Where Would You Be Now?

by Carrie Vaughn

  “Come on,” Kath said to Chloë. “We’ll get you set up inside.”

  * * *

  Kath had them wash faces and hands while she heated up a can of beans to feed them, and made them each drink a glass of water and take a few chewable vitamins. They still had a couple bottles left, and this seemed like a good use for them. After that, the kids curled up on a cot in one of the exam rooms, all three of them together, snuggled under the blanket Kath had tucked them in with despite the heat. Maggie watched from the doorway, arms crossed, clearly unhappy. But she hadn’t really been happy ever, the last couple years.

  “We couldn’t just leave them,” Kath insisted.

  “And we can’t keep taking in strays. We had to throw out those potato plants on the east side of the building. Rot got them.”

  They weren’t strays, Kath thought. They’d been dropped off. People were going to start leaving babies on their doorstep. And the clinic didn’t have enough food. “We’ll try again,” Kath said, because what else could she say? “We’ll figure it out.”

  “Yeah, I know, I know. You should get some rest, okay?” Maggie ran a hand over Kath’s hair, something she’d been doing since Kath was five.

  Kath smiled grimly, double checked that the shotgun and its spare shells were locked up, and went out to the row of tents lined up along the clinic building. She hadn’t really thought about being tired until Maggie mentioned rest.

  Kids and doctors slept in the clinic building. Everyone else used the row of tents, some old-fashioned canvas jobs, a few nylon domes, everything in between. Kath used one of the canvas ones, with the flaps tied up during the day to let in air, mosquito netting in place to try to keep out bugs.

  Melanie was already inside, stripped to tank top and panties, sprawled face down on the sheet-covered mattress. If Kath was tired, Melanie was probably flattened after the night she had. But Kath paused a moment anyway, to see if she was really asleep. Admired the curve of her shoulder, the slope of her back where it arced to her hip. Melanie had the most amazing, artful shape to her.

  Quietly, moving slowly, Kath pulled off her own dusty, rank clothes, then sat with her journal, squinting in the dark to write a handful of words about the image of those kids in the road, the nerve-wracking groans of the woman, the sticky-hot night air. These days, she mostly kept the diary out of habit, and her handwriting had turned tiny, scrunched—trying to conserve space, since she didn’t know when she’d ever find another blank book. She figured she’d keep writing until she ran out of space.

  Kath tried to be quiet, but Melanie woke up anyway. “Hmm?”

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you,” she said.

  “Hm, s’okay, c’mere.”

  Kath set aside the book, collapsed onto the mattress, and Melanie gathered her into her arms. They clung to each other, body to body, and Kath’s near-constant, watchful tension from the night melted a couple of degrees. The scent of Melanie, the soap-and-sweat of her, the warmth of her skin, made Kath feel a little drunk. Melanie shifted, brought her mouth to Kath’s, and they kissed, a little desperately. Melanie sighed, like her own tension was finally fading.

  “You okay?” Kath asked.

  She squeezed her eyes shut. “We’re going to be back there in two years helping that same woman deliver another baby, there’ll be twenty babies running around that camp and they’ll all be starving—”

  Kath hugged her. Melanie shuddered a moment. Trying not to cry, unable not to cry. Kath didn’t know what to tell her.

  “That’s optimistic,” she said finally.

  “What?”

  “That any of us are still going to be around in two years.”

  Melanie pulled away and stared at her a moment, then busted out laughing. They fell together in another tight hug, conveying powerful comfort. Anchoring each other.

  “Where would you be now?” Kath whispered.

  “Med school. I wanted to go to med school.” She laughed, but the laughter turned to crying, like it often did. She didn’t try to hide it this time, and Kath held her till she fell back asleep.

