by Linda L Zern
“Merritt, don’t let Parrish hear you talk to me like that or Britt either. She’ll pound you.” Darby wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. “I’m okay. I’ll be able to boil and wash the bandages.” Lowering her voice, she hissed the last part. “Back off, or I’ll tell my brother you’re giving me a hard time.”
He backed off.
They always did when Darby mentioned her brother. Except for Commander Titus, no one in the unit would dare to go up against her brother. No one. Except for Titus . . . The thought depressed her.
“Do you think that icy freak, your brother, scares me?” Merritt licked his lips then swiped at the sweat on his forehead.
“Yeah, I do, and I think my sisters scare you too.” Darby swallowed back another quick, hard burst of nausea. She watched Merritt try to scoff but saw the fear spark in his face. “I’ll do my job. You just do yours, and we’ll be okay. Besides, my sisters and Parrish should be back today with meat. You want to eat, don’t you?”
The chubby boy licked his lips again and gave her a sour smile. How he stayed so fat now was one of those crazy mysteries like where all the books had gone. Parrish said they were all burned, used for fuel for cook fires, light, heat during the war. Probably. She thought of her small stash of medical texts and handbooks. She didn’t like thinking about having to move them if they had to bug out again. Too heavy. Too much trouble. She shook off her gloomy thoughts.
Merritt was still staring at her. What was he waiting for? "What is your problem? I just ate something gross, upset my stomach. That’s all. Forget it. I’ll go start the kettle for the bandages. Wouldn't want to miss my shift."
He shrugged. “Oh, speaking of forgetting, I was supposed to tell you that Commander Titus wants you to bring him his dinner tonight, late . . . again. ” The sour smile was back. “I told him I thought you were probably faking.”
“What are you talking about? You never told him any such thing. He just walked away. And my family will be back before supper. You watch.”
Merritt looked stumped for a minute. “Well. He will say it. He always wants you to being him his dinner when your family is out on patrol, and I will tell him that you are faking. You’ll see.”
Sick dread crawled over her skin. Her stomach churned. “Parrish will be back. My sisters. There’ll be a celebration. I won’t have time to be taking food to anyone.”
He squinted his piggy eyes at her. His nasty look slid down her body. She lost her fight with her stomach and threw up on the toes of his boots.
***
Doc Jacob counted the days between full moons: two months, going on three. He couldn’t remember when he’d started looking forward to the girl, Darby, coming to rumble around after his chickens. He’d thought himself content enough with his isolation: no one to worry about, no one to try and save, no one to bury. But then she’d fallen out of his chicken tree and brought the world back into his culvert. She was bright and quick and thoughtful about learning. He couldn’t remember when he’d started teaching her. Getting old, all this not remembering. He pulled a poncho over his overalls and waited for the moon to rise.
***
Darby tucked the canvas wrapped hunk of pork under her jacket. No one would see it. The coat she wore was four sizes too big. There was a lot a person could smuggle under an oversized coat. Besides, finding anything that fit her and that wasn’t ridiculous for the way they had to live now . . . She'd worn a frilly pink sundress at her last birthday party before the solar storms. She missed that dress, but what little girl silliness. Tears burned. She shook her head and gritted her teeth against crying like a baby.
At the edge of the camp, Darby gave the boy standing guard a jar of apple vinegar. She whispered, “Put some on a bit of cloth and dab it on the jock itch. It might burn. Depends on how much you’ve been digging at yourself.”
The boy gave her an embarrassed roll of the eyes. “Thanks, Darby. I won’t tell anyone that you’re going out. I won’t.” He clutched the jar to his chest. “No one will ask, but if they do, don’t worry. It’s just silly old Darby looking for chickens. Right?”
He was still nodding his head when she faded into the underbrush along the lakefront road.
None of the roads were easy to travel anymore. Potholes ate away at the asphalt. In the wet season, the holes filled with rainwater, minnows, and frogs. When they emptied in the dry season, the gopher turtles tumbled into the pits, became trapped, died. If you found them in time, they made good eating, but most wound up mummified leather in the bottom of a dusty hole.
