Fractured: Tales of the Canadian Post-Apocalypse(41)

Momma, don’t let her eat so much sugar! She remembered Missy, at 11. Already a tyrant.

Matt went to the hotplate, returning with three spoons. He wiped them on the same shirt he’d used on the floor. “Don’t you wash anything?”

“I’m clinically depressed.”

“Clinically lazy.”

“I see why you get along with my sister.”

“No fighting.” The kid dug in, crunching. “Lindy, eat.”

What the hell. She took a spoonful, and the sugary goodness damn near blew her mind. She’d forgotten how she’d loved preprocessed food. Cereal, pasta. All we need to complete the trip down memory lane is…

Zazu spoke to Matt. “Can you find peanut butter and jelly for lunch?”

Lindy’s skin rose up in gooseflesh.

“Anna loaf of Wonderbread while I’m at it.” Matt grinned. “That shit lasts forever.”

“You said you could get Aunty Depressin.”

“I know a guy with a hoard of Paxil and Xanax.”

Hey, little girl, want some candy? “Zazu, I don’t need the pills.” The eff am I saying what if he can get it, just a little Paxil to soften the edges…

“Anyway, Matt should—”

“Rumour has it you’ve been asking about a glazier’s modem,” Matt said.

Lindy ran dry, mid-sentence. The only thing she could hear was Zazu, crunching her cereal.

Modem modem modem modem, need a modem, Matt’s got a modem?

She got another modem, things stayed the same. She wouldn’t have to fight Missy and her work assignment. Things wouldn’t go from awful to even worse.

“Um. Would you excuse us?”

Matt gave her a half nod, “I’ll hit the men’s.”

When he was gone, she said: “Kid. Zazu. Matt’s not – I don’t think we should trust him.”

“Trust who?”

“This loaves and fishes shit, you can’t pull that in front of other people. You know where that kind of thing ends up?”

Crunch, crunch, crunch. Uncomprehending baby deer eyes.

“You said you knew the Moses story… ” Did people tell little kids about Jesus on the cross? She had a sudden vision of the girl, nailed to a wall, crowned with icicles.

“Don’t you want peanut butter?”

“Zazu, what woke you up?”

“I was done sleeping.”

“Do you read minds?”

“I’m too little to read.”

Shouldn’t a superpowered four-year-old be supersmart?

“No.” Zazu scoffed.

She sighed. “People will freak. There’s nobody like you, kid.”

“Is too.” She held up her hand, curling the smallest two fingers under, showing three.

The words made her skin crawl. “There are others? Beauties waking up without acupuncture or caffeine enemas—”

“Acca punch her.”

“Do they read minds too?”

“What’s enema?”

“If there are others, where are they?”

Zazu stuck her nose in the cereal bowl, like a horse in a feedbag. Words echoed out of a slurp. “At Leepold’s.”

“Leopold? As in Drummer? He’s missing, he’s on the Mountie’s most wanted list—”

“Is not missing.” That childish scorn again.

Identity thief. Lindy lunged across the room and hit her speakerphone: “Give me Missy.”

“What are you doing?” That was Matt, back from his piss and looming over her, close.

“The kid,” she said, breathless. “Matt, we have to tell Missy—”

“Tell Missy what? The Second Coming has a thing for pre-Napocalypse instant foods?”

“Zazu says—”

“You really want to have another pointless convo with Big Sister?”

“No, but… ” He was crowding her; she could barely draw breath.

She gestured at the windows on her varnishing table. All the testimonials. So many versions of “We let it happen. If only we’d done something. We waited until it was too late…”

That’s why Missy was prime minister, right? Because she’d acted. Got people off their asses. Filled the cars with unconscious refugees, nagged people to staff fuel stations.

“If Winkles are waking, we have to tell.”

“We f*cking do not.”

“She reads minds, Matt.”

“And you can’t handle her, I know.”

“I couldn’t keep a cat alive.”

“I’m tagge care offoo,” Zazu said, around a mouthful of loops. I’m taking care of you.

Lindy’s hand went to her detangled, shining hair. Her skin felt clean where the snow had run down her dress. Longing rushed through her: all she’d wanted, for so long, was to be mothered.

“You’re not giving her to a politician,” Matt said. “But I’ll take her off your hands, if you want.”

Oh.

When she’d first seen him, he was looking over the kids’ monitors.

Out in the snow, earlier. He’d have walked away with her.

She managed to say, “No.”