After the Birds

Chapter Eight

Remerton

NY, USA

2024

Andrea

Andrea

At first, Isabella can’t fathom what’s going on. Something makes a sound next to her on the ground, as if someone cracked a whip. Almost immediately, a sharp bang tears through the eerie lack of sound of a quiet Remerton. To her, it sounds odd as if someone pops a giant chewing gum.

One second later, she realizes that someone’s shooting. At her! She runs a few steps, then to the side and throws herself back and forth in a zigzag pattern. Perhaps it’s because of the dread permeating her, but she’s running faster than she’s ever done in her life. A fence in the center of the street is meant to keep pedestrians from jaywalking, but Andrea can’t let it slow her down. She grabs it with both hands and now she’s flying. She lands hard on both feet on the other side and keeps running.

She scurries over to the building and presses her back to the wall. It keeps popping, but the closest bullets ricochets impact at least two yards from her. Andrea looks up along the wall toward the roof of the building. Nobody up there is leaning out over the edge as far as she can see.

Behind her is a restaurant and the big windows don’t make her feel safe. If they’re hit by a ricochet, glass will explode, and it might slice into her. Andrea pulls the collar of her down jacket up around her neck.

She hears someone running, and she moves away from the corner of the building. A man is holding a little girl in one hand a bag in the other is hurrying toward her. When he sees her, he pulls at the girl and stops so fast, the child nearly falls over.

“Damn…are you the one shooting?” He pushes the girl behind him. She looks to be about Theo’s age, or perhaps a year older.

“No, it comes from up there,” Andrea says, points to the roof and resumes walking close to the wall.

“From the roof?” The man looks up.

“No,” the little girls says and whimpers. “I don’t want to.”

“All right, all right,” the man says. “We’re going home, Emma. We’ll be fast.”

“I want my mom.” Now the girl tears her hand from the man’s grip and starts running. She passes Andrea who sees the man trip when he’s trying to stop his daughter.

“Emma! Stop!” The man goes down and his knee nits the sidewalk hard. “Emma!

“Hey, girl. Emma?” Andrea calls out and catches up with the girl. “Your dad fell over. Wait up.”

“That’s not my dad,” the girl says, her lower lip quivering. “My dad’s name’s Andrew.”

The man tries to get up. He’s about twenty yards away. Wobbling, he supports himself against the wall. AnStarting to feel panicky. Andy is trying to graps what's going on. Someone’s shooting from the roof. A man’s pulling a little girl along and she claims he’s not her dad.

“Do you know him at all?” Andrea asks the girl quickly.

“He lives in the same building as my grandma.” Emma tries to get away from Andrea, tugging hard at her hand. He said I have to come with him, but I don’t want to.” She sobs and looks afraid and furious at the same time. “I want Mom!”

“Come here, Emma.” The man lips badly and clings to the wall as she moves toward them. “I’ll look after you. You know me.”

“No. I don’t know you!” The girl’s shrieks and tears stream down her cheeks. “You grabbed me.”

Oh, shit. Andrea stares at the man. He’s in his twenties or thirties. Is he a creep going after little girls? Even if Andrea is in such a hurry to get to Antonio’s condo, to Theo, she can’t leave a little girl to fend for herself. What if it was Theo needing help?

“Do you know where your mom lives?” She pulls Emma further from the man who is closing in on them even if he can barely put weight on his injured leg.

“Yes,” the girl whispers. “Come! It’s not far. We must hurry.”

Andrea doesn’t hesitate. Still holding the girl’s, Emma’s, hand, she begins to run. If this kid is all confused about things, so be it. She can’t risk Emma falling into the hands of a predator. They continue along the sidewalk, and now it’s truly uphill.

The man’s voice echoes behind them. There are more popping sounds, and when Andrea turns her head over her shoulder, she can see that the man has fallen again—and now he’s not moving.

“Run!” Andrea pulls the girl along and they pick up speed. “Tell me when we’re getting close, but now we have to run super-fast. Someone’s shooting.” Andrea doesn’t dare move back into the center of the street in case there are other shooters. She rather risk having to clobber someone with her baseball bat.

They reach the top of the hill, and here Emma pulls her to the left and then to the left again. She lets go of Andrea’s hand and hurries over to a door where she taps in the code for the lock with fast little fingers.

“Wait, wait,” Andrea says when Emma starts pulling at the door. Her bat raised in front of her, Andrea steps inside. A dead body is lying over by the elevator. “Which floor are you on?”

“Third. Look.” Emma points to the sign holding the names of the tenants above the mailboxes. “E. Lang and A. Stevens.”

