Andrew

WE WALK ABOUT FOUR MILES BEFORE THE guy tells us to turn up a driveway of cracked asphalt. A half mile later, the thick woods surrounding the road open onto structured rows of leafless trees as far as the eye can see. The driveway turns to dirt and stone, but we continue walking.

My face throbs with pain, but my nose and the scratch below my eye have stopped bleeding. The Kid holds my good hand while I keep the bad one pulled close to my chest. The pain seems to be coming from everywhere in my body.

I turn to Taylor and whisper, “I need a fucking vacation.”

The look she returns says, Seriously? You’re joking about that now? I shrug because what can I say, it’s true.

There are what look like seven housing structures on the property, which I’m now starting to assume is a farm of some kind given the cute little farmhouse that shall be known as structure number one. There’s also a big, weathered wood barn that’s a dead giveaway. But the other structures look like modular homes joined together by wood beams as an afterthought. Each has a steel chimney emitting white smoke. A few faces look out the windows at us.

Someone emerges from the farmhouse, coming to a stop at the top of the porch steps. They watch us for a bit before they turn around and duck back into the farmhouse, then come out again. This time they walk down the steps and approach us.

It’s an older Southeast Asian man with short white hair and a clean-cut white beard.

“What the hell happened, Jeff?” the man asks.

“They were breaking into the restaurant downtown.”

The man looks confused, then shakes his head. “Marnie’s? What the hell would they have taken? We took everything of use over a year ago.” He points at my injuries, then looks back at Jeff the Jerkoff. “And I’m assuming this is your fault?”

“They’re not from around here,” Jeff says.

“Guess the accent gave it away, huh?” I ask.

The older guy laughs, then walks up to Jeff and holds out his hand. “Give me the gun.” Jeff hands it over and he pulls the bolt. I watch as his eyes go wide. “Where’d you get the round?”

“That’s mine,” I say. “The ammo, but the whole rifle, too.”

Taylor steps forward and holds out Jeff’s empty rifle. “This one is his.”

The man takes it, thanking her, then throws it to Jeff. “Go back to your bunk, wait there.”

“But—”

“Now!”

Without another word, Jeff hunches over and heads to one of the modular homes. The man looks at me in the dying afternoon light and winces.

“Sorry about him,” he says. “He’s jumpy, that’s why he doesn’t usually have ammo.”

“Didn’t stop him from pulling the trigger on an empty chamber,” I say.

He groans and then motions for us to follow him. “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.” As he starts walking toward the house, another man comes out to the porch. It’s not until we’re about ten feet away that I recognize him.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say.

On the porch, Howard Didn’t-Get-a-Last-Name-Because-the-Last-Time-I-Saw-Him-He-Was-Robbing-Us is giving me a look that says I seem familiar, but he can’t quite place me. How many people did you rob, Howard?

“Everyone, take out your food and give it to this asshole,” I say.

“Asshole,” the Kid repeats.

“That’s right, Kid.”

Hearing my voice must connect the dots for him because his eyebrows jump. “You and another guy were in the cabin about ten miles that way.”

He points southwest. Ten miles! I’m only ten miles away?

Shit. Ten miles and now I’m probably going to have to pay a tax or some shit for trying to break into Marnie’s. Howard’s eyes drift over the others, but then come back to me when he realizes Jamie isn’t here.

The other man speaks. “Jeff says they were trying to get into Marnie’s downtown.”

“Why?” Howard looks at me when he says it.

“Trying to find a place to shelter for the night before we go back to the cabin.”

He mulls this over for a second, then turns back to the other guy. “Robbie, get them set up in one of the bunkhouses.” Then he adds quickly, “Not Jeff’s!”

“Yeah, no shit,” Robbie mumbles.

He points at me. “You. I’ll walk you to medical and we’ll get you cleaned up.”

The others look at me with concern, but from all the context clues they’ve been throwing around, it sounds as though Jeff is the only one we have to worry about. But the Kid is still holding on to my hand. I bend down and look him in the eye.

“Go with Taylor and Jamar, okay? I’ll be right behind you after I fix my mug.” I wave my hand around my face, then gently run my fingers down his face like I’m pulling off a mask, making him smile. He nods and takes Taylor’s hand, and Robbie leads them off.

I watch them go—just in case the context clues were intended to throw me off—and Howard joins me at the bottom of the porch steps.

“Howard,” he says. I see his hand out, but I don’t take it.

“I remember. Andrew.”

“I’m trying to be cordial.”

“I think my face got enough cordiality from Jeff.”

“Cordiality isn’t a word.”

“Yes, it is. Who taught you grammar?”

He frowns. “Is it?”

