Before the Dawn (7 page)

Max held the woman's gaze. “Would anyone have to know?”

The mom's eyes flared. “No! They couldn't know, dear . . . or you'd be taken back to where you ran from.”

Max shook her head, violently. “I wouldn't want that.”

“You're my late cousin's Beth's girl.”

“I am?”

The mom smiled. “You are now. . . . We're your foster family. Will you stay with us, Max?”

Knowing what the woman wanted, Max slowly nodded. Then and there, just that easily, she had a new home.

Lucy spoke for the first time since they'd sat down. “Will it be all right with Dad?”

“I'll convince him. Don't you girls worry. He can be . . . difficult . . . but he'll know what this means to me. And as long as Max is willing to work around here . . . you are, aren't you Max?”

Max nodded.

“Well, then, we won't have any trouble. In the meantime, I'm going to see to it you get plenty to eat, and then we'll get you some new clothes.”

Glancing down at her soiled nightshirt, Max knew that wasn't a bad idea.

The mom beamed at her. “Now, you make sure you leave room for pie—it's lemon meringue.”

Max had never had this exotic dish before, and it was incredibly, deliriously delicious.

The next night, Max found out what a dad was, and it wasn't near as good as a mom: a dad (this one anyway) was a burly bully with stringy graying hair, putrid breath, a foul mouth, and a vicious temper. Oh, the dad could be nice, but only when he hadn't been drinking.

Which wasn't often (and it didn't take Max long to learn what a “drinking problem” really was).

After just ten minutes with Jack Barrett, Max knew she'd been wrong thinking Lydecker was mean. Lydecker was only businesslike, cold but not brutal; Lydecker was monstrous—this “dad” was a monster.

That first night, Mr. Barrett had come in the door, brushed past his wife with the greeting, “Get me a beer,” and then he dropped into his recliner, lit up a smoke, and turned his eyes toward Max (in a pink T-shirt and jeans), who stood next to Lucy at the side of his chair. “Who the hell is this?”

Popping the top on his beer, Mrs. Barrett said, “This is Max. Say hello to Mr. Barrett, Max.”

“Hi, Mr. Barrett.”

The dad ignored Max. “What the fuck is that war orphan doing here?”

How could he know she was an orphan? And a soldier?

Rubbing her hands on the front of her apron, Mrs. Barrett said, “Be nice, Jack. . . . She needs a place to stay for a while.”

He turned to glare at Mrs. Barrett. “Another goddamn mouth to feed?”

“Jack, I want this.”

“Joann, I—”

“I put up with a lot, Jack. If you don't like it, you'll come home to an empty house—no meals, Jack. No laundry. Even get up and get your own beer.”

He was gazing at her like his wife was on fire. “Don't get mouthy. . . .”

“You can hit me, Jack . . . but I'll go. I'll leave. I really will this time.
You know what this means to me.
”

He turned away. Clicked on the TV with his remote and gulped his beer.

Mrs. Barrett turned and walked off in a huff. “Come on, girls.”

“Not so fast!” Mr. Barrett bellowed. He turned to Max again. “You!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well . . . you're polite, anyway. Kinda scrawny . . . maybe you'll fill out like Lucy, in a year or two. . . . You gonna help around here, earn your keep?”

Max nodded.

“This one,” he jerked a thumb toward his daughter, “don't do squat, half the time.”

Lucy said, “I always do—”

Mr. Barrett swung around in his chair and slapped his daughter—the crack rang in the small house, like a gunshot.

Lucy's mouth was tremblingly open, as tears rolled down her face, but no sound came out.

“Don't talk back to your father.”

Between gulps of air, Lucy managed to say, “Yes, sir.”

“That's better.”

Max took a step forward. “Don't hit her.”

Jack slapped Max even harder, the pain shooting through her jaw, her teeth, through every fiber of her being. She resisted the urge to strike back; maybe this was how families behaved. She could always kill him later.

“You want to stay here,” Jack yelled, “you want three squares and a bed? You keep your fucking mouth shut unless you're told to speak.”

Her cheek still throbbing, Max stood there silently, glaring at Jack Barrett.

