I walk past the Atlantic Acres sign toward the house with the light in the window. I’m aware of how deathly quiet it is. The soles of my shoes sound like gunshots in the silence.
The house is the third one on the street. It’s on the right side of the road, opposite an empty field on the left side. The house number is 2107. I don’t see a street sign. I assume it’s some name like Ocean Boulevard or Palm Tree Way. As I get closer to the house, the light in the window is no longer visible. The window is on the second floor, and the angle precludes me from seeing inside. The garage door is open. It’s probably how whoever’s inside has gotten there. They called the bad guys “perps” onLaw & Order. Mom loved that show, especially theLaw & Order: Special Victims Unit version. When we had a TV, it was all she watched. And it seemed to be on all the time.
I walk slowly into the garage. A silver Subaru is parked to one side. It has New York license plates. That means this is probably a vacation home. That or someone from New York has come to visit. Or, of course, it’s the perp’s car.
I open the door that leads into the house. Sniff the air. There it is, the stench of death. I wait for the smell to soften. It does, if you wait a few moments. I strain to smell anything else. Sweat, cologne, maybe the sting of cigarette smoke. There’s nothing except the smell of human decay.
Step into the house. The air is stuffy but not as heavy as the other buildings I’ve been into. It was winter when General Tsao had come calling. Very few people had opened their windows before they died. The hotter it got outside, the denser the air became inside. Except not in this house. Maybe whoever is inside has cracked a window, trying to air the place out.
I pass through a small mudroom and then the kitchen. Dirty dishes are piled in the sink. Ants and a bunch of maggots are devouring what little remains. There can’t be much left to eat after so much time.
A strange sound rises above the silence. It’s almost rhythmic, a crunching sort of sound like when you rub bare skin across a leather chair. Footsteps? Maybe. But in the silence I’d expect to hear the squeak of floorboards or the slap of shoes on wood. Unless there’s carpet upstairs. If there is, though, I wouldn’t be hearing this sound. Maybe it’s dresser drawers being opened. My heart is racing. There’s one way to find out.
I start up the stairs. They’re wood, with no carpet on them. They make a sharp turn halfway up, leading to the second floor. As I step onto the landing, the stair makes a grotesque screech. Stop dead in my tracks. Listen for the other sound. It hasn’t stopped. If someone is up here, the squeak of the stair should have been like a bomb going off. I continue up the staircase and emerge on the second floor.
There are three bedrooms, one at the front and two at the back. Sunlight dances across the bare hardwood in the front bedroom. The sound is louder up there. More persistent. I hold the crowbar tightly. Walk into the bedroom.
It’s a man, but he isn’t scavenging. He hangs from the ceiling fan by a black belt tied around his neck. The bedroom window is open. The afternoon breeze blows the frail, fragile body to and fro. The belt rubs against the fan blades, creating the sound.
The man has been here awhile. He’s decomposed badly. A pool of dried liquid spreads out on the floor below where he hangs. It’s dried up long ago, and is now just a thick stain. The bedroom is tidy. The bed is made and clothes hang neatly in the open closet. There’s very little dust. The open window hasn’t allowed much to settle.
I lower the crowbar and stare at the man. Try to feel something. Fear, revulsion, sadness, pity. Nothing comes. Six months ago, I would’ve screamed and probably never stopped. I would’ve had nightmares for the rest of my life. Six months is a long time. And I’ve seen a lot worse.
A glint of light catches my eye. The man wears a small silver cross around his leathery neck. As the breeze blows his body, the sun catches the silver. It reflects in the bedroom mirror.
One feelingdoesbegin to percolate as I stare at the dead man hanging from his ceiling fan. It’s only later, days later, as the man’s body keeps swing back and forth through my head, that I finally put a name to the feeling. It’s anger. The light in the window had been another person. I’d so firmly believed it that it couldn’tnot be. As I walked up that squeaky staircase, I braced herself for it. Another person. And the dead man had taken that away from me.
