DRY - by Neal Shusterman

 

We circle the block that Jason lives on twice.

“You don’t know where he lives, do you?”

“Just shut up, okay?” I snap, because I only kinda sorta know where Jason lives. “There’s a huge tree in the front yard,” I tell him. “Like, ridiculously huge.”

But there are no trees that big anywhere.

“I’m sure it’s this street,” I say, after the third time around.

Kelton thinks about it. “So let’s do some detective work,” he says. “If the tree was that big, it probably was a huge violation of association rules – and believe me, my family knows about that, because everything we do is a violation.”

“Your point?”

“My point is, not everybody doubles down on their violations…”

I finally get it. “A stump! We’re looking for a stump!”

And five houses up, there it is!

Kelton smiles, pleased with himself. Under other circumstances it might have been annoying, but he deserves a moment here. Someone else might have just thought I was lying, or not remembering – but he accepted that I was telling the truth and went from there.

“That was pretty clever,” I admit to him as we head to the house.

He shrugs with false modesty. “Just a simple deduction.”

That’s when my own simple deduction is confirmed – because, on closer inspection, I can see Garrett’s bike behind a dead hedge near the front door.

We hop off our bikes and approach the house. The door’s ajar. It feels weird knocking on a door that’s already partially open, but I do. No response, so I push it open all the way.

I go in, and Kelton follows. There’s a smell here. Awful. Rotten.

“Could be a dead body,” Kelton whispers. I ignore him.

The living room looks pretty normal. Except for the gaudy Roman statue with the leaf-covered genitalia. No accounting for taste.

“I don’t think anyone’s home…”

Screw it. I cross the living room, heading deeper into the house. “Garrett…?” I call out… No response. “Anyone home?”

Kelton hesitates. “You know, it’s perfectly legal to shoot someone for breaking and entering.”

“Fine – you can say ‘told ya so’ when I’m dead.”

Kelton initially follows behind me, but then he pushes his way in front – as if just remembering that Eagle Scouts probably shouldn’t hide behind girls.

We continue down a hallway. The farther we get, the stranger the carpet underneath my feet begins to feel – the squishier it becomes. It’s wet – and the smell is worse than before.

That’s when something catches my eye —

A tropical fish – no, dozens of them. All dead, spread across the floor of the family room. I look up and realize why… The giant fish tank is broken. The enormous aquarium reaches all the way to the ceiling, the collections of rocks and coral that once were a part of the aquatic ecosystem still intact. This is definitely the tank that Garrett was talking about. I move closer to get a better look. A large portion of the tank’s face has been smashed in, violently drained of all of its water – that is, except a thin layer at the bottom, maybe an inch, where a small clown fish sucks in water helplessly, its body partially exposed to the air. I pick it up and move it to another area of the tank where it has a better chance at survival —

“It was like this when I got here,” says a voice from behind. I spin around and there’s Garrett, standing in the kitchen doorway. “And it’s saltwater, anyway.”

I’m happy to have found him … but it isn’t long until a thousand thoughts cascade through my head, bursting the levees that maintain my patience.

“Then what are you still doing here?” I say sharply, realizing that I’m pissed he would send us on a wild goose chase in the first place.

“Dad said he needed more pasta sauce, so I figured I’d borrow a bottle or two,” he explains, avoiding the important questions, as he always does. He looks down and kicks an invisible rock. “Can’t leave empty-handed, you know?”

“You have Mom and Dad worried sick. You had us all worried sick,” I tell him, which I’m sure he already knows. I exhale my aggravation and look around the room, taking in the whole bizarre scene. “So what the hell happened here?”

Garrett shrugs. “I think they skipped town and someone must have broken in.”

“Well,” says Kelton, looking around at all the dead fish, “they definitely didn’t come for sushi.” It might have been borderline funny in a different situation.

Kelton then reaches down and picks up a shard of glass. He holds it up as if to inspect it, the shard glimmering in a ray of light … and that’s when I notice what he already has. There’s blood on the glass…

“Let’s leave,” Garrett says.

Kelton and I don’t need a second invitation. We don’t even bother to take the pasta sauce.

