Dark Grid (44 page)
Authors: David C. Waldron
The formal dining room at the front, which had been turned into an office or library, had been stripped almost to the walls. The computers, books, furniture, and rugs were all gone. The only things remaining were the built-in shelves. Nothing to see here, move along…across the entry way was another formal room--a den by the looks of it. There was still a recliner, and a flat-panel TV on the wall, with a Blue-Ray player and Xbox sitting on the floor. The shelves had been pulled down and burned several weeks ago, as had everything else that would burn once fuel got scarce.
The kitchen had been pretty well picked over and now held mostly just appliances. The first time he’d been through the house, only the doors had been taken off the cabinets--because they were easy to remove, but pulling the cabinets down would have been too much work. As easy fuel grew more difficult to find, the cabinets had finally been deemed “easy pickings”. Interestingly, the cork bulletin board was still on the wall next to the fridge, with a couple of notes and postcards still tacked to it. They looked to be your typical vacation postcards with “Wish You Were Here” from a couple of regional, State, and National parks.
The living room was about half empty, with only the really large pieces and leather furniture still in place, again because it was more work to disassemble something to get to the wood than it was worth…so far. The remaining downstairs rooms were just as disappointing. As Dan climbed the stairs, he wondered why he’d bothered to come in the first place and hoped he’d find something useful.
The first two rooms had been kids’ rooms--he could tell by the paint scheme on the wall if not by the furniture, or lack thereof. It had apparently all been wood furniture, as it was all gone. One was a boy’s room; he had clearly been into cars. Plastic models didn’t burn real well so they’d been left strewn on the floor. The closet was mostly hangers but there was one of those ‘space bags’ that you compress by pulling all the air out of it on the top shelf. Dan grabbed it and headed into the other kid’s room. No telling what was in the space bag; he’d look at it later.
The girl’s room was just as picked over and with nothing to find in the closet. The third room was an empty guest room. The last room was the master bedroom and Dan almost didn’t go in.
This room had no furniture, except for the bedframe, a stand mirror, and a couple of under bed Rubbermaid boxes which had already been gone through. He didn’t feel like going through the picked-over stuff. He was already feeling a little uneasy about going through the house on his own and he’d only been here for ten minutes. It wasn’t that there was any rule about picking over the empty homes by yourself; it was just that this was Carey’s neighbor and everyone knew that Carey and the Taylors didn’t get on well…and now he was starting to have second thoughts about being in here for too long on his own.
Dan did a quick check under the sinks in the master bathroom to be sure nothing was missed and found a bar of Irish Spring, still in the box, and a disposable razor. Next was the closet. He turned on the flashlight that he’d only turned on three other times since June, to make sure it still worked. The Browning gun safe was still there; Carey still hadn’t tried to pry it away from the wall. Mr. Taylor had done too good a job of bolting it to the studs and the floor and it just wasn’t moving. Too bad, maybe Mr. Taylor had left some of his guns behind.
Dan looked up at the ceiling and the dangling cord for the pull-down attic stairs. Dan had been with Carey on almost all of the initial walkthroughs of empty houses after people had either left or passed away. For the first six or eight homes, Carey had gone up into the attic himself, or had one of his lackeys do it, to see if there was anything worth “collecting”. The vast majority of them had held empty suitcases, if anything at all, and after another half dozen or so, Carey had called off searching them.
It was Dan’s hope that Carey had neglected the attic of the Taylor’s house as well. Dan grabbed the cord, pulled down the folding stairs, and got a smattering of dust, pink fiberglass, and grey, papery insulation in the face. Most likely he was going to be the first to go up.
The creaking of the springs and metal joints sounded incredibly loud in the otherwise silent house. Like his own attic there were a dozen or so sheets of plywood lain down between the rafters to walk on and support the odd bits of junk that you didn’t want to leave in the garage but just couldn’t bear to part with.
