Before the war, on Darryl’s last day of work, the elevator plummeted into the storey below the basement, doors sliding closed. He hadn't noticed immediately. He was walking across the lobby of the building, carrying the last box from his cube when he heard it hit bedrock. He turned around slowly. Light bounced dully from the skylight off his buzz cut.
These things, they happen. Darryl had expected this sort of thing. He had three flashlights; a lighter, an extra cell phone, a walky-talky, and three cartons of triple A batteries, along with four water bottles, and some trail mix in an airtight, UV bag in the box in his arms. On the outside of the box in sharpie pen, he had written ‘work: survival’ on a strip of duct-tape.
The contents of that box weren't the reason he had gotten fired, directly. But those contents were the reason his wife had packed her van, buckled in the kids, and driven back to her parents' farm.
*
The car was on its last legs oil wise. They had brought about 15 gallons of gas, when they left
Virginia. Gas vapors have driven them half mad, and Darryl was clenching his teeth audibly, sitting in the back seat.
‘You think we're going to make it? I know it will be within 15 miles or so,’ Sandra said. Her tan hair was nearly touching the ceiling in the car they had picked up on the way out of
Richmond. She had been a math professor. She had a thing for the architecture of plant life as well.
‘I guess it depends on how well the road punks are taking care of the patch work,’ Darryl said, ‘is the toll still edible?’
‘You gonna ask that every sixteen seconds?’ said Juan. He was younger than the other three. Good mechanic, shrewd thinker, black hair, dark skin.
‘Yes, I am. How do you expect to get out of it if we don't? We got about 10 minutes by the signs before we have to give them the food.’
‘Chill out, man, chill,’ Juan said.
Darryl saw movement between the woods and the road to his right, a fish-flash.
‘Deer!’
Carl's hair surged past his face as he mashed the breaks of the green Taurus station wagon into the floorboard. They smashed through a little deer. Everything seemed to be moving very slowly.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Darryl screamed at him. His voice came out at a feminine octave.
‘Shit man, I just was swerving, I saw him, I swear I did.’
The station wagon was rolling to a stop, in the gravel on the side of highway. There were not any cars on the road.
Darryl leapt out of the passenger seat, into the open air, without even a lawn mask on. That was, in certain areas, a great way to develop some forms of cancer rapidly.
There was blood on the grill. There was fur lining the little open areas between the light lenses and the body of the car. The front right quarter panel looked like construction paper, wrinkled.
Carl was not as good a driver as Darryl was. Darryl was cautious. Darryl was very cautious. Darryl planned avenues of advancement. Darryl thought of every possible scenario. He thought of what he was going to have to do in that scenario. It might have made him a slow driver, but he was comfortable that way. He was not comfortable, bordering on insane, any other way.
Darryl tilted his head back, and cussed a few times at the sky. Then he took his watch off, and threw it into the deep ditch beside the highway.
‘You know why I threw that?’ Darryl asked.
‘No,’ Carl said.
‘I threw it because we just fucking lost time. We can't be on these roads after dark. It's 11:30 now. With no trouble, it takes five hours to get to
Charleston from
Richmond. You think it'll be dark at 5:00 tonight?’
‘No, dude.’ said Carl.
‘You willing to be getting shot on that?’ Darryl paused, vein throbbing in his forehead. Suddenly he turned towards the ditch, out of Carl's face.
‘Look, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m not trying to get heated up, man. I just don’t know what to do. We’re probably not going to make this drive. I’m not sure.’
‘Dude, its cool.’
‘You think so?’
‘I think it’s worth a shot. You said it’d be easier to defend ourselves in West Virginia.’
‘It probably would be. It’s just been so difficult protecting all these goddamn seeds, Carl.’
‘I know. Look, man… why don’t you just drive. Maybe we can trade some of the seeds for some Dramamine or something on the way.’
‘You know how unlikely that is? Just estimating like a 2.3 percent chance.’
‘I’d rather do this than have you fucking freaking out on me, kay?’
‘Yeah, sorry. I’m cool now. We’ll fix this,’ said Darryl.
‘We won’t fix this. You know that. We might do a little better at best, get something to grow, but look around man, there’s a whole lot of shit dying out there. It’s just too cold.’
‘Alright. Alright. I’ll drive until you can’t stand it anymore, then we’ll switch.’
‘Get back in the car quick,’ said Carl.
‘We don’t really know how much the glass keeps out radiation. You know that. At least we can look forward to some interesting genetic mutation, eh? Split the species and all ‘that,’ said Darryl.
