The Ocean in the Fire Read online

  He wondered if he’d ever see clearly again, or even if he’d ever seen clearly at all.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  POE

  “Get up right now!” Poe yelled at Blake and Jackson. They hesitated, and were perhaps going to ask for an explanation, until Poe whipped the rifle out of her gun safe and chambered a round. After that, no story was needed.

  Blake grabbed Jackson and knelt down in front of him. “Now I need you to hide in Poe’s closet like we talked about, okay? And don’t come out for anyone that you don’t know.”

  Jackson clutched the stuffed bear he was holding. “Mommy, I don’t want to. I’m scared.”

  “I know, sweetie, but remember what I’ve always told you? I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you, not ever. Right?”

  Jackson nodded, but threw his arms around his mother. “I love you, Mommy. Please be okay. Don’t leave like Daddy okay?”

  Blake’s eyes watered. “I’ll never leave you, you know why? Because Daddy’s watching over us and he’s always going to protect us. He’d never let anything happen to me.” She kissed him on the forehead then gently pushed him toward the closet. “I love you, baby. Now go.”

  Jackson knelt down behind Poe’s clothes and quietly opened a compartment that was hidden in the back. As he slid in, he waved and wiped a tear from his eye. As Blake closed the door behind him and shut the closet, Poe knew she had to shove away her own fears, and get ready for the war they always knew would come.

  Poe stared at her. “You have to keep it together, you hear me?” She handed her the knife that she had grabbed from under her pillow. “Keep it out in front of you, just like we practiced, okay?” Blake positioned it as she was told. “Good. Now let’s go.”

  As they ran through the hallway, she banged on Gabriel’s door with all her strength. “There’s people outside! Grab your gun and get in position!” When Gabriel opened the door, he already had his rifle in hand. “Get Harper and tell her to get in position by the front door. If they get in, she’ll be waiting for them.” Gabriel nodded and turned in the opposite direction.

  Once Poe had Gabriel going she turned back to Blake. “Get everyone up. Tell them to grab anything they can find that would work as a weapon.”

  “But the gun cabinet’s locked!”

  “I know.” Poe swallowed hard. “I have to get to the roof. We’ll get through this, I promise. Go!”

  “Please be careful!” Blake said as she ran down the stairs.

  “I will.”

  As Poe took her position on the roof, she thought about how thoroughly she didn’t believe they were going to get out of their situation alive. She’d always believed in her father, but looking out at the unfamiliar vehicles as they parked in front of their house, any trace of doubt that had been hiding out inside her mind came to the surface in a flood. Her father’s lack of trust had rendered every ounce of preparation that they had useless. She watched as more and more people with guns, six men and two women, got out of the three trucks that were parked outside their home.

  Dad, where are you?

  She, her mother, Harper, and Gabriel were the only ones with weapons. Clearly, they were outnumbered, and all they could hope for would be to out think them before they were all dead. Just as she hoped the new people wouldn’t be able to get through the reinforced metal gate, she saw a figure coming from their house start walking across the driveway.

  Who is that?

  In the dark, it took her a moment to recognize him. The scar on his arm was barely visible in the moonlight, and it seemed to wink at her as he unlocked the gate.

  Brian was letting them in.

  She could see from her vantage point that he was speaking with them. He threw his arms up in the air, and she heard whoever he was talking to yell back. She pointed her scope at Brian’s head, putting the little read dot in the very center of his head. He would pay for this, she thought, until she saw her mother leave the house and go toward them, with Vera and Blake close behind, all making the long walk toward the group of vehicles and people that Brian had now given free access to their house.

  She’d hoped Gabriel had time to rig his shocking device to the doorknob of the front door. If that didn’t work, Harper would be waiting for them on the other side. If they came through the back, Gabriel would be there, though he wasn’t nearly as good a shot as Harper. Poe had to hope that with mere feet between him and his target, Gabriel would come through.

  Her mother stood in front of Brian, looking directly up at Poe. “Everyone, stand down. I want to hear what these people have to say, and you should too.”

  A woman who Poe guessed was the leader of the group came forward and stood directly across from Kate and Brian. She looked muscular, someone who could give even Cassius a fair fight. She had a handgun in a holster at her waist, but, to Poe’s surprise, she left it there. Her hand wasn’t even hovering over it. “My name is Shannon.”

  Kate addressed Brian instead. “Who is this woman, and the rest of them. How do you know them?”

  Brian glanced back up at the house. Poe wondered if he could see Harper from where he was, and what new lie he was about to spin. “Everything I told you before was true. My family did get sick, and then I headed here.” He looked at Shannon. “But I got to a point where I was running out of food. I thought I was going to die for sure. I met up with them and they took me in.” They squeezed each other’s hands. “When they found me I was malnourished, my clothes were in rags…I was a real mess. They saved my life.”

  “And you didn’t bother to mention any of this before?” Kate asked.

