What Comes After

August 10

"Mom, can I go outside?" May asked in the morning.

Both Mom and I looked at her weirdly. Other than the forced trips to the food bank, the wood gathering sessions on Mondays, Mom's weird hiking session a month or so ago, the survival book hunt in the library, and Clara's birthday, I don't think May's ever left the house.

"Where to?" Mom asked.

"Just to see if one of my friends is still here," she said. At that moment, I knew it was a lie, but the reason behind it was a mystery.

Mom didn't say anything.

"What?" May asked. "If Neal gets to visit Charles pretty much every day—"

"Hey, not every day," I said, but she ignored me.

"Then, why can't I visit my friend after, like, two months."

"Alright," Mom said. "You can go, but you need to bring either Neal or Mira along with you."

"What?" May exclaimed. "This is so sexist. Neal can do whatever he wants to do, but I need a babysitter."

"Neal is sixteen," Mom said. "When you get old enough to drive your own car, I'll give you more freedom, but you're fourteen right now, and you'll need someone older to supervise you."

"I'm almost fifteen," May blurted out, grasping at straws.

"Fifteen is not sixteen," Mom said. "So either Neal or Mira are coming with you. Your choice."

"I'll come," I said, chiming in.

"Fine," May said. "I'm going to get ready now."

She walked through the hallway, though stomped would be more appropriate. Mom sighed and put her hand on her chin. There was an awkward silence between us.

"Actually, I take that back. Weren't you outside yesterday?" Mom asked. "Maybe it's better if Mira goes."

"I don't think Mira might be up to going," I said. "Because, you know."

"Oh..." Mom said. "Okay. Just for today I'll make an exemption."

Just after she said that, May popped in. "I'm ready to leave. So let's go."

"Wait," I said and walked towards the hallway. "I need to change. Give me a minute."

"Well, hurry up then."

I went into my room and hastily put on a heavy ski jacket and thick pants. When I got to the front door, May had put on her shoes and was waiting impatient next to Mom. "Took you long enough."

"So, remember—" Mom said before she was cut off.

"Yep. Less than an hour or else I'm grounded for life. Blah-blah-blah. We get it."

May opened the door. The air was still today, the ash clinging to the rooftops unmoving.

"Stay safe," Mom said.

"Don't worry. We won't die," May replied.

We walked away from our house. May kicked up some ash and watched it float, blossoming into a cloud of gray, before settling once again.

"So you want to tell me where we're going?" I asked. "Since it's clearly not a friend's house."

"No duh," she said and pulled out a key from her pocket. "This is where we're going."

I stopped walking. "How'd you even get it?"

"Dad just left it in a drawer. I found it a couple weeks back."

"So we're just going to break into the Hunters' house?" I asked. "And then what? Just take their stuff."

"Pretty much, yeah," she said. "Do you have some problem with that?"

"Yeah," I said. "We're basically stealing from—"

"They gave us the key," May replied before I could finish. "Dad's just not being smart about this. We're practically dying here, so we might as well use all the resources that we can to survive."

"I don't know about this..." I said.

"Just think about this this way. Let's say that we find an axe or something important for our survival. Then Dad will not have to work as hard to cut down trees, which means that he'll stay healthy and we'll get enough wood, which means that we'll stay warm in winter and not die of hypothermia," she replied. "Everyone wins."

"And what if Dad finds out?"

"He won't," she said. "I've got a plan for that."

"Okay," I said and looked around. "So what are we doing here then? We passed the Hunters' house already."

"Mom might be looking out of the window."

"She's not that paranoid," I said, and May gave me a look.

"Oh she definitely is," May said. "Yesterday, she literally looked out of the window until you disappeared into the haze."

We waited a bit longer. I exhaled deeply and saw my breath seep out of my mask, visible in the cold air. I adjusted my mask to tighten it. Hopefully, no ash actually made it into my lungs.

"Is the coast clear?" I asked.

"I think so," she said. "Let's go."

So we walked towards the Hunters' house, a couple houses away from our house. May told me to move quickly because she was worried that Mom might glance out of the window and see us sneaking into the house. May inserted the key into the front door, opening it with a heavy chink. We both ran inside, and she shut the door with a soft thud.

The inside was pretty barren. The living room had been stripped of everything personal, especially the photographs that adorned the room that I remember from that last time our families had dinner, and the walls laid there, starkly empty. May flung open the cabinets. Nothing.

