The Fractured Earth (2 page)

I clenched my teeth and my fists.

If this was terrorists, then I hope I see one of them.

I turned left toward home, paralleling the beach. My whole mental map was based on proximity to and direction of the ocean. So many blocks to the marina, so many to the docks, so many to the closest ocean point. My house was five blocks away from the beach, seven from the marina with my boat.

My house, what a crock.

My foster parents’ place. I shared it with six other foster kids and three kids who actually belonged there. It was an old rundown two-story place with a couple of really big rooms. Four girls in one room, four boys in another, and two Little Ones with their mom and dad.

But truth be told, my foster parents weren't too bad—not like the first ones who tried to sell my boat out from under me. Damn good thing the marina owner was a great guy who had my back. He wouldn't give the keys to anyone but me, and called the police when they threatened me in front of him when I wouldn't hand them over. The cops were really annoyed with me, with him, with my foster parents, but they sided with me.

I never went back to that first house again.

It took maybe ten minutes or so of walking before I turned onto my street. There were a few people out and about, but it was strange. Some were just standing on their porches, staring at the smoke from downtown. A few were pulling suitcases out their front doors. There was one old man who was walking in circles and seemed to be muttering to himself. Every once in a while, he would smack himself in the head. I called him Mr. D'oh! He was on the same side of the street as my house, so I crossed over before passing him by—I'd already hit my limit of creep encounters for the day, so he could have his sidewalk.

It took about five more minutes to get to the house. I counted four hundred and forty steps exactly. 

I guess I should explain that.

When I'm stressed or trying to get through something without going nuts with anxiety, I usually count. Mostly it's a countdown, from either twenty or nineteen to zero. I start with twenty, but subsequent counts are nineteen. Maybe ten if I'm going to finish quicker.

It takes to the count of two hundred and thirty to take a quick shower, about three counts of nineteen to get dressed. It's sixty from the time the popcorn oil stops sizzling until the first kernel pops. Sometimes I count down in the movie theatre waiting for the movie to start. Twice I've nailed it, and one of those times was out loud to the great admiration of my foster mother. Two other out-loud attempts failed though.

Anyway, four hundred and forty steps from the time I started counting, with a short detour, until I arrived at my door. I tried the knob but it was locked, so I rang the doorbell.

Then rang it again a couple of times.
My foster mom should be home
. I listened at the door and rang it again.

Oh yeah, the power outage EMP thing. Looks like it affected doorbells too
. Oh well, I never liked the cheery
Greensleeves
tune to announce yet another solicitor. I wonder if that's
Green Sleeves
or
Green's Leeves
?

I knocked and started my countdown. I reached zero, but the door didn't open. I knocked harder and started another countdown. 

Nothing.

Dang it.

I stepped back and looked up at the windows, wondering how I might get up there. My shared room's window was always cracked a bit. I made sure of that by putting a screw into the base so it wasn’t possible for the window to close. My foster sisters couldn't figure out why they couldn't latch the window. The Valley Girls were all boy-crazy and no brains.

As I was figuring out my strategy to get up to the roof, which mostly involved stacking various unstable odds and ends, I heard a scream. I looked down the street and almost let one out myself.

Mr. D'oh! was attacking the neighbors! Clearly I'd underestimated his crazy level by a few orders of magnitude, or else he'd whacked himself on the head one too many times.

And had a roll of quarters in his hand when he did it.

The scream came from a woman who was half lying on the ground, holding her arm and screaming at Mr. D'oh!, who was clawing at her and, it appeared, biting at a man next to her. Gross. He wasn't screaming or yelling either, which didn't bode well for his chances, I thought.

I hastened my attempts to get into the house. I put a big trash container atop the car in the driveway and leaned it against the house. I pulled myself up on the trash can and tried not to teeter off. There wasn't much purchase on the roof, but I managed to get up with just a scraped knee. I walked over to my window and opened it and got in, taking one last look at the scene down the street.

Someone else had gone over to help and was hitting Mr. D'oh! in the back with what looked a piece of wood, but it didn't seem to be having any effect. As I watched, he hit the crazy man in the head hard enough to remove it from his shoulders! I guess he just staggered him, though, because Mr. D'oh! got up and jumped the guy and, I swear, bit him on the arm! 

If that wasn't crazy enough, the guy he'd had on the ground sat up, reached over, and took a chunk out of the screaming lady.

The Crazy must be catching.

I got the rest of the way in and closed the window. I was wishing I could actually lock it at that point, but I couldn't unless I took the screws out. I opened the bedroom door.

"Mom!" I yelled. "Mom!!" She should be home, her car was there. I didn't really want to call her “Mom,” but she got all sad and whiny if I didn't. And she was okay.

I heard a noise, but it sounded more like a dog or something ... and we didn't have a dog.

"Mom?"

I heard a bang downstairs, and a moaning noise. Down the stairwell, in the dim light in the house, something moved. I saw her, my mom. She fell on the stairs, tripped or something. 

