Water's Edge

Chapter 4

I wake with a start. Right away I figure out what woke me up. The siren. I sit up. That siren and its God awful message. The Barrens are here.I wake up my sleeping friends and run to my brother's room. He sitting on his bed, his eyes wide with shock.
     "It's the Barrens," he whispers. I haven't ever heard the siren but I was drilled from a young age to know what it means.
     "Darya, go and get the guns," Arroyo tells me. My friends, brother, and I are in the sitting room. I jog down to the end of the hall past the three bedrooms. I open the closet door and grab the guns inside. Two revolvers, two Colt pistols, and a Winchester rifle. No automatics. They were all destroyed in the war. Luckily, older guns were saved in bunkers and places away from blast zones.
I hand the revolvers to Lisa and Val. They are inexperienced in shooting a gun but the revolvers are the easiest to handle. I give my brother the Colt's. He, unlike my friends, is trained in shooting pistols. He started teaching himself to shoot after mom and dad died.
I keep the Winchester. It's like a friend to me. I, like my brother, taught myself to shoot after the accident. A couple days a week we stand out on the beach and shoot objects off of rocks. It's hard shooting with the wind coming off the ocean, but it makes us a better shot.
     "Ok everyone pick a window and watch for them," I say. My friends are pale both pale and silent. They might box but they are not good in stressful situations.
      "If you see a Barren, shoot," my brother says. At that Lisa pales even more and she looks faint. Val notices and pulls her into a hug.
     "It's going to be okay," he tells her. "We aren't near the town, the Barrens have no reason to come out here."
      "What about my parents, what about your parents? What will happen to them?" Lisa demands. She is flushed. "We have to go get them."
      "They'll be fine, Lisa. They can take care of themselves."
"I guess your right," Lisa says and she sighs. "I just don't won't them to get hurt." At that she turns and walk down the hallway and disappears into my bedroom. I shrug at Val and follow her. She is sitting by my window, staring at the dirt road that leads off the beach toward the town.
      "I just wish this didn't happen. Last night was so much fun but today..." she trails off, not looking at me as I kneel down beside her. We sit like that for awhile, not saying anything.
Maybe it's just a mistake, I think. It's possible that someone accidentally set it off this morning. It takes me awhile for me to notice that the siren has turned off. So it wasn't supposed to go off, I tell myself.
"Maybe it was just an accident," Lisa says to no one in particular, voicing my thoughts. I start to agree but then stop. There is rustling in the bushes and trees that the dirt road disappears into. A figure then emerges. I grab at my sea glass necklace, a habit that I can tell is forming. They are tall and male with dark features. Then it hits me. It's Apollyon. He is grinning like a maniac and is waving. He looks like what I imagine a serial killer would look like. I turn to Lisa, to see if she has noticed but she doesn't say anything. She is still staring out the window. I look back and he is gone. Just gone. I'm losing it. He wasn't there, I try to tell myself. My mind believes me but my heart doesn't. I feel dread and it's not just because of my "hallucination."
      "Did you see that?" I ask Lisa because I need someone else to say that I'm not going crazy. She looks at me puzzled and I point out the window.
      "What is it?"
      "I saw....." I trail off. This is absurd. "I saw Apollyon." She raises an eyebrow at me and smiles.
     "Are you worried about him? Oh, wait, do you have a crush on him?" I look at her shocked.
"Are you kidding me? You really don't believe that he was just there?" Maybe I am going crazy. I look out at the path.
We sit there in silence. Every so often Arroyo comes and asks us if we saw anything. We answer no each time. The dread in my stomach lessens. It was nothing, I tell myself. Nothing at all. The sun crawls slowly across the sky. At around noon I get Lisa up and we walk to the sitting room.
"It must have been an accidental alarm," I say as Val and Arroyo look up. "I think we're safe." I head to the kitchen and the rest follow.  I light the stove and start to prepare some soup.
As we eat Arroyo casts glances out the window. He still doesn't think we're safe.
"We're fine, Arroyo," I say. He gives me a smile and stops glancing out the window.
      "So, what do we do now?" Lisa asks to no one in particular. I look at Arroyo. He knows exactly what I'm thinking. Supernatural monopoly. I know it sounds childish but it's all we have to do. We don't have internet or electricity like before the war. I stand up and walk to my room. I grab the box and walk out to the sitting room.
      "Yes, my favorite monopoly," Val exclaims when he sees the box.
      "Yeah I love this kind," I answer. I sit down and set the game up. My family has passed this game down since the war. I think it's the only thing we have from before the war.
      I finish setting up the game. Everyone takes their usual pieces. I take the '67 Chevy Impala, Val takes the flask of holy water, Lisa takes the hex bag, and Arroyo takes the detector. We start to play and the day's events are forgotten. I buy several locations and Lisa lands on one of them. She punches me lightly on the arm.
      Time passes quickly and the game ends when the sun is about to set. Arroyo stands up first and stretches. Lisa follows suit and as she stretches she looks out the window. I wait for her to look away but she doesn't. My brother follows her gaze and turns back to us.
      In a deathly calm voice he says, "we have visitors."