Chapter 5.
Shelter.
Michonne.
It was raining again. Michonne closed the curtains and paced the couch a few times before she went back to open them again. It was better to see, better to know, even when the street was dark and quiet. She tried to see beyond their own yard, but the rain and the heat made an awful fog. She was driven to yank the curtains shut again, worried something sinister might see her there.
"Welcome back."
Michonne sat on the couch as the TV came back to life. It had been airing nothing but static for almost an hour now. Andre looked up from his blocks, leaning his shoulder into her knee. Diane was on again, a young, blonde anchor who usually did reports from the field. She looked different behind a desk, almost out of place. Her hair was disheveled.
She stared into the camera for a long, long moment, moving her jaw like she was chewing something, deciding what to say.
"I'm sorry, everyone. We lost communication with our mother station this morning. I can only tell you what I know right now – cell reception is down; fourteen states have stopped responding to satellite calls… we lost touch with Virginia just now and our service is cutting in and out."
Her tone was something straight out of a film, so resigned and morose.
"If you can still view this broadcast, please, get to a safe place and stay there. Stay inside. Do whatever you can to protect yourselves and your families, and-"
It cut off midsentence, back to static.
Michonne stared at the screen, her frustration and fear mounting. If had only been two days, only forty-eight hours, since the first report of some kind of disease, and now the news was done. It was just over. How could that be?
"Quiet," Andre commented, banging two blocks together to fill the void.
She touched the top of his head, forcing her mouth to close. "Yeah, quiet." Her mind raced. What could spread so rapidly? What could cause such devastation? Was she even safe here, in her own home? What was happening to the world outside? Could this really be the end?
Her eyes went to the window again and she shivered.
Suddenly, the front door flew open.
Michonne leapt from the couch so quickly she nearly flipped the coffee table. Andre shrieked. She grabbed the nearest object, the remote control, and held it defensively in front of her.
But it was only Mike and Terry.
Mike put his hands up, "Whoa, relax." He swung his backpack around to his front, starting to pull things out, "I got you guys some stuff, so no need to throw that." He held up a box of matches, "See? Can we relax now?"
He was too relaxed already. She let the remote drop to the floor and scooped Andre into her arms. He clung to her, staring at his father with big, teary eyes.
"You were supposed to be back hours ago," Michonne said, joining him and inspecting his bag. "Where are the candles? Did you get anything for Andre to eat? Where are the fruits? Veggies?"
"Better, I got potato chips, and spray cheese."
She scowled.
He put his hands up again, "Baby, they were all out, or it was moldy or rotten. Nobody was in the store." He kissed her cheek, a little hesitant.
She got a whiff of him. "Are you high right now?"
"No, but my boy here is," Mike said, smiling, gesturing to Terry.
Terry threw up his arms like he won something, and then teetered off to lounge in the recliner. Michonne watched him with distaste. "Did you at least go by the refugee camp?"
"Yeah, that shit is packed," Terry said.
Mike must have sensed her mood, because his tone became less carefree. He took Andre and kissed the boy square on the forehead, nodding, "You okay, baby boy? It was just me. Just me." He held the boy tightly for a moment, his eyes shut, and then answered, "It was packed, but the sign said it was still open. It looks like they have food and water getting shipped in, lots of military around."
He put one arm around her, and she leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder.
He murmured, "I think we should stay here, just the four of us."
Michonne liked the way his voice hummed through his collarbone. She let herself relax, sitting on the couch with him while he tickled their son, watching them, smiling – and thinking. She had not made an argument either way, letting Mike decide these last few days how they would handle this crisis. He was the one going out in it, after all. He was also level-headed when he wanted to be.
But watching the news cut out like that had shaken her.
She put her hand on his leg, drawing his attention, "I think we should go."
He paused in his tickling, but went on, talking over the sound of Andre giggling. "Yeah?"
"Yeah."
Terry was doing his best impression of a throw blanket. His eyes were shut. "You should have seen how packed it was, people wall-to-wall like a can of tiny little fish."
