Tuesday: The Beginning of The End...
5am ---------
The roar of surf is loud in Jacen’s ears as the water curls behind him, propelling his board forward as it cascades back into the ocean-proper behind him. The salt-spray coats his face and dampens his hair with a fine mist, and he squints into the middle-distance. Lola is solid beneath him as she cuts through the surface of the roiling surf. The edge of the sun is beginning to crest over the edge of the city to his left, the first rays of dawn beginning to glint on the water.
This is Joy.
This is flying.
This is freedom.
--------- 6am ---------
The sun is almost fully risen when he steps through his front door. His housemate, Corey, is still asleep, buried under the covers. Jace spares a soft smile for him before he heads for a shower, stripping off his wetsuit as he goes. Once the salt, sweat, and sand is washed away, and he’s reduced to damp hair and a clean pair of boxers, he slides under the covers next to Corey, which elicits an indignant harrumph from that side of the bed. Jacen smooths a hand over Corey’s shoulder as the other man wiggles closer.
“Bad date last night?” Jacen murmurs. The only reply is another huff, this one sad and resigned, as Corey curls into Jacen’s embrace. Jacen holds him close, tucking Corey under his chin and wrapping a leg around him, as he rubs his back gently until they both doze off once more.
--------- 7:30am ---------
Jacen deposits two plates filled with eggs, bacon, and home fries, onto the table. Corey is curled around a steaming mug of coffee, and smiles his thanks before Jacen turns to grab the plate of toast. They eat in companionable silence, their feet tangled together under the table.
“You got any plans tonight?” Corey asks as he rises from the table to clear the dishes. The tentative note of hope in Corey’s tone tugs the corner of Jacen’s mouth into a smile.
“No, no plans tonight,” Jacen confirms, having anticipated the request. Corey’s Bad Dates tend to require a Good Date follow-up. Jacen is happy to provide his companionship in such instances.
“Dinner at Pete’s, then come back here for Netflix and Chill?”
“It’s a date.” Jacen grins and pushes away from the table. He drops a kiss to Corey’s forehead, then goes back upstairs to get ready for the day.
--------- 9am ---------
Jacen’s little goslings are waiting for him as he steps onto the beach: The twins, Suzy and Tyler MacKenzie, headstrong Martha Jones, Billy Cedar, and Tommy Morrison. Of course little is relative, as they’re all between the ages of ten and thirteen, but they’ve been his brood since they were old enough to stand a surfboard, so they will never out-grow being called little.
He runs them through their warm-ups before they all carry their surfboards to the shallows, and begin the lesson for the day. (Lola’s still at home; he uses a board from the school when he teaches.) He takes them out one by one, swimming next to them as they paddle out to where the smaller waves are breaking. He reviews proper technique and corrects their posture when they struggle with balance issues.
He’s confident that all of them will be capable of riding the waves by the end of the summer, and they beam up at him when he tells them so.
--------- 10am ---------
His goslings follow him back to the school building where they all wash-up and change out of their wetsuits. As he walks them out to the parking lot to reunite with their parents and guardians, the squeal of tires draws all of their attention; an out-of-control Sam’s Breakfast Burrito food truck careens into and over the grassy boulevard that separates the lot from the Pacific Highway and comes to an abrupt halt as it overturns.
He exchanges glances with the parents, who look just as confused as he does, even as he’s starting to pull his phone out of his bag to dial 911. As the first person emerges from the wreck, Jacen hears the operator pick-up, but the audio is covered in white noise, and he can barely hear her. The operator is forgotten as he blinks and two more people crawl out of the overturned truck, and advance on the crowd.
Their gait is strange, as they approach the group, and even from this distance Jacne can tell something is really wrong. He starts pushing his kids toward their parents, his eyes never leaving the trio of crash survivors. He hears screams starting to rise from the beach behind them, and one of the parents - Martha’s mom, he thinks - swears loudly, drawing the attention of several other parents in the process. Everything seems to happen very quickly after that.
The engines of four out of the five vehicles rev to life, and almost collide in their haste to drive away. Another scream, this one much closer, rends the air and Jacen finally turns around. There is pandemonium on the beach, and another one of the weird people has a man - the twins’ uncle - pinned to the ground. He absently ends the call on his phone and fishes his keys out of his pocket; he throws the twins into the backseat of his car, and peels off in a cloud of burnt rubber, as their uncle’s throat is bit into and ripped apart…
--------- 10:30am ---------
Jace drives around the city, and everywhere they go is chaos. He manages to find a route that isn’t clogged with abandoned cars, and eventually makes it into the residential areas. He passes by the twins’ house first, and everything seems quiet. He parks on the street, but doesn’t shut the engine off.
“I know you guys are freaked out right now,” he says, turning in his seat to look at the twins, who are huddled together. “But we’re going to get through this, okay?”
They nod at him with tear-filled eyes.