“Are you sure your mom’s alive?” Andrea barely reflects on the bluntness of her question. Such sensitivities are gone forever. She can see that the dead body is of an older man, which is weirdly promising from Emma’s point of view.

“Yes. She called Grandma this morning.” Emma seems to take the question in stride. “Grandma’s alive too. I was going to throw really smelly garbage outside. That man showed up and said I had to go with him.” He pulled me along even if I kicked him. I bit him too. Grandma yelled at him through the window, but he took me anyway.”

They carefully make their way up the stairs. Even if the dead man weren’t blocking the elevator, it is still a bad idea to risk getting stuck between floors. When they reach the third floor, Andrea has to hold Emma back, and she probably hold her too hard, as the girl wants to run to the door to her apartment. Emma hasn’t seen that the door is half open. Everybody locks up tight these days. Those who don’t are probably dead.

“Wait while I take a peek,” Andrea says firmly. “Until we know that your Mom’s home, I’m responsible for you, okay?”

“Okay,” Emma says reluctantly. Her long blond hair lies around her head and shoulder like a massive cloud when she looks up at Andrea with eyes that aren’t childish at all. She has already been through and seen too much for being a little elementary school girl.
Andrea reaches the door and nudges it open a few more inches. It smells all right and there is no sign of looters either. She’s just about to open the door fully with her bat, when she hears a hoarse scream behind her.

“Emma!”

Andrea and Emma swivel toward the direction of the female voice. With her bat at shoulder level, Andrea prepares to go into her first close combat situation.

“Mom…” Emma starts to cry and rushes toward the woman before Andrea has time to stop her.

“Mom, she’s here. She’s here at the apartment. With some girl. Emma’s here.” The woman is on her phone as she falls to her knees in the stairwell with her arms around her daughter. “Emma. Oh, my God.”

Emma clings to her mother with her arms around her neck. “He took me, Mom.”

“I know. I know. But you’re here now. You’re home now.” Emma’s momma presses her lips against Emma’s cheeks, over and over.
“And someone shot at us.” Emma wiped her cheeks, and then at her mother’s.

“Who did?” The mother looks up at Andrea.

“Well, it wasn’t me. I know you’re thrilled to be together, but it’s not safe being out in the open as you may have noticed. Can we go inside?” Andrea points to the apartment with her bat.

“Yes. Of course. Absolutely.” The woman gets up and walks toward Andrea. “Did you rescue Emma from the man who took her?” She walks into the apartment with Emma’s hand in hers. She motions for Andrea to follow.

“Well. She’s pretty good at rescuing herself.” Andrea remains just inside the door after closing and locking it behind her. “I can’t stay. I just wanted to make sure Emma got home all right. You know?”

“My name’s Eva.” Emma’s mom smiles tiredly. “Why don’t you come in and I’ll fix you something to drink. You’re out of breath, both of you.”

“Okay. Thank you. “I’m Andy.”

“How old are you?” Eva pours some squash in two glasses and dilutes it with water.

Andrea accepts the glass and sips it before she answers. It’s been a while since she had something else than water or dry milk. “Soon fourteen.”

“Where are you heading? Any family left?” Eva sits on a kitchen chair and hugs Emma.

“A few blocks from here. I’m going to locate my little brother. I have to hurry.” Andrea hasn’t bothered to sit down, since she feels she might not be able to get up if she does.

“Have you been in contact with him?” Eva looks concerned. She’s as blond as her daughter. “Do you know if he’s okay, I mean?”

“No, I don’t know that, but he is. I’ll find him.” Stubbornly raises her chin and puts the glass down. “Thank you for the squash.”

“Thank you for my daughter. My mother uses a walker and couldn’t hurry after her when the man came. She called me and I panicked and ran outside. We must have just missed each other.”

“You forgot to lock the door. That can’t happen again. Next time it can be dangerous people finding it open, rather than an almost fourteen-year-old girl.” Andrea glowers at Eva.

“I know.” Eva looks ashamed. “But Emma’s father is returning from London soon. He was supposed to be gone for two weeks, but then they cancelled all the flights. I think boats and ships are still available, and I’m sure he’s going to be on one of them soon.”

Andrea understands that Eva hasn’t accepted what’s happened to the world. Not at all. She would have to leave Emma alone with a woman who thinks it’s still possible to travel. Hasn’t she been following the news, or even the public announcements? Or has she just heard what she wanted to hear?

“Stay inside as much as you can.” Andrea smiles at Emma. “Take care of your mom. Keep the door and the windows closed. The door to the balcony too. Just to be safe.”

