“Zonchos?” Zaley echoed in bewilderment. “I don’t get it.”
“Zombie Panchos. Nice, huh?”
“This guy is one hundred percent full-blooded, all-American hipster,” Micah said. “A couple of months ago, he was wearing a bike helmet and wheeling around to help save the environment.”
“I heard someone in line at the warehouse saying everyone with Sombra C should be shipped to the Zombinican Republic,” Zaley said. “It has a ring to it.”
“The overflow can go to Zomgolia,” Corbin said.
“Zombabwe,” Micah suggested. There was nothing else to do but joke. No one had a prayer of going to sleep with the car alarm screaming and the feral having a tantrum in the background. Micah sighed and said, “All right, dude. Move on. Austin needs his beauty sleep.” The feral was still pounding on the blaring car.
“How long do alarms go on if no one shuts them off?” Austin asked. “Is there a timer?”
“Until the car battery wears out, I think,” Corbin said. His grip tightened on the package in his lap as Zaley shifted to get comfortable. “Zaley, don’t touch anything. The finger could have left fluid on the window.” She stilled in her slump over the console. Austin stuffed his fingers in his ears to test how much of the sound it blocked. Then he passed around cookies, putting one directly in Zaley’s mouth and feeding it to her that way. They were keeping the bag in the back rather than the trunk, everyone afraid it would be stolen as they slept. That had been one of those decisions that four very different people could agree upon without the slightest need for discussion. The food stayed close.
Thump. The feral howled in fury and wandered to the edge of the parking lot, where he vanished around the big rocks that braced it on two sides. After several minutes passed and he didn’t return, Micah got out to dump the finger. Austin stood guard outside the car as Corbin cleaned off the window and door. Zaley aimed the flashlight so he could see what he was doing. The car horn went on unabated, an annoying WHOOP-ZING-ZING-ZING-WHOOP-WHOOP that had everyone gritting their teeth. Grant drove away, yelling goodbye over the racket. They would have to drive off as well and find somewhere else to park. That was sad, since they had a fairly safe, private nook here and God only knew how long it would take to find its equivalent out there.
The alarm was interrupted by a nearby gun blast just as Corbin was finishing up. The boys dove into the car and locked the doors. Zaley looked out the windows, in fear for Micah, but a tall figure soon loped into the parking lot and a familiar voice called, “It’s me.” She was carrying a pole.
Rather than come to the car, she headed for the one making the ruckus. Lifting the pole, she smashed it against the driver’s side window until it broke. Then she opened the door, popped the hood, and bent down. Two minutes later, the alarm cut off with a final ZING.
“Thank you,” Corbin whispered. Micah climbed inside the other car and searched it for anything useful. Was it even considered stealing these days? Zaley was just curious what Micah was finding.
“How did you know what to do?” Austin asked when Micah returned.
“I didn’t,” Micah said, locking her door. “I just yanked on things until it shut the fuck up.”
Happy that they wouldn’t have to drive off into the night and find a new temporary home, Zaley asked tentatively, “The gunshot?”
“When your fingers are falling off, it’s time to die,” Micah said. “I trailed him a little ways first so the smell doesn’t come into the parking lot as much.”
“We need to watch the ammo,” Corbin said. “We can’t get replacements.”
“That’s why I aimed for his head and took him out in one shot.” Micah held up what she had taken from the other car: paper maps of California, three pennies, two sticks of gum, and a phone charger. The gum was added to their bag of food, the maps were put into one of the backpacks, and the pennies went into their stash of money. It was worthless, but they kept it out of habit. It used to be worth something.
Micah stuffed the phone charger into her backpack and said, “In case I need to strangle anyone.” She wasn’t joking. She had killed a lot of people in the confinement point, rapists and others who asked her to die. The boys had told Zaley about it, Austin rushing to reassure that Micah wasn’t planning to kill any of them. How could he have thought that that was what was going through Zaley’s mind? She felt safer for what Micah had done. If Zaley had been in the confinement point, she would have rather Micah killed her than dying by the alternatives available.
