Among These Bones

by Amanda Luzzader

  I grinned and Gary put on his hat. He turned to go but then stopped and faced me.

  “Seriously,” he said. “Next time you get into any kind of trouble, tell someone to go and find me. If I’m available, I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Okay. I will. Thanks.”

  Gary had visited the house the first day we moved in, not too long after we’d recovered from our treatment and completed orientation at the start of the new year.

  It felt so long ago. Arie had been in the backyard working on an old bike he’d found half buried in dead bindweed vines. I was unpacking and sorting rations and supplies on the living room floor when Gary came in the front door. He didn’t knock. He just walked in. At first I thought it was Arie and I screamed when I realized it was a stranger. I instinctively grabbed something to defend myself with—a small candlestick.

  Gary hurriedly reached beneath the lapel of his long coat and fished out a clear plastic ID badge on a lanyard. It was inscribed with the Agency seal and a barcode with numbers.

  “It’s okay,” said Gary, his voice raised but not threatening. “I’m with the Agency. My name’s Gary. Gary Gosford. They told you that name, right?”

  I clutched the candlestick like a tiny baseball bat.

  “I’m with the Agency,” he repeated quietly and more slowly. He removed his hat and held out the badge again. “I’m Gary. You’re Alison. It’s okay. I should have knocked first. I’m sorry.”

  Unlike most of the other people I’d encountered around the Zone that first week, Gary was well fed and dressed in clean clothing. I set the candlestick down, but within reach. Gary tucked the badge back into his coat. I watched him carefully.

  “I really didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. “I’m just so used to walking in. I’ll knock next time. I’m your senior supervisor.”

  “Well, I guess you know who I am,” I said.

  “Yes. Alison. I know. And your son is Arie. It’s nice to see you again. You look well."

  "They already told us about the rules," I said. "We've been careful. They gave us rations."

  "Yes," he said. "That's good."

  He worried the brim of the Homburg in his hands.

  “Don’t worry,” said Gary. “You’re not in trouble.”

  “Then what are you doing here?” I asked.

  "Well, I know you don’t remember me,” he said, “but just a few weeks ago we were pretty good friends.”

  It was so disorienting. To hear someone say something like that—someone you don’t recognize at all. Someone you don’t know.

  And I didn’t believe him at the time. I doubted what he was saying, even though it had to be true.

  He’d opened his mouth to speak, but then he stopped himself. He looked down and then up. He smoothed his hair. I waited.

  “Awkward, isn’t it?” he said. “I get it. This is all very new to you, I know, but as a senior supervisor in this Zone, it’s my job to help, to make sure your needs are being met.”

  "Okay."

  There was an uncomfortably long pause. Then finally Gary drew a long breath. “Well, can I visit you, then? I used to come by a couple times a week.”

  At the time, I didn’t want him to, didn’t want to invite some stranger into our lives, but it didn’t seem like I had a choice, and I was very alone and confused.

  “Sure,” I told him without enthusiasm. “Whatever you say.”

  He seemed nice, harmless, maybe even a little lonely. But still, he was an Agency man, and that came with a lot of power. Already I’d heard whispers that you couldn’t trust the Agency people. Already I’d heard people calling them goons. At first I only wanted to avoid breaking the rules or making Gary angry at me, but over time he really had become a friend to us, just like he’d said that day we moved in. I felt a lot of guilt about how I’d treated him those first few days.

  I stood at the door as Gary went down the porch stairs.

  “Tell Arie to go easy on that peanut butter,” he said over his shoulder.

  I waved goodbye and shut the door. Then I went to the kitchen, where Arie was gulping what I suspected was a cup of tea, syrupy with sugar. I laughed at him and sniffed deeply at the paper-wrapped soap.

  “Where do you supposed he gets soap like this? Are there certain people who are getting nice soap and others who get none? Who was this for?”

  “I don’t know,” said Arie, “but I’m gonna eat their peanut butter.”

