by Brian Hodge
Their set-up was in an old gasoline station that smelled funny. He avoided Mr. and Mrs. (they had no other names that Jim knew of). He preferred the Rockets.
He had even come to like the quiet, the sky and the moon, the stars at night. The sun in the daytime. The rain. He had a good shelter not far from the SUV where he hid things and sometimes slept when he wasn’t too scared. It was inside one of the old Rockets and it was roomy in there and the power that ran the lights never went down. It was not bad at all. He felt safe there, protected.
Being alone was not bad until he saw the girl. Saw her one day in town while he was hunting for things to barter with to go with what he grew. Saw her scrounging through an old Wal-Mart store, dressed only in a pink T-shirt, flip-flops and boy’s underwear. He saw her. She saw him. And she ran. And in that moment he knew he did not truly like being alone or with farts like Sleepy Sam and his dumb son.
After that, he thought of her often. Her long, blonde hair and the way she looked in that underwear.
He knew about girls—and women like Mrs. and the insane warrior woman and her maniac man who fought till they died. Girls were better. There had been girls when there was a school, but after the Revolution there were few more girls to see, just some guys. The girls often fled to the cities. He assumed some girls lived nearby, he’d just never seen any. He thought most went into hiding because of the monsters that enjoyed taking women to their masters, so he thought they were all gone and he figured cannibals liked girl meat even more than boy meat. He liked to watch the old movies Sleepy Sam had on videos and DVDs. Sleepy Sam had quite a stash and Jim had loved watching the Star Wars series over and over but Sam always demanded payment. Jim had swiped the first Star Wars movie and watched it several times on a small, battery-powered DVD player he had found in some rich person’s house, but the battery went dead and he hadn’t found another battery that would work. After a while, though, he just got tired of the movies, especially the porno films Sleepy Sam adored. Too many pretty women in the movies.
It was better to know you were alone, and just be alone, and learn to like it. If you didn’t, you thought too much, and if you thought too much, you hurt too much, and that led to wondering too much about imagined things that could not be. Then, if you held yourself in your hand at night and made pleasure come, it became a mean, hollow pleasure that only made you want the other and that made you feel just how lonely and alone you truly were.
If you didn’t watch the DVDs and the jerky videos, then you didn’t think about it so much.
Not so much.
Not as much.
But, once he knew the girl existed, he could not rest. He could no longer be alone and like it.
Alone was no longer the absence of others. It was a hollow ache, a hole that couldn’t be plugged and had no bottom. Then he asked Sleepy Sam what he did to get over being lonesome.
“I just never think about it none.”
“What about Dan’l’s mom?”
“She died.”
“Well, how’d you get over it?”
Sleepy Sam attacked the dirt with his hoe. “You just don’t.”
“Well, then how do you stand it?”
“You just do.”
Not much help. Jim supposed the two were his best friends in the universe but they weren’t really very bright. He guessed he would have to find the girl. He needed to talk to her.
On another day, as the year wound down and summer died out and the cool winds came in, bringing the first rains of the winter to come, he went back to town and scrounged about for some canned goods. He found some canned meat, and was happy even if the expiration date had come and gone years ago. He thought pork and beans and tuna and Spam would just make Mr. and Mrs. the happiest souls on the planet. And the tin of sardines, even if slightly spoiled, would make Sleepy Sam laugh. He also found a CorningWare lid in excellent condition. That should be worth three candles at least. If he had a gun he might shoot something fresh to eat, but he had only seen a few crows and scrawny squirrels.
All the guns in town had been taken; the stores looted of them and their ammunition. So that was out. He fished from time to time with a pole, cord, and hook made from a paper clip. Worms he dug out of the ground for bait. Sometimes he used crickets. But finding the canned meat was a good thing. He had thought it was all gone, but there were several cans in a store he thought he had checked out. They were stashed under a tarpaulin inside an old standing fridge.
It was the store where he had first seen the girl. He was hoping she might be there.
She wasn’t.
He took the meat back to the rocket ship and ate the Spam with some fresh carrots and enjoyed it, but it didn’t stop him from thinking about the girl, and he couldn’t be happy alone anymore.
The boy had long, dark hair. He kept it tied back with a strip of black leather. He acted tough, like he owned Mud Creek and he made her so angry. He stole her stash of food that she’d found the day before. She watched him cram everything into a kid’s backpack. Her stomach growled. He was like a monster, one of those creeps that stole her family. She hated him and yearned for him at the same time. She decided to stalk him, pretend he was a beast she could capture and roast over a slow fire for dinner. A little garlic made anything edible. She carried a jar of garlic powder, pepper, and salt with her at all times. Her mother had taught her how to cook when she was six years old. That was how old she was when the rockets came and the Revolution began.
The monsters. The cannibals. The robots.
How long had it taken her to reach Mud Creek? “Get to Mud Creek,” were her mother’s last words before the fire and the screams sent her running into the forest straight into the claws of a monster. She had told her the coordinates every night before bedtime and what to do when she got inside one of the spaceships. “Go home,” her mother said. Sally didn’t know where home was. She had to find out though.
