Order of the Dead (14 page)

34

From his seat in the back row, Corks was eyeing the stack of Bibles in the
corner behind Tom, and Alan followed his gaze. The stack had gotten shorter
over the years. Maybe some people were keeping up with the whole religion
thing, after all. If that was the case, they were doing it in the privacy of
their own homes and weren’t advertising.

But that was assuming that the Bibles
were being taken for their former, pre-outbreak purposes, rather than for more
practical reasons. Maybe the disappearing Bibles were used to teach children to
read, or as doorstops, or to prop up uneven table legs.

Returning his gaze to Corks’s face and
running his eyes over it, Alan felt bad for the man. Eruptions of mosquito
bites were having their red, scratchy way with his skin, and he was itching at
them from time to time, while obviously struggling to keep his hands away from
his face. It was a battle he was losing.

Senna and Alan had caught up with
Corks before the meeting, and they’d all agreed to speak to Tom about the other
night in private. Everyone was too excitable this close to market, and it was a
thing best discussed out of earshot of the likes of Larry and some of the older
folk, not to mention Nell, although she wasn’t at the meeting now.

Focus, Alan thought, stop flitting
around. His mind was all over the place, and so was his jumping knee. Senna put
a hand on it, squeezed, and for the time being, the leg stopped twitching.

The town hall meetings didn’t have an
attendance policy, and they didn’t need one. The townspeople always came unless
they had something more important to deal with, which was rare. And enough of
them were there enough of the time that town decisions, which were becoming
increasingly scarce, could be made without delay.

Today, most everyone was gathered in
the church. Notably absent were Nell Rodgers and Rad McNealy. Nell was usually
the most vocal participant at the gatherings, and Rad, her son, was a close
second, who was sometimes beat out by Larry.

Nell and Rad had made their intentions
to miss the meeting known in advance, much to the relief of many of the other
folk. Perhaps, with Nell and Rad gone, they could talk about something other
than bugs and bunkers. They couldn’t be there today because they were busy preparing
their goods for sale for market. A batch of Nell’s slurry had taken a turn for
the sour side, and she was trying to salvage what she could of it.

Alan thought of Nell’s merchandise and
swallowed, trying to push the nausea back into its hiding spot.

Before the outbreak, Virginia’s
leading cash crops had been tobacco, corn, soybeans, wheat, peanuts, apples,
cotton, potatoes, tomatoes, barley, and, recently before the apocalypse,
chickpeas, and, if we were really keeping score, weed. New Crozet still produced
these goods in amounts that were suited to the small town, with the notable
addition of bugs and insects for human consumption.

In the years before the virus took
over, entomophagy, the eating of insects, had begun to gain ground as a possible
means of curbing world hunger. The insect-eating advocates had had no idea just
how important the practice would become in the future. After the initial
outbreak and the mutations of the virus that followed, insects and honey were
the only animal products that were still safe to eat.

If the virus took the insects, all
life would end within a century, or sooner. What was it they used to say? Forty
years? Fifty? Alan couldn’t remember, but he did recall that bugs and insects
played a vital role in the ecosystem, without which all other life wouldn’t be
possible.

While he didn’t have a head for stuff
like that, Senna probably knew the precise reason. Maybe he’d ask her the next
time it came to mind, or maybe he’d think better of it.

There was some difference between
insects and bugs, too, and, again, he couldn’t remember what that was. It was a
difference in the number of legs they had, or in what they did in the environment,
or something.

Nell’s products were all high in
protein content. Protein content, protein content, protein content. Always with
the damned protein content. Senna was always harping on about how he should eat
more of Nell’s stuff because it was high in protein and he needed more protein
because he was a man and so on and so forth.

His knee bounced a time or two more,
and Larry Knapp, who was also in the front row, looked over at him and was kind
enough to offer up a dirty look. Then Larry pursed his lips and gave a slight but
unmistakably judgmental shake of his head. As usual, he looked like he’d been
into his beer cask a time or two that day.

Probably three, Alan thought.

Alan’s expression hardened, and he
stared Knapp down until the man averted his gaze, leaving Alan to stare at one
ruddy cheek.

The only products of Nell’s that Alan
usually ate and without much resistance on his part were the roasted and milled
cricket powder, which he mixed into his grits, pretending that it was some sort
of dehydrated nut powder—which flavor of nut he wasn’t sure—and honey, which
was in short supply of late. He told himself that this was adequate for his
nutritional needs, but he wasn’t sure. Who really knew that sort of thing,
anyway?

It was probably enough animal food, he
often told himself, the honey had bee parts in it, after all. And he didn’t
doubt that Nell’s other products were nutritious, they just weren’t for him.
They were just too…buggy.

