This World We Live In (The Last Survivors, Book 3) (5 page)

Now. We have to go now."

"Al right," I said. "But you don't have to go there, Mom. I didn't see Mrs. Nesbitt. I'm sure she wasn't there."

"Mrs. Nesbitt?" Mom said. "Why would she be at the river?"

"I didn't go to the river," I said. "Is that where Matt and Jon ..." I couldn't even finish the sentence.

Mom took a deep breath. "Matt and Jon," she said. "Are they coming back?"

"How can they come back?" I asked. "You just said they ..." I stil couldn't say it.

"I didn't," she said. "I thought you did."

"Did what?" I asked. "Said what? I came in here, and you said Matt and Jon weren't coming back."

"Tel me everything you know about Matt and Jon,"

she said. "Don't leave anything out."

"They left on Tuesday," I said. "They went to the Delaware River to catch shad. They're supposed to come back on Saturday. That's al I know. What do you know?"

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"Exactly the same thing," Mom said. "Oh,

"Exactly the same thing," Mom said. "Oh, Miranda. You gave me the scare of my life."

I stared at her, and we burst out laughing. It's funny: Horton slept through al the hysterics, but as soon as he heard us laughing (and I have to admit, our laughter was pretty hysterical), he got up and walked out of the room. Which made us laugh even more.

"What about Mrs. Nesbitt?" Mom asked. "What were you talking about, Miranda?"

I thought about Mom, how terrified she must have been that she might never see any of us again. I thought about al the people she's lost this past year.

"Nothing," I said. "I saw a field with a lot of fresh graves. The Beasley boys were there. That's who I meant when I said the boys were there. But Mrs.

Nesbitt probably isn't. I hope not anyway."

Mom nodded. "There must be graves like that al over," she said. "Al over the world. Come on, Miranda. Change into something warmer, and I'l make you some soup."

I did as she said. I even ate the soup. But I saw what I saw, and I know--with a cold, cruel certainty--

that someday, somewhere, we'l be part of a mountain of bodies reaching up toward the sunless sky.

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***

Chapter 4 May 12

"Matt and Jon wil be home tomorrow," Mom said, as though saying it often enough would guarantee it would actual y happen. "And we're going to need a place to store the fish."

"You real y think they'l have that many?" I asked.

My fantasies, when I've al owed myself any, are shad poached in white wine, a stuffed baked potato, and sautéed green beans. With a salad beforehand and chocolate mousse for dessert. And a hot fudge sundae.

"Let's hope so," Mom said. "I hate to think they're spending al their time in the cold not catching anything."

"Except cold," I said, which Mom might have thought was clever a year or so ago.

A year ago. May 18th is the anniversary of when the asteroid hit the moon. May 12th a year ago, I had no idea of how my life, how everyone's life, was about to change. A year ago my biggest problem ...

Wel , a year ago I didn't have any problems. Maybe I thought I did but I didn't.

"I think the cel ar would be best," Mom said. "It should be cool enough, at least until we salt the fish."

I don't like cel ars. I don't like ours and I don't like Mrs.

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Nesbitt's. Friends of mine had basements that were converted into family rooms or used for storage, but we have an old-fashioned dirt cel ar.

Toadstools grew there in the summer, but Mom was afraid they were poisonous, so we never ate them.

Mushrooms. I added them to my imaginary shad dinner. Feeling virtuous, I also added a chocolate peanut butter pie.

Mom grabbed our biggest flashlight and opened the cel ar door. I fol owed her, to prove what a good daughter I am. After yesterday she stil needed some convincing.

"Oh no," she said, shining the light onto the floor.

Not that you could see the floor. The reflection of the light shone right back at us. The cel ar was completely flooded.

"I guess we'l have to find someplace else for the shad," I said, unconvinced there'd be enough to worry about. "Maybe the garage?"

"The shad's not the problem," Mom said, which could have fooled me, since the shad had been the problem thirty seconds earlier. "We've got to clear the cel ar out. We can't let it stay flooded."

"I guess the sump pump stopped working," I said.

"Al the snow melting and the rain and not enough electricity. Why can't the cel ar stay flooded? At least until Matt and Jon get home?"

