Foreverland Is Dead

by Tony Bertauski

  Miranda didn’t believe her, but still…she tries not think about it.

  She doesn’t fall asleep until the wolves finish howling. But then, in the middle of the night, someone gets up and goes out the back door. Miranda figures someone’s going to pee.

  She has to pee, too, but decides to hold it. Doesn’t matter if those wolves stopped howling, they could still be out there. The bathroom is a little outhouse near the trees. She doesn’t know what’s worse: walking outside at night or peeing in that bathroom.

  It’s a tie.

  Half an hour later, the girl comes back. She must’ve delivered a number two.

  Even grosser.

  5

  Not day.

  Nor night.

  Endless gray. Forever and ever.

  It cannot be grasped.

  Cannot be let go.

  Cyn tears at the fog. It slips between her fingers, yet clings to her skin. She tries to swim, tries to run, tries to do anything but be there.

  She hears them cry. The boys are out there. They’re crying for help.

  The rooster crows.

  Sleep is like death, bottomless and heavy. Her head is a rock sunk into the pillow; her body gently cradled in the gel-like mattress. Feels like she’s hovering in its embrace. Cyn opens her eyes, stares at the lines carved in the wall. She can’t remember getting into bed.

  They fed the horses and chickens before sunset. The girls wanted to pet the horses. Kat knew what food they ate and how much. The barn had a feed room with tack and barrels of oats.

  They straightened up the kitchen. Dinner was pickles and boiled potatoes. The brick house sat in the distant dark, one eye lit on the front porch.

  They went to bed, but she doesn’t remember doing it.

  Cyn quietly sits up. Her feet hurt like she’d been walking barefoot. She doesn’t recall taking off her boots. She’s wearing the same t-shirt. The smell of death clings to it like smoke. Or perhaps that’s the dead body still staining her sinuses.

  She reaches under the bed and slides out a box. She digs blindly through a stack of shirts, finds a pair of socks near the bottom and something else. Something leather.

  It’s curved at the bottom with a smooth, cold handle. There’s not enough light to see but she knows what it is. She lights the candle. Buck knife.

  She unsnaps the latch and slides it out of the leather case. The blade is silver, heavy. She flicks the end, listens to it ring. The edge is sharp but the tip is dull.

  The lines on the wall.

  Are those days? Has she been marking how long she’s been there? There are so many. She pulls the bed from the wall, the legs grinding. The lines go all the way to the floor.

  More than a year.

  Cyn snuffs the candle out and gets on her knees. She reaches under the bed, feels one of the boards that support the mattress. She unsnaps it one more time and reaches over the bed, gouging a line in the wall.

  A new row begins.

  There are plenty of tools in the barn, but no buckets. A dozen eggs fit in the cradle of Cyn’s shirt. It’s more than they’ll eat, but she wasn’t going to leave the eggs to rot. The cisterns stand like black sentinels drinking from the roof. There’s a door to the kitchen on the outside of the dinner house.

  Cyn slides the keycard into the slot, listens for the gears to turn before pushing it open. She flips the light switch, turns on the griddle, and looks for butter.

  There’s a list of daily chores tacked to the refrigerator. She puts it in her back pocket. The refrigerator is stocked with milk, fruit, and dried strips of meat. The meat could be from a hunt—there’s probably elk and deer—but milk and fruit? Oranges don’t grow where there are snowcapped mountains. Someone had to bring those.

  They’ll be back.

  No butter in the fridge. There’s a cabinet below the sink but no food, just hundreds of plastic bags containing clear liquid. They look like IV bags. The shelves on the door contain brown bottles of peroxide and iodine.

  Medicine, good.

  She grabs one of the IV bags. No label. Maybe medicine or nutrients. If things get desperate, they might be drinking them.

  Half the eggs get burned.

  Mad finds a tub of lard and turns the heat down, salvaging the other eggs. Cyn scrapes the blackened bits onto a plate. They each get two eggs and a banana. Cyn’s eggs look like they were cooked with a hammer.

  They eat in silence.