  "Don't get too attached to the other stuff," I told him. "We're trading most of it."

  “You know,” Arie said, with a wink, “I bet we could get him to bring us a lot more stuff. He likes us. He likes you.”

  “We’re fine,” I said. “Whatever extra he brings us is great. But you’re right. He does like us.”

  “Especially you,” Arie teased.

  I reached over and tousled his hair.

  CHAPTER 5

  A few days passed, and our injuries began to feel a little less raw.

  “I’m going out to pick up our rations,” I told Arie as I pulled on my coat and wrapped a scarf around my neck. I thought I’d try riding my bike again.

  He didn’t answer.

  “Arie? You in here?”

  I found him in the den, crouching by the window that overlooked the backyard.

  He turned to me and put a finger to his mouth.

  “Shh,” he whispered.

  “What is it?” I asked, walking closer. “Is something wrong?”

  “Get down,” he said, motioning.

  I crouched and Arie motioned me to the window.

  “Look,” he said.

  He carefully pushed the curtain slightly aside.

  “What? I don’t see anything,” I said.

  “The apple,” Arie said.

  I hadn’t seen it at first, but at the edge of the back porch there sat a red apple.

  “What’s that doing there?”

  “Just watch,” whispered Arie, stifling a laugh.

  I watched the apple. Nothing happened.

  “Arie—”

  “Just wait,” he said.

  We sat there for maybe a minute. Then, a hint of movement in the back corner of the backyard caught my eye, and a girl of about seven or eight years old poked her head out from around the old sugar maple tree there. She poked her head out, then retreated. She did this a few times, then stepped out from behind the tree. Her face and hands were filthy, and her hair was curly and blond, like buttered noodles, and when she stepped into the sun, it lit up like an angel’s halo. She stood still and looked around—checking, watching. Then she crept like a cat to the porch, snatched the apple, and ran away through an open space in the back fence.

  Arie stood up, smiling. “I’ve been leaving food for her for a couple weeks now. She always comes around about this time.”

  “She just came over and asked for food?” I asked.

  “No, no,” said Arie. “She thinks she’s being really sneaky. One day a while ago I was working on my bike out there and I came inside to grab a wrench—left my lunch on the porch. It was a biscuit with some butter and cheese on it. When I came back, it was gone. Happened a couple other times. I’d turn my back and my lunch would disappear. She really is a little ninja, but one day I finally spotted her. But I turned away fast, pretended not to notice. So now I’ve been leaving something on the porch every couple days. As soon as I come inside, she sneaks up and swipes it.”

  “I’ve never seen her. Who is she?”

  “Not sure, but she keeps coming back. Sly little thing. I’ve been thinking about talking to her, finding out where she lives or whatever.”

  “Arie, I don’t know about this. What if it makes trouble for us?”

  “Trouble? She’s a little kid. What trouble?”

  “I don’t know. What if she breaks in?”

  “Well, quite frankly, she coulda done that already. But she’s just hungry, obviously.” He grinned. “Maybe she can become my new little sister.”


  “I wish you wouldn’t encourage her. You should be eating that food yourself. We barely have enough as it is.”

  “It makes me happy,” said Arie, “and that’s as good as food, sometimes.”

  Even in the few months we’d been together, Arie already knew how to manipulate me. It was hard enough finding moments of happiness, and Arie he knew I wouldn’t deny him. You just never knew who you could trust, though—even when it came to little kids. We’d seen so many bad things. The world was such a very dangerous place. The best way to a safe, was to stay low. Stay out of the way. Look out for yourself.

  I sighed. “Just be careful,” I said.

  “I always am.”

  *

  The line had maybe a hundred people in it when I arrived. I stood behind a tall man with a bushy beard and wild auburn hair. On his shoulders was perched a small girl who had the same wild hair. She looked to be four or five years old.

  “What’s the hold-up?” I asked him.

  “Who knows.” He peered up at the little girl. “Tell ’em to hurry up, will ya, Penny?”

