WebWorld (1.7)

It was a sunny morning, just a little bloody, with the promise of later rain. I looked out on a horizon that was gold mixed with a truly grisly shade of red. It was a colour that soaked through the glass, flowing out over the furniture and the carpet and that dated floral wallpaper. I’d tried to sleep and failed. Zara looked a little better, she was rifling through the kitchen working out how we were going to protect ourselves on our walk. We had nothing that could realistically pass for an effective weapon – nothing that could be carried with any subtlety anyway, and it wasn’t as if either one of us knew how to use one. We weren’t gun people. We didn’t collect swords. We didn’t even have a garden that might have required cutting with a machete. Zara mused about the knives, but decided against.

She found some plastic packaging from our washing machine, and figured that would do to go over our feet. She had a drawer half full of hair ties to secure them to our ankles. In deference to some uncertain rumours about air quality we elected to wear scarfs over our faces, lined with rubber gloves for extra protection. It was makeshift and ridiculous.

Zara twirled anyway, “how do I look?”

“Like Apocalypse Barbie.”

She made a very un-Barbie-like gesture.

“Shall we do this?”

“Okay.”

It was weird going out in it. By that point it’d been close-on six weeks without having left the sanctuary of our flat. Even going into the hallway felt weird. We encountered only a handful of people, and they mostly couldn’t tell us much: had checked on a friend; gone to the dairy, found it closed and boarded up. Supermarket: closed for three days. No more stock coming in.

“Three meals,” said that long-haired guy from 5A, “between any society and a revolution. People starting to run out.”

“They’re still giving away food at the food bank on Rushmore Street.”

There were a few of our neighbours who congregated down in the main foyer. It was mostly just cracked tiling and a few benches, a few planters with leafy green plants growing in rows. A few others sat together on stairs. We nodded, waved, checked on each other. I was left with an impression of people just kinda holding on, bewildered, and caught somewhere half way between enjoying the drama and being knotted up with fear about what was going to come next.

Three meals. The guy was right about that, once those meals dried up altogether, things were going to get rough.

#

Out on the street it was weird. It was dawn-snowfall quiet, almost empty. But you could hear the dim chatter of noise from downtown. Just faraway enough that it wasn’t clear what it was. Cars still driving? Generators? Factories? It was hard to imagine most businesses still functioning, but I’d picked up a couple of rumours that some were. And a supposed black market swinging into operation to provide food, booze, cigarettes.

The air felt clear, and yet it had a tingle about it, a faint scraping against any exposed skin. My face-wrappings left my breathing laboured, but I was glad of them. I could just taste the air through the wool and rubber – it didn’t taste quite right.

“Mikey’s,” I said, “and that’s it.”

“Okay.”

It was a less scary walk than I had steeled myself for. We didn’t have to fight anyone off. We weren’t accosted. We didn’t become infested with this bizarre fungus. It was like sticky moss under our plastic feet.

Mikey’s building was a handful of blocks away. We encountered three people on the way over there. They were all together. They looked us over warily, before one called across the street, “You out for supplies?”

“To look for a friend.”

“Do you know where we can buy food?”

“No. Um. I heard maybe a food bank, Rushmore street.”

“Thanks buddy.”

Zara suggested, “You could try the Asian Food Store on Lubnick Road?”

“Hum. Maybe. Might not be open. Hey,” he was focusing on Zara, “be careful. Don’t go past the Elder-Mattis intersection if you go north. There’s a bandit group claiming it for theirs. They’ll rob you of anything you’re carrying.”

“Law of the Jungle out there,” said another. “Stay safe.”

And then the building. It was a small block of flats, only about six dwellings, stacking two on two on two. And the front door hung open like a broken tooth. As we approached, we could see the front wall graffitied, and the garden in shambles. It’d always been neat enough, maintained by a gardener, growing vegies and flowers. Now it looked as if it had been ploughed, then trampled, then ploughed again. A mix of uneven furrows, covered in weeds and debris, some tipped-over rubbish bins. A discarded shoe. A child’s dress.

Zara and I stood outside, frozen.

“It’s abandoned,” I said.

“We have to check.”

I fought down an image in my head of Mikey lying bloodied and three-days dead in his living room. I pictured walking through that gaping dark doorway into a scene strewn with bodies, either twisted and dying in violence, or enveloped in sticky white webbing, absorbed into the gum, just their eyes staring out in silent horror. A vivid imagination really stops being an asset in times of crisis.

“Stay behind me,” I said to Zara.

She snorted.

“Seriously. Please.”

I think her eyes rolled. I couldn’t quite see, since she mercifully wasn’t going to argue this today. She slid a step behind me. I wished for the kitchen knives Zara had been considering earlier. I wished for an automatic weapon or a flame thrower. Sure, if I’d had a crystal ball before all this happened: sword collecting, great hobby. A crossbow or two. But we just had each other, and we stepped into the murky hallway with our hearts in our mouths.

It was empty though. Not destroyed; though the carpet in places was newly torn, and a hole hung ragged in one wall. Mikey’s place was one floor up, so we made our way upstairs with our eyes darting, hugging walls and corners like we were acting in some cop show or other. Minus the guns. I felt as if a water pistol would have made me feel better at that point.

