Jay stared at the steps leading up and out of Mac’s basement. They’d made it back safely from the library and found no one waiting in ambush. The neighborhood lay still as a grave—that alone unnerved Jay more than he’d like to admit. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end as he paced, unable to calm down.
“Something’s wrong,” he muttered.
“What, Dad? There’s no one here—isn’t that what we wanted?” asked Leah. “There’s a ton of stuff no one took…”
“No…it’s been too long,” Jay whispered. “The boys should be back by now. How long does it take to grab some boxes or bags?”
“Well, I offered to go but you wouldn’t let me.”
Jay waved off his daughter. “No, it’s not that. It’s been…” He checked his watch, wondering how long it would be before the battery died. Then what would he do? Steal a new watch off a corpse? “It’s been almost twenty minutes.”
“Want me to go check on them?” Leah murmured in the dark confines of the basement.
Jay chewed the inside of his cheek. “No. I don’t want you out of my sight. We’ll go together. Just grab a few things—whatever you can carry. I’ll grab…”
He looked down at the pile of survival gear they’d pulled free from the storage lockers hidden under Mac’s house. It took them almost half an hour of quiet digging, but they’d managed to clear enough rubble to expose the basement door. Most of the basement ceiling had collapsed in the fire, but the bookcase had been unharmed. When Jay pulled it aside, he found out why—the books were fake; metal blocks painted to pass as real books from a distance. Behind the panel of “books,” Jay and the kids found several totes of supplies and emergency rations, a backpack labeled “RADIO” and a hard case he thought held a rifle but turned out to be a longbow.
“I’ll take the bow.” He picked up the bow case, loaded the radio bag over his shoulder and grabbed three quivers full of orange and brown arrows.
“I can carry two totes of this freeze dried food, but that’s about it,” Leah advised.
Jay moved through the rubble toward the stairs. “That’s fine. We can come back with the boys for the rest. Let’s get up there—I feel like I’m trapped down here.”
They had only gotten halfway up the stairs when Hunter and Thom scrambled into view, sending down a cascade of charcoal, burnt floor tiles, and bits of Mac’s house.
“Watch it!” hissed Jay, throwing his arms out for balance and to keep the shower of debris from hitting Leah in the face.
“Sorry, dude!” replied Hunter as Thom pulled him back out of the way.
“Mr. C.!”
“Thom,” Jay said, spitting drywall dust from his mouth. “I have told you before to call me Jay.”
Thom swallowed. “There’s someone in your house.”
“More than one, and they were like, in the garage,” added Hunter. “We heard a noise.”
“Could it be the dogs?” asked Jay. Please let it be the dogs.
“I don’t think so,” mused Thom as he took the bow case from Jay. “I saw someone—a shadow, really. But they were bending over a bunch of tools on the floor in the garage. That’s why we took so long getting back,” Thom said.
“Yeah, we didn’t want anyone to see us,” added Hunter.
Jay paused for a moment behind a partial wall in Mac’s kitchen, peering at his own half-destroyed house. “Dammit,” he hissed. “I knew this was going too easy.”
“What do we do?” breathed Leah.
Jay watched her breath dissipate as fog, highlighted by the moon and in stark contrast to the burnt surroundings. “It’s too cold to screw around. We need to get this gear into the car and go. I’ll check it out.”
“What if there’s more of them?” asked Thom.
“Then I’ll use the shotgun.”
“Dad?”
“Leah, you and the boys take this stuff back to the car,” Jay ordered, handing the quivers and radio bag to Hunter.
“But, Dad—”
“No buts! Thom, give me the gun. When you guys are ready, flash the lights. I’ll meet you at the car and we’ll get the hell out of here.”
“And if there really is someone in there?” asked Thom.
Jay balanced the shotgun’s heft between his two injured hands. “Then you’ll hear me fire this thing and drive away." He turned to Leah. "You take them to Mac’s place. Do you understand? Just like we talked.”
“Dad…”
“We went through this already, priya. I need you to do this. I need you to be strong.”
