Tabula Rasa (4 page)

“Relax. I’m not trying anything. I’m sorry for how I’ve been
today. I just can’t lose you again.”

Again? When had he lost me the first time?

Chapter Two

I wish I could say the next day felt more hopeful, that the birdsong
filling the air awakened a sense of adventure in me, but it didn’t.
I woke up sore and tired and still feeling weak. I was beginning to
wonder if I’d caught some exotic illness out here, a thought made
more terrifying by lack of hospitals.

Looking out the window of the tower, I wished it was still night so I
couldn’t see outside. Much of the park was overgrown with kudzu,
the aggressive vines winding and twisting through and around many of
the rides and shops.

It crawled over the concrete, determined to let nothing stop it in
its quest for total park domination. I had my doubts that this would
be a feasible place to stay for another year. Kudzu is like The Blob.
The humidity paired with the kudzu almost guaranteed we were in the
south.

How did I know that?

Trevor made eggs for breakfast, collected fresh from the chickens
roosting in the kiddie rides. There was no milk or orange juice, just
water. I had a feeling milk and juice were now rare luxury items as
likely to be acquired as a private jet. On the bright side, there was
some turkey bacon that had survived in the deep freezer.

“Are you cutting back the kudzu coming our way?” I asked when we
sat down in the kitchen to eat. The vines were the most pressing
thought on my mind.

Trevor gave me an odd look. “I thought you lost your memory.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“You were a botanist... before.”
Before the world went away.
“When we first got here, the kudzu problem was your first concern.”

And it still was, apparently.

“Well? Are you? You have to cut that back. Some of those vines are
heading right for the castle and could climb over the wall. If they
grow strongly enough to the top, they could cover the solar panels.
Then we’re fucked even worse.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“You’d better do it fast. That stuff grows a foot a day. In less
than a week it’ll reach the base of the castle. We need the
freezers to keep working. Speaking of which, how long will this stuff
in the freezer last?”

“Maybe another six to eight months if we’re lucky. Though I’ve
started hunting and freezing local game already, so once this stuff
starts going off, we can just start eating what I’m storing up.”

I didn’t want to think about being here with him another six to
eight months. I didn’t want to think about living here for another
six to eight days. Even six to eight hours felt awful, like arriving
at a menial job you hated, knowing you were trapped for an untenable
block of time.

“A-and the canned goods?”

“Those have about another year on them. The challenge is going to
be getting fruits and vegetables when that runs out. We may have to
survive mainly on meat and eggs. Maybe some berries. At least you
still seem to have your botany knowledge. It’ll keep us from eating
the wrong berries.”

I had the strange feeling that he was happy some of my knowledge
survived primarily because he didn’t want my amnesia cutting into
his berry foraging. What a prince.

“We don’t have running water, right?” I asked.

“That’s right.”

“So where do we... you know?”

Trevor chuckled almost as if he were enjoying this. God, was he that
petty that he was still holding some asinine grudge over whatever
we’d been fighting about before I fell and lost my memory?

“We go outside, princess.”

“Like a bear?”

“Yep.”

That sounded fucking terrible. Of all the shitty things so far, this
whole
going to the bathroom outdoors
sounded the absolute
worst.

“You’ll get used to it.”

Sure I would. Just like I’d get used to his charming company.

I laughed suddenly at the utter bizarreness of being a plant
specialist but being freaked out by too much of the great outdoors.

“What’s funny?”

“Nothing.” If I told him, I was sure he’d piss all over my tiny
inch of mirth. I was convinced I would have to carefully guard any
bit of joy I could find, or Trevor might overtake it like the kudzu
outside.

After breakfast, Trevor washed the dishes then lowered the drawbridge
so I could get out of the castle. He didn’t follow me. After I took
care of
bear business
, I wandered the park.

Kudzu crept over everything. Statuary was broken with a stone limb
here, a random nose there. Strong storms had come through, I could
tell from the slant of things, the uprooted bushes and smaller trees,
and the way they leaned. I took a closer look at the trees. With the
Kudzu and humidity, definitely the south. But there were a few palms
as well.

