It was the confinement point that was making her do this. That had messed them up. And Micah had gotten messed up the most by what she did there, what she had been forced to do for all of them. She had stood on a road and waited for a semi to mow her down because of how sick the confinement point had made her feel. All of the sweetness in the world had been taken away from them on that hill, and by pure chance, a bit of sweetness had come back in the shape of a cross-dressing, hair-holding, somewhat suicidal baby.
The ferals started to sing their weird cries, a single hoot followed by a chorus, a single squawk followed by another chorus. Austin’s comrade-at-arms in the Sons of Shitty Moms club could have been killed in the ten minutes they’d been separated. The baby wasn’t Austin’s enemy. He was Austin’s friend, or he would be one day when he was bigger. They’d lost the same thing, their roots. All they had now was each other to prop them up.
“Sometimes I wish I could remake people,” Austin said. But if he remade Micah into who he wanted her to be, she wouldn’t be the Micah that he had fallen into a platonic love with in the first place. He had to make do with the one-point-off person that she was. “Do you guys wish you could remake me?”
“No,” Zaley gasped between breaths. “But I know what you mean.”
“You’re just frustrated with her, Austin,” Corbin said. “So are we. Let’s find her and see if there’s anything for food or water in Sausalito.”
“Eh-eh-eh-eh-eh!”
Corbin drew an arrow from his quiver as the chorus echoed. Their pace was so fast that Zaley was struggling to keep up. The road was dismayingly shaded from the trees. It rose at a steep grade.
Austin was convinced that they’d see Micah from the crest. But they reached it and the road was empty. It only rolled up higher and blocked his view. He thought I’m sorry to the wind, praying that his message would be swept forward. To both of them.
Set Fourteen
Zaley
They had gotten to Sausalito on a bright day in May. The exact date was irrelevant. Exact dates mattered to things like the stock exchange (gone), dentist appointments (offices closed), or if you had a paper due (schools were shuttered for lack of money, power, staff, or students, or some combination of the four).
To Zaley, the passage of time was relevant only to the taking of Zyllevir and her trips to the relief truck. It was otherwise demarcated at the pier by crab season and salmon season, and the seasons in general. They were going backwards in time. Nobody ever said May 31st or July 6th or December 2nd. It was spring, summer, autumn, winter, and how they related to food. That was more important than anything else in existence.
Disaster relief trucks came every third day, manned by armed workers. They were rarely the same from visit to visit. Some teams of workers only handed out the food silently, guns trained on the crowds to keep the peace. Others delivered news about what was going on elsewhere in the area, in the country, and in the world. It was from one of the chattier teams that Zaley learned the harbor in Sonoma was under fire. The trucks trying to deliver its goods were being waylaid, Shepherds destroying the Zyllevir and commandeering the emergency rations, essentially transforming the harbor into a confinement point. The military had gotten involved to make sure deliveries went through. The fight for control was brutal.
Shepherds weren’t the only ones fighting for control of the supplies coming in for disaster relief. Militias were doing the same. In the vacuum of order, they were rising to fill the void with their own brand of it. Some were gangs getting out of control without a strong police force to rein them back in; others were contract workers hired to protect very wealthy communities from thieves and ferals. Trains brought in food and equipment to Marin and then the war was on for them. A portion of the supplies was earmarked for the military, and the rest for disaster relief to be dispersed around Bay Area cities, but Shepherds and militias attacked the trucks leaving the depot to steal the goods. The trucks that came to Sausalito had been shot at on occasion, criminals aiming to blow out the tires. Zaley collected every detail to fall from the workers’ lips while food was given out. This was her only news station. The baby kicked her thighs and chortled along in response. He thought he was part of the conversation.
He hated facing her in his carrier, a fact they put together after several long, frustrating battles of squirming and fussing and crying in which she had gotten angry enough to want to shake him. That was an awful impulse. Then they turned him around. The cries and squirms and fusses turned off like a spigot. Mars wanted to see the world. Zaley went from wanting to shake him to wanting to shake the woman in the relief line who looked at them in disapproval the following day and said, “Don’t you know facing the front doesn’t support his legs?”
