But what teenage girl, no matter how virtuous, wouldn’t read the letters from her father as a young man to her mother? Jack was afraid that, at best, Anna would invade her privacy and rationalize it by getting all gooey over how romantic her parents had been. Then, at an inopportune time — during an argument over Trent, for example— Anna would throw the letters in her face, reminding her mother that she was trying to deny her daughter the exquisite sex life she had enjoyed until Theo fell ill.
Jack reached for another letter at random. On the back, Theo had written S.W.A.K. “Sealed with a Kiss.” She kissed the back of the envelope now and began to cry. She couldn’t kiss her husband now, not without fear of inviting infection. Now that this simple pleasure was denied her, it seemed more important than ever that she be allowed the indulgence.
She threw the letters back in the tin, still sobbing with great heaving gasps. It wasn’t because she couldn’t kiss Theo that she cried now. It was because going through these old sweet and sexy letters now seemed like a morbid act, nostalgia transformed into something ugly. She felt like an old widow pouring over a dead husband’s correspondence.
It was then that she felt she wasn’t alone. There was a creak at the top of the stairs that she knew well. Whenever either of the kids got up at night to go to the bathroom, that floorboard creaked.
A month ago, Jack had stopped Theo in the middle of urgent but quiet lovemaking because she had detected a noise, so attuned were they to the squeaks and creaks of hallway floorboards. Anna, in a rare post-midnight bathroom trip, had gotten up to pee. Theo and Jack giggled and whispered, unwilling to continue until they could be reasonably sure Anna had returned to her room, oblivious to incriminating sounds from her parents’ room.
Another creak.
Had she locked the back door? She wasn’t sure. No, probably not, she decided. She was only going to be a moment but when she glanced at her watch she wasn’t sure how much time had elapsed since she’d entered the house. It must be at least twenty-five minutes.
“Hello? Is anyone there?” She already knew the answer. For a moment she thought about hiding under the bed, but if the intruder hadn’t heard her crying already, he certainly knew she was in there now.
She cast about, but could see nothing that could be used as a weapon.
Creak!
“I’ve got a gun here!” she said. She’d have been delighted to at least have a long sharp stick. The heat rose in her cheeks. She was still on her knees by the bed, frozen. Her legs and buttocks ached from tensing.
Wouldn’t that old over-under from her childhood home be great to have now? That would change the entire equation. I used to be such a liberal, she thought. A crazed laugh burst from her lips.
Jaimie stood at the door holding his Latin dictionary. He peered into his room. He didn’t look right at her, but instead appeared to be looking to her left, as if a ghost stood behind her only the boy could see.
“Jaimie! You scared the hell out of me! If I’d had a shotgun I would have blown your head off.”
He seemed unperturbed, but he usually looked that way. His cold detachment unnerved her.
“Nothing personal.” Her hands were ice as she put them to her hot cheeks. “I’m shocky.” She went to her son and held him. As usual, he let her, infuriating her anew with his indifference.
“Sorry,” she said absently and squeezed him tighter to her chest.
He put a hand on her elbow and began guiding her out of his room and down the stairs, pulling her.
“Wait,” she said, and went back for her whale painting. He followed her and pulled again on her arm, at first timidly and then he got behind her and pushed. She ran ahead, downstairs to the book case in the living room to grab her wedding album and another book of baby pictures.
She tucked the painting awkwardly under her arm, cut through the dining room into the kitchen with her son on her heels. She scooped up the big bag full of smaller plastic bags. She took a moment to stuff the albums in one of the bags.
Jaimie pushed her again, urging her to go, but she slipped around him and back upstairs. An afterthought, she ran to Jaimie’s bedroom and hurriedly piled the letters back into the tin. The circle of the cookie can stretched the mouth of the biggest bag, but she managed to stuff it in and headed downstairs.
Jaimie kept pushing even as she was passing through the back door.
“Okay! Okay!”
