by Ryan Schow
Looking at me, he smiles, like he’s following my rules. But he’s not. I don’t want Macy fighting anyone, or killing anyone, even if it’s with a stinky sock and a metal plug.
So that’s the lowdown on the pee-dee, but we’ve got other problems. Like we’re going through our food stores too fast. We’re not rationing enough. And there are only so many homes you can break into looking for food before you choose the wrong one and get shot.
“Where are we going to search for food and supplies that we haven’t searched before?” I ask Stanton.
I don’t want to be too negative here, but lately my patience is for crap. Maybe it’s because looking for food has become dangerous, or maybe it’s because I’m not sleeping well. When I close my eyes at night, all I see are the insides of other people’s homes and how we’re always getting caught, or killed. I can’t tell you how many times I wake up in the middle of the night sweating, terrified, crying.
“I have a few ideas,” Stanton mumbles as he’s surveying the neighborhood below. “Couple places that might have some stuff. I’m thinking we take another run at Jordan Park, or even Laurel Heights. It’s been long enough. How many people do you think have died since we went there last? Surely there’s an empty home with something to eat.”
I don’t even know who he’s asking this question to, so I say nothing. Macy looks at me and I shrug my shoulders.
The way Stanton’s talking, he sounds like he’s a million miles away. Like he’s speaking what’s in his head, but only because his mouth is subconsciously giving voice to a host of barely-arranged thoughts. Why do I even bother anymore? If me and Macy leave the room right now, will he even notice?
It turns out the trip to Laurel Heights pays off.
We find a few bags worth of canned foods and a countertop water filter. A good one. We’re talking stainless steel with the word Propur on it and two replacement filters (still packaged). When I saw it, what I saw was us not having to boil water all day. What I saw was less work for the same result.
Dinner isn’t spectacular, but we’ve got food in our bellies and water to wash it down. Not a whole lot has gone on in the neighborhood either, and though this should give us a moment’s peace, it doesn’t. This is usually when bad things happen.
We’ve come to rely on the nights being quiet. Tonight, however, something wakes me. I’m not sure what it is that jolts me from my sleep, but when my eyes open, Stanton is out of bed, knife in hand, tip-toeing toward the door.
Rubbing my eyes, I sneak a glance at Macy. She’s still asleep, thankfully.
“Stanton?” I whisper.
“Shhh,” he says, now at the front door.
That’s when I hear the soft wiggling of the lock. My breath catches high in my throat. A cold horror washes through me, leaving my skin prickled with fear. Is someone trying to break into our home? I keep waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, but dammit they’re taking too long!
“Should I get Macy in the closet?” I whisper.
Stanton’s hand shoots up. He wants me to be quiet. Or does he want me to hold? Either way I’m sure he’s every bit as scared as me.
For whatever reason, I can’t peel my eyes from the outline of the big blade in his hand. It’s a kitchen knife the old lady had for cutting…well, everything. It’s not exactly lethal on the serrated edge, but the point is sharp and that’s all that matters.
Suddenly the wiggling stops. My eyes are finally adjusting to the darkness, enough for me to see my husband at the door, listening, poised to attack, to defend this place.
For a second, I find my breath again.
They must have gone when they realized the door was locked. Stanton looks over at me, like the threat has passed, and that’s when the knob flinches just enough for us to know we’re still in danger. Whoever’s out there, there’re not just checking the door, they’re picking the lock.
This old door knob is keyed on the outside with a turn button on the inside. It’s now turning, presumably moving from the vertical position to full horizontal. If before we were worried there might be trouble, now we’re sure of it.
Oh, God. I can’t breathe again.
The door knob slowly turns and Stanton readies himself. Using all the stealth I can muster, I’m off the mattress like a wraith, whisper-quiet as I’m grabbing the old lady’s shotgun we keep on the floor beside us. I raise the weapon, spin in time to see the silhouette of a man creeping through the front door.
He doesn’t see Stanton. I’m nearly overwhelmed with a shot of dizziness, one that thankfully goes as quickly as it arrived.
The second the intruder is inside, Stanton drives the knife up into the man’s throat. For all the times I’ve questioned my husband’s ability to operate at one hundred percent in tough situations—and there have been a few over the years—he seems to have picked up a thing or two about survival of the fittest. So instead of just sticking the man and stepping back, Stanton palm strikes the butt of the hilt brutally quick, jamming it further into the man’s neck; he then savagely twists the knife back and forth with both hands to do maximum, lethal damage.
This is Rex’s doing. Stanton was never such a savage.
There’s a gurgling in the intruder’s throat, a wet sort of choking. Stanton yanks out the blade and the intruder drops to the floor in a violent heap. Stanton kicks him over; he topples sideways, all but dead.
“Drop whatever weapon you have or I put one in your head,” a man growls from a giant pool of darkness just beyond the front door’s threshold. There is gravel and apprehension in that voice, a certainty that he is not kidding.
I step forward, rack the shotgun and say, “If he gets it, you get it.”
“You won’t shoot me,” the would-be intruder halfheartedly challenges, this disembodied voice in the darkness beyond the door.
