The First Year Page 3

  I know who you’re not. You’re not my family. And you’re not Angie Myers. As the weeks have gone by, I’ve had to walk farther and farther from my house to find water. Food isn’t the issue. It’s all about that water. Most of the houses on the blocks around mine were vacant before General Tsao. I’ve gotten pretty good at determining which dark houses used to be empty and which ones didn’t. The smell is usually the deciding factor. Human bodies. I never realized how messy they are.

  I found Angie Myers seven blocks away. Her house had once been in a gated neighborhood. The gate was smashed, maybe by a car that had tried to get out, and whatever had done the damage had opened the way for others. There were no cars left in the neighborhood. I guess the rich people had tried to leave. Maybe they’d succeeded. Rich people usually did. Not Angie Myers, though. I found her body in one of the bedrooms of a house I’d initially thought was empty. I smelled her before I saw her. I guess the rest of her family got out. They’d left her behind. No neatly lined graves like I’d provided for mine.

  If you leave a dead body alone, two things will eventually happen. First, they’ll start to expand. I mean, really expand. Their stomachs and chests and faces get puffy like they’ve had an allergic reaction. The second thing is that they’ll contract. All the puffiness kind of disappears and their bodies sink. Their cheeks compress inward and the rest of their bodies get bonier and bonier. What stage they’re at depends on things like when they died, how insulated their house is, how damp the air is. Most of the bodies I’ve found had reached Stage Two. A couple of them had exploded altogether. Just blew apart where they’d died. Most people died in bed.

  I knew it was Angie because of the pictures on her dresser. Her body under the covers was unrecognizable. I stood over her for a long time. I tried to feel sorry for her. She’d been abandoned. Despite how hard I tried, though, I couldn’t feel sympathy. Does that make me a bad person? Do you think less of me?

  I can’t charge my cell phone. I lost battery life about a month ago. I lost the signal a long time before that. I don’t have my music anymore. I found a CD player that runs on batteries, but most people don’t have CDs anymore. I did manage to find a few good ones. Prince’s greatest hits. Some Journey, Queen. So there’s that. I like those bands. But I miss my Disney music. Don’t judge.

  It’s dark now. Like, really dark. Nightmare dark. Music is a good companion. So are you. I imagine us lying here together, huddled under the covers like I am now, listening to the winter wind howling outside like an extra set of drums on Don’t Stop Believin’. Where are you? It’s so lonely here.

  ll l

  Someone’s here.

  Total dark. Middle of the night. Can’t focus, too tired.

  There, again. Someone’s downstairs. Coughing. It’s a man. He’s sick.

  Crashing around downstairs. Broken glass. What’s he doing?

  I know what he’s doing. Because it’s the same thing I’ve been doing. He thinks my house is empty.

  More coughing. He’s having trouble catching his breath.

  The floor’s cold. Why do I insist on sleeping barefoot? Stupid, short-sighted. Bumping around in the dark trying to find my shoes. There’s one. Shit. Stupid.

  A big crash. Sounds like a piece of furniture. One of the hallway cabinets? What does he think he’s going to find there?

  Slip my other shoe on and open the door. There’s a glow from down the stairs. A flashlight? Camping lantern?

  Hold onto the railing so I don’t trip over my shoelaces. He’s talking to himself. Can’t quite make out the words. They sound like English but like the words are coming through a sponge. COUGH-COUGH-COUGH. I recognize that sound. Intimately. It’s been awhile since I heard it in the house. Since Dad died. That wet, heavy, phlegmy cough that I’ve come to know as Tsao Cough.

  Why isn’t this man dead? If he’s that sick, why didn’t he die when everyone else did? Did he think he was immune, too, like me?

  Does that mean I’m not? Is there a third round of General Tsao?

  I picture the germs screaming through the cold air. I picture them as cartoons, snot green with angry googly eyes and bushy eyebrows. They’re zooming up my nose. I stifle a sneeze. Am I sneezing because he’s given me General Tsao or because I’m thinking about sneezing?

  Once I’m sure I’m not going to sneeze, I climb slowly down the stairs. He’s got a flashlight, one of the big ones with a giant battery. The first floor of my house is brightly lit.

