Storm

Chapter 9

Amy ate as little as she could, and she drank as little water as she could too, and Marylou was doing all those things as well, but still they were down to the bottom of the last bottle and the last can of tuna and half a single protein bar.

It was now the third day after the men came, after Marylou burned her snake's lifeless body and scattered its ashes out the door down the cold Storm wind and came back and stared out the window for a full hour in silence then turned to Amy and said, "We have food for a day, two if we're lucky, and then we'll have to leave or have to die," and turned around and didn't speak anymore that day.

They made it three days, rationing the tuna and the bread and the protein bars, but now it was all about to be officially over and they'd, Amy and Marylou, have to 'leave or die', as she had said.

"Here." Marylou pushed the tuna can towards Amy with her bare feet. "I can't stand fish anymore, anyway."

"You can eat it," Amy said. "I'm not hungry."

"Yes you are."

"I'm not."

"Eat it."

Amy grabbed the can and pulled the lid open and dipped her fingers in and shoved a wad of tuna inside her mouth and chewed. She offered it back to Marylou, but the girl denied.

"Take it," Amy insisted. "You're hungry too."

"I'm fine," Marylou said.

"Take it."

"Hey. I've known you for less than a hundred hours. Trust me, if I was hungry, I'd take it. Not doing you any favors."

Still Amy rested the can on the floor and made a point of leaving it within arm's reach of Marylou and didn't eat anymore.

Late afternoon was almost turning into night outside, but they didn't go looking for doors and tables and chairs to make firewood. They hadn't built a fire since the men left. Marylou thought it might attract more people. The past three nights they stewed in darkness from dusk to dawn, and during the days they'd roam the silent corridors of the building from dawn to dusk in a sort of purposeless trance, going from classroom to classroom to corridor to stairway to meeting rooms to offices, going through rubble and the carcasses of drawers and furniture in the hopes of finding food or water, but never finding it. That or they'd sit, like now. Just sit, backs against the wall, around the dead fire still there from the night the men came, staring up into the ceiling or staring at the wall, doing nothing, hardly talking, waiting, waiting, waiting, the tuna cans and the power bars counting down in weight then in number like an hourglass ticking away these last few moments of peace before they had to face the outside or starve.

Now night was coming again, and it looked like their last.

"Do you think we're going to die?" Amy asked, her eyes up over Marylou's head at the broken window poorly boarded in plywood, still letting the last of the afternoon grayness in.

"No," Marylou said. "I mean, yes. But not today."

"I don't think this window's gonna last the night."

Marylou peeked up. "No, I don't think so."

"So we'll have to leave. Otherwise the rain will get in. Right?"

"There's nothing in the rain. But yes, we'll have to leave."

"There's the Ghosts in the rain."

"There's no Ghosts."

"How do you know?"
Marylou puffed her cheeks and then looked up again and then looked at Amy. "Ghosts or no Ghosts," she said, "we're out of food, so we have to leave or we'll starve."
The vicious rattle of the rain outside made for interlude as Amy kept quiet, watching Marylou, Marylou watching her, the heavy gray daylight outside dimming its already pale light into night darkness out into the open.

Amy scooted down and stretched her legs and rested her head on the cold floor and put one palm on on top of the other both under her ear and closed her eyes and, for a second, that drumming outside was almost comforting; a melody that made her think of a past world and of her parents and of normal days and normal rain and normal people. The floor was cold and she pushed her sleeve over her fingers and held it tight like a baby. She closed her eyes.

"I'd rather die of hunger," Amy whispered, quietly. "Than the other thing."

Marylou watched the girl slowly drift into sleep until the last of that parody of afternoon light outside died away behind the plywood and the hallway was bathed in complete darkness and the girl was silent and almost still. She leaned back and closed her eyes and rested her elbows on her bent knees and she heard, in the distant endless dark, the echoing of laughter again, faraway and distorted like a fever dream.

She thought of Evil Noodle and his/her ashes scattered outside, now diluted in the rain to the point of inexistence. She thought of all the days she spent alone roaming those hallways and she thought of before that when she studied there and she thought of how she spent seventeen years of her life without ever seeing a dead body and then had seen triple digits in just a couple of months and how weird that was.

But in the end despite Evil Noodle and corpses and hallways, she thought of the laughter, and she thought of glass pipes and cigarette butts scattered on an old maple coffee table and she thought of an old burgundy couch, its vinyl cushions scratched and burnt and stained and washy from booze and ash and needles and coffee and food and God knows what else. Despite herself, she thought of home.

Everything came back in that darkness. The trailer. The TV in front of the couch and her father's patchy beard and her mother's brittle hair like straw on all those afternoons she'd miss school because she didn't wake up and there was no one to do that for her or even yell or ground her for it, and she'd just stand there between the nicotine-stained yellow curtains serving as doorway from bedroom to living room, watching her parents suck into that thing of acrylic and blow up smoke and scream-laugh and point at the TV and push each other laughing, laughing, laughing and then they'd notice her. They'd notice her and her mother would go "Marylou!" in that high-pitched voice and her father would burp and her mother would slap the stained cushion "Come, come sit here!" and laugh and laugh again, the pipe still in her hands unashamed like a mug or a cloth or a thing commonplace and mundane, and Marylou would just turn back and disappear behind the veil and go back to bed and try to sleep again. Afternoons like that were the norm and they'd been a part of Marylou's life from a time before she could talk. In a way even now that Marylou was alone, they were still a part of her life, because there she was, at the edge of the end of the world, alone with a stranger inside a ruined school like marooned sailors, everything so upside down and different from her previous life, and yet she was still thinking of her parents and their laughter and their drugs and their nastiness.

She opened her eyes again and, now more used to the darkness, she already could make out the contours of some doors standing ajar and one tumbled over drinking fountain and other things around her down the corridor, dark and vague shapes with no edges, mere shadows against the thicker dark. She looked down. Amy was sleeping, her belly going up and down and up and down rhythmically with each breath, barely distinguishable from the blackness.

What happened to her? What was her deal? How on Earth was she alive in this shitstorm world still?

Marylou motioned for the backpack automatically, then remembered they had but that last can of tuna and half a protein bar and that was it. She pushed her back further down the wall and stretched her leg and closed her eyes and tried to forget the hunger.

Maybe she could sleep. Maybe just for a little bit, before tomorrow.

Tomorrow scared Marylou.

Tomorrow they'd have to leave and roam the unknown out there in search of a life or something else.

Tomorrow they'd have to face the Storm.