by C. S. Starr
“Well, I guess we just do what we can do while we’re still here to do it, and hope it’s enough,” she mumbled, reaching for her car keys. “Let’s get what we can.”
There had been some looting around the city, mostly by kids that were left to their own devices, but on the whole, things were relatively calm. They drove to several grocery stores, picking up whatever they could get their hands on; canned goods, bottled water, frozen meat and vegetables. When they got home around midnight, Joe felt a bit better.
“I’m going to convert most of my savings to cash tomorrow,” he said, as he loaded the freezer.
“I’ll do the same,” his sister whispered, as she stocked the hall cupboard with toilet paper. “God help poor Leah and Rachel with all these boys.”
“They’ll keep them in line,” Joe said, grinning wryly at his sister. “Just like you always kept us all in line.”
“I can’t believe we’re planning for this.” She shook her head. “It’s necessary, but shit. I mean, I feel fine.”
“Everyone feels fine until they don’t though, Al,” Joe replied. “You know that. Look at Mark, just last week, and Bec…” His voice cracked. “Even two nights ago, she thought it was allergies.”
“At least it was quick,” Alex whispered, sitting down at the kitchen table. “We can thank God for that, I guess, and for the knowledge of that when our time comes.”
“I’m not sure I’m in the mood to thank God for much these days, but I agree,” Joe nodded. “I guess we’ll just have to make the most the time we have left, Sis. Try and teach these kids what we can.”
July 2012
Campbell
Lucy Campbell had always done her best thinking under the stars, late at night while the rest of the world slept. She’d done it when she was a little girl, tucked away in a low-income apartment in Toronto, sharing a bedroom with her two brothers while her mother worked two jobs and slept on the couch. It was there, on a balcony covered in pigeon shit, that she’d first imagined the end of the world.
Her end of the world was different than most kids, because it happened years earlier, when her mother had met with an unfortunate end on the wrong side of a knife one grey winter morning. She’d been on her way home from an overnight shift at a coffee shop in a bad part of town. At eight years old, it had marked Lucy’s transition to adulthood. The world falling apart? It had been her salvation; the only chance she had and she’d clung to the plague and pestilence like a life raft in a dark, rough sea. To her, all the death that had nearly ended human civilization meant she got her life back. She’d thrived on what she considered a second chance.
This night, her visitors occupied her thoughts. She’d considered their request for a meeting long and hard, because she didn’t like to plan her victories, and she knew she’d hate them enough to personally want to flatten them. She’d heard all about Connor Wilde from kid after kid, about his arrogance, his shitty attitude towards everyone that wasn’t him or his tight inner circle. She wasn’t sure, especially after meeting him, how he’d come as far as he had. Name recognition went a long way, she figured. It certainly wasn’t his charming personality or striking good looks. There was something about him that seemed to draw people in, but she couldn’t see it. Not after his tantrum earlier.
She heard the door to the trailer slam shut in the distance. Tal Bauman didn’t approach her but took a seat in the grass about fifty feet to her north. A moment later, he vanished into the dark as he lay down. They both lay there for a time, invisible to each other in the long grass.
She didn’t appreciate the distraction.
“Did you really kill him?” he finally asked, after a half hour or so. “I heard you did, but I don’t know how anyone would be able to do that, and you would have been just a kid at the time—of what? Ten or eleven?”
Lucy took a deep breath. She didn’t like remembering it, let alone answering pointless questions about that day. “I think you and your friends should leave in the morning.”
“It was just a question.”
“One I’m sure you already know the answer to. I’m sure you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t think I was capable. You’d just send some piecemeal, underpaid army from Mexico up to try and wipe my little spot of earth off the map.” She sat up and looked at him, squinting in the dark as she tried to stop her emotions from getting the best of her. “How did you think this was going to go? I assume you’re the brains behind his operation, and not that jackass pocket dictator. Did you think I was going to throw my hands up and back away? Please, take back everything I negotiated. I didn’t want it anyway. Fuck morals, values, and ideals. Fuck what I’ve spent most of my life working for. Please, go back to taking advantage of kids that don’t know any better, and like I said, I’ll see you in ten years.”