It took a long moment, but Leah finally nodded. “I don’t want to be strong any more…” she whispered.
“Leah,” Jay said, cupping his daughter’s face in one bandaged hand. “You can do this.”
She sniffed, then nodded. “Okay. Be careful. Please.”
“Always. Now wait for me to get to the side yard before you go. If someone’s going to get shot, I want it to be me, okay?”
“Jesus, Dad.”
“I’ll protect her, Mr. C.,” Thom said.
“Thank you,” Jay muttered.
“And I’ll protect him,” Hunter added.
Jay moved out into the night with a grin on his face as the two boys bickered in whispers. His feet made far too much noise as he crunched his way across the frozen, snow-crusted grass but there wasn't anything he could do about that. He held the shotgun at his shoulder, hoping to find no one in the garage.
“Who’s there?” he called out. “I’m armed and I don’t want to shoot you, but this is my house. You need to leave.”
He heard a car door open behind him in the driveway and a little pressure faded from his chest. The kids had reached the car. Another thirty seconds or so and they’d be ready to leave. He turned back to the garage and spotted his automotive tools glittering in the moonlight. A set of small footprints trailed out the open garage door, around the house to the back yard.
Shit, Jay thought. None of the kids came out this way…
A light snapped on, blinding Jay in the darkness. “That’s far enough,” a rough voice said.
“Jay?”
Jay froze. “Kate?” he croaked, one hand covering his eyes.
“Jay! They’ve got—” A loud smack silenced his wife.
Jay rushed forward, tripping over something on the ground. “Kate!” he screamed, blinking the stars from his vision.
“He said stop!” roared a familiar voice.
Jay stopped, peering into his garage, squinting at the light. Whoever held the flashlight let it drop a little, and he spotted four figures—two larger ones struggling with a smaller one in the middle and a fourth, shorter one holding the flashlight.
“Maria?” asked Jay.
“Dammit, keep the light pointed at him,” snapped the man who’d ordered him to stop.
“I’m sorry,” Maria whined, adjusting the light to shine in Jay’s eyes again. “He won’t hold still…”
A light turned on over Jay’s shoulder, illuminating the garage. He saw Kate, bloodied and bruised, in little more than rags with both arms held behind her back by a man he vaguely recognized as living on the other side of the neighborhood. Next to him, holding a large knife to her throat, stood José Cortegera. Maria held the flashlight with a mixture of anger and surprise on her face.
“Kate!” gasped Leah.
Jay turned to see all the kids standing behind him. He hadn’t even heard them get out of the car. “No, no—get back to the car!”
“Don’t worry, dude, it’s locked,” said Hunter, grim-faced and holding the keys up in one grimy hand.
“I’m so sorry to do this,” José said. He adjusted the knife so it didn’t rest on Kate’s neck but hovered just half an inch over her exposed skin.
Jay blinked. He’d finally accepted that his wife was dead and here she was, right before him. His heart raced, threatening to tear itself free from his chest. His hands tightened on the shotgun as his eyes flicked from Maria to José. This isn’t happening.
“Why?” he sputtered.
“Jay…” Kate muttered. A line of red trickled down her face. She tried to smile, but he could tell it hurt—her nose looked broken.
“Oh God,” he said, taking a half step. “Kate…what…”
“I made it home, honey…” She spat a glob of bloody mucus on the ground.
“Stop squirming, bitch,” grunted the man holding her.
“Hey!” Jay snapped.
“Jay, just hand over the keys to that truck.”
Jay turned his wrath on José. “Why are you doing this?”
“I’m sorry, Jay. I really am. But Esteban is sick, you know? I got to take care of my family.” His face hardened. “Hand over the keys and I won’t hurt her.”
Jay’s mind reeled, conflicted and torn between an animal urge to defend the woman he loved and his mother’s teachings on peace, avoiding conflict, respect for all living things, and above all, forgiveness. All his life, Jay adhered to those principles and they had served him well. He’d had his run-ins with people who couldn’t see past his skin color—those who’d given him and Monica trouble when they’d married and again with Kate—but they’d been few and far between. Yet those heated arguments and embarrassing comments were still there, just like the bigots who spewed them, harassing and instigating, goading him into action his very nature rejected.
