Autumn in the City of Angels (6 page)

I loved the sound of my name in Gaelic.  I didn’t know much of the ancient language, but Mamó taught me a few words and “
Fòmhair
” was one.  It was really just the translation of the season, but she said it was close enough.  She lived just outside Dublin with my Grandpa.  Being as Irish as they came, she was incredibly spunky and very superstitious, and it was obvious my mother didn’t drop far from the tree.

I wondered for a brief moment if my grandparents in Ireland could have survived.  What if my immunity was genetic?  I pushed the idea away.  There was absolutely no way for me to find out.  Ireland was thousands of miles away and across a very large ocean.

I directed my mind back to the problem before me.  Restocking my food supply from the apartments under me. 
Fortiter
.  I’d just have to find a way to bear it.

I sighed and screwed the lid back on the jar of seeds.  How would I even get past the locked doors?  I wasn’t particularly skilled at picking locks.  And I sure didn’t have a crowbar hanging around.  Maybe there was a janitor’s closet in the basement with one I could use.

Suddenly, a thought popped into my head.  A janitor wouldn’t need a crowbar.  He’d have keys to get into all the units.  He didn’t have a key for our suite, of course, because of the high security for my mother.  But he’d have keys for all the others.  I could help myself and lock up again to keep anything else safe for later use.

I grabbed my own keys from the table in the entrance hall and left the apartment, locking the door behind me and riding the elevator down thirty-seven stories.

When the elevator doors slid open, I stepped out and peeked around the corner to the lobby.  It was a mess.  It had obviously been looted.  I shivered, thinking about Karl in my very own building.  I looked out the windows warily, as if he would suddenly burst in.

I tried the door to the office behind the front desk.  It was locked, but the knob seemed frail enough to break.  But not without a little noise.  I looked around for something to knock the doorknob off.  My eyes settled on a giant stapler on the desk.

I picked it up, weighing it in my hands, and looked out the glass front door again.  I raised the stapler above my head, took a deep breath and brought it down hard on the knob.  It shattered, and I jumped, startled by its destruction and the loud noise it created.

I looked out the windows immediately, afraid I’d attracted attention, but the banana plants and birds of paradise continued to sway softly in the sea breeze.

I pushed the door open.  The first thing I saw was a large box of powdered milk on one of the desks.  Underneath the desk were several jugs of water and a box of canned food.  Bingo.

I walked further into the office, noticing how one entire wall was glass. Bushes and trees outside shielded the interior of the office from view, but from here you could still see anyone coming up the long, curved driveway.  It was a good lookout position.

There was a battered armchair in a corner with a pair of blue fairy wings resting on it.  They had elastic straps attached so you could wear them like a backpack.  A pair of small pink tennis shoes peeked out from under the chair.

My eyes glanced over the rest of the room quickly, and I saw a small wooden cabinet hanging on the wall.  I crossed the room and opened the door on the front.  There were several hooks inside, but no keys.  This would have been where the keys were kept, I was sure.  But they were gone.  A piece of wood sticking out from the top of a tall cabinet caught my eye.  It looked like a sword hilt.  I reached up and slid my fingers around it and pulled it down.  It was a machete with a dark curved blade.  It looked old.  What on earth was it doing here?

And that’s when I saw it.  A small bottle of water on the desk.  It was wet with condensation.  Condensation meant the water had been much colder not long ago.  That someone had recently been here and would probably be coming back soon.  I should leave.  I slid the giant knife back into its place on top of the cabinet, and a stab of fear cut into me when I remembered the door knob.  They would know someone else had been here, broken in, and seen their hiding place.  I had to keep my presence in this building a secret.

I picked up the pieces of the door knob and, with shaking hands, tried to fit it back together, but it was hopelessly broken.  Why did I have to screw up every time I left home?  I was swearing to myself that I would never leave the apartment again when a quiet rattling noise behind me froze my insides.

I turned slowly to look over my shoulder.  No one was there.  I was surprised when my feet carried me to the far corner, where the battered old armchair stood empty except for the fairy wings.  There was a grate in the wall beside the chair.  I crouched down on the floor and peered inside the grate.  A small pair of brown eyes stared back at me.

¹
Pronounced ‘Foe irr’

²
Pronounced ‘For-ti-tair’

“Hello?”  I said quietly.  I heard shallow, quick breathing, as if the person hiding were very small.  And very scared.

