This World We Live In

by Susan Beth Pfeffer

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  "I wondered where all the bodies were," he said like he wondered where Mom hid the Christmas presents."I know people there," I said. "Friends of mine are in that pile."

  Alex stopped his bike and bowed his head in prayer, which made me feel even worse. Especially since the sight and the smell sickened me and all I wanted to do was get as far away as possible.

  "It's hard to lose friends," he said.

  I figured that meant we could start biking again. "Have you lost friends, too?" I asked.

  "Everyone has," he said.

  I thought that was a pretty lousy answer. He could have consoled me for my losses or he could have told me about his, but to point out the whole world is a rotten stinking mass of death didn't make me feel any better.

  And I resent being told the whole world is a rotten stinking mass of death. Every night Mom turns on the radio and gets stations from Pittsburgh and Nashville and Atlanta, and we get to hear, every single night, about their rotten stinking masses of death.

  So I didn't need Alex to point out that everyone on earth has lost friends.

  The one good thing about getting mad was it made me bike even faster. This time, though, I paid attention to where we made our turns and what roads we were on. I had no desire to get lost with this particular LLBA.

  One of us would spot a farmhouse, and we'd check it for signs of life--more carefully than I had in the past because it's warmer and there's a chance people inside weren't using their woodstoves. But the first three we went to were empty. The only problem was they were empty inside as

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  well. We took half a bar of soap and a quarter tube of toothpaste and not much more.I considered resisting saying "I told you so" but gave in to the temptation. "I didn't think we'd do so well out here," I said. "People in the country stayed on longer, so they used up all their stuff."

  "You never know," he said, which I took to mean "Shut up, you stupid girl."

  I wonder what Cinderella would have done with a wicked stepbrother.

  We did better with house number four: a summer cabin you couldn't see from the road. Most likely no one had used it the year before, so whatever was there was two years old. But that doesn't matter when it comes to soap and paper towels. And because it was a summer house, there was lots of summer house reading. I grabbed a dozen paperback mysteries for Mom and some romances for Lisa and Syl.

  "I'm sorry there are no Latin books for you," I said.

  "I'm sorry we can't eat books," he said.

  If Alex knew how to smile, maybe he would have smiled then, and I would have known it was a joke and smiled back. But he doesn't and he didn't and I didn't.

  We kept biking up that road, stopping at a couple more cabins, but mostly finding more of the same. One house, miraculously, had a half box of disposable diapers. Syl and I have been the diaper service since Gabriel's arrival, and even a dozen disposables looked like treasure.

  Our trash bags still looked empty, so we kept on. The houses were getting more isolated, and I was glad to have Alex by my side as we searched.

  I can't say the last house we went to was going to be the last one of the day. Alex hadn't said we should stop looking,

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  and every half roll of toilet paper will make our lives a little bit better. Maybe we would have kept on for another hour or two.And neither one of us noticed anything particularly different about the final house we went to. I could tell right away it wasn't a summer house, but that didn't mean anything.

  We used Alex's trick of throwing a few pebbles against a door and then running for cover in case anybody started shooting. No one did, so we got closer and looked through the windows for signs of life. When we thought it was safe, we tried the doors, which were locked, and threw a stone through the living room window.

  The sound of shattering glass has replaced doorbells in my life.

  It was Alex's turn to stick his hand through the window and unlock it. I love breaking in, but that's my least favorite part, since there's a part of me that's sure whoever owns the house is waiting to chop off my hand. I've had lots of nightmares about that.

  But no one came at us with an ax, so we climbed in.

  We both smelled death right away. It was like the mound of bodies only worse because the house was all closed up and the smell had intensified.

  "Please," I said. "Let's go."

  "Wait outside if you want," Alex said.

  But I knew what I didn't see would frighten me more than what I did. "I'll be okay," I said. I've told bigger lies.

