“One day,” she promised herself, “I’ll find Trent again.” When he saw Anna, she wouldn’t be tied to her family, helping to protect her brother, mother and father. She’d be stronger. He might hardly recognize her, but he’d love what he saw.
Anna looked out over Miseracordia Drive and surveyed a few stragglers on three-wheeled bicycles pedalling up the street. She studied the sky. The wind had shifted away from them. The dark cloud reflected a red glow from the flames of the city beneath, but the roads east would soon be engulfed in flame. A wall of flame was not coming to take her home at the moment, but the Spencers would have to head north beyond the fires before they could begin the trek east.
“They haven’t needed me, but they will,” she said. Anna spoke to herself for a long time, plotting the journey in her mind. “It’s time to be Batgirl or Tomb Raider or something.” Tears slipped down her smooth cheeks, but the set of her jaw was still grim and defiant.
The girl didn’t see the curtain move in the front window of the Bendham house. None of the Spencers knew they were being watched from behind lace curtains by anxious, prying eyes.
It wasn’t just old Mrs. Bendham who spied on them. It was Bently, too. He sat in the old lady’s rocker and watched the girl stand at the upstairs window.
Bently stared and rocked, waiting for the signal, with a big yellow-toothed grin.
Human sacrifice and bloody ritual
When Douglas Oliver came through Mrs. Bendham’s front door, Bently straightened at his post in the rocking chair. “Spencer is still up and moving around I see. Too bad you still have an extra mouth to feed over there.”
“Go out the back and over the fence behind the pool,” Oliver said. “Don’t come back until after dark and bring me more gas. I’m worried about the wind shift. In case the wind shifts again, we’re going to need a lot of fuel to get where we’re going.”
Bently stood, his legs braced straight. “If we bug out, where are we going?”
“I’ll tell you when the time comes. Now get to work! Can’t you smell the smoke? If we have to leave, that changes the variables. Go be useful.”
Bently stalked out. Oliver caught his angry look but let it pass. He needed Bently and men like him, at least for now.
When he turned, Mrs. Bendham stood in her bedroom doorway. Pale, she leaned against the doorframe listlessly. The old woman had lost enough weight that her second chin was gone.
“Marjorie. Have a seat. You look tired.”
“I don’t know why. I’ve been sleeping for hours. Before the plague, I never slept enough. Now I feel like I’m catching up on the sleep debt of a lifetime, but I never feel rested. When I wake up, the sheets are twisted around me and I’m soaked in sweat.”
“Dark in here. Maybe we need to make it cheerier.” Oliver turned the dowel on the Venetian blinds, lighting the living room.
“Your man couldn’t keep watch like that so we kept the blind closed.”
“I know.”
“How is it he’s your man, anyway?”
Oliver sat on her couch. A chunk of salty cured meat sat on her glass coffee table, leaving a stain of grease. Flats of bottled water lay before him on the floor. He pulled a TV tray closer and propped one leg up on a short stack of water bottles.
Oliver pulled a leather bag and a small sheet of black felt from his jacket pocket. He turned the bag over to reveal jewels of many colors. He examined each one and sorted them carefully.
“That’s a good question, Marjorie. If Bently were smarter, maybe he wouldn’t work for me. However, he’s still caught up in the remnants of the old economy. Pieces of fancy paper don’t matter anymore. People are still attached to the values of a month ago.” He gestured to the rings, earrings and necklaces and began sorting each piece by type: Gold, diamonds, and other gems.
He reached down and chewed the meat slowly, as he pondered the gems. She couldn’t tell if he was savoring the taste of the meat or admiring his collection, but he looked satisfied in a way that made her uncomfortable.