Once we’re back, Mom and Dad don’t punish Garrett, which in itself worries me a little. Instead they’re scouring the house for empty gallon jugs to bring to the desalination machines.

“You think they’ll let us get more than two gallons?” Mom says, to whoever’s listening, her head stuck in the pantry.

“We can always go back for more!” Dad yells, probably from a closet somewhere.

Garrett emerges from the door to the garage with a large container usually reserved for camping trips. “Will this work?”

“Absolutely,” Mom says. Garrett, in light of not being punished, is now trying his best to be a perfect son. I give it five minutes, tops.

“Take care of your brother,” Mom says to me. “And be careful of the McCrackens. Remember, they invented ten-foot poles for people like that.”

Dad swings through the kitchen and grabs the car keys from the bowl on the counter. “Listen to your mother,” he says, having no idea what she even said.

“Kelton’s not sooo bad,” I say, suddenly realizing how strange that sounds coming out of my mouth.

Mom and Dad, with empty jugs under their arms, make their way toward the door. “Well, his older brother got out of there the second he could. His shoes left skid marks on the doorstep,” Dad says.

Garrett holds the door for them graciously, and Mom kisses him on the head.

“See you in a bit,” I say with a smile. They take Mom’s Prius, since Dad’s car is still convalescing in the garage. It’s moments like these, seeing them together, that make me appreciate the family I have. When you’re a teenager you spend so much time complaining about how lame your parents are, and then they always somehow seem to find a way to remind you that they’re actually not as uncool as you want to believe. And now with the two of them gone, for some odd childlike reason, I find myself wishing I could have given them a hug goodbye.

 

 

6) Kelton

I decided not to tell my father about the military trucks we saw at our high school. It’s not that I don’t think it’s a significant development, but seeing that we haven’t yet been able to get in touch with my older brother, Brady, there’s no point in rocking the proverbial boat if we’re just going to wait here for him anyway, rather than take off to our bug-out in the mountains. With my dad, the embers of armageddon will quickly grow into a full-on blazing apocalypse in his head. He already got that crazy look in his eyes after hearing about the closures of so many school districts. Which, by the way, is no tragedy to me. Not that I hate school, it’s just that when it comes down to it, I learn more just hanging out at home anyway. I’d probably be homeschooled if either of my parents had the patience to do it.

To take my mind off of things, I load up my paintball gun and practice in the backyard. I’m hitting every target on point, and I try to tell myself it’s a good omen. The de-sal rigs down at the beach will do their job. No one will go thirsty. All will be well.

My dad steps out onto the patio. “Don’t forget to exhale with your shot,” he says. He knows his stuff – after all, he did spend twelve years in the Marine Corps. My mom likes to make fun of his career as a jarhead – his “extraction missions,” because technically he worked as a military dentist and never actually left his base.

After a few more shots, my CO2 cartridge runs out. I go inside to change it, and right after I finish loading the new cartridge, there’s a knock on the front door. My dad answers it – it’s Roger Malecki, one of our other neighbors. The Maleckis just had a baby, so we never see them much. Actually, we never saw them much before the baby, either. We’re not exactly social butterflies in our family.

“How are things, Roger?” my dad says pleasantly.

“Ugh, don’t ask,” Malecki says. “The car keeps overheating. Plus we’re having problems with sewage. Whole house stinks.”

“I hear ya,” says my dad. “You know, the Morrows next door had the exact same problem.” Although he doesn’t offer Malecki any trap seal liquid.

Then Malecki begins to avoid eye contact. My father has no patience for beating around the bush.

“What can I do for you, Roger?”

Malecki heaves a sigh. “It’s the baby. Hannah’s still able to feed her, but she’s getting dehydrated. I’m afraid she won’t be able to breastfeed much longer. We have some powdered formula, but that’s kind of useless without water…”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” my dad says genuinely. “How can we help?”

“Well … we know you have survival supplies. Hell, everyone knows you’ve got enough squirrelled away in there to survive the apocalypse.” Then he laughs nervously, noticing my dad frowning a bit at the word “squirrelled.” As if preparing for the worst is somehow worthy of ridicule. And just then I notice that Malecki’s hands are shaking anxiously, like he went over this dialogue in his head a thousand times, and still screwed it up.

