Authors: Emmy Laybourne
She ignored me, eating the chocolate coating off a Butterfinger bit by bit.
“Chloe!” I said.
“What’ll you give me?”
“Are you kidding me?!”
She yawned.
“Go get Alex.”
“I don’t have to do what you say. You’re not the boss of me.”
“I’m asking you. Please.”
“You’re not asking, you’re telling. No one likes a bossy bear, you know.”
If my wrists hadn’t been getting rubbed bloody by the nylon ropes, I probably would have found this conversation amusing.
“Chloe, fair Chloe, princess of all that is good and kind in this world, wouldst thou, couldst thou take a message to my brother yonder?”
She giggled.
“Say please,” she baited.
“Oh, the prettiest of pleases for the prettiest of fair young maidens…”
“Oh-kay…,” she said and dragged herself off toward the other kids.
It was only then that I noticed that Batiste was in his sleeping bag, just beyond where Chloe had been sitting. He was just lying there, staring up at the ceiling.
“Hey, Batiste,” I said. “Are you okay?”
He didn’t answer.
* * *
Alex hurried over and picked the tight knots apart.
“You bit Brayden on the scalp,” he told me with his eyes twinkling. He whispered, “It was awesome!”
“Where is everyone?” I asked, rubbing life back into my wrists.
“We’re still washing the twins,” he answered.
He turned to go back. I didn’t follow.
“See you when we’re done?” he asked.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said.
I heard mild snoring from a sleeping bag farther back in the aisle. I guess they had dosed Max to the gills with Benadryl, ’cause he was way conked out. His blisters looked three shades less angry, so it seemed to be working.
I went over to Batiste. He was naked, just wrapped in a towel inside his sleeping bag. He seemed subdued and cold.
“You okay, little guy?” I asked him.
His hands were like ice.
“I’m gonna get you all set up,” I told him.
I went to the boys’ clothing section and got some warm clothes for him. I even picked out a pair of those dumb chenille slipper socks. I figured he deserved something absurdly soft and warm.
“Hey, Batiste,” I said, holding up the clothes. “Check out your new look.”
But Batiste didn’t move a muscle. So I just dressed him, I don’t know, like you would a baby. Once I had all his clothes on, and the dumb socks, I rubbed his back.
Yes, I did. Be assured that I felt as uncomfortable actually doing it as I do writing about it.
But I could feel his skinny ribs relaxing a little so I kept at it.
I took it as a good sign when, a few minutes later, he croaked, “My throat hurts.”
I went and got some children’s Advil and a Popsicle for him. On my way back, I ran into Brayden. He was carrying Henry wrapped up in a towel.
Brayden pointed at me and said, “You’re an a-hole.”
Why that made me feel so happy, I can’t quite say.
* * *
No one seemed to be thinking about dinner and the kids were getting hungry, so I grabbed some freezer foods: dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets, frozen green beans, and two bags of Tater Tots.
Then I had to figure out how to actually cook the stuff.
In the Pizza Shack, there were only these industrial toaster ovens and a microwave. There was no stovetop so I didn’t know what to do with the green beans at all. I just put them on one of the pizza trays and put them in an oven. They came out like straws made of charcoal. That’s my best attempt at describing them. Desiccated, black straws of carbon.
The Tater Tots came out exactly perfect.
The chicken nuggets, on the other hand, were cold inside. The little kids didn’t seem to mind. But Jake put some back in the oven for the older kids. And those dino nuggets joined my green beans in charcoal heaven.
We had mostly Tater Tots for dinner.
After everyone had eaten, I brought dinner to Josie and sat with her while she ate.
I had gotten into the habit of chatting with her. “At her” might be more like it.
Our conversations went something like this:
Me: How you doing, Josie?
Josie:
_____
Me: Oh, I’m fine, thanks for asking. I mean, I’m a little depressed, what with the end of life as we know it. But I’m holding it together. How about you?
