This Plague of Days (Omnibus): Seasons 1-3 Page 13

  “Medicinal reasons. You never know when some cat might need tranquilizing and I might be that cat. The thing you need to understand about the new economics is, the banks are shut down now. We’re on our own again. The system has collapsed while you’ve been hiding. I’m surprised the television, phones, power and water still work, but some intrepid souls are still on the job somewhere, keeping a skeleton crew working. When things well and truly fall apart, it will take the turbine a while to get up to speed again, but no worries. You’ve got lots to trade, right? Trade is the new economy. What’s old is new again. We’re pioneers again. We might even get back to covered wagons, depending how bad it gets.”

  All but Jaimie stared at the old man, dumbfounded. “You folks really did have a media ban here, eh? When things change — and at some point everything always changes — it happens quickly.”

  “I’m still getting over you going to a drug dealer,” Anna said.

  “I did say the pharmacy is cleared out, didn’t I? If I break a leg one morning or get a toothache or just can’t stand the horror of it all, I do have a fallback position. Suffering should always be optional.”

  Theo recovered faster than his wife. “How are the roads?”

  “Still passable as far as I could see. Either everyone pulled over to the right when they abandoned their car or, more likely, someone from the city is hauling cars and trucks out of the way, probably to keep up the free flow of the trucks carrying the dead out of town.”

  Oliver looked from face to face. “I’m sorry if I’ve spoiled anyone’s dinner. That was a fine steak.”

  They ate in silence for some time before Anna pushed her plate back. “I can’t eat. I’ve lost my appetite.”

  With the speed of a hawk scooping up salmon from a lake, Jaimie stuck a fork in what remained of Anna’s steak and plopped it on his own plate. He immediately returned to where his right index finger marked his latest Latin phrase: Fronti nulla fides. Appearances are deceiving.

  Everyone else burst out laughing. They laughed until there were fresh tears on their cheeks and they had to gasp for breath. Jaimie chewed and read, oblivious.

  Insistent rapping at the glass at the dining room window silenced them instantly.

  Pray all you want in our final days

  The thin, disheveled man peered in at them, looking left and right. Long, greasy hair obscured half his face. He pounded on the glass.

  Theo leapt up. “Hey! You’re going to break my window!”

  The man stopped, looked at him and waved for him to come outside.

  “Careful,” Oliver said.

  Theo ignored the man’s gestures and instead spoke to him through the glass.

  “What do you want?”

  “Food!” the man said. “I’m all out and my kids are starving. Please give me some food!”

  Oliver stood and moved from window to window on the first floor, checking outside.

  “I could smell that meat cooking down the block!” the man said.

  “How many in your family?” Jack shouted out to the man.

  “Three. I mean, four including me,” he said. “We’ve run out of food. We’ve been scrounging, but people are hoarding and I don’t want to go in any dead people’s houses.” He eyed each face, as if to memorize them.

  Jaimie glanced up from his Latin dictionary entry: e pluribus unum. One out of many was famously the motto of the United States, of course. However, looking at the man in the window, Jaimie thought the new meaning might now shift to something darker. The man was one survivor from many dead. The plague had divided the nation again. The country was becoming merely land, where names and boundaries were useless. To Jaimie, the man in the window seemed more angry than hungry.

  “Please, the baby won’t stop crying.”

  He was lying about his family. Jaimie was sure. There was no baby.

  “We can spare some tins. I’m sick of the peaches and there’s some soups we got that we didn’t really want in the first place,” Jack said.

  “This is a really bad idea,” Oliver said.

  Jaimie couldn’t tell whether Oliver believed the man about his hungry family or not. He wasn’t sure that mattered to the old man.

  Theo nodded to Jack and gave Oliver a helpless shrug. His wife jogged from the table and soon returned with a plastic bag filled with several tins of food. Jack walked to the door but Theo stopped her.

  “I’ll take it out and talk to him,” Theo said.

