“Wow! Joni Luff, you have a steely streak I’ve never noticed before.”
“Not really, because I didn’t get pregnant. We only did it the once. And I got my period the next day. I’m such a dumbass with my dates.”
“Thank goodness.” I watched her reaction, and when she shrugged, I added, “I mean, what were you going to tell David? And Lola?”
“That I was pregnant and happy. But now that David’s not here, I can’t believe I risked losing him.”
“Well, holy shit. That’s—” I didn’t know what that was. Sad, I guess. I wanted to ask if she’d ever told David—not that it was quite the same as Julian and me; their marriage was worth saving, for starters—but Joni got up and started damping down the fire. She was done, off to bed. I gathered up the evidence of our drinking binge and took it to the food tent. When I came out, she was still there, pouring river water over the last glowing embers.
“We need to talk to the kids in the morning,” I said. “With these Wild Things on the loose, we need to be more careful. It’s like you said before, we’ve got to man up. Get some discipline. Especially the little ones.”
“They’re so young, they need time to adjust.”
“They need to survive long enough to adjust.”
Joni dropped her head back to look at the sky. “It’s beautiful out here,” she said, “we have shelter, and there’s food all around us.”
“We could look for a house?”
“What about bodies? What do you call it—the buzz?”
“At least we know this campsite is clean.”
“Right. We’ll be fine here until help comes.”
“What help?” I asked.
“The military, I guess. If this thing is all over the country like you read, all that awful stuff going on in the cities, then it might take a while for them to reach us out here. But David’ll come find us once the flights are back on.” Joni stared up to the sky, and I wondered if she was looking for a sign or something more practical—a plane. “I was supposed to be there. Fly up to see Mom. We should have let Lola cut school, it was only a couple of days.”
“But what if the virus has spread worldwide?”
Joni grabbed the first-aid box and clutched it to her chest. “Then we’ll survive just fine on our own.”
Somewhere in the forest sounded the double bark of a fox. We listened as it repeated its cry, which stopped as suddenly as it began.
“Juvenile, out hunting,” said Joni.
“Like I said, we need to toughen up.” Joni shook her head, but I went on. “Because we’re not on our own anymore, are we?”
“This is so much better than glamping,” Joni said the next morning, as we broke our fast on her lumpy soup and bitter tea.
“Oh, yeah, glamping is so last year,” I said. “So pre-apocalypse.”
But Joni kept twanging on about getting in sync with nature’s rhythms and wandered off with her head in her foraging book.
“Talking about nature’s rhythms,” I said, handing a shovel to Charlie and Peter, “you two are going to dig a latrine.” We found a private spot just outside the camp and consulted their Survival Skills book. I left them to it and returned to the food tent, where Maggie had mixed together the biscuits, pasta, and eggs, and was busy feeding the lot to Horatio, who was wolfing it down. As I started to yell, Lola—who was supposed to be watching the little ones—came back from the road with Billy. They both had armfuls of sunflowers.
“Look Mum-may, we found one-flowers.”
“Just what we need—decorative items. Lola, you left Maggie and the Lost Boy alone, and she fed all our food to the dog.” Lola petted Billy’s hair with the pitying expression of a nurse tending a brave but terminal patient. She had plaited a stem of cow parsley into his side curls so that the hair pulled up, exposing the soft skin behind his ear, the spot he liked to have stroked while falling asleep. My own private spot, just between him and me.
“Come on, Billy, let’s give these to Mom.” As he walked past, I reached down to stroke the soft spot, but he shrugged my finger away like a gnat. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d stroked him to sleep. Probably he couldn’t, either.
Maggie had fled the scene of the crime, the wide-eyed Lost Boy trailing after her, and was busy sifting a pile of dirt near the cooking fire. I picked up a broken tea bag and realized the dirt was actually tea leaves, which she’d collected by ripping open every single tea bag in the box. I drew in a deep breath while I gathered all my best expletives into my frontal lobe, but before I got a chance to release them, Charlie came hurtling into the camp. “Peter’s run away!”
I followed him out again.
The latrine hole was good and deep. They’d done a great job. Until Peter hit a root and tried to lever it up with the shovel, snapping off its handle.
“So then he ran away,” explained Charlie, “because he thought you were going to kill him.” His eyes flicked between my face and feet. “Because he broke the shovel.”
“Yes, yes, I got that. My fault again.” I picked up the jagged handle, which was soft and rotten inside. Threw it into the forest. “He’ll come back when he’s hungry.” Not that we had much to give Peter once he returned; Maggie had seen to that. In the food tent, I did a stock take of the supplies I’d managed to salvage from the shop after the raid: we were good for wine, rice, and breakfast cereals. It seemed the Wild Things weren’t fond of coconut water or avocados, so we had plenty of those. I’d found a sack of potatoes, but I didn’t trust the unrefrigerated meat. Of course, there was always more watercress. We wouldn’t starve, but there were lots of mouths to feed.
“Right, kids, sit down.” My three lined up in height order—Charlie, Maggie, Billy—while Lola busied herself in the background, humming too loud to hear me. The Lost Boy squeezed his narrow frame in next to Maggie.
“You know how I said we have to stay here in the forest for a while?”
“Because of all the rotting dead bodies in the city?” said Maggie.
“Who told you about rotting—? Right, yep, because all the people caught a bug that made them really sick and now—”
“Daddy’s dead, too,” said Maggie.
“Yes, we can’t see Daddy, I’m afraid.” I repeated it in a less brusque tone. “Daddy got sick, too. I’m sorry.”
“I want Daddy,” cried Billy.
“I’m sorry about Daddy. We’ll talk more about him soon, I promise, but now I need to talk about living in the forest—”
“Where is Daddy?”
“He’s gone away.”
“Where? Can we go?”
“No, we can’t go there. We have to stay here in the forest because it’s safe and—”
“Is Daddy coming here?”
“No. I’m afraid we can’t see Daddy. Now, look, we have to talk about survival. Do you know what that word means, survival?”
“Where’s Uncle David?”
“He’s in America. Now, survival, we need to talk about that. It means looking after ourselves—”
“Is Daddy with Uncle David?”
“No. He’s not. Now, look, listen, please. We need to talk about survival and food and we can’t just waste all the tea, okay?”