Last Light (20 page)
They were at war.
And like it or not, he was a soldier on the front lines.
Kay breathed relief as she came out of the store. They had taken her check with no problems, but she knew the fight wasn’t over. Their purchases were fair game to anyone bigger than Doug.
She looked for Jeff through the people in the parking lot, and saw that the bikes were all toppled over. Jeff sat on the ground.
Deni gasped. “Mom, he’s bleeding!”
Kay started running. As she grew closer, panic exploded through her. Blood was smeared under Jeff’s nose and across his cheek. He had taken off his shirt and pressed it to the back of his head, where blood had soaked through.
“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.
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 should 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?”