Susan Pfeffer - This World We Live In

Our trash bags still looked empty, so we kept on. The houses were getting more isolated, and I was glad to have Alex by my side as we searched.

I can’t say the last house we went to was going to be the last one of the day. Alex hadn’t said we should stop looking, and every half roll of toilet paper will make our lives a little bit better. Maybe we would have kept on for another hour or two.

And neither one of us noticed anything particularly different about the final house we went to. I could tell right away it wasn’t a summer house, but that didn’t mean anything.

We used Alex’s trick of throwing a few pebbles against a door and then running for cover in case anybody started shooting. No one did, so we got closer and looked through the windows for signs of life. When we thought it was safe, we tried the doors, which were locked, and threw a stone through the living room window.

The sound of shattering glass has replaced doorbells in my life.

It was Alex’s turn to stick his hand through the window and unlock it. I love breaking in, but that’s my least favorite part, since there’s a part of me that’s sure whoever owns the house is waiting to chop off my hand. I’ve had lots of nightmares about that.

But no one came at us with an ax, so we climbed in.

We both smelled death right away. It was like the mound of bodies only worse because the house was all closed up and the smell had intensified.

“Please,” I said. “Let’s go.”

“Wait outside if you want,” Alex said.

But I knew what I didn’t see would frighten me more than what I did. “I’ll be okay,” I said. I’ve told bigger lies.

Alex took my hand. I could see his was bleeding. “You cut yourself,” I said to hide the fact that I was shaking from fear and excitement at the touch of a boy’s hand.

“Just a scratch,” he said, but he pulled his hand from mine. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get blood on you.”

I nodded. Alex began walking toward the smell and I followed him.

The body was in the kitchen. Once it had been human, sitting in the chair next to where we found it. Or what remained of it, some torn clothing, a belt, some flesh and muscle, hair, bones, an eyeball. By its side was a shotgun, and lying a few feet away was a dead pit bull.

I screamed.

“Don’t look,” Alex said, but I couldn’t avert my eyes. He walked around the corpse, took a red plaid vinyl tablecloth and flung it on top. Then he held me until I stopped shaking.

“I think we’re in luck,” he said. “The dog died recently, maybe even today. It’s been eating its owner for a while now, but it finally starved to death. There’s probably dog food if we look.”

“I don’t know if Horton will eat dog food,” I said.

“Not for Horton,” Alex said. “For us.” He began searching through the kitchen cabinets. Sure enough, there were a couple of cans. Dinner, I thought, grateful that Alex hadn’t suggested we eat the dog.

“All right?” I asked, my voice sounding squeaky even to me. “Can we go now?”

“There’s more,” Alex said. “Can’t you sense it? He was protecting more than two cans of dog food.”

“But he’s dead,” I said. “Maybe he killed himself when he ran out of food.”

“Maybe,” Alex said. “But we should look around anyway. For toilet paper and diapers.”

We both knew there weren’t going to be any diapers, but I was just as happy to get out of the kitchen. We went through the house thoroughly, taking anything we could use, which wasn’t very much. Alex even went down to the cellar but came back empty-handed.

“I guess your hunch was wrong,” I said.

“I still feel it,” he said. “He would have shot his dog first if he was going to kill himself. He loved that dog.”

I knew Alex was right, because if it came to that for us, we would have killed Horton or at least let him loose. “There’s a garage,” I said. “Maybe there’s something out there.”

“Then he would have been sitting in the garage with his shotgun,” Alex said. “It’s in the house somewhere. We’re overlooking something.”

“It could be money,” I said. “Or jewelry. Things he thought were valuable.”

Alex shook his head. “The dog just died,” he said for the third time, like he was Sherlock Holmes and I was the world’s stupidest Dr. Watson. “He ate off the man for a few days and then went a few days without eating. This guy, whoever he is, died fairly recently. He knew what was valuable.”

“All right,” I said. “Where, then? We’ve looked everywhere.”

“Not in the attic,” Alex said. “Wouldn’t this house have an attic?”

“At least a crawlspace,” I said. “But I didn’t see a staircase. Maybe there’s a trapdoor.”

We went upstairs and looked through three closets before finding the trapdoor to the attic. Alex pulled on the cord, and I climbed the stairs.

There were cartons everywhere. But cartons in an attic mean nothing. Even cartons that had the names of products mean nothing. Even cartons still sealed mean nothing.

Alex followed me up. The roof was so low neither one of us could stand upright. There wasn’t much space to walk anyway, but we could move around well enough for him to pull out a penknife and cut open a Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup carton.

Inside it were twenty-four cans of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup.

“He didn’t starve to death,” I said. “How could he with all this food?”

“He was a miser,” Alex said. “You’d hear about guys like that, but I always thought they were folktales. People who stocked up when it first happened and then were so afraid of not having enough, they stopped eating what they had. You stay here. I’ll be back up in a moment.”

I had no idea why he was leaving but I didn’t care. I looked at box after glorious box. Some of the food, I knew, had gone rotten. But there was still so much. Even with ten of us there was enough food for weeks.

When Alex came back up, he had the man’s shotgun. “Just in case we need it,” he said.

“How can we get all this back home?” I asked, hoping Alex knew how to handle a shotgun. “Maybe we should move here until the food runs out.”

“The house is too small,” Alex said. “Besides, a guy like that had to have some way of getting out. He’ll have a van in the garage, or a pickup, with a little gas in the tank. Enough to get the food back to your house. I bet he has some containers as well. He was prepared. Crazy but prepared.”

“What if the garage is locked?” I asked.

“It probably is,” Alex said. “But there was a key ring on the guy’s belt.”

I remembered what the man looked like and shuddered. Not a cute, little horror movie shiver, either.

“It’s okay,” Alex said. “It’s a lot to take in. I’ll get the key and check out the garage. You stay here. It’ll be all right.” He took the shotgun with him and climbed down the stairs.

I forced myself to read the cartons, to concentrate on the miracle of black beans and beef jerky. The sight of four 20-pound bags of rice thrilled me. But I was never more relieved than when I heard Alex enter the closet.

“It’s a van,” he said. “With a quarter tank of gas. I found a couple cans of gas, too.” He shook his head. “He could have gone anywhere with two cans of gas,” he said. “He and the dog both.”

“Is it stick shift?” I asked. “I don’t know how to drive stick shift.”

“I know how,” Alex said. “You learn things on the road. How to drive. How to hot-wire. How to defend yourself.” He paused for a moment. “You’d be amazed how many cars there are with a little bit of gas left in them. You hot-wire a car and you can go twenty-five miles on fumes.”