by D. Gideon
“I know the code,” I said. “I can get back in.”
“Good.” She pressed a button on her key fob, and her car started. Another push, and I heard her doors unlock. “Okay. You walk all the way down to the end of the parking lot. When you’re there, I’ll get in and leave, and I don’t care what you do to the place after that. Burn it down, if you want.”
On the one hand, I was pissed, but on the other hand I could understand her caution. If what she had was as valuable as she said it was, I would have taken the same measures. But there was no chance of me attacking her—I wanted no part of something that valuable. If you had something valuable, someone else would want to take it. They might even kill you for it.
I just wanted to get home.
I started walking, and then finally jogged to the end just to get it over with. I turned to face her, and then even sat down on the edge of the asphalt to prove to her I wasn’t going to try to rush her. I had no idea if she had a gun in her car.
She watched me for a minute, then nodded and got into her car. I sat there as she pulled out quickly, tires chirping as she bounced through the little dip at the edge of the road. After a few moments, even the sound of her engine was gone.
The sun was well into the sky now. I heard some children laughing, and looked at the road behind us to find two boys, maybe ten or so, chasing each other around the yard with huge squirt guns. The tanks on the top of the gun must have held nearly a gallon each, and the thick streams of water seemed to be shooting about fifteen feet.
“Time out! Time out!” One called. “I’m empty. I’ve gotta go back to the pool and refill!”
“You can’t just call time out whenever you run out of ammo,” the second boy said. “That’s cheating. You’re supposed to run back and refill without getting hit!”
The front door of the house opened, and a woman in a long bathrobe stepped out onto the stoop.
“I told you boys to stay in the backyard,” she said. “Now either you get back there right this instant or you can spend the rest of the morning in your rooms.”
The boys ran around the side of the house, disappearing, and the mom went back inside. I could hear more squeals and laughter after a minute. They must’ve refilled their “ammo”.
They had an entire pool full of the most precious substance on earth at the moment, and their mom was letting them pour it out with squirt guns. She had no idea.
I picked myself off of the ground and headed back inside. I needed to let the animals go, I needed to re-stuff my pack, and we needed to get on the road.
As the door behind me shut and cut off the sound of the boys playing, I realized that sooner or later, the neighbors would want the water that was in that pool, and it wouldn’t matter that they’d be taking what those little boys needed to stay alive. I wondered how long that would take.
Walking past the hall where I’d found Joyce, I stopped and considered my options. It would just take a minute to sniff around in there. Mel was still probably asleep, anyway, so it wasn’t like everyone was ready and waiting for me so we could leave.
I didn’t want whatever it was Joyce was after. I was just insanely curious as to what she thought would be the new currency; something valuable enough not just to keep her alive, but keep her comfortable. Then I happened to think: Maybe it’s something we could find and use once we get home.
I pulled out my flashlight and headed for the office.
CHAPTER 26
M onday, September 3rd
College Park, Maryland
Joyce had been successful in gathering up all of the papers, because I looked under the desk, the chair, and even a bushy potted plant next to the filing cabinets looking for one that had gotten loose, and found nothing. She’d left the drawer open though, and there was a nice big split in the folders where she’d taken one out. The hanging file folder that she had pulled the manila folder out of was still hanging there. It didn’t have a plastic label tab, so I pulled it out.
Taped to the front of the folder was a quarter-sheet of paper with typing on it. I laid it on the desk and focused my flashlight on it.
Prince Georges County Public Schools
Approved Medications & Dosages List
2018-2019 School Year
I blinked. Turning back to the cabinet, I slid the hanging file folders aside. There was one for each school year, going back at least ten years. I pulled out the one for last year and laid it on the desk, opening it up.
Listed there was every child who was taking some type of prescription in each school in the county. Their names, grade, age, address, contact number, doctor’s name, prescription name, number of doses per day and in what strength, what condition or ailment the medication was for, and which school nurse had signed off on receiving the child’s medication for daily distribution. The lists were grouped according to which school the children attended.
I ran my finger down the list of drugs. It read like an addict’s dream. Ritalin, Adderall, Zoloft, Xanax, Prozac, Wellbutrin, Concerta, Paxil, Luvox, and more. The conditions were just as varied: ADHD, depression, bulimia, diabetes, bi-polar disorder; every ailment that existed seemed to be present. One poor child was even taking Oxycontin for lung cancer.
Currency, Joyce had said. Having been a teacher for so long, she knew that kids frequently had to leave class to have the nurse dispense their prescribed medication, because the kids weren’t allowed to carry the meds themselves. She knew the pills were there, and being on the school board now, she probably knew the master code to enter every school in the county. I had no idea how she planned to get into the locked nurses’ offices or the locked cabinets they kept the meds in, but she probably had an idea for that, too.
I just hoped the nurses had thought of the meds and had gone to their offices to clear out and protect their stash before anyone else did.
Joyce was wrong. Those pills weren’t currency, they were a guaranteed way to get yourself killed. Once someone found out she had them, she’d have a target on her head.
No, this wasn’t something we could use once we got home. I wasn’t up for the idea of dying because some addict saw me as an obstacle between him and his salvation.
