Chapter 5 – Walls and Worries
The next morning, the Carter household felt a bit different.
Not louder. Not busier. Just heavier, as though some invisible weight pressed on every wall.
Margaret moved quietly in the kitchen, setting out oatmeal made thin with water. Robert sat at the table, staring into his bowl without eating. Alex sat across from them, spoon unmoving, the taste of dust and ashes still in his mouth from yesterday.
No one spoke of the Daniels. Not yet.
Finally Robert cleared his throat. "We can't pretend anymore. If it happened to them, it can happen to us. We need to make this place stronger."
Margaret's spoon clattered against the bowl. "It's already stronger than most houses! We've boarded the windows. We've locked the doors. What else can we do?"
"Locks and wood won't stop desperate people," Robert said softly. "Or whatever did that to the Daniels."
Silence stretched. Then Alex set his spoon down. "Dad's right. Yesterday proved it. We can't count on luck or kindness. We need more."
---
They began with the perimeter.
The Carter house sat on three acres of land, most of it grass and garden, ringed by an old barbed-wire fence that sagged in places. Robert walked the line with Alex, pointing out weaknesses.
"Here," he said, tugging at a loose post. It wobbled in the soil. "Anyone could push through this without even trying."
Alex set down his shotgun and pulled the post free. The wood was rotted. "We'll need replacements. Stronger ones."
"We'll cut from the woods nearby," Robert said. "Plenty of pine. We'll strip it, drive it deep, run the wire tighter."
They worked until their shirts clung with sweat. The rhythmic thunk of the sledgehammer driving new posts became a strange comfort. For each section shored up, the property felt just a little more theirs.
But Alex knew it wasn't enough. Barbed wire slowed cattle, not men. And not… things.
Still, it was a start.
Inside, Margaret was reinforcing the windows. She'd found every spare nail and screw in the toolboxes and every loose board in the shed. Room by room, she laid them across the glass—sometimes two layers thick.
When Alex came in to fetch water, she was hammering furiously, strands of hair plastered to her forehead.
"You don't have to do it all today," he said gently.
Her hammer paused. "If I stop, I'll think about the Daniels." She swallowed hard, then hit the nail again. "And if I think about them, I'll lose it."
Alex didn't argue. He fetched more boards from the pile and held them steady while she drove the nails in.
They didn't speak again, but the steady rhythm of hammering filled the silence better than words.
That evening, they gathered in the living room, lanterns glowing faintly. Supplies from the Daniels' farm were stacked neatly facing against the wall: canned food, flour, bandages. Margaret kept glancing at the pile, her jaw tight.
Robert broke the silence. "We need a plan. Not just boards and fences. A real plan."
Alex leaned forward. "Food's good for now, but not forever. We'll need more. Water's fine—we've got the well. But what about power? If the grid stays down, we're done for."
Robert nodded. "And firewood. Winter's coming."
Margaret rubbed her temples. "And what if more people come? Neighbors, strangers, whoever. Do we let them in? Turn them away? What if they have children?"
The room went still.
No one wanted to answer that.
Finally Alex said, "We'll have to take it case by case. We can't save everyone. But we can't risk us, either."
His mother looked at him, eyes glistening. For the first time, he realized she was seeing not just her son but someone carrying weight beyond his years.
The next day, Alex started keeping lists.
On one page of his notebook, he wrote Immediate Needs:
Firewood
Clean water storage
Stronger barricades
More food staples
On another: Skills to Learn:
First aid
Gardening / preserving
Hunting / trapping
Building / repairs
He left the notebook on the table where his parents could see. It became their silent agenda. Each day, they picked something. Each day, they checked one line.
Firewood came first.
Alex and Robert took the old pickup into the woods, loading the bed with fallen logs. The air smelled of pine and resin, the forest alive with birdsong, a sharp contrast to the emptiness beyond the fields.
For a moment, Alex felt almost normal. Just a son and father hauling wood, like any winter preparation.
But when a branch snapped in the distance, both froze. Robert raised the axe in his hands. Alex lifted the shotgun.
Nothing emerged. The silence that followed was thicker than the trees.
They worked faster after that, before returning.
Margaret, meanwhile, began cleaning out the pantry and basement. She organized supplies into neat rows, labeled shelves with scraps of tape. Flour and rice on one side, canned beans and corn on the other. Bandages and medicine in a shoebox marked "First Aid."
She even found the old pressure canner(A/N: A pressure canner is designed to can low acid foods (vegetables, meat, poultry, fish and wild game) they are designed to hold canning jars (upright) and process at a temperature higher than a water bath canner.), dusty from years of disuse.
"Next garden," she told Alex, "we won't just eat fresh. We'll preserve." Her voice was steady, but her hands shook slightly as she wiped the canner clean.
Nights were hardest.
They ate beside the lantern light, shadows long across the walls. The world outside felt bigger in the dark, pressing against their little island of light.
Sometimes Margaret prayed softly before bed. Sometimes Robert sat by the window, shotgun across his knees.
Alex lay awake in his room, listening to the creaks of the house, the distant cry of coyotes, the wind brushing against boarded windows.
Every sound felt sharper, closer. Every night stretched longer.
And always, he thought of the Daniels' notebook. Paul's fever is worse. Don't know what to do.
What if it happened here?
On the fifth day, Alex walked the perimeter alone. The fence looked stronger now, the posts firm, the wire taut. He paused at the gate, staring down the road that led toward town.
It was quiet. Too quiet.
A shiver ran down his spine. The world out there hadn't vanished. It was waiting. Growing. Changing.
But here—here was still theirs.
For now.
He tightened the wire on the gate, then walked back toward the house. Smoke curled from the chimney, faint but steady. His parents' voices drifted through an open crack in the window—arguing softly about how much flour to ration.
It sounded almost… normal.
Alex smiled faintly. It wouldn't last. But for now, it was enough.
That night, he added a final note to his notebook:
Home is not safe. But it can be safer. Build, prepare, endure.
He closed the book, blew out the lantern, and let the dark take him.