Local Girl Liveblogs the Apocalypse

Chapter 16 - No One is Going to Save Us but Us

Chapter 16 – No One is Going to Save Us but Us

Previously… After the confrontation with her brother, Katherine considers her role in the family, and whether she can play it. Adding to the pressure to be it all, she receives a hurtful online message from Nicole, the woman writing from Windsor in hopes of living in Katherine’s proposed women’s land.

The following days challenge each other in their race toward the bottom.

I admit, I thought the internet would go down first, before fast food and fuel. But our lifeline to the world beyond our front door remains, for now. However, the retail and food service jobs, the ones called 'essential' during a pandemic, were not willing to see the worst of humanity a second time, when the mega corps running the show had gone radio silent to the point where paycheques weren't a guarantee. Those too-recently beleaguered staff said no thanks, took what they could to feed their families, and walked off.

“I would have done the exact same thing,” Tricia says after showing me what people had been posting.

“How could anyone possibly be expected to continue to work under these conditions,” I say, our eyes skimming over the mostly perfect AI captions flooding the field. With everything I set my eyes on, I wonder to myself, how long will this last? How long do we have this for? And what will it be like, when it's gone?

“Jamie texted to say there's no more coffee, not even prepackaged coffee drinks at the gas station.”

“I mean, we knew that was coming,” I say. There's a pang in my heartspace and it isn't just about the coffee, though that does smart. It's the million losses that come with being alive. I look at my sister through the eyes of unimaginable loss, and I can't help but imagine it. What will it feel like to lose her? Since my cancer diagnosis, I'd become adjusted to the idea that the world will carry on without me after I die. That my siblings, my mom, will all have to learn to cope with the loss of me. And despite how my negative self-talk may tell lies about my value, I know it will pain my family deeply to lose me. After all, I know what Jenna's disappearance did to us.

But now, I'm suddenly caught thinking, I may not be the first to go. What if the house is broken into, my family harmed for the buckets of honey we hoarded?

And now I'm wondering how many people are thinking along this same train of thought. How many people who saw the writing on the wall bought guns not for self-defence but for self-offence? A way to end things before the grief and fear becomes overwhelming?

I realize I'm still glad to be alive. The thought comes with the echo of an epiphany. I'm scared, but I don't want to die. I'm in pain, but I want to keep living. The absurd preciousness of life, centred in my mechanical heart and electrical brain, is something I'm still fighting for. The day that balance shifts will come, that feels as true as the fact that it hasn't yet. I decide to put aside dying in favour of living, while I still can.

It isn't my mom's house they come for.

I'm not sure what wakes me and in fact I would have sworn I hadn't even fallen asleep yet if it weren't for the way I plunge into alertness. I sit up to hear better, an instinct deep in my body. My ears are hollow in the pinching silence, one aimed at my window, slightly ajar.

No sounds follow, so I slip to the window and look down the street. Claudette's house across the street has every light on. I check my phone – it's after two in the morning. There's no movement in the house or around it, but as I'm watching, I see two people get into a car in front of Claudette's closest neighbour's house. That house is dark, and the car parked in the driveway isn't one of the usual ones, the ones I'd apparently clocked as belonging to that house without even thinking of it. The black SUV looks starkly wrong, as do the people heaving items into its backseat. It's too dark to see what they are carrying; they are barely lit from the ambient light cast by Claudette's porchlight.

The two people return to the house. I can now see a third person in the driver's seat. From the height, shape, and stride, I think the two outside the vehicle are men, but I can't tell about the driver.

I dial 911 on my phone. As it rings, I can see what awoke me. One of the men exits the house again and, with arms full, nudges the screen door open. He swoops through and the door slams behind him, a violent rattle of metal and wood. It's not loud, but the sudden, sharp crack is enough to break through my already fragmented sleep.

The man approaches the SUV and slides his armful into the backseat. I can tell the vehicle is full by the way he's shoving against things to make space for this load. The call to 911 keeps ringing, keeps ringing.

Like a war correspondent to a recording device, I whisper, “We are at the stage of societal failure where, when you call emergency services, no one answers the phone.”

I can't bring myself to hang up because it feels like giving up on this very obvious robbery of my neighbour's home. No, I don't really know who lives there, but I know these guys don't. I do not want to let such indignities become the norm without fighting. With the ringing in my ear and the repeated slamming of the screen door, all I can think about is how bad things could get, could become, if I let this event continue uninterrupted.

But then I think, if I die right now, trying to intervene on a burglary where the homeowners are not even present, what other injustices may occur that I could have stopped if I hadn't been needlessly killed while trying to stop this one.

