“Canned goods,” Charlie said, “and something to drink.”
“You want a bag?” the young man said.
Dinty Moore Beef Stew. Vienna sausages. Heinz baked beans. Spam. It was all dreadful, but Charlie filled his sack with it. When he could get real food again, he could give the extra canned stuff to the cleaning lady.
“It was a miracle that my father survived,” said a man on the radio. Charlie put two plastic bottles of mineral water in another sack, then walked to the counter and gave the man his Visa card. The man looked at it with contempt.
“Can’t take this,” he said, showing long yellow teeth. “Cash only.” He pointed. “See the sign?”
“The card’s good, mate,” Charlie said. “It’s platinum.”
“Ain’t no way to call to prove that. Phone’s down.”
Charlie sighed, pulled out his Amex card, his MasterCard, his Eurocard, a couple hundred thousand dollars’ worth of credit all told. “They’re all good,” he said. “I can prove they belong to me.”
“Cash,” the man said, “only.”
Charlie eyed him. “Right, then,” he said. “Tell you what. Charge an extra hundred dollars to the total.” The man thought about it for at least a half-second. Then shook his head. “Cash,” he said. “Radio says the economy’s gone crazy. I don’t know them banks are still around.”
“Of course they’re around!” Waving a card. “This is Chase Manhattan Bank.” Waving another. “This is American Express!”
“You got a problem here, pop?” the young man said. He stood behind Charlie and to one side, hand placed casually on the butt of his revolver.
“Cash,” the older man said. “None of your funny foreign money, neither.” There was a sadistic glint in his eye: he was enjoying this, humiliating one of the rich he’d served all his life. I’m working class, too!
Charlie wanted to say. But he knew it was pointless: Americans didn’t know one British accent from another, thought everyone was a lord.
“Charge me double, then,” Charlie said.
The man took the plastic bag of canned goods in one hand, moved it out of Charlie’s reach. “You got cash or not?”
“I thank God,” said a woman on the radio, “for the miracle that saved us.” Charlie reached into his pocket, took out his money clip. It held a ten, two singles, some change. The older man reached into Charlie’s bag and took out a can of Vienna sausage. “This and one of the bottles, eleven dollars.”
Charlie gave him eleven dollars. The man added it to a thick roll he produced from his pocket. Charlie looked in anger at the single dollar remaining.
“Sell you a lottery ticket for that?” the older man asked, and laughed. The laughter followed Charlie out of the store.
Charlie Johns paced back and forth before the chasm in the road. His heart thudded in his chest. “King of the Jungle,” he whispered to himself.
He needed to get out of here. He had eaten all the Vienna sausages at once, and they’d served only to make him more hungry.
He had a car, he thought, Megan’s BMW. He could just drive away, drive till he found some place that would take his credit cards or his checks. Someplace sane, where the phones worked. But he didn’t have the keys to Megan’s car, he realized.
Megan had them. And Megan was dead and in the back of the house and lying under the tub dead in the part of the house where Megan was dead… His mind whirled. He felt the need to sit down, and he found the curb and sat.
The keys, he thought, were probably in her handbag. And her handbag was lying in the room somewhere. He might be able to find it without even looking at Megan. Charlie rose from the curb, swayed, and walked back to his house. He felt he required fortification, so he went to the kitchen first, to the wine rack, and opened a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape. He drank half of it from the neck—good things in wine, he thought, real nutrition there.
The wine’s flush prickled along his skin. With his stomach almost empty, the alcohol hit him quickly. Get to the bedroom fast, he thought. Grab the handbag. Run.
In his haste Charlie stumbled over the water heater that sprawled in the back hall and almost went to his knees. He wrenched himself upright and kept on going, his shoes squelching on the wet carpet. Floorboards sagged under his weight. Don’t look, he thought. He lurched to the door and stepped into the master bedroom.
“Oh God,” he said, and closed his eyes. He turned and lurched blindly for the door. He ran into the door frame and felt a cracking blow to his head. He staggered through the door and down the hall, and then he fell across the water heater and vomited up his Vienna sausages and red wine. Because there were flies now, a black cloud of them, and maggots, so many maggots that they crowded on each other and leaped a foot in the air and fell with the sound of soft rain. Charlie staggered to the kitchen and his bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape, and he rinsed his mouth with the wine and then gagged and went to his knees as his stomach convulsed.
He went out of the house to the BMW and lay down across the two front seats. He still had the wine bottle clutched in his hands.
He could still detect Megan’s scent hovering in the car.
After a while, he took another drink of wine.
The Comet has been passing to the westward since it passed its perihelion—perhaps it has touched the mountain of California, that has given a small shake to this side of the globe—or the shake which the Natchezians have felt may be a mysterious visitation from the Author of all nature, on them for their sins—wickedness and the want of good faith have long prevailed in that territory. Sodom and Gomorrha would have been saved had three righteous persons been found in it—we therefore hope that Natchez has been saved on the same principle.
“Remember to bring in the food! All the food!” Brother Frankland called after the little convoy he was sending down into the Arkansas Delta. “Bring all the survivors, but bring as much food as you can!” The trucks and four-wheel-drive vehicles crunched gravel as they rolled out of the church parking lot and onto the highway. Frankland’s people—conspicuous in their official-looking white armbands—were doing a good job of bringing in survivors from isolated farms, along with as many supplies as could be scrounged from wrecked buildings or dug out of collapsed cellars. It turned out that Frankland would need as much food as his scavengers could provide.
They’d managed to plunder the Piggly Wiggly, though, of everything edible that had survived the quake. The sheriff’s department hadn’t interfered, being told that the people in the white armbands were relief workers, and Piggly Wiggly management were somewhere else. Sheryl was salting down as much of the meat as hadn’t gone directly into the stewpot, and storing the flour in plastic garbage barrels, along with bay leaves to discourage the weevils from eating more than their fair share.
Not that weevils weren’t a good source of protein in themselves.
Protein was also available in the local catfish farms. Since the catfish farmers couldn’t get their fish to market, Frankland reasoned, they might as well donate their harvest. But he hadn’t spoken to any of them other than his parishioner Joe Johnson, who was willing to contribute his income for his soul’s sake. The food issue aside, things were going well. By now, the second day following the quake, the Church of the End Times had turned into a regular encampment, encompassing half the ten acres that comprised Frankland’s property. Tents marched in disciplined rows. Latrines had been dug and screened with canvas or plastic sheets that crackled in the brisk wind. Reverend Garb had brought in his own parishioners to help out, and now there were black hands working alongside the white in getting the camp ready.