Pod

by Stephen Wallenfels

  I want to tell Dad about the dream, but I know it would be a mistake. All I’d get would be another Sphere of Influence speech. Even if things were normal I wouldn’t tell him. Mom and I, we talk about our dreams all the time. Even though they’re random and crazy she still thinks every dream, no matter how stupid, means something. Dad tolerates the discussions, but he never contributes. He says he doesn’t dream. How is that possible? I guess that means he doesn’t have nightmares, which is a definite bonus these days.

  I find him in the kitchen making breakfast. But it’s not oat-bran pancakes. We’re talking fried eggs in olive oil, which I hate, and bacon, which I love. He’s closed the curtains, shutting out the view of the backyard—and, of course, of the PODs. With the curtains closed, the house feels cold and small, but the breakfast smells are good. I sit down, my back to the window. The notebook is open on the table. Today’s entry reads: May 18 / 8:57 a.m. – 120 PODs. Visibility down. Clouds may account for reduced inventory.

  “You hear the coyotes last night?” he asks.

  It was bizarre. We occasionally hear coyotes in the distance, but never like that. It sounded like they were yapping right outside my window. Maybe that was part of my dream?

  “How could I not? Dutch went nuts. He spent the rest of the night licking his balls.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t let him sleep in your room.”

  “Maybe,” I say.

  He says, “This is the last of the eggs.”

  “Fine with me.”

  “You won’t be saying that in a couple of weeks.”

  “Yes, I will. I’ve been meaning to ask you, how do you make your eggs so rubbery?”

  “It’s one of life’s great mysteries.” He slides the greasy pile onto my plate. “I added extra rubber, just for you.”

  The olive oil gives the eggs a greenish brown color. Vomit comes to mind. He smiles and sits down across from me. It’s the first smile I’ve seen in forty-eight hours. There’s one egg and two slices of bacon on his plate. I have three eggs and six slices of bacon.

  “Do I really have to eat all this?”

  “It’s going to spoil if you don’t.”

  “You can have my eggs.”

  “I’m on a diet.”

  I stab at an egg. Thick yellow fluid oozes out. For some reason my stomach is churning. Every time I eat something I’m wondering if it’s my last meal. I don’t want the world to end when I’ve got a belly full of Dad’s oily eggs.

  “Josh,” he says. “We need to talk about our situation.”

  Here we go. I put down my fork. “A situation? It’s an invasion, Dad. Call it what it is!” Then I do it again. I drop the F-bomb.

  He stares hard at me for a moment. I’m not sure which bothers him more, “invasion” or the swearing. He takes a deep breath and says, “If you feel the urge to use profanity in front of me, please choose a different word.”

  “A different word. Like what? ‘Banana’?”

  “I suggest ‘freaking.’”

  “Freaking?”

  “That’s my preference.” Dad looks at his plate, forks the last of his egg. We’re being invaded, life as we know it is about to end, and he’s stressing over my vocabulary.

  “Okay, then. Back to our little ‘situation.’ What’s your freaking point?”

  “We’ve been living high on the hog too long.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “It’s time to start rationing food.”

  He waits for me to say something. I chew on a piece of bacon, wait for the flood.

  “All right. First we cook the perishable goods, then the items that taste better heated, like soups and pastas, because we don’t know how long the electricity or running water will last. When that goes, we’ll cook using the camp stove until we run out of fuel. Then we’ll burn furniture until it’s gone. Then we eat the canned fruits and vegetables in the pantry, and then it’s down to your hoard of potato chips and candy.”

  “Wow,” I say, “someone’s been busy making a plan.” Dad thumbs through the notebook, looking for something. I slip Dutch a piece of bacon under the table.

  Dad finds what he’s looking for. He tears it out of the notebook, hands me a piece of paper with a list titled Survival Priorities. It’s numbered from one to twenty-five, the important stuff bulleted and underlined with a red pen. It says things like fill every container with water, including the bathtub, take inventory of all food items and medicines, figure out what we can burn if the power goes out, break down furniture, recharge batteries—even floss our teeth and keep up with my studies. It all sounds reasonable in a post-apocalypse sort of way. At least it’s something to do. But there’s a couple of issues with the food-rationing plan that bother me.

