Cold Cuts

December 2019 | SciFi | Mystery | Thriller | 5400 words

Veronica never came home from the excavation site before 6 p.m. It was an hour commute, through the frozen remains of rural Louisiana, from her house in La Rousse to the valley in Belle Viande. Her cat, Antsy, howled for her mama for the 11 hours that she was gone each day, every day, all week. Veronica knew Antsy was hungry, but there wasn’t more she could do. Food was scarce; she had to ration for herself before taking care of her pet. She made all her cabinets child-proof. Antsy would have to be satisfied with a scoop of food at 7 a.m. when Veronica left in the morning and a scoop at 6 p.m. when she returned. Sometimes, she returned even later than that. It depended on how slippery the roads were, how much snow had fallen that afternoon, and how many desperate hunting parties were outside looking to raid her truck and eat everything inside—including her.

But Antsy didn’t know this. She only knew food and she knew that there was one way to get it—from Veronica. Surely it had crossed Antsy’s mind that she may need to adapt and survive on other means, but in the meantime, she was still dependent on Veronica. She howled and whined until she got home. She climbed over the pots and saucepans on the stove that were filled with chunks of ice. Mostly, she slept. And starved. She climbed up and down the stairs to see if she could find Veronica downstairs or upstairs. She always expected something new, as though the wait would allow something yet undiscovered to pop out of its hiding place and make itself known. But each time Antsy made her rounds in the house, she was met with the same vacancy that had been there for the past few months.

The one part of the house she was never able to investigate was the locked door in the basement, at the end of the hallway. She had spent hours a day for the past two weeks manically clawing the carpet at the foot of the door. Standing on her hind legs, she chewed a poster that was taped to the wood. Antsy knew there was something in there. She paid close enough attention to her mama’s actions to know that, somehow, this must be a doorway to more food.

She couldn’t tell time, but if she could, she would’ve realized that it was already 6:20, meaning she actually had a good reason to feel hungry now. Veronica was late. Still, Antsy belted out her yowls at the same volume as she would normally have belted out yowls—no more desperate than they were at 11 a.m.

Antsy was downstairs when she heard tires slide into the driveway. She galloped upstairs and sat attentively at the boarded-up window right next to the door, anxiously awaiting her mama.

Almost immediately after Antsy found her spot, Veronica broke through the entryway, splitting the wooden jamb around the latch. Splinters flew to the ground, stealing Antsy’s attention for just one second. She was more startled by her mama’s behavior than by the broken door. Veronica breathed heavily. She spun around, paying Antsy no attention, and tried to slam and lock the door, but the latch was dislodged and broken. Veronica couldn’t even close it, let alone lock it.

Then Veronica was thrown back from the door with a brutal THUD. The door swung open as though it was just a cardboard flap and hit the coat rack behind it, sending it flying backwards onto the ground. Before Veronica could get up, a man in a ski mask and foggy glasses barreled into the entryway and raised a white shotgun to Veronica’s chest.

She lifted her arms in protest. Her hands shook like twigs as she sputtered,“No!”

The great big brute of a stranger was steadfast.

“Take anything,” she said. “Just please—”

She sat up suddenly, extending her arm. The man grunted and lunged—almost squishing Veronica’s leg into the floorboards with his gigantic snow boots—as he rammed the butt of the shotgun into her forehead. She collapsed like a beetle from a shower wall. A crescent-shaped indentation, just above her eyebrows, seemed to weigh her head down.

Antsy screamed a prolonged meow and trotted to her mama’s bleeding, motionless face. She investigated the wound until she felt the side of the man’s boot push against her neck. Antsy reared back and quickly bolted into the kitchen.

“Get,” said the man. He set his snow-colored shotgun on the bench by the door, then closed the door as neatly as he could. He ripped out the mangled fragments of the latch plate so that it could close all the way.

He couldn’t see with the glasses he wore anymore—it was too warm in here. He took off his thin gloves and delicately removed his glasses from the hole in his ski mask with skinny, red-raw fingers. He walked into the kitchen, ran into a stack of boxes around the corner, and felt the wall for a light switch so he could survey the blurry room. Eventually, he found the recognizable shape of a dish towel hanging from the stove railing. He wiped his glasses free from condensation and put them on, finally able to breathe and relax. He checked the whole room for anything unusual, or anybody lurking to attack him. He stood absolutely still for a whole minute, but the only sound he heard in the house, aside from a lone ticking clock, was the cat screaming, butting her head against her food bowl.

