Authors: Emmy Laybourne
“Anyway, I just wanted to say I’m sorry you got the worst type.”
And satisfied with our discussion, he walked away.
* * *
Alex, I will tell you, was just like our dad. Looked like him, thought like him, hiked up his pants the same way.
Our dad was an engineer and a land surveyor, employed almost exclusively by Richardson Hearth Homes. He loved his work but hated the developments he helped build. All the houses with their customizable elements—countertops, appliances, façade colors—he said they were for people who were mall-minded. It was a phrase of his. Similar to small-minded, but
mall
-minded.
Mall-minded people were people who’d grown up working at one national chain store to earn a paycheck they’d spend on crappy products and bad food from other national chain stores.
It was kind of revealing about my dad. He looked down on his neighbors, but built the very homes they lived in. A weird paradox. And we lived, always, in one of his developments. Apparently we couldn’t afford not to—they gave my parents such a steep discount.
What my dad did love was the technical aspect of his work. Surveying, measuring, working with machines and computers—all that stuff he was great at.
Alex was like that, too. He thought in terms of numbers and figures and trends.
When he was a little kid he was scared of everything. Dogs, trucks, the dark, Halloween; you name it, he was scared of it.
Our dad had taught him to analyze the things he feared.
So going trick-or-treating with him, when he was little, was like listening to a technical debriefing:
“That’s not a real witch, it’s a plastic figurine with LED lights for eyes and a prerecorded screech track. Those are not real gravestones; they are PVC molded into the shape of tombstones, with creepy sayings on them that were written by a gag writer. Those are not real demons coming down the street, those are the high school kids dressed in costumes they got at Walgreens or possibly ordered online…”
And all the while Alex’d be squeezing my hand like it offered his last link to sanity.
I had liked being his protector—the one who made him feel safe. Which was why I felt even worse about having attacked him.
Before, we had always made a good team—he was super-smart. I was super-stable. Kind of like our parents, actually.
Where our dad was brilliant and angsty, our mom was grounded and optimistic.
She loved books. That was one thing she and I really shared. Our house was full of old books. She’d buy them by the boxful, especially as people started using their tabs more and more for reading books.
Our mom had started buying books with a mania, as if she was afraid people would stop printing them at all.
She had multiple copies of her favorite books. I think she had eight copies of
A Room of One’s Own
(sort of indecipherable to me) and five
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
(a great read).
Mom was always telling me about her ideas for novels but never started writing any of them.
Once I asked her why she never wrote the books she told me about.
“Oh, sweetie,” she had said. “I try. But, somehow, after I tell you about the idea, it’s like the air is out of the balloon and I don’t need to write it anymore.”
So instead of being a writer, she took care of us.
And worked retail during the holidays.
* * *
Alex and I foraged for some snacks and eventually went back to the Media Department.
Little Caroline woke up crying and Astrid went to her. She picked her up and hugged her.
“I had a nightmare,” Caroline sobbed. “I want my mommy.”
“I know, I know,” Astrid said, holding her close.
“Hey, thanks for waking me up, Cryoline,” Chloe teased. “Now I need to go pee. Who’s going to take me?”
“Saying Cryoline is name calling, Chloe,” Batiste noted. “That’s a you-know-what.”
“No, it’s not!” Chloe countered.
“Yes, it is too!” Batiste said.
“You know, Batiste, you’re being very judgmental,” Astrid noted. “I think being judgmental is a sin.”
“That’s not a sin!” Batiste said, offended. “I know all about sinning, and being judgmental is not a sin.”
“I guess,” Astrid said. “But do you really want to risk it?”
That gave him pause for thought.
I stifled a laugh at his perplexed expression.
Then Astrid said, “Okay, you guys, I’ll take you to the bathroom. Everyone uses the bathroom and everyone washes hands. Then we’ll go find something from the frozen foods aisle for dinner.”
Little Henry asked, “Are we going to the ladies’ room? I don’t want to use the ladies’ room. I want to go in the men’s room.”
