AncilChapter 21: Food Line Rescue.
Three months had passed since that moment when I shot my father. No son should have to experience such a thing but I felt like it was something that had to be done. I was able to force myself to get up and soldier through the days but I couldn’t shake the nightmares. Every night I would get them; visions of torment and destruction. A country consumed by fire and peril. I heard the cries of many and I saw faces; familiar faces. Megan, Melanie, Sam, Rajiv, Cornell, Ravi, Marsha, and my father were all among the tormented. Their screams and cries haunted me and kept me awake, instilling me with so much horror that I was afraid to even close my eyes at night.
The nightmares in my head along with the nightmare of my reality drove me even more insane. The only way I could deal with it was by remaining active during the day instead of sitting and sulking around. I cleaned up the house in order to get rid of the awful rotting flesh smell and barricaded all the doors and windows with wood every evening. The house had a solar panel so I was able to generate enough electricity to play games on my game consoles and use my computer. I listened to some classical music of the 2200s like the Funky Robots, Big Bleepers and John The John.
If I needed anything, I would go down into the town during the day and take stuff straight off the shelves, trying as much as possible to remain low and not make a “scene” as Megan told me. Any little error, any little misjudgment or miscalculation was all that was needed to put me face to face with certain death either from the jumbies or from the Midnight Robber himself. Every time I ventured through town I always kept an eye out for blue devils, moko jumbies or even Rajiv. I sometimes went into town during the cover of night with my shades, hoodie and hat on but I stopped doing that when I got jumped by two pitbulls on my way back up Calvary Hill. Luckily, I had my gun.
The jumbies were really smelly but they were relatively peaceful folk once you didn’t make eye contact with any of them. They did a lot of the same things humans did but they just did it void of any emotion or soul. They played checkers on public tables but only as a way to get something in return for winning. They ate in public restaurants and went to work. They possessed the skills already possessed by the bodies they occupied. The jobs available ranged from garbage collector to doubles vendors, believe it or not. I took a small bite out of a doubles made by one of the jumbies but I couldn’t get past the horrible smell of corroding flesh that came with it.
Even though there were lots of jumbies out during the night the place was relatively quiet. The only sounds that came from the jumbies were the occasional groans. There was no such thing as laughter or joy in the town anymore. The jumbies solely roamed the streets among the mists, doing all that they needed to do in order to survive. Nothing more, nothing less. From my observation of the creatures over the couple months that I lived amongst them, I noticed that their daily routines were generally the same. They slept during the day and came out in the night to get food and hunt. They hunted in order to eat and trade. They were basically just as smart as a typical human but they weren’t conscious. They didn’t have human consciousness but were just organic robots without much free will. I had no idea what was the point of having them. Without purpose they merely took up space on earth, but I was sure the Midnight Robber probably had a plan for them.
It had been a little more than three months since I had last seen or communicated with a real human being and the loneliness got to me at times. To some extent, my game consoles and music in my solar-powered house did the trick of taking my mind away from reality. I was beginning to wonder if Megan was even coming back. I was considering causing a stir in the town again to get the jumbies to report me but I had no idea if the Midnight Robber would have sent Megan again as a scout. It was already weird enough that he sent her the first time. Where was Ray Carter? I had forgotten all about him. Where did he go? It didn’t matter though, I was doing pretty fine all by myself. Well, I was doing fine, until the food ran out. Food supplies in the grocery stores were running low and I could have probably gone to another town but I didn’t have a car and none of the abandoned cars in the area had keys. The ones that did have keys were surrounded by other cars and unable to move.
I searched through the town for any more grocery stores but I couldn’t find any. I could have eaten the food that was being made by the jumbies but the horrid smell made that my very last resort. Besides, I had nothing to trade. The last time I bargained with a jumbie I gave him a dead chicken that I found in my father’s room before I cleaned it up. I wasn’t good at hunting so finding animals wouldn’t be the easiest thing to do. I could probably have just stolen something but I didn’t want to make a scene and get reported again.
While searching the town early one afternoon I noticed a group of jumbies lined up in six lines in front of six food trucks where dame lorraines in their 16th century clothing, white masks and distinctive bodies of rather exaggerated curves, were distributing food. I tightened my cap, fixed my shades and stood in line hoping that the dame lorraines wouldn’t recognize me as a human. It may have seemed like a really stupid idea but to my famished self it was the only one on the table. It was very unusual to see so many jumbies outside so early in the afternoon but I guessed that they just wanted food and so did I. I tried not to look around too much because I feared that a jumbie may see through my shades but I couldn’t help but notice four people who were chained together in the line. They didn’t look like any rotting jumbie to me. They looked……HUMAN. Three out of the four persons looked like small children while one looked a bit older. She was definitely the most beautiful person that I’d seen in months. I wasn’t sure if I honestly found her to be beautiful or if she just seemed beautiful by comparison. I’d been seeing some ugly jumbies for the past couple months so compared to them she was a Greek goddess. More like an Indian goddess. She was Indian, fair-skinned, bare-footed and wore a really old and dirty night gown that looked like it was scavenged from a mud pile. Her skin was pale, very pale. Sickly pale, reminding me of the way Megan’s mother looked when we saw her in the dungeon below the hut in Tobago with the Bookman. The children who were chained in line with the girl looked similar to her. They looked related. There were two boys and one girl and they looked sickly pale as well.
