back at her from the label on the can.
She slid the congealed mass out of the can an into her hand. She broke it into two pieces and gave the larger one to Alice. The girl’s eyes widened when she saw the food and she grabbed it eagerly as soon as Valerie offered it. Alice barely chewed as she shovelled the substance greedily into her mouth. Valerie thought the girl might make herself sick, but she seemed to be able to keep it down.
Valerie ate her portion more slowly, savouring every mouthful. She didn’t know when she would at again… if she would eat again.
A crash nearby jolted them both to maximum alertness. It might just have been some rubble shifting, or maybe one of those mangy dogs, but it also might have been the danger, following the smoke from the fire. She snuffed out the flames just to be safe. They two girls listened intently, but they didn’t hear anything else.
They huddled around the glowing embers to steal the last bit of warmth that they offered. When there was nothing left but cold, black ash, the girls moved in close together to try to stave off the cold. Eventually they fell asleep, lying in one another’s arms, without a word exchanged between them.
V
When she was very young, Valerie had seen a real mall, though she could not remember the experience. She imagined what it must have been like, all the shops selling their wares, shelves lined with goods, bright lights everywhere. There were even stairs, her father had once told her, that moved on their own. People must have been so lazy back then, she had thought, not wanting to climb their own stairs.
Valerie walked into the ruined building that had once been the Lake Sante Shopping Center with Alice following quietly behind her. Broken glass littered the floor and their shoes crunched the shards as they moved.
It had been three days since their last meagre meal. There had been solid rain, so they at least had water, but they needed to find food. The mall had probably been picked clean years ago, but Valerie was happy to get out of the rain for a while anyway.
Alice tugged at her hand and pointed to the large, dormant fountain in the center of the foyer. Inside, draped over the edge, were the remnants of a body. The meat had been cleaned off the arms and legs and the remainder had been cast aside. It was unusual for the danger to leave much more than scraps, but perhaps they’d had a bountiful feast at the time and didn’t need to bother with the less desirable parts.
Valerie took Alice by the hand and led her past the fountain and down a long hallway. They looked into the shops as they passed them. Most were sealed up with slatted metal gates, but a few of the gates had been pried open by looters in days of anarchy long past.
At the end of the hall, under a giant red sign that read “Percy’s,” they found what had once been a grocery store. Of course the shelves were empty, but maybe, just maybe, they could find something that had fallen through the cracks, something no one else had noticed.
The two girls split up, looking under furniture, between shelves, anywhere they might find an overlooked scrap of food. The store seemed vast and they scoured the area for hours, but came up with nothing. The closest thing to food that they found was a dead rat under an old, empty cash register. Valerie left it where was. Her father had taught her to stay away from dead rats, no matter how hungry she was.
As she made her way towards Alice to tell her it was time to move on, Valerie heard a metal rattling sound. She recognized it as the same sound the girls had made as they slipped under the opening in the gate to get into the store. Valerie spun, her eyes seeking what she already knew in her heart.
The danger had found them.
VI
Standing by the gate was a man. A young man, probably only a few years older than Valerie. But that was old enough.
Valerie grabbed Alice’s arm and ran. Alice briefly protested, but Valerie simply said “They’re here,” and the younger girl was silenced. The girls ran hand-in-hand through the aisles of the grocery store. They paused briefly when they reached the back wall and Valerie could immediately hear the thump-thump-thump of heavy footfalls on the linoleum floor.
“This way,” said Valerie as pulled Alice along behind her, dragging towards what she hoped was a back exit. Unfortunately, in the rear corner of the store, where she had hoped to find some form of fire exit or emergency door, Valerie found only a steep metal staircase leading up.
Thump-thump-thump behind her. She ran up the stairs, careful not to let Alice fall behind.
