Brennan kicks open one of the double doors, then scrambles to block its backswing. A ridiculous expenditure of energy. I follow him out the door, emerging into the meat department. To our left I see open shelving that should be refrigerated but isn’t. The signs I cannot read but anyone who’s ever done the shopping for a household, even a small one, knows: beef, pork, chicken, kosher. A smattering of festering packages, plastic wrap bulging with the gasses of rot. And though I’ve smelled far worse than this, I pull my shirt over my nose. Perpendicular to the rotting meat is aisle upon aisle of nonperishables, far from fully stocked, but still ample. “What do you think, canned soups?” I ask.
“What?” replies Brennan.
I repeat myself, articulating carefully through my shirt.
“No,” he says. “I want Lucky Charms.”
Beneath the fabric, I allow myself a smile as I follow him to the cereal aisle. The supermarket is dim, but not as dark as I’d expected. Light creeps in from ceiling vents and skylights in the produce section’s vaulted ceiling. The floor is dusty, and I can see shiny trails winding through the matte covering. The trails are dotted with tiny, dark pellets. At the end of the nearest aisle there are stacks of Rice-A-Roni, ten for ten dollars. Several of the boxes have been chewed through, their contents spilled onto the floor to mingle with more rodent feces.
I hear Brennan stop, then a sliding sound as he extracts a box of what I assume are his coveted Lucky Charms. The sound of cardboard tearing, then plastic. I leave the endcap display and catch up to him. He’s munching on handfuls of oats and marshmallow, a blissful smile laid atop his chewing mouth.
“I bet we can find some powdered milk if you want an actual bowl,” I tell him. His eyes go wide with possibility and he nods, cheeks bulging. “But first let’s see what I want,” I say. Though several shelves are empty, the aisle still contains a slew of brands. I’m surprised sponsors have allowed this cohabitation upon the shelves. But I suppose they can easily blur whatever brands they want to blur. Lucky Charms is made by General Mills, so I run my eyes along the Kellogg’s brands, just because. And then I change my mind—do they have Kashi? A moment later, I find the shelf I want, the brand, and then the product. Two boxes left. I grab one and then we head off in search of powdered milk.
I’m about to dump the milk into my little cooking pot, when I think, Screw it. We might as well use what’s here. I lead Brennan to the paper-goods aisle and grab a pack of plastic bowls, followed by some spoons. We take our supplies to a display of plastic outdoor furniture surrounded by empty coolers, netted beach toys, and excited signage—SALE SALE SALE! I light a couple candles and we dine seated under an entirely unnecessary umbrella. The cereal I chose is sweeter than I remember.
After Brennan finishes his third bowl of Lucky Charms, he wipes his face and asks, “This is a good place to spend the night, isn’t it?”
He’s clearly seeking my approval. “Sure is,” I say. And then—why? I don’t know, it just comes out—“Smells pretty bad and I’m concerned about all the mouse feces, but other than that it’s good.” Bitch, I think, as I watch Brennan’s face fall. I want to apologize, but for what? He’s a cameraman, not my friend, and he’s not as young as he looks. I can’t apologize. Not directly. Instead I say, “Let’s explore some more. Figure out what we want to take with us for the final push.”
“Final push?” he asks.
“Yeah, we’re not far. Two or three days.” Miles, I think. So little distance separates us now.
“And when we get there, what happens?”
He probably knows that better than I do. My mood sours. For all my imagining, I know there must be a final Challenge waiting, something more intense than covering distance. Something the audience, the cameras, will find irresistible. At the thought I take out my lens and scan the ceiling. The cameras are easy to find, but I can’t tell if they’re normal security cameras or if the show has put up more sophisticated ones. Of the two I can see, one is pointed at us and the other toward the inactive cash registers. Because something is going to happen over there or for atmosphere? I’ll ready myself for the former. This is the perfect place for a Challenge, after all, because it feels secure.
Brennan and I comb the aisles. At first I don’t even consider searching the produce section, because it’s all gone to mulch, but then a display of potatoes catches my eye. Root vegetables—they last for ages. With a kind of shy hopefulness, I approach the potatoes. Getting close, it’s hard to tell. I almost draw my lens from my pocket, but then reach out a hand instead, preparing myself for rot.
