The Things That Keep Us Here

by Carla Buckley

  He heard the accusation in her voice. He had tried to get too close. He’d done it without thinking. “I’m fine, princess. See?” He held out his arms in a wide gesture of bonhomie.

  Kate stood slightly behind her mother, her hands stuffed into the pockets of her ski jacket, watching him intently. When she realized he was looking at her, she lowered her head and turned away.

  “It’s late.” Ann put her arms around the children. “Are you coming?”

  “I’ll be in soon.”

  She nodded, and they all crossed the street and went inside. Peter rolled up the garden hose. He coughed and spat onto the ground.

  A small light bobbed in the distance.

  “Singh?” Peter called. “Is that you?”

  The line of light turned and flared. “Be careful. There are hot spots everywhere.”

  Peter worked his way around the building, stepping carefully around the smoldering tide of debris and the slippery patches of refrozen snow, and came up to where the man stood in a ghostly doorway.

  “There,” Singh said.

  Peter peered into the murk. He followed the bright beam of light as it dove past cobwebbed sheets of ash, timbers corrugated and puckered from the heat, greasy puddles speckled gray, to hover on the rounded corner of a white porcelain sink. So this had been the kitchen. The wind shifted, bringing with it the stink of melted plastic, sulfur, copper, and something richly sweet. His eyes watered. “Is that…?”

  “I’m afraid so.” Singh held the light steady.

  Peter cleared his throat and leaned forward. There, nestled by the foot of the sink, he saw the instantly recognizable curve of a human skull burned to mahogany with gaping holes where the eyes had once been, the mocking grin of teeth.

  “That’s Al.” Singh shifted the beam, and Peter glimpsed a second skull and a length of hunched spine wrapped in brown ropes of sinew. “The smaller one’s Sue.”

  Peter looked away, sickened. It felt wrong, looking. He thought of Jodi rocketing into her mother’s arms Thanksgiving Day, Sue laughing with pure delight, Al slinging an arm around his wife’s narrow waist and following his dancing daughter up the path to their front door, all three of them so glad to be safe and together and home. He swallowed, hard.

  Singh shook his head. “First their little girl. Now this.”

  Peter realized his face was wet, that tears were sliding effortlessly down his cheeks. He made no attempt to stop them or wipe them away.

  Singh patted him awkwardly on the back. They stood close together as the smoke twisted into the night sky and embers flared red and hissed into the kiss of slush.

  At last, Peter said, “You think it was smoke inhalation?”

  The man’s fingers dug into the material of Peter’s sleeve. “We can only pray so, but we’ll never know. They’ll never get to a morgue.”

  Peter cleared his throat. “Things are that bad?”

  “We’re almost out of medicines. The morgue is overflowing. Our director died two days ago.”

  “We can’t just leave them here.”

  “When things cool down, I’ll collect what I can and keep them for any relatives who may wish to bury them.” Singh shook his head. “At least they were together.”

  Peter was frozen by the time he returned home. The sweat of exertion dried icy across his back and down his sides. He felt impossibly tired. Coiling the garden hose in his hand, he heaved the length of rubber inside the garage. A yelp and then a dark shape streaked past. Finn’s dog? The animal was gone, swallowed into the shadows that claimed the sidewalk. He’d probably been looking for a place to sleep. A shame Peter had frightened him away. No chance he could coerce the dog back. Barney was long gone by now.

  He dragged down the garage door with a mighty clatter, kicked off his boots, stripped off his outer layers and spread them out in a far corner of the garage to air. Shivering, he opened the door into darkness.

  “Peter, is that you?” Ann called.

  “Be right there.”

  Groping in the shadows, he washed up in the laundry room, his teeth chattering harder now. His head ached. He located a pair of pants Ann had washed and hung to dry. A bathrobe hung there, and he pulled it on. When he stepped into the kitchen, he saw a glow from the hearth. Used to be he was the only one in the family who could lay a fire.

  The four of them sat there in the golden glow, cross-legged on sleeping bags, their faces turned toward him and deeply shadowed. He took his place beside Ann, and she handed him a plate.

