But that was then, in the dream world that had once existed as reality. Now the order was gone and the network nullified. Ten in the morning found children playing in empty roads and adults poking at non-functional cell phones in the hopes they had rejuvenated. The skies were empty and so were mailboxes. Fires burned unimpeded. As Micah observed, if you were sick, you sucked it up, if you were really sick, you sucked it up, and if you were dead, your body decayed wherever you had fallen. It was no longer an anomaly to see bodies crumpled here and there, with vultures circling in the sky or dogs gathered around them to feast.
At least they were eating. With the banks closed, few people had money and that didn’t matter so much when the stores were closed, too. The lone Mr. Foods in the area that had remained open only carried non-edibles like greeting cards and firewood. The employees didn’t know when the trucks would come. Gas station minimarts had nothing; restaurants had nothing; the food banks were wiped out of goods. Abandoned houses had been picked clean. Zaley tried to think positively, that things were going to get better any second now, but that was hard with the growling pain in her stomach.
Sombra C was making hash of the countries that supplied America with oil. America was making hash of itself, so what imports managed to slip through and what oil was produced from American soil itself wasn’t getting where it needed to go. Fuel was the sea upon which their food was carried. Fires, both wild and intentionally set, were consuming swathes of agriculture. Farmers in the Midwest had been forced to flee their fields from the violence between Prime and the government. Factories were abandoned to battles or sabotage, or they were unable to access necessary components to their products, or had a lack of electricity. It depended on the area. Everything was falling more to madness by the day.
Grocery stores, restaurants, gas station minimarts, all of those were just places to distribute food. It came from those fields that couldn’t be planted or harvested, the animals that couldn’t be raised or slaughtered, the processing and packaging factories that had fallen silent. It washed in from other countries on tides of fuel. In weeks, only weeks, America had been rendered incapable of doing the most basic thing: feed itself.
On the tenth of May, an armed battalion of the hungry in San Francisco descended on a Waystation warehouse, demanding it be opened and the supplies inside shared out. Zaley was among them, the closed Golden Gate Bridge visible and tantalizing in the distance. An old man flanked by guards exited the side door of the Waystation and held up his hand to silence the screams. Everyone was ready to riot, to tear the man and his guards to shreds and get at that food. Zaley was no less wild than they in her hatred of these barriers. She was so desperate to quell the gnawing in her gut that she would risk gunfire to get inside that building and shove anything edible into her mouth.
Bringing a bullhorn to his lips, the man said in a surprisingly friendly voice, “This food will be given out, and it will be given out in an orderly fashion until it is gone. Please form three lines and grant my employees twenty minutes to prepare the stock. There is enough for everyone here to take away a little, so there’s no need for pushing or shoving. You won’t go away empty-handed.” They stared at him, stunned, and then rushed to obey by making lines at the three road cones an employee was setting out.
Breakdown. That was the word on everyone’s lips, the term for what had happened to the country in the last few months. But remnants of their former world remained in how they divided up into lines like schoolchildren waiting for assembly. Other warehouses and stores had had riots for the last of what they held, riots that left people dead on the ground, and it was debated during those twenty minutes if the man was giving out the food from altruism or self-preservation. The general consensus was that it didn’t matter so long as he gave it to them.
And he did. When the first bags of food started coming out the door, people shouted in relief and applauded. The exhilaration was deafening. Some people cried, from grown men and women down to children. Anxious whispers passed back through the lines. Would there really be enough to go around? Was that man sure? But the bags just kept flowing out and the lines kept moving up.
One employee with a Santa Claus beard and physique had a big container of colorful lollipops, which he gave out to the kids there. The children formed a ring around him, little pink and brown hands reaching up and high-pitched voices requesting their favorite colors. Their cries of thank you, gracias, thank you, sir, rang through the air, interspersed with adults’ deeper voices expressing gratitude if the boy or girl was too young to speak it. Zaley watched through tear-filled eyes the bittersweet sight of these children overcome with joy at stupid, cheap lollipops. From their reactions, someone would have thought that they were being given a cart packed with the best toys. A Hispanic boy of about nine excused himself to pass through the line by Zaley, his hands held by two identical little girls of preschool age, and the girls’ other hands held by two identical little boys of the same age. Quadruplets. All of them got lollipops and the older boy said bossily, “What do you say?”