  Penny leaned over shouted, “G-o-o-o!”

  I scrunched my nose at her. “Your daughter?”

  “S’what they tell me.” He grinned.

  A joke everybody had heard before, but I nodded and smiled back. “I have a son. But he’s older. I can’t imagine what it’s like for the little ones.”

  “Oh, no,” he said, “this is the way to go.”

  He swayed a little but held onto Penny’s ankles. She giggled and held his head tighter.

  “I figured she’d be real messed up,” he said, “but, you know, they’re not going to remember anything. They start fresh. Isn’t that right, Pen?”

  She drummed unmercifully on his head. He was unfazed.

  “I can make all the typical parenting mistakes but it won’t matter for you because you won’t remember, will ya?”

  She drummed harder, pulled his hair.

  The line moved a little. We took a few steps forward and craned our necks to see ahead.

  “Finally,” said the man.

  “Finally,” Penny mimicked.

  The Agency Depot was the only place to get food and supplies in quantities sufficient to feed more than a single person. The Agency scanned our electronic chips, and these were used to withdraw rations of various kinds on a monthly schedule. They furnished the basics—rudimentary medical supplies, sanitary goods, and fuel for our stoves and heaters.

  They gave us food, too, although it consisted mostly of staples and was very plain. There were rations of flour, cornmeal, rice, and beans. There were dehydrated meals with pasta and potatoes, and soy powder to make a sort of chalky milk drink for protein. In the growing season there might be heads of pithy cabbage, white onions, or grotesquely overgrown winter squash.

  “So, she didn’t have a hard time?” I asked the man. “At the beginning of the year?”

  “Nah. Like I said, the kids take to it better than we do. They don’t question. They believe everything. ‘Hey kid, I’m your dad.’ ‘Okay, get me a drink of water. Wipe my bum. Tuck me in.’ It doesn’t slow them down.”

  “Right.”

  “They’ll be the first generation to grow up without the mistakes of their parents,” he said. “Of course, I can’t remember my parents, either, but I figure the psychological damage was already done when the virus hit.”

  The way he looked at her and talked to her—even the way he gripped her ankles—I could tell he was smitten. Nine months ago, like all of us, he’d woken up and not known Penny at all, and now she was daddy’s little girl, at least for a few more months. I knew just how he felt.

  It wasn’t like that for everyone, though. For some, the fog of forgetting was too deep, the threads of attachment too strained. Or maybe mistakes were made—kids placed with people who weren’t really their parents. We’d never know. The Agency ran a home for orphans and the kids whose parents could not perform their duties, but I suspected lots of those parents simply would not. I thought that was maybe better than being in homes where they weren’t cared for. I didn’t know. Rumor had it the Agency would try to place the children in the home with their parents every year. Did it click some years and not others? The Agency seldom answered questions like that and never volunteered any information.

  The line lurched forward, but then there was shouting ahead. Two Agency goons had taken hold of a young man and were fighting him into the building. He shouted in protest. Those in line strained to see, standing on their toes and leaning.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I can’t hear what they’re saying,” said the man. “Maybe he’s got a ripped chip.”

  I glanced up at Penny and the man turned her away from the commotion. Two more Agency guards showed up and the young man was overwhelmed. They got out their clubs and then I looked away, too, but I glanced back when his shouting stopped. The man was limp and I watched them drag him away. Nobody said anything and neither did I.

  The line moved again and the man and his daughter were waved past the barricades. An Agency worker approached with a scanning wand. The man tilted his head. It was a peculiar motion, the head tilt. It was diffident, a little like bowing for prayer, and I’d often thought it would perhaps strike someone else as odd, but to us it was perfectly natural and we did it without thinking. Bow, scan, move along.

  The same worker waved me through and I was scanned and then I moved along, too. When I bowed my head, I saw spots of blood on the pavement from where the young man had been subdued.

