The Blast

Chapter Two: Time to Be Brave

It wasn't long after we locked ourselves back in the safe room that we heard footsteps upstairs. Shuffling and stomping, like whoever was there was looking for something, until finally, they stopped. Heavy soled shoes hit the floor, and the muffled sounds of conversation slipped down the stairs and through the cracked safe room door.

"Are they making themselves at home up there?" my mom asked, her expression made even more fiery by the light.

"Maybe they'll go away," Mr. Timmons said.

My mom opened her mouth to argue, but my dad stopped her. "We wait. We still have no idea what's happening out there. Let's not do anything without thinking it through." He closed the safe room down and locked it, ending the conversation long enough for me, Henry, and Ellie to pass out from exhaustion.

I awoke the next morning to my mom loading rounds into her shotgun as the footsteps pounded over us once again.

"Belle, stop."

"We have to do something," my mom whispered. "They are bound to come down here, and what will we do when they are right outside this door? How will we protect the kids then? We have to get them out."

My dad looked over at us, Henry and Ellie still sleeping. "You're right," my dad agreed and leaned over to the gun chest. He took two shotguns and handed one to Mr. Timmons. "Do you know how to use this thing, Ed?"

"Eh..."

"Here, load it like this," my mom whispered, leaning to grab the gun. She split it in half to fill the barrels with rounds before snapping it back in place and handing it off to Mr. Timmons. My mom was the kind face at the front of our market stand, selling produce and meats to the public with a smile, but the first day of deer season was basically a holiday in our house. For a few years before the blast, I joined them. Hunting was a family pastime. We would get dressed in our camo after leaving Henry with the Beckers' teenage daughter, and we wouldn't come home until we had enough venison to last us all year. If the electricity hadn't gone out, there would have still been pounds of it waiting for us in the freezer just outside the safe room door. After a few days, we had to clean it all out before it started rotting. Newly strayed dogs probably ate it after that.

My mom turned to me, her face wild in the candlelight. "Watch Henry and Eleanor. Don't be afraid. There's no more time to be scared, do you understand? You need to be the boss here."

"Okay," I said.

The three adults stood up and moved silently to the door. Their shadows looked like giants on the wall. They creaked the door open, as the footsteps overhead began moving again. The adults charged up the stairs, and I raced across the room to grab one of the guns. They all felt like lead in my hands, until I found one that was my size: a black Bersa Thunder handgun, already loaded. I remembered it from my parents' nightstand when I found it while searching for Vick's vapor rub. "Everyone out here owns a gun," I remembered my mom explaining it away.

I took the gun and shook Ellie awake. "Beatrice?" she asked. "Where's my dad?"

"He's upstairs with my parents. I may have to go up, too." Just then, I was interrupted by a gunshot echoing through the house, startling the skin from my bones, and waking up Henry. He began to cry.

"Sh, Henry, you have to stay quiet."

"Where's Mommy?"

"Upstairs. Henry, I'm the boss now," I whispered. "Do not leave. Stay here with Ellie, okay? I'm going outside."

"Beatrice, don't."

"Stay quiet," I ordered and stepped through the doorway into our basement.

I had climbed half the staircase when a stranger's voice stopped me. "Cool it, man, we thought the place was empty!" he yelled.

"I told you to drop the weapons," my dad ordered. "You are in my house, I have the right to shoot you, so I'd drop them if I were you." I heard steel hit the floor. "There we go."

I crawled up a few more stairs.

"Look, man, everything's gone to shit out there. Emergency radio broadcasts are calling it a national emergency. They say the whole country was hit. They say FEMA will be around to make sure everyone's okay, but the police are being trampled and all the stores have been looted. It's the freaking apocalypse out there."

"So you thought you could just take our home? Live with our family?" my mom yelled.

"Cool it, lady, cool it. We'll leave, okay?"

"Now. Leave now," my mom ordered.

"Our guns..."

"Forget them."

"No, you don't understand, it's kill or be killed out there, we need those guns."

"Yeah right," my mom scoffed.

"Listen, assholes," a second stranger threatened. "Either you give us back our guns or we take them by force. Which will it be?"

Then, my eardrums nearly burst with the explosions of two shotgun rounds.

"What did you do?" Mr. Timmons yelled, his voice cracking.

"Ed, you heard them. It was self-defense and they wouldn't leave the property," my mom said.

"We ought to clean this up. You should go check on the kids, they're probably terrified," my dad said in the tone he used when he knew he'd lost an argument with my mom.

I meant to move. I meant to run away and hide in the corner, whimpering with Henry. I couldn't though. I was plastered to the stairs, like a relic from Pompeii.

Light from the fires slowly spread over me as the door opened, and I moved my eyes from the knotty wooden stairs to the kitchen floor between my mom's feet.

Two young men lay on the floor, their chests smoking. Blood pooled beneath the kitchen table, below where I usually sat for breakfast. I didn't have any time to react before my mom said, "You shouldn't have seen this, Beatrice. I'm sorry. But you're brave, right?"

I swallowed my tears and froze my body to keep from shaking. I nodded.

"Good. There are bad people out there, Beatrice. Bad people do bad things to good people like us, unless we take action. And sometimes that makes us look like the bad people, too. But what would be worse would be to do nothing. They could have hurt you... Are you scared, honey?"

I shook my head, but I was certain my face betrayed me.

"Go downstairs," she said. Her voice sounded like soft velvet, which only made the scene behind her more sickening. "Okay?"

I nodded and crawled back down the stairs. I was too weak to stand, but my mom closed the kitchen door before realizing I was still immobilized. My hands and knees froze against the concrete at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for my muscles to do anything, but my mind felt like jello.

"Beatrice?" Ellie's mousy voice sang from the safe room. "What were those sounds? Were those guns?"

I clicked the safety on and crawled toward the room, my gun hitting against the concrete. "There were bad men upstairs. Our parents are brave, though," I said, but the words felt like chunks of acid bubbling into my throat. "The bad men are gone now."

I crawled through the doorway until I could see the tears on my brother's cheeks, glowing like orange streams in the candlelight.

"Did you see my mom?" Ellie asked.

"No. I'm sorry Ellie. Our parents are still upstairs making sure we are safe. We just need to stay in here." I steadied my voice and faked enough strength to stand, pulling the door shut behind me. "The police are going to make everything better soon, and then we'll find your mom, Ellie. Everything will be okay."

I repeated those words, everything will be okay, until Ellie and Henry fell back asleep. I stayed awake, though. I was the boss. I had to keep an eye out.

I heard heavy objects sliding above us, across the kitchen floor and out through the sunroom. I wanted to cry or throw up, but I had to hold it together, at least until the adults came back downstairs. I told myself when they did, I'd let myself cry. I'd let myself be 10 years old again. But I never cried. My adrenaline wouldn't let me, because an hour or so later, more gunshots boomed from upstairs.