In South Portland, Brad saw a wrecked vehicle for the first time. He got out to investigate.
A woman’s curly hair pooled over the steering wheel of the compact car. The car sat with two wheels up on the curb, but had little damage where it rested against a utility pole. Brad knocked on the window even though the hood of the car was cold when he took off his glove and touched it. The curly hair still didn’t move when he knocked again.
He tugged at the handle, but the door was locked.
Farther south, Brad found a big truck in a ditch with unlocked doors. When he pulled the door open, a man in a flannel suit slumped to the side, held in place by his seat belt. The air from the truck smelled bad. The man behind the wheel had an open mouth and black, crusty holes where his eyes should have been. His tongue looked gray and swollen. Brad shut the door to the truck and walked slowly back to his own vehicle. As he drove around South Portland, he saw several more wrecked cars and although he slowed for each one, he didn’t bother to check out the people inside. From what he could see from a distance, they’d all shared the same eye-bursting fate.
Brad made his way back to the ferret house that night.
He explored his local neighborhood. Although he found no corpses—eyes burst or not—he did make several other discoveries. Right next door he liberated a round heater from a sewing room over a garage. This house also yielded two big blue cans of kerosene. The round heater drove the living room temperature of the ferret house up to eighty degrees one evening. Brad slept in his underwear that night for the first time in months.
The one thing Brad didn’t find was any other real live people. He followed tire tracks through the snow, but never found any footprints leading to a house, or saw any cars driving around. He got good at rolling up on parked cars and siphoning off their gas when he got low. Brad always remembered to leave the gas doors open on cars he drained.
Then, finally, a week after he’d moved into the ferret house, Brad walked up to the parking lot to find the boy standing next to one of the parked cars.
“Hi,” Brad said, raising a hand to the boy when he was still a few dozen yards away.
Robby lifted a hand back, but waited until Brad drew closer before he spoke.
“Do you want to come have dinner with us tonight?” Robby asked.
“Sure,” Brad said quickly. “Where?”
“You know where the Denny’s is?” Robby asked.
“The one right up there?” Brad asked. “There’s not another one, is there?”
“That’s the one,” Robby said. “We’ll be there at four.”
“Great,” Brad said. “Can I bring anything? How many people?”
“The clocks in these cars are both right,” Robby said. “You don’t need to bring anything. See you at four.”
“Excellent,” Brad said. “See you then.”
Robby turned and snaked between some parked cars, heading towards the back of the lot.
“Wait,” yelled Brad, “what’s your name?”
“I’m Rob,” he called back.
“See you tonight, Rob,” Brad said. “My name is Brad.”
Robby didn’t turn around, but lifted a hand to wave and acknowledge Brad.
BRAD CLEANED HIMSELF up the best he could. He used an outdoor turkey frying rig to heat up several gallons of water and then dragged the water inside to the bathtub. He found fresh clothes in a house behind his Dead Ferret house. The men’s clothes in the Dead Ferret house hung comically large on Brad. But, the guy who’d lived in the house behind the Dead Ferret house must have been just Brad’s size.
He bathed and shaved, amazed at how much better he felt about himself when he finished. His hair hung down over his forehead, but he managed to sweep it back with some mousse from the bathroom cabinet. Brad changed twice. He settled on a red golf shirt. It had a collar, but didn’t look too fancy. Over the shirt he wore a thin grey sweater to match his thick grey socks. He wore flannel-lined chinos which fit okay in the waist. He rolled up the cuffs so they didn’t drag when he walked. Brad finished the ensemble with a nice black jacket—zippered, but nice enough to wear indoors if it was cold.
He went upstairs to look himself over in the master bedroom’s full-length mirror. Before, he’d looked like a homeless person. Just what you’d expect in a post-apocalyptic hellscape, but not the best way to make a first impression. He preferred to look capable, together, but not too prosperous. He wanted to look able to take care of himself, but not somebody you’d envy. He’d lost a lot of weight—he saw it in his face now that he was clean-shaven. His cheeks didn’t have grooves in them, but they showed noticeable shadows where the grooves were staking out their claim. Brad reminded himself to smile a lot—smiling hid the shadows.
Brad walked up to the Denny’s. Taking a car from the lot felt cumbersome, and Brad wanted to feel unencumbered in case he wanted to get away quickly. He took his pack, loaded with survival supplies, and tucked it behind a bush about a block away from the restaurant. He got there too early—almost thirty minutes too early—so he walked around the side streets for a while. He found the local jail. It sat in a tidy brick building near the train tracks. His watch read three-fifty we he got back to the Denny’s. Brad went inside.
Two kerosene heaters—not the same as Brad’s, but the same idea—warmed the place up to about sixty. Brad took off his outer jacket and kept on the black one. It wasn’t toasty, but it was comfortable.
“Hello?” he asked the room. The only light inside came from the flames of the heaters and the late afternoon light through the windows. The door was unlocked, but someone had drilled out the lock, so it would remain forever open. One table with four chairs had a tablecloth and candles. Brad sat down and lit the candles with a book of matches he found on the table.
The swinging door from the kitchen opened and a young woman stepped into the dining room. She looked like a schoolteacher to Brad. More accurately, she looked like one of Karen’s friends—Brad couldn’t remember her name—who had taught fifth grade. Brad immediately thought of this woman as a teacher, just because of her resemblance to a woman whose name he couldn’t remember. She wore shoulder-length brown hair and a windbreaker over a bulky sweater. Both the windbreaker and the sweater hung down over her black corduroys. When she pushed through the door she looked down at her feet, and her eyes seemed buried in dark hollows. She brightened considerably when she looked up and spotted Brad at the table.
“Are you Brad?” she asked.
“Yes,” Brad said. He half rose from his seat—wanting to seem polite, but unthreatening.
She approached quickly with her hand outstretched.
“I’m Judy,” she said as she shook Brad’s hand. “Robby will be here in a bit.”
Robby entered through the front door a few seconds later. An older man followed Robby. Brad figured this guy to be in his sixties. Brad was forty-two, and hoped he could move as gracefully as this guy did when he reached that age.
“I see you’ve met Judy,” Robby said. “This is Ted,” Robby gestured at the older man. “Ted and Judy, this is Brad.”
Brad shook the older man’s hand as they all moved into position around the table.
“Judy called you ‘Robby’ just now,” Brad said to Robby. “You said your name was Rob earlier. Are you a Rob or really a Robby?”
“He prefers Rob,” Judy said. “But he only seems to answer to Robby.”
Robby smiled and blushed a little. Brad liked him more in that moment than in their previous two encounters combined. The kid had seemed too serious before, like he was trying to act like he thought an adult should.