The New Hunger

by Isaac Marion

  THE NEW HUNGER

  ISAAC MARION

  For my niece and nephews. May they not grow up in a world like this one.

  A dead man lies near a river, and the forest watches him. Gold clouds drift across a warming pink sky. Crows dart through the trees—dark pines and cedars that hover over the dead man like morbid onlookers. In the deep, wild grass, small living things creep around the dead man’s face, eager to eat it and return it to the soil. Their faint clicks mingle with the rush of the wind and the screams of the birds and the roar of the river that will wash away his bones. Nature is hungry. It is ready to take back what the man stole from it by living.

  But the dead man opens his eyes.

  He stares at the sky. He feels an impulse: move. So he sits up. His eyes are open but he can’t see anything. Just a blur that he doesn’t know is a blur, because he has never seen clarity.

  This is the world, he reasons. The world is blurry.

  Hours pass. Then his eyes remember how to focus, and the world sharpens. He thinks that he liked the world better before he could see it.

  Lying next to him is a woman. She is beautiful, her hair pale and silky and matted with blood, her blue eyes mirroring the sky, tears drying rapidly under the hot sun. The man tilts his head, studying the woman’s lovely face and the bullet hole in her forehead. For a brief moment he feels a sensation that he doesn’t like. His features bend downward; his eyes sting. Then it fades and he stands up. The revolver in his hand slips through his limp fingers and falls to the ground. He starts walking.

  The man notices that he is tall. Branches scrape his scalp and tangle in his matted mess of hair. The tall man notices other things, too. A leather chair floating in the river. A metal suitcase hanging from a tree branch. Four more bodies with holes in their heads, sprawled out limp in the grass. These ones are not beautiful. They are pale and sunken, spattered with black blood, regarding the sky with strange, metallic grey eyes. He feels another unpleasant sensation, and he kicks one of the bodies in the head. He kicks it again and again, until his shoe sinks into the putrid mess of its brain, and then he forgets why he’s doing this and keeps walking.

  The tall man does not know who he is. He does not know what he is or where he is, how he came here or why. His head is so empty it hurts; the vacuum of space is twisting it apart, so he forces a thought into it just to ease the pain:

  Find someone.

  He walks away from the blonde woman. He walks away from the bodies. He walks away from the column of smoke rising out of the trees behind him.

  Find another person.

  A girl and her kid brother are walking in the city. Her brother breaks the silence.

  “I know who you like.”

  “What?”

  “I know who you like.”

  “No you don’t.”

  “Yeah I do.”

  “I don’t like anybody.”

  “Do too. And I know who it is.”

  Nora glances back at Addis, who is such a painfully slow walker she wants to put him on a leash and drag him.

  “Okay, who do I like.”

  “I’m not telling.”

  She laughs. “That’s not how blackmail works, dumb-ass.”

  “What’s blackmail?”

  “It’s when you know a secret about somebody and you threaten to tell people unless they do what you want. But it doesn’t work if you don’t say what you know.”

  “Oh. Okay, you like Kevin.”

  Nora fights a surprised smile. The little shit’s got eyes.

  “You do!” Addis crows. “You like Kevin!”

  “Maybe,” Nora says, looking straight ahead. “So what?”

  “So I got you. And now I’m gonna blacknail you.”

  “Blackmail. Okay, let’s hear your demands.”

  “I want the rest of the cookies.”

  “Deal. I don’t even like Oreos.”

  “And you have to carry the water an extra day.”

  “Well…fine. But only because I really don’t want anyone to know I like Kevin.”

  “Yeah, because he’s ugly.”

  “No, because he has a girlfriend.”

  “But he is ugly.”

  “I like ugly. Beauty is a trick.”

  Addis snorts. “No one likes ugly.”

  “I like you, don’t I?” She reaches back and grabs a handful of his woolly hair, shakes his head around. He laughs and wrestles free. “Okay, so are we good here?” she says. “Do we have a deal?”

  “One more.”

  “All right but only one, so you better make it good.”

  Addis studies the pavement scrolling by under his feet. “I want us to look for Mom and Dad.”

