Contaminated 2: Mercy Mode (3 page)

So are Lancaster, Harrisburg, Reading. All the way to Philly and Baltimore. New York City, too. So many people there. Cities were hit hard by the Contamination. All the people obsessed with easy weight loss, all the rioting they did that hot, hot summer when the world broke apart …

Even with the water settling uneasily in my stomach, the world still threatens to spin. I don’t want to puke, not in public, but more importantly, I can’t afford to. So I breathe and breathe and breathe until the color seeps back into the corners of my vision.

The line moves forward, slow like snails on a treadmill made of molasses, my dad would’ve said. The thought of him stings, but it’s like I can’t stop thinking of him, ever. I know he’s gone, but … I found my mom. So something inside me, some dark and secret part, still holds out the hope that, someday, I’ll find him, too.

“If they run out of peanut butter,” the woman in front of me mutters, “I might just kill somebody.”

Nobody says a word, and she doesn’t smile or play it off like a joke. The man behind me, the one who gave
me the water, the one with the little girl, shifts his hand inside the flapping hem of his long-sleeved flannel shirt, and I see now why he’s wearing it even though the sun is burning overhead. He has a knife on his belt. A big one. His fingers casually pop the snap on the leather holster.

For a moment, our eyes meet.

He looks away first. I give the little girl a smile she doesn’t return. I want to say something light to keep us all from falling into a writhing, snarling pack of dogs with each other, but there are no words on my tongue.

Instead, I turn around and face the front of the line. I mind my own business. The man behind me is not going to sink a knife into the base of my skull; he’s not going to slice me up; he’s not going to kill me just because he can.

I hope.

By the time I get closer to the front, I need to pee. I dance with the urge, back and forth, pressing my fingers into that magic spot below my belly button that is supposed to make the need go away.

The woman sitting behind the table looks worn and tired, her hair pulled back in a bun that does nothing to flatter her. The lines around her eyes and mouth have cut deep, making her look much older than she really is. She doesn’t return my smile any more than the little girl did. But she does recognize me before I do her.

“Velvet,” Tony’s mom says. “I can help you here.”

The woman beside her is busy checking off the names
from the ration cards on her list and pays no attention. Tony’s mom doesn’t smile at me. I guess that might be too much to expect, but she does gesture for me to come forward, even though I’m still three back from the front of the line.

I’m moving before the woman in front of me, the one who wouldn’t share her water, can say anything. The cards I hold out are soft and worn at the creases from being folded so many times, and I hand them over. “Thanks.”

“Hey!” the woman says. “I was next.”

“Two lines,” Tony’s mom says, without missing a beat. “You were asked to form two lines. She’s in this one. You’re in that one.”

I can tell the woman wants to make a fuss, but with the soldiers there, guns at the ready, she thinks better of it. Tony’s mom has always been a pain. It makes her perfect for this job, and I’m glad for it now.

She scans the cards I give her with a plastic laser gun attached to the laptop in front of her. It beeps every time she scans, and she looks at me.

“You have six residents?”

I force a smile. “Yes.”

Me. Mom. Opal. Dillon. Mrs. Holly. She and her husband, Gerald, had refused to leave Spring Lake Commons when it was evacuated, and she came to stay with us when Gerald died a few months ago. We had a little ceremony and buried him in their backyard, which was the best we could
do. She said he’d have wanted it that way, to be planted in his own garden. She refused to report it because she said we’d need his rations to stock up for winter … or for when they’d stop handing out food. Mrs. Holly came here from Holland when she was a little girl, just before the rest of her family ended up dying in a concentration camp. She says her parents risked everything to keep her and her sisters from having to hide the way we are now, and she’s way too old to starve to death. I’m not sure that camping out in a house gone “off the grid” is comparable to being Anne Frank, but I’m not going to argue with Mrs. Holly.

Tony’s mom scans the cards again and studies the computer screen. “Opal’s still eligible for the children’s initiative services, right?”

Opal’s birthday was a month ago, but she’s only eleven. When she turns thirteen, she’ll no longer be eligible for things like extra soy milk and vegan cheese. Or peanut butter, I think as Tony’s mom gestures to the workers behind her, who are picking and pulling the different boxes and cartons for everyone in line.