“Whassat, kitty?” asked the man. “Huh? Y’hungry?”

Antsy meowed so loudly that her voice cracked. She stared at him with wide eyes.

“Me, too,” he said, turning to the stovetop. He saw chunks of ice in the pot and thought, I’m pretty thirsty, too. He tried the tap in the sink first, just to be sure that the miracle of thawed pipes hadn’t reached this solitary, barricaded house. When nothing came from the mineral-encrusted faucet, he turned to the stove. The man noticed a tarp, meant to be pitched above the boiling water to catch steam and collect it in a clean water basin. Instead of setting it up, the man took the tarp and threw it at the door. He would take it with him instead, add it to his collection of tools and supplies he took when he raided people’s houses and vehicles. A filtration device would be useful.

As he looked around the room, kicking in cabinets latched with plastic child-safe locks, he started to wonder if he should move all of his belongings into this house instead, and hold down this fort for a while. So far, he could assume that she’d been this house’s only caretaker. Now that she was out of the picture, the house was a tantalizing shell for him to occupy. It was away from the rest of the world—down a beaten icy road in the middle of thick shelterbelts that blocked the wind from kicking in too much biting snow. Whoever she was, she’d done a textbook survivalist’s job of reinforcing her windows not only with wooden beams but steel rebar as well. It would take more than an ax to get through that. He noticed the insulation fastened to the beams and was even more impressed. The cannisters of gasoline near the door, the filtration setup, the camouflage of the white house, and the neatly organized cartridges and guns by the kitchen island made it clear that this was the house—or, had once been the house—of an industrious woman. In hindsight, he could’ve teamed up with her and found a way to live together and survive the indefinite ice age.

Then again, he had once tried to get along with others and rely on them for help. Teamwork didn’t work as effectively as one would expect it to during the apocalypse. Besides, she was dead now. No use thinking about the way things could have been; he had to work with what was available. Everything in the house was his now.

If he did choose to stay here, he vowed to clean the kitchen up better and make it a place fit for dining. He searched, but he couldn’t find anything to eat aside from a cupboard full of cans and cat food. How had she lived like this? All the kitchen containers were currently helping in what looked like the cleaning of precious metal artifacts. At first, the man looked with uncertainty at the mason jars with trinkets floating in green liquid. Then, he remembered the direction from which he’d seen the woman driving. There was an excavation site in Belle Viande where past city officials, police officers, and members of the community actually managed to work together to clear the ice around buried buildings. The excavation site was the latest of a string of missions to save those who had been trapped in the valleys during the first storm of the July blizzards that led to the entire continent freezing over. Some people, he’d heard, had turned to cannibalism in their desperation to stay alive beneath layer upon layer of snow. He didn’t know why the community members kept digging; it was almost cruel to let those under the mountains of snow have to live with what they’d done down below. Better to let them starve and die in good conscience.

The man went to the door and retrieved the tarp so he could repitch the filtration device. If he was staying here for a while, which seemed to be the obvious course of action, he wanted to drink clean water. As he set up the device, the cat nipped at his ankles and meowed for something to eat. The man ignored her. After setting up the tarp, he kicked off his squeaky boots and investigated the rest of his new house.

He flipped a switch in the living room, but no lights came on. In the dim light from the kitchen, he could see that the room was filled more with boxes than it was with furniture. He walked around, hardly able to find places to put his feet. The cardboard was stacked high against the boarded windows and the closed TV entertainment deck. A couple shelves held old movies and CDs. He walked forward into the dark and squinted his eyes at the collection of picture frames on the top shelves. The woman, whatever her name was, had once been part of a huge family. He glanced at her corpse near the door, then at a photo of her at the very end of three rows of what looked like brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, grandparents, nieces, and nephews. Next to her in the picture were two men—one nuzzling his face into the shoulder of the other. They’re together . . . which means she’s alone. The other pictures on the shelf confirmed his suspicions. Among them were her cat, a previously unseen dog, and young relatives. No spouse. She lived in the aftermath of the apocalypse exactly the way she lived when the temperature was still sufferable: alone.

