Alligator/Crocodile

This is the first time I've tried writing dystopian fiction. Be nice to me.

Photo by Jade Koroliuk on Unsplash

“What exactly are you looking for?”

Joanie was grumbling around in a pile of clothing; it had been torn off the racks and sat in a great heap in the ravaged It’s A Buck store.

“Just give me a minute,” she called.

Dev leaned back on a Twinkly display. No Twinklys were left, of course. Food was the toughest to find. It was starting to get dark and he wanted to be back at the shack, safe inside.

“Ta-da!”

Joanie held up a tee-shirt two sizes too large for her. You had to take what you could get these days. The shirt was white with green lettering: Kiss me, I’m Irish it said.

“What’s that,” Dev asked.

Joanie danced the shirt around in front of herself.

“It was for Saint Bad Rick’s Day,” she said. “My grandfather told me about it.”

“What’s ‘Saint’?”

“It’s like Mister but Saint meant you were a really good person.”

“If he was a good person why was he called ‘Bad’?” Dev laughed.

Joanie scrunched her face up in a way that Dev thought was cute. She clutched the shirt to her chest.

“I dunno,” she said. “But my dad said if you were Irish that was your day.”

“Are you Irish?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

“Right. Well, we gotta go, Saint.” Dev nodded towards the door. The sky was beginning to get greenish; dark was coming.

Joanie pouted, but Dev was right. No person, lonesome or a pair, wanted to be outside in the dark.

They made their way through and over piles of boxes and rejected merchandise. If you were looking for certain things the It’s A Buck store was good. Many things in the store remained mysterious, though, as there was no real use for them. Strange machines that you had to “plug in,” but there wasn’t any plugging in anymore, unless you were very rich and had a solar ray that worked. Most mysterious to Joanie was the row where there were pieces of folded paper. The inside of the paper had nothing, sometimes some words, but really nothing. The outsides were colorful and had pictures, most of them saying “Happy Birthday.” People were strange. She supposed these were papers to commemorate the day one was born, but why that was “Happy” she didn’t understand. And why did you need a paper for that?

They were in an area called the Crumbles, because most of the buildings were reduced to piles. Over the years people had cleared paths through the debris; the places that remained were either empty, inhabited by some group, or, like the It’s A Buck, shells of structures with strewn old things that people came to rummage through. It was a good place to find clothing, sometimes shoes. People didn’t care about clothing that much. Mostly, people cared about food and light.

Dev stepped through the door, its glass long broken away, and Joanie followed. Dev was tall, which was a real asset. As they walked down the path, Dev put his arm around Joanie’s shoulder to show that she was protected, but there weren’t many people around. Most were probably inside. Some stars were beginning to show and they had about a half mile to walk. Joanie looked around warily for a few moments, but Dev kept his eyes forward. It was best to show that you weren’t worried. And Dev really could handle the wrong people. Joanie had seen him fight a wrong person once, and he had kicked it, then punched it in its face and it went down, just like that. It was not as tall as he was and it looked sick, but still. Dev was a Saint.

The path was quiet and the air smelled like dust and must and the leftovers of someone’s burnt dinner. There were other paths breaking off in different directions, but they kept straight on until they came to the tree. This tree was one of the few remaining. It was a weird thing: the outside of it was rough and dark; many people had used knives or shards to carve their names into it. There were branches leading from it and it grew leaves; they were green and soft as fur when the weather was warm, like now.

At the tree they turned right and went down another path, out of the large piles of the Crumbles.

“Do we have food,” Joanie asked, although she knew they did. She just liked to hear Dev say it.

“Yes.”

They kept walking and he didn’t look at her, but he kept talking. “We have potatoes. We have carrots. We have eggs. We even have flatbread.”

Joanie smiled. She liked to hear him list off what they had for food. It felt safe.

Dev was a good worker and he could build things. He even had a stash of what many people didn’t have: nails. They had spent so many days going through the Crumbles looking for nails that they’d run their fingers raw. It was hard work, because the easy ones were long gone. But it paid off because Dev could trade work for food and people always wanted their shacks fixed or made stronger. Dev could do it, so they could eat.

The sky was turning a deeper green, a faint orange glow higher up in the sky, as they went down a smaller path to their shack. It was brick, an old structure that Dev had claimed when its former owner died. It had two rooms and a cooking area, but cooking was not easy. They had sometimes burned clothes to make fires, which was an awful mess, smelled horrible, and sometimes didn’t work. Getting proper fuel was tricky. They went inside. Dev lit a candle and Joanie went to put her new shirt in the sleeping area.