Or is that even it? Am I angry that someone wasn’t there, or that someonecould’vebeen there? That’s a head scratcher. And far too honest a question. I shouldwant to find another survivor. There are practical benefits to it, but that isn’t the reason. Being alone will drive me crazy. Won’t it? Isn’t human contact what keeps us rooted in reality? Having a routine, a conversation, a fight, don’t those things prove you actually exist? If no one hears you talking, are you actually saying anything?
I can’t answer that. Even if I could, would the answer have any meaning? How do I even know I’m the survivor? Maybe I’m dead, and everything around me is just my soul’s concoction. That’s an unsolvable problem. There’s no way to prove my existence one way or the other. All I know is filtered through my own consciousness. My life, or my death, or some crazyWizard of Oz fever dream, it’s all a first person experience. Which means that anything I see or feel or hear or taste, it ‘s all up for interpretation.
If that’s the case, if reality is up for grabs, I’ve chosen a pretty good one. Loneliness and being alone, they aren’t the same thing. I’m alone. I didn’t choose to be. Or maybe I did. Who knows?Yousure as hell aren’t helping me answer that question, or any other. If I’m dead, I’ve chosen isolation over wandering into some bright tunnel of light. But I don’tfeeldead. I’veseen death. Smelled it. That’s real. Which means that I’m real too, right?
Six months ago, that wasn’t even a question I imagined I could ask. Six months, it’s definitely proving to be a very long time.
Lights
Can’t sleep. No,guess I don’twanna’ sleep. I keep thinking about the man hanging from the ceiling fan. Was he sick? That’s the question that keeps tumbling around my head. Was he sick? The easiest answer is yes, of course he was. Probably saw what was happening to everyone else, decided he didn’t want to share their fate. Case closed.
But it’s not the easy answer that’s chewing on me. I saw what General Tsao did to my family. I watched the progression of the disease. It didn’t take very long for everyone to become too weak to get out of bed. If the Ceiling Fan Man was sick, he would’ve had to decide to kill himself pretty early on. His bed was made, his room was neat. No snotty tissues lying around. No sign that he’d vomited, which was also one of the earliest manifestations of the disease.
The hard answer is that he wasn’t sick. That he was immune, like me. Maybe the house was his. Or maybe he’d found it abandoned.
That’s the part that’s keeping me awake. Not the horror movie monster his dead body turned into. But the fact that he did it. He did that thing I haven’t done.
If hewas immune, he’d seen the same things I’ve seen. His New York license plate means he’d made a similar choice as mine. Left wherever he was, made the journey here. Buried people he loved. Probably some he didn’t even know. In short, he’d survived. Like me.
There’s no one out there. I get that. No, that’s too glib. Iunderstand that. Deeply and profoundly. The echo of my shoes bouncing back at me from the empty buildings and storefronts in Charleston is like a drumbeat in my ears. No one, no one, no one. Empty, empty, empty. The weight of the emptiness feels similar to the times Grace used to sit on me when we were younger. We’d fight, she’d tickle me until I cried and then sit on my chest. I could still breathe, but I had to consciously do so. That’s the same emptiness. Heavy enough to feel but not quite heavy enough to suffocate me.
Ceiling Fan Man was too bloated and gross for me to figure out how old he was. And there was no way I was going to fish around for his wallet. His hair was light brown, which meant he was younger than a senior citizen. Did he have a family? Kids? Is that what he’
d seen, what he’d done? I buried my family. I watched them die. But I didn’t watch my children die. What’s the difference? Is there one?
If it had been Dad or Mom who had been immune, if they’d had to watch all of us die, would they have been able to survive it? I’ve seen it happen before. A few years before we left Flint, the son of one of Dad’s last holdout clients was shot by someone driving by in a car. I tagged along with Dad on a Saturday and I remember standing awkwardly in the woman’s kitchen as Dad worked on the furnace. The woman had an empty way of talking, like she was whispering to me from the far end of a long tube. As horrible a thing as it was, having her little boy shot to death, she was still alive. She had still talked to me. She’d gotten her furnace fixed.
“Life goes on, Squirt,” Dad told me as we drove home.
“That’s a silly answer,” I replied. Dad laughed.