  Oliver came with him. The man waited by the window. When the intruder’s eyes fell on Anna, he licked his lips and stared. He kept watching Anna until she moved from her seat and out of sight.

  Outside, Theo extended his hand to the stranger but Oliver put a hand on his arm to stop him. “Got a name?”

  “Bently,” the man said. He pointed at Theo. “I think I recognize your kid, the one who never speaks. I’ve seen him at the mall before, walking with you.”

  “Where do you live?” Oliver said.

  “The other side of the drive. I’m a tax attorney.”

  Oliver smiled. “The tax deadline will come and go with no one noticing. Not for a long time, I think.”

  “Yeah, they’ll just have to print up the money this year. They’ll get back to us once this all blows over.” Bently eyed the bag of groceries.

  “What have you got to trade?” Oliver said.

  “Nothing.”

  “Everybody’s got something.”

  Theo looked at Oliver but said nothing.

  “Look,” the old man said, “That was the last of our meat tonight. We don’t have anything more to spare.”

  “I smelled steak,” Bently said. “Your barbecue is still warm.”

  “That tells me you were poking around instead of just ringing the front door like a normal person. You a raccoon or are you a man?”

  “Look, grandpa,” Bently said, “I’m hungry. My family’s hungry.”

  “You left them alone?”

  “Safer for them,” he said.

  “Not if you bring home the bug. Why aren’t you wearing a mask?”

  Anger flashed across Bently’s face, but he said nothing and shrugged his shoulders in a helpless gesture.

  “If you don’t have anything on you, at least tell us what you’ve heard,” Oliver said.

  “Where have you been out looking for…donations?” Theo asked.

  “I’ve been all over the neighborhood. A lot of people have cleared out. I don’t know where they think they’re going.”

  “Know anything about that?” Oliver said, pointing his chin at a gyre of three hawks circling over a property behind a high hedge. The Spencers’ view of the crescent that snaked behind their house was blocked, but the birds must have been circling something dead or dying.

  “There’s a couple bodies in the driveway one street over, on the crescent behind you.”

  “What’d they die of?” Theo asked.

  “Wasn’t the flu. There was blood all over both of them.”

  “Did you see a weapon?”

  “No…but that doesn’t mean anything. I’ve seen a few ugly scenes of murder/suicide. Somebody could have come along and taken a gun from them after it happened. Before I came along, I mean. There are still some people around, you know. You watch some of these houses long enough, you’ll catch a curtain moving. It’s what makes going from house to house so dangerous. I’ve heard shots and even seen a couple of boobytraps where the people left, but somebody came before me and the scavenger was on the wrong end of a shotgun blast. Kinda discourages further exploration, in case there are more traps.”

  “What else?” Oliver said.

  “What do you mean, what else?”

  “Who have you talked to? What’s the word out there?”

  The man thought for a moment. “There’s talk that there’s a gang going around to houses at night. I haven’t seen them myself, but I came across a house behind the mall last week tha
t was wrecked.”

  “Seen any police?”

  “Nope. I called the police station a couple times and at first the line was always busy. Call ’em now and it just rings and rings. Voicemail is full.”

  “What were you calling the police about?” Theo said.

  “Wild dogs,” Bently said. “They almost chased me down a couple times now.” The man gave an ingratiating smile. “You know, you oughta be careful with that propane grill. The smell might bring the dogs instead of a guy like me.”

  “I’m still trying to figure out which I’d prefer,” Oliver said. “You saw these dogs?”

  “Yeah. Haven’t you heard them howl at night? There’s a pack of them.”

  “One of them a big German Shepherd?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I was a bit busy running for my life. They chased me into an empty house and I had to stay there all night. You missing a German Shepherd?”

  “Yeah, but I got another couple to keep me company,” Oliver said.

  The color change fascinated Jaimie. He recognized the lie by Oliver’s aura, gray and white and blue went to a rustier shade around the edges. The old man’s voice and face betrayed nothing.

  “What did you find in the house?” Theo said.

