by Meg Elison
“Mostly I worked in restaurants. Cooking and cleaning type of shit. Sometimes I worked lights in theaters for shows. That’s where I met Chicken.”
“Yeah, I ran soundboards. We been dating like maybe three months before all the theaters were closed. Shit, I was pissed. But everybody was too sick to go on anyway.”
She remembered the theaters closing about a month ago. A temporary measure, the city said, to combat the worst flu season on record. It was hard to think that she hadn’t seen it coming then, but no one had.
“Have you guys seen many people since the panic died down? Besides shovel man?”
“Some,” Joe said. “Seems like everybody died or left the city. But everybody is, like, crazy.”
Chicken was nodding. “Every motherfucker got a gun or some shit. Everybody either act like they wanna kill you or you gonna kill them. I couldn’t believe Joe let you in.” He wasn’t smiling.
“Yeah, but . . .” Joe looked guilty.
“Yeah but what?” she pressed him.
“I haven’t seen no girls. No women. No ladies. Cero mujeres. You the first woman I seen alive since I left my mama, and I know she was dying. I left her in Sac while I could still get home. I needed to find Chicken.” He leaned his head on Chicken’s shoulder.
“Are you guys going to stay in the city? Keep searching for water?”
Chicken shrugged and Joe got off him. “Why not? It’s our city. It’s mostly empty. Maybe we get a big house and all the water and food in the world.”
“Then what?”
“What do you mean?” Chicken looked at her blankly.
“No other people. No kids. No work to do. Just, what? Surviving?”
Chicken laughed a little and filled up another cup. “We don’t need other people. We were never gonna have kids. Living is work enough. And all we’ve ever done is survive. It might look different if you go to college and buy a house and do all that shit, but all we do is survive. Ain’t nothing changed. Just now there’s less competition.” He drained his cup.
She nodded. Yes, that’s true. No, it isn’t. Wasn’t. Won’t be. Won’t be enough. Could I stay here? With them, or near them? Stay home, Jack might find me.
They fell asleep as soon as the sun started to set, curled up on the hard office carpeting, their bellies sloshing and full of water.
In the morning, they climbed to the next floor. One office had a kitchen full of shelf-stable snacks, all bright colors and preservatives. They ate these for breakfast and drank half the contents of another watercooler.
Even without working plumbing, they all felt compelled to use the bathrooms for their intended purpose. Karen sat in a stall with the weak diffused light from the open door slanting in under the stall dividers and pooling around her feet. She thought she’d never have to stand in line to do this again, and the feeling was emptiness.
Clumsily, they filled empty juice bottles and a handful of thermoses with the clean water from the cooler and left the office building in the afternoon. They all needed a change of clothes but couldn’t decide where to go.
“There’s a mall like ten blocks that way. We can just follow the tracks,” Karen said, pointing.
“There’s all the Chinese knockoff stores like right here,” said Joe, pointing away.
“Yeah, but they might not have everything we need.”
“They’ll have everything we need,” Chicken said.
There’s me and there’s them. Don’t need them, but still . . .
“Fine,” Karen said, turning away. “Guess we can meet—”
The explosion knocked them all flat down. Chicken fell almost on his face and came up with his lips bloody. Joe was scratched up and down both arms from grinding against the pavement. Karen pushed up on her palms and felt the wave of heat on her face.
Joe was screaming, but she heard nothing but a high-pitched whine.
“The fucking gas!” He was screaming it over and over, but she had to read his lips to know it. Chicken grabbed Joe and ran, pulling him along, stumbling in huge strides away from the blast.
Karen looked back over her shoulder and saw a wall of flame covering one of the buildings facing her, with gouts of fire spilling out of the lower windows where gas must have pooled before a spark ignited it. She scrambled up and ran after the men, grabbing her water bottle at the last second. She found them sheltering on the cool side of a shaded brick building. She leaned her back against the wall and drank long and deep from her bottle. When she brought it back down, she could see they were trying to talk, but nobody could hear. Gesturing gave way to scratching the brick surface of the wall with a pebble.
