by Noah Mann
“Anything?” Elaine asked, shouting from where she and Neil waited.
“I don’t know!”
I focused again on the top of the turret, taking hold of a grab handle on the largest hatch, pulling upward, my arms straining, palm clasped around the searing metal. The barrier to the point of entry didn’t budge.
Shifting position to the left I tried the other hatch atop the turret, a small 7.62 mm machinegun mounted ahead of it, also loaded, and also unfired. I jerked the handle of this hatch, with no different result. The tank was buttoned up tight.
What did that mean, I wondered? Did it mean that someone had to be inside to secure the hatch? That someone was inside? Or that they once had been, with just their wasting, baked remains left?
I rose to my feet atop the turret and looked to my friends, shaking my head. They walked the short distance and stood alongside the tank as I focused my attention on the town we’d been heading for. Neil tilted against the side of the massive vehicle as I took my binoculars out and scanned the way ahead.
“What can you see?” Elaine asked.
“That we better keep it under thirty to avoid a ticket,” I joked.
From my raised position, that was about all I could see, a speed limit sign, and beyond it the familiar knots of dead trees, grey trunks and barren limbs. Then buildings. Scattered about the sparsely populated tract like so many of the small towns we’d passed, or passed through. Cars sat abandoned on and off the narrow streets. No flags flew that I could see. No stars and stripes. No tricolor banner of the apparent invaders.
The place looked as dead as the whole of the world that surrounded it.
“I don’t see any movement,” I said.
I put my binoculars away and climbed down. Neil straightened, standing tall. Or as tall as he could manage. I’d checked the wound he’d received from the charging man in Manila, and there was no sign of infection. Then again, I wasn’t a doctor, and neither was Elaine, though we didn’t need any advanced degree to know that my friend was suffering.
“We’re going to hit the jackpot up that way,” Neil said. “I can feel it.”
I smiled, wanting to believe him, but wanting more to buoy his optimism, blind as it might be. He needed that right now. We all did.
“The buffet awaits,” I said.
This time Neil led off. Elaine and I held back about ten yards, matching his slow pace side by side.
“He started to cough last night,” she said, keeping her voice down.
“I didn’t hear that.”
“You were dead to the world.”
That was true. I slept deeply and dreamed of lush jungles along glorious white sand shores. The land green, the water blue, the sky endless, pure and perfect.
“He hasn’t coughed today,” I said.
“It sounded bad,” she told me.
I looked to my friend, pushing on, pushing himself, and us, toward our destination. The tiny burg ahead was just a blip on the map. A potential waystation. From here we would move on.
If we could.
“He needs food,” I said.
Elaine didn’t nod. Didn’t agree or disagree. She simply accepted my statement of fact as it was spoken and offered no commentary, which spoke volumes to me about the conflict, the guilt that was roiling within.
“I understand why you did what you did,” I said. “You gave her time.”
Elaine stared straight ahead. Right at Neil’s back as he walked on.
“I couldn’t leave her with nothing,” she said. “Even though I knew...”
She didn’t have to finish the sentence. Even though she knew it wouldn’t last. That the MREs left behind would run out quickly. That the child, the girl, little Emma, would die.
“I just couldn’t,” Elaine repeated.
I reached out and guided her close as we walked, shoulder to shoulder now.
“We’ll make it,” I told her.
“I know.”
We walked on, following Neil into town. Matching his pace until he stopped and waved us forward.
“What is it?” I asked as we reached him.
He didn’t say anything. Then again, he didn’t have to. I simply tracked his gaze to what had seized his attention and saw what had been dragged to the middle of the street in front of the town’s gas station.
“Is that...”
Elaine didn’t finish the question. But I knew the answer.
“Yes,” I said. “It is.”
Sixteen
The large red locker lay in the street, the lid open, piles of bodies around it, weapons in decaying hands or lying close. Guns. Knives. Pipes. A pickup truck sat atop the sidewalk nearby, hood caved in where it had smashed into a telephone pole. Bullet holes riddled the windshield and the back window. Its lift gate was down, the bed empty.
“What the hell happened here?”
Neil might not have asked that question if he’d been thinking more clearly. If the sharpness hadn’t been edged from his thoughts by the struggle his body was suffering through. To me, and to Elaine, I suspected, it was somewhat apparent what had transpired here.
“I think a plan went awry,” I said.
“Food distribution turned to riot,” Elaine added.
Neil caught on. He walked forward, AK held a bit more at the ready now, though there was almost no likelihood of a threat here. The condition of the bodies made it plain that whatever violence had occurred here was six months in the past, or more.
“They brought it in in the back of the truck,” Neil said, stopping just short of the worst of the scene, withering corpses mere inches from his boots. “Then it went south.”
The starving wanted more for themselves. Parents wanted more for their children. The greedy wanted more because they wanted more.
