MARTians (13 page)

CRACK! CRACK!
My eyes shock open. I freeze like a bunny.

“I hate them birds,” says Kral. He’s locking the case. The gun is back in its place under the glamour light.

“Think I got a couple. One’s on the floor, but you better take the ladder and check on top of the high stock. They stink real bad after a couple of days.”

I do as I’m told. The bird that landed on the top shelf is blown into bloody feathers and chunks, but I get as much as I can see and reach. My hands are full of bird parts when Kral calls up to me, “I’ll give you a good review.” Hearing that would have made me think it was worth it, but then he adds, “When it hits the fan, you come by my place and flash those zombie titties — maybe I’ll let you in.”

“I saw bras today that would hold wrecking balls, bras big as circus tents,” Timmer says. “I spent the whole day untangling hangers and shoving bras onto racks. When I thought I was done, they just pointed me back to the beginning. There were bras all over the floor already, like winter was coming and bra racks were trees.”

“I’m surprised they kept you late for that,” I say.

“Oh, they let me go at eleven on the dot. I just had some stuff to do.”

I think about what sort of stuff there is on Timmer’s to-do list: rescuing damsels in distress, stealing gas, sniffing the wind, saving the world. I’m surprised he got done so fast.

“I worked with Kral in the Great Outdoors.”

“Ah . . . Kral. Kral hates birds.”

“Why didn’t you warn me?”

“About what?”

“About Kral.”

“Kral’s harmless. As long as you aren’t a bird.”

“He called me a zombie.”

“We’re all zombies to Kral.”

“He asked if I had a bugout bag. I told him I did.”

“That probably impressed him.”

“He wouldn’t be impressed if he knew I was talking about a plastic bag full of old stories and underpants.”

“Still, you are more prepared than most zombies, right?”

“For when it hits the fan.” We both say it at exactly the same time, like it’s a joke. It isn’t a joke, but we giggle like raccoons anyway while we slink around the Dumpsters and through the parking lot toward the Warren.

It’s getting cold.

“It’s bad,” says Timmer. He is covered with dust. “I wanted to check on Pineapple and Luck, tell them it isn’t a good night to sleep in the car. It’s cold. And the wind is moving some big stuff around. There’s all kinds of wrecks. Look!” He points at the front door. The world is dark and orange. If there are wrecks, I can’t see them through dirt in the air. The lights flicker and dim. The television dies. The last dryer stops tumbling. All I can hear is the roar of the wind and the sound of distant thunder, or maybe crashing cars.

Some rain falls, drops as big as toads. The wind dies. Timmer showers in the dark.

In the morning, we go outside to look at the world after the storm. Smoke is still rising from some of the wrecks piled up on the freeway. Little dunes of driven sand have formed in the gutters. The chiminea is tipped over and the ashes of our fires have blown away.

The lights aren’t on at AllMART. There are customers waiting for the doors to open, but I’m not sure they will. The electricity is still out. According to the Channel 42 emergency bulletin on my phone, it’s a vast failure. The storm caused local outages, attempts to reroute power caused overloads, and the grid fried. It’s feedback runaway, just like satellite rain.

When I enter through the employee door, there are black-uniformed special agents in charge. The Retail Rescue Rangers have arrived. Now I know what a commercial disaster looks like. I’m seeing one happening thanks to the Rescue Rangers’ flashlights. Most human resources are being directed to the frozen-foods department. No power, no refrigeration. The entire frozen-foods inventory has to be scrapped.

We stand shoulder to shoulder, lifting soggy cartons and slippery plastic-covered gobs of meat.

The lights flicker and brighten.

The surveillance screens glow. The security cameras come online. The cooling units rumble back to life.

Three strong Rescue Rangers push a steel warehouse ladder into place at the front of the store. Dawna Day climbs to the top, even though that is a dangerous risk wearing such high heels.

“AllMART family,” she says in a voice that carries. “In thirty minutes the front doors will open. And that isn’t a minute too soon. There are customers out there who
need
stuff. And we are going to serve them. Because that’s what we do. Haboob or no haboob. Power outage or no power outage. We do our part.”

Right on cue, the AllMART jingle rings out through the aisles:

Each does a little part,

But all of us are AllMART.

clapclapclap clapclapclap,
AllMART!

clapclapclap clapclapclap,
Let’s start!

We raise our hands in the air as one and cheer. A drop of cold blood trickles down my arm.

The cheer is over. We all bend back to work, throwing ruined meat into big wheeled trash bins.

As Dawna Day walks past, I can’t help overhearing her private conversation on the phone. “Yes,” I hear her say. “Things are orderly, and we will be open within the hour. . . . My opinion? . . . Middleman really isn’t management material.”

Rumors hatch and slither through the aisles: No gas for the backup generators. It was
his
responsibility. Was it stolen? Maybe
he
stole it. Middleman. Middleman. Middleman. We worked like dogs cleaning up his mess. And he didn’t even show up. Middleman. The jerk.

“It won’t make you happy,” Timmer says.

