“Jeff!” Doug passed her, bolting toward his son. “What happened?”
“Got hit from behind,” he said. “I don’t even know what with.”
Kay fell to his side and took the shirt from his hand, carefully peeled the wad away. At the sight of the gash, she started to cry. “You could have been killed! Who did this?”
“Stupid jerks trying to get the bikes. But they didn’t get any, Dad. I ran them off.”
Deni and Beth stood over him, horrified, but Logan was revved up and ready to go after them. “Which way did they go?”
“Every way. They scattered.”
Deni stooped down in front of him. “Do you know who it was?”
“Some freshman freaks from school. I’d know them if I saw them again. You bet I’m gonna look them up in the yearbook and report them to the sheriff, whatever that’s worth.” He got up as his mother kept the bloody shirt pressed to his head. “Let’s just go. I want to get out of here. I’m sick of this.”
“But you’re still bleeding! We’ll just sit here a minute until it stops. Doug, we have to get him to a doctor. He needs stitches.”
Doug nodded. “That Morton couple that moved in behind us . . . isn’t he a doctor?”
“I think so.”
“Then let’s get Jeff home, and I’ll go get him.”
Jeff took the bloody shirt from his mother, and he got on his bike. Deni touched his arm. “Jeff, I’m sorry for what I said about watching the bikes being an easy job, calling you a wimp and everything.”
Jeff breathed a bitter laugh. “Yeah, next time we’ll leave you out here. This whole thing stinks, you know! It’s like the end of the world. The power’s been out for less than thirty-six hours, and everybody’s gone crazy.”
Doug looked around as if to see if anyone else threatened them. “Come on, guys. Let’s get the bikes up, and I’ll unlock the chain. We’ll go home the back way, so we won’t have so much trouble. Jeff, can you ride?”
“Yeah, no problem.”
“The bleeding is letting up,” Kay said. “Doug, I’m not sure he can handle the gun, so I’ll take it.”
Jeff shook his head. “No way, Mom. I’m doing it. Dad, I’ll lead us home, and you can bring up the rear with your rifle. If we all stay together, we should be all right.”
Kay started to protest, but she knew it would do no good. Besides, Jeff needed to get his dignity back.
Deni mounted her bike, her eyes darting back and forth, waiting for another attack. “But how are we gonna get all this stuff home?”
Kay had been wondering that herself. In answer, Doug pulled some backpacks out of his bike’s carrying pouch and passed them around.
“Stuff whatever you can into the backpack, even if it’s sticking out the top. Deni and Kay, you’ll need to ride side by side carrying the garbage can between you. Logan and Beth, see if you can balance any of the containers on your handlebars, but only if you can handle it.”
Everyone got on a bicycle. Doug looked at Jeff again. “You sure you’re up to this, Son?”
“Oh yeah,” he said. “Just let somebody try to mess with us.”
“Don’t get cocky,” Kay said. “Just stay alert.”
“I will, Mom. Don’t you worry about that.”
Kay didn’t like the Rambo attitude, but she couldn’t blame him for his bravado. His pride was wounded, and he had the gash on his head to remind him of his humiliation. And it didn’t help that the attackers were younger than he.
They took off through the parking lot, dodging people and trying to stay together, and Jeff led them down the back streets where there weren’t as many stalled cars or bikers trying to get through town. Kay and Deni struggled to keep the heavy garbage can between them as they rode.
“I’m dropping it, Mom! Move closer to me.”
Kay tried to ride at the same speed as Deni without pulling her own bike over, but it was difficult with the heavy backpack on her back. Logan and Beth each balanced Rubbermaid containers full of stuff on their handlebars as they rode.
The family was quiet as they sailed through the streets, past people walking down the center of the roads. Some of those walking called to them, trying to make them slow down and stop, but Jeff slowed down for nothing.
Kay wondered if this was how soldiers felt in a time of war, driving through a hostile town in a Humvee convoy, waiting for a rocket launcher to shoot out of nowhere. Was this hostile country? Had it gone from being America the free, where people helped each other for the common good, to America the terrorized, where death could come from any quarter? Whatever caused this power outage sure had brought terror on the people.
When they finally made it to their own street, they rolled up their driveway and into the open garage. Everyone was exhausted, sweating, and red-faced. They let their bikes fall, and Doug quickly pulled the garage shut behind them.
Finally, they were safe.
Kay dashed into the house and headed for the bathroom. She grabbed the alcohol and a towel, and hurried to doctor Jeff’s wound. Doug headed out the back door. “I’ll go see if I can get the doctor to come.”
“Good. Tell him to hurry.”
