Epoch Earth; the Great Glitch Page 16

  I’d like to say that I was selfless in that vast period of timeless time. That I thought only of Howie and his loss. But I was a teenager, and human. We both would’ve cracked if I didn’t allow myself to think of something else. The human mind has ways of protecting itself. My ‘silver lining’ defense mechanism kicked in.

  Sitting there with Howie, sharing his grief, I felt oddly content. Energized. We’d always been close, so close that my mom had called him her son-in-law since we were small children. But until that very moment, he was none of that to me. He was just... Howie.

  Heat rose up from my chest and every part of my body that came into contact with his. It reached out to him, pulling me closer, like my heart was a magnet perfectly tuned to his. All of this happened in the space of a millisecond. That last moment alone with Howie before the older soldier-cop burst back into the room.

  I gasped and jerked away from Howie, as if now our physical closeness was somehow wrong. I had no time to consider those feelings because a manila folder landed with a heavy thud on the desk in front of us, turning the darkest time in Howie’s life into something unfathomably worse.

  “Mr. Anderson,” the captor said in a much deeper voice than before, as if the gravity of his words dragged on his vocal chords. I hadn’t even registered the formal ‘Mr. Anderson’ until full seconds after the rest of the sentence. “You are under arrest for the murders of Carolyn, Marcus, and Evelyn Anderson.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  I rolled over, then back, unable to get the slightest amount of comfort from what was left of my bed. If you could call it that. We’d burned most of the stuffing from our mattresses last winter, and were about to do the same with the remaining threads this year. Light broke through my window, through the shades, and the blanket I’d nailed over the frame. Still that one sliver of light found its way across my room and into my eyes.

  It didn’t matter that I’d turned my bed and pushed it into the corner as far as it would go. And it didn’t matter that all day every day the world was plunged into ashy darkness, had been for years now.

  No, none of that mattered to the bright white ray of sunlight that hunted me down every morning, long before I wanted.

  It was just as well. I could hear Brooks banging on pots and slamming cupboards already. Then his footsteps stomped up the stairs. I counted each with a groan, knowing full well he was coming for me. I was always amazed that he could make so much noise, being still almost as tiny as he’d been as a child. I squeezed my eyes against the mental picture of his protruding ribs, and the pang of guilt they brought to me. It was my responsibility to put meat on those bones, and I wasn’t doing a very good job of it this winter.

  Squirrels were gone. Even the cats and dogs and rats had left us. The last time either of us had tasted meat was in the fall, when Howie...

  I bolted upright.

  The night before came rushing back, forcing tears back to my eyes, where they’d hung until I’d mercifully fallen asleep. Poor Howie.

  There was no time to dwell on Howie, or the ridiculous charges against him. The things that horrid man had accused him of. No. I swiftly wiped the water from my eyes and nose when Brooks burst into my room.

  “Syn, there’s no water!”

  “I’ll go check. Just get out of here and let me get dressed.”

  “Check what?” He didn’t budge. “You think I don’t know what an empty cistern looks like?”

  Our cistern was dry. That tower of upturned, duct taped garbage cans had been our only source of water for two years. It couldn’t be empty.

  I raised an eyebrow at his use of the word ‘cistern’. “Look at you with your big boy pants on. I said I’ll go check after you let me change. Now go!” I shooed him away and flung the covers off, only to shiver and scooch back into my warm body outline on my mattress.

  Brooks tugged at the winter coat he wore on top of the one he’d found while ‘exploring’ with Marcus. I flinched at the thought of Marcus. And Evelyn.

  Motioning for Brooks to come to me, I lifted the blankets for him to crawl in. He didn’t move. Instead he looked at me like I had two heads.

  “I’m not getting in there with you!” Then his expression softened. He must have seen something on my face that said now wasn’t the time for machismo. “What?” he whispered, slowly crossing the room and silently climbing under my covers.