He slapped her again. “Don't stare at me, and when I tell you something, you show me the proper goddamn respect. Stick with that ‘Yes, sir' shit, and we'll get along just fine.”

Pain shot through her body again and this time a tear welled in her eye, but Max willed it not to fall. “Yes, sir.”

“Then she can stay, Jack?” Mrs. Barrett said.

“Kid can stay. For now.”

“Oh Jack, thank you.” And she kissed her husband on the cheek, and he brushed her away.

Mom (as Max had now begun to call her, and think of her) escorted Max to the bedroom she was sharing with Lucy.

“Stay on Jack's good side,” Mom advised, “and don't talk back when he's . . . in a bad mood.”

Later Lucy said, “I hope . . . I hope you don't think this is worse than where you escaped from.”

In her own warm bed, Max was weighing that. Getting slapped was better than getting shot.

“It's fine,” Max said.

That had been February. There were more slaps and even some outright beatings in March, April, and May. Sometimes Mr. Barrett would enter the room in the middle of the night and take Lucy away with him; the girl would look scared, but when she returned, she'd say at least her dad hadn't hit her.

Max had been too sexually naive at the time to really understand what was happening; but she knew it was something bad. As for the beatings, they were commonplace around the Barrett house; and Max, in an effort to fit in, had only fought back one time.

That had been in early March. Jack (as Max now thought of him, never coming to think of him as, much less call him, Dad) had waxed her pretty good, and when Max had gotten to her feet and he reached out to slap her again, she'd sidestepped the blow, caught his hand in hers, and broken two fingers before he'd wrenched it back.

But hurting Jack had been a mistake.

Max was forced to go without food for a week, which only bothered her a little—she'd had deprivation training, after all—but when he'd come home from the emergency room, he'd beaten Lucy so badly the girl couldn't walk for two days.

“If you ever,
ever
raise a hand to me again,” Jack told Max, “your sister pays.”

From then on, Max had done as she was told; and Jack had been smart enough not to lay his hands on his new “daughter.” At least until that day in June, when the whole world changed forever. . . .

June 8, 2009, had seemed like any other day—school had gotten out the week before, and Max and Lucy were settling in for a summer of no schoolwork. Max had fit in surprisingly well at school, mostly keeping to herself, though the seizures that were a side effect of her genetic breeding caused a share of embarrassment, until the school nurse finally provided an unlikely nonprescription medication—tryptophan—that would curtail and control them.

Jack kept them busy enough around the house, and of late he'd been even angrier than usual. The Dodgers—the only thing he truly loved in this life—had been losing, and the skid had only served to give him more reason to beat on Lucy and Mom.

On this June evening, the sisters were steering him a wide path. He was parked in his recliner guzzling beers and chain-smoking, as he watched the Dodgers fall behind early, 3–0. Mrs. Barrett had taken refuge in the bedroom, leaving Max and Lucy to fulfill Jack's needs and receive the brunt of his rage. Jack had already raised his hand to Lucy once tonight, and the girls hovered in the background, being careful to not rile him again.

Finally things started to look up a little: the Dodgers had men on second and third and only one out. Max had learned some baseball from being forced to watch the games while she waited on Jack, and she recognized the beginnings of a rally when she saw one. For their own safety, the girls had become Dodgers fans, too. If the team did well, Jack was less apt to slap them around.

When the electricity went out, just after nine, Max grabbed Lucy's hand and led her to the basement where the two girls hid under the stairs while Jack went berserk. As they huddled there—tears running down Lucy's cheeks, and Jack tearing the house apart looking for them so he could “beat their asses”—Max made a decision.

Once these people had all gone to sleep for the night, she was out of here. As things turned out, no one went to sleep that night, but they still managed to miss the beating. . . .

Tired of searching for them, his anger subsiding as he remembered the impending Dodgers' rally, Jack Barrett staggered back upstairs and turned on a portable radio, which relied on batteries. Jack was pissed when he couldn't find the game on the dial, but when his alcohol fog cleared some, his anger disappeared and he called Mrs. Barrett and the girls to his side.

“Something terrible's happened,” he said, his voice suddenly sober, and not at all hateful.

