Community - 5/21

Another few days passed with no excitement. At the end of the world, it had become extremely boring to just rot in bed, which was something I used to enjoy. Even the occasional tremor that shook us was merely an afterthought to me. Unfortunate, because every time my mind wandered, all I could see was the screaming girl trapped under the rubble, or hear the phantom alarms blaring in the distance. They had long since stopped, but I still thought I heard them on occasion.

I try thinking about my old life to get my mind off things. I miss my computer more than anything. If I had that, or a phone, I could be getting updates on the world around me, seeing tales of survivors or the green zone. Nope, instead, now I have a charred book that Josh had finished this morning, whose pages I can barely turn. Boring at least meant we had been safe, relatively speaking. Fewer survivors were making their way through than the day before, which meant more food was being saved for us, a fact which our cache did not seem to reflect.

“Safe supplies are drying up,” Jasper had noted after returning from a search. He marked a few more spots off their makeshift map, one for an area they checked, and another for which a recent tremor had made unsafe. From what I could tell, their radius had expanded a couple of blocks away, which only made each run longer. The exhaustion was showing on his face.

“We’ll find stuff, just need a new approach,” Marcos says, eating his cold cup of soup on one of the beds.

“We need to stop giving stuff away,” Jasper retorts, his voice barely having the energy to sound irritated.

“If we don’t, they are just going to search for themselves and take it. Easier to keep our area controlled,” Marcos shrugs.

“You sound like some mob boss running a drug ring. It’s not like it’s our turf or anything. Plus, they might not find what we do.”

“Or they will get desperate and try and take it.”

“Might do that anyways.”

Jasper’s right.

They had this conversation nearly every time they stopped back in the tent, with the details varying slightly based on their moods. It was clear their approach was split, but it seemed like Jasper couldn’t stop Marcos from handing out the supplies. As they became more and more exhausted, the tension between them only grew.

It felt like we had been stuck in a loop since the President’s announcement. Four days had passed since then, all of which played out the exact same way. Samantha fed me, then helped me try and move, then I rested. Repeat three times until Jasper and Marcos return, argue, sleep, and then leave again before I am awake.

Josh has started walking around, a little unsteady on his scarred legs, but at least moving. He came over to talk to me a few times. I mostly listened. He had worked in a factory at one point, then lost his arm, then did something or other. None of it was interesting to me, so I just nodded along. There was a reason I had chosen to stay in my apartment, away from people like him who incessantly needed to speak.

Uma had started to chime in a little as well on these conversations, having Samantha and Marcos move her closer to me so that we could talk. Like Jasper, I didn’t care what she said, but at the very least, the group was trying to interact. Trying to survive in their own ways.

Our other two companions never joined in.

I wish I were the one in a coma.

“Have you started the book?” Josh asks, pulling me back into whatever he had been talking about with Uma.

I had read a couple of chapters, but had not gotten into it.

“Yeah, just a little.”

“Ooh alright, I won’t spoil it then. Let me know when you get to the twist, though, I really want to talk about it.”

Maybe they were right for trying, for acting like we were friends. Circumstances aside, I was in a small circle trying to discuss a book. Like an ordinary person would do with their friends on a weekend. All that was missing was the wine.

As if they would talk to you if they had other options.

Josh went back to his bed to sit and eat when the scavengers returned, carrying what looked to be very full backpacks.

“You hit the jackpot!” he yells out, clapping his hand against his chest for some awkward applause.

“Kind of, it’s not all food though, so nobody should expect steaks,” Jasper responds before collapsing into the bed and removing his backpack.

From their packs, they reveal what appear to be clean clothes alongside some meager rations. Samantha had been keeping us washed with some questionable water that had been deemed unsafe to drink, but all of us were getting pretty nasty. New clothes sound divine.

They sort them out and begin to lay each pair next to our beds. Wherever they had found this, it had survived the wall of dust caused by the city's collapse. Cleaner than our bedsheets had been on the first day by a mile.

“Where’d you find these?” I ask, looking at what appeared to be mainly retro concert t-shirts.

“One of those storage unit places, a higher-end one. Took us all day just to break into one unit,” Marcos responds as he helps me remove my dirty gown and put on a shirt from some band I had never heard of. It feels great to finally have a piece of clothing that was closed on the back. Medical gowns are a nightmare.

“You going back?”

“No point, realized what we need wasn’t going to be in there after opening this one. Clothes are nice, but not going to keep us alive much. At least it’s not winter, so these should work.”

There are a couple of pairs of nicer shorts with tags still on them, and a pair of jeans that fit me well enough to keep. I’m sure someone had worked a lifetime collecting these based on the brand names, but in the end, they were just clothing. They had even found a drawstring bag for each of us to store our first new belongings in.

“Now that you have a bag, I can give you these too,” Marcos said, holding up a pair of very worn green Crocs. My Crocs.

“How’d you get those?”

“We had them since you were brought here. Apparently, nobody grabbed them during the first day, so I just had them waiting for when you could walk,” Marcos continued, wrapping up my dirty gown to take away and handing me a can of corn.

“Ah… better than nothing.”

“Shoes or the corn?”

“Both… I guess.”

I stare down at the shoes, feeling a little better for having a piece of my old life back. He had obviously cleaned them at some point because they were not nearly dirty enough. Even the color looked slightly off, but that might have just been my imagination.

I look closer and realize they are a different size.

These aren’t my shoes.

He had lied to me. For a split second, I had felt better, even if it was a lie. The man had barely spoken to me while working himself to the bone, yet went out of his way to remember what I had worn and found a replacement. Sure, he lied, but he probably had his reasons.

I ate my corn in silence, hands much steadier than they had been a mere few days ago. Even though the food was cold, I felt warm inside. Warmer than even the heat of the tent could have made me.