Contaminated 2: Mercy Mode (11 page)

“We’ll have to find you some new clothes,” I say.

“Hooray!” She jumps up and down.

For a second, I think she’s being a brat, but then I see that she’s really happy. That makes me happy, too. The thought of robbing houses to get her some new jeans suddenly seems more like an adventure and less like desperate necessity.

“Mom,” I call up the stairs.

Mrs. Holly comes to the railing. “Your mother’s still sleeping, Velvet. What do you want?”

I frown. “Still sleeping? It’s late already.”

Well, it feels late. Honestly, without clocks, it’s hard to tell anymore. Mrs. Holly puts a finger to her lips.

“Yes. Shhh.”

“I’m gonna get dressed.” Opal pushes past me to head upstairs, leaving me with the dishes that I put in the sink with barely a longing glance at the dishwasher.

The puppy, which has been growing even faster than Opal, scratches at the back door to be let in. Then he tries to follow us when Opal comes downstairs and we head for the front door. “Dexter, stay.”

“Can’t he come with us? He’d be good protection.” Opal bends to give him some love.

“He can stay here. Protect Mom and Mrs. Holly,” I tell her, thinking of how annoying it will be to have to keep an eye on the dog as well as my kid sister.

Opal frowns. “But …”

“He barks at anyone who comes by. They need him here more than we do,” I remind her, and she reluctantly agrees.

“I’ll keep him.” Mrs. Holly hooks a finger through
Dexter’s collar, and he sits obediently. “You girls be careful.”

Opal does a little dance, fingers bopping from side to side as she sings. “We’re gonna get. Stuff to eat. We’re gonna get. Stuff to wear. We’re gonna get—”

“You’re gonna get. A kick in the pants,” I sing back.

“Velvet. Stop. Teasing.”

Surprised, I turn to see my mom standing halfway down the stairs. She looks tired, like she didn’t sleep at all. The circles under her eyes are dark as bruises, and her hair’s a tangled mess. She smiles, though, and holds out a piece of paper.

Opal and I share a look. I take the scrap of paper, on which she’s scrawled … a list? “What’s this?”

“We need.”

I scan it. Her handwriting is unrecognizable, a toddler’s scrawl. I can sort of make out a few words.
Soap. Candles
. But … “Mom, you wrote this?”

“We need,” she says, “these things.”

I don’t want to make her feel bad by getting too excited, but this is the most she’s done in a long time. For the first time in a while, hope leaps up inside my heart. I look at the paper, but can’t make out anything except a few letters here and there. I hug her hard and say into her ear, “I’ll see what I can do.”

SANDRA’S HOUSE, WITH ITS OVERFLOWING
basement, is the obvious place to start, because while there’s Kevin to deal with, at least I already know about him. I can make sure to avoid that room, at least until I can take Dillon with me so we can take care of Kevin’s body. It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve buried someone together. For today, with just me and Opal and our bikes, I have the old bike cart and the canvas shopping bags my mom had collected over the years. She never remembered to take them into the grocery store with her and always ended up having to buy a few more, so we have about fifty. I also have my backpack, and Opal has hers. It’s not the truck, but we’ll manage.

“How come we have to go so far away?” Opal stands up to pedal.

“We already know what’s in Sandra’s basement; we might as well start there. Plus, we should have a system. If we start toward the back and work our way forward, we can
make sure to get all the houses. Like at trick-or-treat time, remember?”

Opal laughs. “Yeah, that house back there always had the full-sized candy bars, remember?”

“But that other one gave out toothbrushes—” We both look at each other and say at the same time, “Let’s not go to that house!”

“They probably have all kinds of, like, dental floss and stuff.” Opal makes a face as she pedals, letting her bike weave slowly back and forth in front of mine as we head for the hill.

I snort softly. “Good dental hygiene’s important.”

“So’s candy,” Opal says. “And I’d rather find a bunch of that!”

Me, too, that’s the truth. It feels like ages since I got the treats from the convenience store. My mouth waters for the taste of chocolate and caramel.

“Hey, Velvet, can we stop at the ponds first?”

We park our bikes in front of the garage and go around the back. Opal dangles her feet into the water, looking at the fish. She tosses them cracker crumbs from her pocket, and I don’t scold her about wasting food, because feeding the fish is fun for her. It’s a normal thing to do, and we need normal.

