The Outside

by Laura Bickle

  “We’re going to have to consider carrying an ember,” I said. “In pine needles or a jar or something. Some way that it can smolder and still get air. I don’t know how well I can start one once it’s wet.” I blew on the tiny orange flame I’d started in the tangle of pine, nursing it as I would a bird fallen from its nest.

  “I’ll work on it.” He shared the last of the juice from the bottle with me and began to carve out a hole in the side with his knife. He stuffed the inside of the bottle with pine needles and unscrewed the cap for a chimney. I could put a spark in it and it would remain live for a long time, able to breathe and smolder.

  “That’s perfect,” I said, warming my hands over the flame. We’d set up camp in an open meadow, where we could see in all directions. This land was a bit higher than some of the flat land we had left, and I could see for miles in the daylight. Now the night was soft and total. I saw no lights. No sign of humans. Only the light of the fire and the stars.

  “What are we going to do if we’re the last ones?” He opened the bag of potato chips and handed them to me. I took a handful and passed the rest to him.

  I shook my head. “We’re not. We can’t be.”

  But I wouldn’t say that the thought hadn’t occurred to me.

  “What happens if, under my brilliant leadership, we get to Canada and there’s nothing there?” He stared into the tiny blaze.

  “Then . . .” I was going to give him a heartfelt platitude about the value of hope or Gelassenheit. But that wasn’t what he wanted. And, feeling the hollowness of Ginger’s death, I wasn’t sure that I could say it and mean it. Instead, I said: “Then we will survive there, just as we’ve managed to survive here, for as long as we can.”

  “And why the hell are you following me, anyway?”

  I blinked at him. I felt a stab of hurt. We’d all come together, and I’d assumed . . . “Where else would I go?”

  “That’s not what I mean. I mean . . . you just agree to submit to my authority. Is that something that you’re doing just because I’m a man? Having a penis doesn’t make me infallible.” He rubbed his hands through his hair, and I could see his Adam’s apple bob as he was trying not to cry. “I got Ginger killed. You should question me. Challenge me if I’m making the wrong call. Not follow me out of some biblical edict or cultural force of habit.”

  I placed my hand on his sleeve. “I’m not following you out of blind faith. Or love, for that matter. When I follow you, it’s because I’ve thought about it and I agree that what you’re doing is right.”

  He leaned over and kissed me. His lips were warm and he felt alive.

  “Thanks, Bonnet. I just . . . I’m not cut out to be any kind of person in charge.”

  “You’re making the right choices.” I truly believed that.

  “I’m not convinced.” Alex licked the salt from the bag. “We are now officially out of food. I don’t know how long that’s going to be, Bonnet, but . . .”

  He stiffened, and his gaze was focused beyond the fire. I felt him reach for his knife at his side, but I put a hand on his arm, stilling him.

  Glowing eyes crept to the edge of the campfire. But they were familiar golden ones. The wolf came within the reach of the light. His tail was low and his ears were pressed flat. He carried something in his mouth.

  I felt Alex suck in his breath as I murmured, “Our shadow has come back.”

  The wolf paused at the edge of the fire and laid down his burden. It was a rabbit. He backed away from us, moved to the other side of the fire, and lay down.

  Alex crawled forward, on hands and knees. He touched the rabbit. “Is this . . . is this for us?”

  The wolf thumped its tail on the ground and whimpered. He looked a bit frightened of us. Horace cast him a dim eye but did not shy away.

  “He is too used to being with people,” I said.

  “Should I chase him off?”

  I shook my head. “No. It’s his choice whether to follow us or not. Perhaps he wants the fire and the light.”

  I took the rabbit from Alex and set his knife to it. The wolf watched as I skinned it and drove a stick through its body to roast it. My stomach grumbled as it cooked on the tiny fire and the fat sizzled in the embers.

  Alex and I took turns devouring the hot meat. It was the best meal I’d had in days. I was careful not to eat it all. I tossed some scraps and the bones to the wolf. He dragged the bones to where he lay and put them between his paws. He quietly gnawed on them, the sound of his chewing melding with the pop and crackle of the fire.

