by Meg Elison
“Blood-borne pathogens,” she said in a completely neutral tone of voice.
She found another bottle under the sink, casually knocking unwanted things out onto the floor. When she found it, she opened it and upended it over her chest. She had forgotten the tamper seal, and nothing came out.
“Oh.” She pinched the plastic half-circle with her right hand and pulled. Peroxide poured out, and she ran it over her arms and neck, washing blood off her body. She poured it over her panties, soaking the crotch. It puddled pink and foaming on the floor. It soaked the carpet at the bathroom door. When she was finished, she put the cap back on the bottle and dropped it neatly into the bathroom trash.
Cold and dazed, she walked back out into her bedroom and tried not to look at the body. She slipped into a pair of jeans she found draped over a chair. She threw the wet shirt she had been wearing on the floor and pulled another from her closet. She put on a hoodie over it, then found a pair of socks and tied up her shoes. She walked back to her bed and pulled the sheet over the face she had never really seen.
Her hands found her cellphone on the floor and slipped it into the tight back pocket of her jeans. She closed her knife carefully and slipped it into a front pocket. She picked up her journal out of the wreck of her nightstand and shoved it down the front of her hoodie. She locked the door to her apartment and left with nothing in her hands.
The lone woman walked out onto the street and saw the orangey-pink in the east that meant the sun would rise soon. She walked up and down the hilly streets of San Francisco, not precisely in herself and not thinking. She came to a place she knew. It was a café she had come to a few times. She walked in, numb and cold, and sat on an old leather couch.
There was no one on the streets to hear her wailing. She sobbed and shook so hard she thought she would break. Her head throbbed and her throat ached and she pounded herself in the chest with both fists. She held her face and screamed and asked questions with no answers. She begged and apologized and raged.
When there was nothing left to say, she got quiet and pushed herself into the corner of the couch. She pulled her legs up close to her, knees tight together. She wrapped her arms around herself and pulled the hood over her face. She thought she might fall asleep, but she watched the sun rise, husked out and raw. When it was fully light, she got up stiffly and walked out the door. She wandered into the Mission District without any idea where she was headed. The sidewalks were covered with broken glass and garbage, single shoes and the usual piles of city junk. In the street, cars were parked neatly in some places and rose up on the sidewalks in others. The road was choked here and there with accidents both minor and severe. She saw that some of the wrecked cars had corpses in them, including one pinned to a motorcycle trapped between two small cars. She tried to stop looking after that.
The Mission was always dirty, it was always derelict, but it had formerly been teeming with life. Alarming and empty now. The windows of the stores and restaurants were broken, and there was no movement. Above the stores, windows to apartments were hung with blankets and flags rather than curtains, looking as unkempt as ever but deadly silent. The only thing she could hear in the cold morning air was the flapping and cooing of pigeons, and the occasional shrill seagull. The city was without streetcars or hordes of people, without dogs barking or music pouring out of windows and the small radios carried by the homeless.
She smelled the sea and the sweet odor of rot from both food and dead bodies all around. The corners and alleys smelled like piss, maybe they always would. Block after block went by, and she hesitated, thinking of traffic and signals and safety. She had to force herself to stop worrying about being hit by a car and start thinking what she should do if she saw another person. This was the first walk she had ever taken in this neighborhood that had not brought with it the smell of a dozen people smoking weed, the haze drifting from windows and bold passersby. Her senses were ringing the bell; the city was dead.
A different smell was beckoning her. As she came to a corner, she could hear a little noise, and she hid in the entrance of a theater, under the marquee, listening. Somewhere on the other side of the intersection, someone was cooking. And singing.
She stayed there as the smell grew stronger. She could smell garlic and mushrooms, she was sure. She heard the singing only in snatches, but the voice sounded high. She thought she should turn around and go the other way, and she fought with herself on that for a long time. In the end, hunger and simple curiosity won out. She emerged cautiously and walked into the intersection. With a glance in all directions, she crossed diagonally away from a liquor store that stank like someone had smashed every bottle inside. The wind shifted, and the aroma came again. Garlic and corn and cheese. Her stomach growled.
She came to the busted-out windows of an old Mexican restaurant with faded signs. The door stood open. She didn’t see anyone. She walked through, craning her neck toward the sound. The song was clearer now; it was old with lyrics in Spanish. The person singing was doing a pretty good impression of the dead singer. She came through a short door into the kitchen.
A tall, dark-skinned man stood at a gas grill, cooking an assortment of pupusas and sweating. He turned toward her with a smile, then goggled at her with his mouth open.
“Who the hell are you?” His accent made the last word joo.
“I’m . . . I’m . . . that smells amazing. I didn’t mean to bust in on you. Are you . . . ?” She stood half in the doorway, deciding whether to run. She didn’t know what she should ask. Are you dangerous? Are you gonna eat that? Terror and curiosity fought hunger and disorientation. She stood, unable to obey any of them.
He put the spatula down slowly. “Look, I just wanted to make some food. I don’t want any trouble. I’m waiting for my friend Chicken. If this is your place, I’m sorry.”
“No, no, it’s not my place. I’m from across town. I haven’t seen anybody else on the street.”
