Page 29 of The Last Stars in the Sky
“Ruby can stay with me.”
An even worse idea. Let both my children out of my sight? Never. Already I’m shaking my head.
Kerry snorts, and the sound puts me on even more of an edge. “Mattie’s, what? Fourteen?” she asks, and her tone implies that I’m coddling my daughter, which, considering that we’re in the middle of a nuclear holocaust, seems utterly absurd. “Besides, where we’re going is right across the street,” she continues. “It’s like, two minutes away.” She points, sticking her finger near my face to indicate past my shoulder. “That street of houses right over there. I can practically see the roof from here.”
“It’ll be fine, Mom,” Mattie says. “There’s lots of people around, and they look friendly.” She nods toward the line, which does look like it’s full of normal people, neighbors, some chatting quietly; there are children, even toddlers, holding their mothers’ hands, a baby in a sling. “I want to do this.”
“It’s not safe—” I begin, only to have my daughter cut me off.
“It’sfine. Besides, there are security guards and stuff.”
If a guy in a high-vis vest counts as a security guard, I think, but I realize I’m considering the notion seriously. We need to get back to the cottage as soon as possible, and we can’t all spend hours lining up for a single box of food. But to leave my daughters here alone…am I crazy—or just desperate?
I glance out of the car, at the neat line of people, some of them looking shell-shocked or resigned, but not feral. Not dangerous. The security guard is directing people, and it all seems orderly. Friendly, even, or almost. Safe. What exactly, I wonder, am I afraid of happening?
“Please, Mom,” Mattie says softly. “I want to help.”
I realize that, expediency aside, maybe I need to let Mattie do this for herself. Maybe, like me, she needs todosomethingbecause it helps her feel in control, even if we both know she’s not. Nobody is.
“Okay,” I say, and it feels like stepping into space, freefalling. “Okay.” My heart is starting to judder, my palms leaving damp marks on the steering wheel.
Mattie is already getting out of the truck, and a cry to stop her bottles in my throat and burns in my chest. “I’ll text you if anything—” she begins, only to stop suddenly as she remembers that of course her phone doesn’t work.
“I’m coming too,” Ruby says suddenly, sliding out of the truck.
I throw out a hand. “Ruby,no—”
“It’s better for them to be together,” Kerry advises. “They’ll be fine. And we’ll be quick. Ten minutes, tops.” She sounds so confident, soinsouciant, and it makes me want to slap her. Why is this all such ajoketo her? Doesn’t she have anything—anyone—to lose?
“We’ll be fine, Mom,” Mattie promises, as if she can, and somehow, they are closing the door of the truck and heading off to join the end of the line, and I’m driving away, and all the while I don’t quite know how it happened, how I let it happen.
“Turn here,” Kerry says after just a few seconds, and I swing the truck down a street lined with ranch houses, just across from Foodland; I can see its roof from where we are, which comforts me a little. “Stop here,” she says a few seconds later, and I park in front of a ranch house made of breeze blocks, with a garage attached.
“What now?” I ask her, and she brandishes the bolt cutters with a wolfish grin.
“Kerry, whose house is this?” I speak in a hushed whisper, glancing around to see if anyone notices us, but there is nobody around. The street is empty, and the curtains of every house aredrawn tight. Kerry is already climbing out of the truck, and I do too, following her to the garage, which is padlocked.
“My aunt and uncle’s,” she replies, as she fits the bolt cutters to the lock. “They go to Florida every winter. They left a couple of weeks ago. They won’t be back anytime soon.” She wrestles with the bolt cutters for a few seconds, grunting a bit, and then, with a loud snap, she cuts the lock, holding it up in triumph before carelessly chucking it aside.
I wince as she pushes the garage’s roller door up with a loud, protesting squeak, looking around to see if anyone is watching, but, as far as I can tell, no one is. Kerry steps inside the garage, which is neatly ordered—shelves, bins, plastic crates, a smell of gasoline and oil.
“What exactly are we here for?” I ask, as I follow her into the shadowy space.
She gestures to the shelves, the bins. “What do you think?”
“We’re—taking it?”
She lets out a snort. “They don’t need it. Obviously.”
“But if they come back—”
“They’re not coming back.” Already she’s peering at the neatly labelled shelves and bins, taking cans from the shelves and inspecting them—engine oil, lighter fluid, white spirit. “I guess we should take it all,” she remarks. “Who knows what we’ll need. After that we can check the house.”
“Thehouse.” I’m still appalled, in a maiden aunt sort of way, that Kerry is actually looting her aunt and uncle’s house.
She turns to me, impatient, a bit annoyed. “Yeah, the house. They’re in Florida, if they’re alive at all. Wasn’t Miami hit?”
“I… think so.”
