Here is Chapter 3.
THE CATASTROPHE THEORY CHAPTER 3 - Deborah Rix
Jared knew that this
was the moment to tell her. But he didn’t. Eve would never agree, and they were
rapidly running out of time to argue about a decision that was already made.
No, he kept his mouth shut and glanced around the garage.
“I’ll put a pack
together for you,” he said.
Eve watched Jared pull
down a small black backpack from the top shelf of the metal shelving that held
all of Jared’s “supplies.” She wondered at his quick acceptance of her plan,
but was too anxious to get moving that she didn’t question him. Eve left him to
put the pack together; she knew he needed to do it, so he could pretend he was
still able to protect her.
After she’d gone back
into the house, Jared sank onto his work stool with a thud and scrubbed his
face with both hands. His shoulders dropped. This was the way it had to be, he
reminded himself for the thousandth time. He knew much more about Eve’s work
than she realized. And he knew her, too. Eve needed to go and do what she
could, but she didn’t need Jared and Cassie along to split her focus and put
her in danger. He’d just needed to wait her out, let her work past the guilt at
leaving them, that was all.
He couldn’t remember
when he’d first started keeping his mouth shut around Eve. She’d been to the
camp only once, a few years ago, for Family Day, and that was enough for her.
So, he hadn’t told her what they were doing up at Adventure Base Camp. Hell,
she didn’t even know that he’d bought it with a small group of like-minded
friends. Only Cassie knew, and she knew how to keep her mouth shut, too.
He loved that about Cassie,
that there was some of him in her because in so many other ways she was just
like her mother. Both were smart, decisive, and ready to jump in and muck
around, confident they would figure it out. He liked the slow and steady
approach, liked to be prepared.
Jared was the Director
at Adventure Base Camp, or Camp ABC as the campers called it. To all
appearances it was an adventure camp like any other camp parents sent their
kids off to for the summer, so they could have some guilt-free, kid-free time.
And mostly it was. In the off-season he held Family Days, corn-roasts, and
star-gazing weekends. Sometimes he held survival weekends for all those guys
that liked to play pretend-soldier. Cassie’s favorites were the Teenage Zombie
weekends, where they staged zombie apocalypse scenarios. Jared couldn’t believe
how much money he could make from the stupid zombie craze.
Eve knew about all of
that. What she didn’t know about was the L.I.T. Program. Leaders-In-Training,
just like other junior counselors at every other kid’s camp in the country.
Except, they weren’t training to be camp counselors. Some of them were kids of
friends or his partners in the camp. Some, he scouted from the zombie weekends
after evaluating the teens that had managed to “survive.” Because that’s what
this was all about. Survival.
Jared zipped the package for Eve in the front
pocket of the backpack, where he knew she’d find it. He’d slipped in a new map,
too. He glanced over at the galvanized
metal trash cans that stood three in a row, lids firmly in place. Farady cages,
that’s what they were, innocuously holding the electronic equipment that Jared
had so carefully wrapped and placed inside. Time enough for that once Eve had
left. He went back inside.
Eve met Jared’s eyes
over the top of Cassie’s head as she hugged her daughter. Hard. There was no
real good-bye. She was there, and then she was gone. Eve knew if she lingered
Jared would try to convince her to stay. Just one more day, he would say.
Cassie felt a lot
better, but not quite as good as she pretended to be. This was it, the big IT, and no way was she going to be
side-lined because her dad didn’t think she was up for it. Rotten timing to get
sick. She was an L.I.T. after all.
“Think she’ll be okay?”
Cassie asked her dad.
He didn’t look at her;
he stared at the door that her mom had just gone through.
“Yeah, she’ll be okay,”
he said.
He sounded as though he
was trying to convince himself, and Cassie thought that nothing was going to be
okay anymore, but she didn’t say anything.
“You ready?” Jared
asked her.
“In a minute,” she
answered as she bounded up the stairs, “I forgot something.”
They both laughed, and
it felt good. Whenever one of the campers used that line, they knew they
weren’t ready at all.
Back in the garage,
Jared and Cassie set to work.
“Are you gonna tell me
now?” she asked.
“Tell you what?” Jared
replied, but he knew.
“How did Doug die?”
Jared remained
silent. He’d looked at his dead neighbor
often enough over the past few days, trying to come up with another
explanation. He didn’t want to tell Cassie that Doug had an older pacemaker,
that it had stopped working when the power went out. Everything with an
electric circuit had stopped working. A solar flare would have wiped out the
power grid but not every single piece of electrical equipment-- plugged in or
not. If it had a circuit, it was fried. Like Doug.
If it wasn’t a solar flare,
then this was a man-made event. And if it was an attack, or something that
could be explained away, an accident maybe, then Jared reasoned there would
have been some sort of military presence by now, hopefully from his own
country. But they’d waited. And nothing.
He could still be
wrong, it could be something else. But Jared didn’t think so. This, whatever this was, had been done on purpose.
Jared looked at the
three trash cans lined up against the garage wall.
Chapter 1 by Joseph Turkot
Chapter 2 by Cary Caffrey
Chapter 3 by Deborah Rix
Look for Chapter 4 by Katie French tomorrow, new chapter posted each day.
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