He walked over the woman’s corpse and clicked on a light to the stairs that led down to the basement. The only light that came on was a yellow incandescent bulb that hung vulnerably from the ceiling at the foot of the stairs. I’ll have to rewire this place, he thought.

He climbed down the carpeted stairs and found more boxes—Matthew, said one stack, written in green marker. Another: June and Spencer. The boxes were stacked in groups all along the basement floor. He couldn’t see much else filling the space except for a rowing machine and an exercise ball, long avoided, unimportant to anyone now that the world had ended. There ain’t anybody left out there to impress with a flat belly.

The basement space narrowed into a hallway. The door at the far end was marked with a poster of teen singer Chelsie Manning (I wonder if she’s still alive?). Both sides of the hallway had their own doors as well. He checked the door to his left—a bathroom, clean and pleasantly decorated with lighthouse-themed ornaments. To his right, a bedroom, with a clear floor and bare mattress. The covers and sheets were folded into a cube resting in the center of the cold room.

He closed both doors and approached the door at the end of the hall. Before he could turn the knob, he heard some noise on the inside and tensed. He suddenly wished he had taken his shotgun downstairs, but at least he had a knife to defend himself against whoever was inside the room. The man peeled his ears and heard two things: the jingle of the cat’s collar as she trotted down the stairs, and the low-register metallic crunch of heavy chain links rubbing against each other. He switched his blade open and put his hand on the knob.

When he tried to turn it, the knob wouldn’t budge. The door was locked. Looking at the knob, there was a keyhole on his side of the door, which meant whoever was inside was the one who was trapped. He placed his ear against the poster on the door and listened harder, but this time, not a single sound came from the room. The cat wove between the man’s legs and meowed.

The man took a deep breath and grunted, “Hello?”

The chains rattled inside. A small voice, probably belonging to a boy, piped up, “Who’s that?”

“Nobody,” said the man. “Those chains?”

“Who are you?” asked the boy.

“I’ll tell you if you’ll give me your name,” said the man.

“Umm . . . Coleman,” said the boy.

“Cool. I’m Arnold,” said the man. “You wanna tell me why you’re chained up in there?”

“Are you with Veronica?” asked Coleman.

“That the woman’s name?” asked Arnold. “One who lives here? Are you one of her family or somethin’?”

“That would be really fucked up,” said Coleman. 

“What, that she locked you in here?” asked Arnold. “I’ve seen a lot of shit, kid. Heck, mom would lock me in my room when I was bad. No chains, I guess, but same idea. This snow makes everyone act a little crazy.”

“A little?” asked Coleman. “She killed my friends.”

Arnold chewed his lip. “That’s . . . really awful, dude.” He meant it. Feeling like he should offer a little more, he added, “My dad was killed.”

Coleman didn’t respond for a while. “How convenient,” he said. “Are you getting me out of here or are you going to kill me too?”

“You wanna give me a hint where I could find a key?” asked Arnold.

“How the fuck should I know? Kick down the door.”

Arnold wasn’t about to barge in there until he knew why Coleman was locked up. “What’s your story, dude?” he asked through the door. “What’d you and your friends do?”

“Break down the door and I’ll tell you,” said Coleman.

“Or I could just take my pickup and get out of here,” said Arnold. “You haven’t got me that invested in your story.”

“No!” said Coleman curtly. “Is she dead? Or what?”

“She might be,” said Arnold.

“She’s a fucking psychopath,” said Coleman. “She drugged us and dragged us to her house.”

“That little lady upstairs?” asked Arnold. That was hard to believe. “How’d you get in the position where she’d jump you like that?”

“It’s not like that,” said Coleman. “It’s not that simple. She works for those guys who dig up all of us who got buried.”

Arnold raised his eyebrows. “You were buried in the valley?” he asked. “You and who else?”

For a moment, there was no sound on the other side of the door. Then, Coleman spoke. “Can’t you get me out first and then ask me about this?”

“Right now there’s a school excavation in Belle Viande,” said Arnold. “Was it your classmates?”

“I don’t want to talk about that,” said Coleman.

“Why?” asked Arnold.

“I don’t like thinking of them as classmates anymore,” said Coleman. “I didn’t see them that way when we were buried there. We couldn’t even be each other’s friends.”

“Why not?” asked Arnold. “Everybody’s got to stick together. Now more than ever before.”

