by Siara Brandt
“That’s all you could find?” Helice went on, ungrateful to the very last. “Did you try the bowling alley?”
“Yes.”
“And the vending machines at the laundromat?”
“I looked there last week. There’s nothing left.”
“What about the movie theater?”
“I couldn’t get there. Every place has been virtually picked clean. I was lucky to find what I did find.”
“That’s what we risked our lives for?” she asked, glaring angrily at the can in his hand as if she could intimidate it with a look. “Peas?”
Actually, they hadn’t risked anything. He had been the one taking all the risks. But he didn’t say that to her. It wasn’t all that he had found. He was about to tell her about the bag of animal crackers and the candy bar in his other pocket but she didn’t give him a chance.
“You must have overlooked something,” she said, doing her best impression of Mr. Ed after the ‘something’. “You should have looked harder.”
Fine, he thought. She could just wait for him to tell her about the candy bar. And the animal crackers.
“I looked as hard as I could. And I didn’t ask for this, you know,” he reminded her. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been doing the best I can. Did you find anything in the kitchen?”
“No, I didn’t want to go in there by myself.”
Then why had she come along in the first place? he wanted to ask. But he bit his tongue and allowed himself a small sigh. She hadn’t done one thing to make herself useful. On the contrary, she had been nothing but a pain in the ass. This time, he didn’t feel one bit remorseful for the silent profanity. A man could only be driven so far and he had been way beyond that point for a long time now.
“All right,” he said after another long, resigned sigh. He wanted nothing more than to be back home where they were relatively safer. In fact, the sooner they got there, the better. “I’ll go look in the kitchen. You stay here.”
Again, he reminded himself that he was the one taking all the risks. For weeks he had struggled to keep them both fed, sustaining them on whatever he could find. It had been weeks of terror and desperation, of scavenging in the most unlikely, most dangerous places. The starving populace, what was left of it, had been like vultures who had picked the town clean within days. He couldn’t blame them, of course. People just like him were desperately trying to provide for their families and ward off starvation, which was not an easy task by any means. Since things weren’t getting any better, he tried not to think about how much harder things were going to get.
For now, Eymann was just as disappointed as Helice was. He wanted his old life back, a life that now seemed like nothing more than a fading dream that got further and further away from him, one that seemed like it had ended a lifetime ago. This zombie apocalypse, or whatever it was, was the reality now and by any standards it was a nightmare, but it might have been borne far easier if they were working together instead of against each other. He did his best to stay positive on his own, but there were times when he found that almost impossible to do. There were times when he would give in to the tears, weeping bitterly for himself and for everything that he had lost. But because he didn’t want Helice to see him blubbering like a baby, he wouldn’t let her see him at those times. Rather than comforting him, he suspected she would probably just mock his weakness and make fun of him, and despise him even more than she already did. He could just hear her telling him to man up and quit slinking around with his tail tucked between his legs.
Right now, however, there was no time to indulge in feeling sorry for himself. He needed to search that kitchen so they could be on their way. The longer they stayed here, the more dangerous it was. Pulling the scarf up from his chin, he covered the lower part of his face and cautiously opened the door that led to the kitchen.
He remained on the threshold staring into the murky gloom, trying to ignore the stench of decaying flesh that hit him immediately on a blast of hot, stagnant air. He inhaled shallowly through his mouth. It helped. A little. But he could not completely avoid the onslaught of unbelievably fetid, rotten air. The smell of old grease mixed with the cloying scent of death and Eymann felt sickened as it filled his lungs, seeming to became a part of him with each breath he took.
He quickly scanned the dark corners first to make sure nothing was hiding there. Then he looked over the shelves. Efficiently. Quickly. He was getting good at this. He’d had enough practice in the past few weeks. All the visible food would be gone, of course. But sometimes he would get lucky and find things that people had hidden away and not come back for.
His shoes were soundless as he stepped forward into the empty, or nearly-empty, room. The smell was almost overwhelming and he brought his hand up to cover his nose and his mouth because the scarf wasn’t enough. And then he saw the reason for the smell.
In spite of his best efforts to prepare himself, his stomach did a queasy roll. Nausea came rushing over him in engulfing waves. In spite of himself, he gagged. Even in the kitchen’s dim interior, he could see the body, or what was left of it, especially the sunken eyes that were staring straight at him.
Eymann had seen death before, but he still felt the bile rising from his stomach to his throat at the gruesome sight before him as flies buzzed around the body. He didn’t want any of those flies to land on him. Fiercely fighting down the nausea, he turned away, not wanting to know any of the details. He didn’t want to know how the person had died. Didn’t want to know if it was a man or a woman. He looked around and found what he was looking for, and then he got out of there as quickly as possible, certain that the stench was still clinging to him, even after he closed the door behind him.
Helice asked right away, “Anything?”
He pulled two cans out of his pockets.
“That’s it? In that whole kitchen, all you found were two cans of kidney beans?”
“No, that’s not it.” He reached into another pocket. He had sewed these special, roomy pockets into his clothes by himself. They came in handy when you were in a hurry, especially when you were in a life or death situation and needed to act fast.
“What’s that?” she wanted to know.