“Yes, and you can consider my teaching you that a down payment on whatever taxes I have to pay to stay in the cabin.”

Howard seems embarrassed. Which, good, I’m glad. It was him and a group of others from this camp who showed up at Jamie’s cabin demanding our food as taxes for living on this land he suddenly claimed in Postapocalyptic Eminent Domain. “Look, all that shit about taxes was just . . .” He flicks his head to his left. “Walk with me, that cut on your face needs to be cleaned.”

I look back to see the others being led into a blue modular home, then I follow Howard.

“Sorry,” he says. “We knew you were out there—we saw the other guy—”

“Jamie.”

“Yes. We saw him out getting supplies in town one day and they followed him. Left you alone for a while, hoping you’d go out searching for other survivors and find us, but when spring rolled around and you didn’t—”

“You decided to rob us.”

“We were trying to scare you into joining us.”

“Ah, yes, because intimidation is so inviting.”

He shrugs. “Yeah, that was my fault. My wife told me it was a bad idea, but I think I was underestimating you. We’d had a couple of bad run-ins with other groups in the area, so we thought it best to scare you into joining us and make it seem like we were your best option.”

“Stealing our food and trying to starve us to death makes you our best option?”

“We left enough food to last you a week, and we went back to the cabin three days later to check on you and invite you back here to live. But youse were already gone, so we figured you had joined up with one of the other groups.”

I watch his face, trying to figure out how much of this is true. “Jeff said there’s three groups in the area?”

“Including us, yeah. There’s a farm about fifteen miles south with around ten people living on it. And the next closest is a group of twenty in a motel six miles west.”

“A Motel 6 or a motel that is six miles west? Again, who taught you grammar?”

“The second one,” he says, sounding as if he’s trying not to laugh.

“How many people are here?”

“Forty-two.” We reach a small corrugated-metal building painted white with a red cross on the door. Howard pulls it open for me. “Watch your step.”

The room is dark, but I can see there’s a large step up that would be easy to trip on. I step inside and Howard flips on a light switch.

The building is one room with four recessed lights in the corners that barely light it up when they flicker on.

“Solar panel on the roof is good for maybe forty minutes of light. They’re LED, so they get brighter the longer they’re on.”

In the center of the room is a padded exam table that’s only missing the disposable butcher paper that made me feel like deli meat at my pediatrician’s office in the before times. There’s a rolling stool pushed into a corner, cabinets above a sink, and a large, locked closet on the wall to my right.

“Have a seat.” Howard motions to the table and goes over to the sink. He squeezes soap out of a dispenser into his hands and uses his foot to hit a pedal below the basin. After a few pumps, water pours from the spigot and he scrubs his hands. Then reaches into the upper cabinet. I see boxes lining the shelves, and he takes one down. It’s a box of assorted bandages. He opens the other cabinet and takes out a towel.

He places them on the table next to me, then goes to the closet, which he unlocks using a ring of keys dangling from his belt loop. He removes a bottle of alcohol, a tube of ointment, and a glass jar filled with long Q-tips.

Once he has everything, he dampens the towel with some alcohol and holds it close enough to my face that I can smell it. “This is going to burn.”

“I’ve felt worse.”

His eyes drop down to my hand. “What happened?” He puts the towel against the cut on my cheek and the burn is immediate. I suck air through my clenched teeth as he dabs at it, the yellow towel coming away brownish red.

“Alligator attack.”

“I’m sure you can make up a better lie than that.”

“Oh, I absolutely can. But sadly nothing beats the truth.”

He looks at me like he’s not sure he understands the joke. “An alligator.”

“It’s a long story involving the breakdown of the food chain, but let’s stick with grammar before moving on to biology.”

Behind him, the door swings open. A Black woman with her hair in short locs enters. Howard peeks back, then returns his attention to me.

“Andrew, my wife, Raven.”

“We’ve met before, when your husband was robbing us,” I say with faux-cheer.

She looks at me cautiously, letting the door close behind her. “I remember.” Her hand drifts down to her belly, which is much bigger than I recall. I guess the Howard-Raven family is expecting a new addition.

“It’s fine, darling,” Howard says. “Jeff just ran into them before we could.”

Raven huffs. “Dipshit.” Then her face clears up and she moves to stand so she can look at her husband while talking to him. “They have a kid with them. Do we have enough water treated for him?”

“We should. Ask Cookie to boil some extra before dinner.”

“We can get our own water,” I say.

“It’s fine,” Howard says. “We use our water for cooking, irrigation, and washing up, mainly. It got to be too much, trying to treat the water for drinking.”

I stare at him, then Raven. “So . . . you all just don’t drink water?”