I guess it all comes down to, what am I even doing here? Why am I alive now, at this hideously dramatic turning point?

“Fire, ambulance, police?”

My mouth falls open as a voice enters the very room in which I'm crouched in the dark against the window. Oh! They actually answered. My ears register the absence of the ringing sound more than the presence of the voice.

“Police,” I respond.

The SUV's front seats are now both occupied, only the third person remains inside the house.

“Please hold.”

The man inside the house must have a flashlight as I can, very faintly, see a white glow flicker around the windows. Moving leisurely from room to room. I wonder how they knew that house was empty? Did they know the owners? Was there someone on our street alerting people to the fact that houses were empty and prime for the taking? If so... what were they observing about our house?

What about Molly D's house, right next to us? Empty save for houseplants and a very expensive solar array system and batteries?

“911, what's the address?”

I give the fire number of the house across the street, along with our road name.

“What's the emergency?”

“There are three people in a black SUV robbing my neighbour's house right now.”

“What is the neighbour's address?”

“That's the one I gave you,” I reply.

“And what is your name?”

“I won't be providing that,” I say, a holdover from many years of having to give my name and date of birth to anyone who asked during my time in hospitals. I had zero privacy and now I hold it very dear.

“We really prefer to have it, it's how we know to take calls seriously.”

“I understand,” I say, and nothing more.

There's a pause. Then, “Well, how do you know it's a robbery?”

“They were going in and out with armfuls of stuff while a driver waits in the car.”

“It's not the homeowners?” the 911 operator asks. I can hear the punch of the mechanical keyboard in the background.

“No, it's not their car and these guys are really suspicious. I can't imagine why the owners would be packing their car at 2am with the lights off.”

“But you can't say for sure if it's the homeowners? Do you recognize any of the people?”

“No, I don't. But I'm not close enough to see their features, even if I did know them.”

“Okay, and can you see if they have weapons?”

At the moment, the blur of white light inside the house is on the ground floor, flashing across the bay window.

“I didn't see any weapons.”

“Did you see them enter the house with force?”

“Listen, it looks like they are wrapping up with whatever they're doing, are you sending someone?”

A man exits the house with a huge silver rectangle in his hands. He's struggling to balance the weight and almost loses a corner. This is more carefully slid into the car.

“I've alerted a patrol car.”

“Are they on their way?” I press.

There's a pause, then the 911 operator says, “There are a lot of robberies happening tonight. Among other crimes.” I realize she sounds exhausted and maybe even a little scared.

“Okay. I'm sorry,” I say, a deep ache of empathy in my gut. Those in her position would be the first ones to see the influx of crime following the announcement of the end – to see crimes shift from the regular day-to-day stuff to the extinction burst type events where nothing matters anymore and anything goes.

“Someone will come by to check,” she says. “Stay inside, do not intervene.”

“I'm afraid we're going to be next,” I whisper.

“Do you have a gun?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“Okay,” she says. “Thank you for your call.”

The call ends and I put my phone down, thoughtless.

The guns are in the basement, improperly stored. No locked safe, just their travel bags, which do have meagre locks on them. I imagine myself picking one up, sitting cross-legged on the hallway floor, ready to to dramatically and permanently alter the life of any person who dares to cross the threshold without invitation. Is it worth it? Their life just to protect our stuff?

But as always, it isn't the stuff I'm worried about. It's us. Three women. It's me.

My secret is this: I am afraid rape will kill me.

That thought has lived uninvited in my typically dark headspace, the darkest of all my fears. Since my surgeries for cancer, my body is not the same. Pelvic radiation caused changes, made me less pliable. A forced entry of my body would have violent physical repercussions. I hold the fear in my pelvis, I know. Rape is an act of terror against anyone, I don't hold myself above that. But here, in my dark room watching men relieve my neighbour's home of its belongings, to myself I can admit... I think I might be able to pull a trigger before anyone else's finger gets itchy.

I think of my sister, my mom, and my resolve hardens further.

Either we make this house, with its fifteen windows and glass sliding doors, safer, or we leave. I can't make the decision alone. But I think of MotherLand and Celeste, and the woman in the trees with the axe. Is it female socialization that has me wishing for a protector, or just human nature?

The men in the black SUV have reversed onto the road and are about to drive past my window. I merge with the wall as much as possible, a dark shape in a dark room – I hope. The driver is rolling up his window, and I can see him for a brief second before the tint crawls over his face. Young. He's really young. A teenager. I can't make out features, or even an expression.

I alternate by the window between sitting, standing, and walking back and forth in front of it. The sun rises. The police never attend the scene.