Now that the world had come to a crashing halt, everything had changed and yet Jay had stubbornly clung to his beliefs, his very essence. In one heartbeat, he realized that had gotten him absolutely nowhere and delivered him nothing but grief.
He’ been taken advantage of, robbed at gunpoint, his house looted and burned, his beloved library ransacked…
And now José and Maria had turned on him. People he had once counted as friends and those to whom he would have trusted his child's life in an emergency, now stood before him, a knife at his wife’s throat.
Jay raised the shotgun to his shoulder. The internal conflict was over.
Maria gasped. The kids shouted, the man holding Kate smirked. José raised his free hand in front of him. “Jay, stop! I mean it, I’ll cut her! I don’t want to, but I will.”
Jay stepped forward, the rage in his chest, pure and unadulterated, forcing the trembles from his aching hands. “If you don’t drop the knife, I swear to Shiva I will put this gun against your fucking face and pull the trigger.”
“I…” José glanced at Maria.
“Jay! Give us the keys!” she shrieked.
“He’s bluffing!” the man holding Kate growled. “Look at him—he can barely hold that gun.”
“Dad!” Leah screamed somewhere behind him.
Jay blocked it all out. His vision shrunk even past Kate’s wild eyes to encompass José and nothing more. He stepped forward again, the shotgun barrel steady and true.
“Jay…”
“Drop the knife or I will kill you,” Jay muttered. Not an ounce of pity, remorse, or mercy remained in his voice. He didn’t even recognize the voice as his own—they were the words of a man pushed one step too far in a world that didn’t recognize civility anymore.
“I’m tell you, he’s bluffing,” the man holding Kate said. “That shotgun will kill his wife too.”
José stared at Jay a long moment. A bead of sweat trickled down the side of his neighbor’s face. José blinked and licked his lips.
“I…”
Kate chose that moment to struggle again and threw her head back with a curse. She caught her captor right on the nose with a loud crack. The man released one hand from her arm and brought it to his face.
“Fuck!” he gurgled. “Bitch broke my nose!”
“Jay!” Kate screamed as she lurched to her right, almost spinning out of the man’s grasp. She tripped and went down with a grunt.
It was all the opening Jay needed.
The shotgun roared and everyone screamed at once. The man holding Kate lay crumpled on the ground, most of his head splattered against the far wall.
She smiled up from the floor at him, her face smeared with blood and dirt, but still the most beautiful thing he’d seen since he first saw Leah in Indiana.
Cha-chack.
Everyone fell silent. The shotgun was pointed back at José’s face. He stuttered a response and dropped the knife almost as fast as the empty shotgun shell hit the floor.
“Step away from my wife,” Jay growled.
“I’m sorry,” José said, talking as fast as Jay had ever heard someone speak. “I didn’t want to—Ray said we could force you to give us the keys…Maria told me about the car—Jay, I never would've hurt her—Dios mío!”
“Shut up!” Maria hissed.
Kate got up off the floor and glared at her neighbor. Maria tossed her hair over her shoulder. “You think you’re better than me? I would do anything to protect my family. I would kick your—”
Kate cocked her arm back and Maria flinched, dropping the flashlight. “Get the fuck out of my house,” she spat.
“But—” began José.
“Leave,” Jay growled. “Now.”
José stared at Jay. He lowered his arms. “You’ve changed, Jay.”
Jay felt his right eye twitch. “The world's changed. Now get the fuck off my property before I do something your wife will regret seeing.”
“He won’t shoot you,” Maria insisted. “If we can—”
“Cállate!” José snapped, never taking his eyes off Jay. “He will shoot. I can see it in his eyes.”
“Dad…” Leah whispered, a gentle hand on his arm. Jay shook her off.
“Get out,” he repeated through clenched teeth. His finger tightened on the trigger. “Last warning.”