They argued whether they were safer indoors or outdoors, whether to head for the waterfront or continue north of the peninsula. Chicken wrote out that “Gas stinks” twice and then underlined it. He was sure they’d be safe if they didn’t smell it. But they hadn’t smelled it back in the street.
Karen scratched out, “Inside better,” and then, “Mall?? Prob no gas in mall.”
They shrugged and followed her. They walked the whole way deaf and shell-shocked, unable to hear one another.
The mall had been boarded up against looters, but the boards had been pulled loose by someone before them. It was lit inside by the skylights, but the light didn’t reach into the stores. They split up to find clothes, frustrated and tired of screaming and gesturing at each other.
“Don’t get lost,” Joe scratched into a movie poster on the wall. She gave him a thumbs-up and walked away.
Karen got a sturdy backpack at a store that sold clothes for teenage girls. She passed by the mannequins with their high, small breasts and exposed stretches of belly and thigh and felt a pang of something. Loss or disappointment, she couldn’t tell. She left that store and headed to another. None of the women’s clothes she looked at seemed durable enough. She didn’t care how she looked; she just wanted clean clothes that would stand up to what she would have to do. She thought back to her stack of scrubs, always ready to go, but they weren’t for all-terrain travel, either. She loaded up wads of clean underwear in her size and got a few sports bras. She put one on and stuck the rest in the bag. She hadn’t had a bra on in days, and she welcomed the feeling of containment and protection.
She ended up at a store for young men and found pants and shirts that fit. She put her own hoodie back on, then decided against it and pulled a thicker one off a wall display. She sat down and brushed out her hair at the accessories table before braiding it into a long plait that hung down her back. She had always worn her hair in braids at work, so much that when work friends saw her at a party, she knew they’d be shocked to see it down. It was long and dark and always wavy, curly on a humid day. She pulled on a baseball cap and threaded her braid through the space above the snaps in the back. She looked in the mirror and cringed a little.
Her reflection looked alarmingly tired. Her collarbones stood up, and the skin under her eyes looked too thin. She touched the spot where she’d been punched, thinking it looked a little puffy. It was sore, but not bruised. She hadn’t had makeup on in a long time, and she was shocked at how unfeminine she appeared. Dehydration showed itself in her lips, and she stuffed a pocket full of ChapStick at the counter. The thing that bothered her most was her eyes. Her small brown eyes, where she always believed people could see who she really was if they looked close enough. They looked afraid. She looked pale, sick, hurt, and afraid. She squared her shoulders and stood up straight. She watched her reflection do it, and she tried a smile. It didn’t come together the way it should have. She looked like prey, like a mark. She’d seen that look before on women who came to the ER, bleeding from one end or the other. Nobody chooses to be a victim, but after a lifetime of practice, it just happens. She wanted that look off her now. She’d have to work on it. For a half a second, she thought of her daily professional look, a quick dash of mascara and concealer, but she couldn’t face the absurdity of it. She applied a thick coat of ChapStick, working it in, stret
ching her lips over her teeth to crack the dry places and let the moisture in.
She came out feeling better, slinging the pack over her shoulder. She walked down toward the end of the building and saw there was a Starbucks near the boarded-up door. As she walked toward it, she tried snapping her fingers beside her ears. The right side heard nothing, but the left picked up the snap as though it were happening under water. She hoped the damage was temporary.
The coffee shop cold case was all but untouched. She sat down and drank a whole bottle of water and one of the shelf-stable coffee drinks. It was room temperature but tasted great to her. They hadn’t agreed on a place to meet up again, so she waited. When a little time had passed, she loaded up all the fruit-and-nut bars and cookies from the register into her bag, took all the water and another coffee, and started back. She stopped at the central staircase and looked around. She was thinking about loading her bag with the basics for first aid when she saw them.
Out of the corner of her eye, they might have been Joe and Chicken. She turned to look and saw there were four instead of two. She froze when they spotted her. One of them pointed at her and got the attention of the man next to him by swatting him backhanded on the chest. She couldn’t hear a word, but their mouths were moving. One of them dropped a length of chain he had coiled around his hand. They broke into a run headed straight toward her.
