The bird stared at me with its black beady eyes. “Peter! Where are you Peter?” it said, hopping along the roof.
“Was Peter your owner?” I asked. The parrot preened itself with its claw. “Where did you come from?” I imagined Peter had long since died in the plague, or abandoned the bird in the chaos afterward. The parrot had survived, though, for over a decade. That simple fact filled me with hope.
I wanted to ask the bird more questions, but then it flew off, until it was only a speck of red against the blue sky. I followed its path, watching it disappear in the distance. Then my gaze fell on the silhouettes coming toward the road, over the hillside and through the trees. Even from two hundred feet away, I could see the guns slung over their backs.
For a moment I stood in awe of these strange and unfamiliar creatures. They were so much taller and broader than women. Even their gait was different, heavier, as though it required great effort to take even one step. They all wore pants and boots and some were shirtless, revealing their leathery brown chests.
The figures moved as a pack, until one brought up his gun and aimed for the deer grazing near the gas pumps. With one blast it fell, its leg seizing in pain. Only then did the panic set in. I was in the middle of the wild, in unforgiving daylight. A gang was just thirty yards off. I fumbled with the door of the shack, clawing at the ivy until I found the rusty old lock.
The gang came closer. I kept at the lock, pulling and hitting it with my palm, hoping it would break. Please open, I begged, please. I glanced around the corner of the shack again and saw the men beneath the gas station awning. They huddled around the deer. One hacked at the animal, cutting its coat away like a person skinning fruit. It bucked and twisted. It was still alive.
I tugged on the door, suddenly wishing Headmistress would barrel down the broken road and the guards would pull me onto the bed of a government Jeep. We would go back the way I’d come, the men shooting at us, until they were tiny black dots on the horizon. Until I was safe.
But my fantasy evaporated, like fog burned off by the sun. Headmistress wasn’t my protector, and School was no longer safe.
Nowhere was safe.
The lock finally gave and I fell forward into the dark shack. I pulled my knapsack inside and shut the door, pushing farther down a narrow corridor that emptied out into a larger room. The dirt-caked windows were snaked with vines, making it impossible to see. I felt my way in and realized at once that it wasn’t a shack, but a long house that expanded into the side of the hill, half buried by the grass. I kept going, feeling my way farther into the room. The walls were rough and mottled, as though they were made of stones.
The strange voices came closer. “Come on, Raff, just throw the hide in the bag and let’s get off.”
“Shove it, you filthy crumb,” another shot back. Their voices were deep and gruff. They didn’t speak in the same careful English we’d learned in School.
I had sat in my Dangers of Boys and Men class for an entire year, learning all the ways women were vulnerable to the other sex. First was the Manipulation and Heartache unit. We did a close reading of Romeo and Juliet, studying the way Romeo seduced Juliet and ultimately led her to her death. Teacher Mildred gave a lecture about a relationship she had before the plague and the highs that so quickly evolved into desperate, anger-fueled lows. She cried as she described how her “love” had left her after she gave birth to their first child, a little girl who later died in the plague. He’d claimed something called “confusion.” During the unit on Domestic Enslavement, we saw old print ads of women in aprons. But the lesson on Gang Mentality was the most terrifying of all.
Teacher Agnes showed us secret images taken by security cameras perched on the wall. They were blurry, but there were three figures—three men. They cornered another, stole the supplies at his belt, and executed him with a shotgun. For weeks I woke up in the middle of the night, my skin slick with sweat. I kept seeing that white blast and the man’s limp body splayed out on the ground, his legs twisted.
“You didn’t need another one, you kill-happy Buggum!” another voice yelled. I backed farther into the house, pressing up against a rough, unstable wall. The air was hot and thick with the scent of mold and something sharper, something chemical. I pulled my shirt over my face, trying to muffle my breath as the men stomped past.
They were close now. I could hear them, each step cracking fallen branches with vicious snaps and pops. Someone stopped outside the shack. His breaths were raspy and choked with phlegm. “Whatcha gots there?” another one called. His voice was farther off, higher. Maybe on the road.
He cleared his throat and terror filled my chest. I held onto the wall of stones, trying to steady myself as I closed my eyes. Go away, please, please, I thought.