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  “Seems like a pretty big thing to keep in your pocket, being witches and all.”

  “We aren’t witches. Well, she is. I’m not. And she’s not even a witch really. She can scramble together a few spells. Something that came down from her mom and from her mom and from her mom before her.”

  I pick up the chair and swing it above my head again. The facade of one of the few older buildings left in downtown has peeled off, and bricks and stone spread across the street in a deep and wide pile.

  “What I saw,” I say as we carefully climb this rubble, “the ball and the bang, that was magic.”

  “Call it what you want.” Caroline steps off a large stone and back to the street. I don’t say anything for a moment. The combination of the pack on my back and the chair over my head has messed with my center of gravity. Combine that with unsteady footing, and it’s taking everything I have to not go end over end off this heap.

  I get to steady ground after a couple of long moments and set the chair back down and drop my pack in the seat. I grab Caroline’s off her back and drop it on top of mine then pick up our conversation: “You can’t do it, you said?”

  “The spells?”

  I nod.

  “It’s not something that ever interested me. And until now I didn’t know how much it would matter. But anyone can do it. Just have to know what to mix with what and what to say while you’re doing it. It’s just tapping into ancient energies. Stuff like that. I never paid any attention to it when my mom discussed it.” She pauses for a moment. “My sister, though. If you’re looking for someone who can cook you up something powerful, she’s your girl.”

  I stay behind the chair and push. “Yeah, I’ll let you know.”

  THREE

  We roll into Fair Park and Caroline’s mom rushes us. Well, rushes her. She throws her arms around her daughter, and the two of them fall to the asphalt.

  “Oh, my girl. My girl. My girl,” she says through tears. Caroline is struggling to stand. She’s pushing both of them from the ground, but her mother won’t let her get up.

  “I just knew you were dead. I just knew it. I knew it.” Mom sits up, and Caroline does too. Mom grabs her daughter’s face. “But look at you. You’re here. You’re OK. I don’t know what I’d have done if I’d lost another little girl.”

  Caroline pulls away. “Mom,” she says, her face serious. “We don’t know what’s happened to Wendy. She live in McKinney. We couldn’t have heard from her. I’m sure she’s fine.”

  Mom just looks at Caroline, waiting for her to finish talking, then pulls her tight to her chest.

  Walter comes walking up behind and offers me a hand. We shake.

  “It’s good to see you,” he says. “We really had thought that we lost you last night. The wailers were out in force. The noises coming from downtown were pretty deafening.”

  I look over toward Caroline and her mother. They are lost in mom’s near hysterics, but I still pull Walter a few steps away then begin to recap the night.

  “It was bad,” I say. “Worst I’ve seen so far. We saw hundreds of them. They were in our building. Coming from above us and below.”

  “The roof?” he asks.

  I nod.

  “Wow.” He pauses for a moment, considering what he’s just heard. I can see the wheels turning. We keep learning new things about the wailers. What they can and can’t do. New knowledge means that we have to readjust strategies. Reconsider things we’ve been doing. Knowing that they can climb the walls. That’s new.

  “How did you guys get away?”

  “Magic,” I say then stop. I shouldn’t say too much. Caroline and her mom haven’t said anything so far. This is their secret to spill. “I guess.”

  “Or luck.” Walter punches my arm then takes the packs out of the seat of the chair.

  “That’s fancy,” he says, running his hand along the light brown leather. “We get to take turns sitting in that thing?”

  “We didn’t take turns getting it here,” I say then smile.

  Walter chuckles. “Fair enough,” he says. “Come get some breakfast. It’s not much, but it’s filling.”

  There’s a fire burning at the foot of the Texas Star and something is cooking. It smells warm; that’s the best that I can say for it. But we’ve learned not to be picky when it comes to food. There’s never a guarantee that you’ll have any, so when you do get to eat you take advantage—even if warm is the best thing you can say about the meal.

  “You and Maggie the only ones here last night?” I ask. I’m in my high-back executive, and I’m already loving it. I do feel like some kind of royal looking out over his subjects and his land.