Now they wouldn’t have to worry about that feral coming back. It was sick how the one thing the virus left in his brain was that he wanted to go home. Zaley remade her awkward bed in the chair and sank into it. The feral was putting her too much in mind of Elania. That she was gone was still beyond belief. Zaley expected to see her in the back seat, or stepping around the rocks. Looking at the Pewter acceptance letter had made her cry the other day. In the world that used to be, that once upon a time fantasy world, Elania and Zaley were still lost together over their math homework and organizing the Welcome Mat spring bake sale. They were excited about graduation and going off to college . . .
No. Zaley wouldn’t have been alive in that world. She was only still alive because of Sombra C, when Elania was dead for the very same reason. That was too much of a tangle to pick apart, and it felt disrespectful to Elania’s memory to try. It wasn’t a mental game to while away her time in playing. The only way to show respect for Elania was to move on, get to the harbor in Sonoma and give her family the news. That had to be better than wondering. Zaley remembered an article she’d read about a cold case murder finally solved, a girl who had gone out for a bicycle ride one summer afternoon and vanished, and how the family of the victim said at least now we know. They had wondered for twenty years what happened. It was awful to know the truth, some pervert abducting and killing her, but they didn’t have to wonder.
But Elania’s family might prefer wondering to the harsh truth. Reaching out, Zaley touched Corbin’s shoulder for comfort. He turned on his side, already asleep, and unconsciously covered her hand in his. It put her back to sleep.
In the morning, they ate breakfast from that wonderful bag of food. There weren’t any public bathrooms around so the bushes by the rocks were used for that purpose. Zaley squatted down to pee and breathed in the stink of San Francisco on the breeze. A miasma of rotting trash, decay, and sewage had hunkered over the peninsula and made itself at home.
Without Internet or newspapers, there wasn’t any way to know what it was like in Cloudy Valley or up in Sonoma. Even electricity was flickering on and off now, and a lot of the radio stations were just dead air. The only thing still working reliably was water. There was a fountain in the tiny park close by. They assumed it was clean, their standards being only that it didn’t taste or look weird, and up to this point hadn’t made them ill.
Zipping up her pants, Zaley returned to the lot. Micah went off to the bridge to check on its progress and Austin had walked down to the water. Sitting on the hood of the car, Corbin was resting against the windshield. He said, “You know what’s weird?”
“What’s weird?” Zaley asked. To her, everything was weird.
“Having nothing to do. No school, no work, no video games. There is absolutely nothing for me to do.” He offered his hand, which she used to climb up beside him.
“Here’s something you can do: tell me what will happen if we can’t count on clean water one day. Or any water.”
“Well, you can kiss agriculture goodbye if there’s no water at all,” Corbin said thoughtfully. “Without safe drinking water, people will get diarrheal illnesses like cholera. That’s a bacterial infection in the intestinal tract. They make some kind of toxic protein in there that causes the diarrhea. People die from cholera. The fluid loss is massive.” He paused to ruminate and then spat, “Christ! America hasn’t had a major outbreak of cholera in over a hundred years. And there were outbreaks in the 1800s that killed thousands o
f people. I listened to an article about that last year. But I bet that’s more than you wanted to know.”
“No, please tell me,” Zaley said. It wasn’t a topic that ever would have been interesting to her before, but now it felt crucial to possess the information.
“The picture was really gross. The diarrhea looked like rice water. So that’s cholera. If sewage contaminated with Salmonella typhi gets in the water, we could see typhoid. Typhoid fever. I don’t remember all the stages, but in the first week, you just have a fever and feel crappy. Sort of like how some people feel when they get Sombra C. You might get a bloody nose. Then you start getting delirious and these rosy colored spots appear on your chest. The diarrhea is pea soup-like. The illness progresses to intestinal hemorrhage, perforations, you’re getting more and more dehydrated . . . it’s nasty. I was almost sorry that I’d pressed play, and then I was sorry when I scrolled down to the pictures.”
