New Chicago #2
Murray paused outside a soup shop. The smell made Cole’s mouth water, but even with those bills in his pocket, he wasn’t tempted.
Before Tyler worked for McClintock, he’d run errands for these shops—killing rats down at the river and digging rotted vegetables out of the market trash.
That’s what you could expect from prepared food in New Chicago.
Murray didn’t seem to know that. The rich scent of hot soup caught his attention, and he followed it to the shop door. Then he paused and fingered the paw.
It’s dirty. Filthy, Cole thought. You’ll need to wash before you eat now. Just get rid of it.
Murray shoved the paw into his pocket and walked inside.
In the old days, this place wouldn’t have been considered a shop at all, much less a restaurant.
Cole remembered restaurants. Fast food ones mostly.
Sometimes, now, he’d wake thinking he smelled fries and it would set him in a lousy mood all day.
Tyler would tease that, of all the things you could miss, fried potatoes should rank near the bottom.
But they both knew it wasn’t really the fries—it was the idea that you could walk into a big, gleaming restaurant, scrub your hands with free soap and water, and order hot, safe food for less than half the twenty bucks your dad gave your brother when he decided to take you to the park that morning.
This soup shop would have fit in one of those fast food restrooms. Hell, it probably had been the restroom for this place, once a big department store, the top two floors now destroyed in the bombings, the remainder divvied up into a score of tiny, dark “shops.” There were certainly no tables or chairs.
You pushed your way up to the counter, got your soup and pushed your way to a spot to eat it, standing.
You could take it outside, but with November winds blowing through thread-bare clothes, Cole suspected most patrons didn’t even really want the soup—it just gave them a chance to squeeze in someplace warm.
Murray would take his soup and go. Cole could tell by the contemptuous gazes the man shot around him.
He even seemed to be reconsidering whether he wanted to remain long enough to get a meal.
Cole had to act fast. He slid up behind Murray and got into position.
Then, when a man left the counter, jostling and elbowing through the crowd, Cole knocked into Murray.
Murray spun on him, scowling.
“Sorry,” Cole said.
He offered a chagrined smile. Murray muttered something, turned and pushed his own way through the crowd, stalking out.
Cole watched him go. Then he glanced down at the paw in his hand. He smiled, shoved it deep into his pocket, and made his way out.
Tyler was in a foul mood, which was rare. It was usually Cole who grumbled while Tyler soldiered through. Today was different. Cole knew that as soon as he saw the candle burning.
Tyler often joked that they had a penthouse apartment.
Not only was it on the top floor, but they even had a second story.
The roof had been blasted off, so their upper floor was four walls with no ceiling.
Those walls, though, cut most of the wind and they could spend the daylight hours up there and save their candles and lantern oil.
If Tyler was staying on the first floor and burning a candle mid-afternoon, something was wrong.
“Where were you?” Tyler demanded as Cole crawled in.
His brother was sitting on a chair—actually a crate, but they called them chairs. He was playing solitaire with a worn deck, slapping them down onto another crate, this one known as “the dining room table.”
“Just walking. Getting some air.”
“Did you finish your work?”
“I read three chapters in history and two of Moby Dick. I also swept and emptied the piss bucket, as you can see—and smell.”
Tyler sighed and gathered up the cards. “Sorry, bud. Rough day.”
“I see that. Catch.”
He tossed Tyler the remaining apple. The corners of his brother’s mouth quirked. “Thanks.” He started to take a bite and stopped. “Do you have one?”
“Already ate it.”
“Are you sure? You know you need more fruits and vegetables. I—”
“I ate one, Ty. Go ahead.”
His brother worried that poor diet was the reason Cole was so small.
He doubted it. He remembered kindergarten—his only year of school before the world went to hell.
He’d been the smallest kid there, too. But Tyler still worried.
Some days, Cole thought that was the only thing keeping his brother going—worries and problems and the faint hope that he could fix them.
Tyler didn’t ask where the apple came from. Cole was in charge of the money and the shopping. Tyler considered it a practical application of his math lessons, which made it easy for Cole to sneak extra cash in the kitty and put extra food on the table.
Tyler took a bite of the apple, snuffed out the candle and waved for them to go upstairs, where they pulled pillows and thick old blankets out of a box. Cushioned and bundled against the cold, they rested, enjoying the faint warmth of the late-day sun.