  Alex took my hand. I could see his was bleeding. "You cut yourself," I said to hide the fact that I was shaking from fear and excitement at the touch of a boy's hand.

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  "Just a scratch," he said, but he pulled his hand from mine. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get blood on you."I nodded. Alex began walking toward the smell and I followed him.

  The body was in the kitchen. Once it had been human, sitting in the chair next to where we found it. Or what remained of it, some torn clothing, a belt, some flesh and muscle, hair, bones, an eyeball. By its side was a shotgun, and lying a few feet away was a dead pit bull.

  I screamed.

  "Don't look," Alex said, but I couldn't avert my eyes. He walked around the corpse, took a red plaid vinyl tablecloth and flung it on top. Then he held me until I stopped shaking.

  "I think we're in luck," he said. "The dog died recently, maybe even today. It's been eating its owner for a while now, but it finally starved to death. There's probably dog food if we look."

  "I don't know if Horton will eat dog food," I said.

  "Not for Horton," Alex said. "For us." He began searching through the kitchen cabinets. Sure enough, there were a couple of cans. Dinner, I thought, grateful that Alex hadn't suggested we eat the dog.

  "All right?" I asked, my voice sounding squeaky even to me. "Can we go now?"

  "There's more," Alex said. "Can't you sense it? He was protecting more than two cans of dog food."

  "But he's dead," I said. "Maybe he killed himself when he ran out of food."

  "Maybe," Alex said. "But we should look around anyway. For toilet paper and diapers."

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  We both knew there weren't going to be any diapers, but I was just as happy to get out of the kitchen. We went through the house thoroughly, taking anything we could use, which wasn't very much. Alex even went down to the cellar but came back empty-handed."I guess your hunch was wrong," I said.

  "I still feel it," he said. "He would have shot his dog first if he was going to kill himself. He loved that dog."

  I knew Alex was right, because if it came to that for us, we would have killed Horton or at least let him loose. "There's a garage," I said. "Maybe there's something out there."

  "Then he would have been sitting in the garage with his shotgun," Alex said. "It's in the house somewhere. We're overlooking something."

  "It could be money," I said. "Or jewelry. Things he thought were valuable."

  Alex shook his head. "The dog just died," he said for the third time, like he was Sherlock Holmes and I was the world's stupidest Dr. Watson. "He ate off the man for a few days and then went a few days without eating. This guy, whoever he is, died fairly recently. He knew what was valuable."

  "All right," I said. "Where, then? We've looked everywhere."

  "Not in the attic," Alex said. "Wouldn't this house have an attic?"

  "At least a crawlspace," I said. "But I didn't see a staircase. Maybe there's a trapdoor."

  We went upstairs and looked through three closets before finding the trapdoor to the attic. Alex pulled on the cord, and I climbed the stairs.

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  There were cartons everywhere. But cartons in an attic mean nothing. Even cartons that had the names of products mean nothing. Even cartons still sealed mean nothing.Alex followed me up. The roof was so low neither one of us could stand upright. There wasn't much space to walk anyway, but we could move aro
und well enough for him to pull out a penknife and cut open a Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup carton.

  Inside it were twenty-four cans of Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup.

  "He didn't starve to death," I said. "How could he with all this food?"

  "He was a miser," Alex said. "You'd hear about guys like that, but I always thought they were folktales. People who stocked up when it first happened and then were so afraid of not having enough, they stopped eating what they had. You stay here. I'll be back up in a moment."

  I had no idea why he was leaving but I didn't care. I looked at box after glorious box. Some of the food, I knew, had gone rotten. But there was still so much. Even with ten of us there was enough food for weeks.

  When Alex came back up, he had the man's shotgun. "Just in case we need it," he said.

  "How can we get all this back home?" I asked, hoping Alex knew how to handle a shotgun. "Maybe we should move here until the food runs out."

  "The house is too small," Alex said. "Besides, a guy like that had to have some way of getting out. He'll have a van in the garage, or a pickup, with a little gas in the tank. Enough to get the food back to your house. I bet he has some containers as well. He was prepared. Crazy but prepared."

