A Matter of Days (24 page)

Zack stepped in front of us. “Toward the gulf.”

“Why?”

Zack shrugged like having conversations at gunpoint was
totally normal. “Heard it was where the government’s setting people up. Jobs and food. Vaccines.”

The surfer yelled from the truck bed, “Hey, is that why we’re going—”

“Shut up, Gary.”

“Man, but—”

“I said shut up. Whatcha have in that truck?”

Please, God, don’t take the truck. My blisters are getting blisters
.

“Clothes, toys for my brother, dog food,” Zack answered.

“Yeah, but how come you don’t look like you’re starving? Clear out the crap.” He whistled and two more men rushed over. “I suggest you get out of our way, or we’ll help you move.”

In seconds they dumped our clothes and the dog food, found a couple bottles of sports drink we were saving for an afternoon snack. They tossed them around and drank it all.

The leader pointed the gun at Twawki. “He’s big, he’d be a good sidekick.” He reached like he was going to take the leash and Twawki lunged and snapped. I’d braced my feet against the earth, but the leash tore into my hand. Zack reached over to help me as the gun went off.

“Damned dog, next shot I won’t miss.” The leader shook off his missed shot and stepped back as if he’d planned to incite the dog to kill. “Too much to feed him anyway. We should roast him up instead of the cow.”

The group guffawed like scaring kids was a fun new hobby. They took everything. Surfer guy and a few more threw the carcass into the truck bed, loaded their bikes next to the cow, and started the engine. Without saying anything else they followed the stampeding animals.

As the rest revved their motorcycles, I watched a passenger on one of them drop a piece of paper behind him into the dust.

They left us standing at the side of the road. Twawki pulled at the leash to go after them.

As the gang disappeared the way we’d come, Rabbit sat down on the ground and cried. “I’m not moving. I’m not taking another step.”

I leaned down next to him. “I can’t say I blame you, but can we go sit under that tree and out of the sun?” I pointed.

We needed a moment to catch our breath.

Zack picked up the paper and read it out loud. “ ‘Two miles back, farmhouse with water pump.’ Seems like not all those guys are in agreement.”

“Why help us?” I asked.

“Who knows? But maybe hooking up with a gang is the only way to make it here. People do crazy things to survive.”

Drops of red splatter on Zack’s shirt and pants drew my attention. “Uh, Zack?”

“What?”

“Did you get shot?”

I stripped off the flannel overshirt I wore as a jacket. “Sit down.”

“I’m fine.” Zack flinched, but stopped arguing as I began peeling off his shirt.

I gasped. His bicep had been tunneled by a bullet that left jagged edges of muscle and skin and lots of oozing blood in its wake. “Ruined your tattoo,” Rabbit declared with a sad shake of his head even though his face was a greenish white.

Zack chuckled, and I couldn’t stop my own laugh. The tattoo was the least important part.

“Did they roll the bullet in dirt first?” I wrapped my shirtsleeve tight around his bicep to stanch the blood flow.

“Is it still in there?” Zack twisted, trying to see the extent of the damage.

“No, I don’t think so. It just burrowed a half-pipe in your flesh.” Rabbit nodded as if he was a doctor.

“Can you walk at all?”

“It’s my arm, Nadia. Of course I can walk,” he snapped.

“Sorry.” I wanted to ask for my head back.

Pushing to his feet in a show of superhuman strength Zack demanded, “Let’s go find this farmhouse.” He took off, with Rabbit slugging along behind him.

“But—” None of the boys paid attention to me and I struggled to catch up.

We made it to the house, but it had been cleaned out, ransacked, probably by the same group.

Come on, Nadia, think. Be the cockroach, what have we learned?

Rabbit turned in circles. “There has to be a cellar. Where do they go for tornadoes?”

“Maybe they don’t have one.”

“They have to have one. It’s a farm. They put garden stuff in jars.”

“Rab, we’re not in the 1800s, you get that, right? Not every farm had to be useful. Maybe they bought pickles at the grocery like the rest of us.”

“No. You don’t run a farm and not feed your family off the land.”

“Where are you coming up with these things?” I asked.

“Zack’s books. Kinda boring.”

I laughed. “Okay, go find the cellar.”

I dug around in the lady’s sewing room and found a large needle and sturdy thread to sew up Zack’s arm. There was a water pump against the side of the house. The water stank of rotten eggs, and tasted worse after we dropped bleach into it to kill any bacteria.