  “Shall we give him a name?” I asked. I was relieved for the wolf’s presence. It gave me something to focus on other than Ginger and the lingering cold feeling of that stone in my hands. I wondered if the sensation would ever fade. Plain people were instructed not to dwell on the dead after the funeral. We were not to allow grief to shadow our footsteps, to devour us. We were to have faith that our loved ones were with God. I repeated these things to myself, but my hands were still cold.

  “I guess. If he sticks around.” Alex seemed to think on this. “What about Fenrir?”

  “Another mythological name?” I rubbed my hands on my skirt.

  Alex watched me. A little hiccupped sob escaped my lips. He took my hands in his, stilling them.

  “Fenrir is a wolf in Norse mythology. He was born as a son to Loki, the god of chaos, and a giantess named Angrboda. Angrboda was the herald of sorrow. They had three children: Fenrir, the giant wolf; the serpent Jörmungand; and the mistress of death, Hel.

  “The gods of Asgard cast a prophecy that said that Fenrir and his children would be responsible for Ragnarök, the end of the world.”

  “Apparently, the end of the world is not a new fear,” I said. But I wanted him to continue, to tell me another story that would take my mind from grief. My hands felt warm in his, and I focused on that feeling and the cadence of his voice.

  “No kidding. Ragnarök is ‘the Doom of the Gods.’ It’s the end of the cosmos. It’s preceded by Fimbulvetr, the winter of winters that will last a year. Humankind will fight itself to the death.

  “Then the wolf Skoll will devour the sun, and his brother Hati will eat the moon. The earth is ruled by Darkness. The stars will vanish from the sky. Then a couple of roosters wake the giants, harass the gods, and raise the dead.”

  I shuddered. “If we see roosters, we’ll know to beware.”

  “Yes. Beware the roosters. Hmm . . . chicken . . .” He looked distracted. “But back to Fenrir . . . the gods of Asgard caught the wolf as a puppy and put him in a cage. Tyr, the god of war, broke him free and cared for the wolf.

  “Fenrir grew freakishly large and strong. The gods chained him, and he broke free. They then got the dwarves to make a magic chain. Tyr reluctantly went along with this. In revenge, Fenrir bit off Tyr’s hand.

  “The gods chained Fenrir to a rock a mile beneath the earth and put a sword between his teeth to keep him from biting. He waits there until the day of Ragnarök, when an earthquake will free him and he will kill Odin, the king of the gods. And Odin’s son is prophesied to kill Fenrir.”

  “Your myths are always terrible,” I told him. “But I think that Fenrir is a fine name.”

  Fenrir closed his golden eyes and slept. His black lips drew back, and I think he smiled.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Fenrir proved himself to be a mighty hunter.

  He was still with us the next morning. He followed behind for some time, ranged away, and would come back. He’d become distracted by pheasants, by rustling leaves, by smells, and would vanish for hours. Then he would return and slink along in our wake.

  At dusk, he brought us a chicken. I have no idea where he found it, or if he’d been listening to Alex’s story. Alex gently took it from him, and the wolf shied away.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Alex held up the chicken and turned it to face him. “I’m gonna name you . . . Ragnarök. Because I can’t remember any of the names of the magical roost
ers in Norse mythology.”

  I grinned. I had not smiled in a long time. It made my face hurt.

  “Ragnarök is going to be delicious.”

  And he was.

  But I was beginning to lose a bit of heart. We had seen no more signs of other living people in all our journey north. We saw some of their leavings, like bits of litter blown up against fences. A turned-over mail truck in the middle of a two-lane highway spilled out a gut of letters and parcels that were growing mildewy. But no sign of anything else. No buildings that hadn’t burned. There were no vampires, which was comforting, until I thought about what that meant: no food. And that worried me.

