“The Potomac is what we heard,” said another.
“Just part of it,” said the third.
“It jumped, then,” said the first. “It must have jumped.”
“We’ll get reserves from out of state,” the man with the water told Eddie. “We’re prepared for it. Won’t be long.”
“Have you heard from them?” Eddie asked.
“Heard from who?”
“Out of state.”
“No. Power’s down.”
“Then how do you know?”
“They know.”
“Who knows?”
“Out of state.” The fireman reached down and squeezed Eddie’s shoulder. “Listen. Conserve your strength. That’s the name of the game.”
Eddie looked up at him, though the sun curling around his body burned his eyes.
“The cops are coming?” he asked.
“Why?” said the first. “You got a complaint?”
“No.”
“Then just sit tight. Go back to your home. You’re lucky. Trust me.”
“Are they arresting people?” Eddie said.
“Leave it to the crime fighters,” one of them said, and they went off down the street. Eddie watched the backs of their blue shirts grow fainter in the sunlight.
He tried to get up. He could feel the sip of water in his stomach. His legs were weak, but he could stand. Soon, he could walk, and he let his legs take him down the hill, like following a stream, back home.
Laura was still on her back, her legs crooked as if she’d been dropped there from above. The sheet was bunched on the floor.
“Where’d you go?” she said.
He stood over her, not answering, as she gazed up at the ceiling.
“You’re right,” she said. “I don’t know anything.”
“You’re going to be fine.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I haven’t even been to the doctor. Like you said.”
“The human body is amazing,” Eddie said. He looked at her legs and wondered how she’d gotten them in that position, how they weren’t hurting her, tucked beneath her as they were. “Did you hear me?”
“The human body is amazing,” she repeated.
“I shouldn’t have run,” he said.
“You ran?”
“Up the street. It was stupid.”
“Just be still now. We don’t need anyone else.”
“Okay,” he said, and he lay down next to her.
“I met some firemen,” he said, finally. “They’re working in the city, but they’re coming back for us. They said the city is a mess.”
“Okay,” she said. “It’s good we didn’t go with the rest of them.”
“Yeah,” he said. “They have water coming in from out of state.”
“Good,” she said. “That’s good for us.”
That night his dreams were a slurry. He reached for Laura but only felt flesh. When he shook her, she moaned but didn’t wake. He waited for the gray of morning, as if only the gray of morning would tell him they’d survived the night.
But it seemed the gray light would never come. When he closed his eyes, he saw red. Opened, black spots swarmed. He rose to climb the stairs but had to sit and rest when he was only halfway up. He brought down two glasses from the kitchen.
“We have to do it now,” he said. “I’ll drink mine. You drink yours. You have to wake up for this. I can’t make you drink mine.”
He turned the flashlight on in the bathroom and balanced it on its blind end. There was a dome of light, and its circumference on the walls was brighter, like a watermark. He stood above the toilet holding the glass below himself, but it was a long time before anything came out. When it did, it was almost nothing, brown and cloudy as cider.
He got Laura up and took her into the bathroom and sat her down, holding her shoulders like she was a child. On his knees, he held the glass between her legs, his hand down in the toilet bowl. When she could, it dripped hot on his wrist and he adjusted his catch beneath her. It was only a few drops, coating the bottom of the glass.
“Don’t think about it,” he said.
They held the cups at their chins. There was no smell. He was preparing to say Go when Laura tipped hers back and swallowed. Eddie knocked his back like a shot but held it in his mouth too long and had to breathe deeply through his nose. The room started to spin and he concentrated hard to keep it still. He swallowed and sat down and rubbed his tongue and the inside of his lips with the edge of his shirt.
“You’re going to keep it down?” he said.
“Yeah.”
They lay back on the mattress, and Eddie closed his eyes until Laura shook him.
“You’re talking,” she said.
“My dreams are hot.”
“Try to stop.”
“It hurts to talk. It hurts my mouth.”
It was dark enough that he couldn’t see her face, but could feel her breath on his skin. He could smell it, but it smelled like nothing. He tried to smell something on it.
She was sleeping again, and her breath was even, and Eddie felt himself relax a little. It was the same breath he heard next to him every night, rasping just at the end of each exhalation. It was easy for Eddie to think that this was all a memory he was making his way through. It was a comfort to think like that, and he worked to rein his mind within the fantasy. That he’d have work in the morning, that it was late, but not so late he couldn’t fall back into the milkiness of sleep. He squeezed the muscles in his mind, but saw the little girl. Sophie. That was her name, but it felt like something else entirely, as though in dying, it had disconnected from her body and now floated there in front of him. He saw the car, but couldn’t see the car—heard the squeal of its tires without knowing the sound, only knowing it was there, that the sound had happened—and though he wanted it to be soft, it was hard—the strike—because beneath the skin was bone.
Laura continued her nighttime noises next to him, but it was no longer any comfort to him. She was not who she’d been the week before. She was his wife, yes, but she was also someone else, and Eddie was afraid—for the first time—that he was already alone.