Jeff winced as she began to clean the gash.
twenty-six
The Mortons lived two houses down from Doug’s backyard neighbors. They’d met the young couple a few months ago when the mailman delivered a piece of their mail to the Brannings. Doug and Kay had returned it together and welcomed them to the neighborhood. He hadn’t seen either of them again until Cathy came to the meeting last night.
Cathy, who looked about five months pregnant, let him in and told him Derek was sleeping after being at the hospital all night, then doing the twenty-mile bicycle commute back from the city. When Doug told her about Jeff, she woke her husband, and he agreed to come.
Back at the Branning house, Derek donned his rubber gloves and checked Jeff’s pupils and his coordination. “I think you’re okay. No sign of a concussion. I’ll stitch it up and you’ll be good as new.”
Jeff’s face twisted. “That’s gonna hurt worse than being knocked in the head.”
Derek chuckled. “No, it won’t. I’m going to deaden your scalp with a shot of xylocaine first.”
Doug watched as the doctor got a vial out of his bag and stuck a syringe in it. When the needle was ready, he turned to Jeff.
“Ready?”
Jeff squeezed his eyes shut as Derek stuck the needle into the skin around the wound. When he was satisfied it was numb, Derek began sewing up the wound.
“So did you hear all the commotion last night?” Doug asked as the doctor worked. “It was just down the street from you.”
Derek tied off the first suture. “No, I wasn’t home. Cathy heard it, though. She was scared to death for the rest of the night. She didn’t find out what happened ’til this morning.”
“I don’t think many of us got much sleep last night,” Doug said.
“So have they found the intruder?”
“No, not yet. He didn’t leave any clues behind. The sheriff dusted for prints, but that’s not going to do any good unless they catch a suspect and compare his fingerprints. Without a suspect or the computer system that searches for matching prints, fingerprints aren’t much help.”
Derek finished the second stitch and closed it off. “He probably wore gloves, anyway.”
“May have.”
Derek finished the third and fourth stitches, then cleaned them up with alcohol. “Now, that wasn’t so bad was it?”
Jeff shook his head. “I guess not.”
Derek took off his gloves and returned his supplies to his bag, then looked up at Doug. “I did want to ask you about the meeting last night, since I couldn’t come. Cathy said you thought the outage was going to go on for a long time.”
Doug told him Brad’s theory about the semiconductors being damaged.
“Unbelievable,” Derek said. “I was thinking it couldn’t possibly go more than another few days. But I s
hould have realized that was wishful thinking when we tried to start up our generator at the hospital and it failed. Even this morning, one of our administrators brought his own little generator from home. The minute he started it up, it conked out, too.”
“I guess that’s a real problem for a hospital,” Doug said.
“You have no idea. I don’t know what we’ll do with all our patients. And I thought malpractice was going to be my major problem as a doctor. Who would have ever thought?”
“So you have to ride twenty miles back and forth to work?” Jeff asked.
“Yeah. Every muscle in my body hurts from this morning’s ride, after a tough night of work. I’m not in shape for this kind of thing.” He rubbed his stubbled face. “The thought of going back just wears me out. And if this is going to go on for a while, then we need to make some long-term plans. We’re running out of food at the hospital. There’s no place to cook. Our monitors and equipment don’t work. If the power doesn’t come back on, people are going to start dying.”
The words shuddered through Doug. The minor inconveniences they’d suffered were minimal compared to the tragedy this outage was to others.
When Derek went home, Doug sat down with Jeff at the table. “You okay, Son?”
Jeff’s face glowed with sunburn. “Yeah. Just mad. Those guys were like animals. They might have killed me. And I would have killed them. All to defend a bunch of bikes.”
“Been there, done that,” Doug said. “And yes, it seems pretty silly in retrospect. But at the time, it feels like life or death.”
Jeff’s weary eyes met Doug’s. “A ten-speed bike is not life or death. Or it shouldn’t be. This is bringing out the absolute worst in people.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s likely to get worse before it gets better.”
Jeff looked down at his hands. “Dad, about last night . . . I’m really sorry for sneaking out. It was immature and irresponsible and deceitful. I don’t even know why I did it.”
Doug leaned on the table. “Tell me how often you smoke pot, Jeff. I smelled it when I came through the gate.”
Jeff looked surprised. “I didn’t think you knew what it smelled like.”
“Hey, I was your age once. I had friends tugging me that direction, too.”
“Well, I didn’t smoke it. It was Zach’s brothers. They weren’t even near me when they did it.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Jeff grunted. “Never, okay? I don’t smoke pot. I was a little hacked when they lit up.”
“But not hacked enough to leave, huh?”
Jeff sighed.
“What about alcohol? How often do you drink? And don’t tell me that was your first time.”