  Walter answers my question with an “Unnnn Hunnn.”

  “And she was in hysterics. I can’t blame her especially. We both thought the two of you had met with a sudden and unexpected demise.”

  Walter likes to talk like that: “a sudden and unexpected demise.” It drives the writer in me crazy, but I figure that it’s something better to tolerate given our current situation. Our camp is small, and I don’t want to ruffle any feathers. These are the people my lots are cast with, whether I like it or not. I can’t have one of them start to feel indifferent on whether or not my demise is sudden or unexpected.

  There are six of us here in total. There’s me. There’s Walter. We have Caroline and her mom. And then there are two other women. Honestly, I don’t care for either of them all that much—Britt and Bethany. They have been fairly useless so far. I am trying to tell myself that they are still in shock over everything that’s happened, but we are getting farther and farther out from the days of the event. We are getting to the point that they should have come back around and are ready to be productive again, to contribute. But they haven’t done any of that yet, and eventually you just have to chalk it up to general laziness. And that’s about where I am with them.

  The other four of us, though, we’re good. We’re strong and bent on survival.

  Walter takes my pack and drops it near the bedroll that I’ve claimed as mine. It’s in the shadows of the Texas Star, the giant Ferris wheel that is the centerpiece of Dallas’ Fair Park. It was the landmark that you saw from the highway as you looked off into southern Dallas, and somehow it remained intact when everything came crashing down, a giant target that none of the big rocks could seem to hit.

  I move the chair to nearer the fire pit and sit back down. The walk from downtown has taken from me whatever energy the good night’s sleep had provided. I expected to have built some sort of stamina by this point. I push up onto my toes, and the seat leans back. I look up into the grid of steel inside of the Ferris wheel above me. I study the beams for a moment and let my mind get lost in the structure of this giant amusement ride. That’s likely why I jump at the sound of Maggie’s voice.

  I look up at her, startled, and she repeats what she said: “Thank you.”

  She pulls one of the milk crates up next to me.

  I sit up. “For what?”

  “For bringing my girl home to me.”

  “She’s a good kid.”

  “I think so, but I’m biased.”

  “She’s smart. She’s confident. She’s going to do well.”

  “Well, she would have. I always thought she’d be a success, but that was when being a success meant more than staying alive.”

  I stand and move toward the food that’s still warming over the small fire that’s slowly dying. It’s on a cast iron pan that Caroline and her mom brought from their apartment after their building was destroyed in the initial attack. They salvaged what they could, which wasn’t much. They each had a couple changes of clothes, and Caroline grabbed the pan as they were leaving. She wasn’t thinking about cooking on it. She wanted something heavy to swing, just in case.

  Maggie steps in front of me and pushes me back toward my seat. I sit, and she fixes me a plate. It’s some sort of meat in some sort of gravy. I don’t ask for details, just eat.

  “But she
can do that too,” I say through a mouth full of food.

  “Yeah, but that confidence scares me.”

  “How?”

  Maggie sits and situates her milk crate in front of me. She slides it close, leans her elbows on her knees and looks me in the eyes.

  “Her arm, Mac. What happened?”

  I don’t respond. I like Caroline, but this isn’t a conversation I need to be having with her mom. Maggie knows that the world out there is dangerous now. Definitely more dangerous than it was before. But she also knows she has a girl who is going to do what she wants to do. She’s getting that itch that comes as adulthood approaches, the itch that drives you to push and stretch at the edges of the rules to give yourself a little more room. More freedom. Elbowing out your own piece of ground in a world that’s opening up before you. I answer Maggie’s question with a question.

  “What did she tell you?”

  “She hasn’t yet. I haven’t asked about it.”

  “Then talk to her first.”

  She smiles and nods. “OK. Thanks again for bringing her home safe.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Maggie takes my empty plate from me, and I lean back again and stare into the beams of the Texas Star.