  “What happens when we run out of candy?”

  “We reevaluate.”

  “Reevaluate, huh? What about him?” I ask, nodding to Dutch. His sad eyes watch my every move, hoping for another tasty piece of bacon.

  “We have ten pounds of dry dog food left. Normally, that would last about ten days. I had hoped to pick up more food for him this weekend, but obviously that’s not happening. We can feed him, or,” he says with a pause, “we can eat it ourselves when our food runs out.”

  “You’re saying we should starve Dutch?”

  “Dutch is a dog, he’ll fend for himself.”

  “Can people even eat dog food?”

  “Dogs eat people food. I’m sure it works both ways.”

  I look at Dutch. He’s a big, fat, lazy yellow Lab with gray whiskers and a bad hip. The only way he’d catch a rabbit is if it jumped into his mouth.

  Thinking I’d rather die than take Dutch’s food, I say, “Do we have to make that decision right now?”

  “There are lots of tough decisions we’ll have to make. You need to realize—” Dad starts, then changes his mind. “Okay, let’s hold off on that one for a couple of days. But beginning tomorrow, he doesn’t get any of our water.”

  “Where’s he going to get it?”

  “The creek behind the house.”

  Our house borders a swamp. Dad calls it a “wetland sanctuary,” but it’s really an algae-covered stinkhole filled with sludgelike green water and plastic waste. It’s closer to a sewer than a creek. When I was younger I used to catch frogs in the reeds bordering the creek, but one year they all floated to the surface, bellies yellow and bloated. There weren’t any frogs after that.

  Barely able to keep from screaming, I say, “Why don’t you just kill him now and—”

  There is a loud pop, followed quickly by two more. Then nothing.

  “Gunshots,” Dad says, standing up fast. “From the apartments, I think.”

  We run to the living room window, just in time to see a door open across the street. Two men hold up a slumping body. It’s a big guy, naked and hairy, pale chest and fat stomach streaked with red. They push him out the door. He’s standing on the sidewalk, barely. In that moment I recognize him. He yelled at Dutch last summer for peeing on his new truck. Two beats later and there’s a flash of light. The guy is gone. A wave of nausea sweeps over me. It’s like hauling out the garbage. As long as it’s human, they’ll take it.

  “What was that about?” I say, blinking back the image that was there just seconds ago.

  Dad stares at the empty sidewalk. He waits, then says in a voice I barely hear, “So dawn goes down to day, nothing gold can stay.”

  I know the line. It’s from a poem he read to me after my third-grade teacher died in a car accident. I’m not much into poetry, but that one stayed with me.

  There’s some shouting going on in the apartments. It’s too far to make out what they’re saying, but I turn my back to the window. It’s time to leave. I’m afraid I’ll hear that pop again.

  And even more afraid the door will open.

  DAY 5: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

  Moving Day

  The soup is gone. So’re the soggy buns. Two pieces of stinky cheese, one slice of bologna, and t
hree glugs of water—that’s all I’ve got left. Oh, and one can of beer. I’ve been sipping it slow to make it last. So far that isn’t a problem. It tastes awful, which makes me wonder how Zack could drink so much. Sometimes when Mom was out working he’d suck down a whole six-pack in the time it took me to finish a soda and a Slim Jim. But anything is better than the soup. I think the soup gave me a bad case of the runs. There’s a place behind a little green Toyota that I hope to never see again. But I’m thirsty and the beer makes me want to pee. That means getting out of the car. And that’s something I hate to do.

  Hoodie keeps coming out here.

  Sometimes he’s alone, but most times he’s not. Day or night, it doesn’t matter. They laugh and swear over who gets what. Ever since he punched Round Man I haven’t seen anyone else but him and his friends. I figure they’re looking for food or maybe drugs or both. There’s so many wrecked cars down here that I’ve been left alone—so far. It’s only a matter of time. I want to stay in this car, but if I stay too long Hoodie will find me. That could be a good thing, but I doubt it. Judging by how things are going up to this point, I figure it’s best to keep hiding.

