The Journey Prize Stories 25 by Various

Author:Various [Various authors]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7710-4737-4
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 2013-10-08T04:00:00+00:00

By then Joel had us storing water at the house in every possible container we could find. And collecting firewood (we were lucky enough to have a fireplace) and candles and batteries. I went along with his precautions, but he pursued them more earnestly than I did. He seemed to think the idea that things would eventually return to normal not worth considering, whereas I held out hope that they might.

For me, normal meant going into the shop every day, if only for a few hours. I hung on to what was left of that routine, I clung to it. It was my way back. Chatting with Reggie over the counter, and anyone else who might pop in. Sometimes I found myself listening for the sound of a train – the CN mainline was only a few blocks away – or gazing down the street hoping to see a Hydro repair truck working to get the power back on. There hadn’t been anything in the sky since the helicopters stopped flying. Where they went nobody seemed to know. Sometimes I even hoped for a convoy of army trucks to go by, but I never said as much, not even to Reggie. Because for one thing, if the army had to take over we were in really bad shape. For another, I was afraid he’d tell me to quit dreaming: there was no army, there was nothing, we were on our own.

But we were not by ourselves. At dusk you could see the bonfires burning on the bridges that led into the downtown, lines of demarcation tended by pockets of men, women, and children, the ones who had gathered in the city’s core at the start of all this. They were as desperate as we were, but maybe more organized than we were. Everyone I talked to suspected that a growing band of warlords was recruiting the gangs from these dispossessed souls, dispatching groups of young men to roam our neighbourhoods nightly in search of abandoned houses to loot. I worried about a time when we might find those fires burning at the end of our street, and what that might mean.

Almost from the start, Adele had not let Megan go out to play without one of us being with her. Her friends were gone, left when their parents pulled out. A more ominous reason had to do with the rumours about kids being abducted, snatched right out of their own front yards – by the gangs, we all presumed, but maybe not. The idea that someone might appear suddenly in broad daylight and run away with a child seemed alarmingly possible. What they did with these children was what worried me. No one, not Adele, not Reggie, seemed to want to talk about that. Reggie’s scoffing, “What do you think?” came as close to confirming my worst fears without defining them.

Food was an issue. A drought the year before had left little local produce. In the spring, the rains had

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