Meg Elison: The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

Joe was screaming but she heard nothing but a high-pitched whine.

“THE FUCKING GAS!” He was screaming it over and over, but she had to read his lips to know it. Chicken grabbed Joe and ran, pulling him along, stumbling in huge strides away from the blast.

Karen looked back over her shoulder and saw a wall of flame covering one of the buildings facing her, with gouts of fire spilling out of the lower windows where gas must have pooled before a spark ignited it. She scrambled up and ran after the men, grabbing her water bottle at the last second. She found them sheltering on the cool side of a shaded brick building. She leaned her back against the wall and drank long and deep from her bottle. When she brought it back down, she could see they were trying to talk but nobody could hear. Gesturing gave way to scratching the brick surface of the wall with a pebble.

They argued whether they were safer indoors or outdoors, whether to head for the waterfront or continue north of the peninsula. Chicken wrote out that GAS STINKS twice and then underlined it. He was sure they’d be safe if they didn’t smell it. But they hadn’t smelled it back in the street.

Karen scratched out INSIDE BETTER and then MALL?? PROB NO GAS IN MALL.

They shrugged and followed her. They walked the whole way deaf and shell-shocked, unable to hear one another.

The mall had been boarded up against looters, but the boards had been pulled loose by someone before them. It was lit inside by the skylights, but the light didn’t reach into the stores. They split up to find clothes, frustrated and tired of screaming and gesturing at each other.

DON’T GET LOST, Joe scratched into a movie poster on the wall. She gave him a thumbs-up and walked away.

Karen got a sturdy backpack at a store that sold clothes for teenage girls. She passed by the mannequins with their high, small breasts and exposed stretches of belly and thigh and felt a pang of something. Loss or disappointment, she couldn’t tell. She left that store and headed to another. None of the women’s clothes she looked at seemed durable enough. She didn’t care how she looked, she just wanted clean clothes that would stand up to what she would have to do. She thought back to her stack of scrubs, always ready to go, but they weren’t for all terrain travel, either. She loaded up wads of clean underwear in her size and got a couple of sports bras. She put one on and stuck the rest in the bag. She hadn’t had a bra on in days and she welcomed the feeling of containment and protection.

She ended up at a store for young men and found pants and shirts that fit. She put her own hoodie back on, then decided against it and pulled a thicker one off a wall display. She sat down and brushed out her hair at the accessories table before braiding it into a long plait that hung down her back. She had always worn her hair in braids at work, so much that when work friends saw her at a party she knew they’d be shocked to see it down. It was long and dark and always wavy, curly on a humid day. She pulled on a baseball cap and threaded her braid through the space above the snaps in the back. She looked in the mirror and cringed a little.

Her reflection looked alarmingly tired. Her collarbones stood up and the skin under her eyes looked too thin. She touched the spot where she’d been punched, thinking it looked a little puffy. It was sore, but not bruised. She hadn’t had makeup on in a long time and she was shocked at how unfeminine she appeared. Dehydration showed itself in her lips and she stuffed a pocket full of chapstick at the counter. The thing that bothered her most was her eyes. Her small brown eyes, where she always believed people could see who she really was if they looked close enough. They looked afraid. She looked pale, sick, hurt, and afraid. She squared her shoulders and stood up straight. She watched her reflection do it, and she tried a smile. It didn’t come together the way it should have. She looked like prey, like a mark. She’d seen that look before on women who came to the ER, bleeding from one end or the other. Nobody chooses to be a victim, but after a lifetime of practice it just happens. She wanted that look off her, now. She’d have to work on it. For a half a second, she thought of her daily professional look; a quick dash of mascara and concealer, but she couldn’t face the absurdity of it. She applied a thick coat of chapstick, working it in, stretching her lips over her teeth to crack the dry places and let the moisture in.

She came out feeling better, slinging the pack over her shoulder. She walked down toward the end of the building and saw there was a Starbucks near the boarded-up door. As she walked toward it, she tried snapping her fingers beside her ears. The right side heard nothing, but the left picked up the snap as though it was happening under water. She hoped the damage was temporary.

The coffee shop cold case was all but untouched. She sat down and drank a whole bottle of water and one of the shelf-stable coffee drinks. It was room temperature, but tasted great to her. They hadn’t agreed on a place to meet up again so she waited. When a little time had passed, she loaded up all of the fruit and nut bars and cookies from the register in her bag, took all the water and another coffee and started back. She stopped at the central staircase and looked around. She was thinking about loading her bag with the basics for first aid when she saw them.

Out of the corner of her eye, they might have been Joe and Chicken. She turned to look and saw they were four instead of two. She froze when they spotted her. One of them pointed at her and got the attention of the man next to him by swatting him backhanded on the chest. She couldn’t hear a word, but their mouths were moving. One of them dropped a length of chain he had coiled around his hand. They broke into a run headed straight toward her.

She didn’t understand what she was seeing, but instinct made her run. She was on the bottom level of the mall where the doors lead into the subway. The ground was two floors up. She took the spiral stairs two and three at a time, not stopping to look back. At the third level, she tore around a kiosk toward the door. She knew she’d have to stop to claw her way out past the boards. She looked over her shoulder and saw Joe and Chicken just steps behind. She half-heard them screaming, “GO! GO!”

She thumped the plywood with her shoulder twice before the nails popped out. The three of them slid through and the other four men followed. They ran around the corner together and Chicken flipped open a dumpster. Joe and Karen jumped in and Chicken followed nimbly, pulling the lid down on them. They waited.

Trying to breathe silently without being able to hear yourself is impossible. Karen stifled the urge to wipe the sweat off her face or change her position at all. Chicken held on to Joe with both hands, as if to hold him still. Joe held his own mouth.

They crouched there, not daring to move, for a long time. Chicken finally came up a tiny bit, pushing the lid of the dumpster with his head. He turned his neck slowly, checking both directions. Finally he stood up and flung the lid back.

“They gone. They ain’t nobody out here.” They couldn’t hear him, but they saw it in his shoulder dropping down.

Joe trembled all over from the adrenaline. When he stood up his knees creaked. He came out and stood beside Chicken. Karen climbed out on her own.

“What in the hell was that all about,” she bellowed toward them, raising both hands and looking bewildered.

Chicken’s head swiveled around to face her, ugly with rage. “That was about YOU. They wanted YOU. They saw you a girl and they decided they want to take you with them, so they run you down. We heard the noise and came running out and they decided we’re defending you, so they gonna kill us. We don’t need this shit.”