  Nora walks in silence for a few sidewalk squares. “No deal.”

  “But I’m blackmailing you!”

  “No deal.”

  “Then I’m gonna tell everyone you like Kevin.”

  Nora stops walking. She cups her hands to her mouth and sucks in a deep breath. “Hey everyone! I like Kevin Kenerly!”

  Her voice echoes through long canyons of crumbled highrises, gutted storefronts, melted glass and scorched concrete. It rolls down mossy streets and bounces off piles of rusted cars, frightening crows out of a copse of alders that sprouts through the roof of an Urban Outfitters.

  Her brother scowls at her, betrayed, but Nora is tired of this. “We were just playing a game, Addy. Kevin’s probably dead by now.”

  She starts walking again. Addis hangs back a moment, then follows, still scowling. “You’re mean,” he says.

  “Yeah, maybe. But I’m nicer than Mom and Dad.”

  They walk in silence for five minutes before Addis looks up from his gloomy study of the sidewalk. “So what are we looking for?”

  Notfign="lefra shrugs. “Good people. There are good people out there.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “There’s got to be one or two.”

  “Do I still get the cookies?”

  She stops and raises her eyes skyward, letting out a slow sigh. She slips off her backpack and pulls out the bag of Oreos, hands it to her brother. He shoves the last two into his mouth and Nora studies him as he chews furiously. He’s getting thinner. A seven-year-old’s face should be round, not sharp. It shouldn’t have the angular planes of a fashion model. She can see the exhaustion in his dark eyes, creeping in around the sadness.

  “Let’s crash,” she says. “I’m tired.”

  Addis beams, revealing white teeth smeared black with cookie gunk.

  They set up camp in a law firm lobby, wrapped in the single wool blanket they share between them, the marble floor softened with chair cushions. The last red rays of the sunset leak through the revolving door and crawl across the floor, then abruptly vanish, severed by the rooftops.

  “Can we make a fire?” Addis whimpers, although the night is warm.

  “In the morning.”

  “But it’s scary in here.”

  Nora can’t argue with that. The building’s steel skeleton creaks and groans as the day’s warmth dissipates, and she can hear the ghostly rustle of paperwork in a nearby office, brought to life by a breeze whistling through a broken window. But it’s a law firm. A place utterly useless to the new world, and thus invisible to scavengers. One threat out of a hundred checked off her list—she will sleep one percent better.

  She pulls the flashlight out of her pack and squeezes its handle a few times until the bulb begins to glow, then gives it to Addis. He hugs it to his chest like a talisman.

  “Goodnight, Adenoid,” she says.

  “Goodnight, Norwhale.”

  Even with the powerful protection of a 2-watt bulb against the endless ocean of creeping night, he still sounds scared. And she can still hear his stomach, g
rowling louder than any monsters that may lurk in the dark.

  Nora reaches across their makeshift bed and squeezes her brother’s hand, marveling at its softness. Wondering how mankind survived as long as it did with hands this soft.

  For the first time in weeks, Julie Grigio is having a dream that’s not a nightmare. She is sitting on a blanket on a high white rooftop, gazing into a sky full of airplanes. There are hundreds of them, gleaming against the sky like a swarm of butterflies, writing letters on the blue with their contrails. She is watching these planes next to a silhouette who loves her, and she knows with warm certainty that everything will be okay. That there is nothing in the world worth fearing.

  Then she wakes up. She opens her eyes and blinks the world into focus. The tiny cage of the SUV’s cabin surrounds her, spacious for a vehicle, suffocating for a home.

  “Mom?” she blurts before she’s fully conscious, a reflex born from years of bad nights and cold-sweat awakenings.

  Her mother twists around in the front seat and gives her a gentle smile. “Morning, honey. Sleep okay?”

  Julie nods, rubbing crust out of her eyes. “Where are we?”

  “Getting close,” her father answers without taking his eyes off the ringoad. The silver Chevy Tahoe cruises at freeway speeds down a narrow suburban street called Boundary Road. It used to terrify her, watching mailboxes and stop signs streak past her window, imagining neighborhood dogs and cats thumping under their tires, but she’s getting used to it. She knows the faster they drive, the sooner they’ll find their new home.

