did a top-level inventory of a lot of the crates, so we had a little more information about how important the house could be.

“We’ll call this the Kingston place,” I declared, passing their picture on the wall again.

“Did these brothers know the end of the world was coming?” she asked.

“Maybe. There are some people who have enough money to buy all this stuff and store it, but I never dreamed one of them would live down the street from us.”

“Maybe we should move here,” she reasoned.

“Yeah, maybe,” I answered. My analytical mind went directly to asking whether that was a good or bad idea. On a practical level, it would save a lot of time and trouble to live where all the supplies were located, but from a defensive standpoint, this house wasn’t on a street that was as easy to defend. There was no canal behind it or next to it, for one thing, so it would be far harder to control the borders. “Wait a second, can I see the map?”

She gave it to me and when I spread it out against the wall, I realized there were no red lines drawn in the area, but they’d been getting closer.

“Dang. They’re going to get to this street at any time, just like they’re going to get to ours.”

It added even more urgency to my decisions. I had to get back, yes, but could I salvage anything from this house before it was discovered?

“Let’s check in the garage before we go. I’d like to make sure he doesn’t have a storeroom out there, like my neighbor, Drummond.”

I choked on my own words when I opened the door to the three-car garage. Not only were there more crates out there, but there were two old Country Squire station wagons, wood-paneled and everything, like they’d come directly from the National Lampoon’s Vacation movie.

Carmen touched the bottom of my chin. “You’re drooling, Frank.”

I laughed, letting myself out of the spell.

I stepped closer to the nearest wagon, using light from small windows on the top row of the steel garage doors. The tires looked brand new, and everything else seemed well-maintained, meaning that it probably was in operational order.

We found the keys in a dish sitting on a workbench. One set was labeled #1 and the other #2. The second one had a small note added with a pen that said ‘He said #2!’

“These brothers must be a couple of hams,” I laughed.

I took the first set and sat in the closest vehicle.

Briefly, I considered that someone with so much foresight and planning might have boobytrapped their own car, or used a complicated kill-switch system, but then I remembered not everyone was completely paranoid like that.

“You better stand back, just in case,” I said to my friend.

Carmen went back to the entrance to the kitchen, but didn’t go into the house.

The car started right up, and it sounded nice, with a beefy roar almost as deep and throaty as the El Camino.

“They did a lot of work to this,” I said under my breath.

When I looked over to Carmen, she was gone.

Butterflies flew around my stomach, wondering where she was, but then the other station wagon cranked over. I turned to my right to see her turning the key over there. The first couple tries sounded terrible, more like what you’d expect from a car from the 1970s, but it finally cranked over and started. Its fan belt squealed, to be annoying.

I rolled the passenger window down.

“Mine doesn’t sound as healthy!” she called.

I shut mine down, then she did the same. The big, old engines threw a lot of fumes into the confined space, so we retreated back into the house and shut the door.

“What do you want to do?” she asked, though I could tell by her tone of voice she already knew what I was thinking. The night had been one disaster after the next, but we were ending it on a high note.

“We’re going home with some new toys.”

CHAPTER 30

We pulled onto the street, both of us driving the station wagons, and parked on the circle. I’d been nervous we’d be spotted on the way in, so I took us the long way, then through the woods, until we came up through the open lots between the occupied and construction homes. I stuck my head out the window and waved at my friends as I drove in, to prevent them from shooting either of us.

“Ahoy!” I yelled.

Gunther appeared first, carrying a double-barreled shotgun, which was one of mine. Nate, Cookie, and Mr. Puppers soon came out after him.

“Hey!” I said.

We all met in front of my house. I was simply glad to be home, after a night of alligators, fires, and prison breaks, but before I could even think of what to do, first, Carmen walked around me and got Cookie in an aggressive bear hold. “I’ve got her, Frank. Where should we put her?”

“What the heck!” Cookie whined.

Nate moved toward the girls, possibly to break it up, or maybe to join in.

“Wait a second,” I ordered. “Let me think about this.”

If this had been a criminal trial, the “beyond a reasonable doubt” burden of proof made it impossible to determine if Cookie had been telling the truth about Jodie. The clothes were there, yes, but they didn’t explain the older woman’s fate. Had she taken the clothes off willingly? Had they been taken off…against her will? What if she’d really been shot in the head, but somehow the blood never got on those clothes? It was impossible to know the woman’s fate given such threadbare evidence.

Carmen looked hurt. “Frank?”

“Let her go,” I said in a kind but firm way.

She shoved the young woman aside, angry with me.

“Am I in trouble?” Cookie asked. “I told you the truth about what happened.”

“We found Jodie’s clothes,” Carmen snapped. “There were no bullet holes or blood on them.”

The young girl tensed.

I gently moved between the two women. Carmen had forced my hand by running ahead of me, but I thought there was still a chance to figure out the truth.

“Cookie, I saw Jodie’s clothes, too, but that isn’t what has me concerned. While I was being held prisoner in that place, I found a map with all the local subdivisions and streets between North Pointe and South Pointe. They have been checking lots of streets already, and the map has red pen marks over the ones they’ve cleared, but my subdivision has no marks at all. It only has a notation that says ‘Cookie’ next to it…”

I finished by dropping my voice, as if I didn’t want the others to rise up in instant rebellion.

Carmen and Nate scoffed and cursed under their breath, like they were shocked at my revelation.

“Whatever trouble you are in, we can help you,” I said to the scared girl, using my sympathetic tone as a counterpoint to my friends’ disgust.

Cookie’s face lost all color.

She held my eyes for a few moments until she teared up and looked down at her feet. “Please tell me Jodie is alright. They said they wouldn’t kill any of us, only that we were going to some island to be evacuated. She was going to be rescued!”

“Ah ha!” Carmen triumphed. “Throw her out of here!”

I had to physically separate the two, which wasn’t easy. Carmen still had that knife, and I knew she wasn’t afraid to use it.

“Wait!” I pleaded. “We have to talk to her.”

Carmen stood down. The others were visibly agitated at the sudden turn of events. Even Mr. P seemed ill at ease as he paced around us, not settling to take a nap like he usually did. I had to admit, I was a little shaken as well.

To Cookie, I asked, “Are you really working for them?”

Still looking down, she slowly nodded.

“Have you reported back anything about us?”

“No way! That’s why I asked about Jodie. That’s why I wanted to go with you in the first place. I could talk to them. Reason with them. Everything was going to be fine as long as I did what they asked Jodie to do.”

“And what was that?” I pressed.

“Betray us,” Carmen murmured.

“I didn’t!” she shot back, shaken. “Before she left the other day, they told us both all she needed to do was count the number of people here. That’s it. How bad can that be, right?”

I thought back to when the two goons asked how many survivors were in my group. At the time, I’d made up the number twelve, but at least that part of her story had some credibility.

“And you didn’t tell them yet?” I added.

“No, Jodie was supposed to report back by tonight, but that wasn’t what I was going to do.” She twisted a finger in her red locks, looking far younger than she was. “I was hoping you found her and brought her back, so she could be free, too.”

“How could we be free—” I started to say, but unsure how to continue.

Carmen held out her arms in exasperation when she looked at me.

“I know,” I mouthed to her. Back to Cookie, I continued. “What is so special about today? Why didn’t you go report back yesterday, or in two days?”

“I wasn’t going to report anything…” After a short pause, she kept talking. “Tomorrow is rescue day, Frank, tomorrow morning. A plane is coming, they said so. That’s why they are taking Jodie to the island, right?”

“More lies,” Carmen said in singsong.

I had to admit I had a hard time believing her. If there was a plane coming to rescue survivors, why hadn’t they dropped leaflets all over the place to get more people there?

“I swear that is all I know,” Cookie insisted. “Frank, they were going to kill her for coming back for me—”

“You said these people were here to rescue us,” Carmen accused. “Make up your mind!”

“I know. I know. This is all so confusing. She said the only way she could get to go with me to the rescue was if I went out and did this one job for her…”

It was becoming clear the girl was no mastermind. She was barely a spy. I put both my hands on her shoulders to steady her shaking.

“Cookie, you’ve now contradicted yourself about five times. Tell me the truth. What really happened when Jodie came back?”

Tears streamed down her cheeks.

“Frank, Jodie drove your car to me, like I told you the first time. She rushed inside with a shotgun and surprised them really bad. She, uh, made those two men get in one room, locked the door, and then took me outside alone. She put me in the car and said things had changed and that she was going to stay in the house and take my place. She, uh…”

The girl sniffled and wiped her nose with her arm. “She said I should never come back, to run far away from them, but she also said there were good guys like you who could help me. She explained that if I did find you, I had to tell you she died in a shootout with the men, or you would come looking for her right away. She just wanted us all to be safe!”

Her sobs came harder.

Jodie had been absolutely right, and I’d only known her for a short time. If I’d found out they were keeping her prisoner, I almost certainly would have tried to make it right. That’s why Cookie had been holding onto her lie. She was protecting Jodie’s sacrifice.

“Why didn’t you both come back?” I asked, sad at the missed opportunity.

“I knew she wanted to, but she said one of us had to stay to ensure the other could leave. I assumed she was talking about that moment, not permanently. I didn’t really believe she was going back inside to get in a shootout and die, like she told me to tell you, but that’s why I said that part of my story.”

I remembered old blood on the floor of that bedroom.

“So, Jodie could be dead after all…” I reasoned.

“I really don’t know, Frank. Now that I’ve had time to think about it, maybe she surrendered and convinced them to let me go. I just don’t know what to believe…”

“I hope she made it,” I said in a hollow tone.

“This whole thing has been a big mess, but, guys, I didn’t turn you in.”

“Because we caught her,” Carmen reminded me.

“I was never going back,” the young girl pleaded, wiping more snot from her nose.

There was a deeper layer to her story, I saw it in her eyes.

“Did they try to hurt you back in that house?” I asked.

She spoke in a low voice. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Well, they sure as hell tried to hurt me.” Carmen showed the girl the hole in her shirt and the ripped shorts.

“That’s what has you wracked with guilt, isn’t it?” I guessed. “After being with me a short time, Jodie went back to you because she knew what they would do to you, and you feel guilty about Jodie because you also knew what they were going to do to her…”

I heard the sizzle of an electrical fence buzzing. She was frozen by it. I’d gotten dangerously close to a bad memory.

“They didn’t touch me,” she said in a mechanical voice, not meeting my eyes. “There was even a priest there for a little while. He kept the peace.”

“We saw a priest there, too,” I remarked.

“He wasn’t with any real church,” Carmen sniped, “if he’s letting us women be abused in the back.”

“No, he was not,” I backed her up.

“He prayed with the men.” Cookie now sounded mad. “He said God rode with them and that they were helping rescue humanity from these streets.”

“We didn’t have time to ask him any questions,” I replied, now curious what sect of clergy would align with such terrible people.

“Before Jodie came back,” Cookie went on, “I heard them talking about that map. Men would come in and check in, write on the map, and whatever, then they would go back out. Now that you said it was used to track where they’d already searched, it makes sense. Also, I had no idea where you lived when Jodie sent me to find you, so…um…I want to point out that if they have my name on your street, it means they know where I am because as God as my witness, I didn’t tell them.”

“Are they going to come here?” I asked.

“I didn’t tell them anything,” she repeated.

“I know that. I believe you—”

“I was supposed to stay away from them forever. Jodie…said so.”

Her tears flowed again.

“I think you’re telling the truth.”

“But why?” Carmen whispered to me, knowing everyone else heard her, too.

“Alright, people,” I said to my new friends, ignoring her question for a second. “We have to assume they’re coming for Cookie and any survivors she may have found out here. We brought back a lot of guns from the house where we were, and we can scatter them throughout the homes, so we always have some close by. If we work together, we can be ready when the Cleaners come to this street and get the jump on them before they can ‘rescue’ any of us.”

I took out my notepad and logged some notes before looking up. “We’re switching gears a little. These guys have a lot of vans for their operation, but they have no reason to suspect we’ll put up a fight, so I would expect them to come driving right down the middle of the road to do their search. That’s why we’re going to lay some traps for them.”

“And what about her?” Carmen asked, everyone knowing who she meant.

I turned to Cookie, unsure what was going through my head. On the one hand, I couldn’t trust her. On the other, I couldn’t afford to be a man down. I could throw her in a locked room and keep her there, but then I’d need someone to check in on her, providing further distraction.

“I leave it up for a vote—”

Carmen huffed, disappointed.

“But let me give my vote, so you know where this is coming from. First, there is no denying we are alone in this. I’m not sure what this business about a rescue plane might be, but their methods for getting us there aren’t inspiring confidence, if you know what I mean. They used Jodie and Cookie to get to me and the rest of you, and there is no way I could trust them if and when they show up. On the other hand, Cookie willingly gave herself up to us and wants to make this right.”

“You caught her, sir,” Nate said. “On your map or whatnot.”

I flattened the map on the hood of the station wagon. “I’m not happy to admit this, but I exaggerated, heavily, about Cookie’s name being on the map.”

Using my finger to draw their attention to where we lived, I made it clear there was no name written there or anywhere else.

“Why?” Carmen asked.

