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“Oh Lord Jesus in Heaven!” Emily bellowed. “Please don’ let this man kill us!”
Shannon shook her head as they walked briskly through the front yard with Atticus at their back.
“Please Jesus!” Emily cried.
“Oh, shut up,” Shannon barked. “Jesus ain’t gonna do shit for you, you crazy old bat.”
Emily ignored Shannon’s jibe and rambled on about Jesus all the way to the concrete storm cellar jutting from the ground.
“Raise the door and get in,” Atticus demanded.
Emily and Shannon looked at each other.
“GET IN NOW!”
Startled, Emily grabbed the handle and lifted the heavy door; it screeched and groaned, metal on metal. Emily went in first, carefully taking the steps, her hands braced on the doorframe. Shannon followed.
Standing next to Atticus, I looked into the hole at the women whose faces stared up at me from the shadows of the 5’X7’ walls that surrounded them. Seconds later, their faces disappeared behind the heavy metal door as it closed with a clamorous bang. Emily’s muffled voice, crying out for Jesus, filtered through the bulbous air vent set in the roof. Then the booming echo of hands beating the metal from inside sounded in my ears.
Atticus stepped hard onto the door to keep it in place.
“Go over to the stable,” he told me, “and find something strong that’ll fit into this hole—hurry!”
I glimpsed the small metal contraption set one part in the door, the other part in the metal around the door, lined perfectly for a padlock to be used. I nodded and then turned, sprinting toward the stable nearby. Moments later, I came running back with a pair of plyers and put them into Atticus’ hand. He slipped the thickest part of one handle through the holes and then released his boot from the door.
“Let’s go,” he said, grabbed my hand and took off running back toward the house; I could hardly keep up with his long legs.
“What are we doing?” I asked, out of breath.
Atticus swung open the door.
“We’re getting supplies.”
His boots went heavily over the wood floor. I followed closely behind.
“We’re going to rob them?”
Atticus stopped in the hallway and whirled around to face me.
“Yes, we’re going to rob them,” he said with disbelief. “They were going to hand us over to raiders!”
Not giving me time to argue—though I hadn’t planned on it—Atticus resumed down the hallway, swinging open the doors in a fit as he went.
He found a backpack and we stuffed it until it was bursting. And we stuffed a pillowcase half-full of bread and dehydrated meat and crackers and Ramen noodles. We found two more guns hidden in the bathroom closet: a handgun and a rifle. Just before we left the house, Atticus snatched up a pair of cotton pants, and he shoved them into one of the pillow cases.
“How are we going to carry all of this stuff?” I asked as we went toward the mare standing behind the house.
“However we can.”
I reached for the mare’s reins, but Atticus stopped me. “No. Leave her,” he said, hoisting the large backpack onto his free shoulder. “Her shoes are too worn. We’ll take the horses from the stable.” He grabbed the quilt from the mare, tossing it over his arm.
Before we set out for the woods, in the opposite direction of the field beyond the highway, Atticus stopped to look out at the wide-open landscape.
“Do you see anything?” I asked.
Peering into a pair of compact-sized binoculars he’d found inside the house, Atticus scanned the area.
“No, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”
