The next day after another MRE breakfast, they left the area. For her and Benjamin, the morning meal had been chicken a la king, crackers, stale fruitcake for dessert, with a piece of gum so dry and hard that she could have used it to tip an arrow. They marched northwest with the four strangers. For once, Coral was certain of her direction, for Doug had a compass that he kept consulting.
When she asked Kathy about the compass, the other woman said, “It’s our only one. We pass it between groups.”
Coral knew better than to ask for more information about their supplies yet, or their organization, but the woman’s brief explanation must mean that they had three or more groups of explorers, going out to hunt for food and useful equipment. They would have begun nearer home and cleaned out everything within a day’s hike before ranging out farther. How far they walked back to their home would give her a hint of how desperate they were for food.
As the day wore on, she grew weary. It wasn’t only the chronic hunger, it was reluctance to be embroiled in another bad situation—to be trapped and powerless—that made her legs unwilling to move quickly.
In mid-afternoon, they walked into the beginning of what was obviously a city. “Is it Boise?” she asked Benjamin.
He nodded.
“The outskirts, really,” said Kathy. She sounded happy. She was probably returning to friends and familiar routines.
“We’re set up in the university district,” said Doug.
“You mean, your group?”
“Everyone left alive,” he said. “It had the best housing, lots of brick and concrete that survived.”
“And it’s defensible,” said Jamie. “More so before the river froze.”
“Have you been attacked?” asked Benjamin.
Doug said, “Early on, once. But we still have patrols. We learned our lesson.”
Jamie cleared his throat. “Let Levi give them the orientation.”
And decide what they need to know,
he clearly meant.
“Right,” said Doug.
“We’re all excited about getting home,” said Kathy, conciliatory.
Coral wondered if there was punishment, something official, for one of them breaking the rules. If Doug turned to her and gave her every piece of defensive information about the Boise compound, would he be shot, or not fed for a day, or put in stocks? Or were they as casual as they seemed to be, blithely letting secrets slip with nothing more than a friendly reminder not to do worse.
Surely, after all these months, they weren’t
this
casual about security. She wondered if they were acting out a play for her and Benjamin, pretending to be something they were not. And then, she’d find out, once she was behind closed doors, what they really were. What if this was bad, like the cult? What if it were
worse
than the cult?
Her steps slowed more, and Martin, who was directly behind her, walked into her, his boots scraping her heels.
“Sorry,” he said.
He had jostled the burlap bag off-balance, and she stopped to readjust it and to think. Should she and Benjamin make a break for it now? Her palms were sweating and her breath coming fast. A wave of dizziness overcame her, and she dropped her sack and sat right there.
“What is it?” Benjamin said, coming to her side. He dropped his own sack and knelt beside her. “Are you sick? Dizzy?”
She shook her head. “I think maybe—” she gasped for another breath. “Maybe a panic attack.” She tried to keep her voice pitched for his ears only.
Kathy, overhearing, said, “Do you have them a lot?”
“Never,” said Coral. “Maybe it’s—” She ran out of breath again. “Something else.” She pressed her hand to the ache in her chest. That felt better. She opened her jacket, made a fist, and massaged her chest with her knuckles. The knuckles bumped over her protruding ribs, but the ache eased.
Kathy had waved the other men away a few feet, and they stood in a loose circle, watching her. Coral closed her eyes against the sight of all those judging eyes. “I’m fine,” she said to Benjamin. She motioned him closer and whispered to him. “Just scared. Are we going to be all right?”
“I think so,” he whispered. “I have your back. Every minute. I promise.”
“Don’t let them separate us, okay?” she said. The tightness in her chest was easing. She felt ashamed of her momentary weakness. She was stronger than this.
“I won’t leave your side,” he said.
She struggled to get up and he jumped up first to give her a hand. “Sorry,” she said to the group. “I’m okay now.”
Kathy came forward. “Really?”
“Really,” she said.
“We won’t hurt you.” She looked sympathetic.
Coral didn’t believe the reassurance. “I’m conditioned for the worst.”
“I can’t imagine,” said Kathy. “We’ve had it okay here. I don’t appreciate it enough, I suppose. Food, walls, organization, law and order.”