“Velvet, could we eat those fish?”

I’d thought of it before, of course, but it surprises me that Opal has.

She looks at me. “I mean, if we start to run out of food, and we can’t get more from town. If we don’t find a lot of stuff in these houses, I mean. Could we? If we had to.”

I wonder how much she’s overheard. Or guessed. I shrug, looking into the murky green water. “Yes. I think we could.”

“I hope we don’t have to.”

“Me, too.”

She gives me a serious, solemn look, the corners of her mouth turned way down. “I’m scared, Velvet.”

I sit next to her at once, slipping off my shoes to let my toes dip into the water. “About what?”

She shrugs, reluctant. I wait, giving her time. I tip my face to the hot spring sun and wish we could sit there forever without ever having to talk about the things that make us afraid.

“You’re gonna laugh at me,” she says finally.

“No. I won’t. I promise.”

Opal gives me a sideways look. “I miss school.”

A bubble of laughter does try to slip out of me but I hold it back. “Your friends?”

“Yes. But also … school. What if I just never learn anything?”

She’s so sincere, so serious that my laughter fades. I put an arm around her shoulders and squeeze her close to me. We’ve fallen off with her lessons, that’s true enough. It
hadn’t seemed to matter. Not with the rest of the world falling to pieces. Now I’m sorry I didn’t think about how it might make her feel.

“We can go back to doing homework, if you want.”

She makes a face. “Ugh.”

“Opal, there’s going to be a lot of stuff for you to learn. And the best teacher is life, right?”

“That’s what Daddy used to say.” She sniffles.

“Yeah.” We sit in silence for another few minutes. Fish swim beneath our feet, occasionally nibbling at our toes.

“I’m scared about Mama, too. That they’re going to take her away, and this time, we won’t get her back. And I miss Daddy.”

“Me, too.”

“When I was in school, Jenna Simmons said her dad got killed right in the beginning. She didn’t see it, but her older brother did. He said the police used a knitting needle in his eye, but whoever did it messed up, and he died instead of just getting lobby … lobby …”

“Lobotomized. Yeah. Lots of people did.” That’s one of the things I wish I didn’t know.

Opal gives me wide eyes. “Do you think that’s what happened to Daddy?”

I should say yes, but something different slips out of me, and as soon as I say it, I know it’s the truth. “No, I don’t.”

“It would be better if we knew for sure,” Opal says.

“Yes.”

“Like when we were waiting to see if you were going to find Mama in the kennels. That was hard.”

I squeeze her again. “Yeah. It was.”

“I’m scared they’re going to take her away again. And you away. And then who will I have?” Opal bursts into tears, raw and horrible.

I hold her close, stroking her hair and rocking her the way our mom always did for us when we were little. It’s not the same, I know, but Opal clings to me as she cries and cries. I cry, too, but silently, so she doesn’t know.

“Nobody’s going to take us away.”

“You promise?” She looks at me with wet, red eyes, her nose dripping snot.

It’s wrong to promise something you can’t be sure of, but I nod, anyway. “Yes. I promise. Now c’mon. Let’s go get loaded up. I want to get back before the afternoon.”

Opal wipes her eyes and seems more cheerful when we leave the ponds behind. We go into the garage to start, wrenching open the door, which doesn’t want to open at first because it’s connected to an electric door opener. I have to yank the chain attaching it at the top, but then we roll it open. I picked the garage because I think there will be tools.

Tools can be weapons.

Once light floods the garage, though, an idea hits me so strong between the eyes, I can’t believe I never thought of it before. “The car!”

Opal’s busy looking at the bikes hanging on the rack, but looks over her shoulder at me. “Huh?”

“There’s a car here.” I actually slap my forehead, that’s how dumb I feel. “Opal, we don’t have to ride back and forth on our bikes or wait for Dillon to get home. We can use this car! Load it up, drive it back and forth.”

She laughs. “You don’t have your driver’s license.”

“Does that matter?” I snort laughter. “I’ll only be in the neighborhood. We’ll just have to be careful to avoid any patrols or anything.”

Opal looks at the car, a blue two-door Mustang. “It’s kind of fancy.”

