* * *
A couple hours later,we’d set up camp, distributed food, and started a fire. Artemis was on watch, and Macon pulled out a bottle of whiskey he must have looted from one of Kitten’s long-gone neighbors. This at least improved my mood. Macon passed it around, all of us taking a swig, except Gizmo, who was absorbed by the radio he’d been fiddling with all day. When the bottle reached Kitten, he swallowed, screwed up his face and almost choked, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Gross. What is that?” he asked.
“That’s Mr. Jack Daniels to you, young man,” Macon drawled. “Tennessee’s finest. Boy, did my daddy love his whiskey. He’d a sold the farm for a bottle of this stuff.” Macon raised the bottle in tribute to his late father, kissing the glass before taking another swig.
“He’s dead?” Kitten asked, peering up from underneath his long lashes.
“Yeah, the fever took him. Crazy bastard went down swinging though.” Macon frowned and passed the bottle over to me.
“My dad died too,” Kitten said. “Caught the fever, then shot himself. My brother was really angry, and my mom was sad. I was just confused because they told me he’d had an accident in the shed. I didn’t find out the truth until much later.”
“They shouldn’t have lied to you,” I said, angry on his behalf.
“They were trying to protect me, I guess. I was younger then. Are you all orphans?”
“More or less,” Macon said, glancing around at the others.
“Is that why you’re all together?” Kitten asked.
“Better than being alone. The world’s fucked up, but at least I got my homies. Ain’t that right, Cipher?” Macon nudged me, and I continued to stare at Kitten.
“That includes you too now,” I reminded him, “for as long as you’re with us.” I passed him the bottle. He took another swig and then, predictably, scrunched up his face at the whiskey’s sour bite.
Across the fire, there was a crackle of static, and the radio hummed to life. Gizmo tinkered with the back of it, screwing the panel on with one of his modified fingers, then tried tuning it to a station. The first one he found was some kind of news program, and we listened for about two minutes to the depressing state of the world—food shortages, fever hot spots, skirmishes in the west—before Macon told him to find something we could dance to. Meanwhile, Kitten had migrated to Gizmo’s side, his attention rapt as Gizmo adjusted the tuner.
How long had it been since Kitten had heard the radio or watched television? There was no power or internet outside of the major cities. The channels in D.C. were all public broadcasts, and most of the programming was from before the plague, but at least it was something.
A song came on then that Kitten and Macon recognized, and they both sang along. Then Artemis popped over to see what the noise was about, and they all started doing some silly dance routine that was popular way back when.
“Turn it up,” Kitten called with enthusiasm as he executed a cute little hop and hammer motion with one arm, face flushed from the alcohol, his curls wild. “My brother and I used to love this song.”
The three of them showed off their dance moves and I snagged another draught of whiskey, enjoying their revelry and the pleasant warmth blooming in my stomach. Teresa was making her doll dance along with them, and Gizmo was watching the three of them as if discovering a new species. Then suddenly the music cut out, which was followed by a chorus of groans. Even after shaking the radio and adjusting the batteries, Gizmo couldn’t get it to play again.
“That was fun,” Kitten said, still with an exuberant air as he dropped down to his former spot between Teresa and me. He frowned suddenly. “I shouldn’t be having fun, though. I should be sad about my mom.”
“It’ll come,” I said. “In fits and spurts and all at once until you feel like you can’t breathe, when you realize they’re gone for good and it’s just you now to carry the burden of memory, all the good times and all the bad resting on your very narrow shoulders.”
Kitten blinked, shocked silent by my sad little monologue.
“Liquor makes me melancholy,” I offered as my excuse.
“No shit,” Macon said and snatched the bottle from my hands. “You’re cut off, vibe-killer.”
Artemis went back to guarding our camp, and Macon sang a country song about drinking away your heartache. Teresa asked to play with Kitten’s hair, and he let her comb it out with her fingers until it tripled in size. The two of them giggled as she measured its height with her tiny hands, and I thought that maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to bring him along. Even the damned cat was curled up by the fire and behaving.
A little while later, after Teresa and Kitten went to bed and Gizmo retreated to his makeshift “workshop” that he’d set up under a tented tarp, Macon and I passed the bottle back and forth between us, having determined we were going to drink it to the bottom.
“What the fuck was that, Edgar Allen Woe?” Macon said about my earlier performance.
“Dunno. I was emoting.”
“Want to talk about it, man-to-man?”
He meant my family and how they died. The short answer was, the fever, the same sad song as everyone else.
“Not really.”
