“Those rioters we saw on the news? Here? Is that what that was?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Laura, those men… they looked through me, they had no fear, please get all the food and water upstairs. We don’t have much time. I’ll be right behind you.”
Jacob went to the garage and shut the overhead door before retrieving his cordless drill and a box of deck screws. He made a quick pass through his home, locking and bolting every door, closing every curtain.
By habit, he went to arm the alarm by the front door, his fingers nearly touching the buttons. With no power and the backup batteries long dead, the alarm was useless. Jacob shook his head before running up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
He joined his wife on the second floor and followed her into the master suite. Their bedroom was large and square; an antique armoire rested against an interior wall close to the door. A single, long window faced the street, opposite the entrance to the bathroom. A king-sized bed in the center of the room, with a nightstand on each side, filled the rest of the space. Jacob moved to the foot of the bed where Laura had placed everything and took a quick inventory of their belongings. He nodded before turning away to bolt the heavy hardwood bedroom door.
Jacob had always been security conscious… or paranoid, as his friends called it. He was on the road a lot for work, and he wanted his family safe when he was away. Laura shook her head at the idea of him tearing out their master bathroom to construct a state-of-the-art safe room. As a compromise—in Jacob’s mind, at least—he’d installed a heavy exterior door at the entrance to their bedroom. The heavy bolt he had added, to secure it further, effectively turned their master suite into a hardened shelter that could hold off any home invader.
Jacob stopped and looked at the door with the brass bolt lock, talking quietly to himself. “Better than that damn security alarm I spent all the money on,” he said. “More practical too… and passive, doesn’t require electricity like the alarm. Nothing to train or learn and no fancy monitoring companies… a one-time expense to install, and we have a barrier between us and them…”
He paused when Laura asked, “Who are you talking to?”
Jacob put his hand on the door again and rattled the knob. Checking the lock, he felt the clunk of the steel bolt riding into the two-by-six stud frame.
“Nobody,” he said.
Jacob lifted the drill and a handful of screws. He drove the four-inch screws in deep—one in each corner, two in the top, and two on each side.
“What are you doing?” Laura, she asked.
Jacob stopped and looked her in the eye. He could see she was in shock and not fully comprehending the situation. She was still struggling with the thought of being attacked in the streets of their quiet neighborhood. Even having felt the violence firsthand in front of their home, she wasn’t fully grasping the urgency of the situation. This wasn't something that was happening far away, not anymore; the violence had reached their front yard. People were killing out there, and nobody was coming to save them. They would have to save themselves.
“I’m running screws through the door all the way to the studs. The lock is good, but this is better.”
Laura watched the same news reports he did—the attacks, the disappearances, the mobs, the warnings from police to stay off the streets. At first, the commentators compared them to events expected with third-world mentality, like the massacres in the Congo and attacks in Rwanda—even the LA Riots; they simply did not make any sense.
The newscasters relayed messages from mayors urging residents to stay in their homes and wait out the crisis. The government was working on it and the police were organizing a response. The National Guard mobilized and set up evacuation centers. Although in some cases, the evacuation centers were as dangerous as the streets. Several reports aired news of them being wiped out… everyone lost… everyone dead. The warnings were shown on the TV in long, repeating broadcasts before the power went out.
Secured on the second floor, Jacob went to the window and observed the street. The road was wide with tall shade trees on both sides and ran deep into the suburban neighborhood. Well-maintained, cookie-cutter homes sat back from green lawns, interrupted by the destroyed car that was still smoking from the collision just beyond his own driveway. Some of his neighbors had left their porches and gathered around it, talking and taking photos with their phones of the dead men.
“What are they doing? Damn it, they need to get inside,” Jacob shouted. “The news said to stay in your homes. Did they not see those men? Don’t this know something is wrong. They need to get back inside!”
Laura went to the window to stand beside him and looked out. “We have to warn them Jacob. They don’t understand, they didn’t experience it like we did—”
Jacob looked at the door and considered going back to the street to reason with his neighbors. “No, it’s too dangerous; I don’t know what they are. Bath salt nutters, zombies, crazed maniacs… Laura, I’m afraid—”
He was interrupted by a loud, blood-curdling scream from down the street. Jacob strained and focused through the shade of the trees lining the road. A woman was running barefoot toward them and screaming, her ripped clothing covered in blood. She ran directly into a man standing by the wrecked cars. He tried to hold the frantic woman, but she struggled and pointed back down the road. She broke free of the man and continued to scream as she ran away.
Jacob stared in horror when he saw what the woman had pointed at; the mob was just as the newscasters described—crazy and bloodthirsty. Their black eyes stared straight ahead, and they shrieked as