“Because I don’t think Cookie is a bad person. I don’t think Jodie was a bad person, either. It all fits together perfectly if you start with that premise. Two good people, in a terrible situation, each trying to lighten the burden of the other. All I had to do to confirm Cookie’s story was convince her the Cleaners had her location. If she was with them, she would have denied everything and let us get found. If she wasn’t with them, like I believe, she would have opened up and warned us.”

“So, she fesses up and then becomes a good guy?” Carmen said, still not entirely happy about the turn of events.

“Here’s the truth,” I said as I took a deep breath. “None of us are angels, but those guys out there are a hundred percent demons, if my experience with them over the last few days is any indication. Where did they come from? Who are they? Who are they working for? If this was about saving people, there are a million ways to get survivors to safety. Instead, they have total contempt for us, they feel free enough to hurt our female friends without consequence, and they drive around snatching people off the streets. If we don’t find the good in each other, these bad people are going to pick us off one by one. After seeing that map, I believe our time to face them is coming due…”

“We’re not soldiers,” Nate reminded me.

“Neither are they. I survived facing off against one of them. Carmen, here, killed two of them with her bare hands.”

“That’s amazing,” Cookie gushed.

Carmen seemed to straighten up with pride.

“Thanks to our young friend telling us the truth, and my visit to their base, we have enough intel to know that we need to spank these guys hard if they ever try to come down our street.” I pointed to the other end of Clownfish Cove.

“And if she betrays us?” Carmen asked, matching my flair for the dramatic.

“I won’t,” Cookie squeaked.

“I’ll take responsibility for her,” I volunteered, knowing it was the only way to transfer some conditional grace to the young lady.

“Fine,” Carmen said as she headed for her house.

I couldn’t ignore the hilt of that big Marine Corps knife sticking out from her shorts, positioned almost in the middle of her back.

Turning, I caught the look on Cookie’s face as she watched the knife walk away, too.

I’d kept the peace, for now.

But how long would it last?

CHAPTER 31

All of us worked hard for the rest of the day to prep the street for potential uninvited guests. While I handed out assignments and watched my small team pour their hearts out into getting things where I wanted them, I kept my eye on Cookie to see if there was anything to suggest she was going to betray us.

I had no intention of harming her, but I did wonder what I would do if she pulled a stunt that proved she wasn’t on our side. Endless survival books faced this dilemma, where one person in the group needed to be kicked out for any number of reasons. The grim reality of it came down to one simple truth. When law disappeared and there were fewer and fewer people to maintain the peace, the only surefire way to ensure the person wouldn’t come back to get revenge was to kill them.

While a tougher leader might have opted to slit some throats and be completely safe, I knew there was no world in which I could go around killing people for so little reason.

But part of the problem was knowing what crimes rose to the level of capital punishment. If Cookie was telling the truth about her role in switching places with Jodie, then the Cleaners would be waiting for her to report in, and presumably they would be looking for her if she failed in her assignment. Jodie had told her to run away, perhaps thinking she would bring the El Camino to me and together we would escape Fort Myers, but that was before I found my other friends. Now I had people and homes to defend, so anyone chasing after Cookie would have to go through me on my home turf.

I believed Cookie had told me the truth in the end, but I paid extra attention to her all afternoon, nonetheless.

Thanks to Carmen’s recon, we’d brought a bunch of weapons back in the station wagons, and I’d set up the fifty-cal sniper rifle inside of my garage, so I could clean it while listening to the radio I’d found over at Drummond’s place.

The whole dial was broadcasting a repeating message that was instantly familiar, as it sounded like a government advisory, complete with the robotic voice.

“All civilians left alive in the Fort Myers, Cape Coral, and North Pointe areas should make their way to the Pine Grove Airport on Pine Island on Saturday, which is EMP-plus-six days. There you will find food, water, and a flight to New Orleans, where FEMA has set up a recovery effort. This message will repeat in twenty seconds.”

“Hey, Frank,” Nate said as he came over to get more ammunition from my lockers.

“Hey, bud, everything okay?”

He pointed to the radio. “I heard them say to go to Pine. Are we going?”

“Do you want to go?”

“It would be nice to know help is out there, you know?”

“Yeah, true…”

“You don’t think they’re going to fly anyone out?”

“It doesn’t feel right,” I answered. “I’ve read a lot of books about covert government operations and other bad actors. When the balloon goes up, like it clearly has here, it pays to maintain a healthy degree of skepticism.”

“What if it’s for real?”

“Then great. We’ll miss the first flights, but they’ll be back, right? They aren’t going to leave us here forever, not if FEMA is really starting up a recovery operation.”

He popped into the door to the kitchen, then immediately came back out carrying a heavy box of ammunition.

“So you’re saying we lay low, make sure everything is on the level, then we go check it out at a later time.” Checking to make sure things were safe before leaving home was a basic survival skill of that orange fish on our subdivision sign, and the namesake of my street—at least if the movie Finding Nemo was true to life.

“Yeah, that feels right to me. I want to believe the people broadcasting this message are on the up-and-up, but until I know what role these Cleaners are playing in that evacuation, I think we need to sit still and observe for a bit. What do you think?”

He held up the box. “I think that thanks to you and your preparation, we can take care of ourselves for a while, sure.”

“That’s the spirit,” I said.

Nate walked across the street, taking his ammo to wherever we’d set up a gun that used 5.56 rounds. We’d done about a thirty-minute training session in the open field with a few rifles and shotguns, so everyone got some experience loading, firing, and re-loading the AR-platform and basic shotties, but that still left a ton of weapons that people couldn’t use effectively.

The Kingston brothers had owned a ton of weapons.

We’d brought back that Barrett M107A1 sniper rifle as the main prize. However, there were also two primo Heckler and Koch HK43s rifles, two Uzi submachine guns, an old Russian sniper rifle that looked like an AK-47 married a Barrett then had a giant kid, a couple of military-looking DP-12 double-barreled shotguns, and, for reasons I could only imagine, the brothers had ten 5-gallon containers of Tannerite, which looked a bit like rock salt in appearance but could only explode when mixed with a second chemical and then was shot by high-velocity rounds. There were about an equal number of oddball rifles, shotguns, and pistols, as if the brothers bought any gun they happened to come across. Most of those were still in the station wagon rear compartments, until we could find better places to store them, and until we could get time to train on them.

I used a rag to clean the exterior of the Barrett.

When I was done servicing the monster rifle, I thumbed the dial on the radio to see if the little independent station was still broadcasting. The repeating message seemed to go out on all the major stations on the FM and AM dial, but I was curious if there was anyone talking elsewhere. The lone dissenting voice wasn’t on the air, however. After listening to static for a bit, I turned it off to preserve the batteries.

I pulled out my notepad, wondering how many tasks I might be able to cross off today. I’d been glad to get a bit of training in, and cleaning weapons was also necessary, but there were fifty items beyond those that I had to be selective about tackling. Some, I’d assigned earlier to my friends. As it got toward evening, I walked down my driveway to see what they’d gotten done. To see what I could cross off my list.

“Bring it in, guys!” I yelled. “Get some dinner!”

They all came running.

“Is Cookie still with us?” Carmen snarked, walking slightly in front of the other woman.

“Whoa, don’t stir the pot,” I said to her.

Cookie kept a brave face on.

“I was half-joking,” Carmen answered.

I had to keep the peace.

“The radio has a message on every channel, asking people to go to Pine Island for a rescue, like she said.” I pointed to Cookie.

“How convenient,” the other woman jibed.

“Ladies, please!” I said, finally getting upset. “I told Cookie I would give her a chance, and for this to work, you’re going to have to trust me, okay?”

Carmen crossed her arms and pouted. It was kind of cute, minus the part where we were facing serious harm.

“I trust you,” she finally answered.

“I’m with you,” Nate said matter-of-factly.

Gunther nodded, which was enough.

Cookie smiled at me, looking like I’d paid for her college tuition.

“Now, let’s get some chow and be ready for whatever is coming our way tonight.”

We all headed for Drummond’s garage, which had the bulk of what we were using for supplies. Since there was probably no chance he would ever return, along with the rest of my neighbors who had been zapped away, I didn’t feel bad tapping into his stockpile. I hoped he would have been okay helping us out.

I sat down next to Gunther in one of the camping chairs.

“Hey,” I said to him, knowing there would be no answer. He did look over to me and smile, but that was the extent of our conversation.

While I ate some pre-packaged turkey jerky, I turned the radio back on, hoping the renegade “It was aliens” guy was back on the air. To my surprise, he was.

“…I hear reports from Rome of UN units surrounding the Vatican. It is unclear why. Also, Turkish troops have opened a transit corridor for Russian peacekeepers who are aiding the UN incursion…”

It wasn’t a news broadcast in the traditional sense, but it sounded like the guy was listening to another broadcast and then relaying what he was hearing.

“…I don’t get this, but apparently…Chinese troops have created a splinter faction of the United Nations. The Sino-UN, they’re calling it. Their first act is to send troops to… Wait… This can’t be right. They’re saying the Sino-UN is already in Texas, heading for New Orleans.” He took a wheezy drag from what sounded like a cigarette. “My friends, if this is true, we are all inside of World War III, and, by what I’m hearing, we’ve already lost.”

Gunther sat up, seemingly shocked.

I recoiled, too. Hearing the USA was losing a war, only one week in, was too difficult to believe.

“Once you eliminate all the people, the land conquers itself,” Nate remarked, sitting nearby.

We all had our weapons close—I was having a two-gun dinner, ready for an imminent attack—but I let my hand fall alongside my AR, wondering if I was going to need it a lot sooner than I’d imagined. If the Chinese were pressing on New Orleans, and FEMA was supposedly running relief ops from there, what did that mean for us? What did it mean for the poor saps running to Pine Island for tomorrow’s rescue?

I changed the station back to what I’d come to think of as the government broadcast, and the robot-voice continued to advise people to go to Pine Island as part of a rescue. When I saw the looks on the faces of my friends, I turned the radio off.

“Guys, we don’t have any idea what is happening out there. Do you remember in that movie Red Dawn? Those kids had no idea what was taking place beyond where they lived, and it didn’t change anything, either. To stay alive, they had to cooperate, lay low, and avoid getting caught. I want to do that with you all…”

“I never saw that movie,” Nate answered.

“Me, either,” Cookie added.

I looked to see Carmen shaking her head.

“But you guys get what I’m saying, right? We’re not going to trust anyone out there until we know exactly what’s going on.”

Gunther almost looked as if he was going to speak, but it came to nothing. Nate gave me a sideways glance while he stuffed beans in his face, but he also flashed a thumbs-up sign to show he was on board, despite not having watched the movie.

Cookie was in, of course.

Even Carmen seemed to rise to the occasion.

“Good. After dinner, I’ll walk around this place and see where we need to reinforce, then we can all settle in for the night. With a little luck, this will all blow over and the Cleaners will hightail it to the airstrip before they manage to complete their sweep of every possible street around here. We can hope they won’t come looking for Cookie, either. Once they’re gone, there will be no one left in the neighborhoods, and we can coast through this disaster until the United States gets back into the fight.”

“Reading between the lines, you’re saying that if those guys are coming at all, it has to be tonight,” Nate clarified.

“Yes,” I replied, straight-up.

“What about sleep?” he asked.

“Try to stay awake if you can, but I plan to be awake all night, since I’ll be in the first house on our street. I don’t want to miss the party.”

“I’ll try, too,” Nate responded.

The others nodded. Normally, I would have had overnight guard shifts, but I didn’t want people moving around tonight. Since we didn’t have working watches with alarms, we had no way to stagger guard shifts without waking each other up. I needed to find a few mechanical alarm clocks, if people even used them anymore.

“Do your best,” I told them.

When there were no more questions, I urged them to get up.

“Alright. Everyone take your desserts back to your hiding spots. I’ll walk around and check up on you in a few minutes…”

They all split up, leaving me momentarily alone in Drummond’s garage. I carefully put the radio back into the Faraday cage, then I brought in the camp chairs, and finally I closed and locked the garage door. It gave me a moment to appreciate the weight of what we were facing.

Never, for one second, did I believe the greatest country on earth had any chance of being defeated. All I had to do was keep my people alive in our little out-of-the-way street, and American tanks would eventually roll down Bayside Road and declare victory.

Until then, it was me, a mute dude I couldn’t communicate with, a prissy twenty-something who wasn’t sure what side she was on, a teen criminal who always seemed on the verge of flight, and, finally, a sassy Hispanic divorcée. Not exactly Red Dawn…

Outside, I looked at the fruits of my notepad checklist.

The houses looked perfectly normal, though a careful inspection of the front windows would reveal the drapes were smushed against the glass, since plywood planks had been hammered in over the tops of them to prevent flying glass. Also, we’d brought in more planters to set on the front porches, so they would deflect any bullets shot at the windows.

I’d taken down the tarps and blockers from between the homes. Our goal was to make it look like we were exactly the same as every other subdivision block. Cars were parked on the street, having lost their drivers. Kids bikes were in the grass and along the pavement, where their riders had evaporated on that first day. Little bits of clothing were scattered around, as if the wind had been shifting it here and there.

