But some of the boxes have little holes eaten through them on the bottom. Which isn’t surprising considering the small brown droppings and crumbs all over the back room. Mice or rats. Possibly squirrels. But the poor fox wasn’t able to get in. Maybe it just waited for all the other rodents to fatten themselves up before eating them. At least now with the door smashed open, they can have all the pantry-moth-eaten food their little heart desires.
There’s a rusty metal tread plate door in the middle of the back room next to a desk stacked with order forms and invoices. Cal leans down and pulls on the metal handle. The hinges squeal and rust flakes off.
A set of steep wooden stairs leads down to a damp-smelling basement. I look back at the boxes against the wall behind us. I don’t see why someone would carry heavy boxes down these basement stairs if they were using the back room as storage. And it’s not like this town has many options for “supermarkets,” so I’d assume the owner knew exactly what kind of food to order and how much per week.
Still, I follow as Cal leads the way.
The basement is pitch-black and the rotten scent gets stronger. I shiver at the familiar sweet, putrid smell. There’s something dead down here. My chest tightens, and I’d sprint back up the stairs if my legs could move, but they can’t. The light in my hand dims and bloodpumps through my ears in a cacophonous whoosh.
“More light, Jamie,” Cal says. It shakes me from my paralysis, and I pump the light, trying to focus on that instead of on the dark around me. Or on the imaginary skeletons lurking in the dark, the people, the animals, or any other things that are waiting to scurry across my feet or graze the back of my neck.
I realize I’m still pumping the flashlight but it’s not getting any brighter.
Cal is looking at me. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Claustrophobic,” I say, which isn’t entirely a lie. I’m scared of the darkandclaustrophobic. The dark is less of an issue when I’m outside, but even if I have to pee at night, I won’t go far from the fire. And if the fire is too low, I’ll hold it till morning.
“Let me distract you, then,” he says, turning back into the basement and waving away the spiderwebs refracting the LED light in the dark. “Do you think you’ll all come along with us tomorrow?”
That is a good distraction, actually. Because I want to vote no, but I’m not sure how Andrew will feel about it. Yes, these people have been helpful, and they seem trustworthy. If they’re not, I shouldn’t be following Cal into a dark basement in middle-of-nowhere Florida. But my plan is still to get Amy and Henri-Two back to Henri in Bethesda and then go to the cabin with Andrew, though I’m not sure he’ll leave everyone else. If we could convince them all to go with the Nomads, then maybe me, Cara, Andrew, Amy, and Henri-Two can continue on our own. It would be easier, just the four of us taking turns holding Henri-Two. We wouldn’t have to find as much food, stop as much, rest for as long.
And if we find antibiotics and food, we can prioritize ourselves. But I’ll be honest, I will miss a few of the others—specifically Daphne, Taylor, and the Kid.
I know it’s the best solution for us. I just don’t think Andrew will go for it.
“I’m not sure,” I say. And the distraction kind of works because now I’m not freaking out about the dark, I’m freaking out about Andrew and me and trying to figure out what’s next for us.
“Holy shit,” Cal says. I focus the flashlight to his right. There’s a ceiling-high shelf that goes all the way toward the front of the store, and on the left is another similar line of shelves, creating an aisle. They’re all filled with non-exploded canned food. The basement is damp and a lot cooler than upstairs. It must not have gotten as hot through the warm summer months.
Though I still don’t get why they’d stock shelves down here instead of keeping the cans in boxes in the back room.
Cal calls up the rickety stairs, “Hey! Get down here and turn on your flashlights!”
I’m checking out the cans on the shelves when the others come down, flicking on their lights. The extra light makes me feel a little more comforted. Everyone whoops in excitement and starts to load up their bags.
“Get a couple boxes we can fill and put in the truck,” Cal tells one of them. “We’ll take what we can today, then we’ll come back with the whole crew tomorrow and empty the place.”
If we split off from them, they’d come back without us. I put my bags down at the end of the row that’s toward the front of the storeand start loading up. But the flashlight reflects off something metallic on the other side of the shelf. I shine the light in and see another room. More food maybe. But then that sweet, rotten smell reminds me there’s something else down here. A body or some animal that came down here and died.
My imagination runs wild with every possible thing that could be in that room. A rabid dog, foaming at the mouth and hiding in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to pounce. Thousands of rats cramped together and tangled into a giant, rotten rat king. A shallow eel pit that’s filled with cannibalistic eels hoping for something else to eat.
Around the corner is a small plywood wall with a makeshift pressboard door on old hinges. Slowly I pull it open, pointing my flashlight at the ground in case anything crawls out. But nothing does. When I step inside, the smell of rot grows much stronger.
I point the flashlight to my left and let out a startled cry.
The others call out to me, asking if I’m okay.
“Yeah.”
It’s no eel pit. There’s a metal cot in this room. The body on it has probably been dead for well over a year, and all that’s left is bone, dried tissue, and clothes. Cal appears in the doorway, along with the woman. She points the flashlight at the body, and I can see it’s curled up in the fetal position. There are dried, oily stains on the cot and basement floor next to some opened canned food.
A flu victim. They probably shut themselves down here as soon as they heard about the superflu, thinking they could ride it out as long as they didn’t have contact with anyone. But that clearly wasn’t thecase. The way it infected people, it didn’t matter how secluded you were. If you weren’t immune, you got it.
“Jesus Christ.” Cal points the flashlight at the far wall. There are about nine military-style automatic rifles hung on the walls. All of them framing a dusty, weatherworn Nazi flag.
“Finally, we have proof of the flu doing something right in the world,” one of the Nomads says. “Adios, Nazi.”
It feels weird seeing a Nazi flag in person. And it doesn’t make my chest feel any less tight.