“Typhoid Mary?” Zaley had read that somewhere, probably in a history class.
“That was the name for an asymptomatic carrier long ago. She got typhoid and recovered, but she continued to shed the bacteria in her urine and feces. She worked as a cook and didn’t wash her hands before she hit the kitchen. So she went from job to job and the people she worked for kept getting sick with typhoid. But she felt totally fine. Some of the infected died. The Health Department finally put her in quarantine. She’d infected people right and left by then. They let her out on the condition she stopped working as a cook, but she went back to it anyway and it started all over again.”
“Then what happened?”
“She was captured and put in quarantine for the rest of her life, denying all the while that she’d ever had typhoid or that she was the cause of everyone else’s illnesses. I think she died in the 1930s. I wish I’d paid more attention to that article.” Corbin stared over the rocks incredulously. He’d paid enough attention to give her a pretty good background of the risks. “Those are really uncommon illnesses in the modern United States, cholera and typhoid. Who gets those? But if they start going around, we’ll have to treat our water with drops of bleach or iodine. Or boil it.”
“We don’t have the supplies to do any of that,” Zaley said.
“No, we don’t. Are you worried?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Yes and no. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” Both of them looked over to the Golden Gate Bridge, tall and red and impassable. Other people had gotten fed up with the wait and swam for the other side. Zaley had watched their heads grow smaller and smaller until they disappeared into the fog. She had no idea if any of them had made it.
Swimming was becoming a tempting option, but her arm wouldn’t last the exertion especially in the currents, and the water was cold. Not to mention they would be doing it weighed down by stuffed backpacks. Corbin glanced at the lapping water and said, “I’m trying to brace myself for swimming being the only choice.”
“Micah could steal a boat,” Zaley said. If any of them could manage that, it would be Micah.
“Yeah, but do any of us know how to sail? I don’t.” Corbin grimaced. “It might be the only way though. Things are getting crazier and crazier here. We need to get somewhere safe, somewhere with food. The last place anyone wants to be in a breakdown is a city. No agriculture, just people penned in and passing on disease . . . If she shows up in a boat, we’ll have to wing it. You can read me the user’s manual.”
“If it comes down to swimming, we have to keep our food and the Zyllevir and things dry. That was hard at the reservoir. We need plastic bags to wrap everything in.”
Grinning, Corbin said, “You want to go out with me? I have a great date idea.”
Yes, she wanted to go out with him. Leaving Austin to guard the car, they spent the rest of the morning in search. It wasn’t too hard to find plastic bags. Garbage was strewn everywhere by the wind. Zaley came across a bread bag that was still whole and Corbin lifted onto his tiptoes to pluck a chip bag from a tree. Checking inside for holes, he said, “This wasn’t ever a date I envisioned taking you on. Picking up litter in preparation for a swim neither one of us wants to make.”
“It’s very romantic,” Zaley said.
“I like to show girls a good time.” He hesitated. “I’m sorry about yesterday.”
“Me, too.” She really was, even though she still felt like she was a little more right than he had been. But she wasn’t going to throw his olive branch back in his face.
They sought out more bags at the park. A trashcan was bursting with maggots and stench. Corbin kicked it over and they picked through the refuse in disgust. The smell was heightened by the body of the feral Micah had shot. It was lying nearby. They should frisk the pockets of those filthy, ripped jeans, but Micah had likely done it.
“People eat maggots,” Corbin said weakly as they returned to the parking lot. “I’m not that hungry yet. I don’t ever want to be that hungry.”
“Once the food is gone, we’ll have to swim,” Zaley said. “We can’t live here and wait for rumors to come our way about warehouses. And I feel like this is the last.”
“Me, too.” They were quiet for several moments, taking in the horror of it. “Then we should make some floaties for you. And me. Like cooler lids made out of Styrofoam, those float. So do plastic soda bottles. We can tape them together.”
“You’re smart, Corbin.”
