Carrie had learned long ago to do without.
In her twenties, she skipped dinner most nights not out of some sense of displeasure with her body, but because meat and vegetables were entirely too expensive once inflation went wild. She’d learned to eat the free food at college, at work, at local library events. Even after Leela was born, Carrie had mostly gotten by on packaged rices, frozen veggies, and blocks of store-brand cheese. Carrie knew what it took to survive.
She made sure that her daughter had never gone without.
Leela was waiting for her back at the basement they’d been hiding out in. Even with the locks and booby traps Carrie had set up, she didn’t want to be gone for long. This supply run had to be a good one. The dog had been whining and hiding under the futon, which he’d done before the last three storms. They’d all been Nor’easters or hurricanes, not that Carrie was a meteorologist or anything. And it’d been months since there’d been any kind of broadcast on radios, nonetheless TVs, to confirm her suspicions. They were lucky enough when electricity was still working.
Carrie had already filled one of the backpacks with the medical end of the CVS: children’s Tylenol, melatonin, multivitamins, bandages and ointments, and even a first aid kit and some small lighters that had gotten hidden behind the hemorrhoid creams. Now she was working on the backpack she had hanging in front of her chest like a papoose. As promised, she’d gotten at least a week’s worth of canned dog food even though, as she kept telling Leela, the dog wasn’t technically theirs. They’d found it starving when they’d had to move again, and after a few days it stopped growling. Once Leela named him, Carrie knew there was no going back.
Everything had become so automatic at this point that she barely even looked at what she was grabbing aside from the bag and box colors. Blue and yellow box. Blue and yellow box. Blue and yellow box. Blue bag. Blue bag. Red box. Red box. Red box. The important thing was getting the right snacks for Leela. Carrie had tried a few different things to avoid making more trips, but Leela would just refuse to eat them. The last time that happened, she’d gotten really sick and couldn’t stay awake. Carrie couldn’t really hold it against her. This whole thing was difficult for her, and she was nearly thirty years older than Leela. It isn’t the seven-year-old’s fault the world went to shit, she kept telling herself.
Carrie grabbed three huge bags of the sea salt and vinegar chips. Even the smell made her gag, but they would keep Leela happy for another couple of weeks. The panic came when the cookie selection was pretty much out. Carrie didn’t want to (literally) run all the way to the Stop and Shop down the way with the supplies weighing her down. But cookies were one of those things that Leela was picky about. “Fuck,” Carrie kept whispering to herself again and again. She only stopped when she heard someone throwing boxes in another aisle. Then she whispered “fuck” to herself one last time, grabbing the steel crowbar from the extra loop she’d sewn onto her coat. The machete would have been more threatening, but she’d left that hidden at home where Leela couldn’t reach it. The other person must not have noticed her, because they let out a triumphant “Oh thank god!” loud enough for them to hear over in Massachusetts.
When Carrie edged around the corner of the aisle, barely keeping herself from tripping on an old cardboard display, she had planned on sneaking out as quickly and quietly as possible. She didn’t need to get jumped for supplies and bleed out on the floor of a CVS. But then she saw it: the last package of Pepperidge Farm cookies in the whole place. Something over came her, a hybrid between mama bear instinct and the unhinging of the new normal. If things were like the old world, she’d have told Leela that she’d go out to look tomorrow, or she’d drive the few blocks down to Stop and Shop. But there would be the storm tomorrow, and gas had long since run out.
“I need those!” Carrie shouted, raising her crowbar.
The woman made a sound in the back of her throat, almost like she’d thought about saying hello and then stopped herself short. She was taller than Carrie, with light brown skin and a long green coat in brand new condition.
“I need those,” Carrie repeated at a lower volume.
“Get some Oreos or something,” the woman said. “These are for my daughter.” She didn’t draw a weapon. Her stance barely changed. She looked completely confident that she could handle herself without one, and Carrie didn’t know whether that was an insult to her or the other woman’s high self-regard of her own skillset. Under different circumstances, Carrie might be impressed.
“My daughter needs those,” Carrie said. She lowered the crowbar slightly. Time to switch tactics. “I know this seems silly, but my daughter is neurodivergent. And those are one of, like, five foods that she’ll eat these days.”
The woman’s dark eyebrows lowered, her head drawing back slightly. “Mine too.”
She laughed and then sighed. Carrie couldn’t quite tell if the tension was breaking or shifting. She decided to keep her guard up.
“The Hunger Games was not built for neurodivergent kids, huh?” the woman in the green coat said.
“Freaking tell me about it.” Carrie couldn’t help smiling, too. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a real conversation with someone, nonetheless someone that actually seemed half-decent. “You a Hunger Games fan?”
“I was more a Twilight girl.”
“Ah.” Carrie folded her arms across her chest, popping her hip to one side to keep a strong stance. “Team Edward or Team Jacob?”
“Team Jacob,” the woman said. “Well, at least until he wanted to fuck a kid.”
“God.” Carrie shook her head. “And they called The Hunger Games dark.” She waited—two breaths, three. “How old’s your daughter?”
“Nine and a half,” she said. “And she gets very, very pissed if you leave off those six months.”
“That checks out,” Carrie said. “Leela’s seven.”
“That’s a sweet age,” the woman said. “And her father?”
“In the wind,” Carrie said. “Since around the start of all this. Yours?”
“Killed over a loaf of bread last spring.”
“Sorry.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m Carrie.”
“Val.” She reached her right hand forward, the left still clinging to the cookies.
