“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.
She ignored me, eating the chocolate coating off a Butterfinger bit by bit.
“Chloe!” I said.
“What’ll you give me?”
“Are you kidding me?!”
She yawned.
“Go get Alex.”
“I don’t have to do what you say. You’re not the boss of me.”
“I’m asking you. Please.”
“You’re not asking, you’re telling. No one likes a bossy bear, you know.”
If my wrists hadn’t been getting rubbed bloody by the nylon ropes, I probably would have found this conversation amusing.
“Chloe, fair Chloe, princess of all that is good and kind in this world, wouldst thou, couldst thou take a message to my brother yonder?”
She giggled.
“Say please,” she baited.
“Oh, the prettiest of pleases for the prettiest of fair young maidens…”
“Oh-kay…,” she said and dragged herself off toward the other kids.
It was only then that I noticed that Batiste was in his sleeping bag, just beyond where Chloe had been sitting. He was just lying there, staring up at the ceiling.
“Hey, Batiste,” I said. “Are you okay?”
He didn’t answer.
Alex hurried over and picked the tight knots apart.
“You bit Brayden on the scalp,” he told me with his eyes twinkling. He whispered, “It was awesome!”
“Where is everyone?” I asked, rubbing life back into my wrists.
“We’re still washing the twins,” he answered.
He turned to go back. I didn’t follow.
“See you when we’re done?” he asked.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said.
I heard mild snoring from a sleeping bag farther back in the aisle. I guess they had dosed Max to the gills with Benadryl, ’cause he was way conked out. His blisters looked three shades less angry, so it seemed to be working.
I went over to Batiste. He was naked, just wrapped in a towel inside his sleeping bag. He seemed subdued and cold.
“You okay, little guy?” I asked him.
His hands were like ice.
“I’m gonna get you all set up,” I told him.
I went to the boys’ clothing section and got some warm clothes for him. I even picked out a pair of those dumb chenille slipper socks. I figured he deserved something absurdly soft and warm.
“Hey, Batiste,” I said, holding up the clothes. “Check out your new look.”
But Batiste didn’t move a muscle. So I just dressed him, I don’t know, like you would a baby. Once I had all his clothes on, and the dumb socks, I rubbed his back.
Yes, I did. Be assured that I felt as uncomfortable actually doing it as I do writing about it.
But I could feel his skinny ribs relaxing a little so I kept at it.
I took it as a good sign when, a few minutes later, he croaked, “My throat hurts.”
I went and got some children’s Advil and a Popsicle for him. On my way back, I ran into Brayden. He was carrying Henry wrapped up in a towel.
Brayden pointed at me and said, “You’re an a-hole.”
Why that made me feel so happy, I can’t quite say.
No one seemed to be thinking about dinner and the kids were getting hungry, so I grabbed some freezer foods: dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets, frozen green beans, and two bags of Tater Tots.
Then I had to figure out how to actually cook the stuff.
In the Pizza Shack, there were only these industrial toaster ovens and a microwave. There was no stovetop so I didn’t know what to do with the green beans at all. I just put them on one of the pizza trays and put them in an oven. They came out like straws made of charcoal. That’s my best attempt at describing them. Desiccated, black straws of carbon.
The Tater Tots came out exactly perfect.
The chicken nuggets, on the other hand, were cold inside. The little kids didn’t seem to mind. But Jake put some back in the oven for the older kids. And those dino nuggets joined my green beans in charcoal heaven.
We had mostly Tater Tots for dinner.
After everyone had eaten, I brought dinner to Josie and sat with her while she ate.
I had gotten into the habit of chatting with her. “At her” might be more like it.
Our conversations went something like this:
Me: How you doing, Josie?
Josie:
Me: Oh, I’m fine, thanks for asking. I mean, I’m a little depressed, what with the end of life as we know it. But I’m holding it together. How about you?
Josie:
Me: Yeah, that’s what I thought. You seem to be having a pretty tough time. Hey, you know, I’ve been thinking. We have plenty of clean clothes. And we can’t use the water anymore, but we’ve been using baby wipes to clean ourselves when we get dirty. They work pretty good. You want me to bring some over? You could sort of use a little cleaning off, if you don’t mind me saying so. And the bandage on your head, it definitely needs to be