  “Are you excited?” her mother asks.

  Julie nods.

  “What are you excited about?”

  “Everything.”

  “Like what? What do you miss most about the city?”

  Julie thinks for a moment. “School?”

  “We’ll find you a great school.”

  “My friends.”

  Her mother hesitates, struggling to maintain her smile. “You’ll make new friends. What else?”

  “Will they have libraries?”

  “Sure. No librarians, but the books should still be there.”

  “What about restaurants?”

  “God, I hope so. I’d kill for a cheeseburger.”

  Julie’s father clears his throat. “Audrey…”

  “What else?” her mother continues, ignoring him. “Art galleries? I bet we could find somewhere to show your paintings—”

  “Audrey.”

  She doesn’t look away from Julie but she stops talking. “What.”

  “The Almanac said ‘functioning government,’ not ‘thriving civilization.’”

  “I know that.”

  “So you shouldn’t be getting her hopes up.”

  Audrey Grigio smiles stiffly at her husband. “I don’t think any of us are in danger of a hope overdose, John.”

  Julie’s father keeps his eyes on the road and doesn’t reply. Her mother turns back to her and tries to resume the daydream. “What else, Julie? Boys? I hear the boys are cute in Vancouver.”

  Julie wants to keep playing but the moment has died. “Maybe,” she says, and looks out the window. Her mother opens her mouth to say more, then closes it and turns around to face the road.

  Behind the perfect movie set of beige houses and green lawns, the border wall looms like a studio soundstage, making suspension of disbelief impossible. Big red maple leafs painted every hundred feet serve as stern reminders of who built this barrier, and who’s keeping out whom. Julie loves her mother. She has high hopes for this new life in Canada. But she has seen more nightmares come true than dreams.

  “There it is,” her father announces. The truck hops a curb and descends into the border park lawn, tearing muddy grooves in the weedy grass. They drive past the booths where glorified mall cops once pretended to interrogate nervous college kids. How long will you be staying? Are you carrying any alcohol? Where were you on September 11th?

  All that quaint border-crossing pageantry is over now. There is only one question still of interest to the gatekeepers of nations:

  Are you infected?

  The Tahoe rolls to a stop in front of the gate and Julie’s father gets out. He approaches the black glass scanning window with his hands upraised. “Colonel John T. Grigio, U.S Army,” he shouts. “Requesting immigration.”

  The wall is an impressive feat of construction for something built in such desperate times: thirty feet of reinforced concrete running from half a mile off the coast of Washington to somewhere deep in dedere deethe Quebecois wilderness, and the whole length of it garnished with razor-wire. The “gate” is just two tall slabs of galvanized steel, fitted flush to the concrete to make any prying or tampering impossible. Not that the automated guns mounted above it would allow the attempt.

  The scanning window emits a few beeps. The guns twitch on their arm mounts. Then silence.

  Julie’s father glances around expectantly. “Colonel John T. Grigio, U.S Army,” he repeats, “requesting immigration.”

  Silence.

  “Hello!” He lowers his hands to his sides. “I have a wife and kid with me. We came from New York by way of the north and middle territories and have much intel to share. Colonel John T. Grigio, requesting immigration!”

  A red light blinks on behind the black glass, then fades. The twin surveillance cameras wobble briefly but remain pointed at random points in the grass, as if fascinated by some caterpillars.

  “How old was that Almanac?” Julie whispers to her mother, gripping the seat to pull herself forward.

  “Two months,” her mother says, and the tightness in her voice pushes Julie’s heart underwater.

  “We have skills!” her father yells, his voice filling with an emotion that startles her. “My wife is a veterinarian. My daughter is combat trained. I was an O-6 colonel and commanded federal forces in twelve secession conflicts!”

  He stands in front of the gate, waiting with apparent patience, but Julie can see his shoulders rising and falling dangerously. She realizes she is seeing a rare sight: a glimpse into her father’s secret bunker. His hopes were as high as his wife’s.

