Although, if it weren’t for Teddy stumbling upon the robbery, Darla supposed they wouldn’t have noticed for a couple more hours. Did the man know their schedules? Was he watching them? Where did he come from?
It seemed unlikely that anyone from Nebraska would venture all this way to kill them through slow starvation.
Spencer marched back to Darla through the open gate with Joey on his heels.
“Wheelbarrow,” Darla said pointing to the tracks.
“Moron,” mumbled Spencer. “If it was our stash he was after, why take it all at once? If you have the element of surprise, of people not knowing you exist? Why tip your hand? He could have bought himself a week or so…you know that we’d all think Joey was just screwing up the inventory.”
Joey scrunched his nose. “Hey now,” he challenged, but then he met Spencer’s gaze and shrugged. “Whatever, man.” He bounced anxiously on the balls of his feet.
“Maybe he’s planning on leaving the area?”
“He will if he’s smart,” Spencer said. He hacked and spit a mucousy stream of saliva to the ground.
Joey fidgeted with the gun at his side and looked between Spencer and Darla in turn. “He can’t be far, right? We can find him. Let’s go. Let’s take off—a couple of us in each direction.”
“He’s gone,” Darla said matter-of-factly. “And he has everything we need with him.” She kicked the grass and swore under her breath. They’d survived without devastating hardship—cold meals, no showers—because they had food and water. Now, every day would become about scrounging for sustenance and nothing more; they were about to feel the pain of this existence in the most visceral way possible: hunger. Thirst.
“In words hardly ever spoken,” Spencer said, “I think Joey’s right. We know these neighborhoods; there’s no way someone took off on foot with all our supplies…and a car or a truck only gets you so far. Any of the major roads are still blocked.”
“We have to try. That’s everything we have,” Joey whined.
Darla closed her eyes for a second and then sighed. “He knew the stash was here. Right?” The men nodded. “And he knew we were here. He had a car…that we didn’t hear…”
“He parked it a block away. Left it running?”
“How did we not hear that?” She looked to the ground, ruminating on all the ways this was even possible. “Okay. We split up.” She looked up and checked her weapon and then started marching toward the front.
“Hold up!” Spencer called to her back. “Who’s with who?”
Darla spun and rolled her eyes. “You two, head west. I’ll head east.”
“By yourself? You want us to grab Gloria? Ainsley?” Joey asked. He took a step back toward the porch. “The man could be dangerous.”
She smirked and rolled her eyes. “Please, boys. Please. If he’s dangerous, I’m better off by myself. I don’t have time to find a thief and babysit.” And with that, she jogged out toward the front of the house, her gun drawn, and on high alert for anything that seemed out of place.
The bodies in the yards were even more disgusting as time passed. Skin rotted away to reveal gelatinous insides, some of which spilled out into pools on the ground. All over the neighborhood the stink of death and rot drifted with the wind; but the King House crew had become accustomed to the smell, and only occasionally did the odor elicit any response. Darla had traversed the neighborhood, the offshoots of the subdivision, many times.
She knew each unmoved landmark: Car driven into garage at ten o’clock. Body of man in pajamas on upstairs balcony straight ahead. The blue Volvo with the door open would appear on the next block. Right next to the house that burned down, an abandoned fire truck, its lights long dead, still sitting outside. The hose tangled forward and never retracted, the bodies of the firefighters MIA.
Many of the homes had been searched for supplies. The dead did not need cereal boxes and canned goods. They didn’t need their flashlights or their supplies of Ibuprofen. Darla never judged the homes she raided. A house four blocks away from the Kings sported an obese man who died in his bathtub. Naked and forever at rest in discolored water. Six homes down from the naked man was a beautiful, well-landscaped bungalow that turned out to be owned by a hoarder. Darla didn’t make it five feet into the house before unleashing a terrible avalanche of boxes and paper bags filled with garbage.
The lives of the dead were not interesting to her. She didn’t care what they were reading when they died. She didn’t care if they were alone or if a family died together. She noticed, but didn’t care, if there were animals left unburied, or tributes to animals who passed before their owners—immortalized for their short lives before anyone realized that they would follow closely behind.
No, Darla only cared if the dead had something to offer her.
Scanning the street, Darla saw nothing out of the ordinary. Nor did she hear a car or a truck. The distinct roll of an engine was absent. She ambled in the open, unafraid, for she was convinced that the new owner of their non-perishable supplies would not be stupid enough to stay where he could be found.
She checked each vehicle with her memory. Black mini-van at green house, unmoved. Red truck at tan house. Unmoved.
Then Darla stopped.
A rumble. White noise, but distinct. A car was running and from somewhere relatively close. The strange noise called to her and she tried to place it. Darla wandered through a yard, waltzing past an uncovered boat, the house with the open slider, the family of four all together in one of the back bathrooms, like they were hunkering down for a tornado instead of a virus. She emerged on one of the next streets over and scanned the familiar landmarks.
Darla froze.
She looked down at the ground and then back up again, as if the truck with its small utility trailer attached to the hitch was just a figment of her imagination. Four houses down, the truck idled. It couldn’t be real. But there it was—the door on the trailer raised up halfway and the inside fully stocked with their stolen food. Opening and closing her mouth like a fish, shocked that it would just be sitting here out in the open, Darla adopted a steady stance and brought her right arm straight out in front of her; her gun trained at the back of the trailer.
Then she lowered her gun and took three giant steps to the side to get a better look. Darla’s mouth dropped open and she let out an involuntary gasp of surprise.
“You’ve got to me kidding me,” she scoffed. And then she felt like a fool for not thinking of it sooner. How had they not assumed it before? How could the possibility have eluded them? “Of course.”
Written in swoopy letters across the side was: From Up Above Tours. Beautiful Adventures Daily.
From inside a two-story house, Darla saw a rustle of curtains, and so she waited. After a few more minutes, a tall man emerged carrying a case of beer and nothing else. He whistled as he walked, moving his small haul with ease, and unaware that he was being watched. It was easy to see the resemblance even from a distance—the same sandy-blonde hair, the same lumbering gait. He sported no gun that Darla could see and she knew that shooting at him would be like firing upon a sitting duck.
Still, the duck stole their food.
She was conflicted.
The man tossed the beer into the back of the utility trailer and then closed the door, taking the time to latch it closed. Then as he started to walk back to the bed of the truck, Darla took long strides forward. Still, he had not noticed her. Darla realized that she was not dealing with a brave mastermind; she was fairly certain this overlooked member of their community was just an inept thief.