by Emily Brewes
“So?”
“So what?” I snapped, rubbing my throbbing shoulder.
“A week’s tokens! I’ve been saving to get the wife a set of crutches, but I’ll give you the whole boodle for fifteen minutes.”
“Fuck me!” I shook my head, which he mistook for an invitation to haggle.
“Ten minutes?”
“No minutes! There’s no one at my place. I was talking to myself.”
That shut him up for ten entire seconds.
“Serious?” His tone was concerned, at least as much for himself as me.
I dug around the heap in front of me for a minute or so, working up a bit of pathos. If I could get him to buy that I was losing it, he’d back off enough to keep Doggo from getting found. I was slightly unsure of my skill at bullshitting, given how long it had been since I really spoke with anyone. Maybe a talking dog was a good influence.
“Yeah, well, you know. I’m alone now since Mum died, and Olivia lit out. Who’ve I got to talk to? Guess I just reached, like, a breaking point. Started babbling to myself this morning. Laughing even.” I paused to look up, directly into his beady brown peepers. “Sorry if I got a bit carried away. I’ll try to keep it down.”
With precision timing, I looked away again, feigning shame. I could feel Metzler’s rising discomfort like the spread of warm pee in a cold lake. It was all I could do to stop myself from cracking up.
He shifted foot to foot, crunching matted dross under ancient hobnails. “Well, shit,” he mumbled. “Well, shit, kid,” he repeated a bit louder. “You need ta talk, you could just come over our way. Stella’d be happy to share a chin wag. You know how she likes ta gab. Used ta do with your mum. Fact of it is, I’d be grateful if you would. She’s not had a good chat since … you know.”
Karl poked the scrap a few times with the sharpened broom handle he used to dig.
“Come on by tonight. I’ve put by some tokens, like I say. We’ll share a meal.” He reached out and squeezed my shoulder with one broad, gloved hand. “It’ll be good. Come on by, yeah?”
No one was generous anymore, and Metzler was stingy by post-apocalypse standards. I nodded, too stunned to speak.
“Good, good. See you tonight.”
He hoisted his broom handle over one shoulder and took off for an unexplored portion of the heap that was thankfully out of my eyeline. A saying of my mother’s sprang into my head, drew me into speaking it aloud. “Will wonders never cease?” I asked nobody in particular.
Then I wondered if giving my portion of ration to Doggo would be enough to bribe him to stay home. And stay quiet.
THE METZLER PLACE was bigger than mine — more than thrice the size, easily. There was a whole kitchenette that took up most of one wall and a private bathroom behind a full-height door. The space had once been the break room for people who worked maintaining the subway tracks and tunnels.
One of the walls curved to meet an arc of ceiling, and every surface from the floor upward was covered in tiny circular tiles glazed tomato-soup red. Most of the walls were hung with quilts or blankets to keep out the chill. There was even an ancient bear skin hanging on the wall by the bed. It gazed balefully at an uncaring world through one heavily scratched glass eye.
The whole house was alive with cooking. The air was warm and humid and laced with mouth-watering aroma, and the light was invitingly yellow. Karl was stirring a pot on the boil and flipping the sizzling contents of a cast-iron skillet, all according to Stella’s instruction from her chair.
“No, use the spatula. Else you’ll burn your fingers. That’s the way now. Gently but firmly … Oh, hello! Hello! Come in, child, come in,” she beckoned, noticing me in the doorway.
Out of some half-remembered habit, I took off my hat and ducked my head. Stella reached both her arms as far as she could. When I got near enough, she folded me into an embrace, with my face pressed to her deflated bosom. She carried the reassuring scent of floral body powder.
“Good to see you,” she whispered in my ear. “So good!” Then she held me at arm’s length for a thorough inspection. Frowning slightly, she said, “Skinny. You eating?”
I nodded. “When I can. Tryna save up to get my shoes fixed.” One foot was held aloft for her to see.
Stella sputtered, her mouth agape in horror. “Shoes? Those aren’t hardly shoes anymore — there’s nothing could be done to fix ’em! Karl, where’re Joey’s old runners? The blue ones with the orange stripe?”