Oliver caught her look, too. He didn’t miss much. “Marjorie, people should value what they can use and what they can eat. However, I convinced Bently that the principles of the old economy still have value. Well, the ancient economy, really. Trading really hasn’t changed in thousands of years, whether it’s Spanish gold, Indian spices or animal pelts. For years, hucksters have been selling bars of silver and urging people to stash gold away in case the government collapsed. Heh. They still think they can eat gold, maybe. Jewels are portable, but soon? I think a lot of people will give up every piece of gold they have for one goat. The trouble will come when the guy with the goat asks himself why he needs another gold ring.”
“So why do you have all these gold rings, then?”
He smiled. “Because not everybody wises up at the same time. If they did, there’d be no commerce at all.” Oliver pointed at the boxes of water bottles, “I’m preparing for the shift in values. The next economy will be trading cans of food that aren’t expired yet. The next economy after that? Finding someone who is still alive who is a blacksmith. Carpenters are going to be rich again after being devalued for years. The richest man in any town won’t be a politician or somebody who wants to be a boss. It’s the dentists and doctors who will become really wealthy.”
Oliver surprised her by pulling a pack of cigarettes from his jacket and fishing a lighter out of his pants pocket.
“I didn’t know you smoked. I’ve never seen you smoke. Please don’t smoke in my house.”
Oliver ignored her and pulled a cigarette from the pack. He flicked the lighter’s wheel a couple of times and a tiny flame sprouted. He lit his cigarette and took a long drag. “I did quit. I quit for years. I was worried about my health. I was so worried these things would be the death of me someday. But I’m old and I survived the Sutr Virus. It feels like it’s reasonable to relax some old standards of behavior, don’t you think? Live a little. Take more risks. The rules have changed. Our life expectancy isn’t so good, anyway, especially the fewer of us there are. Time to stop and smell the deadly nicotine and cancer-causing chemical agents once in a while. What do you say? Nobody lives forever. Spit in the devil’s eye, Marjorie.” He held the cigarette pack out to her.
The old woman ignored the offer and gathered her housecoat around her, hugging herself. “I heard Bently say we still have another mouth to feed over there. What did he mean by that?”
“What do you mean ‘we’?” He looked up at her as he tore another hunk of the meat with his teeth. He reached for a bright yellow nylon rope and wound it between his shoulder and his elbow in a neat oval. “I’m the one building the tribe so as many of us as possible get to live. Don’t pay attention to Bently. Bently shouldn’t talk at all.”
Mrs. Bendham looked at the floor and hugged herself harder. “I’m sure you’ll save as many of us as possible.” But especially you, she thought. She walked to the kitchen.
She opened the refrigerator door. The old woman had lost track of the number of times she had opened and closed that door. Was it twelve or thirteen times since the power went off? Each time she looked in, she found the same few rectangles of stale cheese and some expired packets of plum sauce and catsup from a forgotten take-out order.
A fat bottle of green relish still squatted on the top shelf — “hot dog-slop,” Al had called it. It was still cool to the touch. Her husband had loved it.
“Be sure to gimme that hot dog-slop, Margie,” he’d always say when they ate the soy frankfurters that were supposed to be better for you but tasted like cardboard. He’d say, “I loves me my Marge and hot dog-slop and the Mets.” Then he’d add, “And when the Mets crap out on me, I’ll always have my Margie and the hot dog-slop and the Yankees! I love ’em all with relish!”
Her dead husband would laugh his grinding cornball laugh that reminded her of her father’s awful jokes. How she had loved her dead husband and his stupid jokes. How easy things had
been, to live with someone for forty years who was so easily amused, so ready with a smile even when there wasn’t anything much to smile about.
Marjorie knew she shouldn’t open and close the fridge door so much now that the power was off. She was wasting what cold was still left in the ice box — Jerry had always called them that long after there were no more ice boxes.
Checking the fridge was her small rebellion, a tiny defiance against Douglas Oliver. He’d taken over her house. His invasion had seemed a friendly gesture at first. Then he said it was too dangerous for her to be alone, so he became a fixture, coming and going at all hours without knocking. Oliver filled her home with supplies but warned her not to touch any of his inventory. He said any inconvenience she suffered was for her own good. He acted like he was the only one with all the answers, if only everyone would simply do as he ordered.