  He’s wearing a heavy winter coat with the hood pulled up. I see snatches of his face, a long nose, a hollow cheek. COUGH-COUGH-COUGH. I think he spat up blood. He’s wiping something dark on his parka. He carries a bag, looks like a laundry bag. There’s not much inside it. I guess he hasn’t gotten to the living room yet. That’s where I’m keeping my scavenged loot.

  Two choices. Hide. Or talk. He’s the first person I’ve seen in how long? I don’t remember. I didn’t think I had to keep track. Guess I’ll need to do a better job of that.

  Focus. There’s a strange man in my house. He’s sick. And he’s stealing my stuff.

  Why is he doing this at night? That doesn’t make sense. There’s no one around to stop him during the day. Or is there? Until three minutes ago I didn’t think there was anyone else alive. Maybe I don’t know as much as I think I do. There could be a refugee camp in Toledo for all I know. Or even a dozen blocks from here. If there’s still law and order, there are probably still people who want to break that law. So this guy’s a bad guy, then? The first person I’ve seen in weeks and weeks and he’s robbing me? What a stupid waste.

  So what am I doing any differently? If thereis a refugee camp in Toledo or at the airport or somewhere else, that means that stealing from other peoples’ houses is still against the law. That makes me a criminal. Like this guy.

  Two choices. Hide or talk. What would I say? What do we have to talk about except survival? Do we need anything else?

  COUGH-COUGH-COUGH. He’s not stealing from me anymore. He’s trying to stand up. That’s probably why he pulled over whatever piece of furniture he pulled over in the hallway. Do I try to help him? What the hell can I even do for him? Cure him? I’ve been pretty goddam ineffective at that so far.

  He stumbles outside. Must be delirious. Totally missed my living room treasures. The door is open. It’s really cold. Fear has distracted me. I’m glad I sleep in my sweats. I guess I got one thing right tonight.

  He’s gone. He dropped his flashlight when he stumbled outside. He moved pretty quickly for someone so sick.

  I’m up, off the stairs, grab his flashlight and bolt the front door closed. I’ve been slacking. Security hasn’t been my concern. Haven’t given much thought to locking up. That changes tonight.

  I can hear him outside. COUGH-COUGH-COUGH. I wonder if he heard the door close. Maybe he’ll come back.

  I race from room to room, locking every door and window I can find. In a few minutes I’m impregnable, locked tight inside my keep. All I need is hot oil to pour down from the roof and I’m ready to get medieval on this guy.

  ll l

  How in the hell did I fall asleep? It hurts. My neck is crooked and my legs and back feel like someone kicked me. Serves me right for sleeping on the stairs.

  So I’m not the only one. No,we’renot the only ones. You and me. And he. Although I don’t givehe too much more time to remain part of our exclusive little club. But the fact that he exists at all means anything’s possible.

  He let cold air in last night. I’m going to have to figure out how to light a fire. Last time I tried it filled the house with smoke. I don’t know what I did wrong. I just know that it was something.

  Do I go outside to try to find him? What would I do if Idid find him? What would I say? Is he even still alive?

  The first thing I need to do is try to fix whatever he broke. There it is, just like I thought, one of those cabinets in the hallway Dad had once tried to convince Mom gave this weird old house character. She didn’t b
uy it for a second. Mom had a knack for seeing through Dad’s bull. Grace, though, she couldn’t get enough of it. She believed everything the man said. I don’t know how she didn’t get the joke. Dad and me, we usually shared a wink and a grin. I liked that. Nobody made me feel as special as he did.

  I miss a whole collection of little things about each member of my family. But with Dad it’s that one big thing. No matter how awful our situation got, I always felt like he and I were in it together. That’s the thing I don’t understand. Getting through the bad stuff, that was our thing. We did it together. I used to know things were going to be okay. Who knows, maybe this was the truth the whole time. Nothing wasevergoing to be okay. Dad just made me think it was. So which is better, believing it’s going to be okay or everything actuallybeing okay? I guess I’ll find out.

  No, I don’t guess. Ican’tguess. That’s a luxury I don’t have anymore, guessing. What happens next is up to me. Believing is the first part. But at some point faith has to become action. I’ll have to make it happen, whateverit is. No one else can. Not even you.