She followed him quietly, like an Indian. Mother was an Indian. Maybe. Actually, Sally was not sure what Mother was, just that she was alone and much older than six.
And now seeing her reflection always disturbed her. How did she get so big? Her body had betrayed her. She even bled once a month and that meant she could have a baby. She saw a monster take a baby once. And she didn’t want to know what it did with it. It frightened her. How she wanted to rip it from its claws and protect it.
That was when she got the dog. The dog, a shaggy, Golden Retriever became her friend and loyal companion. She knew his breed because her mother once showed her a dog book with wonderful pictures. When she saw him scavenging for food on the outskirts of a city, she called to him with a pang of longing sweeping through her: “Little One!” He came to her as if he had always known her. They slept together at night, Sally’s hand often resting on his head. It was better than being alone. But the dog couldn’t talk. She wished it could talk, explain to her what had gone so terribly wrong with the world that they had been forced to live like this, so alone, so horribly, hideously alone.
She called the dog Little One even though he wasn’t exactly little because someone had once called her that. Maybe her mother or her father had whispered those words—his face was an even more distant memory than her mom’s, featureless with two dark smudges for eyes and a mouth that never opened except to say, “Good bye.” She was not sure. Maybe she didn’t even have a dad.
Sally tracked the boy to the library, a place of rotting books and broken computers, several times. It took all her courage to confront him on the third visit. He rummaged in the librarian’s office, squatting in front of an old DVD player. “If I could just figure out how to make a battery or make a generator. I really should study on it some. I think I could do it…” he said out loud, as if he knew she was standing behind him.
“I hate you,” she finally said to force him to turn around, her shadow almost touching his. Of course he knew she was there. The light in her lantern glowed.
“Say what?” he turned slowly and
looked at her.
“Won’t do no good,” she said, “—that thing can’t hear you scream when I kill you. I’ve decided to roast you well-done with wild onion and garlic or make me some boy jerky that will last me a year or more. How’d that be? You scared yet?” She set the lantern down with one hand. In the other she held a Glock 19, something she stole from the last cannibal she’d killed.
“I don’t think you want to do that,” the boy said, eyes wide. The gun always frightened the country boys.
Sally smiled. “Maybe. Maybe not. If you got a knife, show it now. Toss it over here or I’ll shoot you right between the eyes.”
The knife slid between her feet. “I’m unarmed now. You got me dead to rights. But are you sure you want to kill and eat me? You don’t look like a cannibal.”
“There ain’t much meat on you, I do confess. Some fat makes for better eating when it comes to roast meat.”
“I got some carrots, onions, potatoes and I can get some eggs. Wouldn’t that taste better?”
“Yeah and I bet you’ve got some Spam, pork and beans and sardines. Am I right, you lousy, no good, asshole THIEF?”
“And you got a cute T-shirt and some Hanes underwear I think I might like to have. Fair exchange?”
“Not on your life,” Sally said, trying to keep a smile from flickering across her lips. The fall weather meant her legs were cold. And the T-shirt wasn’t enough to protect her against the cold to come.
“And tea. I got tea back at my sleeping space. Lipton or some Stash spice tea I’ve been keeping for just the right time. I’ll share it with you if you don’t kill me. That’s a fine piece of gun you got there. I don’t reckon I’ve seen one of them guns before. Not in these parts, anyway. You from the city?”
“I want my food back.”
“I’ll give it to you, just put the gun away. Okay? Let’s be friends.”
Her dog, Little One, had done nothing. He had stood beside her, didn’t growl and his tail began wagging.
“Nice dog. What’s its name?”
“Little One.”
“He’s not very little.”
“I know and if you are mean to me, one word and you’re dead meat.”
“Okay.”
“So—do you want to go shopping with me? I need me some clothes.” Mother and Sally used to go shopping. She would never forget shopping. That was another word for scavenging now.
“Only if you don’t kill me if we don’t find much. There is this little clothes place that still has some wearable stuff. I bet you’re kind of cold.”
Sally looked at her torn, smelly T-shirt. “Yeah, I am. Lead the way.”
The boy stood. He was a young man with long legs in worn jeans. The bare chest that showed through the opening of his button-less flannel shirt had brown hair on it while his shirt had sleeves that were far too short for his arms. He had some hair on his face, too, not a lot but enough to scare her just a little bit. At least it wasn’t a lot and it looked kind of fine. Sally also realized he was a lot taller than she was. She followed him cautiously.
He led her out of the library and down about three blocks or so, to a small department store. A few mannequins still stood in one display, miraculously sporting the latest in pre-Revolution, post-Republic of Texas fashion, cobwebby and filthy. But the shoes looked intact—sturdy black shoes that might fit. Hands slightly shaking, she snatched them and tried them on. He threw her some socks. She put them on and then tried the shoes. They fit. “This is good,” she said. She didn’t know how long they’d last but she’d take them.
“The best clothes are at the back in a storeroom most looters miss,” the young man said.
“Okay. What’s your name?”
“Jim, James Leroy Carver. What’s yours?”
