Sadie Walker Is Stranded (2 page)

But since The Outbreak things had stabilized. Stabilized. That’s the word the street pamphlets liked to use—“the situation has stabilized.” The fear was that the Rabbits leaving would upset the balance. If they stayed they would fuck things up and if they left they’d be a nuisance too. These people attracted hostility and vitriol like a corpse attracts maggots. I didn’t quite get it. Couldn’t they just slow down? There would be time to make babies and I couldn’t see why anyone would be in such a hurry.

“Stabilized, my ass.”

The man that had gotten in line behind me had read the pamphlet over my shoulder. He had a strong Polish accent. I gave him a wan smile. “Could be better,” I said with a shrug, “could be worse.”

That might’ve been true, at least in Seattle, which wasn’t called Seattle much anymore. Back in September, when The Outbreak began, a group of firemen decided to take matters into their own hands. There was only one way to save the city, they thought, keep the living in and the undead firmly fucking out. They sealed off the city and enlisted as many volunteers as they could, and with an untold number of sandbags and cinder blocks, they had turned Seattle into what it is now, the Citadel. The waterway is still open, a meager fleet of boats still comes and goes, but there’s one landroute into the city and one route out and it’s guarded three-sixty-five, day and night. In December the sealing off of the city was completed and by early February the street pamphlets declared that the last of the undead had been cleared out of the city, hopefully for good. What anyone planned to do with the hideous no-man’s-land just outside the city, nobody could say. All the same, Seattle—the Citadel—had become a haven, one sprawling, struggling refugee camp.

I looked at the man ahead of me—I assumed it was a man, but in the chunky sweater and hood he could’ve been a thickly padded mannequin—as he stamped his feet to keep the blood moving through his legs. I couldn’t help but wonder where he had come from, where he lived now. He hacked a cough into the crook of his elbow. Everybody coughed. You got used to it.

The first Tuesday of every month, a caravan of trucks snaked into the one gated entrance to the city. They lumbered over to the old Pike Place Fish Market, now strictly a vegetable and food market, and dumped whatever produce they had managed to grow. The fruits and veg were sorted and carted to different stalls. The lines on Tuesdays started forming up at four or five in the morning, wending up and across the cobbled avenue leading down to the market—hundreds, thousands of people huddled together in the pink dawn glow, bags and baskets tucked under their arms.

There were fish to get as well—not the big, fatty beautiful fish we had eaten in better years but fish all the same. They came in brown paper packages, lightweight and smelling strongly of the sea—smelt and seaperch, salmon if we were lucky, cut and dried into leathery strips. A strip or two could flavor a big pot of cabbage soup and feed six or eight people. We made those packages of dried fish last all month long. The crowd was getting louder, rowdy, everyone in line shuffling anxiously, ready to get going and start their day.

“Fucking Rabbits. They haul ass out of the Citadel yet?”

I jumped, nearly dropping the street pamphlet. It was Carl, my boyfriend. He wrapped me up in a hug and I was grateful for the warmth. It’s hard to hug back with so much stuff in your arms, but I managed. It was nice to see him. I felt just a little relieved to have company, a familiar face among a sea of coughing strangers. Carl, my boyfriend. Carl my boyfriend who was supposed to be watching Shane. I whirled on him.

“What are you doing here? Where’s Shane?”

“Don’t sweat it. Shane’s with my friends.”

“
Which friends?
”

Carl shrugged, his lanky shoulders flying up around his ears like a pair of bony wings. “Dave and Jill,” he said. “They’re cool. They work over in Queen Gardens.”

“I don’t care where they work, Carl, I don’t know them. You can’t just leave Shane with strangers, he’s not a Cuisinart!”

Shane is shy, bookish. He doesn’t like strangers. He barely tolerates me, his own flesh and blood.

Carl heaved a dramatic sigh, his deep-set brown eyes rolling a complete three-sixty. I fold up the pamphlet and swatted him hard on the shoulder with it. On the back of the paper was a list of names, a lost and found of people. I was about to tear into Carl again when a fire truck rumbled by, three men in heavy rubber uniforms tucked along the ladder. They were going awfully fast for this part of town.

