The Garden of Darkness (6 page)

The houses in Fallon belonged largely to people who came to the hills only for the summer. Clare hoped that these houses might be empty of bodies and full of stored food. And Fallon had a grocery store, a gas station, and a general store that stocked everything from toys to linens to camping equipment. It also had a yarn store and a basket outlet. Even before Pest, Clare had never understood the phenomenon of the basket outlet. But the other places—even the Yarn Barn—had potential.

There were animals everywhere in that sunlit morning. Clare thought that maybe there had never been so many wild animals in the world, or that soon enough that would be true. There were rustlings in the unmown lawns, and she startled three deer that were lying in the grass nearby—they bounded away, white tails held high like absurd semaphores. Bear left her side to pursue the deer, and, although she called him, although he stopped and looked back at her for a moment, a second later he was crashing through the fields after them. A startled fox ran in front of her and a covey of partridges burst into the sky. And everywhere there were rabbits—nibbling at the verge of a meadow, lying in the shade of the bushes. They would freeze until she was almost on them and then lollop, casually, into the deeper grass.

The world was thriving. And she felt pretty good. Not great. But pretty good.

She pulled her little wagon around the turn that led into the road that went into Fallon, that, she thought, stretched back and back until it joined the road to the city and back some more until it reached the place where they had abandoned the Toyota and taken the Dodge Avenger (what a stupid name) and even farther back into the doomed city itself.

She felt her mood darken; she had reached the entrance to the town, and there was a body in the middle of the road. She wished the person hadn’t died in the road. The smell, even outdoors, made her think of meat gone bad in a closed and broken freezer. The lips had drawn back from the corpse’s teeth, and the eyes were gone. She supposed the birds had plucked them out.

She wished Bear would return from chasing deer.

Once she had passed the body, she was on the main street of Fallon. Old newspapers scudded down the street. Clare dropped the handle of the wagon and caught one. It was wrinkled with water and stained with rusty blotches. The headline was ‘SitkaAZ13: The Disease and the Cured.’ The article was short, as if the reporter had been working against a demanding deadline, and it occurred to her that he had probably been working against the most demanding deadline of all. The piece mentioned the violence of the Cured. Clare looked down to the bottom of the article to see if this reporter had anything new to say, and, indeed, the very last line was the most telling of all:

Please come and get my baby daughter, Gwennie. I’m dying, but she only has the rash from
SitkaAZ13
. 1123 West Spring Street.

Clare looked at the date.

If no one had gone to find Gwennie, then Gwennie was dead.

Obviously, it had not been business-as-usual at the paper. It had not been business-as-usual anywhere. Clare noticed typographical errors, and she saw that the paper was blank on the other side. No mention of the man she had begun thinking of as the master-of-the-situation.

Perhaps the reporter alone had written and printed the last, the final, the evening edition.

In front of her, a few crows squabbled over carrion. One pecked at something ropy in the street; the other birds jockeyed with each other, waiting for their chance to get at what looked like a long string of rotting meat. Abruptly, the first bird swallowed the dangling lump. There was excited cawing, and then the birds flew off.

Everything was silent. After the noises of the brush and the hay field, the silence was oppressive. Clare wasted no time—she went into the grocery store, which, for the most part, had been stripped.

After a careful search, she loaded up the little wagon with two sacks of rice and some cans of Chef Boyardee ravioli she found in the back room. She hadn’t realized that Chef Boyardee was still a going concern, but the expiration dates were years away.

She had a new appreciation for preservatives.

A more careful canvass of the store yielded SpaghettiOs, stewed canned tomatoes, chicken soup, bottles of water, and a few packages of pasta shaped like bow ties.

She went back out into the light and sat on the stoop; she opened a package of Yum-Yums she had found near the cash register. They were past their expiration date, but they weren’t nearly as old as the KreamKakes. Clare wolfed them down. She followed them with three Slim Jims and a piece of beef jerky, waited for nausea that didn’t come, and then, despite their age, ate the KreamKakes too. She had always loved that creamy filling.

The sun was low in the sky by the time she pulled the wagon over to the big Fallon General Store, and she hesitated at the door.

She suddenly wasn’t sure it was
that
silent anymore.

Clare stood still at the entrance. There was a quality to the silence that she did not like. The light inside the store was terribly dim. She had never realized how few windows most stores had, as if scenery might compete with the desire to shop.

She wished, again, that Bear hadn’t gone off after the deer.

Clare stepped into the store, and when the floor creaked under her, she almost turned back. But then she caught sight of a section devoted to camping. She had left her flashlight at the cabin, so the first thing she picked up was a long heavy flashlight that took large batteries, which she found hanging in containers by the checkout. Then she walked through the store, bewildered by the number of things she was going to have to come back for—things that surely wouldn’t fit in her little wagon: a tent, a backpack, dozens of packets of freeze-dried food, blankets and sweaters and warm clothes.

Just in case, she located the back door to the store. It was to the side of the changing room, and in the light of her flashlight she read the sign next to it: ‘Emergency Exit—Alarm Will Sound.’

Clare thought not.

She put down the flashlight so she could use both hands, and soon she had the back door ajar.

In the clothing section, hurrying now, she pulled on a pair of jeans to see if they fit, listening to her surroundings all the time.

She had dropped a size. No surprise there.

From the corner of her eye, in the crepuscular light, she saw movement. She turned towards the front door and gripped her flashlight like a club.

She heard the sound of clothes whispering against each other, hangers clattering together. It was a casual, almost domestic sound, as if a shopper were sorting through the sale rack.

