State of Chaos

I lick my lips, wondering how a guy so logical can get so much enjoyment out of scaring the crap out of me. Only a man.

“Dusty,” I remark, wrinkling my nose and closing the door behind me. The trailer home looks nearly thirty years old, complete with wallpaper from the 80s. There’s a tiny kitchen, a living room with puke green carpet and a hallway in the back of the house. “I’m guessing this place hasn’t been cleaned since it was built.”

“Probably an accurate assumption,” Chris replies, dropping his gear on a couch. “Whoever was living here is long gone.”

“What about food and water?”

“Let’s check it out.” Chris shrugs his jacket off, keeping his favorite knife sheathed in a strap around his thigh. “Here.” He helps me remove my backpack, rubbing my sore shoulders for a few minutes. I lean against his chest, finding myself wrapped into a warm hug.

“You don’t hug me enough,” I sigh.

Totally embarrassing. But hey, it’s the truth.

I feel his mouth turn up into a smile against my forehead. He draws his hands up my arms, pausing to assess me from head to toe. “You’re right,” he says at last, his green eyes sparkling with amusement. “I don’t.”

I laugh.

“Come on. Let’s get some di

Chris looks extremely disappointed when I slip out of his embrace and walk into the kitchen. Everything smells stale and pungent. A few dirty coffee mugs are sitting in a sink that dried up long ago. Post-it notes and magnets are stuck all over a dead fridge.

“I wonder who lived here,” I whisper, struck by the weirdness of standing in somebody else’s home without permission. “I wonder how old they were.”

Chris shrugs, leaning against the doorframe, watching me carefully. I bend down and open up some of the oak cabinets, finding dishes and junk. There’s nothing in the fridge that’s not already rotten, but in a cupboard above the dishwasher, Chris finds some ca

“What have we here?” he muses, tossing me a can.

“Pears!” I exclaim, excited. “And beans. Okay, wait. Pears, beans and soup.”

“But what kind of soup? That’s the question.”

“Corn chowder. It’s still good.”

“Let’s get cooking then.”

So we do. As strange as it is to camp inside somebody’s old trailer home, I adjust quickly. Anything’s better than sleeping outdoors again. The winter has been brutal — lots of rain, snow and fog. Being able to take my shoes off and walk around on the carpet feels great. No mud, no ice, and no bugs.

Chris is in an unusually good mood, which means he finds plenty of reasons to tease me about my non-existent cooking skills. But let’s face it. There’s not a lot you can do with ca

“Smells good,” Chris says, studying a heavy mirror in the living room. “Hey, Cassidy…?”

I recognize a level of sneakiness in his voice, so I turn around.

“What?”

“Ever leave a secret message in a mirror?”

“Please. That’s a Boy Scout trick.”

“Boy Scout?” Chris feigns an offended expression. “Honey, I was an Eagle Scout. It’s not just a simple trick.” He leans against the wall. “I left a lot of messages for my mom on the bathroom mirror…” he trails off, swallowing.

Silence fills the room. I know what he’s thinking. Is his mother even alive?

I blink back tears and get back to cooking. I can’t think about that right now. There’s no electricity, obviously, but the gas line to the house is still good so all I have to do is open the burner and light the stove with a match. I’m cooking the beans and soup in one of the pots I found above the sink.

“Hand me those bowls, will you?” I ask, gesturing to a stack of plastic mixing bowls I dug out of the cupboards. “We’ll split everything.”

I give a bowl of soup and beans to Chris, and I take what’s left of it.

“Gourmet food,” I say, raising my bowl in a toast. “Cheers.”

“Cheers.” Chris can’t find any silverware so we just tip the bowls back and sip the hot food. It’s delicious, and it trumps eating a field rodent or some random plant any day.

“So what now?” I ask, the two of us lounging on the beat up sofa in the living room. “Are we going to live the rest of our lives in an abandoned trailer park?”

“Not a bad idea, actually,” Chris smiles. “I can think of worse things than being trapped in a confined space with you.”

“Your attempts at flirting are falling flat,” I say, sticking my tongue out. But I’m lying. I love it when he flirts with me. “I’m serious. What’s our next move?”

“There’s not a lot we can do.” Chris finishes up the rest of his soup, rubbing his chin. “We don’t know where they are. We don’t even know if they’re —”

“—Don’t,” I interrupt, nausea spreading in my chest. “They’re alive.”

Chris says nothing, just picks up our empty bowls and walk into the kitchen. I get a sinking feeling in my stomach every time we bring this up, but we can’t wander aimlessly in the wilderness for all eternity. We have to have a plan. We need to at least find someplace to live so we don’t freeze to death when winter comes around again.

“What if they took them to Los Angeles?” I say.

“What if they took them to San Jose? Or San Bernardino? Or San Francisco?” Chris stalks out of the kitchen, clearly not in the mood to discuss the loss of our families. “They could be anywhere. We don’t have a choice but to stay here and be smart, Cassidy. Impulsive action will get us killed. We have to be patient and thoughtful. We can’t rush into anything.”

I fold my arms around my knees, pressing my face into my legs. Over the past couple of months, I’ve stopped crying about losing dad and the Young family. I’ve become almost numb to the entire idea of being alone. It’s amazing how fast I’ve adjusted to living in a post-apocalyptic world. It makes me wonder if I spent way too much time reading fiction when I was in high school — reality just doesn’t freak me out anymore.

“Cassie?” Chris gently slides his hands through my hair, pushing back the scarf tied around my forehead for warmth. “We can’t go looking for people who’ve completely vanished. Our focus right now is surviving. If we put ourselves in u

“Is that what they taught you in the Navy?” I ask.

“Yes.” He pauses. “I’m sizing up the odds, Cassie. They’re not in our favor.”

“But—”

“—They’re not in our favor yet. Don’t give up. We’re alive, right?”

“Yeah. Big whoop.”

He frowns. “It is. A lot of people would love to be us.”

I crawl forward and lay my head against his chest, listening to his steady heartbeat. It’s kind of a summary of who Chris is as a person: Steady. Reliable. Confident.

Logical.

“What do we do until then?” I whisper.

“We stay alive,” he replies, wrapping his arms around me, tracing his fingers down the curve of my back. “Deal?”

I nod.

“Deal.”

I get a temporary feeling of security with those words. Granted, I don’t really believe that everything’s going to be all rainbows and lollipops if we start thinking positively, but we need to focus on one thing at a time.

I fall asleep snuggled into Chris’s warmth, lulled to sleep by his breathing and the sound of a strong wind slapping tree branches against the trailer roof. At around four in the morning, Chris stirs, stretching one arm behind his head. “Could be another storm,” he murmurs, his voice heavy with sleep. “You warm enough?”

I shrug.

He gets off the couch, walking into the hallway. Out of respect — and maybe a little bit of superstition — I haven’t ventured into the bedrooms of the house yet. It seems wrong, somehow.

“Where are you going?” I demand.

“Getting blankets,” he calls back, and I hear him moving stuff around. Curiosity gets the better of me and I walk across the living room, still sleepy. I poke my head into the first bedroom. There’s a king size bed and a matching dresser. Pictures have been taken off the wall, but besides that, it looks like most of the belongings of the couple that lived here are still intact.