  I think that’s why we veered a bit west, toward a small town that Alex spied on the map. The night had grown cold, cold enough that we saw our breath make ghosts in the air. We couldn’t continue sleeping out in the open, exposed. We needed supplies. Alex still wanted to find a car. Or bicycles. And for that, we’d need to venture close to what had once been civilization.

  We followed the two-lane highway until it intersected with a large four-lane. The road was empty and abandoned, but a cluster of a town had sprouted up around the freeway exit.

  It seemed innocuous enough, in the gray light of afternoon. There was a gas station, three fast food restaurants, and a steakhouse. An electronics store sat back from the road, along with what looked like a strip mall. Rain had begun early in the morning, mixing with sleet. My coat was heavy with ice beginning to form, and I couldn’t stop shivering. Even Fenrir kept close for warmth, skulking along the culvert as Alex and I headed into the town.

  We walked along the edge of the strip mall parking lot. Broken glass glittered beneath the coating of sleet, and I could see bent traffic signs. Fenrir found a garbage can to dig through, but nothing edible inside. A sandwich wrapper stuck to his paw, and Alex scraped it off. The traffic lights were out, pulled down in a tangle of wire.

  “I take that to mean there won’t be any power.”

  We paused before the window of a Chinese restaurant. I peered inside the glass, to see the rotting remains of a buffet. It was likely that any fresh food that hadn’t been taken or eaten by survivors had spoiled in the time that had intervened in this disaster. I felt a pang of regret. I had never had Chinese food before. It was one of the things I had looked forward to on Rumspringa.

  “Hey, look at this.”

  I heard a thick metallic thump. I looked back to see Alex pounding his fist on a sheet of metal. I squinted at it. It was a large turquoise building, bricked like a fortress. A flexible metal gate covered the front, like a garage door.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “A department store. And it looks like Fort Knox.” He shoved on the metal, but it did not give.

  We circled around it, finding a locked man-size door at the back and another one of the large metal gates on a loading dock. A few bits of graffiti covered the brick. It was too stylized to read, but it certainly seemed to be a frustrated scrawl.

  “Doesn’t look like anybody figured a way in.”

  “Not yet,” I said. I shivered, staring up at the smooth, seemingly impenetrable façade.

  Alex turned up the collar of my jacket against my throat. “Don’t worry. We’ll figure out a way.”

  I looked up, and our eyes caught on a slatted vent on the side of the building. It was much too high to reach.

  “There’s our entrance,” he said with determination.

  After several jumps, slips on ice, and much swearing, we arrived at a solution. Horace was brought to stand below the vent. Alex and I stood, wobbly, in his saddle, leaning up against the wall. Fenrir watched in an amused fashion from a distance, his tongue hanging out of his mouth in what appeared to be good humor.

  “Okay,” Alex said. “I’m gonna lift you up. See if you can pry open the edge of that vent with the knife.” He put his hands on my waist.

  I looked at the vent above dubiously. “About the leadership thing . . .”

  He waited. “You want to move on?”

  I shook my head. “No. I’ll try it.”

  He lifted me up, and I reached for the corner of the vent. I jammed the knife under the fabricated metal edge and worked to loosen it. There were no screws that I could see. Alex had to set me down twice, when his muscles trembled. Horace snuffled in irritation below us.

  I finally pried the cover of the vent open.

  “All right,” I said. “I think I can reach.”

  Alex hoisted me up and I grasped the lip of the vent with my hands. The edge was sharp, and I could feel it cutting into my palms. I squeezed between the gap in the vent cover and the lip of the vent. Alex shoved as hard as he could, and I scrambled inside the shaft.

  And prayed that there were no vampires inside.

  I had an immediate panic when I felt dust and silt shaking down on me. I feared the sensation of the spider webs that meant one of their nests was close.

  I paused, tried to control my breathing. This was an old duct, and there were likely real spiders here. There had been no sign of assault from the outside, I reasoned. And vampires would have no interest in a closed-up store with no food.

  Behind me, I reached for the vent covering. I pulled it closed and flush against the side of the building, drawing the seams close to the edge of the wall. If I made a way in, I did not want it to be an obvious place for others to enter. I pulled it tight, in its original position, tucked the bent pieces of metal around the shaft walls. I was sealed in.