“Really?” asked Coleman. The chain audibly thumped the carpeted floor inside the room. “Wow, mister, you sure are wise. Tell me what else I should’ve done with a room full of kids and adults for six months. No food, no water. Who would you have trusted? Who would you have . . .” Coleman tried to continue speaking but his voice gave out. Moments later, he continued, “You don’t know what people will do—what people can do—when all their other roads are shut down. I can’t look at anyone the same way again. I can’t think of them as classmates.”

Arnold bowed his head. “What about your family?” he asked.

“Who knows,” muttered Coleman. “Dead, I assume.”

“That’s a real tragedy,” said Arnold. He nodded his head. “That’s sure a crying shame.” He swayed to and fro, placed his hand on the doorframe, and cleared his throat. “Real hard to tell if you’re giving me the whole truth, you know.”

Coleman was silent.

“Hate to tell you this,” said Arnold, “but this ain’t the first time I’ve had someone pleading on the other side of a door for me to bring him over to my side. Only difference is, the man who was knocking at my door a few months ago didn’t give me reason to suspect he was a flesh-eating, crazed lunatic.”

“Fuck,” said Coleman. “It isn’t like that.”

“Huh,” said Arnold, “Let’s see everything we know and ask ourselves who seems to be telling more of the truth: the nice lady upstairs with the nice house and the nice kitty that she takes care of even though the world has gone to shit? Or the boy she keeps locked up in her basement?”

“I’m not hiding anything,” said Coleman. “She’s a psychopath. I’m telling the truth.”

“It’d be easier to believe that if you tell me what you did,” said Arnold. “Why did she lock you up?”

“It’s not that deep,” said Coleman. “Everybody’s got to eat. Think about it. Do you hunt?”

“Did,” said Arnold.

“Think of it like fish in a barrel,” said Coleman. “And she’s the one with the gun.”

Arnold swayed to and fro again, chewing on his bottom lip. “If I let you out of here, what’s the first thing you’re doing?” he asked.

“What do you mean?” asked Coleman. “I’m getting the fuck away from here.”

“So you’re really locked up on chains?” Arnold asked. “Deep in there, against the wall? If I come in with my shotgun pointed at you, you’re not going to charge me, right?”

“Don’t fucking do that,” said Coleman. “No guns. That’s my rule.”

Arnold scoffed. “Making rules, huh? I didn’t think you were in the position for that.”

“For fucks sake, I’m only human,” said Coleman.

Looking down, remembering that he left his shotgun upstairs, Arnold began backing away from the door. “I’m leaving,” he said.

“Don’t leave,” Coleman immediately shouted, “Don’t fucking leave! Don’t leave, stay here, come back—”

“I’ll give you some time to think about it,” said Arnold.

He walked briskly down the hallway, up the stairs, as Coleman continued to scream in the bedroom. He was only hardly audible behind the thick wooden door. The cat walked right next to Arnold’s legs as he climbed up the stairs.

If I were a key, where would I put me? he wondered. When he hit the top step, he grabbed his shotgun and peered over Veronica’s body. He only realized now how young she was, how beautiful. Strong, too. She looked to be almost an even match for Arnold. He looked at the mark he made on her forehead, at the blood that streamed down her skull, at her broad shoulders, at her hands, at her fingernails, at her mouth, at everything. He tried to find a story in her body. One part of her body, one small detail, must give away the reason why she had locked a young man—possibly more—in her basement.

Was it so hard to believe that the young man was telling the truth? Arnold had seen a lot of shit. He saw people stoop to evils he’d never anticipated possible for any human. So this woman, no matter how healthy and beautiful she looked, had more than a strong possibility of being a murderer. Even a cannibal. And if she was one, Arnold didn’t know who long it would be before everyone in this frozen wasteland resorted to the same necessity.

Arnold was just about to turn into the kitchen to search for a key when he stopped and thought of something. He kneeled down beside Veronica’s corpse and rolled her over, reaching into her back pocket for a lump that stuck out. He held it out to see: a key ring, with dozens of different sized keys strung onto it.

He descended the stairs, careful not to trip over the cat, and walked back to the locked door. The young man had stopped shouting by the time he got there.

“Uh, Coleman,” said Arnold. He waited for a response, but didn’t get any. “If I let you out of there, you won’t make a break for it, will you?”

“I’m getting the fuck out of here,” said Coleman.

