“Little Miss Purrfect.”
“That’s a good name.” She sat on the edge of my bed and stroked along Little Miss Purrfect’s spine. My cat arched up to meet her touch, never one to turn down pets.
“Artemis is making dinner,” she said.
“I don’t care.” I swallowed despite the rawness of my throat. The food had been meant for my mother and me, though she hadn’t been eating much lately. I’d been hoping to at least feed her some of the broth. I’d been so excited this morning to find new potatoes in the garden. Damn that black-hearted monster for ruining my harvest.
“Do you have any dollies?” the girl asked.
I studied her to see if she was serious. “No.”
“That’s too bad.”
She sighed and glanced around my room as if to make sure. She seemed younger than her age, or maybe developmentally delayed. My mother said it was common among our generation, since none of us were given a real childhood. We hadn’t had school since I was in fifth grade, and other than my one friend Lucas, there hadn’t been many chances to interact with people outside of our family. My mom had to teach us from whatever books we could find. I wondered if it was the same for this girl and the others.
“What about dresses?” she asked.
“My mother,” I began, my throat closing up again. “My mother has some in her room.”
She took off her hat and held it primly in front of her, and I saw her eyes for the first time, a shade of blue that was almost violet. “Could I have one of your mother’s dresses? Pretty please?” she asked with a polite little curtsy.
I shrugged and continued petting Little Miss Purrfect, now rumbling on my chest like a generator.
She smiled and left while I zoned out for a while, thinking about when my brother and I found Little Miss Purrfect hiding in the storm drain after a downpour. She’d been mewling pitifully, skin and bones from starvation, and only able to see out of one eye because the other one was infected. I’d begged our mom to help me nurse her back to health. She was against it at first. Food was scarce already and she didn’t want the cat dander to trigger my asthma, but I was so persistent that eventually, she came around.
I sensed another presence in my room and turned my head to find the demon lingering in the doorway. How long had he been there? My hearing hadn’t been the same since I contracted the fever. As if sensing the Devil himself were present, Little Miss Purrfect lifted her head and hissed at him. I appreciated her solidarity.
His eyes flicked from her to me again. “Food will be ready soon.”
I hadn’t noticed before, but he must have been missing a leg. Instead of a matching combat boot, there was a curved metal contraption sticking out of the bottom of his pant leg. The older girl with dark skin and braids had an arm made of metal, and the red-headed boy with freckles had a hand like a Swiss-Army knife. I knew there were a lot of amputees thanks to the fever, but we’d been so isolated out here that I hadn’t met any. I hadn’t seen another kid my age in years.
“I’m not hungry,” I told him.
His eyes flicked over me as I lay in my bed, then darted to the four corners of my room as if looking for any hidden threats. “Suit yourself. More for me.”
I rolled away from him, taking Little Miss Purrfect with me and cuddling her warm, furry body in my arms while giving him my back. Maybe he’d sink a knife into it. Maybe he already had.
* * *
I woke up sometime later,throat dry and with a throbbing headache. It was morning, judging from the weak light coming in through the window. Little Miss Purrfect was nowhere in sight, which meant someone else must have fed her.
I stood in my rumpled clothing and patted my hair, not bothering with a comb. I kept a jug of boiled water next to my bed, and I drank from it until my stomach was sloshy and full, then made my way to the bathroom. Where the toilet used to be, there was now just a big ceramic bowl with a drain at its center. My father had built an outhouse for when we needed to go number two. After relieving myself, I headed downstairs, hearing voices coming from the dining room, and found my unwanted house guests sitting around the table, discussing something in hushed tones. All but the demon.
They stopped talking when they saw me, the older girl inviting me to sit at my own table with a queenly wave of her hand.
“No thanks.”
“We need to talk,” she said, and something in her voice, her mere presence, made me think I should listen. I wondered if she was the leader of their gang, if there was a leader at all.
I took the seat across from her, where my father used to sit, remembering how we used to say our prayers every night before meals, all of us with our heads bowed. That was Before. My father contracted the fever first, bitten by a neighbor a few months after the lights went out. The hospitals were already turning people away, and they hadn’t yet set up the quarantine shelters, so my mother cared for him as the disease slowly spread. He was in a lot of pain. Nighttime was the worst. I could hear his cries from my bedroom down the hall, and I often crawled into my brother’s bed just so I wouldn’t have to be alone.
My dad shot himself in the shed before the fever could kill him. They’d told me he’d had an accident, and at the time, I believed it. It broke my mother’s heart.
Years later the table was full of chips and scrapes, and only two of the original chairs remained. The invaders had brought in a few more to make room for them all. The blonde girl left the table and came back with a bowl of soup, which she set in front of me. It was cold but it smelled good—spicy and fragrant. I ignored it.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“Introductions first. I’m Artemis,” the older girl said briskly then went around the table. The red-headed one with glasses and the metal hand was Gizmo, the tanned, muscular one who was built like a football player was Macon, and the little blonde wearing one of my mother’s dresses was Teresa. She had cinched the dress with a belt, but even still, it was too big for her slender frame, and it reminded me of when my brother and I used to dress in our father’s clothing and pretend to be grown men. With the exception of Teresa, they all looked to be about my brother’s age, a couple years older than me. They nodded cautiously in my direction. At least they weren’t as arrogant as the jerk who killed my mother.
