“Iodine tincture,” he said, ripping apart a small white box. ”POISON” was written in red letters on the side. “Now, I just have to be careful not to kill us. Five drops per quart for clear, ten for cloudy? Or ten for clear, twenty for cloudy? Hmm.” He poured the water into a glass tea pitcher with a green flower printed on its side, and used three drops of iodine per quart just to be safe. There was no doubt in his mind iodine was a deadly chemical at high concentrations. He stirred the pitcher with a plastic spoon and went back to where Emily was playing.
“I got something for you,” he said and she shot up to her feet, brows raised. “Close your eyes.”
She cocked her head and squinted. When she opened her eyes again two seconds later, she patted her chest and cheered. “Star! Star!” She lifted up the orange necklace with a plastic star and beamed with all the luminance of the sun. Her arms were thrown around her Daddy’s shoulders and the two fell back on the floor laughing. “Star! Star!”
“I see it. Glad you like it, Emme.” He patted his backpack pocket to be sure the spare stars were still there. These would go in a drawer at home for the inevitable day she lost her current one. “You look so pretty.”
Emily preened as she held the star up for Bullwhip Barbie to see. She did not care to show her other new Barbies such a precious thing as this. They hadn’t yet earned the right.
Ryan noticed that Emily had made use of several other toys on the shelves. She’d ripped into a box with a tea set, all on her own, and put the cups out on the floor in a semi-circle. Bullwhip Barbie was still at the head of their group, but this time she seemed to be conducting high tea and not dom-group therapy. The new Barbies were seated with plastic Hello Kitty teacups, sans saucers, in their laps. Ryan ached at his daughter’s choice in aesthetics, given that Disney princesses were in the box beside the ones she had chosen. But where the princess designs might have been easier to emotionally stomach, the Hello Kitty tea set was more appropriate.
He took a seat and picked up one of the plastic teacups. He ran his finger around the rim and stared at the cartoon kitty’s face for which the entire cup was comprised. A massive reddish-pink bow was cocked sideways near the handle, its end protruding from the lip. Emily took up the matching kettle, tipped Hello Kitty’s spout into his cup, and poured servings of imaginary tea for the rest of their group.
“Mmmm,” Ryan said as he took a sip.
“Mmmm,” Emily repeated, putting the empty cup to her lips. “More teeth?”
“Tea,” he corrected her. “And yes, I would love more.”
“Teeth?”
“Tea. I would like more tea. That’s how you say it. T—e—a. Tea.”
“More teeth. Dada more, more.” Emily kept pouring. “More more more.”
Ryan put his hand over the cup and withdrew. “Oh, my goodness! We’re spilling it all over the place! You must be careful.”
Emily rocked her head and shoulders as she sipped her cup, peering at him from across the lip. She made a loud slurping noise in imitation of her father, and began sticking her pinky outward. After she had finished her cup, she made Bullwhip Barbie stand and address the support group in a jumble of words Ryan could only hope to understand. The conversation soon shifted, winding around and ending up back on her beloved star.
Yesterday had been a blur. It was hard to say what all had happened, but he knew the dogs had cornered them once more. He couldn’t recall much else. He remembered feeling incredibly loopy, then considered the Percocet pain pills he’d found at Karen’s house. There had been three pills at the start, and they’d vanished at once. In college, he’d been quite the party animal, drinking, and smoking his share of pot. He’d taken uppers a few times during finals, but nothing serious. He realized what must have happened to him, was that in his fever haze he had lost track and taken all of the pills at once.
Super.
“Did I argue with someone yesterday?” he asked Emily, and she gave him a funny look.
“Noooo,” she let the word ring out. “No. No. No. No, man.”
Ryan wasn’t sure why, but he suddenly felt embarrassed thinking about it. He turned to his left and addressed the rag-covered skeleton lying on the floor. “You didn’t happen to see me talk to someone, did you?”
The skeleton didn’t reply, and he found that pretty damn rude. What ever happened to the ten-foot rule in retail?