“Now, we can all cry and break down later, but right now I need you to be brave for me. Do you know where your uncle kept your passports or birth certificates?”
Suzy sniffles loudly and hiccoughs, but Tyler nods. “Desk drawer, in his bedroom.”
“Okay,” Jacen says. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to break into your house, and if it’s all clear, you go to your room and fill your backpack with a couple of changes of clothes, a pillow, blanket, a jacket, and only the things you need to survive. I will go and get the stuff from your uncle’s room, and then we meet by the front door. Do either of you need any medication?”
Both of them shake their heads.
“Okay, I’m going to leave the car running, and we’ll leave the car doors unlocked.” Jace looks around to make sure nothing has changed and the coast is still clear. “Okay, let’s go. Quickly now!”
The trio makes it to the front door without incident. Suzy skids to a stop by a potted plant and produces a spare house key. The door swings open, and they all peer inside. Jace makes sure the door closes behind them as they cross the threshold, so no one passing by has any reason to suspect anything is amiss with the house, outside of the running car parked out front.
He follows the twins upstairs, and then passes them as he heads to the master bedroom. He finds the documents right where Tyler said they’d be, and he scoops them up. He stops in the bathroom and rifles through the medicine cabinet. He grabs Asprin, Tylenol, Advil, band-aids, and disinfectant. He dumps all of this into Suzy’s backpack once he rejoins them, and they return to the front door. A look through the window, and the coast is clear.
“I’m going to open the door on three. You run back to the car and get in the back seat. I’ll be right behind you. We’ll drive away as soon as my door closes. Ready? One… two… three!”
The kids fly to the car, with Jacen hot on their heels. He’s ten steps away from deking around the front-end of the car when he hears the crash of garbage cans behind him and a scream from Suzy in the backseat; a quick glance over his shoulder verifies five shuffling, corpse-like people rounding the corner of the house.
Jacen changes his gait and trajectory, speeds up and jumps to slide across the front hood of the car. He lands on the other side, throws open the driver-side door and hurls himself into the seat. As soon as the door slams shut, he jams the car into gear and drives off.
--------- 12pm ---------
They make a quick stop at Jacen’s house, so he, too, can grab some spare clothing, a pillow, blanket, his jacket, the sheathed katana hanging on his wall, and whatever meds he dares to take, along with one of the emergency first-aid kits they have. He also grabs a bunch of protein bars, some random, non-perishable snacks, and fills several water bottles from the tap. In a fit of optimism, he leaves behind some supplies for Corey, just in case.
“There’s a Cabela’s on the outskirts of town,” he says aloud, figuring it’s best to do his planning and thinking out loud so the kids have something to focus on. “If it looks as rough as everything in town does, then we’ll double-back and try and find some place safe to hole up.”
“And if it’s not?” Suzy asks. She’s clutching a stuffed bunny to her chest with one arm. Her other hand is glued to her brother’s.
“Then we go in and see if we can go on a bit of a shipping spree. You guys ever gone camping before?”
“ A couple of times, with mom and dad, before the accident,” Tyler replies.
“Okay, good.” Jacen nods at them in the rear-view mirror. “If we get to go shopping, then I want you two to go to the camping section. Pick out three weather-proof backpacks: the biggest you can find for me, and the biggest size you guys think you can handle.”
Tyler wipes at his nose and nods. “We can fill them with camp foods. A couple lanterns, and batteries, maybe?”
“Knives,” Suzy adds.
“Exactly,” Jacen affirms. “Pick out some sleeping bags, but don’t worry about hauling them around. Hide them in a pile and we’ll grab them on the way out. Then I want you guys to head to the clothing section and pick out some gear. Warm coat, some good boots. Long sleeves, long pants, thermal socks, rain gear. We might really end up in the middle of the woods and we don’t want to be taken down by bugs.”
“I’ll grab bug spray,” Suzy says with a shudder. “And sunblock.”
The conversation continues, and they continue to add onto their wish list. Suzy pulls out a pencil and paper from her school bag and starts writing it all down so they won’t forget anything. The twins continue to work on the list as Jacen pulls into a blissfully abandoned gas station. He fills up the car, then grabs several gas cans from a sales display and fills them up, too. He raids the store for more beef jerky, and bottles of water. Once the gas is secured in the trunk, and the rest deposited with the kids in the backseat, they continue on their way.
--------- 1pm ---------
Cabela’s is a wash. There was absolutely no way they could get anywhere near the store, as the mass of shoppers, vehicles, and walking corpses is a gauntlet that they do not dare run. He smiles at the kids in the rear-view mirror.
“Don’t worry about it. We’ll try again in a day or two. Hopefully we can get in before any major looting begins.”
His route takes him back down the Pacific Highway, and leads him right past the surf school where this nightmare began. He unconsciously slows down as he surveys the area, which is the only reason why he doesn’t run over the girl that just jumped in front of his car…