“My mom once took me in the ladies’ room,” Max volunteered. “And there was this lady in there crying and she had a ice cube and she was rubbing it on her eye and she said, ‘If Harry hits me one more time, I don’t know what I’ll do,’ and then this other lady came out of a stall and she said, ‘If Harry hits you one more time, you give him the end of this to suck on!’ And she puts a real, actual gun down on the sink. Made of metal, I am not even kidding. And then my momma turns to me and goes, ‘Tell your daddy to bring you to the men’s room.’”
I was getting the feeling that Max had lived a very, very interesting life. I took out my journal to write down what he’d said.
Astrid got the kids organized. She told Henry that they were all going to stick together and go in the ladies’ room, which was good psychology, even if it elicited a round of groans from the boys.
CHAPTER EIGHT
WATER
I was minding my own business, writing some stuff down, when Brayden ambled over and kicked the beanbag chair I was sitting on.
“Jesus, Dean, are you a total reject? Are you from the Middle Ages?”
“Brayden…,” Jake said from his own beanbag, a “lay off” implicit in his tone.
“No, it’s just, I knew that Geraldine was weird, I just didn’t understand the total extremity of the situation.”
“I write stuff down,” I said. “I just like to write.”
“Bet there’s stuff about me in there,” he said and he grabbed the journal from me.
“Come on!” I said, jumping to my feet.
He held it behind his back, an arm’s length away.
When I tried to grab it, he’d switch it to the other hand.
It was a scene straight out of first grade.
“I bet there’s stuff about all of us,” Brayden taunted. “Especially Astrid.”
I would’ve killed him if she’d overheard that. But she was off with the kids.
You know, you’d think that being locked in a Greenway during the end of the world would bring out the best in everyone, but—surprise!—Brayden was still an a-hole and a bully.
Brayden tore a page out and squinted at it, keeping the rest held above his head and out of my reach.
“Jeez, man, this stuff is dark,” he said, reading to himself.
“You’re such a jerk, Brayden!” I shouted. “How can you still be this immature?”
“Brayden, drop it,” Jake commanded.
“Don’t you want to know what it says about you, Simonsen?”
“I SAID DROP IT!” Jake shouted.
Brayden jumped. We all did.
Jake was standing, squared off to Brayden, with his hands in fists. His good-natured smile was gone. He was pissed.
“Whatever,” Brayden said and tossed the notebook to the end of the aisle.
“You gotta learn when to lay off, man,” Jake said with a rumble.
“Dude, I apologize,” Brayden said to Jake, palms turned up in an appeal. He shrugged. “For real. Sorry.”
Did I call Brayden a dick under my breath as I scrambled over the fallen books to retrieve my journal?
Of course I did.
* * *
And then there came this thin, tinny sound. Like a fire alarm or a siren. But it was coming from inside and it was getting louder.
It was Ulysses.
He was screaming and running for us.
We ran toward him and then we could hear the melee from the bathroom. Shrieking and screaming and inhuman sounds.
Niko pushed the door open.
The little children had gone crazy.
The McKinley twins were hiding under the sinks.
Chloe was sitting on Max and had her teeth sunk into his scalp. There was blood on the ground.
They were screaming and crying and attacking each other.
But Astrid.
She had Batiste by the throat, up against the wall.
Her face was red. The veins in her throat were throbbing, huge. She looked like a bull.
And Batiste was getting killed. He was getting strangled to death and I hope you never see it because it is a horrible thing to see. His face was blue and his eyes were big and his legs were limp.
Niko and Jake were on her in a flash and they pulled her off him. She fought and thrashed and bit and punched and I wanted to watch and I wanted to join in and I could feel my blood rising, hard, when I was jerked out of there by a set of hands.
Sahalia, if you can believe it.
“You stay out of there, rage boy,” she told me.
And I would have ripped her head off, but I had had only a little whiff of the stuff, so I forced myself to walk away. I walked off down an aisle and got myself to breathe.
Niko came out, holding a screaming, writhing Chloe.
“It’s the water,” Niko said. “The chemicals are coming in through the water.”
He was starting to blister up.
“I’m okay,” I told him through my teeth. “I can help.” I took Chloe’s hands. She was trying to claw me. She struggled and cried and tried to bite me. But I was much stronger—stronger than I normally am. The whiffs of compound coming off her were sweet to me. And the fury in her was met with my own fury.
