Neither I nor my father said anything more on the matter—Sosie was actually right this time.
When it came to food we harvested or hunted separate from the rest of the town, we had to be careful to hide it. The people in our small community always looked out for one another, but with food and scarce supplies, the same people were also known to turn on each other if they’d gone without for too long. And twelve days without meat was just on the cusp of being too long.
Father boiled the fish over a small fire in the fireplace, using water I had drawn from the lake yesterday. We ate in silence, mostly because we were so hungry all we could focus on were the tiny pieces of fish in front of us.
“I can go fishing again before it gets too dark,” I said from the couch. “They were really biting today, but I heard something in the woods and left before the bait ran out.”
“I don’t want you going anywhere this late,” Father spoke up from across the room.
He was standing at the window overlooking the front porch, his back was to us, his left hand touched the side of his face as if to soothe the growing ache in his mouth. But he seemed more focused on something outside the window, rather than the progressing pain.
“But if the fish are biting—”
“No, Thais. No more fishing.” He turned and looked across at me sternly. “Understood?”
I nodded, always respectful of my father’s wishes. It didn’t mean I always agreed with him, but he was my father, and I trusted him more than anyone so I could never bring myself to argue.
Noticing my father rubbing his mouth again, I got up, placed my hand on the doorknob. “I’ll go see if Ms. Mercado is home yet.” I started to open the door.
“She’s not,” Father said, stopping me. “The peppermint oil isn’t going to help with the pain anyway. It never really does.”
“But Daddy—.” I stopped when his eyes fell on me, filled with concern. And then I said instead, “Is something wrong? You seem worried.”
“I am,” he confirmed. “The fact that Emilia and Fernando still haven’t come back—well, something’s not right about it.”
I had been having these thoughts all afternoon.
“They’re probably just looking for supplies,” Sosie called from the couch.
“For two days?” I pointed out. “Not even Fernando would stay away from home that long without telling anyone.”
Fernando was a tall, handsome young man of eighteen, just four months younger than me. He hoped that he and I might be married someday. But I wasn’t interested in Fernando, or any other man for anything other than friendship, and even friendship I was cautious of—rarely did men ever want to be “just friends” with women.
Over the years of our incredibly difficult life, I witnessed the death of two women trying to give birth, several babies that were stillborn, many that were premature and died hours after birth, and one infant death too horrific to speak of. Life in this new world was not fit for children, or the mothers who risked giving birth to them. And I was terrified of ever being part of the statistic. But I was a young woman, and I did find Fernando Mercado attractive, and I did sometimes imagine him kissing me. But thoughts were as far as I would ever let myself go. Like death, rape was something that I could never un-see, and I went out of my way to keep it from happening to me.
“I’m going next door,” Father said, moved in front of me and opened the door. “Stay here and clean up. I’ll be back soon.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
He stepped outside into the humid air of early June.
“I’m going to talk to Mr. Hatley, see if anyone else has seen Emilia or Fernando. Stay inside the house.” He left promptly and disappeared across the street.
The heat from the day had begun to burn off, but our small house was filled with it, and I felt like I was slowly roasting away in an oven. I stayed at the window, desperate for the meager breeze that crept in through the screen, and I watched for my father to return. The sound of a million cicadas singing and crickets chirruping and frogs croaking filled the early evening; the distinct call of a Whippoorwill sounded in a melodious song as the night settled in. I always loved the call of the Whippoorwill. It filled my mind with peace, made me forget about the chaotic world that went on all around us.
“I wish the world had never ended,” Sosie spoke up from her favorite chair by another window, pulling me from my peaceful thoughts.
I sighed, uncrossed my arms.
“The world didn’t end, Sosie,” I said. “Just life as we ever knew it.”
“Isn’t that basically the same thing?”
I shook my head.
“No,” I answered. But also like my father, I often hid what I really felt. Yes, it’s basically the same thing, Sosie…
“Well, end of the world or not,” Sosie said, “I’m glad I have my little sister to brave it with.”
I looked over, smiled softly at her.
“Me too,” I said. “Without you, the end of the world would be terribly boring.”
Sosie laughed lightly, tossed her blonde hair back with the delicate gesture of her hand. “But of course it would,” she said dramatically. “I’m the life of this party, didn’t you know?” She grinned.
I smiled back at my sister, a mask covering the dismal thoughts that lay beneath it.
Civilization ended on a hot July day when I was only eleven-years-old; the day people died off quickly from The Sickness that spread too fast and too far for anyone to contain it. Civilization as everyone knew it, was over, taken back to a time in history that no one in the modern world fed by privilege and luxury and complacency, could fathom.
After The Fall, there was no such thing as magic water that spilled forth from a magic faucet. There were no stocked warehouses with giant automatic doors, and shopping carts that people could fill to the brim with food they might never get around to eating. There were no more hospitals to treat the sick, or police officers to save lives, or churches to nurture souls. When civilization fell, it fell like an intricate maze of dominoes. Electricity—gone. Clean running water—gone. Disneyland and television and the Internet and Saturday trips to the park with our mother and Friday nights with our father at the movies—gone, gone, gone, gone. Everything we ever knew, vanished within months following The Outbreak.
And with the loss of society, also came the loss of freedom: Raiders formed in the Big Cities, and they marched across the countryside like a hailstorm, pillaging food and supplies; they tore able-bodied boys and men from their families, and forced them to fight in corrupt armies for corrupt leaders who preached corrupt beliefs. And women not past childbearing age were taken into the cities and made to reproduce—made to reproduce.