Unlike most, she had little use or faith in electric stoves or gas ranges. She hadn’t taken many things from her old farm in Bayfield County, but one of them, her most prized possession in fact, was her cast-iron wood- burning cookstove. Power or no power, you could count on it. Wanda was in her glory putting out the eats for the young gathered at her table: pancakes with maple syrup? “and it ain’t no Log Cabin nor Aunt Jemima, Mitch Barron, this is pure and sweet squeezed straight from my own trees”?and scrambled eggs and slab bacon. Rita and Rhonda, who lived mostly out of boxes and cans as was the curse of our modern age, were loving it like this was a trip to granny’s farm. Deke was mostly picking at his food. But Wanda kept scolding him and despite himself, despite what he’d seen and knew, his teenage belly was hungry. Hungry as only a teenage boy could be.
Wanda winked a sparkling blue eye at her recent arrivals. “Sit down and fill yourself. For this day will be no better than the last.”
Harry was pretty excited at the idea. After five years of state food, he was ready for some real eats. His eyes were wide and there was drool on his mouth.
“Not right now, Wanda,” Mitch said. “We’re gonna take a turn around the neighborhood, see what’s going on first.”
Harry looked disappointed, but he fell in step behind Tommy.
“Stay,” Mitch told him.
“No, I better go with you guys. You might need me.”
“Stay and eat for chrissake,” Tommy said. “Fill your tank. Look like you need it.”
He fell into a chair and Wanda set a plate of cakes and bacon and eggs down before him. Right away, he launched into it, oooing and ahhing and telling Wanda, between mouthfuls, that she was surely the finest cook in the world.
“Are you going to check at our house?” Rhonda asked.
“Yeah, we’ll take a look,” Mitch told her. “Maybe your mom and dad are home, girls.”
They both nodded. They’d been through hell like everyone else, but they were handling it much better. Mitch decided it was because they were young. The young were much tougher than anyone ever gave them credit for. They could switch gears and burn rubber in the blink of an eye before your average adult even got the keys in the ignition. That was youth. The girls were like dandelions that you mowed down one day and the next, they grew right back, flowering bright and yellow. You could not keep them down.
Mitch went over to Deke and tapped him on the shoulder. “I need to talk with you, buddy.”
They went in the living room and Mitch sat by him on the couch. “What brought you here?” he said, knowing it would not be something good.
Deke shrugged. “I was looking for Chrissy most all night.”
“And?”
He sighed. “And…and you wouldn’t believe me if I told you, because I can’t believe it myself.”
He looked somewhere on the borderline of tears or rage. It was hard to tell which. But there was no doubting that something inside of him had been yanked out and stomped on. And it would be no easy matter putting those things back in and getting them to work properly again.
“I’d believe you. You saw dead things walking? You saw mutations maybe? Ghosts? Spooks? Zombies? Whatever in the Christ you wanna call them. You don’t think I’d believe that, try me. Because I’ve seen things in the past twenty-four hours that’ll turn your hair fucking white.”
Deke looked him, his eyes moist. “Lily,” he said. “Mrs. Barron, I mean.”
Mitch bit down on his lip. “Gone, son. She’s just gone.”
“And Chrissy?”
“She’s out there. She’s alive out there. We just have to find her.”
Deke nodded. “She is alive, Mr. Barron. I know she’s alive.”
“Me, too.”
They both knew it and they both believed it and that was a connection they shared. Maybe it was this more than anything that made Deke start talking. He told Mitch about his visits to the house yesterday and the way Lily had been, talking about dead people below in the sewers and secret worlds beneath and her sister being down there. It hurt to hear it. And mainly because Mitch was floored by guilt. While he was out nosing around town for Chrissy, Lily had been here, needing him. Not in a good state of mind. Confused. Scared. But he had to live with that.
“Then I went home and my mom and dad were gone,” Deke said.
“Nobody was there?”
“Oh, yes, somebody was there. My brother.”
Mitch paled. Nicky Ericksen had drowned a couple years back, he thought.
“We buried him at Hillside Cemtery,” Deke said in a wounded voice. “He must have been washed out with the others. He was home last night. Laying in his bed. Laying there, waiting for me to come home.”
Mitch put a hand on his shoulder, but it was precious little consolation. “Then you came here?”
“No. First I took care of him. I had to take care of him. I had to…to put him back down, you know?” He sank his face in his hands. “It wasn’t Nicky. I don’t know what it was. He was saying things…bad things. Nicky was a sweet kid. He would never have said things like that.”
“I know. Whatever gets into them, it’s spirits or something. Demons. Shit, I don’t know.”
“Are you going to look for Chrissy?”
“In a little while. Not just yet.”
“And when we find her?”
“When we find her, we’ll get her out of this mess. Then I’m coming back. I’m coming back to sort this mess out.”
“I want to help.”
“Okay.”
No point in telling the kid no, Mitch figured. He was hurting and only vengeance would seal that wound and stop the blood from running.
When they got back to the kitchen, Harry was still eating and Tommy was feeding a massive tiger-striped tomcat strips of bacon. It was probably the biggest, ugliest cat Mitch had ever seen. Half its left ear was gone as was half its tail. Goddamn monster. Looked like a dwarf sabertooth tiger with those yellow fangs hanging from its mouth. Tommy had the damn thing sitting up on its hind quarters, begging for bacon.
“Me and this damn cat are getting acquainted,” Tommy said.
“His name’s Mr. Cheese,” Deke said.
“Looks like he got beaten with an ugly stick.”
“Well, that was another name we thought about. Mr. Ugly.”
“Let’s go, Tommy,” Mitch said. “We’ve got things to do.”
10
They didn’t find much more in the neighborhood than they’d found the evening before. Most houses were locked and nobody answered the doors. Those that were open, were empty. They didn’t search every open house, but you could tell upon walking in that nobody was about.
Emptiness.
Desertion.
The day was gray and misting. The water had risen two or three more inches now. You could no longer see the streets. Even the yards and walks were inundated now. Everything was a stagnant sea of dirty standing water, lots of dead leaves floating. Lots of flies buzzed around. They found a few dead animals, a couple of corpses. Tommy poured some salt on them, but nothing happened. That was a good thing, they figured. And what a state of affairs it was when floating corpses meant nothing to you.
Outside the Blake house, the very house that Mitch and Tommy were in no hurry to check, they saw destruction. The front door was pretty much torn off its hinges. Just hanging there. A lot of windows broken.
“Looks like the old bitch had trouble last night,” Tommy said.