“So what happened at work?” Cole asked.
“Same shit, different day.” Tyler paused and then looked over. “When you were out, did you hear anything? Rumors? News?”
“Like what?”
Another pause, longer now, until Cole pressed.
“They say one of the infected got in,” Tyler said.
“Again? What’s that? Third time this month?”
“Yeah. It’s getting worse. They always catch them, but the fact that they’re getting in…” Tyler shook his head. “Just…be careful, okay? When you’re out?”
“I always am.”
After a moment, Tyler asked, “So, how much do we have?”
He said it casually, just an offhand question, but Cole knew it wasn’t offhand at all. This was what was really bothering his brother—that the situation in New Chicago seemed to worsen so much faster than their stash grew.
“Four hundred and sixty-eight dollars to go,” Cole said.
Tyler swore.
“We’ll make it,” Cole said. “Less than a year, I bet.”
“I used to earn that much in a month, mowing lawns. Then I’d blow it on video games and movies.”
“We’ll get there.”
Silence fell for at least five minutes. Then, without looking over, Tyler said, “We have enough to get you in.”
“No.”
“But we could—”
“No. We go together, or we stay together. If you want to make money faster, let me work. You know McClintock offered me a job—”
“No.”
“But if I was working, we’d have enough by—”
“No.”
And there was the impasse. Cole wouldn’t go without Tyler, and Tyler wouldn’t let him work for McClintock.
Cole’s “job” was studying. There were real careers in Garfield Park, like in the old days—doctors and businessmen and teachers.
Most kids Cole’s age couldn’t even read and write.
That would give him an advantage, Tyler said.
Cole couldn’t see how taking a few months off would make much difference, but he knew it wasn’t really about that.
It was about Cole staying away from McClintock and the life he offered.
“We’ll get there,” Cole said.
Tyler tried for a smile, pushed to his feet and rumpled his brother’s hair. “I know we will. I’m just in a mood. I need to go back to work. Big job tonight. It’ll be late.”
“I’ll lock up.”
Tyler laughed. “Yeah. You do that. And see if you can’t get another couple of chapters read before the light’s gone.”
It was only after Tyler left that Cole remembered the paw.
He was sitting there, trying to come up with other ways to make money, when he remembered it.
Even then, he didn’t think “I can wish for money!” He wasn’t that stupid.
Instead, he took it out, turned it over in his hands and wondered how much he could get for it.
You could just wish for the money, he imagined Tyler saying.
His brother would laugh when he said it, but there’d be a little piece that wouldn’t be laughing. A piece that would be hoping, even if he’d never admit it. Tyler would try, just in case.
Cole chuckled softly to himself as he fingered the mangy fur. “All right then. I wish—”
No, the old man said he had to be careful. Be specific.
Cole closed his eyes. “I wish for five hundred dollars.”
He sat there, clutching the paw. It felt familiar, and it took him a moment to realize why.
Because it reminded him of another paw he’d had once—a rabbit’s foot that he’d insisted on buying on their last family road trip before H3N2 hit.
His lucky rabbit foot. He’d carried it everywhere for a month and then stuffed it away in a drawer.
The last time he’d seen it, he’d been making a wish.
Clutching it and praying that the bite on his mother’s arm hadn’t infected her.
Praying she’d walk out of the quarantine ward and come home and see the rabbit foot, laugh and say, “Good god, Cole. Do you still have that flea-bitten old thing?”
Of course, she hadn’t come out. She’d been infected, so they put her down.
Put down.
They had a dog once that had to be put down. It wasn’t the same thing.
When Cole opened his eyes, he could feel tears prickling. He swiped them away with a scowl and then turned that scowl on the monkey’s paw.
Yeah, you’ll make me some money all right. As soon as I figure out how to sell you.
Cole scoured the commercial section of New Chicago—the market and the shops—trying to figure out where he could sell the paw.
The old man had talked like people knew what it was, and Murray said he did.
Was it a famous superstition, like a rabbit’s foot?
If it was, it had to be rarer—there were a whole lot more rabbits around than monkeys.
But if it was too rare, could he sell it without someone realizing that he’d stolen it?
He was walking past the hope peddlers, when someone called, “You! Boy!” He glanced over his shoulder to see the old man, bearing down on him. Cole tensed to run, but he couldn’t, not without causing a scene that would mean he’d be remembered here for weeks.