“Are you... are you a bad person?”  A high voice answered.  The small eyes were wide.

“No.  I’m Autumn.  I live upstairs.  Who are you?”  I knelt to see inside the wall grate.  I heard a scurrying noise as the frail figure scooted back further into darkness.

“Ben?”   The little girl’s voice echoed from the blackness.

“Who’s Ben?”  I asked her.

“I’m not s’posed to talk to anyone.”

“It’s okay.  You don’t have to talk to me.”  An idea struck me suddenly.  I picked up her wings.  “Hey, are these yours?”  I held them up in front of the grate.  “They’re really pretty.  Would you like them in there to keep you company?”

There was silence for a moment, and then a small hand appeared.  I pulled open the grate just enough to pass them through to her.  I heard rustling, which I assumed meant she was putting them on.  When it was quiet again, I ventured another try.

“Who’s Ben?”

“He’s my brother.”  A soft clapping noise followed immediately, as if she had clapped her hand over her mouth to prevent her from saying any more.

I positioned myself more comfortably outside her hiding place so the sun fell on me and the little girl could see me clearly.  “What’s your name,” I asked her.

There was a pause, and I could tell she was studying me.  Finally, her small voice murmured, “Rissi.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Rissi.  I’ve been all by myself for a long time.  It’s good to talk to someone else.  Do you know when your brother will be back?”

There was a soft scuffling noise and a small, heart-shaped face appeared just on the other side of the grate.  She had soft, chestnut curls and big round brown eyes.  Her small nose was slightly turned up like a button.  She couldn’t have been older than seven.  I moved out of the way as she climbed out and said, “He’ll be back soon.  He never leaves me alone for long.  He’s clearing another apartment.”  As she talked, Rissi moved about the room, pulling items from shelves I hadn’t noticed before: books, dolls, more dress up items.

“Do you live here?”  I asked, watching her and marveling at her sudden trust in me.

“We live in twenty twenty.  It’s easy for me to remember, that’s why Ben picked it.  Just for me,” she said proudly and placed a plastic tiara on my head.  She giggled and opened a small pink bag at the foot of the armchair and pulled out a white feather boa.

As she wound it around my neck, I asked her, “So, did you and Ben not get sick like everyone else?”

“Nope!  We’re im...mune,” she said proudly, struggling with the word.  Her tone changed as she said, “Our mom and dad got sick.”  She fumbled with a white plastic stick with a glittered star at the tip and a few white ribbons attached to it.

“So did mine,” I whispered, suddenly wondering how many other immune people must have been left alone when their families and friends all died.  My stomach twisted as I realized how many children might be alone out there just like Rissi and her brother.

She surprised me by handing me the white plastic wand.  I took it and she stooped to adjust my feather boa.

“How old is your brother, Rissi?” I asked.

“He’s thirty-seven.”  She said confidently.

“Uh... okay.”  I said, confused.  Wow, I thought, what an age gap.

The door squeaked suddenly as it swung open.  I gasped in surprise and leapt to my feet.

“Ben!” Rissi squealed and dashed to the dark-haired teenage boy in the doorway. She jumped up on him, catching him around the waist.

While she squeaked out every detail she knew about me, I studied him carefully and decided almost immediately this wasn’t the boy who rescued me four weeks ago.  The way he hunched his shoulders forward whispered of a lack of social confidence, while the boy who rescued me showed concrete confidence and displayed a vein of charm despite our dire situation.  I suddenly realized what it was that set my rescuer apart from any of the other boys my age.  He didn’t act like a teenager.  The boy staring awkwardly at me now was definitely a teenager.

I suddenly felt self-conscious with the feather boa trailing halfway to the floor and the plastic tiara perched on my head.  I wondered when I’d last washed my hair.  I placed the wand and the tiara on the seat of the armchair and started to unwind the boa from around my neck.  I had trouble getting it untangled from around me.  I doubt it would have come off in a hurricane.

Judging by the precautions these two had been taking against “the bad people,” I felt fairly confident they weren’t with The Front.  They were probably like me, alone and doing the best they could.  I tucked my hair behind my ears and stuck out my hand.  “I’m Autumn. Like Rissi said... um... I live here.”

The boy shook my hand briefly, his brown eyes not leaving my own.  He had a round face, dark curly hair and glasses.  He certainly wasn’t thirty-seven.  He looked no older than me.  Why wasn’t he saying anything?  Did he think I was part of The Front?  I remembered Sam, and how benign she’d seemed.  I suppose it would have been easy for Ben to think I was like her, so I tried to ease his mind.