Jeff seemed to consider how to answer. He folded his arms in front of him, and stared down at the grain on the table. “No, it wasn’t. But I don’t drink a lot, Dad. Just a beer every now and then, when I’m hanging out with the guys.”
“You know how your mother and I feel about that.”
“Yeah, I do. You think a person can’t be Christian if they drink. But Jesus drank.”
Doug had been all through this when Deni went to college. He was ready. “Son, let’s just cut to the chase. When you drank that beer last night, did it make you more careful, more intelligent, more mature, more trustworthy?”
Jeff closed his eyes. “No. But it didn’t make me less those things, either.”
“Well, let’s see. You snuck out to go over there, probably fully intending to come back before I knew you were gone. What happened to that plan?”
He waited, knowing Jeff didn’t want to admit that, with his inhibitions lowered from intoxication, he had forgotten his intentions. “Time got away from me. It’s hard when you don’t have a watch.”
“I see. And what about the bikini-clad girl in your lap? Was that part of your plan? How much farther might that have gone if I hadn’t shown up when I did?”
“No farther.”
“Oh, really? Jeff, I raised you to be a gentleman, with moral values. I taught you Christian principles about how to conduct yourself with girls. Would you have had that girl sitting in your lap if you’d been sober?”
Jeff didn’t answer.
“So what makes you think drinking didn’t change your behavior, lower your inhibitions, and cause you to do things you would never have done before?”
“I have my values,” he said. “I told you, I’m not gonna have sex before marriage. None of that has changed.”
“Can you be sure of that? With a few more beers, and a willing girl? Privacy didn’t even seem to be an issue for you. You were making out right in front of everyone.”
“It was dark, Dad. Nobody was paying attention.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
Jeff set his cheek on his palm. “I won’t do it again, okay? You don’t have to worry.”
Doug looked into his eyes. He’d grown up so fast. It seemed like only yesterday he’d been learning to play T-ball. Man, he’d been cute running those bases, his little cap flopping on his head.
Doug’s voice softened. “Jeff, every day of your life you’ll have to make decisions about what kind of man you want to be. It’s not going to start when you’re older. It starts right now. And every time you make a decision to be less than what God wants for you, you’re denying yourself some of God’s blessings. It’s up to you. You can live a life with God’s blessings, or just exist with all the consequences of choosing wrong.”
Jeff held Doug’s gaze, and he knew he was listening.
“When you put it that way, it sounds easy.”
“It’s not easy. I’m not saying it is. But once you make up your mind whose side you’re on—God’s or your drinking buddies’ or a pretty girl’s—it’s up to you to make sure you don’t compromise those decisions through drinking or anything else. One wrong choice can change your whole life, Jeff. Just one. And one right one can turn you away from a world of trouble. So next time someone offers you a beer, I hope you’ll make the right decision.”
Jeff only nodded.
Doug rubbed his sweating face, raked his fingers through his hair. “Jeff, why do you think this outage is bringing out the worst in people?”
“I really don’t know.”
“Because without transportation and communication, there’s not all that much accountability. People think they can get away with things. And they all have some overblown sense of entitlement. If things are hard, then they think they have a right to act like animals—to loot and rob and attack.”
“I’m not like that, Dad.”
“No, you’re not. But it’s not that big a step to cross the line into immorality. We have to agree that we’re not going to cross it.”
“Okay, Dad. I’ll do my best.”
Doug believed he meant it.
“So what’s my punishment?”
Doug sighed. Jeff had had a really bad day. He’d been punished enough. Maybe it was time to move on. “Let’s call it even,” he said. He slid his chair back and got up. “Well, I have work to do. I need to go to the lake and get water.”
“I’ll help.”
“You sure you’re up to it? You have a good excuse—”
“I don’t need an excuse, Dad. I can pull my weight.”
Doug rubbed his son’s neck. Jeff was going to be all right. Doug had no doubt about it.
Together, they’d be ready for whatever came next.
twenty-seven
The morning’s events weighed on Doug like a lead blanket, as mounting fatigue slowed him down. Each muscle group in his body had convened to register its protest. If only the Jacuzzi were working. A good hot soak would relax the lactic acid right out of his thighs, his calves, his feet, his toes, his shoulders, his arms.
Dream on.
He’d gone through the motions of the day regardless, bringing water from the lake and trying to think hours ahead to what they would need to have done before dark. When Sam Ellington
approached him about coming to a meeting for some of the men in the neighborhood, he’d hesitated. But Sam convinced him it was for the safety of Oak Hollow.
He wondered why Brad hadn’t told him about the meeting. When Doug saw Brad earlier that day, he’d complained that there had been no takers on his idea. Well, maybe they had surprised him in the last few hours.