“That’s fine,” said Arnold, “I want to get out of here, too. But you’re not getting anywhere unless you know where to go. And I’ve got a pickup outside stocked with gas.”

“What, you want me to come with you?” asked Coleman.

“If I open this door and what you say seems about right, I’ll consider it,” said Arnold.

“You’re not really giving me a choice, though,” said Coleman.

“I’m giving you a choice between life and death, dude,” said Arnold.

“We’ll see,” said Coleman.

Arnold flipped through the key ring until he found one that fit through the hole. After sliding it all the way through, he stopped when he heard the chain jolt and jingle. He listened, but the inside of the room was silent again.

“You staying back against the wall, ain’t you?” he asked.

Coleman laughed, exasperated. “I can’t do anything. My hands are chained up.”

Arnold spoke deliberately: “Against the wall.”

After an icy pause, Coleman spoke again, his voice farther from the door: “Alright.”

Arnold slowly turned the key in its lock. With his dominant arm, he one-handed the shotgun while turning the knob in the other, just barely, so he could support the barrel of his gun completely. He pushed the barrel of the gun forward, nudging the heavy door open only a few inches. It was enough to see the room. The white carpet was stained with two dry, round, rust-colored pools of blood. Surprising to Arnold, the light fixture that illuminated the room was bright and well-furnished compared to the other lights that illuminated the house. Underneath the light lay three heavy chains—only one in use. Coleman, a lithe, dirty, brown-haired boy, was tethered by his neck to a metal pipe that stood upright at the other end of the room, running through the ceiling and floor. His hands were cuffed together. He wasn’t wearing any pants. They were piled up next to a 5-gallon bucket beside the wall. He cowered in fear when he saw Arnold.

“Put that down,” urged Coleman, looking at the shotgun.

Arnold did—but not right away. After giving every detail of the room full consideration, he thought it was safe to believe the boy was telling the truth. He set the gun down against a wall that he didn’t think Coleman would be able to get to, then walked over to the pipe that Coleman was tethered to.

“Wait,” said Coleman, “get my hands first.”

Arnold ignored him and found the key on the ring that matched the padlock on the chain around the pipe. “Step back,” he said.

Coleman moved back, watching over Arnold’s shoulder as he fidgeted with the lock.

“Can you shoot?” Arnold muttered.

“No,” Coleman said. “I can’t even shoot.” He watched with his mouth agape, breathing shakily. “Bet you’ve been shooting ever since you were a kid. Who taught you? Your dad?”

Arnold exhaled deeply. “Sure did.”

He clicked the padlock open. The steel U swung out, and the chain was free.

Arnold shifted, getting ready to stand. “Dad took me hunt—”

Arnold felt a blunt force hit between his shoulder blades, pushing him down. He had no time to react. He lost balance on his feet and slipped to his knees.

Then, thick links of a chain swung down in front of Arnold’s eyes. The chain hit his chest, crashed into his windpipe, and coldly constricted his neck just beneath his chin. He tried to stand, but Coleman’s knee drove into the top of his back, just between his shoulder blades, keeping him down. Arnold felt Coleman’s knee readjust to push against his neck. The chain links wrapped around the sides of his neck and crossed behind it, turning his head into a pimple ready to burst. He could feel his eyes popping. His heartbeat punched in his ears. Suddenly, his windpipe collapsed, and any chance of finding even the most meager of breaths was gone. Stars pulsed behind his eyes.

Arnold clawed behind himself. He swept the floor, trying to find a part of the chain wrapped around Coleman’s neck, but he soon lost the strength to grab anything. The last thing he saw before his vision went black was Coleman’s grimace in the shiny reflection of the metal pipe.

Arnold’s arms flopped to the ground. Coleman held him upright for five careful seconds. Then he dropped him and kicked him onto his side. The cat meowed from just outside the room, then briskly trotted in to sniff the man’s motionless masked face.

Coleman shuddered with a terrible exhale of exultation. He stood there, ready to kick back into action, until he was absolutely sure the man was dead.

Then, he knelt down and grabbed the key ring that Arnold had dropped. He uncuffed his hands, then wrestled with the lock on the chain around his neck. When it was off, he scrambled to the wall and grabbed the shotgun. He didn’t know how to shoot, but he did know how to hold it and make it look like he knew what he was doing with it. When Veronica had taken him and two others prisoner down here, he’d been unconscious, so he had no idea what the layout of the house was like. He didn’t know how many people lived here. In the back of his mind, he even doubted that Veronica was dead. Whatever lurked around the corner, he needed to be ready. He pointed the shotgun at the dimly-lit hallway outside the room and carefully yet hurriedly made his way out of the room that had served as his cell for over two weeks.

