A Surprise
No, no, no… Sloane hastily made her way to the stairwell and surfaced out of the water. Mae was nowhere. Please no!
She crept up the slimy wooden stairs, hauling the bucket up to stow nearby in the dark interior. She tried to limit the splashing of the water, but she was panicking now and couldn’t avoid it. She laid the rifle across the water-filled bucket. Where Mae should have been standing, Sloane instead found the turned-off flashlight. She turned it on and listened for any sounds to detect where the girls might be but only heard silence. She flashed the light onto the pile of her clothing on the ground.
Her Glock still remained inside her holster atop the pile. She grabbed the towel, dried her hands, and snatched the gun out of its strap. She crept up the stairs; as the light filtered in a line under the door, a shadow passed by, and she stopped in her tracks.
“Wren?” she finally whispered. The door opened.
“Hi Mom.”
“Is everything okay? Where’s Mae?”
“She’s right here, with Nicole,” Wren said in a tone trying to convey the situation at hand without saying it out loud.
“Nicole?” Suddenly Sloane went from fright back to worry. “Is… her dad here, too?” she asked in a light tone.
“No. Only Nicole,” Wren said.
She loved eleven-year-old Nicole, who came to visit many times over the years since the pandemic, but her father was another story.
With the exception of his daughter Nicole, who was only five at the time, Doug had lost his entire family to the pandemic. Doug was never prepared for the deadly disease; in fact, they lived paycheck to paycheck then, never saving or preparing for a rainy day. He’d once broken into her house to steal her food while she and the girls were away and had also tried to break into Larry’s house while they were home. If it weren’t for Trent Carson, he would have succeeded. He’d also played a part in Trent’s near death, causing everyone who made it through the crisis to keep their distance from Doug’s house. After the pandemic, Doug and his daughter remained in the same house at the end of Horseshoe Lane. That left poor Nicole to grow up on her own, cast out from most of the neighborhood kids.
Over the years, Doug grew mentally unstable and obese. He was prone to outbursts aimed toward his daughter and seldom left home. He hoarded food and supplies so much that his garage was packed to the gills, quite visible to passersby whenever he’d left it opened. His truck remained in the driveway, abandoned to the elements. The house fell into disrepair and little Nicole grew quiet, rail thin, unkempt, and often wandered the neighborhood in search of kindness. It was a heartbreaking transformation she and the other neighbors witnessed over the years. Everyone helped out where they could, but Doug wouldn’t allow help from any of them where Nicole was concerned.
She slipped the gun behind her and approached the landing. Nicole and Mae sat on the stairs leading to the second floor, talking quietly and petting the stray cat that had scared her to death earlier. Noting mentally, Sloane thought it was best not to tell them about the snake in the basement.
“Hi Nicole,” Sloane said. This was not good. She must have wandered over here because either her father sent her or the girls were making too much noise and she sought them out.
“Hi Sloane,” Nicole said while petting the cat. Sloane saw curiosity in the child’s eyes when they swept over Sloane’s wet swimsuit and hand behind her back.
“What are you doing down there?” Nicole asked.
Sloane noticed something alarming about Nicole, as well; her face, though dirty from the lack of proper washing, was bruised on the left side and her lip was split. She deflected the question. “Honey, what happened to your face?” she said with concern.
Her expression immediately took on a blank stare as she lifted her hand from the cat’s fur. “Ah, nothing. I fell on the slippery stairs.”
Okay, that might have happened but I doubt it. I’ll kill him if he’s now beating her, too. Now I have to convince her that the Carsons are home with me swimming in their basement. How do I do that?
“Well, please be more careful, Nicole. There’s not a lot of doctors around. Listen, the Carsons are going to be home later tonight and we needed to get our spare keys to our shed out of their basement. They told us to go ahead and get them on our own.” She pulled the keys from her suit and jingled them in front of the girl.
Both of her daughters had gone stone quiet with widened eyes as their mother spun the tale. She hated to lie, but she needed to maintain the deception so Doug wouldn’t find out about the empty houses.
“Oh, I thought they were gone. The Bakers are gone, too,” Nicole said.
“Actually, I saw Mr. Baker checking the mailbox this morning. They’re home,” Wren interjected, cutting her eyes at her mother at the end of her lie.
“Amy, too. She came over early this morning for her phone that she’d left at our house,” Mae said.