I thought about leaving a note for this Dr. Rainer telling him who had taken the list, but discarded it and put the file folders back into the cabinet.
By the time he came back to this office to get anything he wanted to keep and saw the note, Joyce would likely be dead anyway…or trapped somewhere wishing she was dead.
People ain’t got no sense, I remembered Grams often saying, and the thought of her brought on a flood of homesickness and worry. Was she okay? Were my parents okay? Had they been able to get home? What was going to happen to them, to all of us, in the weeks and months to come? Would we all end up like Joyce, either dead or wishing we were? The little boys across the street—what would happen to them? Would someone kill them for their pool water? Would their parents be able to protect them?
All of the children across the country, across the world…most of them would die horribly in the next few weeks. Violence, dysentery from polluted water, not being able to get the medications they needed. Even a small cut could turn out to be deadly now if it got infected, and kids were always getting little scratches and cuts. In the months ahead, they’d be dying of starvation, more violence from other people who were starving and desperate, or freezing to death once winter set in.
My mind raced, taking the opportunity to travel down paths I hadn’t let myself think about. People in nursing homes were probably already suffering, if their caretakers weren’t showing up. People in hospitals might last another few days depending on how much fuel the hospital generators had, but then they’d be gone, too. Most of the population would be dead once spring arrived, simply because the electricity had gone out.
The enormity of it all overwhelmed me, and I slid down the filing cabinet into a heap on the floor, sobbing for all of us and what we were about to go through.
; With the exception of King, the dogs were gone. I had walked each of them outside to the pile of food and tub of water, and then taken the leash off of them and gone back inside for the next. Each time I came out, the previous dog had disappeared.
The cats weren’t so anxious to leave. Two of them were sprawled on the parking lot, soaking up the rising sun and the warming blacktop. One was lying next to the food, watching the two in the parking lot. Two had started sniffing around the edge of the building, keeping close to it, and had eventually worked their way around to the front where I couldn’t see them.
The turtle I deposited in the bushes alongside the old playground at the back of the property. Either he’d wander off, or some kid would find him and keep him for a while. Maybe he’d end up as someone’s supper. He was a grumpy thing, so I wasn’t too torn up about it. Marco joked that we could cook him and have him for breakfast, and I almost considered it.
The cockatiel was a different story. He was a perky, friendly little guy who tried very hard to talk. His owner hadn’t kept up with clipping his wing feathers, but they still weren’t grown out enough that he could fly. He needed a couple more weeks.
Marco ended up sneaking the cage and a few bags of birdseed to the house where I’d seen the children. He came back grinning, saying he’d left the bird in some shade under a tree in their backyard where the kids couldn’t miss him. Maybe I should have snapped the cockatiel’s neck and given him to the cats, but he was just so cute with his little gravelly, gurgling noises and bobbing head that I couldn’t bear the thought of it.
Let him bring some joy to those little boys, I thought. For as long as it lasts.
Breakfast consisted of some over-glazed bear claw pastries from the school board’s snack machine. Corey had somehow gotten the front door open with his Leatherman and his shovel, but he had no luck with the soda machine. We took snacks that would last, like pretzels and bags of nuts, and left all of the more fragile things like chips behind. Marco made another small pot of what he called “cowboy coffee”, and Mel found a spot for the rest of the coffee grounds in her backpack. She’d condensed the contents of her purse into her laptop bag, leaving a large pile of random things she didn’t think she’d need on the break room table. Now we were all re-arranging our backpacks in the hall near the back door, where we had plenty of natural light. King lay behind me, snoring softly.
Corey was shoving things into his pack as if they’d personally offended him just by existing. He hadn’t spoken to me since I’d told everyone about my encounter with Joyce. Now that I thought about it, he had completely avoided me.
I finished strapping my rolled-up blanket to the bottom of my pack and sat back, watching him. He tightened the straps on his pack and then stood up and stomped off. A minute later he came back with the bucket and the towel. He dropped the bucket on the floor with a noise that startled Mel and Marco, then threw the towel at me. I caught it just before it hit my face.
“Don’t forget that,” he snapped.
“Did I miss something?” I said. “Did you not have enough coffee or something?”
He crossed his arms and glared down at me, silent.
I lifted my eyebrows and waited. After nearly a minute, I broke.
“Okay, fine. What are you so pissed about?”
“You,” he said. “You go creeping off to see who’s here, confront the person, without telling any of us where you’re going or what you’re doing, or getting one of us to come with you.”
“Okay,” I said. “And…?”
“And you could’ve gotten killed, Ripley. What if that woman had had a gun instead of a taser? What if it had been some junkie breaking in here looking for something to steal?”
“She didn’t, it wasn’t, and I’m fine.”
“You’re fine because you got lucky,” he said. “That was beyond stupid. What if you had gotten shot? How would I have told your parents that? I’m so sorry Mr. Miller, she just went off without us. We didn’t even know what she was doing and the next thing we know, there’s gunshots.”
“You’re overreacting,” I said.
“I’m being realistic. You are acting like everything’s fine and dandy, like it’s all normal and we’re just taking a spontaneous hike back to your house because we feel like it.”
