Authors: Laura Bickle
I stopped at the furniture store and pulled my bike up on the porch. I called into the darkness of the structure for Seth and Joseph, but no one answered. I reached into my pocket for a pencil and snagged a scrap of paper that blew up against the building. I left the boys a note:
Seth, Joseph:
I don’t know if you’ll get this note. But your father and Elijah are looking for you. All they want is for you to come home.
—Katie
I wedged the note between the door and the door frame. If they came back here, if they saw it, they would know.
I continued on, pedaling down the side streets. I saw a police car overturned on its roof, burned to a crisp that blackened the pavement. A truck carrying pumpkins had jackknifed in the road, smashed gourds painting the street a lurid shade of orange. Flies had descended upon the mess, and I wrinkled my nose as I walked my bike around it.
I finally arrived at the drugstore, next door to a Laundromat and bar. I didn’t really expect to find anyone there, since the streets had been empty.
The door at the front of the drugstore was locked, and the sign on the window said that it was closed. I shook the door handle, rattling the glass.
I stepped back and looked up. The lights were on inside, so I assumed that the structure still had electricity, that the power lines to this part of town were still intact. I was certain the drugstore kept surveillance cameras on the property to deter precisely the kind of thing I was planning on doing.
I cast about the parking lot, and my eye fell on a cigarette receptacle. It was heavy, but I managed to lift it and swing it clumsily.
The glass door shattered in a glittering hail. My blood pounded in my ears. I couldn’t believe the destruction I’d caused—not even when the alarm went off.
The screech of the alarm caused me to jump back, and my first instinct was to flee, but I fought that down. If the alarm brought police, that was good. They could look for Seth and Joseph. They could get Alex to a hospital. At the very least, they could tell me what was happening.
My shoes crunched in the broken glass as I walked into the fluorescent glare of the store. I picked up a large backpack in the school supplies area and began to shop.
I bypassed the makeup and glossy magazines, the bubble bath and the candy, veering toward the back of the store where the actual health items seemed to be hidden. Strange arrangement for a store that had a purpose to sell medicine.
I picked up rolls of gauze, sterile bandages, antibiotic cream, ibuprofen, and hydrogen peroxide, stuffing them quickly into the bag. As I worked my way farther back, I found myself staring at the closed window of the pharmacy counter.
Antibiotics would be there. I tried to lift the steel curtain covering the window, but to no avail.
I set my bag down and began to think. There must be something to pry it up. I grabbed a cane from a nearby display and succeeded in wedging it beneath the steel curtain, bending it back enough to just allow space for me to jump the counter and wriggle through.
I knocked over scads of plastic baskets and rattling pill bottles before I found the light switch behind the pharmacist’s counter. I was surrounded by a bewildering array of shelves of bottles and boxes. I had no idea what purposes the vast majority of them were used for. I picked up bottles at random. I didn’t understand the labels.
There had to be some kind of tool here for pharmacists to tell . . . I went to a desk in the back that held a large red book. I opened it. To my relief, it was an index of drugs. I searched for “antibiotics” and carefully wrote down the names of several on a nearby notepad. The terminology was largely unfamiliar to me, but I could read through the lists and copy the information.
Carefully scrutinizing the shelves, I was able to find most of them: a bottle of erythromycin, packets of something called Zithromax (which sounded like a comic book superhero), and some similar odd packages called Bactrim. I crammed as many as I could into a plastic bag and squirmed out under the counter.
I paused to think, my mind and heart racing. I might not get another chance to be Outside again. What else did I need? I wandered down the battery aisle. Several chargers and batteries that worked for cell phones were arranged on a plastic display. I knew that Mrs. Parsall’s cell battery had been getting low. I’d taken a good look at it last night before we went to bed, memorizing the model number printed on the back. I found two extra batteries and a car charger that were supposed to work for that model.
Last, I went down the dog food aisle. I scooped all the cans of dog food that would fit into the backpack. I hesitated, then went back for a second backpack and filled that with dry food. I knew as well as anyone else that when food went short, the animals would suffer most. Not if I could help it.