"Sardines?" Mike wondered.
"Mm. We're better off here."
"How are we gonna protect ourselves," Michonne challenged.
"Protect ourselves from what?" Terry scoffed.
"Infected people!" Michonne wished she could gesture to the news, but the TV screen was blank. She went off of memory instead. "We all saw them, walking around out there, just looking for someone to bite."
"We saw them," Terry corrected. "You should see how slow they are."
She groaned.
"Doors have locks," he went on, "And we have weapons."
"Yeah, but are we gonna stay inside for the rest of the week? For another month? We're already short on food and the plumbing stopped working this morning. Soon we'll have to go out for water." Michonne looked at Mike imploringly, "Every time you go out for food you risk not coming back – what happens when you have to leave, and it gets worse here? What happens if, god forbid, you die out there? Or get infected? What happens to me and Andre?"
Mike pulled the boy upright on his knee, staring at him seriously, and Andre frowned back at him, confused about why the game had stopped.
"If you really think we should go… we'll go."
He met her eyes, uncertain, and she leaned in to kiss his jaw. "I do."
Terry opened one eye, and then closed it again. He sighed. "I'm with you two."
"Get up then, and help me pack," Mike said, hopping up and sliding Andre over to Michonne. He stretched, showing off his stomach to her, and grinned.
She popped him in the belly and sent him off.
It took twenty minutes to pack, because they all argued about what to bring. Terry had come over with a bag when this all started, so he was already set, but he kept jumping into discussions about photo albums and priceless relics from their travels. Michonne packed three outfits for Andre and three for herself, choosing her most comfortable clothes, and Mike kept insisting he bring two pairs of sneakers when only one would fit in their shared bag.
"You've never played a sport in your life," Michonne argued.
"I spent a thousand dollars on each shoe – each shoe!"
"I was not present for that terrible choice and I shouldn't be held accountable for it."
He smiled, and groaned, and put the shoes back in the closet. "If those get looted, I'll cry."
Michonne plucked a fertility relic out of the bottom of the bag – a sub-Saharan goddess, carved from ivory, carefully imbued with storied symbols in rows along its entire form. She held it up to Mike, "What are you trying to do, here?"
"Come on, it's one of a kind."
"I think we have enough on our hands," she said, gesturing to Andre, who stood by her leg. "I'm gonna go ahead and veto all fertility items."
"Why not just all art? Or are you hiding something in there, too?"
"No. I packed practically."
He dug through the bottom of the bag, and his face lit up as he pulled out a tie-dyed disco dog statuette. It was small, but hefty. "Oh, oh, oh, what do we have here?"
"Your mom gave that to me the first time I met her."
"You just like the colors." He returned it to the nearby shelf, "Blanket ban on art."
Terry, meanwhile, was lounging across the upper part of their bed, his arms folded behind his head, his suitcase resting on his chest. "You two have your priorities all wrong. When society collapses, what you'll want most is toilet paper."
Michonne traded a glance with Mike. "How much did he smoke?"
"He lives on a different plane now. We just have to embrace it."
Her car was too small for the four of them and their bags, so they took Terry's SUV, and Mike opted to drive. Michonne had not been out of the house since this all started, but as she strapped her son into his seat, she got a look down the road.
It was abandoned.
It was not just quiet, not just a dreary, rainy day, but utterly empty. Her neighbors' cars were gone. Mailboxes hung open. Everything was still and untouched. She shut the door and looked over the top of the car and found the same in the other direction.
"Mike…" she said, climbing into the passenger's seat, "are we the last ones left on this road?"
"Maybe. Lots of people left yesterday." He glanced around, frowning, "And it looks like the rest bailed today. God, this fog is freaking me out."
"Crazy, man," Terry intoned from the backseat.
"Hush, Terry," Michonne said, and then to Mike, "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Tell you what?"
"That all of our neighbors evacuated already! Didn't that bother you? Wasn't that a red flag?"
