The New Hunger

“No, you have to start out as a regular officer and then maybe I’ll promote you.”

  “Oh really? Do I have a lot of competition?” She points at a uniformed corpse slumped over a police motorcycle. “That guy, maybe?”

  “That’s…Sergeant Smith. He’s our best guy, he’ll probably beat you.”

  “I don’t know, he looks kinda lazy.”

  Addis laughs.

  “Sleeping on the job again, Smith?” she says in her best tough-chief growl and begins frisking the dead cop. “That does it! I want your badge on my desk, pronto!” She’s not surprised that his gun is gone—if he still had it, why would he be dead?—but she does find a few things of interest in his pockets. A magnetic keycard of some sort and a baggie of pot. She confiscates both and they approach the station entrance.

  The door is locked, which is an auspicious sign. Most easily accessed areas are stripped of anything useful. The harder a place is to reach, the more likely reaching it will be worthwhile. Nora and Addis work together to lift an empty Seattle Times kiosk and ram it through the tempered-glass street windows.

  Once inside the lobby, her hopes sink a little. The reception desk is bare and there are no posters or placards on the walls, as if the station closed down officially instead of being abandoned intact like most businesses these days. They roam through empty hallways and locker rooms, past ceramic-tiled holding cells smeared with graffiti in various mediums. The anarchy “A” drawn in blood. The Fire Church’s burning Earth drawn in ash. A gigantic f horown face drawn in what looks like vomit. This one strikes Nora as the most eloquent. It should replace the American flag and fly proudly over City Hall, the first raw honesty to touch that place in years.

  “Why didn’t Dad take us here?” Addis asks as they dig through a pile of blue uniforms.

  “Probably didn’t know where it was.”

  “But he was a policeman. He should have known about it.”

  “He should have a lot of things.”

  “What if him and Mom came here? What if they took all the bullets and stuff already?”

  “Addy, there are plenty of people for us to worry about without bringing Mom and Dad into it.”

  “No there aren’t.”

  “Well…maybe not here. But other places.”

  “Why is everywhere always empty? Where do people go?”

  “Some of them find shelter. Like skyscrapers or stadiums.”

  “And the other ones die, right? Like all those people out in the road?”

  She pauses. “Right.”

  “Okay.”

  He finds a riot helmet and crams it down over his springy hair. “Halt!” he orders in cop-voice, and Nora smiles through a sudden rush of bittersweet sadness that takes her a moment to understand. She feels ashamed when she realizes it’s nostalgia. She has already begun missing him.

  “I like this place,” he says. “Maybe we should stay here tonight.”

  Nora looks around the station, considering it. “We broke the window. Anything could come in here and get us.”

  “We could lock ourselves in the jail!” He starts giggling halfway through this idea.

  “We need a simple building we can lock from the inside and get out of easily if we have to. This place has too many places to get trapped in. Once we’re done in here, we’ll go find a house.”

  “Aww,” he says with genuine disappointment, and Nora wonders if being in the police station feels like being with his father. She wonders if he remembers the time Ababa Germame—aka Bob Greene—showed his kids around the D.C. precinct when Nora was twelve and Addis was three. The man was so proud. He had worked so hard, overcome such odds. None of his friends from the neighborhood could believe he had made it through the academy, even in its drastically simplified mid-apocalyptic form. Neither could his wife, who mocked and resented every forward step he took. And maybe all that doubt finally convinced him, too, because it was less than a year before he decided his shift would be easier with some amphetamines in his veins and shot a teenager for flipping him off, ending his brief foray into the world of unbroken people living unbroken lives.

  Nora glances over her shoulder. One dark thought leads to another and she feels shadows creeping across her back. “Wait here a second,” she tells her brother. “I’m gonna go check outside.”

  “Why?”

  “To see if those things are still following us.”

  “But they’re slow. We can just walk away from them.”

  “Not if they trap us in a cramped building like this. And there might be more of them around here.”

  “Really?” Addis’s eyes widen as if he’s never considered this, which worries Nora.

