Family Reunion "J" (9 page)

When they entered the kitchen, Julian could hear a TV playing in the other room. “You have electricity? Do your phones work?”

Shaun shook his head. “No, I have a generator. I put on a movie for your son to watch. He was somewhat bored. I brought him up here last time I checked on you; he said he had to pee. We got no phones, no water, no nothing. Sorry.”

Julian followed Shaun into the living room and found Simon sitting on the floor in front of the TV, watching an old Abbot and Costello movie. Simon saw him and jumped up. “Daddy!” He ran to Julian and embraced his legs tightly. Julian bent down.

“Hey buddy, are you doing all right?”

“Yes sir. Mr. Shaun gave me some chili and bread, and a pop! I know Mom doesn’t like for me to have pop, but I figured it was okay, and I didn’t want to be impolite to Mr. Shaun.”

“You were right, that was a good call, son,” Julian said, rubbing the six-year-old’s head. He’d explained to Simon about his mom, but he was sure that the boy didn’t understand. “Go ahead and watch your movie. I need to talk to Mr. Pierce, okay?”

“Yes sir. It’s pretty funny,” the boy said, running back to his spot. “The little fat guy keeps getting hit on the head by the tall skinny guy.”

The two men went back into the kitchen and Shaun scooped some chili into a bowl, opened the bread, and put a couple of slices down next to the bowl on the table. Julian thanked him and sat down. He was famished.

“Sorry, it’s not much, just canned chili.”

“No, no, no, Mr. Pierce, it is fabulously good. Best I have ever tasted,” Julian countered.

“It’s Shaun, and there’s nothing like hunger to make you appreciate some store-brand chili,” he said with a chuckle.

“Thank you for the food, Shaun, and thank you for watching Simon. It is nice to find out there are still good people around.”

“No problem, bud,” Shaun said, dragging out the word
bud
and ending with a hiccup-like snort. “Not many, good or bad, left anymore.”

Shaun convinced Julian to spend the night and get a fresh start in the morning. They took the neighbors’ VW Jetta and brought it over to Shaun’s place. Simon spent most of the day watching movies and playing with Shaun’s sheepdog. The thing was a mass of long, fluffy hair and loved Simon.

The last twelve hours seemed to have lasted twelve days. After Danny went outside, Auddy heard more gunfire and was sick with worry. She paced in front of the door like a father waiting for his daughter to return from prom. More than once, she started to go outside, but talked herself out of it each time. When the gunfire stopped, she opened the front door and called out to Danny. There was no response.

An hour later she had to pee. The water was still running so she went into the bathroom. As she sat down on the toilet, she heard a thump, then another. With her pants around her ankles, she lifted both feet and brought them down hard, then listened. She heard another thump in response. She quickly took care of business and then went and got the broom from the kitchen.

She thumped the broom handle twice and heard two thumps in return. Every time she’d bang on the floor with the broom, a corresponding number of thumps would respond.
Someone is alive down there. Oh please Danny, be alive.
She continued the thumping for a while, then gave up. She went down on her knees to the floor by the heater vent and screamed into it, then put her ear to the vent. She thought she could here muffled screams back, but the condos were too well insulated and she couldn’t make out anything definite. She sat in the tub and thought about what to do. She didn’t know Morse code, and no matter how she tried, she couldn’t think of a way to communicate with whomever it was in the bathroom below.

She dozed off, only to be awakened by a humming noise. It sounded like some kind of vibration. She looked over the rim of the tub in time to see a drill bit poke through the floor. She jumped up and watched as it pulled back, and then she heard Danny shouting her name. She got out of the tub, put her mouth close to the small hole, and yelled back. Soon they were both taking turns yelling back and forth. She’d yell, then put her ear to the hole. They had to repeat themselves several times to get the message across, but she was relieved just to know he was okay. After the shouting back and forth, he finally told her they’d better be quiet, there were pod people listening.
Pod people? What the hell are pod people?

Even after the sun broke the horizon, they kept quiet. At around ten o’clock she heard Danny thumping the ceiling to get her attention. He thought the coast was clear. He and Winnie were coming up and she should meet them at the door.

For the next four hours, Auddy became the pack mule. It was decided that since Winnie’s condo was no longer secure, she should come upstairs. So while Danny stood guard, Winnie pointed out everything that needed to be moved upstairs from her place, and Auddy dutifully carried it to the spare room.

Auddy finally collapsed onto the couch. “That’s it, I’m done.”

Danny heard her proclamation from his post out on the porch and he yelled for Winnie. He helped her up the stairs and they had a nice lunch of PB&J’s and warm water.

“There’s still a lot of stuff to move,” Winnie said, fanning herself with a magazine.

Auddy shook her head. “Nope, no way. If it is that important, we can get it tomorrow. Like I said, I have climbed those stairs for the last time today.”