  He lifted it and sniffed. No use. He couldn’t smell anything but smoke. Looked like crackers with something piled on top. He brought one to his mouth. He chewed and swallowed with effort, his throat dry. He wasn’t hungry. “What is this?”

  “Tuna,” Ann said, watching him. She handed him a smooth small box.

  He squinted at it.

  “It’s a juice box,” Maddie said happily. “Mom’s been saving it. Because it’s Christmas Eve, Daddy.” That’s right. He’d forgotten. “Here we go again,” Kate said. “Shut up,” Maddie said.

  “I wonder when Santa’s going to get here,” Kate chanted in a singsong. “I sure hope Rudolf doesn’t have the flu. That’d slow things down for sure.”

  “Kate,” Ann warned softly.

  “Well, I’ve been thinking about it,” Kate persisted. “And I’ve decided I’d like an iPhone. What about you, Maddie? What do you want Santa to bring you?”

  Maddie looked up at Ann. “Does this mean no Santa?” she said tearfully.

  “Shh.” Ann patted Maddie’s knee. “You know how sometimes we have to postpone birthday parties?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, it’s the same thing with Christmas this year.”

  “Does Jesus know we’re putting off his birthday?” Kate said.

  “Enough,” Peter snarled, and she sat back, surprised.

  He peeled the cellophane from his straw and tried to poke it into the tiny hole. His fingers were clumsy with cold, and the dancing shadows from the fire weren’t making it easy for him.

  Shazia reached out. “May I help?” She poked the straw into the tiny hole.

  He drank. The cold, sweet liquid slid down. Under the sweetness, though, he tasted ashes.

  Ann said, “How do you think it started?”

  “It was probably their camping stove. Singh thought they’d been using it for heat.”

  Everyone was quiet.

  “Are they … dead?” Maddie’s voice wobbled. “Honey,” Ann began, but Maddie insisted, “All of them, Daddy? Even Jodi?”

  The firelight played over their young faces. Kate had her head lowered as she jabbed the rubber of her shoe with the tines of her fork. Maddie’s gaze was full on him, her eyes shiny with tears. He made his voice gentle. “You know, you’ve got to be very careful using a stove indoors. We wouldn’t do it.”

  “That’s right,” Ann said.

  Kate twisted the fork into her shoe.

  The truth had come out about Jodi, though not in the way he’d have predicted. Maybe this was for the best. Maybe it was better for the girls to believe the fire had taken Jodi. He didn’t know. He couldn’t tell. The girls had given him no signals at all as to how deep their awareness ran. Ann had been right. Kate and Maddie were both unnervingly quiet on the subject.

  Maddie rubbed her nose. Then she sagged into Ann and her shoulders shook. Ann put her arms around her and kissed the top of her head. “Shh,” she crooned. “It’s all right, honey. It’s going to be all right.”

  Kate hurled the fork clattering across the floor and pushed herself up.

  It was his fault. He shouldn’t have snapped at her. He started to follow her, but Ann said, “Give her a few minutes.” A door slammed. Maddie wept. “I hate Kate.”

  “Hush,” Ann said, smoothing her hair from her damp cheek. “You don’t mean that.”

  “I do mean it. I hate her. I wish she’d never been born.”

  Ann tensed for a moment, then pulled Maddie closer.
>
  A whole family was gone. Peter reached over and took one of Maddie’s hands.

  The fire had drawn out the neighbors. Some of them. It had been a small group, smaller than he’d have expected. “Did you see Libby or Smith?”

  Ann shook her head without looking at him. She had her cheek pressed to Maddie’s and was softly humming, rocking Maddie in her arms. He glanced at Shazia. She shook her head, her face in shadow.

  That was surprising. Smith was the kind of guy Peter would have expected to be the first to come running to help.

  TWENTY-TWO

  WHERE WERE THEY?

  Ann stood on the patio and watched Libby’s house. A wet smokiness blew across from the still-smoldering house behind her. Soot peppered the snow about her. She shivered.