  * * *

  Just a year or so into their time camping out at the clinic, a fire flattened the strip mall on the other side of the street. Could have been anything that started it, from a leaking gas line and static build up to lightning. Some traveler tossing a lit cigarette. With no one to fight the fire, it burned walls to the ground, collapsed roofs, and kept going. The few shade trees spaced out on the sidewalk went up like torches, and folk at the clinic stayed up all night stomping on ashes and dumping water on hot spots to keep the fire from jumping the road and claiming their home. The barricade of derelict cars, trucks, and trailers had already been put in place by then, but after the fire died down they hauled, towed, and wrangled the barricade another fifty feet out, and added on to it, to increase their buffer zone. To increase the perception of safety. They also spent six months demolishing buildings up and down their own street. Took a long time, clearing all that space with sledgehammers and controlled burns, but it gave them great line of sight after. And more space for gardening. After security, gardening was their biggest preoccupation.

  It had only taken a few years for the entire character of that street, the neighborhood surrounding the clinic, to change. When they sat around at night, drinking whatever bottle of booze turned up, and asked how this could happen, they only had to look around.

  The next day, after stopping by the kitchen tent for a cup of water and an apple, Kath went on her daily walk around the barricade. She usually did this in the morning, but after the long night she slept past noon. Melanie had already gotten up and was probably at the clinic helping with the work of the day. Kath would check in in a little while, see how the new arrivals were getting on.

  The air was sticky, humid, and the sun was roasting. Calendar said it was April, but this felt like July. She was dripping sweat in moments. She wiped her face and pulled the brim of her baseball cap down to better block the glare.

  The clinic housed thirty-two people these days. Thirty-five, she revised. Most of the clinic residents were up and about, working in garden patches, tinkering with the couple of cars they still had, cleaning and maintaining the camp. A half dozen stood at the barricade with weapons, watching. Kath waved when people waved at her, said hello. The day felt ordinary.

  On the west side of the compound, Dr. Dennis stood outside the barricade and hit golf balls with a driver. Flung them up the road, one after the other. When it was safe enough he’d go collect them, and for some of the kids it was a game, to see how many golf balls they could recover for him. A few always stayed lost, but Dennis kept hitting them anyway. Swing, a whoosh of air, thwack. He’d shade his eyes to follow the arc of the ball until it hit the ground a hundred yards or so on. Kath didn’t know enough about golf to tell if he was any good. Didn’t seem to bother him, that he might never play a real round of golf ever again. He just seemed to enjoy hitting balls to nowhere.

  Kath sat on the edge of the barricade and watched for a little while.

  “Morning,” Dennis said finally.

  “What happens when you run out?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe I’ll start hitting rocks. But, maybe I won’t run out. Maybe I’ll get back to Palm Springs, when everything gets back to normal.”

  This is normal, she thought. She was thinking that more and more, but never said it out loud.

  “You want to try it?” Dennis asked.

  “No thanks. I’m just taking a walk.”

  “Enjoy.”

  “You, too.”

  He took another ball from the nylon bag at his feet, set it on a bare patch of ground, and lined up for the next swing.

  Kath finished her circle around the compound and headed to the squat, concrete building in the middle.

  The front room was crowded. The compound’s handful of resident kids swarmed. They were supposed to be settling down for the impromptu class one of the nurses taught every other day or so, but some
thing had set them off. A giant spider, Kath gathered from the shouting. The room was loud. Anita, one of the clinic nurses, was trying to settle them down, yelling in both English and Spanish, but nothing worked.

  Kath’s three refugees cringed away from it all, huddled at the side of the room, watching cautiously. She grabbed a couple of picture books from the basket under one of the chairs and called to Chloë. “Let’s go get some air, okay?”

  The girl considered a moment, lips pressed in a suspicious frown. She was looking marginally better today, Kath thought. Some color in her cheeks. But then, she couldn’t look much worse than she had last night, standing in the dark, bleakly washed out by headlights. The two little ones were hunched up next to her, staring at the proceedings with round, glazed eyes. Maybe trying to decide if this was dangerous. Chloë picked up their hands and tugged them toward the door.

