Nora glances over her shoulder. One dark thought leads to another and she feels shadows creeping across her back. “Wait here a second,” she tells her brother. “I’m gonna go check outside.”
“Why?”
“To see if those things are still following us.”
“But they’re slow. We can just walk away from them.”
“Not if they trap us in a cramped building like this. And there might be more of them around here.”
“Really?” Addis’s eyes widen as if he’s never considered this, which worries Nora.
“Of course, Addy, duh. What do you think ate the brains out of all those people in the street?”
“If there’s more, where are they?”
“Couldlef he sa be anywhere. I don’t think there’s a hive in Seattle, so they’ll just be wandering around. That’s why we have to be super careful.”
“Okay.”
“Be right back.”
She jogs out into the lobby and crawls through the shattered window. The street is still motionless, just a desolate garden of sun-wrinkled corpses. Could it be that Boney and Clyde finally gave up? Went off in search of easier heists?
She hurries back to the station locker room, but her brother is not there. “Addis!” she shouts down the hall. She runs back into the lobby, then through the briefing room. “Addis!”
She finds him on the basement level, in a corner of the station they haven’t yet explored.
“Look at this,” he says, staring through the bars of a holding cell.
“I told you to wait,” she hisses at him, but something in the way he’s looking into the cell distracts her from her discipline.
“What is that?” he says, and Nora moves in behind him to see.
“Holy shit…” she whispers. In the corner of the cell sits a pile of small cubes, glittering like diamonds in their foil wrappers. “I think that’s…”
She scans the wall around the cell door, finds the lock mechanism and slips the cop’s keycard into it. The steel door unlocks with a loud clack and Nora heaves it open.
“What is it, what is it?” Addis demands, hopping on his toes.
Nora picks up one of the cubes and studies the wrapper. “Carbtein,” she reads incredulously. “Oh my God Addy this is Carbtein!”
“What’s Carbtein!”
“It’s…food. Like…super food, for soldiers and cops and stuff. Oh my God I can’t believe this.”
“What’s super food?”
“Here, just shut up and eat one.” She tears open the wrapper and hands the white cube to Addis. He regards it skeptically.
“This is food?”
“It’s like…concentrated food. They break stuff down to the basic nutrients and it just…goes right into your cells.”
Addis turns the cube in his hand, grimacing. He licks it cautiously. “It’s salty.” He nibbles a tiny bite off the corner. “But kinda sour, too.” He swallows hard, then closes his eyes and shudders. “Gross.”
Nora unwraps a cube and bites it in half. It has the texture of moist chalk, like a candy Valentine heart, but its flavor is a disorienting mix of dissonant notes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and a few that her mind can’t quite label. She concurs with her brother’s review.
“This is what we’re gonna eat?” Addis moans.
Nora is still chewing her first bite. The stuff resists her saliva; it won’t dissolve. She keeps chewing it into smaller and smaller particles until she finally convinces her throat to swallow. She gags, but when it hits her stomach she feels something remarkable. A wave of warmth spreads out from her core like she’s just taken a shot of whiskey. It will stay in her belly for hours, slowly releasing nutrients like an IV drip feed, and despite the awful taste lingering in her mouth, she smiles. Up until this moment, her plans for their future have been very small. Walk a little farther. Live a few more days. She has not allowed her mind to wander past tomorrow because tomorrow was a wall and beyond it a smothering black void she dared not approach. But a horizon has appeared.
“Eat aseft/p>
He moans again and takes a halfhearted bite.
Nora begins cramming the little foil packages into her backpack. Addis watches in dismay.
“Hey,” she says. “This is the best thing that’s ever happened to us.”
“Is not,” he mumbles.
“There’s probably two hundred cubes here! We can live off this for months!”
He groans.
“Oh so you’d rather starve?”
“Maybe.”
She stops packing and fixes him with a hard stare. She knows he’s just a seven-year-old whining about food just like any seven-year-old in any era, but she is suddenly filled with rage. “You listen to me,” she says. “We are not at Auntie’s house, okay? It is not your f**king birthday. We are dying. Do you understand that?”
Addis is quiet.
“You get a few bites to eat and you forget what starving feels like. Well I don’t. It’s my job to take care of you now and I’m doing the best I can, but I’m scared shitless and all I ever dream about is failing. So don’t you f**king tell me you’d rather starve.”
He looks at the ground. “Sorry.”
“I’ll let you know next time I find pizza and ice cream but for now let’s just try to stay alive, okay?”
He sighs and takes another bite of his cube.
“Okay,” Nora says. “Let’s go find somewhere to sleep.”