It was hard to stand still knowing that Shane was being watched by strangers. Trust is a commodity these days, and one I’m generally short on. I like Carl, but his parenting skills are about as sharp as a sea cucumber. I glanced back up the rising hill toward the distance, where the apartment was, the bottom floor of a stout apartment on Bell. Looking back at the market I saw the farmers had brought out the bins and the line was surging forward to push their ration papers into the farmers’ hands. The front of the line disappeared into the shadow of the fish market, the coppery pig statue swarmed with hungry people with the distinctive
PUBLIC MARKET CENTER
crooked and straining at its hinges like an ox pushing into its yoke. I felt suddenly claustrophobic, short of breath.

“Here,” I said, shoving the market bag at Carl. “You stay and get the food. I’ll go back to Shane.”

“He’ll be fine.”

“He better be.”

The ration papers were in my pocket. They stated in slanted handwriting that Shane and I, making up a family, were entitled to two bags of mixed vegetables, fruit and a packet of dried fish. These were in exchange for the beets and cabbages our family garden contributed to the city’s food supply. My hand-drawn children’s books don’t officially rate of course, but they’ve helped to barter for medicine and blankets in a pinch.

“Use my papers and yours too,” I added. “They’ll be more than enough for the month.”

Shane and I didn’t need much and with Carl’s rations coming in too, we ate pretty well. I turned to go and Carl grabbed me by the forearm.

“I
said
they’re my friends. What’s the problem?”

“Just get the groceries, okay?”

I didn’t feel like arguing with him, not just then, not when poor Shane was probably curled up in the fetal position, convinced that he’d been abandoned again. Shane is my sister Kat’s eight-year-old. Kat and her husband were on a bus when The Outbreak hit downtown. They never made it home and voilà, just like winning a twisted game show, I became a mother to a quiet little nerd with sunshine curls and a gap-toothed, if rare, smile.

Even more people were out and about as I half-ran up 1st Avenue. Looming, burned out storefronts darkened either side of the road; a run-down strip club with greasy windows and sun-bleached posters looked as if a demolition team had gone nuts on its insides. The main market still functioned as a grocer, but for basic things now—blankets and clothing and food and a few real gems, like booksellers and wine dealers. The Outbreak hit us in September. By early November, alcohol and books were at a premium. They still were, but at least now people like Jason and a few others produced new work, new books and comics.

I turned right, going more steeply uphill, away from the waterfront and toward the apartment. Most things change, but some things never did. The Olympic Mountains loomed over the Citadel, rising out of the fog, silent, stoic watchers that, on a daily basis, managed to remind me that enduring was possible. Other things, less majestic things, stayed the same too. Like the crappy all-night grocers in this part of town and the seedy bars. There was nothing to sell there now except sex with pock-marked flesh and the accompanying array of colorful diseases.

My whole body, sensing trouble, sped up. A nasty idea had occurred to me: Carl didn’t have friends, Carl had customers. He dealt mainly in knives, self-defense junk, and he had a knack for finding army surplus all over town. Carl kept the knives elsewhere but the only people I’d ever seen him hang around with were in some way tied to his business. I didn’t like his business, but it brought in extra food, a lot of it, and you just didn’t complain about that sort of thing.

Belltown, now laughingly called Beet-town, housed entire city blocks stripped down and devoted to growing the knobby purple vegetables. It was a smart thing to grow when you had investment bankers and massage therapists tending the gardens; beets are hearty and hard to fuck up. There’s another more alarming reason for the nickname: it’s a rough area and Beet-town sounds a lot like its other specialty, beat downs.

Luckily, even with the dregs of the city up and stumbling out of their doorways, I was safe. People knew Carl in this part of town and so by extension they knew me. Nobody picked a fight with a man specializing in knives and they didn’t bother his girlfriend either. Carl was better than a can of Mace and cheaper than a gun.

A prickly heat began rising out of the back of my scarf. I should’ve just waited to leave the apartment and dropped Shane off with Mrs. Trieu downstairs. She didn’t open her day care until after ten, giving her some time to tend her own expansive garden and do the cooking and washing for the day. Mrs. Trieu charged exorbitant prices, even by post-Outbreak standards, but she was also a crack shot with a Luger and made the best Vietnamese food in ten blocks, so nobody minded. Her spotless record and tasty Pho spoke for her.