We did leave the roadblock intact, however, since it was designed to look like normal traffic had been on the street when the zap took place. The only way a vehicle could get through to the end of the circle was by veering into the lawns or having enough power to push parked cars off the crowded street. My hope was that anyone searching the area tonight would be pressed for time and wouldn’t want the hassle…

After doing my rounds, checking on each person, I settled into my chosen hiding spot in one of the construction homes. I’d placed Gunther in my house, looking out the front and rear windows, with two rifles and plenty of ammo. Carmen was in her own home, where she insisted she hang out, but she was watching front and back for us. I put Cookie in Ben’s house, the one on the end, so I had the most direct line of sight to her. As the evening got along, I saw her face in the front window, keeping watch like the rest of us.

Nate was my wildcard. I’d told him to hang out in the woods with the birds, listening for anyone trying to sneak through there. If he found someone, he was ordered to fire his gun to rile up the birds so he would have cover to run back to the houses.

I had time to reflect on our setup, and it didn’t take long to imagine an enemy on the street, with my people all aiming at them. Depending on the angles, we might end up shooting each other, since we surrounded the ambush point.

“Cookie!” I called out, hoping she would hear, even though I wasn’t yelling at the top of my voice.

“Yeah?” she asked.

“Check your targets if you shoot. Don’t shoot one of us across the street from you!”

“I won’t,” she assured me.

“Can you pass that down to the others?” I asked.

As instructed, I heard her call over to the others, who were closer to her than they were to me. Once the message was passed along, I got back to wondering what other tactical lessons I’d forgotten from my books.

That went on for a bit, with several notes being added to my notepad.

I believed I’d prepped us as best as my non-professional self possibly could, but once darkness fell and my dinner settled, I realized there was a far more obvious and sinister enemy I needed to fight. An enemy no man could hold off forever.

My first yawn signaled the start of the battle.

I’d promised my friends I would stay awake all night.

I wasn’t going to let them down.

CHAPTER 32

I fought sleep all night, but the struggle got worse in the hour before sunrise. I’d made it so any time my head dipped from nodding off, it would strike the sniper rifle buttstock, jarring me awake. That worked great, but I really sat up when I heard car engine noises approaching from Poseidon Pier…

It was now daybreak on EMP plus-6, as the radio announcement had described it.

“Everyone wake up,” I whispered, wishing I had a way to talk to all my friends. Our separated nature meant I had to hope they were hearing the arriving vehicles and reacting, too.

As blood and adrenaline mixed in my brain, a cascade of new ideas flooded in. Had I done enough to prepare?

Could I have blown the bridge at the start of the subdivision?

Could I have posted a guard on Bayside Road, to give us an advanced warning?

Could we have moved our supplies, rather than risk them being discovered on Clownfish?

Could we…

But there were only so many hours in the day, and so few of us on the street, that I’d stuck to the tasks that benefited us the most when it came to defending against outsiders. The most important goal was to blend in, so they would drive by without taking note. If that failed, we needed to have a bunch of big guns ready to go.

The Barrett was a big gun, for sure. Whatever vehicle appeared at the end of our street, I was certain the giant rounds would do serious damage to both vehicle and occupants, but only if they decided they wouldn’t take no for an answer.

We’d all agreed on our plan to sit out the first evacuation to Pine Island. If the Cleaners came and tried to take us, we would be polite, but firm, that we didn’t want to go. Knowing they weren’t the nicest folks around, I’d prepared everyone to basically assume they would try to take us by force.

“You won’t know what hit you,” I whispered.

The others were hard to spot from my location, but I saw movement through several windows while my friends prepped for the encounter with the Cleaners. It tapped into a special place in my brain to know they were up and ready to help.

I listened for a few moments.

There were diesel engines coming. I’d spent a lifetime working with heavy-duty trucks and big rigs, so I knew them well. When the dump truck came around the corner, I was not taken by surprise.

It was old, with a giant plow on the front. The driver brought it into the middle of Clownfish Cove and headed directly for the mess of cars we’d placed in front of him.

A spool of razor wire tangled around my gut.

“Uh-oh.”

While the dozer-dump-truck passed my location, I watched as an ancient school bus came around the corner. The distinctive yellow paint had faded to pasty white, and it looked as if it had come from the junkyard. Inside, to my shock, people sat in all the seats.

Six Cleaner vans completed the convoy behind the bus.

I’d explained to my friends that no one was to fire on the enemy until I did, and I promised them they would have no problem knowing when I shot the obnoxious sniper rifle. I had my eye and ear protection right next to me, since I’d read accounts of shooters going deaf without the plugs. However, I was beginning to doubt if we could take these guys.

The dump truck was already through the abandoned vehicles. It easily pushed aside the ones we’d used as a fake roadblock and opened up the route for the bus and vans to travel through the same spot. They would never even consider driving on the lawns, where we’d carefully hidden all the tire-poppers.

The knot in my stomach got tighter.

What type of attack was I witnessing?

The dump truck went around the circle and then came all the way back to the last house, parking roughly between me and Cookie, so I couldn’t see her. It dawned on me that was the perfect spot if the girl had somehow planned this…

I held my breath, waiting for the betrayal.

The bus went toward the circle but stopped in front of Trevor’s house. Only one person got off, and it wasn’t anyone I’d been expecting.

“Hello!” the priest shouted.

The vans passed the bus and slowly looped around the circle.

I knew that every plan had to be modified once contact was made with the enemy, but this was a curveball from outside the stadium. How did the priest figure into the Cleaners’ plans? He’d been there the night Carmen and I were captured, but they’d gotten rid of him before they tried to get violent with us. Was he being pressed into service, like Jodie and Cookie? A friendly face on a terrible organization, to get people to fall in line?

He cried out again. “Don’t make my friends get out of their vans to get you. They’re in a hurry, and you won’t like how they treat your homes.”

I was torn for a few moments. I’d wanted to blend in and have them pass, but they’d evidently decided something about the street suggested we were hiding nearby. Maybe they’d had guys watching us from the woods, or they saw us walking around, or they had recon aircraft high above, or… Still, no matter the reason for their belief, if they were going to search homes, it wouldn’t take them long to find my friends or our valuables, and I didn’t want that.

“I hear you!” I finally yelled back.

He reoriented in my direction, though he couldn’t know exactly where I was. The vans had now parked in the no man’s land between the construction houses and the main group of homes on our street, so I figured they would find me a lot quicker.

“Oh, hi! We’re here to take you to safety!”

“It looks like you are here to attack us,” I called back. “Those men in the vans are bad people.”

“No, you’re mistaken, son. We have contracted with these facilitators to evacuate the last survivors of a global attack on this fine nation. We are all going to Pine Island airport to be rescued.”

“What if we don’t want to come?” I asked.

He laughed to himself a little. “Why wouldn’t you want to be saved?”

“Let’s just say we have some trust issues to work through.”

Someone spoke to the priest from inside the bus. At first, he shook his head and pleaded with the person not to come out, but he quickly relented and stood aside.

“Hello, Frank,” a woman said an instant before she set foot outside the door to the bus.

“Jodie?” I asked with some degree of shock. She was wearing an all-black uniform like the rest of the Cleaners.

“Come here, Frank. I promise we aren’t here to hurt anyone.”

I gritted my teeth, thinking through everything. If they wanted me dead, there were six vans and who-knew-how many men hiding inside. There could be a whole platoon of soldiers on that bus. Even though we had five guns trained on them, I didn’t think we could survive a battle with these guys. Even if we did win, I didn’t think we could do it without taking a single loss…and I wasn’t in the mood to lose any of my new friends.

“Stay where you are!” I hollered, hoping my four friends knew I was talking to them.

I left all my weapons in the house. Being at 0-gun level made me feel vulnerable as I walked past the six vans. The men glared at me, but I did my best to wave and be friendly as I walked on. Did they know I was the one who’d taken out three of their buddies in the burning house? They almost certainly knew I was the one who’d shot the first two guys all those days ago.

When I reached Jodie, a mixture of emotions swept over me.

“I’m glad you are still alive,” I finally allowed myself to say. In the brief time I’d known her, I’d enjoyed her company and experienced real emotions when she’d told me about the loss of her grandbabies.

“And I’m glad you’re still alive. Is Cookie alright?” She searched the windows of the closest homes. “I didn’t see her when we drove in.”

“I can’t say,” I responded.

“I understand. These people in charge are trying to clean up all the remainders in the area, but using contractors has not been ideal, Frank. None of this has.”

“Did they hurt you?” I whispered.

The priest coughed.

When she didn’t answer, I changed tact. “Cookie said you traded places with her,” I deadpanned.

Jodie and the priest exchanged glances this time, and he didn’t seem happy, but he didn’t tell her not to answer.

“I assisted her on her way, yes,” she allowed.

The priest held out his hand. “I’m Father Mackinaw.”

I took it after a moment. I found his skin cold and clammy, and I wanted to end it as quickly as possible. Nothing about the moment was inviting or pleasant, nor did the man in the black hat put me at spiritual ease, as one might expect with a holy man.

“How did you find us?” I asked, trying to hide the fact I was wiping the handshake on my side.

“The water meters,” Jodie replied.

“Sister!” the priest hissed.

She kept talking. “We went to the water company. When you turn on your faucet, it registers back at the water district building. Their infrastructure is mostly underground, where the pipes are, so they survived the EMP. Since everyone else is gone, any water usage really stands out.”

I’d been caught by my own survival methods in terms of fresh water. Fill the tubs. Fill pitchers. Fill everything.

“I missed that,” I said, not intending to be heard. I liked to be the person who could plan ahead and see what’s coming, but I had to admit I’d been focused on the more immediate problem of tapping into freely available fresh water instead of who was monitoring it at the other end of the pipe. Having been told this news, however, I felt as if I’d let my friends down.

“It’s not your—” Jodie tried to say, but I cut her off.

“So, what did you bring the junkyard dogs for?” I asked, still angry to find her working with them, no matter her reason. “Are we free to go or aren’t we?”

Jodie stepped in front of the religious man. “Frank, you’ve been reasonable this whole time, and I’ve been telling my…friends…that when I found you, I was going to make sure you were treated with respect and made to feel at home with us. Once you get back to regular order in New Orleans, you’ll see how this was all nothing more than a big misunderstanding.”

In the mix of headlights and taillights on my street, I caught her face in a new angle while she stood in front of the priest. I realized she had a black eye, a swollen lip, and bruising on both cheeks. I wanted to say something about it, but she gave me an almost imperceptible head-shake not to mention it.

Maybe she wasn’t as much ‘with them’ as I thought.

“So, we aren’t free to go?” I drawled.

“God dictates that we should obey the laws of the land, sir,” the priest said from behind Jodie. “And I think it would be best if we all made for the island before we risk missing our ride.”

“If it’s all the same, I think me and my friends would like to drive ourselves. Why don’t you guys lead, and we’ll follow in our own vehicles.”

Jodie took a long sigh.

“What?” I pressed.

The priest had balled his hands in a pair of fists, like he was preparing to do something he didn’t want to do.

“Am I free or not?” I asked.

Jodie stepped closer and whispered, “Frank, just get in the stupid bus. If you don’t, they are going to make me do something bad…”

I stepped back half a pace, not sure I’d heard her right.

“And what if I don’t care?”

The older woman glanced behind me, not a shred of happiness on her broken face. When I looked in the same direction, a man in a black uniform had his head out the side window of the first van. He nodded to her, and she nodded back. The vans retreated several houses.

“What’s going on?” I asked, wondering if I could make a run for it. Neither Jodie nor the priest seemed to be armed. If I could get over to Carmen, I could get one of the extra guns and hold them off while my friends ran for safety…

“I’m so sorry, Frank.”

Jodie stepped over to the side of the bus and tapped a release that opened a compartment at the lowest section of the vehicle. It had been designed to house bookbags, sporting goods, and band equipment for any number of school outings, but now it stored a far more lethal payload.

“You are going to blow up these kids?” I asked, incredulous. I could see the heads of people inside the darkened bus, but I couldn’t make out who they were. Given the type of vehicle, I’d assumed they were youngsters.

“It never comes to this,” she said, as if reminding herself, rather than me.

“Who are these people, really?” I pressed. Even FEMA wouldn’t resort to such open terrorism. “What’s going on here?”

Jodie’s eyes went dark. “Frank, why do you have to be so difficult?” She peeked back toward the vans for a second. “You don’t understand the pressure we’re under. If we don’t deliver enough people, they’re going to—”

“Ahem, sister, that’s not what we talk about.” Father Mackinaw appeared as pleasant as before, save for his voice.

She looked at me with the eyes of a drowning woman, but she spoke at a loud volume. “Frank, if you and your friends don’t get on this bus in the next thirty seconds, they will make me pull this lever and blow up you, me, and every house on this street. You’ve already lost, okay? Don’t make this worse.”

I turned to the priest. “Is this true?”

He shrugged. “The one I serve does not want me to endanger all these lives, but he planned this as the best way to get people like you on the bus in a peaceful manner. I take solace in his methods.”

“Frank,” Jodie whispered, “don’t test these guys.”

“Tell me one thing,” I requested. “Are we really going to be taken to safety?”

She looked me directly in the eye. “They have promised me that much, yes.”

I knew she wasn’t telling the whole truth.

“It’s just me here,” I said, trying to salvage something out of this mess. “I’ll come quietly.”

“We know there are others,” the priest announced, before yelling. “We will kill Frank if you don’t all come out!”

This deal was getting worse and worse.

“Wait, hold on—” I tried to say.

“Five seconds!” the priest reminded everyone nearby.