“You and me both, girl. Me and Chicken thought we were the last two motherfuckers on Earth.” She watched him closely. She knew he was gay. It was in everything, the way he stood in a long curve with his hips forward at the stove, the way he held his mouth when he called her girl. It was in his delicate but deft hand as he flipped the pupusas. It was in the way he didn’t look her up and down or linger anywhere but her face. She knew and she knew him immediately. It was a snap judgment to make, but she had lived and worked with gay men in San Francisco her whole life. Most of her best friends had been gay men, especially since after twenty-five, most of her female friends had disappeared down the rabbit hole of marriage and come out mothers on the other side. She relaxed a little and came all the way through the door.
“You don’t look like a looter,” he told her, turning his attention back to the food.
“I’m not. I was sick with whatever the fuck everyone had and woke up at UCSF. Where did everybody go?”
“You were at UCSF, you tell me. The news said everyone was dying, especially the ladies. Some pundit asshole was saying it was an extinction event and all the women would die.”
She leaned against the wall, staring at the food. “It was really contagious. Airborne. It appeared everywhere at once. I knew it was deadly, but there is nobody anywhere. I can’t get over it.”
He switched the gas off and piled pupusas onto paper plates. The plates were the cheap kind, so he stacked up four or five to support the weight of the food. “I’m Joe. My friend Chicken is out getting us water. The water is off everywhere. I can’t believe the fucking gas is still on.” He carried the plates out into the dining room and swept glass and balled-up napkins off the table.
“Might as well sit down, have something to eat.”
She sat opposite him in one of the mismatched chairs. “I’m Karen,” she said as she moved pupusas onto her plate with a plastic fork. He hadn’t offered his hand, and neither did she. He went back to the kitchen and returned with four different kinds of hot sauce.
They skipped t
he rest of the introduction because they both wanted to eat. She was starving, her mouth flooding at the sight of hot food on her plate. She shoveled in huge bites, the melted cheese scalding the roof of her mouth.
She was not Karen. Karen had died a week ago, still wearing her name tag. He wasn’t going to ask for ID. She decided to be Karen for now.
He poured out dots of bright-red sauce onto his own pile of food and shoveled just as fast. When they’d both finished a plateful, they slowed down. She took one more, he took two.
She poured green sauce over the pancake-like pupusa in front of her. “I can’t believe this is all still good. All the fresh food I had had gone bad. I think I was at the hospital for ten days, maybe more.”
He talked with his mouth full but held his right hand in front of his face as he spoke. “Almost everything here was bad. All the meat was rotten and most of the cheese. I used to work here. There’s an old icebox they store the mushrooms and onions and garlic in and it seals tight. I thought it might be ok, but there was wrapped up masa and some cheese in there, too. Still good, ’cause the cheese is dry. It’s my lucky day. I knew the gas was on, ’cause we passed a couple gas leaks over on Van Ness.”
“My lucky day, too. I’m alive.” It hurt to swallow, but she meant it.
There was a commotion in the back of the kitchen, and Joe popped up out of his chair.
“Chicken?”
“Joe, help me! I got caught!”
Joe ran to the back and Karen followed. Chicken turned out to be a tall, scared-looking black kid, no more than twenty years old. His eyes were huge and rolling, and his broad hands seemed to be holding him up in the doorway. His left leg was wrapped in razor wire. It wound in and out of his jeans, and the denim was purple with blood in a couple of places.
“Shit,” Joe said as he stared.
Karen pushed him out of the way. She put her shoulder against Chicken’s body and pulled his long muscular arm over her shoulder. Together, they hobbled out of the kitchen out into the dining room. She helped him ease down onto the counter and pull his legs up after him. He reached for his injured leg, and she caught his hands.
“Don’t pull, you might make it worse. Let me help you.”
“You a nurse? Who is this chick, Joe?”
“Karen. She just showed up.”
“I am a nurse, I worked at the medical center. I can help you.” She turned to Joe. “There’s a drugstore on this block, isn’t there?”
He looked out the door, unsure. “I think so?”
She looked back at Chicken. “Is it safe to go out?”
“Nobody is after me.” He gritted his teeth and looked at his leg.
“Ok. Joe, run to that drugstore, and I mean run. Bring me back peroxide, in the brown bottle. You know that, right?”
“I know what peroxide is. Jesus.” He looked more annoyed than scared.
“Ok, peroxide and gauze and an Ace bandage. Go quick.”
He was out the door without another word.
She pulled her knife out of her pocket and opened it without looking at it. She couldn’t remember if she had cleaned it or not. She decided it didn’t matter and started cutting at Chicken’s jeans. She thought to try to cut the wire out but realized it was a waste and cut the jeans around below the knee. She pulled at the hem and watched him. If the razor wire was caught in his skin, any movement would make him jump. He didn’t, so she pulled straight down.
There was a lot of blood, but the damage wasn’t that bad. He had a few deep cuts in the belly of his calf and one spot in his shin, with a long slice of skin taken off, still hanging by a shred at the bottom. She pulled at it decisively, and it popped off. Chicken yelped.
