There was a strange fear in the air. People knew that something was wrong, but much like Lucas, they probably couldn’t tell exactly how bad it was.

  A few moments later, Lucas and the others walked into the kitchen, and his mother began rifling through the cupboards, pulling out tins, spaghetti packets, and the like, moving them to the kitchen table. She glanced over her shoulder and frowned at her two sons.

  Lucas blinked. What was she even doing? Surely the food would be fine where it was?

  “Are you not going to help, boy? Go organise that drawer over there. You should find some canned beans and maybe some tuna that I bought last month,” she said, raising her hand and shooing him towards the cupboard. “Get it all together and move it to the table. There should also be some other things there. Go, go!”

  Lucas stepped backwards in confusion, his eyes glancing towards Isabelle, who stood off to the side with her sister. The girl’s gaze was still one of distrust, hesitant as if she was contemplating leaving at any moment. Yet she stood there, her hand firmly on her sister’s shoulder.

  A few minutes later, Lucas, Roland, and his mother had gathered all the non-perishable supplies in one pile and the perishables in the other. His mother stood over the perishable pile, tapping her foot on the kitchen tile and resting her hand on the table.

  “We’re going to have to eat this ice cream first.”

  Lucas frowned at her, glancing at the tub of ice cream and then back to her. Roland let out a squeal of excitement, hopping from one foot to the other.

  “Really, Mom? We get to eat all of this?”

  The woman nodded grimly, determination sparkling in her eyes. She didn’t want to do this, but felt she had to. After all, it was consume this now or just let it rot.

  “Surely we can eat it at a later time?” Lucas countered, taking only a small amount of satisfaction from seeing Roland’s smile drop; the boy was a joy to tease.

  She pointed towards the fridge, which was now dark, the light probably never coming back on. “The power is out, Lucas. Taps are dry, and the gas is gone. Do you have any way to store this ice cream?”

  He didn’t, but surely the ice inside would last for more than a day?

  After he considered the thought for a moment, Lucas shook his head. His mother was right. They had to eat the ice cream. Leaving it in the fridge and risking it would just be playing with diarrhoea.

  And the power being out wasn’t the only problem. They’d found out earlier that the water and, as expected, the gas weren’t running. Then, Lucas remembered that the human body could only survive three days without water.

  His mother reassured him at the time that they could simply gather rainwater. They were, after all, in the UK. Rain here was practically a daily occurrence. But Lucas hadn’t been too sure about that.

  He shook his head, his gaze drifting back to the ice cream.

  “Can we eat it now?” Roland asked, reaching for the tub.

  A crisp slap cracked across the back of the boy’s hand, and he retracted it, holding it to his chest. A look of shock and betrayal lingered in his eyes as he stared at his mother, mouth falling open.

  “I said we can eat it, but we are all eating it. You aren’t gonna sit there and just hoard it. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Mum,” he said, taking a step back.

  The woman then turned her gaze towards Sasha and Isabelle. “You two will help, unless you have somewhere you need to be.”

  So she had noticed the girl’s behaviour. Lucas had been thinking that his mom was just oblivious.

  Isabelle looked at him, her gaze still wary, and then to Lucas’s mother. There was a moment of what Lucas could only assume was hesitation. Maybe she was reassessing her situation and seeing—well, at least Lucas hoped—that they weren’t a threat and, if anything, they needed to pull together.

  Though he could understand if she didn’t want to eat. While the gesture was kind on the surface, a decent person would feel somewhat indebted. It was a lot to ask of someone you’d met only a few hours ago.

  After a minute of awkward silence, Isabelle nodded, and her little sister, with delight, stepped over to Roland, who now stood with a bowl. The boy handed her one and then handed her a spoon. Lucas’s mother moved over to another cupboard, pulling out several more bowls.

  “So, we’re going to sit and eat this ice cream, and we’re going to figure out where we go from here.”

  “What do you mean?” Lucas asked.

  “As I said before, my prepping videos warned of this. For the first few days, it’s going to be relatively peaceful, but after that, people are going to realise help isn’t coming, and they’ll be starving.”

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  “How do you know help isn’t coming?” Isabelle asked, stepping over to the kitchen table, her voice a little strained as she spoke. “We’ve heard nothing from the police. For all we know, the authorities might have already sent out rescue teams.”

  “Yes, they may have,” Lucas’s mother replied. She paused as if weighing her next words. “But the way that I see it, whatever’s happened is too big for any one government to handle. I mean, the water supply should last for at least a day.”

  She glanced at Lucas. “And given what you said about Main Street, this isn’t a local thing. Houses just disappearing. I mean, for God’s sake, our neighbour used to live a literal wall away. Now there’s nothing but a random oak.” She sighed, scratching her head.

  “If this system,” she said, begrudgingly, as if not wanting to acknowledge the fact that this magical force that had changed the world even existed, “if it has done what I suspect, then it may not even be possible to reform a coherent government for at least a few months, and by that point, society would have all but collapsed.”