  Through the grate, I could see Alex down below with the horse. He nodded at me, and I could see the sleet freezing on his jacket.

  I turned around to face the darkness.

  On my elbows and knees, I crawled forward. My movements made loud thuds on the sheet metal, surely announcing my presence to any awaiting creatures. I could see nothing but pitch black. But I struggled to quell my fear and forced myself to keep moving.

  I crawled for what seemed like a hundred feet before I felt something change beneath me. The shaft had sloped downward, and I felt a different texture than dusty metal under my palms. I explored it with my fingers. It felt like a metal grate, a panel with holes. I backed off and pushed down on it.

  Nothing happened. I crammed my legs beneath me and scrunched myself into a sitting position. With all my might, I kicked downward on the pane.

  Once.

  Twice.

  On the third blow, the grate gave away with a ripping sound. I nearly fell into the hole that spilled out from the bottom of the darkness. The air below me was a bit warmer, and it smelled like cinnamon.

  But I had no way of knowing for certain how far down the floor was. I could guess, based on what I’d seen outside. The vent had been about twelve feet from the ground. Assuming that it didn’t open above a stairwell, that was still a substantial drop. I could break some bones on the descent and die in this place.

  I’d be alone. Entirely alone.

  I sat for a few moments, cradling my aching hand in my lap. Eventually, the pain and my fear dulled. I turned around, swinging my legs over the edge of the vent. I took a deep breath. I backed out into darkness, lurching into it, keeping my grip firmly on the edge of the vent.

  The vent groaned and shrieked under that concentrated weight. I felt my grip slipping, the metal shifting beneath me. The vent collapsed, but I tried to hang on. I heard drywall cracking and felt my arms tangling in metal. I grabbed whatever I could, grappling with the wave of collapsing duct and ceiling until it dumped me out onto a hard floor with a deafening thud that jarred my spine and backside.

  I lay still on the floor. Pieces of crumbly drywall rained around me. I felt sore and bruised, but did not feel anything broken. My palms and arms were scraped, but everything seemed intact. I crawled to my feet, wobbly in the cinnamon-scented darkness.

  I sucked in a breath.

  Something was glowing.

  And I was trapped here with it.

  This wasn’t anything like the glowing of vampire eyes, or
even the golden shine of Fenrir’s. This was an artificial, dull luminosity. It reminded me of the stars on the ceiling in the boy’s bedroom at the Animal Farm.

  Cautiously, I stumbled toward it. I jammed my knee against what must have been a display containing glass—it broke and I cried out in startlement. I weaved and bobbed, heading toward that light.

  And I paused, uncomprehending. They were glowing human shapes . . . transparent, filled with light. Mannequins, I think they were called. They were perched in what would have been the front window of the store, now shrouded by the metal shutter. There were four of them, posed as if in dance, with translucent wings. The mannequins were wearing gossamer dresses that must have been for sale somewhere in the store. They looked like angels, lit from within from strings of lights like those I’d seen Englishers use for Christmas decorations. I stared up into the empty skulls of the figures. They had no faces. In this way, they were like Amish dolls, blank. We didn’t create graven images.

  I touched a translucent face. It seemed alien. Unreal. And I was pretty sure I wasn’t part of the intended market for the short dresses they wore in varying shades of white sheer fabric. Far too immodest and vain for a Plain girl.

  I brushed bits of drywall off my sleeves. But maybe I wasn’t a Plain girl anymore. I didn’t look like one.

  In the dim glow of the mannequins, I searched for a way to bring their light with me. I tried to pull one of the mannequins off the display, but her cord only extended six feet. Once I drew her beyond that, the cord came unplugged from a giant battery beneath the stage, and she went dark. I fumbled around and plugged her back in. I let her lie on the cold marble floor, but she threw enough light for me to be able to see the glass doors of the main entrance and the metal door beyond. I had to get them open somehow.