“Dunno,” replied Karl, his voice tense with concentration. “What am I doing with these fritters?”
I was gently pushed to one side so Stella could get a view of the kitchen. She donned her glasses and squinted into them while Karl held up the pan.
“They’re done. Fish them out and put them on that plate with the cloth, then pull the corners up and over to keep them warm.”
Karl nodded, clearly happy to put the pan down at last. His face was reddened by heat and by effort, and a small rivulet of sweat ran from his temple to his jowl.
To me, but at least as much to herself, Stella muttered, “Now, where are those runners?”
Her legs, or what was left of them, shifted beneath the blanket that covered them. Stella was about as far from vain as was possible to get. Nevertheless, she was somewhat shamed by the state of her legs. She’d lost the use of them, only to have much of what remained rot away by a bad infection from a tiny scratch. I still remember that reek. Everyone nearby thought for sure there was a drowned rats’ nest behind a wall, tiny bloated bodies festering and unreachable. Then my mother had come to visit Stella, who was suffering from a fever. She went to pat Stella’s knee and the whole thing collapsed.
The sawbones — a mean, lean old fella who also cut hair and pulled black teeth — was called in, at some fair expense. He suspected gangrene, but it turned out to be a leg-sized colony of mushrooms. They’d eaten Stella’s flesh as though she were an old oak log rotting on the forest floor. On the plus side, some of those cultures went on to breed chitin for the whole Underground colony. It was one of the reasons the Metzlers had such a cherry place to live.
“Maybe they’re in that bin under the bed,” said Stella, pointing a lacquer-nailed finger to a curtained area across the way. “If you’d be a dear?”
Obediently, I went to the bed and pulled a worn plastic tub from underneath. There was no lid, and it was crammed edge to edge with shoes.
“That’s the one! You see a pair, bright blue with an orange stripe up the sides?”
They were easy to spot among the dull assortment of brown and black and grey. I pulled them out, catching a glimpse of a smaller pink shoe underneath. There was only one. I didn’t remember the Metzlers having a daughter — only a horde of strapping sons.
“These them?” I held the shoes aloft for Stella to see, though they were obviously the pair she had described. Beyond a bit of wear and the dinge of dirt, they were virtually new. They were worth a fortune in trade.
Squinting through her glasses, Stella nodded. “Oh yes! The very ones. Take them, if you’ve need. They’re only going to waste sitting ’round here.”
I got a bit choked up, in spite of myself. They were only shoes, but it had been a long time since I’d been given anything — since well before my mother died. It suddenly made me miss her terribly. And Olivia. Even my father.
“Everything alright, dear?”
I coughed into the crook of my elbow to dispel the tension in my throat and to secretly wipe the standing tears from my eyes. “Yep,” I eventually managed. “Oh yeah, fine. You sure I can’t give you a few tokens for these? You’re already feeding me. I feel like a mooch.”
From the kitchen, Karl piped, “Well, if you insist —” But he was cut off by Stella scoffing.
“Oh, please! He didn’t even know we had those till just now. And you’re welcome to them. Joey grew out of the things about five minutes after we bought them, and shoes that don’t get worn are no good to anybody.”
Karl clea
red his throat with a grumble but offered no contradiction.
“Are we eating tonight, or what?” He picked up the plate of fritters and clapped it roughly on the table.
“Is the stew done?”
“How the hell should I know?” Karl demanded. “Come over and try it.”
Stella pursed her lips. “There’s no call to be mean.” After a pause, she added, “If you can put a fork through the potato, it’s done.”
Potato! Who knew my neighbours were so well off? Here I was, scrounging for the barest scraps, while they were living like royalty just ten feet away. My mother died for lack of medicine while they’d a trove of goods for trade. Just one pair of those shoes, the ones made of real leather, might have saved her life. It was galling enough to set my teeth on edge.
I looked at the shoes in my hand and swallowed my bitterness. They were being so kind when they didn’t have to. And there was no way to know whether medicine would have saved my mother. In the end, it was probably more down to will than pills. Like she’d had enough, maybe, and just gave up. I was certainly no help on that account.
