“I’m okay,” I told them. “I have to cook.”
They left, and I never saw them again. Late at night, when I can’t sleep and the minutes flow slowly into hours, I hope against hope they made it.
Later that afternoon, when I went down to prep the food, it was snowing outside. It fell across the gray sky like television static. It piled on the yellow grass and transformed into gusts of steam when it hit the pool. The guests—we were down to fifteen, maybe—gathered before the fireplace to hear a spindly boy with a mohawk, the former CEO of a social network, explain the culture of toxic privilege. The last of the kombucha was served.
In the kitchen, the walk-in fridge was empty, but I found a dripping pile of meat waiting for me on the main island. Adam sat on a nearby stool, tapping at his dead phone as if it would miraculously snap back to life. He had lost so much weight that he looked like a living skeleton.
“More supplies for you,” he said. “I’m sorry Beau left, but I’m so happy you’ve decided to stick around for our little East Coast Burning Man.”
When he laughed, it sounded like the wind rattling through dead branches.
“Happy to be here,” I said, hoping that nothing in my tone telegraphed the dread I felt. “Where’d you source this meat?”
He shrugged. “Another house.”
“Got it.” I washed my hands, set the oven to pre-heat, drew my favorite blade, and went to work. It must have been the same boar as before, lean and tough. I wondered if the house managers in the surrounding mansions all sourced their meat from the same purveyor—
My knife hit something sharp that wasn’t bone. Withdrawing the blade, I widened the cut with my thumb. Something gleamed yellowish in the weak light.
A gold tooth.
I should have known from the beginning, of course, but now’s a good time as any to admit that I had fallen off the wagon in a serious way once we arrived at Oleg’s mansion. Not that I was ever much on the wagon to begin with. Or maybe I knew all along, but just couldn’t admit it to myself. Not until I was slicing into prime Beau, at least.
How many people had Beau and Adam killed to serve their hungry masses? And when the time came, where had Adam finished off Beau? Oleg’s mansion had a lot of rooms—too many places where someone with a hacksaw and some plastic sheeting could prepare farm-fresh meat.
With numb fingers, I slipped the gold tooth into my pocket. I could have followed that up by burying my knife in Adam’s throat. But while I’ve been many things, a murderer isn’t one of them; even at that lowest moment, with the pile of what used to be my friend in front of me, I didn’t have what it took.
The group in front of the fireplace was breaking up, and the masses streamed past the kitchen doorway on their way to the outdoors. Maybe that weakling CEO had climaxed his speech by declaring they needed to plunge into the sea all at once, Jonestown-style. I hadn’t heard much over the roaring of blood in my ears.
“I have to go,” I said, quietly.
Adam looked up from his blank screen, offering me a little smile. “Anything wrong?”
“No.”
“I haven’t explained something important,” he said. “Things have been a little too chaotic. But I wanted to thank you. For taking a chance on what we’re building here. For recognizing that a kinder world stands before us.”
“Assume all contact hostile.”
His smile twitched. “Excuse me?”
“Nothing. I’ll be right back.”
Taking the long route through the house, my knife still in my hand, I ducked into the basement. It took me some time to find the gas lines, but only a second to slit open two of them. The basement had a door that led to the outside, and I took care to close it behind me as I headed into the sunlight.
I don’t know if the gas reached the fireplace or the pre-heating oven first, but when it went, the explosion was enormous. From my position at the base of the dunes, facing the sea, the black mushroom cloud blotted out the sky. A few minutes later, the bag of grenades in Beau’s bathroom cooked off with a stuttering bang, sending another fireball heavenward.
Further down the beach, the merry morons screamed and flailed in the sand, and I gave them a cheerful wave. I felt better than I had in months, maybe years. I had absolutely nothing left, no past and no future; I was a speck of carbon at the edge of the rumbling void.
Under ordinary circumstances, the offseason life is the slow life.
But we left ‘ordinary’ behind a long time ago.
By S.A. Cosby
Tasha heard them before she saw them.
It was a sound she had become unaccustomed to in the last few years: The metallic roar of a truck’s engine. A powerful creature with skin made of steel that bled oil and drank the remains of dinosaurs.