“Grab your friend, get him out of my house or I paint the hallway with your brains,” I snarl, my tone having never been more serious. It’s intestinal fortitude powered by explosive terror and a indomitable will to protect my family, to survive.
“We just need a place to stay,” he says, changing tact.
“How many are you?” I ask. I want to know if this is going to be a bigger problem. I want to know if I have to go from pretending to be unhinged to actually pulling the trigger.
“Mom?” Macy says from behind me. Thunder crashes through me now, and I feel everyone go perfectly still. Everyone but the man with gun.
The man I can’t see but in shadow.
I want to tell her to shut up; Stanton wants to tell her the same. Neither of us say a word because that’s the kind of distraction that gets you killed. The kind of distraction that gets everyone killed.
“Me and my brother and his two kids,” the voice finally says. Then: “Well, just me and his kids now that you’ve killed my brother. Do you just have the one?”
“Where are the kids?” Stanton asks.
“Downstairs,” he tells us.
“Perfect,” I say, working like the devil to force any anxiety from my voice. “When I get done with you, I’ll hunt both of them down and end them, too. Now get your brother the hell out of our house or I swear to God, I won’t wait for you to shoot him before I shoot you.”
Thankfully I hear the rustling in the darkness, see a shadow bend over and grab the dead body’s leg. Slowly the interloper is dragged from our house.
“This isn’t over,” he mutters.
“See, when you say things like that,” I reply, “it means next time I see you I shoot first, then don’t ask questions later.”
Stanton shuts the door and we both listen to the man being dragged down the stairwell, shoulders and head knocking each and every wooden step on the way down. We hear the front door open. It bangs shut a moment later. Stanton peeks out the open window, scanning the street below. I join him, look over his shoulder. The two kids the would-be intruder was talking about, they aren’t there. It’s just the guy and his dead…whomever.
&n
bsp; “Liar,” I mutter.
“Scumbag,” Stanton grumbles.
The tremors I managed to hold at bay overtake my body, leaving me jittery and high, too juiced on adrenaline to calm down. At this point I’m all fits and starts and it’s terribly uncomfortable.
On the street below, the idiot that lived drops the one who didn’t on the sidewalk. He heads across the street and starts trying other doors. He’s a skinny thing with a lanky walk and a head full of ratty hair. He’s a hundred and fifty pounds at best, maybe less.
“I’ll keep watch,” Stanton says. “You get some sleep.”
“Will someone please tell me what just happened?” Macy asks.
Stanton turns and says, “What have I taught you that makes you think you should ever open your mouth in a situation like that?” The torrid break in his voice is fear and frayed nerves. To Macy, I’m sure it sounds like anger.
“I—I just…”
“She was scared,” I tell Stanton, making little fists of my hands to still the tremors.
“You can’t afford to be that stupid,” he snaps. “You could’ve gotten us killed.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Stanton,” I say, calmly.
It’s a warning for him to back off. He knows why, and he knows he should, but he just killed a man and this has yet to sit right with him. It’s always like this after he takes a life.
“When it’s this dark and you speak,” Stanton says, his tone barely tempered, “you not only alert these men who broke into our home that you’re here, you announce that you’re a girl.”
We’ve been hearing too much about all the rapes lately. And about the murders that follow. These are quickly becoming ungovernable times, dreadful times.
“Okay,” Macy says.
“We were all scared, Macy,” I explain. “Dad more than all of us because if anything happened to you, he couldn’t bear it. Neither of us could.”
“Did you at least have your gun in hand?” he asks.
“Yes,” she replies.
“Are you kidding me, Stanton?” I say. “We talked about this!”
“And I listened. But listening isn’t the same as agreeing, and I don’t agree with you, so she keeps the gun and that’s that.”
As much as I hate that Stanton went against my better wishes, part of me is glad she was armed. And it was this situation that made me realize that Stanton and Rex were right about her having a gun.
“Next time,” I tell her, “when your gun is out, your mouth stays shut. Got it?”
“Got it.”
With nothing left to say, and the threat over, Macy lays back down, pulls the blankets over her. I crawl into bed as well because the house is so cold I’m practically shivering. Stanton sits at the table with the knife, contemplative as usual. I wonder if he’s gathering up all the madness he feels. I wonder if the onslaught of emotions is swirling in his head like a hurricane, tearing up the landscape of his mind, eating away his humanity one kill at a time. To me, that’s what it looks like. That’s what it always looks like.
As I lay there in bed, alone, replaying the events in my mind, working my way through the fears that set my teeth on edge, I can’t help but acknowledge the rise of my darker impulses. Lately they’ve been crawling out of their black corners, forcing upon me thoughts I don’t want to have, making me think I can do things I would never have done in more civil times.
I don’t want to tell Stanton this. It’s because of my earlier stance against violence. These days, my faith in scavenging for food is waning. I’ve been toying with the idea of taking what we need from someone who already has it. Someone like us. Someone alive.
