Humanity (12 page)

Chapter 11

“We should be nearing a good shopping
area now,” Gideon said a few days later, still limping along.

“Do you have a map in your head, or
something?”

“No, why?”

“How do you know we’re getting close to a
shopping area?”

“I’ve been around here before.”

“Really? Have you walked along this
stream before?”

“Yes.”

“But you hadn’t been to that carnival.”

“I’d been to the edge of it; I’d never
gone in before, because of a string of circumstances out of my control.”

“Huh. So none of this is new to you.”

“You are new to me.” He was holding my
hand again; he’d never said a word about this new behavior, but repeated it
often. I let him because it felt nice, and it had really been just a small step
further from the little touches before. His hand was large and warm and
calloused, and made me feel as if I could never be lost while it was there.

True, in a way, if he already knew where
we were going.

“Where else have you been?”

“I’ve been to a lot of different places.”

“Do you know where south we’re going?”

“I have an idea of a good spot, yes.”

“Have you been to the east?”

“I’m from Wisconsin, remember?”

“I mean further east than that.”

“Like Virginia?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve been to every state in the
continental U.S.”

“Wow. Really? Why?”

He shrugged. “What else is there to do?”

“So you just travel?”

“In the north in the summer, in the south
in the winter.”

“What about the middle?”

“I get around to going there, too.
Usually in the ‘middle’ parts of the year.” He smirked down at me; I rolled my
eyes.

“We were too busy trying to be immobile
to ‘travel’ for the sake of traveling. Immobility meant the opportunity to grow
food, and to trade. The most traveling we did was when we were looking for
scarce commodities.”

“Like medicine.”

“Yes.”

“We need to exit the trees here.” He
angled his head to the right; I hadn’t noticed the trees thinning until now,
but he pulled me along. “Have you ever been inside a shopping mall?”

“Er, only the ones with pharmacies.”

“So about two.”

I smiled. “Something like that.”

“Then this is a great one for your
first.”

We hit the sidewalk, buildings jumping up
around us as we exited the trees.

“Is that the mall?” I asked, pointing at
the biggest, widest building of them all; the rest were just small restaurants
and bookstores. I was pretty sure we were both hungry, but the food inside
restaurants had been the first commodities to disappear when the economy went
down the toilet. Too bad, because the faded photos of food on the front of some
of the windows looked absolutely mouthwatering.

“Yes, that’s it.”

“And you’ve been inside before?”

“This is the best time of year to need
new clothes.”

“How long ago was that?”

“About five years, I think.”

“What are the chances there are any
clothes left?”

He frowned. “Not good, but we’ll have to
start searching somewhere.”

“Or join a nudist colony.”

“Good luck finding one still in
existence.”

When we got there, he held the door open
for me; this was just a gesture, as the glass had long since been smashed,
deeming the doors useless.

“First stop: Macy’s.”

The store was dark, only lit as well as
the outer sunlight allowed. Mannequins and hangers littered the floor. Metal
racks stood useless, several of them tipped over. The broken glass of the doors
had caused debris from outside to blow in, collecting in the corners in large
piles from several years of decrepitude; I thought I saw a human leg sticking
out of one pile, and quickly looked away. As for the carpet, it was as if it
had never existed; a thick layer of dirt and mold covered the top, and there
were even a few green sprouts growing out of it in the areas that periodically
caught sunlight.

“Very promising,” I told him, trying not
to sound too sarcastic.

“Not very promising, because it has its
own entrance. This stuff would have gone first.”

“I can see that.”

“If there’s anything useful left, it’ll
be in the interior of the mall, and probably in the back of whatever store that
is. We’ll need to check each store’s stockroom.”

“That’ll take a long time. Should we plan
on camping here?”

Gideon glanced over at the leg I’d
noticed. “If there’s anywhere that feels nonthreatening. I mostly prefer having
open sky over my head so I don’t feel trapped, but we’ll see what we find. Come
on.” He pulled me forward; we walked through Macy’s, checking the storeroom as
discussed, then entered the wider part of the mall.

The mall had two floors, railings
separating us from the open air between them. The sun gleamed down through the
high windows, lighting the fronts of each retailer but not making it through to
their inner accommodations. The outer halls were cleaner than Macy’s, though
not by much; the dirt had simply not managed to travel far from the broken
doors. We could see a few figures ducking from one doorway to the next, but the
mall was mostly deserted.

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to
something taking up a lot of space in the middle of the walkway, one floor
below us.

Gideon pulled us closer to the railing to
see what I was indicating. “Huh. I believe that is the remains of an ice
skating rink.”

What had once been the ice was now dry
dirt; the ice had long since melted away, turned into mud, and then completely
vanished.

We stood there, looking around, for a few
more moments, and then walked into the nearest store to begin our search for
proper attire. No clothing remained. We searched through store after store,
leaving just as empty-handed as the few other humans flitting in and out of
entrances.

Something crunched under my foot; I
glanced down and grimaced at the rotting mouse corpse. “Maybe we should take a
break,” I muttered, looking around at the endless line of shops.

“It’ll be easier to find things in malls
further south,” Gideon told me, leading me over to a bench.

“So this is a waste of time?”

“Are we in a rush?”