Tal sat up as well and peered in Lucy’s general direction. “I didn’t want to come here. I told him it was a stupid idea.”
It was a stupid idea, but his answer surprised her. It wasn’t the kind of bravado she’d heard about West, or the kind he’d demonstrated in front of his boys, with his obnoxious posturing in their little boys’ club.
“I’m not forcing anyone to side with me. It’s been easy.”
“Well when you offer people with nothing something new, of course it is.” Tal stretched his legs out in front of him. “I guess we’ll just have to come up with a better offer.”
That was exactly what they needed to do, Lucy thought. But they wouldn’t. Couldn’t. It was too hard to change.
“I guess that’s exactly what you’ll have to do. I wouldn’t be gaining so much ground if you had a better plan.” She stood, and brushed the dirt from her knees. “There’s no negotiation. You’ll leave tomorrow.”
“How are you going to keep it all, once you get it? Do you really think it’s just that easy?” Tal followed her lead and headed toward the old farmhouse. “Did you do it here? Is this always where you lived? Where you killed him?”
Lucy stopped abruptly and turned around, her stomach a knot of anger and disgust at both his insinuation and his attempt to play with her emotions. “It’s just you and me out here. Who’s to say I won’t kill you?”
“That would start a war. We’re guests in your house. You invited us, eventually. ” Tal stood his ground as she approached him. “It was just a simple question.”
It wasn’t a simple question at all. It was a series of complicated questions, and the answers were hers. She clutched them tightly at the back of her mind, happy to let people make assumptions. Their assumptions had gone a long way in establishing her.
“You haven’t earned the right to ask me that.” She crossed her arms. “How are you going to hold your world? What have you done to earn it?”
Tal looked at her, and in that moment, he knew that things were changing, and that he didn’t have answers to her questions. Not good ones.
“We gave them boundaries and laws when they needed them. We made jobs. We entertained them. We protected them, and we fed them, and we helped them stay alive. We gave them order. We were leaders when you were up here with your grandfather strung up on your porch, rotting, scaring people off. ”
Just like that, he’d said it. Lucy pulled her sweater around her tight, the chill in his tone affecting her. She stared at him, wondering if he was smart enough to try and disarm her, or if he was just being arrogant. He could have killed her out here, or tried anyway, the two of them alone, but he didn’t look the type. Lucy knew that he’d have to be an idiot to assume she wasn’t armed. If he attacked her, he would never leave Campbell alive.
Tal knew that too.
“You take, and you take, and you expect people to keep on giving. Here’s a bit of information for you. Vancouver came to us. Half of those little towns? They came to us too.” She took a step towards him, entering his personal space. “You know what else?” Her eyes locked with his. “If you fuck with me, it’ll be you hanging in the front porch with your dick in your mouth, just like him.�
�
Tal took a step back, and found himself visibly shaken at the imagery she’d projected and in that second, he knew he’d given her exactly what she wanted. A reaction. “So you did do it,” he said quietly. “Connor didn’t think you had it in you.”
“Go back to the trailer,” Lucy replied coldly. “You leave in the morning. You’re not welcome here. Not that you ever were, but you’re really not now.”
Tal paused for a minute, his mind racing behind his dark eyes. “There has to be something we can figure out, something that works for both of us.”
“We’re not cut from the same cloth, Tal Bauman,” she said bluntly. “And you should be thankful for that.”
Lucy locked the farm house door behind her and trudged up the well-worn staircase to her room, the first space she’d ever felt truly comfortable. It wasn’t a big room, and the furnishings weren’t fancy, but she’d worked hard to give them positive associations. A dear friend had made her the quilt. Her and Zoey had painted the walls. This farm wasn’t the one they’d lived in before. She and her brothers had burned that one to the ground a few years earlier in the hopes of getting some closure. They’d gotten drunk, each of them working through a series of painful moments that the flames weren’t hot enough to eviscerate. Charring them felt good, however.
