The Survivor Chronicles: Book 1, The Upheaval (7 page)

Al pulled the CB free and retreated back up the stairs. Mary Ellen had abandoned the radio and now paced anxiously from one end of the room to the other.

“Does it still work?” she inquired.

“We’re going to find out.” He placed it on the table and settled onto the couch. It had been years since he’d used the thing, he wasn’t sure he’d remember how, or that the batteries were still good. But static filtered out when he turned it on and began to move through the channels. Mary Ellen hovered restlessly nearby, but the other woman had still not vacated her spot by the window. He was looking to connect with someone, anyone, but there seemed to be no one out there as he was greeted with nothing but static and silence.

He turned it off, unwilling to drain the battery, but also unwilling to give up on it just yet. He might get a better response somewhere else. He looked over at Mary Ellen. She was visibly pale; her hands shook as she pushed back a loose strand of chestnut brown hair and tucked it behind her ear.

“It’s getting strange out there,” the other woman muttered.

Al exchanged a look with Mary Ellen. “Getting?” she inquired in disbelief.

The woman turned away from the window, and her lower lip began to tremble. “Yeah.”

Al didn’t like the sound of that, or the look of the woman. He placed the CB down and rose to his feet as Mary Ellen stepped next to the window and pulled the other curtain back. He stood beside her, staring out at the darkening day. It was still early in the morning, the sun was somewhere behind his house, but the shadows were all wrong. It shouldn’t be this dark.

“What are they doing?” the woman inquired.

It was how her attention was engrossed on something across the street that alerted him to the fact that the darkening sky wasn’t the strangest thing occurring right now. His focus became riveted on the sidewalk across the street. In all of his seventy-two years, including the five years he had spent watching his wife waste away, he had never seen anything quite as terrifying as what he witnessed now.

Across the street, lined up in a perfect row, were a collection of dogs from the neighborhood. They sat in a straight line, and although their gazes were directed on his house, it seemed as if they somehow saw through the house to whatever was causing the darkness behind them to grow. Their tails and ears were pricked. They didn’t move, didn’t bark, drool or wag. There were large dogs and small ones, there were even a few he wasn’t entirely sure were domesticated. There were about twenty of them in total, sitting, staring.

Al’s breath hissed out of him, Mary Ellen released the curtain, letting it settle back into place as she stepped to the side to peer through the opening left by the drapes. “What are they doing?” she whispered.

“Nothing good. I’m certain of it,” the woman answered.

There were still people out there, and though most of them seemed to have started noticing the dogs, there were still some who were walking around in a dazed oblivion. He wanted to open the door and yell at them to run, to get away. But he couldn’t bring his feet to move. A young man, holding a hand to his bleeding cheek bumped into a Husky, but the dog didn’t move. The man staggered back, stared at the dogs for a minute, and then turned and bolted down the street. Al held his breath, waiting to see if the dogs would take off after him and attack.

They remained immobile.

“That’s my Moogie.”

“I’m sorry?” Al asked. “What’s a Moogie?”

The woman raised a trembling hand and pointed out the window at a golden retriever seated in between a poodle, and a dachshund. “The retriever, her name is Moogie.”

Al quirked a brow over that one, but bit his tongue on a response. He’d probably go a little crazy too, if someone had named him “Moogie.” He realized that he now knew more about the woman’s dog than the woman herself. “So, if that’s Moogie, what’s your name, may I ask?”

“I’m sorry.” She colored as she thrust out her hand. “It’s Rita.”

He shook her hand firmly as he introduced himself and then Mary Ellen. Mary Ellen barely acknowledged the woman as she quickly shook her hand. Her gaze was still riveted on the sidewalk and the sky. “The birds stopped falling,” she said quietly.

Al watched as a small dog that looked like a cross between a Jack Russell and a Chihuahua padded over to the others and sat at the end. It frightened him that they all seemed to be staring at his house, and beyond. He’d always been more of a cat man himself, and now, looking at the dogs, he was reassured by his preference.

“Maybe I should get Moogie,” Rita pondered.

“You’re crazy if you try,” Mary Ellen told her.

Al silently agreed as he was seized with the sudden urge to get his guns. He turned away from the window and hurried into his back den. Even though his youngest son had moved out years ago, he still kept the gun cabinet locked. He pulled it open and critically eyed the three rifles tucked safely inside. He’d bought them years ago, when he’d still gone on his yearly hunting trips to Maine with some of his college friends. He’d never been much of a hunter, but he had enjoyed the week they had spent drinking and catching up on each other’s lives.

In fact, he’d only ever shot one deer in his life, and he’d only shot that one because someone else had maimed it first and had either been too inept to track the deer, or too lazy to be bothered. Al couldn’t walk away and leave the animal to suffer, however. There was no way it was going to survive with the bullet wound it had sustained to its hindquarters. Not only had the hunter been too lazy to track the deer, they’d also been a poor shot.

Al may not have been much of a hunter, but he was deadly accurate with a gun. He’d made sure to be, had spent hours at target practice just in case there ever came a time when he would actually have to shoot something. He’d never gone out there to kill anything, but if it ever became necessary, or if he ever had to defend himself, he was going to make sure it was with a kill shot. He wasn’t about to let anything suffer because of his incompetence.