“No! We have a right—” began Maria.
José cut off his wife’s outburst by grabbing her arm and dragging her kicking and screaming from the garage. “I’m sorry!” he called again.
As soon as the Cortegeras disappeared into the night, Jay dropped the shotgun and almost tackled Kate. Despite the filth and grime on her face, his lips found hers as they wrapped arms around each other.
“—so happy to see you—” she muttered between kisses.
“God, I thought you were dead,” Jay replied when they broke for air.
Thom cleared his throat. “Uh, excuse me Mr. and Mrs. C., but there’s more people coming down the street.”
“What?” Jay asked. He couldn’t pull his eyes away from Kate’s.
“Dad!” barked Leah from the driveway. “We need to go. Now!” She pointed down the street. “The Cortegeras just met up with like, ten people. They're coming back!”
“Everybody in the car—now!” Jay ordered.
Once inside the safety of the Tahoe, Jay took a look at Kate again, still not believing she was real and sitting in the passenger seat. Beyond her, out the window, he spotted several flashlights and his smile faded.
Jay threw the big truck into drive and not bothering to back up, drove across the side yard, kicking up a rooster tail of dirt, grass, and snow. He roared down Mac’s driveway and into the street on squealing tires. The kids yelled in the back and their supplies jostled back and forth, but Jay didn’t care.
“You came back,” Kate whispered, her hand finding his as they drove down the deserted street. “You got Leah and came back for me.”
Jay blinked the water from his eyes and stole a glance at his wife. He’d just killed another man and almost shot his neighbor.
“My God, what happened to you?”
Kate looked down at the grimy bandages on his hand. “I could say the same thing about you…”
“Kate!” Leah said, throwing her arms around her stepmother from the back seat.
As his girls got reacquainted, Jay stared into the night and raced out of their neighborhood for the last time. He knew he’d never be back. He left behind Monica and his life with her, memories of Leah growing up, and a job he loved.
Jay looked at his wife as she talked with Leah and they traded stories about what happened when the lights went out. The boys added color commentary when Leah refused to take credit for the battle in the dorm, but Jay could tell they were just as excited.
In that moment, Jay realized none of what he left behind mattered. He had his wife back from the grave. He’d rescued his daughter and saved the lives of two college kids besides. They’d survived a neighborhood that turned on them like a pack of rabid animals.
Now they had a car mostly full of supplies, the open road, and a destination in sight.
Jay glanced at the dashboard clock and laughed.
“What’s so funny?” asked Kate, a smile curling the corner of her cracked, split lips. She tucked a lock of filthy hair behind one ear.
“It’s two o’clock.”
“So?” asked Kate. “You got a hot date?”
Leah giggled from the back seat. “Oh my God, he’s going to freak.”
“Who?” asked Leah.
“Mac!” Leah blurted.
“Mac’s alive?” Kate looked at Jay. “But his house…I thought—”
Jay pulled the radio from his jacket as he merged onto I-74 heading east. It was the third time in a week that he’d set his sights on Indianapolis.
“We have one hell of a call to make.”
“What are you talking about? Where are we going?” Kate asked, reading the green road sign that proclaimed Indianapolis to be 170 miles ahead. “Why are we going this way?”
“We’re going to Mac’s retreat. Upstate Michigan, but the turn-off is on the other side of Indy.”
Kate’s hands went to her mouth. “He made it?”
As the kids talked over one and other to inform Kate about their nightly calls with Mac, Jay pressed the transmit button on his handheld HAM radio.
“Mongoose calling Iceman. Come in, Iceman.”
In a few seconds, the reply came back, scratchy but understandable. “Go ahead, Mongoose. Iceman reads you five-by. Did you make it back to the house? Tell me you’re on your way. Over.”
“We made it, Iceman. I've got someone here who wants to say hi,” he said.
“Mac! It’s Kate!”
“Kate? What the hell? You’re alive!”
Jay smiled at the shock in Mac’s voice. He took the radio back from Kate and raised it to his mouth.
“We’re on our way.”