“You don’t know what makes me happy.”

“True. I never saw you happy.”

I don’t even know what happy means anymore. Far as I know, it’s just the physical reactions in my body caused by assuming the posture, doing the cheer, and smiling like a doormat. As soon as I scan out, I stop smiling. I’m not on the clock anymore.

“I just want to go home for one night. Please take me home. I know I can’t stay. I get that, but I forgot some things — useful things.”

“What useful things?”

I don’t answer that because it is unanswerable. I’m not going to tell Timmer I forgot to bring tampons.

This morning, my phone background was a single pink rosebud.
See this, Zoëkins? When you see this flower, it means you need to be prepared.
That was what AnnaMom said when she installed the Rosie Reminder on my phone years ago. She didn’t want me to be surprised and embarrassed. And I never was. When the pink flower opened its little rosebud mouth, I went straight to AnnaMom’s bathroom and got supplies out of the monthly drawer.

But now the flower is yawning, and I am not prepared.

I could slide my name tag through the vending machine in the employee changing room, but the vending machine prices are premium prices — the sort of prices only a desperate person will pay. I do not want to be a desperate person digging myself deeper into debt one premium-priced cotton wad at a time.

I know Timmer has money in his pocket, but I’m not going to beg him for tampons. I’m just not.

So I want to go home.

Home.

When I get home, I want sleep in my own bed all alone. I want to touch the doorknob on my own door and shut it.

“You went back to Terra Incognita a bunch of times,” I say. “I should get to go back at least once.”

“And leave 5er alone through the night?”

I think about that, about 5er waking in the night, scratching in the dark and touching only air, his strangled, gurgling screaming getting no answer, no shushing voice he doesn’t hear but is there anyway.

“We could bring him with us. Why not?”

Timmer knows he’s lost. After all, he used to leave 5er alone all the time, which makes him a worse person than I am. All I want to do is go back to my house and pick up some useful things. He turns his attention to 5er. “Hey, guy, we need to go for a little while. You should come with.”

5er looks at Timmer and squints.

“I’ll leave a note, so they know to wait until we get back.” So Timmer does that. “We got 5er. Back on Thursday morning.”

My house on Terra Incognita Circle still says
FOR SALE
.

The little strip of grass is smothered under the dirt carried by the haboob, but it was brown with thirst before the storm. The drought didn’t kill the lilies, but they have been trampled and bitten down. I can see the heart-shaped tracks of deer in the dust. In the middle of the wreck, the last living petals on the last living flower on Terra Incognita are crumpling and collapsing. I pinch the wilting bud and crush it in my fist. Little things matter.

The front door is still locked. And there is junk mail in the box; not much — the profitability of direct-mail sales was finally not worth the trip — but collecting the Super! offers feels normal. I’m home.

I enter 1 -2 -2 -6 A -2 -Z into the security pad on the front door. It doesn’t unlock.

“No electric. The lock was electric. You want me to break a window?” Timmer is yelling through the open car window.

“No!”

“What about the garage door? There’s a door to the kitchen, right?”

“There’s a passkey in the sprinkler box,” I say. I kneel beside the step and open the box. The passkey is there, behind a spiderweb.

“You won’t need that,” says Timmer. He’s walked up the sidewalk.

I step off the porch and go around the corner to where he is standing.

I can’t pretend that everything is normal anymore.

The garage is ripped apart. The automatic door is gone; there is only an open wound with splinters around the edges. Behind it, the garage is a hole scattered with ruined and discarded things. AnnaMom always kept that space so tidy. It would kill her to see it like this.

I don’t want to go in the garage. It looks so broken.

“Come with me?” I reach out to Timmer.

“I need to stay here where I can keep an eye on 5er. He’s sleeping.”

“Just stay close enough where you can see me too?”

“If there is a raccoon in there, don’t mess with it,” Timmer says.

“The kitchen door will probably be locked too,” I say, but then I see that the wall between the kitchen and the garage is just another hole.

“The kitchen door, it’s convenient access to plumbing,” says Timmer. “The garage door is good scrap. These guys were efficient.”

I am not prepared to appreciate the efficiency of the people who broke my house.

“Seen enough?”

I wish. What I can see through the hole into the kitchen should be plenty. Being efficient is destructive. The skin of the walls is ripped open, jagged tracks running where the electricity used to hide. The floor is covered with tufts of yellow fluff and broken glass.

“I’m going to my room.”

“Be careful. I was serious about the raccoons. And watch for holes in the floor. And it still isn’t a good idea,” says Timmer.

Shattered dishes crunch under my feet. The living room isn’t as ruined as the kitchen. There is less worth taking, less stuff worth breaking. The wire that was in the walls is gone, but the uncomfortable couch and the acrylic table are still there, positioned with psychological precision by Jyll the stager.

I climb the stairs slowly, pausing on each step to listen for raccoons and the aching sound I imagine the floor will make before it falls out from under me.
I love you twelve stair steps,
whispers imaginary AnnaMom.