Dead Leaves, Dark Corners

by Nicki Huntsman Smith

  When the president emerged again, he had a plan. He would use the Strategic National Stockpile – six enormous warehouses scattered about the nation containing food and medical supplies – to provide for a select segment of those who remained. He couldn’t save everyone and didn’t want to. His ego still prickled from slights and insults directed at him by South American leaders during his administration, so people of Latino heritage were first on his cull list. As the list grew, other ethnicities were added, as were people with certain religious affiliations who were stupid enough to include that information on the government questionnaire. Once the numbers were calculated, it came down to this: there was only enough food and medicine to provide for a tiny percentage of the population, and those lucky people who had made the cut were ones who looked a lot like Schmidt himself: blond-haired and blue-eyed.

  “They are poor things,” Conrad said, anger in his voice now. “It’s cruel to let them starve.”

  “How do you think they’ve managed this long? Rats?”

  “Probably. There’s plenty of those these days. Gretch, look. There’s one approaching the trap now. See the movement by the fire escape?”

  She narrowed her eyes, peering into the gloom. She could just make out the silhouette crouching near the brick wall; moonlight glinted off its eyes. Minutes ticked by and it didn’t move. It seemed to be making sure there wasn’t danger. Soon the smell of the food became too hard to resist. The figure darted for the cage and scrambled through the opening. When it touched the paper plate, the door sprung shut.

  “Got it!” Conrad leaped out of the pickup and ran toward the Havahart trap.

  Despite her fear of being in the decaying urban alleyway at night, Gretchen jumped out of the truck too. She wanted to see what would happen next. Would the feral claw and hiss at its captor? Or would it be so traumatized as to remain motionless in a corner of the cage? Conrad told her it could go either way.

  “I promise I’m not going to hurt you,” he spoke in a low soothing voice, just like that actor did in the movie when he talked to horses. “I’m going to put you in my truck...see over there? Then we’ll go for a ride out to the country. There’s a lot more food out there than here.”

  Up close now, Gretchen could see just how pathetic the feral was. It was clothed in tattered rags that covered only the torso; the bare arms and legs were exposed to the elements, and Springfield in October could be cold. She shuddered at the thought of having to live this way, starving and without adequate clothing or shelter to stave off the weather.

  “Do you understand what I’m saying? Just nod if you do,” he said.

  Gretchen held her breath. Finally, the child gave a reluctant nod. Its enormous, unblinking eyes were either darkest brown or fully dilated; she couldn’t tell which in the dim light.

  “Are your parents alive?”

  A slow shake of the head.

  Conrad sighed. “That’s the way it usually is. I only take the ones who have been orphaned. I figure they wouldn’t want to be moved if they still have a family around.”

  “You don’t ever take grownups?”

  The handsome face was set in a grimace of displeasure. It did nothing to mar the pleasing features.

  “No. It’s too risky. And there’s always the possibility they’ll turn on me. I can fight off the little ones, but the adults could overpower me. I’m just not willing to take that risk.”

  Gretchen nodded. “You’re the kindest person I know, Conrad. You really are.” She stopped herself just before saying the words, ‘And I love you.’ She would wait until he said them first.

  He hoisted the trap, much heavier now with the weight of the child, and carried it to the pickup, placing it gently in the truck bed. He draped a heavy blanket over the metal for warmth, and also so it couldn’t be seen by any nosy New Patriots who might glimpse them on their way through town. Very few people traveled on the roads these days, even though driving hadn’t been outlawed. Not yet. But most people preferred to remain in the safety of their homes located in the only part of the city that still had power, and where all the other New Patriots lived, within close range of the food distribution location.

  Over the next hour, they retrieved the remaining traps. Two others had also caught ferals, so their tally for tonight’s work was three.

  “Where will you take them?”

  “There’s an old farm called Providence Hill, just north of Branson. There’s vegetation in the fields, even this time of year. Plus there are still dairy cows wandering around. I’ve seen some hogs too. If they’re resourceful and careful, their chances of surviving are much better in the country than in the city.”

  “So you’re just going to dump them on the side of the road or something?”

  “Of course not. There are abandoned houses down there that will provide shelter.”

  “Will they be safe? From others of their kind?”

  He breathed out an exasperated sigh.

  “They’ll be safer taking their chances there than in town. Trust me. I know what I’m doing.”

  She nodded.

  They drove the next few moments in silence. She couldn’t gauge his mood at the moment; he seemed angry about something but also distracted. She followed his gaze through the Chevy’s cracked windshield and the blacktop beyond that rolled toward them, illuminated by the twin headlights.

  “I caught the little black one tonight. Did you notice?”

  She shook her head. “No, I kind of stopped watching after that first one. It’s a bit upsetting.”

  “Yes, it is, but it’s necessary. I feel that I’m doing a good thing, but there’s no way to know for sure. That’s why your question about them being safe bothered me. I don’t know what’s going on out there exactly,” he gestured to the rolling hills of the Missouri countryside, “but it has to be an improvement. There’s no way to get food in the city. The Feds have seen to that. So if these ferals have a chance of surviving, it’s going to be out here, where they can learn to farm and can find clean water. There’s no possibility of that happening in the city. Do you understand now?”

