A Matter of Days (5 page)

“We’ll look for some at the mall, but for now just get us in a door. We’ll patch the window with wood, or cardboard, or something.”

“Aye, aye.” Rabbit grabbed the hammer and ran toward the front entrance.

I grabbed our backpacks with fresh clothes, and a couple of lamps.

By the time I’d walked over, Rabbit held the door open. “Welcome to the Snow Chalet, do you have a reservation?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. It’s under Dork.” I smiled, closing the door behind me.

“Isn’t this place amazing?” Rabbit kicked off his boots but left on his coat—the air was warmer than outside, but only because there wasn’t wind blowing. A large fireplace dominated one end of a reception area. The space was littered with sofas and chairs. Huge dark wooden beams lined the walls and supported the ceiling like sentries.

Each carrying a lantern, we wandered around picking stuff up and opening doors. There was a musty unused smell, but no death. My nose told me I wouldn’t walk around a corner and be jolted back into the present.
Heaven
.

“Hey, there are tons of candles in here, and firewood.” We’d stumbled into a honeymoon suite decorated with understated hearts and old-school romantic lighting. A two-way fireplace split the sleeping area and bathroom; yet another area was cozily made into a living room with a couch and recliners. Dried wilted red-black roses covered the whitest, fluffiest king-size bed I’d ever seen.
Someone planned to stay here and never made it
.

“Let’s sleep in here.” Rabbit set his lantern down, found matches in a drawer, and started lighting candles. “We can put a fire in and warm up. Get more wood and have both fireplaces blazing!”

“I’ll go see if there’s anything left in the kitchen, or grab food out of the car.”

“Grab pots, or something, to melt ice in?”

“For bathing in that swimming pool of a tub, right?” I sighed and wished for hot water and Jacuzzi jets and tons of bubble bath. At least we’d be clean, sleeping in clean sheets. “Aye, aye.”

“Wait, there’s a minifridge over here.” Rabbit lowered the candle. “And a snack cabinet.”

“Minibar. Dad said they’re expensive and we should never ever eat anything out of it.”

Rab visibly shrank.

“Quick, what’s in it?” I smiled.
No one’s billing us for the stay
.

He wrestled open the doors, “Chips, Snickers, nuts, Coke, and a moldy orange.”

“I’ll skip the orange. But I really am getting sick of snack food.”

“How is that possible?” Rabbit looked crestfallen. “Me too.”

“Let me see if there’s real food around here, then we can have dessert.” I ruffled his hair, or tried to. It was a greasy, dirty mess.

“Do I look as nasty as you do?” I wiped my palm on my jeans.

“Oh yeah, worse.” Rabbit snickered.

“Thanks. You okay here while I go out?”

“Yep, I’ll get the fire going, and find more wood and stuff.…” He trailed off, seeming vulnerable, yet brave.

I turned away.

“Wait!” Rabbit raced over to his backpack and pulled out a pair of Junior Ranger walkie-talkies.

“You brought those?”

“They’re my walkie-talkies. I just—I mean, I—I couldn’t.”
Leave them behind, perhaps?
Rabbit and Dad hiked the forests of the Olympic Peninsula with a walkie-talkie attached to their belts. “Man time” I’d never envied until Dad was dead.

“It’s a great idea.” We practiced a little. I saw Rabbit standing taller, appearing less fragile since we could talk to each other at any time. “Ring if you need me.”

“You too.” Rabbit started balling up old newspapers and magazines to build his fire.

I used a flashlight instead of the lantern, but there was still a lot of ambient sunlight bouncing off the snow. I wondered if I’d ever get used to the silence. I unzipped my coat but didn’t take it off. My toes were icicles in my socks; the sooner I found us food, or went to the car to grab cans of soup, the sooner I’d be back in the suite.

Behind one door, I found a cart that probably belonged to room service or housekeeping. I wheeled it in front of me, part armor, part efficiency. I had to keep reminding myself of that “no zombies” thing.

I headed away from the guest rooms and back toward the reception area. I remembered seeing a bar and what might be a dining room. The kitchen had to be close to that.

I crossed a polished dance floor, and even though wires lay like a coil of plastic snakes, all the DJ equipment was gone. So far electronics topped the list.
Yummy
. When would I stop being shocked at the things people carried off?