I looked around and said the first thing that came to mind, “Where’d you find the powdered milk?  That must be nice.”  I gestured to the box.

Rissi stared at me, then Ben, her smile widening.  When Ben didn’t say anything, she jumped up and down, pulling on his arm.  This seemed to wake him up.

“Uh, yeah.  Rissi likes cereal.”  Ben said flatly.  He cleared his throat.  “Um, she’s also off by twenty years.  I’m seventeen.  She’s seven.”  His voice trailed off.

I nodded.  “I’m so sorry about your door.  I didn’t think anyone else was living here.  I’ve been up in our apartment for the past two and a half months, and I’m about out of food.  I was looking for the janitor’s keys so I could get into some of the other apartments.”

Ben pulled out a fat key ring from his pocket.  The ring was so full, the keys stuck out like spokes on a bicycle wheel.  “That’s what we’ve been doing,” he said, then eyed me a little closer.  Suddenly I saw a dawn of recognition, “You’re Adara O’Neal’s daughter, aren’t you?”

Hearing her name suddenly shocked me like static electricity, and the familiar pain twisted in my chest.  Her red curly hair and laughing eyes shimmered in front of me for a moment.  I shook my head slightly to clear it.  At least I knew why he was staring now.  That used to happen sometimes.  Best to pretend like they’re not, my mother always said.  Graceful, gracious and grateful was her mantra when dealing with the public.

“That’s me.  Have we met?”

“No, I’ve just seen you around here before... you know... before...”

“Oh!  You lived here too?”

Ben exhaled sharply and looked around sarcastically.  “Here?  Yeah right.  My dad was the janitor.  I helped him after school, so I’d see you sometimes.  Marissa and I live here now, though.”  He patted her on the back when he said her name.

“So that’s how you knew about the keys.”

Ben nodded.  “We thought we were the only ones left in the building.  We’ve been all over it, gathering food and supplies.  We didn’t have access to your penthouse though, because of the high security.  Jeez, you’ve really been up there all this time by yourself?  Bet you’ve been going crazy.”  I couldn’t help but start to smile at how fast Ben was warming and how his rambling sentences seemed to be all connected into one thought.

“Yeah, I go a little nutty some days.  I’m glad I ran into you.  It’ll be nice to have some company again.”  My voice cut off there, and I stopped my thoughts from wandering to my parents again.  I swallowed and looked at Rissi, who was staring at me, grinning.  I suddenly noticed how her brown curly hair hung lank in messy pigtails.  Her shirt had a stain down the front, and her hands were dirty.  She wore rubber flip flops, and her feet were dirty, too.

I opened my mouth to ask if they wanted to come up for a swim/bath in my pool but Ben said, “Well, I just cleared 1824 so you can come up with us to look around if you like.  Hey, Rissi, guess what they have?  Something you were just saying this morning you wanted...”

Rissi’s huge brown eyes lit up, and she squealed something unintelligible.

Ben laughed, and I said, “What was that?”

“Marshmallows.”

I marveled at how Ben and Rissi had been getting along so well, so close to me, practically underneath my nose, all this time.

Ben waved for us to follow him, and we walked out to the elevator.  He pushed the “up” button with a long, thin finger.  I nervously glanced behind me at the wall of windows leading to the street as the elevator opened.

“Don’t worry.  They’re not around today.”

I was taken aback by his assuredness.  “How do you know?”

“I overheard one of the guys talking on a walkie talkie.  Something about his group leaving to go help with some underground project, but they’ll be back tonight.”

I stared at him, shocked.  “How did you overhear them?"

He shrugged, and I noticed his t-shirt was a tad too small for his frame.  “Spying.  We’ve only been in this building for about three weeks.  We tried to stay at our house in Palms as long as we could, but we ran out of food.  We moved to another apartment complex in Santa Monica but The Front raided it.  It was all I could do to keep us hidden.  Hopped around to a couple different places since, always trying to keep ahead of their looting.  When we found this place, I thought I’d make it look like they’d already raided it, hoped it’d confuse them.”

I raised my eyebrows, impressed and asked, “Has it worked?”

Ben grimaced.  “So far, but Karl hasn’t been with them.  Don’t know if it would fool him.”

I started at the name.  “You know Karl?”

He shrugged.  “Not personally.  He’s a real creep.  I’ve only heard him on the radio.”

