At the End of Everything, page 24
Without taking my eyes off them, I nudge Nia and sign, “Careful. They’re dangerous.”
I’ve barely finished the thought when Store Guy points at us. At me. “Thief!”
One of the veins at his temple throbs, and his neck bulges.
The voices and murmurs of the crowd around us become a tidal wave, and my breath catches.
“We gotta go!” Nia shouts. And we don’t hesitate for a moment longer. We run, while the other man shouts, “Someone stop her! Stop them both!”
I glance behind me to see that he’s grabbed his shotgun, but his eyes are darting between us and the soldiers who are making their way toward them. No one responds to his call, though everyone’s turned to look at what’s happening.
We duck and weave around people in their endless lines and the trees that line the pavement, trying to get away from the street as quickly as possible, but it’s crowded enough that it’s hard to put distance between us.
And Store Guy has his gun too. He doesn’t seem to care about the soldiers or the eyes on him. He seems to be breathing hard, and if possible, he’s even redder than he was before. He tracks me with his barrel, closes an eye, and lowers his shoulders.
I turn away and keep running.
Bang.
Thirty-one
Grace
The gunshot echoes across the square. There are screams everywhere. The lines for the food move as if simultaneously, with everyone jumping back and cowering. I can still hear the echo of Reid’s words.
We’re too close now. Don’t you see? I can’t go back. I can’t. I can’t. I have to try.
Riley stumbles to her feet from our hiding point, and I leap forward to grab her leg to stop her. My ears ring. My eyes burn. Riley trembles under my grasp. “Grace! Logan! We have to—”
“No!” I don’t want to lose anyone else. I can’t.
“I have to get to them. This is exactly why I hated this plan!”
“We can’t.”
Riley reaches out to me and turns my face in the direction of the trucks. “We can.”
Store Guy has dropped to his knees, and he is cradling his wrist. His gun lies a few feet in front of him. Three soldiers circle around him, their own guns at the ready. Another two have grabbed the other guy by the soldiers. “Violence will not be tolerated,” one of the soldiers says loudly, for the crowd’s benefit as much as the men, it seems. “Open carrying is in direct violation of the rules of distribution and—”
I stop listening. I crawl forward out of our hiding space and attempt to locate Logan and Nia. They’re both huddling against each other but pushing themselves to their feet again.
I breathe out hard. I want to vomit. I want to curl up within myself and stay here and let the world be the world and just forget about it. I want to cry. I want to sleep.
I want to go home.
“Now you should go to them,” I manage. I force my hand to let go of Riley’s leg and allow myself a second or three to breathe, to push through the fear and the fatigue.
Riley massages her leg, and she nods. “Yeah, I should.”
“Is Emerson still in line?”
Emerson joined the line when Nia and Logan reached the front of it, to keep as much of a distance between them as possible. Riley stands on tiptoe and points. “There.”
I follow her mark and find Emerson being shuffled back and forth along with everyone else while soldiers shout orders at them to line up properly. Their shoulders are up to their ears, and they fidget with a sleeve. They don’t have a ration card or ID either.
Fuck. I hate it, but we’re still here on a mission. We still need the food. We need a ration card, and there’s only one thing left to do. I know what I have to do.
“Can you watch them too?” I ask.
Riley nods. “Where are you going?”
“I’ll be back soon.”
She frowns. “Grace…”
“I’m going to try a thing, but I have to do it alone.” I rub my eyes. Riley would hate it if she knew, and for all the right reasons too.
“Promise me you’ll be careful? We may not agree on much,” she says with a rueful smile, “but Hope needs you.”
I can’t promise that. “I’ll do my best.”
She stares at me like she’s trying to read my mind. I don’t look away from it. I don’t wince.
Eventually, she shakes her head. “Fine. Do what needs to be done.” With that, she turns and darts out of her hiding place, toward the girls. I give it a moment to make sure no one sees her or attempts to stop her, and then I turn away.
I take my copy of our carefully constructed map out of my pocket and backtrack our route into town. When I leave the main square behind me, the crowd’s voices dissipate too. The only thing I hear is the pounding of my heartbeat in my ears, the echo of the gunshot, and the yowling of an angry cat a few blocks down. My legs feel like lead, and my head is spinning. Every time we try to find help, someone shoots at us.
I can’t get Casey’s words out of my mind. We are the only ones who can save ourselves.
I find my way back to the church, with all its small remembrances, and from there I turn toward one of my familiar routes. I know all the houses by heart here. The ones we’ve cleared out, the ones on our list as maybes. The ones that have been cleared out by officials, though those are few and far between.
And the ones with new slashes on their doors. Markings that weren’t there two days ago. On “my” block are three new houses. I pass them by twice before I make my decision. Not the bright, two-story house with the two pink bicycles lying on top of each other outside the garage, where a young girl stares out of the window but doesn’t see me pass by. Not the single-story bungalow with all the curtains drawn and an angry slash on the door.
I stop in front of a house with a chaotic lawn and meticulously landscaped plants outside the door. The plague slash across the door is shimmering.