The bar was empty of booze. One last party, or an enterprising employee? Had they raided the kitchen, too? I pushed the swinging doors open with my cart. The smell hit me first. A hint of garbage, not people rotting, but food waste like slimy salad greens and fuzzy broccoli. It made sense that I might find moldy produce, but only if there was anything left to spoil.

The industrial-style stainless steel kitchen was so clean, I felt like I’d stepped into a surgical theater. My flashlight picked
up and bounced spurts of light, casting shadows on the walls like an animated movie. I’d never been in a restaurant kitchen.
Why would I? Add that to the list of things I know nothing about
. Restaurant kitchens didn’t matter in my old life. My only thoughts were to hope the cooks weren’t spitting in my food or dropping it on the floor.
I’ll take a menu and a chance right about now. What happened to “Domino’s delivers”?

I opened food lockers and found a few jars of olives, garlic paste, a couple big tins of dry curry mix. Crumbs and not much else. I kept hunting. Maybe they’d been in a hurry with the dance-party raid.

Perseverance paid off. At the back of one locker, I found marshmallows, stale and crusty, and unopened graham crackers. We already had chocolate bars in our vending machine stash. I moved baking soda and vanilla extract to see the very back of the pantry.

“Bingo!” I shouted, and did my version of a happy dance.

“You okay?” The walkie-talkie crackled with Rabbit’s question.

I hadn’t realized I’d yelled so loud. “Food, I found food! Real stuff!”
Okay, well, kind of real
.

Rabbit didn’t need to hit the transmit button for me to hear his whoop of delight across the building. “What is it?”

I began piling items onto the cart and realized it might take two trips. “Soups. Cheese. Chili.” Moldy bread was unsalvageable, but jars of peanut butter and jam joined crackers and unopened packages of cured meats like pepperoni and salami. I left half the cheese—the moldy parts I cut off—behind.

“Should I come?” he asked.

“You have the fire going?”

“Yeah, and a bunch of candles.”

“Stay put. I’m coming to you.” I grabbed a pot and bowls, cutlery, napkins from the bins by the door on my way back. The darkness outside the windows didn’t feel oppressive; instead I found comfort in knowing that no one could sneak up on us.

“It’s like Christmas!” Rabbit held the suite door open and helped me roll the very heavy cart across the threshold.

The heat filling our hideaway was so unexpected, it felt tangible like a cuddly blanket. I’d been chilly for so long I wanted to purr and stretch, but I restrained from unwinding my scarves and unzipping my coat just yet.

“There’s so much food here.” Rabbit carefully unloaded my finds onto the little table.

“I think someone squirreled it all away and then didn’t come back.”
Or couldn’t come back
. Who would think to look behind the flavorings and leavenings for real food?
Me
. Mimicking Rab’s favorite saying, I declared, “Sucks to be them.”

Rabbit smiled. “Chicken noodle soup and toasted cheddar cheese sandwiches.” Dad’s only culinary accomplishments and Rabbit’s favorite meal.

“No bread. But we can make ’em on the flat crackers?”

Rab’s shoulders dipped with disappointment, but he said, “Sure.”

“We have s’mores for dessert.” I wanted to bring the smile back to Rabbit’s face.

A ghost of a grin accompanied his nod. “I tried the taps and there’s no water.”

“Frozen pipes, maybe?” I suggested. Sounded plausible to me, and it was my best guess. Hot running water was asking
too much. I worked on dinner while Rabbit filled a couple of huge stainless steel bowls with icicles and snow from the balcony and dumped them into the bathtub to melt.

My grilled cheese crackers were black on one side and the soup boiled itself a layer of noodle on the inside of the pot. Cooking over a fire inspired thoughts of raw vegetables and sushi—no-cooking-required-type foods. If I didn’t scrape the sides of the pot the carbon charring wasn’t too noticeable.

“So the good news is …” I let my statement hang until Rabbit glanced up.

“There’s good news?”

“No dish washing.” At least, not now.

“What do you mean?”

In the early days, Mom made us continue to wash and act normally. Which made no sense at the time, and certainly not now. “We’ve got lots of extra dishes and no one is going to yell if we let the used ones stack up.” I knew as the quasi adult I should make us stay civilized and wash up after each meal like at home. But I didn’t care about doing dishes. Until it meant eating on a clean plate or having to reuse a dirty one, I was on cleaning vacation. “Just for a little while.”

Rabbit nodded. “If we had a dog he could lick ’em clean.”

