Doom Days

by Beaman, Sara

  “Nothing?” Beck asked after a while.

  “Nothing,” Scout said. “Sorry. I guess the Halcyons are making me jumpy.”

  “Yeah, I remember with great fondness those days when you were all calm, relaxed nerves.”

  Scout gave Beck the finger and finished his sandwich. When they were ready, they took off on foot.

  Another of Scout’s scavenging strategies whenever he visited a new area was to hit the pseudo-medical offices. Hospitals and walk-in clinics had long since been raided for drugs and first aid supplies, but other places—dentists, oral surgeons, laser eye centers—were sometimes forgotten. This was Scout’s first plastic surgery center, though.

  “Think we’ll find anything worthwhile?” Beck asked as they climbed over a fallen tree that blocked the front door of the two-story building. The rotted trunk broke into mulch as they wriggled past.

  “Drug stuff, I’m hoping. If they did procedures in the office, they should have some on hand. Or samples. Drug men just loved their samples.”

  “I wonder if the Botox is any good?”

  Scout sort of had an idea what Botox was, but not enough to take it gracefully that Beck obviously did. So he said, “Big word, Professor Beck.”

  “It’s two syllables, fuck head. Don’t you know what Botox is? It took the wrinkles out of your forehead. It came from blowfish. A girl I dated from the University told me.”

  “A girl from the University dated you?”

  Beck gave Scout a dirty look and said, “Yeah, I done gone and spent time with a girl with all that there book learning.”

  “From a fish?” Scout said.

  “A poisonous fish. Or maybe it was the bacteria from a poisonous fish. Better leave that part out if we try to trade with Gretchen. Wait. Back up.” He threw his body forward into a powerful kick. The clinic’s front door cracked into kindling.

  Beck took out the splinters around the edges with a few more kicks. When the way was clear, he stepped aside with a flourish and gave Scout the chance to be the first one ambushed, on the off-chance someone was inside.

  Scout turned on one of their precious, battery-powered search lamps and stepped inside. His footsteps kicked up clouds of dust and mold. It was so thick that it turned the search beam into a solid bar of yellow light.

  Most of the letters had fallen off a directory next to the useless elevator, but one of the names had a DR in front of it. They hunted up the stairway, which was sealed off from the rest of the building with pneumatic fire doors. The fire doors had kept the stairwell surreally clean. Scout marveled at it as they climbed to the second floor. It was like a time warp.

  Upstairs, Beck found another directory. It was in better repair, and not only showed the location of the cosmetic surgery unit but also an office suite for a shipping company. They decided to split up, with Beck heading towards the shipping company.

  The ruined hallway rug crunched under Scout’s boots as he shouldered open the office door. On the other side, afternoon sunlight filtered through cracked glass, bright enough to see by. A tree had fallen through one of the windows, and the floor around the receptionist desk was a nest of dead twigs and rodent scat.

  A faded line of commercial posters led towards exam rooms. In between ransacking the exam rooms, Scout paused and read them. They were morbidly fascinating. The idea that someone’s life could be so safe and sparing they could devote resources to the fat on their ass was unreal.

  Still, I suppose some of it could have been done for a good reason, Scout thought, and self-consciously touched his scar.

  He was halfway through the operating room when he scored.

  The cherry furniture inside was sturdy and well-constructed. That was a good sign: the doors were tight enough to keep their contents dry. Scout wasn’t surprised to see an intact cardboard box in one of the larger cabinets.

  He was surprised to find an armload of antibiotics, in sample-sized blister packs, perfectly preserved.

  Scout might not have been well-read on fish poison, but he was a damn savant when it came to antibiotics. Clindamycin was used in the early part of the twenty-first century. Scout stuck his hand in the cardboard box and let the blister packs rattle through his fingers like gold coins.

  The pills would feed him and Beck for months—months. There were people who wouldn’t die because of them.

  “Scout,” Beck said from the doorway in a hushed, reverent voice.

  “We’ve scored,” Scout said.