Stinkbugs, for example, were plentiful
in Virginia, had an apple flavor that most of the townspeople loved, but had a
smell that he couldn’t get past. Nutrient dense protein supplements like those,
he could do without.

Just the other night he’d run into Nell
when she was taking down some of her grasshopper traps, which were tall,
standing sheets of galvanized tin roofing, their ends stuffed into old oil
drums, and with powerful lights set to shining on them at night. With the tin
roofing reflecting light into the darkness, grasshoppers were attracted into
the traps in large numbers, and landed on the upright, glowing roofing and then
slid into the old oil drums where they were captured, then harvested by Nell, then
stored, and finally fed to the townspeople.

When he’d passed by he’d given her and
her hoppers a wide berth. He knew that the jumping things and their cricket
brethren were ground up and ended up in his oatmeal and mashed potatoes on
occasion, especially when Senna snuck that stuff in there, but he didn’t want
to think about it. He squirmed in his seat briefly.

Unlike Alan, Senna loved
all
of
Nell’s products. And she would, seeing as how she and Alan had pretty much the
opposite taste in all things, except spending time with each other. Spices,
which were becoming increasingly difficult to find, would have made the insect
dishes more palatable.

Alan’s expression brightened at the
thought of spices. He glanced over at Senna and smiled inwardly, but he felt
nerves gather in his stomach, too. He knew that she’d love the gift he’d gotten
her, but that was only part of it, a small part. How she’d react to the rest,
he couldn’t know.

He’d once had a taste for earthworms,
and he’d joined the other townspeople in gathering them after the heavy rains
when the soil became so saturated that they were forced to come to the surface
or drown. The earthworms’ bodies were filled with dirt, which was removed by
soaking them in water for a day, or for shorter periods, depending on how
hungry the soaker was. Nell didn’t deal in worms, leaving it to the townspeople
to collect them after the rains and purify and prepare them on their own and as
they pleased.

The dirt didn’t ruin the earthworms’
taste, but added a sandy texture that some—though only a few in New Crozet—found
unpleasant. Alan hadn’t minded either the gritty texture or the worms’ bitter
flavor, but he couldn’t eat them anymore. His tastes had changed, or perhaps
he’d been spoiled by all the good produce the townspeople grew. Of course, Senna
loved them, especially after drying, which mellowed the bitter flavor and made
them an easy addition to a variety of dishes.

Then there were the periodical
cicadas, which lived underground for seventeen years before emerging and
molting, reproducing, and dying. They’d come out last year, and the townspeople
wouldn’t stop talking about how soft, juicy, tender, and utterly delicious they
were, and Senna, of course, had kept bringing them home and trying to get Alan
to eat them.

He was glad to be rid of them for
seventeen years. They were revolting,
objectively
revolting if you asked
him, and he didn’t like being around other people eating them. It was silly,
given his circumstances, for him to feel this way, but the idea of eating the
bugs turned his stomach. He made a mental note to avoid Nell’s tent at the
market, though he knew it would be hard to miss, as popular as it always was.

There would likely be enough people
crowding around it so he wouldn’t have to see the wares at her stall, but he
was sure to see the townspeople and other traders popping the crawlies into
their mouths, crunching, and chewing and having a grand time of it while he
tried to keep the meager contents of his belly in place.

It is what it is, Alan thought,
recalling the mantra that had been popular among lawyers before the outbreak,
often called upon when faced with an insurmountable obstacle, of pre-outbreak
proportions, that is, which often meant someone else getting the deal other
than your company, or a point or two on your term sheet not passing muster with
the other side.

Well, now it
really
fucking is
what it is, he mouthed. Settling into his seat and finally growing calmer, he
took in that he was now sitting in the most formal proceeding that
post-outbreak life had to offer. And even though no one there was wearing a
suit, that didn’t stop them from discussing matters of life and death, matters
that touched and concerned their own lives, the lives of their few children,
and the fleeting possibility of keeping the human species on the map for
another decade.

35

As if taking a cue from Alan’s ‘It is what it is,’ self-talk, Tom started the
meeting.

“I’d like to take a few minutes to
talk about the bunkers,” Tom said.

There was a collective groan from the
people seated in the nave. It was impressively well-timed, and that was unsurprising
because they’d had plenty of practice.

“That’s all we ever talk about,” muttered
Ridley Bevins, a fifty-something, former Division II basketball coach.