“No. We’re desperate. That was what made my bow in the confinement point.” He didn’t talk about that too often, and Zaley didn’t pry. But he had wanted to know every last detail about the guards and the barracks, how things ran outside the fence when he was trapped inside it. Zaley had described it all, from angry Wasp trying to cover all the jobs with too few people down to the mentally disturbed Fawn who thought sleeping around was going to win her a relationship. The tales of Fun Nights had made Corbin mad. While he was bracing the doors in the lodge to not get torn apart by ferals, Shepherd guards were heading out to drink and party at Bonko’s.
“We can make kickboards out of the taped bottles,” Austin said once he heard Corbin’s idea. “Then attach rope to them, so Micah and I can dog paddle and drag you two deadweights along.” He flexed his arms to show off his muscles.
“You’re a dick,” Corbin said companionably. “Find enough bottles and we could put our stuff on a raft rather than have to swim with it on our backs.” They hunted around the parking lot for bottles and piled them in the trunk of the car.
Corbin took off his shoes and jeans and waded into the water to retrieve a few that were bobbing by. With two tucked in his armpit, he shouted to shore, “They need to have their caps! If they don’t, water will fill them.”
“Keep calm, Zaley,” Austin chided.
“Why?” Zaley asked.
“Your man is in his undies. Focus on the raft now.”
“He is cute,” Zaley said. “Back off, he’s mine.” Not having much food for a few days had rendered her interest in anything physical to nil. Now it was coming back with a roar.
“You leave my men alone, I’ll leave yours alone,” Austin said, hefting up the pole that Micah had used to smash the car window. His eyes were on another car in the lot.
Zaley followed him to it. There were empty bottles in the back. “I don’t think the guys you’re going to like will be interested in me, so don’t worry.”
“Stand back, sweetie.” He took aim and swung a practice try before giving the window a hard smack. A spider web of lines spread out. Zaley looked around mildly, thinking it would be terrible luck for the owner to show, but this car had been here for ages. It was covered in dust and bird shit, and no one had ever come along to check on it. The gas flap was open, someone walking off with whatever fuel it had once contained in the tank.
Austin dealt the window a series of blows. “This . . . is . . . such . . . a . . . stereotype!” Then he lowered the pole to inspect the window. It was covered in lines but hadn’t broken. “Yeah, the black man is b
reaking into a car. What is this window made of? Steel? How did Micah do this with one launch of a brick? She’s a blue-haired demon.”
“I’ll take a swing,” Zaley offered. She wasn’t serious, but he gave her the pole. Lifting it against her right shoulder, she paused and changed her stance to brace it on her left. Like Austin, she did a practice try to fix her aim. Then she swung and punched a little hole through the window. “Piece of cake.”
“I softened it up for you,” Austin said.
“Sure you did, Austin, sure you did.” She returned the pole and he bashed the window until they could get inside. They relieved the car of its bottles and climbed around the seats to see what else was there. Under the back seat were ancient fries and a crumpled Shor-Bee’s wrapper. They examined the fries and each other.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Austin grumbled, and gathered them up as Zaley held the bag open. “They’re fucking petrified.”
Zaley wasn’t keen on eating them either. Under the back seat meant they’d belonged to some child, who gummed them around in his or her mouth and jammed them in the crack. That was gross. But they were still in pristine condition, not a spot of mold anywhere on the hard strands of processed potato approximation. “How long do you think they’ve been under here?”
“Months. Years. Eons,” Austin said dismally. “Oh, look. And here’s the toy.” He lifted a pale blue star made of rubber that had SHERIFF stamped on it. “Now it’s mine, kid. Now it’s mine. Once everything is better, Zaley, I’m taking you guys out to the best restaurant in the world. Cloth napkins and corkage fees. We’ll get the most expensive items on the menu. I’ve been planning this for ages. It will replace the memories of eating out of garbage cans and these Paleolithic fries we found under the back seat of a stranger’s car.”
“What are you guys doing in there?” Corbin asked, sticking his head through the destroyed back window. He was dressed again, and had his wrung-out underwear in his hand.
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