Chapter 7: Last Rites
The oak planks we’d hauled from the shed now covered the lower halves of the front windows, nailed into the frames with a violence that had left my wrists aching. They blocked the view but not the sound. The low, wet groans from the street had become our new white noise, punctuated by the occasional shatter of glass from further down the block.
Our fortress was built. Now we were starving inside it.
Ellie’s inventory list lay on the granite, next to a half-eaten can of cold green beans. “We need protein,” she said, her voice flat. “We need batteries. And painkillers. And…” She trailed off, staring at the list as if it could magic those things into being.
“The Quick-Stop,” Mary said. She was studying a hand-drawn map on the back of an old envelope. “Three blocks east. It’s small, fewer points of entry than the big market. Likely already been hit, but there might be leftovers.”
“It’s a death trap,” I said, automatically. My engineer’s mind saw the variables: the large front windows, the single aisle making for easy ambush, the probable lack of power.
“So is staying here,” Nancy said quietly. She was sharpening a long kitchen knife on the whetstone Ellie used for her chisels. The rhythmic shhhhk-shhhhk was unnervingly calm. “We can’t live on corn and nostalgia.”
Ellie looked from Nancy’s focused face to Mary’s map, then to me. Her eyes held a grim resolve I’d only seen once before, when Nancy had broken her arm falling from a tree at twelve and we’d had to drive through a snowstorm to the ER. “We go. Together. We’re stronger as a unit.”
The decision was made. The next phase was preparation.
“We layer up,” I instructed, moving to the hall closet. “Jeans, thick sweaters. Leather jackets if you have them. It won’t stop a bite, but it might slow a tear.” I pulled out my old motorcycle jacket, the leather worn soft at the elbows.
We dressed in silence, the rustle of fabric loud in the tense kitchen. I zipped my jacket, the weight of it feeling absurdly like armor. Mary emerged from her room in dark cargo pants and a heavy canvas work shirt, her short hair tucked under a beanie.
Ellie looked at us, then at Nancy, who was lacing up sturdy boots. A faint, worn-out smile touched her lips. “You two look like you’re about to rob a bank. A very practical, lesbian bank.”
Nancy snorted, a sudden, genuine sound. “Yeah, Mom. You and Mary are giving off serious ‘tactical heist’ vibes. All you need are earpieces.”
“The earpieces are broken,” Mary deadpanned, not looking up from checking the duct tape securing her pants cuffs to her boots. “We’re using walkie-talkies from 1992.”
A laugh, brittle but real, escaped Ellie. It broke the last of the procedural tension. For a second, we were just us, getting ready for a weird, dangerous family outing.
“Alright, comedians,” I said, but I felt my own shoulders loosen a fraction. “Weapons. We’re not going out there empty-handed.”
We raided the house. It was surreal, a macabre version of picking teams for capture the flag.
I reclaimed my hammer from the bedroom floor. It felt good in my hand, its weight familiar and righteous.
Mary took the crowbar from the shed haul. Its sharp, forked end gleamed dully.
Nancy held up her sharpened chef’s knife, then looked at it critically. “I need more reach.” She swapped it for the heavy cast-iron skillet from the stove. She hefted it. “Blunt force trauma. And I can shield with it.”
Ellie bypassed the knife block entirely. She went to her studio and came back with a long, tapered woodcarving mallet, its head a smooth cylinder of hardened lignum vitae. “For driving chisels,” she said, her artist’s voice steady. “It’s weighted. It’ll crack a skull.”
The casual statement hung in the air. We were a mother, an artist, a student, an engineer. And we were standing in our kitchen armed with tools meant for building and creating, repurposed for annihilation.
My throat tightened. I looked at them—Ellie with her beautiful, serious face, Nancy trying to look brave with her frying pan, Mary calculating the swing-arc of her crowbar.
“Stick close. Move fast. No heroics,” I said, the words gravel in my mouth. “We get in, we fill the bags, we get out. If something gets between us and the door, we go through it. Together.”
We shouldered empty backpacks. Ellie had a reusable shopping bag folded in her pocket. The mundane details felt like madness.
At the barricaded front door, we paused. The groaning outside seemed to swell, a chorus of endless hunger. I put my hand on the planks we’d nailed there just days ago, now our only barrier between the sanctuary of our home and the drowning world.
Ellie’s hand found mine, her fingers threading through my sweaty ones. Nancy leaned into Mary’s side for a brief second.
“Ready?” I whispered.
No one answered. They didn’t have to. I saw it in their eyes, in the set of their jaws. The fear was there, cold and liquid in my own gut. But underneath it was something else, a current of furious, defiant love.
I began moving the heavy cabinet we’d shoved against the door. The sound of scraping wood was a roar in the quiet house. Light from the high, uncovered part of the window sliced across our determined, terrified faces.
We were leaving our fortress. We were walking into the maw.
The door swung open onto the stifling, groaning air.