She reached in and touched the plastic bottle again, as if to reassure herself that yes, it was there; yes, it had weight. She’d gotten it for Al. His bottle of relish, old photographs and the smell of his clothes closet was all she had left of her husband. “We never took enough pictures,” she told the empty kitchen.
She didn’t look forward to eating the relish, but it was growing more tempting as the days stretched on. She had never had hunger pangs, not like this. She realized now that, before the plague, she had never waited long enough for hunger pangs to even begin to gnaw. She had run ahead of them to the fridge or the kitchen cupboard, never allowing herself to feel discomfort.
She stared at the bottle of relish. “I wish I’d gone with you, Al. What have I got to look forward to?”
People who knew hunger before the plague knew how to be hungry, subsisting on scraps. Mrs. Bendham now understood how wonderful a fully stocked grocery store really was. She had not been alone in this arrogance and advantage, but there was still some shame in this new knowledge.
Oliver regarded her with disdain, begrudging her needs. “Wait until the real famine hits,” he said. He allowed her a tiny portion of the meat now fouling her coffee table with grease. Oliver picked up an old paring knife and examined the circle of meat. He measured her worth and finally cut her a measly quarter of it. He held it out to her. His eyes told her she wasn’t worth a quarter slice of sausage.
“You can have this much. Chew slowly and maybe you’ll lose another chin. It’ll do you good. Plenty of protein in that.”
She’d eaten it in a rush, trying to slow down, knowing she should try to make it last, but failing. She’d swallowed it down, barely chewing. Then Marjorie Bendham hated herself for the gratitude she felt to the old man for that puny scrap. The hunk of meat slid down into her stomach, thick and hard to digest, feeling cold and heavy in her shrunken gut. It melted away. The hunger remained.
Her self-hatred moved on to something else: hating Douglas Oliver. He sat there, winding another length of rope and eyeing her like a dog begging at his table.
Marjorie knew there was canned food in her garage. She didn’t know how much, but she knew that, with all of Oliver’s nocturnal foraging and dealing, the boxes must have held many treasures. Sometimes she hoped someone would shoot him for looting.
She snuck out to the garage when Oliver was out on his midnight runs. Each dawn, he returned with more supplies, usually with Bently doing the heavy lifting. Oliver was stocking up for a rainy day, as if it wasn’t pouring torrentially right now.
She didn’t know what all the supplies were. He wouldn’t tell her, though Bently had a clipboard and tallied everything up for Oliver. Then the old man double-checked.
At first, Oliver had placated her with talk about his love for Al and how it was now his duty to see that she was safe through this crisis. Her husband had hit golf balls with Oliver, but she hadn’t thought they were as close as her old neighbor claimed. How much fun was hitting a golf ball to a blind man, really?
Marjorie returned to the kitchen to rummage through her cupboards again, finding nothing. Oliver put her canned preserves in a box, sealed it with duct tape and recorded the entry on his clipboard. Oliver warned her to stay away from his supplies. “We’re going to have to leave soon. If you want to be with us when we go, you’ll mind my druthers.”
His warning had infuriated her. The old queen, usually so charming, had moved in, lectured her, raged at her, and finally threatened her in her own home. “Touch any of that reserve and we all die! But you first. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she’d said in a little girl voice she had forgotten, and backed away. He told her the supplies would keep her alive, but only when the time came. She began to think she was pawn to his king in a chess game where only he could see the larger board.
Citing her safety from the Sutr virus, Oliver had forbidden her from visiting the neighbors, even when she thought she’d go crazy if she didn’t walk outside and look at the blue sky. Oliver hadn’t allowed her to step outside her own door, even after Oliver had let the Spencers move into his own home across the street.
It galled her. She’d lived next door to the family for years. She knew the Spencers better than Oliver did. Not well, but they’d shared the same fence and talked amiably, always friendly, though not friends. She’d marched over with cupcakes the day they moved in years ago, the first and the only person in the neighborhood to attempt to make the young family feel welcome.