My heart bashed my insides. Would he really blow us all to smithereens?

Cookie, Nate, and Gunther stormed out of their respective houses.

“No!” I cried out, relieved and disappointed at the same time.

“Three seconds,” Mackinaw announced.

I put my hands up. “We all surrender!”

The priest gave no emotion to the moment. He went to the bomb hatch and let the door slam like he’d loaded up the football team’s gear and was ready to roll out. Jodie, however, seemed shell-shocked.

“Guys, we’ve been caught,” I said to my arriving friends. “Looks like we’re going to be rescued.”

The vans rolled back to where they were.

Jodie used both hands to brush her hair back, but then she took out a pin, put it in her mouth, and cinched her long hair into a ponytail. While she had the pin in between her teeth, she spoke quietly—without moving her mouth.

“Frank, I’m so sorry. I tried to get myself out of this mess, and I tried to get Cookie free, but I’ve failed on both counts. None of us can do anything against them.”

I didn’t answer except with my eyes.

“Is Cookie okay?” she begged.

“She seems fine, for now,” I whispered.

“Good. All of this was for her.”

“She said you were killed, which was obviously a lie, so it has been hard to trust her.”

“That’s on me,” she said through her clenched teeth as she continued to fuss with her hair. “I did my best to make it so she wouldn’t come back to rescue me.”

“It seems like everyone is trying to help everyone…” I agreed. It meant I could probably trust Cookie.

“I can make this right,” she said in a hurried voice. “When we get to where we’re going, you’ve got to run when the plane arrives, okay?”

“Why? You just said they were here to take us to safety.”

“I had to say that,” she complained. “Look, if you trust me one last time, just run away from the plane, no matter what else happens. I’ve heard the men talk about the rescue operations and they talk more about ‘rescuing’ the virginity of girls like Cookie.”

“I’ve seen that firsthand,” I acknowledged.

“I’ll keep the priest distracted for you. He’s the boss of all this.”

“What? I need more of a plan than—”

She shook her head. “They listen on the bus. They listen everywhere. Be careful.”

Finally, before she aroused more suspicion, she removed her hair clip from her mouth, put it in her hair, then acted satisfied to have it done.

In the meantime, my friends came to my side, and the priest returned.

“I told them you were good,” Cookie said the moment she came around the bus and saw Jodie. “You lied.”

“Hi, Cookie,” Jodie said matter-of-factly. “I’m glad you’re safe.”

I’d expected the young girl to curse out the older one, but she instead took a spot next to me, facing the bus. I considered telling her that Jodie had lied to protect her, but I didn’t think it was safe.

Gunther arrived next, silent as ever. I gave him a chuck on the shoulder. “Sorry, big guy. They were going to blow up the entire neighborhood if we didn’t go for a ride with them.”

Nate sauntered up a few moments later, followed by Mr. Puppers.

“No dogs,” Mackinaw declared.

“Oh, man, them’s fightin’ words,” I said, trying to be funny.

A gun blast went off, and the concrete chipped underneath Mr. Puppers, making him jump two feet straight up.

“No!” I yelled.

A guy in a black uniform held his rifle as he stood next to an open door of the second van.

“Run for it, Mr. Puppers!” I screamed. Blind to consequences, I took a few steps to my right, putting myself between the dog and the shooter. “Run!”

The dog whined, still shocked, and it broke my heart to look in his eyes as I ordered him to leave. I hoped he understood, and he did reverse course at a gallop, but it was still a terrible sight.

Once the golden fluffball was gone, I turned to the shooter and pointed at him. “You kill my dog, I kill you.”

The man sneered at me, his task already done. Other guys got out of the vans to join him, and they spread out to our homes, as if to give them one last sweep.

I stormed onto the bus, leading by example. I was in such blind rage when I got aboard, I was not prepared to see who was already in the seats. It was not full of kids, as I’d imagined.

“Oh, h-hi,” I stammered.

There were people of every age, ethnicity, and dress code. It took me a few moments to dial it in, but I realized they were exactly like me and my Clownfish Cove friends—survivors taken at random from across Fort Myers, all headed to the same destination.

“Are they going to kill us?” an elderly woman asked from the back. “My mother told me about the Jews being taken for bus rides…”

I found an empty seat, and Cookie hopped in next to me.

Gunther and Nate sat directly across from us.

It left a couple of benches open in the front, but Jodie and the priest took the first one, closest to the driver, a burly guy wearing a shamrock-green newsboy hat.

The men searching the houses returned to their vans, seemingly without any additional prisoners…

As we rolled out, I finally let go of one strand of that barbed wire cradling my stomach. I’d been worried the Cleaners knew precisely how many people were on my street, and that’s why they had gotten out to search the homes, but if they knew we’d been one short when we boarded the bus, they didn’t figure out where she was hiding.

Somewhere behind us, Carmen was watching us leave.

CHAPTER 33

I settled in as the bus took us to the end of Poseidon Pier and turned left on Bayside. For a precious few seconds, I was transported back to kindergarten, when I rode in the front seat for that exciting first year of public school. Now, with a lifetime of miles between me and that child, I wasn’t thinking about my life ahead, but about the mistakes and choices I’d made ten minutes ago.

What if I had started shooting the second that bus showed up?

What if we had said nothing at all? Would they have blown themselves up on a potentially empty street?

And why didn’t I order my friends to run away, get out of the bomb radius, rather than let them come to me?

None of them had easy answers. The best I could say was that my decisions had ensured all of us were still alive…

“Do you think they’re really here to rescue us?” Cookie whispered.

“I do not,” I deadpanned.

“Me, either.” She scooted a bit closer before continuing. “So, what’s the plan? How are we getting out of this one?”

I had to laugh at her youthful enthusiasm, wishing I could share it. However, she hadn’t been there when I’d been given a look at the bomb now riding below us. Any attempt to escape would be dealt with harshly, I was sure of that.

Cookie seemed to sense the internal dialogue bouncing back and forth behind my eyes. “Mister Frank, you— No, that sounds weird. What’s your last name?”

I briefly wondered if she was fishing for information about me so she could give it to Jodie and the Cleaners, like this was all a big put-on, but I took Jodie at her word that Cookie was on the up-and-up.

“Douglas.”

“Mr. Douglas?” She seemed to chew on it. “You don’t seem like a mister.”

“That was my dad, actually.” I laughed at the old joke, but she didn’t get it.

“Oh, he got taken, too?” she asked timidly.

“Yeah, a long time ago…by heart disease.”

She backed off, as if she’d said one bad thing too many.

“Hey, call me whatever you want. I don’t care. Honest.”

That perked her up. “Well, I am sorry I had any part in this, but I really tried to make this right.”

“I can see that.” I then whispered, mindful that Jodie had warned about people listening on the bus. “Thanks for not giving up our mutual friend.”

She winked at me. “She’ll owe me big time if we get out of this.”

“Oh, we will,” I reassured her, hoping to reassure myself.

We drove past the street where the Cleaners had come from. The house that had caught fire was now a smoldering crater. I cast my eyes casually away from it, worried one of the spies on the bus was watching to see if I reacted to it. That could get me in more hot water.

We then drove south to the end of the woods, where it bordered on the suburb of South Pointe. To the left, down a four-lane main street, there were more houses and, eventually, the hardware store, restaurants, and food stores. Plumes of smoke wafted up in various places, confirming that part of the city was suffering the same as ours.

The convoy took us through a couple more neighborhoods, stopping a few times, though only at one of those did an older couple climb aboard.

“Going to the plane?” the guy asked, looking like he’d come off the golf course not long ago.

“Looks like it,” I answered.

The couple took one of the few remaining seats.

The bus headed onto a two-lane stretch of highway that started as an extended causeway but soon became a long bridge. We passed ten or twenty of the Cleaners, all dressed in their boring black uniforms, all heavily armed, but they waved the bus and vans through with barely a look at us.

“That’s odd,” I said to myself.

“Trouble?” Cookie whispered.

I wasn’t sure what I was feeling. It did seem like we were going somewhere to be evacuated, but the guards standing around the bridge made me wonder if we were being shoved on the island to put us in a large prison. If these weirdos weren’t with FEMA or the government, then who were they with?

The causeway and bridge system was about three miles long, variously crossing open ocean water or driving along swampy lowlands. A fancy sign told us we were entering Pine Island as soon as we came across one last patch of water. Checking behind us, most of the vans had dropped back, and the dump truck was long gone, though one singular van trailed us.

Without most of the Cleaners in the vans, our ‘guards’ now were the priest and Jodie, neither armed. The driver made no show of holding a weapon, but I had to assume he could have one…

“A lot of the guards are gone,” I whispered.

Cookie looked behind the bus to confirm.

I was distracted by oohing and ahhing from the other passengers. They looked outside at the little town we were currently passing through.

“People!” someone cried.

And there they were. Residents had heard the bus coming, so they’d run out to the street, from houses and little businesses, to watch it pass. I choked up a bit, seeing so many smiling faces.

We drove for about a mile along the busy street, with more and more people reaching the roadway before we passed, as if word of our arrival had been spreading ahead of us. Every type of person came forward, cutting out a healthy cross-section of tourist-trap Florida, exactly as it had been the instant before it had all been zapped away.

I stayed more reserved than others on the bus. Some dropped their windows and hung their heads and arms outside, waving like they were in a parade. I merely watched, content to get where we were going before celebrating. However, I was jostled back into the moment by someone’s touch.

“What’s up, buddy?” I asked Gunther, who reached to me from across the aisle.

He made a motion like he was writing.

I pulled out my notebook and gave him my pencil. Since he wasn’t talking, he’d asked to write a few things over the past several days, but this had an urgency to it. “Here you go.”

He began writing, but then he scratched out the words. I thought nothing of it until he did it again. This time he nearly tore the page. I could tell he was really struggling for some reason, but he finally put a few block letters on the sheet before showing me.

On the paper, under the violent scratches, it simply said, ‘THERE ARE NO CHILDREN.’

Before answering, I looked back to the crowd, which was now several deep along the entire route ahead of us. As far as I could see, there were no strollers, no children holding the hands of their loved ones, and no little heads bobbing and clapping.

I stood up and looked to the people on the bus.

There wasn’t a single child among them.

I sat back down, sure it was a coincidence. Maybe all the local children were in school. I tried to remember what day it was, maybe Sunday, maybe Saturday. Had it been almost a week since the EMP already?

“We’ll ask about that at the airport,” I said to Gunther, eager to prove him wrong.

He gave me my notebook without adding anything, and I took a few notes on my observations and thoughts as we drove on.

Pine Island was a narrow stretch of land about ten or fifteen miles long, if my reading of a map was solid. I guessed it was also about a mile wide, at most, with one small road that ran up the middle like a zipper. We followed it for a couple of minutes before turning right onto a narrow gravel road. We went through a neighborhood with a few bungalows set on large pieces of property. They were covered by weeds and small trees, as if no one took care of their yards, but we soon passed those and entered a large clearing.

“Pine Island Airport,” the portly male driver announced. A little sign described it as Tranquility Bay, but I wasn’t sure what that meant.

To say it was an airfield was being extremely charitable. There was definitely a piece of flat land, and it was about a quarter-mile long, but the field was not more than a hundred yards across and set between two equally long, straight tree-lined canals that started close to us, where the bus was arriving. At the other end, the pair of short canals dumped into a large body of ocean water.

The driver turned and backed the bus to a point at the near end of the strip, as if prepping to take the bus back out when we were off. It was pointed north, so everyone could come directly down the steps and face the airport landing strip.

“We’re right on time for pickup,” the driver announced when he had the engine off. “Everyone needs to get out and stand over there by those cones.” He pointed to three orange safety cones that were literally standing in the middle of nowhere at the end of the grassy runway. The airfield had no structures of any kind, not even a restroom. It was a grassy field surrounded by woods, with no other buildings, houses, or structures within sight. Importantly, there was no one from an airline or an airport waiting out there.

“Everyone out,” the driver said as he climbed down the steps.

Jodie and the priest climbed down first.

My friends and I made our way out with the others, but we stayed away from Jodie, since she was close to Father Mackinaw. Instead, I tried to catch up to the driver, who had gone toward the cones.

Get away from the plane, Jodie had warned me. I figured maybe the driver knew something about the aircraft picking us up… Maybe he could answer why it was imperative to avoid it.

While walking, I noted where our handlers were located. The lone van had parked in front of the bus, maybe a hundred feet away, with its front turned our way. Two guards were already getting out, probably to supervise us regular people.

I caught up to the driver and his green hat as he sparked a match to light his cigarette.

“Hey, sir, thanks for the ride,” I said.

“Yeah, sure.” He didn’t look at me. Didn’t offer me a smoke.

“You think a big plane can land here?” I pressed. The grass was almost knee-high, and the airfield appeared as if it had seldom been used. “I don’t want to get stuck waiting for a small plane to do ten loads, you know?”

He shrugged and spoke in a manner that said ‘get lost’ in the undertone. “I just drive the bus.”

“I see.” No help there.

I tried to think of another question I could ask—

The guy cocked his head, listening. “I hear it coming now.” He took a few steps toward the canal, and I noticed there was, in fact, one little concrete building over there. It was off to the side of the runway, near the end of the canal to our right, and it blended in among the overgrowth at the edge of the waterway. Here, the canals were not well-tended like those around Clownfish; these were tangled messes of greenery along the edges. I only really noticed the structure when the driver moseyed his way toward it. “Go back by the bus and wait with the others.”

