Olivia looked at her watch. She shrugged. “I’ve heard a few cars leaving. We just need to find gas wherever they’re finding it.” She pointed out to the ocean, where the sun was beginning to drop fast, spreading its pink, orange and red coloring across the horizon. “And we’ve got more water than we need right there.”
Gabby huffed and took in a deep breath, blowing it out in frustration.
Emma put her hand on Gabby’s arm, letting her know she’d try. “Olivia, the people you saw leaving may have had gas when they left here, but they won’t get far before they need more, and there isn’t any. The gas stations that did still have gas were charging up to a hundred dollars a gallon cash only, and even that went fast. It’s gone now. We’re stranded—”
Gabby interrupted. “And we can’t drink saltwater. You know that. We don’t have any idea how to do it. It’s not just boiling water, ya know? There’s salt to get out of the water, too. We could use the condensation trick, but that’d take forever to get just a tiny bit to drink.”
She waved her arms slowly to indicate the beach. “There’s just not enough resources here. There’s too many people. We have to go somewhere else. Emma and I just came from the resort snack bar and restaurant. We stood for over an hour waiting to get in and just before our turn, they hung up a closed sign. They’re out. No more food either. We’re going to have to walk farther to find some. All we have is what’s in our room—our unbearably hot, stinky room. The maids aren’t coming. No more water is coming. No more food. No magic genie who can turn saltwater into drinking water or gas. If we’ve got to go find food and water for ourselves anyway, we may as well do that on the way home.”
Gabby stopped long enough to take a breath, but Emma held up her hand to take a turn, “Olivia, she’s right. We’ve got to leave now. Things are getting worse. You can’t change it by denial. Your own husband has been telling you this could happen. Grayson would be so disappointed in you for stalling.” She pursed her lips and slowly shook her head at Olivia. “And what about Graysie stuck an hour from home at college? I’ll bet she’s not just sitting there with her head—or feet—in the sand thinking someone is going to turn the power back on. She’s probably on the way home, too.”
Olivia abruptly stood up, the back of her legs knocking her chair over in the sand. “Fine! But how the heck are we—three women—going to walk all the way home? Two hundred miles. Have you two lost your minds? We aren’t nineteen years old like Graysie, and this isn’t just a lap around the mall or a hot yoga class.” She waved her hands around. “This is… it’s… insane. We’re talking hot asphalt and pavement, dusty roads, and woods. Lots of woods. Do you seriously think we can make it all the way there on foot?” Olivia’s voice wavered on the last sentence and her chin trembled.
Seems she was a little more bothered than she’d been letting on after all.
Emma nodded emphatically while Gabby smiled and hugged her twin sister, knowing she was coming around—finally.
“We can find a way,” Gabby insisted. “The only other option is to stay here, and you know the guys are probably worrying themselves to death about us. I’m sure Rickey is safe with Dusty, but I’ll bet he’s worried about his mama.” She gave Emma a sympathetic look. “Let’s pull up our big girl panties and show them we were listening for the past two years. I’ve got my bug-out bag in the room, and both of yours are in the car. We’ve got guns. I think we can do it.”
Olivia grimaced. “Yeah, I need to talk to you about those bags.”
Before Gabby or Emma could respond, they were knocked over by a man running between them awkwardly swinging a heavy ice chest. As the girls tumbled to the sand in a heap and another man… and another… ran through them, giving chase.
“Hey! Watch it,” Gabby yelled after them. “There’s women and children—”
Bang Bang Bang
Shots fired out and the beach erupted in screams and a scurry of people grabbing children and running away toward the beach access ramp, sprinting toward safety in a panic. In seconds the once spread-out crowd who’d only dotted the sand every fifty to hundred feet were now running toe to heel, clustered together and bottlenecking at the access ramp to the resort. Some were jumping the fence over the dunes, others shoving to get through the gate onto the boardwalk. People kicked and screamed. Women and children were crying.
Total chaos in seconds.
Another Pop Pop Pop and the crowd roared and surged, doubling their efforts to get away.
Emma stayed down, hands over her head as the gritty sand, dirty feet, heavy coolers, and brightly-striped towels flashed past them. Gabby was on her knees, her head spinning side to side, trying to look around knees and ankles for the shooter.
Now people were running back to the beach—some of them. Others were still running away—causing the crowd to crash and buckle. People fell down. Tangles of limbs. Screams rang out through the air. The terrified cries of children rose above the pandemonium.
Gabby struggled to her feet and shielded her eyes with her hand, squinting to look down the beach. Was it something that came from down there? What was happening? She didn’t see anyone pointing a gun… maybe it was just fireworks?
She turned to ask Emma and Olivia if they saw anything.
But Olivia wasn’t thinking.
She wasn’t doing anything; sprawled in the sand on her back with a trickle of blood running down the side of her head, she looked like she was finally getting some peaceful sleep.
Gabby screamed.
4
“YEAH, I’M A DAMN APOCALOPTOMIST ALRIGHT.”
Jake ran his hands over his face, and kept on the whispered rant against himself, “I know the shit has probably hit the fan but I’m playin’ like it’s all gonna be alright. Way to be a good neighbor, Jake,” he said out loud to himself. He slammed his fist against the wall. He felt like crap for lying. He cringed as he thought about the conversation.
The idiot neighbor—the one that had been driving him crazy for years with his unkempt grass, stupid mulch-straw mounds with nothing growing in them, and once, even putting a beekeepers box in his back yard that had been bothering Gabby the entire summer until they’d discovered it—had knocked on his door an hour ago. When he’d answered it, Kenny had asked him what he should do with all the food in his freezer that was defrosting. Jake had just shrugged and said, “Eat it or throw it out, I guess.”
He’d played stupid.
Kenny had asked him if he thought the power was coming back on and Jake had shrugged again and said, “Sure. I guess it will, eventually.”
He’d lied through his teeth. His brothers-in-law, both Grayson and Dusty—who coincidentally were actual brothers—had been telling him for a long time that this could happen. And if it did, the power wasn’t coming back on for quite a while. Kenny, and a lot of the people in this neighborhood, were clueless.
Most of them lived in their McMansions, drove high-priced cars and kept less than a week’s worth of food on hand. Heck, some of them probably less than that. They probably didn’t have the first idea of what they should be doing. That food needed to be cooked, canned or dehydrated. They needed to conserve food, and especially water.
They were just lucky the power had gone out at night, while most of them were in their beds sleeping, and that they weren’t having to trudge home on foot from their high-falootin’ jobs.