“Of course not. That was back in The Loop. You’ve been stuck here all along—” He leaned over to read the skeleton’s name tag, “—Janice.”
After a half hour, they got up and ran circles around the makeup aisles, Emily shouting ‘hide’ all the while. Ryan didn’t move fast but limped at a good pace. He could feel his man fruits swinging in just his undies and couldn’t wait for the sun to dry their clothes. Emily found more plastic costume jewelry, adding a pair of translucent rings, five neon bracelets, a butterfly hair clip and crown, to her star accessory. She now had an adorable mismatch of diaper, oversized t-shirt, pink sneakers and random jewelry. She asked repeatedly if she was pretty, and Ryan agreed. She was very pretty. He started having trouble keeping up with her, having found himself short of breath, and encouraged that they take a break. Emily objected wildly, but when he offered her something to drink, she quieted and sucked down water so fast he thought she might puke. He found several boxes of crayons and a series of coloring books, one with a picture of a mother holding her daughter on the beach, laid them out on the floor and started coloring between the lines with red.
Emily took a seat, sorted the crayons then stole the red from Ryan’s hand. “No, Dada. No.”
“What? I can’t use red? I’m coloring in a crab. Crabs are red.”
“No. This a won.” She handed him a yellow crayon.
“Fine,” he hissed and started to color the sun. The yellow was faint and hardly made a mark on the ivory page. He supposed that by the time he filled in the blue skies you might could see the yellow contrast but that was all. Emily used her stolen red crayon to draw crisscross patterns over a series of faces in a Sponge Bob coloring book she procured on her own.
“Yellow sucks,” Ryan said.
“No. No blue,” she reached out and took the yellow crayon from him, replacing it with white. The dreaded white. “Here, dis blue.”
“No. This is white.” He held the crayon upright. “The white crayon.”
“Blue.”
“White.”
“Withe?”
“White.”
“Wyatt?”
“White crayon.”
“Withe kronee,” she put her head down and kept coloring.
Ryan chuckled and shook his head. “What the heck can I do with this? The white crayon is useless. Seriously, there is nothing you can do with it.” He scrubbed the paper with its tip and all it left behind was a muted sheen. “It won’t even make marks where ink has been. I’m getting a different color, here let’s see, cerulean. That’s a good sky color, right?”
“No.” Emily snatched the cerulean crayon from her Dada’s fingers and carefully placed it to the side. “No. This a one.” She pointed again at the white crayon.
“But I no want,” Ryan whined. He really needed to color this picture properly, it was important. Emily might not understand, but this was a small way of imposing order and balance to their world. He had the crab three quarters filled and the sun was on its way. He had sixty-four colors of crayons at his disposal and all Emily wanted him to have was white. “Please?”
“No.” Her brows knitted as she shook her head. “No. No. No.”
He darted out with his hand and snatched one of the light brown crayons from on top of the box. He pulled the coloring book up onto his knees and leaned over it. The palm tree on the right needed filling. He could start light as he moved up from the sand, then press hard on the opposite side of the sun, adding a bit of semi-realistic shading. After it was finished, black could be used to add a true shadow onto the beach.
Ryan was halfway up when E
mily took his artistic implement. “No. No blue.”
“Uhh, this isn’t blue. It’s brown.”
“Blown?”
“Brown.”
“Brown.” She rolled the word around in her mouth as if the quality of its flavor was difficult to appraise. “Brown.”
“That’s it. Super.”
“Super?”
“Yup, super. Like, super-duper.”
“Duper?”
It took longer than usual, not that he minded, for Emily to fall asleep for her afternoon nap. He’d found an air mattress, blown it up, almost passed out, and tucked her in with several t-shirts. He didn’t remain sitting on the mattress, much as he wanted to, and instead roamed the store for something to occupy his free time. He checked their clothes and flipped them over. Still a ways to go before they were dry.