Our apartment took up the western half of one block, the eastern half reserved for the gardens. The redbrick façade was in bad shape, slender shadows falling down over the windows and front door from the ragged roof supports jutting out. Ivy had sprung up through the broken sidewalk, covering the front of the apartment with a gangrenous mossy film. Someone had taken an old Buick and turned it into modern art in the intersection, peeling open the roof and nailing lawn ornaments to it. A fat sleek crow perched on the curled car roof. Glossy black wings, slightly iridescent—crows are an illustrator’s best friend; they’re simple to sketch, beautiful and an instant dosage of gravitas to any frame.

Fumbling with the keys, I flung open the front door and raced through the sand-colored empty lobby, down the hall and up the back stairs. Our apartment sat right at the top, around a bare two-by-four doorway, close enough to hear the neighbors troop up and down day and night. The door to our apartment was shut, a good sign, but the queasy feeling in my stomach didn’t ease. Inside it was dark. The pink frills of early morning were just visible out the windows, the sun appearing like a bright red egg yolk behind the clouds.

I dropped my portfolio with a thud on the hardwood floor.

“Shane?”

He never met me at the door. In fact, he was usually hiding somewhere, either behind the mattress or in the kitchen cupboards next to the rice. “Shane? It’s not a joke. Come out here.”

There was a faint tinkling sound, like a distant jingle bell. To the right, the apartment housed a cramped kitchen. Even in the semidarkness I could see a cupboard door inch open. I grabbed the edge and yanked.

“Shane! Oh God, Shane.” I pulled him out of the cupboard, brushing the stray rice off his little shoulder, and gathered him up in my arms. He didn’t protest, which was odd, and put his nose right into the crook of my neck.

“Are they coming back?” he asked in a tiny voice. He was holding his favorite stuffed animal, Pink Bear. It was actually a fluffy pig, but I didn’t have the heart to explain the discrepancy. Pink Bear was the star of many of our illustrated adventures.

“Is who coming back?” I asked. “Carl’s friends?”

“They’re not friends,” he whispered.

I pulled him back, smoothing the blond curls away from his forehead, checking for bruises, signs of injury or abuse. He scrunched up his face and tried to dodge my frantic pawing.

“Did they hurt you?” I asked.

“They’re not friends,” Shane said again.

A flicker of shadow passed over his face and I heard a quick intake of breath from behind us. But there was no time to react, not with a kid in my arms and my heart rate just starting to slow. Something hard and sharp hit the top of my head. I felt Shane slip and my body tip forward and the ground come for me like a swiftly rising tide. But it wasn’t quite enough.

“Hit her again.”

It was Carl saying this. Carl speaking, my Carl, telling someone to knock me out. Shane’s pale blond head flashed in front of me. I turned, stumbling out of the kitchen and pushing past the blurry stranger who had struck me. A black ink spill was falling over my eyes, dripping down like a liquid curtain. But I had enough of my wits to lash out with my arms, reach blindly for my nephew. He screamed. Shane never screamed—he protested from time to time quietly in his meek, middle-aged child manner, but never raised his voice above a thoughtful murmur. There was probably blood on me. Blood would make him scream.

Carl stood in the hallway, his tall, rangy body framed by the open doorway. I fumbled toward him, batting, my legs failing just in time to send me pitching forward. Carl and I tumbled out into the corridor.

“Hit her again. Jesus Christ. Hurry up!”

He slammed into the wall and grunted the air out of his lungs; my fists balled up and pressed against his chest. I grabbed him by the collar of his coat and shook and then pulled. But gravity and my aching head won, and I fell forward again, my weight sending us both toward the stairwell and the wide open arch of two-by-fours. Nothing stopped us. The stairs were suddenly there, plummeting downward, steeper than I remembered. Carl went down first, me on top, and I felt every hard crack against his spine as we toppled and rolled. I was getting nauseous, about to throw up. Everything spun as we finally found the bottom and Carl’s neck, encouraged by my weight, crashed into the baseboard. The last thing I heard was a sound, an unmistakable, biological crunch as vertebrae met wood.

And then nothing and a deep tugging feeling in my chest, like I was being dragged down, like I was drowning.

TWO

The funny thing about being unconscious is that you don’t notice you’re passed out on top of a dead man. I didn’t know that could happen. I couldn’t have guessed. I slept, fitfully, not knowing how long I had been out. In the twilight sleep of pain, I heard words, terrible words that only began to make sense as I came slowly back to my senses. People came and went. Maybe they thought I was dead too. A pair of big, long-lashed green eyes stared down at me. Eyes I recognized, friendly eyes. Andrea.