“I guess it is,” he said. “I think what it means is that you can survive all kinds of things, even the worst thing you can imagine.”
“Why would you want to?” I asked.
“I’m not sure you have a choice,” Dad told me. “I mean, you do, I guess you always do, but y’know… and I just realized you’re ten.”
“Dad,” I shook my head.
“Your vocabulary makes me forget sometimes,” he said, and glanced over at me. “Quit reading those books. It just confuses me.”
Maybe I just want to believe they’d both have just fallen down and died on the spot, overwhelmed by grief. Maybe Ineedto believe that. I like the idea. ButI’mstill here. I guess lifedoes go on, Squirt.
I guess life is gonna’ take me outside now. The roar of the waves is what I imagine a hymn to sound like. Sometimes I wish we’d been religious. Dakota Macrin’s family went to a yelling and screaming sort of church. One of the weekends I slept over, her parents just assumed I was going with them. I’ve never been against religion, exactly. I just don’t like getting yelled at. I did like the singing. And I liked the look on Dakota’s freckled face when she sang with them. It was a kind of simple happiness I’ve never felt. Not even on one of those good Christmas mornings.
It’s cold enough for me to have to put on one of the sweatshirts I took from Heusten’s in Columbia. Some sports team I don’t recognize. Not that I would. Go, sports.
The sky is an explosion of stars and light. That’s been one of my biggest and most consistent surprises, how bright the sky is at night. We had a taste of it in Detroit, Dad and I did. But nothing like this. I suppose I’ll stop being surprised by it someday. I hope not.
The starlight reflects on the surface of the ocean, and the motion of the waves is almost as if the sky is breathing. In and out, in and out. I sit down on the beach. My toes melt into the cool sand. The wind blows my hair into my eyes. Maybe I’ll give myself a haircut. Or figure out how to wear a ponytail. It looks so easy to do. Pull my hair back from my face and off my neck, tie it up with one of those elastic things. I don’t know, maybe it’s because my hair is too crazy, but I’ve never been able to keep a ponytail up for very long. Clumps of hair keep falling out. I end up looking like I got my head caught in a spider web.
Ceiling Fan Man isn’t what’s bothering me. Not him directly. I don’t know him. He’s just another empty body to me. I’ve seen enough empty bodies to not care about one more. I don’t even know if hewas immune. Not that it matters now, anyway. Dead is dead, whether by a belt around your neck or a microscopic critter.
I can make that same choice.
Yeah, that’s what’s really messing up my head. It’s not like I haven’t thought about it. You and I have talked about it. But there’s a difference between having that option andseeing that option, y’know? The same comparison between learning about something in a book and experiencing it for reals. Because now, for better or worse, Ceiling Fan Man has shown me what that option looks like.
What wouldyou do? Stupid question, right? I know what you’d do because you’ve already done it. You’re alive. Same choice I have. You’ve made yours. I know you made it because I’m talking to you. I guess, even if you’re only in my head, that’s the same thing, right? Even make believe, you’re alive somewhere. And that’s a choice.
There’s something moving in the waves. Beyond the cove, close to shore. There, again. Breaking the waves. Another beside it. It’s dolphins. I can see their beaks as they jump the waves. Another one, three total, and they’re moving across the water together. A puff of spray from one of their blowholes catches the starlight. It looks like stardust.
Where did they come from? Have they always been out there and I just haven’t seen them yet? Or are they on their way from somewhere else, like me? The roar of the waves masks any sound they’re making.
What was that? Caught it out of the corner of my eye. A flash of light. Or lights. Scan the horizon. Maybe a tall wave catching the starlight? No, there it is again. Shimmering lights, like a fire in the distance. A fire on the water?
Maybe it’s an oil rig. I know there are oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. I watched a show once about that oil rig that caught fire, spilled all that gunk and filth. Are there any oil rigs this far north in the Atlantic?
The lights flicker again, disappear. If it’s a fire, what does that mean for me? Will there be oil spills on the beach?
A boat?
No, not a boat. Aship. A big one. Far away, almost past the horizon. What’s it doing out there? Where did it come from?
