The Compound

Chapter SIX

MY DREAMS THAT NIGHT, LIKE SO MANY OTHER NIGHTS, WERE of food. Cheeseburgers, loaded with bacon and mayo and ketchup. Seasoned curly fries, greasy and dripping in mustard. Milk shakes, thick slices of strawberry cheesecake, hot fudge sundaes.

When I woke up, my pillow was wet with drool and my stomach growled. I hated waking up like that, immediately reminded of our pathetic food situation.

It hadn’t always been bad. In the beginning we had plenty to eat. An enormous open room near the hydroponics housed the poultry and livestock. Without Eddy to do the job, caring for them fell to me. We had five Holsteins, all with suckling calves. With their soft fur, slippery noses, and sandpaper tongues, the calves were so loveable that it helped me not miss Cocoa so much.

Their pen was a smaller version of a corral you’d see on a ranch. Smelled like one as well. Every day, wishing I could worm my way out of it, I grudgingly held my breath as I scooped up their manure and hauled it to one of the incinerators. I gave the animals water, and then carried grain by bucketfuls to their trough. The trough sat near a water tank that I filled with a hose from a nearby spigot.

The chickens were not as fun as the cows. I sprinkled their corn, brought clean water, and rushed out of the henhouse. I hated the putrid stench of chicken crap. Most days I gathered eggs. Those were a treat, especially when Mom made them into cheese omelets.

One entire room of the warehouse was devoted to feed for the animals. Should it dwindle, Dad explained, we would butcher the cows and make do without milk and the cheese and butter that Mom made. Even though it would mean less shoveling for me, I chose not to think about that day, counting on the feed to last.

Between the dairy and poultry products, produce from the garden, and freezers full of meat, we ate well.

For the first seven months.

The morning it all changed started out like any other. Life had become routine, almost like we’d always lived in the Compound.

With an orange wheelbarrow, I hauled a new bag of feed out of the storeroom and poured it into the cows’ trough. They dug in with gusto as usual, the calves nursing as their mothers chewed, their crunching loud. The chickens were ecstatic when I fed them, their ruffling feathers and cackling driving me nuts.

The next day I went to feed them. I was puzzled. Neither the chickens nor cows touched the food I gave them. The cows dripped saliva while the calves suckled. I went to get Dad.

He wasn’t that up on hanging out with the livestock. His nose wrinkled the minute he walked in the room, and his eyes were glued to the ground as he took ginger steps around any dirt I might have missed when I cleaned up, even though he wore knee-high muck boots.

Dad wasn’t sure what to make of the cows’ behavior. “They probably have to adjust to this place, too. They’ll be back to normal in a day or so.”

Later, I went back to check. The cows stood there, panting and drooling. The calves lay on their sides, still.

I rested my hand on one.

The fur was still soft. But the body was stiff and cold. The calves were dead. All of them.

And it was quiet in there. Too quiet.

I realized what was missing. Cackling. Inside the henhouse, I found all the chickens, unmoving and lifeless.

I ran to get Dad, and then struggled to keep up as we raced back. By then a cow was on her side. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he hissed.

My mouth opened to defend myself, to tell him I’d done everything the way I was supposed to. I was afraid to speak.

Dad held a hand to the cow’s heaving flank. I realized his words were directed at her, not me.

He grabbed a couple of stainless steel buckets from the stack. He put some water in one and a few handfuls of grain in the other and took them to his lab. I followed to watch him.

He readied the microscope and his other equipment, then set to work. Inspected first, the water ended up being fine; it was the same we all drank.

I went to check on the cows and decided to stay with them. One by one they dropped to their forelegs, then fell onto their sides. I was with them through the afternoon. One by one, they died.

Back in the lab, I found Dad deep in concentration. He didn’t seem to notice me as he studied the information that compiled on his computer screen. At last his analysis was complete. “No, no, no. No, No, NO.” Dad leaned on the counter, holding his head in his hands. “Traces of rat poison.” His exact next words escape me. I do know he shouted something about the cows and swore. A lot.

I took all the dead chickens to the incinerator with the orange wheelbarrow, which I christened The Hearse. Dad sliced up the large animals with equipment from the meat processing room. The grinding whine stayed in my head for days.

I COULDN’T GO BACK TO SLEEP. MY ALARM HADN’T GONE OFF yet, so I stayed in bed and daydreamed, as I often did, about things I used to take for granted. The smell of Cocoa after her bath, and the way she tore around the house, rolling on every carpet in sight, grunting. I felt her then, her body on top of my feet, her warmth seeping through the covers. She was my phantom limb.