“Thank you!” the four chorused together. Everyone chuckled. A grown woman with the flattish features of Down Syndrome came up shyly, her eyes to the container, and the man gave her a lollipop, too.
The guards were armed, and they stood around the lines to ensure they stayed calm. Only once was there a problem, a guy driving up on the curb in a raised pick-up. Burly men were riding in the back. All of them got out, lifting guns and demanding their pick-up be filled with food. Their voices silenced when the guards and a full third of the people in line took aim. Zaley aimed right for the driver’s head, her finger on the trigger and ready to pull. The lines had been so peaceable. Most people just watched the children get their lollipops, or spoke at a low volume about hijacked ports, a ludicrously out-of-touch presidential plea not to panic, gangs going wild, and hunger. But with the arrival of those men, the peace instantly transformed into rage. This order would be kept, everyone would get a little food, and nothing was going to get in the way of that. Especially not a bunch of assholes who thought they were big, scary men that could push and shove and intimidate to get their way.
That hadn’t been the reaction the guys were expecting. It was silent for several tense seconds. They took in the size of the three lines like they hadn’t really noticed before that. The group of them looked small and foolish against the hundreds of muzzles pointed their way. Then their guns lowered and the guard told them to get in the back of the line. They obeyed almost meekly and the driver moved his truck off the curb. In her mother’s arms, a young child scolded, “You’re bad people! You’re bad people!” Then peace resumed.
When it was at last Zaley’s turn at the front, an employee said, “How many are you feeding, honey?”
“Five, please.” Zaley had counted Elania by mistake. That stung, but she didn’t correct herself. They needed whatever they got, even if it was through dishonesty. Hunger made her guilt minimal. The woman leaned back and shouted five through the door to people waiting there to fulfill orders.
Into a doubled-up paper bag went ramen noodles and boxes of macaroni and cheese, a big jug of peanut butter and one of water, cookies and granola bars and crackers, and some other things. A man called out, “Pets? Do you have any pets?”
Bleu Cheese. Oh God, that stung, too. “No.” Not now. Zaley had loved that goofy dog dearly. She should have lied and said yes though. They were hungry enough to eat dog food. But it was better to tell the truth in this instance. She couldn’t carry groceries and a sack of kibble on top of it.
The bag was monstrously heavy when she lifted it onto her left hip. The weight was the sweetest sensation of her life. They would be okay for a few days. Zaley walked through the lines in the direction of the car. One of those awful guys who had tried to skip the line called out to those departing that he’d pay for the food they carried. No one was taking him up on it. What was his money worth? He could have handed Zaley a million dollars and she wouldn’t relin
quish this bag. It was more precious than gold. Once in the car, she locked all the doors and hid the food under spare clothes before driving away.
They were living in a parking lot by the water, in the shadow of the bridge that could not be crossed. The firefight for control between the T-BACS and the Shepherds had been unremitting. No sooner had Shepherds won than what remained of Road and Transportation arrived to check it for structural integrity and perform repairs. Micah was threatening to swim across the bay if this situation didn’t resolve soon. She’d hiked over to the bridge to ask how long it was going to take and had gotten turned away by guns. It would be done when it was done and no sooner. And if it got damaged again, it wasn’t going to be fixed.