  “I know, so get off the fucking floor and come see. I found the mother lode.”

  Since Beck exhibited the same sort of worship for back issues of Hustler, Scout didn’t hold out much hope of anything better than what he’d already found.

  He followed Beck to the other end of the building. The first few rooms were a snarl of overturned, once-sleek chrome furniture, now dull and crusty. Beck had cleared a path through it to a storage closet.

  Stacked inside were commercial truck batteries. A dozen of them. More. Each battery was ninety pounds of high-quality energy that could withstand temperatures well below freezing and well above a hundred degrees.

  These wouldn’t sit in inventory for months, waiting for a good buyer. These would be the subject of an almighty bidding war.

  “They,” Scout said, and then licked his lips. He tried again. “This will see us through the winter. This will buy us meat. Or a cow. We could buy a cow.”

  “And whores!” Beck said.

  “Beck, if we’re smart, it’ll last us the better part of a year.”

  “Or we could stay dumb and buy smart whores. For you too! I bet we could find some nice boy whores at the Sister of Mercy.”

  “We need to get the wagons and hook them up to the three-wheelers. The horses won’t be able to carry this kind of weight. We’ll take the antibiotics back now and…. Shit. Shit, this is good!”

  ****

  The next twenty-four hours went by in a blur. They got back to the Park, hid the antibiotics, and went into town to spend a small fortune on gasoline. They cleaned and tested the three-wheelers. Scout had invested in the vehicles six months back for help in transporting larger scores.

  Finally they drove out to Wendell. Using the three-wheelers—using any engine—was a treat; and since they were on their way to reclaim buried treasure, Scout was in probably the best mood of his life.

  Back in Wendell, they stopped outside the doctor’s office for a quick snack.

  Beck sat and grinned stupidly at the cool blue sky. Scout, who’d been gnawing on a protein bar, surprised himself by saying, “You should have half.”

  Beck gave Scout’s protein bar a puzzled look. “You’ve only got one bite left, asshole.”

  “No. Half of the score.”

  Beck’s eyebrows climbed into his hairline.

  Scout mumbled, “Well…It’s not like you’re just an employee anymore, is it? We’re friends. And you were the one who found the batteries.”

  Beck said, “Are you hitting on me?”

  “Fine. Forget I said anything.”

  “Aw, don’t be like that. You’re really going to split it in half? I don’t even have to take my shirt off or anything?” He held up his hands. “Joking! Thanks. I mean it, Scout. And—and goddamn motherfucking hellfire shit that’s a fucking rope!”

  It took Scout a second to spot it: a shiny, nylon, black and yellow rope dangling out a second story window.

  “That wasn’t there yesterday,” Scout said stupidly. Beck was already pulling his rifle from the three-wheeler gun mounts. Scout scrambled for his own weapon.

  It took them a painfully anxious fifteen minutes to reach the upstairs corridor. They moved at a glacial pace, stopping every few feet and straining to hear sounds of movement or ambush.

  In the second story hallway, Scout shined the beam of his lamp across every inch of soiled carpet. The dust was thick enough that it was impossible to hide tracks, which confirmed their worst fears. There was a disturbance in front of every door.
Someone had searched the place.

  Beck shoved by Scout and stomped towards the shipping office. Scout slid to the left and tried to get a bead on anything that might pop up in front of Beck, but Beck’s massive shoulders seemed to take up the width of the corridor. Scout lowered his gun and hurried after.

  Inside the office, the first thing he saw was the empty closet.

  They both stood there and stared at it for what felt like a very long time.

  Finally, Beck went over to the receptionist’s desk and, with great restraint, laid his gun down on top. When that was done he methodically began to bust up every piece of furniture in the room. After the first couple chairs, Scout stepped out into the hallway, picked a corner, and sank down.

  By the time Beck moved on to exhausted swearing, Scout had worked through his self-pity. He went back into the office and said, “Are you ready to deal with this?”

  “Do you have someone I can shoot?”