I nodded and briefly told him about my short visit with them, editing out the part about the boy in the alley.

“I bet it’s like listening to World War II propaganda back in the day.  At first it sounds pretty good, but then it gets creepy, fast.  They say we need to unite to survive, that we can rebuild together.  But then they talk about how we have to reform our ways for a better community and strip away our own wants and needs... serve them and stuff.  It’s pretty crazy.”  Ben’s voice was bitter, and his eyes hardened.  “But I’ve seen what they do.  I’m not buying their crap.”

An image of the olive-skinned boy in the dirty t-shirt and Karl, handsome head bowed as he dug through the boy’s bag, flashed through my head.  “I don’t like them either,” I said.  Ben looked at me and we both understood.

The elevator arrived on the eighteenth floor, and we stepped into the hallway, where Ben guided us to the left.  We passed doors with flat brass numbers fastened to them.  When we reached the door labeled “1824,” Rissi opened the unlocked door and ran right in.  Ben held the door open for me, and I followed her.  I heard her shouting with joy from deeper in the apartment.  I smiled.  She must have found the marshmallows.

My earlier worry about the inhabitants of these apartments resurfaced as Rissi reappeared with a fistful of giant marshmallows.  She ran by, her mouth crammed full, yelling what sounded like, “Chubby Bunny!” and then disappeared again through an open doorway into what I guessed was a bedroom.  I heard Ben opening cabinets in the kitchen, so I walked toward the noise.

Ben was stacking canned food onto the counter.  He had already piled a couple bags of chips and some bottled water and soda next to them.  He pulled open the refrigerator and immediately picked up a familiar bright pink bottle of Pepto-Bismol.  He put it on the counter with the other items and continued poking around the refrigerator, sniffing items here and there.  I could almost imagine this was his own place, and that he’d just gotten home and was digging up a snack.

“Um, Ben?”

There was a pause, and then I heard his muffled reply from the back of the fridge.  “Yeah?”

“So, is that your machete down in the lobby office?”

He reappeared holding a jar of applesauce and some extremely moldy cheese.  “Yup.  Gotta have something, and until I can get my hands on a gun, that’ll have to do.”

My wide eyes must have given me away, because he said, “Autumn, you’ve seen what Karl and The Front are doing.  They’re taking people by force.  I’m not about to let that happen to us.”

I nodded.  “Of course.”  I hoped he’d never have to resort to using it.  Watching him inspect the cheese, he didn’t seem the type to know how to handle a gun, let alone a machete.  He had such a gentle look about him, and I was willing to bet he knew more about computers than handling weapons.

“What did you mean when you said you ‘cleared’ this apartment?”  I asked, thinking I probably already knew the answer.

“Well, I can’t let Rissi just run into these apartments, not knowing what’s behind all the closed doors.”  He tossed the cheese back into the fridge.  It landed with a soft thump on the shelf.  “These people didn’t just go up in a puff of smoke when they died, you know?”

My eyes widened slightly. He’d not only used the same phrase I thought not half an hour ago, but he’d talked so casually about it.

“So... so you go in the apartments first and...”  My voice trailed off.

“Clear them.”  He finished for me and began bagging his groceries.  “...Rissi knows the rule about closed doors.”

I turned my back to him suddenly, realizing what he must go through every day just so Rissi could come with him.  Seeing dead bodies, moving them, touching them, hiding them.  I took a deep breath and bit my lip hard. There was a closed door just beyond the living room.

Knowing they used to be alive and just like me with thoughts and fears and passions is what scared me most about dead bodies.  I’d only seen one dead body in my life.  Well, two now, counting the boy in the street.

My granddaddy died a couple of years ago, and I’d walked with my dad to the front of the church to say goodbye at his casket.  I watched as my dad bent down and kissed his dead father’s forehead and slipped something in the breast pocket of the jacket.  I stepped forward and my granddaddy’s face came into view.  He looked like a wax figure of himself.  His skin was stretched and thick.  His lips looked swollen.  My breath caught in my throat, and I was terrified to move closer.  Without thinking, I stepped back and stumbled on my dad’s shoe.  Caught off guard, he wasn’t able to catch me, and I fell in front of everyone.  I didn’t care, though.  I stood up and walked quietly to the back of the church.  For the rest of the service, I wasn’t able to tear my eyes away from the white tip of my granddaddy’s nose that peeped out of his casket.