Chapter 11
Barb woke before dawn, her mind already moving before her body joined it. The house was cold. She listened for Cathy’s breathing from the sofa and heard a quiet, rhythmic rise and fall. Exhaustion had finally pulled her under sometime after midnight.
She dressed quietly and grabbed her carpentry hammer, a bucket of screws, and the metal brackets she had stacked on the entry table the night before.
Her breath made a faint cloud in the cool morning air when she stepped outside.
The silence was thicker, a reminder that the electrical world was truly gone.
She walked around her house first, setting her tools on the porch railing.
She pushed the front door open and examined the jamb.
Age had eaten through the lower section.
“That won’t work,” she murmured.
Cathy stood barefoot in the hallway, wrapped in a blanket, her face drawn in the pale light. “You’re already working,” Cathy said.
“I had to start early,” Barb said. “We need these doors solid before anything else.”
“Do you think someone will come out here?”
“Not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but eventually, yes. We’re two miles from town. That’s walking distance.”
Cathy tightened the blanket around herself. “Tell me what to do.”
“Eat something first. Then meet me at the other house. We need to reinforce every hinge and window.”
Cathy nodded and went to the kitchen. Barb returned to work, pulling another 2x4 from the corner and measuring the back door frame.
The screws bit loudly into the wood. She liked the sound, knowing that it meant progress.
When Cathy joined her fifteen minutes later, her hair braided loosely over one shoulder and her hands trembling only a little, Barb handed her a small crowbar.
“Check the windows,” Barb said. “Push on the frames. Tell me if any of them wiggle.”
Cathy nodded and moved to the nearest window. Barb went to the next one and tested the latch. It lifted with barely any resistance. She muttered under her breath and screwed an interior bar across the lower pane. She installed a second bracket for reinforcement, then tested it again.
Cathy moved down the hallway. “This one’s loose. The latch doesn’t catch.”
“I’ll fix it,” Barb said.
They worked through the house window by window, Barb reinforcing each one until the main house felt tighter, less vulnerable, more like a place that could withstand a frightened stranger pounding on the glass.
When the last window was secure, Barb wiped her hands on her jeans. “Now we do the other house.”
Cathy hesitated in the doorway. “Do we have to?”
“Yes,” Barb said. “That house is part of the plan.”
They walked the short distance across the yard.
The second house looked even older, standing in the stillness without its usual background noise.
The peeling siding and missing trim felt more obvious.
Cathy paused on the threshold, clearly staring at the place she had dreamed of turning into her home with Hank.
Barb touched her arm. “This house has a new purpose now.”
“You said it would be a decoy.”
“It will. If someone breaks in, they’ll grab what they can see. They won’t look deeper. We let them take what doesn’t matter and keep what does.”
Cathy nodded slowly, though grief clouded her eyes again.
Barb opened the front door, and the hinges squealed. She grabbed a bracket from her belt and began reinforcing the frame. “Start checking the windows,” Barb said. “Same as before.”
Cathy moved through the rooms quietly. Each time she found a loose window, she called for Barb, who came with screws and bars and steady hands. Together they worked in silence, broken only by the scrape of metal and the soft rustle of dust.
Once the windows were secure, Barb turned to the visible supplies. “We’re staging this house.”
“How?” Cathy asked.
“We make it look like this is where we keep extras,” Barb said. “Put that on the kitchen counter and make it visible.”
Cathy didn’t question her. She grabbed the metal box, set it on the counter, and stepped back.
“Now blankets,” Barb said. “Stack them in the living room. If someone breaks in, they’ll think they found our stores.”
Cathy gathered the blankets with careful hands. They moved food that could be spared to obvious shelves. A small stack of canned vegetables. A bucket of mixed feed. A few tools were placed in clear sight. Enough to satisfy a desperate search, not enough to starve them if taken.
When Cathy stepped back, she frowned. “It looks believable.”
“It should,” Barb said. “Now the real supplies.”
She kneeled on the floor of the back room and wedged the chisel under a floorboard. The wood lifted with a small crack. Cathy inhaled sharply.
“There’s space under the floor?” Cathy whispered.
“There is now,” Barb said.
She pulled up two more planks. The cavity beneath was shallow but wide. She lowered a sealed metal bin inside.
“Food goes here,” Barb said. “Tools in the next space. Medical supplies are in the metal trash cans in the basement. The rest goes in the feed bins outside. No one will think to check inside a feed bin.”
Cathy ran her fingers along the floorboard edge. “I didn’t know you’d thought this far ahead.”
“You don’t survive a collapse thinking only about today.”
Cathy’s face softened with a new, heavy understanding.
They worked until the sun dipped low and the air cooled again.
When they finished, the second house had transformed.
It looked like a desperate family’s best effort at staying afloat.
A surface-level inventory. A place that would keep a looter from looking deeper. They stepped outside into the dusk.
“What now?”
“We reinforce the property,” Barb said. “I need to understand how someone would come at us.”
She walked the perimeter slowly, her eyes drifting across the tree line, the slope of the land, and the curve of the gravel road. Cathy followed silently. The sky deepened into a violet shade.
“This part,” Barb said, pointing toward a gap in the trees. “It’s a blind approach. Someone could come through there, and we wouldn’t see them until they were on us.”
Cathy tensed. “How do we fix that?”
“We set up obstacles. Brush piles, downed branches…anything that slows movement. That’s a high point. If someone stood there, we’d barely see them from the porch. We need to clear some of the scrub there so we can watch it better.”
Cathy hugged her arms around her chest. “This is a lot.”
“It is, but it’s necessary.”
They reached the barn. Barb walked behind it to the open stretch where the land dipped slightly into a natural hollow.
A row of old fence posts stood crooked near the edge of the clearing.
She stopped and set her tool bag down. Barb walked to the stack of feed bags and pulled Hank’s hunting rifle free.
She held it with steady hands, though Cathy flinched as if the sight alone could hurt her.
“I need to teach you something,” Barb said.
Cathy shook her head instantly. “Barb, I don’t know if I can do that.”
“You can. I’m not asking you to be a soldier. I’m asking you to know how to protect yourself.”
“Hank used that for hunting.”
“I know,” Barb said. “Which is why you’re the one who should learn. He’d want you to know how.”
Cathy’s breath hitched. She took the rifle with shaking hands.
Barb guided her to the clearing. “Feet apart. Not too wide. Shoulder into it. Don’t let it float.”
“I’m scared.”
“I know, but scared people learn fast.”
Cathy adjusted her stance.
Barb gently touched her elbow, shifting it into place. “Raise it higher,” Barb said. “Breathe slow. Focus on the post. Not the noise. Squeeze the trigger. Slow and steady.”
Cathy inhaled and exhaled once. Then she fired. The gunshot echoed across the clearing. Her sister stumbled back, startled by the kick, but Barb caught her arm. The tin can Barb had placed on the post toppled to the ground. Cathy stared wide-eyed, breathing hard. “I hit it.”
“You did,” Barb said.
Cathy lowered the rifle. “My shoulder hurts.”
“It always does the first time.”
“I didn’t think I could do that.”
“You did,” Barb repeated. “Which means you can do more.”
Cathy looked at her with something new in her eyes. Not relief or hope, but something steadier.
Barb held her gaze. “This isn’t about becoming someone else. It’s about surviving. You just took your first step.”
They walked back toward the house in silence, the rifle resting safely in Barb’s hands. The night settled over the land, soft and heavy.
When they reached the porch, Cathy stopped and looked out at the fields, the darkness gathered around the fence line, the quiet house waiting like a sentinel. “I think I understand now.”
Barb nodded. “Good.”