OUTPOURING: Typhoon Yolanda Relief Anthology

by Dean Francis Alfar

  That night we packed our bags and headed out. It was time to get away from the city, what remained of the city, at least for awhile.

  #

  The log cabin sat on an island, barely more than a sandbar, in the middle of the Brazos River. Raymond had chosen the spot as we followed one of the few remaining roads. We needed a summer retreat, a place to figure things out.

  It was Raymond who explained how the native tribes had given a name to even the smallest piece of earth. Later, the Spanish explorers added their own words.

  “Brazos means the arms of God,” Raymond said that first day as he dragged our worn, green canoe up onto the banks.

  We’d managed three weeks together on this small patch of earth. Three weeks of walking along the path to the river for water. Three weeks of watching the night sky through the elms and cedars. Three weeks without cars, or computers or the blaring of the morning alarm clock. Three weeks without a single word from Raymond’s book. Perhaps there was still something left.

  Each night I headed down to the river to collect the water for our cooking pot and morning coffee. Some nights Raymond came with me, but most nights he stayed behind, staring up at the rough boards that made up our cabin walls. Reading the grain he called it, as though this activity was a reasonable substitute for his months of recitation.

  Tonight, I stood beside the river. Alone.

  I listened to the river rage against its banks while I picked out the constellations: Sagittarius, Ursa Major, the bright prick of Saturn against the edges of Virgo. I couldn’t find Hercules. Its fourteen stars were missing from the center of the evening sky. On the opposite bank of the river, I saw cottonwoods and silver maples, a few willows cascaded down toward the water. It was hard to tell what else remained. I hadn’t seen another human being in days.

  A place that holds all of creation.

  I turned toward the path and the shadows that made up the low-rising blackberry brambles and twisted branches that led back to our cabin. My arms had started to ache. In my left hand, I held the red, plastic bucket full of river water, in my right the gallon jug.

  I started forward through the brush that edged over the path, heading toward the small clearing that encircled our cabin. The only light came from the single lantern that gleamed from the cabin’s windows. It made me think of lighthouses and rocky shores. Ships lost in the night. A gust of wind tugged at my hair. Somewhere behind me the branches of the pines and oaks whispered as the wind bent against them. As I neared the cabin, I could hear something else as well. Raymond’s voice. A litany of words were pouring out: nabusiʔaipʉ, dream, nanakwʉʉhtʉ, marry, naraʔurakʉtʉ, learn.

  “Raymond,” I called out.

  “Nasuwatsirʉ,” I heard Raymond say. “Forget.”

  I dropped the bucket and the jug. My lips tingled but no sounds came out. Remember, I thought. Remember. Remember. Teal Blue. Letters from Sophie. Remember Lucy Costa. Gardner and his nails clicking against the floorboards. Remember.

  The cabin stood in front of me. The lantern still in the window. Raymond’s voice. He was still speaking.

  “Raymond,” I said. “Raymond, you promised!”

  There was a moment of silence, even the trees seemed to pause. All I could hear was my own breath, and the pitter-patter of my heart against my chest. And then the cabin door swung open. Raymond stood in the doorway, smiling. The glow from the lantern surrounded his body like a halo. His shape was a dark shadow in the middle of all that light.

  “Valerie, it’s okay,” Raymond began. “I’ve figured out a way—”

  I didn’t give him a chance to finish. Who knew what words he’d say next? “Raymond, I want—I need to go home.”

  “What does home mean anyway?” Raymond’s voice was soft. He was silent for a moment and then he took a few steps forward. We looked at each other. No more than ten feet separated the two of us. His lips didn’t move, but something had changed. Had I dropped the bucket? I couldn’t remember what else my hands had held. Something… Had my fingers always been so bare? I could feel them, lost words unraveling in the silence. The unmaking.

  Raymond took a step toward me and then another. The two of us were now standing less than a foot apart, surrounded by the darkness.

  “What do you see up there?” Raymond asked.

  I tilted my head back, following the outline of his arm as he pointed up toward the sky.