“I’m ready,” Coral said, picking up her sack again. Her embarrassment was turning to anger at herself. If she had to be weak, did she have to show it to these people? No good could come of that. She promised herself she wouldn’t do it again, no matter what happened.
Keep a brave front. Don’t seem vulnerable. Watch your back
.
Trust no one but Benjamin.
Those were the rules of survival.
They walked farther and farther into a ghost town. Brick and concrete buildings had survived, and the tidy lines of streets were still obvious between them. The cars had been buried under snow by now, but every so often the top of a truck poked up out of the drifts. Metal poles that had held streetlights still stood. Two stories of a chain hotel stuck out of the snow, its sign a reminder of the old world.
How long before all this was gone? Twenty-five years? A hundred? How long before every building and the asphalt below them crumbled into dust? Would the buildings outlast people? Was there anything that anyone could do to keep humanity alive that long?
Coral was having a hard enough time keeping herself alive. The rest of the species would have to fend for itself. She glanced at Benjamin. Except for him, of course. She’d do whatever she could to keep him alive, too.
For the hundredth time that day, she hoped that following these strangers into their home was not going to be something she’d regret.
Then she glanced at the hands gripping rifles and shotgun, and she remembered it wasn’t her choice at all—not any longer. She had seen their city. The choice had been made. She would have to see it through.
The street curved at the ruins of a tall building, now merely a grid of steel girders.
“Student union on your right,” said Doug, pointing to it, as if he were a campus tour director on orientation week.
Coral had another flash of her old life, when a campus tour wouldn’t have been a bizarre thing to do, the way it was today. They turned after the ruin, where a smokestack poked out of the snow to their left.
Benjamin asked, “Is that for a furnace?”
“Not working now, but yeah, it was,” Doug said.
“They weren’t coal-fired, I take it.”
“Natural gas,” Doug said.
“A shame,” Benjamin said.
Another turn, and they were approaching an intact brick building, four stories tall. The snow had been shoveled away from the walk and entrance. They walked down a slope of snow and onto pavement, the first her boots had touched in many months.
At the entrance, in a shaded area under a concrete overhang, there was an armed guard. Kathy greeted her by name, explained the situation, and the woman went inside.
Kathy said to Coral and Benjamin, “I’m going to go home now. But I’ll see you both later—at supper, probably.”
Martin said, “Me too. See you both around.” He and Kathy walked off to the end of the walk to the southwest, and then they split apart and headed to different destinations.
Doug leaned against a brick column. He said, “I’ve been noticing your boots are coming apart.” He was pointing down to Coral’s boots.
“Yeah,” she said. “A lot of miles on them.” She glanced back at the door to the brick building, nervous about what was coming.
“Don’t worry,” Doug said.
“Okay,” she said.
“Levi will want to meet you.”
“Right,” she said. “Of course.” Realizing she was feeling the urge to chatter from her fear, she bit down on her lower lip to keep herself silent.
Benjamin said, “Was Levi a city leader? Or someone important at the university?”
Jamie said, “He was a businessman and was—is—used to organizing and supervising people. We had an election for mayor. There wasn’t any real opposition to him.”
Benjamin nodded. The guard came back and said, “Go on in. Parnell said it might be a few minutes.”
Jamie led them through the front doors and into a wide hall, filled with dead computers and a few tables stacked against outside walls. Doug trailed them up flights of stairs. There, the doors opened up and revealed a library—or what had once been a library. There were metal shelves, and some books were still on the shelves. Others were in piles on the floor, tumbling over.
Doug said, “These piles are all burnable.”
Coral said, “You’re burning books?”
“To stay warm, to cook food. We burned the tables. We burned chairs. We’ve burned flooring and lumber we’ve found that survived elsewhere in the city. This past month a committee has been going through the books and deciding what might have some application. Anything in engineering, agriculture, botany, other sciences, all those are kept. Novels that are older, or set on farms, that might have some information that might help us stay alive—for now, we’re keeping those.”
“So what’s getting burned?”
“Politics, and the history of governments. Analyses of the works of James Joyce and that sort of thing. Computer science. Philosophy. Psychology. Every bound copy of every dissertation. For now, they’ve saved the art books, but they’ll go soon enough.” Doug sounded troubled.