Rabbit ran back to us. “It’s in the barn, under hay. There’s full jars.”

“How did you find it?”

“I’m brilliant and determined.” Rab grinned.

“That you are, brother mine.” I shook my head with a smile.

We made a meal of dill pickles and blackberry jam, crunchy green beans and corn chutney. I wanted to forget the feel of sewing Zack’s skin with the needle.

The next morning, I checked Zack’s arm and the wound was an angry red, with streaks away from the sutures. My stomach dropped. It didn’t take a genius to see we needed to open it up again, clean it out, and restitch it.

“I vote no,” Zack said.

“You’re outvoted. Until we find antibiotics we don’t have a choice.”

“How are you going to disinfect it, Starbucks? Pour bleach on my arm?”

“That would eat your skin, not clean it,” Rabbit answered, as if Zack had asked the question sincerely.

“We have to pee on it.” I grimaced.

“Huh?”

“We don’t have any antiseptic, do we? It’s a nasty wound, there’ll be bacteria in there.”

“And pee is better?”

“It’s a nurses’ trick.” I frowned.

“I can see why it’s not better known,” Zack grumped.

Rabbit backed away. “No, I am not peeing on him.”

“Rabbit, please,” I pleaded.

“You think it’s a brilliant idea—you do it.”

“Fine.” I grabbed a bowl and walked into the bushes. “For God’s sake somebody talk loudly, this is hard enough without silence!” I yelled.
Once again, wishing I was a boy
.

The steaming, fragrant bowl held anything but broth. I swallowed a gag.

“Don’t think about it, just do it.” Zack held his arm away from his body.

I dumped a steady stream of still-warm urine along the wound.
Dear God, please don’t let him die because of my pee. How the hell would I live with
that
guilt?

Al started singing, “Tinkle, tinkle little star.”

Zack guffawed. “Funny bird.”

“We have to keep moving.”

Over the next two stops, we found school backpacks and scavenged a few bottles of water, a last jar of olives, a pan, lighters, and a couple of knives. “I wish we had at least one gun.”

I nodded. There was something more comforting about a gun than a knife.

Rabbit found an atlas from 1995 in a dead car. “At least the big roads are probably still on here.”

This was farm country. Miles upon miles of acres with occasional farmhouses, or carcasses of ones that had burned down. Two sun ups, two sun downs, and lots of shuffling feet because all the vehicles were on empty. Semi-trucks that once hauled freight were empty when we found them.

After the seventh charred residence, Rabbit voiced what we all were thinking, “Would someone deliberately burn down houses?”

“If they were trying to force people out, I guess.”

“We have to keep moving.”

Twawki stopped by a mud puddle and dipped his tongue into it. Al said, “Yuck!”

I almost considered doing the same thing. I was so thirsty my tongue felt swollen and crusted.

“There’s a pigeon.” Rabbit sounded beyond excited.

“Great,” I mumbled.

“Yes, it is great. There’s a whole flock. Which way are they flying? Pay attention,” Rabbit demanded.

“That way.” Zack pointed, and I agreed.

“We need to go that way.”

“Rabbit, that’s off the road, off the path. It’s the wrong way.”

“Are you thirsty? Come on.”

“Why are we following a flock of pigeons into the forest, Shark?”

“Keep your eyes peeled for finches, too.”

Zack turned to me. “What the hell does a finch look like?”

I shrugged. “Um, it has feathers and wings.”

“Thanks.”

Rabbit recited, “Grain eaters like finches and pigeons stay near water. If they fly low and straight they are going toward the water source. Dad said.”

Well, if Dad said it …
It wasn’t Rabbit’s fault I felt bitchy, so I didn’t let the thought escape, but Dad also said nothing was going to happen to him and he’d come home. Alive. Dad said a lot of things that were never going to happen.

“Wait. Stop. Quiet.” Zack grabbed my arm, while Twawki sat and cocked his head.

There, at the outmost range of my hearing, was a trickling sound like water running.

“He’s right?” Zack shook his head. “Lead on, Mouse.”

When we found the pond and the stream bubbling into it I wanted to submerge my face and lap it up like a creature of the forest.

“I want to jump in and drink.” Rabbit lay down along the banks.

“We can’t. We have to disinfect the water.”