  And hiding is something I do better than anyone.

  The secret is to hide in a place that has already been searched. That’s how I always hid from Zack when he was drunk. I’d be in the closet while he was looking under the bed. Then when he turned his back I’d slip under the bed. He never figured it out. I tried telling this to Mom, that we could hide from him in town, but she wouldn’t listen. She said we needed to get as far away as possible. We drove from Erie, Pennsylvania, to Los Angeles in three days. We were headed for a friend’s house in San Diego, but the radiator blew in Bakersfield, so that wiped out our cash. We made it to LA with no money and the tank on “E.” That’s why I’m in a parking garage and Mom is interviewing for a job. A job that would last an hour, tops.

  It’s time to move. I’ve been watching that SUV, the one I noticed on the first day. The mom with the two kids never came back. The girl’s stuffed rabbit is still on the ground where she dropped it. I’m afraid to pick it up because someone might figure out that I’m here. So it just lies on the cold cement and reminds me of that awful day when Mom left with the whispering man. The bald guy with the tattoos already broke into the SUV, so I doubt he’ll bother with it. There’s a security light close, but not too close, and lots of shadows all around. It looks big, so there should be plenty of room for my sleeping bag and clothes and places to hide if I need them. It’s still kind of sideways from when it got rammed, which is good for me. That means I have a perfect view to watch this car.

  For when Mom comes back.

  My backpack is loaded. It’s dark outside and no one has been in the garage for three hours. Sticking to the shadows, I make my way to the SUV. It’s a Lincoln Navigator. The big rear window is broken but not smashed. The window on the front passenger side is completely gone. My hand shakes as I reach for the door handle. I’ve never busted into a car before. It feels like I’m doing something illegal. But that’s crazy thinking—nobody is going to yell at me now. The door is unlocked. I slip inside, promising myself that if I take something, even if it’s just a crumb, I’ll leave a note.

  The first thing that hits me is the smell of leather. It reminds me of shopping with Mom one day. We stopped at a furniture store and sat on all the expensive couches—“Just for kicks and giggles,” she said. My shirt smelled like leather the rest of the day. I didn’t want to wash it.

  There’s barely enough light from outside to see what I’m doing. The front passenger seat is covered with small diamonds of broken glass. I wrap my hand in my shirtsleeve and sweep them onto the floor. The glove compartment is hanging open, its contents tossed around. I find folded-up maps of California, Nevada, and Oregon, a small notebook with two pages of neat handwritten information about miles traveled and gallons of gas. While I’m flipping through the pages I think I hear something, like a small squeak. I stop and listen. It doesn’t happen again, so I keep searching.

  The ashtray holds some change and half a stick of gum. I start chewing on the gum but leave the money. The storage bin between the front seats has a stack of four CDs, all country, which I hate, and a power cord for something, probably a cell phone. There is one treasure the looters missed. A pen with a small flashlight that works. I stuff it into my pack.

  The compartments in the doors are just as worthless— a hairbrush, some greasy food wrappers, and a remote for a garage door opener. Zack always hides stuff under the seats, so I check there. Nothing under the passenger side except pieces of glass and one pencil that could be useful. But under the driver’s seat—that’s where I find something interesting.

  It’s a black metal box a little bigger than Zack’s briefcase. There’s a drawer on the front with a silver keyhole. The drawer is locked. I yank on the box. It doesn’t budge. I try to pry the drawer open with my pencil, but all I do is break the lead. Whatever is in the box must be important, probably tools and maybe some cash. But that will have to wait until later. I need to get moved in.

  I search the rest of the SUV. It’s huge compared to Mom’s Nova. There are two seats in back, one with a booster that has smears of something dark on the cushion and seatbelt. It’s either chocolate or dried blood. I remember the girl’s head was bleeding after the crash so I’m pretty sure it’s not chocolate. The family must have been on a road trip because there are coloring books full of pictures of unicorns, three Spider-Man comics, and a shoebox crammed with baseball cards. I roll up the comics—they go in the pack. The storage compartment between the seats is full of crayons. I stick my fingers in the cracks between the armrests and get lucky—twenty Skittles, my favorite candy.

