Stories (2011) (78 page)

Animal meat must seem too tame.

"Stay here and keep your nose clean," Sleepy Sam
said. He had a generator so he had electricity when the lights went out and
stayed out a few years ago.

Most people left the little town during the Revolution or
were killed by the monsters and the cannibals. Some stayed and some came back,
then left again. They were primarily teens with no parents and no place to go,
but the intense jungle that had suddenly surrounded and engulfed the town
freaked them out and most left. They liked concrete and danger better. It put
him in mind of
The Jungle Book
he kept in his ragged backpack. His
parents were long dead now but they used to read from that book sometimes,
together at night when he was little and dreaming about living in a jungle
someday and here he was. The Revolution had taken his parents but given him the
jungle. He kept a picture of another jungle at his sleeping space. He'd stolen
it from the library. The picture also showed some terrible animals attacking
each other. What if this jungle would summon such creatures? He began considering
the possibility such wild beasts might arrive and decided he would always be
ready. He kept his pocketknife, a sharp stick and a hammer always handy.

Not long ago there was a group that rode into town that
seemed nice at first and then turned deadly. He had had little to no
interaction with those just passing through Mud Creek, but these people laughed
and danced and sang a lot. They built a big bonfire and ate rabbit and squirrel
they shared with him. They made a game out of chasing a big beach ball one of
them blew up and threw around like it was something special. Then one of the
women got angry, the red-headed leader, and her man who had a long black beard.
They fought like feral cats and it scared him. He crawled back home when they
started killing each other.

The next day, when he went to see if their camp in the
parking lot of the abandoned police station was still there, he found it
wasn't. Gone from Mud Creek. He was relieved and sad at the same time.

–•–

"Good riddance to bad rubbish," Sleepy Sam had
said when Jim told him and his son.

Cranky Dan'l, who rarely spoke, nodded his head.

"Dey kilt my hog, Billy. I hate dem," Dan'l said.

"They be lost wanderers, those gypsy kind. They don't
care about nothing but getting high and eatin' all they can, stealin' all they
can and fightin' about what they didn't eat and didn't steal," Sleepy Sam
said.

"But they danced. They sang songs. They seemed real
happy and they just went crazy."

"I know. But the whole world be crazy now, son. Just
keep clear of weirdos."

Jim took the advice and a hat full of eggs and left.

–•–

Mud Creek was just a little town near the rockets now. Weeds
and grass grew in the cracks of the streets, curbs and sidewalks. The windows
of most buildings no longer were glass. Most of the stores had been looted and
truthfully, Jim had done his share of looting before going away to hide, but
after most of the people left, he found it just wasn't as much fun doing it
alone.

Jim knew there was still much to be had for one man and he
shouldn't act like a kid, afraid of the ghosts in the stores. If he needed
something now, he just took it like a man. Jim knew he had to act like a man,
not a little boy. The encounter with the ugly man had taught him that, as much
as his own jungle dreams which sometimes included a sad-faced girl with big
eyes and soft pink lips.

He wondered where everyone had gone to after they left Mud
Creek and what in the Sam Hill could be better out there? He envisioned only
the worst: all of them gone crazy and eating one another like sharks with blood
in the water.

The town provided most of his needs and the library had
provided books that taught him about things like sharks that he had never seen
except in pictures, and about bears and such, the monkey, the lion, the birds.
From Sleepy Sam and Cranky Dan'l, he also learned about how to plant the seeds
from the stores, and because he planted them behind the garage, he survived
because he didn't have to depend on Sleepy Sam or on anyone. He even bartered
with his extras, sometimes with an old lady who made beeswax candles. She sold
them in the center of town along with some moonshine her old man made, but she
frightened him. She always made awful cannibal jokes.

"I got me a hankering for boy today. My stomach aches
to eat me some boy. You know some boy I can eat? What's pink and white and et'
all over?" she'd laugh.

"Raw boy," Jim would have to say or she wouldn't
exchange her candle for what scavenged item he was proffering, usually some
stolen book, unbroken crockery or beans. The old man's moonshine wasn't too bad
and it was cheap. A book of matches and Jim was set with a jar full of amber
fire. He didn't drink it, though. He used it to clean stuff.

–•–

Their set-up was in an old gasoline station that smelled
funny. He avoided Mr. and Mrs.

(They had no other names that Jim knew of.)

He preferred the rockets.

He had even come to like the quiet, the sky and the moon,
the stars at night. The sun in the daytime. The rain. He had a good shelter not
far from the SUV where he hid things and sometimes slept when he wasn't too
scared. It was inside one of the old rockets and it was roomy in there and the
power that ran the lights never went down. It was not bad at all. He felt safe
there, protected.

Being alone was not bad until he saw the girl. Saw her one
day in town while he was hunting for things to barter with to go with what he
grew. Saw her scrounging through an old Wal-Mart store, dressed only in a pink
tee-shirt, flip-flops and boy's underwear. He saw her. She saw him.

And she ran. And in that moment he knew he did not truly
like being alone or with farts like Sleepy Sam and his dumb son.

After that, he thought of her often. Her long blonde hair
and the way she looked in that underwear.

He knew about girls—and women like Mrs. and the insane
warrior woman and her maniac man who fought till they died. Girls were better.
There had been girls when there was a school, but after the Revolution there
were few more girls to see, just some guys. The girls often fled to the cities.
He assumed some girls lived nearby, he'd just never seen any. He thought most
went into hiding because of the monsters who enjoyed taking women to their
masters, so he thought they were all gone and he figured cannibals liked girl
meat even more than boy meat. He liked to watch the old movies Sleepy Sam had
on videos and DVDs. Sleepy Sam had quite a stash and Jim had loved watching the
Star Wars series over and over but Sam always demanded payment. Jim had swiped
the first Star Wars movie and watched it several times on a small
battery-powered DVD player he had found in some rich person's house, but the
battery went dead and he hadn't found another one that would work. After
awhile, though, he just got tired of the movies, especially the porno films
Sleepy Sam adored. Too many pretty women in the movies.