Howard smirks. “Well, Raven does. For about seven months now. And if anyone wants to, they boil it off for themselves. But you see all the trees on your way in?”

“Yes?”

“Apple trees. Back in the day, before there was large-scale water treatment, people used to drink beer, wine, and cider more than water. Fermented drinks were healthier for them.”

I stare at them, wide-eyed. “Yeah, and they also used to do bloodletting as a treatment for insanity. So, you’re all just drunk all the time?”

Howard chuckles. “It’s low alcohol. Our apples are less sweet than what you’re used to, and we don’t add sugar. But just to be safe, pregnant women and kids get water.”

“Or milk,” Raven adds.

“If there’s extra from what Cookie needs it for.”

I clench my jaw, trying to figure out a polite way to say this—which, honestly, they robbed Jamie and me, so do they even deserve politeness? But on the other hand, they are helping me right now. “So, you have a cow—I’m assuming—”

“Your assumption is wrong. We have goats. But only four, which doesn’t go as far as you’d think.”

“Okay, you have goats and cider and apparently a whole-ass farm. Why did you rob us? And don’t say it was to scare us into joining you, because I’m not buying that. You could have knocked on the door and said ‘We got goats! Come see!’ and my ass would have been here in seconds. Goats are fucking adorable.”

Raven swats Howard’s arm as he opens the tube of antibiotic ointment. “See?”

“At the time, we didn’t have everything we do now. We weren’t producing our own crops—even that was hard this year.”

“The bugs?” I ask.

Howard looks at me as if he’s surprised, then seems to realize it must be a universal issue. “Right, breakdown of the food chain. Thankfully we still can make cider from the apples the bugs have gotten. Just adds a little protein.”

“Ew.”

Howard continues, “But we weren’t completely set up then. We needed more people and supplies. We’ve been through some tough times, and there’s a big learning curve to becoming a self-sustaining community. We’re still learning, honestly. But we’re doing it.” He lightly places the bandage across my cheek. “We do it by learning from each other and trying our best. Sometimes an extra hand or two comes in . . .” He pauses.

“Oh, please don’t say handy,” I say.

He and Raven both laugh; it’s absolutely what he was going to say. But he decides on, “It’s useful. So now we’ll do this the way we should have from the start. We would love to have you all join us.”

I stare at them, thinking it over.

Then Raven adds, “We got goats!”

I point at her, staring daggers at Howard. “See? How hard was that?” They laugh, but I’m still not sure. Living with groups hasn’t been what I expected. I prefer when it was just Jamie and me making our own decisions. Or even Niki and the others. I wouldn’t say Jamie was right, but I’d say now I better understand where he was coming from—and I wish he were here so I could tell him.

If we all lived at the cabin, it would be cramped, but we could make choices for ourselves. We could reach out to this group if we needed help, help them when they need it. Separate, but still part of their community.

“I have to talk to the others,” I say. “They can decide what they want to do, but I think I’m going to pass. That cabin is home for Jamie and me. We’re willing to help you out and be friendly, but I’d rather live there.”

Howard seems disappointed but nods anyway. “Okay. And all that about the taxes, just forget it.”

“Yeah, I was gonna do that anyway, but thanks.”

Raven pats Howard’s shoulder. “I’m going to go check on the water for the kid.” Then she looks at me. “What’s his name?”

“He won’t tell us, but he answers to Kid.”

Howard’s eyes light up and Raven shakes her head. “No.”

“I told you it was an option!” he shouts at her as she leaves the room. She shouts “no” back. “I suggested that for the baby’s name.” He starts cleaning up and I hop down from the table.

“I agree with her. You can’t have two Kids walking around. Especially with the goats!”

“I never thought about it like that.” He shows me out of the room, and we start walking back toward the other buildings.

“Any chance someone can walk me to the cabin? I can’t really find it from here, and the last time I went wandering through these woods I stepped in a bear trap.”

He stares at me as if trying to figure out if I’m joking, and no, I’m not joking, Howard. Then he finally says, “You have terrible luck.”

“Tell me about it.”

The next day, the others stay at the farm—Howard and his crew call it Bittersharp Farm based on the type of apples they grow—while he and I walk through the woods to the cabin. As we walk, I tell him about our journey from here, why we left and why we came back. It’s a shortened version of events, because we only have three hours to cover the past eight months.

Howard seems impressed, but I’m probably doing a bad job of telling the story. It’s all the excitement, none of the bad shit. Of that, there’s plenty.

I see the shed first. Greenish-brown ivy grows up the back of it, wood peeking around the leaves. The blue tarp over the woodpile has started to shred and come apart. The grass in the backyard is about waist-high and brown.

We stop at the edge of the tree line. This is where I first saw Howard while Jamie and I were sitting on the back deck one afternoon.