Jesus fucking Christ. Facing out and Mars was happy as a clam. Facing in and he had a goddamned fit. He did not want to check Zaley’s face for expressions or hide in her boobs when over-stimulated by his surroundings. The only time he liked facing in was when he was falling asleep, or to cower when the relief workers blew the air horn too much to announce their presence. He wasn’t a fan of loud sounds. Otherwise, the world was his television show and he didn’t want to miss a minute. The women in line with babies all had theirs facing in, but none of their brats were crying about it. Zaley would put up with the backache and her arm tweaking to stop him from screaming, and if he ended up with hip dysplasia, it was his own damn fault and that was what physical therapy was for.
But she didn’t dare say it to that woman. Annette had strong opinions and no qualms about sharing them with total strangers. Husbands, kids, politics, she knew best. Meanwhile, she was divorced and her own two children ran amok around the line, shrieking like banshees and lobbing blows at one another. Zaley felt loads better when another woman whispered, “Honey, I have five kids and my oldest wouldn’t face-in for anything. He’ll be fine. Do what you have to do.”
Everything about relief days was awful except the news and food that came from them. It was over two miles to walk each way and she had to take Mars along. Women with small children stood in a special line and received powdered formula and a little extra food. She picked her spot in line carefully, even waiting by the trees if someone nosy or annoying was at the back. It was like elementary school, when you didn’t want to stand beside Anna Datz because she picked her nose and ate it, nor did you want to be by Jenny March because she was weird and wanted to be best friends. All that had changed was that everyone had gotten taller and now had kids. One woman complained unceasingly about her sporadic electricity, and how hard it was to stand in line for so long to only receive junk food. Her CSA used to drop off a box of fresh fruits and vegetables to her door every Thursday afternoon. When her complaining went on too long one day, the only man in line shifted his baby daughter and whispered sassily, “Preach it, sister.” Everyone around him giggled. No one was living any better than she was, but she only ever acknowledged her own inconveniences.
Another woman was far too much like Zaley’s mother, throwing out inane comments about the weather and pretty birds and cloud shapes. The breakdown hadn’t happened at all in her head. It was like they had just come across this line and decided to hang out in it together. Everyone usually tuned her out or made one-syllable replies. The one time Zaley made the mistake of standing in line behind her, the woman had insisted on holding the baby. She jiggled and jounced Mars, who was perfectly content to babble at the myriad of strangers from his carrier, but increasingly viewed being handed off to one of them as akin to torture. Strangers meant danger. He wailed and reached out for Zaley as the woman cooed and chuckled three inches from his face, utterly oblivious to his distress. Alarmed by the woman’s weirdness and hating to see Mars so upset, Zaley almost had to pry him away to get him back. She was reluctantly touched to be identified as a safe person in Mars’ life.
Oh God, she was picky about where she stood in the relief line. The comment about the carrier had made her livid and it wasn’t like Zaley had wanted t
o get landed with this kid anyway! Every time she went away from the truck, Corbin appeared from the trees and offered to carry the groceries. She almost threw the baby at him instead. The others had a lot more patience with Mars. Hers lasted twenty minutes, and then Mars was just a needy, noisy bowling ball strapped to her chest that she had to endure while the line moved up with excruciating slowness. She couldn’t wear her bracelet from Corbin either when she was minding the baby, because he picked at it.
And Mom had wanted Zaley to stay this age permanently. She gained a whole new appreciation for the depth of her mother’s insanity. The baby stage had its cute moments but overall it sucked, and the whiny, bored toddlers in line weren’t much better. Zaley liked how much more rational and reasonable the older children were. You could talk to them about the books they were holding, or what grade they had been in before the breakdown. When truly on the edge of throttling Mars, she reminded herself that one day he was going to have more interesting things to say than drooled vowels, his ghostly boo-oo-ooos, and blowing spit bubbles. It just wasn’t today.
They lived in two tents near Horseshoe Cove, under the swaying eucalyptus trees and the guillotine of the Zyllevir bottle. There was plenty for now, but if the bottle was stolen or the pills ran out . . . Zaley was afraid to think about it. If it came to the worst, she was handing off Mars to that awful Annette in the relief line and walking away. There you go. Let’s see you do it better.
