The Rule of Three (11 page)

“Could you just put down the weapons?” I asked, remembering how Herb had defused the situations at the pool store and the grocery store. “Mr. and Mrs. Peterson, could you lower your guns a little as well?”

Nobody did what I asked, but I kept walking toward them. I put out my hand and did my best to smile. The man who was doing the talking handed the club he was carrying to another man and came forward.

“I’m Adam,” I said as we shook.

“I’m Jim.”

“How many kids do you have?” I asked. Herb always tried to bring a personal note into these conversations.

“Three. A girl and two boys. The boys are twins.”

“My family has twins, too,” I said. “Could you have your friends put down their weapons, please?”

They all did as I asked before he could say anything. I turned to Mr. Peterson. “Look, I know this isn’t my farm, but what do you think about us filling up their containers with water for them?”

“That would be just fine,” Mrs. Peterson answered before her husband could. “Nobody should be going without when we have enough to help them.”

“Jim, how about if you put down the containers? My friend and I, we’ll fill them up and bring them to you at the top of the lane.”

“I can help as well,” Lori said, her voice coming from somewhere behind me.

“But you all have to do us a favor: you can’t be telling people where you got this from,” I said. “If there’s a stampede of people, this is the only water you’ll get.”

“And if we don’t tell anybody, can we come back tomorrow or the next day to get more?” he asked.

I looked at Mr. Peterson. He seemed hesitant.

“I have an idea,” Mrs. Peterson said. “What if they left their empty containers hidden in the bushes up at the top of the lane and we’d make sure they were filled and put back there?”

“Would that be all right, Mr. Peterson?”

All eyes turned to him. He lowered his shotgun the rest of the way. “You all wait at the end of the drive. We’ll get you the water. Then we will bring it out and show you where to hide the containers from now on.”

“Thank you, thank you so much. In the meantime we’ll figure out how we can return the favor, sir,” the man said to him. “And, Adam, thank you.”

13

The sun came up over the horizon. The light and the warmth were awesome after our night outdoors. I stood up and stretched, working out the kinks in my back. After a quiet few hours, Todd and I had decided to stop patrolling behind the fence sometime around three-thirty in the morning. I took up sentry duty in front of the house. Todd hunkered down by the barn.

Following the confrontation, just after the intruders left with their water, I felt my whole body get soft and mushy. It was the aftereffect of an adrenaline rush I didn’t even know I’d had. Nothing else had happened for the rest of the night.

I circled around the side of the house and went to the barn. The door was shut and Todd was sitting on a chair, leaning backward, snoring, with the bat on his lap. I couldn’t blame him for sleeping. I knew I’d drifted off a couple of times, once while I was standing.

But I wanted to get home before my mother did. It would be far better for me to explain things and for her to see that I was all right than to have somebody else tell her I was gone and get her worked up and worried until I returned.

“Good morning.”

I leaped into the air. It was Mr. Peterson. He laughed and then tried to hide it.

“I guess I’m a little jumpy,” I said.

“A little? You got some good hang time there.”

“Maybe a bit more than a little,” I said. “So I think we have to get going soon. Things are okay during the day, right?”

He nodded. “So far, but I’m not sure that means much.”

“I’m sorry we can’t stick around.”

“I understand, and I’m grateful for you guys being here last night. Especially the way you handled things with those men. Polite and civil is better.”

“As long as it works,” I said.

“Those men were just trying to provide for their families, and I’m just trying to protect mine.” He shook his head slowly. “But it’s only day four. Somebody is going to get hurt or killed if this goes on much longer. I sure as heck don’t want to be the one who gets killed, but I really don’t want to be the person doing the killing either.”

Those words bounced around in my mind. I was carrying a gun, but I certainly didn’t want to use it. Could I point a weapon at another person and pull the trigger? I wasn’t ready to think about something like that. I should be thinking about school, or what university I was going to in a couple of years, or flying lessons, or Lori—although she was probably thinking about Chad. Or Brett.