I bent to take a handful of dirt in a spot where the sidewalk had
broken apart. The texture was a bit sandy. Could we be near an ocean?
Not near enough to smell the salt, but hurricanes definitely could
have blown through.

If storms had blown through, how long ago? It must have been before
the world ended unless we had the luckiest set of solar panels in the
world. And how long had it taken for the well water to be okay again?
If it even had been harmed. I wasn’t sure about that. I grasped for
information just outside my supposed specialty to no avail. What I
wouldn’t give for an Internet connection and more information right
about now.

Trevor hadn’t exactly been the most forthcoming tour guide. Hell, I
didn’t even know what he’d done for a living before the solar
flares.

As I moved farther from the castle, I could see shop windows had been
broken, and on the main strip at least some looting had taken place.
It was easy enough to see the bare walls and shelves through the
gaping holes in the glass.

Maybe the drawbridge of the castle had been up when they came, and it
hadn’t been worth it to try to scale the walls. Maybe that was how
Trevor and I had found such a livable environment amongst these
modern ruins.

On one wall near an arcade, with what looked like a fortune teller’s
tent, someone had spray painted something about the fortune teller
being dead and her services no longer being needed. It sounded like
song lyrics. I was sure it was song lyrics. I strained to try to pick
out a memory of the song in my head, a melody, more lyrics, anything,
but everything was a blank. Maybe it was just clever, if not morbid,
graffiti. Just because it rhymed, didn’t make it a song. Maybe it
was some kind of street poetry.

Many of the rides already showed signs of rust. A few of them looked
as if they’d been beaten with baseball bats—some hopeless youth
taking out aggression at the world for not staying the way it was
supposed to, maybe? I wished they’d left the bats so I could take a
few swings. It would have been cathartic.

A wooden cut out of a man welcoming people to the park had been
painted over so that he looked like a monster—a ghoul or a vampire
or a zombie. It was hard to tell which one they had been going for.
Covering the sign in black spray paint were the words: “Abandon all
hope.”

What a cheery place to live. Somehow I couldn’t imagine any version
of myself that could have ever been excited about this. And if I had
been, God, how bad had my living conditions been before we found this
place?

As I reached the end of Main Street, the park began to branch into
different themed areas. On my right was a giant vampire head, his
mouth wide open to form a door. Guests were meant to walk right in
between those huge fangs to get to... above his head was a sign that
once lit up with individual letters. It said “unhouse”. A large F
was on the ground near a cluster of wildflowers that grew in
abundance throughout the park.

Not my kind of fun. Or “un” as the kids were calling it now.

Just past the fun house, haunted house, and creepy clown-themed rides
and stores, were the kiddie rides. The chickens started clucking as I
approached. A few of the hens sat on nests, while others pecked at
the bugs and worms through large cracks in the sidewalk. A rooster
gave me an aggressive stare as if to say he’d peck out my eyeballs
to keep his harem intact.

I held up my hands to let him know I had no intentions toward his
girls and wondered if such a gesture even translated across species.
How had Trevor managed to get the eggs with that rooster lurking
about? I backed away slowly until he lost interest in me and went
back to eating.

“Oww, Fuck!” I gripped the side of the kiddie ride as a sharp low
abdominal cramp hit me. Oh shit. My period. What was I going to do
about that? What
had I
been doing about that? I was too
embarrassed to bring it up with Trevor. It didn’t matter if he was
my husband. I didn’t know him.

I was relieved at least to have a passingly plausible explanation for
my feelings of weakness. Maybe it was just hormones. And I was sure
the heat and humidity weren’t helping matters.

As I wandered the park, an idea hit me, and I went in search of a
ladies’ room. I shrieked when a long slinky rodent zipped past me
inside the first bathroom I came to. Of course creatures would be
nesting in here. But on the wall was just what I expected: one of
those machines with feminine hygiene products. Fantastic.

