The Garden of Darkness

Food was a constant topic of conversation. Jem, Sarai and Mirri—and now Clare—worked constantly to maintain their supply. But three people, now four, went through a lot of food—and resources in Fallon were limited.

It seemed it was always time to scavenge.

They left the farmhouse early the day the stitches came out. Sarai and Mirri made sure that Clare had her own pair of rubber gloves, a kerchief for her mouth and Vick’s VapoRub to smear under her nose.

“Our scavenging costumes,” said Sarai.

In her few excursions alone, Clare had found foraging to be scary nasty work, often not worth the trip. In return for witnessing appalling horrors, Clare would get as little in return as a box of wormy cornflakes. Or everything would be covered in mold, or, in the refrigerator, she would find a mass of vegetables turned to a black soupy jello.

“Don’t worry,” said Mirri as they set out. “Jem keeps us out of the worst houses. He doesn’t want us desensitized.”

“I put that word on my vocab list,” said Sarai.

“Jem does all the really nasty stuff,” said Mirri. “He always goes into the houses first to see how much decomp there is. That’s what he calls it. Decomp.”

Clare thought, as she had before, that Jem was pretty tough for a chess player.

As they trundled onto the road with the wagons, Clare thought she saw movement out of the corner of her eye, but when she turned there was nothing. Sarai noticed the direction of her gaze.

“It’s the Cured-in-a-blue-dress,” said Sarai. “Sometimes she follows us.”

The first house they approached had its curtains drawn. A lot of people, it seemed, had wanted to shut out the outside world as they died. Their houses were like tombs.

“I’ll go with you, Jem,” said Clare when they stopped.

“I’ve sort of gotten used to it,” said Jem, “if you want to wait outside.”

“How bad is it?”

“Well, put on your gloves, and we’ll see.”

“You think I should use the Vicks?”

“Yeah.”

It was bad. The body of a young man lay half in and half out of the kitchen. He stank.

Then Clare saw movement.

“Jem. He’s alive.”

“No,” Jem said. “It’s the maggots. They can make a body look like it’s moving.”

“I feel a little sick.”

“We’ll keep the others out of here. It’s always harder when the bodies aren’t in bed. There’s way too much to see.”

But in many respects, the house was a winner. Someone had gone in for winter sports, and, besides ski equipment, they found down jackets, down vests, snow pants, neck warmers and woolen hats—some for children and some for adults.

“We’ll take some of it now and come back for more later,” Jem said.

“What if some of the children survived?”

“They didn’t.”

“You can’t be sure.”

“I checked when we first came in. They’re in the back bedroom.”

There wasn’t much else of use in the house: a bottle of ketchup; some pickles; a jar of peanut butter.

The bodies in the second house they checked were also tucked away in a bedroom, and so Mirri and Sarai came in too, but there didn’t seem to be much food.

“Look what I found,” said Mirri when she came out of the pantry.

They looked at her armload of cans.

“It’s cherry pie filling. Can you believe it?”

“Mirri—” Jem started to speak and then appeared to think better of it.

“Cherry pie filling is good. My mother used to let me eat it right out of the can. My mother—” Her eyes started to fill, and she looked down.

There was an awkward silence. It was Jem who broke it.

“I love cherry pie filling,” he said.

Sarai just thumped Mirri on the back.

After they got back to the farm and stowed the food, Clare went down to the meadow, Bear at her heel. The soft afternoon light cast long shadows, and the smell of the grass was sweet. A movement caught Clare’s eye, and she turned around in time to see the unmistakable figure of Mirri coming down the steps of the porch. Clare almost called to her before she noticed that Mirri had something in her hands. Mirri kept looking nervously over her shoulder at the house as she ran to the nearby copse of trees.

Clare slowly sat down next to Bear and buried her hand in his thick coat.

Mirri stood with her back against a tree, and Clare could now see that she was carrying a small basket.

There was a flicker of blue in the trees, moving rapidly among them. Mirri held out the basket stiffly, and the Cured-in-the-blue-dress took it from her. As she did, she hurriedly backed off, as if to run. But Mirri raised her hand, slowly and gently, and the Cured-in-the-blue-dress submitted, and came forward and let Mirri’s hand rest on her shoulder.

The strange moment of intimacy over, the scared woman turned and ran, and the vivid blue of her dress flickered away between the trees.

Clare stayed still until Mirri had returned to the house.

When Clare herself returned, Mirri and Sarai were gathered around Jem, who had just returned from the local library with some kind of survivalist manual. On its cover a man dressed in camouflage held a gun in one hand and a dead turkey in the other.