by Steven Price
What’s going on? the old man said. Is the road closed?
We’ve had some trouble with looters, the taller man said. Where are you headed to?
We’re trying to find a missing girl.
Sure you are. This was the second man, the shorter one. His face was oily with sweat.
We’re going to have to ask you to step out of the vehicle.
Why?
The shorter man opened the door roughly. Get out, he said. His eyes were dark.
And what do we have here? the first man asked. A thick pale hand vanishing low into the footwell. He withdrew the old man’s rifle from beneath the seat, checked the chamber expertly. You got a licence for this?
It was destroyed in the quake, the old man said.
Sure it was, the shorter man said.
Shouldn’t be carrying this inside the vehicle. You know that.
Of course.
She leaned across, arms folded around her son. Who are you? she asked. Are you police?
That’s right. Police.
I want to see your identification, she said.
We’re not police, the first man said. He gave his companion a grim look. We got special dispensation. We’re stopping all the vehicles and checking for looters.
What special dispensation? she demanded.
The second man muttered something then.
What happened to your hand? the taller man asked.
She hurt it in the quake.
Sure she did, the shorter man said.
In the quake? Or breaking into a store?
Jesus Christ, she snapped. We don’t have time for this. I mean it.
But the shorter man swore then and he leaned in and hissed, Get out of the fucken truck.
Don’t get out of the truck, Anna Mercia said.
The old man unbuckled his seat belt. It’s alright, he said. I’ll just be a minute.
Arthur, she hissed.
But he climbed out and left the door standing open and a bell in the dashboard chiming. The first man came back to the truck and withdrew the keys from the ignition and took them with him. She said nothing. She could see through the windshield where the old man was being questioned at the front fender. In the waxen daylight his skin looked plastic. His shock of white hair plastered wetly at his neck.
Mason twisted in his seat, peered back over the ribbed leather. She heard the canopy open with a clatter and then the first man called across to his companion. Got a lot of food back here, he called. All sorts of things. Flashlights. Water.
When she turned back she saw a movement across the street. A third man lurked just beyond an open window. He had a gun trained on their truck. She swallowed nervously.
They’re not police, Mom, Mason whispered.
Hush, honey, she said. I know. Just stay quiet, okay?
He frowned. Arthur needs to know.
He knows, honey.
The old man came back to the cab and ducked his head in and gave her son an uneasy smile. It’s okay, he said. They want us to wait in the building over there. They just need to check some things.
No, she said firmly. Absolutely not. We’re not going anywhere.
His eyes were pained. Anna Mercia, he said.
I said no.
Think of Mason.
There was something in his voice. Then her door opened out and the shorter man stood there, studying her. Get out, he said flatly.
What are you going to do to us?
Get out, he said.
They got out.
The two men led them across the street towards a mound of rubble and then cut past two cars standing with their doors wide and their trunks popped and pieces of clothing strewn in the dirt. Just behind these stood a blue truck with a tarp crumpled on the ground and Anna Mercia stopped when she saw its cargo. She felt suddenly terrified.
What the hell is that? she said.
In the bed of the truck lay the sprawled corpses of a half-dozen people. Looking boneless and swollen. The old man coming up beside her swore softly and held his nose and shielded her son with his body. Some of the corpses were in a bad way, the flesh furred where it had started to come apart and laid out between the bodies were a number of mismatched human legs some still dressed in trouser leg and sock and shoe. A soft black wax of thickened blood had collected in the grooves of the floor and they could see where boots had smeared and tacked through it, where heads had dragged lolling. Anna Mercia stepped back holding her mouth. Her eyes watering.
Oh my god, she said. What are you going to do to us? She was shaking.
What is this? the old man demanded. What’s going on here?
The two men grinned at each other.
Relax, said the taller. Hey, take it easy. That’s on its way to Henderson Field.
The old man had pulled her son away.
Henderson Field, she said softly.
Come on, the shorter man said. It’s disgusting. Let’s go.
He led them into the apartment complex across the street and up a narrow flight of stairs to the third floor. Unlocked a battered green door and held it wide.
She followed the old man through. It was a small apartment. In the entrance lay piles of winter coats, empty wire hangers. The kitchen was small and dishevelled, a table and chairs toppled against one wall. The windows at the back had been boarded over. Toaster and microwave on the narrow counter, cupboards at all angles and tins cluttered and dishes smashed on the floor. In the sink were stacked old breakfast plates and she saw brown dregs of coffee crusted in the bottom and it seemed none had eaten there in days.
What is this place? she asked.
The shorter man grunted from the doorway. Wait here, he said. We’ll get you when we’re ready.
Ready?
But he had already closed the door. The scrape of a key in the lock, then the heavy tread of boots on stairs.
She tried the tap. It gasped dryly but no water came. Flies dead on the sills, dust on the shelves. She went to the closet door where it stood closed and she opened it and then stood listening. She could hear the old man moving in the next room and she went out to the living room and saw her son standing in the corridor.
She was frightened.
How much trouble do you think we’re in? she asked.
It’s not good.