  “We need to figure out who was here and how the hell they moved all those batteries, and we need to figure out where they’ve got to now. Those batteries weighed a hundred pounds each. They can’t have gotten far. Let’s look for clues.”

  “Clues?” Beck kicked aside a chair leg, bent down, and said, “Hey! A matchbook! It’s from the only Chinese-Lithuanian bar on the East Coast! Maybe that’s where they’re headed?”

  Scout ignored him and started searching. He figured a couple things out almost immediately.

  Someone had busted one of the windows and tied the nylon rope through the handles of an old metal trash bin. They probably lowered all the batteries out the window—which was clever and efficient, especially if there weren’t many of them.

  Beck found the second clue. In the clean stairwell, on one of the steps, were the remains of a chicken lunch. Bones and some plastic wrap.

  The plastic wrap was patterned with Christmas trees and reindeers.

  ****

  They searched the rest of the building. They searched several other buildings on the street. They checked for tracks in the brush. They climbed the roof of a Presbyterian steeple and tried to spot movement. Eventually, in the failing light of evening, they headed home.

  Scout was feeling very rational. Calm, almost. It unsettled him a little.

  The Halcyons had done more than just steal from him. Steal was a colorless word. The Halcyons had cost him a year’s worth of food. They’d taken away the peace of mind that came from being solvent in the winter. They’d all but guaranteed that he and Beck would need to slog through cold, miserable weather on other salvaging trips during December and January.

  Beck kept ducking his head whenever Scout glanced his way. Finally, as they stopped to lift the trailers over a blockage in the road, he cleared his throat and said, “Scout?”

  “Beck?”

  Beck hesitated. He casually took a few steps to his left so that he was positioned between Scout and Scout’s rifle. He said, “I’ve got something to tell you.”

  “No, we’re not stopping at a whore house on the way home,” Scout said.

  “It’s bad, what I’ve got to say. Something bad.” His voice was pained. “It’s my fault. It’s my fault the batteries are gone.”

  “You mean because you told Izza we were going to Wendell?”

  Beck’s jaw went slack. He sagged against the three-wheeler. The headlight was on, and the lighting made the exhausted wrinkles around his eyes look like smudged ash.

  Scout said, “I figured that much out already. There was no way the Halcyons followed us without me seeing them—not unless they already knew where we were going.”

  “Izza and I, we were together the night before our first trip out, and I told her. I didn’t know she would do anything with it. I didn’t think…. Oh God, I think I’m going to be sick. Please don’t fire me. Please don’t send me away.”

  “Beck—”

  “I’ll pay the batteries out of my future shares, I swear, I’ll—”

  “Beck. It’s okay. We’ll figure it out.”

  “You ain’t mad?”

  “We’re partners,” Scout said awkwardly, and shrugged. “I can’t throw you out.”

  Beck frowned. “Now do I take my shirt off?”

  Scout said, “Grab the other end of the damn trailer.”

  As they worked to get the trailer onto the other side of the block, Beck said, “What are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But we’re going to do something, right?”

  “I don’t know. What can we do? We can’t just storm into their house with guns blazing. That just gets people dead.”

  Beck pursed his lips. His face didn’t relax from whatever he wanted to say, so Scout blew air through his nose and said, “What?”

  “I ever tell you about the grasshopper song?”

  “No, Beck. I do not believe you’ve ever talked to me about grasshoppers.”

  “Don’t get snippy. We’re feeling all warm and brotherly here. So, my dad, before he died, used to tell me a story about the grasshopper and the ants. One summer, the ants spent all their time gathering food, because they knew it was going to be a really bad winter. Meanwhile the grasshopper lounged around, laughing at all their hard work. He played his fiddle, and took long naps in the sunshine, and floated on the pond. Then the weather turned. Winter came. The ants went underground. They knew they’d be able to last months and months while it snowed. During one really bad blizzard, there’s a knock on their door. Outside, the grasshopper is half-dead on their welcome mat. He’s hungry and cold. Anyway, the story has a happy ending—the ants let the grasshopper in, and give him food, and he sits next to their fire and plays the fiddle for them for the rest of the winter. Me, Scout? I’m a grasshopper. I may not think ahead like you do, but I’ve got no problem singing for my supper. You? You’re the ants. You do think ahead. You save.”