“Sit, sit, sit!” Stella waved me toward a crate with a cushion on it that was pulled up beside her chair. She was beaming at me like I was one of her own children. Even Karl, across the table, stole glances that were at least as contented as they were cranky. He pulled back a corner of the cloth on the plate of fritters and offered it to me.
“Guests first,” he muttered.
The Metzlers didn’t eat chitin, though by the looks of things they could have afforded it. Moral objections about eating the dead, which I shared but were sadly above my paygrade. The fritters were steaming hot and golden, a mix of cabbage and carrot and potato. I took one, along with a fragrant ladle of stew that was made with largely the same ingredients. Still, it was a most welcome change from pressed krill and bonemeal cakes. I did my best to eat slowly, to savour every bite. It was about the hardest thing I’d ever done, but from the look on Stella’s face, I could tell the effort was appreciated.
When plates were emptied, I was filled to bursting. Karl gathered up the dishes and took them to the sink. Stella leaned over and put an arm around my shoulders. There were tears quivering in the corners of her tired eyes.
“I’m so glad you came,” she managed. “It’s been nice to have company, what with the boys gone and all. Nice change!”
“It was good to be here, Mrs. M. Can’t recall the last time I was so full!” I patted her hand and stood up to leave.
“Off so soon?”
I heard the hurt in her voice and hesitated. Then I thought about Doggo. He’d done a good job of keeping quiet, but surely that would only last so long. My mind raced to come up with an excuse while Karl gave me the dirty eyeball from the kitchen.
“Sorry. It was a real long day, and I don’t think I’ll be such good company after a meal like that. If I don’t get home, I might just konk out in the corridor.”
Karl nodded and looked away, satisfied. Stella did the same, clearly chuffed to have fed me so well.
“Well, dear. Whenever you next need a good feed, just catch Karl at the scraps so he can pick up extra on the way home.”
It was tempting — so tempting! — to stay, to curl up on their floor and give up on any pretension of having my own life. I could be their talking dog, and Doggo could … There was no place for him here. Maybe that’s when I had the first inkling that I wasn’t long for the Underground. It certainly wasn’t the last.
“Sure thing, Mrs. M. Thanks again, so very much. And you, Karl!” I called over the clank of washing dishes, but he gave no indication that he’d heard me. On impulse, I kissed Stella on the cheek as I hugged her goodbye. “And thanks again for the shoes. You’re a real saint!”
I made it all the way home before I realized there were tears streaming from my eyes. Doggo crept out from under the bed, his tail wagging so hard his whole back end bent back and forth with the force of it.
“You’re back! Food Bringer came back later, which isn’t now, but it is. Now.” Noticing my tears, he tilted his head. “Food Bringer, why are you leaking?”
THE TIPPING POINT
WE WASTED A LOT OF TIME before going Underground. Humans, I mean. Some denied it was happening at all, like those in government, like my father. They said it was a conspiracy but could neither agree who was behind it, nor explain how that secret cabal might benefit.
There were those who insisted we decide who was to blame rather than taking steps to fix what seemed to be the problems. Some of these said it was God’s judgment for any number of sins: abortion, homosexuality, decadence, and degeneracy. Not one could rationalize, assuming the existence of such a being, why God waited so long to take exception and wipe us off the planet. They advocated prayer. Unsurprisingly, this did nothing beyond self-soothe.
There were those who acknowledged the problems early on, who were desperate to begin treatment, who harangued the powerful for decades to take action. Sadly, short-sightedness won the day. And many argued amongst themselves which remedy ought to be tried first.
In the meantime, we all sickened. Families were pried apart by disagreement. The conceptual distance between members of communities, between neighbours, opened into gulfs too wide to see the opposite side. Little kids defined themselves by the party lines of their parents, and schoolyard arguments became full-blown gang fights.