She didn’t understand what she was seeing, but instinct made her run. She was on the bottom level of the mall where the doors lead into the subway. The ground was two floors up. She took the spiral stairs two and three at a time, not stopping to look back. At the third level, she tore around a kiosk toward the door. She knew she’d have to stop to claw her way out past the boards. She looked over her shoulder and saw Joe and Chicken just steps behind. She half heard them screaming, “Go! Go!”
She thumped the plywood with her shoulder twice before the nails popped out. The three of them slid through, and the other four men followed. They ran around the corner together, and Chicken flipped open a Dumpster. Joe and Karen jumped in, and Chicken followed nimbly, pulling the lid down on them. They waited.
Trying to breathe silently without being able to hear yourself is impossible. Karen stifled the urge to wipe the sweat off her face or change her position at all. Chicken held on to Joe with both hands, as if to hold him still. Joe held his own mouth.
They crouched there, not daring to move, for a long time. Chicken finally came up a tiny bit, pushing the lid of the Dumpster with his head. He turned his neck slowly, checking both directions. Finally he stood up and flung the lid back.
“They gone. They ain’t nobody out here.” They couldn’t hear him, but they saw it in his shoulders dropping down.
Joe trembled all over from the adrenaline. When he stood up his knees creaked. He came out and stood beside Chicken. Karen climbed out on her own.
“What in the hell was that all about,” she bellowed toward them, raising both hands and looking bewildered.
Chicken’s head swiveled around to face her, ugly with rage. “That was about you. They wanted you. They saw you a girl, and they decided they want to take you with them, so they run you down. We heard the noise and came running out, and they decided we’re defending you, so they gonna kill us. We don’t need this shit.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
Joe started to speak, but Chicken cut him off. “Fucking gas explodes, whatever, that ain’t your fault. And it ain’t your fault you a female. But you are gonna make trouble for us, and we don’t need you. I seen this shit coming when I seen no women. We ain’t gonna die defending you. You gotta go.”
“Look, I can defend myself. You won’t have to—”
“Those guys would have acted tough, maybe made us leave the mall. They would have had no fight if they didn’t see you. You too rare. We can’t do this. I’m sorry. You gotta go. We gotta go. This ain’t gonna work.”
Only just met them, so how can they break my heart? How does this ache like an abandoned child?
“Chicken, I probably saved your life. If that cut had gotten infected—”
“And we probably saved yours. We’re even.” He was already turning away.
Joe shrugged in that way that meant it wasn’t up to him. He turned with Chicken’s arm around his neck, and they walked away.
Alone, she looked around in every direction, and there was no reason to go in any of them. No one waited at the end of any road, no purpose or burden came with any choice. It was like falling through something with no bottom.
In the end, she picked a street and started to walk. She strained her ringing ears to hear anyone coming behind her, but she looked over her shoulder every few paces. She thought about how Joe and Chicken had looked in their clothes, and how she looked different. Simple differences, small changes. It was the beginning of a plan.
CHAPTER 2
1 May
Have no idea of the date. Just sat here with this thing, trying to guess for a couple minutes before I decided to say fuck it. Pretty sure it’s May. It’s been cold, but the flowers are out. It isn’t hot yet. More fog than before. Declaring it May.
Living in the basement of a rickety house on Capp St. Been here since the fires spread across the Mission. Have my kit, my knife, and a good stockpile of canned food. Raiding is pure hell, and I’m sure I’ll die doing it. Most of what I have I found in other houses. Found a revolver in a closet two days ago. At least it’s a gun I know how to use. Took it apart, cleaned it up, spent some time getting used to the feel of it. Familiar. Friendly. Can stand searching houses and offices. After the mall, stores are too much, too open, with too many places to hide.
Made it back to the hospital, tried to find Jack or some sign of him. Been a year and everything = dry = crypt = fuck that. Nothing. Went back to the apartment, couldn’t go in. Must have thought I was dying. Can’t blame him. Left a note anyway. Time stopped a long time ago. Time was never time at all. Digital clocks gone blank.
