Thirst (18 page)

“Okay,” she said, and when she was down, he knelt beside her and stroked her hair again. He bent to kiss her ear, and felt her hair at his mouth. It was still coarse and strong.

She slept, and he went back and stood at the window. There was no one in the street, but he watched as if he could produce the vision again. They’d been leaving the neighborhood, leaving their homes, and Eddie had not gone with them. When he shut his eyes he could feel the asphalt beneath his shoes, could feel himself running through the night—that old buoyant joy of sprinting through late-summer streets.

But they were gone.

He had missed them.

The salsa jar on the counter was empty except for a residue. He tipped it to his mouth and got out a few sour drops. When the retching came, he went to the sink. His stomach tightened and he spat out a brownish gob.

There was only baking soda in the fridge, and he got a spoonful of it and put it in his mouth. It stayed powdered until he worked it around. After a minute or so, it turned into a paste that he could swallow. It would settle his stomach, at least.

A flashlight was magnetized to the door of the freezer and he clicked it on. He expected to see Mike Sr. sleeping in the next room—a dining room with a polished wooden table—but the room was empty. The hallway was empty, too. There was a linen cupboard at the end of the hall, and on a top shelf, a box of bandages and ointments. A bottle of liquid cold medicine. Eddie unscrewed the cap and held it to his nose. He
had to breathe in hard to smell the orangey syrup, children’s strength.

In the living room, he pried Mike Jr.’s mouth open and pressed the plastic bottle against his teeth. When the liquid touched the back of his throat, he swallowed, and kept on swallowing. There was more in the bottle than Eddie had realized, but he continued to hold it to Mike Jr.’s mouth.

When the bottle was empty, he sat beside Mike Jr. and touched the boy’s silken hair, letting it float electrically between his fingers. It took a long time for Eddie to check on the boy’s breathing. He pressed in close, but Mike Jr.’s little chest didn’t rise or fall. Eddie put a hand to the boy’s mouth and felt nothing—nothing coming from his nostrils, either.

Laura had turned onto her stomach, her hands at her sides as if she was going to push herself up. Her eyes were open. She was looking at him.

“Is he okay?” she asked.

Eddie listened to the quiet in the room. “Yeah,” he said. “He’s comfortable now.”

“Is he okay?” she repeated.

He tried to imagine their life together, what it had been—but he couldn’t.

He felt the warmth in the boy’s chest.

She lunged forward, reaching for Mike Jr., but she was too far away and only flopped down on the carpet.

“Please!” she sobbed.

She thrashed around there, but made no progress toward the two of them.

Eddie put his hand over her mouth, hushing her and squeezing her by the shoulder. “He’s not yours,” he said. He felt
her tongue and teeth on his fingers. “He’s not yours,” he said again.

She rolled onto her back and looked up at the ceiling. Then she pressed her hands into her belly.

“Mine’s gone.”

“Don’t say that.”

He got her beneath her armpits and moved her toward the door.

“No,” she said. “Let go.”

“We shouldn’t be here,” Eddie said. “This is a family thing.”

Outside, they sat on the Davises’ deck. Eddie put his head down because it hurt to keep it lifted. The boards were hotter than the air, and pressed into his bones. His temple ached where it touched the wood. He needed to get onto the grass, but when he tugged on Laura’s arm, she didn’t budge.

“Leave me,” she told him.

“We can’t sleep here.”

“I can.”

“Come on, Laur.”

She was lying down, too. He got his arm under hers again, and when he tried to stand, his weight moved her forward. She groaned a little. Her head was near the edge of the porch, but it wasn’t hanging off.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m here. I’ll be right here.”

He went down to the grass and lay on it. It was as sharp as splinters, but he pretended it was cooler than the deck. The basement would be cooler, softer, but he couldn’t conceive making it back inside his own house. The basement might as well have been a mile away, ten miles away. His fingertips tingled, the insides of his elbows, too.

He looked up and saw Laura watching him from the porch. She was smiling. Maybe he’d done something funny. He was beneath the overpass, and he had fallen from high above. He’d covered himself up with ash again. The ash was warm and velvety on his skin.

In the light, he saw a man coming from the Mathiases’ across the street.

He had a suitcase on wheels with the handle extended so that he didn’t have to bend as he bumped it down the steps. He wore long pants that looked like suit pants and a shirt that wasn’t tucked in.

