I snatched the packet in no more time than it had taken to pick up a couple of lemons a moment before. First I spotted the hiding place, then I snatched up the money packet along with a hand full of dirt. Then, eager to leave, but terrified of drawing attention to myself, I picked up a few more lemons and hunted around for more food.
The figs were hard and green instead of purple, and the persimmons were yellow-green instead of orange. I found a single ear of corn left on a downed stalk and used it to stuff the money packet deeper into my blanket pack. Then I left.
With my pack on my back and the pillow case in my left arm, resting on my hip like a baby, I walked down the driveway to the street. I kept my right hand free for the gun still in my pocket. I had not taken time to put on the holster.
There were more people within the walls than there had been when I arrived. I had to walk past most of them to get out. Others were leaving with their loads, and I tried to follow them without quite attaching myself to any particular group. This meant that I moved more slowly than I would have chosen to. I had time to look at the corpses and see what I didn’t want to see.
Richard Moss, stark naked, lying in a pool of his own blood. His house, closer to the gate than ours, had been burned to the ground. Only the chimney stuck up blackened and naked from the rubble. Where were his two surviving wives Karen and Zahra? Or had they survived? Where were all his many children?
Little Robin Baiter, naked, filthy, bloody between her legs, cold, bony, barely pubescent. Yet she might have married my brother Marcus someday. She might have been my sister. She had always been such a bright, sharp, great little kid, all serious and knowing. Twelve going on thirty-five, Cory used to say. She always smiled when she said it.
Russell Dory, Robin’s grandfather. Only his shoes had been taken. His body had been almost torn apart by automatic weapons fire. An old man and a child. What had the painted faces gotten for all their killing?
“She died for us,” the scavenger woman had said of the green face. Some kind of insane burn-the-rich movement, Keith had said. We’ve never been rich, but to the desperate, we looked rich. We were surviving and we had our wall. Did our community die so that addicts could make a help the poor political statement?
There were other corpses. I didn’t get a close look at most of them. They littered the front yards, the street, and the island. There was no sign of our emergency bell now. The men who had wanted it had carried it away—perhaps to be sold for its metal.
I saw Layla Yannis, Shani’s oldest daughter. Like Robin, she had been raped. I saw Michael Talcott, one side of his head smashed in. I didn’t look around for Curtis. I was terrified that I might see him lying nearby. I was almost out of control as it was, and I couldn’t draw attention to myself. I couldn’t be anything more than another scavenger hauling away treasure.
Bodies passed under my eyes: Jeremy Baiter, one of Robin’s brothers, Philip Moss, George Hsu, his wife and his oldest son, Juana Montoya, Rubin Quintanilla, Lidia Cruz… Lidia was only eight years old. She had been raped, too.
I made it back through the gate. I didn’t break down. I hadn’t seen Cory or my brothers in the carnage. That didn’t mean they weren’t there, but I hadn’t seen them. They might be alive. Curtis might be alive. Where could I look for them?
The Talcotts had relatives living in Robledo, but I didn’t know where. Somewhere on the other side of River Street. I couldn’t look for them, though Curtis might have gone to them. Why hadn’t anyone else stayed to salvage what they could?
I circled the neighborhood, keeping the wall in sight, then made a greater circle. I saw no one—or at least no one I knew. I saw other street poor who stared at me.
Then because I didn’t know what else to do, I headed back toward my burned out garage on Meredith Street. I couldn’t call the police. All the phones I knew of were slag. No strangers would let me use their phone if they had phones, and I didn’t know anyone whom I could pay to call and trust to make the call. Most people would avoid me or be tempted to keep my money and never call. And anyway, if the police have ignored what’s been done to my neighborhood so far, if such a fire and so many corpses can be ignored, why should I go to them? What would they do? Arrest me? Take my cash as their fee? I wouldn’t be surprised. Best to stay clear of them.
But where was my family!
Someone called my name.
I turned around, my hand in my pocket, and saw Zahra Moss and Harry Baiter—Richard Moss’s youngest wife and Robin Baiter’s oldest brother. They were an unlikely pair, but they were definitely together. They managed, without touching each other, to give the appearance of all but clinging together. Both were blood-spattered and ragged. I looked at Harry’s battered swollen face and remembered that Joanne had loved him—or thought she had—and that he wouldn’t marry her and go with her to Olivar because he believed what Dad believed about Olivar.
“Are you all right?” he asked me.
I nodded, remembering Robin. Did he know? Russell Dory, Robin, and Jeremy…“They beat you up?” I asked, feeling stupid and awkward. I didn’t want to tell him his grandfather, brother, and sister were dead.
“I had to fight my way out last night. I was lucky they didn’t shoot me.” He swayed, looked around. “Let’s sit on the curb.”
Both Zahra and I looked around, made sure no one else was near by. We sat with Harry between us. I sat on my pillowcase of clothing. Zahra and Harry were fully dressed, in spite of their coating of blood and dirt, but they carried nothing. Did they have nothing, or had they left their things somewhere—perhaps with whatever was left of their families. And where was Zahra’s little girl Bibi? Did she know that Richard Moss was dead?