  “Clouds,” I said. “It’s going to rain.” But even then I knew. The sky was too dark. I could remember some things. There had been stars just minutes before. I was sure of it, even if I could no longer recall their names. There was no rain. There were no clouds. The sky was empty. The stars were gone and with them the planets. The heavens. Not even Venus, the morning star, had managed to maintain her place.

  “Home,” I said, “Sofa. Car. Childhood. Mother.” I tried to guide my memories back and with them all the words that had lost their meaning: city and bicycle, lover and friend, Saturn, Venus, the fingernail sliver of the moon.

  I wanted to take all those words back in, envelope them in my open arms, embracing each and every one.

  Arms, I thought. Raymond.

  And then those words slipped away as well, replaced by absolute nothing.

  Fresh Fruit for Rotting Corpses

  By Yvette Tan

  Someone once asked me where I wanted to be doing when the end of the world came.

  I said: I want to be cooking.

  #

  It was easy to tell that she was fresh, her skin still supple, her lips not yet having turned gray. She looked alive, the open wound in her neck, with bits of meat and bone peeking out, the only telltale sign that she might be otherwise. She was rooting around—we assumed for food, those things always seem to want to do nothing but eat—in a trash heap when we found her. She was alone, a rare thing since the dead, for some reason, like to wander around in packs. Like Erwin used to say, people are like sheep, doesn’t matter if they’re dead or alive.

  Erwin subdued her, no problem. The dead may be strong, even if they’re by themselves, but Erwin was always bigger and stronger than the average guy, so it was no trouble to pin her down, take his cleaver and hack her head off. I always admired Erwin’s prowess with the butcher’s knife. I’m no slouch at knifework but my skill comes from the training I got in culinary school. Erwin’s is pure talent, coupled with working in his mom’s wet market meat stall since he was 13. He held her head face-down with his left hand, his body over hers, his knee pressed against her back, ignoring the slow, almost mechanical flail of her arms while I held her feet to keep her from kicking.

  One hack and it was over, Erwin getting up, holding the head by long dark hair that shone smooth in the sun. You could tell that she took good care of herself when she was alive. Clothes that fit right, hair that looked like it saw a lot of the inside of the beauty salon. The kind of person that had enough dough to book a room at the Orchid Hotel, where I used to work before all this happened. Not that any of that mattered now. Her nice clothes were ruined. Her expensive shoes, scuffed. We didn’t even bother to take her jewelry. None of that had any use. Not for cash, not for barter, not even for ornamentation. When you have a heard of the dead coming after you, you don’t want to be wearing anything that can be pulled by a dead hand. I let go of the woman’s legs. Erwin gave me a look and I nodded. Together, we made our way back to the base.

  Our “base” is really Aling Lucing, a restaurant near the railroad tracks Erwin and I used to frequent up until last year, when all of this started. It’s an institution here in Angeles City, the pride of the province of Pampanga. On the outside, it looks—looked—the same as all the other restaurants along railroad row, all of them turo-turo, open-air, canteen-style eateries where customers picked the food that they wanted, paid, and waited for their meal to be brought to their table. Aling Lucing’s was named after the proprietor, a hero around these parts, the lady who put Angeles City on the Philippine foodie trail.

  Pampang
a cuisine has always had the reputation of being one of the best in the country, but it wasn’t until Aling Lucing came along that people really started to take notice. By some accounts, she wasn’t a phenomenal cook—just good enough to run a fairly successful restaurant—but she invented a dish that became a star in mainstream Filipino cuisine.

  The train tracks weren’t far from where we found the woman, but it took some time getting back to Aling Lucing’s. You had to move slowly, had to always be on the lookout. The dead were smarter than they looked, and we weren’t sure of what they were capable of doing yet. All we knew was that they could sense movement, detect strong odors, hear loud noises. That was enough to make us weary. After they appeared, when we lost our city, we learned to hide in the shadows, to walk without sound. We learned to take heed of the direction the wind was blowing and if we happened to be downwind, to find a buffer. This was easy, as the city was full of trash. The city has always been full of trash, a bane and an eyesore whose stench would later save lives by helping to mask the smell of the living from the dead. We became scavengers, a skill that only a few people had to learn because most Filipinos lived below the poverty line and were used to looking through the garbage for sustenance. We learned to become killers. But how can you kill something that is already dead?