He started driving, turning down quiet roads, onto quiet roads, into quiet neighbors, onto the quiet highway. "Sorry, I was focused on getting us supplies. I guess today was the first day I noticed it was a ghost town, since everybody stopped showing up for work."
Michonne wondered what would happen if they tried to call 911, if anyone would be there to pick up the phone. She wondered if people were being deployed to fight fires, to stop robberies, to help people out of car accidents. Terry was wrong. Society seemed to be collapsing, and all that Michonne wanted was help.
It was crowded at the camp.
It was set up in the parking lot and baseball field of a local school, hundreds of white tents with red crosses on them, surrounded by a thrown-together barbed-wire fence lined with sandbags. Soldiers patrolled the area, guns in hand. People stood in lines to get Styrofoam boxes full of food. Michonne got an uneasy feeling the moment she saw the place.
A man in camouflage stopped them at the gate, peering into the car.
"How many?"
"Uh, four," Mike responded.
"Names?"
He gave their names, and their occupations, and where they previously lived, and then directed them to park the car among a hundred others on the lawn by the road. Michonne zipped Andre into his jacket while the boys grabbed the bags, and they walked through a rainy parking lot, through a few more checkpoints that saw them patted down and searched for weapons. Mike was handed two adults sleeping bags and given directions to a tent.
"Row twenty-four, number fourteen," Mike said. "I think dinner is served. You guys hungry?"
Terry nodded, but Michonne shook her head. She didn't want to stand in the rain with her son for two hours, and she couldn't leave him alone.
She ended up in their tent, with four other people. She left her shoes among a pile at the door and sat among their suitcases, almost making herself a little fort, holding Andre in her lap. The white walls constantly bowed and swayed as the rain pattered down. It gave her an immediate, vicious headache. Or was that the stress? Andre stared around, fascinated by the rain beating down.
Everyone in the tent was eerily silent, strangers to each other as well as to her. Michonne said nothing to them. She laid out her sleeping bag and tried to keep her son occupied, giving him the cheese that his father had brought him. He sprayed it up his nose immediately, getting it confiscated, and crying for nearly twenty minutes while she tried to get it out. Michonne sat there eating the rest in dabs, forgetting that she had eaten nothing else that day. Andre became brave, walking circles around her munching potato chips, watching the ceiling with wide eyes.
Mike and Terry returned with food an hour later – a hot bowl of some sort of vegetable soup and a piece of bread each. Mike sat beside her, and they traded bites of his soup, but they gave the bread to Andre, and so did Terry. They sat in a ring, circling the boy, eating quietly.
It seemed Terry was finally coming down from his high. He slurped down the rest of his soup and nodded to himself, "I guess this beats another night of cheese-n-chips surprise."
Michonne snorted, "You loved my cheese-n-chips surprise, don't lie."
He smiled, "And that store was out anyway. I mean out. We found that stuff under an aisle divider."
Mike nodded, "It was the right move, coming here."
"You two trying to butter me up?"
Both men scoffed together.
She was suspicious, but she let it go. "I heard them say this sort of housing is temporary, until the rest of the high school rooms can be converted."
Terry perked up, "You think we might be able to upgrade? 'Cause I'm gonna be frank, these digs are a little too post-modern for me. I mean, you got your rocks over here, yeah, and you got your grass down there, right? But what about the color? What about the pizzazz?" He sat up, waving his arms around, drawing the attention of the others in the tent. "I think this whole camp could use a little less white, hospital style and a little more Starry Night. Maybe some nice greens over the top there, and some pink on the walls."
Michonne drug her suitcase to her, digging through the bottom, aware that Mike was growing more and more suspicious the longer she searched – and then she pulled out her disco dog and held it up for them to see, grinning.
"Oh, she did, she did," Terry crowed.
Mike laughed, "I love you, I do, honest to God, but I'm gonna choke you out."
She flipped her wrists, presenting her neck, "Come on, try it."