  Kat’s the first to finish, licking her plate. She starts scraping the inside of the banana peel. Miranda picks at her food, pushes the crispy parts to the edge. Roc pinches them off her plate. Miranda doesn’t complain.

  Grit gusts against the windows. It sounds cold.

  Roc takes her plate to the kitchen, returns with a jar of preserved apples. The top pops. She dips two fingers inside like chopsticks.

  “We need to start rationing,” Cyn says.

  “There’s enough food for months,” Roc says.

  “We might be here longer.”

  “I don’t plan on being here that long.”

  “Where you going?”

  “Out there.” Roc points at the front door. “I’m not waiting around to die; I’ll hit the hills and take my chances.”

  “That’s not smart. Grizzlies are out there.”

  “How do you know?” She plucks out another apple.

  “We’re in the mountains. This looks like Wyoming or Montana. Either way, bears live here.”

  “She’s right,” Kat adds. “This is the wilderness. You won’t survive two nights out there. Plus, we’re at the end of summer. That means it’s going to get colder.”

  “And we need to conserve food.” Cyn reaches for the jar.

  Roc slides it away. “Maybe I’m Daniel Boone.”

  “You don’t know who you are.” Cyn looks around the table. “None of us do. And until we know more, we need to work together. We need to survive until someone finds us.”

  “That’s your plan? Hang around until someone finds us?”

  “Look, oranges and apples don’t grow here, someone brought them. Someone built these cabins.”

  Roc laughs. “Maybe the dead lady did.”

  “That’s not funny!” Miranda stands up. Her chair falls over.

  Her chest heaves, fists clenched at her sides. Her lip starts trembling and she crosses her arms, turns her back.

  The wind hurls another gust of sand.

  “Look,” Cyn says, “there’s a lot we don’t know. We don’t know anything, really. We have to play it safe. We need to conserve food. We have to eat to survive, and that means staying hungry, eating little. We need to make it last.”

  “Maybe the world ended, is that what you’re saying?” Roc says.

  “First, we need to survive. So would you put the lid back on that jar and put it away?”

  Roc wipes her chin, stares at Cyn. They’re all watching.

  “How about this?” She lifts the jar as if to make a toast. “We go ahead and divvy this up since it’s already open. After that, we tighten the screws. I promise.”

  Roc doesn’t wait. She walks around the table, giving everyone a portion. The pieces plop onto the plates, cinnamon syrup spilling over the plump slices. Cyn watches the keycard dangle from her neck.

  The girls pause, but their appetites take over. They clear their plates and slurp up the syrup. They don’t look at Cyn. She doesn’t eat the fat chunks mellowing in a puddle of sugar water, even though her stomach fights her. Roc drops her boots on the table while running her finger inside the jar.

  “I found this.” Cyn pulls the paper from her back pocket. “It’s a chore list. I think we need to start doing it.”

  She spreads it on the table.

  “It makes sense, seems like things we should be doing.” No one objects. “Someone needs to be in charge of the garden, like weeding and harvesting. Who knows how much longer that stuff will grow; we need to get as much food out of the garden as we can. We’ve got at least one empty jar to
fill.”

  Roc licks the rim.

  Jen raises her hand. “I’ll do it.”

  “Then there’s the barn, and feeding the horses and chickens—”

  “I’ll do that.” Kat stands up.

  “Okay, good. I saw tools in there, so you and Jen can get that figured out. Someone also needs to manage the kitchen, clean stuff, and plan the meals, do all the cooking—that sort of thing. Mad?”

  She nods.

  “That leaves chopping wood.” Cyn drops her finger on the chore list. “There’s a stack on the other side of the barn. I think we need to stock up all the wood we can. If we’re here all winter, we’ll need to keep the stoves burning. I don’t think the bunkhouse will stay warm enough without a fire. We have to plan for the worst, start searching for dead wood or fallen trees. There are axes and wheelbarrows in the shed.”

  Cyn looks at them.

  “Stay off the path in back. We’ll just leave the body alone for now.”