She laughed bitterly. For god’s sake. Do I look shaken?
It’s okay Mom.
This was stupid. Stupid.
But it’s done, the old man said.
He sat in the gloom at the edge of a hardwood chair beside the television with his hands between bony thighs and his head lowered. She watched her son go to him and murmur some word and he put a tired hand on the boy’s shoulder. To her eye there seemed a thing conversant and alien between them which she could not comprehend. When at last he looked at her there seemed a fierce reproach in his eyes. His lined face drained and grey, his eyes sunken with the strain.
Don’t look at me like that, she said.
Like what.
Like this is my fault.
The ceiling creaked as if some footfall faltered there. The building felt huge and dark and silent.
This isn’t your fault, Anna Mercia.
That’s right, she said angrily, it isn’t. She crossed to the front window and tried to lift the pane but it had been painted shut. Through the greasy glass she could make out three men hauling the old man’s provisions from their truck. A fourth leaned into the cab, rooted under the seats.
They’re taking your stuff, she said.
Yes.
Then her eye was drawn to a low doorway across the street. The shorter man with the gun was speaking to another figure and then that figure turned and peered up towards her where she stood. Even at that distance she could make out the bandaged head, the gauze over the punctured eye, the black beard. His uneasy limp as he moved to one side.
Oh my god, she whispered.
It was the barber.
What is it? the old man asked in alarm. What’s going on?
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br /> But when she looked again she was not so sure. The man had turned and limped back into the building and he had seemed somehow too large, too bulky. The shorter man with the gun was crossing the street towards their building and she turned now to the battered apartment door.
We have to go, she said. We can’t wait here.
The old man wrinkled his brow.
What do they want? Mason asked.
Lower your voice, son.
What do they want.
Whatever we have, I suppose.
She could see her blue hands trembling. Arthur, she said. We have to go. I mean it.
How?
She crossed back into the kitchen, began to rummage through the drawers. Help me, she muttered angrily. Then she was prying at the hammered boards over the back window with a butter knife. Goddamnit, she hissed.
The old man wrapped his big hands around a loose board, pulled, straining.
Goddamnit, she hissed again.
And then the boards were breaking off and swinging on their crooked nails and she was smashing out the broken glass with a pastry roller.
Mason, she called. Get over here. Get through here. Go on.
And then they were slipping down the metal fire escape, the rusted bolts groaning softly, their shoes clanking on the rungs. Jumping the last few feet to the sidewalk. Running.
Mason gets it from me, I’d say. He always was watchful, had such a sense of trespass, a compass for betrayal. Not Kat. When she was little she loved animals, cats, birds, fish, dogs in the street. She gets that from her father. Mason would scream blue murder if a dog came near him. I don’t know how Kat got so quiet, she wasn’t like that as a baby. It’s hard. They’re both stubborn, they get that from me. Mason’s the sensitive one. Kat can be emotional but I think it’s because she doesn’t feel things as deeply. She’s the optimist. She’s always been popular. It’ll be hard for her as she gets older, she’s so beautiful. I think of those sullen girls who haunt shopping malls, defiantly smoking, flashing their pierced bellies. There’s this way of undoing you that can feel almost physical, this attempt to hollow you out. I’m not talking about sex, never mind about sex. It can be done so delicately you don’t even realize something’s been taken from you. I want to keep that away from her but I know it’s not up to me. That frightens me something awful.
A girl was found murdered out in the woods last June. Two boys from her school did it. They burned her body, I don’t know why. I guess to make it harder to catch them. Who does a thing like that? I unfolded the Times-Colonist one morning to see the face of the murdered girl, heavily made up, hair in an elegant bun. It was obviously a graduation photo, something taken on a day of great importance. I hated that they’d used that picture. That they’d taken such a precious moment and linked it forever to her death. I guess they wanted her at her best, I can understand that. Jesus. Sometimes it gets so exhausting, reading the news in the mornings. I laid the paper on the table, set my coffee aside, brought my brow down to rest against its cool print. The pages smelled faintly of dust and ink. I was thinking of that girl. I don’t know. I don’t know.
Mason came in and I raised my face, smiled. He stood on his toes to reach the cupboard with the cereal, his face straining with the effort. I watched him get out his blue bowl and his dented spoon, pull a brown place mat from the drawer. He’s a good kid. You forget it sometimes. He was humming to himself, some tuneless little song, drawing out the last notes.
And then he sat down beside me, like he belonged nowhere else, and I wanted to cry.
They ran. In a whorl of streets, alleys, doorways, they ran, and then she saw nothing not her feet not her own hand wiping the dirt from her face. Not the ugly swaddled skull of the barber in that open door. Not the glister of sweat on his arms. She gasped, the sharp edges of masonry scraping her ribboned shirt. The shush of the old man’s pale cloth, the cool of Mason’s hand in her own. Not her little girl. Oh her little girl. When Mason stumbled she drew him up and his shoes clattered echoing off the pavement. The old man had come to a stop.
What is it? she hissed. The galloping of her own heart. Her son’s shallow breaths.
There, Lear whispered. Across the street.