  Kath found a shady spot around the side of the building where the clinic’s pots of lettuce plants lived. Wasn’t exactly a garden, but it was kind of a nice place to spend a few quiet moments.

  “Want to do the honors?” Kath asked, opening to the first page of one of the books. The little ones scooted closer, drawn by the colors and pictures of round friendly animals, putting their hands on the paper.

  Chloë winced, drawing her limbs in to hug herself. “I can’t. I know I should … but…”

  Kath thought that might be the case. “No worries. We’ll work on it now.” She read to them, following with her fingers, showing Chloë the words. She wasn’t going to teach the girl to read in one sitting. But they had to start somewhere. The little ones were rapt.

  They went through the books she’d brought, went through them all again at the little ones’ insistence, and Kath asked them which were their favorites and why. They finally seemed normal. Acted normal, engaged and talking. Then they lost interest in the books and ran off to chase a grasshopper. Kath let them; they couldn’t get into too much trouble around here.

  Chloë was still suspicious.

  “They your siblings? Brother and sister?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where are your parents?”

  She shrugged, shuffling through the books, brushing fingers on the covers. “What’s the point? I mean, does anybody still read?”

  “We still have books. We have a whole library inside. It’s still a good way to learn things.”

  “I guess.”

  Kath wanted to draw her out. “Do you remember anything from before?” She was old enough; she might, unlike her siblings. Or depending on how bad things had been for her, she might have blocked it all out. “I remember a lot. I definitely don’t want to forget how to read.”

  Chloë stared out at the barricade of junked cars. Kath didn’t think she was going to talk, and was going to let it go. Suggest they go in and find some lunch. But then the girl said, “I remember Disneyland. We went when I was really small. Got my picture with Ariel. She’s my favorite. Wish I still had the picture but it got lost somewhere. I guess it’s still there? Disneyland? What’s going to happen to it?”

  Honestly, Kath couldn’t remember the last time she’d even thought of Disneyland. But the question suddenly filled her. What had happened to Disneyland? Another stab of grief followed. Another thing to mourn, or lock away and forget.

  She said, “It must still be there. Some of it, at least. But the lights have probably gone out.”

  “I wish I was there. Even with the lights out.”

  “Yeah.”

  Kath looked up; Maggie stood at the corner of the building, arms crossed. Her face was screwed up in the way it usually got when she was thinking of crying. Holding it in so hard she seemed to be in pain. Then, the look was gone.

  Maggie said, “Hey there! Anita’s got soup cooking. Chloë, why don’t you take the others around and get yourselves fed.”

  The girl nodded, clambering to her feet and going to fetch the others, who’d been playing some kind of tag. She didn’t call out to them, and Kath wondered about that. That she didn’t feel safe, raising her voice.

  Kath stood and watched them go, and Maggie watched Kath.

  “You’re good with the kids. They’re comfortable with you.”

  “Yeah, I like them too.” She didn’t worry so much with the kids. She didn’t think about the future so much. Kids were easy: keep them fed, keep them clean, do everything to keep them safe. Simple. If she could teach them to read, then she’ll really have accomplished something.

  Maggie seemed to draw even tighter to herself. Her shoulders were rigid, her hands in fists.

  Kath’s brow furrowed. “What’s the matter?”

  “It’s just … you looked like … you don’t want to have your own kids, do you?”

  She hadn’t thought about it at all. Food and security, that was what she thought about these days. The question startled her, and she had to think a moment, but that moment was too long for Maggie.

  “Oh God, you’re already pregnant, aren’t you? That’s why you like the kids, you’re practicing—”

  “What? No! What gave you that idea?”

  This didn’t seem to help. “But you’re having sex. Tell me, are you having sex?”

  Kath glared. “I’m twenty years old, of course I’m having sex!”

  “And you’re pregnant.”

  “No, God no!”

  “But have you been using protection? How do you know?” Maggie seemed desperate.

  Kath paused, then shot back, “Because I’m sleeping with Melanie!”

