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Jack Colclough moved down the hallway, past the kids' bedrooms, and into the kitchen, where four candles on the granite countertop and two more on the breakfast table made this the brightest room in the house. Dee stood in shadow at the sink, filling another milk jug with water from the tap, the cabinets surrounding her thrown open and vacated, the stovetop cluttered with cans of food that hadn't seen the light of day in years.

"I can't find the road map," Jack said.

"You looked under the bed?" 

"Yes."

"That was the last place I saw it."

Jack set the flashlight on the counter and stared at his fourteen-year-old daughter. She was sitting at the breakfast table, her purple-streaked blond hair twirled around her finger.

"Got your clothes?" he asked. 

She shook her head.

"Naomi. Go. Now. And help Cole pack. I think your brother got distracted."

"We aren't really leaving, are we?" 

"Now."

Naomi pushed back from the table, her chair shrieking against the hardwood floor. She stormed out of the kitchen, down the hallway.

"Hey!" he shouted after her.

"Cut her a break," Dee said. "She's terrified."

Jack went to his wife. The night beyond the windowpane was moonless and unmarred by even the faintest pinprick of light. It was the city's second night without power.

"This is the last jug," Dee said. "Makes eight gallons." 

"That isn't going to last us very long."

From the battery-powered radio on the windowsill above the sink, an old woman's voice replaced the static that had dominated the airwaves for the last six hours. Jack reached over, turned up the volume.

They listened as she read another name, another address over the radio. 

"They've lost their fucking minds," Jack said.

Dee turned off the tap and screwed a cap onto the final jug. "You think anyone's actually acting on that?"

"I don't know."

"I don't want to leave, Jack."

"I'll take these jugs out to the car. Make sure the kids are getting packed."

*  *  *

Jack hit the light switch out of habit, but when he opened the door, the garage remained dark. He shined the flashlight on the four steps that dropped out of the hallway. The smooth concrete was cold through his socks. He popped the hatch to the cargo area, illumination flooding out of the overhead dome lights. He set the first jug of water in the back of the Land Rover Discovery. Their backpacks and camping equipment hung from hooks over the chest freezer, and he lifted them down off the wall. Pristine, unblemished by even a speck of trail dust. Four never-slept-in sleeping bags dangled from the ceiling in mesh sacks. He dragged a workbench over from the red Craftsman tool drawer and climbed up to take them down. Dee had been begging for a family camping trip ever since he'd purchased three thousand dollars' worth of backpacking gear, and he'd fully intended for their family to spend every other weekend in the mountains or the desert. But two years had passed, and life had happened, priorities changed. The gas stove and water filter hadn't even been liberated from their packaging, which still bore price tags.

He heard Dee shout his name. He grabbed the flashlight, negotiated the sprawl of backpacks and sleeping bags, and bolted up the steps and through the door to the house. Past the washer and dryer, back into the kitchen.

Naomi and his seven-year-old son, Cole, stood at the opening to the hallway, their faces all warmth and shadow in the candlelight, watching their mother at the sink.

Jack shined the light on Dee. 

She pointed at the radio.

"They just read off Marty Anderson's name. They're going through the humanities department, Jack."