“Well everything isn’t falling to friggin’ pieces yet, either. We can’t expect everyone we meet to kill us, Corey.”
“We have to take precautions to make sure they can’t! This isn’t the same world it was four days ago!”
Outside, a small engine started up. It skipped and choked at first, then slid up into a smooth, yet annoying drone. Mel stood up and looked out of the window through the back door.
“The guy at the house next to the kids has his lawnmower out in the driveway,” she said. The sound of the engine changed a bit, and she shook her head. “That idiot’s cutting his grass.”
Corey and I glared at each other. I lifted a hand and thrust it at the door, as if to say See? Normal.
“You’re being naive,” he said. “Again. And it’s going to get you killed. It might get all of us killed.”
I huffed and rolled my eyes. Kids were playing outside. A man was cutting his grass. There weren’t cars screaming by shooting at each other, people breaking into homes, and chaos in the streets. It sounded like a normal day, minus the traffic.
“It’s not hard to kill someone,” Marco said. “Not after the first time, at least.”
That got our attention.
He was sitting cross-legged behind his pack, idly flipping one of the straps around in his fingers. He didn’t look up at us.
“After the first time, it just becomes a matter of efficiency. Will this person come back later to kill me if I leave them alive? Will this person harm someone else if I leave them alive? Would the world be better off without them?”
Still not looking up, he picked up one of the four water bottles he’d fished out of trash cans around the building, washed out, and refilled. He set it on top of the socks in the open top of his backpack, then reached for the next.
“When I was a kid, our city came under siege in a civil war. No one could get in or out. It was a normal city, like any you’d find here. Restaurants, movie theaters, shopping malls. Big billboards showing off the latest fashions, the newest watches. People going to work in business suits, taxi cabs that were less than two years old, modern skyscrapers—it was just like any city here in America. There was some unrest in the country, but nothing anyone seemed worried about—I was just a child. It was just boring talk on the news, it had nothing to do with us. We were a modern city. Unrest was for the rural areas, for the poor people. Then one day, we were surrounded by tanks and soldiers.”
He put the second bottle into the pack. “No trucks bringing food or supplies into the city. They cut off the water and the electricity. The troops from the countryside started shelling the city. Things went from normal to surreal in less than a week. People were using their furniture for cooking fires. They were afraid to leave their homes. Hundreds were dying in the bombings, and those that survived were homeless. We boarded up our windows, barricaded the doors, and tried not to attract attention. We’d hear glass breaking, and shooting, and screaming every night on the streets around us. And the bombs, of course. It went on for months.”
The third bottle went in.
“I never knew it, because it was just normal life to me, but we were a wealthy family. My father worked for the banks, closing businesses and restructuring them. We had come to Sarajevo from Portugal just a year before, as the bank saw opportunity in Bosnia and sent my father to handle their business. It wasn’t long into the siege before bad elements were forming groups, going from house to house demanding payment or else. They’d take supplies, jewelry, money…even cigarettes and candles. And because these things ran out very fast, they started taking information.”
He picked up the fourth bottle and rolled it slowly in his hand.
“Someone
told them that my father was a rich foreigner who worked for the banks, and that he had gold hidden in the house. Not that gold would have done them any good; there was nothing to buy, no food on the shelves. The stores were all destroyed from the bombs, and those that weren’t were closed. But it didn’t matter. They were the new lords of the city, and they wanted the gold.”
We were all silent. Corey had uncrossed his arms and leaned back against the wall, no longer glaring at me. Mel had sat back down and was staring at Marco with a look of dread. Perhaps Marco had started talking to break the tension between Corey and I, but he’d simply replaced it with tension of his own.
“There must have been ten of them that night. They busted in the front and back doors at the same time. They had guns—I’d never seen such guns. They looked huge to me, too heavy to carry. They rounded my family up in the living room and demanded that my father take them to the gold. He refused, of course—he had no gold in the house. They didn’t believe him. They destroyed everything. Smashed our plates and cups onto the floor. Busted our windows from the inside, and then busted out the boards my father had covered them with. They smashed our furniture, our mirrors, and threatened to light us on fire, but still my father could not take them to gold he didn’t have. So they gave him an ultimatum: he had three days to think about it, and in the meantime, they’d take my sister to keep them company.”
I saw a motion in the corner of my eye as Mel’s hand flew up to cover her mouth. I was staring down at my own hands now, motionless.
“I tried to stop them. I pulled at her arm, trying to pull her away from them. My mother and father were pulling, too. There was so much screaming. I adored my sister. She was fourteen, and she treated me like I was her favorite person in the world. She’d always let me come with her when she walked to the park to meet her friends. She’d sit up at night, reading to me and helping me learn the language. If the sun rose and set in my parents, then my sister was my moon. I had no idea what they were going to do, just that they were taking her. She knew, though. She was screaming to us to stay back, to not get hurt, that she loved us. They beat my father down with the butt of a rifle. They threw my mother across the room. They pulled me off of my sister and threw me to the floor and stomped on me and kicked me. And then they left with her.”