The Girl in Red

Red peered out the window at the other houses sprinkled along their route. Most of them were set far back from the road as her own home was, and so it was hard to tell if there was anyone left alive inside them. She was genuinely surprised to see no abandoned cars along the side of the road. Yes, they lived in a fairly isolated area but she’d expected some sick people to try to leave town and have to stop because they were unable to drive. But there was no evidence of that.

As they got closer to town she noticed that more of the houses had no cars in their driveways, and a few of them had broken windows. Red assumed that survivors were looting for whatever was available—food, medicine, blankets. It was understandable, because people just wanted to survive. But it was also sad, sad to see someone’s castle broken open and violated, sad to see doors hanging drunkenly from their hinges or possessions strewn on the lawn. Photographs might not be useful if you were looking for food, but there was no reason to throw them around and break them, in Red’s opinion. There were plenty of ways to get what you needed without being a destructive jerk.

The number of houses increased, signaling the approach of the town proper, and with that increase came more signs of destruction, of chaos, of panic. It had been a couple of weeks since any of them had come this far, and it was difficult not to be surprised by just how much had changed.

At that time many of the businesses were closed up and several houses had appeared empty, but there was no sense of end-of-the-world-type panic—just an unusual hush that came from lack of cars and folks moving around the same space. The grocery store had still been open then, and while things were pretty picked over a general sense of decency had reigned—nobody taking the last ten gallons of milk for themselves, nobody punching anyone out for a case of water. This was a small town, after all, and in small towns everybody knew everybody. No one wanted to behave badly and be reported for this behavior to a neighbor.

So it was startling to see furniture dragged into the street where it had been set on fire, and clothing tossed all along the sidewalk. It was a shock to see broken bottles everywhere, and rusty stains along pavement that could only be blood.

Then they saw it.

In point of fact they smelled it before they saw it—a deep, gut-wrenching reek that seeped through the closed car windows and the masks they wore over their mouth and nose. It smelled like gasoline and burnt fat, like the flare-ups on a barbecue when the meat was dripping.

Mama pointed and said, “What in the name of heaven is that?”

They could see a large pile of . . . something . . . blocking the center of the street. With the sun behind it the pile was just a big black shadow, not a uniform hill but a messily stacked pyramid, one with trailing edges and uneven sides. It was tall, though, for all of that—if not a story high then close to it. Dad slowed the car down and came to a stop maybe forty or fifty feet away from it.

“Should we get out and see what it is?” Adam asked.

He sounded scared, a thing Red rarely heard from him. Adam was all bravado all the time, had been like that since he was twelve or thirteen, and he had been very unconcerned about almost everything that had happened since the Crisis began. In fact, the only thing that had resulted in something like panic from him had been the lack of reception bars on his smartphone.

“I suppose we ought to,” Dad said, his voice full of the reluctance that he clearly felt. “We have to get around it to get to Hawk’s in any case.”

“We don’t have to keep going forward,” Red said. “We can turn around and head home and figure out your supplies from what we have there. I’m sure we can pull something together.”

Mama and Dad looked at each other. Dad’s mouth twisted. “I wish it were so, Red, but our reasons for coming here are still valid.”

“What if the sporting goods store has been looted?” Red said, with a trace of desperation.

She didn’t want her mother to get out and see what was out there, not up close. She didn’t know why it was so important that Mama not see this, but it was. Her mother was sensitive, though she pretended not to be. Even though they’d all sat together watching people be terrible to each other on television (until the TV had gone off forever) this was somehow different. It was close-up. It was real, not separated from them by the glass of the television and the glare of the camera. And it wouldn’t be good for Mama to see it. It just wouldn’t.

“I guess I’ll leave the car here,” Dad said.

He sounded uncertain, which was not like him at all, and Red didn’t like that this one little jaunt into town had already made two of her family members act in ways not like themselves.

“Turn the car around before we get out,” Red said.