  This car is so gimongous there’s even a row of seats behind the backseats. It’s comfy, like my favorite couch in the expensive furniture store, with plenty of room to stretch out. Perfect for a sleeping bag and my backpack. There’s a rear compartment that I can get into by folding down the seats, but I decide to explore that in the morning when the light is better. I could use the flashlight pen, but why waste the batteries? I roll out my sleeping bag, crawl inside, and use the backpack for a pillow. There’s a kind of nasty smell back here—I’m not sure what the problem is, but it can’t be much worse than the shirt I’m wearing.

  I close my eyes and wait for sleep. Hopefully it will come without bringing pictures of Speed-Bump Guy bouncing under the cars. I hate it when that happens. My stomach growls, which reminds me I didn’t have dinner. That’s easy to fix. One bite of bologna. One nibble of cheese. A sip of beer. There, dinner is done. I close my eyes again. The silence and the dark surround me.

  But not for long. There it is again—that squeak.

  It’s definitely coming from inside the car, and close. I hold my breath and wait. I hear it—the back compartment. I scramble out of my sleeping bag and fold down one of the seats. The smell is so bad my eyes water. But the sound is louder. I know what it has to be. My heart pounds as I fumble in my pack for the flashlight pen. I find it, switch it on, aim the small beam into the shadows.

  It’s a kitten in a small wire cage.

  The cage is on its side with a pink towel covering the bottom edge. I open the door and lift her out. She’s the size of a fuzzy softball, big gray eyes ringed with dried goop, yellow hair the same color as mine. She smells like cat pee. There are two empty dishes in her cage. One has Cassie written with red crayon on the side. I think back to the first day, when the boy tried to run to the SUV but his mother wouldn’t let him. He screamed like he forgot something important. Now I know what that something was.

  “Hello, Cassie,” I say.

  The sound startles me. It’s the first words I’ve spoken since Mom left. It must have startled Cassie too because she starts mewing like crazy. An alarm goes off in my brain, but I don’t care. I hold her close to my chest and stroke her fur. She settles down.

  “Let’s get you cleaned up,” I whisper. “You sti
nk worse than me.”

  I carry her back to my couch bed, spill a few drops of water on the towel, and wipe her down. Then I give her a couple of sips of my beer. She laps it up and looks around for more.

  I say, “Guess that means you’re hungry, too.”

  I tear off a sliver of bologna. She gobbles it down like it was a piece of steak.

  The alarm goes off in my head again. As much as I’d like to keep her, I have to be smart. Like Mom would say, who needs another mouth to feed? I give her one more sip of beer. I promise to let her go first thing tomorrow. Right now she needs some company.

  “You’re a very lucky kitty,” I whisper.

  We burrow into the warmth of my sleeping bag. Beneath it all I hear the buzz of the security light. For a moment I wonder how dark it would be without the lights. No darker than my closet at home, that’s for sure.

  Then Cassie starts to purr. For once I’m not thinking about Hoodie with his knife, the aliens, or the long, dark smear. Or even Mom. Cassie feels good against my skin.

  That’s what I’m thinking when I fall asleep.

  DAY 6: PROSSER, WASHINGTON

  Click

  It’s official. The man is crazy.

  First the laundry, now this. We’re filling containers with water. Jugs, mugs, bottles, and cans are lined up in neat rows on the kitchen counter. He’s upstairs filling the bathtub. I’m in the kitchen, filling—I can’t believe this—Ziploc freezer bags. They look like supersized versions of those cheesy prizes you win on the midways at county fairs, only without the goldfish that die three days later.

  This storm of insanity was triggered this morning when the power went off. It stayed off for about fifteen minutes, then came back on. By that time Dad had already mobilized the water brigade. I tried reasoning with him, that it was total overkill, but he didn’t buy my argument.