Page 1 of Zen's Crash

Chapter 1

Lexi

Ijolt awake to my father screaming for me to get to the safe room.

“Oh God, not another drill,” I mutter to myself as I roll out of bed, grab my laptop, and stumble out of my bedroom and down the steps to the ground floor of our dream home.

My father has always been wildly paranoid, which means we’ve moved to a new ‘dream house’ every four or five years since I can remember. During my childhood, my mother was focused on buying her dream home and settling down, so my dad phrased every new move as the final one, but I always knew there was more to it than that. I race down to the basement, still feeling sad that she died of cancer before realizing her dream of settling down in her forever home. Now, I’m trapped in the nightmare she left behind.

I burst into the safe room, only to find my father isn’t there. I put my laptop on the table and quickly turn to go and find him. That’s when I see him standing at the door, looking more freaked out than ever before.

He has both hands on the door and has already shoved it mostly closed. I can only see his face and one shoulder in the opening.

Playing his game, I tell him, “Come on Dad, get in here. We have to be safe together, remember?” That was always the deal in our family. We all go to the safe room as a family and wait out the danger. Right now, he’s the only family I’ve got left. So heneeds to get his ass into the safe room, just on the off chance we really are in danger.

His expression is grim. “Not this time, Lexi. God, there’s so much I haven’t told you, and now it’s too late.”

I take a step towards him, realizing for the first time that something different is going on tonight. “What are you talking about? Get in here and lock the door. Then you can tell me all about it.”

“I’m sorry, Lexi. I really am.” The tone of his voice and his cryptic words take a toll on me.

“Dad, you’re scaring me.”

“No need to be scared, princess. I’m locking you in. Stay quiet, no matter what you hear.”

The door shuts with a finality that resonates through the small space. I scramble into place at the table, fire up my laptop, and hack into our security feed, the one my dad normally controls. My heart is pounding, the hairs on my arms are raised, and I’m getting sick to my stomach with worry. This isn’t my dad’s regular run-of-the-mill paranoia. Tonight the danger is real, I can feel it all the way down to my bones.

When the feed comes up, my blood runs cold. My hand automatically goes to the keypad and punches in 911 on my G-Fi app. When the dispatcher asks what my emergency is, I tell her, “Someone has broken into my house. He’s pointing a gun at my dad. I need the police right away.”

The woman quickly verifies my address and phone number before asking, “Are you in a safe place right now?”

“Yeah, I’m in my basement, but you have to hurry. The intruder is walking around like he owns the place, and he’s already made my dad get down on his knees.”

“Stay on the line and remain in place. Officers will be on the scene shortly. In the meantime, I have some questions. Do you recognize the intruder?”

“No. He’s wearing a balaclava. I can’t see his face.”

She keeps asking questions and I answer as best I can, but my attention is squarely centered on the scene unfolding before my eyes on the security camera. My dad never wired his old-fashioned security setup to capture audio, so all I can do is sit here helplessly with the dispatcher yapping in my ear.

I watch the intruder yell and scream at my dad while gesticulating wildly with the gun, and I pray it doesn’t go off accidentally. Suddenly, he stalks across the room and hits my dad several times over the head with the butt.

H-hurry!” I stammer, mortified at what I’m seeing. “He’s beating my dad.”

Finally, the intruder stops hitting my father’s now bloody head and starts pacing around, ransacking the place. I can hear the dispatcher reassuring me that the officers are on their way. However, I can’t tear my eyes away from what’s going down in our living room.

The intruder is angry, that’s obvious from the gestures he’s making. He goes straight to the mantel and picks up a picture of me and my dad fishing in a nearby stream. We’re both wearing waders. I’m wearing shorts and a long t-shirt that barely covers them. I realize in this moment that it might look like I’m notwearing bottoms. He turns the picture frame around to show my dad and taps my image with the end of his gun. My father freezes, stealing a glance at the security camera.

The intruder looks over to see what caught my dad’s attention. When the angry man catches sight of the camera, he goes a little crazy. He walks over to it, but from my perspective, it seems like he’s stalking right up to me with his big gun in his hand. He lifts the picture and taps my image with the end of his gun again and then points his gun at my dad before making a go-away gesture towards the door.

I’d have to be an idiot not to understand what he’s saying. He’ll let my father go if I trade places with him. Since the police are on their way, it seems like the only way to buy me and my dad some time.

I fly out of my seat and try to get out of the safe room, only remembering too late that my dad told me he was locking me in. I scramble back to my computer and try to hack deeper into the software to find out if there’s a way to unlock the door electronically. Meanwhile, the intruder is getting more and more exasperated by my refusal to comply.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see him shoot the camera. I panic inside because there’s only one reason he’d do that. He doesn’t want anything recorded.

My shaking hands come up to the keyboard and I switch around to the other cameras in the house until I find the one from our entry way. That’s when I see the bastard standing over my dad. My dad is slumped on the floor, not moving. From this angle I can’t see blood or a bullet wound, but I’m almost a hundred percent sure he shot my dad.

The intruder’s head jerks up like he can hear something I can’t, probably sirens. He bolts for the back of our house and I switch to a different camera, watching until I catch him crashing through the back door to make his escape. I should switch to the exterior cameras and look for clues about who he is or at least what he’s driving. But those cameras will capture the footage whether I’m there to see it in real time or not. I go back to the living room camera and watch to see if my father is moving.

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