There’s no way they’ll allow me this.
My fingers meet firm brown skin. The sensation is so unexpected I don’t trust it. I squeeze, lightly, then harder, and still the potato doesn’t give.
It’s not rotten.
I must have done something right, something incredible, to earn such a prize. The banner, I think. This is my reward for climbing the downed tree, for bypassing the motel. For being both brave and prudent.
I jog to the front of the store and grab a handbasket. I hear Brennan call after me, but I don’t answer. Within moments I’m picking through the potatoes, finding the “best” by some standard I can’t name. Really, I just want to touch them all. Then I move to the adjacent stand. Onions. Garlic. Ginger. For all the fabricated decay around me, all I smell is spice. Flavor. The next half hour is a manic blur as I scour the aisles and collect ingredients: lentils, quinoa, cans of sliced carrots and green beans, peas. Olive oil. Diced, stewed tomatoes. I attack the spice aisle—ground black pepper, thyme, rosemary, cumin, turmeric, dried parsley, red pepper flakes. The flavors don’t go together, I know that, and yet I want them all.
There are plastic-wrapped packages of firewood at the front of the store, five logs per pack. I clear a space on the floor near where we ate our cereal, then start a fire inside a dinky charcoal grill. “Isn’t that going to set off the sprinklers?” asks Brennan.
“There’s no power,” I tell him. I have no idea if sprinkler systems need electricity to work, but they’ve disabled everything else in this forsaken world. I’ll keep the fire small, just in case. I arrange the grill’s metal grate atop the flames, then set a pot of lentils to boil.
Next, I place a potato on a cutting board. I pause and lift my knife. I breathe out and slice through the spotty skin. The two halves fall aside, revealing a sheen of moisture on the interior flesh. I sit on a plastic chair, staring at the halved potato on its plastic cutting board beneath this plastic umbrella and feel a stirring like joy. Which is ludicrous; it’s just a potato. But there’s something about its organic realness amid all the plastic and preservatives that strikes me as extraordinarily beautiful.
It’s nice to feel this way—even over a potato—but it also makes me nervous. I’m like a turtle pushing her head into the light while predators still peck at her shell. It’s a stupid move, I’m putting myself in danger, and yet—I need to feel this. I need to know that I’m still capable of joy. I brush the halved potato with my hand, and I give in.
First I grin, then I whistle. It’s a nothing tune, full of halting trills and looping, lifting patterns. Not a song, an outpouring. I’m not musical; it’s the best I can do. I dice the potato, and another, and am about to toss them into the boiling water with the lentils when I think—No, home fries. I hurry back to the cooking-gear aisle and grab a frying pan. I dice an onion, mince four large garlic cloves, green sprouts and all. Digging my hand into an oven mitt, I hold the pan over the grill, heating a swirl of olive oil. Once it’s hot, I dump the potatoes, the onion, the garlic all inside the pan at once. The sizzle, the smell; I laugh. I sprinkle a hearty covering of black pepper and a few red pepper flakes, toss it all with a flick of my wrist, then cover the pan and leave the home fries to cook. I chop more onions and garlic, peel some ginger just to smell it, then into the lentil pot it all goes, followed by the canned carrots, beans, and peas once I drain them. The tomatoes I dump in juice and all. At least a tablespoon
of dried thyme, more pepper, both red and black, then at first just a dash of rosemary, then another. And—why not?—a single broad bay leaf. I uncover the home fries, give them a stir with a plastic spatula.
Suddenly Brennan is at my side and I’m happy to see him. “That smells great,” he says.
“Why don’t you see if you can find some canned chicken to toss in?”
“On it!” He hurries off.
It’s dark in the store now. My cooking area is well lit from the fire, but only a hint of moon and starlight enters from the vents above. I have no concept of how much time has passed since we entered. It simultaneously feels like only a few minutes and many hours.
Brennan returns and dumps half a dozen cans of cooked chicken breast on the table. I peel off the tops of two and scoop the contents into the lentil stew, which is thick now, bubbling and topped with white foam. I give the lentils another few minutes to cook, then pour in half a bag of quinoa. “It’ll be ready in fifteen or twenty minutes,” I say.
