The Infinite Sea(43)

            They were running out of food. But his mother wouldn’t let him leave. It’s too dangerous. You’ll get lost. You’ll get abducted. You’ll get shot. He would argue with her. He was eight and very big for his age, the target of school-yard taunts and cruel insults since he was six. He was tough. He could handle himself. But she wouldn’t let him go. I can’t keep anything down and you could stand to lose a little weight anyway. She wasn’t being cruel; she was trying to be funny. He didn’t think it was funny, though.

            Then they were down to their last can of condensed soup and wrapper of stale crackers. He heated the soup in the fireplace, over a fire he fed with pieces of broken-up furniture and his father’s old hunting magazines. The baby ate all the crackers but said he didn’t want the soup. He wanted mac and cheese. We don’t have mac and cheese. We have soup and crackers, and that’s all we have. The baby cried and rolled on the floor in front of the fireplace, screaming for mac and cheese.

            He brought a cup of the soup to his mother. Her fever was bad. The night before, she had started throwing up the lumpy black stuff, which was the lining of her stomach mixed with blood, though he didn’t know that then. She watched him come into the room with dead, expressionless eyes, the fixed stare of the Red Death.

            What do you think you’re doing? I can’t eat that. Take it away.

            He took it away and ate it standing at the kitchen sink while his baby brother rolled on the floor and screamed and his mother sank deeper into mindlessness, the virus spreading into her brain. In the final hours, his mother would disappear. Her personality, her memory, the who of who she was, surrendering before her body. He ate the lukewarm soup and then licked the bowl clean. He would have to leave in the morning. There was no more food. He would tell his little brother to stay inside no matter what and he wouldn’t come back until he found something for them to eat.

            He snuck out the next morning. He looked in abandoned groceries and convenience stores. He looked in looted restaurants and fast-food places. He found Dumpsters reeking of decaying produce and overflowing with torn-open garbage bags where many hands before his had searched. By late afternoon, he’d found only one edible morsel: a small cake about the size of his palm, still in its plastic wrapper, underneath an empty shelf in a gas station. It was getting late; the sun was going down. He decided to go home and return the next morning. Maybe there were more cakes and other kinds of food stashed or lost and he needed to look harder.

            When he got home, the front door was ajar. He remembered closing it behind him, so he knew something was wrong. He ran inside. He called for the baby. He went room to room. He looked under beds and inside closets and in the cars that sat cold and useless in the garage. His mother called him into her room. Where had he been? The baby wouldn’t stop crying for him. He asked his mother where the baby was and she snapped at him, Can’t you hear him?

            But he heard nothing.

            He went outside and yelled the baby’s name. He checked the backyard, walked over to the neighbor’s house and banged on the door. He banged on every door on the street. Nobody answered. Either the people inside were too scared to come out or they were sick or dead or just gone. He walked several blocks one way, then several more the other way, calling his brother’s name until he was hoarse. An old woman tottered out onto her porch and screamed at him to go away; she had a gun. He went home.

            The baby was gone. He decided not to tell his mother. What would she do about it? He didn’t want her to think he was bad for leaving. He should have brought him along, but he thought it was safer at home. Your home is the safest place on Earth.

            That night, his mother called to him. Where is my baby? He told her the baby was asleep. It was the worst night yet. Bloody tissues wadded on the bed. Bloody tissues crowding the nightstand, littering the floor.

            Bring me my baby.

            He’s asleep.

            I want to see my baby.