"Don't you think they've done enough for us?"

Mom asked.

Actual y I didn't. As far as I was concerned, they were having a wonderful adventure, away from home, away from Mom and the sunroom and mounds of bodies.

"Mom," I said, trying to sound mature and reasonable and not like a whining crybaby. "That's an awful lot of water for us to mop."

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"We'l use the pails you brought home," Mom said, because sure, it was fine for me to break into people's houses just as long as I stole pails and crossword puzzle books. She walked down a few steps, then turned to me and said, "Get the folding yardstick. It's in the hardware drawer in the kitchen."

I found the yardstick and brought it to her. Mom climbed down the rest of the stairs and stuck the yardstick into the water. "Six inches," she said. "The water is six inches deep."

"We can't clean up al that water ourselves," I said.

"Why not?" Mom said. "Do you have anything better to do?"

Suddenly Romeo and Juliet seemed very

appealing. "I'l get the pails," I said, "but I don't know how we're going to do this."

"Me either," Mom said. "Bring al the pails and that big pot we used to make soup in. Oh, and the mop.

We'l need it eventual y."

"How about boots?" I asked.

"Absolutely," Mom said. "And another flashlight we can leave on the steps."

So I searched the house for anything that could hold water and anything that could keep it off us.

"I've done this before," Mom said when I returned to her loaded with everything I could find. "Once when the sump pump stopped and another time when the water heater burst. A little water never hurt anyone, but it's not a good idea to let the cel ar stay like this."

"How are we going to empty the pails?" I asked.

Mom paused for a moment. "It is going to take forever, isn't it?" she said. "I'l fil the pails and you can empty them

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outside. Tel you what. Open the kitchen window and lift the screen up and throw the water out. It's not the best method, but it'l save us time."

"We'l be better off with six containers," I said.

"You can fil four while I throw out two."

"Good thinking," Mom said. "Get the biggest pots you can find."

So I did. And while I was looking for them, Mom put on her boots and started fil ing the pails. By the time I put on my boots and walked down the stairs, Mom had al three pails and the soup pot pretty much ful . I took two pails, carried them from the cel ar through the kitchen, and flung the water out.

As I walked downstairs, I thought that this was the stupidest thing I'd done in a year, maybe in my entire life.

On the other hand, it kept Mom from staring at the door, wil ing Matt and Jon to come home. And it was a distraction from thinking about piles of dead bodies.

It didn't take more than a half dozen trips before my legs and back began aching. And I knew, after a half dozen trips, that if we'd stuck the yardstick back in the water, it would stil register six inches.

But Mom kept at it, and her body had to be aching every bit as much as mine, from bending with the pot, fil ing it with water, and dumping the water into a pail.

We worked silently for a half hour, the only sounds the water sploshing around and my footsteps up and down the cel ar stairs. I thought about saying how ridiculous this al was, but I knew better than that. I went for the lighthearted approach instead.

"It's a shame we can't let the water freeze," I said.

"I could have an indoor skating rink."

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Mom stood upright and stretched. "Do you miss skating?" she asked.

Compared to what? I thought. Food? Friends?

Dad? But al I said was "A little bit. I liked skating on the pond this winter."

"I used to love to watch you skate," Mom said.

"Don't tel Matt or Jon, because I enjoyed their track meets and basebal games, but I liked going to your skating competitions the most. It broke my heart when you had to give it up."

"Mine, too," I said.

"Sometimes I think of al the things we had and lost before," Mom said. "Your skating. Lucky, our cat before Horton. Even my parents, dying when I was so young. Maybe we lost the things we loved then so we could survive losing everything else."

"We haven't lost everything else," I said, taking the pails from her. "We stil have each other and the house and Horton." And a flooded cel ar and a backache.

"Isn't there some kind of Greek myth about this?" I asked on one of my return trips. "Some guy who has to empty out the ocean with a spoon and by the time he finishes, it rains for forty days and nights?"

"If there isn't, there should be," Mom said. "How long have we been at it?"

"Too long," I said, and checked my watch. "More than an hour."

Mom stretched again. "I was in labor fourteen hours with Matt," she said. "That was worse."