  She reached over and squeezed his shoulder, feeling the muscles through his t-shirt.

  “I do understand, and I’ll help you if I can. As long as we don’t get caught,” she added. The last thing she wanted was to get arrested and risk being cut from the food program. It had happened to a few acquaintances and it was terrible. Last week one of them had come begging and she had been forced to turn him away. There was only enough food for herself; twelve thousand calories a week barely kept the hunger at bay, but it was enough to keep from starving. The thought sparked another question.

  “Conrad, how do you stay so fit and strong on the rations when you’re using some of the food in your traps? You must be hungry all the time.”

  “I get hungry, but it’s worth it to me. Plus, sometimes the ferals leave me a few squash or tomatoes when I drop off. I always come on the same night every week and release the ferals at the same place, so they expect me. The vegetables are their way of saying thank you. The first time it happened, they left a note, so that’s how I know.”

  “A written note? They can write? What did it say?”

  He reached across her lap to the glovebox, pressed the button, and extracted a scrap of grimy notebook paper.

  The lettering was childlike, as one would expect, but surprisingly neat. It read: Thank you mister for saving us. We like it here better.

  “See? That’s how I know what I’m doing is good. I imagine with winter coming on, there won’t be as many thank-you vegetables, but that’s okay. I’ll keep this up for as long as I’m able.”

  Soon they came to a stop on a dirt road thirty miles outside Springfield proper. Gretchen had been to the country before, but she had been a little girl at the time and barely remembered the experience. The heady fragrances of pine trees, decaying leaves, and rich soil washed over her, evoking hazy flashbacks of a childhood she hadn’t thought about in years. It
was a survival technique, blocking all the wonderful memories from the past. Otherwise, the reality of their grim existence was too much to bear.

  A harvest moon shone down on them like a benevolent guardian, casting enough light to do their work. Soon all three ferals were unloaded and released from their cages. When Conrad opened the third cage, the feral darted out and took off toward a line of giant pecan trees a hundred yards to the south. The other two stood silently by the truck, waiting further instructions.

  “You’re free,” he told them. “Free to go wherever you’d like without worrying about the New Patriots rounding you up for extermination camp. You should look for others of your kind. I think it’s smart to stick together in groups. That one that ran off probably won’t last long. See that farmhouse?” he pointed the opposite direction from the tree line. “I think that’s your best bet. There’s food growing there...just like this.” He indicated a plastic grocery basket placed by a lopsided mailbox on the side of the road. It was packed with feathery-leafed carrots and a few small turnips.

  Gretchen’s eyes opened wide at the fresh produce. She didn’t get this kind of food from the Feds. Their stuff was all dehydrated, freeze-dried, or canned.

  “See? It’s a thank-you gift,” Conrad said with a smile. “I think there may be a colony of them out there, banding together, learning how to farm the land. I like to think so, anyway.” He added after seeing her skepticism.

  “You think they’re smart enough to farm? That seems like a stretch.”

  “Yeah, they probably just find this stuff growing wild. I don’t know. I’m no expert. All I know is these two will have a better chance out here than in the city.” He turned his attention back to the children. “Go on now. Just head that way. Good luck!”

  They watched the ferals walk away. Gretchen couldn’t determine their gender; their pre-pubescent bodies looked equally malnourished, and they both had long, matted dark hair. There was no way to tell without checking between their legs, and she had no interest in doing that.

  “We better get going too. Grab that basket, would you, Gretch?”

  He emptied its contents into a plastic bag and replaced the basket next to the mailbox. When they made a U-turn on the country road and headed for home, Gretchen could no longer see the two ferals in the gloom. She hoped they would be safe here in the beautiful countryside. Just as Conrad said, surely it was an improvement over the rat-infested urban wasteland of the inner city.

  ***

  Two pairs of eyes followed the red taillights of the departing vehicle. The children crouched in a fallow

  cornfield. They could hear noises all around them. Their hearing was extraordinary, as it must be to survive;their instincts told them to RUN! But the sounds were coming from all directions now.

  A dozen ferals emerged from the dead cornstalks, surrounding the two new arrivals. These ferals were taller, but no less filthy. An observer would be able to easily discern their genders because they wore no clothing, only smears of mud brushed here and there on their lithe bodies, and done so in a manner that seemed significant; indications of a tribal hierarchy, perhaps.

  One bold male stepped toward the two frightened children. He grunted something and gestured, indicating they should remove their clothing. Both did so, revealing themselves to be girls.

  The country ferals began to hoot, stomping their bare feet on the weed-choked earth. The bold male, the one in charge who clutched a primitive spear, began twirling it now in excited circles. The hooting continued for a few seconds, then was interrupted by the leader.

  “Smokehouse!” he screeched into the night. The two children were grabbed before they could run. Their wrists and ankles were bound with tattered rags. Two of the largest ferals flung them across their own bony shoulders, and the group began walking toward the old farm.

  ***

  An hour later, Conrad was unloading the contents of the plastic bag – the vegetables from the country ferals – when he noticed two long strips of dried meat mixed in with the carrots.