Their view was beautiful, of the blue ripples of water and the thrashed red bridge, the fog over San Francisco and the glory of the city when it lifted. Micah fished from a kayak and Zaley crabbed off the pier. The kayak, the fishing rods, the tents and other things had all come from an abandoned home in Sausalito. The door was spray-painted with a giant red C, and the house hadn’t been vandalized since people were too freaked out about catching the virus (and too ignorant of the viral life span) to risk going inside. Everything in the fridge was rotting, but Micah had brought back a load of soup and cookies and clothes, camping supplies, flashlights and a hoop net and bedding. She’d also gotten the carrier, cloth diapers, baby clothes a few sizes too big, stuffed animals and colorful ring toys for Mars. In the evenings, Micah connected the kayak to the tents with an intricate system of bike locks so no one stole it. During the day, one of them always stayed at the campsite to protect their Zyllevir and ill begotten things. Everyone had a plastic baggie holding a few pills in the backpacks and Micah had the bottle with the rest. She also carried an extra few in a baggie just in case of armed robbery of their campsite or some other disaster.
She had gotten anchovies, which she used as bait, and they turned over rocks to catch tiny crabs or whatever wriggled there for the same purpose. Blackperch, walleye surfperch, silver surfperch, rockfish, sculpins, sturgeon, smelt, they never had any idea what was going to be on the menu for dinner. There was a sign posted by the pier with types of fish labeled on it. It also warned them to stay away from certain kinds because of the mercury level. They laughed at that sign. Sometimes they didn’t know what the fish of the day even was.
Another sign warned them sternly that catching certain kinds of crabs was illegal. That word didn’t have meaning when no one was around to enforce it, and they would have caught those forbidden crabs regardless. Let a Fish and Game ranger come by, fit to be tied about the pilfered Dungeness crabs with the white-tipped claws. The need for food trumped the law and invalidated his authority. There were no stores or restaurants or other alternatives. The crab was edible, so it was going to be eaten.
Zaley loved crabbing, which she did almost every afternoon. It was strange to discover that under her skin, a whole new interest of which she’d never suspected. There was something meditative about sending the hoop net into the water and pulling it back over the side. The first time, she hadn’t known what the hell she was doing. She had just gone down to the pier to get away from the crying baby. An elderly man named Bob Shint was there. He had a hoop net just like the one she had, and he was there to hunt down food for himself and his wife. She had severe heart problems that kept her at home in their bed, on good days in her recliner, and he smelled of cigarettes even though there weren’t any to smoke. He had health problems too, but someone had to get food.
From Bob came the teachings of snares and pots and traps, rock crabs versus red crabs, that rock weren’t as meaty as Dungeness, and chicken was excellent bait. Frozen turkey necks were another good one, since crabs couldn’t rip off a piece of the meat and get away. Neither Bob nor Zaley had those things. When the supply of anchovies ran out and other bait from the shore wasn’t plentiful, Zaley used the heads of the fish Micah caught and shared some with Bob. The man was so old and sick that he shouldn’t have been out here at all, he had cancer that was going untreated, but every word that dropped from his lips was a jewel of information.
People who had turned to the water for food trailed over as he instructed Zaley on the tying of knots to the outer ring of the net, making them stick there with zip ties, attaching the bait cage and the trouble an octopus was capable of causing. Often the man looked up from his lessons and was surprised to see just how many people were hinged on his words. Someone asked what the best time of day or night was to crab, and Bob said hungry time was the best time. A woman translated all of his lessons into Spanish.
“It’s funny,” he said to Zaley, when the audience had gone off one day to try their luck. “You get old and the world forgets about you. And then, suddenly, it remembers. You learned something in all your time. Now, pick up your net. This time, toss it more like a Frisbee.”