“Kinda clean, maybe.”

“Jimmy’s dog licks the plates cleaner than the dishwasher.” He swallowed a couple more spoonfuls of soup, but I knew he was thinking about his dead friend and the closest thing to a pet Rabbit ever had.

Rabbit set down his bowl. “Was he, um, in there?”

I hadn’t seen or heard Max bark. I shook my head. “They probably let him out and he went to Disneyland instead of hanging around at home.”

The look Rabbit shot me suggested he was past the fairytale-type lies.

I inhaled and considered. “Tell you what, if we find a dog along the way and it wants to be part of the family, we’ll keep it, okay?”

Rabbit set down his soup and threw his arms around me. “Really? Truly?”

“Sure.” I hugged him back, not remembering the last time we’d touched. Contact was all but forbidden weeks ago and it was oddly funny how out of practice I felt.

Rab hung on longer than he ever had. Longer than
before
. “Cool.” He took a full crunchy bite of cracker and melted cheese. Extra sips of juice helped add moisture to our mouths. “Are we ever going to have bread again?”

Add that to the list
. “Sure we are. There’s been bread for thousands of years, we’ll figure it out.”

“Thousands?”

“Everyone had bread, all over the world. Every culture. We can figure it out eventually.”

Rabbit sighed wistfully. “But not Seattle sourdough.”

“It gets its taste from fermentation, Rab. I think all our bread will probably be sourdough. Think about the gold miners—they didn’t have electric ovens and they invented sourdough.”

Rabbit quietly put more of the long-lasting fake logs on the fire and tossed in a couple of pinecones that promised to “turn the fire into a romantic light show.” We watched the greens and blues bounce around.

“That is definitely romantic,” Rab pronounced without a hint of a smile.

Giggles turned to chuckles to full-out belly laughs, almost
instantaneously. My eleven-year-old brother declaring anything romantic was laughable. But in our current situation, I guffawed until I was this side of peeing my pants with hysteria.

“What? What?” Rabbit joined me in the fun, but I could tell he thought I might be losing my mind.

We collapsed trying to get our breath back. Warm, full, and relaxed, the world pixilated and I fell into a deep sleep, devoid of the usual nightmarish flashbacks. At least for a while.

I
rolled myself tighter, burrowing into the covers, pressing the pillow against my ears.
No, brain, stop. Go back to sleep
. Too late to stay lost in slumber, my brain clicked on and started spinning with the weight of this new life.

Tucked into a tight fetal position with Rabbit smashed against me so completely I felt his vertebrae poking into my knees. I almost pushed him away to stretch my legs when I heard sniffling. The mewling, quiet sounds of an animal in pain ready to give up the fight. I forced my eyelids open. There was enough light to see my breath cloud around my face. I didn’t want to leave the cocoon made by the little body heat we generated under the blankets.

I should have piled on the down comforters from other rooms. I
should have pitched a tent or built a fort
. I remembered thinking of all the things I should do as my eyes closed and my stomach quieted.

Cold. Fire equals heat
. Reality came crashing back. I lifted my head to see that the only glow came from a tiny single ember. The rest of the coals were dark and probably cold to the touch.

The mound of blankets sighed and snorted.
Rabbit. He’s crying. In his sleep
. I didn’t wake him. It wouldn’t matter. There was nothing I could do to stop the tears, or the pain, and he needed sleep. Even if it was broken by sobs.

Better than the screaming nightmares—his or mine.
If we watch each other’s dreams, like a horror movie, will they be the same?
I forced myself to move through the sharp-edged air. I tucked my blanket over Rabbit’s nest and wrapped a wool shawl from the armchair over my head and shoulders. My coat was buried somewhere in Rab’s pile.

Get the fire going. Stoke it. Have food ready for Rabbit
. I didn’t want to go far from Rabbit in case he called for me. Which meant mining the suite for flammable materials. I picked up a stack of magazines from
before
. Smiling, loving Valentine’s Day couples and artfully plated desserts and headlines like
Make This Year Special
and
The Perfect Gift He Didn’t Know He Craved
and
Life Is Short, Make the Most of Your Love!

My heart leapt into my throat.
Love?
I’d never been in love. Might never be in love. Might never meet another teenager. Might be the last girl on earth.
What if we are the only people left? What if this is it? Waking up in the middle of the night cold? Crying? Needing fire and food and what happens when it all runs out or spoils or—?