“Falafel mix.”
“Falafel mix?”
He was still fighting back the sick feeling. He wished that for once that she would just have a little sympathy for him, but this was Helice. He would probably drop dead from shock and be like that corpse in there if she showed any compassion for him whatsoever.
“It’s non-GMO and gluten fr- ” He began, still trying his hardest to distract himself from the lingering smell that he was sure he could now taste in the back of his throat. But he stopped when he saw the look on her face.
“Do you think any of that matters anymore? It was probably left behind because no one wanted it.”
He had been doing his damndest to keep her alive and for what? For nothing more than the usual slew of reprimands?
“Probably,” he agreed recklessly. “Maybe I did miss something. Why don’t you go in there and see if you can do better?”
She had nothing to say to that but if looks could kill- Eymann would be a dead man right now. Just like that corpse.
But looks weren’t lethal and so, having nothing more to say to each other, they prepared for the long, perilous walk home while Eymann consoled himself with the thought that while they had not found a lot of food, at least they had something to ward off starvation for a few more days. He opened a side door that led to the alley and stepped out first. She hadn’t been out here like he had. She didn’t know what to expect. She was probably getting an idea of what it was like, but she still hadn’t seen what he’d seen, not by a long shot. Of course, there was always the possibility that she didn’t care what he went through. But he couldn’t change that, either. Like their marriage, all he could do was to live with it.
There were a lot of dead bodies in the streets. They were also haphazardly strewn across th
e lawns and the sidewalks in dark pools of dried blood. They were in the parks and the parking lots. He knew there were some living people still holed up in the buildings around them, but they were afraid to come out and they didn’t show themselves much. A lot of the undead were trapped in the buildings, too. The alley was no different. Men, women, and children were sprawled everywhere in varying states of decay. Then there were the undead ones that were still walking. You could smell them before you even saw them. Sometimes that gave you an advantage. Sometimes.
It was amazing how fast what used to be a quiet, familiar hometown had changed overnight. Things had deteriorated in such a short amount of time that, in addition to the bodies, garbage littered every street and every yard. The decline was worse than anything Eymann could have imagined, and faster, so much faster than he would have thought possible. He was witnessing the decline of civilization and he knew that things were only going to get worse.
In the beginning, both he and Helice had tried to find out what was going on so that they could make some informed decisions. They had debated heatedly back and forth about going to one of the designated shelters, but by the time they made the final decision, it was already too late. When they drove up to the last shelter to see people waiting in lines around the building, they decided it was no longer an option. When word got around that someone in a shelter had turned, the panic began, and so did the exodus. An armed gang attacked another one of the shelters, stole all the food and terrified the people as much as the undead. As a consequence, no one felt safe going to a shelter anymore. In Eymann’s opinion, one of the churches would have been a better choice, but to his surprise, all the churches they tried had been abandoned.
They still knew little of what was really going on. Technology had ceased to exist almost overnight. Communications were down so they had to rely on local rumors which had been rampant in the beginning. And completely unreliable. The only thing they knew for sure was that this was happening all over America, and by the last reports, the rest of the world, too. All they could do was to sit helplessly by and watch it all fall apart. Just like the infamous broadcast of War of the Worlds, the panic and hysteria had kicked in almost immediately. For a while, unbelievable chaos reigned. People were killed in droves, either by the dead, or by each other, or by stupid mistakes. Or they became the undead themselves. Suicide rates skyrocketed. Looting became a way of life as frightened people became desperate to take care of their own families because no one was going to do it for them.
As far as the Buckminsters could tell, most of their neighbors were already gone. In the beginning they had gathered on the sidewalks in front of their houses to try and find out the latest news. In the end, almost all of them agreed that getting out of the city was their best option for staying alive. Most didn’t really know much of what was out there beyond their very structured city lives that relied on goods brought in by outsiders. They just assumed, and hoped, that there was something better out there, something to ward off the looming specter of starvation, starvation that came incredibly fast and brought with it a heavy dose of reality, one that no one could continue to ignore.
Virtually all of the food was gone almost immediately. Most of it was cleaned out of the stores within the first few days. What hadn’t spoiled, that is. Eymann quickly learned how much of their food was perishable without electricity to keep it cold. Dairy, meat, milk, fruits and vegetables, especially the microwavable, prepared food that most people were used to. Once it was gone, it was gone. There was no replacing it. There were no more deliveries. What truck driver would risk making a delivery of food in a city populated by starving, desperate people? Especially after the Stock Market crashed and money became worthless. A barter system was quickly established, but the lucky few who had the food weren’t about to give it up to strangers when they needed it themselves. Luckily, Eymann had already put in a garden. But it was going to take time to begin producing anything that was actually edible. And he worried that someone was going to come and take whatever he did manage to grow. He had seen strangers prowling the neighborhood more than once. He assumed they were looking for food or for other necessities of life. Since Eymann had no weapons of any kind in the house, he had no way of stopping anyone from taking whatever they wanted, not that they had much of anything that was of value anymore.
Eymann was also quickly learning that he had taken a lot of things for granted. Like ice cream, pizza, or a cold glass of milk before bedtime. He even missed fast food. And the list just got longer and longer as the days went on.