  For a moment I just held him, not wanting to break the silence. How could I tell him that everyone he loved in this world was now gone? The only family we had left after Mom and Dad died, were gone.

  After a moment he struggled against me and I realized the closeness and silence were probably more unnerving to him than what I had to say. I pulled myself away from him, wiped my red face on the blankets and told him the truth. I owed him that much. You only sugar coat life for children, and neither of us had been children for a very long time.

  It seemed like forever when we finally dragged ourselves down the stairs. I think we had fallen asleep somewhere in the midst of the tears and screams and questions. Broken and spent, I started to make us some mashed potatoes. Brooks began building a fire in the small hole we’d cut into the floor of the living room. With no electricity nor adults, that had been the best we could come up with. I held the small pot up to the water hose, waiting for... nothing.

  “Told you so,” Brooks attempted to smile at being right for a change.

  I wrapped Mom’s large overcoat around myself and ran outside barefoot. It was so cold I expected to see snow on the ground. My rational mind knew there was no snow in Florida. My body knew the temperature was well below what it should have been. “Is it frozen?” I asked myself on the way to the back yard, sensing that Brooks hadn’t followed me.

  As I turned the corner of the house, fine brown particles of sand kicked up from all my commotion. I saw why we had no water. A tattered old garden hose snaked along the yard and hung from the faucet on my cistern, in place of our own tattered old garden hose. There was a small puddle the size of my bare foot in front of the fence.

  Someone had stolen our water.

  “It’s all gone.” Apparently, Brooks had followed me, because his voice behind me echoed the thoughts that ran through my own head. It wasn’t a question. Even the ‘I told you so’ was gone, leaving only disbelief and fear. I felt it too.

  The entire world shrank in on us in that moment. We were alone on this tiny island, 1401 Addison Loop, with no one to come save us. Mom, Dad, everyone was gone. I couldn’t even chip Howie for help. It was as I’d feared for so long, me on my own, with Brooks depending on me—and only me—for survival. How I’d make that happen was anybody’s guess. Things had been so bad for so long.

  Rain fell sporadically at best now. Reservoirs had long since dried up. Anyone who’d made it this long after the Glitch did so on their own—boiling the rusty brown mud that plopped out of our faucets and had the nerve to call itself water.

  Mornings had been reduced to turning on the kitchen faucet and waiting for the sputtering rattle to travel under our feet, through the pipes, into the restaurant-sized pot that formerly housed Mom’s Famous Turkey Soup every Thanksgiving and Christmas. While we waited, often an hour or more, we’d rinse off in last week’s dishwater, which sat stagnating in a large plastic storage container in the corner of our living room.

  Back when she still could, Mom had taken all our family photos out of the containers and moved them to a watertight safe. She was sure we’d have record floods and other wet natural disasters, being in Florida. Toward the end, I think she wished for them, instead of the dry desert nothing that we got.

  We’d reused the plastic storage containers as wash bins, setting them up around the house. Downstairs was for dishes and clothes; upstairs for personal hygiene. Once a week we’d move the dishes and clothes water to the upstairs bathroom and fill that bin with the cloudy remains of water. Then we’d – mostly Mom, then myself, and recently Brooks – carry sloshing bucket after bucket down to
the garage to the third container.

  Just inside the overhead door Mom and I had constructed a water filtration system. Two charcoal grills reboiled basins full of recycled water each week. Then the charcoal became scarce and one grill boiled smaller and smaller pots of water.

  After Mom died, Brooks and I had started using wood that we collected from fallen trees and houses in the neighborhood. It seemed to handle the load better, but we switched to every two weeks instead. There was just always something more important to do.

  The roof over Mom’s office caved in last summer. A ton of dust and red sand fell onto her expensive desk. In some ways it felt fitting, like a funeral. Her favorite place in the world covered in a foot of dirt. We’d cordoned off the room, removing anything of practical value that had survived the cave in, and promptly climbed atop the roof to clear the rest of the heavy accumulated dust.