She came back to the main room to find Dev in front of the stove, putting in a small pile of wood.

“What’s this? Where’d you get that?”

Dev turned and smiled up at her.

“Stark came over to trade. He had an entire wagon full of wood.”

Joanie clapped her hands. “Whoa, did you get a lot?”

“Look,” he said, motioning to the side of the oven. There was a cloth hanging over a stack of wood that came up to Joanie’s waist. She whistled approvingly. “He said he went out for five days. Found a whole patch of trees, like a patch of trees you could walk through. He won’t tell anyone where it is, though.”

“Five days,” Joanie said. “How did he last without running into any wrong people?”

Dev shrugged and made the fire.

That dark they had boiled potatoes and carrots, and Dev boiled one potato so soft that he could mash it up so that it was like a vegetable stew. Then they sat side by side and watched the fire burn down. The sky was now dark green, the moon a vivid orange through the haze that always lingered. The cries were few that night, almost as if a perfect light had run into a perfect dark, and granted them some moments of calm.

And before they fell asleep, Dev whispered to her, “Alligator.”

She breathed deeply and replied, “Crocodile.”

What had happened happened long ago. There was so much destruction that few humans made it out unscathed. Back then there were still more old resources surviving, so they made lives for themselves. But progressive generations saw changes in their offspring. Subtle differences, sometimes larger abnormalities. A different breed: more prone to violence, incapable of learning, living only to satisfy their basest desires. Something wrong.

Joanie had seen and heard them many times. The first time was when she was very young; it was just dark and she was outside with her learning group: four or five other children. The wrong people came running down the path. She remembered the one in front: it had one eye and just a blank spot on the other side of its face. Its mouth was open and its tongue was coated white; it was howling. Another had arms that were too long and they swung and hit the ground when it ran and another’s head was bald and misshapen as though it had been crushed in while the skull was still forming.

All of them were screaming: the children, the adults, the wrong ones. The adults were pushing the children into a shack; Joanie remembered falling down and another child fell on top of her. After they were in and the door was barred an adult started crying because Ricky wasn’t there. He was still outside. Joanie didn’t remember Ricky, but she did remember his screams. High-pitched and frantic, the way people screamed when they knew whatever they did would be no use.

When the light came back, Joanie sat up and looked around the room. They were all right. Today they might look for nails, they might go a little further into the Crumbles to scavenge. Dev usually decided what it was they needed to do. She got up and got their bucket and went to get water to set it to boil.

Stark was outside near their shack, also with a bucket. He was a nice guy, but he had light-colored hair, which was weird. Most people had black hair, like Dev and herself.

Stark turned when he heard her behind him.

“Hi, girl,” he said, stopping.

“Hi,” Joanie said, approaching him. “How did you last all those days out there?”

She was curious. Others had probably already asked him this. The most she had heard of was two days and nights, and that party had come back with one missing.

“I’ll tell you,” he said. “But you can’t tell anyone else.”

“Okay,” she said. He had probably told everyone else who had asked, she thought. He wanted to make it seem like a secret, but everyone would be talking about it soon; she was sure.

He moved closer to her and looked around, as though it really was a secret.

“Once you get to the third day out, things change.”

“What things,” Joanie asked.

“Well, for one there’s more grass,” he said, nodding to the little patches of grass that dotted the ground. “And other things are coming up out of it. Like, weird things that are different colors. I brought some back if you wanna see.”

“Yeah,” said Joanie, “You need to show me later.”

“Here,” he said, pulling something small from his pocket. It was strange. It was like a thick, rounded piece of grass, but there was a top to it. It had yellow spikes all around the top in a circular shape and underneath there were pointy green parts. “Don’t touch the yellow part,” Stark said. “It makes your finger yellow.”

Joanie recoiled at his warning and shoved the thing back at him.

“Maybe it’s poison,” she said.

“I don’t think so. Nothing has happened to me, yet.”

“Is it a food like a carrot?”

“I don’t know,” Stark said. “I’m not going to eat it. That’d be asking for trouble.”

“Ok, but how did you not get killed by the wrong people?” This was what Joanie really wanted to know.

“Listen, once you get like three days out, there aren’t as many of them”

“What?”

“Really. The place where the trees were–it was just trees and some other strange things. I think we could all move there and not have to worry about being raided. And we could find out if some of the things there are food. And there’s more places to grow food.”

