Coral took the hint and changed the subject. But she hoped Edith would remember what she said. “Benjamin is getting us all dinner. I’m going to leave it to you to try and get Abigail to eat, okay?” She spied the anatomy book, face down on the floor and picked it up, smoothing a creased page of muscle diagrams before closing it and putting it up on the shelf where it belonged.
The memorial service for Doug was held the next afternoon, before supper. They stood before the library, over a hundred people. Abigail stood among a small group of her friends. Coral and Benjamin were back in the crowd.
Levi officiated, and Coral found herself irked at him. He hadn’t liked Doug that well, his praise sounded false to her ears, and she hated when he said, “We all sacrifice for the community.”
It sounded like self-congratulations to her ears and, as she had seen, Levi sacrificed less than most.
“We all sacrifice and Douglas Arlin Simms made the supreme sacrifice. In the weeks to come, let us remember that, and remember him. Now Reverend Ackerman will offer a prayer.”
Around her, most people bowed their heads, and Coral watched Levi do so. Parnell was there, too, but his head wasn’t bowed. His eyes scanned the crowd and caught hers, holding them for a second before moving on. They looked empty to her, and she wondered what he was feeling about Doug. Grief? Guilt? Nothing?
The minister prayed, a few people crossed themselves at the end of the prayer, and most people began to drift away. Others formed a ragged line in front of the widow, waiting to say a few words of comfort to her.
Physically, Abigail was fine. Her post-miscarriage bleeding was down to almost nothing. Emotionally, she was not in great shape. She seemed dazed. Sometimes, she cried, tears running unchecked and unnoticed down her cheeks. She didn’t have on her mask, and her face was red and raw looking from being wet in this cold weather.
A few flakes of snow began to fall, tiny flakes that the wind tossed around. Coral thought it looked like rice or confetti being thrown at a wedding, creating a bracket of images for Abigail and Doug’s life together.
Parnell was making his way toward her. She straightened her back and tried to shake off her sad mood. “I heard you were hurt,” she said.
“I’m fine today. I wrenched my shoulder, digging.”
“Do you want me to look at it?”
“No. I iced it a couple times, and that seemed to do the trick. I can hardly feel anything today.” He turned to Benjamin. “I was hoping I could talk to you for a short while.”
He didn’t want Coral there—that much was clear. She thought about ignoring the hint, and then thought,
why bother?
“See you at supper,” she said to Benjamin.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he said.
Coral joined the crowd moving toward the dining hall. Abigail did not show up at the table. For a minute, Coral thought about getting up and hunting for her, but Coral obviously wasn’t the person Abigail wanted to see right now. Friends and coworkers were there to help her. Come to think of it, maybe she was even changing her eating assignment. That would make sense, to not want to come back to a place she’d shared with Doug for so many months.
Soup had been served and she was nearly done with hers when Benjamin finally came in.
“What’s up?” she said.
“I’m going out tomorrow. On scavenge.”
“What? So soon?” What would this do to their plans to leave tomorrow night? The urge to leave this place sprung up stronger than ever. “For how long? With Kathy and them?”
“No with Parnell and two others, RJ and Mike.”
“I don’t know them.”
One of their table mates said, “Which direction you headed?”
“East, I think. Toward the Air Force base again, looking for food this time.”
The table fell to talking about scavenging while Coral fretted over Benjamin’s assignment. Why wasn’t he being sent out with his regular group? They didn’t send scavengers out twice in a row, usually, so why was Parnell—who had also injured himself—going so soon? Maybe it was because of the food crisis. But then, why not send out four groups at once, have people out there hunting all the time?
Something didn’t feel right to Coral. She finished her soup and watched Benjamin talk, hardly listening to his answers, trying to read how he was feeling from his posture.
He seemed unperturbed—or he was doing a good job of faking it.
She waited until he had finished eating—though his soup must have been cold by the time he got to it—and then hurried him out the door. They were caught up by Martin and he walked part way with them, making real talk impossible. She waited until she and Benjamin were back at the apartment and alone.
Abigail wasn’t there.
“Probably she’s still with those women at the funeral,” Benjamin said.
“I’m worried.”
“She’ll be fine, in time.”
“No, about you. Did you get any sort of sense that anything odd was happening with Parnell? I mean—why you, why now? It’s not your turn, is it? Why is he going? Why isn’t Kathy going?”
“I thought you were jealous of Kathy.”
“If she’s got a thing for you, at least she’ll watch your back better.”
“Everyone watches each other’s back out there. It’ll be fine.”
“But—”
“He even said it probably wouldn’t take long. We’ll leave tomorrow, and I’ll be back in three nights.”
“If something doesn’t happen.”
“Nothing will happen.”
“It did to Doug.”
He grabbed her by her jacket, pulled her in, and planted a kiss on her forehead. “I’ll be fine.”
She bit her lip to keep herself from repeating that she was worried. “And we’ll leave when you get back, right?”
“Yeah. Give me one good night’s sleep, and I’ll be ready to go the next evening. I’ll be well-fed too, with the MREs. So maybe it’s for the best, letting me get fueled up.”
Coral began to pace the room. “If you’re hurt, though, we’ll have to delay. I have a bad feeling about putting off our leaving any longer.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Something.” Maybe it was Doug’s death, reminding her that life was fragile. She stopped her pacing. “I’m sorry. I’m sounding like some middle age neurotic.”
“You’re sounding like you care about me. And I like that.”
“Well that’s good. Because you are well and truly stuck with it.”
He smiled. “Come upstairs?”
“It isn’t dark yet.”
“But we’re alone. And light might be nice for a change.”
“Ha! Like I’d expose any bit of my body to the air in this kind of weather.”
He reached out, and she gave him her hand, and they went upstairs to bed.