There were the two heating units and the light switch that didn’t do anything anymore and of course a couple of suitcases that hadn’t been taken. There were, however, what looked like a couple of sleeping bags in stuff sacks that appeared to have been up here for a couple of years and forgotten about. Those could come in handy. They were on the far end of where the plywood was in the attic, where Dan had to stoop down to keep from hitting his head as the roof was sloping down, and he was about as far from the opening back down to the closet as he could get.
From this vantage point he panned the flashlight back and forth across the attic again to see if there was anything else that he’d missed, or couldn’t see while standing on the steps. On the third pass he caught the brief reflection of something on the back of the rafter that held the light switch for the attic. He carried the sleeping bags back to the stairway, set them down, and examined a nail driven into the rafter. Hanging on the nail was a single key--a key with the word “Browning” on it.
Acknowledgements
First and foremost I must thank my wife. She has put up with a lot, and I do mean a LOT, while I did what I did to get this thing done. She made sure I stayed fed when I would have just kept writing when I was ‘in the zone’, went to bed when I had to get up in the morning for the job that actually pays the bills, and spent time with the family so my kids didn’t ever say, “Who’s the guy taking off in Dad’s car?”. I was even accused, tongue in cheek--I’m pretty sure, of having an affair with one of my main characters because of the amount of time I was spending writing, and she stuck with me through it all. Thank you, hon, I love you.
An additional
huge
“Thank You” goes to my wife as editor. She took this challenge on for the second edition and I have to say that it was a Herculean task. Neither of us knew what she was in for when she signed on but I think the results speak for themselves. Words alone don’t do justice but thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
Second goes to my kids. I have the greatest family in the world, bar none. Daddy was grumpy when he couldn’t write but he really wanted to or felt he needed to but was stuck. Even though the first draft was done in a relatively short amount of time, there were some rough patches. Then there were the times when Dad just wouldn’t…shut…UP about the book. Again, they were great. I’ll make it up to you, and we’ll go get ice-cream!
This has been a long time in the making. If I’m really honest with myself, I’ve been toying with bits and pieces of this since 1988 and my “Writing Science Fiction” class with Mr. K at Lake Forest High School (you will always be “Ken” to me, sorry). For good or ill, I actually started a story back then with--I kid you not,--“It was a dark and stormy night”. As God is my witness, I didn’t even know it was a cliché at the time. After I graduated, I toyed around with writing the dust jackets for the books I eventually hoped to write but never got around to even starting, and eventually, life got in the way.
Fast-forward twenty years and a co-worker introduced me to an author who is going to hate me for describing him this way, but so be it. This co-worker (who shall remain nameless at this point but appears as a character in Dark Grid) hands me a book by one John Ringo, and I like it. I read another one, and another, and then I got this wild hair to start writing. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t want to compete with John but I got, no foolin’, a little inspired. After about a month of hammering on the keyboard I decided to email John and ask him for advice and lo and behold, he responded…within like fifteen minutes! This is where I use the word he’ll probably hate…since then, he’s been a bit of a mentor. He’s been supportive in a way that I don’t think anyone else could have been with advice, insight, and blunt honesty.
Then there’s a whole cast of additional characters, some based more in “reality” than others, but all of them just as real to me in many ways. I work with a bunch of really great guys, many of whom are Veterans (capital “V” people, that wasn’t a typo) and a lot of them show up as characters in the book. I have never served in the military but several members of my family have, and I have the utmost respect for ALL members of our Armed Forces. Those that I know personally proved to be an invaluable resource, allowing me to tap into their knowledge and past experiences. It’s a culture that I can only glimpse from the outside and only understand at the most basic level, but it is one that I am grateful for nonetheless.
Debbie Kolstad, who did the final cover treatment for the book; it looks great, thanks, Mom.
Finally, but certainly not lastly, or least, all of the many proofreaders and first readers who not only helped make corrections and suggestions but also gave me the confidence to go through with seeing this through to the end. I couldn’t have done it without you and for that you have my undying gratitude.
--David
Table of Contents
Table of Contents