“Everyone’s dead,” Zahra whispered as though speaking into my thoughts. “Everyone. Those painted bastards killed them all!”
“No!” Harry shook his head. “We got out. There’ll be some others.” He sat with his face in his hands, and I wondered whether he was more hurt than I had thought. I wasn’t sharing any serious pain with him.
“Have either of you seen my brothers or Cory?” I asked.
“Dead,” Zahra whispered. “Like my Bibi. All dead.”
I jumped. “No! Not all of them. No! Did you see them?”
“I saw most of the Montoya family,” Harry said. He wasn’t talking to me as much as musing aloud. “We saw them last night. They said Juana was dead. The rest of them were going to walk to Glendale where their relatives live.”
“But—” I began.
“And I saw Laticia Hsu. She had been stabbed forty or fifty times.”
“But did you see my brothers?” I had to ask.
“They’re all dead, I told you,” Zahra said. “They got out, but the paints caught them and dragged them back and killed them. I saw. One of them had me down, and he… I saw.”
She was being raped when she saw my family dragged back and killed? Was that what she meant? Was it true?
“I went back this morning,” I said. “I didn’t see their bodies. Didn’t see any of them.” Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no…
“I saw. Your mother. All of them. I saw.” Zahra hugged herself. “I didn’t want to see, but I saw.”
We all sat without talking. I don’t know how long we sat there. Now and then someone walked past us and looked at us, some dirty, ragged person with bundles. Cleaner people in little bunches rode past us on bikes. A group of three rode past on motorcycles, their electric hum and whine strange in the quiet street.
When I got up, the other two looked at me. For no reason except habit, I picked up my pillowcase. I don’t know what I meant to do with the things in it. It had occurred to me, though, that I should get back to my garage before someone else settled there. I wasn’t thinking very well. It was as though that garage was home now, and all I wanted in the world was to be there.
Harry got up and almost fell down again. He bent and threw up into the gutter. The sight of his throwing up grabbed at me, and I only just managed to look awa
y in time to avoid joining him. He finished, spat, turned to face Zahra and me, and coughed.
“I feel like hell,” he said.
“They hit him in the head last night,” Zahra explained. “He got me away from the guy who was… Well, you know. He got me away, but they hurt him.”
“There’s a burned out garage where I slept last night,” I said. “It’s a long walk, but he can rest there. We can all rest there.”
Zahra took my pillowcase and carried it. Maybe something in it could do her some good. We walked on either side of Harry and kept him from stopping or wandering off or staggering too much. Somehow, we got him to the garage.
15
❏ ❏ ❏
Kindness eases Change
EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING
SUNDAY, AUGUST 1, 2027
HARRY SLEPT MOST OF the day today Zahra and I took turns staying with him. He has a concussion, at least, and he needs time to heal. We haven’t talked about what we’ll do if he gets sicker instead of healing. Zahra doesn’t want to abandon him because he fought to save her. I don’t want to abandon him because I’ve known him all my life. He’s a good guy. I wonder if there’s some way to get in touch with the Garfields. They would give him a home, or at least see that he has medical care.
But he doesn’t seem to be getting worse. He totters out to the fenced back yard to urinate. He eats the food and drinks the water that I give him. With no need for discussion, we’re eating and drinking sparingly from my supplies. They’re all we have. Soon we’ll have to risk going out to buy more. But today, Sunday, is a day of rest and healing for us.
The pain of Harry’s headache and his bruised, beaten body are almost welcome to me. They’re distractions. Along with Zahra’s talking and crying for her dead daughter, they fill my mind.
Their misery eases my own, somehow. It gives me moments when I don’t think about my family. Everyone is dead. But how can they be? Everyone?
Zahra has a soft, little-girl voice that I used to think was phony. It’s real, but it takes on a sandpaper roughness when she’s upset. It sounds painful, as though it’s abrading her throat as she speaks.
She had seen her daughter killed, seen the blue face who shot Bibi as Zahra ran, carrying her. She believed the blue face was enjoying himself, shooting at all the moving targets. She said his expression reminded her of a man having sex.
“I fell down,” she whispered. “I thought I was dead. I thought he had killed me. There was blood. Then I saw Bibi’s head drop to one side. A red face grabbed her from me. I didn’t see where he came from. He grabbed her and threw her into the Hsu house. The house was burning everywhere. He threw her into the fire.
“I went crazy then. I don’t know what I did. Somebody grabbed me, then I was free, then somebody shoved me down and fell on me. I couldn’t get my breath, and he tore my clothes. Then he was on me, and I couldn’t do anything. That’s when I saw your mother, your brothers…
“Then Harry was there, and he pulled the bastard off me. He told me later that I was screaming. I don’t know what I was doing. He was beating up the guy he’d pulled off me when a new guy jumped him. I hit the new guy with a rock and Harry knocked the other one out. Then we got away. We just ran. We didn’t sleep. We hid between two unwalled houses down the street away from the fire until a guy came out with an ax and chased us away. Then we just wandered until we found you. We didn’t even really know each other before. You know, Richard never wanted us to have much to do with the neighbors—especially the white ones.”