Overnight, there was an abrupt end to all the advances of the last century. Computers, phones, TV, music. With only Helice to listen to, it didn’t take Eymann long to realize how much he had relied on technology to drown her out.
But it was hunger that was the most difficult for him. Hunger was his first thought in the morning and his last thought at night. Hunger kept him awake in the middle of the night. Hunger alone had made him take reckless chances on more than one occasion. Like today.
He found himself longing desperately for the past when the worst problem facing him was how to fix the leaky faucet in the bathroom or how to keep his flower beds weed free. He wanted nothing more than to concentrate on the simple things that had given him so much pleasure in the past, like caring for his home and his yard, two things that he had taken a great amount of pride in. Now the grass was knee-high and the car was still in the yard although it had been pushed off the steps and was sitting vacantly at the curb, its occupant long gone. The ruts were still there, a grim reminder of how this had all started.
The toilet paper was there as well, but it was shredded and clumped together now by the weather. Eymann had started to clean it up, but other matters had become more pressing. And while his house was the worst eyesore on the block, the entire neighborhood looked neglected and abandoned. Weeds grew everywhere, even in cracks in the sidewalks and the streets. A lot of the houses on the street had been ransacked, the empty ones at least. Discarded items of every description littered the yards and the streets.
As Eymann walked ahead of Helice, he kept looking back and forth alertly. He looked in front of them and behind. You could never be too careful. They had a system. They would watch first to see if the next alleyway was clear, and then they would move up to the next safe place where they would watch again before moving forward.
But although he could see no immediate threat, Eymann felt an uneasy feeling creeping up on him. He didn’t understand it consciously, but his instincts were kicking into gear. It was something that Eymann was coming to rely on more and more, something that replaced the technology that had become almost indispensable in everyone’s lives in the past.
A rabbit darted into the alley in front of them. It froze there for a few seconds before hopping into cover in the weeds of the next yard. Eymann breathed a sigh of relief. A rabbit he could handle. He found it amazing how fast wildlife was taking over the town. Rabbits, deer, squirrels, even raccoons and possums were everywhere. As he walked along, a miniature tornado of gnats began spinning around his head. He brushed them away and walked faster. Behind him, he heard Helice exclaim as she walked into the same swarm. It was the time of year for them and they seemed worse than ever. Just like the flies. And he found himself thinking about the plagues of Egypt. He hoped the gnats had not been feeding on a corpse. Who knew how this was spread?
Luckily, Helice finally seemed to have gotten it through her head that she needed to stay quiet. Even when they stopped again, she remained silent. She was standing beside him now in a doorway rubbing her arms nervously, waiting for him to go first. Both of their heads spun around when they heard a woman scream in the far distance.
It was a distressing sound, but not an uncommon one. In fact, it happened with disturbing regularity. They were too far away to even begin to know what was going on, and most likely too far to be of any help. Eymann used to run towards such sounds, until he learned how useless and how dangerous that was.
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He looked at Helice now, wondering how she was going to react. If she panicked and started going into hysterics-
But the screams had already stopped. He tried not to think about them, or about why they had stopped. They were always difficult to contemplate, to remember, to wonder if he could have done something, anything, to help.
“We have to keep moving,” he said to Helice. He grabbed her hand and she let him take it.
“You shouldn’t have worn those shoes,” he said when they had gone a little further. “I’m sure you have more practical ones in your closet.”
“These are my practical shoes.”
Yeah, they were practically a death sentence.
“You can’t run in them,” he said, trying to distract them both from the screams and now the depressing silence that followed them.
“I can run,” she said. “I’ve come this far, haven’t I? Besides, those things are slower than we are. We could easily outrun them.”
No, she was very wrong. Too many unexpected things could happen. They could be surrounded. They could be cut off. They could trip and fall . . .
But there was no sense arguing with her, especially this far from home. They still had about a half mile to go and he had no intention of arguing with her all the way there.
At the edge of town, Eymann told her to wait while he checked one last alley before moving on. It was a very long alley and it was overgrown with weeds. There were a lot of places where anything could be hiding.
“I’m not staying here by myself,” Helice said as she glanced over her shoulder, maybe still thinking about those screams. “I’m coming with you.”
“No, it’s best if you stay here.”
“I-am-coming-with-you,” she ennunciated very clearly.
It was the last straw. “For God’s sake, Helice. For once, do what I say and stay here. Do you want to get us both killed?”
To his surprise, she backed down and didn’t say another word to him. Pausing only a moment to make sure she would stay put, Eymann left her. He stopped to look around when he reached the last few houses. Frowning, he glanced back over his shoulder and saw nothing. But his instincts were picking up a familiar smell. He passed another half-eaten corpse that lay in the weeds. The gray, rotting face looked shriveled and ghastly in the sunlight. It was a grisly warning, a grim reminder to Eymann that they couldn’t be too careful, not if they wanted to survive. He walked carefully around the corpse, stepping wide to avoid the pool of dried blood and guts that were scattered across a wide area, wondering in the back of his mind if the animals were eating them. And if so, could they get the disease. He hadn’t come across anything like that yet, but he still had to wonder.