I know my dad well enough to know that he doesn’t give “hand-outs.” Plus, once you start giving things away for free it’s a slippery slope. And if there’s one thing my dad hates, it’s slippery slopes.

My dad casually, strategically puts his hand on the door. Not to close it, but to give him leverage in case he needs to. “The key word there, Roger, is ‘survival.’ We have just enough to survive.”

Malecki takes a moment to regroup his thoughts, and tries again. “All right, I get it,” he says. “You have principles and you don’t want to compromise them – but I’m begging you, Richard. There’s got to be something you can do… I mean … the baby…”

My dad weighs the possibilities. “I’m sure I could give you a few pointers,” he says.

“Pointers?”

My dad motions toward Malecki’s yard. “You’ve got a marvelous garden of succulents. You could grind those up and squeeze at least a gallon out of them. I could even show you how to make a condenser to extract the water.”

“The cactuses?” Malecki laughs, incredulous.

My dad smiles graciously. “Cacti,” he gently corrects. “You could have fresh water by tomorrow.”

Malecki’s smile fades, realizing that my father isn’t joking. “I have a family to look after. I don’t have that kind of time!”

“Well, if you want water you’ll make the time.”

But rather than formulating a response, his eyes narrow and his lips curl with rage. He steps forward, getting into my dad’s face. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

But my dad stays cool. Collected. “Roger, I’m offering you a gift much more valuable than a bottle of water. Self-reliance.”

Malecki’s expression darkens, and he gets this strange, wild look in his eyes.

“You’re just going to stand there and let my wife’s breast milk run dry?”

“How dare you get angry at me – as if your lack of foresight is my fault!”

“You’re a son of a bitch, you know that?”

And my dad’s done. He doesn’t suffer fools lightly – and to him anyone who expects others to solve their problems is a fool.

“Why don’t you come back when you’re ready to behave like a functioning member of society.” He tries to shut the door, but Malecki lunges forward across the threshold, blocking the door from closing.

“I should smack that grin right off your face,” says Malecki, although my dad isn’t grinning at all. My dad tries to shoulder him out, but Malecki has the adrenaline of a desperate man, and pushes farther in. He knocks my father off balance, and the door swings open.

That’s when I raise my gun, exhale, and pull the trigger. Three times. I shoot Malecki square in the chest. Right on target. The force of the blasts blows him back against the door jamb. All his bravado is gone. He wails, thinking he’s dying. Then he reaches to his chest and examines the blue phosphorescent ooze on his shirt. My heart pounds probably as much as his. He looks up to me with this forlorn, bewildered look, as if I really had blown a hole in his chest. Then I reach for my backpack hanging on the rack near the front door. I cram my arm in, shift around, and produce a water bottle I bought at school, when it was something I took for granted. I shove it into his blue, dripping hands.

“Take it and leave,” I tell him.

Malecki looks at the bottle of water and goes red in the face, embarrassed, like it wasn’t too late for his humanity to suddenly come rushing back. He turns, and like that, he’s gone.

In an instant my dad looks to me, his lip bloodied from the scuffle, now wearing this violently charged expression – and I can’t tell if he’s just worked up, or if he truly disapproves of what I did – not that I blasted the guy with paint, but that I gave him my water.

“This was none of your business,” my father says sternly. “You shouldn’t have interfered.”

“Yes, sir,” I tell him. “I know, sir.” I always call him sir when he’s pissed off at me.

Then he closes the door and strides away.

The thing is, I’m glad I did what I did. Not just because it has always been a fantasy of mine to blast our neighbors with my paintball gun – but because whether my dad knows it or not, I saw what was coming next. What would have happened if I didn’t pull my trigger. Because at the apex of that confrontation, my dad’s hand had instinctively traveled down to his belt … where his gun was nestled in its holster.

 

 

PART TWO

THREE DAYS TO ANIMAL

 

 

SNAPSHOT 1 OF 3: ACTIVIST

Camille Cohen has always had a problem with impassive bureaucracy and authority figures. Back in high school, she was extremely vocal in pointing out hypocrisies in the curriculum, or inequalities in their disciplinary system – and nothing has really changed now that she’s a social ecology major at UC Irvine. The only difference is that now, she sees a path to actually changing the world.