I could now hear the sound of engines. The low droning noise was different than most planes, but, oddly enough, I immediately recognized what it was.

I turned to look low on the horizon, over the north part of the island. Since we were in an open field, we had a good view in all directions. The big white plane with the dish underneath was flying a few thousand feet in the air, heading directly down the middle of the island. Not to land on the runway, since it was perpendicular to the plane’s route, but to fly over it.

“Hey, buddy, is that what’s picking us up?” I turned, but the heavyset driver had hurried to the concrete building about fifty feet away and went to the backside, out of sight.

My heart skipped a few beats.

Why would he rush like that?

Where was he going?

I turned back to the group still pouring out of the bus at their own slow pace. Not that I blamed them, since the sun was hot, and the sticky air was doing its best to cook us.

Looking at the approaching air monster, there was no way that giant could touch down in such a short space…and if it did somehow make it down here, it would never have enough runway to take off again.

Maybe it wasn’t the plane that was going to pick us up.

Then why was the bus driver running for his life?

I had no trust for these people, but Jodie and the priest stood together near the front of the bus, away from the others, as if they were too good for everyone. They also saw the plane, but they weren’t running away like the driver.

That was good, right?

What was I missing?

Concrete bunker?

A bomber-sized aircraft.

Was it going to bomb us?

Wasn’t this supposed to be a rescue?

Or was it another attack?

Jodie had warned me. She said I had to get away from the plane. I’d assumed the time to do that was when it landed, and when all the bad guys were distracted, but maybe that time was now. Jodie kept Father Mackinaw in front of the bus. She pointed to the plane, and they both looked up with excitement.

My blood turned to acid.

“Cookie! Gunther! Nate!”

My friends had already gathered close, staying away from most of the others.

“Follow me,” I suggested in a firm but quiet tone.

I ran toward the building, intent on figuring out what the driver was trying to do. It couldn’t be a bombing, not unless they wanted to kill their own people, right?

As I bounded through the tall grass, I thought back to that first day when I saw the plane passing over Fort Myers. It had been flying south, straight as an arrow, and at a level altitude.

My breathing turned to labored panting as I got close to the building.

I found a ten-by-ten structure, half-covered in vines and weeds, with an old metal door on the back side. There were no windows or openings that I could see.

I banged on the locked door. “Hey, I’ve got to use the restroom!”

“Did our driver go in there?” Nate asked when he arrived.

“I can’t hear anything.”

I peeked around the corner. The plane was ten or fifteen seconds from passing overhead. All those people were still standing there. Even the two guards were turned around, facing away from us. If Jodie was making good on her promise to distract the priest, she was earning it at that moment.

“Gunther, we have to get this door open!”

He looked at me weird but understood when I pointed to it. The big man kicked furiously against the metal. I used the moment to step to the side of the structure and look back to the bus.

“Everyone!” I yelled and waved. “Get away from the bus!” I figured if bombs were coming, what better target than a huge yellow bus.

They were all watching the plane, which had now approached close enough for those on the ground to get a sense of the scale of it. It was far larger than a jumbo jet, and it flew a lot lower, making it appear even more grotesque in scale. The dish alone seemed like it could be the size of a small stadium. The wings went tens of yards beyond.

Gunther pounded and grunted, giving me the first sounds I’d ever heard from the guy’s mouth.

The travelers stood there watching the aircraft with great fanfare and applause

“Run for it!” I urged.

None of the people turned to me except for Jodie, since she was at the front of the bus, away from the noisy crowd and had probably been listening for trouble.

“Come on,” I mouthed, hoping she would free herself. If we were bombed by the plane, it would mean Jodie was on our side. I had to try to save her.

Her smile was grim as she shook her head. She tugged at the priest’s arm, but he only looked at the crowd for a second, then leaned over and spoke to her. Once done, they both looked up to the plane again as if they couldn’t be bothered by anyone else.

I was left with an unusual moment of indecision. If Jodie wasn’t going to save herself, could I get over there and bring her back in the time we had left?

Gunther threw himself against the door with all his weight, and the old thing busted clean off its hinges. I’d turned around at the perfect time to watch him go through the entry and collapse inside.

I ran over.

There was a narrow, dank stairway leading straight down.

“We have room for everyone,” I gushed. The ten-by-ten cube of concrete would have been too small for the whole group of passengers, but I’d been planning to at least get the women inside. Now we could get everyone.

Turning back to Jodie, there were but seconds left. The plane was almost directly overhead, and I heard static in my ears, as if a radio’s volume nob was slowly being turned up. I couldn’t put my finger on what wasn’t right about it, but there was something odd going on.

“You guys have to run for it!” I bellowed, not caring if we gave ourselves away to the priest, guards, or anyone else. I wanted Jodie out of there.

But not a single person turned around.

I looked up, suddenly enamored by the giant cross-shape almost straight above us, and the soft static in my ears made me want to enjoy the fly-over, but Cookie grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the open doorway.

“No one listened,” I complained, foggy in the head. “Jodie helped us!”

“And you’re saving us,” she reminded me.

Gunther was already down the steps, and the rest of us tumbled into the stairwell to follow him. When we got about twenty feet down, it became soaked with condensation from the walls, and we splashed into a pool of water at the bottom.

“Go, go, go!” I shoved my friends forward into the darkness, having no idea what was there. I waited for the bombs to hit, sure it would be any second…

We made it to the end of the passage and came into another boxy room about the same size as the one at the top. I had no light, so I had to depend on my hands to feel the walls and get us inside.

“Come on in!” I cried out.

I saw the shadows of three people join me in the underground refuge, and I was certain we’d made it mere seconds before the ground was going to shake with bomb impacts. I searched the cramped space for the driver, assuming he was hiding in there, but I didn’t find anyone else.

Seconds turned into a minute.

Still nothing.

“Did we make it?” Cookie whispered.

I noticed the static noise was gone, but I couldn’t know if that was because we were in the bunker or if the plane had flown past us. I kept us in there for another few minutes, waiting for the earth-shaking explosions, but I finally went up the stairs by myself, listening for the engine drone the whole way. When I peeked outside, I only heard grasshoppers and birds.

Had we broken into the building for nothing?

Would everyone now watch us come out and wonder why we’d acted so rash?

Had I failed to take Jodie’s advice? Had we run away before the right time?

Then I noticed a pile of clothes about ten feet from the door. They belonged to the driver. His green hat could not be mistaken. It was in that moment I knew he hadn’t gone into the bunker at all.

And I also understood that the plane hadn’t dropped bombs…

I peeked around the building, knowing with near certainty what I was going to see when I gazed at the other passengers.

Every person from the bus was now gone, their clothes creating a drift of shirts, dresses, and trousers all along the side of the long, yellow bus. However, standing near the front bumper like it was a pleasant day at the park, Father Mackinaw was by himself, kicking absently at the uniform that formerly belonged to Jodie.

I backed myself around the corner.

“This can’t be happening…” I shuddered.

When my friends came up, I shushed them.

“You can come out now,” the priest called to someone. “It is done.”

My blood froze in place.

“We’ve got big problems,” I whispered.

CHAPTER 34

There were no words to describe how fast my heart pounded against my ribs in that moment. I was absolutely certain that plane had been responsible for the disappearances of all those people from the bus, and, more to the point, it had been the cause of everyone being zapped away in our part of Fort Myers. I was equally certain the lone man in the dark suit was a part of it and now he was calling out to me.

“I don’t have all day,” he said in singsong.

My friends had come up the steps a little bit, waiting for the all-clear. How could I convey the complexity of what I’d witnessed? On one level, I understood it was four against one, and the guy was a priest to boot, but he had a giant people-zapping plane at his disposal. Our best defense was to stay hidden.

I waved them to go back downstairs. At the very least, if he came looking, I would give myself up to save everyone else. It was me trying to play the hero, I had to admit, but after witnessing the death of fifty people in the field, including the double-agent Jodie, I was compelled, no matter the cost, to save the lives of someone, anyone.

They crept into the darkness again.

My breathing was out of control, and I assumed the strange priest was on his way to talk to me face-to-face, but I convinced myself the right call was to calm my nerves before engaging with him. If I said anything that made him think I had friends with me, he might turn that plane around and make sure they were zapped.

“I don’t have all day!” the priest yelled, sounding pissed.

I got my emotions under control for about twenty seconds, but my anxiety spiked when I heard footfalls from nearby.

“Driver, what’s taking you so—” silence for a moment.

I peeked through the broken doorway to find the backside of the priest, about ten feet away. I put my hand over my mouth, desperate to control my wild panting.

Why was I so frightened of him?

The priest kicked the driver’s clothes, much as he had done with Jodie’s. I thought he was about to turn around, so I ducked out of sight.

“Oh, come on. Did you think I wasn’t going to see you?”

My beating heart was a taiko drum against my ears.

In three seconds, he was going to come over and tag me, like a child playing hide-and-seek.

“I can literally see you making waves down there, driver.” He ran his fingers along the brim of his black hat, as if making sure it was still straight.

“Leave me be!” a man yelled back from the edge of the canal.

I almost cried out at hearing the other voice.

It felt as if I’d gotten away from the firing squad.

He’s not here for me.

The priest had gotten close to the edge of the waterway running along the airstrip. “That was a nice touch, ditching your clothes. I almost thought I’d lost you with the other prisoners, but I noticed your skivvies weren’t there.”

“Leave me be,” the driver pleaded.

“How did you survive the collection?” the holy man asked, about as sympathetic as a man inquiring about the weather.

“I dove as deep as I could.”

“We’ll need to work on the penetration, no doubt.” Again, he didn’t sound disappointed or happy to talk with the driver. It was as if the guy was beneath him in every way.

“You cleaned up my buddies?” he asked.

“Those van guys? We can get more from the prison whenever we want. Don’t worry about them.”

“But they were friends…”

“Stop being dramatic,” Father Mackinaw insisted. “We can’t have any loose ends, you know. Come out of there, my son.”

He didn’t come out.

“You knew that safety door would be locked, didn’t you?” the driver accused. “I was a loose end.”

“Oh, come now. Someone forgot to leave it open, that’s all.” Then, after a long sigh, he continued, “Be a good boy and come along. Since you are still here, you can drive me back.”

The driver splashed along the edge of the canal for a few moments, but then he came closer to the bank.

“I’ll be in the bus,” Mackinaw remarked, walking away.

For the next couple of minutes, I could see the driver standing near his clothing, but he wasn’t putting them on. The priest’s footfalls went up the stairs of the bus, giving me confirmation he wasn’t going to spot me, but I didn’t want the driver to see me either, lest he tip off the other man.

“Are you coming or not?” the priest called out.

“It’s over, isn’t it?” the driver asked, facing the water, not the priest. “If you are cleaning up the cleaners…”

“Yes, it is, my son. For your kingdom is fallen, as sure as I’m wearing my hat.” He tittered at his own statement.

“America is fallen,” the driver lamented.

“But don’t worry. Everything is going to be fine. The Sino-UN will be here shortly to oversee.” He’d said the phrase as ‘sinew’ and not sin-oh-you-en, like the guy on the radio. “A new dawn will soon rise.”

“So, why do you need me?”

The priest chuckled. “I don’t like to talk to myself.”

That made the driver turn around in anger. I ducked back, but I was half-certain I’d been spotted. Tension grabbed my middle again as I listened for the big reveal.

“So I’d be a plaything, nothing more?”

“You men of Rome didn’t honestly think you would come here and enjoy the fruits of our labor, did you? This cleaning business was useful, I’ll admit, but now the land is clean. The chores are done. Now, we bask in our leader’s glory.”

“Your leader,” the driver spat.

It took ten or twenty seconds before the priest spoke. “Fine, if you won’t get on this bus, I’ll find a new sock puppet to talk to. I happen to know of one little angel that got away from me, back at the Clownfish Cove stop.”

“But we got everyone,” the half-naked man lamented.

“That Frank character was clever. He left one, trust me.”

I was tempted to storm out of the bunker and race to the bus, but he’d already started the engine. There was no way he was going to give me enough time to run over, force open the doors, and take him out. In those precious seconds, he might call his base and order the plane to return or, worse, order it to Clownfish Cove to get Carmen.

I considered competing directives for a few moments.

“Shall I send the plane for you?” Mackinaw laughed.

“Don’t bother,” he replied.

The driver strolled through the weeds next to the canal and then jumped in. I didn’t know for sure what he was doing until he’d gone into the middle and turned back to the priest.

“You’ll never get all of us, you know,” the guy yelled. “There are going to be survivors, and they’re going to figure out your stupid bunkers, and they’re going to wipe your ass off this whole continent.”

The priest banged the side of the bus, making a surprising amount of noise. “You are nothing! You are flecks of sand to us! You are—”

“Save it! I’ll be one American you can’t erase. I’ll do it myself!”

The driver seemed to look at me, and it was only after he dove under that I realized he’d been saying good-bye. As the priest stomped on the gas and spun the tires on the grass, the swimmer’s feet flopped on the waves, then pushed the man to the bottom.

“What’s going on?” I whispered to myself.

I wanted to run and jump into the canal to save the guy, but I had to wait until the bus had pulled down the lane and was safely out of sight. I kept peeking until I figured I was safe.