  It gets quiet. Time slows.

  They’re all wishing Cyn didn’t remind them.

  “What do you think happened?” Jen asks.

  “I don’t know.” Cyn shrugs. “We just have to survive. We have to hope.”

  “What about her?” Roc slides the empty jar in Miranda’s direction. “What’s she going to do?

  Miranda remains distant. She grabs a lock of hair from behind her ear, puts it in her mouth. She hasn’t touched her preserved apples.

  “She’ll have to do what none of us can.”

  The others don’t say anything, either.

  Cyn takes her plate to the kitchen and eats the apples. She rinses her plate. Roc drops her plate in the sink, still chewing. Miranda is already on the front porch, her plate still on the table.

  The apples gone.

  6

  “I don’t want to do this,” Miranda says.

  “Who the hell wants to do any of this?” Roc snaps.

  Miranda looks at the meadow and the faraway trees, the mountains beyond. She thinks about running, not turning back, just going and going and getting as far away from this place as she can. The wolves are out there. Bears, too.

  Maybe that’s safer.

  “Look.” Cyn touches her shoulder. “We’ve got to know what’s in the brick house. We need to know if there’s a phone or a computer. And if there’s not, we need food.”

  She gently squeezes.

  “You’re the only one that can do it.”

  Miranda looks at the wooden planks. She nods and starts for the brick house without them. She doesn’t like to be touched, even if Cyn is the nice one.

  The lamp in the window is still on. Miranda’s legs begin to lock up as she nears the fence.

  “Go on.” Roc shoves her. “We ain’t got all day.”

  Miranda trips ahead and stops. She’s inside the fence and Roc can’t touch her. Stuck between two rocks—the brick house and the Dagger Queen—she pauses.

  Anger balls up in her belly. If she was big enough, she could drag that bitch through the fence and watch her go unconscious. But Miranda’s a waif. A fairy compared to Roc.

  A skinny little Barbie.

  “Come on, let’s go!” Roc claps. “Everyone’s working and you’re standing.”

  “Take it slow, Miranda,” Cyn says. “One step at a time. Open the door, look inside, and go in, nice and easy. No one’s going to hurt you, we’re right here. Go on.”

  Like they can do anything if something happens.

  She pulls herself up the steps with the help of the railing. The floorboards are painted. There are glass tables and rocking chairs at both ends. One of the tables has a tall glass on it, half-full of diluted tea.

  There are twin doors. Miranda drops her hand on one of the brass knobs. The hinges creak. She decides to push both doors open.

  The smell hits her.

  It’s dull and rotten, sticks to the back of her throat, clings to her tongue like gluey vapor. It’s the smell from the woods.

  “What is it?” Cyn asks.

  “It smells. Bad.”

  “Smell ain’t going to hurt you,” Roc says.

  “Cover your face.” Cyn demonstrates with her shirt. “Breathe through your shirt.”

  Miranda does that. It helps.

  The first step inside makes her dizzy. It’s not so much the odor; more like déjà vu, that strange sense she’s been here, done that. She braces herself against the doorjamb. Roc’s voice is distant. Miranda’s ears are ringing.

  The front room is immaculate, the couches pristine. The coffee tables are arranged with magazines and framed photos of the mountains and trees. Elk grazing in the meadow. There’s a TV set in a cherry hutch and a grandfather clock ticking in the corner.

  No computer, though.

  No phone.

  There’s a hallway down the center of the house with a metal door at the end. Everything is homey and nice: there’s crown molding, the wood floor looks polished, and the lamps have frilly lace on the shades. But the door at the end of the hall looks thick and heavy.

  The staircase is halfway down on the right. That’s where she came down only a day earlier. Seems like forever. She didn’t pay much attention to the house then. Too consumed with what was going on outside. Now she wishes she had looked around. Then she wouldn’t have to be doing this.

  All the doors along the way are closed. Thank God.

