The Dead and the Gone ls-2

by Susan Beth Pfeffer

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. “Thank you, Sister.”

  “Alex,” Sister Rita said, and grabbed him by the arm. “Listen to me. What’s bad now is nothing compared to what might be coming. Think of Joseph and the seven years of famine. The people survived because he prepared them for what was to come. The archdiocese is providing us with food now, but if the crops all die, there won’t be any more coming in. Maybe things will be better down south. Maybe there’s someplace safe in the world. But if you’re planning to stick it out in New York, you’d better get as many supplies as you can, because food may stop coming and we won’t be able to grow our own.”

  Alex remembered the baby trampled in the food riot. It was an image that haunted him. If things got that bad that fast on a day when at least some people got food, what would it be like if no food at all was available?

  “I’ll do what I can,” he said. “Thank you again.”

  Wednesday, August 31

  Alex dropped Julie off at school, made his rounds, then went to St. Margaret’s, arriving there shortly after Mass ended. His wait to see Father Franco was much shorter than it had been earlier in the summer. Fewer people, fewer problems.

  He didn’t bother asking the priest if there was any more word from Puerto Rico. He’d stopped calling Nana’s number even before his phone service had stopped—a couple of weeks before. Papi was gone, the same as Mami, the same as Carlos, the same as the sun.

  “I haven’t heard anything from my friends at the convent,” Father Franco said apologetically. “But I’m sure everything is fine with Briana.”

  “That’s not why I’m here,” Alex said. “It’s Julie. She’s okay; we both are. We still have food and the schools are still serving lunch. But I don’t know how much longer that will last, so I wanted to know if there’s any place outside the city taking girls her age. She’ll be thirteen in a few weeks, and she’s strong and a good worker.”

  “You mean someplace like Briana’s convent?” Father Franco asked. “That’s the only one I know of.”

  “I mean anyplace,” Alex said. “In case things get worse. The church must have someplace for girls to go, an orphanage or something.”

  Father Franco shook his head.

  “There must be something,” Alex said. “Can’t you call the archdiocese and ask?”

  “I’ll tell you what I know,” Father Franco said. “The past three months, the church has dealt with the dead and the dying. Only two Catholic hospitals are open in the city now. Most of the smaller churches have closed, and I’ve been told St. Margaret’s will close before New Year’s. I just pray it will still be open for Christmas. The social service agencies have all closed. All the children in foster care were sent out of the city in July, and no new children are being accepted. This fall, most of the schools will close. There are federally run evacuee camps inland. The closest one I know of is in Bingham-ton. You and Julie could go there, but I don’t think it would be wise to send her alone, and once you were there, you’d still have to find someplace safe to move to.”

  “Aren’t there any convents taking in girls?” Alex asked. “I know she’s too young to be a postulant, but there’s got to be a convent somewhere that she could go to.”

  “The convents have been decimated,” Father Franco said. “The ones on the coasts have been flooded out, and the ones inland have had to deal with earthquakes, volcanoes, and disease. No place is safe anymore, Alex. Julie’s better off with you than she would be anywhere else. I thank the Blessed Virgin that we found a safe place for Briana. Perhaps in her all-merciful heart, she’ll find such a place for Julie, also.”

  The Blessed Virgin had found a place for Julie, Alex thought as he left St. Margaret’s. It was with Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Lorraine. Whatever happened to Julie was his fault. She lived in hell because of him, and he would spend eternity in hell for her suffering.

  Thursday, September 1

  Alex woke up thinking about the thirty-dollar flashlight, not sure why. Of all the decisions he’d made, not buying the flashlight was one he never regretted.

  Then he remembered how he’d been told the cost of the flashlight was going to go up to forty bucks, and he figured it out. The value of what he brought in body shopping was going to go down as food became sparser. Today a pair of shoes was worth two cans of beans and a box of pasta. In a month he’d be lucky to get the pasta.

