The New Hunger by Isaac Marion Read Free Book Online

painted plywood sign, declaring in thousand-point font:
    GUNS
     
    She chuckles to herself. She almost walked past it.
    • • •
     
    Naturally, a cache this obvious has been thoroughly looted, but they search anyway. The display cases are empty, the ammo boxes are gone. There are more than a few puddles of dried blood on the floor and walls, but no bodies. Whoever made this mess was careless. Everyone living in these times knows the most important rule of conservation: if you have to kill someone, make sure they stay dead. It may be a losing battle, the math may be against the Living, but diligence in this one area will at least slow down the spread of the plague. Responsible murder is the new recycling.
    “This is the worst gun store ever,” Addis says, scanning row after empty row.
    “Pretend you’re a looter. What places would you check last?”
    “What are looters like?”
    “I don’t know, hungry? Scared?”
    “Okay. That’s easy.”
    “So you run into this place, you’re hungry and scared, maybe you shoot some people…what do you do next?”
    “Well…” A little smile blooms on his face as he gets into character. Nora realizes this is inappropriate make-believe to play with a seven-year-old, and for a moment she feels bad. But only a moment.
    Addis runs around the store aiming an invisible pistol, making blam sounds near all the blood pools and taking little grabs at the empty shelves. Then he turns to deliver his findings.
    “I’d grab all the ones off the shelves first. Then the stuff in the cases. All the stuff that’s right in front, ‘cause I’d be scared to go into any back rooms or corners.”
    “Well I already checked the back room…”
    “What if I was the owner of the shop?” His eyes widen with inspiration. “I bet I’d be even more scared then!”
    “Okay, what if you were the owner?”
    “I’d put guns in secret spots all over the store. So I could grab one no matter where I was.”
    Nora checks the cash register. Its drawer is open, empty. She checks the shelves under it. Empty.
    “But if there was lots of shooting all the time,” Addis continues like a scientist explaining his breakthrough theorem, “I’d probably be hiding on the floor a lot.”
    Nora shrugs and lies down on the floor behind the cash register, playing along. “Oh shit,” she laughs. She grabs the Colt .45 taped to the cabinet molding and jumps up, aiming it at an imaginary target.
    “Blam,” she says.
    Addis grins with huge, Christmas-morning eyes.
    Nora checks the magazine. Full.
    ret c="lhriI love you, Addis Greene,” she says. “Let’s go find somewhere to sleep.”
    • • •
     
    When choosing their lodging, they ignore all the feeble enticements on the billboards. Fragmented advertisements with letters either missing or added by vandals.
     
    CLEAN & QUI T
     
    FREE INTERNmEnT
     
    MONTHLY RA p ES
     
    They base their choice solely on the thickness of the window bars.
    Not wanting to damage their room’s lock, Nora kicks in the office door instead, finds the key for the room furthest from the street, and enters the civilized way. Once inside, she locks the doorknob, latches the chain, hooks the hook, turns the deadbolt, the mortice, and the night-latch.
    This is a good motel.
    A scan of the room brings a grim smile to her face. Peeling beige wallpaper. Dark orange carpet with wall-to-wall stains. Teal bedspread with a pink floral pattern. She tries the light switch but isn’t surprised when nothing happens. Businesses in areas like this probably only bought gas generators, leaving the solar and hydrogen stuff to the downtown folk. As a general rule, she doesn’t expect to find electricity anywhere she can’t find art galleries.
    The moment she feels satisfied with the room’s security, a wave of exhaustion washes over her. She plops down on the bed next to Addis and stares out the window into the darkness. After a while she feels Addis looking at her. She senses another round of