It’s morning, but just barely. I open the front door, and there are a dozen people gathering around a communal table that sits in the middle of the courtyard. The sun is just starting to come up, and there’s still a chill in the air.
Willie sees me standing in the doorway and waves me over to the table.
“Thought I’d have to come wake you up.”
“Heard you through the door.” I pick a bit of sleep from the corner of my eye.
“Sorry about that. We’re kind of creatures of habit around here. Breakfast is at sunrise. We’ll eat lunch right close to noon. Dinner is as the sun starts to set.”
“You’ll get used to it,” a woman looks up from the table and tells me.
Willie steps away, and I follow. He starts making introductions, and I start making small talk. It feels like an early morning post-apocalyptic cocktail party.
I share “where were you when …” stories with each person I meet, and it strikes me just how similar everyone’s story is. We were all at home the night the sky began to fall. We all gathered ourselves quickly and found safety. Almost to a person we found others to cast our lots with. Now, none of this was a guarantee of survival, especially after the wailers emerged. But almost everyone who survived had this story. The people who tried to go it alone, who holed themselves up someplace and tried to ride out the collapse of society by themselves didn’t make it.
More and more people are getting up and joining our breakfast party. There’s conversation and laughter. There’s plans being made for the day ahead. There are people going about morning duties--gathering things for the coming meal, straightening and cleaning from the night before. There’s organization and community.
I look back to my apartment just as the door opens. Caroline steps out, and I raise an arm and wave my hand to get her attention. She scans the courtyard for a moment before she gives a wave to acknowledge that she’s seen me.
“You weren’t going to wake me?” she asks when she gets close enough for me to hear.
“You needed the rest. But I would have woken you before food was served.”
She’s taking in the scene, the activity, when a bell rings. The small groups that had been having polite conversations break up, and everyone heads to the table. They all take direct routes to specific seats, like they’ve been assigned.
Caroline and I go to the far end of the table and stand. Willie joins us.
“Looks like we need two more, huh?” Willie calls to a young man and puts two fingers in the air. The kid turns and runs into an open apartment. He appears a second later with two more chairs. He brings them to us and slides them under the table. We both sit.
The last time I was sitting like this, in a chair and at a table was the night everything collapsed. I’d been on a date. We’d gone to a little Italian place a few blocks from my apartment. Good pizza. Great pasta. The tables were covered in red and white checkerboard tablecloths, like something you’d see in a movie. That’s my last real meal--real plates, real place settings, at a table. Everything since then has been whatever I can find eaten from my lap.
There’s chatter around us, the kind of easy conversation that happens between friends. After a couple of moments two large cast iron pans are brought out and sat in the middle of the table. Eggs.
Plates are passed from the far end of the table, and everyone takes one. Forks and napkins are next. Once everyone has a place setting a young woman who I hadn’t seen yet stands and says “Let’s pray.”
She says a grace that feels old and is clearly familiar to everyone here. A chorus of “amens” are said then the skillets are passed. Everyone loads their plates. A basket of something comes from one of the apartments a few moments later. It’s also passed. As it gets near me I see that it’s tomatoes. Everyone in front of me is taking a whole one so I do too.
I start to eat then see Willie stand with his plate. He comes and sits next to me and Caroline.
“Sleep well?”
Caroline never stops eating, just vigorously nods her response to Willie’s question.
Willie watches both of us eat. “Still hungry, I see.” He’s smiling.
Caroline nods.
“Regular food in large amounts. I don’t know that I’d even care what’s on the plate so long as it’s warm.”
Willie begins to eat. “I never understood this city chicken thing. Why would you want to be an urban farmer like that? Now, though … It keeps me fed.”
“The tomatoes?” I ask.
“We somehow got lucky enough to have a few green thumbs in our group. We’ve got a pretty robust garden behind the building. They like tending to it, and I like eating the fruits of their labor. So it works out.”
Willie laughs at his joke as I scoop the last of the eggs off my plate. Caroline has already pushed hers to the middle of the table, empty.
“You always eat like this? As a … family?”
Willie’s mouth is full of eggs, but he still says: “Communal.”
He finishes chewing then continues. “It’s not because we all love each other. It’s practical more than anything. When we first started gathering up here we just let everyone worry about themselves. People could come and go. It wasn’t a lot different than before the attack. Then the wailers came, and the wall went up as necessary protection.”
“Salvation,” the woman next to Caroline says.
“For sure,” Willie says. “For some. But for others it was opportunity. They started throwing their weight around, bullying others for food. This place became some kind of school yard for them. So we dealt with them and created some new rules. The biggest was around meals. Food is shared. Three times a day we gather like this and eat together.”
“Plus it’s kind of nice,” the woman next to Caroline adds. “It’s a chance to get out of your own head for a bit.”
She extends her hand to Caroline. “Hi. I’m Grace.”
Grace looks to be a bit older than Caroline. The two of them begin talking. After a couple of moments they get up from the table together.
I turn toward Willie.
“You like to hunt?” he asks.
“Never been.”
“Think you’d like it? Because I’m going out in a bit if you wanted to join me.”