Sometimes, Lucy appreciated the pain of her past. She felt like it pushed her forward in a way that nothing else could have, forced her to do whatever she could to make it all for something.
“I was wondering where you were,” Zoey mumbled, as Lucy undressed and crawled into bed beside her. “That jackass Connor just left after spending some time with Cole. I saw him out the window.”
Lucy sat up and flicked on the lamp beside the bed. “What kind of time?”
“I don’t know,” she said groggily, rolling over and blinking in the fresh light. “He headed out the front door about twenty minutes ago.”
Suddenly Lucy’s visitor made more sense. He’d been sent to distract her. “You don’t think….”
“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “I couldn’t hear anything, but it’s hard to say.”
“Cole wouldn’t have told him anything I didn’t already,” Lucy said, thinking back on all the things Cole could have revealed, but wouldn’t. “I guess it doesn’t matter. I’m just surprised.”
“You saw the moony eyes they were making at each other over lunch.”
“I didn’t notice.” Lucy mentally kicked herself for not paying more attention to her brother. He was the sibling easiest to manipulate. “Do you think they—”
“I think you know what I think, but that’s always what I think. I know he’s assumed straight, but I think he’s just got good PR. Your brother is pretty good looking too, so if he thought he could get something out of it, why not? He wasn’t getting anywhere with you.”
Lucy thought about that. Cole hated that he was never as involved in things, he was pretty indiscriminate, and there was no accounting for taste. There was a distinct possibility that Zoey was right. Connor would never have been strong enough to embrace homosexuality publicly. Things were easier, but there was still a stigma associated with it, especially for men.
“I’ll ask him tomorrow,” she muttered, shaking her head. “I told the VP that they have to leave in the morning. This isn’t getting us anywhere.”
Zoey’s arm snaked around Lucy’s waist before resting at the curve of her hip. “You heard them out. I don’t know what they expected beyond that.”
“I don’t really care what they expected,” she grumbled. “I’m sure I’m not what they expected at all.”
“You should have seen their faces when I introduced myself as your girlfriend,” Zoey chuckled. “I think they had great plans to fuck you stupid and have their way with your territory.”
“Right,” Lucy mumbled, rolling over to face her bedmate. “The second in command smells nice.”
“Like what?” Zoey said, wrinkling up her nose. “You smelled him?”
“We kind of got up in each other’s faces a little. I don’t know. He just smells good. He’s an asshole, but he’s got the smell thing figured out.”
“You did good today,” Zoey whispered, planting a soft kiss on Lucy’s mouth. “You stood up for yourself, and what we’ve all worked for. This was a big day.”
No one knew Lucy’s sordid tale the way Zoey did, and because of that, she’d figured her out better than most people, found out where the soft spots were, understood where not to poke. Because of that, Zoey had been allowed access to areas that Lucy doubted she’d ever let anyone else into. Relating to other people was challenging for Lucy. She knew what Zoey wanted that night, and in a safe, compartmentalized part of her mind, she wanted it too. She kissed her back with fervor, before pulling their bodies together.
They’d been involved intimately and mostly exclusively for a couple of years, bar Zoey’s passing interest with men. Men weren’t something Lucy felt she could deny her girlfriend, but it was something she still quietly begrudged her, even though she knew that part of embracing new progressive attitudes included all the things that had been problematic in previous generations, including prejudices toward people of differing sexual preferences. Zoey wasn’t particularly into sexual monogamy, and she liked sex; liked the power that came with it, and, as Cole always said, craved any sort of attention. It was what it was. Lucy didn’t entirely understand her own preferences either, so she didn’t feel in a position to judge her partner’s.
And Zoey loved her the best, as she’d proven time and time again.
“He likes you,” Zoey whispered. “That Tal guy. He was looking at you that way.”
“I like you,” Lucy responded, tugging at her girlfriend’s underwear. “And I don’t want to talk about them anymore tonight.”