When Zaley got back to their temporary home, the bag of food was met with joy even though the ramen and macaroni was going to have to be soaked in cold water and eaten that way. Or they’d have to build a fire somehow, and do it by day so it didn’t attract ferals. But who cared? They had something to eat. Corbin massaged Zaley’s arm as the other two fixed sandwiches out of peanut butter and crackers, all four of them on the blanket by the water. It was his apology being kneaded into her aching flesh. They had argued viciously about her leaving alone, Corbin angry that she wanted to follow the rumor of the warehouse, Zaley adamant that he couldn’t go with her. The risk of his stamp showing was too much for her to handle and she’d driven away while they were still in the midst of the fight. Fighting, she and Corbin. They were such a pair of get-along and make-nice personalities that it was a rare occurrence. Something about fighting had made her feel alive, and terrible at the very same time.
Driving away like that had been rude, and she was also sorry. Being hungry made them all bitchy and intractable in their opinions. But as vulnerable as she was, being female, young, and injured, was just as vulnerable as he was with his stamp. The cosmetics weren’t an impenetrable barrier. They were both wrong. They were both right. A woman one line over had been wearing suspiciously thick makeup on her face and neck, and she had on a shirt with a high collar, too. Zaley had known from the nervous look the woman gave her what these things covered. Smiling politely, Zaley had turned away. She wished that she could have told the woman it was all right, but it could only be expressed through silence.
“One for me, and one for Corbin,” Austin said happily, shoving a peanut butter cracker sandwich into his mouth. “One for me, and one for Zaley.” When he gave her a napkin filled with the little sandwiches, she paused and thought thank you. Thank you to the man at the warehouse for whatever reason he chose not to fight; thank you to the people for standing so calmly in line and the guards for enforcing it; and thank you to God for this bounty. Thank you for her friends, for the car with its tank still three-quarters full of gas, and the kindness of that employee giving out lollipops to the deprived children in those lines. She even thought thank you for Corbin, for loving her enough that he argued about her going away alone. Then she could wait no longer and dove into the banquet in her hand.
They slept contentedly in the car that night. The windows were cracked a tiny bit to keep the air circulating. She had the driver’s seat and Corbin the passenger’s, both with towels for blankets. Micah and Austin tangled together in the back. They used the blanket from the motel and a pair of pillows that Micah had gotten from breaking into a house. It had already been cleaned out in previous break-ins. The pillows were about all that was left.
Shapes moved out there in the darkness on some nights. The animal cries indicated that many of them were feral Sombra Cs. Zaley stayed very still when those started up nearby. Other times it was someone picking at the fuel door cover, intending to siphon gas. The first time that had happened, all four of them burst out of the car and chased the guy away. There wasn’t a second time, since Micah went hunting around the area and came back with rolls of tape to make their car a less attractive target. No one was going to get in without having to make a serious effort. Zaley wouldn’t be able to get in there any more easily to refuel. But gas stations were closed, so it was a moot point.
That night, the only visitor was a feral. The moonlight was quite bright, and allowed Zaley to see him fairly well. Wearing nothing but ripped skinny jeans, the guy was lurching around aimlessly and emitting occasional howls. He examined all the cars in the rows, going to one driver’s side door after another to try the handle. The howls had woken Zaley and Micah, who watched his progress from car to car. Micah whispered, “He’s looking for his own.”
“How do you know?” Zaley whispered while making sure the doors were locked. It was neurotic. She always checked two or three times when they settled in for the night.
“I just know,” Micah said. That was good enough for Zaley, who was a month older than Micah but considered her much more street-savvy, and savvy in general. This was what the virus left behind in the man’s brain, the knowledge that he had a car somewhere and that he wanted to drive it, and which door was the one that led to the driver’s seat. Sombra C had stripped him of everything else.
The howls grew more frustrated at each locked door and he pounded on the hoods. Most of the cars parked around here were abandoned, and not serving as anyone’s home. The one that wasn’t had a man and a dog living inside. The guy’s name was Grant and the basset hound was Bucky. Although Grant wasn’t that friendly to them, he had been the one to pass along the rumor of the warehouse and directions on how to get there. He’d also gotten a bag of food and a ten-pound sack of kibble for the dog. Bucky wasn’t friendly either. Following his owner around like a shadow, he only ever acknowledged Zaley with a doleful expression, like he fully expected that she was going to kick him if the chance ever presented itself.