Resorting to violence and larceny may gain us a few more months of food (the more civilized side of me reasons), but will we be able to live with ourselves if we steal from people like us? If we kill them for their things? Perhaps. If this keeps my family alive. And this is the thought that scares me most. It makes me wonder what I’m truly capable of.
“You sounded like a badass, Mom,” Macy finally says.
“I nearly peed myself,” I admit.
“This is never going to end,” Stanton tells us both, turning the knife in his hand. His voice sounds so strained, so rippled with tension, I’m starting to think maybe he’s losing it. Maybe we’re all losing it. Maybe we’ve all lost it and we just don’t know it yet.
A long time passes. Macy should be asleep. “Macy?” I whisper into the darkness.
“Still awake.”
“Just checking,” I tell her. To Stanton I say, “At some point in time, they have to realize they’re wasting their resources on us.”
“We’re already broken,” he says. “They don’t care.” Then after a minute, he says, “Does it smell like mold in here? It smells like mold to me.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine,” he laments. “Do you know what mold can do to a person’s immune system?”
“There are worse things out there than mold, Stanton.” After awhile, when the silence feels so opaque it’s all but unbearable, I say, “Thank you for protecting us tonight.”
“You did just as much as I did,” he says, nearly emotionless.
“Well thank you anyway.”
Chapter Sixteen
The crush of noise and destruction wakes us all. That’s how it is. How it’s been every day since this nightmare began. Stanton’s head lifts off the kitchen table, and at the same time, I pull the pillow over my ears. The attacks are closer than normal.
Sitting up, I wonder, is today going to be the day?
“Can we please go find something good to eat?” Macy says. “I’m tired of oatmeal in a cup.”
So I guess Macy’s awake. She’s rolling over, sitting up as well. Her eyes look red and swollen, like she hasn’t slept. I know exactly how she feels.
“Did you sleep okay?” I ask.
“No.”
She’s shoving off the blanket, putting feet into shoes that aren’t hers—shoes that fit, but don’t match.
When I was young, I remember reading about the forced labor camps in Auschwitz. When the Jews and Jewish sympathizers were transported into the death camps, those who died or were gassed, they were stripped of their shoes which were tossed into huge piles. When a person needed new shoes, soldiers grabbed two from the giant pile and threw them at the prisoners. One might be a size nine man’s boot while the other could be a size six woman’s heel. Someone once said more people were exterminated for foot related infections than for any other reason. I think they might be misinformed, but I can’t be sure. It was probably just small talk with a sprinkling of exaggeration.
The point is, in times like this, you take what you’re given and do your best to make it work. That’s all we’re doing—trying our best to make this work.
Looking over by the front door, there’s arterial blood spray on the wall and a smeared pond of dried blood all along the old hardwood floor leading into the hallway. My eyes flick over to Stanton, see the dried gore on his hands and shirt, see it shot along the side of his face. He looks like the victim, not so much like the predator who put the victim down.
“You should wash up, Stanton. Just in case.”
“It’s fine,” he says, looking at the blood under his fingernails. The man used to buy the most expensive hand lotions and face creams; now he’s got some dead guy’s blood in his hair and all over his face and it doesn’t even faze him. This is massive progress for a clean freak. Does it seem crazy to you that I’m proud of him right now? Well I am, in a funny sort of way.
“You look like a horror show,” I say. “And that beard has to go.”
“The beard is staying.”
“If you can’t do it for you,” I say, “at least do it for us.”
He spits in his hand, uses it and his shirt to wipe his face. It only makes matters worse, but at least he’s trying. Or maybe he’s pitching a fit.
I can’t tell.
Whatever pride I
feel in him stalls the second another bomb hits. That’s how things are now. We’re living a minute-by-minute existence with no guarantees of anything, and that sort of trumps everything. Even these pint sized moments of satisfaction have the shortest of shelf-lives.
I drag myself out of bed, my skin breaking into gooseflesh immediately, it’s that cold. No one wants to talk about how cold it is but me. Same as always. Twice I nearly lay a fire, but I stop each time because Stanton will just tell me no, that we need to conserve our resources for when we really need them. What he’s really saying is if the drones or the pee-dee see smoke coming from our chimney, one or both of them will level this whole place in no time flat.
From a small pile of confiscated clothes, I drag a sweater over my head, find my way into a dirty pair of jeans. My shoes are comfortable, but they’re only a few walking miles away from splitting at the seams. Avoiding the bathroom mirror (as usual), I ask Macy to French braid my hair, which she does, then I scrape the fronts of my teeth clean with a fingernail. Macy and I check our guns, then check each other. After that we both look at Stanton, pinning him down with serious eyes.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” he grouses.
Like Macy, he’s so skinny the sight of him hurts me. He’s changing shirts. I look away, unable to take in the sight of all those bones, how he doesn’t have much fat left on his body. I busy myself with something. Anything. If we make it through the day, I’m going to tell him he needs to start eating his fair share of food.
After a luxurious breakfast of oatmeal and water, we head outside in a tight pack of three, our senses attuned to everything, our minds ready for anything. You never know when people are going to crack. When they’ll snap on you, or others around you.