As she finally drifted off in the dark, she realized that she had never heard Abigail come home. She was probably staying with friends. Coral hoped she was feeling comforted by that. And a small part of her hoped that Abigail wouldn’t come back for many days. It might make leaving this place easier.
The next morning, Benjamin left at dawn. She crawled back in bed after he left and tried to catch another few minutes of sleep but failed.
Later, she wolfed down breakfast before hunting through the dining hall rooms to find Kathy. She was sitting at a table with one of Coral’s regular patients, and with the perimeter guard Coral had spoken with that one day out on patrol, Blake. There was a table of children at one side of the room, too, a kids’ table, like there used to be on extended family holidays. They must belong to the various adults in this room.
“Can I have a minute?” she asked Kathy.
“Sure, I’m almost done.” Kathy finished her porridge and asked Blake if he’d mind carrying her bowl to the kitchen with his own. She had a rifle slung over the back of her chair and grabbed that. “Let’s go.”
Coral went with her outside.
“Am I being paranoid to be worried about Benjamin being sent to scavenge again?”
“Probably.”
“I mean, it seems soon. And why didn’t you go along?”
“I have other work assignments.” But there was a note in her voice, too, of uncertainty.
“I thought they would keep you all together, to get used to each other, be more efficient.”
“That’d make sense. But you’ve had bosses before, right? You’re not
that
young. Sometimes they do stuff just because they can. It doesn’t need to make sense.”
“Yeah, I guess. Sorry to bother you. It was that Doug’s....” She gave an apologetic shrug.
Kathy seemed to soften at that. “I know. I liked him, too.” She shifted her rifle. “Benjamin can take care of himself out there. You can trust him.”
“I know I can.” The words were out of her mouth before she realized there might have been a double meaning intended.
Blake came out of the dining room and made his way over to them.
“I am sorry to bug you about this. And thanks for the reassurance.” Coral didn’t feel particularly reassured, and she felt less so when she noticed Blake’s worried expression. Of course he wasn’t worried about Benjamin, but it looked like something was troubling him.
She made a mental note to try and find him out on patrol later, alone, and see what he thought. Right now, it was time to go to the clinic and open up.
She had the clinic key for a change. She unlocked the door, went in, and took the moment while alone to go back and check her pilfered items hidden in the back room. She’d take that home tonight, be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. Or maybe she should bring her big bag here to they could leave from here? She checked the window to make sure it was still unlocked.
Maybe she was being irrational, or maybe she was more disturbed by Doug’s death than she had been admitting to herself, but something was telling her it was past time to leave. She should have insisted they do it last night.
She stoked the stove with the last of the fuel wood, lit it, and put on water to warm. Edith came in a few minutes later and the two of them made sure the exam rooms were clean.
“It could use a good mopping,” said Edith, in the room where Abigail had miscarried.
“Is there a mop anywhere?”
“I’ve been scrubbing it with rags once a week.”
Coral felt bad—she hadn’t even noticed, nor offered to help with the chore. “It always looks good,” she said. “I’m not seeing any blood.”
“No, luckily Abigail didn’t bleed that much.”
“Did you tell her to come back in today for a check-up?”
“I told her to stay off her feet, and to come and get one of us if she started bleeding. But I’ll be happy to check her later. Unless you want to.”
“Somehow, I think she’d prefer to see you, if that’s all right with you.”
“It’s fine. You know, it might be because I lost my children, and she thinks I understand her better. You shouldn’t be offended by her withdrawing.”
“I hadn’t thought of that. I assumed it was because I was the first person to use the word ‘dead’ in conjunction with Doug, even before we knew for sure.”
“It was a nice memorial service,” said Edith.
Coral nodded noncommittally. “I need to go bring in more wood.”
“Okay. I’ll start with the patients.”
Coral hadn’t realized there was anyone here yet. “Okay. Be right back.” She went out to the wood pile, but all there was there were a few scraps, hardly enough to keep the stove going for an hour. What day was it? Was it a wood delivery day? She thought that yesterday should have been the day they brought wood.
Maybe that’s part of why they sent out scavengers this morning. Maybe the town was running out of fuel, too.
I wonder if Levi’s apartment is still warm enough.
If there was wood out there to be found, Benjamin would find it.
That wouldn’t keep her or her patients warm today, though.
Edith called her in to look at the first patient, a toddler with a mild rash she thought was due to imperfect hygiene. “Keep her cleaner,” she told the caretaker, a girl about Coral’s age who said she’d been a neighbor to the girl’s family. The toddler was the only survivor of a family of six.
“She hates cold water. And she says the soap smells bad.”
“Warm a cloth a bit in your hands first. But insist, okay?
Though why bother, really? She couldn’t censor the thought before it was there in her mind. A three year old, when the city fell apart, would be one of the first to die. If she got lost from this kind neighbor, and if no one with better skills picked her up and took responsibility for her, that would be the end of her.
She cut off the thought. True as it might be, it was too depressing to see the people who came in here as doomed. But that’s what they were, most of them: dead people still walking, unaware that they were coming to the end of the old world and unprepared to survive in the new.
Try as she might, she could not shake the thought, and she began to imagine every person as a shambling corpse, like out of some zombie movie. Finally, she had to get out of there. She told Edith, “I’m going to go check at the library or kitchen and see if they can spare some wood.” The stove was putting out little heat by this point.
She went to the library first—it was closer—but it was locked up. No sentry stood guard outside. Levi must be out doing something. She headed toward the dining halls and kitchen. At this time of day, it would be only Chef there. She did not look forward to asking him to give up other supplies, after his reluctance to hand over the herbs. Maybe she should tell him that they were helpful, try and make him feel better about sacrificing them.