Amanda Leduc - The Centaur's Wife

“We should have a lost and found,” Elyse says. “We could keep it somewhere central. Maybe by the sign in the square?”

She heads deeper into the darker hallways, where Tasha and Annie have already been, and Tasha calls out, “Don’t go any further.”

Elyse stops, turns to them. “But—there might be more stuff in those rooms. And what if there are… people? Shouldn’t we be looking?”

“We’ve looked. You don’t need to go in there.” Annie’s voice is firm.

Elyse’s face trembles. She closes her eyes. Annie goes to her, puts an arm around her shoulder. “If anyone was still alive under the rubble, we would have heard them by now,” she says. “They would be trying to make noise. Have you heard anything?”

What’s left of the hospital is silent and dead.

On another day, they search a school. It was empty when the meteors hit and sustained little damage—but the pipes have burst here, too, and books bob softly in the hallways. They squelch through the corridors and take what they can.

“Won’t the kids need these things when they come back?” Elyse asks, after they’ve trudged outside yet again with their arms full of books and dropped them on the grass.

Tasha and Annie glance at one another.

“I think,” Tasha says, carefully, “we can assume that won’t be for a while.”

Elyse stares at her. “But—you said help will come.”

Tasha nods. “And I think it will. It just might take longer than anyone expects.”

Elyse nods at this, slowly. “There must be places that weren’t hit as bad.”

“Of course,” Tasha says. “But they might be on the other side of the world. We need to take care of ourselves, and prepare for the future as best we can. If for nothing other than to keep people busy. I don’t want anyone to worry any more than they have to, and the best thing for that is to give people something to do.”

“Okay,” Elyse says. She goes back to organizing the books.

It is helpful, the repetition—bottles in boxes and boxes in boxes and this food goes here and let’s gather blankets and keep them all in one central place so that no one stops to think about the fact that there is no one in the pharmacy, there is no one at the bank, there is no power, there is no news from elsewhere.

She and Annie have help, for which Tasha is more grateful than she can say. Kevin from the fire trucks, other paramedics from their old seaside city. Brendan, with the red hair and the girls and the dark-haired wife, Heather. Alan from the grocery store. Other people who open up their homes to strangers and share their food. Still others who defuse confrontations that break out in the streets. There is so much fear in the air, so much fighting. But slowly, slowly, the survivors come together.

On the nights that she can’t sleep, Tasha sends Annie and Elyse home and walks the city with other insomniacs—foraging, she calls it. Never looting. It isn’t just her own survival she’s thinking about. She’s thinking about everyone else. That’s how they’re all going to survive—by thinking about everyone else. She goes up and down the night streets with others that she trusts—Kevin, and Alan, and Zeljko, the youth from the convenience store—and together they search for anything that might help them survive.

She hardly sleeps. But then, she’s used to that.

One night when she comes home in the early hours of the morning, Annie is waiting for her, just inside the front door. “Hi,” she whispers, and Tasha closes the door behind her and then Annie pushes her up against the door and Annie’s hands are in her hair, Annie’s tongue is in her mouth, Annie’s hands are pulling hard at the zipper of her jeans. Her skin feels grimy and dry but so does Tasha’s—they slide against one another like paper dolls, crumpling together, falling to the floor.

Tasha makes a sound deep in her throat, then lifts her head and bites Annie’s ear. Annie puts a hand over her mouth. “Shhh,” she says. “You’ll wake Elyse.”

Tasha laughs into Annie’s palm. She slides a finger deep inside of Annie and watches her wife shudder in the dark. Then she pulls her hand away.

“More,” Annie whispers.

Tasha only shakes her head. “What about Elyse?” she says, but her mouth is on Annie’s shoulder now, her fingers slick and hovering over Annie’s face. She sticks a finger in Annie’s mouth and Annie sucks it.

And then it is gone, the desire, the shock of its absence rushing cold into the room. Tasha pushes herself up, sits back against the closed front door. Annie blinks at her, surprised.

“I wasn’t serious,” Annie says. “Not really. I mean—it’s not like we haven’t had to be quiet before.”

Before. Once upon a time in a seaside city long, long ago. They’d had silent sex in the guest room in Annie’s parents’ house a hundred times. The laughter building in them, ready to burst.

Before. It hasn’t been that long, but it feels like it. Tasha pulls her knees up and sighs a little. Then she takes Annie’s palm and kisses it, folds Annie’s fingers over the kiss. “It’s late,” she says. “And it’ll be another long day tomorrow. We should go to bed.”

This time Annie is the one who pulls her hand away, her fist balled tight, like she’s a child afraid the kiss will disappear.

Elyse is on the couch when they go upstairs to their room. They climb into the bed without speaking and wind their bodies together—Annie curled inside and Tasha behind her, her arms sliding around Annie’s slender torso. Her golden-haired princess, all dirt and sweat.

Another evening, Tasha’s alone on her rounds, driving the ambulance in widening circles, looking for places they might have missed. Just as she decides to turn for home, she once again sees the dark-haired woman, Heather, coming toward her from the mountain, carrying her babies. Their red hair shines even from this far away. Tasha stops beside her.

“Heather,” she calls. The woman keeps walking, her eyes on the ground. “Are you all right?”

Heather lifts her head, startled, then nods. “I’m just tired,” she says.

What happened in that other fire? Tasha wants to reach out and touch her. To crawl back to that moment in front of the hospital, when she touched Heather’s forehead and heard the high-pitched sound of screaming. The taste of starlight at once impossible and unmistakable in her mouth. Where had that come from? What did it mean?

“Okay,” she says instead. “Well—Annie and I are in a townhouse by the hospital. The one with the blue roof. If you need anything.”

Heather shrugs. “Okay,” she says. “Thank you.”

“Where were you walking?”

Heather’s face is still shuttered, but she says, “I was just in the forest for a little bit. The trees relax me.”

“I was just curious. I don’t care where you go.” Then, tentatively. “Maybe I could come with you sometime?”

Heather doesn’t say anything, but since she’s still standing there, Tasha asks, “Remember that first day, by the ambulance, when I touched your face? What did you see?”

Heather sighs. “That there was a fire,” she says. “Or—there had been a fire. And you were alone.” She looks back down at the ground. “Sometimes I see things like that. Other people’s—memories. I know it sounds ridiculous.”

“I saw you,” Tasha says, and Heather’s face softens in surprise. “Or—I heard you. When my hand touched your face, I saw the mountain and clouds, and I heard you scream. What happened? Did someone fall?”