At the top of the staircase was an entirely different world. There were desks, computers, cubicles… Valerie’s father had taught her what all these things were, though she had no memory of ever seeing them in practical use. While the bottom floor of the store was ransacked and utterly destroyed, the offices upstairs were pristine, almost untouched. There was a thick level of dust over everything, and spider webs clung stubbornly in the corners, weighed down by the dirt in the air, but otherwise everything looked as Valerie imagined it must have all those years ago. Before… well, just before.
Valerie heard the clang of heavy boots on the metal steps of the staircase and started running again. A red sign hanging in a nearby doorway read “Exit” and she turned towards it. Her father had taught her to read, even though there she always insisted there was no point to it. Nothing new was ever going to be printed, she had maintained, so why learn to read? But her father persisted. “There’s value in all the things that were written before,” he had told her. This had been true for her in many ways, Valerie had realized, in the years since his death.
The two girls barrelled through the door and out onto a fire escape. The metal rungs were rusted orange; they squealed and sagged under the weight of the two girls. There was a latch to release a ladder down to the ground and Valerie tried to unloosen it, but the rust had fused it onto a single jagged piece of pipe.
“We’re going to have to jump down,” said Valerie.
Alice’s eyes widened at the prospect, looking down at the ground from what seemed an impossible height.
“I can’t,” she whimpered.
“You have to,” replied Valerie. “I’m sorry, but you have to.”
“I CAN’T!”
Of course she couldn’t. She was a child. A scared child. To her the jump down must have seemed like suicide. Valerie realized she had two choices: she could throw Alice down to the ground, or they could take the ladder up onto the roof. The corroded metal continued to groan under their combined weight and she knew their time was limited.
“Up,” she said pushing Alice onto the ladder that spanned the short distance up to the roof. Alice complied, thankful she was no longer being asked to jump to what she believed was her certain death. As Alice clamoured to the roof, and Valerie grasped the closest rung, the fire escape gave one final, dissatisfied groan and completely collapsed in on itself.
VII
Valerie’s hands tightened around the rough metal of the ladder rung, still safely embedded in the side of the wall. Beneath her, however, her legs thrashed violently in the panic of suddenly being without foundation.
The pieces of the fire escape clattered into a pile of twisted metal on the ground below. A layer of ash rose up from the metal mound like a miniature mushroom cloud and everything seemed abnormally quiet after the exceptionally loud crash.
Valerie held tight to the rusted rung with both hands, but the tighter she held it, the more it bit painfully into her hands. Alice looked down over the side of the roof and immediately reached out a helping hand when she saw what had happened. but Valerie knew it was no use. Alice’s tiny frame couldn’t possibly pull her up, and even if she could, Valerie would have to let go of the rung in order to take Alice’s hand. A single hand wouldn’t be able to support her weight, even for a second.
The jagged edges of the metal cylinder began to cut her flesh, droplets of blood squeezing out under clenched fists, making the rung slick and even more difficult to grasp. Alice looked down pleadingly, but there was nothing Valerie could do. She didn’t want to leave Al
ice alone. She didn’t want to die.
All this time running, for what? All these years spent avoiding the danger, but what was the point? To fall to her death, impaled on the pieces of a broken fire escape below? She might survive the fall, but she’d almost certainly break something, which was tantamount to a death sentence, one way or another. With no medical help, a broken bone would probably kill her, and even if it didn’t, she’d be easy prey for the danger until it healed.
Her fingers uncurled, unable to hold on any longer, dropping her several feet before a hand reached out of the open door and grabbed her wrist. The weight of her dropping body wrenched her arm painfully, but the hand held fast. After a long second of confusion, Valerie realized she was no longer falling. She looked at her saviour and saw the man, or perhaps more accurately, the boy, that had been chasing them.
Valerie attacked, scratching at the boy with her free hand, painting him with bloody handprints, as he struggled to keep hold of her. Without even considering, he knew she would rather risk being impaled below than be saved by the danger. Whatever he would do to her would be much worse.
“Stop it,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you.” But Valerie refused to believe him. He was the enemy. He was the danger.
“Let me help you,” he continued to pull her up as best he could. Valerie thrashed