“Guys, I’m going to help that driver! He’s drowning. Come on out!”

I raced to the edge of the canal and noted where the bubbles came up at the spot the man had submerged. I kicked off my boots and belly-flopped onto the water before trying to dive.

“The priest is gone!” I shouted, hoping the man heard me. He didn’t need to off himself to prove his point.

My expertise in swimming was poor, to be fair, but I did know how to float around and go underwater. I’d planned to be at the beach a lot, and I had to expect potential lady friends might like to splash around a bit, too, so I’d at least jumped in a few ponds back in Illinois to prepare.

The canal itself wasn’t crystal-clear, it was more of a cloudy green, but where the man had stirred the bottom, it was completely opaque. I tried to feel around for the man in the murk, but I couldn’t stay down for long. Despite splashing around to prep, I hadn’t practiced holding my breath underwater.

When I came up, my friends were at the edge, trying to find the driver from where they were.

“I think he’s over there,” Cookie said, pointing to the east.

I dove down and tried again.

When I came up, she was still pointing. “It’s getting cloudy over there.”

I went under another time, but I was already aching. How many minutes had it been since he’d gone under? It seemed like ten.

When I came up again, no one had any idea where to point me. The cloudy currents had blossomed across the whole end of the canal. Frantic to find him, I dove closer to the bank, trying to peer through the cleaner parts to see where he might have gone.

When another good chunk of time passed, Nate called me to shore.

“Frank, you tried, but I think it is safe to say he’s gone.”

“Yeah, I guess.” I pulled myself into the weeds of the bank.

“People threw all kinds of garbage in the waterways around Miami,” Nate explained, “so these are probably filled with trash, too. Old boats. Old farm stuff. Maybe old planes. He could have gotten snagged onto something down there, which will make it impossible to ever find him without a proper search team.”

I couldn’t tell if any of those things were true. I hadn’t done more than stand at the edge of the canals since I’d moved into my new home, so I had no frame of reference for junk disposal.

However, content as I was that I’d done my best to rescue the guy, I’d been harboring the thought of another rescue, of Carmen. The only reason I hadn’t gone straight to that problem was that I didn’t want to have the man’s suicide on my hands. As it was, I’d done everything possible to save him.

I crawled over to my boots and started to put them on.

“Guys, you heard what he said. He knows Carmen was hiding back at Clownfish.”

“How could he have known that?”

“I have no idea, but there is no way I’m going to let that creepy dude get anywhere close to her.”

Nate pointed to the lone van. “You want me to bring that around for you?”

“Yeah,” I said, lacing boot number two. “I think we can beat an old school bus across town.”

But I left nothing to chance. Anyone with access to technology advanced enough to erase the whole state of Florida demanded a little respect. The driver knew more than he was letting on, and he’d chosen a one-way ticket to Davy Jones’s Locker rather than face the priest.

I would never underestimate him again.

CHAPTER 35

Nate brought the van over, but he scooted to the passenger seat, so I could drive. We shot down the dusty lane heading for the main north-south road that ran along the middle of the island. I turned left on the pavement and got us going as fast as the old machine would let us.

We soon came to where the people had been standing along the roadside to watch us head toward the airport. I’d been holding a sliver of hope that whatever spared the priest had also spared the local residents, but the piles of clothes all over the roadway immediately confirmed they’d been struck down.

“The black lines on the map showed the flight of that big zapper plane,” I commented to my friends. “It was never going to be a rescue.”

The van had three rows of seating, and Gunther sat in the middle row, with his head down.

“Is this what happened while I was at the beach?” Cookie peeped from the back row.

“I believe this confirms it,” I said over my shoulder.

I headed for the intersection where we would find the highway to the mainland, but I noticed an odd-colored car parked on the driveway of a house one street over.

We all leaned into the sudden right turn.

“This is the wrong way,” Nate remarked.

“I know. I’m going to check that out.”

I pointed to where I was going, then I stopped in the grass next to my target. One benefit of an EMP was that it brought out all the garage queens that collectors and enthusiasts had been hoarding over the past few decades. The owner of the jet-black Caprice Classic had parked his masterpiece on his driveway, perhaps intending to drive it to do some chores. When I opened the driver’s door, I found the keys already in the ignition. There was also a driver…

I was in a rush, so I gently picked up the basketball shorts and T-shirt and set them in the grass next to the car. I also grabbed the man’s shoes, necklaces, and watch and put them all on the shirt.

My friends had transferred vehicles by the time I was done.

“There was more room in the van,” Cookie said as she settled into the back seat.

“Right now, we don’t need room,” I replied, cranking over the motor. I didn’t use the word masterpiece lightly, but the dual quad-carb scoop stuck up through the hood, announcing to the world that this car was built for one purpose. When I heard the tune of the motor, I knew the word ‘masterpiece’ was appropriate. “We need speed.”

I stomped on the accelerator, savoring the moment. The mechanical roar of the tweaked-out engine sent shivers up my spine and injected adrenaline directly to the part of my brain that never stopped being a 16-year-old driver. Even the smell of gasoline was now a part of it. This was peak hotrod, at least for today.

“Everyone hang on,” I said, backing out, alternately spanking the gas to burn a little carbon and then letting off to hear her purr.

“I’ll go ahead and buckle in,” Nate laughed.

I drove slowly to get off the side street and onto the main strip. The classic car had a manual transmission, giving me an even more pleasurable experience working through the smooth gears. I didn’t need third gear until we were on the main highway leading off the island. I hit fifth once we were on the bridge.

Even Cookie strapped in as we ripped along the causeway.

The only time I slowed was when we passed by a number of Cleaner vans on the side of the highway, where we’d passed them on the way in. Now there were a good number of black uniforms on the pavement, blowing around in the breeze. I was glad they were no longer a threat, but it concerned me that the group in charge of that plane no longer needed those men and believed they were safe enough to betray them.

“Guys, we’re going to catch up to that priest if we keep going this way.” I didn’t have the map with me, it was sitting on a table in my garage, but I could visualize part of it. “Isn’t there a street that goes all the way up and down the coast, like Bayside but closer to the water?”

“I don’t think any of us live around here,” Nate laughed. “I know I sure don’t. Gunther doesn’t, either.”

Cookie did the “ooh-ooh ah-ah” thing to get my attention. “I recognize that street! Turn left at 40th!”

“Thanks for that,” I said .

“It’s the only street I know, besides my own. I haven’t lived around here for very long.”

“That makes two of us,” I answered.

The engine sounded like angels singing as I gripped it and ripped it to the far end of the speedometer. It was loud enough that we had to speak up to hear each other, but not so loud that I needed earplugs. It was a Goldilocks motor, built ‘just right.’

We’d gone several miles past dead cars, blowing clothing, and empty streets, when Gunther batted me to get my attention.

“Turn right, Frank,” Cookie interpreted.

I shoved on the brakes and let the car slide at an angle before reaching the corner, hitting the gas, and doing a messy power-slide around the bend, like I was in a Fast and Furious movie.

“We’re on Poseidon,” I announced.

As we shot east toward my home, I was totally confident we’d gotten in front of Father Mackinaw, but now I imagined him coming up Bayside Road at that same moment. If I crossed in front of him and sped for home, he might get on the horn to his pilot friends.

As soon as I was able, I turned left.

“Wait, why this way?” Nate complained. “Your place is—”

“I know,” I cut him off.

I weaved around some turns, intending to go north, then east, but I passed a large house with a huge fenced-in yard that made me skid to a stop.

“Oof!” Nate yelped as he lunged toward the dashboard, gripped by his seatbelt.

Everyone gasped as if I’d narrowly avoided an accident, but I left the engine running in the middle of an empty street, leading them to question the whole thing.

“Why’d you stop?” Cookie asked from the back.

I opened my door and stood looking over the top of the Caprice toward a corner house on the right side of the block. “Somone has been very busy,” I announced.

The huge house was the last lot on a side street. The sprawling back yard was sideways to us, so we could see the whole thing. The grassy yard was entirely enclosed with a four-foot black ornamental fence. The metal bars were spaced far enough apart I could easily see through the slats. Inside, running and playing, was nearly a hundred dogs of every size, shape, and color.

Nate opened his door and stood opposite me. He looked at the chaos of the yard, then gave me a side-eye glance.

“Is this where you’ve been disappearing to?” I pressed.

“Frank, I know you wanted my focus on our street, but these dogs needed my help. They were trapped in their houses without food or water. I guess I felt sorry for them.”

I didn’t need a psych degree to figure out what was going on. He’d been trapped in the police car, headed to prison, so he would naturally have empathy for the only residents left alive in our surrounding area. I’d been so consumed with helping my fellow humans that I’d given little thought to the animals.

There were empty bags of dog chow blowing around on the side of the house, and I figured he’d been sneaking over here on his bike to pour the feed over the fence, then hurry back to our street.

“This is actually a pretty cool thing to do for them,” I allowed.

“You aren’t mad?” he tested.

“I don’t like surprises,” I answered. As much as I respected what he’d done, and I was happy to see the playful animals having fun out there, I didn’t want to encourage or support actions done behind the backs of his fellow survivors. “No more, okay?”

“Are you going to make me let them go?”

I wondered how long we could feed that many dogs.

“I’m not going to make you do anything, Nate. This is your project. However, now that the rest of us know about it, maybe we can work together.”

He brightened.

“Right now,” I continued, “we’ve got to get to Carmen.”

We got back in the car, and I shredded the tires to make up time.

“Do you have any cats?” Cookie asked from the back.

Nate turned around. “A bunch, yeah. I keep them inside the house.”

I groaned, thinking of what a mess we might find in there. I also thought of Carmen and her living room of cat art. When I’d discovered the room, I’d absently thought about cats and dogs trapped around the city, but I’d put that task on the back burner. I was proud of Nate for making it a priority, and I figured Carmen would be glad, too, given her fondness for felines.

If only we could reach her.

My friends endured several erratic turns over the next sixty seconds until I skidded to a stop in front of a house that was almost the last one before Bayside. When they figured out where we were, I pointed to the tunnel. “You guys already have wet feet, so what’s a little more?”

We had no weapons, so we traveled light. My idea was to park the Caprice at the canal tunnel closest to the streets in my subdivision—the same one Nate had used to hide himself. We would go under the highway and stay hidden from anyone driving our way. From there, we could run along the edge of the woods and come to my house from the back.

Everything went according to the hasty plan drawn in my head until we passed Barracuda Bay. The labored engine of the school bus was clear as could be as it rolled closer to my street. If we didn’t move faster, it was going to beat us there by a good margin.

I was already panting from the exertion.

“Come on!” I encouraged.

I arrived behind my house as the bus rolled around the circle. Father Mackinaw drove like he was taking his time, meaning, I hoped, that he didn’t suspect we were already there.

“I hate to do it, but we have to split up. See if you can find Carmen before he does. If you do, get her into the woods and keep her safe. We’ll link up when he’s gone…”

“He’s just one guy,” Nate suggested. “Why don’t we take him out, or at least wave a gun in his face and tell him to get lost? All his guards are gone, right?”

“I think he still outguns us, no matter what we have in our garages. He somehow survived the plane attack when everyone else disappeared and he’s obviously with them, so we’re not going to underestimate him, okay? If you can get out and get safe, do it.”

Gunther took Cookie to my left. Nate went to my right.

I looked at the back of my house and regretted what I had to do next. While the bus was coming to a stop, I grabbed one of my patio chairs and slammed it against the thick hurricane glass of my sliding door. It crunched against the glass, cracking a little, but that was about it.

Looking back at my friends, I lined up another swing.

The chair made solid contact with the glass, but again, it barely cracked a small section of the giant pane.

“Hurricane glass is a bitch,” Nate said matter-of-factly. “I’ve seen stuff like this down in Miami a bunch. They are made to withstand impacts from flying boards in hundred-mile-per-hour winds. Not even Gunther could get through without the right tools.”

The big guy came forward as if accepting a challenge.

I held him back. “No, he’s right. There’s no time. I’ve got to go around.”

We heard the priest yell from the street.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are!” Mackinaw taunted. This time, he wasn’t talking about me. He’d come here to get Carmen. “I won’t hurt you, I promise.”

“Don’t trust him, Carmen,” I whispered, hoping the good vibes would carry over to her.

“I’m here to take you to the others,” he cooed.

I ran alongside my house, intending to hurry across the driveway and go through the front door to retrieve a gun. A million thoughts crossed my mind on the way. Could I shoot the guy in cold blood? Wasn’t he clearly an enemy, thus I could skip the moral dilemmas? If he found Carmen before I could arm up, we’d have a hostage situation. All the while, I had to remind myself he came armed with a mega-plane that could erase cities.

I glanced over as I ran across the driveway. My garage doors were still closed from our earlier preparations to defend the street, so I had to continue walking.

The bus was parked off the circle, in front of Levar’s house. Father Mackinaw stood in front of Luke’s two-story. As I walked fast, I caught sight of a brown ball of fur striding up to him.

Mackinaw looked down at Mr. Puppers. “There you are, little one. I knew you’d still be here when I got back. Would you like to come on a nice bus ride, maybe be a nice dinner for me?”

I did a double-take. Had he come back for my dog?

