6. Knox
SIX
KNOX
Daylight pours through my bedroom window, practically blinding me as I peel my eyes open.
I cringe and run my palms over my face. Today’s going to be rough—I have a splitting headache, and I haven’t even gotten out of bed yet. Groaning, I sit up and glance around my room. My clothes are discarded on the floor, my hat is dangling from the chair in the corner, and a mostly empty bottle of Buffalo Trace sits on my nightstand.
“Great,” I grumble, pressing my palms into my eyes, thankful I had the wherewithal to keep my boxer briefs on so that Liz, our housekeeper, doesn’t get an eyeful of something she can’t unsee when she pops her head in to check on me. That she hasn’t yet is surprising, especially since I’m usually up before dawn. But I’m too groggy to care.
Rising to my feet, I scour the room for my phone. It’s not on the charger or my side table, but a part of me can’t think about it right now. I have to piss like there’s no tomorrow, and I drag myself into the bathroom to take a leak.
The last thing I remember is finishing what was in the decanter and searching the cupboards for another bottle. It’s one of three things my father is never short of—a curled lip, coffee, and bourbon.
Gripping the wall to hold myself upright, I rest my head on my bicep, groaning because peeing has never felt so euphoric. When I’m finished, I brush my teeth, feeling slightly less dead, and head into my room for a pair of sweats. I shut my drawer and pull them on before heading into the kitchen for a glass of water.
“Liz!” I call out. Aside from the low chatter on the radio, the house is far too quiet and empty. She’s not singing in another room or walking heavily and hastily through the house as she cleans or does the laundry.
Lucy pads up the porch and she nuzzles the screen door open, which apparently I never shut last night. “What trouble have you been getting into?” I rub her ears and face as she sidles up to me for morning affection, and I pause in the living room. I take in the disarray from yesterday. The broken frame and disheveled couch. The empty decanter on the coffee table. The television is still cycling through devastating images of what’s happening around the world, and suddenly, I recall the depressing reality of my life.
Lucy leads me to her food bowl, which I fill before searching the house for my phone again. How many times did I call Kellen last night before giving up? And it’s obvious Liz hasn’t been here at all this morning, which makes me frown. Every day, like clockwork, she is here. Save for Tony, she’s been the most consistent person in my life for the last ten years.
Instead of going down that rabbit hole again, I walk into the kitchen and pull a glass from the cupboard. Only, I stop short and stare out the window toward the steer paddock. I should have fed the animals already. I should’ve checked on the cattle to see if they are getting any better, or worse.
Scowling, I fill the glass a quarter full before I pause again, this time bringing the glass to my nose for a sniff. It doesn’t smell like sulfur yet, but I’d rather not test my luck. Dumping it out, I turn for the fridge and grab the Brita filter Liz always keeps filled to the brim.
I chug the entire glass down, desperate for the cool water to slake my parched throat. It’s perfection and rejuvenating, and I’m tempted to pour another glass, but I second-guess the decision. We need to take stock of our water situation before I start drinking all the filtered water we have.
We . I shake my head. I can imagine my father’s face when he returns from San Antonio to discover one more problem to wade through.
Setting the glass on the quartz countertop, I turn for the television. Images of Yellowstone and the smoking volcano are downright terrifying. But I’m not surprised; people have been evacuated for miles surrounding the national park for over a year. And Moonies have been waiting for the damn thing to erupt for decades.
The earthquakes, the tsunamis, the erratic and severe weather patterns, and the rumbling volcanoes breathed back to life—the warnings have been circulating my entire life. Still, it’s unsettling because I never thought any of it actually would happen. At least, not until I was old and gray, long after my father was buried in the earth.
I imagined the end would come out of nowhere. I’d probably be sitting on the porch and abruptly consumed by one of the lava pits underneath me opening up and swallowing me whole. I hadn’t anticipated the earth’s turmoil to show up now, and like this. That I would be two years shy of thirty. That I would have the weight of the ranch on my shoulders, facing the possible death of my brother, and what it would feel like—how full of regret I would be that I had blamed him for so many things.
I never considered we might lose the ranch and cattle. And now, our clean water supply. I never considered so many things, and suddenly, it’s all happening far too quickly, and despite the weight of it all bearing down on me, it’s as if my mind is barely catching up.
An urgency to inventory our supplies and batten down the hatches for the shitstorm I feel growing on the horizon grips hold of me. I walk to the couch to search for my phone. My Uncle Mason and Aunt Beth have been preparing for this for years. I always thought they were the crazy ones—Moonies of epic proportions, like many others who were alive when the asteroid hit. Only now, it’s them I want to speak with the most. They’ll know what I should prioritize. They will help me sort through my bubbling panic. I’ll have a plan in place when my father returns, and we can divide and conquer.
More aerial views from around the country flash across the television, and hope rears its dangerous head as I wonder how many survivors have been found in San Francisco since last night. I lift the cushions, searching each cranny for my phone, and glance at the television again. An entire city has fallen into a sinkhole.
I drop the cushion in my hand. Trees, homes, roads, cars, buildings—it’s a never-ending view of a crumbled city. When I recognize the Tower of the Americas protruding from the rubble, I grip the couch as I stagger down. Mind in a fog, I feel for the remote discarded on the floor and turn the volume up with a shaking hand.
“—it extends the length of the city,” a female voice reports from the helicopter hovering over San Antonio. “It’s so wide, I can’t see where it ends from here.” The horror that rings in each word echoes through my head, and I inhale a ragged breath. “From what we’ve gathered so far, which is very little,” she adds, “the sinkhole is easily fifty-miles wide—that’s the breadth of San Antonio itself. Some say the hole is up to a dozen-miles deep. It’s devastating and there is no doubt it will take search and rescue months to sort through the rubble.”
“No.” I don’t know if I say it or if it escapes as a breath. Before I can fully process, I’m tearing the couch apart and shoving furniture out of the way, searching for my phone. I sprint for my room and pull the blankets from my bed until I finally spot my cell phone in the twisted sheets. Only eleven percent battery and no missed calls. Nothing from Tony or Kellen. Nothing from my father or Liz.
The phone is slick in my sweaty hands, and I can barely catch my breath as I plop down on my bed and dial my father’s number, certain he’s too goddamn stubborn to die and that his phone will be on. After what happened to my mother, neither of us ever turn them off for fear we’ll miss an urgent call. But when I press send, the call goes straight to voicemail.
“Fuck!” I brace my elbows on my thighs, raking my hands over my face and through my short hair. “No, no, no, no, no!” I try calling him again because my father is right; I’m a fool, and it goes to voicemail just like before.
“You stubborn son of a bitch,” I grumble. Hurrying to the radio, I turn the volume up and listen to the call signs coming through and their conversations. The chances of hearing my father’s voice or him hearing mine are slim, but I wish with every fiber of my being that, for once in his life, he actually listened to me and left his radio on in his truck.
He’d have to be in his truck.
“—city is in chaos. Over.”
“Copy that, N5TXY. I’m in Austin, just a couple of hours away. Communications are down here too. Over.”
“I haven’t heard from anyone in San Antonio since it happened. Have you? Over.”
“Negative, N5TXY. The Texas ARES has designated 147.180 MHz as the primary repeater for emergency communications. They’ve gotta have more information for us. I’m going to check it out. Over.”
“Roger that. I’ll switch over to 147.180 MHz and standby.”
I switch over as well, but it’s more chatter, people trying to figure out what is going on but having no idea, and I’m wasting time standing here.
I might hate my father most days, but he’s all I have left. I pull on whatever discarded clothes are on my floor, keenly aware my only option is to go to San Antonio—whatever’s left of it—to find him.