He reaches back in and I realize that must be where his gun is. My heart leaps into my throat, but my hands are full. He handed over thecans to distract me so I couldn’t fight back.
Instead he pulls out three books and holds them out to me. I set the cans on the back of the couch and look at the books. The first cover is worn and has an old cruise ship on the front. It’s calledThe Voyage Outand it’s by Virginia Woolf. I’ve heard of her but not the book.
The next book in the stack isThe Shiningby Stephen King. This one I’ve heard of. Saw the movie, never read the book. And finally there’s a worn, spiral-bound road atlas.
“Food and stories,” I say.
“Isn’t that all you need?”
I finish making dinner—just a soup with canned vegetables—and bring it out to him. We sit in silence as we eat. AsIeat. Andrew hasn’t taken a bite yet. He locks eyes with me.
“Hot,” he says, blowing on the bowl.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he says. “This will be the first hot meal I’ve had in a while.” But he’s looking at the soup like it’s a bowl full of spiders. “How is everything still working?”
I swallow a mouthful of soup. “You mean the electric?”
“I meant the water park down the street—it’s winter, what the eff, guys?” I’m starting to think Andrew will never not make a joke. “But yes, that, too. You said it’s well water, but aren’t hot water heaters natural gas?”
“There’s no gas lines out here. Everything’s electric. We used to come out for holidays. A bad thunderstorm in the summer could knock out the power for days. A snowstorm in the winter might do thesame. Driving three hours here a few times only to discover we didn’t have power was enough to give my mom a personal vendetta against nature.”
Andrew laughs and blows on a spoonful of soup.
“So she spent a shitload to change the roof tiles to solar, and there’s a battery backup that stores excess power.”
The last time we drove out here, I started wondering if my mom had sensed all this coming. Like she had some intuition that the world would eventually be wiped out by a plague and we’d have to survive out here on our own. That’s why she taught me how to hunt. Ortriedto teach me how to hunt.
Before the superflu, coming out here felt like another home, an annex of what we had in Philly. Coming out here this final time felt different, as if, because we were leaving our home in Philly forever, it severed the connection to this place. And now this place is just that. A place. It feels wrong.
“Three hours?” Andrew says, and eats a spoonful of soup. “Where was that from?”
“Philadelphia. Where were you from?”
“Connecticut.”
“You walked all the way down here from Connecticut?”
He nods and looks back at the soup as if he isn’t sure he wants to eat anymore. But then he does and says, “Winter was really bad up there. So the first nice day in January, I left.”
“You said you were alone for five months.” It’s March.
“I did, you are correct.” There’s something in his voice that makes it sound as if there’s more to the story, but I let him leave it there.
We finish dinner in silence. He still looks uncomfortable, so I askhow his leg is as I take the bowl from him. He looks at it, bites his lip, then looks up at me.
“I’m going to be honest with you, Jamison. I...” He pauses and reaches under the cushions of the sofa.
Shit. Did he hide a gun while I was in the kitchen?
He holds out two pills. “...didn’t take the pills you gave me.”
“You... Why not?”
“Because I thought you were trying to kill me?”
I glance down at the bowls in my hands. “Is that why you wouldn’t eat the soup at first?”