“But this isn’t going to last much longer,” Eva says. “We should go to the park on a nice day like today, Emma.”

“Weren’t you listening, Mom? People are shooting from the rooftops. Bad men can come and grab us if we go outside. We must stay inside.” Emma shakes her mother’s arm. “Listen to me.”

Eva hugs Emma hard. “Of course I’m listening.”

Andrea isn’t sure how to handle this new situation. At first, she thought everything would be fine if they just managed to find Emma’s mother. Grownups are supposed to know better and provide safety for the kids. Now she studies Eva’s distracted, shifty eyes, tremulous smile, and, oh God, too-firm grip of Emma’s hair. Emma tries to pry Eva’s fingers loose, but for each curl she liberates, Eva’s fingers find another.

“Eva,” Andrea says slowly. “Do you and Emma have everything you need, you can lock the door behind me when I leave.”

“Of course we do. We have lovely neighbors here in this stairwell. We help each other.” Eva nods eagerly.

Part of Andrea wants to believe Eva and just leave and not feel guilty about it. But it can’t be true that this stairwell, in this building, has been spared. There was a dead man by the elevator after all. It is enough of a miracle that a daughter, mother, and grandmother, in the same family, all are immune.

“You know? When I find my brother, and we know that the streets are somewhat safer, I’ll come back to check on you.” Andrea looks pleadingly at Emma for her to understand. “You and Theo are about the same age. You can have fun together. For sure.”

“Sounds like a great idea. I think school will be out for a few weeks yet,” Eva says and smiles. Her eyes look a little glazed over.
Andrea and Emma exchange glances. The expression in Emma’s gaze is nothing she’d ever thought she’d see in a little kid. A kind of grownup calm where she’s somehow assumed her mother’s role. There should have been a child’s fear or confusion, but Emma seems to have aged a decade in a few hours.

“I’ll be back.” Andrea speaks quietly. “That’s a promise.”

“I believe you.” Emma stands within her mother’s embrace, and Eva squeezes her very hard. Emma appears to completely disregard that her mother presses her lips to the top of her head in harsh, desperate kisses.

Andrea finds a pen on the kitchen table. She snatches a paper towel and writes her phone number. “Here. In case it’s possible to make a call. Okay?”

“Okay,” Emma whispers.

Andrea walks toward the front door and calls behind her. “Lock up after me!” Nobody answers, but when she closes the door, she thinks she hears someone cough.

#

Andrea feels guilty for leaving Eva and Emma. Which one of them coughed? Of course, a person can cough without having contracted the bird virus. But it’s something about that cough, a special sound that’s easily recognizable once you’ve heard it from a few people. Wet and sticky.

She’s so close to Antonio’s condo now, and finding Theo is the most important thing of all. She runs through the streets without stopping even once to catch to breath. When she reaches Antoino’s street, she checks her watch. 2.30 PM. Everything has taken so much longer than she calculated.

Then she finds herself with the door leading into Antony’s stairwell. It is hanging from only the top hinge. She loses her breath when she sees the broken entry buttons and intercom console next to it. The only explanation is that looters must’ve been here. Not a good sign. It doesn’t have to mean they’ve been able to get into all the condos. She grips her bat hard and crawls through the opening under the door. The backpack gets stuck, but she yanks herself free.

There are no bodies in sight, at least, but the stairwell smells like death. Will she ever get used to that smell? Andrea doesn’t think so. Her gag reflex settles once she stops trying to breathe through her nose. It seems she can find her balance quicker each time she comes across the smell. Now she only has one thought in her head. Theo.

She runs up the stairs. On the second floor, all four doors open. Two of them appear undamaged and the other two look as if someone used a sledgehammer. She can see into the parts of the condos, but doesn’t have time to investigate, just to listen in case someone’s approaching.

Andrea runs up to the third floor, which shows the same thing. All the doors are broken, and so is Antonio’s. She been praying to God all the way up that his door would be intact, but it isn’t.

She swallows against the tears flooding her throat but refuses to cry. She stands staring into the hallway to the condo where her little brother was supposed to be. He was supposed to come running to the door when she knocked and listened for her. He would open it and throw himself in her arms. That was how she had envisioned it and now all she sees are jackets and shoes in a mess on the floor, together with the paintings that the art collecting Antonio normally kept on proud display on the walls around the flat.

She spots something blue and red. Andrea whimpers when she recognizes Theo’s little backpack. A blue backpack with Spiderman on the front that Mom bought for him when he started school last fall. He loves that pack. She plucks it from the floor and hooks it on her arm while she raises the bat. She’s got a good grip of it with both hands just in case.