Mikey’s door was intact. I knocked uneasily.

“How long should we wait?”

He wasn’t answering.

Zara tried his phone, just the beeping of a disconnected number. Why though? The possibilities echoed around in my head. I reached for the doorknob and turned it slowly. It moved unhindered beneath my fingers.

Zara looked at me.

I took a breath. “Okay.”

The compact flat we walked into looked lived-in. There was furniture still there, and a coffee mug sitting on a table, sticky with what had once been a nearly finished drink. A book sat open and face down on the couch. We walked slowly, waiting for something to happen. What? For something to leap out and grab us?

“Mikey?” Zara called in a faint undertone.

Her voice threaded itself through the flat and bounced back against nothing.

She walked into the kitchen, opening cupboards and Mikey’s fridge. There were still a few things left there. Yoghurt, baked beans, coffee, lollies, rice, some vacuum-packed naan bread. I tried not to, I tried not to think about our own dwindling supplies, about how what was here might supplement them a little longer. And if Mikey was gone, and he couldn’t make use of them…? And yet what if he came back?

My shame was heightened by the way Zara looked at me, until I realised that that look in her eyes was her thinking the same thing.

“We can’t,” she said.

“No.”

“I mean, of course…” but her fingers hung near the cupboard, still hesitating, considering.

“He might still be here.”

“He hasn’t come out.”

We moved down a pencil-thin hallway, nudging open first the toilet, then the bathroom, then Mikey’s bedroom. It was thankfully a tiny little flat, it didn’t take long to stare into the murk of every room, to see nothing moving, to see no sign of our friend. His place wasn’t wrecked, nor did it look as if it had been packed up. So, where was he? His bed wasn’t made. His coat – which usually hung on a hook on the back of the door – was gone.

“This place would be way more trashed if he’d been taken,” I ventured.

“And he’s not lying dead in his bedroom or anything.”

“That’s… good.” I wanted to get out of there. I kept feeling the tug of his few food items sitting in those cupboards, wanting them, but keeping thinking to myself: yeah, but what if he comes back and we’ve stolen the last of his food?

I thought: better us than some roaming thugs.

I thought: yeah, but what if he comes back?

There was something in the distance, sounds like gunfire. Or at least… I’d never heard real gunfire. I couldn’t be sure that’s what it was. And the distance, the direction, I wasn’t too sure where it was happening.

“We should get out of here,” I said.

She hesitated. “Okay.”

But she stopped again outside the door opposite Mikey’s.

“We don’t even know who lives there.”

“They might know something.”

“They might think we’re there to rob them. They might have a shotgun.”

She looked at me wide-eyed, a look between incredulous and indulgent – really, Nate, really? – but also: you couldn’t be right, could you?  But she knocked on the door regardless, her compact fist faltering, twitching on the brink of taking the action back. She balled her keys up in the palm of her other hand.

The door took time. But at last a woman answered it. She was looking ragged and strained, her dark hair in disarray, her shirt half-tucked into loose jeans. There was a child in the background, a boy of five or six who sat cross-legged in the hall, staring like a dog, his hair sticking out at angles like his mother’s.

The woman regarded us with suspicion. She was ready to slam the door in our faces at the slightest provocation.

“Excuse me,” Zara said, “we were just wondering. Do you know the guy who lives across the hall, right there?”

“Mike.”

“Yeah. Yeah.  Hey, do you know where he is?”

She shook her head.

“Do you know if he’s all right?”

The woman said, “not really. I haven’t seen him since he went out.”

“When?”

“Three days ago.”

“Did he say anything to you?”

“He was going to get us food. He said he’d get food for us both. I didn’t want to leave Duncan,” a glance back towards the little boy, “and I didn’t want to take him out there. Mike was going to see what he could find for us. But then he didn’t come back.”

Zara swallowed. She was about to open her mouth, but then closed it, not knowing what to say next. He’s missing. But what was there to do? Who was there to call? Where was there to even start looking?

I asked anyway, “Do you know where he was going?”

“Anywhere. He didn’t say where. Just said he was going to see if he could get any groceries. He was nearly out as well.”

“He might still come back.”

I wanted to shake my head at her. He won’t. Or he would have. So, he won’t. And I thought about the food in his cupboards. I wanted to go back for it. The woman was stick-thin though, and she had that little kid. I felt sick and stupid, and kind of like a traitor. “There’s some food left in his apartment. It’s open.”

Her eyes widened.

“Not much, but some.”

“Cigarettes?” she asked.

Zara shook her head, “He didn’t smoke.”

“Yeah, no. No. Do… you…?”

“No. Sorry.”

We didn’t have anything else to do or say. It was glaring out there on the way back, and the buildings were covered in lace-like fungus. Iced with it like gingerbread. The road was like a river. Only one figure out there, a hunched man in a hooded raincoat. Searching? Food? Family? He didn’t look up as we passed.

I thought about Mikey’s kitchen, and the food stored there, all the way home. I didn’t think for more than a couple of seconds about Mikey.

 

Picture credit/discredit: author's own work