It had been years since he’d met with his friends in Maine, but he’d kept the guns in excellent condition. He’d cleaned them regularly, even taken each of them to the shooting range twice a year to keep them in good, firing condition. Growing up, his family had had little, they’d scrimped and saved and gone without, and he’d grown up believing that everything ought to be treated with respect. He’d had a lot more in his later years, but he’d never wasted unnecessarily and he took care of every one of his possessions, only getting rid of them when they were beyond repair.

Now, he was grateful for his meticulousness as he pulled the gleaming rifles from the cabinet. There was a twenty-two Winchester he had bought for Nellie when she had expressed a desire to learn to shoot. The other two were both thirty-aught-sixes with top notch scopes. He grabbed the boxes of ammo from the cabinet and tucked them into his rifle bag. There were also two Smith and Wesson nine mm’s that he hefted into his hands. He was reassured by their weight.

As he turned away from the gun cabinet he had intended to ignore the back window, but his inherent curiosity drew him to it. He used the muzzle of the handgun to push the curtain aside. The day had grown darker, the sky was shadowed and hazy, but he spotted the source of the unexpected, sudden nightfall. The moon, or perhaps it was dark clouds, stretched over the sun to create a vibrant halo he had to look away from. There wasn’t supposed to be a solar eclipse today, but that's almost what it appeared to be as darkness enshrouded the Earth.

“An eclipse.” Mary Ellen’s words were hushed, awed, as she stared past his shoulder from her place in the doorway. Al released the curtain and turned away from the strange phenomena. She massaged her forehead as she frowned. “I didn’t know there was supposed to be one today.”

“There wasn’t,” he grunted. “And I'm not sure that it is one. Have you ever shot a gun before?”

“No.”

Al studied the twenty-two and then the handgun. Mary Ellen and Rita were both about the same size, but he felt that Mary Ellen would probably be more capable of handling a gun, as well as reloading it with a steady hand. He held it out to her. She hesitated before taking it from him.

“Do you really think guns are necessary?” Mary Ellen inquired.

“I’d rather have them than not have them.”

She nodded. “You’re right. How do I use this thing?”

He didn’t like the fact that all he could give her was a crash course on how to stand, shoot, and reload, but it was the best he could manage right now. If everything remained calm (which he didn’t think it would), he’d give both women a better lesson, but right now he just wanted her to know how to use the weapon, and where the safety was.

“You feel comfortable with it?”

“I think I’ll have to be.”

Al admired her resolve and determination as she threw back her shoulders and nodded. Rita was by the window still, her gaze focused across the street. “There are more of them,” she stated as Al handed her the twenty two and explained it as quickly as he could.

Across the street the dogs continued to amass, the darkness continued to creep over them. There were still a few people outside, but they went out of their way to avoid the dogs as they walked toward the main road. The fire finally consumed the house down the road; sparks shot out of it as it collapsed upon itself in a crumpled heap.

It was nearly dark as night now. He had the frightening thought that the glow of the sun would be blocked permanently. The deaths that would result, the deaths that were already resulting from whatever was happening, would be astronomical. The day became night, and in one fluid, united motion, the dogs rose to their feet.

CHAPTER 6

Xander

Foxboro, Mass.

7:45 a.m.

Xander worked his jaw back and forth as he rubbed at the tender bruise he knew was forming. Jeez, but the girl had one hell of a right hook, and if the glare she was shooting him was any indication, she felt absolutely no remorse for punching him in the jaw. Hard. Apparently she couldn’t take a joke, but to be fair she’d never truly appreciated the nickname he gave her to begin with. As a matter of fact, he didn’t think she’d said more than a cold ‘hello’ to him since he’d come home for the summer.

When she was a kid the nickname had been appropriate. Her ears had stuck out drastically from her head. But now, though they were slightly larger than normal, they weren’t as bad, and she no longer looked as if she could take flight if handed a magic feather. She’d become annoyed, irritated, and angry with him from the first time he'd called her Dumbo. Apparently her mom had never told her that boys only teased the girls they liked. That had been years ago though, he’d been just a kid, but she held a nasty grudge. And a solid fist to go with it, apparently.

He cracked his jaw.

“You had it coming,” Carol told him.

“I saved her life!” he retorted.

His sister shrugged a dainty shoulder and pulled up the strap on her loose tank top. “Yeah well, you’re not in fourth grade anymore, pulling on her pigtails and hoping she’ll notice you.”

“Bite me, Carol.”

She grinned at him and chuckled. “It’s already bruising.”

“I can tell,” he winced.

Carol’s smile slipped away. “Do you think Mom and Dad are okay?”

Xander’s amusement vanished. His hand fell from his offended jaw as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “I’m sure they’re fine,” he lied.

“How will we get in contact with them?”

He fell silent as he pondered the question. At the end of the road a police car crept forward with its lights spinning. The police officer loudly announced instructions for people to proceed safely to the police station if possible, and to hang a towel from their windows if they required assistance. “We’ll find a way,” he assured Carol when the car disappeared from view.