L Akers - Fight Like a Man

He glanced out the window just in time to see the neighbor across the street dump a bucket of what he assumed to be dirty water onto a blue hydrangea. Just wasted it… unreal. Jake rubbed his hands over his face again and looked away. He couldn’t watch anymore.

Of all times for Gabby to take off on a vacation with her sisters. It’d been two days. Two days of no communication with her, or anyone. Two long days of him sitting alone, hoping the power was coming back on, yet knowing it probably wasn’t. He knew he should be getting busy. There was so much to do, and he should be helping Grayson out at the homestead.

He just couldn’t get his head together. Couldn’t stop worrying about Gabby and the girls. Couldn’t stop hoping the power was coming back on. But mostly it was about Gabby. He’d been laid out on the couch, avoiding the neighbors most of the past two days, frozen with anxiety over his wife.

Admit it, Jake, there’s more than that keeping you glued to the couch.

Jake shook that thought away. He wouldn’t admit it. To admit it would give it power over his life. No, he refused to think of that right now.

He pushed his secret back down, before it got away from him.

He rubbed his knuckles and was surprised to see blood over his oil-stained creases. Crap. Not cool in a grid-down situation to purposely hurt yourself. He stomped into the bathroom and grabbed the big brown bottle of peroxide. He poured it over his hand, let it bubble a moment, and then shook it off. It was time to get the heck out of there. If Grayson had been right these past few years, the shit was about to hit the fan. The news had been predicting it, if you listened hard enough.

He’d heard the talk from the neighborhood, too, on the first day. One woman worked across the border, for American Airlines in Charlotte, North Carolina. She said all planes were grounded. Not only were the flight plans usually electronic, but all their ground systems were too. No power or communications meant no air transportation. It was utter chaos at Charlotte Douglas Airport, according to her. She’d wasted her gas getting to work only to be turned around and sent home, barely squeaking into her driveway on empty, too afraid to attempt getting any more gas while she was alone.

She’d said the lines at the gas stations she’d passed were filled with angry people. There were only a few that had generators running to pump the gas, and fights had broken out over the limited supply. Only cash was accepted and they were fleecing people for a five-gallon limit.

Another neighbor worked for the power company. Rumor was the system was hacked. A cyber-attack. Not only did they not have control of it yet to bring it back up, but dozens of transformers around town had blown. With the number needed, it would take a long time to get those in, as most big parts were made in China, and that was if they could repair the hack and take back control of the system.

The fire departments were using every drop of gas they had stored up to locate and fight fires, from blown transformers. Soon, they wouldn’t be able to go anywhere either. It was rumored that by late evening yesterday, there was no gas in town, according to the neighborhood chatter.

Great day.

No phones. No cars. No power. No running water.

No shit?

He shook his head. It was time to stop procrastinating and hoping it wasn’t real.

It. Was. Real.

He had a plan. He wasn’t a tree, he could move if he wanted to. If he tried hard enough. He just had to get motivated to get moving. Grayson was probably chomping at the bit by now wondering where he was. He’d have to come up with a good excuse for sitting around doing nothing up until now. He couldn’t tell him the real reason. No one could know that. No one would know that; especially his wife, Gabby.

He passed their bed and glanced at the bed-side table. There was his motivation. He stepped over and picked up their wedding picture. She had been eighteen years old. A child-bride. Her long-brown hair and sapphire eyes had mesmerized him from the moment he’d met her. Now she—and her twin—were in their early thirties, and they were more beautiful than they’d been at eighteen. Same long hair, same blue eyes. And their little sister, Emma, looked just like them.

Jake shook his head and swallowed hard. What the hell is wrong with me? Women like this out on the road during this chaos? His pulse quickened as a thousand bad scenarios flashed through his brain. He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. It wouldn’t do to get all worked up. They were probably doing the same thing everyone else was, sitting around waiting for the lights to come back on. It would be sometime in the next few days that they would realize they’d have to hoof it.

His eyes slid to the ball cap also resting on the table. It was Gabby’s favorite. The emblem on the front and the three letters: TSS, stood for The Shooting Sisterhood . It was an online group of women who loved guns and shooting. Gabby had joined it over a year ago. She kept in regular contact through Facebook with her ‘sisters in shooting,’ who all encouraged and supported each other. Gabby had mentioned a few were gathering here, at their local gun range to shoot together this week in a tournament and she’d been disappointed about having to miss it—but shooting couldn’t compete with the beach with her real blood sisters. He felt guilty that he’d encouraged her to go. He’d wanted time alone to try to deal with his own demons. To try to crush them before he was crushed.

He hadn’t made any headway after all.

Now, he wished she’d stayed home for the tournament.

He grabbed the hat and loosened it to fit his own head. He pulled it down tight and breathed in the scent of his wife’s hair. A good reminder for him to stay motivated and moving. He needed to haul his ass over to Grayson’s. He knew without a doubt Grayson would say the plan has always been in an event or a crisis, for everyone to head to the homestead.

But he didn’t know if he could wait for Gabby any longer. Maybe he and Grayson should try to get to the girls—before someone else did.

GRAYSIE SWUNG HER LONG, curly red hair over her shoulder—the way only a nineteen-year-old co-ed could—and straightened the sign on the bathroom door between the dorm-suites. It read: ‘If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down.’

She rolled her eyes. Her dad, Grayson, had used the same phrase when the power had gone out at home for one long icy weekend. She scrunched her nose up to enter. The lid was down. She hopped in place as she looked for something to lift it with. With this smell, she didn’t want to touch it.

Perfect, we’re out of toilet paper.

She’d known two rolls wouldn’t last long with three suite-mates in her dorm, and sure enough the cardboard roll sat naked and dejected on the holder.

So nice of them to save me some.

She used the edge of her flip-flop to lift the toilet lid and nearly gagged. So much for the sign. No wonder it smelled so bad in here. Someone hadn’t flushed down their ‘brown.’ She grimaced as she looked around for their bucket of water. The college administrators had offered water to anyone that could provide something to put it in. Thank goodness one of her roommates had a clean fetish and kept a bucket in their room to wash her car. Without the water, they couldn’t flush at all. As she looked at the mess, she wondered why that fetish didn’t apply here.

She spied the bucket in the corner, filled with damp towels. Are you freaking kidding me? Someone had used the last of the water to bathe? She gathered her hair in her hand and brought it over her shoulder. She shook her head in disgust as she turned around and sat down. She couldn’t hold it any longer.