Simply put, there wasn’t enough ‘more’ to go around. And whatever ‘more’ there’d been had been scooped up, taken, and used to sustain someone. Or someones. The empty red locker told the story of at least that one victor in the war that had been waged here.
“You think the tank out there is related to this?” Neil asked, wondering.
“I don’t know,” I said.
My lack of an answer, or any attempt at one, seemed to frustrate him. But that was the way of this world. Of this life. There were unknowns that would remain that. Explanations were lost with the last breath of the final witness to what had happened here.
“Maybe it was protecting the food delivery,” Neil suggested.
He stumbled forward, suddenly lightheaded, and planted himself against the side of the empty truck bed, a half-exposed skull at his feet, the body it had belonged to lost somewhere amongst the jumble of death.
“Neil...”
He waved off my worry. I looked to Elaine, her concern no less than mine.
“We have to look around,” she said.
Neil eyed her for a moment, the contempt he’d harbored toward her actions simmering again, animus wiping away the optimism, feigned or not, that he’d expressed as we neared Baggs.
“Yeah, I guess we have to,” he agreed caustically. “Don’t we?”
He straightened, pushing himself off of the wrecked truck. Elaine looked away from him. The fire he was breathing toward her would grow old at some point. Would require some response. But for now she simply took what he was dishing out, ascribing his demeanor to the battle his body was waging with itself.
“The first street,” I said, gesturing up the nearest block of the small town. “Let’s stay close, give every house a look. Cabinets, drawers. See if there are any cellars.”
“I know the drill,” Neil said, moving past me and Elaine, annoyed and driven.
We waited, giving my friend some space, then we followed, leaving the carnage we’d come upon behind. Out of sight, but not mind.
* * *
Elaine and I worked the left side of the block, Neil the right. She was one house ahead of me, Neil two behind on his side. My house was barely that anymore, windows broken o
ut, not even a shard of glass left in the frame. An entire side wall had been torn to pieces, plaster crumbled within, siding scattered like matchsticks outside, bare wire and pipes exposed between two by four framing.
Why?
I stood in the front room and stared at the very focused and specific destruction for a moment, wondering. Why would someone have taken the time, and put in the effort, to peel away the inner and outer skins of the structure in that one spot, yet leave other walls as they were?
It was just another mystery. Another answerless wondering to remain unsatisfied. An action taken by a nameless someone for some reason that made sense to then, but which vexed my understanding at the moment.
I left the front room and entered the kitchen. Every cabinet was open. Every drawer pulled and dumped. Forks and knives and spoons lay upon the dusty floor. Strips of once pretty curtains billowed lightly in the breeze flowing through the broken window over the sink. This space had been scavenged. Picked clean and left in disarray.
Two closets in a narrow hallway were similarly emptied, contents avalanched into the corridor. Two bedrooms, a single bathroom, all defiled. Furniture upturned. Smashed. With purpose.
But to what purpose?
Another question. But this one, in concert with what I’d seen in the front room, and in comparison to previous houses along the street, nagged.
This house had received some extra attention. Particular focus. In no others were mattresses tipped to lean against walls. Night stands were not smashed to pieces appropriate to kindling. Walls were not...
...opened.
Someone was looking. For something. Not just as we were, hopefully scavenging. There was that purpose I’d recognized here. At the very least there seemed to have been the belief that something worth having existed in this house. And what was the most valuable thing in the world as it was, both now and six months ago? A year ago?
Food.
I moved through the rooms again. Holes had been punched in the ceiling to scan the attic space. Carpet was ripped up and bunched in corners. Motivated wreckers had come through. Desperate. Driven. People who’d believed that the occupant or occupants of this very house had been holding out. That they’d been prepared. Or, as Major Layton had branded it near Whitefish, hoarding.
Maybe here the belief had been correct. Maybe the searchers had come and found what they’d been looking for. No more walls had been peeled open. Just the one. Perhaps they’d found something secreted in the space between plaster and siding.
But, also perhaps, there was more.
I took a moment to think, an act becoming more difficult by the day. By the hour, even. Hunger was sapping not only the physical strength from my body, but the mental acuity from my mind, as it was for all of us. But I needed that here. If just for a short time to pull myself back from the haphazard opening of cabinets to focus. To target.
Where might someone have hidden food?
Had they done so in the walls? Had that been a hiding place a desperate mob had beaten out of them? Possibly. But if they’d gone to that trouble, would they have put all of their eggs in one basket. Even I had had a hidden cache of backup supplies at my refuge. This person, these people, could have had more than one. I would have were this the situation I’d found myself living in.
Again, I had to ask where?
Some indication that might help me I found on the living room floor, not two feet from the opened wall. A can opener. The familiar device, with crank to turn and small, sharp wheels to cut through metal lids, lay there, in a place where no other implements of cooking or eating were. I picked it up and stared at it.
That’s when I saw the blood. Or what I imagined had been blood. A dark, almost black stain on a bolt of carpet, layer of dust not enough to obscure it. Someone had been hurt here. Had bled here. A lot.