  The Plan

  The emptiness isgetting heavier. This big empty house feels like it’s gaining weight. I found a bicycle in one of the neighbors’ garages. Since the snow melted, getting around is easier. Riding the bike allows me to increase my scouting range. I spend my mornings riding up and down the empty streets of Detroit. I honestly believed someone else would be around. Maybe in a Red Cross shelter or a police station. As my territory expands, I’m starting finally to understand. Thereis no one else. Just you and me. I found the man who broke into my house a week ago. He hadn’t made it far. Ended up in an overgrown hedge. The melting snow had turned his face and hands into a kind of bluish liquid. Yesterday morning, I thought I heard a dog barking. A few distant yaps and then nothing. Might have been my imagination.

  The smell, of course, is everywhere. It smells like ground beef that’s been left out and forgotten. It’s the smell of dead bodies. The smell was the reason I dug my family’s graves in the first place. Gabe was the first to die, followed a couple nights later by Grace. I’d left my brother and sister in their beds, wrapped up tightly. I’d learned about decomposition in science class. Mrs. Ivey had never mentioned the smell. It took days after Gabe’s death for me to start digging.

  At the end, Detroit had a population of fewer than a million people. But nine-hundred thousand dead bodies rotting in their closed-up houses as spring starts to heat things up... the smell is like a wall, smacking me hard across the face like a heavy, putrid fog.

  It’s the last week of April, more or less. I now only vaguely keep track. The air is warmer. The winter-bare trees have begun to bud. Thunderstorms roll in off Lake Huron and roll out again toward Lake Erie. Lawns have started growing.

  Last night I noticed a glow on the horizon. People? Electricity? Maybe someone got the power back on. The streets are passable now. The snow is mostly gone. I don’t hold out hope, but I have to find out.

  I pedal my bike through the wet streets, past the huge General Motors building downtown. It’s almost fun, riding my bike. I can go so much farther without wearing myself out.

  I can’t see the glow anymore in the daylight. Maybe I imagined it. I’ve been doing a lot of that lately. I thought I heard a car engine a couple of days ago.

  Something smells. Not regular smell, either, not the smell of death. I mean, it’s there, but this is different. Like a campfire, but one made of skunks and farts.

  There it is, along the Detroit River. Black smoke circles lazily over a collection of warehouses. They’ve caught fire. The thick black smoke coils out of the warehouse roofs.

  “Lightning?” The sound of my voice is loud in the empty city. Maybe I’m talking to you. But I know that’s not how our relationship works.

  “That was a bad storm the other night. Maybe lightning caught something on fire. It really frickin’ smells like dead skunks.”

  There isn’t much to be done. Maybe ride to a fire station, figure out how to operate a fire truck and try to put the fire out? As if. I picture myself trying to wrestle with a fire hose. Eighty-five pounds and five-foot-nothin’. I wouldn’t be able to see over the steering wheel of the fire truck.

  Another, darker thought. What if it spreads? What if this fire jumps to another building and then another and then what if the whole city burns downs?

  “Calm down. You sound like Grace.”

  A pang of unexpected misery stabs me in the heart. Grace would’ve practically peed herself if she were here. Grace with her fifteen-year-old attitude, her barely-there boobs that she flaunted at every opportunity, and her complete inability to hold it together, that would almost be worth seeing. And I’d give just about anything to see it.

  “Eye on the prize, kid.”

  The prize. What prize is left? I’ve already buried my dead family. Nobody appears to be home anywhere in Detroit. The only person I’ve seen in months is turning to blue goo in a bush. No lights, no plumbing, no Burger King or Sonic. It strikes suddenly, for the first time in so many words that I’ve made the decision to live. But what does that mean?

  “It means I stop riding around this city, looking for something that isn’t there.”

  Amen. So what, then? Just sit in that big house and decompose along with everything else? Wait for these fires to burn everything down?

  Someone’s laughing. I spin around before I realize it’s coming from inside my own head. It’s a laugh left over from the last good time. It’s Mom’s laugh. A rare thing.