My family hunted, some of them. But it’s not something that my dad ever taught me and my brother to do. We went fishing enough for me to realize that I wasn’t any good at it. But Willie’s asked and it feels rude to say no, that I’d rather just stay here and sleep and mooch off his generosity, so I tell him: “Sure. I’ll go.”
“Great. Bring a gun, just in case. I’ll come get you soon.”
Others are already leaving the table, carrying their plates to a tub that’s positioned at the opposite end from where I’m seated. I carry my plate there too. Those still at the table smile and nod their greetings as I pass.
Back in the apartment, I lay back down on the couch and close my eyes again. I’ve just about drifted off when Caroline comes in.
“Make a friend?” I ask and sit up.
“Yeah,” Caroline says. “Maybe.”
She drops down onto the cushions next to me.
“So…” I let that hang in the air.
“So, what?”
“After a good night’s sleep and a smart breakfast, what are you thinking today?”
“I think it’s nice to have a roof and regular food,” she says.
“Agreed, and these people …”
Caroline interrupts me. “But it doesn’t change anything for me. It’s great that we are getting a chance to recover some, gather our strength, but I’m still going to get to McKinney. That’s my goal. This is just a pit stop.”
I’d thought that this would be a pit stop too. Willie had just saved us, so we owed him. Plus, I expected some rough camp set up in a clearing. Fires built inside of a stone circle, like something from when I was in Boy Scouts. I hadn’t expected organization. I hadn’t expected a roof over my head or enough people that I’
d have to count them on two hands. I hadn’t expected community. I wasn’t sure I was going to be happy with this just being a pit stop. We may have stumbled onto home. That’s what I want to tell Caroline, but I can’t figure out a way for it not to sound completely selfish.
So, instead I just nod while she’s speaking and say, “We’ll get you there. I promise.”
FOUR
Willie knocks on the door and interrupts my conversation with Caroline.
“It’s Willie,” I tell her quickly. “He wants me to go hunting. You mind?”
I’m asking her like she has some say in what I do. Seeking her permission to go. She gives me a weird look, but this is the first time we’ll have been apart since we left Fair Park. If she’s not comfortable with it, I’ll stay.
“No, you weirdo. It’s fine. Go.”
I give her an awkward thumbs up, and it feels like everything has changed now. Our team, once so focused on a single goal, is at cross purposes. For her, nothing is different. But for me, now I’m not sure.
Willie knocks again. Caroline shifts her weight on the couch and points at the door. “Your girlfriend is waiting.”
“Shut up,” I tell her. I open the door and Willie slaps a shotgun to my chest with a meaty hand.
“I know you said you had a sidearm, but take this.”
He looks over my shoulder and tells Caroline: “I’ll have him back in a few hours.”
“You kids be safe,” she says. She laughs at her own joke. I pull the door closed behind me.
I follow Willie across the camp and out the open gate in the wall. We walk back through the neighborhood where we originally met Willie. He moves fast, and I have to work hard to keep up.
“Where we headed?” I ask.
He points off to his right. “About a half mile that way. There’s a creek that runs through a neighborhood. Mostly overgrown now, but that means the animals are returning. I set some traps the other day. It’s actually where I was coming from when I found you and Caroline.”
“Trapping what?”
“We aren’t particular, but we usually get rabbits.”
Willie cuts through a yard and across a four-lane street without looking for a homeowner or oncoming traffic. That still feels weird. Old habits, I suppose. Stick to the sidewalk so no one can come out shaking a fist and asking you to get off their lawn. Look both ways before crossing a street so you aren’t flattened by a bus because you weren’t paying attention and become some kind of warning that people tell kids about. But Willie just goes, walking confidently wherever he chooses.
I stand a little taller and push my shoulders back. Even if I don’t feel as confident as he does, I can fake it.
“You aren’t worried about anyone else getting into your traps?”
“I hadn’t thought about it, really. Think I should be?”
“I guess I was thinking about wailers more than other actual people.”
We cut through the backyard of a house. It’s overgrown now, but you can see that it was once cared for. There are flowers near the house. There’s a seating area near the back of the yard. Two chairs sit on a base of paver stones that are doing their best to fight against nature. A hammock, stained a light brown by the weather, sits just behind. Willie seems to not notice any of it.
He hops the fence at the back of the yard in a single smooth move. I do the same with not near the grace.
“You said wailers. Is that what you call them?”
“The creatures? Yeah. We call them wailers. Why? What do you call them?”
“We call them ‘them.’ I guess we never bothered to come up with a better name.” He pauses. “But we can go with wailers.”
We walk along the bank of a small creek. The grasses that grow near the water are shushing against our pant legs. Water trickles its way to wherever this creek empties into. Bugs buzz about. We walk long enough for the houses that were on our right have disappeared, the creek twisting one way and the developers building in another.
Willie puts up a hand, and I stop. He points toward a thick-trunked tree. “Over here,” he says. “First trap.”
A pickle bucket lays on its side, the lid loosely closed over the top of it. Willie opens the lid and staring back from the other side is a rabbit.