On the way out, I emptied my pockets of all the bills I had and placed them next to the cash register. I had no idea how much the medicines cost, but knew that it wouldn’t anywhere near cover the damage I’d done to the store.
I glanced longingly back at the pharmacy counter and the pet food display, briefly thought of loading up with everything I could carry. But I knew, deep down, that I should not take more than I could pay for.
Still feeling guilty, I stepped through the shattered door to my bike. I nestled one backpack in the basket and slung the other on my back. I began to push away from the curb, when something caught my eye.
Something red and white and delicious.
The glow of a Coca-Cola machine beckoned behind the door of the Suds ’n’ Duds, the bar and Laundromat next door. I’d always thought drinking and laundry were a strange combination, but I had noticed that many people Outside required constant stimulation. Odd.
I looked away from the Coke machine, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth.
But I couldn’t help glancing back at the seductive glow. Like a moth to the flame, I drifted toward it. In the bottom of my pocket, I fingered some loose coins. They clanked together, slipping against my sweaty palms.
The doors opened at my touch, and I stepped inside. Unlike the drugstore, the Laundromat advertised that it was open twenty-four hours. The washing machines and dryers lining the walls and aisles had long since fallen silent, and the fluorescent lighting buzzed and flickered overhead. I had never used machines like that. We used simple tubs, washboards, and lye soap. I couldn’t imagine not having anything to do while laundry did itself. The cracked tile on the floor looked grimy, and I smelled a combination of stale beer and perfumed laundry soap. I stepped around abandoned plastic baskets full of clothes on the floor to stand before the warm red glow of the Coke machine.
I fed the machine a dollar in quarters and nickels, then punched the glowing button to release the soda. The machine clunked inside, and I reached down to retrieve my treat from the receptacle.
But nothing came out.
Gritting my teeth, I reached up into the mouth of the machine, trying to feel if it had gotten stuck. My fingers wiggled in air and darkness.
I stood back and pressed the button again. Nothing happened. The machine had eaten my money.
I dug into my pocket. I only had two dimes left.
My hands balled into fists. This might be the last chance I ever got to taste a Coke. Whether it was because of what had happened Outside, or my parents’ rescinding of
Rumspringa,
I wanted the syrupy taste of this small rebellion. And this stupid machine was denying that bit of freedom to me . . . just like everyone else.
I slammed my hand against the face of the machine. It was the first time I’d ever struck anything or anyone out of anger. The blow echoed against the plastic, startling me with the force of it traveling up my arm to my shoulder. But the machine was unmoved. It continued to hum as if nothing had happened, smugly digesting my change in the face of my pathetic assault.
Shoulders slumped in defeat, I turned to walk away. The drugstore had caved under the force of my criminal will, but the Coke machine was virtuous. Inviolate.
I paused, glancing over the rows of battered washing machines to the bar. It wasn’t much, just a long counter with chipped, mirrored shelves of bottles behind it and wobbly stools before it. But it was apparently enough to keep the folks entertained while they were doing their laundry. A television perched above the bar was tuned to the soft snow of static. They must have served some food here too, since flies swarmed over a paper tray of french fries abandoned on the counter.
My eyes narrowed. There might be Coca-Cola there.
And, after all, I
had
paid for it.
I circled behind the bar, scanning the bottles and cans. The spirits were colorless, brown, amber, and red. I didn’t know why one would drink something called “extra dry.” Nor did I understand why someone would drink something violent, as suggested by the “brut” on the label. And “Irish Rose” sounded entirely unappetizing. Flowers, in my experience, tended to taste bitter. My gaze roved over cans stuffed into a small refrigerator under the bar. Just beer and wilted lemons.
I frowned. I’d tasted beer once before and hated it.
I really wanted a Coke. Just a Coke.
At the end of the mirror behind the bar stood a shiny steel metal door. I grasped the latch. It was cold—I expected that it was a refrigerator of some type. A walk-in cooler that might contain what I was looking for.