Her shoes clapped on the concrete of the deck in an angry rush. Now Jaimie pulled her back and held her fast. Jack rounded on her son. “What? What? This strong silent type thing is really getting on my nerves.”
He waved at her in an impatient “c’mere” gesture and headed toward the fence at the rear of their property.
Mrs. Bendham’s house was to their right. Jaimie cut left, looking back just long enough to confirm his mother followed. With surprising grace, Jaimie put one hand on the top of the fence and climbed over, never dropping his dictionary.
Jack handed him the bags and leaned over to carefully put her painting in the tall grass on the far side. With less grace, she climbed over. They stood at the rear of their other neighbor’s property.
The bungalow belonged to Mr. Sotherby, an aging, divorced pilot who seemed to use his house as a quick pitstop to change clothes and head off again. A lawn care company took care of the property, at least until recently. Jack had never glimpsed the pilot out of uniform. Whenever they had seen him, he was rushing somewhere.
It occurred to Jack in that moment how he was so much like Douglas Oliver, as if they were the only family in The Neighborhood of Mysterious Old Bachelors.
There was something different about Jaimie now. His was not the usual dreamy, distracted stare. He was looking for something. His head was often cocked to one side (his bewildered cockatoo look, she called it.) Now he moved with purpose, his back straight. He gripped her forearm tightly, the same way she held him in pressing crowds. Now it was her son’s turn to lead her.
Then Jack heard something: A bicycle’s gear shift. Someone was out front of the house in the street. She peeked around the front corner of her empty house.
Bently steered in a circle, staring at the Spencer house. She pulled back quickly and prayed he missed her. In a blink, she’d had taken in all the information she needed. The rifle stood high in the bicycle’s handlebar basket. She had also spotted a red gas can stuffed in beside the rifle.
In trying to push a thought away, an idea is given more power and it comes for you, stronger and scarier. The image that popped up was of her children, on fire and screaming.
“Get out of here!” she heard. It was Oliver, yelling from his front lawn. “Go! Get away!”
She risked another look and saw that Bently now stood beside Oliver in the Bendham’s driveway. Bently dismounted, looking relaxed. Oliver whispered something, his gestures urgent. Bently nodded, got on his bike and pedaled away slowly, defiantly.
When Bently was out of sight, she leaned out to make sure the vulture was gone. She thought the old man had retreated back into Mrs. Bendham’s house but she was wrong. Douglas Oliver stared at her. Was he startled because he thought she’d done something wrong? Or had she seen something she was not supposed to see?
Oliver paused a moment and then steamed toward Jack and her son across the grass. She stood her ground, arms crossed in front of her chest. “What was that?”
“I told him to go away,” Oliver said. “I don’t know how long that will last.” His eyes searched hers. “I was right to get you to move into my house. That thug was casing your place.”
“He didn’t seem particularly mad at you,” Jack said.
“He wants me dead,” Oliver said. “He had the rifle.”
“He didn’t do anything.”
“He was here to check us out.”
Us? she thought. Is there really an us?
“He was here to intimidate. Bently wants us to know he hasn’t forgotten.”
“Of course not!”
“I’m trusting you, not because I’m sure I can but because I have no other choice.”
“I let you move into my house so you’d be safe! I am protecting you.”
“That better be true, Douglas.”
Jaimie pulled his mother away. Oliver stared after them, hands on hips.
The boy looked back at the old man, staring back, directly into Oliver’s eyes. Something wormed and wriggled in the old man’s bowels and he felt the sudden urge to urinate. His heart skipped a beat. Oliver felt a moment’s disorientation, like not quite enough oxygen could find its way to his brain.
Jaimie’s eyes were black stones from a cold alien planet. The old man felt a touch of fear.
When they come for us, hungry and red
“We have to go out on a mission,” Oliver announced.
Jack and Theo looked up together, surprised to find the old man standing at the entry to the living room.