Or maybe it’s just my eyes telling me I’m too tired to make decisions. I wish I had a pair of binoculars. Add that to the list for tomorrow.
My heart skips for a second. Almost let myself believe I saw a ship. The lights, if they even exist, are gone. So are the dolphins. Thosewere real. At least I can still tell the difference.
Why do I keep thinking someone’s going to show up? I’ve walked halfway across the country. Bears and deer and cougars, oh my, we’ve sure got those. But people are decidedly endangered.Extinct, even. Except not quite. I’m the Albatross. Or the unicorn. Or Bigfoot. I’ll take the unicorn. Maybe that way I could fart rainbows.
I’m cold. I’m tired. And I’m sad. Those are pretty simple words for what I’m feeling. But my feelings have become pretty simple things.
JULY
Hunter
The gun smells like grease. It’s heavy but feels almost breakable, as if the pieces that make it up aren’t fully connected. The barrel is long. The gun is gray.
Wildlife has become more prevalent. Deer mostly, wandering first through the wooded areas and then into the streets and then, one day, surprising me inside a grocery store. Birds, too, have started to roost everywhere. I saw animals on my trip, of course. The bears in Cincinnati, the cougar in Columbia. But for the most part, animals have been scarce. I assumed that most of the animals had died, like the people. Maybe it was the smell of death that had kept them away. Or maybe long-held memories of the dangers of cars and humans. It took some time, but it looks like the animals have finally gotten the memo. All the humans are gone. The world belongs to the animals once again.
What I don’t see are dogs or cats. I’ve seen enough dead ones, curled up on sofas or sprawled at their dead humans’ feet. I assumed General Tsao got them, too. But who can tell?
I have no interest in guns. I’ve never even picked one up until this morning. My family didn’t hunt. We camped, but just for a night or two and we always brought our own pre-packaged food. There were enough kids in school who’d been fascinated by guns. I found those kids creepy. It was usually boys, the kind who wore camo or wrestling T-shirts. My only real experience with guns came during random school shooting preparedness drills. The whole concept is foreign. You pick up a gun to kill something. Why would I want to do that?
The idea entered my mind unexpectedly. I was sitting on the stoop of a food co-op in North Charleston. My bike trailer was full of canned fruit and tins of SPAM. Canned food is abundant. There are easily a hundred more shops in the city I haven’t scavenged yet. And tho
usands of houses. The beach house is starting to look like the food collection drives we held at school around Thanksgiving. And the food is okay. Food is a means to an end, after all. It isn’t supposed to be exciting. That’s what books are for.
There’s a soft rustle in the bushes beside me. Three deer step out onto the street. They’re delicate animals. Their thin legs and tiny hooves don’t look functional. But upon closer inspection, their powerful haunches and muscular torsos speak to a hidden strength. I’ve seen them run. Two, three leaps and they disappear, their long, frail-looking legs propelling them like catapults.
The deer don’t appear to be concerned with me. I sit very still. Two of the deer are small, half the size of the third. Babies. Born this spring. And now out foraging with mom.
The doe is aware of me. Her tall ears twitch slightly. Her enormous brown eyes make quick, sidelong glances in my direction. The fawns become engrossed in a patch of grass across the street. With no one around to mow, lawns are overgrown and weedy. The regular late afternoon rain only makes them grow faster.
Even as the thought enters my head, I felt dirty. This beautiful family of deer, not hurting anything, and the first thought that comes to mind is having a barbecue?
“You’re a sick puppy.” The doe pops her head straight up at the sound of my voice. The doe doesn’t look back at me, but her ears piston as if electrified.
But the seed is planted. Even as I warm beans and canned pasta over my propane camping stove, my thoughts are never far from meat. I know what meat is.
“This used to be a cow, you know,” Grace scoffed. “Big weepy eyes, udders, spots on its belly.”
“And now it’s a burger,” Mom replied. “That’s called the circle of life.”
“Well, I’m not eating it,” Grace said, and pushed her plate away dramatically. Meat was a luxury in our house. Even the cheap, greasy ground beef we had to eat the same day we bought it, according to the expiration date.
The First Year Page 9