  At first he thought he should leave the apartment and search everywhere for new bodies, but then he knew what the flashlight really meant. He had access to four apartments, all filled with things that could be used and bartered. Four treasure chests he’d been ignoring because somewhere in the back of his mind he thought taking things without permission was sinful.

  He was damned anyway. He might as well take what he could when he could.

  He let Julie sleep while he worked out the system. It had to be done today. He couldn’t remember the last time there was electricity over a weekend, so he couldn’t wait until then. Friday morning was food line, and Friday afternoon was probably the best time to barter what he could, since he suspected a lot of Harvey’s supplies conveniently fell off the food line truck Friday mornings.

  As he dressed he thought about asking Kevin to help him unload the apartments, but decided against it. Kevin had been great, but it would be too much temptation.

  Still, he felt guilty body shopping with his friend that morning. But guilt was as much a part of his life as cold, hunger, and grief. And if Kevin noticed his mind was elsewhere, he didn’t say anything. The two found a fair number of shoes, watches, and coats, which they traded in for soup, mixed vegetables, black beans, and rice for Alex and vodka for Kevin.

  Julie was up when he got back. “We’re not going to school today,” he said, handing her the groceries. “We’re spending the day going through the apartments, taking everything we can barter or use and bringing it all down here.”

  “What about lunch?” Julie asked.

  “I don’t know,” Alex said. “Do we have enough to get us through to Tuesday?”

  Julie checked out what Alex had just brought in and what remained in the cabinets. “We can stretch the rice and beans for two meals each,” she said. “And we can each have a can of soup for supper tomorrow. We have the can of mixed vegetables and a can of carrots and a can of peas. Won’t you get food tomorrow?”

  “I hope so,” Alex said. “But we can’t count on it.”

  “Then no lunch today,” Julie said. She scowled. “I used to like holidays. Now they just mean no lunch.”

  The refrigerator began its useless whir, and the light that Alex always left on in the living room began to shine. “We’ve got to use the electricity while we can,” he said. “Let’s get the shopping carts and garbage bags. We can risk taking the elevator up, but we’d better be careful, because once it goes off, it might stay off until Tuesday.”

  Julie looked thoughtful. “Maybe we should take all the stuff to one of the upstairs apartments,” she said. “If someone looks into our windows, they could see the stuff here.”

  Alex hadn’t thought of that. He looked at the iron grilles on their windows, which prevented people from breaking in. But if someone was desperate enough, he could break the doors down.

  “We’ll keep the curtains closed,” he said. “We’re not getting much natural light anyway. And we can cover the windows with blankets, once we have some extra ones. That’ll keep some of the cold air out, and no one will be able to look in. I’d rather have the stuff here, where we can control it.”

  Julie dug out the garbage bags from under the sink.

  “Okay,” she said. “What are we looking for?”

  “Anything and everything,” Alex replied. “The food’s all gone, but I bet there’s plenty of coats and sweaters and shoes. Blankets and quilts. Flashlights, candles, batteries, matches. Socks. Liquor. Whatever’s in the medicine cabinets. I’ll trade what we can’t use. We’ll need to move fast but be thorough.”

&nbs
p; “Are things going to get worse?” Julie asked, and Alex could hear the suppressed panic in her voice.

  “Yeah, I think so,” Alex said. “If you can believe that.”

  “I don’t want to eat rats,” Julie said. “Or dead people.”

  “Me neither,” Alex said. “Let’s get going so we won’t have to.”

  Monday, September 5

  “Julie!” Alex said, unable to keep the irritation out of his voice. “My shirts are filthy. Can’t you do a better job with them?” He told himself no one was as clean as they had been, but with school officially starting again the next day, he wanted to look as respectable as possible.

  “Why don’t you do your own damn laundry,” Julie said.

  Alex grabbed her arm. “Don’t ever talk to me like that again,” he said. “Never.”

  “Or what?” Julie said.

  “Or you won’t eat,” Alex said.

  Julie stared at him in horror. “You don’t mean that, do you?” she asked. “You’d keep all the food for yourself?”