“I’m worried about my family, about how I can watch the place with just the three of us.”

“I might be able to come back.”

“And then I’d be worried about you as well. It wasn’t right of me to put somebody else’s son at risk.”

“I volunteered. Look, I’m going to talk to my mother and Herb and see what they have to say. One of them might come up with an answer. I better wake up Todd now. We have a long walk ahead of us.”

Todd groaned. “I am awake, and did you say
walk
?”

“Good morning, dear,” I said.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“We can’t wait for somebody to pick us up. It’s not that far. If we move fast, we can cover the distance in less than ninety minutes.”

He got up, yawned, and stretched. “Unless you’re planning on running instead of walking it’ll take way over two hours.”

“We might jog a little.”

“Do we at least get breakfast before we leave?”

“I’ll mix you up some fresh eggs and toast,” Mr. Peterson said. “And then I can drive you on my tractor as far as the overpass.”

“It’s probably better if you don’t leave the farm,” I said.

“It’s probably better if we don’t have to walk all the way,” Todd countered.

“He’s right,” Mr. Peterson said. “Besides, it’s so early that nobody is going to be out yet, and if they are, well, I’ll bring my gun.”

*   *   *

Todd and I bounced along on the rear of the tractor, standing precariously on the hitch, facing backward. I’d never been on a tractor, and this didn’t seem particularly safe. At least the trip wasn’t any rougher than in my car. That probably said more about my car and the need for new shock absorbers than anything else.

The road was empty and deserted. Leaving early was smart, although I really didn’t expect that we’d find anybody along this first section. It was after the overpass where the houses and apartment buildings started that we’d see people around. It was Saturday, although anything but a normal weekend. I just hoped most people would be still sleeping and those who were up and about wouldn’t be causing any trouble. Mr. Peterson had lent us two baseball bats just in case, and of course I still had the gun.

I was thinking how this ten-minute ride had probably saved us a forty-five-minute walk when I saw something up in the sky to the south. It was a small plane!

“Do you see it?” I screamed.

Todd looked up to where I was pointing. Mr. Peterson had noticed, too, and brought the tractor to a stop. Todd and I jumped off. The plane had changed directions and seemed to be coming right toward us. I wondered if he’d seen us moving along the road and was as curious about us as we were about him.

“I think it’s a Cessna,” I said.

“But I thought planes couldn’t fly?” Todd said.

“It’s probably older, precomputer.”

There was now no question it was coming right over us and was dropping down to have a closer look. It
was
a Cessna, an old four-seater. It closed in, so low that I could make out the pilot and the passenger beside him. Todd jumped up in the air, screaming and hollering and waving as the plane buzzed over the top of us. We stood there watching as it flew off, gaining height and then banking to return to the course it had been on before it saw us.

“It’s great to know some planes are flying,” I said. It gave me hope that maybe my father could find one of those and fly it back. The worse this got, the more worried I was—not just about him but about us being without him.

14

We said goodbye to Mr. Peterson and walked the rest of the way in an hour or so. We saw a few people outside their homes and apartment buildings, but they seemed to go out of their way to avoid us. Probably because that’s what you do when you see two guys with baseball bats coming your way.

It was good to get past the checkpoint and into the neighborhood. I felt my whole body relax. It was almost like I hadn’t realized how tense I’d felt until I wasn’t tense anymore. I wasn’t at my house yet, but still, this was home. I’d lived in this neighborhood almost my whole life. We were one of the first families to move into the subdivision. I remembered houses going up, the mini-mall being built, the stores opening, and those little shrubs and trees growing into real trees.

As we arrived home, the driveway was crowded with the peculiar little fleet of vehicles driven by the patrols.

“Looks like you have a full house,” Todd said.

“It’s not the worst thing. I’ll get to find out more about what’s happening, and there’s less chance that my mother will yell at me in front of other people.”

“How upset do you think she’s going to be?” Todd asked.

