One Day at a Time - (Season One)

Chapter Eight: Deja Vu

An hour had passed since the screaming from across the street had stopped. Lukas had thankfully slept through the entire ordeal, but the rest of them were now wide awake and tense as they waited for the rest of the Clarks' extended family to arrive.

It was pitch black outside now, but Mr. Manawa still hadn't returned from getting his son and ex-wife. Apparently, the three of them had gotten caught out in the city because of the riots--it had gotten much, much worse after Marty had gotten out with her brother. Mrs. Clark was able to briefly speak with him on the phone, he was currently holed up in a barber shop with the rest of his family and some strangers until things got a bit better.

The current plan is to immediately head out into the desert the moment that Mr. Manawa gets back. Marty wasn't sure if the goal was to head to the campgrounds now... people seemed to be the... cause of all the madness going on. She didn't know what was going on... and it was starting to really bother Marty. She hadn't experienced a lot of control over how her life had turned out, and Marty hated how that had turned her into a low-level control freak. She liked to stick to plans and follow routines, she was a creature of habit--and Marty was very outside of her comfort zone right now.

Mr. Peters had been dripping in blood and covered with unidentifyable... bits. Nick's neighbor had attacked the woman from across the street with a fervor that had been terrifying. The screams that'd been coming from that house were horrific, Marty had barely been able to keep herself from crying when a higher-pitched scream joined the cacophony of terrified shouts. A child was screeching until it suddenly cut out and the silence that followed it made Marty want to scream. That was very outside of normal. It was so out of normal, and all she really wanted was to crawl underneath her weighted blanket until the world started making some sense again. Unfortunately, her weighted blanket was currently in the trunk of her car. Marty was not going to go get it.

Mrs. Clark had taken to pacing around the house, busying herself in an attempt to take her mind off her estranged boyfriend. When the blonde had originally blocked Alicia from going out, the younger teen had ended up storming off into her bedroom... but when the screams got worse, she'd nervously returned to the living room and kept vigil by the windows. Marty wasn't sure what exactly the girl was trying to see, but she wasn't sure if it was a 'seeing is believing' sort of thing... if it was, as much as Marty wanted to know what was going on, she didn't want to see why the family across the street had been letting out blood-curdling screams. Or why it ended.

Marty was currently curled up on the couch, Nick's head on her lap as she ran her fingers through his tangled mane--carefully undoing the knots that snagged along her path. She was trying to read one of the baby books she'd downloaded on her Kindle, but her mind kept wandering. Marty had decided to take the initiative and began to download as many books as she could onto the device... After all, the police hadn't come when the Cruz's across the street were attacked--and she had a sinking feeling that their lives would never go back to normal, so what was the point of letting all of her hard-earned money go to waste in the bank? No, Marty would be a moron if all of the hours she'd apparently wasted trying to build a nest egg for the later months of her pregnancy went down the toilet.

At least this way, she had thousands of helpful books downloaded on her Kindle that could help them later on. She must have stopped petting Nick's hair since he started whining and started manually moving her hand through his hair again--a silent plead for more pets. Marty giggled tiredly, but she restarted her ministrations once more, biting her lips when Nick sagged against her once more.

Behind them, Alicia was peering through the window once more. She was probably staring desolately at the house across the street in the hope that she could catch a glimpse of Mr. Dawson or anyone from the Cruz family. Again.