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.