I nodded, remembering Richard Moss. “He’s dead, you know,” I said. “I saw him.” I wanted to take the words back as soon as I’d said them. I didn’t know how to tell someone her husband was dead, but there must be a better, gentler way than that.
She stared at me, stricken. I wanted to apologize for my bluntness, but I didn’t think it would help. I’m sorry, I said in a kind of generic apology for everything. She began to cry, and I repeated, “I’m sorry.”
I held her and let her cry. Harry woke up, drank a little water, and listened while Zahra told how Richard Moss had bought her from her homeless mother when she was only fifteen—younger than I had thought—and brought her to live in the first house she had ever known. He gave her enough to eat and didn’t beat her, and even when her co-wives were hateful to her, it was a thousand times better than living outside with her mother and starving. Now she was outside again. In six years, she had gone from nothing to nothing.
“Do you have someplace to go?” she asked us at last. “Do you know anybody who still has a house?”
I looked at Harry. “You might be able to get into Olivar if you can walk there from here. The Garfields would take you in.”
He thought about that for a while. “I don’t want to,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any more future in Olivar than there was in our neighborhood. But at least in our neighborhood, we had the guns.”
“For all the good it did us,” Zahra muttered.
“I know. But they were our guns, not hired gunmen. No one could turn them against us. In Olivar, from what Joanne said, no one’s allowed to have a gun except the security force. And who the hell are they?”
“Company people,” I said. “People from outside Olivar.”
He nodded. “That’s what I heard, too. Maybe it will be all right, but it doesn’t sound all right.”
“It sounds better than starving,” Zahra said. “You guys have never missed a meal, have you?”
“I’m going north,” I said. “I planned to go anyway once my family was back on its feet. Now I have no family, and I’m going.”
“North where?” Zahra demanded.
“Up toward Canada. The way things are now, I may not be able to get that far. But I’ll get to a place where water doesn’t cost more than food, and where work brings a salary. Even a small one. I’m not going to spend my life as some kind of twenty-first century slave.”
“North is where I’m headed, too,” Harry said. “There’s nothing here. I’ve tried for over a year to get a job here—any job that pays money. There’s nothing. I want to work for money and get some college. The only jobs that pay serious money are the kind our parents had, the kind that require college degrees.”
I looked at him, wanting to ask something, hesitating, plunging. “Harry, what about your parents?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t see them killed. Zahra says she didn’t. I don’t know where anyone is. We got separated.”
I swallowed. “I didn’t see your parents,” I said, “but I did see some of your other relatives—dead.”
“Who?” he demanded.
I guess there really isn’t any way to tell people that their close relatives are dead except to say it—no matter how much you don’t want to. “Your grandfather,” I said, “and Jeremy and Robin.”
“Robin and Jeremy? Kids? Little kids?”
Zahra took his hand. “They kill little kids,” she said. “Out here in the world, they kill kids every day.”
He didn’t cry. Or maybe he cried when we were asleep. First, though, he closed himself up, stopped talking, stopped responding, stopped doing anything until it was nearly dark. By then, Zahra had gone out and come back with my brother Bennett’s shirt full of ripe peaches.
“Don’t ask me where I got them,” she said.
“I assume you stole them,” I said. “Not from anyone around here, I hope. No sense making the neighbors mad.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “I don’t need you to tell me how to live out here. I was born out here. Eat your peaches.”
I ate four of them. They were delicious, and too ripe to travel well anyway.
“Why don’t you try on some of those clothes,” I said. “Take what fits you.” She fit not only into Marcus’s shirt and jeans—though she had to roll the jeans legs up—but into his shoes. Shoes are expensive. Now she has two pair.
“You let me do it, I’ll trade these little shoes for some food,�
� she said.
I nodded. “Tomorrow. Whatever you get, we’ll split it. Then I’m leaving.”
“Going north?”
“Yes.”
“Just north. Do you know anything about the roads and towns and where to buy stuff or steal it? Have you got money?”
“I have maps,” I said. “They’re old, but I think they’re still good. No one’s been building new roads lately.”
“Hell no. Money?”
“A little. Not enough, I suspect.”
“No such thing as enough money. What about him?” She gestured toward Harry’s unmoving back. He was lying down. I couldn’t tell whether he was asleep or not.
“He has to decide for himself,” I said. “Maybe he wants to hang around to look for his family before he goes.”
He turned over slowly. He looked sick, but fully aware. Zahra put the peaches she had saved for him next to him.
“I don’t want to wait for anything,” he said. “I wish we could start now. I hate this place.”
“You going with her?” Zahra asked, jabbing a thumb at me.
He looked at me. “We might be able to help each other,” he said. “At least we know each other, and… I managed to grab a few hundred dollars as I ran out of the house.” He was offering trust. He meant we could trust each other. That was no small thing.
Parable of the Sower Page 15
