Adams ladder, p.3
Adam's Ladder, page 3
The girl takes off, climbing up and over the fence with ease. Corinne smiles. Funny, she was never overly fond of children before. She thought they were too noisy, and now, even thinking that, guilt twinges in her belly.
She stretches her back again and says “Mother, abacus, xylophone, beer.”
Sixty is approaching on fast feet, and while she isn’t frail or sickly, she has the older person’s occasional aches and pains. The body betrays everyone in the end, no matter how active you are.
Before heading inside, she fills a pot from one of her rain barrels to boil atop her wood-burning stove. In warmer months, she uses the grill outside, but the late September air is cool enough now to cook in the house. After a light dinner of sweet potato bread, peach preserves, and cucumber slices, she slips on a cardigan for her nightly walk. As she fastens the buttons, she says, “Pine tree, squirrel, alphabet, locks.”
Though she closes the front door behind her, she doesn’t bother to lock it. No reason for that anymore. As she strolls through her neighborhood, she takes stock of the houses and the lawns. The old Patterson place at the end of her street is little more than a pile of charred bricks surrounded by weeds—it was struck by lightning a few years ago. Corinne watched it burn for hours, no longer expecting someone to come and help. It didn’t take long for the greedy flames to eat through the shingles and the siding, the wallpaper, and the memories of human life within.
Ivy covers almost every inch of the big house on the corner, with only a hint of cedar siding peeking through on the top floor beneath the eaves. She always loved this one and once considered moving into it because it was twice as big as her two-bedroom rancher, but when she dared make an inspection, the ghosts—crumbs on the kitchen counter next to the sink, a glass in the drainboard, a load of laundry folded atop the dryer, a grocery list stuck on the refrigerator with a cartoon cat magnet—sent her running back out, hands butterflying to her chest. Better to stay in her own home. After all, she had the roof replaced the previous summer, and the shingles supposedly had a lifetime guarantee. And her yard got more sun. More sun equaled a better garden.
On the next three streets, all running parallel to hers, most of the houses are lost within the surrounding greenery; nature is all too willing to reclaim its space. A larger road runs perpendicular and curves around another series of small streets before passing the elementary school. That road is the only way in or out of the neighborhood on land; no through-traffic is part of the reason Corinne bought her house here. Once on the main road, it’s only a short drive to a plethora of stores, although now that matters not at all. But it was a help in the early days when she stockpiled supplies, when she retained the hope that someone—the military, she assumed—would come in and put things to right. That hope died in dribs and drabs, ultimately replaced with a stoic sense of survival.
She turns down another perpendicular street, this one closer to the water, and walks down the gravel pathway leading to a small neighborhood beach and the South River beyond. Overgrown lawns, choked with weeds, sit on each side of the pathway. The roof of one of the houses collapsed by degrees; the other in one fell swoop after a storm a decade ago.
For a long while, Corinne kept the lawns tamed with her push mower, but now she worries only about the path and the small grassy area at its end. She maintains the bench in the middle of the grass as well; it’s her favorite place to watch the sun set. The grassy area slopes down to the beach, a sandy half-circle about thirty feet long and ten feet wide.
Seated on the bench, she toes the dirt below her feet. Across the river, there’s another beach, three times as large as this one and home to Silent Ones. This group currently numbers twenty-eight. They make no sign that they’re aware of her presence, but she knows they are. The children, including the dark-haired girl, are off to one side, running in circles in a game that resembles tag. The lack of chatter, of happy shrieks, no longer strikes Corinne as strange. Some of the adults are stretched out, napping; others are scurrying around the shelter they’ve built from scavenged materials—garage doors, vinyl tarps, and the like—perhaps expanding it or making repairs. From where she sits, Corinne can’t tell. For the past few days, they’ve seemed busier than usual; with the colder weather on the horizon, it makes perfect sense. In spite of the activity, the only sounds are thuds and banging. No calls to each other for assistance, not even a grunt or a whistle.