“Sorry, something was stuck to you.” In her experience, it was always better not to say that skin was what had been ripped off. “Where were you?”
“I was up in some apartments like a mile away. I was looking for water.”
She pulled his bloody sock and shoe off. “Joe told me. So what happened?”
“I was in this building with a bunch of flats, and I was checking each one for bottled water. I got to this one in the middle, and the door was open. I went straight for the kitchen, and I found some glass bottles of Pellegrino, and I started to load them up. This guy came screaming out of the bedroom. He was covered in blood and looking real fucked up. He was holding, like, a shovel or, like, a little spade or something. I don’t know what it was, but he scared the everfucking shit out of me. He blocked the door, so I went out the window. I was hanging off a window AC, trying to drop to the awning underneath. I missed and hit the windowsill and got tangled up in this shit here. I roll down the awning and hit the ground running. Fucking like going to the gym in hell. Ran all the way back.”
Joe came pounding back in the door. “Here, I got it, I got it, I got it.” He swung a plastic shopping bag onto the counter, where it banged. She pulled the peroxide out of it and opened it up.
“He’s ok, Joe,” she said evenly. “It looks bad, but most of the cuts are superficial. As long as it doesn’t get infected, he’ll be ok.” She poured peroxide over the skinned chunk of shin, and Chicken screeched through clenched teeth. Joe came around and grabbed his hand.
“I know it stings, I know.” She poured more over his leg, pushing the calf muscle to one side to make the cuts gap open and poured again. “Just remember, that sting is the shit that wants to kill you dying off. The sting is good. The sting will save you.”
Chicken gripped Joe’s hand tightly.
“So you didn’t get any water?”
“No, I didn’t get any water, bitch. I got back alive. Fuck.”
“Ok, sorry. Just checking. We’ll get some.”
“I want some new jeans, too. And shoes. And fuck that hurts.”
“I know, I know. Almost done.” She flushed the cuts again and opened a package of gauze and used it to blot the wounds. Then she unrolled another and started to wrap it tight enough to hold but not too tight to walk in. When it was done up, she wrapped again with the Ace bandage and used the tiny teeth in the closure butterflies to hold the whole thing together.
Chicken swung his legs off the counter. “Girl, you better be ready to feed me.” Karen stiffened, but Joe ran to the table and brought back a stack of cooled pupusas and a bottle of hot sauce.
Chicken held it in his lap and started to eat.
They stood around while he ate. Joe watched Chicken. Karen stared out the front door, thinking.
Chicken finished and set his plate aside. “Thank you, baby.” He snaked his neck around and kissed Joe on the cheek. Joe smiled. “We need to find a place with water and stay there for the night. And get some clothes. You coming?”
They both looked at her.
“Sure,” she said. She was better off with them than on her own, she decided. “Take it easy on that leg,” she said to Chicken. “We can walk slow.”
He rolled his eyes and hopped off the counter, then winced. “Ok,” he said warily. “We go slow for now.”
They walked at his pace, away from the direction that Karen had come. They checked out the drugstore Joe had been in and had a soda each, but the water was gone. They tried a boba shop and a row of restaurants. Syrups and toppings, bottles of ketchup and soy sauce. No water. By noon the fog had cleared and they were very thirsty.
“How the hell is there no water anywhere?” She was starting to feel crabby.
“The panic,” Joe said simply.
“The panic?”
“Yeah,” Chicken broke in. “Bad news freak people out. They panicking. They at the store, buying up toilet paper and water and guns, except they hardly any guns in San Francisco. Since the water been off, we been looking for water. Every day.”
She tried to do the math. How many days in the hospital? How many days sick and unconscious? How many days until the city fell into panic? How long since the power and water died? The last day she could remember waking up in her apartment with lights on, catching the bus, and
going to work was back in February.
“What’s today?”
“Huh?” Joe looked at her like she was crazy.
“Do you guys know what today is? Like, the date?”
Chicken snorted. “You gotta be somewhere? Come on, let’s try in here.”
They were at the door of an office building. The front door stood slightly ajar.
“Why here?” she asked.
“I got an idea.”
They went up the stairs, which were windowless and dark. They came out onto the second floor into a huge room full of cubicles. Sunlight flooded in from the glass walls. Chicken went to one end of the room. Joe and Karen followed his lead and spread out. Karen looked at desks she passed, hoping for a water bottle at a workstation. She saw dead plants hanging over the sides of their pots and pictures of children. She came to a dead end. From the other side, she heard Joe yelling.
“I got it!”
She jogged in the direction of his voice. Joe stood beside the office bathrooms. Standing between them was a nearly full watercooler with a fat, upright blue five-gallon bottle. Joe had sunk to the floor and was filling a paper cup. Karen grabbed one right after him and got out of Chicken’s way when he hobbled around the nearest cubicle. They sat and drank cup after cup.
“Why are you called Chicken?” she asked when the silence had gone too long.
“I won a game once,” he said.
“A game of chicken?”
“Yeah.” He stared into his cup.
“Did the other guy die?”
His head snapped up. “No! He swerve out the way. I won his car. Did that a couple times and sold the cars. Made some money that way.”
“Oh. What did you do for a living, Joe?”