No one to talk to now, long time. Last woman on Earth. Going to go crazy if I don’t talk to somebody besides myself. This = that. Substitution. Sham.
So, the bag. Journal, all the way in the bottom and flat. Food and bottled water. Inside my kit: army medic set for wounds, all the disinfectants and antibiotics I have left. Two topicals. Replace those pretty easy. 86 vials of Depo-Provera and a box of hypos. Two stashes of the patch. Three large boxes of the ring. All that = main pocket. Outside pockets: all the OB tampons I have left, two flashlights, twelve batteries, four lighters, and the map = enough to make camp in the East Bay and keep moving.
Don’t know if it’s any better on that side. Saw the fires in the Oakland hills, raging with nothing to stop them until the rains came. Up toward Berkeley things seemed a little better. Maybe head toward the university and raid there. Then move on. North. All the talk overheard sounds like heading south = go north.
Small group yesterday, close enough for me to wake up and hear them. Panicked at first, thinking they were in the house. Passing between houses, and they eventually stopped in one across the street. Got a hold of myself, heard them talking outside.
“Down toward San Diego. I heard it wasn’t as bad in Mexico. Maybe we could live on the beach in Baja and go fishing.”
“Man, I guess. We need to find a car, though. I’m fucking sick of walking. Maybe on the 101 we can find something that still runs.”
A third voice laughed. “Even if it runs, there’s nowhere to go with it. Everything is blocked. We could grab some motorcycles, maybe. But we’d need five.”
“Four. She can ride bitch.”
Small laughter. Listened to their steps leading away, my heart still pounding. Four men then.
One woman. Stayed in the locker with the garden tools until heard nothing at all for a long time. Neighborhood = nothing but ghosts for weeks, but time to move on. People moving down the peninsula, and there’s no way no how no reason to get caught on a bridge. Heading down to the marina, steal a
boat. Still sailboats, made sure. Everything that ran on gas is gone = not raiding for gas even if they aren’t. Never sailed before, but it isn’t far. Go tomorrow or the next day. Go tomorrow. Go during the night. Must GTFO. Go.
Bitch, call everyone bitch. Ride bitch, feed me bitch. Pussy = pussy. Choose the rougher word.
Posturing. Easy laugh. Take it easy. Only joking. Bitch.
June
Getting out of the city took longer than I thought. Couple of weeks in indecision, not wanting to leave the basement. Ate everything I could, slept forever always in daylight. Hearing = mostly back, don’t know if my right ear will ever be as good as it was. Packed and unpacked. Hated every day and chickened out every night. Pussy = pussy. Finally ran for it the night I heard the motorcycle. New one, rice-rocket. Ripped up and down the streets in the predawn hours. Felt like dragging my nerves out with it. Got too far away to hear anymore, figured that was it. Strapped on the knife and the gun, put on my pack. Walk.
Did an ok job of changing my look. I’m tall. Apartment in the Mission, found a compression vest to hide my tits. Thanks transman of yesteryear. Little too small, real tight. Shaved my head.
Wasn’t easy. Got men’s cargo pants and combat boots, with a couple of loose shirts and my hoodie on top. Can’t do anything about a beard. Couldn’t find one in a costume shop or anywhere. Settled for rubbing dirt into my jaw every morning. Candlelit mirror tricky, tricky.
Look like a young, effeminate man. A guy like Joe. Need to do more push-ups.
Walk tall, keep hips straight. Don’t sway. Feet flat. Hunch a little, arms straight down. Don’t gesture. Stare down. Make fists while talking. Sit with knees apart. Adjust. Don’t tilt your head.
Don’t bite your lip. Interrupt. Laugh low.
She found a sailboat that wasn’t wrecked or hopelessly entangled after walking the marina until well after dawn. She felt horribly exposed, being out in the wide open. She thought it would be better than on a bridge, because she wouldn’t have to choose to jump. The boat’s name was Circe, and that sounded like something bad, but she couldn’t place it. She looked it all over to make sure there was only rope holding it down. She loosed the mooring and climbed aboard to push off the dock with a long pole. The tide started to drag her out. It was really working.