  It took us almost an hour to make a trip that would normally take ten minutes. The chairs we had piled against the back door (more to signal us if anyone had entered than to actually keep anyone out) were still there. We gently pulled them away, stacking them neatly to one side before slipping inside.

  Trying to stay alive in a world where the dead want to eat you is, like a friend who used to work at the local TV station used to say, a production number. Like a television variety show, there are numerous things to constantly consider, the smallest nuances to watch out for, the most obscure clues to remember. Life is never easy if you’re prey.

  We closed the door, bolted it, secured it with a sturdy metal table. We’d outfitted the inside of the restaurant to the best of our specifications, clearing out space for sleeping and slowly bringing in scavenged items for use. Not that there was much to find. The looting was terrible when things started, people breaking windows, walking into stores and taking items, the employees either having run out long before or actually leading the way.

  Here’s the thing about the looting: when the end of the world finally arrived, when the news anchors warned that people should stock up on the necessities—canned goods, bullets—people didn’t. When panic-buying stopped and the looting started, the first items to go were the luxuries. Flat screen TVs, entertainment systems, designer shoes, bags. They say the Hermes store in Makati got cleaned out faster than the nearby restaurants. It took a while for reality to sink in, for people to realize that things weren’t going to go back to what they were; that the world had become a very, very dangerous place.

  By that time, the grocery stores, the 7/11s and Mini Stops, the cafes, restaurants, hotel kitchens, even the neighborhood sari-sari stores that sold everyday sundries such as coffee and vinegar had been emptied out by smarter people, mostly folks who had lived with too little for too long, folks who knew the signs of oncoming famine, and knew that they had to be smart and ruthless to stay alive. Also by this time, the streets were thick with the walking dead, so that even just stepping outdoors was a threat to your life. People who locked themselves in high up in condominiums couldn’t open their windows for the stench of the dead clustered below.

  Still, we were luckier than a lot of countries. Being third-world meant that we were used to a certain level of discomfort, a lack of things wealthier countries might call necessities. Many of us, especially those from the lower classes, could live on less food, not get sick on dirty water. So many of us survived. We learned to kill the already dead, reasoning to ourselves that they were no different from the pigs and cows and chickens we slaughtered in the wet markets, cut up on our chopping blocks. We closed our eyes as we battered, impaled, beheaded people we knew, saw everyday on the elevator, worked with in the office, slept beside every night. The stronger of us—some would say the more heartless—would keep their eyes open as they delivered that final blow. There’s something in the eyes, they say, a final flicker of recognition, of humanity, just before they glazed over and the body dropped for the last time. It was, they say, the soul set free. That’s bull. The ramblings of lost souls trying to make sense of a lost cause. There is no soul in a dead body. You are dead because you were fatally wounded or had a disease or were bitten by a zombie. When you rise undead, it’s not because some demon has held your soul captive. You rise because a sickness commands you to. It is a scarred world indeed, where even the dead are sick.

  That’s the world we have to live in now, Erwin and I. And we make do any way we can.

  I checked and rechecked our fortifications while Erwin got to work with the head, carefully washing it with some water that we had collected during the last rainfall. When I was sure that we were safe, I stood beside my friend to watch.