  “I’m sorry.” He continued. “They offered to let me stay with them, but I said I had to get to Harper. I told them about this place, and I thought maybe we could all stay here together.” He gestured toward the new group. “These people, they’re police officers, firefighters, and their families. They’d all be really good additions to the group. They could help defend this place.”

  Kate sighed. “You should have told us.”

  “I was going to. But Shannon just told me they are in a bad state. Their food is extremely low and they don’t have many bullets left. I was going to wait until Connor trusted me more and then present the idea to him. But they’re at a place now where they either have to be let in or find some other source of help fast. It was just taking too long.”

  Shannon finally spoke. “We don’t mean any trouble, ma’am. We can pull our own weight. We just can’t be on the road anymore. When everything first happened, a couple of us at the precinct decided we would stick together. We were ready before anybody else even imagined the disease would get this far. At first we just took shelter at the station. But when we ran out of supplies, we started traveling, sticking to the small towns and as far away from other people as we could. We scavenged and managed to make our way.”

  Poe looked at each member of the new group and noticed that she was the only person with her gun drawn.

  After hearing Shannon speak, her mother smiled. “Call me Kate.” Poe winced, shocked at how quickly and easily her mother accepted Shannon’s story, and Brian’s explanation for why he had just left them vulnerable to attack, one which, thanks to her father, they were not prepared to fight. She had noticed her mother drifting from her father for some time, not directly, but in the little things: the way they didn’t hold hands anymore, the way she contradicted him, even in the way her eyes never stayed connected to his for very long. They were changing, and her mother had picked the worst time to completely leave his side.

  Just as the rest of the group got out of their vehicles, she saw another set of headlights coming up the driveway.

  Her father was back.

  He and Drew jumped out of their truck, barely pulling it to a stop.

  Their guns were aimed right at Shannon.

  She imagined she could hear her father’s footsteps on the earth, pounding like that of a god coming down to bestow his wrath upon those below him. She wondered if Shann
on and Brian would share that burden alone, or if some would be aimed at her mother. A part of her hoped for the latter. “What the hell is going on?” He kept his gun pointed at Shannon. As he did so, the rest of the new group drew their weapons with the quickness of trained professionals. Apparently that part of Brian’s story was true. “I don’t know who you are but get off my property, or I’ll shoot you, I promise you that.” Poe was surprised he hadn’t done so already, but then realized that even her father knew they were outgunned.

  Brian stepped between them. “Connor, no! I know them. They’re friends. Please—”

  Her father moved his gun and pushed it against Brian’s forehead. “You lead them here…I should kill you where you stand.”

  Poe looked around at the faces of each group. The new people had their guns aimed at her father, Drew, Vera, Blake, and even her mother. When she heard the commotion, Harper emerged from the house and put Shannon in her site line. Gabriel came up from the back of the house and did his best to cover the rest of the group, aiming at clusters of people rather than individuals. Blake, Vera, and now Cassius and Darius stood behind him. Poe noticed that now since no family members were watching, Cassius and Darius had each grabbed large kitchen knives, and had them pointed outward and at the ready. Yes, they were no match for the guns that were pointed at them, but they were better than nothing at all. And maybe, just maybe, if they played the situation right, they could get close enough to use them. She whispered a ‘thank you’ to them that she knew they’d never hear. “Connor, right?” Shannon said in a smooth, even tone. “I couldn’t wait to meet you.”

  “I don’t care what you want, lady. As you can see, we are all trained to deal with people trying to take what we have.” He gestured to the rest of the group, and aimed his gun back at Shannon. “You are in way over your head here.”

  Poe looked around at each face through her viewfinder. No one blinked. Beads of sweat dripped down the cheeks of every individual. She had a terrible feeling creep over her that her night was going to end very badly.

  She was right.

  They would only find out later that the sound they had thought was gunfire was actually an explosion from something Gabriel was working on in his shop. They would figure it out after they found the remnants all over one of the back shelves, red grime solidified on the walls, putting the pieces together much later, too late to save her.

  They all heard what Connor assumed was the crack of a gun going off. It didn’t matter that it actually ended up being something else. In his head, in that moment, it was a gun. So when he fired a shot clean through Shannon’s head, the war had started before her body hit the ground.

  Poe aimed her rifle at the man closest to the front of the invading group and fired: direct hit. As he was down on the ground, she started aiming at the other people as they got closer. Each shot was precise, right in the chest, but for some reason, the people kept coming, only being deterred temporarily by her bullets. As Poe saw the first person on the ground start to get up again, obviously in pain but very functional, Poe realized her mistake. She squinted enough to see a slight bulginess in each of the invader’s clothing, as if there was another layer behind their shirts: when they left the police station, they had taken some very important supplies with them.

  All of them were wearing ballistic vests.

  As they neared the house, Poe saw four more people getting out of the trucks; they must have been sitting in the back, because she hadn’t even seen them until they emerged. She started aiming for the head, but it was a much smaller target and she only managed to hit a shoulder of one of them. As they made their way closer to the rest of their team, Poe nearly dropped her rifle. The last four people were wearing riot gear.