  "What if the garage is locked?" I asked.

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  "It probably is," Alex said. "But there was a key ring on the guy's belt."I remembered what the man looked like and shuddered. Not a cute, little horror movie shiver, either.

  "It's okay," Alex said. "It's a lot to take in. I'll get the key and check out the garage. You stay here. It'll be all right." He took the shotgun with him and climbed down the stairs.

  I forced myself to read the cartons, to concentrate on the miracle of black beans and beef jerky. The sight of four 20-pound bags of rice thrilled me. But I was never more relieved than when I heard Alex enter the closet.

  "It's a van," he said. "With a quarter tank of gas. I found a couple cans of gas, too." He shook his head. "He could have gone anywhere with two cans of gas," he said. "He and the dog both."

  "Is it stick shift?" I asked. "I don't know how to drive stick shift."

  "I know how," Alex said. "You learn things on the road. How to drive. How to hot-wire. How to defend yourself." He paused for a moment. "You'd be amazed how many cars there are with a little bit of gas left in them. You hot-wire a car and you can go twenty-five miles on fumes."

  "That's how you got here?" I asked. "Dad and Lisa and Charlie, too? By car?"

  "Some," Alex said. "Some we biked and some we walked. Julie and I got a lift partway to Tulsa in February. That was a big help. Then we left Tulsa to find Carlos in Texas. His Marine regiment is stationed there. By the time we located him, we knew everything we needed to survive."

  I knew I'd ask about Tulsa later, but the important thing was getting all the food back home. "I had an idea,"

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  I said. "See that window? I could toss the cartons to the ground. They're cans and boxes, so nothing would break.""Great idea," Alex said. "You stay here and do the tossing. I'll go down, and when you're through, we'll load the van."

  At first I resented the idea that I'd do all the heavy lifting, but then I realized Alex would be outside with the shotgun. He and Julie knew how to defend themselves, but no one had bothered to teach me. "Fair enough," I said.

  We shattered open the window, and Alex watched as I threw a box down. "Good work," he said. He picked up one of the bags of rice and carried it down while I kept tossing the boxes out the window. A couple of them flew open, but mostly they held.

  It took a while for me to get them all down, and I was exhausted by the time I'd finished, but the job was only partly done. We still had to get three bags of rice outside, and we couldn't toss them. Alex came back, and we each took one. I had no idea how heavy twenty pounds could be. Alex handed me the shotgun, then went to the attic and got the final bag.

  The van looked really old, and its windows had been whitewashed so you couldn't see in. But it held everything, except our bikes. Those Alex and I strapped to the top with rope he'd found.

  The sound of the engine turning over was just amazing. The sensation of being in a van that actually moved was beyond description.

  "Do you know how to get back?" I asked. "Or should I direct?"

  "I'll need your directions," Alex said. "I try to remember landmarks, but this country all looks the same to me."

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  So I told him where to turn. There were no other cars on the road, and no one came out at the sound of ours. I was relieved, since Alex had given me the shotgun and I was terrified I'd be expected to use it."Who was in Tulsa?" I asked. "Or did you just pass through there?" It was easier to ask Alex questions with us both facing forward with no danger of eye contact.

  "We thought we'd find our aunt and uncle," Alex said. "They set out for there last June. We spent a few days looking but no luck."

  "It's hard to picture cities," I said. "Cities with people."

  "They're not like before," Alex said. "There are bodies, mostly skeletons now, piled up. Even the rats have died. And only some buildings have heat, so you share apartments."

  "Are there schools?" I asked, remembering my idea about places for politicians and millionaires to live. "Hospitals? Could you and Julie have stayed there?"

  Alex held on to the steering wheel a little tighter. "The plan was for me to leave Julie with our aunt and uncle. I was going to get to Texas, find Carlos, let him know where we were, and then go back and work at the oil fields. But I couldn't leave Julie alone, so we went to Texas together."