“Are there books on medicine?” Coral asked.
“Some. They’re at the clinic.”
“There’s a clinic?”
“Yeah, over—” and he was interrupted by a man with a clipboard coming through a door, saying, “You waiting for Levi?”
Jamie said, “Yeah.”
“He’s ready.”
“Thanks, Parnell.”
Doug waited in the library with their bags while Jamie led them through that door and into an office. A cast iron wood stove was in the corner, vented out of a wall. At a desk messy with paper and books sat a man in a blazer and white cotton shirt. His hair was dark, collar-length, and looked as if he’d been scrubbing his hand through it all day.
He stood and walked from behind the desk, his hand extended. He approached Coral.
She made herself not shrink back and took her glove off, shaking his hand. It was dry and warm. The office was warm, almost too warm. She unzipped her jacket as the man shook hands with Benjamin and introduced himself.
“Levi Balbao,” he said, “Call me Levi. And you are…?” His tone was well-modulated, comfortable with public speaking.
Benjamin introduced them.
The man said, “So you’re the doctor.”
“No,” she said. “I’m a doctor in training. I’m not a doctor.”
“But you can treat people.”
“I can try. I know—” and her mind flashed back to the previous conversation with Benjamin “—where the appendix is, but I would hate to try to take one out.”
“You’re not that far along in your training?”
“No,” she said. “My hands-on experience is limited to not much more than first aid and some post-surgical care.”
“But you’re not squeamish?”
“I’m not,” she said.
“Good. Edith has been doing fine, but we had an injury or two that…” His eyebrows flicked up for a second. “Overwhelmed her, let’s say.”
Okay, let’s, thought Coral. She didn’t know why, but she found herself put off by the man’s manner. He was too—something. Glib. Patronizing. Smooth. False.
“Parnell there is my assistant. And what do you do, Benjamin?” when Levi Balbao turned away from her, it was as if a spotlight had moved off her.
Benjamin said, “Jack of all trades.”
“Master of none?” Levi gave him a smile.
“I can hunt. I can fix things, build things.”
“Good, good,” Levi said. “We’ll have plenty for you to do. But no experience with growing food? Maybe a little hydroponics pot farm?”
“Sorry,” Benjamin said.
“We’ll get you fixed up with a job.” He looked them over. “I’m sure you’d like to get cleaned up. We’ll see if we can find you some fresh clothes.”
Jamie said, “Shoes for the doc, if there are any.”
“We might be able to come up with a white coat, even.” Levi shone his smile on her again.
Benjamin said, “One of my grandmothers was Basque.”
Levi nodded. “Mine too,” and then he laughed again. He looked at Parnell. “Will you arrange for housing?”
Jamie said, “Doug says he’ll take them in, get them acclimated.”
“Good. That’s fine.” Levi shook hands again with Benjamin and then with Coral. “We’ll talk more tomorrow, but let’s get you settled before we lose the light today, okay?”
“What about our gear?” Coral said. “Will we get that back?”
Levi looked an inquiry at Parnell.
“Rifle,” he said.
“Not quite yet, not that. But everything else, I assume.”
“My knife?” Coral said.
Jamie said, “I think Kathy still has it— a pocketknife.”
“I’d like it back,” Coral said.
“Fine by me,” said Levi, then walked to the door and opened it for them. “Until tomorrow, then.”
Coral and Benjamin went out. Jamie said, “Have a seat. I’ll be a minute,” and he went back in the office to talk with Levi.
Doug was several yards away, picking through a stack of books. She kept her voice quiet as she spoke to Benjamin. “What do you think?”
“That he’s sorry there aren’t used cars to sell any more.”
Despite her nervousness, Coral laughed. “But there are, plenty of cars. They just don’t do much.”
“The ones he sold before probably didn’t do much either.”
She said, “I’m glad we’re still together. Whatever happens.”
“We’ll have it figured out here in a couple days.”
“And we’ll leave if it’s bad?”
“Yeah,” he said, looking over at Doug. “I wonder if anyone can get access to the books they’ve saved. I have some questions about hibernating animals I’d like to find the answers to.”
