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.
You might make him sick.
She cursed him. She told him to go to hell. She spat bloody phlegm at him. He stood in the doorway, hands nervously fiddling in his pockets, and the cake wrapper crackled, the plastic damaged by the heat.
Where have you been?
Looking for food.
She gagged. Don’t say that word!
Watching him with bright red, bloody eyes.
Why were you looking for food? You don’t need any food. You’re the most disgusting piece of pig lard I’ve ever seen. You could live till winter on just your belly fat.
He didn’t say anything. He knew it was the plague talking, not his mother. His mother loved him. When the teasing at school got bad, she went to the principal and said she would file a lawsuit if the bullying didn’t stop.
What’s that noise? What’s that horrible noise?
He told her he didn’t hear anything. She got very angry. She started to curse again and bloody spittle spattered on the headboard.
It’s coming from you. What are you playing with in your pocket?
There was nothing he could do. He had to show her. He pulled out the cake and she screamed for him to put it away and never take it out again. No wonder he was so fat. No wonder his baby brother was starving while he ate cakes and candies and all the mac and cheese. What sort of monster was he that he ate all his baby brother’s mac and cheese?
He tried to defend himself. But every time he started talking, she screamed at him to shut up, shut up, shut UP. His voice made her sick. He made her sick. He did it. He did something to her husband and he did something to his baby brother and he did something to her, made her sick, poisoned her, he was poisoning her.
And every time he tried to speak, she screamed at him. Shut up, shut up, shut UP.
She died two days later.
He wrapped her in a clean sheet and carried her body into the backyard. He doused the body with his father’s charcoal lighter fluid and set it on fire. He burned his mother’s body and all the bedding, too. He waited another week for his baby brother to come home, but he never did. He searched for him—and for food. He found food, but not his brother. He stopped calling for him. He stopped talking altogether. He shut up.
Six weeks later, he was walking down a highway dotted with stalled-out cars and wrecks of cars and trucks and motorcycles when he saw black smoke in the distance and, after a few minutes, the source of the smoke, a yellow school bus full of children. There were soldiers on the bus and the soldiers asked his name and where he was from and how old he was, and later he remembered nervously stuffing his hands in his pockets and finding the old piece of cake, still in its wrapper.
Pig lard. Live till winter on your belly fat.