Their skin is light and dark and in between, and, as far as Corinne can tell, they treat each other the same. Most are clothed in a manner of speaking—they have old, tattered blankets over their shoulders or wrapped around their waists, but a few are naked. All have long hair, and the men are heavily bearded. Feral is the first word that comes to mind, but it isn’t right. Feral implies a sort of bestiality they don’t possess. Primitive might be the better choice. They often groom each other, and they work together when foraging for food or caring for the children. Primitive, yet peaceful. She’s never seen anything resembling a squabble, and she’s been observing them for a long time.
There are only two in the group of a similar age to Corinne; the rest are younger. She can’t help but wonder if they remember what their lives were like before everything changed. Before they changed.
If she closes her eyes, she can recall the first video. It went viral in days, even though no one understood what was happening and what it meant. People proclaimed it a joke or bizarre performance art and why not? Uploaded by an anonymous user with no mention as to where it was taken, it showed two dozen protestors holding signs that read No Fracking! and presumably chanting, although there was no audio, only the movement of their mouths. In hindsight, a frightening harbinger of what was to come.
They paced back and forth, back and forth down a generic American street, in front of a generic American office building. A woman at the end of the line dropped her sign, her face went blank, and her mouth opened and closed like a fish. She started moving her hands, as if scooping water, and the other protestors gathered around her, seemingly offering aid. There the video ended. Nearly six months later, when the swarms began, everyone realized that first protestor was most likely Patient Zero.
The affliction earned crude nicknames such as Shut the Hell Up, Captain Mute, in a nod to a Stephen King novel, or, oddly enough, Chatter. As to where it came from, no one ever knew or if they did, they kept mum. A few groups tried to claim it their creation, but they were all discredited. Others called it a natural phenomenon, a step on the evolutionary ladder. Some claimed it a disaster brought about by pollution, oil spills, the destruction of the rain forests. Those of a particularly religious bent offered the usual end of the world Judgment Day opinions.
No matter its origin, everything changed. It spread slowly at first, until the swarms began. They attacked—though that isn’t quite right because they didn’t appear to be trying to hurt anyone—those who still had words, had language, touching their mouths and bringing their hands back to their own, over and over again, as if trying to borrow or steal what they’d lost. Sooner or later, they’d give up and walk away, sometimes weeping, always soundlessly, and wringing their hands.
After the swarms came the overcrowded hospitals, the brownouts, the mandatory curfews, and then the mass suicides. Not all who plunged from bridges, cliffs, or swam into the ocean were those afflicted. A few months later, the power went off and never came back on.
She doubts she’s the only one alive who’s capable of language and sound, but after eighteen years, those who aren’t surely outnumber those who are, and probably in vast numbers. And by the time she realized how lonely, how jarring, the silence was, she’d already filled her pantry, spare bedroom, and garage with supplies, built her greenhouse, and taught herself how to preserve fruits and vegetables. She’d settled in. And she had Jacob, her neighbor, another immune, to look after. He was nearing eighty when the world changed, and he lived for five more years.
The world belongs to Silent Ones now and maybe it’s for the best. Maybe the world is better quiet. For certain, there’s no more global warming, no more melting ice caps, no more cities vomiting exhaust and chemicals into the air.
The sun begins its descent, painting the surface of the river in shifting shades of gold, and Corinne rests back against the bench, a breeze rifling through her hair. Those across the river don’t pay the same sort of attention to the sun she does, but there is a shift. The children settle down a bit and draw closer to the group. A woman begins running her fingers through their hair, picking out leaves and such. A man begins gathering wood for a fire they’ll start with a stick and friction, which is much harder to do than it appears.
Another group, larger than this one, once lived near the elementary school but none survived a particularly harsh winter two years ago. Why they don’t go indoors when there are plenty of empty buildings and houses is beyond Corinne. She doesn’t know what they comprehend and what they don’t and wishes she did, but the changes are definitely more than a lack of words and language.
“Manicure, pedicure, elephant, sex,” she says, her words soft and low.