Mrs. Bendham had watched the Spencer kids grow up: The pretty girl growing to a young woman; that odd little boy growing up into an awkward, somewhat spooky teen who never looked her in the eye.
She searched her cupboards and found only tea. Then inspiration struck. The old woman got on all fours. Her knees creaked and ached and she had to cling to the cabinet to lower herself carefully.
All that was left in the cabinet with the Lazy Susan were an assortment of teas and spices. She pushed her head in further. The kitchen was too dark and she didn’t have a flashlight. Marjorie reached to the back and groped until her hand closed on a smooth, cool tin can. It had fallen to the back of the cabinet from the rotating shelf.
When she brought it out into the light, she found it was an expired can of seafood chowder. It was the white, New England stuff, not that awful, red New York chowder. The thought of it made her mouth water.
If Al were alive, he wouldn’t stand for Oliver’s demands and threats. But Al was dead, burned to a crisp somewhere, his ashes anonymous and in the wind. She resented him for that. He should have lived for her. If he’d loved her more, maybe he would have fought harder to survive. They’d dealt with his blindness and the cancer and his affair with a nurse when they were newly married. But they’d stuck for forty years. Then Al let the flu take him away from her.
She needed her dead husband to tell her what she should do. Instead, she was alone with Oliver and, as angry with him as she was, she was also afraid to tell him to go. If Douglas Oliver left without her, she would truly be alone. She’d be an old woman with no one to help her, no one with whom to talk, worry with and work through the problems of surviving.
Instead, she hid behind her curtains, staring out at the world and only daring sometimes to step out into the backyard at night when Oliver was out. She stared at the stars and wondered what Al would say now that she was a scared old woman, an old widow, ordered around by an old, cranky queen. And was Al now sighted and dancing with that slut of a nurse in some strange heaven?
The electric can opener would have made too much noise and alerted Oliver to what she was doing. Without power, making too much noise had become a non-issue. She dug a manual opener out of the back of a kitchen drawer and hurriedly cranked the tin. It was months past its best before date, but she was too hungry to worry about food poisoning.
Marjorie Bendham sat on the cold kitchen tile as the darkness gathered. She spooned the soup in cold. The chowder was a slimy gel that slid down her throat thickly. This time, she ate slowly.
When she was a little girl she’d sung in the church choir. Long after
she lost interest in the church, she’d stayed so she could sing for an audience. A dimly remembered memory surfaced. She remembered the lavender and lace the old women around her wore, in much the same style as she wore now.
“In prayer,” her old preacher had said, “God doesn’t give you the right answer until you ask the right question.”
She prayed now, more to Al than to God. Looking for answers felt very much like groping for something lost in the dark. Then her mind closed around something cold and she thought, Aha. I’ve finally asked the right question.
Knees cracking and clinging to the kitchen counter, the old woman pulled herself up. Once she was on her feet and steady, Marjorie opened the fridge door again and stared at the relish bottle.
Something clicked over in her mind, like a lever switch closing, completing a circuit. Soon she’d be hungry enough to eat that relish right out of the bottle, smearing her lips green as she greedily sucked it down.
When she became that hungry, she would have to eat Al’s “hot dog-slop”. When that was gone and the hunger pangs returned, Marjorie Bendham resolved to slip a steak knife from her kitchen drawer and, while he slept, she imagined the great satisfaction she would feel when she slit Douglas Oliver’s throat wide. When his blood pumped out in spurting arcs, she would smile again. She might even grab a teacup and drink the old bastard’s blood for good measure. Plenty of protein in that.
The virus spreads, making evil minds
Jack knelt beside Theo. Her husband lay sweating on Douglas Oliver’s living room couch. She thought of a freshly caught fish on a dock, gasping and bewildered, its gills working uselessly. Theo sweated so much, he hadn’t urinated all day. The trip down the front walk had exhausted him.
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