Thirst by Benjamin Warner Read Free Book Online Page B

stockroom. It looked like someone had forgotten about it there. Eddie pulled off the clear tape and counted eighteen red juices in plastic bottles molded to look like little barrels. They had foil caps. He knelt beside the box and placed them one by one into his pack, stacking them so they wouldn’t burst.
    Laura was in the freezer aisle. The doors were hanging open.
    “You think these will keep?” She held up a couple of pizza boxes.
    “Maybe,” Eddie said. “For a little while, anyway.”
    She put them in her pack, and he followed her to where she took a box of cheese crackers.
    He gave her a can of whole mushrooms and a couple cans of beans. “Here, put these in,” he said. There was a woman standing just behind them, staring at the empty space in the shelf where the beans had been. She wore a long nylon trench coat,and held on to the handle of a metal cart—a low wire basket on wheels—to support herself. Eddie took one of the cans of beans from Laura’s pack and extended it to her. He assumed she spoke no English. He made a Go on motion with his chin.
    The woman shook her head, and Eddie put the beans back on the shelf. When the woman didn’t move, Laura took them and put them back into her pack.
    “I’m running out of room,” she said.
    “We’ve got enough. I’ll take one more lap.”
    He walked toward the hardware aisle and stopped in front of an endcap of insect products. The cans of wasp poison read: SPRAYS UP TO 22 FT . The nozzles looked like little megaphones. A gray-haired man the shape of a bell dropped four of them—one at a time—down his shirtfront. His midsection bulged in geometric shapes from all his shopping.
    “What do you need all those for?” Eddie asked, but the man only stared at him, spooked, and scurried away.
    Eddie put a can in each of the water bottle pouches at the side of his pack.
    At the registers, Laura was leafing through a Cosmo . When she saw Eddie, she put it back in the rack.
    “So, we’re just taking all of this,” she said.
    “There’s no one here to pay.”
    “They must have insurance.”
    “Everyone has insurance.”
    Outside, people walked across the lines in the parking lot. There were only a few cars and they looked abandoned.
    Eddie took a bag of charcoal briquettes that had been stacked in a pile on top of a wooden pallet. He held it in both arms across his chest.
    “To cook the pizzas,” he said.
    “We’re going to feel ridiculous with all this junk when the power comes back on.”
    “It’s not ridiculous to be prepared,” Eddie said.
    They crossed an empty street and walked along the sidewalk.
    “You’re limping,” Laura said.
    “I twisted my knee a little.”
    A couple rode a tandem bicycle down the center lane without their helmets on. The woman’s blond hair streamed back behind her.
    “Like they’re on vacation,” Laura said.
    In their neighborhood, the sky was eggy-white and the heat was rising. Eddie saw a man standing down the hill, arms akimbo. He was tall in the way Bill Peters had been tall.
    “Let’s go this way,” he said to Laura. He nudged her with the bag of briquettes and they made a left onto a side street. It was a longer way to go.
    “Why?”
    Thinking of the cyclists, Eddie said, “It’s nice out, anyway.”

They were in front of the Davises’ when Eddie saw the boy. He was stumbling through the street like a drunk, as gray as an early shadow. Eddie put the charcoal down.
    It was like remembering a dream so clearly, it turned real.
    “Who’s this now?” Laura said.
    Eddie flinched. He looked hard at Laura to see what she was seeing. That the boy was real. That he was standing right in front of them.
    She went to him and Eddie followed. The boy’s chest and shoulders were stained with ash. Laura touched his arm and then removed her fingers quickly, rubbing them together. The boy’s hair looked spiky, Eddie saw, but it wasn’t. It was singed.
    “What are you doing out here, sweetheart?” Laura