If she establishes some sort of communication with the girl, maybe it will lead to communication with the adults, and maybe then she’ll have more of an understanding.
The sun drops below the horizon, and, as is her routine, Corinne waves before she heads down the pathway. No one waves in response, but their gazes are heavy on her retreating back.
The girl returns the next day, spying on Corinne as she runs through her afternoon chores. After about an hour, Corinne sits cross-legged on the ground near a rain barrel, about twenty feet from the lilac bush. The girl peeks from between two branches, then dips back down, out of sight.
Corinne closes her eyes and tips her face toward the sun. After a time, she glances over at the bush, and unless she’s mistaken, the girl’s now seated as well. Corinne gives a slow finger wave. The girl peers through the branches again. Corinne waves again. The branches shake as the girl rises to her feet and climbs the fence, but she doesn’t race over as fast as she did yesterday. Progress of a sort, perhaps.
“Aluminum, peroxide, squalid, bear,” Corinne says. “Bear,” she repeats, tapping her chin while a smile grows.
She keeps a bag of fabric scraps in her spare bedroom, now a storage room. She’s seen the children playing with sticks and rocks, but never toys, though there must be some lying around in decent shape. Maybe the girl will respond to a stuffed animal.
She cuts pieces of brightly colored fabric in the rough shape of a bear and sets aside other pieces to use as stuffing. Her stitches are small and neat, reminding her of a line from a movie she saw a few times. Early on, when the gas was still viable, she had a generator and played movies at night. Now, her collection of DVDs is in the attic above the garage. Her car is long gone; to free up storage space, she parked it in her neighbor’s driveway where it sits to this day, rusting away.
After a break for dinner, she returns to the bear instead of taking a walk and when it’s done, she shakes out the stiffness in her fingers. One of the bear’s ears is larger than the other and the limbs on the right side are plumper than those on the left, but all in all, it’s not too bad for a first effort.
For a long time she sits on her front porch, holding the bear loosely in her arms, while insects chatter and flit through the growing dark and bats give chase. A fox lopes down the middle of the street, its bushy tail bouncing with each step. “Butterscotch, pillow, radiation, pine,” Corinne says. The fox pauses, twitches its tail, then moves on.
The girl is sitting behind the lilac bush when Corinne comes outside after breakfast. She pretends not to notice her at first, but eventually goes back inside for the bear. The girl is there upon her return, and Corinne repeats yesterday’s action with one difference: she holds the stuffed bear against her chest.
Then she wiggles her hips and scoots a little closer to the bush. The girl remains in place. Corinne sits for a time, cuddling the bear, then scoots again. As the girl watches, Corinne continues to hold the bear and scoot until she’s about ten feet from the bush. She takes a deep breath and holds out the bear. The branches rustle as the girl scrambles toward the fence and, in a blink of the eye, she’s gone.
Corinne’s shoulders sag. “Telephone, harpsichord, battery, flu,” she whispers into the bear’s fur. After a few moments’ consideration, she leaves the bear behind the lilacs and returns inside. She checks periodically during the day and early evening, but the bear is still there each time.
After dinner, she walks to the river’s edge and sits on the beach itself, tracing patterns in the sand. Across the water, the Silent Ones go about their business. Of the dark haired girl, there’s no sign.
Before Corinne turns in for the night, she checks the lilac bush again. The stuffed bear is gone.
It’s late afternoon and she’s inside the greenhouse when the crash comes. Cucumbers fall out of her hands, but she leaves them on the ground as she runs outside, her tongue slicked bitter with panic. Her house is fine, and those around hers are intact as well. No fallen trees, no collapsed roofs, no shattered glass.
The second crash is louder than the first and it comes from the beach. She breaks into a run. Across the water, half the Silent Ones shelter has fallen. A man drags a bit of loosened tarp away to a pile off to the side. Another man pulls on a garage door, and there’s a third crash when it falls on its side. The two begin dragging it up the beach, toward the houses.