Winnie rolled her eyes and looked as if she was going to say something else, but stopped when Danny gave her a shake of his head. Instead, she rose from the chair and puttered off to the extra bedroom. “I’ll just be in here organizing,” she said. Looking over her shoulder, she winked at Danny. “Let me know if you want to finish the job.” Danny groaned and waited for Auddy’s response, but apparently she had fallen asleep in the short time since sitting down.

It was still fairly early in the day. Danny decided there was more he could do to fortify the condo. He boarded up the only window that faced the front porch, then stood there looking at the stairs. The sweat stung his eyes as it dripped from his brow; he was sure the temperature was in the nineties. The stairs worried him. When he escaped Mr. Dietrich in the clubhouse, he had just barely made it to the car. Whatever these things were, they were fast, and stairs didn’t seem to slow them down. It would only be a matter of time until they’d figure out that someone was upstairs.

There were two flights of stairs from the ground floor. The first was at a parallel to the porch, the second turned toward the condo and porch. If he could detach the second set somehow, he would be able to cut off that access.

He stepped down the first few stairs and turned to examine them. The treads, nailed to wooden stringers, could be pried up, but that wouldn’t be good enough. He needed to remove the entire structure completely. He went down to Winnie’s porch and looked up at the bottom side of them. It would be a challenge, but he thought he could do it.

Auddy woke up with sweat pooling in all her crevices. The next thing she noticed was the unusual quiet. No fans humming, pushing the cool air around the room, no air conditioner compressor kicking on to make the air cool, no TV playing in the background. No sound at all. She sat up. “Danny?”

There was no response. She jumped up and ran into the spare bedroom. No sign of Winnie either. She was about to panic when she saw the note on the coffee table:
“Had to make a supply run. Don’t worry we’ll be right back. Winnie is riding shotgun.”

She didn’t know if she was mad that he left her here, or if she was mad that he took that old biddy with him. She knew she was mad. Once again, Danny hadn’t thought about how she would feel, which made her madder still.

Danny’s BMW had ski racks on its roof. He hadn’t bothered to remove them when he moved from New Jersey to South Carolina. Now there was an extension ladder strapped to the car’s roof. It stuck clear out to the front end of the car and several feet past the rear end as well. He took it from the golf course’s maintenance shed, along with a chainsaw, some gas, and six water coolers that were there to refresh the golfers every other hole.

Winnie insisted that he let her look around before he went into the shed itself. This was why the fifteen-minute job had turned into an hour-long adventure. She would not be rushed, and if you didn’t like how long it took her, that was
your
problem. If he’d said “We need to hurry this up” once, he’d said it fifty times.

They pulled up to the condos to find Auddy standing on the porch. “Oh my, she doesn’t look happy,” Winnie quipped.

“Winnie, would you please not antagonize her? It’s bad enough already, I don’t need you stoking the fire.”

Winnie thought about it for a second, then said, “Can’t promise you anything, but I’ll try.”

He got out and ran around to Winnie’s door, opening it for her. Auddy saw this and it cooled her down. He was always such a gentleman. He had made it clear to her on their first date: he would expect her to wait for him to make it around the car to open her door. She had argued that it wasn’t necessary, but he said it was a sign of respect and that for him it was necessary. So she reluctantly agreed at first. Then, as time went by, she understood what he meant. Other people saw him opening her door and knew that she was important to him, and she liked that.

Winnie stood guard as he undid the rope that bound the ladder to the roof. Then he carried it over to the porch and set it down.

“Hey there, sleeping beauty, got some more stuff in the car.”

“You need help?” she asked, trying to make it clear she was good.

“No, I got it, love you.”

“I love you too Danny.”

Winnie had protested the entire plan. “How the hell do you expect me to climb that damn ladder?”

“I don’t. If for some reason you have to leave, I will lower you down myself. Now, go on up there so I can get busy.”

She muttered and cursed him for the five minutes it took her to climb the stairs with Auddy on her arm. Then Auddy and Danny finished carrying up the last of Winnie’s stuff while she sat in her rocker with the shotgun in her lap.

Two hours later, the stairs were down. Danny pulled the ladder up after himself and looked down. “I don’t think they’ll be able to get up here now.”

“Homeowners association’s going to have your ass for cutting down the stairs,” Winnie said. That got all of them laughing.

Jay didn’t run into any more problems between Morgantown and Charleston, and two and a half hours later, she arrived. Her heart quickened as she passed the exit that would have taken her to her home. She had to see if Mark and Patty were okay. She drove on another four miles and pulled off at the Big Chimney exit, downshifting to slow the big bike’s momentum. There was a car similar to Patty’s at the end of the off-ramp with a body slumped behind the wheel. She pulled up next to the small car and was relieved to see that the corpse was not her daughter-in-law.