I think of the photo of Sandra and her husband from the key ring. How happy they’d looked, the wind blowing their hair, the ocean behind them. If they had kids, they’d have been adults by now. I touch the Mustang. It’s the kind of car my dad said he’d get someday, when we were out of college. His midlife crisis, my mom would reply, but laughing, like she knew our dad would never go through one of those.

“But it’s here. And I’m sure there are other cars in the neighborhood, too. Maybe even another pickup truck. A newer one.” Dillon loves his truck because it had been his
dad’s, but it’s old and kind of falling apart. He worries about its breaking down.

“All right, well, let’s get cracking.” Opal puts her hands on her hips, and I’m reminded suddenly that even though she can be ten kinds of pain in the butt, I love that kid.

“We want tools,” I tell her. “Hammers, screwdrivers, saws. Also, any nails, screws, stuff like that. Let’s start loading up. I’m going to see if it starts.”

I have the keys on the ring. One of them fits the Mustang, which roars to life, filling the garage with noise and a blurt of stinky exhaust that has Opal running outside, waving the air in front of her nose. I turn off the ignition, something light bubbling inside me. This simple thing will change so much.

We clean out the garage of anything that seems useful. Boxes of nails and all kinds of fasteners. Tools. Rolls of duct tape.

It’s hot, sweaty work, and I wish we could listen to music while we do it. Sometimes, I miss music more than anything. Hip-hop beats, funky pop songs. The classic rock my parents liked to torture us with. I liked the Doors, hated the Who. I’d never have admitted it, but I loved Black Sabbath and Judas Priest and Metallica, too.

That’s what I sing now: “Enter Sandman.” The words surge up and out of me. Pretty soon, Opal and I are yelling the words and jumping around the garage, playing our
air guitars. She busts out a pretty good air drum solo that has me cracking up. We don’t get all the words right, but it doesn’t matter.

It’s the best I’ve felt in a long time. We sing other songs, too. Some fast, some slow, sometimes we mash them up together in our own sort of remix. The hours pass; we help ourselves to water from the kitchen sink and dig around in the basement for cans of fruit and boxes of crackers.

We’ve filled the trunk and backseat of the Mustang with just about everything I can think of that would be useful from the garage. There’s no more room, and the afternoon has worn on enough that Dillon will be home soon. I’d like to wash up and get some dinner started before he does … and, laughing, I shake my head at the domesticity of that. Of my life.

“What’s so funny?” Opal slurps juice from a can, tipping it upside down to get the last sweet drops.

“Just thinking about Dillon. How maybe I should get an apron or something to wear for when he comes home.” I roll my eyes.

Opal makes a face. “Mom never wore an apron.”

“Mom had a job that wasn’t just taking care of the house and us.”

Opal’s brows go up. “So do you! You take care of everything! And you used to have a job, Velvet. And you’ll have to get one when you turn eighteen, too.” She thinks about
this for a moment, frowning. “Yuck. I don’t want to have to be a garbage collector.”

“You might not have to be. That’s a long time off.” I ruffle her hair, which she hates and ducks away from. “And there are other jobs. You don’t have to be a sanitation engineer. You could drive a delivery truck or work in the sewage plant.”

“Ewww!” Opal wiggles around.

We both laugh, but it’s true. Those are the sorts of jobs everyone’s being forced to take on. It sobers me up kind of fast. I’ll be eighteen in a few months. Things could be really different by then.

“Put your seat belt on,” I tell her when we get in the Mustang. I turn the key, making sure my foot’s on the brake. I never got my license, but that doesn’t mean I never had any lessons.

But I never drove a car like this. It’s so easy to go fast, even in our neighborhood, with its twisting, turning roads. We roll down the windows and scream, singing again. I avoid the street with the wrecked cars, going another way home, but when we pass the street I need to turn on to in order to get to our house, I keep going.

I drive and drive, fast and slow, getting the feel of the car. The power of it. The speed. I understand now why someone would want a car like this, why it’s so much fun. We drive until I think to check the gas gauge and see it dipping to a quarter tank, but I’m not that worried.

We have an entire neighborhood to plunder, after all. There will be more gas. There will be more food. Clothes. Tools. More of everything. And we will gather it all, I think, before the winter comes.

We’ll make ourselves a fortress.

WE MAKE IT HOME BEFORE DILLON, AND I TELL
Opal to figure out what to make for dinner. I want to check on my mom. Mrs. Holly said she was sleeping again. I find her still in bed, her eyes closed.