The priest knelt on one knee and tried to coax the golden the last five feet toward him. Something in me snapped. It was bad enough wiping out an entire island but taking a man’s dog was simply rubbing salt in the wound.

I practically kicked my own door down, not caring about making noise, and grabbed the H&K rifle left in the front room from when Gunther was on lookout.

Now armed, I hurried outside. “Get away from my dog!”

The priest jumped up and held his hat, as if I’d successfully startled him, but he seemed to recover in moments. He didn’t fall back or cower at the sight of a guy stomping toward him with a huge rifle in his hands.

Mr. Puppers immediately ran to me and fell into my orbit.

“You?” he asked with more than mild curiosity. “Frank, right? You were Jodie’s friend.”

He knew exactly who I was.

“That’s my name.”

He blinked half a dozen times, as if he’d been hit with too much information. Finally, his eyes steadied and he glared at me. “You were with my driver in the water…”

“Jodie helped me get away.” I didn’t feel it necessary to explain where I’d been or how I’d survived.

“That explains why she was so friendly to me.” He brushed the air, as if to send me away from him. “No matter. I know where you live.”

“Is that a threat? Are you going to bring one of your planes to wipe me out?” I was careful not to say ‘we,’ so as to not endanger my friends. I knew they had to be hidden, listening.

“The time of cleansing is over. The angels of collection are flying to other places, even now, but I do have friends in low places. Friends who can do a bit more cleaning…”

I got right up next to him, mad enough to threaten him with my bare hands instead of the rifle. “You tell me right this second what is going on. Who invaded my country? Who are you people?”

His reaction wasn’t what I expected. Instead of facing me and answering questions to save his life, he turned and headed back to his bus.

“Hey, I’m talking to you!” I called out.

“And I’m not talking to you,” he said over his shoulder.

I didn’t chase. There was something about the man that made me glad to put some distance between us. He was one unarmed priest with a slow-moving school bus as his escape vehicle. There was no way he could truly get away from me. Besides, the distance gave me a few moments to consider my options. If he had no fear of being choked, beaten, or shot, what could I hold over him?

“You can’t win, you know,” he droned on. “If you wring my neck or blow my head off, my friends will be here to clean up the mess within the hour. If you let me go, I’ll be able to tell my friends exactly where you are. Then, what happens?”

“Checkmate,” I said, mostly to myself.

He stopped when he’d gotten close to the bus. “That’s right. Do I look like I fear nobodies like you? Isn’t it clear by now? You have already lost, Frank. The sad part is you don’t even know what that means. It isn’t in your vocabulary, is it?”

My silence was his answer.

“But, as it so happens, I am anxious to avoid any death this morning. If you would be open to a deal, giving you a little more time in this blasted community, I have a proposal.”

I reached down and patted Mr. P on the head.

“If your deal has anything whatsoever to do with my dog, I’m going to take your whole head off with my bare hands.”

He chuckled like I’d said a funny joke at a tea party.

“Oh, no, that’s too much. You couldn’t have thought I was here for this mangy thing?”

“I heard you say you wanted my dog…”

“That was idle chatter,” he said defensively. “I came here for the missing woman…”

I fought to keep my face and words neutral. I’d come back home expecting to rescue Carmen, but I’d been holding out hope he’d come for the dog. “I don’t know of any missing woman.”

He sighed heavily. “She lives in that house right there.”

The priest pointed to Carmen’s empty home. For all I knew, Carmen was in there, watching, but I wasn’t going to gamble on it.

“I still don’t know who you are talking about,” I lied.

“Carmen Perez,” he snapped. “We missed her on the first sweep. I’m here to collect her.”

“If I knew this…Carmen…what do you want me to do about it?”

“Find her. Tell me where she is. I’ll give you twenty-four hours. If you can produce her—safely, I must insist—then I’ll give you another twenty-four hours of respite from our remaining Cleaners.”

“To what end? Why do you need her? Why let us stick around? What is this all about?” I hated giving him the satisfaction of asking the questions, but there was no hiding the fact I was behind the information curve on this one.

“I suppose I owe you a little more for not hurting me. We have a list. She is on that list. The end.”

“Not helpful,” I said, soured on the whole discussion. “I’m not her keeper, anyway. If she’s hiding, she doesn’t want to be found. You don’t strike me as someone my friends need to know better than they already do. No offense.”

“None taken. All I can ask is you will extend the invitation. If she won’t meet me, then that will tell you something, as it will tell me.”

First, Mr. Puppers, then Carmen. My resistance to his offer was nearing maximum.

“You know, Father, I don’t think there is anything you could say or do that would make me trust you enough to even mention that you were looking for her…”

The priest stood next to the bus, not close enough to board but close enough to rest his shoulder against the side. It looked as if he was trying to appear relaxed and in charge, but I could tell I’d struck a nerve by being my usual difficult self.

“You aren’t going to let me drive away, are you,” he stated dryly, calm and professional. “You have friends out there, watching your back, don’t you.”

I tapped my H&K, answering his questions.

“You have a way with words, my son,” he said, almost impressed.

“Don’t call me your son, asshole,” I barked.

He put up his hands in mock surrender.

“While I’ve got you, maybe I should detain you for a bit,” I commented, getting an inspiration. The guy was obviously a boss of some kind, so that had to be worth something. “I can trade you to get an actual flight out of here.”

I took a step closer to bolster my threat. He was about fifty feet away, still a distance that would be short work for my precision rifle.

He slapped the side of the bus in mock laughter. “Frank, you have no idea how far you are from the front lines. They aren’t that way, or that way, or that way.” He pointed to his sides and front, before pointing straight up. “They are that way.”

“The planes,” I conceded.

He nodded. “World War III is already over. Your entire nation put up a few hours of real resistance, but then they—” He made the ‘poof’ gesture with both hands. “Now my people are already on to the next war, can’t you see?”

“War? Killing? You seem to revel in violence instead of helping the weak, sick, and lost. What twisted seminary ever made you a priest, anyway?”

He smirked. “In war, morality can be a shepherd or a sheep. My people tend the flocks and shear those sheep. It is the natural order of the strong over the weak.”

“You seem to be the wolves.”

“This has been a pleasant conversation,” he announced, looking to the building clouds above, “but I can see you are not going to be reasonable about this.”

Our meeting was over.

“You’ve shown me who you are.” I aimed my rifle, certain I was within my rights to take him out to defend my street, and my friend Carmen. He’d threatened her, me, my dog, and everyone left alive on my block. To capture him would be foolish, perhaps impossible. To let him go would be even worse. The hard decision was to take him out and let the chips fall.

Mackinaw popped open the side of the bus.

“I can’t let myself be captured, my son.”

He pulled a lever inside the compartment and gripped the handle of the explosive device, the same one Jodie had threatened to use to get me on the bus. The bomb was primed, waiting for him to pull it down.

“Whoa!” I exhaled.

I ran the numbers in my head. I could easily shoot him, and almost certainly hit him, but unless I somehow shot off the hand holding the trigger, it would come to no good.

I held up my rifle and my other hand, to show I wasn’t going to try to shoot him. If I stalled him, maybe I could figure out…

“It’s a shame you won’t live to see what comes next,” he said, reasonable in his tone. “The fleet of Rapture angels has moved on to Europe and Asia. Everyone on Earth is being repositioned, as we intended.”

“Repositioned? You mean they aren’t dead?”

I forced myself to shift my feet, inconspicuously, to step back a pace.

He continued to hold the handle.

“Your puny minds have no capacity to understand what is going on. You have no idea how insignificant you are in the grand scheme of our planning.”

“You said Rapture angels. Is this how the Rapture happens?”

The priest laughed.

“What?” I pressed.

“What better way to get people to surrender their initiative than trick them into believing God swooped by and snatched them up to Heaven? For the survivors, including the military, they sat by and watched helplessly as my fellow clergymen assured them all was going to be alright…if only they joined us at the evacuation points.”

“You killed all the survivors,” I accused. “Why the hell would—”

“We didn’t kill them,” he interrupted.

“You didn’t?” I was shocked.

His smile turned wicked. The priest took off his hat and let it fall to the ground.

I took another step back, ready to run.

“If I told you where they went, I’d have to kill you,” he sneered. “Oh wait, I guess you are about to die…”

“Where are they?” I whispered, shocked to my core that there was a chance all these neighbors were still alive.

“They are in Hell,” he cracked up, “the same place where you’re going!”

It happened in the snap of a finger.

A bright light rose from the middle of the bus.

I veered behind the big vehicle and took several steps running—

Hot air pushed us forward.

Mr. Puppers ran, too.

“I hope I don’t go to Hell,” I said, disappointed it was going to be my last thought. Still, in war, sacrifices had to be made. The dangerous priest would die, so maybe my friends would get to live.

Oh, I did have a thought after my last thought.

Dogs didn’t go to Hell, did they? I didn’t want my four-legged friend to go there with me, should that be my fate.

I reached down and grabbed his furry coat.

And drew him to my chest.

CHAPTER 36

I woke up on my back, stirred awake by a knock-knock sound on a hollow door. At first, I thought I was between my house and Mr. Drummond’s place, but there was no smoke or fumes swirling above me. The nighttime sky was as brilliant and clear as I’d ever seen it, with stars from one end of the horizon to the other.

“Mr. Puppers?” I called out.

Funny that I thought of the dog first. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about my friends, I prayed that they’d survived the bomb, but the pup represented innocence. He never saw what was coming, and he didn’t deserve to die for simply being a loving companion to those of us he’d found on his street after his family disappeared…

When I sat up, my brain couldn’t register what my eyes reported.

I was on the edge of a cliff, looking over a turbulent sea. It was emerald-green water out to the horizon, but flashes of light constantly blazed under the surface, as if an army of laser-wielding soldiers were having a huge battle down there.

“What the—”

I tried to speak, but I inhaled dirt and coughed.

When I opened my eyes, I was waking up for real. This time, as expected, I was between the houses, but on my face. I was using a bare patch of dry soil as my pillow.

My ears buzzed.

Zips of pain ran throughout my body, as if reporting in.

Right arm, present, but sore.

Left leg, injured, but present. Oh, and sore.

Stomach, present—

With my cat-like reflexes, I hopped on my elbows and jettisoned the little that was in my stomach.

Stomach, present, now empty.

“Oh, God, I can’t believe I’m alive.” Acrid fumes of gasoline and metal burned my nose. Despite my pain and offended gut, I was still breathing. “And, God, thank you for helping me survive that.”

No shame in thanking a higher power for what, to me, seemed like a miracle. I wasn’t in Hell, anyway, unless it was a place that looked exactly like my block.

Tapping into my reserves of strength, I pushed myself onto one knee, steadying my shaky body by holding the stucco wall of my garage. The first thing I heard was the crackle of fire, which made me finally look to the street.

“Wow.”

I’d been living through the apocalypse, but now it had found my address and paid a personal visit to Clownfish Cove. I had no idea what wizardry had gone into making that bomb, but the bus was entirely gone, with no pieces larger than a milk jug lying outside of a bus-sized crater in the street.

All the houses on the block were technically still standing, but the fronts had been pulverized by flying debris and were missing their front windows, pieces of their roof, and the stucco exterior was bare cinderblock where the explosion had touched it.

I didn’t dare get up to see what the front of my house looked like. Not yet. Instead, I forced myself to my feet and retreated behind my house. I stumbled along the backside of Drummond’s place, hoping to find one of my friends.

“Nate!” I yelled.

There was no point in being quiet. The bomb blast would alert all of Central Florida that people had been hiding on the street. I patted my pocket to confirm I still had my waterlogged notepad. The second I found my friends, I needed to plan what to do next. Step one was going to be moving our food and guns and…

“Frank!” the boy called out the second he saw me come around to the back of Luke’s home. He was covered by black soot, and his unruly hair was now wilder than the deepest, darkest jungle, but he seemed otherwise unharmed.

We hugged briefly before I pushed him back. “I’ve got to head over there, to check on the others.”

“Those two were in Trevor’s place, I think. I saw them crossing between the houses as you were talking to that creepy dude.”

“Okay, thanks.”

I took the long way around, going behind my house, behind Carmen’s house, and then to the back of Trevor’s big estate. A piece of bus had gone straight through his home and punched out the rear doors, making it easy for me to go inside. At the same time, my heart sputtered a few moments when I saw the condition of the place.

“Cookie?” I said, almost at a whisper. Then, realizing she might be hurt, I said it a lot louder. “Cookie!”

“We’re up here!” she yelled.

I ran up the stairs to find her tending to Gunther, who appeared to be—

“Is he okay?”

Cookie looked up, dirty tears on her cheeks. “I thought he was dead, Frank. This is all my fault!”

She had indeed started the chain of events leading to this, but not by choice. We’d all been unwilling front-line participants in this new kind of apocalyptic warfare. I wanted to console her, but there was a more pressing issue.

“Is he?” I asked as firmly and gently as I could.

She shook her head. “No, that shockwave pushed him right out the door and into the wall. He’s breathing and everything, and I don’t see any blood…”

The big man had put a divot in the drywall. He did look alright, but he was going to have a terrible hangover.

I peeked out the upstairs window where they’d been watching the street. The elevated view gave me a better vantage point to look at the devastation, and I quickly figured out where the bulk of the bus had gone. The entire undercarriage had bounced over the parked cars in front of Trevor’s house and now lay smoldering in the front yard. Large sheets of yellow metal were scattered across the rooftops.