  I collected my provisions without reading the labels and tucked them beneath my coat. I made it back through the barricades, and as I rushed to my bicycle I saw the man with the girl on his shoulders. I waved to them. The man lifted his chin and showed me a sad smile. Penny waved. She looked happy.

  When I was alone, well away from the Depot, I pulled over and checked the provisions. It was rice and black-eyed peas. Two pounds of each. Not much, but I could pad out the rice with what we had at home and probably make it until the next distribution. I put them in my backpack with the books I’d brought from home. Then I kept riding.

  There was never enough of anything. We almost never had enough cooking oil or salt. Most people went months without fruit—even the canned kind. Liquor was so rare it was as though it simply no longer existed, like cable television and the Internet and birthdays.

  So, we traded. We learned who might have extra and who never did. And we learned who traded supplies for skills, too. There was an older man in town who mended clothing and shoes. A lady down the street from us had located a small flock of chickens holed up somewhere just across the Zone boundaries. Each morning she sent her children to gather the eggs—I heard it was over a mile each way. And I’d heard about a person in my neighborhood who collected wild honey, but I never found out who it was.

  I rode out past the burned-out factories on the edge of town and got on the highway. It was choked with a permanent traffic jam of cars and busses. They’d sat motionless for so long the sun had dulled their paint. The weeds growing up through the cracks in the pavement were so tall and thick I had to weave my way between them, too. After a few miles, I got off the highway and rode to a desolate drive-in movie theater where there was an enormous white and gold RV, parked as if ready to watch that evening’s feature.

  Inside, Donna lived surrounded by her cats and her books.

  Most of the cats scattered or dove beneath the RV as I rode up. A few sat in the dust and watched me. One ran up and rubbed itself against my ankle and walked a figure-eight through my legs. I reached up to knock on the door but before I could, Donna opened it—just a crack wide enough for her see me.

  “Hi, Donna. It’s Alison.”

  She stood there peering through the space of the partially open door, blinking at me through one thick lens of her wire-framed spectacles. I saw that in one hand she held a hardback book with a finger inserted to hold her place.

  “What
are you reading today?” I asked.

  She blinked at me like an owl.

  “I have a few books for you,” I said. “And some beans.”

  “Let me see,” she said, opening the door a little more.

  “The books? Or the beans?”

  “The books.”

  I unshouldered my pack and rummaged inside.

  “I found these,” I said, offering her the books. One was a collection of Isaac Asimov stories and the other two were spy novels.

  She inspected the first spy novel and handed it back with a slight shake of her head. The second one, too. When she saw the Asimov collection, her expression changed slightly. The hint of a smile.

  “Notebooks?” she asked.

  “Yes, please.”

  She went inside. The door swung closed but not all the way. I peeked into the RV. I’d never been in. The only light inside seeped in through the few windows and was filtered through heavy curtains. From what I could see, there was little in there apart from a couch completely walled around with piles of books. Books on shelves and others in boxes and there were tall but orderly stacks, too. She must have moved like a phantom in there to avoid knocking them over.

  Donna came back with three spiral notebooks. I was going to give them to Arie for his birthday. With all the journaling and note-keeping he did, he’d need them. She held them out and I gave her the paperback books.

  “Thanks, Donna.”

  “Mm.”

  “Here,” I said. “This, too.” I held up the sack of black-eyed peas.

  “I don’t need those.”

  “Sure you do. When’s the last time you went to the depot? Would you rather some rice? You have to eat.”

  Without taking it from my hand, she turned the packet of beans so that she could squint at the label. She made the little head shake again.

  “Just take them,” I said, but she was already shutting the door.

  *

  On my trip back, a few miles from my house, I saw a bulky figure waddling between the tall, winter-dry weed stalks that grew up through the pavement.

  It was Ruby.

  I considered passing her by, but before I could decide for sure, I was steering the bike in her direction and I knew she’d spotted me. She limped along. When I got close enough, she showed me her grin and nodded, but there was something cursory in her greeting, something dismissive. Her face was florid and wet with sweat.