Chloe was such an annoying kid anyway, it was a pleasure to restrain her. I’m ashamed to write that, but it is the truth. I held her fat little wrists with a big, mean smile on my face.
Niko was starting to blister again.
“Go get Benadryl,” I told him.
He ran, tripping, down the aisle.
“Be right back,” he shouted.
Sahalia came out with the McKinley twins, who were clearly hallucinating and freaking out. You couldn’t make out their words—they were just clutching each other and screaming.
Max came behind next, sobbing and pressing his hands onto his bleeding scalp.
“The water’s off,” Sahalia huffed.
Jake burst through the doors with Batiste in his arms. Batiste’s head lolled on his shoulders.
“Clear some space,” Jake said. “He’s not breathing.”
Brayden came forward. I hadn’t realized he was not in the bathroom. He’d been somewhere behind us in the aisles.
A coward.
“I know CPR,” Brayden said and he knelt down beside Batiste. But then he looked up, suddenly clammy and afraid. Maybe the compounds were taking effect. I guess I can give him the benefit of the doubt.
“So do I,” Niko said. He moved into Brayden’s space as Brayden gratefully slid aside.
Niko put his mouth over Batiste’s blue lips and huffed into him, like Batiste was a dying campfire. It didn’t take long, thank God. I don’t think Niko could have done it for long.
As it was, Niko started coughing and it was a wet sound.
A couple of long breaths, a couple of gentle but confident pushes on Batiste’s skinny rib cage, and his eyes fluttered. He took a jagged breath. And then another.
I watched Brayden, watching Niko. It was jealousy on his face, mixed with regret. Maybe fear, too. But mostly jealousy.
Meanwhile, Jake wrestled Astrid out of the bathroom.
Her shirt was torn and she was bleeding from the ear.
“I need like rope or something!” Jake shouted. Astrid bucked and screamed. She elbowed Jake in the side of the head and he lost his grip.
She broke away and lurched from him. She slipped, but regained her balance and ran off into one of the dark aisles.
Astrid cast one last look at us and I read horror in her eyes.
* * *
We had five weeping grammar school kids, contaminated to some degree with chemical warfare compounds.
Now, anyway, we knew who was which blood type.
In addition to the beating he’d received from Chloe, Max was also starting to blister up (type A). The McKinley twins were hiding from us—they clearly had the paranoia (type AB). Ulysses was chattering to himself in Spanish, a rapid-fire monologue that made me pretty sure he had the paranoid type—type AB—as well as the twins.
Batiste had type B, the blood type that exhibited no symptoms, as did Alex, Jake, and Sahalia (sterility and reproductive failure—hooray!).
“We have to get them clean,” Brayden said.
“You think?” I sort of shouted at him (type O).
“Screw you,” Brayden said to me.
Ah, I wanted to slaughter him. I really did. I wanted to tear him limb from limb.
Niko looked at me.
“Dean, go,” he said. “This stuff is too strong. It’s affecting you.”
“Yeah, go find Astrid,” Brayden taunted. “You two are perfect for each other.”
* * *
Apparently, I bit him.
I have no memory of it.
I woke up a while later, tied up, and lying facedown on a beanbag.
I struggled to sit up, but couldn’t.
I rolled sort of onto my side.
There I saw Chloe, freshly bathed, wrapped in a towel, eating fun-size Butterfingers one after another like a chain smoker and watching me like I was her soap opera.
* * *
For the record, they washed the kids with bottled spring water in a big kiddy pool. Then they put the contaminated clothes in the pool and covered the whole thing with plastic sheeting. Vicious, psychedelically destructive, blister-inducing water, all sealed up in a kiddy pool. Pretty brilliant, actually.
My brother’s idea.
They pushed the pool into the baby stroller aisle. That aisle was to become known to us later as the Dump.
* * *
“Chloe,” I said as calmly as I could. “Please go tell Alex that I’m okay now and I’d like to be untied.”
She shrugged.
“Chloe, go get Alex.”
“Why should I?” she asked me in a snotty voice.
“Because I’m asking you to,” I replied.