Untaken (10 page)

Brandon

he Biedermanns had split town some time during the night, and that had to account for some of Dad’s good mood today. Our remaining neighbors had dragged their radios and portable TVs outside, so they could keep an eye on the invaders, but no one was getting anything but static and a pre-recorded emergency broadcast I was already sick of hearing.

The ships were back in the sky again, but Dad ignored them and I tried my best to do the same.

We worked all day, side by side, me fetching and carrying, and Dad whacking in nails. We did a real good job of turning our little ranch house into a genuine bunker. Dad was clever with his hands. He used plywood to cover the doors and windows, with neat little slots cut in that we could look out through. He hauled his old welding kit out of the basement, and sent me running round the back yard, wrenching all that old scrap iron free of the weeds. It was almost like he’d had a plan for that junk all along.

The basement was the real triumph though. It was past midnight when we started working on it. My eyes kept slipping closed, and my shoulders felt like someone had run piano wire through them and was yanking on the ends, but Dad was still going strong. He swapped the flimsy wooden doors that led from the kitchen to the basement stairs with the heavy metal one from the gun shed and did likewise with the bulkhead door that led out into the yard.

“That ought to do it,” he said finally, sometime around three a.m.

“Looks good,” I said.

“It don’t look pretty,” he said with a smile, “but yeah, it looks good.” He clapped me on the shoulder.

“How ‘bout a beer before we settle in?”

We drank our beers sitting in the yard, the moonlight glinting off our new reinforcements. I kept my gaze on the ships, but I didn’t feel so scared of them now. I guess what I felt was something like gratitude.

That night, I slept sounder than I had in months. It was the hard work that did it. That, and knowing Dad was sleeping too, instead of out wilding somewhere.

It was dark in the house when I woke up, even though my bedside clock said 8:00 a.m., but it felt safe, too—cozy, I guess I’d call it—with so much plywood over the windows, not even the sun could get in.

We worked all day again on the house, tearing down the weak parts and building them up strong. Lou drove by once in his big police cruiser, but I reckoned the local law enforcement boys had bigger things to worry about than Dad’s building projects.

I was still beat from the day before. My muscles were stiff, and the blisters on my hands made it hard for me to hold the hammer. I was trying my best to help Dad, but with him standing over me, I was liable to drop things, to hammer nails in crooked and strip screws at the best of times.

“Make yourself useful and go hunt up some supplies. Food. That kind of shit,” he told me as I served the two of us lunch—my specialty: fried eggs in ketchup.

“I could go down to the corner store,” I said, “but Shaw’s is closed. I heard Mr. Kauffmann telling Mr. Leddy. Everyone went crazy down there and smashed the place up.”

Dad rolled his eyes. “I don’t mean the stores. Use your head, Brandon. Look in the houses. Start next door with them lousy Biedermanns. Lots of people split town in a hurry. It’ll be easy pickings if we move now before them other fools think of it.”

“Isn’t that kind of…stealing?” I pictured Lou in his big police cruiser. Lifting a bottle of sauce from the corner store was one thing, but breaking and entering was serious.

“In a survival situation, you do what you can to feed you and yours,” Dad stated. “You think when those bastards attack, things like taking a few tins of franks’n’beans will mean shit?”

I shook my head.

“But having that food could mean the difference between life and death for us.”

I could see the truth in that, but a prickle of gooseflesh crept down my spine as I hopped the fence between our yard and the Biedermann’s, then snuck between their neatly clipped bushes to the backyard.

A dumb-looking garden gnome grinned at me from the patio. I hefted it by its pointy hat and let the sliding door have it.

With the sound of Dad’s power saw chomping through timber, I didn’t think anyone had heard the glass break, but all the same, I made myself wait five long, jittery minutes before stooping through the shattered panel.