Coleman had already let it set in that he would be there forever. He was stuck in a pitch-black school for months before he was rescued—or so he had thought. In hindsight, he had let the fantasy of resurfacing to the world of light get in the way of the reality: there were no decent people in the world anymore. Veronica had chipped her way into the kitchen where they were hidden, bursting through the tunnel like a savior summoned by constant prayer. Yet, when she stepped in and led the remaining three of them into an empty tent outside, she became only a continuation of his nightmare. She chained them to the pipe inside that room and kept them starved with only animalistic amenities. He and the others—a girl named Christine and a boy named Grant—had spent the past months growing accustomed to the act of killing their fellow men to survive. They continued with this mindset in Veronica’s basement. They hardly slept in that brightly-lit room, only watching each other as though in a prolonged Mexican standoff. Only a few weeks ago, Veronica had decided for them which of them would die first. She brought a handgun into the room and shot Christine in the chest and Grant in the head. Coleman had watched plenty of people bleed out in the flashlight-lit kitchen floor of the school, but the cruelty of having to see an outsider kill his cellmates under the harsh, unflinching, fluorescent lights, all while being chained to the wall, filled him with unparalleled terror. Each day and night, he wished it would all be over. The last week of his life stretched out longer to him than the previous months of his life; he knew there was no foreseeable future for him.

At last, it seemed like his luck had changed. Coleman made his way all the way up the stairs without facing a threat. His heart rate briefly spiked when he saw Veronica lying on the floor, but when he saw the pool of blood around her head, he started entertaining the thought that he was free.

He opened the door, but it was already dusk. Not a good time to travel. He would have to stay here for the night.

Coleman spent the rest of the night packing boxes and coolers with survival items that he found around the house. He bundled up and went outside, into the garage, and found the bags of human meat that he expected to find. It made him seize up on the floor of the garage to think about continuing his cannibalistic practices to survive, but the drained meat in the freezer was better than eating the rudimentarily prepared meat he and the others made in the kitchen of the school. He decided he would only eat it as a last resort.

He slept surprisingly well that night, even through the incessant meowing of the cat and with the terrible memories of the house looming over him. The first thing he saw when he woke up in the living room the next morning was a collection of picture frames he’d neglected to see the previous night. One in particular caught his eye: a group of young boys, outside in the sun, with a swimming pool and a bed of grass as their backdrop. The boy in the middle of the group of kids, smiling brightly at the camera, looked remarkably like his little brother, who he last saw a year ago. The kid almost looked like a younger version of himself. Coleman removed the photo from the frame and pocketed it.

He stepped out into the bright white snowy front yard, and with the truck packed full of guns, shovels, boots, tanks of gas, and all the other supplies he could need in the next few days, he backed out of the driveway that was fresh with drifts of snow. It had been months since he last drove, but to his surprise, it came back to him as easily as any natural instinct. He wasn’t afraid of where he was going; he was ready for whatever came his way. With the sky devoid of moisture, his entire view was white. There was no line that marked the horizon and there was hardly any visibility of the road in front of him, but he drove forward with total confidence.

Veronica and Arnold stayed on the floor of the house throughout the previous night and that morning. Coleman hadn’t bothered moving them. Now that it was morning, and Coleman was gone, Antsy’s yowling reached its peak of desperation. She wandered the house until noon, getting into every nook and cranny of the house, for some small bite of food. But she found nothing. No open containers. It wasn’t just in her head, and it wasn’t just an exaggeration—she was really starving.

She daintily walked back to her mama, who lay motionless in front of the door. Antsy knew she was dead, but she believed, somewhere deep inside, that she might get up and feed her. She’d always relied on her mama’s dependence. It never failed her until now.

Antsy sniffed Veronica’s face again. The pool of blood beneath her head had dried through the night, and was now a crusty maroon color. The more Antsy smelled her, the less it smelled like her mama. It smelled an awful lot like meat. When it was all gone, Antsy didn’t know what she would do. But she didn’t worry about the future, only what she wanted now. And she wanted to eat.