“Hard to predict. I just hope she was too preoccupied with other things to be worried about me.”

Todd headed home to take a nap. I was sure his parents would be glad to see him home safe and sound as well.

As I went through the door, I could hear voices in the kitchen. There was no point in putting things off any longer. I walked right into the room. Herb, my mother, and her four officers were sitting at the table. They turned to look at me as I entered. I nodded but worked hard not to make eye contact with my mother. I walked over and sat down at the table, acting like nothing was wrong. They stopped talking.

“Am I interrupting?” I asked.

“I was just getting ready to send somebody out to get you,” my mother explained. She sounded like she was working on being calm.

“Mr. Peterson drove us partway with his tractor, and then we walked from where the 403 curved around and crossed over Burnham Drive. It wasn’t far.”

“Farther than it should have been,” my mother said. “You shouldn’t have been out there to begin with. But we’ll talk about it later.”

“Like I said, it’s really my fault,” Herb said. “I just didn’t think there was going to be any major problem out there.”

“And was there?” my mother asked, who was clearly not thrilled with Herb’s decision.

I thought about the pistol in my pocket, the intruders, and Mr. Peterson threatening them with a shotgun. “Everything went fine.”

She looked relieved.

“I was just trying to help them—the way I hope people are helping Dad if he needs it,” I said.

I saw those words sink in. Her eyes looked pained and then softened. We seemed to have an unspoken agreement that if we didn’t talk about him he’d be okay. I guess I’d broken our agreement.

I looked around the table. “So … how did things go on patrol last night?”

“Not great,” Howie, the big officer, said. He’d always struck me as sort of a good-natured kid. Despite all that had happened in the last four days, he still had a smile on his face.

“I knew things were going to potentially be worse than the night before, but I didn’t expect them to be that bad,” Sergeant Evans reported. “Between the fires, the robberies, the looting, and the assaults, it’s just getting out of hand. I don’t mind telling you that I was afraid out there.”

“If you’re not afraid, you’d be an idiot,” Howie added.

“I wouldn’t mind being out there if I thought I was actually doing anything,” Sergeant Evans said, “but we’re useless. We can’t stop anything from happening or fix it if it does. All we can do is watch and report.”

“It’s starting to feel like
we
need the protection,” Brett added.

“Speak for yourself, rookie,” Sergeant Evans joked.

“Weren’t you the one saying you were afraid out—”

“Okay, gang,” my mother said, cutting Brett off. “Look, everybody is tired and worried. How about if people go home, kiss your wives and kids hello, pet the dog, and just get some sleep? I’ve got to get back to the station. And you’re going to be back on patrol in only a few hours.”

They all agreed. After they finished their coffee and left, it was just my mother, Herb, and me around the table. If she was going to yell at me, this was going to be the time. Maybe that’s why Herb spoke up.

“I heard some things on the shortwave radio last night that I didn’t think should be for everybody’s ears,” Herb said.

“Do you want me to leave?” I asked.

“I think you should stay, Adam. Here’s the deal. It’s getting much worse in the cities. The bigger the city, the worse the problems.”

“Have you heard anything at all about what exactly caused the outage, where it started, or why? Anything?” My mom looked hopeful.

“Only speculation. No concrete information. Mainly the few people I can reach are only talking about the results.”

I listened as he told us about robberies, assaults, fires being set, and the streets becoming completely out of what the police could control. While he talked, I couldn’t help but think of my father, in Chicago, being part of all of that. If Herb was right, Chicago would be one of the worst places to be.

“So it’s all just breaking down,” my mother said. “We have to hope that tonight it doesn’t get any worse.”

“In fact, you should expect it to get exponentially worse tonight,” Herb replied.

“I was afraid you were going to say something like that,” my mother said.

“Because of your job and training, Kate, you probably know the drill better than anybody,” Herb said. “Either services will be reinstated and it will become much, much better, or they don’t get repaired and each night will be a factor of five or even ten times as bad as the night before.”