I thought about how unlikely it was I would ever meet any guy, fal in love, get married, have babies.

Especial y since I was going to spend the rest of my life in the cel ar,

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where, in the not too distant future, I'd turn into a toadstool. I hoped I'd be the poisonous variety.

I don't know how much longer we were working before I had my realization: Mom knew how impossible this job was and she didn't care. It was a convenient excuse to keep me from going out and looting. The only fun I'd had in months and she was determined to prevent me from doing it, even if it meant locking me in a cel ar and making me empty pail after pail of water.

Okay, I wasn't locked in. And Mom was working as hard as, if not harder than, I was. But it stil was an awful y convenient excuse to keep me where she could see me.

Given that I'd run away like a seven-year-old the day before, she might have had a point. But I real y was capable of biking around town and looking for space heaters, boxes of rice pilaf, and half-used rol s of toilet paper.

Matt and Jon got to be out of her sight for five days. I was out for five hours, and it was down to the cel ar for me.

It's funny. I'm writing al this down because I felt it, and even though I know it was immature for me to feel that way, I'm not sure I wasn't right. Maybe not 100 percent right but at least partway. If it hadn't been the cel ar, Mom would have found some other job in the house for me. She wanted me where she could see me, and the cel ar provided her with a great excuse to keep me by her side.

Al of which, of course, put me in an even worse mood. But I kept taking the pails from her and carrying the water upstairs and flinging it out the window, because I'd done my seven-year-old running-away bit yesterday and al it had gotten me was a mound of dead bodies I'l see until the day I'm part of it.

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After a while, though, I had to take a break. "I'm taking a few minutes off," I told Mom. "I'm going to check up on Horton. And I'l clean the ash out from the woodstove."

"I'l stay down here," Mom said. "If I leave, I'l never come back."

That seemed like an excel ent reason to leave, but when Mom's like that, you don't try to fight. I took the pails, emptied them, tossed them back to Mom, and looked in on Horton. Or more accurately, his food bowl. He'd eaten a little since last night, but not as much as I would have liked.

I cleaned his litter while I was at it and then the woodstove. Those were Jon's jobs ordinarily. The ash pile had gotten a lot of snow mixed in over the months, and now that the snow was pretty much melted, the ash had turned into a large messy glop.

It was probably kil ing al the plants around it, except of course there's no sunlight anymore, so the plants were dead anyway.

I stood there for a moment, thinking about the ash and the sun and death, then trudged back to the house, got to the cel ar door, sighed heavily so Mom could understand what a martyr I was, and walked down the stairs, expecting to see Mom surrounded by ful pails of water for me to ditch.

Only Mom wasn't surrounded by anything. She was lying, face down, in the water.

I first thought, She's dead. She's dead and I kil ed her. And for a second I was frozen with terror and guilt. She must have fainted, I thought, and fal en face down in the water. You can drown in six inches just as easily as six feet.

They say in the moment before you die, your whole life

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passes in front of you. Al I know is Mom's whole life passed in front of me. Al her hopes. Al her fears. Al her anger.

The moment passed as quickly as it had arrived, and I raced down the stairs to get to her. I'm a swimmer. I've taken lifesaving courses. I hadn't dawdled that long outside, and for al I knew, Mom had col apsed five seconds before I found her.

I yanked her up out of the water and gave her mouth-to-mouth until she began breathing on her own.

When I was sure she was alive and conscious, I pul ed her up the stairs into the kitchen and then into the sunroom. She was stil coughing, but she hadn't died some stupid, meaningless death.

I wanted to yel at her, to tel her never to do anything like that again, but instead I ran for towels.

She was shaking too hard to undress herself, so I took her clothes off. She's so thin. She's eaten less than any of us so we can al have a little bit more.

I dried her off, but she was stil shaking, so I heated some water on the woodstove and sponge-bathed her, then dried her off again. I found clean clothes for her to put on, extra socks and a coat, even though the sunroom is pretty warm. I wrapped a blanket around her, then used up one of our last tea bags and made her a cup to sip. Horton jumped on her lap, and she stroked him until they were both comforted.