  +++++

  Night crashes hard now. The skies are covered with clouds all the time so it never gets fully bright anymore. There’s always a dull gloom over everything. But the clouds also speed up the arrival of night. By 4 o’clock it’s practically impossible to see without some kind of extra illumination.

  It’s dark, and I’m thinking back to the lanterns that I plucked from the doctor’s office the night before. I can see their brass frames and clear glass, and I can see the warm glow of their light. They were elegant and would have brought a bit of sophistication to a world that was now just a few steps away from primal.

  Of course, I knew why Caroline had to destroy them, and I wouldn’t have thought about them now if there wasn’t a fire burning in a 40 gallon drum in front of me. It’s putting off enough heat to slowly roast beef.

  I’ve taken off my jacket, and Maggie takes off her outer layer when she slides up next to me.

  “She says it’s from rubble.”

  “What?”

  “Caroline says that she cut her arm on rubble.”

  “That’s what she says?”

  “It is.” Maggie pulls a nearby folding chair next to me.

  “Then that must have been what happened.”

  “It’s very neatly bandaged.”

  “She must have wrapped it herself.”

  “Well,” Maggie says, “she is a talented girl. You said so yourself. I hope I’m forgiven if I don’t believe her.”

  “You’re welcome to believe whatever you like. It’s not like she’d be the only one around here with secrets.” I look at Maggie and the awkward air hangs between us for a few seconds.

  “Had to use them?”

  “We did. Pretty neat little trick.”

  “If you liked that one …”

  I spin my seat to face Maggie. “You never thought to mention that you could…”

  “Hi. I’m Maggie.” She sticks out a hand for a fake handshake. “I’m a mom of two. Work in retail. And I can do magic. How well do you think that would have been received?”

  “Well, good point. Unless you followed that up by shooting some kind of glitter beams out of the palm of your hands.”

  “It doesn’t work like that; and don’t make fun.”

  “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “I know you were joking, but it’s also why I tend to keep it to myself.”

  “Caroline says she can’t do it.”

  “She can. She just chooses not to. Never took an interest in it, but it’s not some kind of recessive gene that skips a generation or two. She’s got the ability, just not the will.”

  The conversation stalls. After a moment the first wailer of the night breaks the silence. It’s a lone cry coming from somewhere near downtown. It’s followed a moment later by dozens of others. It’s like a call and response from the church services I used to attend.

  It’s the evening routine. Once the wailers start talking they don’t stop until the sun is up. One will call. The others respond. My body always tenses when it starts, an unease that sits in my gut. Makes me jumpy. Makes me anxious. And it doesn’t go away until the sun begins to rise.

  Walter and Caroline join us around the fire. We are each sitting across from each other, Walter on the opposite side of the barrel from me. Caroline is across from her mom. It is each person’s responsibility to watch the area across from them. Nothing sneaking up on us.

  Something rattles in the dark, and all of us turn.

  “Hello,” calls a voice from the nothing. “It’s me. J.R. Don’t shoot or anything.”

  Our little square of people relaxes.

  “Good evening, J.R.,” Walter says. “Come. Join us by the fire.”

  J.R.’s small frame steps out of the dark, and we can see that he’s carrying three dead rabbits by the back haunches. They swing slow at his side, and Walter and I stand to greet him.

  We haven’t seen J.R. in a few days. He’s not a camp regular, but he does pass by a couple times a week. He’ll sleep here overnight then leave in the morning. He has a wife and kids he’s looking for. We talk about it after he leaves. None of us think they’ve survived, but none of us have the heart to tell him that either.

  He lays the rabbits on top of a plastic bucket that we’ve turned over and use as a table. Walter scoops them back up and pulls a large knife from the holder attached to his belt. He walks away from the rest of us. He’s going to dress the rabbits. We have a makeshift spit that we’ll roast them on. J.R. always brings food.