“Well, the faster we reach some warmer
states, the less we’ll need clothes.”

“We’re going to need clothes either way;
we’re not going to make it with my injuries.”

I sighed. “I know.” I looked around at
our surroundings. An Easter rabbit twice as large as Gideon was positioned not
too far away, neon Easter eggs strategically arranged at his feet; dust covered
both the rabbit and the eggs, causing the once cheerful colors to look faded
and bleak. “I like the forest better.”

“That’s because you still can’t
appreciate the beauty of what
is
;
you’re still focusing on what this mall
used
to be.”

“Is that really so wrong?” I asked.

“No, except for the part where you keep
getting depressed about it.
I
think
this mall is amazing for how nature has taken over. The mall still stands, but
it’s not in the right of humans anymore. It is in the right of nature. That
bunny?” He gestured to the rabbit. “Look how the sunlight catches it, bringing
out the dirt and residue that covers it. Humans couldn’t make the sunlight do
that; nature’s made it beautiful in that way.”

I squinted at the rabbit. “But it’s not
serving its purpose anymore.”

“It’s purpose now is a relic; a reminder
of what was, and what now is.”

“But that’s sad.”

“What’s sad? The rabbit
used
to represent the candy industry
forcing what used to be a religious holiday into another holiday where they can
rot children’s teeth, and encourage greedy little children to whine for the
opportunity to rot their teeth. Now, candy doesn’t exist. The bunny’s covered
in dust. The only beauty in it anymore is the sunlight on its ceramic surface.”

“Well, what about the skating rink?” I
craned my neck to look over the railing at it.

“What about the skating rink?”

“Was there anything wrong with it being
the way it was? A fun way to spend time together, and to get some exercise?”

“Except we don’t need exercise anymore,
because we’ve been forced back into a hunter-gatherer mentality. That ice rink
represents one of the few pure, joyful things humans created. Now, we don’t
have time or resources for its upkeep. That’s not a bad thing; we have other
stuff to worry about.”

“But wouldn’t it be fun to skate?”

“Probably.”

“So therefore the remains of the skating
rink represent loss.”

“The remains of the skating rink
represent the government’s lack of capability in keeping the economy running –
that’s all. If you want to skate on some ice, we can stay up north for the
winter, wait for all the lakes to ice over, and then skate on those. Ice
skating isn’t extinct; humans just aren’t in charge of when it’s available
anymore.”

I mulled this over.

“
Do
you want to stay north and skate this winter?” he asked.

“No; it’s not worth being cold,” I told
him.

“That’s how I feel.”

“But I
do
wish I could know what it was like to skate.” It had only been
about thirty years since the end of American civilization – long enough for me
to know that it would have been fun.

He rolled his eyes, then pushed himself
up. “Come on,” he said, grabbing my hand and pulling me up.

“Where are we going? I thought we were
taking a break.”

“Nope. We’re going ice skating.” He was
hauling me toward the run-down escalator.

“I thought the point of the conversation
we just had was that we
couldn’t
go
ice skating unless we stayed up north for the winter.”

“Candace, don’t you have any
imagination?” he asked as we descended the escalator.

“Obviously not,” I replied.

He didn’t answer. We reached the railing
of the rink, and he placed his hands on my hips.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He met my eyes, and then lifted me right
up, setting me back down on the other side of the barrier. He braced an arm
against the barrier to heft himself over, then reclaimed my hand and dragged me
to the middle of the rink.

We stood in an extra large circle of
dirt.

“Okay,” I said, drawing out the word and
raising my eyebrows at Gideon.

He smiled down at me, then took my other
hand so that he was holding both of them.

“Close your eyes,” he told me.

I did, making sure he caught the look
that said whatever he was up to was ridiculous.

“Shuffle your feet.”

I moved my feet up and down in a war
march.

“That’s not what I meant.” He let go of
one of my hands; I heard his knees crack as he squatted down beside me, and
almost jumped back in surprise when I felt his hand on my calf. “Like this,” he
said, moving my foot horizontally against the dirt. “Like you’re skating.” He
stood up again, taking my hand back. “Rotate your feet, shuffling forward.”

I did as he said, still keeping my eyes
closed, shuffling forward as Gideon pulled me. I could feel dirt clouding up
around us, settling on any bare skin I had.

“What does this feel like?” Gideon asked.

“Something less than magical,” I replied,
coughing and pulling my hand away to swat at the dirt. I opened my eyes.

Gideon was frowning in thought. “Let’s do
it this way,” he finally said; he grabbed my hands again. “Step up on my
boots.”

I sighed and rolled my eyes before doing
so.

“Close your eyes.”

I did.

He started walking backward so that I
moved forward. He let go of my hands, his hands going to my waist instead. I
didn’t know where else to put my hands, so I rested them on his shoulders. He
kept us gliding around, and dust didn’t get into my face.

I giggled.

“What does this feel like?” he asked.

“Definitely not ice skating.” I paused,
thinking. “More like dancing.”

“Da da da da dun, da dun, da dun. Da da
da da dun, da dun, da dun. Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm.” His tune was some
classical composition.

I burst out laughing, then opened my eyes
and met his; they were sparkling in response to my laugh, a big grin on his
face. He was closer than I’d expected, and my whole body froze as I realized
this.