  There was no way to stop these people. They were going to get inside the house.

  They had to evacuate the compound, and they had to do it now.

  She was just about to throw open the door on the roof when she heard two women screaming. The first sounded like Vera. The second was her mother. For a moment, it struck her as odd that she didn’t hear Blake among them. As she went back and peered over the side of the roof, she figured out why.

  Blake was clutching her chest, and slowly sinking toward the ground.

  Suddenly, the firefight stopped, and the quiet that filled the air was suffocating. She ran down the stairs and out the door, joining Vera and her mother as they surrounded her friend. Drew was working on her furiously, using a jacket to put pressure on the wound. Poe listened as he took quick shallow breaths. “You’re going to be okay. You’re going to be okay, you hear me?”

  Poe had always been very aware of death. Even as a child, she understood it. Most of the time, when people grew old, something broken inside them would be more than they could handle and they would slip away. That was how it was supposed to work.

  Time was so fickle though. Anyone could be driving home one night and be hit by another car, and they would be gone forever, or someone who ran marathons and ate nothing but vegetables could be snuffed out by a brain aneurism. She could lose anyone she loved at any moment.

  But it wasn’t supposed to be Blake; not her, not yet.

  She grabbed Blake’s hand and squeezed it. She wanted to tell Blake everything was going to be fine, to have it within her to make it pretty, like Drew. But Poe saw the waves of blood pouring out of her, and saw the chill that had flooded her cheeks. Let Drew tell her falsities, she thought. I will comfort her with the truth, the best gift that I can give her now. “I will take care of Jackson. We all will.” She brought Blake’s pale hand up to her lips and kissed it gently. “We’re going to tell him how beautiful his mother was…how strong…and how we can see her every time he smiles, and how she’s with his father now. And I’m going to tell him how brave you were, and how he should want to be just like you when he grows up. Like I do.”

  Blake’s voice gave out in a whisper, and she let the words thank you slip into the atmosphere, along with her soul and everything in between.

  Poe’s heart shattered like a vase thrown on the ground when she realized someone would have to tell Jackson that his mother wasn’t coming back. He was just a baby, and he was now going to grow up an orphan. Yes, there were people that loved him, but Blake…she was his mother, and a light all her own that made everyone around her feel special. At least she had done that for Poe, and she knew her son must have felt it too. How was anyone going to measure up to her? No one ever would. He would have to grow old wondering what might have been if that night never existed, and the thought made Poe’s knees start to shake.

  Drew and Vera had to be carried inside. Cassius and Darius pulled Drew away, while her mother held tightly to Vera. What they were doing could not be called crying; they were letting out screams that seemed to come from all life, as if nature itself understood the loss they had suffered, and it had manifested into the sound that Poe knew could have been heard for miles, if there was anyone left alive to hear it.

  The people with guns ushering them inside seemed invisible. As they passed through the front door, Poe looked back to see a man cradling Shannon, with several other people holding each other as their tears fell.

  ***

  The man who Poe shot first whose miraculous recovery clued her into the Kevlar vests was the first to speak. “You, sit down over there next to the others.” He used his gun as an extra finger, waving it in the direction where he wanted Poe to park herself. For the moment, she listened, taking a seat next to Vera. On the other side, Vera had her arm around Jackson, who had heard all the commotion and come downstairs despite his mother’s orders, and as soon as Poe sat down, Vera wrapped her other arm around her. Poe lost herself in the gesture for a second, feeling like part of a group that had nothing to do with her own family. Vera’s grip was tight, and Poe was sure she wished it was Blake she was clutching instead. Gabriel was on her other side, while Cassius, Darius, Drew, and her mother were seated on the floor.

  Her father was nowhere
to be seen, and the realization made her grow cold.

  She looked over at Jackson. No one had told him what happened to his mother, but the tears were streaming down his face nonetheless. He may not have been told in words, but when his mother was nowhere to be found and Drew and Vera were sobbing uncontrollably; he figured it out on his own, and buried his face against Vera’s side.

  As much as everything inside her hurt in a way that made her imagine a ball of yarn, long, spindly things twisting and turning in on themselves, Poe pushed it away. She knew that if she let the insanity that death brought take hold of her, she would be of no use to the rest of her family and they might as well lie down and accept their fate. So instead, she paid attention. She would keep her word to Blake, and she would make sure they would make it through what lie ahead, and the people who had taken her from them would soon be crumbling at their feet.

  Poe noticed that they hadn’t restrained them in any way. Apparently they figured there was no need since she and her family were on the receiving end of their weapons. She took careful inventory of each group member: one man had his gun in a holster that was too big for it. It was an easy guess that he was not one of the police officers that Shannon had mentioned. He had to be a spouse or a family member, which meant he would be an easier target than some of the others. Another man was wearing dress shoes, which meant wherever he was he had left in a hurry. The group immediately started taking off their gear and tossing it in a pile in the corner of the living room.

  Poe wondered if they would notice if one of the vests went missing.