For a while, the junior militias had tried to keep the highways clear, but the warlords and gangs blocked the roads as fast as they were cleared.
Darby scrambled through a latticework of toppled elderberry branches near the railroad track where the trail curved down to the edge of the lake. When the moon peeked over the ragged tree line, the light caught in the banana spider webs threaded through the downed tree branches. Darby picked up a stick. She whacked the big yellow bugs out of the way.
“Mister Doc?” Darby stuck her head inside the culvert. Her voice rang in the space. The banked fire smelled of fresh fat drippings. He’d been cooking something greasy, armadillo maybe. Her stomach heaved. She fought down the sour taste of bile. Pulling the pork from under her coat, Darby dropped it next to his stash of bent pots—a mini kitchen tucked away inside a hollow hole. She liked the way his home felt: cozy, dry, and safe.
Safe. The word jumped so quickly into her head that it hurt. She bit her lip.
Darby scooted close to the back of the culvert where Doc had blocked off the back end of the cement tube with a hunk of painted plywood. Fresh air flowed into the space through an open rectangle in the cement at the top of the curved ceiling, giving somewhere for the carbon monoxide and smoke to go, allowing him a fire at the edge of the enclosed space instead of out in the open. She wondered if the culvert had come with the convenient length of window, or if he’d chipped away at the hard cement side for the long years the world had stopped buzzing, beeping, and chirping with electricity. Darby could see the glint of starlight through the ragged hole in the cement. Cozy. Safe.
There were bright lights in the night. The sky still had lights.
The coals glowed quietly. Where could he be? A tiny pinprick of panic threatened to bubble up. People went out. Didn’t come back. Isn’t that what happened to Mom and Dad? They were there, and then they were gone. She shook off the sick worry, pulled a thin blanket into a lump for her head.
Suddenly, the warmth, the wink of lights above, the whisper crack-snap of dying coals were too much; she was so tired, all the time tired, which was stupid because usually, she could stay out all night, finding chickens, scrounging for medicines, rummaging . . . She slept.
Ham sizzled. Darby's mouth watered, and then the smell hit Darby like poison. She crawled past Mister Doc to the edge of the culvert and threw up. She gagged until she couldn’t breathe. A cup of water appeared over her shoulder.
“Rinse. Don’t swallow. What you need are crackers. Soda crackers. Fresh out.”
Darby closed her eyes, dug her fingers into her legs. She sucked in air. “Was that a joke?” She blew out air. Her breath smelled terrible. She shuddered.
“What? You mean the crackers?” He bent over the slab of pork he was frying. Looking up from his skillet he smiled. It wasn’t a very good smile. Maybe his stomach hurt too.
The sun rose like a fire in the morning sky. Early. Sunrise. How could she have fallen asleep?
“Oh, God, I fell asleep. How could you let me? Where were you? I wouldn’t have conked out if you’d been here.” On hands and knees, Darby scrambled out of the culvert. Blackberry brambles reached out to catch at her hair. She twisted away from the unforgiving thorns, fell backward onto her butt, felt something wet under her hand. It was vomit. “Oh, gross. Gross,” she yelled.
“Girl! You need to shut that yelling down. Don’t need to make it easier for those bastards over at the armory to f
ind us.” He stabbed at the hunk of pork then flipped it over.
“To find us,” she snapped, wiping her hand against her cargo pants. “I need to go back. They’ll look for me and if my brother comes . . .” She let the sentence trail away as she pushed to her feet.
“Darby. Sit down. Try to eat something.”
He watched her hand fly to her throat as her face turned white. She looked sick. She wasn’t.
“I can’t eat that.” Her eyes snaked to the frying pan.
When she pinched her nose, he said, “Breathe through your mouth. It’ll help. You need to settle your stomach. He pulled his pack forward, trying to search the contents with one hand. He held the frying pan out to her. “Take this for a minute.”
“No. I have to go. I can’t—”
He shoved the cast iron handle into her hands. She had to use both hands to hold it steady.