We never found ration cards in any of the other houses. We didn’t know to look for them, of course. But if what the letter says is right, they’ve handed out rations before, so the cards would only be in new houses.
Plague houses.
Here.
We can’t wait another couple of weeks.
I fold the map and put it back in my pocket. I’ve entered houses like this before, so I know the way, but I hate it. No one in their right minds would enter a plague house. I breathe in deeply and grab my mask, and I circle around the house. I find my way in through the kitchen window…
And enter a house that doesn’t reek of death. Not yet.
Instead, it looks clean. Pots and pans hang from a rack above the counter, and the kitchen spoons and utensils peek out of a colorful ceramic jar. I’m not entirely sure what it’s meant to portray, but it looks like a child’s school project. A kitchen towel with lace and flowers hangs from one of the cabinet doors.
I ball my hands into fists and push my fists into my pockets. My instincts tell me to run and not look back. To raid the fridge and the kitchen cabinets and leave the rations card. There may be enough to keep us going for another two days, and who knows what the world will look like then.
I shake my head. The world will still look the same in two days. Lonely and hungry. And the next rations delivery won’t be for another month. I tenderly walk toward the living room. The house is quiet. Quieter than I would like it. It makes me feel like everything around me is holding its breath and the walls themselves have eyes.
Then the floorboards creak.
“What are you doing here?” a voice rasps from directly behind me.
I want to spin around, but a stabbing sensation in my back prevents me.
“Answer me, girl.”
I slowly raise my hands—and all my words flee.
“Are you ignorant, or do you have a death wish? Is that why you entered a plague house?” the person continues. The voice is so raw and croaking that it’s impossible to tell anything about the person speaking.
“May I turn around?” I ask, with my hands still high.
After some hesitation, the stabbing sensation disappears. I take that as agreement and ever so slowly spin to face the inhabitant of the house. I keep my hands visible and make no sudden movements. And my breath catches in my throat.
In front of me stands an elderly woman, probably in her early eighties. She has long, silver hair and cold, blue eyes. Red blotches mar her face, and she has blood splatters on her blue woolen cardigan. Her hands are frail and her posture unsteady.
I take a step back right when she starts coughing, and my heart sinks.
“Speak up, girl,” she says, when she’s regained her breath. “Do I need to call the police?”
I laugh. I can’t help it. I’m terrified and tired, and this is absurd. Are there even police officers anymore? “My name is Grace,” I say. “I live at the Hope Juvenile Treatment Center, and we’re hungry.”
The woman lets the kitchen knife she’s holding drop an inch or so. “Yes, and?”
“My friend is lining up for rations today, but they need a rations card. No one will give us anything otherwise.”
“So you thought you’d sneak into a plague house and steal a card for yourself?” Contrary to her angry words, the woman lowers the knife farther. “What an absurd idea.”
“I know,” I admit. I didn’t even let myself think about it too hard. “But I don’t know if I could find a card anywhere else, and I’d hoped, since your sign is still so recent…” I stop when I realize how that must sound.
She has no such qualms. “You hoped I’d be dead but our food and our bodies not yet looted.”
I don’t—I can’t deny it. “Yes.”
She doesn’t shout at me. She doesn’t tell me to get out. She doesn’t have to. I’m here already, aren’t I? “You weren’t given any food?”
“No food. No care. No way to contact our families.” I keep my voice as steady as I can.
“And you didn’t get sick?”
In the back of my mind, a small voice is shouting at me. Telling me to leave the house, get away from the woman, run while I still can. But instead, I sag down on the nearest chair—one of those old, leather armchairs—and I tell her. I tell her everything from the first night until now, like a waterfall of words and stories that needs to make its way out of my brain.
The old woman walks to a chair opposite mine with considerable difficulty and sits down. “And so you thought it would be better to die trying to find a solution than go back empty-handed.”
Yes. I promised Casey that too, though I didn’t say it out loud. “I may be lucky.”
“You may be.” She doesn’t sound convinced. She wavers back and forth on her chair. She opens the drawer of a coffee table and pulls out two cards. “One of these belonged to my children. My Marcus went to get it when they—” She swallows. “The other one is ours. You should take both, for as long as they’ll work. I’ll have no use for them soon.”
My breath catches. I feel faint. “Are you sure?”
The woman smiles, and it makes the coldness in her eyes thaw a little. But then she coughs again, and when she holds up a handkerchief to her lips, I can see the blood spatters. “I’m certain.”
She hesitates then pulls out a cell phone with the charger still plugged in. “Take this as well. Some of you should be able to call home. Some of you should be able to contact your families before this is all over.”
I’m too tired and relieved to be emotional, but I reach out to her regardless. I cover her hand with mine before I can think better of it. “Thank you. Thank you.”
She looks at my hand over hers and shakes her head. “I’m sorry.”
* * *
I’m blocks away from the house before I realize I don’t even know her name. I cling to the cards and the phone like they’re made from solid gold. They’re as valuable.
I make it back to the line well before it’s Emerson’s turn. They see me coming and frown. “Grace?”