  Maybe Libby was driving up to her parents’ adobe house surrounded by beige sand and purple mountains. She was lifting Jacob from his car seat and handing him to her mother, happy to be home. “Merry Christmas,” Libby was saying, and Smith was putting his arm around her. They were all trooping inside.

  Ann thought about pulling into her own parents’ driveway. The front door would bang open and her parents would stand there grinning, the lights on the Christmas tree glowing gaily in the room behind them. Maddie would leap about, and Kate would come close for hugs. Her dad would insist on carrying in the suitcases. Ann would scold him and shoo him away. She stopped herself.

  Her parents weren’t home. They were still in Charlottesville. Assuming they’d made the trip successfully. Of course they had. Beth was smart. She was clever and determined. She’d let nothing stand in her way.

  Not knowing was the hard part. There were so many things she didn’t know. She was marooned in silence. It pounded against her eardrums. It mocked her as she watched out the windows for signs of life. Who knew what was happening in the hospitals, the medical labs, other towns and cities? She didn’t even know what had happened next door.

  Her mother, her sister, her best friend, they were all gone. There was no one left.

  She stepped back into her kitchen and locked the door.

  “Where is it?” Kate yelled from somewhere upstairs.

  “Say please!” Maddie sang from the family room.

  The girls were at it again. Ann could feel a headache punch its way between her eyes. She turned and saw Peter bringing down the first-aid bin. Fear stabbed her. “Who’s sick?”

  “I’m just seeing what we have.” He pulled things out and stood them on the counter. “Do we have any more cough syrup?”

  He was taking inventory? He’d never been one to track the mundane. That sort of thing had always been Ann’s domain. Now that there were no stores or gas stations, maybe he’d begun to realize their limits. She didn’t know if this reassured or worried her. “There’s some in the girls’ medicine cabinet. Why?”

  Stomping footsteps upstairs.

  Maddie called out, “Did you check the toilet, Kate?”

  “Mom! Maddie flushed Owl down the toilet!”

  Aghast, Ann marched into the family room, where Maddie sprawled across a chair, her book in her lap.

  “Did you?” she demanded.

  “She took all my crayons, Mom, and broke them into pieces.”

  Ann tipped back her head and stared at the ceiling. “Did you flush Owl down the toilet?”

  Maddie licked her lips, then leaned forward to whisper, “No, Mom. I didn’t. But don’t tell her.”

  “Ann?” Peter called from the kitchen. “I can’t find a thermometer.”

  “Honey,” she said to Maddie, “it’s terrible she broke your crayons, but you just can’t take Owl away.”

  Maddie stuck out her lower lip, thinking, then lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “Whatever.” She pushed herself up.

  Ann walked back into the kitchen. “I keep the thermometers in that tin,” she told Peter.

  He dug out the small container and pried off the lid. “Here it is.”

  “There should be two.”

  He shook his head. “Nope. Just the one.”

  Ann pulled the bin toward her and shifted things around. A thermometer was small enough that it was probably lying at the bottom unnoticed. “What’s this about, Peter?”

  “We need to consider pooling our resources.”

  Ann stared at him. “With who?”

  “After what happened with the Guarnieris—”

  “You’re not talking about getting together with our neighbors!”

  “It’s the only way we’re going to make it through this.” He pulled out a bottle of ibuprofen and shook it.

  She pictured those children the other day, running around, mingling germs from all their various households. All it took was one sick person, one sneeze, one cough. Panic squeezed her chest. Peter couldn’t be serious. A thousand protests bubbled to her lips, but all she could manage was one shocked “No.”

  He set the bottle down. “What if one of us gets injured? You only have a couple rolls of gauze. Singh probably has an entire storage unit of the stuff.”

  “He’s around sick people all day. There is absolutely no way I’m letting my girls near him.”

  “By building one fire to heat three families, we could triple our firewood. What about antibacterial ointment?”

  Peter was still reeling from Sue and Al’s deaths. “Maybe earlier we could have considered something like that. But not now, not when the flu’s everywhere.”