  The odor, though, gets worse. It seems to be clinging to her clothes. She’ll smell worse than body odor. She continues, one step at a time, just like Cyn told her. There are frames on the wall, photos of grandmothers and grandchildren. Sometimes they’re photographed out in the meadow or on the porch of the dinner house. There’s another one in the woods next to a small cabin.

  Miranda swallows a lump.

  She stops for a moment, pulling a deep breath through her shirt, closing her eyes. She feels funny. Maybe she’s hyperventilating.

  She should probably open a few doors, look for a phone. Roc and Cyn are watching, expecting her to do something. She gets halfway down the hall. The stairwell is to the right, but there’s an open door to the left. It’s the kitchen.

  There’s a sink below a window that overlooks the garden. Jen is on her knees, plucking peppers and storing them in the bottom of her shirt.

  All the cabinets are closed and the island countertop wiped off. The sink is empty. There’s no sign of a phone. There’s a door to the right. Miranda reaches out with her free hand, tears building on the rims of her eyelids. She rests her hand on the knob, suddenly battling thoughts of dead bodies stacked inside and tumbling down when she opens it.

  She stifles a sob and her hand slips from her face. The swampish odor wafts inside her head. She bends over. A tear splashes onto the linoleum.

  She has to take something out there, something that will satisfy them. Miranda closes her eyes, and before her thoughts seize her arm, she yanks the door open— Food.

  Lots of it. Cans of beans, beets, corn, beans—a culinary treasure chest. The shelves are deep and loaded, enough to feed them all winter.

  There’s a hamper on the floor. She holds her breath and lets go of her shirt so she can scoop the contents of one of the bottom shelves into the plastic hamper with the crook of her arm. She dry-heaves once.

  She drags the hamper across the floor, backing into the hallway with the food in tow. She feels dizzy again. The smell has worked its way past her throat and into her esophagus, staining her senses.

  But she keeps going, despite the tears… She closes her eyes, backing out of the hallway and into the front room. She backpedals until she feels the cool breeze and the sun. She steps off the porch, the hamper banging on the steps and cans falling out.

  She keeps going.

  One foot after another.

  Until she backs into something soft. Arms wrap around her.

  “You did it.” Cyn has her.

  Miranda collapses. The tears, this time, are different.

  She never wants t
o go in there again.

  7

  “This is good stuff.” Mad holds up a can of black beans. “Everything on our shelves is generic, but this is brand name. Is there more?”

  “Miranda said the entire pantry is stocked,” Cyn added.

  “Where is she?” Mad asks.

  “Puking.” Roc’s laughter sputters.

  Cyn walks away from the back corner of the dinner house. The outside door to the kitchen faces the garden and brick house. Mad slides the hamper inside and starts stacking the goods. Roc follows her, pulling out random items and setting them to the side.

  “Get all that inventoried,” Cyn says. “I want a list of all the food we have in stock.”

  “You an accountant now?” Roc says.

  “We’ve got to plan our meals, know what we have. Then we’ll know how long it’ll last.”

  “There’s a crapload in the brick house, you said so yourself.”

  “We won’t know how much until we get it. Until then, we work with what we have.”

  Jen arrives from the garden, a pile of green peppers cradled in her shirt. She puts them in the sink. “We’re going to eat like queens tonight,” she says.

  “No, we’re not,” Cyn says. “We’re only going to eat what we need.”

  “Well, these peppers aren’t going to last forever.”

  “They’ll be just fine for a couple of weeks. We prioritize what needs to be eaten first. We’ll eat what comes out of the garden until the cold gets here.” Cyn looks at the sky like the color tells the season. “After that, we start on canned goods.”

  Roc’s pile is two cans high. Cyn grabs the can of cherries, the pie-filling kind. Roc drops her hand on Cyn’s wrist. “What’re you doing?”

  “Helping.”

  “I’ve got a system here, you’re messing with it.” The dagger tattoo ripples. “Why don’t you start writing stuff down?”

  “Your cans are out of order. They need to be organized with the others.”

  “They will. I’m just looking, seeing what we’ve got. No need to be getting your hands on everything.”

  Roc stares. She doesn’t let go until Cyn looks away.