I went to school for a while. First to a run-down elementary by the highway, with its combination auditorium-cafeteria-gymnasium that perpetually smelled strongly of floor wax. Single grades taught by single teachers became combination grades taught by single teachers. Those in turn became an entire school taught by a harried man who had been the principal. Classes moved to the audi-caf-gym and largely consisted of silently reading or practising sheets of times tables.
When the total number of students in the entire area dropped to a few dozen, they moved us into a room in the basement of the public library. I don’t recall many high-schoolers there for long. The ones who continued to show up were more like teaching assistants than students, helping out with the youngsters, leading sing-alongs when the ever-present tension got to be too much.
I remember one day very clearly, maybe because it was near the end of my school career. Class had been taken over by Mrs. Barfoot after the former principal, Mr. McCullough, couldn’t be found. She was a warm older woman from town who made gingersnaps by the bucket and who didn’t sing but always clapped to the beat with a sad smile on her face.
Anyway, some bickering had come to blows, which Mrs. Barfoot and an older girl whose name I never knew were having trouble pulling apart. I was standing back, trying not to get sucked into the vortex of violence, when I was shocked by icy water splashing against my shins. Everyone was stunned into stillness, panting to overcome the shock of the cold on their skin.
Looking up, I saw Constable Ferris holding a yellow janitor’s bucket. Just behind him were Mrs. Barfoot and the girl, who had clearly been warned the water was incoming, since neither of them were wet. On the floor, a soaking tangle of skinny limbs painted with threads of watery nose blood coughed and shivered and sniffled. I think Jeremy was one of them. He was okay, most of the time. I remember wondering who’d got his goat enough to pull him into the fray.
Constable Ferris had that very serious square jaw that is commonly associated with law enforcement. Yet he wasn’t the bully archetype who seemed pulled to the occupation like filings to a magnet. He had no swagger but moved with quiet competence. A peacekeeper in every sense.
He put down the bucket and started pulling the tangle of children apart. As he got one free, he handed them over to Mrs. Barfoot, who seemed to have conjured a stack of towels out of thin air. Each one was wrapped around the shoulders and set into a chair, one after another. The older girl was handing out tea and gingersnaps. When everyone was up, the constable asked us all to have a seat.
“Mind the wet spot,” he said, pointing to the place where the car
pet was dark and a few ice cubes continued their slow dissolution.
I sat on one of the reading chairs. It was a curved shape made of foam and upholstered in green vinyl the colour of Slimer from Ghostbusters. The material squeaked against my bare skin where my shorts ended. I hoped nobody thought I’d farted. Seated and in expectant silence, we turned our eyes to the constable.
“Well, I was coming to tell this to your teacher, but since you all seem grown-up enough to bring politics to the classroom, I’ll tell all of you.” He took the kind of deep breath, ending in a sigh, that was common to adults at the time. “Mr. McCullough was taking a bit of a walk in the woods near here, ’bout a week ago they say. He was attacked by an animal. Coroner said maybe a mountain lion.”
A hand was raised. Const. Ferris acknowledged it. “Question?”
“What’s a coroner?”
Ferris frowned and glanced over at Mrs. Barfoot. She provided the answer. “A coroner is a kind of doctor who looks at people’s bodies to see how they died.”
The word was allowed to sink in. Died. That meant dead. It meant Mr. McCullough was …
That train of thought was interrupted by the constable continuing. “He had his phone on him. Even had time to dial in to 911. Trouble is that the cell tower on Ski Hill was damaged in that last storm, so the call didn’t go through.”
He had to take a moment. I’ve never been sure if it was just sympathy for the plight of a fellow human being or something else. For a man who had seen worse in his tenure, like the time the Jamieson’s eldest ate his twelve-gauge on the way back from a turkey hunt or the transient man who got drunk and fell asleep on the railroad tracks, he seemed especially choked up. When he got himself together, he swept his gaze across the group, ensuring he made brief-yet-meaningful eye contact with everybody.
“Point is, be extra careful out there. I think you all know things are changing. If you’re walking, don’t go alone. Stay away from the woods, ’specially at dawn and dusk. And don’t rely on cellphones to save you.” He turned to Mrs. Barfoot, touching the bill of his cap. “Thank you for your time.”