  “Requesting immigration!” he roars savagely and hammers the butt of his pistol into the scanning window. It bounces pitifully off the bulletproof glass, but this action finally elicits a reaction. The red light blinks on again. The surveillance cameras wobble. A garbled electronic voice fills the air—ARNING—SAULT RESPONSE—ETHAL FORCE—and the guns begin spraying bullets.

  Julie screams as geysers of dust erupt inches from her father’s feet. He leaps backward and runs, not toward the truck but into the grass of the park. But the guns don’t follow him. They spin on their arms, strafing the road, bending downward and bouncing bullets off the steel door itself, then they abruptly go limp, barrels bouncing against the concrete.

  Julie’s mother hops out of the car and runs to her husband’s side. They both stare at the wall in shock.

  FILE, it declares in its buzzing authoritarian baritone. RESPONSE FILE CORRU—RETINA SCAN—AILED. REQUESTING RESPONSE FROM FEDERAL AUTHORIT—ASSWORD. ASSWORD—EQUIRED. WORK VISA. DUTY-FREE. APPLE MAGGOT.

  The guns rise.

  Julie’s parents jump into the Tahoe and her father slams it in reverse, lurching backward just as the guns spray another wild arc across the road. When they’re out of range he pulls a sharp slide in the muddy grass, flipping the Tahoe around, and they all pause to catch their breath as Canada’s border goes about losing its mind. The guns have stopped spinning and are both pointed down at the same spot, diligently pounding bullets into the dirt.

  “What the fuck?” Julie’s mother says between gasps.

  Julie digs through the duffel bag on the seat next to her and pulls out her father’s sniper scope. She runs it along the top of the wall, past coil after coil of razor wire, scraps of clothing and the occasional bits of dried flesh. Then she sees an explanation, and herligion, an heart finishes drowning.

  “Dad,” she mumbles, han
ding him the scope. She points. He looks. He sees it. A uniformed arm dangling over the edge of the wall. Two helmets caught in the razor wire, one containing a head. And three city-sized plumes of smoke rising from somewhere beyond the wall.

  Her father hands the scope back to her and drives calmly toward the freeway, steering clear of the gun turrets that bristle from the Peace Arch. His face is flat, all traces of that unnerving lapse into passion now gone. For better or worse, he is himself again.

  After five minutes of silence, her mother speaks, her voice as flat as her husband’s face. “Where are we going.”

  “South.”

  Five more minutes.

  “To where?”

  “Rosso’s heard chatter about a fortified enclave in South Cascadia. When we get in radio range we’ll check in with him.”

  “What happened?” Julie asks in a small voice. Her only answer is the roar of the tires on the cracked, leaf-strewn pavement of I-5 South. There are dozens of answers for her to choose from, everything from anarchic uprising to foreign invasion to the newer, more exotic forms of annihilation that have recently graced the world, but the relevant portion of every answer is the same: Canada is gone. The land is still there, and maybe some of its people, but Canada the safe haven, Canada the last vestige of North American civilization, Canada the new place to call home—that Canada is as lost as Atlantis, sunk beneath the same tide of blood and hunger that drowned the home she fled.

  Suddenly exhausted, she closes her eyes and slips into nightmares again. Graveyards rising out of the ocean. Her friends’ corpses in the light of their burning school. Skeletons ripping open men’s chests and crawling inside. She endures it patiently, waiting for the horror film to end and the theater to go dark, those precious few hours of blackout that are her only respite.

  Julie Bastet Grigio has reasons to sleep darkly. Her life has seen little light. She is twelve years old but has a woman’s weathered poise. Her abyss-blue eyes have a piercing focus that some adults find unsettling. Her mother ties her hair in a ponytail but Julie pulls it out, letting it fall into a loose mess of yellow and gold. She has fired a gun into a human head. She has watched a pile of bodies set alight. She has starved and thirsted, stolen food and given it away, and glimpsed the meaning of life by watching it end over and over. But she has just turned twelve. She likes horses. She has never kissed a boy.