  "But you didn't stay," I said. "Couldn't you have worked in the Texas oil fields instead?"

  "I could have," Alex replied. "But there was no one to look after Julie."

  "Julie's a good kid," I said. "She wouldn't have gotten into trouble."

  "Trouble would have found her," Alex said. "We couldn't take that risk."

  I considered asking him about the convent, but I didn't

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  want to remind Alex that he'd caught me eavesdropping. "Could Dad and Lisa have stayed?" I asked instead. "Not necessarily in Tulsa. But in a city somewhere? Could Dad have gotten work?""Maybe," Alex said. "Maybe not. It's all physical labor. But the only thing that mattered to him, besides Lisa and the baby, was getting home to you. He talked so much about you, I felt like I knew you before we ever met. You were on your swim team, and before that you used to figure skate, and you played Glinda the Good in your fourth grade play."

  "He told you all that?" I asked.

  "And more," Alex said. "About all of you."

  I thought about Dad, about how I'd even for a moment thought he could love anyone like he loves us, and I felt happy and guilty at the same time. But mostly I felt grateful to Alex, even though there was no way he could know how much his comment meant to me.

  "Can I ask you a question now?" he said.

  "Absolutely," I said. LLBA was asking me a question.

  "The bruises on your face," he said. "When we got here a week ago, they were pretty bad. How did you get them?"

  It's nice to know the first thing he'd noticed about me was my ravishing collection of black-and-blue marks. "I took a header off my bike," I said.

  "Oh," he said. "Julie and I had a bet going."

  "Who won?" I asked, trying to keep the irritation out of my voice.

  "We both lost," Alex said. "Her money was on you and Syl having a fight. Mine was on Matt slugging you one."

  "Matt's never hit me," I said. "We weren't brought up like that, like animals."

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  "Neither were we," Alex said. "You don't have to be an animal to hit your sister.""Not in my household," I said, sounding exactly like Mom.

  "Fine," Alex said, sounding exactly like me.

  We drove the rest of the way in silence, except for when I told him to make a turn. But it was hard for me to stay sulky when I was so excited about all the food we were bringing back in our very own va
n with its very own containers of gas.

  Mom and Lisa stayed inside, trying to find places for all the cartons, while the rest of us carried in the food. The excitement was contagious. Charlie sang "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'," and Julie danced around, and Matt and Syl grabbed each other, and Dad cried with joy.

  And I discovered that Alex knows how to smile.

  June 10

  You'd think with a houseful of food for the first time in a year, we'd be eating nonstop. Oh no. Not us.First off, Matt pointed out that what seems like an enormous amount of food now is going to vanish in the blink of an eye with ten people eating it. Okay, he didn't say "in the blink of an eye." He said that if we each ate four ounces of rice a day, we'd finish the four twenty-pound bags in a month.

  Four ounces of rice sounds like a lot of rice to me. And there's all that other food we brought back, plus the food we get each week, plus whatever shad is still in the garage. But Mom agreed with Matt that we'd have to be very careful to stretch out our supplies for a long time.

  Then Charlie---Mr. Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'--

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  pointed out that some of the food might have spoiled, and it would be a disaster if we came down with food poisoning at the same time.He suggested we become food buddies (that was his exact term, "food buddies"), and every morning two of us could take a nibble from one kind of food and two of us from another, etc., and then if we didn't get sick, we could all eat the food we'd started that morning.

  Matt and Syl said they'd be food buddies, and Jon volunteered himself and Julie, which left Alex and me. Dad and Charlie said they'd food-buddy, also, and we agreed Mom and Lisa shouldn't risk it.

  This morning Alex and I each had a bite of canned mushrooms, and Jon and Julie had a bite of beef jerky, and Matt and Syl had a bite of canned carrots, and Dad and Charlie had a sip of vegetable soup.

  We're all still alive.