The Garden of Darkness

“I thought I was the only one alive in the whole world. Except for the Cured. I waited with Mother’s and Kevin’s bodies for a long time.” She stopped, and he didn’t press her.

“You’re alive,” he said finally. “And we’ll start there.”

“There’s no one left in Clarion,” she said. “I walked around for a while, but there were only bodies. Then I got scared. I thought maybe I could build a tree house and live in the woods, but I just got lost, and it started getting cold. There weren’t any berries to eat.”

“Any Cured in Clarion?”

“One,” said Britta. “He kept telling me to come closer. His face sagged down, and when I saw that, I ran.”

“Very wise.”

“You are the Master, aren’t you? Of the situation? For real?”

He sat back in his chair. They were seated at the thick oak table in the kitchen, a table big enough to accommodate a large family. He thought that soon enough, as the children came, he would fill the places.

“Yes,” he said. “I am the Master.”

“I was worried you might be someone who hurts kids.”

“Parents scare their children too much.”

For being the first one to find him, the Master wanted to give Britta the most opulent bedroom in the mansion—the one with huge, gilt framed mirrors on the walls and oriental rugs on the floor and a bed with an intricately embroidered coverlet. But part of him knew that the room would be scary for her, and he wanted all the children to be comfortable with him. Respectful, but comfortable.

He finally gave her a small cozy room on the second floor, a room that overlooked the gardens that he meant to become lush and extravagant with flowers. Once there were other children, they would plant and reap and delight in excess of everything: food, flowers. They would raise domestic animals. He knew that children liked baby things. He would make sure that there would be ducklings and chicks. They wouldn’t be able to resist ducklings.

That night, Britta let him tuck her in. Then he went outside to the perimeter of the estate. Britta hadn’t wanted him to leave her alone in the house, but he knew it was possible the Cured she had seen in Clarion had followed her. If so, some clean up work needed to be done.

The air was cool on his face. He stared into the darkness and listened. The unmown grass was fragrant and the soft, and dewy heads of clover brushed his legs. Then he heard it—a low hooting sound, as if some night bird were calling to another.

The Cured was out there, but too far away for him to do anything about it. No matter. The Cured would soon come closer, and he would be ready.

He went back inside and up the stairs to check on Britta.

She lay on her side. The light from the kerosene lantern he held showed deep shadows around her eyes. He was about to close the door, but, in spite of the marks that exhaustion and fear and hunger had left on her, in spite of what must have been a deep fatigue, she woke up.

She didn’t want to know where she was, or who he was, and she didn’t ask for her parents.

“Is everything all right?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Leave the door open.”

He did. When he checked back later, she was in a deep and lovely sleep.

He was still excited from the day. He picked up his baseball bat and took a chair—it looked like an antique, perhaps Louis Quatorze—and sat outside near the perimeter of the grounds.

He wanted to kill something.

The Cured hooted softly. It was a lonely sound.

When the Cure had started to go terribly wrong, he had feared that the unfortunate recipients of it might band together, but that didn’t seem to be happening.

And one Cured, well, one Cured he could hunt down.





THE NEXT DAY, he and Britta took the truck that had been sitting, keys in the ignition, in the long drive of the estate. They didn’t go to Clarion; he didn’t want Britta reminded of the past. He would build society from the ground up, and that meant leaving the past behind.

So they went to Sennet, where there were very few bodies in the streets. Most people, it seemed, had been content to die at home. He kept watch for the Cured, baseball bat in hand, while Britta checked out stores and restaurants.

They finally found a warehouse of food. Britta spilled over with joy. He was less satisfied. The cartons all contained cans of soup—tomato, minestrone, beef with barley, mushroom. He didn’t plan on feeding himself and the children on soup alone. The mansion needed luxuries, luxuries for the young children—candy bars and licorice and gum—and luxuries for himself and the older ones—caviar, paté, smoked oysters. His world needed to be enticing. Soup might get them through the winter, but soup wasn’t interesting. And he wanted live animals to raise for food; he wanted chickens, pigs, sheep. He didn’t fear butchering them; if there was anything he knew how to do well, it was how to wield a knife. And he knew anatomy.

The mansion had already been well stocked. He and Britta made trip after trip until the storeroom was full.

“We’ll go back to Sennet tomorrow,” he said to Britta.

“Don’t we have enough for the winter already?” she asked.