He turned to search his pack with both hands.
“Okay,” she said, holding the pan of sliced ham as if it contained a rattlesnake.
Mister Doc pulled a small tin out of his backpack. There was a fading picture of a Christmas tree on it. He pried the lid off.
“Cookies? Did you find cookies?” She stumbled closer in spite of herself.
“Nope. Sorry. But this will help with your tummy trouble.” Her eyebrows crashed down. He hadn’t been able to keep the worry out of his voice. Losing his professional savvy. Oh well. Poor kid. He wondered if she knew what was wrong with her.
“I’m not sick. So don’t worry. You won’t get anything. I just ate something that doesn’t sit right.”
“Darby?”
She took a step backward started to shake his head. “I gotta go. Take this back. I brought the pork because of the chickens. Didn’t want you to think I haven’t got anything to give back.” She stopped, shrugged. “I gotta go before they come after me.” She pushed the frying pan back at him. “There’ll be trouble.”
“Darby? How long have you been ‘not sick’ in the mornings?” He took the frying pan from her.
The head shaking stopped before he had finished asking. She stared at him with blue-black shadows under her eyes.
“How long?”
“Maybe it’s worms. I’ve been using more elderberry tonic. Probably worms.”
“How long?”
“Two months.” She sounded sad and tired. “Am I dying?” Tears sparkled in her lashes. It had taken her a while to drill down to her real worry.
Setting the frying pan down, he reached into the tin and pulled out a handful of thin yellow strips.
“Here. Eat this. You need folic acid.”
Her pretty blue eyes widened until they made him think of marbles made of glass. “Is this sugar? Is there sugar on these? Where did you find it?”
“Around,” he said, remembering the house on the edge of town with the buried, derelict freezer full of sugar and wheat. Last year’s rains had washed the dirt away from the stash. Someone had tried to be ready.
She nibbled at the yellow rind. Her eyes got bigger, if that was possible. “What is this?”
“Lemon peel, sugar, water. My grandmother’s recipe. They used to call it candied lemon peel. It’s good for you.” Her eyes finally closed in delight. The lemons are all around. The sugar was a nice surprise.”
“So is this folic acid stuff going to fix me?”
Time to make the real diagnosis. He saw her lick every last granule of sugar from her hand. She looked like a raccoon washing up after a meal.
He put the lid back on the tin of lemon peel and handed it to her. “No. It’s not going to fix you, but you need it.”
“I can’t take this back with me. I won’t know how to explain it.”
“Sure you do. You found it on your nightly wanderings, but there’s only one, so don’t waste it.”
She shrugged and then shuddered. “I gotta go.”
“Darby, who’s been hurting you?”
She bristled. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Girl!” He toughened his voice. “Who’s been making you have sex?”
The color left her face again. She clutched the tin of lemon candy to her chest. She looked about ten years old.
“You aren’t going to die.” He hoped that it was true. She was so young, so little. “You’re going to have a baby.”
***
Darby’s mouth watered thinking about the secret candy tin that Mister Doc had given her. She’d snuck it back into the armory under her coat like it contained a genie and three wishes. Merritt would find it. He would watch her and watch her until she got so used to it she’d goof up, and he’d find the candy. He was like a ferret that way, sniffing out all her treasures, all her secrets.
She pushed the Christmas tin under a pile of dirty bedding and bandages. Their medic wouldn’t look there; it was too close to the actual work.
Darby walked to the front of the armory building. She’d lucked out. Parrish, Brittany, Ella, and some of the younger boys that Parrish was teaching to track and hunt, had come back to camp early carrying a massive boar on a pole of bamboo. Fresh meat and the hard work of butchering had distracted everyone, including the guards, from keeping track of her and that was luck.
What was left of the historic brick building looked out on the dark waters of Lake Monroe. A motley collection of tarps and tents and lean-tos surrounded the building. The unit had wound down and stopped at the edge of the big lake like a tired pocket watch. They’d moved and marched for so long, and then they’d just stopped. It was weird. Maybe, it had a lot to do with not having anyone over twenty-one left alive to lead them.
