Day three without power. Ninety-six degrees inside. And at 6 AM, the kitchen tap coughs air.
You turn it all the way open. Nothing. Not a drip. The whole street went quiet at the same time.
Then your phone buzzes. Water alert. Do not drink tap water. Do not boil it.
Most people don't know this. Boiling kills germs. But the CDC says boiling can't fix fuel or chemical contamination. So whatever is in the pipes, it isn't germs.
You count. 22 cans. Two gallons of water. One gallon per person per day. That's two days.
But you remember something. Your water heater tank. Forty gallons of clean water, sitting in the closet, from before the pipes went bad.
You open the closet. You kneel by the drain valve at the bottom of the tank.
The valve is already open. The floor is dry. The tank is empty.
Somebody drained forty gallons out of your house. Quietly. While you slept.
And your doors are still locked from the inside.