Dry: Part Two

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.

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 for the first time in all his years here, the station is facing an unprecedented situation.

He might be reprimanded for what he did—might even lose his job, but he resolved not to regret it.

The unofficial word is that it was the result of employee attrition. Workers just stopped showing up.

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.

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.

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

“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.”

I lean nonchalantly up against the refrigerator, accidentally closing the freezer all the way again.

And after hearing those words, seeing the look on her face, something suddenly takes me over—this strange, innate force.

What had seemed to be very surreal now has become vividly, luridly real.

Like the rest of the world, the store is a slight aberration of normal.

It reminds me of pictures I once saw in class of a destitute market in a war-torn country, where your only options were between canned beans or bread, and if you hesitated, you didn’t get either.

Black smoke billows and swirls in the morning sky, and below it, maybe fifty yards ahead, is a single car that has caught on fire.

She is a child of the sixties; following the pack blindly has never been her ethos.

Waves thunder in the distance, and although the ocean’s cadence has always been comforting to me, the silence that lingers in between each crashing wave now strikes me as odd.

It’s virtually deserted, with just a few random people who seem to meander aimlessly.

And that just brings forth a deluge of tears from him.

“Why you?” she says, oddly pensive. “I guess I don’t really like your face. Bet it was once pretty though. Pretty beach boy. I got dumped by too many of those.”

She blows a long strand of black hair away from her face, revealing inscrutable dark eyes that pierce in a very different way than the kid’s blue ones.

She scrutinizes him, suddenly not so cavalier.

The second I saw the geek with the gun, I knew this was not going to end well if I didn’t intercede.

As they say in the Old Testament, there was much consternation and gnashing of teeth.

People tried to defy orders and merge themselves into the functional lines, but without any of the finesse that I would have brought to the endeavor.

When I first met her I figured that she was all bark, no bite—but now in the car as sunlight refracts across her face, illuminating what I could not see before, I realize that her eyes aren’t as dull and vapid as I had first thought. She’s shrewd.

Well, she’s a necessary gambit. That’s a chess term. It’s the sacrifice of an important piece early on in the game, with an eventual long-term gain down the line. But sometimes that’s what you have to do to win.

The fact that it's now in her possession doesn’t just make me wildly irresponsible, but one hundred percent culpable for whatever the hell she ends up doing with it.

“Welcome home,” he says, with deadpan coolness. “Have fun out there?”

I stare at his back for a while, cogitating, unsure of how to begin.

Like an exposed raw nerve, he just stands there, holding that bizarre hybrid terror tool, and I realize that thing is the physical manifestation of everything he fears.

Mrs. Jarvis claims her sister is a legitimate dowser, and can find water for a “nominal fee.”

She stuffs her face, gleefully irreverent, and eventually motions with her fork.

“It’s called the psychology of scarcity, and deprivation thinking,” Kelton says, feeling the need to defend his father—although it really feels more like he’s apologizing for him. “Add that to mob dynamics, and you get a mob that will keep taking until you’re just as bereft as they are.”

I wonder what his rationale is for giving me the keys to his castle.

Was it Kelton who persuaded him, I wonder—or was it because I corroborated his abysmal view of humanity?

Martial law will fail; the military will underestimate the need, or not be able to scramble fast enough; riots will be systemic and severe; Southern California will break hard, and recovery will take years, if at all.

That’s when Jacqui goes to a window, and whatever she sees out there makes her turn to me with bug-eyed concern—something I didn’t even know was in her emotional repertoire.

The banging, which had stopped for a few moments, changes timbre and direction.

I chide myself for even getting into a situation like this. I should have found a way to get the keys back during the night from Kelton’s father, but I gave in to the comfort and safety of a well-stocked home.

We drive down another identical suburban street, past endless rows of tightly spaced homes, once full of life, but now their facades look like dead faces with sagging eyes seething despair.

“As much as I’d enjoy rendering you unconscious, I wasn’t the one who hit you.”

Dozens of families, huddling close, praying for deliverance from thirst.

There’s a trite saying among the faithful, goes like this: “God answers all prayers. And sometimes his answer is no.”

“But we’re not going to be able to get there in this car. We’re going to need something with an elevated chassis. Four-wheel drive.”