  He and I walk back to the fire, and he makes a bee-line for my chair. I catch his shoulder just as he’s about to sit. He turns to me, and I shake my head a very quiet no. He pulls a folding chair up to the fire. If this had been just a couple days later I would have let him sit in the chair, no problem. But it wasn’t. The chair is new, and I don’t need anyone thinking it’s already community property.

  “How you been, J.R.,” Maggie asks.

  “I’m alive,” he says and slips down deeper into the chair. He pushes his feet out in front of him and lets his chin fall to his chest. Alive, but barely.

  “Glad you survived the other night,” Maggie continues.

  J.R. nods slightly. “Spent it at a camp over in Mesquite. By the big tower. They are calling the place Paris now. Never been, but assuming it’s still standing, I’m betting the French place is a little different.”

  We all chuckle at his joke. It’s not great, and I don’t think any of us would argue that, but it’s nice to have a bit of levity.

  A wailer screams from somewhere that’s probably nearer than any of us would like. Half a dozen others respond. Everything in camp stops for a moment or two then all of us relax.

  “What’s it like out there? South?” I ask. I’ve kept myself focused on this camp and downtown. I don’t really know what to do next. I don’t know that any of us do, any of us but J.R. Are we all waiting for something? For the wailers to move on? For things to get back to normal? For the nightmare to end? To die?

  J.R. adjusts his position in his seat. He sits up straighter, pushing himself up by the elbows. “It’s different, I guess. The wailers are more aggressive. There are more of them. I don’t know if it’s confidence in numbers, or what. But you have to be on your toes now. And it’s not just in the dark that you see them. They are coming out during the dusk, before the sun is completely gone.”

  I think we all knew that there were more wailers now. The volume of the responses to the initial calls had increased too much for their not to be more of them. But I hadn’t expected that they’d become bolder. Out at dusk would become out in the afternoons would become out always. The relative safety we felt in the sunlight was about to disappear.

  “When I was over at Paris,”
J.R. says, “there was talk of a church in Oklahoma. One where survivors were congregating. Starting another civilization, or something. Honestly, surprised a church from here hasn’t done it first.”

  “Who’s this talk from?” I ask. It’s important. If he knows this person then the info is legit. Legit info is worth considering, storing away. If this is just coming from someone who was at the camp for a night then maybe it’s not true. But even if it’s not … I don’t know. Maybe it’s worth hanging onto no matter what.

  J.R. doesn’t answer my question. He’s staring into the fire, letting the tongues of flame burn themselves into his retinas. Sear his eyes. He’s lost somewhere in his own head. We all give him a couple of minutes to spend wherever it is he’s mentally wandered off to, then I break the silence.

  “This church have a name?”

  A beat then he responds: “Sorry. What? Oh. New Hope Fellowship. Wait. No. Tabernacle. New Hope Tabernacle.”

  “Fitting,” Maggie says.

  “Too fitting?” I ask, because the name seems a bit perfect.

  “Just what I’ve heard.” J.R. has no interest in the church. His mental excursion has unhinged him. We’ve lost him for the night.

  We all sit in silence — like most nights at camp — and watch the fire. We listen to the wailers screech from far off somewhere. Caroline is reading a book that she found in one of the first excursions from camp. It feels like forever ago, but it wasn’t all that long.

  I’d just met her and her mom. I’d just met everyone at camp. We had nothing more than what we’d brought with us, and, for me, that was almost nothing. I’d come in late at night, like J.R. I was walking down Interstate 30. The sun was setting, and I could see the fire they’d made glowing from the overpass. I braved the trip through the surrounding neighborhood to make it to their camp and the fires burning in the large drums. I said my introductions then gave myself over to exhaustion. I laid down on a bench and slept until morning.

  I woke up the next day and walked the surrounding neighborhood with Caroline and her mom. We spent the day getting to know each other some and looting the local stores. One had books on a spinner rack, like something I saw in an older drug store I’d frequent with my grandparents when I’d visit them. Caroline loaded her pockets with paperbacks. Now, if she’s not off with me scavenging or arguing with her mom, she’s got her head in a book.