As he perused the books, his thoughts drifting back to Lillian’s phone, along with the irritation of not having made it work yet. He took a couple novels that looked interesting and went through the magazines. It didn’t take long for him to find a niche publication that focused on outdoor survival, tinkering, and generally manly subjects. Including auto repair. What caught his attention the most was a step-by-step guide on how to revive a dead deep cycle battery. He knew a little about electronics—he’d made a radio or two when he was a kid, and thought this shouldn’t be all that hard. The article spoke of how deep cycles were mostly used in RVs and on boats with trolling motors, and so he figured a cell phone couldn’t work too much different. Hell, he might even be able to get the tablet working so Emily could watch Bears or Ponies or Princesses.
“All I need is a battery. Then, I can charge the phone.” He went through his memory for the closest auto parts store and came up blank. Maybe he could salvage one instead. Surely, one of his neighbors had need for such a long draw battery. “Let’s see, what do I need? Alum? Not sure where you even get that. Baking soda? Simple. Water? Sure. Well crap, it needs to charge. Der. How am I going to charge it?” He found several tiny solar panel cell phone chargers hanging up by the registers. “Worth a shot.”
Coming to rest beside the air mattress, he leaned back and used it as a pillow. He read through the magazine again, then set it aside, picking up a copy of Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits by David Wong.
Reading fiction had become an alien, incongruous thing. Stories set in modern times were harder to relate to in the place he’d found himself. Maybe one day they would feel the same again, but he didn’t think so. Even narratives that were one hundred percent realistic, had started feeling like high fantasy.
As Ryan lost sight of reality, he soon found himself in a world obsessed with violence streamed via the internet, a reminder of yet another place he would never see again.
Chapter 27
They arrived home three days later. Staying at the drugstore had been like taking a mini vacation and neither of them were interested in it coming to an end. Stetson’s wasn’t familiar enough to feel like home, and so the special brand of dread this alien world had been giving Ryan, and in a more subtle way influencing Emily, didn’t seem to touch them there.
On the third morning, he decided it was time to head back, lest the rainwater they’d collected turn brackish before it could be boiled. They gathered up their supplies—new diapers, meal replacement bars, soap, and medicine—filling to capacity an undersized shopping cart. For once, Emily didn’t complain about riding inside, but unfortunately, she took up almost the entire thing. Ryan carried the balance of their supplies on his back or in shopping bags hanging from the side of the cart.
The wild dogs had to be dealt with on a more permanent basis. Ryan knew he was going to have to take the cruelest action he could devise. Once they reentered The Loop, he tossed lumps of Spam and potted meat to the left and right of their path. Each lump fell with a muted splat, sticking to the road, sometimes revealing a small glint of silver light. A single mutt appeared as he passed Fitz’s Restaurant who began to nibble on one of the lumps.
“Come on,” Ryan had said, keeping a close eye on the dog’s actions. After a moment, the dog was licking its lips, wanting more. Ryan sighed, in both relief and guilt. The dog followed them slowly and then stopped; coughing like it had swallowed a pair of dirty underwear whole.
Ryan could only imagine what was happening on the inside of the animal’s body. Tiny blades were slashing rents in the canine’s internal tissues as they worked down the esophagus and into the stomach. The deadly objects would remain there for some time, causing occasional stomach pains as they wiggled around in its belly. The body would try its best to digest the fractured razor blades, blood leaking in from the throat, but it would fail. Within the day, the dog would bleed out internally, no longer a threat to Ryan or his daughter.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and put his head down. “I really am. But it’s us, or you. And I’m taking us.”
They made a pit stop in the trendy new grocery, picked up a few spices that might just make their food eatable, staples, and one additional thing Ryan knew he needed but had not known where to get.
“Alum,” he said, picking up a small tan and red container with white powder inside. “Super. It’s a spice? Now, I just need some baking soda and a deep cycle battery, and we’ll be in business.”
“Biz-nest,” Emily added, eyes on Bullwhip Barbie as she combed her hair.
“Well, not quite. There’s still the matter of charging it,” Ryan replied, but Emily was singing to herself.