Willie lifts the bucket by the handle and follows the creek bank a few dozen feet to another bucket. This one is still open, the lid is wired to shut quickly once the handmade trigger that’s deep in the bucket is activated. Willie is using some kind of greenery as bait. He eases the bait off the trigger, and the lid snaps shut on his arm. WIllie winces then pulls his hand free. He inspects the his bait. It’s leaves of some kind, and they’ve clearly been at least snacked upon.
Willie resets the trap, and we check two more set up in the same area. Another has a trigger that failed even though the bait had been disturbed.
“We are still trying to figure these things out,” he says as he tries to steady his hands enough to set the trigger. “Make them too steady and they fail. Make them too sensitive and they snap shut on their own.”
Willie walks to the next trap, this one with the lid closed. He peeks inside and smiles. He looks up to me.
“But we’re getting there.” He pulls the lid off and pulls a rabbit out. He drops it into the first bucket with the other rabbit then goes to resetting the trap.
Willie stands. He looks happy. Satisfied. Maybe proud. And why not? He’s just caught two rabbits. I don’t know what kind of stockpile they have back at their camp, but he’s going to be able to feed everyone there at least one more day. Providing like that has to be satisfying.
“So, you want to see something?”
It’s a question a 12 year old would ask. Or someone who is feeling confident about himself. He’s puffed up and ready to brag. And since I’ve got nothing but time to kill and am at Willie’s mercies anyway, I say “Sure.”
“Then follow me.” Willie steps down the bank and across the creek. The water is deep, and comes most of the way to my knee. It’s also running mostly clear. This creek is spring fed. It’s not some glorified drainage ditch that is mostly sewage or rainwater runoff. A spring-fed creek could have fish.
We step out and up the other bank, and I call out to Willie: “You know what we just passed through, right?”
“Yes,” he shouts over his shoulder. “I know what a creek is. Thanks, Nature Joe.”
“That’s a spring-fed creek. There could be fish in there. In case your traps ever stop working.”
Willie is unimpressed. Maybe he doesn’t like fish. But I’m filing this away. We now have another food source.
Willie stops walking and waits for me to catch up. I’ve followed him halfway across a wide open right of way that’s cut in half by industrial sized power lines. The wires sag and hang loose from the towers. I’m sure at one time they sparked and created quite the light show. Today, though, they just droop and sway in the breeze, like giant, emaciated willow trees.
Willie points across the field to another bank of trees. “Just through there,” he says. “You’ll hear it before you see it. But when you see it …” He doesn’t finish his sentence. It’s too hard to talk through a smile that big.
“What is it, Willie?”
He gently claps his hands three times then says, “You’ll see.”
He begins walking again, a bounce in his step that gets more pronounced the closer we get to the trees. I’m following again. He puts a hand up, and I stop. He waves a finger for me to get closer then crouches close to the ground, hiding himself mostly behind a fallen log. I kneel down and rest an arm on the log, and that’s when I first hear it.
It sounds like water sizzling across a hot pan.
“What is that?” I ask. “Where’s it coming from?”
Willie points across the top of the log. “It’s over there. It’s wailers. Well, pre-wailers really.”
Willie sees the confusion across my face. He stands and starts looking in all directions, leaning out
like he’s about to cross a street. Once he’s satisfied that it’s safe, he steps out from behind this log. He waves for me to follow, and I do.
After a few steps the ground falls away from us into a deep hole. It looks like a crater created by one of the boulders that fell on the night of the initial attack. Water filled the bottom of the hole and came almost to the top of what looks like eggs--opaque, gelatinous eggs. They pulse in some kind of strange and disgusting rhythm.
The water around these eggs bubbles and boils.
“What is …” I can’t finish my sentence.
“We think it’s a kind of incubator. Where the wailers are born.”
“But the wailers are people, were people. How do they get here? Inside of these … whatever they are?”
“I don’t know. Something brings them. Something compels them. I just know that this thing is always full.”
We watch the eggs do their dance for few more minutes then, Willie: “Let’s keep going. Just thought you might want to see that.”
“Yeah,” I say. I did want to see it. I didn’t know I did, but I did. “Thanks.”
Willie hurries back to the trees that we passed through a few minutes earlier. I look for the sun. It’s nearly directly above us. Near noon. Explains why I’m getting hungry.
“So, this is the easy part,” Willie says and reaches into the canvas bag he’s slung across his back. He pulls out a second bag, one that’s been wadded into a ball. He hands it to me, and says “Start picking.”
“What are we looking for?”
“Ideally, dandelion. But anything that’s broad-leafed is good. It will all cook down.”
I grab handfuls of whatever is at my feet and hold it up for WIllie to inspect.
“This good?” I ask.
He gives it a quick look. “Yeah. That’s the stuff.”
I shove the greens into my bag and reach for another. “This what we ate last night?”
Willie doesn’t look up. “It’s what we eat every night.”
We pick in silence for a couple of minutes, the leaves tinting my hand a light green. My back isn’t used to this posture. I haven’t been stooped long, but I’m beginning to feel an ache near my waist. It’s manageable, though, especially if it means I’m doing real work, something beyond fighting to survive.
The Road North Page 4
