The name stuck.
2
The meat tasted strongly of the lighter fluid it took to ignite the ancient charcoal from Mrs. Ransom’s basement, but they ate the entire shank that Lila had hacked from the body of the bobcat she’d shot with her service revolver and dragged out of the fetid swimming pool.
“We are sick puppies,” said Molly on that first night, licking the grease from her fingers and grabbing another chunk. Being a sick puppy didn’t seem to sit too badly with her.
“Got that right, m’darlin,” her grandmother said, “but I’m damned if this isn’t half-decent eatin. Grab me another piece, Missus Sheriff.”
They had taken shelter in the remains of Mrs. Ransom’s house, not trying anything from the dusty canned goods in the pantry because Lila was afraid of botulism. They subsisted for the next two weeks primarily on berries they picked from the bushes in their former suburban neighborhood, and tiny ears of wild corn, tough and almost tasteless, but at least edible. May was too early for berries and corn, but there it was.
From this Lila drew a conclusion, shaky at first but growing more solid: the version of Dooling where they found themselves was moving at a different pace in time from the Dooling they had been in before. Time felt the same, but it wasn’t. Mrs. Ransom confirmed that she had been alone for several days before Molly appeared. The hours in the old place (before?), were days in the new one (now?). Maybe more than days.
This concern with the differing time-streams most often occupied Lila in the loose minutes before sleep took her. Many of the places they slept were open to the sky—fallen trees had punched holes in some roofs, wind had snatched others away altogether—and Lila blinked at the stars as she drifted off. The stars were the same, but their glare was shocking. They were hot-white welding sparks. Was it even real, this world without men? Was it heaven? Purgatory? An alternate universe on an alternate time-stream?
More women and girls arrived. The population began to snowball, and although Lila didn’t want the job, she found herself in charge. By default, it seemed.
Dorothy Harper of the Curriculum Committee, and her friends, three cheerful, white-haired women in their seventies, who introduced themselves as book club chums, emerged from the scrub forest that had risen around a condo. They made a great fuss over Molly, who enjoyed being fussed over. Janice Coates arrived strolling down Main Street, a leaf stuck in the ruins of her perm, accompanied by three women in prison red tops. Janice and the three former inmates—Kitty McDavid, Celia Frode, and Nell Seeger—had needed to hack their way through a thicket to get out of Dooling Correctional.
“Good afternoon, ladies,” Janice said, after embracing first Blanche McIntyre, then Lila. “Forgive our appearance. We just broke jail. Now which one of you nicked your finger on a spindle and created this mess?”
Some of the old dwellings were habitable and salvageable. Others were fabulously overgrown or crumbled or both. On Main Street they gaped at the high school, which had been an outmoded building even in the old Dooling. In this new one, it was literally split down the middle, each half of the structure leaning to opposite sides, and open air in between jagged brick edges. Birds perched on the cliffs of classroom lino that jutted out into space. The Municipal Building, which had included the town and sheriff’s department offices, was half-collapsed. A sinkhole had opened on Malloy. A car sat at the bottom, submerged to the windshield in coffee-colored water.
A woman named Kayleigh Rawlings joined the colony, and volunteered her experience as an electrician. It was no surprise to the former warden, who knew that Kayleigh had gone to vocational school to learn about wiring and voltage. That Kayleigh and her education had emerged from inside the fence of Dooling Correctional was not an issue. The woman had never committed a crime in this new place, under these too-bright stars.
Kayleigh managed to resurrect a solar-powered generator attached to what had once been a rich doctor’s house, and they cooked rabbit on his electric stovetop and listened to old records on his vintage Rock-Ola jukebox.
In the evenings they talked. Most of the women had, like Lila in the cruiser in Mrs. Ransom’s driveway, awakened in the places where they had fallen asleep. A few others, however, remembered finding themselves in the dark, hearing nothing but wind and birdsong and—perhaps—distant voices. When the sun had risen these women had picked their way west through woods and come out either on Ball’s Hill Road or West Lavin. To Lila, the picture they drew of those early moments was of a world being formed, as if the surroundings of their existence was an act of collective imagination. That, she thought, was as likely as anything else.
3
Day followed day and night followed night. Exactly how many from the first day no one was sure, but weeks certainly, and then months.
A hunting and gathering group was formed. There was a great deal of game—deer and rabbit, especially—as well as plenty of wild fruits and vegetables. They never came close to starving. There was a farming group, a construction group, a healthcare group, and an education group to teach the children. Each morning a different girl stood out in front of the little school, ringing a cowbell. The sound carried for miles. Women taught; some of the older girls did, too.
No viruses afflicted them, though there were many cases of poison ivy to deal with and more than a few cuts and bruises, even broken bones brought about by the perils inherent in long-abandoned structures—sharp edges and bucklings and hidden traps. If this world was an act of imagination, Lila sometimes thought as she drifted toward sleep, it was a remarkably strong one if it could make people bleed.