When the gray came through the window, he was able to gather his strength. Laura got up with him and they sat in the living room and looked out the picture window. A car drove by. Eddie banged on the window and Laura opened the door and shouted after it, but it was gone. Mike Sr. was coming up their walk. They watched him huff up the steps and take a break. He stared down at his stomach and took deep breaths that made his chest rise and fall.
They let him inside and he sat down on the sofa.
“We need to go out again,” he said.
“Where?” Eddie said.
“Anywhere.”
“It’s best to rest,” Laura said.
“We need to act on this right now. This is our window. Right now. What do you have left?”
“Nothing much,” Laura said. “Some bread. Some beans. Ramen noodles.”
“Nothing else in cans?”
“Nothing we haven’t used.”
“We’ve got one of tomatoes,” Mike Sr. said. “That’s it. Patty’s trying to get it down Mike Jr. now. I’ll bring you over some.”
“You keep it,” Eddie said, “for Mike Jr.”
“Let’s get out there, then,” he said. “You and me, Ed.”
“Eddie.” Laura touched the back of his hand. “You’ll be exhausted.” She looked at Mike Sr. “You’ll exhaust yourself, Mike.”
“I’m exhausted already.”
“It won’t be much,” Eddie said. “Just knocking on a few doors.”
“Why would anyone want to give you anything now?” she said. “We’re all in the same boat.”
“Some people never got back home,” Mike Sr. said.
“Break-ins, then,” she said.
“It’s an emergency.”
“Eddie met some firemen.”
“Where?”
“Down the road,” Eddie said. “
They’re going to the city, but they’ll be back, they said.”
“Why didn’t you get me?”
“They were gone already.”
“Still,” Mike Sr. said.
“They said the city’s a wreck. We’re better up here,” he said. “We were smart to stay.”
Outside, the sunlight filled the air around them like a pool. Mike Sr. held on to Eddie’s shoulder, and Eddie led the way. Both their shirts were dry; even around the collars there was no sweat.
“No one’s left,” Mike Sr. said. “Dammit. Where are we going, Ed?”
“I know a place. I was there before.”
“What’s it got?”
“I don’t know yet.”
They sat beneath a sphere of bare branches where once there had been leaves. The branches were thick and close together and gave a little shade.
The podiatrist’s house was at the top of a slope, and Eddie counted his steps in his head and thought one-two-three-hup, moving each foot forward as he’d seen soldiers do in old war movies.
“I’m cooked,” Mike Sr. said. He sat down on a lawn.
“You can’t stay here.”
“This was a bad idea,” he said.
“It’s not much farther.”
Eddie got him up and going again, and soon they were at the podiatrist’s house. There was no answer at the door, and Eddie looked for stones to break the windows.
“Then what?” Mike Sr. said. “Then you have to climb up through broken glass on your belly. You can’t risk losing blood.”
Eddie took him around to the basement windows and they kicked at them. Eddie threw stones, but they only bounced off. When Mike Sr. tried, one left a white nick in the glass.
“Too tough,” he said.
“Look,” Eddie said. In the backyard was a crab apple tree. There were a few brown apples in the branches. “We need a ladder,” Eddie said.
They found a big blue recycling bin and wheeled it around. It was sturdy. Mike Sr. held it and Eddie knelt on top. He stood slowly. It felt like he was a hundred feet up. “Keep holding!” he said. His breath buzzed inside his chest, and he held the trunk and reached out for an apple. Two of them were close and he got his hand on the nearest one. It was like squeezing a leather pouch. He had to lean down hard to disengage the stem. When he pulled the second one, the branch dipped. He felt the bin slide beneath him and hung on to the apple, thinking in that flash that it might keep him aloft. It broke from the branch and he fell and landed hard on his shoulder. The apple was in his hand.
“You okay?” Mike. Sr. said.
“I’m okay.”
“Check yourself out.”
He lifted up his shirt and peered over his nose to see a raspberry on his shoulder, blood just beneath the surface.
“It’s not bad,” Eddie said. He bit into the apple. Beneath the thick skin, the flesh was all but gone, but he worked it in his mouth and got some moisture out of it.
“Eat,” he said to Mike Sr.
“I’m saving it,” he said.
“You need fuel to get back.”
“I’ll make it back.” He held the apple between his thumb and forefinger and tilted it back and forth in the way of someone showing off a medal. “Now I know I’ll make it back.”
On the way, they passed the house of the woman who’d opened up for him before. Eddie thought about knocking, but didn’t.
“I spoke to a woman in that house,” he said.
“Which house?”
Eddie pointed.
“What are you waiting for, then? Let’s try it again.”
Eddie thought of what to say. Mike Sr. had a strange look. It seemed to Eddie that all these houses had been abandoned. That everything was there for the taking. But he kept himself from thinking it.
“I already bothered her once,” he said. “She couldn’t help.”
But Mike Sr. had walked up to the door already. He knocked a few times and waited. The woman opened with the safety chain secured. They could only see the right-hand side of her face. She looked older than Eddie remembered.
“Ma’am,” Mike Sr. said. “My son is sick. Do you have anything at all that you could give me?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. She looked at Eddie and he tried too late to look away.
“Are you a parent?” Mike Sr. asked. She tried to close the door, but as she did, he wedged his shoulder in. “Come on, Ed!” he said.