“Hello?” Andrea calls out and crosses the threshold. Perhaps they’re hiding inside? Her unbending hopefulness hurts. Antonio can have locked themselves in the bathroom. “It’s me. Andy. Hello?”

She carefully makes her way through the condo. Further into the hallway is a broken mirror on the floor. Seven years of misfortune, Mom would have said. Some fuckers must’ve crushed every single mirror all over the world since everything went to hell. Seven years won’t be anywhere enough to fix this situation. More like seventy.

“Theo?” she calls out again, a little less loud now, as she’s afraid of attracting strangers. “Theo. Antonio? It’s Andy.”

Nobody answers and she walks toward the bedroom. No little boy’s voice calls out her name with that cute little voice of his. No Theo to call her the world’s best sister with that lisp that his missing two front teeth creates.

“I’m here now. As I promised.” Andrea had really promised Mom, but still.

Everything in the condo is a mess. Complete chaos. A two-bedroom condo, and Theo has his own room when staying with his dad. Theo’s room turns out to be equally messy. If Theo had fled with his dad, he would have been adamant about taking his backpack. Andrea has it in a firm grip and now fills it with some of his clothes and a few toys and books. When she finds him, he’ll need his stuff. She pulls off her own backpack and manages to attach the Spiderman pack to it. It becomes a bit bulky, but that’s all right.

Andrea tiptoes toward the bathroom. The door is closed, and her hope reignites. “Theo,” she said outside the door and hardly dares to touch the doorknob. “Are you in there? It’s just m. Andy. Theo?”

There is no sound from behind the door, and she opens it. The bathroom is empty. Several buckets of fresh water sit in the shower stall. Antonio doesn’t have a bathtub, and he’s clearly tried his best to follow the advice from the public announcements.

She walks into the living room and here the looters have left a lot of evidence of having been there. The huge eighty-six-inch flatscreen TV is gone. As is the Xbox, all the games, and Antonio’s laptop, unless it’s in another room. What do these fools think they’re going to do with that stuff when the power goes down permanently? Right not it’s gone more than it isn’t. Do they really think there’s a lucrative black market for tech stuff now?

Andrea sits down on the couch after having adjusted the jumbled cushions. She doesn’t dare let the tears that cling to her lashes fall. If she does, she’ll be crying for days. That’s how it feels, at least. She needs to think. And when she sets her mind to do so, the thoughts flood her mind. Yes, there have been looters here. But there are no bodies. The condo itself doesn’t smell like death.

Andrea gets up and walks into the kitchen, the only room she hasn’t checked yet. There’s a foul smell from the half open fridge. She peers inside and sees an old, open yogurt carton that is ripe enough to walk out of there on its own. Three bottles of Pellegrino sit in the door, and she tucks two of them into her pocket and opens the third. She downs half of it thirstily and burps loudly. For some reason, this is suddenly so funny. She starts to laugh and holds on hard to the countertop between the paroxysms. If Mom had heard her burp like that, she would have told Andrea about good manners. God. So good mannered people don’t burp? She drinks the rest at a slower pace between giggles. When the laughter is close to hysteria and tears, she smacks her cheek hard. She’s seen that done in movies, and somehow it appears to work. Not if someone else had smacked her, but some self-discipline is not wrong. That’s a word that Mom used when she thought Andrea should know better.

So. Antonio and Theo fled. After, rather than before, the break-in, if she’s guessing. It didn’t look like they had time to pack, as they left Theo’s backpack. If the looters had killed them, they’d still be here.

A trembling voice in her mind suggests they could be collected and carried down into the basement or another apartment. No, not another apartment. All the doors are open, and it would stink much worse if one of them were full of corpses. But the basement… She realizes she has to venture down into the basement and make sure.

Surely someone in this building in one of the other stairwells has to be alive? Perhaps she could find someone who can tell her what happened? Someone like that old man in her own building. Fishing off the last drops of the Pellegrino, Andrea stops with the bottle still pressed against her lips.

She hears it clearer now. Steps of someone ascending the stairs. For a fraction of a moment, happiness soars in her chest. It could be Antonio and Theo! But then fear swallows her whole and she hurries out into the hallway and looks around frantically. At the far end of the narrow hallways is a door she’s overlooked until now. The walk-in closet. Without hesitating, she opens it and throws herself inside. It’s just as messy as the rest of the condo and she’s stepping on clothes that’s been torn off their hangers, but it also muffles her steps, which is good. She leaves the door open half an inch. She needs to see who it is.

Perhaps it’s Antonio and Theo after all?

Continued behind door 9

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