  “Nothing. The people who left took everything useful they could carry.”

  “Oh, c’mon,” said Theo. “You’re starving and you were holed up in an empty house all night with dogs howling for your skin and you didn’t take a hard look around? There must have been something.”

  “I’m just saying I’m no looter,” Bently said.

  “The man didn’t say you were,” Oliver said. “It’s not looting if you leave a nice note saying you’ll pay it back. That’s the new rule. That, or trade.”

  “Look, fellas, I appreciate the food but I need to get back to my family.”

  “We’re just looking for a little quid pro quo,” Oliver said.

  “A what?” Bently said.

  Oliver seized the bag of groceries from Theo’s hands and whipped it across the man’s face, opening a gash over Bently’s right eye. The plastic bag burst and the cans rolled around the patio with a tin and liquid clatter.

  Bently did not fall down but staggered back, holding the wound over his eye. In shock, his mouth hung agape with one hand to his forehead. He held his head like a man who had just experienced a terrifying epiphany. After a moment’s hesitation, he bent and picked up the cans of food.

  “Doug!” Jack yelled from her seat at the table. “What are you doing?”

  Bently scurried, wary of Oliver but picking up the groceries as fast as he could.

  “There’s nothing more here for you, raccoon! Don’t come back! Don’t ever come back!”

  His arms full, Bently ran for the gate. “You shouldn’t have done that! I know where you live! I know where you live!”

  “Raccoon!”

  Theo and Oliver followed him out to the front yard. Bently walked away as quickly as he could manage. He retreated up the street toward the intersection with Fanshawe Park Road. Soon he disappeared out of sight.

  Jack met them on the front lawn. Anna followed, pulling Jaimie behind her. He was still chewing some steak but, for once, he was not carrying any kind of dictionary in his free hand.

  “Why did you do that?” Jack Spencer looked pale. Her lower lip trembled.

  Theo patted Oliver on the shoulder. “A tax attorney who doesn’t know the phrase quid pro quo?”

  “Not bloody likely,” the old man said.

  “He recognized Jaimie!” Anna interjected. “He may not be who he says he is, but he’s from around here.”

  “Don’t worry about that too much, honey,” Theo said. “We’re quite memorable when I walk around the mall holding the hand of my sixteen-year-old. I’ve had a lot of ugly sneers directed my way. They don’t ease up unless they notice Jaimie’s — ” he struggled for the right word.

  “Distracted retard look?” Anna asked.

  Jack swatted her lightly across the back of the head. “Your father was probably going to say something about Jaimie’s other-worldly manner.”

  “Yes,” Anna said, rubbing the back of her head dramatically. “Ears is positively ethereal.”

  “Actually, I think that’s exactly the right word,” Oliver said. The old man turned to Jack and held out the big gold ring that had been on the third finger of his left hand. “For your hospitality,” he said.

  Jack put her hands up. “No, Doug. No.”

  He held it out to her, waiting. “Barter is the new currency and I have to distinguish myself from that, that — ”

  “Raccoon?” Anna said.

  “Yes,” Oliver said. “Bandits and vermin, rifling the trash cans with small, clever hands. If the new economy is going to work so things don’t descend into chaos, we’ve got to work with what we’ve got. I was going to offer you some of my weed but I don’t have it on me at the moment.”

  “I have another idea,” Theo said.

  “What?” Oliver said.

  “Let us move into your house. I don’t feel like my family is safe at home.”

  “Theo! Don’t you think we should discuss this? I don’t think Douglas — ”

  But the old man was already nodding. “That’s not a bad idea. He thinks I live here, too. Prolly thinks I’m the mean old grandpa. Since I opened the bugger’s head, he might decide to come back and do something uncivilized. Like he said. He knows where you live. Besides,” Oliver shrugged, “I’m shacked up with the Widow Bendham most of the time, keeping her company. There’s room at my house. I bluffed about having another couple dogs in reserve, but I don’t know if he bought it. It sounds kind of silly now that I think about it, though in the heat of the moment…you know. Best lie I could come up with since I didn’t have advanced notice.”