“Still my house,” he said. Then, suddenly embarrassed by his own forthrightness, added, “Sorry if I intruded. I shoulda knocked.”
Theo gestured for Oliver to sit but the old man paced instead. “There’s more smoke to the southwest,” he said. “New smoke.”
“We’ve been discussing possibilities,” Jack said coolly.
The old man stopped and smiled. “It’s a bugger to figure out what we should take and how much of what. I mean, can we find gas along the way or should we just take as many gas cans as we can pack into and onto the van and just go with that?”
Theo shrugged. “I hope it doesn’t come to that…where we have to decide to abandon our home. Leaving it to go across the street has been enough of a hassle. I’m feeling a bit better and Jack and I were just discussing moving back home.” He looked to his wife. Jack had already told him about spotting Oliver talking with Bently. The old man, it seemed, was trying to proceed as if that hadn’t happened.
“I hope we don’t have to leave, either,” Oliver said. “I’m no farmer, but your farm might be the best option, Theo. Still, there’s an awful lot of smoke in the city, and dry woods and lots of wood houses between here and Maine for that matter…”
“Pray for rain,” Theo said. “And it’s my father’s farm. It’s been a long time since I was there. I don’t know what kind of shape it’s in.”
“But it’s remote, right?”
“As much as anything can be, I suppose…” Theo ended with a hacking cough and brought up something green and red and black into a rag. They had run out of tissues days ago.
Oliver continued, ignoring the interruption. “Remote is good. There are other farms that are much closer, no doubt, but with so many people pouring out of the cities, they’ll be headed to the rural areas. I don’t imagine whoever is left will be welcoming.”
“We could find a farm close by.” Jack squeezed Theo’s hand as he struggled to sit up and clear his lungs.
“I don’t think so. The farms will be overrun with gangs of city-dwellers looking for a safe place and taking what they want by force. I wonder how many little wars are going on as we speak, surviving farmers on one side, hungry refugees on the other?” Oliver allowed the enormity of his suggestion sink in. He looked shocked when Jack Spencer shook her head.
“Are we going to talk about Bently?” she asked.
“What is there to talk about?”
“The way you were talking to him…you looked casual about it.”
“I told him to go away.”
“He had a rifle in his bicycle basket but he didn’t use it on you.”
“Maybe he didn’t have any bullets. Maybe he realized I’m an old alpha dog and he shouldn’t fuss with me.”
Jack turned to her husband on the couch. “That’s a lot of maybes in a short space of time.”
“Jacqueline, what have I done that is so suspicious? The last we met Bently, I socked him in the face with cans of food to make him go away. The next time you see him, I’m telling him to go away. What else is there?”
“I don’t know what to think.”
“I think I’ve taken you into my home to protect you from him. Your family is safe here. I’ve done nothing but care for you people. If we’re going to survive this thing, we have to work together. Don’t you agree?”
Theo cleared his throat and spit into his rag again. “We’re grateful, Douglas. And yes, we will have to work together. Just so we all understand each other, everybody has to work together, right? Us with you…and you with us.”
“Of course. Which brings us to pressing business. I’m thinking of a proactive venture to solidify our alliance and get us a better chance of getting out of here. We need to go on a trip to the mall. A foraging mission. We should see what’s salvageable. You asked about bendy straws, for instance.”
Jack laughed in a climbing trill. “It’s kind of a risk just to get some straws, don’t you think? Besides, I thought the hordes had already cleaned out the mall.”
“Not everything is gone and it’s not about the straws specifically.” His guard slipped then and his irritation showed. “This is a survival situation. We need to do more reconnaissance and see what’s out there. We may find something we didn’t know we needed until we find it.”
He rearranged his face, aiming for reasonable and relaxed and not quite making it. “Besides, it’s only a few blocks and it’s for our tribe,” he said.
Jack and Theo looked at each other. “Tribe?”