For six years I’d tried not to dwell on thoughts of her or anyone else too long. It was better to separate the old world from the new. It was better to stay cold and detached.

Actually, I was getting good at cold and detached. Too good.

I shivered, and pulled the covers up tight.

I often wondered about the cows and how it all could have happened. Could one of the workers have sabotaged the food supply? And the grow bulbs in hydroponics. Could someone have put fluorescent ones in their place on purpose? A disgruntled worker who knew the job was coming to an end? An envious working stiff who hated the thought of his own family dying while the Yanakakis clan lived out nuclear winter in luxury?

I hid my face in my hands, rubbing away at the sleepiness.

Dad had planned well, of course. But even he had made mistakes. I crunched my last tortilla chip when I was eleven. Swallowed my last Mountain Dew when I was thirteen. Peanut butter ran out when I was fourteen, the jelly soon after. We each learned to hoard. Underneath my bed, a dozen Snickers called to me. True, the one I ate on my birthday was white around the edges and tasted rather off. Still, I saved the rest. I liked knowing they were there.

Dad had stockpiled tons, literally, of food. But even he couldn’t extend the shelf life. Most canned goods were fresh for three, four years tops; wheat and honey were the only two foods with an indefinite shelf life. Trust me on that.

The meat in the freezers became increasingly inedible in Year Three. We’d been vegetarian since I was thirteen. Not by choice. I’d have given a few body parts for a burger and fries.

Sometimes when I thought about this place called Uncle Barney’s we used to go to, I’d get a little choked up. They made these incredible Monte Cristo sandwiches with layers of smoked turkey and honey ham and cheddar and Swiss, drenched in beer batter, then deep fried. Nice, eh? Rich kid pines away for food, and doesn’t shed a tear for the brother he killed.

My stomach growled then, at just the thought of meat. I resisted the temptation to reach under the bed for a Snickers. Instead I got up to do my tai chi. I began the motions. I tried. I couldn’t stop thinking about the food.

How food used to be fun.

Not anymore.

Meals had become scientific, every bite like a mathematical equation, each integer blending together to create an adequate sum, product, solution. This bite and that equaled proper nutrition.

My gaze fell to the oak dresser and the industrial-size bottle of vitamins I took by the handful. No substitute for real food, they were close to expiring. We wouldn’t starve as long as the honey and wheat lasted. Malnutrition could become an issue, inviting related ailments such as scurvy and rickets. Nice.

My right calf muscle felt tight. I stopped to stretch. My hands kneaded the sinewy lower half of my leg.

Of course there was a safety net: MREs, meals ready to eat. Dad laid in a huge stock, thousands purchased from a military supply place. Way to go, Pops.

My concentration was shot, so I gave up on tai chi and went to take a preworkout shower. Thanks to Dad’s hightech water heaters, at least we had plenty of that. I stepped in, hoping the water would wash away my thoughts. Didn’t work.

I didn’t get it, how he could go through the entire planning process of the Compound, and then screw up the most important thing. I respected him for the effort, of course, who else could have pulled this off, but still. To screw up something as basic as the food supply?

The blasted saga of the MREs wouldn’t leave me alone.

Stored at 60 degrees, they have a shelf life of 130 months, give or take a few. They would last for at least ten years. Stored at 60 degrees. The thermostat in the MRE storage room malfunctioned. Rising to 90 degrees, it stayed there for over six weeks before anyone noticed. Stored at 90 degrees, MREs have a shelf life of 55 months.

We began eating up the MREs while they were still good. Good being a relative term. I suspected they were always crappy, even in their prime. Not much variation there. Macaroni hot dish. Beef stew. Chop suey. There was, however, variation in how they were prepared, as stated by the official instructions. I’d read them so many times while I ate that they were ingrained in my mind:

Place unopened pouch in warm water for 5-10 minutes. Unopened pouch may be laid on a warm surface.

Lay unopened pouch in direct sunlight. Not much chance of that down here.

Place unopened pouch inside your shirt, allow your body temperature to warm your MRE.

I was surprised they left out: Place unopened pouch on ground and pee on it.

As the water ran hot down my body, I had another thought. Could the thermostat in the MRE room have been sabotaged as well? Who would wish us such ill will? Stupid question. Billions of people. For no other reason than for all that we possessed. Especially our survival.

I switched off the water and stepped out, grabbing a towel.

If someone had tampered with our food, they never could have imagined the depths we would sink to in order to remedy the situation. Because soon after the MRE disaster, Dad made a decision necessary for his family’s survival; a decision a normal person could never have lived with.

A decision I had to live with every day.

A decision I had to think about, whether I wanted to or not, every time I walked by that yellow door.