The woman next to me eyes the goods Tony’s mom is checking off on her laptop just as the lady behind the table who’s helping her says, “Sorry, we’re out of peanut butter. We should get more next time.”

“
She
got peanut butter.” The woman jabs her finger at me.

“She has a card for it,” Tony’s mom says loudly.

“I do, too!” She waves her card in Tony’s mom’s face.

“You have a card that says you’re entitled to this week’s supply distribution. We ran out of peanut butter,” Tony’s mom says flatly while the other ration-disbursement worker beside her starts to look nervous. “Velvet has a child’s card—”

“She’s not a child!”

“It’s for my sister,” I put in, but the woman edges away from me with a scornful sneer.

“Anyone could bring in a card for a child,” she spits. “You have how many cards there? Six? Where’s everyone else? Why are you the only one doing the pickup? How are you going to carry all that? I bet you’re cheating!”

This accusation rings across the parking lot. My stomach sinks. I
am
cheating, but not with Opal’s card. “We’re allowed to have one person from each household collect for everyone. Because not everyone’s capable—”

“Let me see those cards!” Before anyone can stop her, the woman grabs the cards from the table and starts flipping through them. She holds up one triumphantly. “These people don’t even have the same last names!”

“They’re my grandparents. My mom’s parents.” I reach for the cards, but she dances out of reach.

“And this one?” She flips Dillon’s card in my face, but too fast for me to grab.

“He’s … my husband.” The word still tastes funny, sort of terrible, like licking a battery.

Tony’s mom lets out a surprised snort. “Husband?”

“Those cards are all legitimate.” I force my voice to remain firm, not shaking. I look at everyone who’s staring at me, including the soldiers, in the eye. I start shoving the cans, all with plain white labels and black lettering, into my backpack. It’s a big one, meant for hiking and camping, and I can put a lot in it. “We’re allowed to combine households, and I’m allowed to pick up the rations for anyone in my household who’s incapable of doing it. It’s the law!”

The woman who’s been giving me such a hard time narrows her eyes. She looks at me. Then at the small pile of rations I haven’t had time to shove into my backpack.

Slowly, deliberately she grabs the tiny jar of peanut butter and jerks her chin at me like she’s daring me to protest.

“You can’t do that!” cries the lady who was helping her.

Tony’s mom stands up. “Put that back.”

I don’t say anything as I sweep the rest of my rations into the pack and zip it closed, then sling it over my shoulders. The weight is enough to make me feel as though I might tumble over backward until I snap the waist strap around my stomach to help distribute the load. The heat in my throat and cheeks is back, the sweat in my armpits, my shaking-ice hands. Something in my face must scare the thief, because she pulls the jar close to her chest as she backs up. She bumps into the couple who was in front of her. They didn’t get any peanut butter, either.

“No,” the woman says. “I was told I’d get peanut butter this week, and I want it.”

“Me, too!” shouts someone from the back of the line. “I want peanut butter!”

Other shouts rise. People are really mad about the peanut butter. I’d let her have the stupid jar, except that sometimes peanut butter is all we can get my mom to eat. Opal, too, though that’s just because she’s a brat now and then.

Besides, it’s ours.

I grab it from her hands so fast, all she can do is let out a surprised cry. With my other hand, I shove her hard enough to knock her backward. She stumbles and goes down on her butt. She’s lost a shoe.

All at once, the crowd is moving. Someone jostles me from behind, and the little girl’s doll hits the pavement at my feet. Staggering with the weight of my pack, I bend to pick it up and press it into her hands, her tears and open mouth reminding me so much of Opal when she was little that I want to grab and squeeze her, tight. Instead, I find myself pulling her against me, out of the way of a couple of big guys in trucker caps and dirty jeans, who’ve begun shoving their way toward the table.

One knee pressed into the pavement, the pack like a turtle’s shell on my back, I try to shield her from the wave of angry people who’d been waiting so patiently in line just minutes ago. They shove and push and kick. Her doll goes flying. A big boot crushes my fingers. Someone tries to
rip the pack from my shoulders, but it’s secured too tightly around my waist, and he lets go when another person punches him in the face to get to the table.

I can’t see the old man she was with, but I scoop up the little girl as best I can and try to get out of the mob surging toward the table. Tony’s mom is shouting, waving her hands. Her coworker has disappeared. Someone shoves the table over, and that’s when the first soldier steps forward.