  The rhythmic roar of the ocean waves was like a slow, steady heartbeat. I jumped into the waves, ran out again and did it over and over. The pressure of the waves against my bare, sun-bronzed legs was a challenge — keep standing, don’t let me pull you under. Mom joined in, taking hold of my hand and the two of us jumped the waves together. Mom’s laughed washed over me like a warm waterfall.

  Home. That’s the first thought that comes into my head. That’s home.

  “That’s ridiculous, we lived in Flint.” But Flint, it’s tainted. The last year we lived there was like watching a grandparent die. I watched everything I knew go up in a puff of smoke. Our house was taken away. Two sheriff’s deputies took all our stuff and set it at the curb. Every piece of the life I knew, from the weird little figurines Mom collected to the posters Grace had tacked to her bedroom walls, all of it was set out like last week’s trash. Life, that life, it’s gone. The only home I ever knew, the house where I’d learned to ride a bike, where I’d stared at the Christmas tree with such blindanticipation, where I had sleepovers with Marcy Ling and Dakota Macrin, all of that was dead. Maybe that’s why it was so easy to accept my family dying, too. It was the obvious conclusion to a process that had started at the curb in Flint.

  I turn around, kick my foot on the pavement to get my bike moving. The fire is a lost cause. Nothing I can do. Not that I have any real desire to do anything.

  There’s a bookstore. I haven’t seen one on any of the streets I’ve explored. The front display windows are broken. There were news reports of rioting on the radio, back when there was radio, but a bookstore seems like an odd thing to destroy. Other businesses up and down the street have also been vandalized.

  Maybe the vandals are still around. I haven’t seen or heard anybody in a long time. That doesn’t mean there’s no one out there. I stop cold in my tracks. Maybe they’re watching me now. Some violent, bloodthirsty horde just waiting to…

  Yeah, right. Everyone’s dead. I cansmell that everyone is dead. I can even hear the perpetual hum of flies like the distant beat of helicopter blades. If anyone is still around, I would’ve found them already. Right?

  I rest my bike against the brick wall outside and step inside. I find the travel section and pick up a road atlas. It’s an oversized book and sticks out of the top of my backpack. As I pass the discount tables, a book calledThe Disaster Preparedness Manual catches my eye. Stuff that in my backpack and ride home.

  Spen
d the next two days reading. The disaster handbook scares me to death. I kind of wish I hadn’t picked it up, but now I can’t put it down. It very clearly details all the horrible things I’ve purposely been trying not to think about. But it also gives me an awkward sense of hope. I survived. I’msurviving. And either by dumb luck or divine intervention, I continue to do so.

  I climb out through the attic window and sit on the roof. It’s late in the afternoon. Look northeast, toward downtown Detroit. The black smoke from the warehouse fire is getting thicker. The sky is clear. No rain in sight.

  I lie on my stomach along the flat eave over my bedroom window. The late afternoon sun is warmer than I expect it to be. I open the atlas to the two-page spread that shows the entire continental United States. I uncap a red Sharpie and circle the dot that marks Detroit. We’d vacationed just outside of Charleston, South Carolina, in a place called Isle of Palms. Even thename sounds like a vacation. There, I find Charleston on the map and circle it as well. Detroit and Charleston are both on the same half of the two-page spread. And honestly, they don’t look that far apart. The flight my family took to get there had only lasted a few hours. It seemed like forever then, but doesn’t look so daunting now. What will it take, a few days? A week at the most?

  I take note of each state between Detroit and Charleston. Thick blue lines indicate interstate highways. I-75 south from Detroit, through Ohio, Kentucky and into Tennessee. Pick up I-40 in Knoxville, Tennessee, then I-26 in Asheville, North Carolina. Follow that all the way down to the blue Atlantic coast. What is that, five states? Six if I count Michigan. Easy-peasy, as Dad says. Used to say.

  I take a look out at the horizon. The sun is starting to set. Time has a nasty habit of slipping away from me these days. I don’t have a schedule. Mom and school had been my timepieces. I’ve always lived inside my own head. Put a book in my hand and I’ll forget to even go to the bathroom. Grace used to sneer and call it “Hannah hibernation”. Ever since I’ve been on my own, I’ve had tried to be more aware of it. Sometimes it works. Sometimes, not so much.