Once the net was below, she tied the line to the bars that framed the pier and waited. They spoke or didn’t as the mood moved them, watched the pier and the water and the bridge. From their vantage point, they looked up to its red underside. Seagulls flew through the air, some of them landing on the pier and strolling about it. One stole a turkey neck from a person’s untended bait and fifteen birds broke into a brawl. No one got a chance to eat it, having possession of the neck for only a second before another bird snatched it away. A boy laughed at the battle and flapped his arms to scare them. They flew up a few feet and then resettled to resume the fight. His mother shouted something castigating in German. The boy darted into the battling birds and retrieved what was left of the neck to use as bait.
Zaley liked to look at a huge rock jutting out of the water between the pier and the bridge, at the fog and the ducks floating in the bay. Her former life was receding, no longer in the forefront of her mind or even waiting in the wings just off-stage for its summons. It appeared only sporadically, and usually in the relief line. This was her world now, the tents and the crabbing, Corbin’s arm at night and the helplessness she felt at the gradually dwindling medication. The smell of cigarette smoke was entwined with the kindness of that old man, and the salt in the breeze kept her rooted to this place of quiet.
If the medication wasn’t renewed, if it was lost, she would lose them all. Then she’d pass along Mars to more capable hands, not to Annette but one of the nicer mothers or that lone father, and find an abandoned houseboat. That was how she would live, her companions only what came up in the net, the wind and the water. She’d read and fish and remember this time in the tents, where every morning when she said hello to Corbin, she was also whispering goodbye in her heart.
When it was time to pull up the hoop net, she did it quickly but smoothly as she had been taught. Red crabs were supposed to be a certain length to be legal. Not everyone threw them back. Hungry time. The crabs she caught went into her bucket of seawater, and to keep from getting pinched, she held them by the back.
The one part of crabbing she hated was the killing. Gathering the legs into her hands, she smashed each crab behind its eyes against a rock in the hopes the carapace would come away cleanly. Bigger crabs were harder. It went without saying that crabbing wasn’t a proper physical therapy exercise. She didn’t want to mess up her arm by asking too much too early, but this was a
world where she needed more from it.
Then the crabs went into the pot of boiling water over the fire at their campsite. When done and cooled, she cracked the legs and claws with a nutcracker. One evening, Austin moaned for lemon wedges and small bowls of clarified butter to accompany the crabmeat, and Micah retorted that she preferred her butter confused. After getting out his complaints and throwing a claw at Micah in retaliation, Austin gave Zaley a hug and sweetly thanked her for bringing home the crabs. Hello. Goodbye.
They couldn’t go forward. They couldn’t go back. They could only dwell in limbo where their lives were reduced to the most basic components of food, water, and shelter. A drinking fountain supplied them with fresh water, and they filled the bucket there for sponge baths and laundry. Since Zaley’s hair was prone to getting oily, she washed it once a week with the bottle of shampoo they had and then Micah set it back in a French braid. That kept it from looking so awful. The color was almost back to normal.
The others kept their stamps covered and limited their interactions with people. Fortunately, Sausalito’s current supply of Shepherds was small and ineffective. But that didn’t mean people liked zombies any better. They just hated Shepherds more. Micah steered away from other boats when she was out on the water. Friends could become enemies in one careless moment.
The boys took turns with the kayak, but Austin found it boring and lonely. Corbin did it now and then, yet he wasn’t keen on water. They preferred hunting for bait, a babbling Mars hanging off their chests in turn as one boy or another dipped over and over to the rocks. That was a sweet sight to Zaley, who enjoyed the baby more when someone else was in charge of him. Mars liked Corbin now. It had just taken a while to win him over. But it was still for Micah that he went bonkers, and at times he cried when she sailed away.
Rumors often passed along the pier when Zaley was there. There was no way to know how much truth was in them. No longer were most newspapers being printed, and none still in existence were being distributed in the area. The oil shortage had become an oil absence altogether in the world’s chaos, the United States opening up its reserves to fill a tiny portion of the gap. The reserves were limited to military and relief use. The military had pulled back into the San Bernardino Mountains, ceding all that lay of California below to chaos. A member of the Prime cabinet and his wife had been pulled out of their mansion in Texas and executed, not by military or police but vigilantes in the community. Their fake president still lived, but several members of his family had also been executed.
The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set Page 128