“If I ask you to come, and things go wrong, then what are we going to say to each other? I told you both I’m sorry.”
Ben cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, too, Jack. None of this is on you.”
“It’s all on me, Ben.”
“I promise not to say anything,” Griffin said. “I promise not to ever say I want to go home again. Please just let us come with you, Jack.”
“It’s not up to me.”
And Ben said, “Come on. Let’s get that shit packed up and go.”
* * *
There once was a supermarket between the park and Cracktown. The kids in another Glenbrook saw it as a kind of border checkpoint where sweaty punks who looked homeless would sit and smoke cheap generic-brand cigarettes along the concrete wheelstops that marked off slotted parking spaces.
During wars, supermarkets are the first territories conquered.
I could imagine what it was like: survivors, at first in large numbers, gathering around the oasis of the store, competing with one another, fattening themselves up, being hunted, and then the water hole turning to dust.
This was real.
We walked, Ben carrying his spear, Griffin, who wore his shirt tied up on his head like we were crossing the Sahara, and me, with one of the kids’ school backpacks that held a few salvaged belongings from their home and the last of our food.
I think just the act of getting out of their house, out of the box, made us all feel a little better, like we had some purpose, something to do rather than just wait.
Maybe we weren’t mad at one another anymore.
But walking past the husk of that old supermarket was scary. The front wall had been entirely destroyed, and most of the ceiling hung down on wires and aluminum framing, uneven and jagged like some abandoned mine. It looked like something where monsters would live, in horror films or nightmares.
Or here.
The entire floor was covered in broken glass and other discarded containers. There were bones scattered everywhere—skulls, pelvises—so many of them you couldn’t tell the difference between the junk that used to be for sale and the junk that used to be a person.
I couldn’t help it. I imagined what it would be like to round up every kid, teacher, custodian, and security guard at our school and bring them to the market and kill them all. That’s what it looked like.
All along the roof’s edge, skulls had been lined up like beads on a string. Every one of them was jawless, dried; some were pale yellow, and others were an amber so rich in tone they almost looked like withered oranges. I saw the heads of children and adults, indiscriminately integrated—all fair and equal access on the roof’s edge. Some had hair on them, but most had been picked clean.
In the darkest depth of the building, a glint of red flame flickered and then dropped behind a pile of rubble the size of a bulldozer.
I stopped and watched, held up my hand so the boys wouldn’t move.
“What do you see?” Ben whispered.
I kept my eyes pinned on the interior of the market. “One of them. He’s back there.”
Ben and Griffin crouched slightly and strained to catch a glimpse of what I’d seen.
Griffin nudged my shoulder. “Where is he?”
I pointed. “Over that way. Against the back wall, I think.”
“Do you think there’s more?” Ben asked.
Hunters never came out alone. He knew that.
I sniffed. Sometimes you could smell them. They smelled like old piss.
“There has to be more.”
“We could maybe take two of them,” Ben said. “Any more than that, we should get the fuck out of here now, Jack.”
And go where? I had to think, calculate the distances to our options. The ag school was maybe two hours’ hike. I hadn’t planned on running into any Hunters out here during the day, but now an unexpected variable had been added to my math.
I sighed.
The firehouse was about fifteen minutes from here. At a dead run, we might make it in five or six. And what if Quinn wasn’t there? What if he wouldn’t let us in?
I pulled out my knife, held it low, next to my thigh. “If we wait here a couple more minutes, and they don’t show themselves, then we know they think they can’t take us. Look at us, we’re just kids.”
Odds.
Griffin moved up between me and Ben. “Do you think he saw us?”
“He knows we’re here,” I said.
Then Ben tapped my arm with the back of his fingers. “Holy shit, Jack.”
He was facing toward the west end of the building, and until he’d said anything, I didn’t even notice that there were ten or more of the things who’d come around in a line, watching us, drooling, licking their teeth.
This was a hunting party, out in the day, which meant they were winning; confidently taking over this other Glenbrook. They were all males, looking for food, for something to bring back to their mates, their offspring. Meat.
More of them started coming out, climbing over the hills of trash inside the supermarket, emerging one by one.
With nothing but a skinning knife and a steel rod, we had no chance against numbers like this.
But they were taking their time. They were going to enjoy doing whatever they wanted to do to us.
In the center of their ranks, the largest male stood at the point of their phalanx. He wore human scalps, molded into a codpiece that covered his nuts. One of the scalps trailed long white hair halfway to his knees, the other, black. The hair had been twisted together, not braided, but clotted with some unimaginable concoction of paste. He was covered in thick purple splotches, and his skin glistened like he’d just pissed on himself. Tusk horns curled around his jaw from the back of his skull, and completely hairless as he was, he looked like some kind of salamander. He was missing his fingers; both hands were twisted into long, hooking claws with talons that looked like they’d been carved from obsidian. In one of them, he held the stump of a club that had been spiked with glass and fragments of bone. Even at my distance, I could see a strand of saliva dripping from his chin, leaking onto the necklace of little pink fleshy souvenirs he wore. Jay Pittman in reverse. And, like all of them, he had one black eye, one white.
The other Hunters in his party stood in the open, uncovered, completely naked. Their scalp-taking had only just started, but some of the others had adorned themselves with decorations: strands of long-dead cell phones, teeth, dried tongues; one of them even had the entire head of a dog hanging in front of his belly, strung through its ear canals on a rope that was likely made from braided intestine. Another wore a pair of women’s glasses on a pearl strand around his neck. It looked like something you’d see on a matronly librarian. And every one of them carried a weapon of some kind. The flankers at either end of the line held bows, pulled tight, arrows angled inward at the three of us.
There was no perceivable way out.
We were dead.
But they all stood still, waiting for the slobbering Hunter at the center of the line to direct their game.
Time for fun.
I didn’t move. “Griff, listen to me. Unzip the backpack and take the sock out. The sock with the glasses in it.”
“Don’t leave us, Jack!” Griffin was beginning to panic.
I whispered, “I’m not. Just do what I said.”
The Hunters began creeping toward us, completely unconcerned, certain they were going to have exactly what they wanted. I could hear their mouths working, licking, teeth clattering, nearly choking on the flowing saliva of their anticipation.
I felt Griffin opening the pack.
Ben faltered. He was breathing so hard. He jerked around, turned as if to run.
There was no way we’d outrun them. Trying to run would only make them more excited, horny for us. It was pointless.
I grabbed Ben’s shirt and held him steady. “Don’t.”
Ben couldn’t catch his breath to answer. I thought he was going to pass out.
I squeezed the knife in one hand, then I let go of Ben and put my other hand out for Griffin. “Give me the lens.”
There was always a peculiar weight to the Marbury lens. It wasn’t from gravity; it came from something else altogether. And even though the lens was dead to me now, I could still feel the heaviness it contained when Griffin placed the fragment onto my open palm. And as soon as he did, the boy whispered a hushed “What the fuck, Jack?”