Sloane thought that was perhaps going over the line a little too far. Great. Now I’ve turned my children into liars as well. It was the beginning of a life of survival and she knew she’d have to give up on many of the ethics she’d instilled in them when life was normal.
Nicole looked a little confused. “Oh, it was so quiet this morning. I thought they’d all left. A lot of people have left the neighborhood.”
“Well, we’re here and so are the Carsons, the Bakers, and the Millers.” She said it specifically that way in case her father questioned the girl.
Nicole stood up and brushed off her shorts.
Sloane was aghast at the girl’s condition. When she stood, she saw the outline of her ribs through her muddied purple t-shirt. Her legs reminded her of those horrid, emaciated teen models: too thin and scrawny.
“Nicole, have you eaten anything today?” Sloane had to ask the question.
She visibly swallowed.
Sloane watched as her neck muscles flexed. “Dad says we only get one meal a day now. He doesn’t want to run out.”
Sloane absorbed this piece of news and nodded because the last time she saw Doug, he definitely wasn’t missing any meals. This left Sloane in a difficult situation. She couldn’t tell the girl to come around later and have dinner. Nicole would likely tell her father, which, in their past experience, ensured a nighttime break-in. No, she couldn’t do that and endanger them all. It was a problem—one she didn’t have an answer to. For now, she’d have to let Nicole go and keep an eye on her condition as the days went on.
“Well, why don’t you take that kitty along and bring him outside, Nicole. We’ll lock up the house for the Carsons and get back to our own place. Mr. Baker said he wanted to take a look at our gas lines later, so we should get back to the house,” she continued the ruse.
Nicole walked out the front door with the heavy cat limp over her arm and waved goodbye. Nicole even struggled with the weight of the cat in her arms.
“Bye Nicole. See you around,” the girls called after her.
“Quickly, lock the door,” Sloane whispered to Wren. “How did this happen? How did she get in?” she asked them.
Wren began to explain, “Mom, I was watching the front door and then all of a sudden I turned around and there was Nicole, standing in the kitchen. She came through the busted-out back door. She scared me to death, but there was nothing I could do. I called down for Mae to come up and visit with her until you were done because I didn’t want to tell her to leave so she could run off and tell her dad that we were here.”
“Okay, well, let’s hurry up and get out of here. Give me a second to change. I’ll be right back,” Sloane said and went back into the stairwell. She set the rifle aside and drained the water from the bucket as much as possible. It was very heavy now with the ammo cartridge inside, along with the pistol and waterlogged ammo box. Then she quickly dried off and redressed. Lugging the bucket and rifle through water was much easier. She wasn’t sure how she was going to disguise this heavy load as they walked across the street. She now viewed boarding up the Carsons’ back door as more a priority than her own, knowing that Doug would certainly take advantage of the food cache he had down there. They’d have to think of something quick.
She resurfaced from the basement dressed and burdened with the bulky items.
“So we’re just going to walk across the street with that waving like lunatics?” Mae said.
“I don’t see us having much choice. Instead of hiding it, we’ll pretend that’s why we came over—to get the guns and the bucket of stuff. If we’re seen with the weapons, people will think twice about bothering us, and if we make it seem like we got them from the Carsons, they’ll know the people living here are armed too because they didn’t need these. Get it?”
Both girls nodded that they did.
“So we’re lying our heads off so no one will think we’re alone. Got it,” Mae said.
Sloane wasn’t sure if she really did or if that was her sarcasm working overtime.
“Are we going to rinse those here, like you said earlier?” Wren asked, pointing to the stash.
“No, we’re going to do it at home. We’d better get out of here before we attract any more attention.”
After locking the doors that could be locked, they stepped back through the busted opening, and Sloane wondered if Nicole came in looking for food. It wasn’t like the girl to sneak into people’s backyards, especially the Carsons’ backyard. Hunger had a way of making you do things you normally wouldn’t.
As they approached the street, Nicole was nowhere in sight but the cat was. The cat made a beeline from one end of the neighborhood to the other with a black, shaggy dog on its tail. The prey zigged and zagged back and forth, trying to lose its hunter.
“Oh Mom! We have to do something!” Wren gasped.
Sloane spoke low. “No. There’s nothing we can do for it. Don’t look. Come on, let’s go,” she said and waved back at the Carsons’ house. “Thank you, Trent. We’ll see you soon. Have Amy come over later.”