On the night of day 5, we were told to figure out how much food and bottled water we had in our houses, to try and figure out how long we could live without getting outside food. It was just me in the house, and we had a decent stash of canned and packaged food but almost nothing in the way of bottled water. As long as I could get clean water, I would be able to eat for a long time, but the lack of bottled water scared me. The whole morning was spent with me filling any kind of bottle or container I could with water from the tap. I even filled up our bathtub, something I found out later was actually something most people did in emergencies. I guess we weren’t really prepared as a family. I know you’re supposed to have a family emergency plan and first aid kits and the like, but we really didn’t. It wasn’t something high on my parents’ priority lists.
That afternoon, I tried calling my family again. This time I didn’t get any answers anywhere, and since the power was out, no one’s answering machines were working. When I left the Smith’s to go wander around the neighborhood, I immediately ran into a bunch of the neighbor kids all wandering around together. Seven-year-olds all the way through teenagers. I knew some of them from the block parties, so they accepted me into the group pretty gracefully. Some of the parents had decided that the best way to keep their kids entertained was to group them up with the other neighbor kids, and that way everyone’s kids were being taken care of while the adults did whatever it was they were doing. It seemed to be working pretty well.
The gang of us roved around the street aimlessly, mostly following the lead of the younger kids who were more apt to chase off after each other or something they had seen. The older kids talked, mostly about our parents. It turned out that I was the only one who had been left alone. All the other kids on the street still had at least one parent. Some of the kids got a lot nicer to me after finding that out. I got several invites to sleep over at their places if I got lonely. This coming from the little kids was very sweet. From the older boys it was a little skeevy. I actually considered the invite from one girl though, Alice, who was only a year younger than me. She and I were the only girls over the age of 13, so we somewhat banded together. She was very nice, although a little shy and quiet. I had trouble hearing her most of the time. When nightfall came, we were all in the streets again, and I got to meet Alice’s father. Her mother and brother had gone missing. Alice’s father was a fairly nice person, although he was a little gruff. I suppose I was too, come to think of it. The situation wasn’t the best.
Same speeches as always from the President and Mr. Homitzer, although tonight had the addition of a neighborhood watch volunteer. Mr. Homitzer said that the police had warned them that several gangs were now roving the streets, looting, and that it might be a good idea to start a neighborhood watch during the night time. We all got whistles that we were supposed to use in case we saw something suspicious or someone tried to force their way into our house. There would be two adults each night who would watch the street, either from their roofs or cars or somewhere safe that had a vantage point. If anything happened, they’d use the whistle. Although I know some of the neighborhood people had guns as well.