Even though the Biedermanns had left in a rush, their house seemed so clean and ordered compared to ours. For the first time, I wondered if maybe Grammy hadn’t been right about Dad’s housekeeping. I mean, our house was great, but there always seemed to be kind of an uncomfortable feeling in there. Like, no matter how many windows you opened, you could never quite get enough light in. I don’t know if that feeling came from the fridge that was always empty but for beers and dried-up spills, or the floors that would never quite come clean, or something that came from Dad himself, who often seemed surrounded by some sort of hot, dark energy that made my skin prickle.

The Biedermann’s was more like Grammy’s place. Everything clean. Pictures on the walls with honest-to-god frames around them, instead of tacked up magazine pages showing cars or chicks with their titties out—which was the kind of art Dad favored.

There were photos, too. Tom and Louise and their two dopey kids posing together against cheesy photographers’ backdrops, or just out and about together, on vacation, or in the park. There weren’t any photos like that in our house. Just the old ones of Mom that I wasn’t supposed to see, and one of me taken at school a few years back, before Dad said they were a waste of money when he could see my face any old day just by looking at me.

Besides, what would our photographs have shown anyhow? Dad driving off in his truck to go hunting with his buddies? Me trying to take the spliff from between his fingers when he nodded off smoking?

I felt guilty for thinking that way. I didn’t want to be like one of those dumb Biedermanns. Dad was smarter than any of them—you could tell that just by looking at all the stuff they’d left behind when they ran away. Sure, some of the closets were empty, and a lot of the good food was gone, but there was plenty left behind. Rich pickings.

They’d split with no real plan.

“They’re scared,” said Dad, when I came back with my haul. “But they’re only scared enough to run; like that’ll make a lick of difference.”

I brewed up some of the Biedermann’s fancy organic coffee and we took the steaming mugs outdoors to drink in front of the radio.

“Give it a rest,” Dad finally said as I dialed through the bands, trying to find some news. “It’d just be more of the same anyway. Them Generals got themselves believing all that ‘we come in peace’ bullshit the government scientists been trying to sell. You mark my words, them politicians are gonna tie the hands of our troops, until there isn’t a damn thing we can do.”

I knew Dad was right. Back when the Space Men had first arrived, scientist after scientist had appeared on screen, yakking on and on about “the need for contact” and “exercising caution” until my head spun.

“What’s gonna happen eventually is that the Army’ll tell them political types and pencil necks where to shove it,” Dad said. “And then we’ll kick some alien ass, all right?”

“Guess so,” I said.

“Darn tootin’.”

We kind of grinned at each other a moment.

That night, I lay awake in spite of my aches and pains. Who knew what funky weapons were on those ships? I’d been so caught up in fortifying the house and enjoying Dad’s good mood, that I hadn’t stopped to think about what might be happening now, just a few miles down the road. The Space Men could be here any day. If there really was a battle, would I be able to step up and fight like a soldier? I had enough trouble killing rabbits—would I really be able to shoot straight when the time came?

Yes, I decided. So long as Dad was beside me, I’d make him proud.

I’d step up.

Everything would be okay.

Gracie

he sun was starting to go down again when there was a knock on the door. All the fear and hope I’d held in all day seemed to get stuck in my throat, making it hard to breathe. I ran to the door, and my hands were so slick with sweat I had to fold a big wad of my T-shirt around the door handle before I could open it.

When I finally got the damn thing open, it was just Mr. Novak from across the road.

“Hey there, Gracie, are the rest of your family”—he paused, like he searched for the appropriate words, then settled on—“home?”

“Just me,” I said, trying to hide the disappointment in my voice. “Dad was at work, and Mom and the boys were at the Common.”

Mr. Novak was a nice guy, and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by seeming upset that he was still alive and kicking instead of my family. Him and his wife, Wilma, didn’t have any kids of their own and sometimes that means grownups are grumpy with kids, but the Novaks were the other kind—the people who gave us popsicles in the summer, and never minded if our games spilled across from our lawn to theirs.

“Well, honey, I’m sure they’re all fine,” he said. “They’ve been playing something on the radio just now about an emergency center where folks should gather together. Wilma and I are headed over there and we think it would be best if you came along with us.”