  “Of course, Addy, duh. What do you think ate the brains out of all those people in the street?”

  “If there’s more, where are they?”

  “Couldlef he sa be anywhere. I don’t think there’s a hive in Seattle, so they’ll just be wandering around. That’s why we have to be super careful.”

  “Okay.”

  “Be right back.”

  She jogs out into the lobby and crawls through the shattered window. The street is still motionless, just a desolate garden of sun-wrinkled corpses. Could it be that Boney and Clyde finally gave up? Went off in search of easier heists?

  She hurries back to the station locker room, but her brother is not there. “Addis!” she shouts down the hall. She runs back into the lobby, then through the briefing room. “Addis!”

  She finds him on the basement level, in a corner of the station they haven’t yet explored.

  “Look at this,” he says, staring through the bars of a holding cell.

  “I told you to wait,” she hisses at him, but something in the way he’s looking into the cell distracts her from her discipline.

  “What is that?” he says, and Nora moves in behind him to see.

  “Holy shit…” she whispers. In the corner of the cell sits a pile of small cubes, glittering like diamonds in their foil wrappers. “I think that’s…”

  She scans the wall around the cell door, finds the lock mechanism and slips the cop’s keycard into it. The steel door unlocks with a loud clack and Nora heaves it open.

  “What is it, what is it?” Addis demands, hopping on his toes.

  Nora picks up one of the cubes and studies the wrapper. “Carbtein,” she reads incredulously. “Oh my God Addy this is Carbtein!”

  “What’s Carbtein!”

  “It’s…food. Like…super food, for soldiers and cops and stuff. Oh my God I can’t believe this.”

  “What’s super food?”

  “Here, just shut up and eat one.” She tears open the wrapper and hands the white cube to Addis. He regards it skeptically.

  “This is food?”

  “It’s like…concentrated food. They break stuff down to the basic nutrients and it just…goes right into your cells.”

  Addis turns the cube in his hand, grimacing. He licks it cautiously. “It’s salty.” He nibbles a tiny bite off the corner. “But kinda sour, too.” He swallows hard, then closes his eyes and shudders. “Gross.”

  Nora unwraps a cube and bites it in half. It has the texture of moist chalk, like a candy Valentine heart, but its flavor is a disorienting mix of dissonant notes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and a few that her mind can’t quite label. She concurs with her brother’s review.

  “This is what we’re gonna eat?” Addis moans.

  Nora is still chewing her first bite. The stuff resists her saliva; it won’t dissolve. She keeps chewing it into smaller and smaller particles until she finally convinces her throat to swallow. She gags, but when it hits her stomach she feels something remarkable. A wave of warmth spreads out from her core like she’s just taken a shot of whiskey. It will stay in her belly for hours, slowly releasing nutrients like an IV drip feed, and despite the awful taste lingering in her mouth, she smiles. Up until this moment, her plans for their future have been very small. Walk a little farther. Live a few more days. She has not
allowed her mind to wander past tomorrow because tomorrow was a wall and beyond it a smothering black void she dared not approach. But a horizon has appeared.

  “Eat aseft/p>

  He moans again and takes a halfhearted bite.

  Nora begins cramming the little foil packages into her backpack. Addis watches in dismay.

  “Hey,” she says. “This is the best thing that’s ever happened to us.”

  “Is not,” he mumbles.

  “There’s probably two hundred cubes here! We can live off this for months!”

  He groans.

  “Oh so you’d rather starve?”

  “Maybe.”

  She stops packing and fixes him with a hard stare. She knows he’s just a seven-year-old whining about food just like any seven-year-old in any era, but she is suddenly filled with rage. “You listen to me,” she says. “We are not at Auntie’s house, okay? It is not your fucking birthday. We are dying. Do you understand that?”

  Addis is quiet.

  “You get a few bites to eat and you forget what starving feels like. Well I don’t. It’s my job to take care of you now and I’m doing the best I can, but I’m scared shitless and all I ever dream about is failing. So don’t you fucking tell me you’d rather starve.”