Eddie lifted his face from the ground and felt where the grass had stuck into his cheek.

The man was coming up the driveway. Laura wasn’t near the steps, and Eddie felt the panic of having left the knives inside. He sat up. The inside of his mouth was rough against his tongue and his tongue was fatter than it should have been. It felt more like a piece of meat. He didn’t know if he could speak. He couldn’t get to his feet.

“Hush, now,” the man said as he approached. “I’m just a neighbor.”

Eddie dropped to his side and used his elbow to drag himself
along the ground, but didn’t make it far. The man stood next to him. Eddie could feel the weight of the suitcase—its black rectangle blotting out the sun.

“I’m here to help,” the man said. He unzipped the suitcase and took out a clear gallon jug. Eddie looked up beneath it and saw where the liquid in the bottom made a section of the sky dance like a swimming pool. The man tilted it over a coffee mug.

“Here,” he said. “Drink.”

The man got Eddie sitting against the base of the house, and put the cup to his lips. He couldn’t swallow, but felt it going down. Whatever skin and muscle was in his throat was swollen and almost numb. He let his head drop and took deep breaths. Then he felt his head get lighter.

“Easy,” the man said.

“Who are you?” Eddie managed.

“My name is Steve McCarthy.” He knelt down next to Eddie and kept his eyes pressed closed. It was as if he were trying to keep them from floating off his face. There was stubble on his chin and his teeth were yellow. His shirt was stained coffee brown beneath the armpits. Eddie couldn’t smell him, though. He couldn’t smell anything. His nose was full.

“I have a wife,” Eddie said.

The man nodded, but continued to hold his severe expression.

Eddie pointed at the Davises’ porch. “She was up there.”

He looked at Eddie and then dropped his chin to his chest. When he lifted his face, his eyes were red-rimmed. “This is going to end. God sends everyone everywhere, so I guess he sent me here. I really believe that.” He paused as if to double-check. “Do you?”

Eddie examined Steve McCarthy’s face. “Yeah,” he said.

“Your wife? She’s living?”

“On the porch.”

“That’s good. Just rest now. Let the water do its work.”

“How many have died?”

“I only minister to the live ones.”

“Where did you get the water?”

“I have a supply.”

Eddie tried to ask him
How?
and
Where?
, but his voice was stuck again.

“It doesn’t matter now,” Steve McCarthy said.

Eddie collected himself. He swallowed.

“My wife was on the porch,” he said. “I could see her there last night.”

He left Eddie sitting there and walked up the Davises’ steps with the jug of water swinging in his hand. The sunlight played inside of it like golden ropes. On the porch, he bent down in the corner. Eddie couldn’t see him from where he was.

“Is she there?” he said.

“Yes,” Steve McCarthy called.

Eddie waited. “Is she okay?” he said.

“She’s taking water.”

He tried to stand but his legs still didn’t work. He held on to the fence behind himself and used his arms to push himself up, but that, too, required strength he didn’t have.

“It takes a little while,” Steve McCarthy called. He was still bent down next to Laura; Eddie could see only the top of his head, the graying hair, the little curls at the base of his neck. “You’ll get some strength, but you have to wait,” he said.

“There are more in the house.”

“How many?”

“Maybe two or three.”

“You sit tight now,” Steve McCarthy said, but he said it gently, only to Laura. He knocked at the Davises’ door. While he waited, he stood with rigid arms, like a man uprighted in a coffin.

“They’re in there,” Eddie said.

“I can wait. For a while, at least.”

“Eddie?” It was Laura’s voice.

“I’m down here. Do what he says.” He slumped back against the fence. He was feeling better, though. The blood was coming back into his legs.

Steve McCarthy knocked again. In the silence that followed, he took the slow deep breaths of a sickly fish.

“We’re going to get out of here,” Eddie said to him. “Then we’ll come back and help. We’ll do what you’re doing.”

“The roads are all blocked,” Steve McCarthy said.

“Then we’ll walk.”

“Not in this heat. Your systems will shut down. And there are people who would rob you.”

“Then how are you doing it?”

“I’m not going far. This is just my neighborhood. I move slow. See this? I breathe deeply. It helps.”

“We’ll take it slow, then.”

“If you want to make it, take it slow.”