‘You need a plastic baggie or something,’ Sandra said to Carl as he got in the back seat.
‘Hell yeah I do.’
‘How bad is it,’ she asked, twisting around in her seat to look behind her.
‘You'll find out in a minute,’ Carl said.
Darryl slammed the driver's door closed.
‘Why’d you throw that watch?’ said Sandra.
‘We ain’t making it in this car. We lost crazy time. I guess it just made sense to throw it.’
‘It didn’t make any sense at all,’ she said.
‘Well, fucking help me find some fucking drugs then.’
‘That’s the whole idea,’ Juan said.
They made it about two miles, before the front right hand tire started whining.
‘Oh, no. The tire is going to explode,’ said Darryl.
‘You sure?’ said Juan. The tire exploded, taking the wheel well with it. It felt like the car had taken mortar fire. It shifted to the right, and ground to a halt at a crazy angle in the gravel.
‘Awesome. Now what?’ said Carl. Then he retched, and threw up in his shoes.
*
They had knives, each of them, somewhere in their clothes. They had to leave most of the precious seeds in the car. They had to walk together, for protection.
‘Fair chance that there's something to drive in the town off this exit,’ said Darryl, ‘Lot of cars sort of just left where they ran out of gas.’
No shit, thought Juan.
They found a Nissan Altima, in useable condition. It hadn't been there for long, about 300 yards from a dry gas station.
‘Must have been desperate, gas ran out 6 months ago or more.’
They walked over to the car, and filled the tank all the way up. Darryl popped the trunk, and stowed the empty gas containers.
‘Let me drive, Darryl. I can't throw up again.’
‘Nope.’
‘Dude, let him drive,’ said Juan.
‘You selfish bastard. How dare you suggest I should let him drive? We've got more than one man's deficiencies riding on us getting there. Now I don't want to hear another goddamn word about it. I am going to drive this, or you can try and kill me. But I would ‘strongly advise against that.’
‘After all this shit, you bring that up again?’ said Juan.
‘We need to go right now,’ said Sandra, ‘Four cars,' she pointed off in the distance to the east.
They all jumped in the car, slammed the doors, and sped off. Carl put his heads in his hands, and threw up again into the plastic baggie he had. He looked up at the back of Darryl's head.
*
Somewhere outside of Charleston, they parked in a parking lot beside an ancient store that said Bodean’s on an old rusty sign.
‘Amazing how quickly nature takes over again,’ said Darryl.
‘You know how many time’s I’ve heard that in the last year?’ Juan said.
‘Well, hopefully, your bro or cousin or whatever shows up soon. We gotta start digging if we’re going to get this stuff planted, right?’ said Sandra. She was sitting on the hot hood, kicking her feet.
Darryl watched Carl’s hand on her thigh for a moment. It seemed like such an odd thing to do. There was no reason Carl should feel like the other two needed to be reminded that she was his. She wasn’t his. She could never again find a use to be anybody’s, not for long, not like it used to be.
They needed re-population with as much genetic diversity as possible. If everybody didn’t know that yet, then they were going to be getting into a lot of trouble. Could have been just a dudes hand on a hot chick’s thigh, he reminded himself.
They waited in the parking lot for an hour and a half before Darryl’s Ex-wife’s brother, Cory, showed. They didn’t seem him walk up, since they were standing at the bottom of the hill he walked over. They were hungry, thirsty, tired, and cold, and they had about enough gas to roll the Nissan down to the declivity between two mountains Cory had fortified his trailer.
‘Originally, trailer was 20 miles further back into the holler. I had to haul that shit up myself. Ain’t too many people starved around here, so there was some who died a cancer, but not too many, like I said, not too many,’ said Cory, who was pressed against Carl in the back seat.
‘Into the what?’ said Juan.
‘The holler, my holler,’ said Cory.
‘That's what they call this sorta narrow valley between two mountains. Kinda like a neighborhood in other states,’ said Darryl.
‘So you hauled you're trailer? You got a truck at still works?’ said Juan.
‘Nope. Don’t you think I’d be driving it? Your friend here smells like a bad night in a cheap bar.’
Carl looked up from his bag at the large bald man sitting next to him, and said, ‘So how’d you ‘haul’ it, like you said, without a truck, man?’
‘It doesn’t take too much to convince a bunch a people to do something when you got the only easy food in miles,’ Cory said.
‘You think this one was raided?’ Darryl asked.