Now my view of the back deck is blocked.

A large tree has fallen on the cabin. It looks like it landed on the room that I used to sleep in, crushing the roof and continuing over to the bathroom and maybe even part of the kitchen. The top of the dead tree lies across the backyard.

Given everything that happened to us, this seems fitting.

“Well, shit,” I say. Am I numb? Is this what being numb to the fortunes of the world is?

Howard steps around the fallen tree and I follow him. We go to the front of the cabin—taking a long way around the roots that have pulled up from the ground.

From the front of the house, it almost looks as if the tree missed it. At least Jamie’s room is intact. Howard walks up the porch stairs, but I stop at the bottom of them. The steps are covered with leaves. I use my hand to push some of them aside, and there she is. A garden gnome sitting on a toadstool with a fat little sheep in her lap. The Mother’s Day gift Jamie bought one year.

“Hey, Holly,” I say, picking her up. “Long time no see!”

I put her in my backpack as Howard opens the front door. I see right back to the cracked window over the kitchen sink. One of the wall cabinets has fallen down, and it looks like the drywall is moldy and wet from where the tree landed.

The house smells like a mix of mildew and decaying organic matter. Something scratches across the floor to our left, and Howard points a flashlight. A fat raccoon runs down the hall toward the fallen tree.

“I always wanted a pet trash panda,” I say.

“You’re not seriously considering staying here.”

I shrug. “Maybe I can cut up that tree and rebuild the wall. Jamie and I only need the one bedroom.”

Howard shakes his head. “Look, I know we pissed you off, but it sounds to me like you were gonna leave anyway. Just stay with us. We’ll keep you safe; you can have whatever freedom you and Jamie need when he gets here. We’ll keep Jeff forty feet away from you at all times.”

I laugh. “I get it. Stop feeling guilty, you fed us last night, we had a warm place to sleep”—thanks in large part to the modded-out modular homes with the woodburning stoves—“but you really don’t owe us anything else. The others can stay, I’m sure they want to, but this is where Jamie is coming when he finds his way back. I know it.”

And I know he’s still alive. I can feel it in my gut. It’s not me being optimistic—I just know he is. All the bad things that happen to us, they happen because we can survive it. Together or apart, the worst never happens, and I’m starting to believe it never will.

“We’ll help you,” Howard says. “Come stay with us, then every weekend a few of us will come out, help with cleaning this place up.”

I stare at him. “Seriously?”

“Yes. We can split the wood from that tree. We’ll figure out a way to turn it into supports for the new walls. Get rid of the raccoons—”

“I mean, maybe they can stay in the shed.”

“We make amends. We rebuild, you all can stay here but know you have neighbors who are there to look out for you.”

This is not what I expected. If anything, I thought Jamie and I would have to hide here the rest of our lives, being careful not to let it seem like anyone is here. But, honestly, how long would that have lasted?

“You’re really serious about this,” I say. “Not just trying to pull me along so I can help on your farm, and every weekend it’s ‘Oh, we can’t, something came up, next weekend for sure.’”

“You have my word. Sure, there are bound to be times when it seems like a bad idea to leave the farm—blizzards, for instance. But as long as weather allows, yes. You help us, we help you.” He holds out his hand to me. I stare at it, then look around at the walls. There are tiny spots of mold and mildew. Moss grows on the tree trunk where the bathroom should be. The floors have warped and discolored with constant water intrusion.

Fixing the house might be an impossible task. But having others there to figure it out might be helpful.

I take Howard’s hand and shake on it. “Okay. Deal.”

“Great, let’s head back, then. If we’re going to be camping here every weekend, I’d rather do it with more supplies than we have now.”

“One second.” I walk around him into the dining room. Some of the pictures scattered across the wall have fallen—probably when the tree hit the house. I bend down and pick one up. The glass is cracked, but the frame is intact.

In the picture are Jamie and his mom. Jamie is almost a foot taller than she is, and she’s trying to kiss his cheek but he’s laughing and pulling away. She’s wearing green scrubs and he’s in a black suit and blue shirt with a navy tie. There’s a flower pinned on his lapel. I assume he was going to some high school dance, so it was probably only taken a couple of years ago, but he looks so young. Completely different from the boy I know now.

I put the frame in my bag with Holly. And one picture, still on the wall, catches my eye. It’s Jamie as a little kid on the beach with his mom. He’s missing baby teeth and there’s a glob of sunscreen on his shoulder. His smile makes me feel light and buzzy and fills my body with warmth. It’s a kid who has no idea what’s ahead for him. I tell myself it’s okay. Someday I’ll see him again. And maybe he’ll even smile like that again.