Andrew and Aidan emerged from the kitchen, the younger one clasping a bowl of hot soup. He walked with a cautious gait, trying not to spill a drop. Travers turned his head. Aidan—the sweet little boy, kindhearted and gentle—extended the bowl with a smile. “And food too,” the man said. “I feel like I’ve hit the jackpot here.”
Travers cradled the bowl and set it down on the stone. He pulled his scarf down from his face and started devouring the soup. The expression on Aidan’s face changed from goodhearted to horror. He stepped back into Andrew’s legs, Andrew’s eyes lifting up toward Elise, his chest rising. Sean perked up. She stepped towards Aidan, her eyes locked onto Travers as the fire crackled in front of him. She walked through his shadow and then back into the light.
Travers hunched over his bowl, slurping down soup by the spoonful. “Travers,” she said. He turned his head up toward her. “Oh my goodness,” Elise said, putting a hand on her chest.
His nose and lips were blackened with frost bite and his right nostril was missing. His cheeks were chaffed so badly they appeared raw and bleeding. He shied his face away from her. “I’m sorry,” he said.
She forced her hand back to her side even though it felt much more comfortable on her chest. “It’s okay,” Elise said. “It’s okay. I’m the one who should be sorry.”
“I didn’t warn you.”
“What happened to you?” Aidan said.
She blushed. “You shouldn’t have to,” she said and turned to Andrew. “Maybe we should take Aidan upstairs. Let our guest settle in. It’s time for bed anyway.”
“What happened to your face?” Aidan said.
“Aidan,” Elise said, “go upstairs. Come on, now.”
“But, Mom—”
“But, nothing. Go.”
Andrew grabbed Aidan’s shoulders and led the reluctant boy toward the stairs. As they made their way up, Kelly came down hugging a stack of clothes. Despite his deformity, she smiled at him and placed the items on the stone hearth. “I’m Kelly,” she said.
“Travers,” he said with a gleam in his eyes. “Pleased to meet you.”
Kelly pulled back toward Michael, and Molly appeared. “The generator is going, but it’ll take a little—oh.” She stopped.
“This is Travers, Molly,” Elise said and looked down at him. “My daughter.” She said to Molly, “Would you mind going upstairs and helping Andrew put Aidan to bed?” Sean straightened his back. “Just for a little while,” she said, watching him in her peripheral.
Molly nodded and shot up the stairs, but not before glancing a few more times at their guest. When she disappeared, Travers hung his head low. “I don’t mean to scare nobody.”
“You’re fine. Do you want to get changed? We have a mudroom behind the kitchen.”
“Changing might be a hassle.”
He gripped the edges of his gloves and pulled them off, slowly, his face contorted. He gasped when they came off. Elise covered her mouth. His hands were blue and speckled with wounds where frozen patches of skin had torn away from removing his gloves. They were spotted with a dead blackness from the tips of his fingers to his palm. Half his fingers were missing.
She swallowed. “Kelly, can you please go down into the reserves and get one of the first aid kits?”
“The reserves?” Travers said.
“None of your business,” Sean said.
Kelly went to the basement. Travers removed his other glove like the first and then extended both mangled hands toward the burning fire. “This is real nice of you folks,” he said. “Real nice.”
BY MIDNIGHT, TRAVERS was dressed, showered, and covered in a thick blanket. He didn’t stray from the fire for long, as if walking away would extinguish it, and the chill would come after him again. His appearance had transformed. No longer concealed under layers, they could see the disaster had not been good to him. His skin stretched taut against his emaciated bones—his body skinnier than anyone she had ever seen before. His face had creases reserved for people a decade older. The cartilage at the top of his ears was gone, having been victim to the cold, and spots of skin on his face were permanently blackened.
Elise sat down near him. “Are you sure we can’t do anything about your hands?”
“I lost my fingers a long while ago, ma’am. You can’t bring ‘em back.”
Michael tossed another log onto the fire. Within a few minutes it was roaring. Sean sat in a chair at the back of the room, silent. His eyes showed all the signs of exhaustion, but there was an awareness there too, a penetrating stare that made her uneasy. The firelight reflected in everyone’s eyes, but the same glow made her husband look menacing. Like he was a tight, fraying cable on a bridge, moments away from snapping.
With the kids upstairs and Andrew in the spare bedroom, the adults hung around the fire, watching Travers suck down another bowl of soup and stare at the flames. Kelly rested her head on Michael’s shoulder.
Travers set the soup down and faced everyone. “This is the most unexpected welcome,” he said. “Warms my heart. Really does. I haven’t been in front of a fire for weeks.”
Sean shifted. Elise said, “You don’t have to thank us.”
“I will anyway. I don’t expect this kind of hospitality anymore.”
“Why do you say that?” Michael asked.
“Because it don’t exist, that’s why. You’re the first real person I’ve seen in probably two months. And the last person I seen wasn’t so friendly.”
“What happened?”
“Almost got shot. Man just up and fired at me for no damn reason.”
Elise asked, “Where?”
“It’s everywhere, ma’am. Nobody’s taking care of one another no more. Have y’all been here since the eruption?” Everyone nodded except for Sean, who stared Travers down, his brow furrowed and his chin lowered. “It’s something out there now. Something you don’t want to know.”
“What is?” Elise whispered.
“It’s a funny thing. People. They all wanna act like they’re all in it together—like they care. Until the storms hit and topple the—what’s the word—facade.” He smiled. “That’s how it started at first: people helping out, trying to help. Coming together. A few bad eggs tried to loot stores and things like that, but it was mostly people trying to take care of one another. But people got limits, I found. People wanted to help at first, but then the ash didn’t stop. Everyone thought it would stop after a while.”
Something creaked in the attic.
“Then the news stopped coming from out west, closer to the eruption zone. Didn’t hear a thing. Everything’s covered in ash. Didn’t stop. I think people got wise after that. Started realizing they depend on food that keeps shipping to the grocery stores, you know? But the thing is, no trucks were shipping nothing no more. Everyone rushed to the stores the day of the eruption and picked it all clean. It filled up again maybe two or three times, but then the deliveries stopped. Ain’t nobody was gonna risk it. What I heard, people took to hijacking grocery store trucks and killing the drivers and taking all the food. You believe that?
“So once there was no more food, people started getting crazy. You ever seen those videos of countries undergoing a coup, something like that? Was like that ‘cept worse. People killing each other over a can of beans. A can of beans. No police. No army. After a few weeks, there was no TV broadcast except on the emergency lines—they kept telling people to stay in their homes.”
Travers put a hand on his forehead. “After a while it wasn’t even about the food no more. I seen with my own eyes these guys pin this one girl down—she was probably twelve or thirteen, I don’t know—taking turns raping her. What’s that tell you, huh? That ain’t about food or water or surviving. It was like the chains came off, you know? As soon as there was nobody to stop them, people started doing whatever they wanted.” He dragged his hand over his mouth and rubbed his lips. “First thing you had to do was get out of the cities. That was for damn sure. That’s what I did.”