by McBain, Tim
He still had something, though. He would help those boys. He would make one thing right, as right as he could make it, anyway. But first he would eat lunch.
He figured this turkey sandwich wouldn’t be his last meal, but it was close enough in a way. He had no reason to go light on the mayo now, no concerns about piling the meat as high as he could get it or controlling his portion of potato chips. He filled a small bowl with pickles. It was a delicious meal. It reminded him of being young. Before Janice, when he lived on his own, he ate sandwiches like this often, chugged Pepsi all day. It was a simpler time. There were less apocalypses going on.
Though the meal was satisfying on some gluttonous level, he found himself growing more and more restless as he ate. Sating his hunger finally left his mind able to wander to other things, to mull over his wife’s death. His feelings on the subject seemed to be coming unblocked, to be welling up from beneath the surface, though they still seemed somewhat muted.
Instead of the anticipated sorrow or defeat, however, he found only the heat of rage crawling up to flush his face and make the blood vessels in his temples throb. He felt the sting of it in his eyes and in his teeth, in all of the muscles in his face gone taut.
Some part of him wanted to flip the table over, sweep the condiments and pickle jar off of the counter to send a rushing wave of pickle juice and mustard and broken glass over the linoleum. Then he could go through the rest of the house trashing it. Exploding vases, shattered mirrors, holes punched in drywall.
He felt duped. Like he could suddenly see through the cracks in reality and make out the lack of light underneath.
What was reality, really? Society had created this paradise of distraction, built on novelty and convenience and bright lights and loud noises. But it was all emptiness. Filling his life with TV, movies, video games, sports, treating those like the things that actually mattered. At some point, Mitch thought, it became hard to remember what was real, what was important.
What was it all a distraction from, though? Death, right? Death was something that happened on TV to the bad guys. It was a tragic ending of a Lifetime movie. It wasn’t supposed to happen to him, to his wife, maybe even his kids. How could that be how things worked?
They sold him a better reality, made it seem like the paradise of novelty could be his forever if he played along, that he could connect to some painlessness, some eternal bliss at some unspecified future date. But it was a ponzi scheme. He did his part. He paid with his money and effort and time, giving his life for what? For nothing. For sitcoms and superhero movies and football and beer that tastes great and is less filling.
This was the long con. It kept him obedient and productive, made it so death could blindside him.
Christ on a crutch. Is that the best life can be? Distract yourself for as long as you can.
Just as he crunched down on his last bite of pickle, something creaked behind him. The front door opened and closed. He froze, his mouth stuck in a strange mid-chew. All he could picture was dead Janice stumbling through the doorway to head out on the town.
He turned back to look. No zombies. Instead, Kevin and Matt were taking their shoes off, hanging up their coats. Was it so late already? He glanced at his phone. 1:26 PM. The kids walked into the kitchen.
Kevin’s long face resembled his mother, though he had red hair and paler skin than she did. Matt’s round face showed that he still had some of that little kid chub to him, and his hair was so blond it sometimes looked white in the right light.
“School get out early?” Mitch said, his mouth still half full of pickle and turkey and bread.
They nodded.
“There’s a riot,” Matt said. He delivered this bit of news in a matter of fact way that seemed funny to Mitch. He was 8. He probably barely knew what a riot was.
“A riot, huh?” Mitch said, a smile curling on the corners of his mouth.
He wanted to get the kid to expound upon this notion, to get him to explain his idea of a riot. But then he pictured the rise and fall of the crowbar and the piece of pipe, the eggshell skull bobbing as the mouth closed in on the ankle, and it didn’t seem as funny anymore.
He ruffled Matt’s hair, which he knew the kid hated. The boy made a face, his top lip curling and protruding so that it almost touched his nose. He jerked away from his father and smoothed his blond hair back down with a rigid hand.
“You hear from Mom?” Kevin said, digging a root beer out of the fridge.
Mitch pictured the dead body in the basement. He’d thrown a scrap of tarp over it, but it wasn’t big enough to cover the whole thing. The feet stuck out at the bottom, one pink Chuck Taylor and one bare heel touching concrete, the ankles limp so the toes pointed out. Apparently the thing had lost a shoe stumbling around in zombie mode.
“No,” he said. “I’ll try to call your Grandpa again.”
He scrolled to the number in his contact list, brought the phone to his ear. His heart felt like it was beating in the base of his neck. He was paranoid that the boys would try to go into the basement, though there was no reason for them to do so. All he could picture was one of them and then the other twisting that door knob while the phone rang and rang.
“No answer,” he said. He set the phone on the table. This was his third attempt at calling. He’d hoped to convince the grandparents to take custody of the boys more or less, and he’d help all of them get set up at the cabin. The well with the hand pump, the wood burning stove and ample lumber supply. That was the place to be.
Kevin sipped at his root beer, lines creasing his forehead. He was the worrier of the two brothers.
“I’m sure everything is fine,” Mitch said. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll head over there in a bit.”
The room fell quiet. Kevin didn’t seem convinced.
Jesus, should I just tell them? Don’t I have to at some point?
“Hey, listen. I got you guys something,” he said.