Clare’s instinct was to stay low. She dared not call attention to herself by running for the back door. She began, as quietly as she could, to inch towards the front—only for her foot to slip on a blouse that was lying on the floor. She tried to catch herself as she went down by grabbing onto one of the clothes racks. The hangers above her jangled together merrily.

From her prone position Clare saw movement to her left. She scrambled to her feet. There was no more time to think—a figure with a pale blot of a face loomed up beside her. She swung the flashlight up over her head and brought it down as hard as she could.

“Ow!”

The ‘ow’ made her hesitate. Maybe she just wasn’t all that eager to kill. There would be time to ponder the moment, the moment that was to determine the course of her entire life.

Instead of striking again, she lowered the flashlight and turned it on, thinking she could at least momentarily blind her adversary.

“Go away,” she whispered. “Whatever you are—go away.”

But she found she was facing a boy, a boy younger than she. He carried no marks of Pest. His face was deathly pale, his hair and eyebrows dark. He was squinting. Clare slowly lowered the flashlight.

“I’m just a kid,” he said. And although he was still squinting, still partially blinded by the light, she thought she saw recognition dawn on his face.

“You’re Clare Bodine,” he said.

She nodded, incredulous; a moment later his name came to her.

“You’re Jem Clearey,” she said. “Ninth grade.”

“You’re the cheerleader,” he said. There was disbelief in his voice. “You do those back flips.”

“Chess club, right?”

“Right.”

They looked at each other. Then, in the gathering gloom of the store, as the shadows outside grew longer, and the wind stirred up dust on the empty streets, fifteen-year-old Clare Bodine, the cheerleader, reached out and pulled thirteen-year-old Jem Clearey, member of the chess club, into her arms.

CHAPTER SEVEN

OLYMPIC GOLD

“I
THOUGHT YOU
were going to kill me,” Clare said once they had disentangled themselves.

“Um. Me?” said Jem. “I don’t have enough status to talk to you, much less kill you.”

“Oh,” said Clare. “That.”

Clare pulled Michael’s Varsity jacket closer around her.

“That,” said Jem.

“I don’t think any of that matters anymore.” Clare remembered now that Jem’s name had been in the newspaper when he had won the local chess tournament, and that he had gone on to some sort of national tournament. She remembered little else. Once she had run into him in the school hallway and had noticed his strange face, pale and thoughtful. Otherwise, he was a shadow in the background.

“You were a good cheerleader,” Jem said. He was looking at her eyes.

“It’s not a very helpful skill now, I guess.” said Clare, looking down, embarrassed.

“I know what you mean. But I’m still carrying around a travel chess set.”

“Just now I thought you were a Cured. That’s why I tried to bash your head in.”

“I’m really glad you missed.”

“I bet your shoulder hurts.”

“Yes.”

Clare felt awkward. “I’m sorry I never knew you in school.”

“The high school didn’t have much time for ninth graders,” said Jem. “And we didn’t have much time for you, either, I guess. But it’s hard not to remember a cheerleader.”

“They made me a cheerleader because I can do back flips,” she said. “But I read real good, too.”

Jem laughed. “You’re different close up.”

She had liked being a cheerleader, though. It felt good to hurtle through the air. And, besides, her back flips made Laura Sparks—whose cartwheels were pitiful—so very jealous. Laura had once dropped her on purpose when they did the pyramid formation. After she had found out about all the phone calls from Michael.

And now all of that high school intrigue was over forever. All Clare had left of those intertwined relationships was Michael’s jacket.

“What happened to you during Pest?” Jem asked.

“Everything.”

“Yeah,” said Jem. “Me, too.”

They left the store, and Clare found herself blinking in the light. The town was no longer silent. Clare could hear laughter.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“That’s Mirri,” said Jem. “She’s at the playground. She’s with me. So’s Sarai—they’re both little girls.”

“I didn’t know if there would be others or not,” said Clare. “I only knew for sure that the Cured were out there somewhere.”

“One of the Cured follows us sometimes,” said Jem. “But she seems to be okay. Insane, yes, but not violent. We haven’t seen any others. I try to be vigilant. You know. Watchful.”

“I know what ‘vigilant’ means.”

Jem looked embarrassed. “I forgot you read real good.”

In the playground, Clare could see the two little girls. Two. Suddenly it was as if the whole world had been repopulated.

“The one pushing the swing,” said Jem, “is Sarai. She’s nine. Mirri’s the little one with the bad haircut. She tried to do it herself. She’s seven.”

The older girl pushed the swing; the younger pumped her legs and yelled “Higher! Higher!” and laughed her uncanny laugh.

When Clare and Jem got closer, Clare noticed that there was something bizarre about the picture. Sarai wore a dress that reached to her calves, a pair of hiking boots and a sequined T-shirt. Mirri had on jeans, but over them she wore a frilly pink tutu. Both were crowned with tiaras.

“They like to dress up,” said Jem. “But I figure there aren’t any more fashion guidelines. I never understood what those guidelines were about, anyway.”

“They were mostly about who was in and who was out,” said Clare. “And we’re all in now. Or out. I don’t know.”

Clare thought about what it must be like to take care of two people. She realized that she could barely take care of herself, although Bear had shaken her out of her lethargy. Yet Jem, at thirteen, had taken on these little girls. Sarai’s dark hair was drawn back carefully into a braid, and her brown skin glowed against her pale shirt. Mirri jumped off the swing, her shaggy badly cut hair gleaming red-gold in the light. She was certainly cleaner than Clare.

The instant the girls saw Jem and Clare, they stopped playing.

“Jem?” Sarai asked. “Is she okay?”

“Yes.”

“Her Pest rash isn’t very bright,” said Sarai, and Clare pulled Michael’s jacket close around her again.