“We need to get out of here,” Eddie said.

“My advice? Stay where you are. Wait for it to end.”

When the door opened, Mike Sr. leaned against the jamb. He twisted his face at Steve McCarthy. One arm was hidden behind the door, and when he raised it, it held a gun. Steve McCarthy backed away.

“He’s got water!” Eddie cried.

“Water?” Mike Sr. asked. He was a full head taller than Steve McCarthy and had to point the gun down to level it at his face. “Where were you yesterday?” he shouted. His neck was wide with veins. His fury made him naked-looking.

Steve McCarthy held up his hands. It was as if Mike Sr. had said
Stick ’em up
. “I wasn’t here yet,” Steve McCarthy said. His voice had the calm of someone not afraid of death by bullets. “I was doing something else.”

The gun shook in Mike Sr.’s hand, and he lowered his arm to his side. He closed his eyes, breathed, and held it up again.

“My son is gone. My
son
.”

“Shooting me won’t bring him back,” Steve McCarthy said. He’d planted his feet at the end of the porch. “It won’t answer any of your questions.”

“You will, though. Tell me. Tell me why my son is dead.”

“It’s okay, Mike,” Eddie soothed. Mike Sr. jerked his arm toward Eddie. He fired, and a moment later, the air was filled with the absence of the bang.

Eddie opened his mouth and exercised his jaw. He waited for pain, but the bullet had missed him by a mile. Mike Sr. slumped from the door to the railing of the porch. Laura was standing, steadying herself. Her mouth opened, but Eddie couldn’t hear the words.

The water traveled up the sides of the jug as Steve McCarthy backed off the porch. Mike Sr. leaned forward on the top step but couldn’t get his legs to follow. His big chest was a weight held too far out, and he pitched and fell, stumbling down to lie flat on his stomach in the driveway. The gun was still in his hand. When he looked up at Eddie, his nose leaked blood.

“Don’t,” Eddie said. The word was muffled, as if spoken underwater. He stood, but he couldn’t walk yet. He looked down at the back of Mike Sr.’s head. “He’s helping you.”

“Helping me?” Mike Sr. said. “Why doesn’t he help me bury my son? You bastard.”

The door opened wider, and Laura had a hand under Patty’s armpit to keep her standing up. Patty leaned her weight to one side and lifted up a foot. When it was down, she lifted up the other. In this way, she went forward, rocking back and forth.

“Mike,” she croaked. “Drop it.”

Mike Sr. was still splayed out on the asphalt, but he loosened his fingers off the grip.

Laura steadied herself against Patty and got her to the steps. They teetered on the edge. Laura’s knees were shaking and then jutting forward, bending her in half. Patty reached out and caught the railing as Laura sat beside her in a heap.

“Sorry, Patty,” she said.

“You’re fine, hon.” Patty set her jaw and stepped. Then she stepped again, her whole body rocking. She was like a piano being lowered.

“Come here,” she said to Steve McCarthy, who backed over into Eddie and Laura’s driveway.

“Ma’am,” he said. “I don’t mean any harm. I’m sorry that you’ve lost someone. I’ve lost somebody, too.”

“I didn’t lose someone.” Patty stepped finally onto the flat asphalt. Her face pinched as she bent her knees and retrieved the gun from Mike Sr.’s hand. “I lost the only thing I had.”

Eddie tried to take a step forward, and this time his legs held him up. “Patty,” he said. “He has water. He’s helping.”

“When you lose your family, nothing else matters,” she told Steve McCarthy.

They were standing as if in a duel: Patty with the gun at her side, and Steve McCarthy with the jug of water.

“You have your husband,” he said.

“We’re not a family. We’re just two people. The family part’s gone.”

Steve McCarthy looked at the ground and closed his eyes again. “Not if you have them in your heart.”

“Bullshit!” Patty croaked.

“There are people all over suffering,” he said. “Some have lost everything.”

“Put the gun down, Patty,” Eddie said.

“
I
lost everything.”

“Put the gun down.” This time when Eddie said it, it served only to remind her she was holding something deadly. She raised it and pointed for the second time at Steve McCarthy.

“Drop it,” she said.

He placed the jug of water by his shoe. “If I give it to you, you might as well just shoot me in the head.”

“Step away. Go on. Get outta here.”