Corinne has never ventured around the inlet to their side of the river, but her curiosity is strong. The road that curves around is narrow and twisty, full of potholes and rubble. She makes her way carefully, but quickly. Maybe they’re planning to rebuild the shelter closer to the houses. Maybe they’re planning to relocate in one of the houses. That would be a definite mark of progress.
She rounds the last corner and skids to a stop. In the middle of the road, one of the men is standing, staring at Corinne, his face impassive. He takes a step toward her and then another. He holds no weapon and his arms are hanging loose at his side, fingers unclenched, but fear waltzes up her spine.
“Okay,” she says, hands out as she backs away, pulse rushing in her ears. “Okay, I’m leaving. I’ll leave you alone.”
She keeps backing away, even when he’s no longer in sight. For the first time in a long time, she locks her windows and doors before she goes to bed. But sleep eludes her and she slips from bed. From the top shelf of her closet, she removes a handgun. It belonged to her neighbor and comes in handy when she ventures out of the neighborhood—the dogs are all feral now and sometimes they need to be scared away. She leaves the gun on her nightstand, within easy reach, and climbs back in bed. Foolish, perhaps, to keep the weapon at hand, but she’s unsettled and can’t shake it off.
The morning dawns heavy with clouds and the smell of impending rain. Corinne takes enough wood inside to keep a fire burning for several days, just in case, and makes sure the tarp over the rest of the pile is secure. She locks the door behind her and pulls the curtains tightly closed so the interior of her house is swathed in shadows. She keeps the gun close at hand as well.
Mid-afternoon, the storm rolls in. It starts strong, with a deluge of rain, deep rumbles of thunder, and bright flashes of lightning, and rains all day and into the night. She sleeps in fits and starts, tossing and turning between nightmares of masked assailants.
Morning brings full sun and a bright blue sky, but Corinne’s smile fades as soon as she steps outside. There’s a thick smell of char in the air, and from her front lawn, a dark plume of smoke is visible over the roofs and trees. She thinks the fire might be across the street in one of the old shopping centers, but the proximity justifies taking a look. She won’t be able to put it out herself, but she can at least survey the damage and make sure it can’t spread, if she’s able.
She packs two days’ worth of supplies, more than she’ll need, but better to have it and not need it than the reverse. The day is warmer than it’s been with only a hint of a breeze. On her way out of the neighborhood, walking stick firmly in hand, hiking boots tightly laced, handgun in a holster on her hip, she focuses all her attention on her passage. The roads are cracked and pitted with weeds sticking up from the gaps, and one unseen pothole, one misstep, could prove disastrous.
“Calliope, grapefruit, troubadour, swing,” she says, punctuating each word with another step.
She used to leave the neighborhood once a month or so, not that there was anything to find, but she liked to keep watch, liked to remind herself that the world was larger than the small corner she occupied. She stopped not long after the girl came into her yard for the first time.
Birds sing from the trees and squirrels dart this way and that, too intent on their lives to worry about her. She pauses at the main road to take a drink of water, and a half-dozen white-tailed deer pick their way across the parking lot of an old bank on the corner. After they pass, she crosses to the middle of the road, checking left and right beforehand, for animals, not cars. Bits of white paint, the crisp edges long erased, streak the asphalt in spots.
She keeps her eye on the smoke. It’s not as near as she first feared, which is a relief, and she’s fairly certain it’s far enough away to be of no concern, even if the fire’s still burning, but since she’s made it this far, it makes no sense to turn around. And it feels good to be moving. She forgot how much she liked these trips.
She keeps going, stick tapping in rhythm with the thud of her boots. The ghosts of old shopping centers rise and fall on either side of the street. Grocery stores, frozen yogurt shops, the bookstore—that one she misses—pizza chains and Chinese restaurants—another definite miss. A good many of the buildings appear structurally intact; more than a few have unbroken windows. The signs have faded or fallen, the latter now concealed by greenery. The deer and rabbits do a remarkably good job at keeping the grass and weeds from overtaking everything, but it’s very apparent the buildings are no longer inhabited. She’s curious what another eighteen years will bring. If she’s alive to see it, that is.
