“Track Nine:” Beach Front Property

Said, "It's the end of days." And we’re just hoping for the beach front property.

Everyone and everything had gone insane after the power went out.

For six months, there was no power.

Anywhere… in the entire world.

Take away the power for people’s phones, internet, access to their money, refrigeration for food, their jobs… the world turned lawless. It was like something you read in history books about the old west.

It’s still hard to wrap my brain around how quickly things changed. One minute we were staying in, watching HGTV in our sweats and eating takeout… the next, everything went dark.

The first month was the hardest. Our phones only lasted as long as your batteries and portable chargers could carry them. There was no way to get the news unless you wasted the gas in your car to listen to the radio, or you had one of those hand crank emergency flashlight-radio combos. But after a while even the radio stations were having trouble broadcasting as their generators were constantly getting stolen. Two months into the outage, the stations must have given up. The broadcasts went dark too.

Six months later, lights and sounds and screens turned back on all over the world. But it only took a couple of weeks before people started to loot storefronts, rob banks, and invade homes… Even when the power came back on, there was no going back to the old way of life. After six months of people living like thieves and complete nutters, how could it?

That’s all it took for the old world to crumble and the new world to take hold.

No one has been able to prove or even explain how it all even happened. There will always be theories of course; hackers, doomsday cults, the government (though which government it could have been changes constantly). There was no rhyme or reason. It was just something that happened.

We stayed in Denver for one more restless month after the power came back on, but it was clear the world had no plans to return to ‘normal.’ People of all sorts were scattering for different reasons; family, financials… independence (mostly from people they wanted to escape long before the world went mad and finally had a reason to do so). Some moved toward the people they were missing all along, simply choosing not to miss them any longer.

Without work, and the old day to day that made up our “lives” this specific location seemed less important than it used to. My family was already scattered; my parents had retired to Maine, and my brother was living down in Arizona.

Betty’s family was still in and around the Denver area, but her relationship with them was…complicated. She wanted us to leave Denver years ago, but at the time my job was holding us here. Betty didn’t see her family all that much. We only saw them on the holidays and special occasions, the forced days that would have been laced with the anxiety even if they were on good terms. She didn’t ever speak about them really. They’d have to call, mail an invitation… In fact, the closest she came to entering them into a conversation that was previously unrelated to them was a couple of years back. When Instagram was still a thing.

She was scrolling through something on her phone and let out a, “huh.”

“What’s up, babe?”

“I wonder if they really mean it.” It didn’t ring out like much of a question.

I looked over her shoulder and found her eyeing a sentimental post of sorts from one of her far off friends, gushing over their dad on Father’s Day.

That was all she said.

Then she closed her app and asked if I felt like watching a movie.

That’s how Betty and I ended up here on the coast.

We cashed out our bank accounts, packed up the important things (or of what we could fit in the truck), and Betty’s books. She had insisted on taking a very specific stack of paperbacks by very specific authors: Stephen King, Richard Matheson, Cormac McCarthy… I asked if she wanted the others, but she said only those would be necessary. The books all looked brand new on our shelf before we headed south. I think it was the Arizona sun that had turned them brittle. Even though we didn’t stay there long.

We stowed her paperbacks back behind my seat and headed south to see my brother August before making our way west to the coast to stake our claim in the new world, in an area we never would have been able to afford in the old one.

We drove through the scorching heat in Arizona. We’d only been to this part of the country a time or two before when August had invited us out for Spring Training, big baseball fan that he was. I never quite understood the appeal. But I loved football. The real kind. The kind that 90% of the world’s population loves.

There were similarities, I suppose. Large green fields, men spread about… though the cardio in baseball seemed to lack the endurance required for European football. Also, the fan support in baseball left something to be desired. While I wouldn’t say I outright supported hooliganism, I did appreciate the dedication. And the attendance for baseball left something to be desired. Sure, their playoffs were a different story, but that’s what always pissed me off. A bunch of people who seemed not to care all season long show up, pay top dollar for a ticket, then spend half the game looking at their mobile instead of screaming for their team. Here we were in the apocalypse I still couldn’t shake that argument from my head. It’s a strange game with strange fans… Though August was a Dodger fan, and perhaps not all team support was like this.