It was better to know you were alone, and just be alone, and
learn to like it. If you didn't, you thought too much, and if you thought too
much, you hurt too much, and that led to wondering too much about imagined
things that could not be. Then, if you held yourself in your hand at night and
made pleasure come, it became a mean, hollow pleasure that only made you want
the other and that made you feel just how lonely and alone you truly were.

If you didn't watch the DVDs and the jerky videos, then you
didn't think about it so much.

Not so much.

Not as much.

But, once he knew the girl existed, he could not rest. He
could no longer be alone and like it.

–•–

Alone was no longer the absence of others. It was a hollow ache,
a hole that couldn't be plugged and had no bottom. Then he asked Sleepy Sam
what he did to get over being lonesome.

"I just never think about it none."

"What about Dan'l's mom?"

"She died."

"Well, how'd you get over it?"

Sleepy Sam attacked the dirt with his hoe. "You just
don't."

"Well, then how do you stand it?"

"You just do."

Not much help. Jim supposed the two were his best friends in
the universe but they weren't really very bright. He guessed he would have to
find the girl. He needed to talk to her.

–•–

On another day, as the year wound down and summer died out
and the cool winds came in, bringing the first rains of the winter to come, he
went back to town and scrounged about for some canned goods. He found some
canned meat, and was happy even if the expiration date had come and gone years
ago. He thought pork and beans and tuna and Spam would just make Mr. and Mrs.
the happiest souls on the planet. And the tin of sardines, even if slightly
spoiled, would make Sleepy Sam laugh. He also found a Corning Ware lid in
excellent condition. That should be worth three candles at least. If he had a
gun he might shoot something fresh to eat, but he had only seen a few crows and
scrawny squirrels.

All the guns in town had been taken, the stores looted of them
and their ammunition. So that was out. He fished from time to time with a pole,
cord and a hook made from a paperclip.

Worms he dug out of the ground for bait. Sometimes he used
crickets. But finding the canned meat was a good thing. He had thought it was
all gone, but there were several cans in a store he thought he had checked out.
They were stashed under a tarpaulin inside an old standing fridge.

It was the store where he had first seen the girl. He was
hoping she might be there.

She wasn't.

He took the meat back to the rocket ship and ate the Spam
with some fresh carrots and enjoyed it, but it didn't stop him from thinking
about the girl, and he couldn't be happy alone anymore.

–•–

The boy had long dark hair. He kept it tied back with a
strip of black leather. He acted tough, like he owned Mud Creek, and he made
her so angry. He stole her stash of food that she'd found the day before. She
watched him cram everything into a kid's backpack. Her stomach growled.

He was like a monster, one of those creeps that stole her
family. She hated him and yearned for him at the same time. She decided to
stalk him, pretend he was a beast she could capture and roast over a slow fire
for dinner. A little garlic made anything edible. She carried a jar of garlic
powder, pepper and salt with her at all times. Her mother had taught her how to
cook when she was six years old. That was how old she was when the rockets came
and the Revolution began.

The monsters. The cannibals. The robots.

How long had it taken her to reach Mud Creek? "Get to
Mud Creek," were her mother's last words before the fire and the screams
sent her running into the forest straight into the claws of a monster. She had
told her the coordinates every night before bedtime and what to do when she got
inside one of the spaceships. "Go home," her mother said. Sally
didn't know where home was. She had to find out though.

She followed him quietly, like an Indian. Mother was an
Indian. Maybe. Actually, Sally was not sure what Mother was, just that she was
alone and much older than six.

And now seeing her reflection always disturbed her. How did
she get so big? Her body had betrayed her. She even bled once a month and that
meant she could have a baby. She saw a monster take a baby once. And she didn't
want to know what it did with it. It frightened her.

How she wanted to rip it from its claws and protect it.

That was when she got the dog. The dog—a shaggy, golden
retriever—became her friend and loyal companion. She knew his breed because her
mother once showed her a dog book with wonderful pictures. When she saw him
scavenging for food on the outskirts of a city, she called to him with a pang
of longing sweeping through her: "Little One!" He came to her as if
he had always known her. They slept together at night, Sally's hand often
resting on his head. It was better than being alone. But the dog couldn't talk.
She wished it could talk, explain to her what had gone so terribly wrong with
the world that they had been forced to live like this, so alone, so horribly, hideously
alone.

She called the dog Little One even though he wasn't exactly
little because someone had once called her that. Maybe her mother or her father
had whispered those words—his face was an even-more-distant memory than her
mom's, featureless with two dark smudges for eyes and a mouth that never opened
except to say, "Goodbye." She was not sure. Maybe she didn't even
have a dad.

Sally tracked the boy to the library, a place of rotting
books and broken computers, several times. It took all her courage to confront
him on the third visit. He rummaged in the librarian's office, squatting in
front of an old DVD player. "If I could just figure out how to make a
battery or make a generator. I really should study on it some. I think I could
do it. . . ." he said out loud, as if he knew she was standing behind him.

"I hate you," she finally said to force him to
turn around, her shadow almost touching his. Of course he knew she was there.
The light in her lantern glowed.

"Say what?" he turned slowly and looked at her.

"Won't do no good," she said, "that thing
can't hear you scream when I kill you.

"I've decided to roast you well done with wild onion
and garlic or make me some boy jerky that will last me a year or more. How'd
that be? You scared yet?" She set the lantern down with one hand. In the
other she held a Glock 19, something she stole from the last cannibal she'd
killed.