They stood in a line in the back yard, the sun shining down on them and clouds scuttling across a blue sky. When you looked up at that, Mitch thought, you had no sense that the world was in the process of being flushed down the crapper.
A line of bottles and cans formed a row on the picnic table at the back of the yard, awaiting execution.
“Cover your ears,” Mitch said.
He watched to make sure they did as he said, and then he pointed the gun at the array of targets, settling his sights on a tomato soup can. He squinted one eye and fine-tuned his aim until he felt good, flicked off the safety, exhaled for a beat and squeezed the trigger. Wood and paint shavings splintered up from the top of the picnic table where the bullet grazed it. The two targets nearest the point of impact wobbled, but they didn’t fall over much less take any damage.
The boys chuckled, Matt even throwing his head back in delight, blond hair whooshing back to cover his forehead when he righted himself. Mitch flicked the safety back on and handed the gun to Kevin.
“Swing and a miss,” the boy said, taking the gun. His eyes glowed like it was Christmas when he gazed upon the firearm in his hand, like he’d just gotten something better than any video game console.
“Hey, I made contact. Could’ve been worse,” Mitch said. “Practice makes perfect, right?”
Kevin rolled his eyes. He aimed the gun.
“The safety is there,” Mitch said, pointing.
“Yeah, I get it,” Kevin said, without breaking his concentration.
“OK,” Mitch said.
Matt’s head swung from the gun to the bottles and back. The palms of his hands smothered his ears, his elbows pointed straight out. He made a face with the corners of his mouth pulled out and down. Mitch thought it kind of looked like he was caught in the middle of a huge windstorm.
The safety clicked. The hammer clacked. The Beretta blazed and popped. Glass crunched in the distance, and the top half of a Bass Ale bottle tumbled to the table in pieces, the bottom of it tottering three times and settling back into place.<
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“Yeah!” Matt said, clapping his brother on the back.
“Nice shot,” Mitch said.
Kevin just smirked at his dad. Mitch looked upon his son’s face. He knew the boy had no idea how happy, how relieved he was to have his son show him up like this. No idea.
“My turn?” Matt said.
Mitch looked at the gun, looked at the boy. He tried to picture the firearm in those tiny hands, and he couldn’t.
“Maybe not yet,” he said.
Matt smirked. Mitch thought he looked a little disappointed but not surprised.
“You’ll get your turn,” he said. “But we need to go visit with your grandparents now.”
Travis
Hillsboro, Michigan
50 Days after
He thought there was no way the dog would go inside with him, not after being trapped indoors like she was, but she did. She showed no concern, following him everywhere, seeming to trust him entirely. Still, he wanted her to be able to do what she liked.
The back door lay in the yard, balanced on a pair of saw horses. Popping it off the hinges had been easier than he anticipated, just a well placed chisel and a few hammer taps. Now he taped the paper template from the doggie door package to the bottom of the door, a double wide perimeter of green painter’s tape to help him see things better. He was pretty drunk after all.
At first, he thought it’d all be down to hand tools and elbow grease without any power for the drill or circular saw. No worries, he figured. Time was the one thing he had. However, the batteries in his dad’s cordless drill had enough juice to help him get started. No such luck with the saber saw. Either the battery was dead or the EMP fried it. He wasn’t sure. Still, the drill was better than nothing.
Thinking about it now, the only electronic devices that seemed to work — the drill and a small flashlight — had been stored in his dad’s metal toolbox. Maybe the metal shielded them from the pulse somehow. He felt like there was a name for this concept that he couldn’t remember.
A cigarette hung between his lips, smoke drifting into one eye. The drill whirred, cutting a pilot hole in each corner of the rectangle the hole would soon occupy. It felt crazy, hearing that little electric sound after going so long without anything like it. He went back over each hole, grooving them out a bit to better fit the saw inside, to give him a little room to work.
He paused, reaching over for the mason jar of warm martini and taking a slug. Movement caught his eye just then, and he glanced over his shoulder at the dog sitting on the back steps, mouth open, chest heaving, looking around. He smiled when he looked upon the beast. She had so much energy, was so enthusiastic that it couldn’t help but become infectious.
He plucked the cigarette from his mouth and flicked the ashes on the ground. Now came the elbow grease.
He figured the foldable sliding saw was probably designed for pruning shrubs or small tree branches in a garden. It would work, though, even if the going was rough. Maybe when the hole was bigger, he’d dig around for a tool more suitable for the job, something with finer teeth, but he kind of doubted it. The jagged edge would be covered by the plastic lip of the doggie door anyway, so why bother? Just plow through it, he thought.
He worked the saw up and down, slowly etching the first line in the door. The sound and the feel fell into a rhythm right away that lulled him into a distant state. Saw dust clumped in the gap where the saw slid, little tufts of it falling to the sides. His eyes took these things in but he barely noticed them, his mind drifting away to another place.
He wondered sometimes if the raiders broke down his door and killed his parents because they’d seen him hauling cigarettes or booze. He couldn’t think of why else they’d target his family. As it happened, they didn’t get his supply. At that point, he’d stored it all under the floorboards in his bedroom and the guest room, a hiding place which apparently eluded their search. He still had a decent amount under the floor now, though his collection had grown too big, and he felt secure enough to move the bulk of it to reside behind the locked oak door of his parents’ room now that he hardly saw anyone around town.