Hoarder...
I wondered, was the can opener the thing that had given them away? Or an errant can discarded within view of neighbors whose stomachs ached with emptiness. Picturing what might have transpired where I stood took little imagination. Blows to the person. Demands to know where the cans were. A gesture toward the wall. Not enough found in there to satisfy the mob, if any was found at all. More blows. Then death.
It could all be fantasy, I knew. My drifting mind conjuring what I wanted to believe. Or it could be a bread crumb. The first on a trail that might lead to a loaf of plenty.
Cans. I started with that. If this person had stocked up, and had hidden what they had, a wall might have worked. But access would certainly have been a problem. Opening it could have drawn attention. If they’d secreted some in there, it would have been for a last resort. A survival cache to be accessed only when necessary. That’s what I would have done.
What else would I have done? Hide the items in plain sight? No. Being too clever was no different than being too obvious. I would, though, have tried to place my cache someplace accessible and ordinary. Easy to get to. Someplace that would draw little attention.
With the can opener in hand I moved through the house once more. Nothing in any room grabbed my attention. No obvious unobvious places seemed to exist within the house.
Outside.
Possibly, I told myself. But also risky. Any neighbor might chance a view of someone carting an armful of cans from a garage into the house. Still, I had to look.
I passed through a dilapidated back porch, enclosed by screens perforated by wind and neglect. An old washer and dryer sat unused, lids opened, hoses and cords connected to useless pipes and outlets. Without even stepping from the porch I knew that any search outside was pointless. A garage did stand beyond a flat yard of dirt behind the house, but its doors had been ripped away, siding torn off, contents dragged onto an expanse near a walkway where a garden had once flourished. The raiders of the house had taken their search to the precise place I was going, and it appeared they came up empty handed, the destruction seeming born of frustration more than success.
Foolish.
That’s what I branded myself. Elaine was probably three houses on by now. Neil, maybe two. And I was standing in a crumbling screened porch next to...
Wait...
I looked to the washer and dryer. More precisely, I looked beyond them. To the exterior wall at the back of the house where the porch was attached. To the water supply lines and the electrical outlets that fed the machines.
And to the drain pipe that had once—once—carried dirty water away. But not anymore. Not for a very long time. Yet it, and the vent stack rising up through the tarpaper roof of the porch, were not old, rusting iron like what had to exist within the walls of the rest of the structure. They were almost pristine black plastic. As if they’d been installed when the blight was just taking hold.
I shoved the washer aside and stood at the back wall of the house. The inky pipe rose before me and disappeared beneath the floor. I reached out and gripped it, and with almost no effort, with hardly a moment to realize that I’d found success, the full length of the pipe twisted free of connections that should have been glued and cans of food spilled out like coins from a slot machine that had just hit triple seven.
Five, six, seven, finally ten cans fell to the porch’s plank floor, rolling against my boots. I let go of the pipe and crouched, picking each can up, eyeing the labels with a joy that left me momentarily mute.
Refried beans. Chili. Beef stew. Chicken soup. The labels were scratched, but the images of their delectable contents were unmistakable. They were real.
I closed the lid of the washing machine and stacked the bounty of cans atop it, then bolted out the back door of the porch, running into the street at the front of the house and screaming out to my friends.
“I found food!”
Then I began to laugh. And that’s how Neil and Elaine found me, standing in the middle of the dusty street in Baggs, Wyoming, laughing like a madman and pointing at the house I’d just come from.
“Food,” I said, almost out of breath from the bur
st of joy.
Elaine threw her arms around me. I reached out and grabbed my friend by his shirt and pulled him close.
“There’s food in there,” I repeated. “And I think there might be more.”
* * *
Neil cleared the kitchen and righted a small table and three chairs. He found pots and wiped the dust from them as best he could, then built a small fire in the old sink as Elaine and I tore more pipes from the walls behind the bathroom. When we returned from our search we had two dozen cans to add to what I’d initially found.
“Whoever did this was brilliant,” I said.
Neil already had refried beans and chili heating in two pans as we stacked our find on the counter.
“How so?” he asked.
“They put two extra pipes in the wall,” Elaine explained. “There was a drywall patch over them. It would have just looked like some repair to a casual observer.”
“My guess is they had a hell of a lot of stuff stored,” I said. “In closets and wherever. All this stuff was for when the crap hit the fan.”
“Backup to their backup,” Neil said, stirring the pot with a small spoon. “I hope you don’t mind, but my finger’s been in this stew about a dozen times.”
I smiled and sat at the table. Elaine took the seat next to me.
“Just making sure it’s properly seasoned?” I prodded my friend.
“Something like that,” Neil answered.
He’d put bowls on the table. And spoons. A water bottle from our supply sat at the center, with three honest to goodness glasses at each place setting.
“I somehow feel underdressed,” Elaine said.