Josie:
_____
Me: Yeah, that’s what I thought. You seem to be having a pretty tough time. Hey, you know, I’ve been thinking. We have plenty of clean clothes. And we can’t use the water anymore, but we’ve been using baby wipes to clean ourselves when we get dirty. They work pretty good. You want me to bring some over? You could sort of use a little cleaning off, if you don’t mind me saying so. And the bandage on your head, it definitely needs to be changed.
Josie:
_____
Me: Sure, I could bring over a new one. No problem. I’ll bring over the baby wipes, too. I’d be lying if I said we weren’t worried about you. You know you haven’t said a single word since the bus …
Josie:
_____
Me: Well, I’m here, if you need anything. Just say the word. Any word, actually …
Stuff like that.
* * *
Dessert was impossible to screw up: Popsicles.
“Niko,” Alex said, with his mouth dyed purple. “I’m going to take a survey of the utilities in the store tomorrow. Dean and I think we should clean up the Grocery section right away. We should be eating the fresh produce—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Brayden interrupted. “Jake is on it. He’s got a plan for all that.”
“Yeah,” Jake said, “tomorrow we’re going to break into teams and start getting this place in shape.”
Niko nodded at Alex. “Sounds like a good plan,” Niko said.
“We can help clean,” said little Henry. “Me and Caroline are good helpers.”
“I’m a good cleaner, too,” volunteered Max. “I’m good at mopping. I’ve mopped up stuff you wouldn’t believe if I told you!”
I could only imagine.
“Sure.” Jake nodded. “Tomorrow we clean up.”
The problem of toilets came up just after we all laid down in our sleeping bags for the night.
“Ulysses has to go pee,” Max said.
“How do you know?” Jake asked.
“He’s my friend. I understand him,” Max answered.
“Tell him to pee in the corner,” Jake mumbled. “That’s what I did.”
I couldn’t judge. I’d done the same.
“That’s unsanitary,” Alex said.
“He’s scared. He’s not going out there alone. And neither am I.”
“And I need to make,” Chloe added.
“Awesome,” Jake groaned.
This was a moment Astrid would have probably handled, but since she had gone AWOL, we had to figure it out.
Henry and Caroline started whispering to each other furiously. After a moment’s debate, Henry raised his hand.
Jake didn’t see him. But I did, so I said, “What is it, Henry?”
“Well, sometimes me and Caroline, like, if we’re going to a sleepover, we wear pull-ups. So since this was like a sleepover, we got some pull-ups.”
And he pulled out an opened package of size 6 pull-ups.
“So you think we should crap in a diaper?” Brayden asked.
Henry shrunk a bit.
Niko spoke up. “It’s not a bad idea. We could lay a pull-ups or a diaper on the ground and do what we need to do. Then we just close it up and put it in a trash bag. It could work.”
So that’s what we did.
The little kids put them on outright. They didn’t want to be getting up in the night, alone. I’m sure they didn’t even want to think about the bathrooms, given what had happened the last time they went there.
They just started wearing pull-ups.
A little bit of regression, anyone?
(The next day, Niko set up latrines for us in the baby stroller aisle. They were weird things made of a toilet seat on top of a heavy-duty plastic basin, the kind they use at construction sites, which was lined with a plastic bag. Every so often, the bag got knotted up and thrown in a plastic storage tub. Just so you know.)
* * *
Around ten, the lights in the store dimmed automatically. This made it feel like night. The sleeping bag didn’t do much cushioning against the hard floor. I made up my mind to drag over a lawn chair or something in the morning.
I ached and ached until I fell asleep.
I woke up to a little voice.
It was one of the kids sleep-talking. I couldn’t tell which kid.
It was a one-word conversation.
One word repeated over and over, with different intonations, with different meanings.
The word was
mommy
.
Pleading, entreating. Calling, demanding. Beseeching, begging.
I thought maybe I was dreaming until Brayden said, “Shut up.
SHUT UP
!”
And the calls for mommy stopped.
CHAPTER NINE
AIR HORN
The next morning the little kids woke up first. They then tried to wake Jake up, but he was deep in his snores, so they got me up. Niko was already up and probably off doing something industrious.
Alex was sleeping, too. I didn’t want to wake him up.