The FlareOut War had burned itself out long before they’d staggered to this empty spot.
FlareOut—one word, big F, big O—Darby ran her hand over the fading graffiti on the curved arched entrance of the building. The graffiti had crawled its way across the land just like the way their unit had, leaving hints of what had happened. The lights went out. The world went mad. The government did its best to control the madness. But then the bullets ran out; the gas quit flowing, the trucks stopped coming, and a lot of people turned feral, just like the dogs.
One word, big F, big O—FlareOut—and the authorities had needed bodies, lots and lots of warm bodies to march and shoot and die. They’d come for Parrish and her sisters at school. Later when it was just junior militia, kids and teenagers, and after Parrish and her sisters had found Darby in the FEMA camp outside of Palatka, she’d marched with them, until they’d stopped, here next to the black water, and that’s when Titus had started coming around, at night. Always when her family was away: on patrol, on a hunt, on a scouting party. Titus knew how to sneak and take what he wanted.
“Hey! Darby! We got a monster. We’re having monster for dinner,” Ella’s voice carried across the camp. If her sister wasn’t careful, she was going to become commander material with a bellow like that. Darby nibbled at her knuckle. Great. Pork. More pork.
They’d have to leave before someone noticed she couldn’t eat pork or smell it or think about it, and there was more under her jacket than smuggled lemon rind.
***
Commander Titus stared at Darby over the dripping body of the big pig. Tallahassee sweated next to the fire as he turned their makeshift spit, a hunk of pipe yanked off the side of somebody’s pump house. It was a hot, miserable job turning the spit, saved for the kid most likely to be in trouble. Tallahassee didn’t seem to mind.
She turned away from Titus’ hot stare, thought about counting stars. Standing, she turned her back on the fire, on the misery of her situation. Without a moon, the stars stood out like floodlights powered by angels.
Parrish joined Darby, patting her on the head. “How you doing, kid?” His hair had started to curl over his ears.
“You need a haircut.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
It was a joke between them. It used to make him smile. Darby couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her big brother smile.
/> “Parrish?” she said, reaching for his hand.
“Hmmm. What?”
“Is it time to go? I think it might be time to go, to that place you talk about some of the time. That ranch. That S-Line place.”
In the starlight, his green eyes appeared black and bottomless, mysterious. Brittany laughed at something Ella said across the blaze of the cook fire. Everyone was in a good mood. Food and the thought of full stomachs did that for kids in the unit—everyone alive for one more day.
Darby ignored his dark look. She could almost hear his mind churning. “I know you worry about being alone out there. That we’ll be too alone if we leave. But if it’s real . . . That place . . . Those people. We wouldn’t be alone, would we?”
Beyond the ring of the fire’s glow, a solid wall of darkness pressed in on the circle of hungry junior militia members; it was like a living thing, that light, that fire, almost a physical pull to stay close to the comfort of it, to stay connected to other human beings.
“I know you’re not afraid—”
He snorted. “No. I’m not afraid of anything that’s out there.” He turned his head, his eyes following Commander Titus, a boy who’d been dumped into the militia from juvie, a boy who’d climbed the ranks of hardened leadership without blinking, carrying a machete like a sword. “I’m more worried for the boys here, under Titus. If I left—”
As if he could read their minds, Titus stopped his restless pacing at the edge of the perimeter of light and smiled at them across the body of the slaughtered pig. Darby shivered inside her jacket, ducked her head, and shoved her hands into her pockets.
“He’s getting worse, Darbs. He’s talking crazy about making the training for the newbies, well,” he hesitated, “more like torture, not so much training.”
“Could they come with us? Some of them?”
“Yeah, I wish. That would be best. He's locked down the big guns in that Army transport truck. He’s got the key, and they watch the truck like there's chocolate inside. He’s started disarming the girls when they come back to camp. Ella’s not happy about it and Britt’s ready to smack somebody.”