  He looks at the ground. “Sorry.”

  “I’ll let you know next time I find pizza and ice cream but for now let’s just try to stay alive, okay?”

  He sighs and takes another bite of his cube.

  “Okay,” Nora says. “Let’s go find somewhere to sleep.”

  When they emerge from the police station the sun is all the way down, leaving only a residual orange glow as it journeys west. Down where Pine intersects Broadway, a few street lamps flicker on. Nora sees the big man and his woman trudging steadily up the hill. And now someone else. Another man trailing an awkward distance behind them, like a surly teen who doesn’t want to be seen with his parents. So they’re gaining converts. Trying to start a hive. Even the Dead want a family.

  Well you can’t have mine, she mutters under her breath, and pulls Addis the other way.

  Thirty-four miles north of the police station, a young girl who recently killed a young boy is watching blue and beige houses flicker through the headlights of her family’s SUV. Her father’s eyes are tight on the road, her mother’s on everything around the road, pistol at the ready should anything incongruous emerge from this idyllic suburban scene. They are traveling later than they usually do, later than is safe, and the girl is glad. She hates sleeping. Not just because of the nightmares, but because everything is urgent. Because life is short. Because she feels a thousand fractures running through her, and she knows they run through the world. She is racing to find the glue.

  Thirty-four miles south of this girl, a man who recently learned he is a monster is following two other monsters up a steep hill in an empty city, because he can smell life in the distance and his purpose now is to take it. A brutish thing inside him is giggling and slavering and clutching its many hands in anticipation, overjoyed to finally be obeyed, but the man himself feels none of this. Only a coldness deep in his chest, in the organ that once pumped blood and feeling and now pumps nothing. A dull ache like a severed stump numbed in ice—eft/ply what was there is gone, but it hurts. It still hurts.

  And three hundred feet north of these monsters are a girl and boy who are looking for new parents. Or perhaps becoming them. Both are strong, both are super smart and super cool, and both are tiny and alone in a vast, merciless, endlessly hungry world.

  All six are moving toward each other, some by accident, some by intent, and though their goals differ considerably, on this particular summer night, under this particular set of cold stars, all of them are sharing the same thought:

  Find people.

  “Can I get my flashlight?” Addis asks as they enter a tree-lined residential area. Nora recognizes a few of the towering mansions they saw from the highway.

  “The stars are plenty bright. I don’t want people seeing us.”

  “But I thought we’re looking for people!”

  “Not at night. Bad people come out at night.”

  “We’re out at night.”

  “Okay, bad people and stupid people. But we’re not looking for either of those.”

  He swallows hard and takes a deep breath. “I just swallowed the bite I took back at the police station.”

  “I know it’s gross, Addy, but look on the bright side. You’ll never have to poop.”

  His face freezes, then he snickers. “What?”

  “There’s zero waste in this stuff. Your body absorbs all of it. So no poop.”

  He laughs explosively, and Nora laughs at his laughter. “Poop,” he repeats with supreme satisfaction, as if savoring the world’s most perfectly crafted joke.

  “Basically what you’re eating is life.”

  “What?”

  “It’s made out of the same stuff our cells use for energy. So it’s basically human life condensed into a powder.”

  “We’re eating people?”

  “It’s not people. It’s just made out of the same stuff.”

  “Oh.”

  Nora glances over her shoulder. The street is dark except for the faint sheen of a crescent moon rising. She has to strain to make out the distant silhouettes stumbling along behind her. They seem to keep a steady pace at all times, and it occurs to her that if she and Addis were to sprint at full speed for as long as they could, they might be able to finally lose their stalkers. Except that despite being slow, the Dead have two big advantages: they can smell the Living from half a mile away, and they never have to stop. Nora realizes that sooner or later, she will have to deal with them.

