Page 27 of Them

The man had only hoped to find a guest room in the basement, but it seemed these folks had moved their main suite to the subterranean level. He reached over to one of the bedside tables. Its surface was neat and tidy, complete with an inoperable lamp placed atop a circular doily of dusty white lace. Inside the single drawer was a religious text in a language the man couldn’t name and a Jack Reacher paperback in English. Some medicine bottles with multisyllabic names that had been prescribed by a professional long ago. They were all empty.

The opposite nightstand was messier. The lamp and doily were identical, but the rest of the surface was crowded with reading glasses, an ashtray filled with silver dollars, and two hardcover books. The man opened the drawer and dug through lazily tossed heart medications, a tangle of various charging cords, and a swath of makeup wipes until he found what he sought. A pen. Bonus: a notepad.

The top page was partially detached and covered in nearly illegible scrawl. The handwriting was hard and uncurved. The inked tip had driven into the paper, creating small indentations that spoke in typographical sureness. It was a list:

Stock up—toilet paper (if store’s out, Marty has extra)

Sour Patch Kids for Sherry

The man flinched.

Lowe’s—check x# nails first—2x4s & plywood

Do we have enough water?

Plug & fill bathtub

The man reread number two.

Heavy blanket

Fix radio or get new one—extra batteries

The man ripped the list off the notepad and scrawled the current time, 8:03, on the next leaflet. He rested his head on the pillow and tried to sleep, but his mind kept returning to the list. His thoughts lingered: toilet paper, candy, nails, wood, water, blankets, a radio, batter—

A radio!

The man sat up. The blood in his brain stirred, heavy and viscous, but he fought the nausea. He’d tried radios before, shortly after leaving the bunker, but heard nothing except dead static. Yet what else did he have to do?

Might as well take a look. Need clothes anyway. A new flashlight too? Probably not. Lighter’s good enough.

The man pushed himself up from the bed and briefly detoured to use the restroom in flickering flamelight. He checked his watch and was shocked to see that it was almost midnight.

Didn’t even realize I fell asleep.

After procuring a new pair of jeans, underpants, socks, and a plain white T-shirt, he took his time searching for the radio. The basement bedroom failed to yield one, so he climbed the stairs. There was a small home office filled with stacks of paperwork and a stockpile of FOR SALE yard signs. Printed on the opposite side of each was the tanned face of an attractive and well-dressed dark-haired woman. A real estate agent, and presumably the mother of the house. Her name was not Sherry, the Sour Patch Kids fan.

The next door he came to was closed and decorated with butterflies made of pink construction paper and a big yellow sun. The man did not open that door.

In a truly American living room complete with couch, recliner, and television, the man found the radio partially disassembled on the coffee table. He hadn’t noticed it the night before when he stumbled in, hell-bent on finding the basement. He hadn’t noticed anything.

He sat down on the sofa, used the lighter to spark a dusty candle on the coffee table, and examined the array of interior parts. They were organized in the neat fashion of an instruction manual. The electrical components remained mostly intact. That was good.

He was reaching for one of the larger pieces when a dull whitish blue caught his eye. The battery compartment. The springs and nodes were covered with corrosion.

There’s your issue right there. How to fix it?

He’d once had a toy lightsaber. A blue one, like Anakin Skywalker’s. He’d always liked Anakin, who was brave and bold and in love. Anakin did what it took to save the ones he loved. For that, even knowing what would become of the fallen Jedi Knight, the boy forgave the fictional character.

One day, after dropping his lightsaber down the hardwood stairs of his childhood apartment, the dollar-store batteries had exploded in a hiss of blue-gray foam. The boy cried because the light blue glow had disappeared and been replaced by dull plastic, and when he waved it through the air, the weeeuw weeeuw sounds didn’t come, and when he’d cried, his mother had taken him into her arms and said “It’s okay, Timmy, it’s okay” because she knew the secret. A toothbrush and baking soda. Good as new.

Timmy. That was my name. I remember that much.

He found the baking soda in a cabinet beneath the kitchen sink. Instead of a toothbrush, the man ran an old musty sponge beneath a bottle of water taken from the dead fridge. He sprinkled the baking soda on top of it, then did the same to the battery compartment, and began to scrub.

The corrosion felt strange against his fingers, granules sticking to his hands as they worked to scrub the radio, coating his wrists and creeping beneath his fingernails, sending a series of charged chills up his spine.

Eerie.