“Sally Louise Alice Mistral Corabeth Angelique Kiki Anne Robinson Lewis Thompson Johnson Mason Something or Other. In other words, I haven’t the vaguest clue but I think my Mother called me Sally.”
“Well, dang, that’s a mouthful, Sally.” He smiled.
Sally felt suddenly weak. He held out his hand. “Let’s get you some new clothes. I could use some new trousers myself. These jeans are getting too tight.”
They were tight, she noticed, but didn’t think that was such a bad thing.
In the storeroom, the lantern came in handy. They tried on clothes, backs turned, used to nudity and unaware that seeing each other might provoke some strange feelings.
She looked at him like a wolf looked at a wounded pig when his pants slipped to the floor so he could try some gray silky suit pants.
“You don’t got any underwear on. How come?”
He seemed stunned and uncomfortable. “Just don’t see the point.”
“Oh.” She pulled on a short red skirt. “This is cute but I guess I need me some pants, too.”
He threw her some jeans. She tried them and grinned. “I can wear these. They fit. I want me a shirt with pockets. And a jacket and sweater, too.”
He grinned.
“I need me a back pack better’n that thing of yours. How come you carry such a little baby backpack? Don’t you need a bigger one now? You’re a man, not a kid.”
“I guess I should. Never thought about it, really.”
“Hey, thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I guess we’re friends now.”
She tried on a jacket after shaking the dust out of it. “This could do with a wash in the creek. Mud Creek has a creek, doesn’t it?”
“Sort of. We can go bathe in the creek, if you’d like, but you can’t swim with a gun.”
“I’d like that, Jim. But I want my food back first or I’m telling you I’ll kill you and roast you for supper.” She waved the Glock 19.
“Put that away or we can’t be friends,” he said.
Jim had done more talking with Sally than he’d ever done with another human being. She talked so much that it shocked him. He talked so much he got hoarse. They talked at the creek before they got naked and jumped in. He had never seen such a pretty girl in his life, certainly not one his own age and certainly not one with a gun.
He really wanted to look at the gun up close but she wouldn’t let him. She made her dog sit on it while they swam.
Jim wanted to touch her so badly he actually ached. It hurt to watch her breasts bob in the water. They swam closer and closer to each other. He shook the cold water out of his ears when he came up for air after a few strokes that brought him right next to her. He suddenly had to do something or burst. He grabbed her and kissed her. She resisted at first and then she kissed him back. They were kind of sloppy at kissing.
It took a few tries before it felt right.
They kissed a lot and then she got scared and swam away. She got into her clothes, whistled to her dog and left. Jim treaded water for awhile and then he got out before his skin got all wrinkled. The sun was going down and the warmth of the moment had vanished.
He waited for her to come back and get the food he’d stolen from her but she didn’t. He didn’t want to go all the way back into town to the SUV so instead he went to the rocket ship where he hid things.
That night he sat alone outside the Rocket, and looked at the stars and wondered what she thought about their kisses. Way out in the distance, coming from the mountains, he could see light. Fires. Someone was up there. He wondered if one of the lights belonged to the girl. He wondered if she were still alive or if some other man had her and was enjoying her.
It was not a thing he liked to think about for very long. Then he thought about the ridge and the giant faces.
He told himself that she was most likely not that far away. The lights from the fires looked near, but they were not. Maybe the beasts of the jungle were coming or the monsters or the cannibals. He wondered if they would come to the Rocket and find him. He feared that. He knew that he could stay inside his hiding place and finally figure how to close it up, and it would be impos
sible for them to come in after him, with him way up high, the hatch closed and air-tight. No one could ever get to him in here.
Maybe that girl Sally had become a cannibal. Let her have that damn Glock 19 and that dog she liked to sleep with. Maybe she had fleas. Maybe if he slept with her he’d get fleas and they’d scratch themselves to death. If he did not get caught outside, nothing could happen. That was the thing to watch out for, not getting caught out where there was a chance of being hurt, captured, killed and eaten. Or maybe just his supplies taken, his rocket ship stolen by a girl who could grow up to be like, well, Mrs.
There were other rockets. Someone like that girl could come along and move in next door. There could be a lot of people living in the rockets. They could call it Rocket City on Wuthering Heights Street. They could borrow tools and plant gardens and share and work their way straight into a Post-Revolution civilization. They could get that dang DVD player working again and the electric plant and make new Spam and pork and beans that never rotted.
It was a pretty thought, but he knew it was just a thought. If more men and women like Sally came with guns, they would most likely kill him. They had formed their packs, and the packs were what they protected. If you were outside the pack, they wanted you dead; they wanted to eat you.
He wondered if he would eat a human being, and knew, if there was no other food available, he would—easily—with or without potatoes. Sally had mentioned garlic. He liked garlic.
He remembered his garden behind the garage growing in the moonlight. It was fat with vegetables, and he was pleased by the thought of the coming harvest. If he didn’t go check on it, what would happen? The garden needed watering.
Seemed like several days went by and he got bored waiting to see if Sally would come find him. She didn’t so he decided to go into Mud Creek to just see what she was up to and check on his garden but he was afraid. What if she laughed at him?