“What about those?” Brennan asks, nodding toward the home fries. I give them a stir and poke one with a plastic fork.
“Almost done.” I leave the cover off so they can brown.
“I was thinking,” he says. “What if we collect all the kitchen towels and stuff, use them to pad the chairs for sleeping?”
An hour or two ago I probably would have dismissed the idea as unnecessary, but now it tickles me. I agree, and Brennan begins hefting armfuls of tiny towels over from their aisle. He tears off the packaging and dumps them onto a pair of beach lounge chairs.
“There might be beach towels somewhere,” I say. “We can look after we eat.”
He nods, then sits across from me. I scoop a hefty portion of potatoes onto a paper plate and hand it to him. Remarkably, he waits until I’ve served myself before eating. Then he’s like a vacuum, steadily inhaling. I hesitate, though, relishing the smell.
“How are they?” I ask.
His answer is mangled by his refusal to stop shoveling food into his mouth, but I think he says, “Awesome.”
I pierce a piece of potato and onion with my plastic fork. I lift the fork and take my first bite, allowing the food to sit between my tongue and the roof of my mouth for a moment. The give of the potato’s flesh, the resistance of its browned skin, the tang of lightly charred garlic, the sweetness of caramelized onion. I’ve tasted this same dish countless times since childhood, and yet I’ve never appreciated it like this. It’s ambrosial. All it needs is—I put down my fork. “One second,” I say, and I jog off into the darkened store. I can’t read the aisle signs, but spot an endcap with pancake mix and turn in. A moment later I have it, a small jug of “real Vermont maple syrup.” I haven’t put maple syrup on home fries since I was a kid; that was how my dad always made them, and as an adult I decided to cut out that extra sweetness.
When I get back to the table, Brennan has finished his potatoes and is eyeing those left in the pan. “Go ahead,” I say as I crack open the maple syrup’s cap. Just a drizzle, that’s all I want. The thinnest dribble atop my portion, maybe a teaspoon’s worth. I clunk the bottle onto the table and stir my potatoes with my fork. The next bite I take is pure comfort, a composite of every positive moment of my childhood. My parents are reservoirs of love, my life is made of toys, sunshine, and maple. It’s a sensation of memory rather than memory itself. I know my childhood was never that easy, but for a moment I allow myself to feel like it was.
Brennan is refilling his plate. I reach over and drizzle syrup over his portion too. He looks at me, surprised—about my sharing or the syrup itself, I don’t know. “Trust me,” I say, and then I think: hot chocolate. I want hot chocolate next. I stand, glancing at the lentil stew and giving it a stir. The quinoa hasn’t popped yet. I head back to the aisles and return with a box of Swiss Miss, a teakettle, and another gallon jug of water. I tear the packaging off the kettle, fill it, and set it on the grill. I forgot to get cups, though. I turn back toward the aisles.
Bang!
The violent metallic sound rings out from the front of the store. I turn, harried. I don’t see anything in the muddled dark where the cash registers rest. Bang, again, like thunder, and I’m frozen. Brennan appears beside me. Only when I hear the sound a third time am I able to puzzle out the source. Something—someone—is outside, beating on the metal shutters.
18.
Zoo’s group has been walking downstream for half a mile, searching for where their target left the water.
“You think we missed it?” asks Rancher.
“Probably,” says Zoo. “I mean, why would he stay in the water this long? And we should have seen another sign by now if he did. Right?”
“How much time do we have left?” asks Waitress.
Zoo looks toward the sun. She’s been told one can estimate the time by how far the sun is from the horizon, but that’s as much as she knows. She hazards a guess. “An hour?” The correct answer is: seventy-six minutes. They have seventy-six minutes left to find Timothy, and almost two miles to go.
They decide to double back. Approaching from a new angle, Rancher sees it—a snapped branch with a red smear, from where Timothy pulled himself onto a slightly raised bank and reentered the woods. Zoo and Waitress are on the opposite side of the stream from Rancher. They make their way over, balancing on the rocks. Rancher helps Zoo hop the last few steps, then reaches out for Waitress. Before she can take his hand, her left foot slips into the ankle-high water.