The big truck came bounding over the ruts in their dirt lane like a hungry dog responding to the sound of its food hitting the bottom of the bowl. It came to a halt fifteen feet from her and Luke, her miracle son. Born at home in the bathtub. She and Jimmy waited for him to die for two weeks before they dared to let themselves love him. When everything with the virus had started, they had said babies and young people had nothing to worry about. They’d been wrong.
As the men in the truck climbed out, wearing homemade Hazmat suits and backyard arts-and-crafts gas masks, she thought she and Jimmy had been wrong about a lot of things.
The truck was one of those ridiculous jacked-up monstrosities that would be comical if their owners didn’t take it so seriously. Once upon a time, it had been candy-apple red, but now it was just a dull magenta. The color of dried blood.
There were six of them. Four men and two women. She could tell two of them were women by the sway of their hips and their braless breasts that swung like overripe fruit on a dying vine. The men had machine guns, and each had a bandolier across his chest. Some had pistols. The women carried shotguns with extra shells clipped to the stock.
Lucas gripped Tasha’s thigh through her house dress.
One of the men dropped to his haunches and removed his mask. “Hey little guy. You ain’t gotta be afraid. It’s okay. We thought you might sick, but you look like you’re right as rain. Just like your mama,” he said. The man had the ruddy, shined-leather complexion of someone who called themselves white without looking too closely at their family tree. A mop of shaggy brown hair spilled down to his shoulders. Standing again, he said: “How you doing there miss? My name’s Tucker. “
“Mother Tucker,” a diminutive Asian man said.
Tucker laughed. “Don’t mind Caleb. He’s got a weird sense of humor. Now, I know how this question might sound, so don’t take it wrong. You here alone…what’s your name, darling?” Tucker asked.
Tasha set down her basket of tomatoes. “Tasha.”
“Alright, Tasha. You here alone?” Tucker asked again.
“No. My husband is out checking his traps. He should be back by sundown,” Tasha said. Tucker glanced behind him. Over the magnolia trees that ran up and down the lane. The amber ball of fire in the sky appeared to be just inches above the horizon.
“Well, he oughta be here any minute. Maybe we can wait for him. Talk some barter,” Tucker said, his eyes crinkling at the corners.
“You gonna want to be gone before he get back,” Tasha said. She didn’t yell or scream. She didn’t put any extra sass on it. It was a simple declarative statement.
“Your husband some kind of Billy Badass?” another man asked. He was black but lighter than Tasha. His hair was twisted into loose dreads that threatened to unravel any second.
“No. He’s not. I’m just saying you wanna get out of here before he get back. You gonna want to get out of here before dark,” Tasha said.
“Now, that’s just downright rude. I thought the South was known for its hospitality? We got about fifty gallons of gas at our camp. My girl Mara can sew anything you can think of from scratch. You gonna tell me you can’t trade some of those tomatoes or those greens I see back behind that house?
” Tucker asked.
A spiky haired blonde wiggled her fingers at Tasha.
Tasha didn’t doubt they had the gas. She thought about how all the books and movies had gotten it all wrong. The world didn’t end in riots and wars in an endless dystopian wasteland. It didn’t end with a whimper like that poet who liked cats had said, either. It ended in increments. It slowed and slowed like the heart of a wounded animal until it just stopped and began to rot. Once the Drip took hold for real, the unbearable weight of reality just ground the gears of existence to powder. Grocery stores fell, of course, but gas stations just stopped operating. Electronics stores became crypts full of useless toys. Jordans sat on the shelves of Foot Lockers, gathering dust. Bookstores became nurseries for silverfish. The Drips was ten times as contagious as measles, with a mortality rate that made Ebola look like an upset stomach. Fear of the outsider had been replaced with fear of the outside.
At first, the Drip had some long scientific name that the President couldn’t pronounce so he called it “the Brazilian virus,” all because a website with less credibility than your crackhead cousin had postulated it had come from Brazil. But once the first video clips emerged of people in the nation’s emergency rooms, laying on stretchers with mucus dripping from all their orifices, well, the name just stuck.