Still, the idea nagged at him, that perhaps he could be responsible for their deaths in a more direct sense. It was hard to say with any real certainty, but it wasn’t like these guys went door to door and killed everyone. They must have selected his house for a reason, right?
Maybe.
He finished the first cut, only making it about a half an inch into the painter’s tape perimeter before he noticed, which was a touch better than he expected of himself. He drank again, eyes closing as the booze plummeted down the drain. He imagined himself ordering this concoction:
“I’ll have a dry martini. Room temp. Not stirred.”
Erin
Presto, Pennsylvania
29 days after
She was frozen in front of the pantry door when the voice came from behind her.
“Language.”
Erin whirled around to find Izzy poking her head through the banister from below.
“I told you to wait downstairs!”
Izzy waggled a finger at her.
“That’s no excuse for the potty mouth, missy.”
“Fine. Come take a look and tell me it’s not Holy-Shit-worthy.”
Erin crossed back to the living room and threw open the curtains to let in some light. A beam of late afternoon sun illuminated one side of the pantry, casting a golden glow over the rows of canned goods. And that’s what all that food looked like to Erin. Solid gold.
All those cans and only some of them were beans.
Izzy hopped up the steps two at a time. Erin waited next to the pantry door with a toothy smile and some florid hand movements, trying to give the impression of a game show model revealing a prize.
Izzy’s eyes went wide at the sight of the stocked pantry.
“Jackpot!”
“I know. That’s kind of what I meant when I said ‘Holy Shit.’”
Erin held up a hand, and they high-fived.
“You swear too much,” Izzy said, then dropped to her knees and slid a few cans around.
“Should I start loading up bags?”
Erin sat down beside her and picked up a jar of salsa.
“Let’s eat first. I’m starving.”
“Me too,” Izzy said. “What should we have?”
Erin reached for a bag of Tostitos and a can of refried beans. It was the first can of beans she was actually kind of excited to eat.
“I’m thinking nachos.”
While Erin went into the kitchen to prepare the food, Izzy continued perusing the stockpile.
She heard a gasp from inside the pantry.
“What is it?”
Izzy chuckled. “You’ll see.”
She waddled into the kitchen carrying a can that was almost half her size. The label read “NACHO CHEESE” and depicted a waterfall of orange goop cascading into a bowl.
Erin looked from the gallon-size can of cheese to the bag of chips.
“I think we’re going to need more chips.”
While she assembled the nachos, Erin kept trying to do a Julia Child impression, even though she was pretty certain Izzy had no idea who Julia Child was.
“Today we’ll be making the classical French dish. Nachos! First, you want a generous amount of roasted corn chips, smudged liberally with refried beans -- always from a can, of course! Next, just to dress it up a bit, we’ll layer on a bit of nacho cheese, and finally, we garnish with a bit of salsa!”
After their feast, they began the task of unloading the shelves. Toward the back, Erin found two jars with handwritten labels.
“Hey!” She pulled one out to show Izzy.
“Strawberry rhubarb jam!”
Izzy pulled a plastic shopping bag from her pocket and shook it a few times to unwad it. Grasping it by the handles, she held it open while Erin filled it. In went the jars of jam and a can of chicken noodle soup.
Behind the jam jars was
a Christmas tin. Erin pried the lid off.
“There’s the real jackpot.”
Izzy lifted herself on tiptoe to try to peek into the tin. Erin lowered it so she could see the wad of cash inside.
“Who hides money in the pantry?”
“I think it’s an old lady thing.”
She pushed the lid back on the tin and dropped it into the shopping bag with a clank.
Erin paused with a can of green beans in each fist. Another variety of bean she didn’t completely loathe. She tipped her head back, closed her eyes, and inhaled.
“I love that smell.”
Wrinkles formed across Izzy’s nose.
“You’re weird.”
“You’re over here talking about zombie poop, but I’m the weird one?”
The kid grinned and shrugged.
“My Grandma had a pantry just like this. And it had this exact smell.” She sniffed again.
“When I was about 12, I found a bag of peanut M&M’s in it. The expiration date was from a few months before I was even born.”
“What did you do with them?”
“I ate them. Duh.”
Izzy laughed.
Erin tossed a box of crackers into the last bag.
“That’s the last of the food. I’ll go scrape together whatever else I can.”
She unfurled a bag and plucked the rings and bracelets from her hands. They’d only get in her way carrying all this crap back. But she left the necklaces on.
She found a pack of batteries in a linen closet, as well as five rolls of toilet paper. That was how to get rich in the post-apocalypse. Toilet paper. If you stockpiled TP, you could probably make a killing.
Izzy was crossing the handles and tying the last bag closed when Erin met her back at the threshold of the pantry.
Erin added her bag to the row and counted them quickly.
“Six bags. Not bad.”
“What about the cheese?”
Erin followed Izzy’s gaze to the can on the counter. They’d barely put a dent in it.
“I guess we have to leave it. Too much to carry. And it probably wouldn’t keep anyway.”