“Dammit,” she says. A moment later she’s back on land, shaking out her wet foot. She sits on a rock and unties her shoe.
“What are you doing?” asks Zoo.
“I can’t walk like this.” Waitress slips off her shoe, then her soaked cotton sock, which is yellowed and ringed with brown. She wriggles her toes; her green nail polish glints in the sun. She wrings out her sock. “Do we have time to let it dry?” she asks. Zoo and Rancher exchange a look. “Guess not.” Waitress grimaces as she pulls on the damp sock, followed by her sneaker. She stands and her frown deepens. “Wet feet are the worst.”
“We’re probably almost there,” says Zoo. “You won’t have to deal with it for long.” Her tone is consoling, but she’s anxious to keep moving. It’s harder for her to smile at Waitress than it used to be.
“I bet Cooper’s group found their guy hours ago,” says Waitress, following her teammates into the woods.
“Emery didn’t say order mattered,” Rancher replies over his shoulder. “Just that we get there before sunset.”
Zoo calls back to them both, “Yeah, I think we—”
“Goddammit!” shouts Waitress. Rancher and Zoo turn to find her hopping on her wet foot and muttering additional profanities. Their cameraman catches disdain painted across Zoo’s face, but the editor won’t use the shot.
“What happened?” asks Zoo.
“I think I broke my toe.” Waitress sits on the ground, tears in her eyes, her top lip pinched tightly between her teeth. She reaches for her dry foot and cradles it in her hands.
“What did you trip over?” Zoo sees twigs and some small rocks, but nothing hard or heavy enough to cause Waitress’s ear-splitting pain.
“I don’t know, but it hurt.” The camera saw: a root popping up from the earth and obscured by leaves. “My feet are fucked,” says Waitress.
Rancher kneels by her. “Take off your shoe, let’s have a look.”
An eighth-inch piece of Waitress’s big toenail is cracked, jutting upward. Blood wells from the wound, but Waitress wiggles the toe just fine. “That ain’t so bad,” says Rancher. “A Band-Aid ought to do it.”
Waitress is crying now, quietly but openly. She fumbles with her pack and pulls out her first-aid kit. Rancher pinches a piece of gauze around her toe until the bleeding stops, then deftly smears the toenail with antibiotic ointment and wraps it in a Band-Aid. He relaxes as he tends to Waitress, babying her as he would his daughter.
Zoo watches his careful tending and Waitress’s we
t eyes. “Stubbed toes suck,” she says, just to say something. Once the toe is bandaged and Waitress makes no move to put her shoe back on, Zoo’s limited sympathy fades to nothing.
Waitress is feeling more than the pain of her stubbed toe. She’s feeling the frustration of her tired muscles, her body’s desperate need for caffeine and sugar, the dampness of her left foot like her spirits themselves have been soaked through. And now that she’s crying, she can’t seem to stop. “Sorry.” She sniffles. “I just need a minute.”
Most viewers will not understand why it is Rancher, not Zoo, comforting her. That Zoo stayed away that night at the campfire was excusable—there were two other women already handling Waitress—but now? Isn’t Zoo the one whose chromosomes cry out an unavoidable need to soothe and comfort? Isn’t Zoo the one biologically adapted to suckle young? Why isn’t she the one holding Waitress’s trembling hand?
The explanation most viewers will jump to is as common an assumption as maternal instinct: female jealousy. Waitress is younger, skinnier, and prettier, after all. But Zoo doesn’t care that Waitress is pretty, or skinny, or young. All she cares about is that she’s delaying their team. She would be equally annoyed at a man doing the same.
The minutes tick by as Waitress struggles to stop crying. She’s trying, really trying, but her body defies her will, and Rancher’s fatherly hand on her back only makes matters worse. She wants him to ignore her, so she can pull herself together. Thirteen minutes pass between Waitress stubbing her toe and being ready to move. The editor will portray the delay in less than a minute, but will cut in images of the setting sun to make it seem like she sat there for much longer, like she cried for hours.
The Last One Page 23