Cold air blew into my face as I opened it, and my breath made ghosts in the fog. Something inside smelled funny, but I chalked it up to rotting food. I reached inside for a light switch, and a weak fluorescent light flickered on overhead. It illuminated metal racks on wheels full of beer, a couple of kegs on the floor . . .
. . . and a familiar stack of red and white cans, tucked behind one of the movable racks. I grinned in triumph.
A spider web brushed across my face, and I rubbed it away.
I should have paid attention to that, to that sensation that made me shudder. I pawed at my face and took two quick steps inside, trying not to imagine the spider that had created the string now caught in my hair.
I reached for the cans of Coke, victorious adrenaline surging through me. But that adrenaline soured, curdled as I became aware of something sticky on the floor that was sucking at my shoes.
I stared down.
A brown stain spread across the concrete floor to a drain. At first I assumed that some of the cans had frozen, exploded. But as I pushed the rack aside, I saw that it had trickled from a body on the floor.
Not just a body. I had seen dead bodies before, at funerals. Those bodies were neatly dressed in their Plain clothes, pale and sunken, usually old. Since we didn’t embalm our dead, we buried them quickly, with little ceremony. Plain dead were peaceful, solemn.
This was . . . not peaceful. A man in a T-shirt and jeans lay on the floor. His head had been torn off, missing. I saw only white vertebrae glistening in that mass of gore that had been his neck.
I jammed my fist in my mouth. I was too terrified to scream, too shocked to do anything but utter a squeak.
And then I heard the clang of the cooler door slam shut behind me.
I scuttled back, tripped on a bucket. I fell down, backwards, on the floor, in the stain. I scrambled to my feet, whimpering in terror. I shoved at the door, but it was locked.
I sobbed, slammed my fist against it. The sound echoed just like my blow on the Coke machine and was just as ineffective. I tried to control my breathing. There had to be an emergency release, some way to get out . . . my shaking fingers worked around the seam of the door, feeling for a lever or a switch.
Something made a scraping sound above me.
Swallowing hard, I looked up.
Behind the fluorescent light, I could make out shadows. I shaded my eyes from the weak light with my hand. I was able to distinguish shapes—shapes of people. They were suspended upside down from the ceiling, curled up in balls or dangling with limbs dragging in spider webs of silk that drizzled down in the darkness, holding the forms there in an ethereal embrace.
My breath disturbed a string of silk that trailed from the shadowed ceiling. It moved as intangibly as smoke. I was reminded of when I was a young girl and had disturbed a nest of corn spiders in the barn. The creatures had crawled everywhere, in my hair, my bonnet, down the neck of my dress . . .
Something up there moved, shifted. And glowing red eyes stared at me.
I saw the figure scuttle across the ceiling in a spider-like fashion, but it was human . . .
“Oh God!” I swore, jerking on the handle to the door. I rattled it, working my hands around the door, trying to find an emergency release I knew
had
to be there.
The creature on the ceiling approached as silently as those barn spiders, reached toward me.
My shaking hands found a cracked plastic button to the right of the door. I pulled at it, turned it, whimpering, finally slapped it hard . . .
And the door sprang open. I lurched through the doorway, running behind the bar.
I knew that
thing
was behind me. I ran past the line of washing machines, turned back to see it pawing along the ceiling. I didn’t watch where I was going, stumbled over a box of laundry soap. The powdered soap spewed all over the floor, and I slammed against the wall of dryers.
The glass door of one of the dryers sprang open from the impact, and I found myself face to face with the contents of the machine. At first, I assumed that they were merely clothes, but . . . that smell . . . it was the same as in the cooler.
I could see pale, broken limbs turned in on themselves, a claw of a hand tangled in a sleeve. It was a crumpled, stinking body.
I whirled, only to find the creature from the cooler walking down the wall of dryers, hands behind knees, then dropping upright, on his feet. He was pale and filthy, and he smelled like blood. But what was most unnatural was the way his eyes glowed, like a cat’s in the darkness. Behind him, I could see other shapes gathering on the ceiling.