The Garden of Darkness

Everything was silent. After the noises of the brush and the hay field, the silence was oppressive. Clare wasted no time—she went into the grocery store, which, for the most part, had been stripped.

After a careful search, she loaded up the little wagon with two sacks of rice and some cans of Chef Boyardee ravioli she found in the back room. She hadn’t realized that Chef Boyardee was still a going concern, but the expiration dates were years away.

She had a new appreciation for preservatives.

A more careful canvass of the store yielded SpaghettiOs, stewed canned tomatoes, chicken soup, bottles of water, and a few packages of pasta shaped like bow ties.

She went back out into the light and sat on the stoop; she opened a package of Yum-Yums she had found near the cash register. They were past their expiration date, but they weren’t nearly as old as the KreamKakes. Clare wolfed them down. She followed them with three Slim Jims and a piece of beef jerky, waited for nausea that didn’t come, and then, despite their age, ate the KreamKakes too. She had always loved that creamy filling.

The sun was low in the sky by the time she pulled the wagon over to the big Fallon General Store, and she hesitated at the door.

She suddenly wasn’t sure it was that silent anymore.

Clare stood still at the entrance. There was a quality to the silence that she did not like. The light inside the store was terribly dim. She had never realized how few windows most stores had, as if scenery might compete with the desire to shop.

She wished, again, that Bear hadn’t gone off after the deer.

Clare stepped into the store, and when the floor creaked under her, she almost turned back. But then she caught sight of a section devoted to camping. She had left her flashlight at the cabin, so the first thing she picked up was a long heavy flashlight that took large batteries, which she found hanging in containers by the checkout. Then she walked through the store, bewildered by the number of things she was going to have to come back for—things that surely wouldn’t fit in her little wagon: a tent, a backpack, dozens of packets of freeze-dried food, blankets and sweaters and warm clothes.

Just in case, she located the back door to the store. It was to the side of the changing room, and in the light of her flashlight she read the sign next to it: ‘Emergency Exit—Alarm Will Sound.’

Clare thought not.

She put down the flashlight so she could use both hands, and soon she had the back door ajar.

In the clothing section, hurrying now, she pulled on a pair of jeans to see if they fit, listening to her surroundings all the time.

She had dropped a size. No surprise there.

From the corner of her eye, in the crepuscular light, she saw movement. She turned towards the front door and gripped her flashlight like a club.

She heard the sound of clothes whispering against each other, hangers clattering together. It was a casual, almost domestic sound, as if a shopper were sorting through the sale rack.

Clare’s instinct was to stay low. She dared not call attention to herself by running for the back door. She began, as quietly as she could, to inch towards the front—only for her foot to slip on a blouse that was lying on the floor. She tried to catch herself as she went down by grabbing onto one of the clothes racks. The hangers above her jangled together merrily.

From her prone position Clare saw movement to her left. She scrambled to her feet. There was no more time to think—a figure with a pale blot of a face loomed up beside her. She swung the flashlight up over her head and brought it down as hard as she could.

“Ow!”

The ‘ow’ made her hesitate. Maybe she just wasn’t all that eager to kill. There would be time to ponder the moment, the moment that was to determine the course of her entire life.

Instead of striking again, she lowered the flashlight and turned it on, thinking she could at least momentarily blind her adversary.

“Go away,” she whispered. “Whatever you are—go away.”

But she found she was facing a boy, a boy younger than she. He carried no marks of Pest. His face was deathly pale, his hair and eyebrows dark. He was squinting. Clare slowly lowered the flashlight.

“I’m just a kid,” he said. And although he was still squinting, still partially blinded by the light, she thought she saw recognition dawn on his face.

“You’re Clare Bodine,” he said.

She nodded, incredulous; a moment later his name came to her.

“You’re Jem Clearey,” she said. “Ninth grade.”

“You’re the cheerleader,” he said. There was disbelief in his voice. “You do those back flips.”

“Chess club, right?”

“Right.”

They looked at each other. Then, in the gathering gloom of the store, as the shadows outside grew longer, and the wind stirred up dust on the empty streets, fifteen-year-old Clare Bodine, the cheerleader, reached out and pulled thirteen-year-old Jem Clearey, member of the chess club, into her arms.





CHAPTER SEVEN





OLYMPIC GOLD