I ran out of the house and back into the street where I checked the pockets of each body—anything to help distract me from my father.
Mr. Hatley had six thick matches wrapped in an old handkerchief hidden in his shirt pocket. I also found on him another pocketknife, and a wallet filled with American money that no longer held value. Sifting through the wallet compartments, I found photos of his sons and his wife who had died when The Sickness hit. I left Mr. Hatley with his wallet and his smiling family and I went to search the other bodies. I barely found anything more, just a lot of pocketknives and photos.
I continued to search everywhere for anything I could take back with me. I found a roll of fishing string beside Mr. Hatley’s house; a stainless-steel water bottle without a top, at the next. I plucked it from the dirt and hastily wiped down the sides. In another yard, I found a backpack. By the time I set out for the trail again, the backpack carried not only the fishing string and pocketknives and stainless-steel water bottle, but also a can of pinto beans, a small iron pan that weighed the backpack down, and an old soda can that had been faded by the sun. It wasn’t much, but more than I had when I set out. The only other thing of use I left with were two pairs of work boots that laced up the front, also taken off the dead. I wore one pair on the way back, the other pair hung over my shoulder, tied together by the long, black strings. They smelled rancid but were better protection for Sosie’s feet than the open-toed sandals she wore now.
As I hurried up the path back toward the cave, my eyes burning thinking of my father, I saw Sosie’s walking-stick still where I’d tossed it. I grabbed it and took it back to my very appreciative sister.
4
THAIS
We didn’t talk about our father. Sosie knew he was dead—my silence only confirmed it.
“I got you some boots.” Untying the laces, I set the boots in front of Sosie on the ground. “They’ll protect your feet better than those.”
In true Sosie fashion, her nose crinkled when she got a good whiff. For the briefest of moments, it made me smile.
“I’m thirsty,” Sosie said minutes later.
I fished the stainless-steel water bottle from the backpack, hit the bottom against the palm of my hand to knock the dirt out.
“Well that’s another problem solved,” I said proudly, and stood up. “I found something to boil the water in.”
I went down the rock incline in my new old boots and made my way to the stream; already I felt the spots where I knew I’d end up with blisters later as the leather rubbed against my skin.
The stream was small; I could stand over it with a foot on each side, and if it didn’t rain soon, it would dry up in a couple of days. I filled the bottle and took it back up the hill to the cave.
“I’m scared,” Sosie said, sitting against the wall where she seemed to stay, just like her chair by the window at home. “I’d rather get shot than cut up by somebody and put in a pot.”
“They weren’t cannibals,” I assured her as I prepared a small campfire.
“How do you know?”
“They left the bodies.” I struck one of the matches I’d found in Mr. Hatley’s pocket, against a rock, setting a small mound of twigs and some dried leaves aflame. “All of the dead were old, too,” I added as an afterthought, ignoring my father’s age. A small fire crackled and spitted as I slowly added more sticks, strategically placing them so as not to suffocate the flames.
“And everyone else?”
“They were gone,” I said. “And so was everything else before they burned the houses. I was lucky to find a can of beans. It was probably dropped. They left nothing. Nothing, Sosie.” I wanted to stay strong for my sister, but the reality of all that had happened was eating away at me. And worse than what I could not change, was that I had no idea about what we would do from here on out.
When the third night fell, Sosie had stopped talking much again. “Put out the fire so no one sees us in the dark” was all she’d said in three hours.
I couldn’t sleep. I stayed up all night on watch, thinking about what we would do next, where we would go. We couldn’t stay in the cave forever. We had little to eat as it was—the beans, after nearly cutting my finger off trying to open the can with a knife, turned out to be spoiled—and I wasn’t a good hunter like my father. But even if I could hunt, I had no weapon with which to hunt. Catching fish and eating bugs would be our only means of survival. But for how long? I had five matches left, tucked away inside Mr. Hatley’s handkerchief, wedged between two rocks inside the cave to keep them from getting wet if it ever rained.
But four days later and it still had not rained and the stream was drying up.
I kept filling the water bottle and sterilizing it over the campfire, burning the bottom of the stainless-steel until it was as black as charcoal. We drank as much as we could instead of letting the water disappear into the earth. We still had the lake, but it was a risk going there even to fish. Not only was it a thirty-minute walk away, but I’d have to go across the grassy field to get to it and that would leave me exposed.
I’ll crawl through the field on my belly if I have to, I thought, hoping I wouldn’t have to.
On the sixth day, it finally rained.
A violent storm came in, pushing us against the back wall of the cave where we huddled together, shaking in each other’s arms as the thunder boomed overhead and lightning cracked through the sky like a whip and the winds howled and ripped through the trees. When the storm was over, we crawled out of the cave to a replenished stream, but a sodden pile of sticks that had been our campfire, and a forest full of wet everything that would surely hinder the lighting of a new one.
And we had only two matches left.
“We have to leave the fire burning throughout the night,” I said after finding wood dry enough to burn on the seventh day. “I’ll pile rocks around it and keep it low so no one will see the flames.”
Sosie did not argue; she was still her unmoving, unemotional self.
By day ten, we had no more food. My stomach ached with hunger to the point I felt nauseous and lightheaded. Sosie felt the same, I knew; I could hear her stomach rumbling. But she never complained; for once in her life, she didn’t have the energy.
“You have to eat.” I held out a few earthworms draped over a stick that I’d just roasted over the fire. “I know they’re disgusting, but they’re full of protein.”
“I don’t want it.” Her voice was listless.
“It’s all we have.”
“I don’t care. I’m not hungry.”
I threw the stick down in front of her. “Then I’ll go fishing,” I snapped, and rose to my feet, hunched over to keep from hitting my head on the cave roof. “I can’t survive this alone”—I stomped away—“You could at least act like you want to help me.”