  Alex tried to remember what it felt like not to be hungry. Bri wasn’t hungry, he thought. She was fat as a kitten. If he’d let Uncle Jimmy take Julie, maybe she’d be fat as a kitten, too.

  “I didn’t mean it,” he said, releasing Julie from his grasp. “As long as I have food, you’ll have food.”

  “It’s hard washing clothes by hand,” Julie said. “Maybe I should stay home from school, when the electricity is on. Then I could use the washer and drier.”

  Alex shook his head. “School is more important,” he said. “I’ll wash my own clothes. That way if they’re not clean enough, I’ll have only myself to blame.”

  “Papi never washed clothes,” Julie said.

  “Yeah, well, I’m not Papi,” Alex said. Papi would never have threatened to starve a child, no matter how dirty his shirts might be.

  Tuesday, September 6

  Alex was relieved to find that at least some of the guys he’d gone to school with in the spring had returned for fall classes. He did a count at Mass and figured the chapel was about a third full—not bad given that there was no new batch of seventh graders to replace the seniors who’d graduated.

  Father Mulrooney welcomed everyone back and said that, once again, attendance at Mass was mandatory. The faculty had increased by two, with a couple of nervous-looking seminarians joining the three elderly priests who’d held the fort during the summertime. Mr. Kim would teach all the science classes, and Mr. Bello all the math classes. There were no more requirements for lunch; if you were at school that day, you would be fed. Alex was relieved. It had grown increasingly more difficult and depressing to check up on the people on his list. He was reluctant to admit it, but physical exertion was getting harder—maybe because he was eating so little or maybe because the air quality was so bad. And although he hated to think about it, the bad air and the lack, of food was probably killing off some of the people he’d been checking up on all summer.

  He had lunch that day with Kevin, Tony Loretto, and James Flaherty. James had spent the summer in Pennsylvania with his grandparents, and it felt strange to see him back. It was hard to remember that people with money could come and go, and that gone didn’t always mean dead.

  “What’s it like out there?” Alex asked as he devoured in three bites his lunch of red cabbage and baked beans.

  “Bad,” James replied.

  “So’s lunch,” Kevin said, but Alex noticed he ate everything on his plate as fast as Alex had.

  “Bad like how?” Tony asked. “Earthquakes? Floods?”

  James shook his head. “It’s dead there,” he replied. “Here we’re still getting food shipments and there’s electricity most weekdays. There, nothing. It’s a little warmer here, too, if you can believe it. The city traps the bad air and the warm air. Out there, without the skyscrapers, the air stays cleaner but colder. But the crops all died, and a lot of the farmers were talking about how they were going to have to slaughter their animals, since there wouldn’t be enough feed for them to get through the winter, even assuming things get better next spring.”

  “Which they won’t,” Kevin said.

  “I don’t think so, either,” Tony said. “Not around here, anyway.”

  “But at least in the country, they don’t leave dead bodies lying around everywhere,” James said with a shudder. “That’s new since I left the city. How do people put up with it, the corpses and the rats?”

  “After a while you don’t really notice,” Tony replied. “You have to be careful about the rats, in case they’re rabid, but for the most part they’re okay, too. They eat the bodies and leave everyone else alone.”

  “I’m surprised you came back,” Kevin said. “I thought everyone who left would stay gone.”

  “My father can’t get out yet,” James said. “He’s a cardiologist. I could have stayed with my grandparents, but there wasn’t enough food for all of us. So I’m back until they give Dad the okay to go.”

  “What’s going to become of your grandparents; do you know?” Tony asked.

  “We’re not sure yet,” James replied. “The rules keep shifting about who can get in and who can’t.”

  “I thought the evacuation centers were open to everybody,” Alex said.

  “Are you crazy?” James said. “Dad would never send his parents to an evac center.”

  “Don’t mind Morales,” Kevin said. “He lives under a rock.”

  “Shut up, Kevin,” Alex said. “What’s wrong with the evacuation centers?”