  “What about there?” Addis says, stopping to look at a relatively modest two-story estate. The place is an odd study in contrasts. It’s an elegant, old-fashioned building, rustic red brick with white window frames and knob-topped railings on its second-floor balcony, but it has the security measures of an inner-city bank branch. Thick, wrought-iron bars on all the windows, cameras on every door, and a tall iron fence around the whole yard. The fence isn’t much help due to the front gate lying flat on the ground, but still…

  “Let’s take a look,” Nora says.

  She pulls out her flashlight and her hatchet. Addis eft/punddoes the same. They begin with a quick circuit of the yard, checking the window bars, checking the doors. All intact, all locked. A Maserati convertible covered in dried blood and claw marks is the only thing out of the ordinary. In fact, the yard is oddly well-kept, the shrubberies still in neat rows, the lawn weedy but not wild.

  “All clear,” Addis says in cop-voice.

  “These window bars are pretty wide. Think you could fit?”

  He tests his head against the bars. Pushing his ears flat, he could probably squeeze through. “Want me to break in?” he asks, smiling deviously. He might make a better robber than cop.

  “Let’s check the rest of the doors first.”

  They come back around to the front. Nora is surprised to find the front door—a huge, solid oak slab with reinforced hinges—unlocked. Slightly ajar. They step inside. Nora locks it behind them and clicks on her flashlight. The interior is no less luxurious than she expected. The usual exotic hardwoods and leather, paintings by real artists hanging casually in the hall like it’s no big deal.

  “God,” Nora whispers, aiming her flashlight at a messy, intricate collage. “That’s a Rauschenberg.”

  “It’s way too big,” Addis says in a tone that means Don’t even think about it. He remembers when the family stopped at a museum to search for weapons on dead security guards and Nora stuffed the Geo full of Picassos. He remembers when some thugs stole the car and they had to continue on foot, and she made him put all her clothes in his bag so she’d have room for some rolled-up Dali canvases. He doesn’t have to worry anymore. She’s much more practical these days.

  They begin to explore the house. The white circles of their fla
shlights roam the walls like infant ghosts. Nora flicks a light switch and is surprised to see a chandelier blaze to life. She quickly switches it off.

  “Why’d you turn it off?” Addis says.

  “You know why.”

  Addis sighs. They step quietly down the hall and into the dining room. “What’s that smell?” he asks, wrinkling his nose.

  Nora sniffs. “Burnt plastic?” She starts to move toward the kitchen to investigate and Addis yelps, so sudden and sharp Nora almost drops her flashlight. She dashes to his side, hatchet raised. His light is creeping slowly over the faces of three corpses. Old corpses. Skeletons. No flesh but a few leathery ligaments clinging to the joints. Even their clothes have disintegrated. They recline peacefully in the living room, an adult in the easy chair and two smaller ones on the couch, their lipless mouths locked in that insane snarl that lurks behind every smile.

  Addis pulls his light away and the grim tableau disappears into the shadows. He is breathing a lot harder than Nora.

  “Come on,” she says. “Let’s check upstairs.”

  The top floor is just two children’s bedrooms, a bathroom, and the balcony. Empty, dusty, silent.

  “All clear?” Nora asks, but Addis doesn’t confirm.

  “Can we stay up here?” he says quietly. “We don’t have to go downstairs again do we?”

  “Not if we’re all clear. Are we all clear?”

  “All clear.”

  “Okay. Then we can stay up here.”

  “Until it’s light out?”

  “Yep.”

  “Okay.”

  “Are you tired?”

  “Not really.”

  Nora lo"le30"oks at his face. He is shaken. Walking over a hundred bodies rotting in the street didn’t faze him, but those three skeletons seem to have reached him in a deeper place. She doubts he will sleep tonight.

  “Addy,” she says. “Come out on the balcony with me.”

  She drops her pack at her feet—the Carbtein cubes are surprisingly heavy—and she and her brother lean against the railing, looking down at the street, watching the faint moonlight shimmer on the treetops as a gentle breeze teases the leaves. Nora pulls the cop’s bag of weed out of her pocket, then a red BIC and some shredded newspapers from her backpack. She rolls a joint, lights it, and sucks.