Jimmy had realized how serious it was, even as the president was saying it was all under control. Jimmy had a natural sixth sense. He knew when a cop was going to pull them over for DWB. He could tell when a fight was going to break out in a club. He knew when a waitress was going to be the drizzling shits. He had a gift. Well, Tasha called it a gift.
Its gonna get bad, Tash. Mother Earth has had it with our bullshit, he’d said.
They saying it won’t be any worse than the flu, she’d said. Normally she didn’t doubt Jimmy’s hunches, but this time, she couldn’t help but hope he was wrong.
I’m telling you, Tash. It’s a reckoning, he’d said.
Two weeks later, the Vice President had issued a national lockdown. The President had died during a press conference—viscous ribbons of mucus pouring out of his eyes, nose and mouth like billowy party streamers.
Jimmy couldn’t stay quarantined in their apartment. Half-black, half-Cree and all wild energy, he was designed from birth to run through the woods and swim in rivers. They’d met at American University, where she’d been an art student and Jimmy was majoring in history. His grandparents had lived down here in Virginia in the middle of nowhere for longer than either of them had been alive. When he’d suggested they make a run for it, she’d gone along not just because she loved him, but because she’d had nightmares about marauding gangs breaking into their place and doing what men did when the rules were suspended.
Now the men without rules had found her.
That, Alanis, is irony, she thought.
“I guess the lockdown ain’t in effect anymore?” Tasha asked.
Tucker chuckled and said: “Well they say it is, but ain’t nobody seen a cop in a coon’s age.”
The dread-head laughed. It was a braying sound, like a donkey on nitrous oxide.
“Look, little sister, we can just take what we want, but I ain’t that kind of man. So why don’t you show us what you got in that garden back there. We can give a couple gallons of gas and you can give us these tomatoes, some of them greens, and whatever else you got back there,” Tucker said.
“The greens ain’t ready yet. All we got now is cucumbers, tomatoes and some cantaloupes,” Tasha said.
“Why don’t you show me? You guys hang back. Come on Mara,” Tucker said. The blonde walked over and stood beside Tucker. She’d unzipped her Hazmat suit to reveal a wifebeater shirt and cutoff jean shorts. Tucker was still wearing his suit, a bulky swatch of heavy-duty blue plastic stitched together like a quilt.
“If I show you, will you leave?” Tasha asked.
“Little sister, I give you my word,” Tucker said. Mara snickered. Tucker shot her a look that killed the sound in her throat.
Tasha reached down and picked up Lucas. She gave the darkening sky a glance, then headed for the back of the house. As they passed the well, Tucker touched her on her shoulder.
“How long y’all been out here?”
“Since it first happened. Jimmy’s grandparents lived here. They were dead when we got here so we buried them and moved in,” Tasha lied.
“Seven hundred thirty-nine days y’all been out here?” Tucker said.
“If that’s how long it been, yeah,” Tasha said. They came around the corner of the farmhouse. Four steps from the back door, a small garden took up a 30x30 square. Cucumbers, tomato cages and cantaloupes made up the majority of it. Off to the left, a cinderblock building with a heavy wooden door held court.
“Huh, you won’t lying. You’d be surprised how many people we’ve run across who are less than truthful. It’s disappointing,” Tucker said.
“Life is full of disappointments,” Tasha said. She felt a crushing pain in her left arm as Tucker grabbed her. Lucas was huddled in her right.
“Don’t get smart with me. I don’t like it when people get smart with me. You got pretty eyes. Don’t make me take one for souvenir,” Tucker said.
Tasha held his gaze longer than he had expected. There was a vacantness in them that made him uneasy. He released her arm and asked: “What’s in that building over there?”
“Is it a smokehouse?” Mara asked behind them.
“No. It’s nothing,” Tasha said.
“Well, I was once from Missouri. Show me,” Tucker said. Tasha crossed the yard, slicing through the tall grass like a shark. When she reached the outbuilding, she opened the door.
“Goddamn! What the fuck is that smell?” Tucker asked. Tasha didn’t respond. Even in the rapidly dwindling light, Tucker could see there was nothing in the shed except a pair of heavy manacles attached to stout-looking chains attached to the back wall.
