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suggest ‘freaking.’”
    “Freaking?”
    “That’s my preference.” Dad looks at his plate, forks the last of his egg. We’re being invaded, life as we know it is about to end, and he’s stressing over my vocabulary.
    “Okay, then. Back to our little ‘situation.’ What’s your
freaking
point?”
    “We’ve been living high on the hog too long.”
    “Meaning what?”
    “It’s time to start rationing food.”
    He waits for me to say something. I chew on a piece of bacon, wait for the flood.
    “All right. First we cook the perishable goods, then the items that taste better heated, like soups and pastas, because we don’t know how long the electricity or running water will last. When that goes, we’ll cook using the camp stove until we run out of fuel. Then we’ll burn furniture until it’s gone. Then we eat the canned fruits and vegetables in the pantry, and then it’s down to your hoard of potato chips and candy.”
    “Wow,” I say, “someone’s been busy making a plan.” Dad thumbs through the notebook, looking for something. I slip Dutch a piece of bacon under the table.
    Dad finds what he’s looking for. He tears it out of the notebook, hands me a piece of paper with a list titled
Survival Priorities
. It’s numbered from one to twenty-five, the important stuff bulleted and underlined with a red pen. It says things like fill every container with water, including the bathtub, take inventory of all food items and medicines, figure out what we can burn if the power goes out, break down furniture, recharge batteries—even floss our teeth and keep up with my studies. It all sounds reasonable in a post-apocalypse sort of way. At least it’s something to do. But there’s a couple of issues with the food-rationing plan that bother me.
    “What happens when we run out of candy?”
    “We reevaluate.”
    “Reevaluate, huh? What about him?” I ask, nodding to Dutch. His sad eyes watch my every move, hoping for another tasty piece of bacon.
    “We have ten pounds of dry dog food left. Normally, that would last about ten days. I had hoped to pick up more food for him this weekend, but obviously that’s not happening. We can feed him, or,” he says with a pause, “we can eat it ourselves when our food runs out.”
    “You’re saying we should starve Dutch?”
    “Dutch is a dog, he’ll fend for himself.”
    “Can people even eat dog food?”
    “Dogs eat people food. I’m sure it works both ways.”
    I look at Dutch. He’s a big, fat, lazy yellow Lab with gray whiskers and a bad hip. The only way he’d catch a rabbit is if it jumped into his mouth.
    Thinking I’d rather die than take Dutch’s food, I say, “Do we have to make that decision right now?”
    “There are lots of tough decisions we’ll have to make. You need to realize—” Dad starts, then changes his mind. “Okay, let’s hold off on that one for a couple of days. But beginning tomorrow, he doesn’t get any of our water.”
    “Where’s he going to get it?”
    “The creek behind the house.”
    Our house borders a swamp. Dad calls it a “wetland sanctuary,” but it’s really an algae-covered stinkhole filled with sludgelike green water and plastic waste. It’s closer to a sewer than a creek. When I was younger I used to catch frogs in the reeds bordering the creek, but one year they all floated to the surface, bellies yellow and bloated. There weren’t any frogs after that.
    Barely able to keep from screaming, I say, “Why don’t you just kill him now and—”
    There is a loud
pop
, followed quickly by two more. Then nothing.
    “Gunshots,” Dad says, standing up fast. “From the apartments, I think.”
    We run to the living room window, just in time to see a door open across the street. Two men hold up a slumping body. It’s a big guy, naked and hairy, pale chest and fat stomach streaked with red. They push him out the door. He’s standing on the sidewalk, barely. In that moment I recognize him. He yelled at