Grant yelled when the feral picked at the door handle, his voice cracking through the open sunroof in warning, and then he flicked the headlights. The dog barked. The feral went crazy and slammed his fists against the hood. As the yelling and lights had only made it worse, Grant hushed Bucky and went silent. The feral picked at the handle some more and moved on.
“Okay?” Corbin yawned as Austin slept through it.
“Just a feral,” Micah said. The three of them stared out to that dark, howling shape. They couldn’t roll up the windows without starting the car, and starting the car would make noise and turn on the lights. Corbin leaned over Zaley to stuff extra clothes in her cracked window. Then he did the same to his window. Micah handled the ones in back.
Then they waited. Corbin covered Zaley’s hand in his own and squeezed. She felt the weakness in his fourth and fifth fingers, the way they didn’t press in on hers as tightly. But the others had a firm grip.
Micah passed up the kid’s rifle from the back for Corbin to hold. She had Zaley’s gun, Zaley having given it to her upon returning from the warehouse. It was hard to touch it after Elania had used it to kill herself. That must have been why she had apologized to Zaley before walking away to the homeless camp in the golf course. She’d been planning to die. If only Zaley had seen through the apology . . . but then what? Nothing would have made Elania better.
“Hoooooo,” the feral was howling. “Hoooooooo!”
“Home,” Micah whispered. “He wants to go home.”
But that was gone to the virus. Zaley bet if she were to ask the guy where his home was, he’d pummel her in reply. Corbin whispered, “You shouldn’t sit there in the driver’s seat. That’s where he’s going.”
There wasn’t time to switch places. The feral was lurching to their car. Zaley checked the lock one more time. Feet scraped along the ground and she froze at the pick-pick-pick of fingers upon the handle. The feral’s breath was harsh and aggravated. “Hoooooooooo.”
The clothes in the crack were tugged. Even if they fell away, the guy wouldn’t be able to unlock the door. The cracks were very small for precisely that reason. But the gap could let in fluid, should he be bleeding or choose to spit. Corbin threw his towel over Zaley’s head to make sure nothing got on her. She doubled over the center consol
e, closed her eyes, and waited for the feral to give up and leave.
“Hoooooooo.”
Home. Wherever this man’s home was, she was positive that it didn’t have a floor covered in yellow star rugs. If Zaley ever had children, she wasn’t going to sob over every tiny onesie outgrown and abandoned doll and make her kids keep all of that shit forever. And she was going to have a job and hobbies so her entire universe wasn’t wrapped up in her offspring.
The feral wasn’t going away. Something hit her left leg very lightly and Corbin hissed. She couldn’t stand it and peeked out from the towel. The clothing from the crack was now in her lap. Black fingers jutted through the tight opening and the smell of rot was filling the car. The fingers curled over the glass, seeking how far they could go in. Corbin and Micah had the guns trained on them.
Austin woke up. Shushing him, Zaley put her hand on his leg. The fingers pressed down so hard on the glass that the feral cracked a knuckle. Disliking the sharp snap of it, he howled and struck the roof. That was worse than the first sound and he yelled even more loudly. Yanking his fingers out of the crack, the advanced state of decay stripped one of its meat. The degloved finger retracted and the flesh hit the clothes. The feral spun away, yelling nonsensically.
“Don’t move, Zaley,” Corbin ordered. He passed the rifle to Austin and wrapped up the rotted chunk of meat in the clothes it had fallen on. Holding it in his lap, he looked out the back window. “We have to get rid of this. It’s crawling with Sombra C. And wash down the window and everything else he touched.”
The feral was reeling through the parking lot, shouting and pounding on trunks. It set off a car alarm. He went berserk and beat up the car. Austin said, “You know what I heard someone say today? I was walking around at the park and hid behind a tree when these guys strolled past. They’re calling them zonchos, the infected who came up from Mexico.”
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