Aurora(35)

The morning of day three, Aubrey had noticed Phil boarding up what looked to be a broken window on the half-sunken basement level of his house. She hadn’t gone over to ask, but she’d wandered into the street, close enough to hear him talking with Derek and Janelle, who lived next door. Apparently, there had been a breakin on the second night, and why they’d picked Phil’s unassuming house was as big a mystery to him as it was to them. Nothing much was missing, he said, they’d mostly just ransacked the basement, but he’d startled them in the act and had a black eye to show for it. He was actually grateful for the lack of power, as he’d been able to scurry away in the darkness of his house and hide until the burglars were gone.

That was as close as violence had gotten to Cayuga Lane. So far, anyway.

Now, on the morning of day four, Aubrey sat on her front steps, smoking one of the last of her secret cigarettes before Scott got out of bed. She’d dug out the Iridium Extreme satellite phone Thom had sent her two Christmases ago and checked its battery—still at forty percent. She wished she’d returned even one of Thom’s calls, which had come at a rate of about five per day so far, as surely he’d have better intel than the scuttlebutt on her block. But she hadn’t felt like talking to him. Everything he’d ever told her had turned out to be right, but that wasn’t going to be enough for him, he’d want her to know and admit it. She shoved the bulky phone back in her pocket. Maybe in a little while.

Honestly, though, what did it matter if she knew what was going on in the rest of the world? What would it change?

She felt clearheaded this morning. Thinking and planning seemed to be getting easier. Abruptly losing coffee from her diet was certainly a part of that. She hadn’t realized how much she’d been drinking, but when you cut it off abruptly, your addiction has a way of standing up and introducing itself. The massive headaches subsided after forty-eight hours, and turned into more of an emotional pang, a longing for something that had been underappreciated and was now impossible.

She’d slept better the last couple of nights too, in spite of the dire circumstances and her overwhelming anxiety. She woke when the sun was up, she got sleepy when it went down, and during the times in between there were no electronic distractions. She’d never been a big consumer of TV, but the internet and its discontents were a major part of her life.

No more. That whole world was suddenly gone and wasn’t coming back for a long time. Aubrey was surprised by how quickly she’d begun to mentally disconnect from the infinite online distractions she’d used to seek. She had kicked the internet to the curb with a speed and conviction that surprised her, awakening as if from hypnosis and realizing what a prisoner of algorithm her thoughts had been. No coffee, no internet? Thank Christ.

Scott’s adjustment was more gradual. He’d always slept a lot, and he was still sleeping ’til noon, but now he was also in bed most nights by 10 p.m., which meant he was officially asleep more than he was awake. Aubrey knew incipient depression when she saw it, and his general listlessness and monosyllabic conversations were danger signs. Then again, he was looking down the barrel of a year or more of living in Little House on the Fucking Prairie with his ex-stepmother. So, you know, he had a right.

Aubrey heard the roar of a car engine. A beat-up black Dodge Ram had just come around the corner, noisy and rude in the heavy quiet of the morning. She frowned. It was Rusty’s truck, and he and it were the last things she wanted to see. He drove past her house, fast, and cut the wheel. He made a showy U-turn, curving around in a big arc ’til the back end of the truck was directly opposite her driveway. There he stopped with a jerk, threw it in reverse, and backed up, bouncing over the crack in her sidewalk and parking in her driveway.

Aubrey sighed and stood up from her front steps. Now what?

“Relax, everybody, the cavalry has arrived,” Rusty said, without charm, as he got out of the truck. He dropped the rear gate and leaned in, getting a gloved hand on one of the metal bars that stuck out on either side of the large yellow machine in the bed of the truck.

Aubrey walked over and looked at it. “What is that and why is it here?”

“You’re welcome very much.” Rusty slid it back toward him, bent his knees, and hoisted it out of the truck. He was strong, but this thing had to go eighty pounds. He duck-walked it, with some effort, over to the side of the house before dropping it down on the cement apron under the kitchen window.

“Seriously, Rusty, what is it?”

“What does it look like? A generator.”

He went back to the truck, jumped up into the bed, and walked to the front of it, flipping open the equipment cabinet that ran beneath the rear window. He pulled a two-gallon can of gas out, hopped off the back of the truck, and returned to the generator.

“I had an extra one at the site I’m working on. Won’t be doing anything there for a while, and I thought maybe you guys could use it.”

Aubrey, unaccustomed to an even remotely kind gesture from him, didn’t know what to say. “Thanks” seemed obvious but inadequate, but then again, so was Rusty, so she went with just that.

She watched while he unscrewed the generator’s cap, upended the gas can, and filled the tank. “It’s kind of a pig, and a gallon of gas won’t last you more than an hour or so,” he said. “The tank’s two gallons, so I’m gonna fill it up, and I can come back every few days if you want. I’d say run it no more than one hour at a time, maybe every other day.”