“See any reason for us to be searching for some other place to stay? Any place safer?” I put air quotes around safer. “Before we set up any more stuff like this, let’s be clear. I mean, we could go over to Camp Mabry and see what’s what.”
Kodie said, “Not tonight. Safety net’s gone. No police, army, doctors, mommies and daddies. We can’t go roaming around in the dark, not after Butler Park.”
“No,” Bass said. “I see no reason why we’d risk leaving what we know here. I’ve set all this up, you guys have made backup water available. I’ll get the generators going.”
“These first days are triage. Breathing room until…” I shrugged, motioned to the radio.
“Whatever we think of next,” said Kodie.
“Whatever comes next,” I said.
Kodie chortled. “I think we’re good on weapons for now,” she said, nodding at the arsenal against the wall. Bass and Kodie had moved the couch to another wall and arranged everything, the guns and ammo, so we could get to them quickly. We all turned to take in the impressive display.
“Should we go to someplace more fortified, a hotel or something? I dunno….” I said, still spitballing.
Bass answered, “Hate to say it. We’d be trapped up there, if, well, you know—”
“If the hundred thousand kids of Austin decided to turn on us? Is that what you’re trying to say?” Kodie was kind of mad. “We need to stop tiptoeing on eggshells and talk plainly and honestly to each other or we’re never going to make it.” Oddly, she shot Bass a knowing look, which he returned. When I searched both their faces, they looked down.
And then Kodie wheezed, her first of the day I knew of. It crackled and whined. An uncomfortable static-filled quiet followed.
“I’ve loaded all these here,” Bass said, waving his hand in game-show-display form. “I know guns. Fourteen different species of handguns here, all ready. Same with the twelve shotguns. Now, these automatics here, civilian-grade military assault rifles, your Bushmaster M-16s, these are all topped off. I can teach anyone to shoot who doesn’t know how. We should all know how at least. Over here you’ve got your…” and as he continued with his proud inventory all I could think of was kids. Mowing down kids, sweating and sneering like Rambo. What else would we be shooting at?
When Bass was finished, I had to say it. “Let’s not avoid the nine-hundred-pound pink gorilla riding the elephant in the room. Anyone here think there are adults alive? Show of hands.”
Kodie raised her hand. “We don’t know anything for sure.” She punctuated this with a cough.
Me: “True. But, Occam’s Razor. No military jets or tanks. There’s nothing, right? We know this.”
“Still. It’s early. We don’t know,” she said.
“Can we agree they’re dangerous? Are we willing to shoot to kill if it comes to that?”
Bass said, “If in mortal danger, we’re going to protect ourselves as needs be. If a hoard of a ten thousand kids comes running down the street at us, I say we get out the M-16s and…”
“What, mow them down?” Kodie asked, slackjawed at Bass. More sarcasm than disdain.
Bass said, “If they’re coming to kill us, then… yes.”
“When I fired into the air the night of, they scattered,” I said. “Probably all we’d need to do.”
“They won’t go into a cemetery for chrissakes,” said Bass. “They’re scared kids.”
“But then why are we scared of them?” I asked. A measure of pause. “Because we are. It’s the way they move, isn’t it? What we saw. That was enough. Their roaring from two miles away. That hum.”
Bass nodded his head with vigor. “Yes, definitely. They are changed. They’re together and they don’t seem to want our help.”
We all stood in that circle in my living room and nodded to ourselves. Radio static. Kodie’s sizzling lungs.
Bass turned to me and said, “Generators. I’ll go, before it gets dark.”
The first transmission came in at sunset.
We were playing coin poker on the living room floor while listening to my phone’s music player on low volume so we could hear the ham. Not totally unserious about it, I had suggested strip poker. Kodie smirked.
“Two dudes, one girl. Right,” she said. Her wheezing got worse with the dark and her fever returned, her face flush with it. While we were making our water rounds this afternoon, I had felt her forehead. It felt warm but I told her that I thought the fever was a good thing. I thought it meant she was simply old-world sick. She said she hoped so, adding that she’d had bronchitis before and this is how it felt. I thought, bronchitis—three days ago we’d shrug and take the antibiotics or whatever. Without doctors, pharmacists… the flu, influenza, to use its deadlier-sounding real name, could kill us now. Sure, we could break into pharmacies, hospitals, pilfer medicines, but we wouldn’t know what we’re doing. We could kill ourselves taking these things. Shelf life, quantity, dosage, who knows?
The adults knew. They left a gaping hole in the safety net. No, they’d taken the damn thing out from under us altogether.
Now children didn’t dare cross into cemeteries. They threw rocks, covered bodies, clung together like atoms of water. Primordial fear. They left that for us too.
The precariousness of our lives now, the omnipresent dangers of the new world, started to flow through and fill the passages and chambers of my mind, threatening to overflow into a panic flood. Darkness itself was now fearsome, and it came again soon. I’d been marking the sun’s scrape across the sky all day like prey dreading night-feeders.
When we heard the voice come over, we looked up from our cards and into each other’s eyes with shock and threw down our cards. Bass had turned down the volume so we could hear the music over the static but now leaped from the floor to crank it up.
The voice sounded strong and articulate. A voice like ours, late-teens maybe, deep, male.
“CQ CQ calling anybody. CQ CQ come back roger wilco shitfuck. Hello hello. CQ CQ this is Chris Washburn calling from near Medina, Texas. Awaiting any response. Hello! Goddammit, hello!” Dogs barking in the background. Lots of dogs.
Bass grabbed the mike like Bono going into a chorus at Wembley. “Yeah, hey, hello hello! Bastian Calhoun in Austin, Texas! Hello!”
“Holy Christ!” The guy, Chris, yelled off mike: “Hey, I got someone!” Back on mike: “Yeah hey, Bastian in Austin. Wow. For godsakes stay on this frequency. In case we lose it, we’re at the Utopia Ranch outside of Medina which is south of Kerrville, west of San Antonio about an hour. Holy shit man, I can’t believe it. Over—”
“Chris, yeah, us too. There’s three of us here, a couple miles north of the UT campus. How many of you are there? Over.”
“Five, now. There were six yesterday.” Pause. We didn’t ask. “We’re four girls, one guy, now. We’re all high school seniors. Over.”
“Same here, but two guys, one girl. You’re all from Medina?”
“No. Hell no. We came together from San Antonio. We had to get out. The kids. Over.”
“What happened? Why’d you have to leave? Over.”
“We just got here today, this afternoon. The kids in San Antonio… I don’t know how to say it. Well, let me ask. Any adults there at all? Anything coming together? Because in San Antonio there’s nada. Nobody alive. We drove around and around looking for others for a solid day. No one. We’d keep trying, I guess, if it wasn’t for the kids. Masses of them. They kept getting in the road, just standing there. It got to the point where they were blocking us at every turn. They didn’t do anything, though, just got in the way. It became a maze and we finally made it out of the city with nothing. Kinky had this ham radio in here, so. And now we’ve found you guys. Over.”