“Nope.” Mark’s forehead furrowed. “Why’d you want me to be quiet a minute ago?”
Dianne leaned Mark’s rifle up against the wall next to the door and locked up the back door as she answered. “I want to try and keep things as quiet as we can for the next few days, just in case that fire at the Carson’s place wasn’t an accident. That means no shouting and no playing or working outside unless we absolutely have to.”
“Probably shouldn’t run the generator or have a fire either, right?”
Dianne smiled and patted Mark on the back. “Good job. That’s exactly right. Let’s keep things quiet for a few days, okay? Oh, by the way, after dinner can you help me get your dad’s night vision cameras set up? I think we’ve got enough juice in the batteries to run a couple of those, right?”
Mark nodded. “I think so. They just need the router to be working and you can view their feeds from your phone or tablet.”
“Cool. Help me out with that after dinner. Speaking of which, I’m going to get your rifle put away in the case above the fridge. Can you tell your brother and sister to come down? I’ll put some soup on to heat up.” Mark nodded and ran back up the stairs. Dianne picked his rifle back up and took one last look out through the back door before closing the curtains across the door and walking into the kitchen.
Mounted above the refrigerator, the long horizontal cabinet was accessed by a five-digit combination lock. Dianne and Rick were the only ones that knew the combination but as Dianne put away the rifle Mark had been using, she decided that he would need to know the code as well. She was confident in his maturity when it came to the gun, but she didn’t want Jacob and Josie to have free access to it. While Josie had shown appropriate levels of respect and care when it came to firearms, Jacob was still careless enough in his day-to-day life that Dianne felt nervous about leaving a rifle out for him to potentially pick up.
After locking Mark’s gun and a couple of spare magazines away in the cabinet, Dianne pulled her rifle off of her back and laid it out on top of the refrigerator, keeping it up out of the way while she started on dinner. She thought about turning on the generator out behind the house to make the night’s meal slightly easier to prepare but she didn’t want to have the noise attract any undue attention. Plenty of charge in the batteries to keep the freezer and fridge on tonight and the hotplate shouldn’t take up much juice, either.
As Mark, Jacob and Josie came down the stairs, Dianne was opening a large container of canned New England Clam Chowder and dumping it into a saucepan. “Hon, would you get out some crackers and get everyone’s drinks ready? I think we’ve got some apples you can slice, too.”
“Sure, mom.” Mark and Dianne worked together to get the meal prepared while Jacob and Josie set the table. After everything was laid out and they started eating, Dianne grabbed her notebook and pen and began sketching on the paper in between bites of food.
“What’s that, mom?” Josie craned her head in curiosity as she tried to see the pages.
“Well,” Dianne said, “I’m trying to come up with some ideas for how to make sure all of us and our house and animals can stay safe.”
“Oh.” Josie took another bite of soup as she contemplated her mother’s response. “Safe from what?”
“Good question. We need to stay warm with the weather getting colder and we need to make sure that if any bad people try to hurt the house or our animals we can keep them away.”
“Oh.” The answer seemed to satisfy Josie, but Jacob spoke up next.
“What kind of bad people, mom? Did they burn down the house with Mr. and Mrs. Carsons?”
“No, Jacob. The Carsons weren’t there.”
“But some bad guys burned down their house? What if they come here? Do you think they were, like, from—”
“Ooookay!” Dianne stood up and smiled, speaking over Jacob. “Lots of questions, but we’ll get to them tomorrow, okay? There are no bad people here at the house and we’re going to keep it that way. Now Jacob and Josie, I want you two to clear the table and rinse the bowls out. Once you’re done you can go to the living room and read or play quietly before bed, okay?”
A pair of resigned voices grumbled “yes, ma’am” as they got up from the table, moving as slowly as they possibly could. Mark moved over one seat and looked over his mother’s shoulder as she continued jotting notes down on her paper.
“Barbed wire?” Mark raised an eyebrow as he read from the page.
“Just an idea.” Dianne shrugged. “We have the fence running around the property but it won’t stop anyone from coming in. I think we have a few spools of barbed wire, still. Might be enough to deter people from coming in through the front near the driveway. It won’t keep people out but maybe they’ll think twice.”
Mark waited until his brother and sister were out of the room before whispering his next question. “Do you really think someone burned down their house?”
Dianne sighed. “I’m not really sure. I don’t think so, but after what we saw in town I don’t want to take any chances. I think we need to be extra careful for the next few days, especially at night. I’ll really need your help with this, okay?”
Dianne could tell that Mark was feeling excited about his new role in the ongoing crisis, which helped to reduce the stress of the situation. “Sure thing. What do you want me to do?”
“Help me get those cameras hooked up tonight to start. Mostly I need you to watch over your brother and sister and make sure you’re paying attention to what’s going on around you. Remember what your dad and I taught you about that, okay?”
Mark nodded and Dianne smiled and ruffled his hair as she stood up. “You’re a good kid, kid. Now c’mon; let’s go get the cameras hooked up.”
While Jacob and Josie played in the living room, Mark located the few pieces of equipment that they would need to have powered on to make the cameras on the outside of the house function properly. Rick had installed a pair of night vision cameras on each of the four corners of the house, near the roof, about a month before leaving on his trip.
The impetus for installing the cameras had been a pack of coyotes that had been in the area, howling away for several nights in a row as they started roaming closer to the Waters’ home. When combined with several spotlights and speakers set up throughout the property, Rick had intended on scaring away any of the animals if they started sniffing around the farm at night, but before he could get everything hooked up the howls had stopped. The cameras were installed and wired but lacking power and neither Mark nor Dianne knew whether the spotlights and speakers were functional.
After Dianne and Mark got the power cables for the cameras that were running through the attic plugged in, Mark got the network router online as well. After a few minutes of waiting for both the cameras and the router to power up, Mark powered up a tablet computer from Rick’s office and opened a security camera application on the device. It took another half hour of fiddling with cables and settings on the tablet, router and cameras but by the time the sun was starting to set the first image popped up on the tablet and Dianne grinned. “Nice work!”