Is it them? Mason asked.
Lear shook his head. I don’t think so.
A figure in a long dark coat was picking his way along the sidewalk. He peered down the street both directions then disappeared into a tall apartment complex.
They’ll know we’re gone by now.
Do you think they’ll follow us?
He frowned. I don’t know. I doubt it. I guess it depends on what they were going to do.
You mean to us.
I mean to us.
Mason, she grimaced. Get up.
I’m up.
We need to keep going.
I know. She closed her eyes. She closed her eyes and thought of her daughter, buried. Thought of her plunging downward. How she must have awakened choking in blackness. A panic in her. The sharp rubble gouging her cheek and how she must have cried.
Anna Mercia?
She opened her eyes. I’m ready.
Sometimes she imagined her daughter buried alone and sometimes she imagined her with a friend. But always she saw her little girl’s knees folded back, the soles of her soft feet atlasing hard a chunk of wall. Her small heart battering in its cavity of blood amid the creaking of her own flesh. The hot webbing of her fingers in the dirt.
And too sometimes she would imagine the strong hands lifting her out, into the blaring light. Away from where she had been. Where she still might be.
They saw no one else for many hours. The doors of the grocers and corner stores they passed had been broken or pried back and the windows smashed in. The old man went from shop to shop peering in and at last he stopped, gave her an anxious glance, slipped inside. He came out looking grim.
Nothing?
It’s what I thought. The shelves are empty, everything’s already been taken.
I’m starving, Mason said.
She put her hand on the back of his neck. But you found something.
Lear’s lips whitened. No.
It is something. What is it.
Her son was rolling an iron cross-hatched bar with the toe of his shoe. Was it dead people?
Lear glanced at the boy and then at her. His grey eyes were dark.
Oh god, she murmured. That’s awful. It’s been four days.
He nodded and glanced at the sky as if only just noticing it. It’s so quiet, he muttered.
It is.
I’m sure there are people around. We just don’t see them.
They were walking again. Mason slipping easily ahead, peering into the locked cars as they passed. We shouldn’t have let them take our truck, he called back to them.
No.
Or our food.
Mason. Be careful.
Her son gave her a look.
Just then Lear hissed at her and she glanced across at him.
What?
His brows drew down into a dark knot and he gestured ahead, past Mason.
A large black dog stood with its long tongue loose in its jaws, watching her son. It lifted its snout, turned, studied her and Lear.
Mason, she called sharply.
Her son stopped, peered back.
It’s not alone, Lear said quietly.
She felt the skin on the back of her neck prickle. What do you mean?
I saw a different dog following us before. A yellow one.
What do they want?
He gave her a look.
She shook her head. It’s only been four days, Arthur. They can’t be wild already.
And what do you think they’ve been eating for four days?
Mason, she called again. Mason. Come here.
Her son wandered back towards her swinging the iron bar. They moved on through the empty streets and after a while she saw a second black dog join the first. The two dogs did not approach, simply moved along loose-l
imbed and silent in their wake.
Why don’t they bark? she asked uneasily. They’re so quiet.
Just leave it alone, Lear said. Just walk. As if you know where you’re going.
What is it? Mason asked. Is it the dogs?
Yes, honey.
Stop looking back so much, Lear said. Mason. I said stop looking.
Mason swung back around.
They crossed a small parking lot and kicked through the weeds of a closed electronics outlet and turned into the nearest street. It was narrow and cluttered with rubble and the old man swore softly when he saw it and then just stood with one hand on his forehead and stared up the road in each direction. The sun had slid behind a screen of smoke and in its red light his face looked drained and grim.
Where exactly are you leading us? she asked.
Are they still behind us?
Yes, Mason said.
There was rubble in the street where the wall of a warehouse had slewed out over the shells of parked cars and they clambered over chunks of masonry and crushed windshields aching with the exertion. When Anna Mercia paused she could hear the click of claws on stone.
I hear it too, Lear murmured. Just keep going.
The going was slow. Low buildings in disrepair stood close to the road and cast them in darkness, in sudden light, as they passed the gaps where walls once stood. Her boots slid in the loose mortar and gravel and then she was down the hill of rubble and climbing up over a car and ascending another pile.
Mason, she murmured. Mason, honey. Come on.
Then some dark thing slid past at the edge of her vision and she turned.
Arthur, she called out uneasily. Did you see that?
But Lear had passed from sight and she took her son by the wrist and scrambled after him. She could feel eyes boring into her back and when she reached the rise and looked down she saw Lear staring back at her from below. His back pressed up against the fender of a half-buried car.
Then she looked back and saw it. A large yellow dog was watching her. It bared its teeth and loped loosely towards her.
Don’t run, Lear called up. Just come very slowly down.
She could feel her son trembling beside her.
A smaller brown dog had materialized to their right. It barked once then studied them with yellow eyes. Two more dogs appeared at their left. She kept her head high and turned her face very slightly to keep the dogs in her line of sight. The yellow dog stopped short and swung its wet snout from side to side as if catching some scent. Then it came again forward along the ridge of the rubble.