He’s a young kid, not much older than Dillon, and though he carries a gun, he doesn’t seem ready to use it. “Hey! Settle down!”

Only minutes ago, I was thinking about how the crowd could easily overpower these few soldiers, and now it’s happening. The scary thing is, so far as I can tell, none of these people are Contaminated.

They’re just pissed off.

Shouting, shoving, grabbing. Some push past the soldiers to get at the food stacked behind the table. Others head for the truck. The well-dressed couple who were ahead of me have moved out of the way, but the woman sidles around the side of the knocked-over table and starts shoving packets of instant soup and stuff into her bag.

Everything’s out of control. People are screaming about peanut butter and freedom. I hear the far-off wail of sirens getting closer. The old man grabs the little girl away from me, his face twisted and angry. She doesn’t have her doll.

“I gave you water!” he spits.

It’s an accusation, and I can’t do anything about it but back away. I don’t run. That would make it look as though I’m fleeing. It would attract attention. Instead, I walk slowly toward the sidewalk in front of the strip mall, toward the office-supply store that has been closed for months and then the outpatient surgical center that’s been turned into a walk-in testing clinic for Contamination. I don’t want to get anywhere close to that place; I’m afraid of it like it’s something in a fairy story, as if trees with grabbing hands will reach for me and drag me inside. Through the glass, I can see the goggle-faced people looking out at the mayhem in the parking lot, and I pick up the pace just enough to get around the corner before anyone can open the door.

Behind me, sirens. A police car speeds past, lights flashing. I keep going. Over the field and past the Tractor Supply, the bank, beyond the half-finished and abandoned shopping complex that had once been rumored to be the future home of a megabookstore. There’s an empty cell phone store in it now, and nothing else. Then down the hill and across the gas station parking lot.

I usually have time to repack the backpack after picking up the rations to make sure everything fits in the best way. Even the smallest edge of a box that feels like nothing can become excruciating after a mile or so. I stumble a little on the concrete before I decide I need to sit and take a break.

I find a spot on the grass between the parking lot and the highway, and shrug out of my pack. I’d like to let myself fall
onto my back and stare at the bright blue sky and the burning golden disc of the sun, but I want to get home.

There are only a few cars in the lot, fewer people inside the gas station’s convenience store. With an eye out for anyone acting suspicious, I pull out cans and boxes, and lay them on the grass in a pile so I can rearrange. Something sticky coats my fingers—syrup. Some things have broken. I would like to break just then, thinking of the ruin inside the pack. Punctured cans, torn boxes, stuff leaking. This food has to last us until the next ration pickup in two weeks, and, when I think about what happened in the parking lot today, maybe longer than that.

The syrup has soaked through the pack and into the front zipper pocket, inside which I find an old baseball cap. It was my dad’s. He wore it for yard work and for hikes, and I clutch it to me suddenly, without caring about the goo on it. I can wash the hat at home, and for now I set it on the edge of the curb to keep it out of the way while I refill the pack.

When the car pulls up beside me, I turn, startled and wary. There are people who will take what I have, who won’t hesitate to snatch my pack and drive away with it. Worse, people wouldn’t hesitate for a single second before taking me, too. But the older woman in the BMW doesn’t look like she’s going to try and take my battered cans of tofu pork and beans or kidnap me.

She smiles at me kindly and tosses a folded dollar bill
out the window of her car, toward my dad’s upturned hat. Without a word, she rolls up the window and drives slowly away. I look after her, confused for a moment before I realize how I must look. If I thought asking for water felt like begging before, now I really understand how it feels. Raggedy clothes, a pack full of food, a hat …

There were homeless before the Contamination, and there are plenty of people who lost their homes in the time since, but you don’t ever see anyone living on the streets anymore. Anyone who tries is rounded up, tested for Contamination. Sent to the Sanitarium. According to the Voice, everyone tests positive, whether they are or not. Nobody’s homeless, but there are plenty of beggars. Raggedy men and women dancing or playing music for coins. Some with children in tow and signs that read PLEASE HELP. Some with nothing but the looks on their faces. I don’t know how successful they are—nobody seems to have much of anything extra anymore. What we all get from the government is supposed to be enough.