“Let Nell and Rad pick that back up at
the next meeting,” said Jill Glinnor, from the back pew. She was in her late
thirties, keen on Bevins—who was sitting next to her—and a former public
relations specialist. In a more former,
former,
she’d been a high school
cheerleader, and all things basketball and football had a way of loosening her
up. She’d claimed Bevins for herself, and word was she was pregnant, what with
all the bulk she’d been wearing lately, which wasn’t like her at all.

And pray to God that she is, was the
general sentiment, because someone had to do it, and most of New Crozet was
getting way past replicating age, and then what? What was the point of working
so hard at making a future possible, if there would be no offspring to live in
it and pass down the post-apocalyptic torch, the survivors’ legacy?

“We can all use a break from that talk,”
she said, “and from them.”

Tom sighed. “We all know how Nell and
Rad can be—they’ve got a lot of fire in their bellies—but they do have a point.
Now might be the right time to talk about it,
without
them. I thought we
could try to have a balanced discussion and see if there were resources we could
shift around to actually working on it, to finishing, if there were resources
who were
willing
to be shifted.”

“We
do
have to finish the
bunkers, and then make them
bigger,
” Larry Knapp said, drawing out the
words much too long. He would have shouted, but it was all he could manage right
now to keep the words from jumbling into one another. “There ain’t enough room
in what
you
people planned, even if we ever do finish building ’em. Everyone
here’s got too
happy.
Too com…com…”

He was going for ‘complacent’ but
settled on ‘comfortable.’ When he found it, the word spilled out of his mouth
in a relief-infused slur.

“
Comfortable.
It’s gonna change
again. The
virus
is gonna
change
and find a new way in and we’ll
be left out in the cold.”

And damn well fucked, he thought, but
he didn’t say it, because he didn’t want another talking-to from Tom about
being polite at the town meetings. He’d had his fill of those already from that
self-righteous prick.

Knapp grinned quite inappropriately
and added, slowly and as if it were the last verse in a mocking rhyme, “And
it’s gonna get us.”

Fuck, I didn’t want to say that, he
thought. But it felt good.
Damned
good.

“What’s the point?” Molly Samuels, a
forty-something, former secretary, said, her high-pitched voice making Alan’s
ears prick up. “Of the bunkers or any of this talk? If the virus changes or the
zombies get in and we have to hide in the bunkers, we’re done for at that
point, we’re just waiting to run out of food and die. Forget the bunkers. We
should grow more food and make more weapons so we can fight them off when they
come. We’ve been hiding long enough. We’ve got to get ready to fight again.”

“
Hiding
is what’s keeping us
alive,
”
Knapp retorted, giving a fresh coat of animus to the scowl he’d put on when
Molly first spoke up. “We can’t fight them off. When it comes to strength and
fighting they always win. They’re near invisi—invincible. We gotta figure out
new ways to
hide.
We have to use our minds, overcome them with our int-a-leck.”
He tapped on the side of his head with a finger. “int-a-leck.”

He was in better form than usual,
slurring only some of his words, and even those only partially. He did have a
thing for saying ‘int-a-leck,’ even though most of those who were even remotely
close to him were pretty sure he knew that the word was ‘intellect.’

Larry Knapp was by no means a stupid
man, his petty, callous, crude, and disagreeable nature notwithstanding.

“And we’re not even hiding,
here,
”
he cried out, putting an unusual amount of emphasis on the last word. “We’re in
plain damned sight the way I see it.
They
know where we are. But
we
don’t know where
they
are!” He thrust his finger up into the air as if
he were skewering something with it. Feeling that he’d made his point, and
quite literally having done so in jabbing his finger at the ceiling, he settled
back into his chair to bask in triumph.

“It’s an
interesting
idea,”
Corks said, scratching at an inflamed bite on the side of his face just under
his sideburn while trying to keep the derision out of his tone, “which we’ve
talked to death already. How much longer can we beat this dead horse? We don’t
have the capacity to do it, Knapp, even if we moved people away from farming
and got all the materials, and the space, remember the
space.

“There isn’t even enough room for the
facilities we’ve started on. Where would we dig the rest out? And what would
the point be, anyway? We have to farm
outside,
above ground,
regardless.
We can’t live underground. People can’t,
shouldn’t,
live underground.”

Feeling like his ears were beginning
to wilt on account of this talk, Alan shifted uncomfortably in his seat. But, let
them talk and get it out of their systems, he thought.

That was largely what these meetings
were for, anyway. Still, his demeanor slipped a little, and he groaned not
inaudibly. Senna patted his hand and then squeezed it, as if to say, ‘There,
there, only a few more minutes and then we get to go home and play.’

Virginia is for lovers indeed. They’d
been proving right the old slogan, appropriately coined in 1969, ever since
they’d met.