It really didn’t take a genius to figure out that we’d run out of water. If you just read the quarterly public water reports, as she had, the numbers were right there. But to successfully ignore those reports and misdirect people into thinking the problem was under control? That required the mastery of a very special skill set. These were the supervillains Camille hoped to bring down someday. Hopefully, sooner than later.

Weeks before the Tap-Out, Camille led a protest at the county government offices in Santa Ana, backed by a record number of participants – all members of her college’s student body. But she knew it would take more than one protest. If there’s anything her past efforts have taught her, it’s that real change requires prolonged pressure and inspired action.

Raw. Tangible. Action.

Today’s action will be inspired by what she sees on the road ahead of her. It begins with shock, followed by rage – because cruising ahead of her is a water supply truck owned by one of the various underperforming water municipalities. The ten-gallon bottles stacked in its bed are clearly visible, and are a let-them-drink-wine sort of slap in the face to an increasingly thirsty population. This truck is delivering water that isn’t supposed to exist to some privileged place. It represents every single lie she’s been fighting so hard to expose.

So rather than continuing west to the desalination center at the beach, she decides to crank her wheel right and follow the truck.

 

 

SNAPSHOT 2 OF 3: OCWD TRANSPORT

David Chen has been an employee of the Orange County Water District for nearly a year now – and lately they’ve given him increasingly stressful tasks. Today he’s driving a truck full of drinking water, and riding shotgun is a guy with a shotgun. And a bulletproof vest. In fact, they’ve given David a vest, too. “Just a precaution,” he was told. “Nothing to concern yourself with.” As if he’s stupid.

The vest is heavy and hot, and no amount of air-conditioning in the truck can cool him down. He’s sweating in more ways than one.

With all the county’s water mains on emergency shutdown, and endless glitches in the computers trying to redirect what water is left, he’s been transporting water manually to high-priority facilities. Just yesterday he drove one of a dozen tanker trucks delivering the contents of a high school swimming pool to Camp Pendleton Marine Base. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and water managers are scrambling to keep the sky from completely falling.

It’s late afternoon and David is only on his third delivery of the day. Traffic has been getting increasingly worse, and the GPS apps keep giving everyone the same alternate routes, just compounding the problem. Current protocol is that all water from municipal water districts will go to hospitals and government facilities first. Federal Emergency Management will provide relief for private citizens.

David already stashed away one of the blue watercooler-size containers for himself and his family. One measly container in the grand scheme of things won’t be missed. He considers it unofficial combat pay.

It’s reclaimed water. That’s what they’re down to now. All the water that was still in the sewer system when the water was turned off. All the water that was leaving homes ahead of the Tap-Out, and heading back to the Orange County Water District.

It’s not like they just dump that water into the ocean. It’s purified. Microfiltration, reverse osmosis, ultraviolet radiation, and abracadabra – they turned the county’s last day of raw sewage into nearly fifty thousand gallons of drinkable water. Of course, no one’s supposed to drink it. The policy is that it’s only supposed to be used for public irrigation – because serving a litigious, finicky public reclaimed water, no matter how clean it is, would be a public relations nightmare.

But now no one cares where it comes from, as long as it comes.

This afternoon’s delivery is a critical one. He’s bringing water to the workers holed up behind the locked fence of Huntington Beach power plant. From what he understands, the plant, which only has about forty on-site workers at any given time, has become a refuge for Applied Energy Services, and Southern California Edison employees. Now there are more than three hundred people within its gates. A spontaneous refugee camp of sorts. Hence today’s delivery.

As he pulls off of Pacific Coast Highway, the plant wavers before him like an ugly industrial mirage, asphalt heat making it shimmer before him. But he has to halt short of the security gate, because someone’s standing in his way, preventing him from proceeding. Not an employee, but a girl, no older than twenty. By the way she’s planted her feet, and by the angry, thirsty look in her eye, he gets the feeling she’s not going to let him pass.

Meanwhile, on the other side of Pacific Coast Highway, on the long strip of Huntington Beach, frustrated crowds waiting for desalination machines have begun to take notice of his truck.