“We’ll ask Doug. He seems friendly enough.”
“Maybe,” said Benjamin.
Coral didn’t disagree with his hesitation. They could trust no one except each other.
Doug took the two of them to his home. He seemed calm and friendly, and Coral wondered if that were an act or not. The town’s security seemed lax. There weren’t armed guards patrolling the streets, and it would be easy enough to sneak away from Doug. Unless there was an army of people guarding the edges of the town, they might be able to get away much more easily than they’d escaped the UFO cult.
Doug’s home was a few blocks away, in a block of dark brick apartment buildings. The sidewalks there had also been kept clear of snow.
“This is—was—housing for upperclassmen, apartment suites. We’re in Aspen, right here.” He led them through a door and up into a dim hall. “We keep everything unlocked. No keys, but there’s not much to steal. Things that used to be valuable are worthless now, and anything that’s of value now is being used or has been added to central stores.” At a door, he pushed through and into a cold apartment. He called out “Ab?”
There was no answer.
“That’s my wife. If it’s okay with her, I want to invite you two to share this place. We have plenty of room.”
“That’s kind of you,” said Coral, wondering if it was, or if he’d been told to keep an eye on them and was following those orders.
“The boss has to decide, of course, but I think you’ll like her.”
“I’m surprised people live alone, in apartments. You might be warmer if a bunch of people slept in a big room together.”
“A few do live like that, but as time went on, and fuel ran low, most came out and grabbed alternative housing. Maybe we’d grown weary of the togetherness.”
“So you’ve lived alone for how many months?” Coral asked. Benjamin was looking carefully around the living room.
To him, Doug, said, “Go on and wander around. There’s a kitchen and a bedroom we use as an office. Nothing in the kitchen or bathroom works, of course.” He turned back to Coral as Benjamin explored. “We had roommates, another couple we knew. But Alec died, and Steph moved in with another single woman friend. I think she couldn’t stand to be reminded, you know?”
Coral nodded. “What did your friend die of?”
“We’re not sure. It was six, seven weeks ago. Fourteen died. A disease of some sort. Diarrhea, vomiting, fevers, convulsions, and death. Very quick, like three days.”
“A virus, you think? Food poisoning?”
“We don’t know, but we were lucky we lost so few. I miss Alec.”
“How are people fed?”
“In one of the central cafeterias. We’ve converted what equipment we could to wood-burning and pulled in every wood-burning stove we could salvage. Most of those are in the kitchen. We eat two meals a day now, communally.”
“Then with the fatalities, could it have been salmonella, or something with food? Some food that only fourteen of them ate?”
He was shaking his head. “We don’t think so. Everyone around them was questioned, too. They weren’t all out on a salvage team, they weren’t all at the same table, they weren’t all working in a closed room together. None of that.”
Coral was stumped, too. With this weather, after six or seven weeks, the bodies still might have a tale to tell her. “Were they buried?”
“It’s too cold to dig. We’re burying people in a mausoleum across town.”
She filed the information away. “How much work will there be for me? In this clinic or wherever?”
“Levi didn’t say?”
“It was a quick meeting.”
“I’m not sure if I should.” But he obviously wanted to.
Coral simply waited, thinking he’d cave to his own inclinations.
“There are three hundred and four of us left. There were over four hundred at the start. But some died. Some wandered off, trying to find friends or relatives. A couple have died, of accidents. You two take us back up to three hundred and six.”
Coral saw Benjamin through an open door, standing still, clearly eavesdropping.
“How many of those are children?”
“Not many. About forty. A lot of people lost their kids.”
“A lot of grieving people, I imagine,” Coral said.
“We have a counselor, Victoria, who runs a bereaved parents’ group. You’ll meet her soon, I’m sure.”
The front door opened. Coral had automatically tensed and was backing away when a tall woman in a fur coat and purple scarf stepped inside. She was brought up short by the sight of Coral, but then her eyes landed on Doug and she smiled and went to him. They hugged and rested their foreheads together.
Coral backed away, trying to give them privacy. It had been so long since she saw two people sharing affection, she was embarrassed at it. She’d have been less shocked, she realized, had someone walked in and shot Doug dead.