Emily found herself a wooden dowel rod on the floor of aisle six and started calling it a wand. She cast her spells on every skeletal patron they passed. Ryan laughed, pointing at more remains for her to cast spells on, and something dawned on him.
When everyone had wound down, stopped, and suddenly died, it must have been during the middle of the day. That would explain the sorts of places he was finding bodies and the positions they were in. Traffic was gridlocked, but not like rush hour. Stores were lightly populated. Patrons had the clothes of stay-at-home moms and retired folk, hardly anyone in suits or business attire. No, those people were at work. Those people were in the city, the office buildings, the industry outside town.
Pushing a shopping cart down the boulevard was not as easy as he had hoped. There was so much debris and new growth, a spattered carpet of decomposing leaves, that the cart’s small wheels often got stuck. If they were to travel long distances, they’d need a better solution than this. A car would be great, but that prospect wasn’t looking good. Perhaps a wagon? He pressed on despite the challenge and made a game out of it for Emily, shaking the cart wildly while instructing her to hold on tight. She tried her best to remain calm, but mostly laughed instead.
Just past his turn onto North Skinker Boulevard, Ryan saw a familiar sight. Beside the retro style bowling alley was the shape of a plastic man with pressed slacks and a sweater. The man appeared to be glaring at him from where he was standing on the curb.
“Strange.”
Ryan was convinced the man should be lying on the ground another block away. He pushed this incongruous sight out of his head. Mannequins can’t move on their own.
Pushing the cart gave him time to think. Despite the battery argument rattling around in Ryan’s skull, the need for him to power up his wife’s cell phone and see her videos, there was another serious matter. Ryan had mixed feelings over one seemingly unimportant thing he’d procured at the drug store. He’d been feeling increasingly lonely at night, and not just the kind of lonely where he wanted people around or someone to cuddle. It was the deep aching loneliness that burned beneath his belt and made a man worry his penis might wither and fall off from disuse. This brand of loneliness was making for some strange mornings.
Ryan soon realized, the most awkward thing he could ever imagine, was waking up next to your two-year-old daughter after having a wet dream about your dead wife. Each night these dreams grew more vivid, taking a greater hold over his wandering mind, and he needed release. He needed s
ome time alone, a hot shower, whatever it took to empty the massive load engorging his blue balls sometime before bed. Perhaps that would make for a more ordinary morning.
The Playboy he acquired from Jimmy, an associate at Stetson’s, locker was not on the level of his usual erotic fair. Things had changed greatly when it came to available amorous imagery since he first found titties interesting; and internet porn, in a way, had spoiled him with choice. He and his wife had never quarreled over the act of looking at naked pictures or videos online, as she did so just about as much as he. It was more an awkward point of conversation when they had first married, being honest enough to come out and admit to one another they sometimes liked watching other people fuck. It was hard to be honest about. They both worried this desire reflected that they might not be happy with their partner, which was far from the truth. They were merely closet voyeurs. After some time, and several dream-like sessions of watching porn together while swimming through a river of alcohol, they accepted the fact and often made jokes about it.
In Ryan’s opinion, Lillian had been the freak of their couple. Aside from the usual vanilla sexual endeavors, she enjoyed watching petite girls in light bondage be flogged by men wearing leather masks and blue jeans. Ryan had always found this a little disturbing to watch, as if the men were acting like predators even though the girl had given consent. Lillian disagreed, said it was super-hot, and tried to get him to act it out with her one night. It had not ended well.
Conversely, Ryan had a fantasy she disliked. He’d always wanted to have sex with his partner, wife or otherwise, while another woman sat on his face, both women wearing tall athletic socks. Common, yes, but the idea aroused an iron resolve in his pants. Lillian never allowed such a thing to happen, not willing to let someone else have a piece of him, and so his fantastical adventure existed only in his mind. As a result of their sexual disharmony, they avoided speaking of these more fringe erotic situations and kept their focus on the common ones. Sometimes that involved a Chinese finger trap. Sometimes it involved pegging or DP.
The Two That Remained Page 16