I turn one of the ration cards in my pocket over between my fingers before I take it out. I hold it up. “You forgot this.”
Emerson’s eyes widen, but to their credit, they don’t say anything to give the game away, and I ignore the question in their eyes.
I keep my distance. I have to. Just to be sure. I focus on what matters: one card for Emerson and one card for Riley.
I bite my lip. “Find the others on your way home? I still have to collect something for Sofia.” I hope they understand my flimsy excuse. The traps seemed like the best reason to leave the others for now. Just until I know I’m safe. Until I know they are too.
Emerson takes a step toward me, but I shake my head. “Stay in line, please.”
“Grace…”
“Please.” I toss the card in their direction.
They snatch it from the air and immediately wince. “I will. I—”
“I’ll see you back home.”
Thirty-two
Emerson
We head home with two boxes of food, medication, and other essentials. Logan helps me carry one, pulling far more of the weight than I can, and Nia helps Riley. She’s laughing at something Riley said, and despite the fact that the boxes are heavy, the return journey feels lighter than it has…ever since I arrived here, probably. Today, it feels like we’re walking home with our future in our hands.
Logan is the only one who looks around her with a kind of frown, and I know what—or rather, who—she’s looking for.
“Grace will find her own way back to Hope,” I mumble.
Her half smile doesn’t reach her eyes.
“I’m worried too,” I admit.
The ration card burns a hole in my pocket, and I don’t want to know what she did to obtain it. I can guess, and that’s bad enough. My Saint Jude medal bounces against my shirt, and the sensation fills me with emptiness and comfort and resolve. Pray for us. Pray for Grace. I cannot lose someone else. Not again.
* * *
When we get back to Hope, Josie is the pacing in front of the entrance. She all but jumps when she spots us and immediately runs back inside to call out our arrival. By the time we actually reach the gates, every single person who can be outside to greet us is.
We place the boxes on the grass in front of us and collectively take a deep breath. The boxes aren’t too heavy, and the trek isn’t too long, but the combination is absolutely exhausting, and while my wrist is improving, this hurts. I waver.
Casey is the first to walk out to greet us. His eyes dart from the boxes to the four of us, though he keeps a distance, like we agreed.
“Where is Grace?”
“She went to check the traps on the way here,” I tell him. I hope to God my lie isn’t as obvious as hers. “She isn’t back yet?”
“She isn’t.” Casey sighs, and I can hear him think and worry. “What happened?”
“We needed ration cards,” I say. I outline what happened in the broadest strokes, and Casey grows paler. “I don’t know about Grace, but we didn’t get into contact with anyone but the soldiers. Everyone else kept a careful distance, and they all had protective clothing.” I raise my voice on that last sentence, loud enough that Mackenzi can hear from the door opening. She nods.
“We’ll all keep to our rooms for a couple of days,” Nia says. She leans against Logan, who doesn’t appear to be bothered by it. “Like we agreed. But I’d like to see what’s in the boxes before we all go our separate ways.”
Logan signs something, and Nia laughs. “Someone will need to take inventory too. And cook for us.”
“Let’s take the boxes to the cafeteria. We can unpack them there,” Casey says.
“Perfect. You can do the unpacking. We’ll eat and watch,” Riley grumbles. But she smiles. We all smile when we grab the boxes and follow the others into the building. Several times I catch someone else glancing back at us and smiling, whispering excitedly.
It sends a thrill up my spine. We come bearing gifts, and this feels like Christmas in a way even Christmas never did. Gold, incense, and myrrh have got nothing on the promise of food when you haven’t had a full meal in several weeks.
We place the boxes on the center table inside the cafeteria, and then the four of us withdraw to one of the farthest tables in the room. Casey retrieves a knife and cleaning products from the kitchen, while Josie places meals on another table. I can’t help but laugh when I realize it’s pieces of toast—from the slightly-moldy-but-not-quite-off bread we found in town—and what remains of the fish Sofia caught earlier this week. Bread and fish. How appropriate.
Casey surveys the room while we tear into the food like hungry wolves. “Should we wait for Grace?”
The four of us nod, but everyone else thinks differently.
“Open it up!”
“We’ve been waiting all day!”
“She’ll be back soon enough!”
“Maybe there’ll be chocolate!”
I can’t pinpoint who says that, but Riley snorts.
Casey still hesitates.
“I don’t think she would want us to wait,” Sofia says, and that’s what convinces him. He takes the knife and carefully slides open the packaging tape around both the boxes.
And when he unpacks, the rest of the world lies forgotten. Even Isabella, who is bundled up and propped against the wall, cranes her neck to see everything.
Heavy bags of rice and pasta. Flour and sugar. Two boxes of cereal elicit the first oohs and aahs, even if we have no fresh milk to go with them. But there is powdered milk. Bags of lentils and beans too. Boxed mac and cheese. Two jars of peanut butter. Mayonnaise and ketchup and pancake mix. Never before has canned meat looked so good, not to mention pasta sauce and canned vegetables. Granola bars and dried fruit. Both boxes have canned peaches too, and when Casey pulls out the first can of condensed milk, Mackenzi whimpers.
