The End of the World As They Knew It
They used to have a big family. Wendy remembered that there had always been a lot of people around. She used to have to search to find someplace to be alone, most times ending up crawling under the couch in the small space that only she could fit in. She would hide in her couch "fort" and eat pilfered cheese and crackers that she didn’t have to share with her siblings.
Even before everything Went Bad, there had been a lot of times where they didn’t have enough to eat. All the Bad Stuff happening only meant there was less to eat. Less people, but also less food. There were lots of times where she was so hungry, but all she could do was lie down and go to sleep. She felt less hungry when she was asleep.
Now there was just her, her two years older sister Amalia, her three years older sister Stella, and her five years older brother Daniel. Their parents and two brothers and four sisters… were gone. (Dead. She knew what dead was. She just didn’t like to think of the word and what it meant.)
Daniel was the oldest one left and he was in charge. He was twelve years old, almost a teenager, and he was in charge.
He led them around to scavenge food and supplies from the surrounding area. The local grocery store had already been cleared out by the strangers that had passed through in a big pickup truck. They had watched all the food being taken away, but Daniel had forced them to stay quiet and small, because the people that had taken everything had been bigger and stronger and carried guns.
Daniel had held his hand over Wendy’s mouth, and his breath had been smelly against her face as he’d whispered for his sisters to be quiet. "We don’t know who they are. They look dangerous. What if they eat little kids?"
They’d watched all the food being taken away, and they’d hid and waited until the truck was long gone. And after that the only way they could survive was to go in and out of the neighboring houses, hauling what they could back home using a child’s plastic wagon that someone had hand painted with clumsy looking flowers and leaves.
First they took the foods they recognized, along with blankets and tools. Then when the recognizable food was gone, they had to start puzzling out what other things were.
Their parents had called themselves unschoolers, which meant Wendy and her siblings got to stay home and teach themselves whatever they wanted to learn. Mama had said that there was plenty of time to learn how to read in the future if they ever wanted to. Learning to read was easy, they could do it later when they were grown up and wanted to get jobs and do boring things like reading books and filing paperwork.
But now, for the first time in her young life, Wendy really wished that she knew how to read.
Because after they’d gathered all the food they recognized, they were stuck now trying to figure out what other things were. Who would have thought that there were so many cans and boxes that didn’t have pictures on them?
Last night they’d opened a can of what they’d thought would be chicken noodle soup but turned out to be graying white goop with black and gray bits in it. Daniel had recognized it as mushroom soup, and they’d heated it over the propane stove and eaten it with little hexagonal crackers they’d found in a glass canister in their four houses down neighbor’s house.
That was another thing that made it hard for them. A lot of people didn’t leave their food in their original containers. There were pantries full of plastic and glass bottles and canisters holding pasta and oats and rice and weird brown grain bits that were so hard they made Wendy’s teeth hurt.
Today they were inside the house of their six houses down neighbor. Daniel had broken the backdoor window and used a twisted wire hanger to reach inside and unlock the door.
Amalia and Stella were going in and out of the bedrooms to find blankets and warm clothes because winter was coming. Daniel was in the pantry, and Wendy was going through the kitchen cabinets. All four of them were supposed to keep an eye out for any spare propane bottles.
Wendy climbed up on the counter using a step ladder she’d found and walked back and forth opening the cabinet doors to peer inside. Dishes in one, pill bottles in another, a cabinet full of cooking spices and bottles of vegetable oil. She was disappointed that she hadn’t found anything good like old Halloween candy or bottles of sweet juice.
Then in a lonely side cabinet she found a glass jar all alone. It was full of what she thought might be sugar, but the lid was screwed on so tight that she couldn’t open it to check. There was a strip of freezer tape on the side of the bottle, but she didn’t know what the black Sharpie words said.
Cradling the jar against her chest, she carefully climbed down off the counter and ran toward the pantry.
"Daniel! Daniel! I found something!" she called.
Daniel had a black garbage bag he was putting things into, but there didn’t seem to be much. The home owners must not have gone to the grocery store in a while.
"What did you find?" he asked.
Wendy shrugged. "I don’t know. It was in one of the cabinets. What does it say?" she asked, holding the jar out.
Daniel squinted at the label, biting his lip. "Um. That’s a R, and that’s a O, and that’s a… P? And that’s a… a 3, and that’s a M, and that’s a T, I know T, and that’s a 1, and that’s a C, and another 1, and another P, and a 3."
"But what does it say?" Wendy asked, frustrated. Daniel was the best reader amongst them, but there were a lot of words he didn’t know. It made her mad because she knew even less words but really wanted to know them all.
Daniel’s lips moved and his eyes were extra shiny, but he didn’t cry. "I… I don’t know." He pursed his lips, then used all his strength to unscrew the lid. The powder shifted around inside the jar, alluring in its mystery.
"Is it sugar?" Wendy asked, licking her lips. They’d found a lot of unfamiliar powders and syrupy liquids that had turned out to be different kinds of sugar, including some dark brown "syrup" that had turned out to be honey. It had tasted so good on the last bits of unmoldy bread they’d found.
"I don’t know. Let me see," Daniel said. He licked his forefinger and dipped it into the powder. He sniffed it then carefully licked. "Oh, it’s sweet! I think it’s one of those fake sugars. I like this. We’ll take it back." He started to close the jar.
"Wait! Let me taste it too," Wendy pleaded.
Daniel sighed but proffered the jar toward his little sister. "One taste"
Wendy smiled and licked her finger. "Okay!"
Neither child recognized the word written prominently on the side of the jar. Thick black capital letters written clearly so no one could misunderstand the contents inside: RODENTICIDE
=END=
~Harper Kingsley
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