  Lucas scratched his head, letting her words sink in. Was his mother being dramatic, going from zero to a hundred in an instant? Maybe. After all, this was a lot for anyone.

  Sure, whatever the system had done messed up everything, but to say that the world had completely collapsed and that they were completely on their own for months wasn’t that a bit of an over-exaggeration?

  “But,” his mum said, breaking him from his thoughts, “whatever is happening right now, either way we have to look out for ourselves. So sit down and let’s dig in.”

  Over the next few minutes, they sat there, chewing on various perishables; to Roland’s dismay, they started with the veggies. The vegetables were going off in a couple of days, so they had to eat them as well as the food that would be off by the next morning.

  The hams, the chicken, and the milk. By the end, Lucas was more stuffed than he’d ever been before, though he was more than able to scarf down at least one bowl of ice cream. Roland, for that matter, sucked down most of the tub, even after it had melted.

  In the end, they ate most of the perishables. They left the ones that would last longer than three days, not wanting to waste what they might need later. Then, his mother instructed them to move the rest of the goods upstairs. A broken front room window would mean anyone could come in during the night.

  And with the power off, it would be pitch black. There were people out there who would take advantage of that fact, no matter the risk. They didn’t need to lose supplies just because something was unlikely, because that never meant impossible.

  Lucas glanced out of the kitchen window. The sky had turned orange. The sun was setting, and it would be dark soon. He hoped the wolves wouldn’t come back during the night, because it was bad enough fighting them during the day. If he had to fight them in the dark, it would be difficult, to say the least.

  And so, over the course of a few minutes, with the help of Isabelle and her sister, they moved things from the kitchen to Lucas’s mother’s bedroom. Roland’s bedroom also got some of the surplus that couldn’t fit in Lucas’s mother’s room.

  Lucas’s mother stopped them all on the stair landing a little later. “About room distribution,” she said, eyeing Isabelle and her sister. “The two girls will take Lucas’s room.”

  “What?” Lucas asked, his head snapping to his mum.

  She tilted her head to the side and raised her eyebrow. “You saved them. That means they’re your responsibility, and therefore, we treat them as such. Giving them your room is no problem, I assume, at least until we can secure more of the house.”

  Lucas wanted to refute that. He had saved them, yes, but that didn’t mean he needed to give up his room to them. But then again, it was the right thing to do. At the very least, it was the moral thing. There wasn’t exactly a rule on what to do when you save people, after all.

  “And you two,” Lucas’s mother continued, gesturing to him and his brother, “will stay in my room with me. We’ll use Roland’s room as storage for now, keeping the supplies there until we can better hide them.”

  Lucas frowned, then his mother eyed him and sighed.

  “Son,” she said, picking up on his confusion. “When it comes to being prepared, there is something you need to understand.”

  She looked him dead in his eyes, as if she were saying the most important thing so far. “There are going to be stages in rebuilding society. I mean, unless those creatures kill everyone outside.” She frowned as she went a little off track before continuing.

  “And if what you say about that system is true,” she said. Again, in a begrudging tone. “I doubt they’ll succeed, at least not instantly. People will fight back, and societies will pop up. During the chaotic time, we can’t let people know how much we have. There’ll be people who want to take advantage of us or outright steal from us. So we probably shouldn’t make ourselves look like fat targets.”

  Lucas nodded at his mum and then stepped past her. But first, he had some stuff to do. It was darker now. The world had taken on a faint dark-bluish colour. It was like walking into a room where your eyes had just about adjusted, though with a little more light.

  “Where are you going?” his mother asked, resting a hand on the bannister.

  He looked back up at her from the middle of the stairs and shrugged. “Well, as you said, the front room window’s broken.” Slipping his keys from his pocket, he held them up. “I’m going to go through the front room window, use the sofa to block the door, and move whatever else I can find. That way, at least, it’ll stop people just walking straight in, not without some effort, at least.”

  His mother nodded. “All right, be careful, and let me know if you need any help.”

  He shrugged as his mother stepped back, nightgown swaying in the dim light. She wouldn’t exactly provide much help. While he was scrawny, to say the least, he was at least stronger than her, able to move the sofa.

  Roland waved at him as he followed behind his mother into her room. Isabelle watched him for a moment before stepping away as well, leading her sister towards Lucas’s room.

  With them all gone, Lucas made his way downstairs, out the front door, and climbed through the front room window. He spent a few strained minutes pushing the sofa towards the front room door—which opened into the living room itself—and used it to block the door. He then shifted the bookcase off the far wall, over to the sofa, and then toppled it with a bang.

  The doorframe shook as the bookshelf’s edge met it, and Lucas winced a bit, looking up towards the ceiling. His mother’s room was just above. She was probably complaining about him making noise. Well, he at least imagined she would. The woman would definitely have done that in normal times.

  As he turned, he spotted the German shepherd outside the window watching him, its gaze shifting from him to the surroundings. The thing was definitely careful. That was a good trait to have. And someone to watch his back was exactly what he needed right now.

  Crunching across the broken glass, he stepped over the window frame and out into the front garden.