“But are there shacks?”

“No. But with Dev, we could make some. I told him about it. Tell him you want to go and he’ll go.”

Stark walked off, but Joanie stood awhile, thinking. If Stark told Dev, why didn’t he tell her? They talked about everything together. And this news was a big deal. They had both heard stories about people finding better places: places with buildings that still had things in them, unknown and useful things. Places with different foods, with different animals. Why hadn’t he told her?

Joanie got the water and walked back. Dev was awake and making a fire for eggs. She sat on the floor next to him by the stove.

“I saw Stark,” she said.

“Ah,” he replied. He kept working with the stove and it felt to Joanie like when he was walking outside in the Crumbles. Eyes ahead.

“He said some people might move to the place he found.”

“Why would they do that?”

“There aren’t as many wrong people and there’s maybe food.”

“We have food here and we have shacks here,” Dev said. “Why leave when we have what we need here?”

Joanie didn’t say anything for a little while. She watched his strong arms and his peaceful face. He was always sure about everything.

“We wouldn’t have to be as afraid,” she finally said.

He stopped his work and looked straight at her.

“Are you afraid? Because I’m keeping you safe. I wouldn’t let a wrong person get near you.” His voice was louder now, like she was making him angry. This was why he hadn’t told her. He didn’t want to leave. “And we have things to trade with here. We’re never hungry,” he continued. “Out there, we’d…we’d maybe not find food or have anything.”

“But people will bring things with them, like potatoes and chickens. We could bring the nails and make new places,” Joanie said.

Dev got up and moved across the room. He stood with his back to her, as if he were thinking of what to say next. Instead, he opened the door and went outside.

Joanie sat. Then she boiled eggs and potatoes, boiling two eggs for Dev to show that she was sorry. But he didn’t come back for a long time.

When he came back it was getting dark; she was sitting at a metal table they had found long ago and she hadn’t even lit a candle.

He walked over to her and sat down. There was a candle and a small pile of scrapings in the middle of the table, and he used his flint to light some tinder, then lit the candle. They looked at each other.

“I talked to Stark,” Dev said. “They’re going. About twenty people are going. Tomorrow.”

“I want to see,” she said.

“I know.”

They sat in the candlelight for quite a while, just looking at each other.

“All right, then,” Dev said. He patted the table twice, stood, and went into the sleeping room.

***

In the morning there was a small ceramic container sitting on the table where Dev had been sitting. Joanie went to it and looked inside. Nails. She wondered how many, but she knew Dev would be fair. She had helped to find these, too.

He wasn’t in the house. He’d left; gone somewhere so he wouldn’t have to watch her leave. She moved slowly around the rooms with a drawstring bag, taking some clothing, some things she thought may be useful, like a small pot, some spoons, half the candles, some carrots, potatoes, spoons. An extra pair of shoes. A thin quilt. Everything she touched seemed so fragile to her, as though it were made up of air, as though it were really nothing, but she still needed it. She walked around the rooms several times, feeling as though she were missing something, forgetting something. Then she forced herself to go out the door.

Some women and children had climbed into Stark’s wagon and sat there, smiling, looking anxious, but pleased. Stark saw her and waved, then pointed to the wagon. A woman opened the gate and she threw her bag up in it, then climbed up.

Stark walked over to the back of the wagon.

“Are we all ready?”

There was a murmuring of agreement. They were ready. They were ready to see the new place, to work, to plant, to sleep soundly in the dark. To be away from the dust that covered everything and to marvel at more than one tree.

The horses began to move and Joanie felt herself being jostled, but grinned along with everyone else in the wagon. It would be better there.

As they came to the path’s end, they saw a large ribbon of concrete stretched before them, some of it broken down, dust on either side. A group of those who were staying had gathered to wave good-bye.

Joanie stood up, craning her neck to look for Dev.

He was there, at the edge of the crowd and standing near the road.

Some of the men who were leaving walked over and began hugging people. The women in the wagon with her called out to their friends.

Dev stepped up, close to the wagon. She knelt down and put her hands out of the side and Dev held them.

“Alligator,” he said.

“I can’t,” she said, staring at his hands holding hers.

“Alligator,” he said again.

“I can’t…that means that we’ll see each other again. My grandfather told me.”

He dropped her hands and backed up into the crowd, still facing her. And he stood there until he was just a speck far off, so far away.