 

 

SNAPSHOT 3 OF 3: PLANT MANAGER

When Pete Flores was a child, he always wanted to be a magician. As an adult, he found his magic in the manipulation of electrical currents. To him, he couldn’t have landed any closer to his original dream, because now, as a power plant manager, he gets to create electricity out of thin air – literally – using natural gas. His Huntington Beach plant produces 450 megawatts of power, which is enough to power nearly half a million homes. But for the first time in all his years here, the station is facing an unprecedented situation.

Should he have refused to allow all of his employees safe refuge within the gates of the plant? Should he have refused when other electrical agencies requested sanctuary for their workers? Should he have refused when they asked to bring their families?

The home office would have refused. Not because they were hardened, but because they were so far removed. They didn’t see the human faces of this crisis. He might be reprimanded for what he did – might even lose his job, but he resolved not to regret it. He’s accepted that the days ahead are going to be increasingly difficult, but the job brings him pride and honor.

This is nothing, he thinks, reminding himself of the nuclear power plant that melted down in Fukushima, Japan, after an earthquake, and the tsunami that followed. Generators flooded and shut down, and the reactors overheated, resulting in total nuclear meltdown. And what did that plant manager do? Rather than fleeing the scene, he decided to stay with his workers in spite of the danger, cooling the plant using seawater. It exposed them to lethal levels of radiation, but reduced Japan’s nuclear contamination tenfold. That’s how you hold the line when you have the fate of millions of lives in your hands. Sometimes being the hero means going down with the ship.

As the power plant is considered a critical water priority, Pete’s request for food and water had to be honored. Which is exactly why all the families who are currently under his care came. Now he isn’t just a plant manager, he finds he’s more like a mayor. It’s both terrifying and exhilarating. It makes him wonder if public office might be in his future once he gets fired for helping all these people.

Today his turbines are working at full capacity, because both the Redondo and Palomar power plants have gone off-line. The unofficial word is that it was the result of employee attrition. Workers just stopped showing up. In a choice between taking care of the plants, or taking care of their families during the Tap-Out, they chose their families. It just reinforces for Pete that welcoming his own workers’ families was the right decision. Still, the two plant shutdowns trouble him. If there are any more, it could cause a cascading failure in the grid – and with so many electrical workers AWOL, there’s no telling when such a thing would be resolved.

Late in the afternoon, his control room supervisor alerts him that the water truck they’ve been waiting for all day is at the gate.

“But there’s a problem,” he says.

Pete is wary. While his job is all about solving problems, the issues he’s been facing lately have been a bit out of his wheelhouse. “What sort of problem?”

“Maybe you should see for yourself.”

Most of the security cameras show expected activity on the property. Technicians and machinery in restricted areas, and in the nonrestricted areas, their numerous guests go about their business.

But the cams at the main gate show something else entirely. Something that hits Pete like a thousand volts.

There are dozens of people at the gate, all amassed at the entrance. At first he thinks it’s some sort of protest or strange demonstration – there have been plenty of those in this drought climate. But why here? And then he realizes the object of their attention —

It’s the incoming water truck. And it’s totally encircled.

This isn’t just a protest, it’s something far more dangerous – more desperate.

“How many guards do we have on duty?” Pete asks the control room supervisor.

“Three,” he answers, “including the one at the gate.”

“Get them all down there!”

“Should I call this in to the home office?”

“Are you kidding me? Call 911!”

And then on the screen, the crowd seems to explode into action. All of them, all at once. They’re ripping bottles off the truck, smashing the windshield. Pulling out the driver. My God! It happened in the blink of an eye!

From the passenger seat emerges what looks like a security guard.

“Is that a shotgun?”

The man raises it, silently fires it into the air, and a second later Pete hears the delayed report of the gunshot, dull and distant. But the man who fired the gun gets off no more than a warning shot, because the mob rips the shotgun from him and pulls him down into a melee of angry hands.

The supervisor dispatches the other guards, and begins to frantically call 911, but it’s too late – because that mob, in its righteous rage, is crashing through the gate and flooding into Pete’s plant. And it’s more than just dozens of people. It could be hundreds.