In fact, he sounded frightened, like a scared kid.

Soon they had all gathered around the radio to listen.

“This is the Emergency Broadcast System,” a voice said. “At twelve-oh-five
A
.
M
., eastern time, terrorists detonated a nuclear instrument over the Atlantic Ocean. This has triggered an electromagnetic pulse that has destroyed virtually every electronic device on the eastern seaboard.”

Mrs. Barrett hugged Jack and gathered the girls to her, as well.

“All communications are down east of the Mississippi River, and there is currently no timetable for the reestablishment of contact with those areas. The threat of another terrorist attack in the western half of the country is still a possibility, and all citizens are asked to remain in their homes until further notice.”

The little family huddled together like that for the next two and a half hours. The EBS continued to broadcast the same message over and over, with no new information. Finally, Jack grew bored and restless. He pulled Lucy away from her mother.

“Get me a beer,” he growled.

Lucy went to the kitchen and came back with a fresh beer, popping the top for him; but the can slipped out of her hand as she tried to give it to him, and landed upside down in Jack's lap, soaking his crotch.

He jumped up and stood before them, his face reddening in anger, the can bouncing across the room, his pants looking as though he'd just wet them.

Max laughed.

The livid Jack took a step toward her, his hand shooting out; but Max had already decided to leave, so there was no reason to endure the abuse anymore. As the dad reached for her, she ducked, kicked out, and swept his feet from under him, dropping him to the floor in a heap.

He howled in rage and, as he tried to get up, she delivered an elbow that broke his nose and knocked him flat again.

Jack shrieked in pain.

Finding the sound strangely satisfying, Max backed off then, moved toward the door; but the fight wasn't out of Jack yet and he crawled after her. Spinning, she delivered a kick to the side of his head that dropped him one last time and left him lying on the floor unconscious.

With one last look back at an astonished Lucy and Mrs. Barrett—her sister and Mom didn't seem to know whether to be upset or elated—Max whispered, “Thank you.”

And she walked out of the shabby little house for the last time. She didn't know where she was going, but she did know she wasn't coming back here—ever.

In the days to come, Max—like everyone—learned from the remnants of the media what had occurred.

The Pulse had screwed up everything but good. Every electronic and motorized device from New York to Des Moines bought the farm when that thing detonated. Within seconds, power grids, telecommunications networks, transportation systems, banking systems, medical services, and emergency systems had become museum relics.

One minute, the United States of America was a superpower where everybody had jobs, money, food, all their needs met. The next, the American tapestry unraveled and left the country reeling. . . . No jobs, no money, no food, people forced to start fending for themselves.

No more drive-up, no more New York Stock Exchange, no more school . . . the entire eastern half of the country came to a grinding, screeching halt. Everything people were sure of yesterday was in doubt today, and there was no telling how long . . . or even
if
. . . the country could recover from such a catastrophe.

Even though, on the night Max left the Barrett home, the effects of the Pulse hadn't yet reached California, the X5-unit found herself in the same leaky boat as everybody else. Genetically enhanced or not, a nine-year-old could do only so many things in an upside-down world; so Max quickly turned to petty theft. She did fine for a while on her own, stealing enough to eat, sleeping wherever she could find a place.

Though the East's destruction had been nearly instantaneous, the West took longer to feel the effects; but as the West Coast economic depression caught up with the upheaval in the East, the pickings for foragers like Max became more and more sparse.

Still, Max had managed to build a loner's life for herself there in Los Angeles. As the people around her broke up into smaller groups in order to protect themselves, she continued to live the outlaw life, finding herself a remote spot within the confines of Griffith Park, from which she ventured only when she needed supplies. To Max, the three years she lived in the park were like an extended Manticore field exercise.

With one important difference—she was free.

Whenever she started to get down about the state of her life, that one thought could bring her back up. But she wondered if the others—if there were any still outside the wire—missed her as much as she missed them . . .

. . . defiant Eva, shot by Lydecker, the catalyst for their escape, dead for sure; Brin, the acrobatic one; Zack, their leader and her older brother; Seth, the boy who'd been caught that night and dragged back by the guards; and her best friend and sister Jondy. . . .