Carrie reached out her own right hand before she realized she was still armed. She laughed, switching the weapon over to her other hand before they shook.
“Are you from around here?” Val asked.
“Yeah,” Carrie said. “Aren’t you?”
“No. We travelled in from Western Connecticut.”
“Why’d you come all the way out here?” Carrie slid the crowbar back into her coat loop. “It’s hardly beach season.” She thought back to a year and a half ago, when it was hard to get anywhere in South County because of all the idiot tourists who didn’t know where to turn or switch lanes. Carrie could almost smell the musty air conditioning in their old Kia. She never thought she’d miss something so ridiculous as tourist traffic, but here she was.
“Heading to my mom’s place. She’s up near Boston.” Val glanced at the watch on her wrist. Carrie had a flash of when she’d had to teach Leela how to read old clocks, back when they’d scavenged some antique wind-ups. “I’m hoping we’ll be able to make it in the next week, before it gets too cold. Amaia’s only good for walking about four hours at a time. And that’s on a good day. And she’d hit that age where she thinks she’s already a teenager, too.”
Carrie closed her eyes and nodded. She couldn’t help letting her guard down. Something about Val felt… safe. Familiar. Maybe her instincts were losing their edge. “Lee’s been like that since about age three.”
“Did you get any kind of formal diagnosis?” Val asked. She set the cookies back on the shelf as she rummaged around in her bag. “I mean, before all this happened, of course.” Carrie could grab the cookies and run while she wasn’t looking. But no matter how hard she thought it, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. “Shit,” Val said. “I’m gonna need more batteries, too.”
“Oh.” Carrie gestured toward the exits. “Up by the registers, there’s still a bunch.”
“Good.” She stuffed the cookies in her bag. “I can see if they have Pall Malls.”
“You smoke?”
“My mom does. Or, she sneaks the occasional one since I moved out many moons ago and thinks I don’t know.”
“Ah.” As they walked toward the exits side-by-side, Carrie remembered she’d left the question unanswered. “ADHD.”
“Huh?”
“ADHD. And DMDD. Before all this.”
“Mm.” Val grabbed battery packages by the handful without paying it much attention. “Juni, uh… Juni had ADHD, too.” She cleared her throat. “A bitch to get a diagnosis for girls, isn’t it?”
“That and Autism, yeah,” Carrie agreed. She almost asked about the name, only barely stopping herself. Asking questions like that tended to lead to uncomfortable conversations these days, and uncomfortable conversations could get you killed. It didn’t sound like Juni was in the picture anymore, at any rate. It was probably better not to ask what had happened to her. Carrie checked over her shoulder, looking at the registers with forbidden inventory behind it. “No cigarettes,” she muttered.
“Shame,” Val said. “I’ll have to keep an eye out along the way. So… I have a weird question. And I promise I’m not trying to be a creep.”
“A promising start,” Carrie said, raising her eyebrows.
“Just… what’s your set-up like?”
Carrie felt a spike of panic shoot through her. Her muscles tensed. She stumbled a step back without meaning to.
“I… you don’t have to give me your location or anything. But, I mean… did you steal some rich person’s secret bunker or something?”
Carrie should run. She knew she should run. She had enough supplies. Her daughter was back home waiting for her.
Just last week, Leela had woken up crying because she couldn’t remember her best friend’s name from kindergarten.
“No, nothing that fancy,” Carrie said. “Just a basement. And a dog.”
“A dog?”
“Came with the basement.”
“A signing bonus,” Val said with a huge grin.
Carrie laughed. It was different from how she laughed with her daughter, not laced with guilt over the conditions they were in, or fear over whether they’d still have heat the next week. Just a joke. Just a woman. Just laughter.
“If you don’t have anything or anyone else waiting for you,” Val went on, “my mom has a three bedroom house up by Wompatuck State Park. It’s got a nice property, and she put in a swing set about five years ago for the girls.”
“Are you sure?” Carrie knew what it meant, trusting her with this information. “I could be, like, some rando axe murderer or something.”
“An axe murderer who carries a crowbar?”
“I leave my axe at home.”
“Ah, makes sense.” Val nodded, glancing down. “And I’m sure. You seem nice. Besides, I don’t want Amaia to have to grow up alone, you know?”
“I do.”
“And she’s been bugging me for a dog for years anyway,” Val said. “This way, she gets a friend and…”
“And a signing bonus?”
Though Val grinned, Carrie could suddenly see how tired her eyes were, could feel it in her own.
“And a signing bonus.”
“Plus, the girls can split the cookies,” Carrie said.
“We’ll grab Amaia first, if that works,” Val said. “Then head over to your daughter?”
“Sure,” Carrie said. She was dizzy with the anxiety that she was making the wrong choice, the last wrong choice, the one that would get them killed. But every choice was a risk in this kind of world. “That works for me.”
“And then in the morning, we’ll start walking up north together.”
Together. Together hadn’t felt so together in a long time.
Audrey T. Carroll is the author of What Blooms in the Dark (ELJ Editions, 2024), Parts of Speech: A Disabled Dictionary (Alien Buddha Press, 2023), and In My Next Queer Life, I Want to Be (kith books, 2023). Her writing has appeared in Lost Balloon, CRAFT, JMWW, Bending Genres, and others. She is a bi/queer/genderqueer and disabled/chronically ill writer. She serves as a Fiction Editor for Chaotic Merge Magazine. She can be found at
http://AudreyTCarrollWrites.weebly.com
and @AudreyTCarroll on Twitter/Instagram.