He glanced up at the puffy white clouds that scudded along the blue sky. The afternoon was sweltering, and his throat felt dry as a desert. He shelved thoughts of where the airplanes had gone for later. His body's increasing need for sustenance, shelter, and water pushed all his other concerns to a persistent throb at the back of his mind.
Darien smiled. His lips were sun-cracked and painful, but he didn’t care. His string of bad luck was about to change. Before him was the key to survival. A massive house set at the entrance to an exclusive neighborhood called Bee’s Landing. The expansive, well-manicured lawn spread out before him. He whistled low under his breath, unable to guess the mortgage payment on such a huge mansion. To a lifelong apartment dweller like Darien, such a monstrosity of living quarters meant one thing: money.
"Would you look at that," mumbled Spanner behind him.
Jon Boy pushed forward, eliciting grunts of irritation from the others. "I want to see, I want to see," he said excitedly.
Darien shushed him, and motioned the others forward to the edge of the greenery. "There it is boys," Darien said. “Shangri-la. We’re gonna work our way through this neighborhood and see what we can find. There's got to be a house in here somewhere that we can break into. Anybody have any experience at that?" he asked. He knew the answer from Spanner and Jon Boy, they were car thieves after all, but a thief was a thief. Darien prided himself on a code of conduct that he adhered to strictly, but the two escaped convicts were an unknown entity. They glanced at each other, then looked at him and grinned.
The appointed leader of the two cons, Cisco, smirked derisively at the house. "Yeah, I reckon we can get in there.” He licked his lips and craned his neck, in an attempt to see around Jon Boy. "Anybody see any movement? Don't look like anybody's home to me, Lopez…”
"What are we waiting for then?" said the other inmate. He moved to step around Darien.
"No, not yet," Darien snapped. One glance at Jon Boy, and the mountain stuck out a thick arm, almost as big as some of the trees that sheltered them, which stopped the convict in his tracks.
"Okay, okay…” Lopez said as he threw his arms in the air. "Don't gotta be all unfriendly.”
“We’re not gonna go rushin’ in there and blow this thing," Darien commanded. "This is the sweetest score we've had since that wave hit. We’re going to take our time…understand?”
“Who died and made you God?" muttered Cisco.
Darien turned and faced the man down. Or up, since the convict was a head taller. "I never asked you to join up with us. I said you could if you wanted to. I also said if you were going to follow along, you’d do what I say, when I say it. Does my memory fail me,” he said to Jon Boy and Spanner, “or did these two agree to those conditions?"
As one, Jon Boy and Spanner closed ranks behind Darien. "We remember."
"That's what I thought.” He turned back to Cisco and Lopez. “Now, we gonna have problems? Or are we gonna act like civilized men, scope this place out for just a few minutes, then go on in and see what we can find once the coast is clear?”
"Look, I just don't see…” began Lopez.
"That's right, you don’t,” Darien snapped, “because you're not thinking, you're reacting. That house could be full of cops for all we know. Maybe somebody had a retirement party when the wave hit, and they're all stuck there waiting to see what to do next?"
“That’s ridiculous—it’s probably empty," Cisco muttered sullenly.
"Yeah, and it could be some drunk army vet sittin’ there with a 12-gauge just waiting to blow away the first person that steps through the front door," Darien snapped. He turned away and threw one hand up over his shoulder, the signal the conversation was over. As soon as he did, he spotted movement inside the house. "Everybody down," he hissed and dropped to a knee behind the bushes. Jon Boy just about knocked a tree over getting to his knees, but within a few seconds they were all safely concealed behind the greenery at the edge of the yard.
"What? What is it?" asked Lopez.
"Somebody's walking around in there,” Darien whispered over his shoulder. He pointed at one of the windows on the ground floor, the closest one to their position. “Look!” A shadow crossed behind the gauzy curtains and disappeared. "Anyone else see that?"
"I saw it, Darien!" Jon Boy giddily reported.
"Yeah, there’s somebody in there…” Lopez admitted. "Now what do we do?" he asked, deflated.
"I didn't say we were just gonna walk away,” Darien replied with a grin. “I just said we’re going to scope the place out. Let's take a minute and see what we…” He trailed off as the words dried up in his throat. The sliding porch door at the back of the house opened, and a woman poked her head out and glanced left and right as she blinked in the sun. He couldn't tell much about her other than the flowing waterfall of hair that cascaded around her shoulders, which glistened bright golden in the sunlight as she looked to and fro. She was far enough away that he couldn't see an expression on her face, but her hurried movements gave no doubt that she wanted to make sure no one lurked in the backyard.
"Everybody stay still," Darien whispered. For once he received no arguments.