  “So….what?” Scout asked. “I’m supposed to share with the Halcyons? Hope they have something to offer in return?”

  “No. That’s not my point at all. My point is that you’ve got a lot of stuff that people want, and not everyone else in the world is a grasshopper. Some of them are locusts. It’s a hard life we lead, and people like Cal Halcyon are not going to offer you anything in return—they’re just going to take. How far will you go to keep what’s yours, Scout? This could get ugly.”

  “I….”

  “I’ve got your back. I just want you to know that.”

  Scout shrugged the conversation away and went back to fetch the three-wheeler.

  After a second he frowned and stared back at his friend. “You do realize you got that whole story ass-backwards, right? The moral was that you’re supposed to work now and play later, not that you can play all you want and let someone else save your ass. The grasshopper is not a valid lifestyle choice.”

  “Eh,” Beck said.

  ****

  Finding the right person in the right place at the right time isn’t always a stroke of luck. Sometimes it’s just the Universe spoiling for a good fight.

  “Hello Cal.”

  Cal Halcyon jerked at the sound of Scout’s voice. He lost balance and stumbled. Scout had found him skulking in an alley between office buildings, far enough away from his family to flag Scout’s interest.

  “Why, Scout,” Cal said. Red-cheeked joviality settled across his face like a snapped bed sheet. “Didn’t hear you coming up.”

  “Guess not,” Scout said. “Beck and I just got back from a road trip.”

  “Have you now. I hope it was successful, son.”

  Scout was close enough that he could smell the fumes of moonshine rising off Cal. Scout treated Cal to a rare smile, something Scout almost never did because it pulled the damaged muscles of his face in uncommon directions.

  “No,” he said. “It wasn’t successful. Someone got to our score and took all our batteries.”

  “That’s awful,” Cal said, and shook his head. “Damn raiders. That’s just a crying
shame, son.”

  “It could have been worse. I visited Isaac on the way back. If anyone local took the batteries, they won’t be selling them in Thorn Creek. Isaac promised me that much.”

  It was a bald lie, but it had its desired effect. The manufactured friendliness dropped from Cal’s face. Scout could almost see the gears working as Cal said, “Of course, me and my boys have been scavenging too. I hope there won’t be any problems if we find batteries ourselves. They’re heck to move, so I’d hate to think we’d waste all that effort only to run into trouble selling them.”

  “Must be some pretty big batteries you’re looking to scavenge,” Scout said softly.

  Cal must have realized he’d slipped up a half second later. He didn’t make it worse by saying anything else.

  “Do you want to know how I see it, Cal? Want to know how I see the world? I think that all of us—everyone, here, in town, in the American refugee camps in Mexico, everyone—are just eating scraps off a table that’s slowly rising out of our reach. Sooner or later, the end of civilization is going to catch up with us. But that day isn’t today. Today, there is plenty of treasure to find if you’re smart enough to know where to look. And I’m really not okay with you riding the coattails of my smarts. I’ll expect my batteries stacked in front of my building by the end of the week.”

  “Is that so,” Cal said flatly.

  “You stole from me. That’s so.”

  “Must have missed your bill of sale, son,” Cal said. “Must have overlooked your receipt. I’d say that steal is a harsh word.”

  “My God understands harsh, and I think yours does too. End of the week, Cal. Trust me, you don’t want to make an issue of this.”

  Scout walked away.

  Part iv

  Two days after the events in Wendell, Scout’s scar started itching.

  He went to the roof because it was drizzling, and cold drizzle usually felt nice against his cheek. He was up there, scratching the hard, ridged flesh, when he caught sight of an electric blue blob. His gaze tracked over to it just in time to see it vanish into a cement pipe on the south side of the Park.