Mike Sr. ground his feet into the walk and leaned, and eventually the chain broke, the door swung open, and he went pitching headlong into a banister. The house was a split-level, and the woman retreated up the carpeted stairs into the kitchen.
“Get out!” she shrieked. “I don’t have anything!”
“You have something. You’re still alive,” Mike Sr. said. He followed her up into the kitchen and she cowered by the sink. Mike Sr. found the knives and threw the block down the stairs as if for Eddie’s safekeeping.
“Help me search the place,” he called to him.
“How can you do this?” the woman cried. “We’ll die.”
“Ha!” Mike Sr. said. “If you have nothing, you’d have nothing to worry about. You’ll die anyway.”
“He has a kid,” Eddie said to her. “That’s the reason.”
Mike Sr. found a glass jar of salsa in the fridge and a soggy bag of strawberries in the freezer. The bag had been resealed with a paper clip.
“Have you eaten these?” Mike Sr. said. “Will they make him sick?”
The woman shook her head.
“Let’s look around. Check the back,” Mike Sr. said.
“No!” the woman shrieked. She ran to Eddie and grabbed his shirt, pulling him down on the kitchen floor. “Don’t do it. Please.”
“What you got back there?” Mike Sr. said. He walked past them and placed his hand on top of the woman’s head to keep her on the ground—or maybe to keep his balance.
“Stay where you are,” he said.
“Why are you doing this?” she pleaded.
Eddie squatted beside the woman and touched her shoulder. She winced as though his fingers were sharp.
“Don’t,” she moaned. “Leave him alone.”
Mike Sr. walked down the hall and opened a door back there. Eddie leaned on his heels to look. A bouquet of silk flowers, a white wall, an apparatus with handrails. He closed his eyes and felt he could stay there for a while.
“Mike,” he called. “Let’s go.”
Mike Sr. had stopped in the doorway. Eddie got up and stood next to him, putting a hand on his hot, doughy shoulder. Sitting up on the bed was a man with wisps of gray hair. His cheeks were hollow, his eyes as big as quarters. He worked his jaw. His lips had trouble separating. “Mup,” he said, reaching a skeletal hand at them. The flesh on his arm was as loose as rotted canvas.
“We need to go,” Eddie said.
“What’s going on in here?” Mike Sr. said.
“We need to get out of here.”
Mike Sr. nodded sternly at the salsa in his hand. “I’m keeping this,” he said, but he put the strawberries back in the freezer.
The woman was still lying on the floor.
“You’ve killed him,” she called as they left. “He’ll be dead because of you.”
Mike Sr. pulled the front door closed. They stood on the patio without speaking.
“Don’t listen to her,” he said after a while. “That guy was dying before we got there. I guess we’re all dying now.”
It took them a long time going back. Mike Sr. had to stop and sit and eventually Eddie did, too.
“You’ve got to eat just a little,” Eddie told him.
But Mike Sr. refused. Even the color in his eyes had drained. They made it another block and rested on an elaborate wooden planter. The dirt inside was as weightless as perlite. Eddie ran his fingers over the surface and jostled the stalks of dead plants that were the same color as the dirt.
Mike Sr. unscrewed the salsa lid.
“Here,” he said
. “You’re right. We should.” He held the jar out to Eddie. “Take a little,” he said.
Eddie scooped out a few chunks of tomato and onion with his fingers and put the pieces into his mouth. He let them sit there, sucking the juices.
“Nothing’s more important than my boy,” Mike Sr. said.
Eddie looked at him. “I want to live, too.”
“It’s different being a father. You’re still just thinking of you.”
“Let’s get back, then,” Eddie said, “to your boy.” As he said it, an ink stain spread across his vision. He lay back in the dirt and could feel his shoulder hanging off the planter. The air was soundless. A cough would have thundered through the neighborhood. Eddie reached over his head and felt past the corner of the planter. There was something soft there, and he let his fingers play on top of it. He thought of the stuffed dog he’d slept with as a boy—Louis—how he had worried its paws until the material felt as soft as this. His parents had let him name a stuffed dog Louis. It had probably been cute—that name in a child’s mouth.
What a world. To get from there to this.
He could feel Mike Sr. grabbing at his wrists and lifting him.
“Easy, now,” Mike Sr. said. “Don’t go touching that.”
On his feet, Eddie saw what the softness was. In the corner of the planter, a couple of squirrels had died. They were bunched up with their heads together, like they’d been trying to burrow.
“I thought it was something else,” Eddie said.
“Easy, now,” Mike Sr. said again.
Their houses weren’t far, and they leaned on each other and took small, slow steps to make it back. Eddie went inside and called for Laura. Then he stretched out on the sofa. He could see the old man with his enormous eyes, lifting himself up to stare at them. The woman had been right. That far gone, an effort like that would probably be the end of him.
“Laura,” he called again.
Eddie thought that maybe he’d been sleeping, though how much time had passed, he couldn’t tell.
The house was quiet, and panic shot through him.
“Laura!” he called.
She wasn’t on the mattress in the basement. She wasn’t in any of the basement rooms. It was dark down there, and he swung the flashlight over all the floors.
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