  Maggie drew back, and Kath wondered what she was going to rant about next. It wasn’t that she and Melanie had been hiding anything. It just made sense to double up on tents to save space, and they hadn’t actually announced anything when they became more than friends. It wasn’t being gay that Kath thought would upset people. It was being … adult. She wasn’t growing up. She was grown.

  Now, Maggie did cry. Or laugh. Something that came from tension releasing, and causing whatever was holding her together to collapse. She slumped against the wall, both hands covering her face. “I’m sorry, Kathy. I’m sorry. It’s just … we can’t feed everyone, and people keep having babies and we can’t do anything, we can’t feed them—”

  Kath put her arms around the woman and just held her.

  “God, look at me,” Maggie said around sobs. “I’m supposed to be taking care of you and just look at me.”

  “You don’t have to take care of me,” Kath said. “You have enough to worry about, just let me … be me.”

  They stayed like that awhile, hidden in the shelter of the building where Maggie could lose it in private, and Kath stayed to make sure she was okay. The older woman had been right at the edge for such a long time.

  Maggie finally pulled away, scrubbing tears off her face and chuckling at herself, a strained and painful sound.

  “So, you and Melanie, huh? I think I knew that. Yeah. Oh God, I’m so messed up I can’t see what’s right in front of my face. I promised your mom I’d look out for you and if you turned up pregnant in this mess—” She took a shuddering breath, rubbed her face one more time. And like that she had put on a new mask, and was smiling. “I’m sorry. I forget sometimes, that you’re grown up.”

  Kath offered words, a gesture of comfort, though it might hurt as much as it helped. Kath wanted to say it. “I never got to come out to Mom,” she said softly. “I mean, I sort of knew, I was starting to figure it out. Figuring out that I didn’t just put those pictures on my wall because I liked beach volleyball so much, you know? But I never told Mom.”

  “Oh, hon. You know she’d be okay with it, right?”

  “Yeah, I know. But I wish…” She shook her head. They all wished.

  “You should be in college,” Maggie murmured, running a hand over Kath’s hair.

  All the adults said that to her in their most maudlin moments. She should be in college. Not staying up half the night with a gun under her arm. Kath herself had stopped believing anything woul
d ever change. This was just what life was now. There’d never be somewhere else.

  “Where would you be now?” she asked Maggie.

  She looked around at the wide-open compound that used to be part of a pleasant street, the modest building now crammed with solar panels it didn’t used to have. “I’d be here, I think. But it’d be a lot different. Can you do a watch shift tonight? Mike’s come down with something.”

  “Bad?”

  “No, just a cold.”

  “Yeah, no problem.”

  “Thanks. Just … thank you.”

  * * *

  Kath’s watch shift started late afternoon and went into the evening. She covered about half the perimeter, walking on top of the barricade, stepping from car roof to truck hood to trailer and on. They’d bolted on sheets of metal and spikes, fencing, and other odds and ends to the basic framework over the years. Occasionally she’d come upon a loose bit, a piece of sheeting that moved under her feet, a car roof that was rusting out, and the next day someone would come to repair it. Used to be, they’d have four or five people covering the barricade, especially during the night watch. But since the fire and clearing the line of sight, they needed fewer people watching and could save the effort for other chores. The long approach gave the watchers plenty of time to spot trouble and raise an alarm.

  This evening, trouble came right around dusk. The worst time, with the light fading. Her first hint came as movement on the horizon. Could have been anything, so she waited for the movement to resolve into shapes, or fade into nothing. Shadows appearing in wavering heat lines in the distance could be deceptive. She brought binoculars to her eyes, spent a moment focusing with one hand, the other clenched on the shotgun.

  The shadows gained definition. Not a mirage, not deer or something else wandering in the distance. Now that she saw them, she heard the noise, a rumbling sound that was becoming rare. Gas-powered engines, beating against the air. Three cars, a couple of motorcycles, more than a dozen people, and those were just the ones she could see from this distance. Who knew how many were hiding inside the vehicles?