‘It’s been over a year, Darryl, yeah, I think it’s been raided. In fact, that was my easy source of food. That and the fields we harvested, before it got too cold.’
‘Well it's time to get to planning,’ said Darryl.
They all filed in through the sliding back door to the modified trailer. It led into a steel foyer that had eye slits, and holes to slide a gun barrel through. Then up some stairs, and into the actual trailer. They could hardly fit standing up.
*
‘So, food?’ Carl asked.
‘Got seeds,’ said Darryl.
‘Can you shoot?’ asked Cory.
‘I shot a black powder rifle in Boy Scouts during the two weeks I was in it,’ replied Cory.
Cory pulled the couch forward, so that it tilted on its face. Underneath was a slide in the floor. There were seven or so rifles down there, and boxes after boxes of ammunition. He reached in, and picked up a Kalashnikov.
‘Take it,’ he said, and pushed it towards Carl.
‘All right, we gonna shoot some gooks?’
‘No but if you weren't such a college liberal pinko, you'd know that that gun is what they would have been shooting you with,’ Cory said. He laughed. It eased the sudden tension.
‘And we're gonna get some food with that thing, so I hope you're only bad at hunting, and not considerably worse.’
Everyone believed them when they said they’d be back soon. There had been a recent up spike in deer in the area. They were finding secret sources of food in the cold. When you woke up in the morning it was like a deer nation.
Meanwhile, the other three had been drawing up methods of excavating three cellars underneath the trailer. There was a coal mine just a mile down the road, and they figured they could square off some rooms in the coal mine, gather up the florescent lighting, and reattach the mine to the remnants of the electric grid.
‘If we can hack the grid, then we just might be able to get something to grow down there,’ Sandra said, ‘the only concern I have is that we have to ensure nobody ever sees us going in and out of the mine shaft.’
‘That’s where the real work is going to be, you know,’ said Darryl.
‘You think you’re gonna dig a tunnel all the way to the mine?’ Juan asked, ‘You couldn’t do that before the warming, man.’
‘I don’t know about that. I’ve been looking at these topo maps over here. I think we just might be able to pull this off really well. See, we can start digging in the side of the hill, where all those trees our, about six feet under the roots of those trees. The trees will help hold the soil above us. We just need some four by fours, or the equivalent thereof. It’ll be easy to do the digging, it’s the collapsing that’s the main issue.’
‘You bet it is.’
‘Damn, dog. You’re into this aren’t you,’ said Juan.
‘Man, I spent too much time thinking about survivalism not to be prepared for some shit ‘like this.’
‘You believe in revelation, man?’
‘I don’t think I really need to believe in anything at this point, right? I mean, hey, we’re living in a dying world, and who knows if the nukes worked? We got ten years to balance the ice age if it worked. If it didn’t, well I’m going to be the last man to die.’
‘Like you can prevent yourself from dying through sheer willpower,’ Sandra said.
‘Stuff that legends are made from.’
‘Stuff that terrorists, religious fanatics, and extremely mentally ill people like you are made from.’
‘Why don’t you shut up, Sandra,’ Darryl said, ‘I don’t want to hear you talk about it again, Sandra. You got me, Sandra.’
‘Darryl. Get a hold of yourself, man,’ said Juan.
‘Dammit,’ he said. He smacked himself across the face. Then again. He turned away. He reached into his pocket, pulled out some ancient cigarettes, and lit one.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘Well that ain’t good enough,’ Sandra said, ‘You could be normal if you wanted to.’
‘Yeah, that’s why we’re in a 'holler' in West Virginia trying to grow food to trade it for drugs, because this is all a big charade I’m pulling. It’s all grand theatre. The house lights’ll come up any fucking minute, yeah? Yeah?’
‘Look, all right. Why don’t you just give us something to do,’ Sandra said.
Darryl seemed to take a minute to think about it. He looked though the steel slats over the front window.
‘Wonder how long it’ll take till somebody makes a go of this place,’ he said.
‘Not too long,’ said Juan, ‘What I’m wondering is whether that piece of shit over there can ‘deflect a bullet.’
‘Cory said yeah,’ said Sandra.
‘He might just know too,’ Darryl said.
‘Yep. He’d know if he’s been here for more than a year,’ said Sandra.
‘We’ll I guess that’s more than cold comfort, eh,’ said Juan.
‘You ain’t getting you’re ass shot in the bottom of a grocery store,’ said Darryl.
‘Well, it was the only good place to sleep.’
