The Feeders

12 - Decrepit Fabric and Moth Balls

I don't feel any different as I wait for Salem at his car in the parking lot. My throat doesn't itch, my eyes don't burn, I don't feel warm. All the same, I've pulled the mask back over my airways, breathing in its stuffy, cottony smell. I normally never ride with Salem. Before all of this, he had lots of after school activities, and not even the cool kind that I would normally stay for. It was lame things like science and chess clubs and journalism stuff. The kind of snoozefests I'd rather just walk home to avoid. But after school clubs and teams had been banned since the outbreak.

I use the extra key to let myself into the passenger seat where I finally take off the mask. The key is the very key dad had previously been holding onto for Salem as a precaution should he accidentally lock his own key inside--which he never did--or in case dad needed to use the car for some reason--which he never did. Salem insisted I keep the key when dad fell ill.

Fell ill. I say it as if he got some disease like cancer or AIDS. What happened to him is much worse than that. Those illnesses kill, but this one has turned him into something that doesn't know it's dead. Something so terrible that it doesn't ever stop, even after it has taken everything it can from its host.

"What are you doing out here?" Salem asks through the glass of the passenger window.

I take in the sight of him, standing with an arm around Carly Ulrich. Carly's hair is black, thick as poodle fur and five times as long. Today, she's wearing her usual style, split crudely down the center and pulled into long wavy bunches on each side of her head. Her nose is about a third the size of her face, and her eyes have that naked and scared look eyes sometimes get when they are custom to wearing glasses and somehow find themselves without them. She had recently had a surgery to correct her vision. Apparently nobody explained the absence of rims to her eyeballs yet.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

To everyone else, Salem's face would look normal, but as his sibling--a long time viewer of his face and his habits--I can see a minuscule distinct change. It's the way the corner of his lips twitch and his brow tightens. "I can't tell you right now," the look says.

"Hi, Jan!" Carly says into her plain mask.

She's perky, no doubt because she's happy Salem is paying attention to her. There was a time--after they went on a few dates--that she became enamored with him. It drove her to such acts as practically camping on our porch one night and reciting embarrassing poetry in front of the entire class. Salem pulled far away and she had finally got the message, much to her dismay, but she never fully let go. He would still have to dodge her from time to time. But here he is now, standing outside his car with her as though they're a cheerful new couple. I suppose, when you're looking at the end of the world even stalkers are better than being alone.

"Hi, Carly." I don't show any emotion.

Salem lets Carly into the back seat behind me. She smells like apple juice and old closets. I can imagine those ratty fur boots she always wears and her knitted pastel rainbow sweater had baked in a closet long before she happened upon them to claim them as her own. They possess the perpetual scent of decrepit fabric and moth balls.
Cool air relieves me briefly as Salem opens the driver side and plops inside. He gives me a sideways glance.

"I'm so glad you asked me over today, Salem!" she chirps. "I was looking for a sign that I shouldn't just give up and leave town, and then there you are, standing in the chemistry lab doorway. It was fate."

"Leave?" Salem says, sliding the mask from his face. "Where were you going?"

Carly's mask is already off. Her lips are thin and coated in a hideous pink lipstick that look as old as her boots. "I don't know. Away. Somewhere safe."

There is nowhere safe. Not anymore. I know that, but I'm not sure how many other people have worked that out. Salem drops the gear shift down and backs us out of the school parking lot with Carly chattering away.

When we pull up to the house, the cop car in the driveway shuts Carly right up. Salem and I stare in horror at Captain Woody Wainwright's cruiser.  This is bad.