“I’d give anything for a cherry ice.”

“Don’t say ice. That’s cruel.” Sweat kept our clothes sticking against our skin.

“Sorry.”

We all stripped off our shoes and socks and dipped our toes into the water. Then we filled empty bottles with water, measured the last of the bleach in, shook them up and let the water sit.

Finally, we sipped, measuring our intake against the horrendous need to chug it all down. The discipline it took bordered on insanity.

“Slowly.” The last thing any of us needed to do was puke up any of the precious liquid.

By the third round of bottles my headache had eased. Rabbit moved and I could hear his stomach slosh around.

It struck me as funny and a giggle escaped, along with a slightly chlorinated belch.

I dug my toes into the cool mud, letting it seep the throb from my blisters, and slapped Zack on the head. “Sorry, mosquito.”

“Oh, really?” He quirked an eyebrow up.

“Scout’s honor.” I smiled.

He flicked water at me with a grin. “You look a little hot.”

We’d walked miles without seeing a car, a house, or even much wildlife.

Poised to turn this into a full-out water war we froze when Rabbit said, “Hey, guys? Is that a tree fort?” He pointed up behind us at a stand of old trees, the kind with peeling white bark.

The breeze shifted, and lifted the branches again. We saw a ladder of boards nailed into the backside of a tree trunk. It was either falling apart or had never been finished, but it was definitely human construction.

“I
t looks like kids made it.” Zack raced after Rabbit to get a closer look.

“Well, where there are kids, there might be people and a house, right?” Rabbit offered.

“Rabbit, you’re brilliant.” I hugged him. “Nice eyes.”

We quickly dried off our wet and muddy feet. I hated wrestling my stiff socks back on, but the idea of a house with untold treasures egged me on.

“How far away might the fort builder live?” I asked as we trudged along what might have been a deer trail, or simply a path we were desperate to see that didn’t exist.

No one answered me; I hadn’t expected them to. The trees thinned, became sparser and more scraggly, as we went. The light clarified and brightened.

There, in the distance, I spied a roof. I think we all saw it at the same time. We started walking more carefully, quieter. When we got close enough we sat against trees and peered out at one of those preplanned neighborhoods filled with cookie-cutter McMansions and culs-de-sac. “There are houses out there. Seven,” I whispered, as if staring at a mirage.

And a lot more planned. There were asphalt roads and carved driveways. Dirt piled lots were littered with little pink flags and wooden stakes marking off unbuilt houses.

“I don’t even care if there are zombies. We can sleep in a bed tonight, and maybe they have food.” Rabbit started forward until Zack held out a hand.

Surrounded by fields, and forests, the actual neighborhood was a long way into the open without cover.

“We need to wait until dark, see if anyone comes back here for the night. Or lights a candle,” Zack cautioned.

“I agree. We need to be careful. I’m hungry too, but at least we’re not thirsty anymore.” I tried to focus on the positive.

Rabbit sat in the shade and rubbed Twawki’s head. Al chased a shiny black beetle in circles at our feet.

With my stomach full of cool water and the heat of the haze a lullaby, I fought drowsiness even as I watched Rabbit drift off.

“We’ve got movement,” Zack whispered in my ear.

My eyes snapped open and I instantly went on alert. “Sorry,” I mumbled as I watched a woman come out of one house dressed in a very stained tennis outfit and sneakers. A sun visor covered her face, and she’d pulled her hair into a slick and tangled ponytail that stuck out of the top. When she picked up the hose and started to water a row of brown and dead
bushes, Zack and I shared a glance. There wasn’t water coming out of the hose, nor did she seem to notice the bushes—roses, maybe?—were dead.

She carefully hummed and tended as if seeing a lush and verdant garden.

“She’s snapped.” I rubbed my face.

“But is she alone?” Zack asked.

“I’ll go.”

“No, I will,” he insisted.

“No, I’m a girl. If she’s alone you might scare her. I’ll wave if it’s safe, okay?”

“I don’t like it.”

“I don’t care, you know I’m right.” I brushed off my butt and walked out of the woods with what I hoped was a friendly-looking wave and jaunty step.

The woman didn’t pause in her watering, but smiled and waved me closer. She yelled, “You must be part of the new family in 5325. I’m right, aren’t I? I can’t believe I’ve been too busy to bring you cookies and welcome you to the neighborhood.”