"Mom, are you okay?" I started down the stairs but stopped when I got a closer look. She had some kind of doll's head in her hand, and what looked like paint ... or blood ... on her hands and face, and, well, everywhere. She looked up at me and hissed. I swear, she really hissed at me! She started to climb, and then I realized it wasn't a doll's head…

I screamed and ran up the stairs to my room. There was no lock, so I started piling junk up in front of it—dresser drawers, clothes, my foster sister's banjo. She couldn't play it, but thought she could. Nothing worse than that, unless one of my other foster sisters decided to take up the washboard.

I got a lot of stuff piled up pretty quick before I heard the first THUD against the door, like a head or a shoulder thumping against it. I didn't want to think about which one it was. The room certainly didn't have any weapons, except ... I had a bamboo sword I used for Tae-Kwon-Do, and a baton. They were in my foot locker—the one thing I had in this house that was private.

I was scared out of my wits. Crazies outside, probably one or more inside. No power, no phones, and maybe not for a while if Mr. Poof was to be believed. Go outside and risk being bitten by the rabid Mr. D'oh! and his recent victims, or stay inside this room forever while NotMom tried to bash in the flimsy wooden door with the head of her own child?

I cried. For myself. For my foster mom. For my real parents. For my city.

For the world. My world. My ocean. 

That's what I would do—my ocean, my boat. If I could make it there, I'd be okay.

Maybe.

A scrape and another loud THUD signaled that NotMom was pushing her way in. Her bloody hand grabbed the edge of the door and pushed it open further. I was running out of time.

I opened my locker and started riffling through it for my baton—sort of a police-looking thing with a little extra handle that stuck up. Old CDs that my dad gave me—I pulled them out.

The door scraped more, pushing my pile of stuff. NotMom stuck her head in, saw me and hissed and gnashed her teeth. I almost peed myself, but my fury took over.

I dumped the locker on the floor and saw the baton poking up. Grabbing it by the small handle so that it rested against my forearm—with the long end toward my elbow—I climbed up the pile in front of the door and brought the baton down on NotMom’s head, and knocked her … it … down, hopefully forever. For good measure, I flipped it by the grip handle and smashed the long end hard against her head again. Then I climbed down from the pile, panting from the adrenaline high—my second today.

NotMom was lying halfway in the room, her eyes still open but vacant, not moving.

"What now?" I wondered, looking away from her … it. Get what I can and head for the boat? Try to drive the car?

Oh, yeah. Wouldn't work. 

Would my boat motor even start, or would I have to violate the harbor rules and try to sail out? What should I take, what should I pack for my end of the world vacation?
See the sites! Burning cities. Meet new people! Who want to take you to lunch
... so to speak
. Activities for the whole family! Kill the crazies. Baseball bats provided free, Uzis extra.

I looked around my room, now in shambles. A pile of stuff at the door, now bloody. My locker contents on the floor. Drawers thrown around and trinkets knocked off the dresser. I knew there was an old Disney
Frozen
backpack in the back of the closet beneath a pile of the Valley Girls' clothes. The three of them just tossed dirty laundry in there when their personal clothes bag filled up. 

Tossing out the clothes and picking up the
Frozen
backpack, I frowned. This was my least favorite movie, ever. The only singing that halfway belonged in a movie was in
Fiddler on the Roof
, but this one had a ten minute song for every five minutes of plot. Appalling.

But it was what I had. Into it went a few personal items like those CD’s from my dad, a couple of books and my old family pictures, minus the frames, stuffed between book pages. I used my laundry bag for clothes, leaving the few dirty clothes inside since they were what I usually wore—and added some undies, warm and cold weather clothing, and my sailing gear.

I wrapped my hands in some shirts and cleared out the pile of stuff, opened the door, and stepped over NotMom. 

I didn't look at the doll's head she'd used to bash at the door.

In the bathroom, I added toiletries, including ladies’ stuff.

I hate guys.

All the toilet paper I could pack went into the bag, including some from the bathroom downstairs.

I went into the kitchen and started getting everything out that I wanted to take. I had to go back upstairs to dump one of my sisters' bags, then back down to the kitchen. Dry goods, canned meats with lots of calories, all the vitamins. I added a thermos and a couple of cooking pots and all the salt and pepper, plus some spices that I had no idea what they were.

In the garage I put on my foster dad's old tool belt and shoved my baton in the hammer loop. I found a good-looking knife with a sheath, and even a tree-trimming machete. It was pretty short, with one dull side, and the sharp side had a curve, I guess for chopping at the tops of branches? Anyway, it went into another loop on the belt. I also grabbed some nylon cord and a flashlight.

Back in the kitchen, I stared at the car keys for at least ten seconds. "What the hell?" I muttered, grabbing them. I went to the front door and unlocked the deadbolt and opened it. The trash bin was still precariously balanced on the hood of the car, but I’d just left it there. When I tapped the door opener, I didn't hear the telltale clunk of the doors unlocking, so I used the key. I sat down and tried to start it, but nothing happened.

Oh well, it was worth a try.

I pulled out the keys and started to get out when a hand grabbed my arm and yanked me out the car, squeezing my arm. I couldn't see my attacker, as I was pulled into a bear hug, and a sweaty hand covered my mouth.