‘Hell, I’m not blaming you,’ Darryl said. Then he laughed.
‘All right, then, so what’s the plan?’ said Juan.
‘I think I’m going to get a shovel and see if I am just gonna have to start blasting my way into the side of the mountain.’
‘All we’ve got is a two foot drill bit, and TNT. But Cory’s got a pile of that, so we can blast if we have to. I just have no idea what I’m doing with it. Sandra is going to hit up the shed for plywood, 4x4s, 2x4s, whatever you can get you’re hands on. Then I’m going to work the rounds between the three of us, and we’re going to make some 4x4 ‘timbers. We got the wood.’
‘You really think we can get the tunnel done before we start planting.’
‘Honestly no. There's a lot to do to get the mine we scoped out yesterday ready, but it'll go much faster than the tunneling.’
‘Then what are we doing this for? I mean, we're going to be bringing major equipment into that mine, surely somebody will see us.’
‘Probably. We can't prevent that, but we can dig a tunnel to reduce the chance in the future, provide an escape route, and worst comes to worst, defend these few acres from‘marauders from the tunnel, even if they outman us three to one.’
*
Three weeks later, the only light between the pillars in the mine was the skull glow from pot bellied stoves they'd wrestled down the service elevators. The glow illuminated Carl's cot he'd brought down with him, once he realized how difficult it was to keep all the stoves alive.
Tendrils of tomatoes wriggled in the twilight like tentacles. It smelled like manure. Carl had time to think. It was bad.
This is the future? These pipes pushing coal smoke into slag pits so no one would see? Hydroponics plants we're staving off from the cold? How did I draw the short stick, thought Carl.
Carl heard shifting at the main tunnel entrance. Sound bounced and fractured. His AK-47 clattered as he picked it up. Only Semi-auto, but that was American law, right, he thought.
‘Carl! Turn the goddamn lights on!’ yelled Darryl.
‘Heh, it's you!’
‘Where's the breaker again?’ said Darryl.
‘Can't believe its daylight already.’
‘Turn the lights on, man, it's my turn.’
‘I mean I can stay, if you want. I don't mind.’
‘Jesus Christ, you're crazier than I am. Don't make this thing collapse on your way out.’
Suddenly rows of florescent lights flickered to life over Carl's wrinkled brow and clenching jaw.
‘Yeah, time to go.’
*
Darryl turned at the wall where he was digging. He was 152.6 yards into the mountainside. He might hit the mine at any point.
‘I need more water. That's what I need,’ he said aloud to himself.
He wondered whether Sandra could hear him all the way outside the tunnel, if it had a megaphone effect or not. Self-control keeps us human, he thought. He wondered for an instant where he'd picked up that tripe.
As he shuffled along, pushing the shop-light, and cord in front of him, he checked each cross strut as he passed. It looked like the 16-pennies were holding. It didn't help his mind in the slightest.
At the 17th cross brace, most of the way out, he notice three of the nails had worked their way out, about half way. Plate tectonics and earth shifting images flashed through his mind. He put one hand up on the brace, released the hammer from under his belt, and attempted to drive the first one in.
His giant safety glasses landed on the ground beside him. He cursed. Dirt cascaded into his eyes. He shifted backwards, from were the dirt was falling. His foot shifted the post behind him with the pressure, pinning his foot to the wall.
Lizzie, Cory's wife, and her children, who survived the depopulation, were blowing bubbles in front of the trailer when the tunnel collapsed. She was wiping bubble slime from her black hair. She turned and looked.
Juan burst from underneath the trailer, where he'd been excavating a third cellar for future crop storage.
‘What the fuck was that? Did you feel that?’ he yelled at Sandra, who was tying a sickly cow to a post that was eventually going to be a barn.
Juan saw where the dust was rising from the collapse.
‘Holy Christ! It collapsed, man! Sandra, it collapsed. Grab a shovel! Shit!’ He pelted down the lawn, and across the creek to the tunnel entrance, spade in hand.
Sandra grabbed a shovel and sprinted behind Juan.
‘Where's Darryl, Juan?’
‘He was in there, in the hole.’
Sandra stood in front of the narrow cleft, like a stream gulley with a ragged edge, open to the sky for 32 yards. Juan pushed passed her and ran down into the defile.
‘Hope that sonofabitch is dead,’ Cory said, walking up to her.
‘Yeah, you got any hospitals still open, Cory?’ asked Sandra.
‘If you like civil war era healthcare, then yeah, we do,’ said Cory. He smiled at her and walked passed her up the hillside, ‘Think we should organize this excavation a little better?’