  Jaimie watched their neighbor’s aura, curious. The old man did have advanced notice.

  Theo ignored his wife’s protests. “It’s for the best. It’s not like we have a machine gun nest on the roof if he does come back. And we don’t have so many food supplies that we can make deadly weapons out of grocery bags full of cans, though that was surprisingly effective on that guy.”

  “He’s right, Mom,” Anna said. “I don’t like the way he looked at us. I really don’t like the way he looked at me.”

  At that, Jack relented. She turned to Oliver. “What does rent go for in apocalyptic times?”

  For the first time, Oliver looked down, at a loss. Finally, he said, “I don’t know. What do you think is fair? Make me an offer.”

  “We share our food with you,” Theo said.

  The old man didn’t hesitate. “That’s a grand idea! Don’t worry. I’m an old man, so I just take a senior’s portion…but I must agree with one caveat.”

  Caveat, Jaimie thought. Why wasn’t there one English word that was that succinct for the idea behind it?

  “Yes?” Jack said.

  “Well, no offense, but you folks haven’t exactly been much in survival mode. You loaded up on lots of canned groceries but I bet you’re eating through the supply fast. In our conversations, I’ve had the distinct impression that you are all waiting for the cavalry to come over the hill any moment. As we discussed, I don’t think that cavalry is coming.”

  Deus ex machina, Jaimie thought. Another succinct phrase that English couldn’t match.

  Oliver balled his fists and shook his head at the same time, looking like a man who needed something to hit. “This isn’t a fire drill. This is the real thing!”

  Jack sputtered. “I call it having faith and hope that things are going to work out soon.”

  “That’s good. I wish I had the comfort in faith that you seem to have. I’d sleep better at night. However, when God sends the flood he expects you to have your ark packed and ready.”

  “What exactly are you proposing?” Theo said.

  “For your safety, strict rationing and beefed
up security of some kind,” he answered. “Don’t get me wrong, Jacqueline. I think you’ve done a marvelous job so far, thanks to having the good sense to heed that warning from your brother-in-law early on. However, we can’t assume your stocks are going to last as long as the crisis.”

  “Theo’s brother said The World Health Organization’s recommendation was for two to three months worth of stocked food. We’ve got that and we’re putting in a garden.”

  “I wonder if the WHO even exists anymore? And what if the seeds don’t take or the weather’s bad? One bad crop and we’re out risking our lives, scrambling for old cans of tuna in booby-trapped houses…or homes full of bodies and viruses and bacteria. I’ve survived Sutr, but cholera comes next. We’re going to have to secure a clean water source and really make sure it’s filtered. It’ll be hard but we do need to band together against looters. I believed Bently’s story about the wild dogs, too. That might become an issue. If my dog is with the pack, I hope he remembers his old master.”

  “Of course, you’re right,” Jack relented. “We should move in to your house. Bently might come back. From your house, we can watch our house and stay safe.”

  “If he comes back, maybe I’ll get a chance to sneak up behind him and smack him on the head with a shovel,” Theo said. “Or my wife could hit him with a purse full of soup cans.”

  Jack noticed her daughter shaking and gave Anna a hug. “Screw that,” Jack said. “I’ll use the meat cleaver.”

  Jack and Theo shook hands with their old neighbor. Oliver threw Anna and Jaimie a friendly smile as he put his gold ring back on.

  Jaimie had watched the rusty edges around the old man’s words as they rolled out. He had the distinct impression that Oliver had planned this all along. He had somehow led his parents to this conclusion. They thought moving across the street was their idea and to their benefit.

  The boy was sure his mother and father were wrong. Jaimie watched the old man. He thought Plautus, the ancient playwright, might have sent him a warning about Mr. Douglas Oliver from 200 years before Christ: lupus est homo homini. Man is a wolf to man.

  An army rises and the dead will have their way.