She still had flashes of him sometimes, nearly twelve years later, and this night was one of those nights, perhaps because her run in with Tal had brought him to her forefront—stirred the muck. She didn’t wake up in a cold sweat as much as she used to though, and she attributed that to Zoey. She was good, and level, and did whatever she could to keep Lucy in the moment. And the moments were good, more often than they weren’t.
Lucy had often wondered how adults would have helped her cope with what had happened, if the world hadn’t fallen apart. She was unconvinced that therapy, or doctors, or whatever anyone would have done would have been more successful than just living her life.
After Zoey fell asleep, Lucy wandered downstairs and found Cole sitting out on the front porch, a glass of their homemade wine in hand, the bottle beside him. She sat down silently and he handed her the bottle.
“You shut me out, every time,” he muttered. “I know you’re the one that’s read everything, and the one that’s smart—”
“Cole, you’re smart. Don’t be like that.” She tipped back a little wine. “You just get emotional—”
“I don’t anymore.” He shook his head and sighed. “It’s been a long time since I got emotional. I just…I want to be a part of things, for real, and be helpful. You…do everything.”
She smiled and shook her head, knowing he’d taken her comment to heart. “It’s good that you get emotional. I need you to. Someone needs to. Otherwise, I’d probably kill everyone who disagreed with me. Sometimes I’m nice because I don’t want to upset you.”
He’d cried like a baby at every death that had touched them, for as long as people had been dying. He cried over their mother years after his other siblings had almost forgotten the loss. Lucy was jealous of his ability to feel so deeply sometimes. Other times, she was grateful to have different weaknesses to contend with.
“I could have helped there.” He sipped his wine. “I think everyone could have worked something out, if you weren’t so stubborn about it.”
“They’re spoiled brats, not wanting to share their toys. What could we possibly work out?”
“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “Connor came to see me tonight.”
>
“Did you sleep with him?” Lucy asked matter of fact. They’d made a pact never to lie to one another back when they were too young to really understand what that meant. They would have had a hard time lying anyway, since they knew each other’s body language so well.
“No,” Cole said, shaking his head. “We just had some wine. They brought you some things from LA. Some swag he called it. There’s some good stuff in there. Sunglasses and bags and things.”
Lucy looked at her brother, hard. Something more had happened than what he was telling her.
“Was there anything else?” she asked firmly.
“You think I’m lying to you?” her twin said, frowning at her. “Wow. That’s…a new level of suspicious, Ce.”
“Are you lying to me?” she asked, aware that she was going to upset him. Lucy hadn’t known Cole to go behind her back, and she didn’t like it. It was more of an Andrew thing to do.
“Fuck off, Lucy,” Cole muttered. “You’re just a Campbell. You’re not the only Campbell.”
His words stung. She thought about apologizing, but knew she didn’t have to with Cole. They’d fought a lot over the years, and he’d once told her it was like fighting with himself. She concurred.
“I don’t want their things.” Lucy said firmly. “We shouldn’t keep them.”
“He doesn’t want to take them back. He just doesn’t want to lose everything. He’s scared.” Cole furrowed his brow. “We’ve all been scared, Ce—”
“He told you that?” Lucy raised an eyebrow. No one was a sucker for a sob story like Cole.
“No. But he is.” He stood up and crossed his arms. “It’s obvious when you actually talk to him and don’t bark. I don’t know why you don’t see that. You’re so hard sometimes—”
She shook her head. “He’s manipulative, and anything he’s putting out there is a product of that.” She nodded at the spot beside her. “Sit.”
He did as he was told. “Ce, maybe we’ve gone far enough. You know if it wasn’t West it would be East trying to start things in a year or so. Maybe we should take this as a lesson and consider ourselves lucky they didn’t land with an army and machine guns. We’ve done well. Well enough that we’ll be good forever. We can make the kids here very rich. East and West have been at this longer than us. Leave them to their skirmishes over the Midwest. Maybe we should be friends with them. We don’t want to end up part of East.”