  Erwin doesn’t say much these days. Time was we could talk nonstop for hours. In grade school, Erwin was always getting into trouble for opening his mouth. And it wasn’t just that his tales were fascinating. He drew you in too, made you spill your guts, made you feel important. Erwin, he could make a chatterbox out of the shyest wallflower. That was how he charmed Rosa, his wife. Sat beside her in grade three and talked her ear off, then leaned in to listen when she finally spoke, her voice soft, a natural whisper. He never told anyone, not even me, what she had said to him that one day, but they had been inseparable since. First as friends, then lovers, then man and wife. They stayed together even when Erwin had to quit school and help his mother with her meat stall in the market. They stayed together even when Rosa’s father threatened to disinherit her for dating a palengkero, a market vendor. That same father who was there when Maria Lourdes was born, but as a proud grandfather, shaking Erwin’s hand. No, Erwin doesn’t say anything these days, not after he had come home to find his wife dying, his daughter, who had caught a cold earlier that week, become one of the living dead, gnawing at her mother’s teat with a hunger so fierce she drew blood with her gums. This was just before radio went down, so everyone knew what was happening, knew what they had to do. Erwin used to be a religious man, but I think the day he had to look into his wife’s eyes as he brought the cleaver down on her neck was the day he lost all his faith. I want to ask him what he saw in her eyes those last few seconds. If it was true what they said about the soul leaving. I don’t know how he took care of his daughter. Some things are so horrible, the best way to deal with them is to keep them to yourself.

  After washing the head, he tilted it to the side, taking a cleaver and with a gentle whack, embedding it into the skull, just above the ear. He worked the cleaver around, then pried the top of the head open, exposing brain. I let out a low whistle. He looked at me. I nodded.

  There’s a reason why we’re holed up in this specific restaurant. There’s a reason why we took shelter at Aling Lucing’s and not at, say, The Orchid. The biggest reason is because we both love sisig. Erwin and I, we worship the dish. Couldn’t get enough of it. When the world was still sane, we would go through all the restaurants in Angeles that served sisig, but we would always come back to Aling Lucing’s, not because it had the best sisig—the dish is a matter of taste, and Erwin and I each had our favorites—but because it was where it was first served to the public, and so this where people said it was first created.

  Every cook’s dream is to create a dish so fantastic, so unique that their name is forever attached to it. The most famous example is the Earl of Sandwich, who, in 1762, asked his manservant to place a slice of meat between two pieces of bread so that he could eat without leaving his card game. Along Lucing did it with sisig.

  Every Filipino knows what sisig is. It is practically the national pulutan, which means that it’s the kind of food you eat when you go drinking, though you can have it a
s a meal with rice as well. What it is is basically pork face—cheeks, snout, ears—stuff you don’t normally eat, minced into bite-sized pieces about the size of half a kernel of corn, fried with onions and chili peppers and served on a sizzling plate. There are different variations. There’s wet sisig, which is chewy and slightly rubbery with more of a piggy taste, and there’s dry sisig, where everything is cooked to a crisp (the kind I prefer). Some versions have egg in them, while others have mayonnaise. Some cooks like to boost flavor by adding other pork parts: sometimes liver, sometimes heart, sometimes brain. It comes to you sizzling hot. You add soy sauce, Tabasco, and a little calamansi before mixing everything together so that you get a big brown oily mess that you eat with rice. Looks and sounds gross, but tastes awesome. Goes well with beer, and is greasy enough to coat your stomach so that you can pack in more alcohol.

  Sisig means ‘soured.’ They say it used to be made with sour fruits, and was only eaten by pregnant women to ease their discomfort. Somehow, this became pig parts marinated in vinegar. There are many stories of how this dish caught its current macho reputation. My favorite is how a restaurant owner overheard some patrons talking about how they had managed to sneak away from their pregnant wives so that they could go drinking. The proprietor decided to play a little trick on her customers by serving them the dish that their wives were probably eating right at that moment. But the drunkards loved the dish so much they asked for another order. Later, Aling Lucing decided to sell it en masse, and that was why people later said she invented it.

  Erwin and I, stuck in this world, this wasteland of a city, missing friends and family, missing cold beer and good food, having nothing, no one, except each other, we figured, what have we got to lose?

  In my past life, I was a line cook working my way up to executive chef. Erwin ran his mother’s meat stall in the market, except they weren’t dirt poor, like when he started. His innate business skills, coupled with a natural affinity with the knife and chopping block, made him a lot more money than a guy who wore a bloody wifebeater as a uniform looked like he should. I was a cook. He was a butcher. We both loved food. It was only natural.