Page 27 of The Last Stars in the Sky
Kerry shrugs, the gesture dismissive. “Get some more food, I guess.”
Wow, what a font of homesteading wisdom. I’m not sure what I was expecting—for Kerry to dash outside, pick a few plants and whip up a stew? Bag a rabbit and cook it for dinner, show me how to trap, how to shoot, how to distill dandelions for some kind of medicinal elixir? Did I think she was some kind of wise medicine woman, simply because she lives in the backwoods of Ontario? I feel like an idiot, and I know it’s because she’s making me feel like one. Is it on purpose? Maybe. Probably.
“And where,” I ask her, “would you suggest we go to get more food?”
Her eyebrows arch again, her lips curving. “Corville?”
Seriously? “You think I can just walk into Foodland and pick up some groceries?” The edge is definitely audible in my voice now.
“Probably not, but there are other places to get food,” she replies with certainty, and my interest sharpens because she sounds like she knows something, something I don’t.
“Where?”
Kerry shrugs, a small smile playing about her mouth. I think she likes keeping me guessing. “Places…” she says again, and I wonder what she means. I wonder if I even want to know.
“All right,” I tell her. “Let’s go to Corville then.” I say it evenly, like a challenge, and her smile widens. Mattie will be pleased, at least.
“Okay.” She nods, pushing off from the wall she’s been leaning against. “My mom will have to stay here. She’s not up for the trip.”
“Okay, if you think she’ll be all right.”
“And,” Kerry finishes, “we’ll need to bring some bolt cutters.”
ELEVEN
I found the bolt cutters in my dad’s little tool cupboard, next to a bunch of mousetraps. They’re in the back of the truck, along with a couple of cardboard boxes from the barn that Kerry thought we should take, for the food presumably, although where we’re going to get it, I still don’t know. Somehow, I doubt the supermarket in Corville is operating as usual, but who knows? I’m caught between fear and a hope that feels delusional but remains persistent.Maybe, just maybe…
The girls are in the back of the cab, anxious but excited, almost as if this is a normal outing, a day trip to the supermarket and the chip wagon and the river, just as it was before. Even in the midst of Armageddon, it seems, a teenager can get bored.
I am not excited. Dread swirls in my stomach like acid, making it cramp. My hands clench the steering wheel, white-knuckled and aching, as we drive the twenty miles to Corville in virtual silence, having had to move the logs that camouflage the driveway; Kerry heaved one end while I took the other. She seemed amiable enough, helping out with alacrity, but with that faint smile on her face that I find unsettling. Now she’s relaxed, staring out the window, humming under her breath. I’m starting to wonder if I understand her at all. More worryingly, I’mwondering whether I can trust her. What do I know about her, besides that she’s Darlene’s daughter, and remembered me?
We encounter only one car on the way—an ancient Cadillac, with an elderly man at the wheel, his wife in the passenger seat beside him, driving slowly down the rutted road, both of them staring at us wide-eyed as we slip by them like salmon in a stream. Their mouths are open, like gaping holes, and their pale faces remind me of sad clowns, sliding silently past. The woman is wearing lipstick, a bright orange, and her hair is permed. I notice these details before they drive by, gone into the distance, who knows where.
We left Darlene at home, lying on the sofa, the fire built up. She drank a cup of coffee and ate some oatmeal, and all in all seemed in good spirits, although her skin still had a grayish cast and there was a sheen of sweat on her forehead. Still, she smiled, grabbed my hand as I walked by with some firewood.
“You’re a good girl,” she said, squeezing my fingers, and I nearly dropped a log in her lap by accident. I smiled and slipped my hand from hers to steady the firewood in my arms. I could hear her wheeze as I went to the fireplace and dumped the logs in the wrought-iron rack my dad bought when I was in college. I remember him joking how he was gentrifying the place.
Before we left for Corville, I let the chickens out of the pump house, to their seeming relief; Kerry said they could peck around freely, as long as they were back inside by sunset, before the foxes or wolves or whatever else could get at them. Still, leaving both Darlene and the chickens, the cottage itself, is making me nervous. I want to get back, lock doors, and hunker down; and yet I’m desperate for news, for a sense of the world as it is now, even if it is just what I find in tiny, out-of-the-way Corville.
As we come to the junction at the edge of the town—a lumber yard on one side and on the other an abandoned building that once housed the town’s grocery store, until the big Foodland wasbuilt on the other side when I was a teenager—it looks just like it did when we were last here—how long ago now? Four days?Only four days.
“Nothing’s changed,” Mattie says eagerly, leaning forward, craning her neck. “Nothing!” She sounds exultant.
“Let’s wait and see,” I reply quietly, because what, after all, was meant to change with a lumber yard and a deserted building? I scan the empty road, feel the sense of stillness that’s settled over it, and then I turn right toward the town. We drive in silence, and it feels as if we are all holding our breath, hoping, even as I know, Iknowwe won’t find Corville the way we did just four days ago.
After about a mile and a half, a straight shot and then curving down a hill, we get to the junction that leads into town—a gas station on the right, a big Catholic church and school across the street. The gas station is shuttered, a padlock on the door, along with a cardboard sign, handwritten in marker: NO GAS. NO FOOD.
I glance at Kerry, who shrugs as if I’ve asked a question. We drive on—down the hill, past the church, across the bridge. All the stores are shuttered, the parking lots empty. When we drive by the hipster coffee shop by the bridge, I see that the plate-glass window has been shattered. Inside, tables and stools are knocked over. A shudder goes through me. It’sreal. Whatever we thought had happened, hoped hadn’t, has. That much I know, absolutely, just from what I’ve seen so far, and it feels like grief.
I glance in the rear-view mirror; Mattie’s arms are folded, her lower lip jutted out. I’d think she looked disappointed, but I know it’s deeper than that. Here is proof that the world really has changed, despite her desperate hopes. Ruby, I see, is gazing down at her laced fingers in her lap, humming very softly under her breath, her own kind of coping mechanism. I turn to look atKerry again, but she’s staring out the window, that smile of hers gone; her eyes look bleak, the lines from her nose to her mouth more deeply drawn, and I wonder what about this scene has made her drop her insouciant mask, if only for a moment.
“We should check out Foodland, anyway,” she says tonelessly, still staring out the window, and I head over the bridge. At Foodland, we finally see people. They are milling around the parking lot, and someone with a megaphone is issuing instructions.
“Turn in,” Kerry instructs, and I obey her without even thinking about it. A guy in a high-vis vest directs me to an area where a few trucks and vans are parked.
“What’s going on?” Mattie asks, and I don’t reply because I’m not sure. It looks like people are lining up at the front of the store; there’s some kind of system going on, but I can’t make out what it’s for, or why.
“I’ll go see,” I tell them, and I get out of the car. It feels strange, to be among people again. There is a normality to it that feels odd. Off. No one is looking at me, or even at each other. Shoulders are hunched, faces averted. There’s a feeling about the place like the aftermath of a tragedy, which I suppose is exactly what it is.