“What the hell, you guys into some freak-deaky shit? Like that movie… shit what was it, Mara?”
“’Secretary’?” Mara offered without a trace of confidence.
“No, the other one with the rich dipshit. Never mind. Smells like a… kennel in there. You got a dog? You about to sick ol’ spot on me?” Tucker asked. He unzipped his Hazmat suit a few inches. Tasha watched as he slipped his hand inside. She could see it moving under the suit like a pinworm working its way under the skin of a pig. When it emerged, he was holding a chunk of beef jerky.
“A dog is only as loyal as he is hungry,” Tucker opined. The self-satisfied look on his face told Tasha he’d used that line more than once before.
“No dog. Just take what you want and go,” Tasha said.
Tucker unzipped his Hazmat suit and stepped out of it. He had on a tight black t-shirt and jeans. He had kicked off his boots to get out of the suit. He stepped back into them and rolled his shoulders.
“I don’t know, little sister. You got a pretty nice setup here. And to be honest, we been traveling for quite a while. Everything back home is dead and buried. People living like fucking moles. I think I like it here. What you think Mara?” Tucker asked.
“I think we kill this bitch and her brat, then fuck in their bed,” Mara said.
Tucker grabbed Mara by the neck and forced her to her knees: “What I done told you about that? We ain’t like that unless it’s called for. Goddamn it, woman, I’ll never understand why that shit gets your pump greased. We ain’t like that, little sister. Lots of crazy sons of bitches around these days. When I came out of Jersey, people were getting fat off their loved ones. Ain’t that some shit? Everybody so scared of the Drip they wouldn’t leave their fucking house, so they started cooking up Nana and shit. When I saw my next-door neighbor tossing out a bucket of femurs, I knew it was time to get out of Dodge. I ain’t that kind of person.”
Tasha saw Tucker’s eyes go wide. She didn’t know if he was trying to convince her or himself.
“Just go… please.” Tasha said.
Tucker released Mara. “Show us the house,” he said.
Before Tasha could respond, they heard a commotion from the front yard.
“Hey, Tucker, Daddy’s home!” Caleb yelled.
“Hey, little one, you wanna go see Daddy?” Tucker asked Lucas.
They had Jimmy pressed up against the truck. His long black hair spilled down his back like a waterfall made of shadows. A string of rabbits had been tossed on the hood of the vehicle.
Tucker approached, saying: “You must be the man of the house. I’m Tucker. I was just talking to your lady here about possibly bartering with you. Whew, boy, look at them rabbits. I tell you what: I bet you we can make a deal.”
“You don’t have anything we need,” Jimmy said. His eyes, black as his hair, locked on Tucker. You wouldn’t have thought he had an AR-15 pointed at his head and the barrel of a .45 pressed into his stomach.
“I gotta disagree on that one, son. We have your woman and your son. Now, come, don’t be like that. Let’s talk. Let’s parley,” Tucker said.
Jimmy glanced at the sky. The blue had given away to black. The moon was a fat onion hanging deliriously close to their heads.
Jimmy grabbed the dread-head’s wrist and twisted the .45 out of his grip. It made a dense flat sound as it hit the ground. Spinning away from Caleb and his rifle, he charged at Tucker.
The larger man, seemingly bemused by Jimmy’s show of bravado, swung his AR-15 around. “Dumbass,” he said.
He pulled the trigger. A volley of bullets slammed into Jimmy’s chest and face. He did a lazy pirouette before landing face-first in the dirt.
Lucas screamed in Tasha’s arms. Tasha bit her bottom lip so hard she wasn’t the least bit shocked when a sharp coppery taste filled her mouth.
“Alright, gang, let’s check out our new place,” Tucker yelled.
They made Tasha fix them dinner.
She made tomato soup and cucumber salad. Cleaned the rabbits and grilled them in their own fat on the wood stove, making the house so smoky they had to open all the windows and doors. Tucker took this opportunity to strip off his shirt. His chest and arms were littered with jailhouse tattoos, their indistinct blue lines more akin to child-scribbles than art.
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