Birds are the first to leave, in one giant airlift, a dense cloud thousands thick, from the surrounding trees. The Roma begin to whisper amongst themselves. Something is happening, but I don’t know what. Mass migration is never a good thing unless it’s fall.
The lurchers are next. Those lanky Gypsy dogs pace ditches into the earth, their ears low, their tongues thick, red rubber lolling from their mouths.
Secret keepers, all of them.
One morning a thousand feet come, shambling along the weather-worn blacktop. They’re a stew of ages and sexes, all of them exhausted, filthy, dull-eyed. They brought their bodies on their journey but forgot to pack their souls.
“Canadians,” Nick says. “They’re migrating south.”
“Like the birds,” Morris says.
The others trickle in behind her. Through the second-floor windows we watch the indigent parade trickle past.
“We should feed them.” This from a big guy named Troy. He’s barely out of high school. Now there’s no college for kids like him. Everything he learns has to come from the streets.
“What, all of them?” Casey snaps. Former National Guard. A twig who used to hawk cosmetics.
Troy crosses his arms, increases his bulk. “They’re starving.”
Morris serves as peacekeeper. “We can’t feed all those people from our supplies. They’re gonna have to find their own food. There’s still food out there—shelter, too. If they want it bad enough, they’ll find a way. We can’t do everyone’s surviving for them. All we can do is watch and make sure there’s no trouble.”
The bickering fades to a cease-fire. Everyone knows why there’s shelter. So many died that there’s a surplus of everything except people and fresh food and optimism.
“We’re being naturally selected,” someone mumbles.
“No we’re not,” I say. “There’s nothing natural about this.”
Morris claps her hands, wrestles for control before we turn friends to enemies.
“Positions, people. Let’s make sure there’s no problems. I don’t think there will be; they’re too beaten down, but they’re desperate, too. Desperate people don’t always think right.”
Everyone leaps into action. It’s been days since we’ve had new scenery. The power comes and goes as it pleases, and the television and news along with it. New is new. New is different. New is shiny. New means there’s still life.
A family comes, also from the north road, its members clinging to each other as though the least thing might sever their delicate ties. Their feet are soundless, but they do me a kindness and cough politely to warn me of their approach. I unfold myself from a crouch and shake the numbness from my legs. My hand rubs away the cola foam from my mouth’s chapped edges.
Each man is a bookend keeping his three children upright. They stop on the sidewalk, their mouths full of questions.
“We’ve never been here,” one says. “We always meant to but never did.”
“And now here we are,” says the other. “What’s there to do here?”
Besides wait to die or fight to live? I don’t say that, though, because I don’t want to frighten the children. But the men know it; that hard truth is ground into their posture.
“Not much,” I say. “We have a good library and a great museum.”
I am a tour guide selling my dead city.
“Is there food here? Some place decent to stay?”
“If you’ll tell us where to go, we’ll go there.”
I reel off directions, but they stare at me with blank eyes, because everything that is stale to me blinds them with its newness. So I offer to walk with them a short way and show them what sights still stand. Before we part ways, they press a paper envelope into my hands.
“It’s all we have,” they tell me. “Worthless at best. But maybe someday…”
Tickets to Disney World, the happiest place on earth.
“Be safe,” I say before good-bye.
There is a long, dim hall inside the old school, and Nick stands at one end with bloodlust smeared the length of his face. At the opposite end, I wear a mask painted with indifference. In between, there’s a doorway that leads to a room with coffee. We set out together: Nick taking long, murderous strides and me on a Monday stroll.
“I know why you’re pissed,” I say when we meet.
“Don’t ever do that again.”
“I’ll do what I need to.”
“Don’t sacrifice yourself for other people.”
I stare him down like he’s the devil asking for one last dance.
“It was the right thing to do.”
“Bullshit. You could have been raped, beaten, killed. Sold into slavery. A million things.”
“I’m a lot of things, Nick, but stupid isn’t one of them. They were good people. It was the human thing.” I turn away from him and make a break for the coffee, but he uses my ponytail as a crude brake, then reels me in. His thumb strokes my collarbone. Heat radiates from that tiny spot until I am a bonfire on a dark night.
“I want you.”
“Don’t pull my hair like that again.” My protest barely escapes the deafening lust haze.
“I might.” His eyes make me a promise. “But next time you’ll like it.”
It’s night when the quake punches its way through the ground. The earth seizes and shakes. Vomits rocks and dirt.
This is it: the secret the animals were keeping.
All the usual rules don’t apply. There’s no bathroom to hide in, no table for cover, no doorways with headers strong enough to hold up a roof, just makeshift shacks with the staying power of light-hold hairspray. Flimsy metal walls struggle to stay upright, but they have nothing with which to grab the earth and hold on for the ride.
I snatch up my backpack and run.
People zip around me, none of them paying attention as I stumble through the camp. Rocks roll from around the fire pits, creating open paths for the red coals to bounce free. The ground is dry enough for the leafy debris to spark, then burst into naked flame. Mother Nature’s temper tantrum splits the ground, shooting each half into jagged inclines. The dilapidated pickup trucks are homicidal bowling pins, pinning bodies between them. The world becomes a tangle of bodies and metal and movement. Pained braying punctuates the cacophony as the donkeys realize they can’t out-stubborn seismic activity and they rush to save themselves.
We’re running, all of us, with nowhere to go. This can’t be outrun.
When the ground grinds to a halt, the night holds its breath.
“Yanni?” I call out.
A woman is lying on the ground nearby. I help her up. She’s hurt, her face bloodied, but I can’t do anything for her right now. Another woman is a magician’s trick gone wrong, her body severed by a sheet of corrugated iron. There’s no cavalry coming for her, either.
Yanni is a puppet sprawled across the hood of a pickup truck. A tree pins him to the grill. Gone is the boy who would be a man. He’s devolved, a child again, his jaw shuddering as the tears pour in sheets from his face.
I race to him. I can’t help it. But there’s nothing I can do to make his body right. There’s no way to separate his ribs from the mangled chrome.
“Hi, baby boy.” I try not to choke on my tears. “How are you doing?”
He doesn’t even try to smile. “Cigarette?”
With shaking hands, I reach into his shirt pocket, roll the paper around a thin finger of tobacco like I’ve watched him do. And although it’s no good for me or my baby, I suck on the stick until the end flares red before
