Free Before the Dawn by Max Allan Collins Page B

only fought back one time.
    That had been in early March. Jack (as Max now thought of him, never coming to think of him as, much less call him, Dad) had waxed her pretty good, and when Max had gotten to her feet and he reached out to slap her again, she'd sidestepped the blow, caught his hand in hers, and broken two fingers before he'd wrenched it back.
    But hurting Jack had been a mistake.
    Max was forced to go without food for a week, which only bothered her a little—she'd had deprivation training, after all—but when he'd come home from the emergency room, he'd beaten Lucy so badly the girl couldn't walk for two days.
    “If you ever,
ever
raise a hand to me again,” Jack told Max, “your sister pays.”
    From then on, Max had done as she was told; and Jack had been smart enough not to lay his hands on his new “daughter.” At least until that day in June, when the whole world changed forever. . . .
             
    June 8, 2009, had seemed like any other day—school had gotten out the week before, and Max and Lucy were settling in for a summer of no schoolwork. Max had fit in surprisingly well at school, mostly keeping to herself, though the seizures that were a side effect of her genetic breeding caused a share of embarrassment, until the school nurse finally provided an unlikely nonprescription medication—tryptophan—that would curtail and control them.
             
    Jack kept them busy enough around the house, and of late he'd been even angrier than usual. The Dodgers—the only thing he truly loved in this life—had been losing, and the skid had only served to give him more reason to beat on Lucy and Mom.
    On this June evening, the sisters were steering him a wide path. He was parked in his recliner guzzling beers and chain-smoking, as he watched the Dodgers fall behind early, 3–0. Mrs. Barrett had taken refuge in the bedroom, leaving Max and Lucy to fulfill Jack's needs and receive the brunt of his rage. Jack had already raised his hand to Lucy once tonight, and the girls hovered in the background, being careful to not rile him again.
    Finally things started to look up a little: the Dodgers had men on second and third and only one out. Max had learned some baseball from being forced to watch the games while she waited on Jack, and she recognized the beginnings of a rally when she saw one. For their own safety, the girls had become Dodgers fans, too. If the team did well, Jack was less apt to slap them around.
    When the electricity went out, just after nine, Max grabbed Lucy's hand and led her to the basement where the two girls hid under the stairs while Jack went berserk. As they huddled there—tears running down Lucy's cheeks, and Jack tearing the house apart looking for them so he could “beat their asses”—Max made a decision.
    Once these people had all gone to sleep for the night, she was out of here. As things turned out, no one went to sleep that night, but they still managed to miss the beating. . . .
    Tired of searching for them, his anger subsiding as he remembered the impending Dodgers' rally, Jack Barrett staggered back upstairs and turned on a portable radio, which relied on batteries. Jack was pissed when he couldn't find the game on the dial, but when his alcohol fog cleared some, his anger disappeared and he called Mrs. Barrett and the girls to his side.
    “Something terrible's happened,” he said, his voice suddenly sober, and not at all hateful.
    In fact, he sounded frightened, like a scared kid.
    Soon they had all gathered around the radio to listen.
    “This is the Emergency Broadcast System,” a voice said. “At twelve-oh-five A . M ., eastern time, terrorists detonated a nuclear instrument over the Atlantic Ocean. This has triggered an electromagnetic pulse that has destroyed virtually every electronic device on the eastern seaboard.”
    Mrs. Barrett hugged Jack and gathered the girls to her, as well.
    “All communications are down east of the Mississippi River,