“Look,” he said, “if we were suddenly transported to Gilligan’s Island with limited resources and hostile cannibals lurking around, you’d rearrange your priorities faster. You’d be thinking water, food, shelter, clothing. But we’re not marooned on an island. We’re in familiar houses while the ground changes beneath us. The worst that’s happened to you personally is a scary guy was rude to you, you moved in here and the power’s off.
“I’ve been fighting your inertia, trying to wake you up. If not for me, you’d be at the mercy of that hungry kook or you’d have burned through all your food by now. You’ve got to get out of your suburban self-satisfaction and get into survival mode, ’cause this is the rainy day everyone warns you about.”
“He’s right,” Anna descended the stairs, sat on the bottom step and hugged the bannister post. “Let’s go shopping. I can’t stay up in that room another minute. It’s time to take action and get more control over our situation.”
“I wouldn’t call it shopping, exactly, young lady,” Oliver said.
“Shopping. Looting. Whatever. Any excuse to go to the mall. Maybe we’ll find out what’s going on. Aren’t you just dying to find out what the hell’s going on? When I played soccer, the coach was always screaming that we had to assert, engage and attack to win. So let’s go win something.”
Jack stood. “Okay. Everybody who can carry something goes. Everyone else stays here and holds down the fort.” She looked at her husband meaningfully. “That’s you and Jaimie holding the fort.”
Anna shook her head. “Jaimie’s stronger than me and Mom put together.”
“Ah, fair youth,” Oliver said. “I was naturally strong when I was his age, too. We didn’t have gyms but for some reason we didn’t need them then.”
“He can carry heavy things just fine,” Anna assured her mother. “It’s the dictionaries that gives him those muscles.”
Anna pulled her mother aside. “I listened to the wind up radio early this morning.”
“Really? I gave up on it. When I first wound it up I thought it was kind of cool. Then winding it so often became too much of a bother.”
Anna gripped her arm harder. “Mom! Listen! I caught the end of a scary news report. It’s like London’s gone crazy.”
“We heard there were food riots. Supply lines to cities will be cut off — ”
“No! Worse than food riots. People attacking each other. The
reporter said people were eating each other, Mom!”
“It’s hard to believe things could go that sour. Look, we’ve heard all kinds of rumors since this thing started. Who reported this?”
“I don’t know. The signal went in and out.”
“Those are called skips. It’s a trick of the atmosphere bouncing radio signals around.” Jack put an arm around her daughter’s shoulder. “When I lived in Poeticule Bay as a girl, sometimes we caught skips of the Boston police radio on the stereo. If the atmosphere is just right, you can get anybody saying anything into a microphone. What you heard couldn’t have been from England, though. It was just a report of a report. The news has turned into an echo chamber. They sensationalize so much, we shouldn’t take what we hear too seriously.”
“This was real.” Anna looked as haunted as an old, broken house.
“Sweetie, on 9/11, rumors were reported as fact. First they said the attack on the Pentagon was a helicopter explosion. Everybody believed it. Then they said it was one of the planes. Then someone said it was a missile. Then we didn’t know what or who to believe anymore. Ever.”
“So, believe no one?”
“Believe me, Anna. We’re going to be okay. You know why? Because we’re going to assert, engage and attack our problems.”
Anna smiled. “Okay.”
Jack leaned closer and whispered, “But since you bring it up, don’t trust Mr. Oliver.”
“Why?”
“I don’t have real evidence, I suppose, but your dad and I have changed our minds about the old guy. We’ve decided to watch him more carefully. After this trip to the mall, and if the city’s fire burns itself out, I think we’ll move back home.”
Anna smiled wider. “I’m good with that. I want to sleep in my own bed. The one I’m in is lumpy.”
“Good. It’s decided then. And don’t worry. We’ll go to the mall and see what supplies we can find. If the old guy steps out of line, I’ll find some sweet and sour sauce packets in the food court and I’ll eat him myself, starting with his lying face.”
This Plague of Days (Omnibus): Seasons 1-3 Page 24