Helpless, plant manager Pete Flores watches the security screen, and realizes that, like electricity itself, this mob is a force as dangerous as that Japanese tsunami … and it may be his turn to go down with the ship.

 

 

7) Kelton

As the hours pass, I start to get the feeling that Mom isn’t very happy with the way Dad handled the confrontation with Malecki, because tonight she’s making dinner an hour early – a nervous habit she’s developed when things get tense at our house. Early dinner means she can get to bed early and end an undesirable day. My mom is also a compulsive “freezer” – and because we’re trying to conserve the food we have, we somehow end up with defrosted honey-baked ham from Easter and half a green bean casserole that may have been from last Christmas, but don’t quote me.

Mom fills all of our glasses with water. It’s more than we’re supposed to have, considering our rations, but it’s not just that – she’s filled our glasses to the brim, so that you can’t lift them without spilling some. Another sign that she’s angry at my father.

Dad takes his seat at his spot at the head of the table, for the moment oblivious to Mom’s irritated overtures, and begins making incisions in his ham. The sound of scraping cutlery. The ticking clock. No one’s talking, the tension so thick in the air you’d need a machete just to make it to the refrigerator and back. Finally my father notices it. He looks at my mom, looks at me, then continues cutting.

I try to lighten the mood with something positive. “Is Brady coming?” I ask anyone who’ll answer.

Dad responds. “We still can’t get ahold of him.”

So much for lightening things. I realize that Brady’s lack of response is yet another trigger-point of stress. Brady’s never been good with phones. Or e-mails. Or any sort of communication at all. These days he only gets in touch when he feels like it, and only responds when he has to. I thought with the Tap-Out that might change, but apparently not. “We’re going to wait for him, right?” I ask. “I mean, before we leave for the bug-out?”

Dad chews intensely. “We shouldn’t stay here much longer,” he says. “You can see how things are already breaking down.”

Mom refills my half-drunk glass back to the absolute brim.

“Marybeth, this water is supposed to last us,” he finally says, pointing with his fork.

“Your son is thirsty.” Though I’m not really.

“Good. Being a little bit thirsty will remind us why we need to ration,” he rebuts, his anger beginning to fill to the brim.

“We have plenty,” Mom reminds him. “And if we’re not going to share it, we might as well drink it all ourselves until we burst.” Since I was a child, I always knew when my parents were having crypto-arguments in front of me because they start over-emphasizing words.

“We’ve shared every day,” my dad says. “I taught the Clarks how to make a portable greenhouse, and even gave them some of the materials. I showed your friends down the block how to set up an outhouse.”

Mom gets up and throws away her paper dinner plate, even though she’s barely touched her meal. “Well, I don’t see the harm in sharing a few necessities like water if we’re going to be leaving it behind anyway, once we leave for the bug-out.”

My dad takes a deep breath, which signals a lecture.

“You know how it works, Marybeth. If we start giving away free water, people are going to start demanding we give more. And when things get violent they’ll just take. And as you can clearly see,” he motions in the direction of the Maleckis’ house, “even sharing information is dangerous past this point.”

“They’re our neighbors!”

“When it comes down to survival you don’t have neighbors!”

“We’re going to have to live with these people when this is all over.”

“Live is the key word here! If this is as bad as I think it is, not everyone is going to make it – and if we’re going to remain among the living we need to stick with our survival plan, and keep a tight lid on our supplies. You want to give things away? Fine. Leave the door wide open when we leave for the bug-out, and let the marauders strip this place down to the wall studs.”

Mom breaks. Dad pushed just the right button. The one in between the commands for “yell” and “cry” – the same one he always pushes – the power button. Mom totally shuts down, clamming up and falling silent. Chances are she’ll be like this all night, and maybe even tomorrow.

I take up her defense, though speaking in a way my father can understand. “As herders we’re supposed to be a source of guidance, but we’re doing nothing to help the sheep,” I say.

“Before we can help anyone else, we need to make sure we’re secure.”

“And when will that be?”

“I’ll tell you.” And with that he folds his napkin, guzzles his water in audible gulps until the glass is empty, then exits the kitchen, leaving me alone with my crashed mom and the bizarro Holiday Dinner from Hell.