One of the seats was burning on the far side of the canal.

“We’re lucky to be alive,” I said, understatement of the year.

“He saved us by making me stay back,” Cookie suggested. “I wanted to go out there and back you up, Frank, but Gunther said I had to trust what you were doing.”

“He talked?” I exclaimed.

“No. What I mean is that he physically held me from going, then I read his expression.” She chuckled a bit, as if remembering the moment.

“Smart guy,” I said, heading back down the stairs.

“Where you going?”

“I have two more residents to find.”

“Carmen and…”

“Mr. Puppers, of course.”

“Oh, right. I hope he wasn’t close to that blast…”

“Me, too.”

I hurried out the ruined back door, wondering how we were going to secure all these damaged houses.

“Mr. Puppers!” I yelled toward the forest. If he was out with the dying birds, I would have expected to see—

I couldn’t believe it.

The dog was right out back.

I raced to him and slid on the ground as I put my arms around his neck. He nuzzled me in return, as if to tell me thanks for finding him. I gave him some ear scratches, then soon looked around. “What are you doing out here?”

It didn’t escape my notice that he, like all the birds, seemed to be staying under the cover of the tree canopy. The local animals all seemed to have a sixth-sense about what was going to happen when the plane flew overhead—the birds, the manatees, the alligators, and now my dog.

“I don’t suppose you know where Carmen is?”

His ears perked up.

“Yeah, Carmen. Do you know where she is?” I’d said it as a throwaway statement, since she was next on my list to find, but it struck me by his recognition that maybe he could track her down like a bloodhound. Was that a skill all dogs had, to some extent?

We both stood up.

“Go find Carmen,” I insisted.

He looked toward the houses, which was where I expected to go, but then he turned around and trotted deeper into the flock of dead and dying birds.

“That way?” I asked with disappointment.

He looked back at me for a moment. ‘Hey, mate, you asked me, so just follow and learn.’

“I’m following,” I assured him.

Our walk in the woods gave me time to examine up close what the birds had done to the place. Bird poop was everywhere now, coating the ground and low branches as far as I could see. Lots of birds were dead, and, to my surprise, other birds were pecking at their corpses, creating a macabre seen of a million turkey dinners set on top of the world’s biggest open-air toilet.

At first, I thought the god-awful stink was coming from the nightmare on the ground, but I soon recognized a new and more powerful stench drifting on the air.

Mr. Puppers kept us going straight into it.

“Please don’t tell me there’s a flood control pit in my back yard,” I said to myself.

The dog looked back and halted. I didn’t talk for him, but I could read his mind.

“Yeah, keep going if you know where Carmen is…”

He turned and kept on.

We’d walked maybe another hundred yards when I saw a rise in the grotesque white floor of the woodland landscape. Unusual bumps in the ground did capture attention in the otherwise flat terrain of this area of Florida, and the rest of the forest seemed absolutely smooth, so this one really had me confused.

“What is it, boy?” I whispered.

The stink was now unbearable, almost to the point of saturating me with the grim humidity of the normal day. It was somehow worse than the smell of death wafting off the piles of dead birds.

My stomach was already uneasy, but now it was on tumble cycle. I had to clench my jaw, convincing myself not to hurl.

Mr. P stopped and seemed to lose the thread.

“Where’s Carmen?” I asked, begging him to turn in another direction to follow her trail.

He whined a bit, which was a first, but then he kept walking toward the abyss…

“I promise you a whole box of Pop-Tarts if you find her.”

It was the least I could offer for where we were headed.

Unlike the other tunnels that were square holes set flat in the ground, this one was a black square set on the side of an angled mound. The lid was angled, too, and it had slid to the right as I approached. As we walked up to it, I almost had to turn my head to avoid being blasted by the fumes blowing from inside.

“Don’t tell me she’s in there,” I complained a bit, mimicking the dog’s reluctance to go closer.

The hole was about fifteen feet square and was the start of a ramp going down the sloped shaft. There were no trees in front of the opening, suggesting vehicles, even large ones, could access the entrance. The sewer or flood control department certainly had to access this hatch from time to time.

The pup walked up to the edge of the concrete interior, but then he sat down. When I arrived and was able to get a good look into the darkness down the slope, I was blown away by who I saw.

“Carmen!” I called out.

“Help!” a weak voice croaked in return.

My friend was lying in the corner where the floor and wall met, on the left side of the tunnel. She was about ten feet down, with her arms sprawled ahead of her.

“Don’t come down!” she pleaded.

I stopped where I was.

“It’s like ice,” she coughed.

Now I got a better look at the structure. It was wet inside, as one would expect of a flood control device, but there was a slick, green mossy slime on the bottom, and I could easily see how a person could slide all the way into the darkness…

A shiver kneaded my spine from bottom to top.

“Thanks,” I said. She was so close, but I could see how she’d been clawing her way up the side, where the slime didn’t seem to be as thick.

Torn between a million possibilities, I decided to back off.

“I’ll be right back. Hold on.”

I ran into the woods and found a small sapling. Using my pocketknife, I cut the trunk at the ground and let it tip over. It was about ten feet tall, enough, I hoped, to rescue my friend.

When I dragged it back and set it on the edge, I had to tell Carmen what was coming, so I didn’t accidentally push her backward.

I desperately wanted to know what was down there.

How did she end up there?

How long had she been climbing?

But the only thing that mattered was that last ten feet.

“Hey, I’m dropping a branch to you. If you grab on, I’ll pull you up.”

“I’ll try,” she wheezed.

She didn’t sound herself, but we were all holding our noses to endure the stench.

I braced myself to avoid falling into the well, then slid the tree down. When I brushed the top against her left hand, she clasped on.

“Take your time,” I cautioned. “I’ve got you.”

She took half a minute to claw her way up about half the tree, and once I was certain she had a solid grip, I pulled her the rest of the way out, to save her the effort. Mr. Puppers ran in circles, no doubt pleased he’d brought me to her. I had to admit, if that dog could follow Carmen’s scent into this miasma of foul odors, he was a world-champion bloodhound in my book.

When she got to the cusp, I noticed she’d changed into a white outfit. Much of it was covered in green slime, as one would expect from crawling out of a sewer. I didn’t think much of it until she got more in the light, and I noticed her hair was a different color, and much shorter. When she looked up, I saw it wasn’t even the same face.

“You’re not Carmen,” I deadpanned.

She shook her filthy head.

“I’m Doctor Faith Sinclair. I need to get to the police. There’s been a series of murders down below. Seven, at least.”

“That’s it?” I asked, admittedly a little insensitive.

“Yeah, they were children!”

“Well, up here, I’ve seen about a million deaths in the past week,” I said dryly.

She watched me for a moment, perhaps taking note that I was covered in soot and my clothes were battered and torn.

“What the heck happened up here?”

“You don’t know? How long have you been down there?”

She looked at her wrist but shrugged. “My watch stopped working, but I do feel like I’ve been down there for an eternity. What day is it?”

“Sunday, I think.”

“The last day I remember was Monday. This can’t be right. That was…six days ago?” I read no deception on her face. She was stunned.

“Last Monday is when it happened…”

I got her safely out of the pit and sat back on my bottom next to her. Beyond, in the dark pit, the stench continued to blow in my face. There was no place on earth I wanted to go less than down there, but Mr. Puppers had brought us here for a reason.

Carmen was down there.

I stood up and helped her to her feet. She was wearing a tattered lab coat, and her ‘Dr. Faith Sinclair, S.N.A.K.E.,’ nametag was covered in green muck.

“What happened last Monday?” she whispered.

“A week ago, I thought I knew. An EMP went off, but not in the way I thought it would. It showed up as a burst of blue energy from over the horizon. Then, people disappeared when a giant plane flew overhead. I saw it happen a second time earlier this morning. I thought everyone was dead, but now…” I scratched my head, thinking of my last interaction with Mackinaw. “A priest told me the people who disappeared didn’t die, but they were moved, ‘repositioned’ is the word he used.”

“A priest?” she asked.

“Yeah, a weird guy named Father Mackinaw. He’s been leading things around here, I guess, mopping up those few of us left alive.”

“This can’t be a coincidence. There was a priest supervising things down there. I saw people disappear, too. The ones who I thought were murdered. He called someone when the children went away, as if that’s what he’d been waiting for. It’s clear he knew a lot more than he was willing to share with me or my team.”

“I don’t think my guy was really a priest,” I chuckled. “He probably got his uniform from central casting…”

“Yeah, I don’t think mine was legit, either,” she replied, before letting her eyes shut for a few moments.

“Look, after what you’ve been through, you could probably use a hot meal and a place to lie down, and it just so happens I have a working barbeque grill. Why don’t we go back and get you cleaned up, huh?”

“And you’ll help me find the police?” she asked with hope.

“Yeah, if I can, we’ll find the police.” I had a feeling there were no police left in all of Fort Myers, but I couldn’t be certain, so I didn’t burst her balloon.

“That sounds good.”

I glanced behind her. “I lost a friend. Did you see anyone going down while you were coming up? I’m thinking she might have slipped…”

“Honestly, a train could have passed, and I wouldn’t have heard or seen it. It was totally dark down there, with lots of wind and trickling water. As far as I know, no, there is no one alive in this part of the tunnel.”

Mr. Puppers nudged my leg, wanting to leave.

‘Oi, Mate, I didn’t find Carmen, but is this other lady worth a Pop-Tart? Should we go home and eat before searching some more?’

I gave him a scratch. Finding Carmen was number one on my to-do list, but there was no way I would go down there without learning everything the woman knew about the hole in the ground. Mr. Puppers was right… We would have to come back and try again.

I took Faith’s hand to show her the way.

“Me and my dog will come back later. For now, let’s get you back to Clownfish Cove. It looks like we both have a story to tell.”

###

This is the first book of the Build A Better Apocalypse series.

Thank you for reading this new EMP adventure. I love writing about Frank Douglas, which is why I had to start a new series with him at the center of the action. I hope these books will help answer some of the lingering questions that have been lurking in my books since the day I started writing in 2015.

Please leave a review, so I know you want more in this series. The next book should be on sale when you read this, or shortly thereafter.

I have a short follow-up author note below.

This book is a work of fiction.

All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

Build A Better Apocalypse (and what happens within / characters / situations / worlds)
are Copyright (c) 2025 by E.E. Isherwood

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of E.E. Isherwood

Kindle Version 1.00

Cover by Covers by Christian

Editing services provided by Mia at LKJ Books

AUTHOR NOTES

Written April 11, 2025

Thank you for reading this first novel in an alternate history of Clownfish Cove. Ever since my first book, Since the Sirens (2015), I’ve been fascinated by the evolution of technology, artificial intelligence, and military applications of futuristic weapons. All my books seem to touch on the use of drones, computer systems, and a mysterious intelligence deep underground.

Current (2025) news illustrates how much of this is coming to real life, with drone warfare in Ukraine, the dawn of artificial superintelligence, and endless conspiracies revealed by government whistleblowers as being true. Is it difficult to imagine trillions of dollars stolen from budgets and used to build advanced weapons, quantum computers, or secretive bases? Not for me.

It has been ten years since I first began telling these stories, and with each new book series I put out, there were more and more questions that refused to be answered about the root causes of the fall of civilization. At first, these felt more like rounding errors, without serious weight, but over time they have added up. Now, there is a multiverse of “EE Isherwood” questions I feel compelled to explore, so they all tie together as one giant series of series.

A giga-series, if you will.

To get it done, I pulled out the big guns. Frank Douglas is the perfect man for the job, and Clownfish Cove is the perfect place to begin his journey. Over the course of this book series, I would expect him to discover key mysteries seeded into my previous series, such as End Days, Since the Sirens, Minus America, and more. He’ll have many friends and neighbors helping him along the way, some familiar, some new.

I hope you’ll join me for the ride. Like many good post-apocalyptic adventures, it begins with a grid-killing EMP attack, but as he explores the collapsing city in future volumes, he will begin to see a much larger battle going on around him. One that eventually could consume the entire planet…

Let THE END begin!

Thanks again for reading my books.

That’s all for now.

EE

BACK MATTER

Website

My updated website now has links to my back catalog on Amazon, so you can see all of them on one easy-to-read page. I’ve also got maps of my books, links to my free books, and you can sign up for my newsletter.

Back Catalog at a Glance

Neighborhood Watch – Frank’s retirement starts and stops on the day of the EMP. Now, his new job is keeping the neighbors on his street alive as the world collapses around them. Ten books.

1000 Miles of Bad Road – Joey starts the end of the world 1000 miles from his family, but he is lucky. He has the only working car on the highway. Sadly, everyone he meets is going to want to steal it. Five books.

Minus America – What would happen if everyone in the US vanished in a flash? Every trucker. Every housewife. Every police officer. How would you survive in an empty land? Who would come to take it? Five-book boxset.

End Days (co-written with Craig Martelle) – A post-apocalyptic adventure about a father and son on opposite ends of a continent ravaged by a failed science experiment. Six-book boxset.

Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse – A teen boy must keep his great-grandma alive to find the cure to the zombie plague, but what if the only people immune are those over 100? Eight books.

Impact – A post-apocalyptic thriller about an asteroid slamming across the heartland of America. Six books.