HUNGRY

Every great event has a start date. I was thinking about this as Romie and I rummaged through the maggot- ridden garage bins for something to eat. We hadn't eaten in days, and my blurred vision is a witness to that. I can stand going for a few days without sleep, even a day or two with very little to drink--in the way of liquor, that is. I got to have water, regularly--but food, when a man is deprived of something to eat, well, that's when his animal instincts take over, and you might go hunting for anything--even another person, if need be, to eat. Some people we’ve come across have rare taste for various things. One guy and his family we met was traveling on the off roads going from farm to farm. They’re looking for horses and other farm animals. Thankfully, they hadn’t allowed themselves to go for humans yet. But I’ve been tempted. Mind you, I’ve been hungry from day one. I've come close to it--to eating Romie. She's looked mighty yummy to me at times over the past few months and weeks since the world shut down. But no, I couldn't eat her, she's my best pal--right?

I came across her the day after everything went dark. She was sitting on the curb of a street crying and holding some silver necklace by hand. She was covered from head to toes in ashes and dirt, and looked a mess. I sorta felt sorry for her, being a kid and all--she's maybe eighteen or nineteen, I haven't asked, but she has the kindest green eyes I've ever seen. She melted my heart, right off the bat. She wasn't like some of the other kids I've encountered here lately, cocky and self-willed and thinking only of their own belly. At first, she wasn't too sure she could trust me. While she was alone on her own, another guy about my age came along who tried to take advantage of her. She said he was all sweet and nice at first, but gradually he tried to win her confidence to maybe let him have his way with her. One evening as she was making a spot off alone to sleep, he'd come over and asked to sleep next to her. She didn't think anything wrong with it, they'd been traveling together for a few days. So she said OK. At first nothing happened. The fella made a sleeping mat on the ground and lay on it, then he pulled over real close to her and started foundling her, trying to work his hands down her pants. She said she told him no but he was too persistent. And they got up and started arguing. He was wiggling his pointy finger in her face so she bit him--took his whole finger in her mouth and pretty near bite the thing clean off. The last time she saw him he was hollering and screaming and bouncing about, with blood gushing all over him from her biting him. She never saw the man again.

Romie and I are great friends, and we get along real good. Most of the time we go around looking in trash containers and back of stores, trying to find food. All the markets and restaurants are empty and closed and people have raided them long ago. But people are still hungry.

Once we came across a pack of hungry kids. About twelve of them. There was not a grownup among them. I think the oldest, a girl, was about fourteen, but all the rest where little fellers--boys and girls around five and six, all orphans, all homeless, and all very hungry. For some reason, they got it in their minds that older fat fellows like me was more meaty and tastier than a younger, slimmer, more fit version of myself, because, for the first fifteen minute, it was all Romie and I could do--redirecting their thoughts--to keep those hungry eyes from sizing me up for their next meal.

“I got the head! I’ve got the head!” I kept hearing a rather greasy-looking boy whispered to another kid. They say the head is full of moist meat, easy to break apart and eat off for days, the brains and eyeballs and ears serving up a delicious treat.

Luckily, we found a stray dog on its last leg and the youngsters caught it, killed it, cooked it and were feasting on it while we made our escape. I managed to sneak a piece of a leg muscle for Romie and I to share, so we'd not get too hungry before we found something else.

Now I heard the United States government is trying to regroup its forces and come back, maybe with some kind of restructuring plan to rebuild things. That will help, and not a moment too soon, either. I heard what's happened here is taking place all over the world. And no one was prepared for it--not in this major way. I mean, sure, there were some survival groups out there who claim to have food to last a couple of years, but they were off to themselves and some had even taken up shelter in caves and underground bunkers. Talk around here says there was some main event had happened out in space that changed everything. A meteoroid strike of some kind had hit the moon, disrupted its orbit and shattered the huge rock. I was looking up at it last night. It looks as if part of it is gone--has been blown away. If it looked dead before, it surely looks dead now, there's hardly any of it out there to admire. When the mood got hit, people say large chunks of it came crashing to earth. I'm not sure if this is true or not, because there hasn't been any news programs on TV since the day all electrical power grids went down, but they say a few cities in northern Canada, and even Moscow in the Soviet Union, are gone. Crushed under the force of falling debris from space. The moon's broken parts.

That's what caused the darkness. Smoke and ash and everything imaginable filling the air and blocking out the sun.

It's amazing how we as humans take everything for granted. We live as if nothing out of ordinary will ever happen, and when it does, we fall all to pieces and start blaming each other.

The day I found Romie, she was sitting there crying, saying it was all her fault her live-in-boyfriend was dead, and that she can't get in touch with her family who lives on the other side of the country. It seems, when she and Nelson, her boyfriend, got real serious, he found a job here in Ohio and she left Portland with him to escape them. Her only reminder of them is the heart-shaped locket she stole from her mom's room before she set out with him. A whole lot of time has passed since last she saw them and knew anything about their welfare. Perhaps they're OK. Her dad did well for himself, driving trucks and providing for the family. They had a big house with a yard and swing on a tree in the back.

I promised Romie I'd go with her and try to find the family she left behind. She looks at that silver necklace a lot. Once, while she was holding it open, staring into it, I glanced over her shoulder to see what she was staring at and saw there was nothing inside it. Not a picture. Not a string of hair. Nor even a fingernail. It was completely empty. Maybe that's why Romie's going back, to replace the emptiness she feels inside her that's quite apparent by the empty locket she keeps staring down into. Maybe she's seeking closure, or proof of life--I don't know which. I just know we keep tracking on, making our way to Portland, and trying our best not to get eaten along the way.