  I think the fire was after that. I’m not sure anymore. One life threatening emergency after another, you know. They all run together after a while.

  We started huddling together in our rooms and the playroom. Brooks pretended to rinse off every night, then every other, then not so much. And I pretended not to smell him as I kissed his forehead to tuck him in. Now we just ate our food raw, when we could get it, and none of the plastic containers had any emergency water left to save us.

  That homemade cistern had been the only source of cleanish drinking water for over a year and someone had robbed us of it. Signed our death warrant.

  I turned to him, put my hand on his shoulder, and looked into his bloodshot brown eyes. I’d just finished telling him his only friend in this world was dead, and now we might be next.

  Maneuvering my face into the calmest authoritative expression I could muster, I squeezed his bony shoulder and said, “I’ll fix this. But I need your help. Can you do that?”

  Brooks straightened to his full height, still way below what it should be at nine, and set those narrow shoulders. “Of course.”

  “Get some sand and charcoal, the black unused kind that we saved.” I paused, skimming through the information I’d downloaded onto my chip in the months after the Glitch. “I have to go find water for us. You get the supplies ready to make a filtration system.”

  His eyes darted to the fence where someone had very recently invaded our safe-haven, then back to me. He didn’t say anything, I’ll give him that, but he didn’t have to. His thoughts always showed on his face. It ran in the family. And would die with us. Soon if we didn’t fix this.

  I scanned the room for something to write with, settling on an old box of colored chalk that we both pretended not to play with anymore. Bringing up the reference material on my chip again, I drew a hasty diagram of an emergency water filter kit on the concrete floor.

  I stood and patted Brooks on the head with my blue chalky fingers. He ducked, but not quickly enough, then fluffed his brown curls to remove any trace of chalk, and me.

  Pointing my blue finger at the ground, I said, “Find a plastic bottle like that one and fill it in layers like the drawing. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” I pulled him to me for a hug, then faltered halfway. It felt too final, melodramatic. Instead, I reached up to rub more chalk in his hair and he shoved me away, both of us glad the moment didn’t come to hugging.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  I buckled the work belt around my waist and strung four empty milk jugs from it, two on each hip. It had been months since we’d collected water from the streams in the neighborhood. I had no idea where to start looking, or how far out of our area I’d have to go.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I yelled toward the garage as I swung open the front door. The screen door squeaked slowly as it closed behind me and I added WD40 to my mental list of things to get on our—my—next outing.

  An intense pain shot across my chest and I stood motionless on the front porch, unable to breathe. There was no ‘our’ anymore. I wanted so much to chip Howie, to make sure he was alright, but it was too dangerous. He was in that place... I refused to call it jail, even inside my own head.

  Flashes of last night hit me all at once. Howie rocking back and forth, wailing like a child. The scanners pointing right at us, waiting for one of us to slip up and transmit something. That cop’s hairy knuckles as he tossed the pictures of Howie’s family in front of us. And those awful pictures. Mrs. Anderson’s blanket was wadded up and shoved into the front grate of the space heater. The smoking gun that convinced the cops of Howie’s guilt, also told us the truth.

  She’d done it herself. Unable to take one more day, Mrs. Anderson had taken her own life, not knowing that Marcus and Evelyn were in the house with her.

  I shuddered. I wouldn’t allow myself to see those images again. I locked them away in a part of my mind I knew I’d never visit. With everything else I refused to think about again.

  Worst of all, if that’s possible, was those same hairy knuckles wrapped around Howie’s arm, escorting him out of the station to the... place... he was now. Where he’d probably stay.

  And on top of all that; the memory of my body pulling itself toward Howie, like intense gravity, made me glad there was an emergency to deal with right now. I locked that feeling away too, and forced myself to move.