  “Gretchen, you’re in luck! They gave us some beef jerky this time! Oh man, you’ve never eaten jerky like this before. It’s so tender and delicious. Try it!”

  Burdens

  “I have no idea what her problem is. She’s been acting weird for days. Weeks actually, now that I think about it. Chelsea, eat your pears.” The woman turned to a toddler strapped into a highchair, but soon her attention returned to the sink of dirty dishes and the conversation with the cordless telephone perched on her shoulder.

  “I think she’s jealous that Brad and I are doing so great when she and Doofus are struggling to pay their mortgage.”

  The toddler’s sticky fingers fished a pear wedge from the bowl and had begun the upward trajectory when the dimpled hand paused midway. The bright blue eyes grew wide as they gazed at her mother – or rather at the black creature wriggling up the leg of her jeans.

  “I know, I know. I shouldn’t say that. That was mean.”

  The toddler popped the pear chunk into her mouth, watching the creepy crawly cling to the Levi’s label on her mother’s backside, like a mountain climber clutching a rocky ledge. It hesitated in its ascent, its head cocked at an attentive angle and its pointed ears swiveling radar dish-like upward.

  “Well, she shouldn’t snub me at every opportunity. She ignored my new Facebook profile pic, and it was a good one. You liked it. Everyone else did too, but she didn’t even acknowledge it. Such a bitch.”

  The creature nodded to itself, shark-grinning now, gray lips pulled back to reveal row after row of miniature razor teeth.

  “Mama! There’s a baddie on you!” the child said, but to adult ears, it sounded like, “Mamamama...duhsabudu!” and so was dismissed as toddler gibberish.

  The tiny monster scaled the back of the blouse and squirmed under the collar. Chelsea could see the lump it made in the plaid fabric on her mother’s shoulder. She reached for another pear, watching the lump move about. It must be building a nest in there, like the birdies do in the trees.

  “I don’t want to say anything. She’ll just accuse me of being a drama queen. Besides, it would give her the opportunity to apologize.”

  As another pear wedge was making its way to the child’s mouth, a second beastie crawled out from under the cabinet where they kept the stinky garbage. It wasn’t black like the other one; its color looked like her stomach felt right before she threw up. Instead of legs, it had pinchers, and it click-clacked its way along the tile floor to her mother’s sneaker. It lingered at the rubber toe, as if waiting for something.

  “Because if she apologizes, I have to let her off the hook, which means I’ll have to invite her to Bunco on Friday. And frankly, I’d just as soon not have to listen to that screechy voice on game night for once.”

  This second creature didn’t have a shark-grin. Instead, its mouth was like a sucker on an octopus tentacle. It used its sucker mouth and pincher legs to climb up the sneaker and under the denim hem at her mother’s ankle. Chelsea followed the bulge move up to the knee, where it stopped.

  “Mama, it’s building a nest there, just like the other one did on your shoulder,” the child said. Her mother heard: “Mamamama ...buddignehdere... liketotherdoneshodder!”

  “Baby, if you eat all your pears, we’ll go to the park.”

  The toddler nodded, cramming two more chunks of fruit in at once. Neither the plaid lump nor the denim lump were moving now.

  “You have to admit, she gets on your nerves too. God, if I have to hear the ‘week-we-spent-in-Vancouver’ story one more time, I may slit my wrists.”

  A third creepy crawly scrambled out from under the refrigerator. It wasn’t black, or sick-stomach color, but made the child think of the piles of poop her doggy had made right before it went to doggy heaven. It didn’t have pinchers, but crawled along on a thousand wriggling insect legs. Its head was twice as large as the rest of its slithering body. It wasn’t as fast as the other two creatures, but something
about this one made the child worry about it getting on her mother. Something told her it was worse than the other two. Serious Bad News Bears, as her daddy would say.

  “You know what else? I think she’s a closet alky. There, I said it. You know we’ve all thought it for a while now.”

  The creature wriggled and slithered, wriggled and slithered, closer and closer to her mother.

  “Mama! There’s a really bad baddie coming now!” Chelsea said. All her mother heard was baby talk, but there was something in her child’s tone that caught her attention, wresting it away from the phone.

  “What’s wrong, sweetie? Does your tummy hurt?”

  Chelsea shook her head, pointing at the multi-legged monster on the floor. It was only a few feet away from her mother’s Keds now.

  “What is it? A spider?”

  Blond curls wobbled again. She blew out an exasperated breath, air-stabbing a chubby finger at the thing on the floor.

  “Honey, I don’t see anything.”

  Her child’s odd behavior was unsettling. She had never seen her act this way before. She felt a shiver of something...a ghost cobweb across the back of her neck. Her baby was staring at her with such intensity...the precious face covered in fruit syrup and the brows drawn down in an adorable frown.

  “Are you telling me it’s time to get off the phone and take you to the park?”

  The child shrugged. Was there anything cuter than a toddler shrugging?

  “Stacy, I need to go. Chelsea is ready for playtime, then her nap. You know, I think I’m being a brat about this thing with Janice. Maybe she’s struggling with something and taking it out on me without meaning to.”