  “What’s right with them is more like it,” James said. “Half of New York City is crammed into the Binghamton one. The wrong half, at that.”

  “No one who has a choice goes to an evac center,” Tony said. “Not that there aren’t a lot of decent people stuck there.”

  “The decent people don’t stand a chance,” James said. “Crime, disease, not enough food.”

  “Sounds like home,” Kevin said, but no one laughed.

  “How do you know?” Alex demanded. “You ever been to one?”

  “My mother has,” Tony replied. “A couple of weeks ago for her job. She was there with two armed bodyguards, and she still said she was never so scared in her life. The one in Binghamton was set up to hold thirty thousand people and it’s already at a hundred thousand. The National Guard is supposed to police the place, but they’re stretched too thin, and if you wander off looking for food, the townspeople shoot to kill. No showers, no toilets, and now people are freezing to death. You’re lucky, James, your father hasn’t been assigned to work at one. People are dropping like flies because there aren’t nearly enough doctors.”

  “My father has too many powerful patients,” James said. “Wherever they go, we’ll go. And trust me, Alex, it won’t be to any evac center.”

  Tony nodded. “Dad won’t leave Mom,” he said. “And they’re not sending my brothers and me off without them, so we’re not going anytime soon.”

  “I’d rather be here,” Kevin said. “Corpses and all.”

  “Me too,” James said. “New York, the people may be dead, but at least the city’s alive. In the country, everything’s dead.”

  Wednesday, September 7

  For supper that night, Alex and Julie shared a can of sauerkraut.

  “Sister Rita says vegetarians live longer,” Julie said. “She says it’s a good thing we eat the way we do.”

  “I don’t need any lectures from sainted Sister Rita about how good we have it,” Alex said. “I bet she’s eating steak every night while we’re starving to death.”

  “She isn’t!” Julie cried. “Are we? Starving to death, I mean?”

  “No,” Alex said. “I’m sorry. I have things on my mind.”

  “Can I help?” Julie asked.

  Alex shook his head. “Just a problem I have to work out on my own,” he said.

  Julie carried the dishes and forks to the sink. Alex watched—while trying to come up with a way to keep her alive and safe.
When he finally acknowledged there was none, he went into his bedroom, and threw his missal against the wall.

  Chapter 11

  Monday, September 12

  Alex could tell as soon as they approached the apartment that something was wrong. The blanket he’d nailed to the inside or the living room window was flapping.

  Julie had been right, he thought. Someone broke in. All the food that he’d gotten from Harvey—and he’d pretty much wiped out Harvey’s supplies—might be gone. The bottles of booze he’d held in reserve, the blankets and quilts, the two sleeping bags he’d been thrilled to find, the box of cigars, the coffee, the beer, the aspirin and vitamins and sleeping pills and cold medicines and antacids. The electric heater, the heating pad, and the electric blanket. The fur coats, the wool coats, the sweaters, and boots. He’d been an idiot to keep things downstairs. If Papi or Uncle Jimmy, or even Carlos, had suggested keeping the stuff in one of the upstairs apartments, he would have agreed. But it had been Julie, so naturally he’d overruled her.

  Julie. What was he going to do about her? He couldn’t let her go into the apartment, but it was equally unsafe to have her stand outside.

  “Something’s the matter,” he whispered, pointing to the flapping blanket. “Go into the lobby and take the stairs to the third floor. Go as fast as you can, but quietly, and don’t slam any doors. I’ll get you when it’s safe. Now move!”

  Julie did as she was told. Alex waited five minutes, to make sure she was safely upstairs, then unlocked the outside door to the basement. If it was only one guy in there, the element of surprise might be enough to chase the burglar away. With shaking hands, he unlocked the door to the apartment, and yelled through the door, “Get out now! I have a gun!”

  “Alex? Don’t shoot. It’s me, Bri!”

  “Bri?” Alex shouted. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “I’m home. It’s just me.”

  Alex raced into the apartment and hugged his sister hard—until she began coughing.