  As I stepped off the porch I surveyed the rest of the yard. Six plastic barrels lined the fence to my right. Wood and metal fragments piled waist high in various places. My pink scooter leaned against the far tree, unmoved since winter. I’d had to make the choice between easier travel and the generator. In the end, there hadn’t been enough fuel for either.

  Satisfied that nothing looked out of place, I went out the gate and made sure to lock it behind me.

  When I got to Fairview, something told me to turn right instead of the usual left. I’m not sure what it was. Nothing tangible. Probably just the memory of dragging myself through sludge for hours with only two jugs of mud to show for it. Not much chance of a better outcome now.

  The haze clung to my clothes and nostrils, dampening the former and burning the latter. In my haste, I’d forgotten my shirt-mask—a faded yellow t-shirt with Dayne’s billion dollar grin and sparkling brown eyes that shined just for me printed across the front. Oh how Howie had laughed with faux amazement at my choice of using Dayne’s pretty face to filter the muck out of the air. I believe he’d likened it to ‘the most natural looking tan’ Dayne would ever get.

  Just thinking of Howie for that one moment sent a sharp pain through my chest. I knew I’d never get through the day if I allowed myself to wallow in missing him, so I pushed his grinning face out of my mind and trudged on.

  I needed to focus anyway. I had no idea where I was going. We had never come this way before. Everything looked ominous. I was heading toward nothing. But that seemed like the best option. Anything in town would be ransacked and run over by undesirables.

  Mom had made me stop going to town after that Truther nearly killed me, all because I refused to download his sketchy patch. Not the same one as before either. A different one, because I only learn my lessons the hard way. Even if I did believe his mumbo jumbo about the Sister Nations conspiring to get rid of the poor—which now doesn’t seem as far-fetched as it used to—he wasn’t getting anywhere near my port!

  Fueled all of a sudden by the adrenaline rush that memory provided, I soon found myself far off the main road and heading toward what probably used to be a heavily wooded area. All I saw was gray, leafless trees and white sand piled up along the edge of the cracking pavement. It looked as if a snow plow had just cleared the streets after a freak blizzard, except there hadn’t been snow in Florida for over a hundred years. And it wasn’t likely that these roads would feel the touch of a tire ever again.

  I waded through sand dunes, some of which hugged my calves like quicksand. I knew where there were trees, or what passed as trees those days, there should also be water. But it quickly exhausted me. There was no stepping over them; they were too close together. And walking directly int
o them made each step an exaggerated slow high-stepping march. It made me wonder if I looked like one of those cat videos that Dad always thought were so funny; the orange tabby with socks on his feet, which he picked up way over his head with every step.

  I had to rest.

  Sliding down the side of a thin tree, I removed my utility belt and held one of the clear milk jugs behind my head as a poor man’s pillow. Fingering the fallen pieces of bark, which quickly dissolved into ash in my hand, I closed my burning eyes for just one second.

  I jerked awake, startled by some sensation out in the periphery of my consciousness. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it was bad. My hand quickly wrapped around the machete that took up permanent residence on my utility belt. There hadn’t been vegetation to whack through in over a year, but I never could bring myself to untie the foot-long blade from its pocket. I was quite glad for that fact when the sensation, a noise I now knew, pricked the hairs on the back of my neck. My personal space, in this vast open network of dying trees, had been invaded.

  I pushed onto my feet and spun around, brandishing the rusted machete like a sword. Startled, a man—barely—stumbled toward me. Watching him take the last step over a particularly large sandhill, I noted with some embarrassment that yes, one did look like a cat with socks when trying to traverse the forest floor.

  Hands shaking, I swung the machete in the young man’s general direction, which he promptly ignored. He fell against the tree and looked up at me; his sunken brown eyes threatened to water. There was something in those eyes that sparked a faint recognition, but I couldn’t place him. Or maybe it was just the fact that everyone everywhere had the same brown eyes. Still, I gripped the handle of my knife tighter. Familiar or not, people these days weren’t exactly honorable with their fellow man. Not to mention the fact that I’m not a man.