She followed him up the side of the hill, looking down into where it collapsed.
‘How was Darryl moving all the fill?’ asked Juan when they got to where he was digging.
‘Wheelbarrow. Betcha can't guess where that shit is now, huh?’ said Cory.
‘How was he even pushing it in here?’ muttered Juan, his shoulders were nearly touching the walls. The sod was just above head level.
‘Dunno, but I do know that you still got all them buckets, Juan. Go get 'em. We can get the kids and Lizzie out here, get 'em moving factory style.’
‘Look, man, I don't know... we got a limited time span here,’ said Juan.
The gallows grin dropped from Cory's face. He pulled a Smith & Wesson SW990L Pistol from
The back of his belt loop. All the sunlight that was left in the holler attached to the gun.
‘Get the fucking buckets,’ he said.
Juan's gaze tracked from the barrel to Cory's eyes.
‘Whoa, man. What the... okay, man,’ he said.
He backed down the declivity slowly, palms facing Cory, until Cory turned around, towards Sandra and let Juan see him put the black thing back under his jean shirt.
Sandra swallowed; she turned the shovel point in the ground.
There was a long silence.
‘What would you like me to do for now?’ said Sandra.
‘We could jump down in there and start digging,’ he said. He eased himself in, and then helped her down.
‘Wider than it needed to be,’ he said.
They heard Carl running up the gravel driveway. They kept digging. They didn't even turn around when he started yelling inquiries across the yard.
‘We don't got time,’ Cory said to no one.
‘Dude, did you guys feel that?’ said Carl.
‘Darryl's dying in this tunnel,’ Sandra said.
‘What??’
‘Care to help Juan bring the buckets from the cellars over here? And would you get my wife to bring the kids out while you're down there?’
Carl nodded, turned, and jogged back to the trailer.
They found the top of a camouflaged helmet fifteen buckets later. Sandra hit it with her shovel. The sun was setting. The helmet was pinned to the dirt by one of the crossbeams.
‘Holy shit, it's him,’ said Carl, grabbing the fifteenth bucket from Juan, ‘told him this would happen.’
‘Shut the fuck up, Carl,’ said Juan.
Juan got on his knees, and wrapped his hands under the beam. He pulled up. Dirt shifted.
‘You sure you want to do that?’ said Cory, standing with arms akimbo, from where he switched to supervisor mode after the Hispanic got back.
Juan froze. Then he tore the beam upwards out of the ground. Dirt cascaded backward, down the slope of the beam.
Darryl was mostly freed from the soil. He lay there motionlessly, like a plaster cast.
‘You check if he's breathing now,’ said Cory, looking at Carl.
‘Kay.’ He shifted past Juan, who was hoisting the beam onto of the sod, and bent over Darryl's face.
‘He's breathing. He's got a lot of blood coming out of this cut, man, but he ain't dead’ Carl said.
Sandra exhaled audibly.
‘Well then dig his ass out quick,’ said Cory, ‘Let's get his fat ass out of there. Juan, you grab him under the arms, pull him out. Can't do too much more damage now, and if his neck is broken, this'll be worthless anyway. Carl, jump out. Run down to the store at the end of the holler with one of the kids. Buy medical supplies, needle, thread, alcohol. You two get down to the fortress and clear a table for this fucking lug,’ he was looking at Sandra and Lizzie.
Carl nodded, and ran off, dirt smeared across his face. He turned halfway across the yard. ‘What are we paying with?’
‘You got four packs of ramen noodles in there. That'll buy you everything you need. Now fucking go, you're gonna kill him. Run your ass off,’ yelled Cory.
Cory watched Sandra as she ran towards the trailer, Cory's 'fortress'. He cocked his head to the side. The last of the sun light colored his goatee.
‘Hey Juan?’ he asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘She pregnant already?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You?’ asked Cory.
Juan just laughed.
*
Lizzie pushed up the sleeves of her giant sweater. She pinched together the skin on Darryl's forehead, and he winced. He attempted to lift the bottle of Jack to his mouth, without being able to see it, and poured a splash on his chin. Cory snaked his hand in the tangle, and removed the bottle.
‘God,’ Darryl moaned.
She drove the needle through the pinched skin, knot in the fishing line holding.
‘Ah! Why are we doing this! Oh God that hurts,’ Darryl said.
‘Infection, mostly. And don't want to scar your pretty face,’ said Cory. He laughed.