Betty and I made our way through the desert air, swallowed up by the dry heat. We drove past the deserted frat bars August had always forced us to visit. This town was build for adults to go on spring break, but without the draw of a live ‘sport’ why would anyone want to stay here? 

            August and Isla were, as it turned out, not looking to stay in Scottsdale at all. If Denver reminded us of the old west, Arizona had gone full Mad Max. August had tried his hand at looting for food but didn’t get far. His neighbors were all armed to the hilt before the power outage. And his baseball bat was no match for the terrifying array of firearms these locals possessed.

            He and Isla were terrified. “Do you think we could come with you to the coast?”

            I looked at Betty, I knew how she felt about her family, but was never actually quite sure how she felt about mine. Isla was sensing our hesitation.

            “You can’t even get into a grocery store here without some sort of a long-range weapon. There are goons blocking the produce section. You have to threaten them with something bigger to get anywhere near a damn apple.”

August, in his Lacoste polo shirt, and Isla in her rose gold jewelry, had not adapted to the new world.

            Betty turned to me and nodded. “Fine by me.”

            The next day we packed up August and Isla’s car and got out of Arizona as fast as possible.

By the time we reached the coast, the pages of Betty’s books, once scorched from the desert drive, were starting to feel damp again.

I think the sea and the fog have brought her books back to life. If that can be a thing? I wouldn’t think so, but I also didn’t think we’d end up in a deserted beach house at what felt like the end of the world, either.

Since we settled in on the coast, we haven’t seen much of the sun. The fog blankets us almost every day, as Isla never fails to complain about. Betty thinks the weather has become our mood ring. As if the earth knows we wouldn’t do much good with a sunny day if it supplied it for us.

August and Isla stayed with us for three very long, and very awkward months. They were always cold. Hated the wind off the water, and the more their clothes wore threadbare, the more irrational and vain they became.

  One night, make one of our customary bonfires on the beach, Betty nearly took August’s head off with a folding chair when he tried to use one of her paperback books as kindling.

August ducked, only his wavy hair was clipped in the process. “You’re too attached those books! You’ve already read them all half a dozen times anyway!”

Betty ripped her paperback from my brother’s hand and kicked sand at him for good measure before storming off into the house.

Isla glared at me. “What is her problem? All she does is scribble in them and highlight the pages. What does she need to do all that for, anyway?”

“They’re how we’ve made it this far.” Through the fire, all they August and Isla could is stare at me. “It’s research.”

They doubled over, laughing and rolling about the sand. To be fair, when Betty pulled all the apocalypse-themed books we owned, and only those, from the shelf, I thought she had snapped a bit. But each story had ideas, practices, warnings that kept us out of trouble and helped point us toward making the right choices.

August grabbed Isla’s hand. “You guys have both lost your minds. Come on Isla. Pack your things. We’re going to Mexico where it’s not always so god damn cold.”

August and Isla were heading south, and neither of them spoke Spanish. Betty and her books would have warned them against that decision… not that they would have listened anyway.

They were gone at dawn.  

That day Betty picked up her copy of Night Shift and padded over the strand to the beach. She flicked out her towel, smoothing it out flat and dropped the book and pens to the sand at her feet. She seemed lighter today with August and Isla gone.

            The sun was even coming out.

            I wondered if the clouds were going to follow August to Mexico. I replayed our conversation from this morning in my head after August tried to convince me to go with them to Mexico.

I shrugged and told August, thanks, but no thanks. “If every city is the same. Doom and gloom under a different name. Maybe we should find our home in one?” We had promised to stick together when we left Arizona. We argue and assign the blame. But neither of us accepts it. Moving around like this took a toll on all of us and pointing fingers wasn’t going to help. Not like any of us feel the shame, count on one hand all the good we’ve done. I told him, “I'm tired anyway.”

I wished August and Isla well, but he seemed rather angry I wasn’t going and shrugged me off. “Why the hell would I care?”

For the first time in months, I brought out the sunscreen and my beach towel from the house and sprawled out in the sand next to Betty and her book. I closed my eyes as the sun broke through the clouds, feeling the warmth on my skin, at peace on our beach front property. “I'm tired anyway.”

*Inspired by Spanish Love Songs, “Beach Front Property”