  “Three bottles of rubbing alcohol. Good.” He began returning things to the bin. “By driving one car to the store, we can halve our fuel expenditures.”

  He wasn’t listening. She rapped her knuckles on the counter and he looked up, startled.

  “Peter,” she said. “I said no.”

  “You’re not thinking of the bigger picture. It’s not just the flu we have to worry about.”

  My God, he could be so patronizing. “This isn’t some lab experiment, Peter. This is real life. These are my daughters, and I say we are not getting anywhere near our neighbors. It was bad enough yesterday, all of us running around outside like that. I stayed up half the night worrying that one of us might have gotten exposed.”

  He looked at her for a long moment. Then he took on that stubborn expression she knew only too well. She’d come at him too directly. She sucked in her breath and released it. “Listen. You said it yourself, Peter, remember? You said the girls couldn’t play with their friends. There’s no difference between that and this.”

  “Ann.” His voice was cold. “We’re not talking about playing with friends. We’re talking about the difference between surviving and not.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” she snapped.

  Shazia came down the stairs. “Is Kate okay?” she asked. “I heard …” She halted, hand on the banister, her gaze moving from Peter to Ann and back again.

  “Kate’s fine.” Peter turned and set the bin on the pantry shelf. “Do you need the girls for anything, Ann? I’ve got a project I’d like their help with.”

  “Good. Take them.” She reached for the broom. The floor was dirty again. She could feel grit rolling against the soles of her shoes. And there was a smear of something on the floor by the sink.

  Shazia made up the bucket of bleach solution. She carried it across the kitchen, leaning to one side to offset the weight, and went into the bathroom. That was the routine. Bathrooms first, door handles, kitchen, twice daily, morning and night. A spoonful of bleach poured into the sinkful of water, dishes set in to soak till noon. Everyone got one set of dishes each day. If they lost water, they’d switch to paper and plastic.

  Ann stepped into the garage and held the dustpan over the nearest bin and gave it a quick shake. The stink made her eyes water. She’d have thought the cold would have kept down the stench. She turned to leave. Then she paused.

  A small white bag lay across the top of their food, not tucked to the side where she kept it. It had been torn in two and its contents were gone. Blueberry muffins. She’d been sav
ing them for the girls. No toys, no gift cards in their Christmas stockings, no new pajamas—just one small package of blueberry muffins, and now, not even that.

  Could Kate or Maddie have pilfered it? No, they wouldn’t have left the evidence lying around for her to discover.

  “What is it?” Shazia stood on the step, clutching her sweater around her.

  “I think we have a thief.”

  Shazia picked her way over to where Ann stood. She frowned down at the bin and then crouched, moved things aside. She picked up a Baggie containing doughnut crumbs, its corner shredded. “It looks like an animal got into this.”

  “A raccoon?”

  “Maybe rats.”

  Rats? My God … in her home? Those horrible, dirty creatures rummaging around, their noses twitching and their long hairless tails flicking. Her lip curled. Disgusting things. They got into everything. They were indiscriminate. They had ticks and lice, and who knew what else? Then a new, more terrible, thought struck her. She turned to Shazia. “Don’t they eat human flesh?”

  Shazia was scanning the garage. “If they can.”

  Ann put her hand to her throat. They could find their way into the house and nip them as they slept. “We’ll keep the garage door closed.”

  “I doubt it will do any good. They can chew their way through it or crawl underneath.”

  Ann stared at the door. It was at least two inches thick. How was that possible? “They can chew through the door?”

  Shazia studied the bin, moved back to stare at the floor. “Concrete, too.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “We need to locate their nest.”

  Ann looked around. What did a rat’s nest look like?

  Shazia lifted up a box. “Ideally, they’d dig a burrow somewhere outside, but the cold might have driven them indoors.”

  So, wait. They could still be in here? She curled her toes in her shoes, shuddering. The way Shazia was shifting things around, a rat could leap out at any moment. She picked up a shovel. “What are we looking for?”

  “If it’s just one, he’d have a pad, a few flat items stacked high enough to raise him up from the floor. If it’s more, they’d have shredded stuff into a cup shape.”