So it was up to me to get breakfast.
I really, really did not want to become the cook of this operation, but that’s what seemed to be happening.
I was beating eggs by hand when Batiste came over.
“Why don’t you do that in a blender?” he asked.
“We don’t have one,” I answered. “That’s part of what’s so hard about cooking here. I only have these two industrial ovens and this big microwave.”
“Why don’t you just get one?” Batiste said, looking at me with his head cocked to the side like a little poodle.
I guess I looked as slow as I felt because he added, “From the shelves.”
I started to laugh. We had been in the store for three days and it had not occurred to me that we had every single appliance right here. Just two aisles over.
“Of course,” I said. “You want to help me?”
“Sure!” he said.
“Let’s go.”
Batiste and I outfitted the kitchen with the aforementioned blender, an electric griddle, a family-size George Foreman grill, a six-slice toaster, a toaster oven, an electric teakettle, a rice maker, a KitchenAid mixer, and every kind of pan, mixing bowl, whisk, spatula, cheese grater. Basically one of everything from the Kitchen aisle.
While we “shopped,” Batiste told me about his parents and his church group and their preacher Reverend Grand and his dog, Blackie.
It made me feel like he was starting to recover from his experience with Astrid.
When we got back with all the supplies, the kids helped us unpack everything and they were pretty content for a while as I made the eggs and bacon (on a griddle pan, thank you!), but soon they started picking on one another and generally driving me crazy.
I had this messy kitchen I felt like I should deal with.
“Go find Jake,” I told them. “Ask him what the plan is.”
They went off, kicking boxes and roughhousing and whining and chatting.
I wrapped up a plate of eggs and bacon in tinfoil, wrote a little note on paper from my notebook, and left it on top of the plate. It said something like:
Astrid,
Here’s some eggs for you. They turned out pretty horrible, but they’re for you if you want them.
I know you must be feeling lousy. I really do understand how you feel, so come find me if you want to talk.
From Dean
Alex came over eventually. I offered him eggs, but he took a Pop-Tart instead.
“Dean,” he said. “What do you think is happening out there? Really.”
I felt so tired. My eyes ached. Head ached. I didn’t really want to talk about it, but truthfully I was relieved Alex was talking to me at all.
I took off my glasses and rubbed my eyes.
“I think that the type Os are killing and marauding through our town. Lots of people are hiding. Some people are blistering up and dying from it.”
Alex nodded.
He took out several sheets of lined paper.
“I’ve been running the numbers,” he said.
I looked at the sheet.
At the top it read
P
RE
-C
RISIS
P
OPULATION OF
M
ONUMENT
, CO: 7,000.
Then lots of numbers and figures.
And at the bottom:
C
URRENT
E
STIMATED
P
OPULATION
: 2,200.
I looked at the paper. At the horrors it speculated about.
I knew how my brother operated. Numbers and figures were therapeutic to him. Fear of things unknown and unquantifiable was what turned my little brother inside out.
“Do you want me to take you through it?” he asked brightly.
“No,” I said. “No. I want you to hide that. Don’t show it to people.”
“It’s just math,” he said. He seemed offended.
“It’s not just math,” I told him. “It’s people.”
* * *
We got the kitchen cleaned up. Having no running water, this took some figuring out. The solution was Clorox wipes. Lots and lots of Clorox wipes.
We went back to the Media Department to find everyone screwing off.
Jake and Brayden were playing air hockey. They had busted out a deluxe air hockey table and were going at it. I could see they’d already played Ping-Pong and had a packaged dart board standing at the ready.
“What’s going on, Jake?” I asked.
“BAM! VICTORY!” Jake shouted.
Sahalia cheered. She was watching them play.
“Next game I will own you, Simonsen!” Brayden answered.
Sahalia had changed her clothes and was wearing a really, really short skirt. I don’t know, maybe it was just a scarf tied around her hips. She had on ripped fishnets and absurdly high-heeled boots. Some kind of a tank top over a paper-thin T. She looked like a twenty-year-old fashion model.
She had obviously decided to help herself to whatever she wanted from the store.