The machines were intact, so unless someone wandering past had a
bunch of quarters on them, I might be in luck. I took apart the pipe
on one of the sinks and used it to break into the machine. It was a
lot more difficult than I expected, especially given how the metal
box on the wall was rusting out.

When it finally broke, feminine care products rained out like candy
from a piñata. I gathered everything that had spilled out like I had just found a
hoard of gold and continued on my way. I stopped in one of the gift
shops. Looted. Almost picked clean.

Whoever had been in the park before us must have been guys or the
tampons would have already been raided. Despite the shop being
savaged, I found a large shopping bag behind the register. I put my
bounty from the bathroom machine into the bag then went and collected
everything out of the other ladies’ rooms. A few of the machines
were running low or empty but most were still full.

When I got back, Trevor was in the tower reading a book. “Find
anything interesting?” he asked, indicating my bag as if I’d just
been out shopping or something.

“More creepy than interesting,” I said. I wasn’t willing to get
into a discussion about my hoarding. I took the bag to the bathroom
and stashed it under the sink and locked the bathroom door. I was
right, my period had started. I quickly took care of things and went
back out into the main suite where Trevor sat with a curious
expression on his face.

There was no way I was talking about this directly, but I did need
information. What I’d collected would last several months, but I
was sure there had to be a storeroom somewhere, probably here in the
castle. If it was in the castle, I was set and could worry about what
happened when that ran out way in the future.

“Umm, Trevor?”

He looked up from his book. “Yes, dear?”

I wished he wouldn’t call me that, but I let it go. “So, I know
we don’t have running water, but surely if there’s a stock room
in the castle, we have soap and shampoo at least.”

He seemed almost disappointed that I’d figured that out. What an
asshole.

“Yeah, there’s a stock room on the second floor. Do you want me
to go with you?”

“No. I’ve got it, thanks,” I said.

He shrugged and went back to reading.

When I reached the second floor, I found the stock room hidden away
at the end of a hallway—something I’d overlooked in my previous
exploration because it was so nondescript. I let out a relieved sigh
when I discovered the door was unlocked. Inside was a wondrous bounty
of little hotel soaps and shampoos, towels, toilet paper, paper
towels, cleaning products, and... jackpot... feminine protection.
Endless boxes of pads and tampons. It was the happiest I’d been
since waking up in that pirate ship. These were things that made me
feel halfway civilized.

I didn’t bother relocating any of it up to the tower. It was enough
that I knew it was there. And with the drawbridge coming up each
night, I didn’t have to worry someone would wander in and take
anything. I was, somehow disturbed Trevor hadn’t already shown me
this stuff. Wouldn’t he realize how important soap and shampoo and
all the rest would be to me?

Didn’t he care?

I went back up to the tower.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” he asked.

“Yeah. Where’d you get a book?” I asked. I’d been preoccupied
before but now that I was thinking about it, I couldn’t imagine
Trevor had traveled with books while the world was dying. And if he
had, he’d probably read it so many times he could have it memorized
by now.

“There were a whole bunch of them in the office below us when we
got here. We relocated them to the cabinet in the entertainment
center. Check the side without the DVDs. You might like some of them.
And without your memory, it’s all new again.”

“Yeah, thrilling. You’re such a silver lining kind of guy.”

Trevor frowned. “Are you going to be like this forever?”

“Like what?”

“Before you had that stupid fall you were optimistic, acclimating
to our life. Things were good.”

I wrinkled my nose at that. “They were so good that we had a huge
fight before the accident?”

A disturbing thought occurred to me. What if I hadn’t fallen at
all? What if he’d pushed me? What if he’d tried to kill me during
the fight? It would explain why he didn’t seem too upset about my
memory loss.

Trevor slammed his book shut and stalked out of the suite, leaving me
alone in the tower. I was hungry, but I was also exhausted, and I
didn’t want to run into him again for a while, so I lay down on the
bed for a nap.