There was a silence punctured by the sound of the needle sliding through Darryl's skin.
‘The tunnel is seeping water at the end,’ said Darryl, almost evenly.
‘Who cares man,’ said Carl.
‘I'm going to finish it,’ said Darryl.
‘Really,’ said Cory, who cocked his head to the side in the cramped trailer.
‘We're in big trouble,’ said Sandra, ‘We gotta figure out what we're going to do next now. The tunnel is obviously a wash; we're going to have to bring food in and out of the mine. And manure.’
‘Frankly, I can't believe nobody's stumbled on our little operation up to this point,’ said Lizzie.
‘How much would it matter, really,’ said Juan.
‘It would matter. We'd have a battle on our hands. I mean, like a fucking battle,’ Cory said.
‘We have to reduce our chances of getting caught. We have to finish the tunnel, and connect the west branch of the mine to us here at the trailer,’ said Darryl.
‘Dude, you think you're going to crawl in there with your leg like that?’ said Carl, slowly.
‘Yeah, yeah I am, Carl. Soon as I get sufficient binding for my leg.’
‘It looks awful, Darryl. You may have fractured it,’ said Sandra. She looked down at the brown carpet in the kitchenette.
‘We can't keep stopping for these little things,’ said Juan.
‘My kids ain't staying hungry forever,’ said Cory.
‘Darryl, listen, I'd try to appeal to your sense, but I guess you don't have any. I don't know what's wrong with the chemicals in your head, but you're going to take my place, permanently, in the mine. You're gonna mess this up, man.’
‘Carl, look at me. I'm prepared for this shit in ways that'd never. cross. your. mind. You get me? You don't tell me what the fuck I'm going to do, son.’
Cory cocked his head to the side, and leaned back from the table.
‘It ain't like that, dude. I'm not trying to let you start something. We know what you want. You thought you were top dog. Well you're not. We're all screwed equally here. We're failing with the food. The tunnel collapsed. I'm probably dying from chemical poisoning from the mine. Eventually, some group will attack us here. We're screwed man. Screwed. And now, you gotta listen to all of us.’
Carl had his head in his hands. He pushed back from the table, and started to walk towards the door.
‘Carl, you're not going to survive this. You're just so fucking laid back,’ said Darryl.
Carl suddenly turned around and back handed Darryl across the face. Tiny blood and spittle droplets arched across the room, slow in the sunlight.
Darryl put both hands up to his mouth, we he caught the balance of his chair. Everything was still. Sandra's mouth was a little black O. Juan had his hand wrapped around a ceramic mug. The needle hung from Darryl's head on the invisible fishing line, like magic.
Cory stood up.
‘You weren't prepared for that now where you,’ said Carl, ‘I need you to hear me through that chemical fog in your brain.’
He was slowly backing toward the door, waiting for someone to lunge at him.
‘You bastards. I didn't want to use drastic measures. But you're all making mistake after mistake. You can't crawl with that leg. Sandra's already three month's pregnant. Cory's going to shoot somebody. You hear me now? I'm not going back into that fucking mine ever again. We gotta have each one of us fully functional, just to keep this thing alive, to survive the next ten years, and we're already losing, man, losing.’
Cory had his back to the door. He looked Darryl in the eyes. Then he pushed out of the door, into the dark. The creek burble rose and fell, as the door opened, and then closed.
Darryl and Juan stood up.
‘Get that fucker back in here,’ said Juan, moving toward the door, ‘He gonna tell somebody.’
Cory slammed his gun on the table. It made a loud clattery noise. Everyone turned towards him.
‘This is my land, my house. You sit down.’
Darryl kept standing. Juan sat down.
Cory looked Darryl in the eyes. ‘Don't do this,’ he said, ‘I will kill you. I will keep order here. You should know that. Now I’m gonna walk out that door. Now I don’t give a shit what you do, ‘cept if you follow me, I’ll shoot you in the face, okay?’
He got up and walked through the door.
‘Oh my god, he's going to shoot Carl. Where the fuck are we? What's going on?’
Seconds passed. They heard muffled voices.
The echo of nine gunshots slammed into the trailer.
They heard a final tenth shot.
‘Oh my god,’ Sandra said. Terror shivered down her voice.
Lizzie heard her daughter scream, and she darted into the back room.
Sandra heard her say, ‘Its gonna be okay, girls, things are going to be just fine. We're gonna make it through this okay, we're gonna make something good here, honey, I promise, we're going make it through, baby, okay?’
Sandra looked down at her belly.