"They couldn't leave any food behind," May grumbled. "What was the point in even giving us the key?"

I went into the kitchen to help her. Nothing in the cabinets except for some packets of pink lemonade.

"A win is a win," she said and shrugged.

"This is some sad raiding," I said.

"Did you check the pantry yet?" she asked.

"Nope," I said. "I wanted you to do the honors."

May flung open the pantry. There was a single can of brussel sprouts smack dab in the center of the middle shelf, covered in a thin layer of dust. I grabbed a stool and stood on it to check the top shelf of the pantry. There were just some old mason jars and a smiley-face lemonade pitcher. I climbed back down, and May picked up the can.

"Well that's at least something," she said.

"Did you check the expiring date?" I asked.

She looked at the back of the can, and her face fell. "Oh..."

"Yeah," I said and nodded. "There was probably a good reason they left that behind."

"Who even has two years expired canned brussel sprouts in their pantry?" she said. "And canned food lasts, like, forever, so who knows even what century that came from? Disgusting."

"Should we go check the garage?"

"What are you waiting for?" she asked. "Let's go."

We walked through the house and towards the garage. The wooden floors creaked underneath us as faded gray light passed through the dust-streaked windows. May made a detour to check out the closet, though it was empty, just like basically all of this house. I have no idea how the Hunters packed basically everything. They must be packing gods or something.

A washer and dryer hung in front of the entrance to the garage, lonely and unused. May tapped the top of one with her hand, the metallic clang echoing softly in the laundry room. It was dark in the room. "Did you bring a flashlight?"

"Of course," she said. "I'm not dumb."

She pulled out one flashlight for herself and one from me. She opened the door to the garage. "Looks like we hit the gold mine."

There was a massive clutter of randomness in the garage. I moved my flashlight around. There were cardboard boxes and supplies strewn across the floor. I spotted some toolboxes laying on a shelf and my light glinted off of something shiny and metal, and I walked towards it.

There was no axe lying on the shelf, just a bunch of screwdrivers and hammers. I sighed.

"Look what I found," May said.

She picked up a solar panel, the same brand as the one we had at home. "It's not really going to be useful," I said. "Given that the sun is gone pretty much all the time."

"Whatever," she said and moved her flashlight around, investigating the mess of supplies in the middle of the garage.

I turned back and shone my light on the shelf. There were boxes filled with personal items, beat-up stuffed animals, messily painted ceramic coffee cups, string-up lights, old Christmas ornaments, sparkling under the fluorescent light. I felt guilty looking at these. There was history behind many of them, memories and dreams imbued into them. And we were just stealing whatever we wanted with no mind to the history behind them, treating them as if they were objects and nothing else.

I tried to shake off these thoughts and kneeled down to check the bottom row. There were a couple of weights and lots of cardboard boxes. I pulled one out, but there was nothing in there other than multicolored wires and a mouse from a decade ago. Just as I was putting it back, my flashlight caught on something dull and metallic on the back of the shelf.

It was an axe, hidden by the cardboard boxes and covered in dust and cobwebs. I grabbed it, cringing at the feeling of the silky threads on my skin, and I stood up, holding it. "Look what I found."

May turned around. "Lucky. All I found were a bunch of fishing rods, and it's not like we're ever going to use them since no one in our family eats fish."

"So what's your plan for the axe?"

"So next week, when you meet up with Charles, that's when you bring back the axe."

"I don't get it."

"Just tell them you guys went to the garden and found it in a supply shed and found the axe."

"You know Dad will be," I said. "If he's so opposed to this thing with the Hunters' stuff, then he'll be even more opposed to taking something from the garden."

"You'll be able to think of something," May replied. "And Mom and Dad will believe you no matter what you say unless you say that a flying unicorn gave it to you or something."

"That was a pretty awful plan, you know," I replied.

"It sounded better in my head," she said. "Anyways, let's go now. We're probably over Mom's time limit."

So we went up the stairs and out of the front door, careful to make sure that the door was properly locked. Small flecks of ash were beginning to fall, covering the faded wooden porch, and I tightened my mask as the both of us walked home.

As soon as we opened the door, Mom began to interrogate us, or more specifically, May.

"So how was it?" Mom said in her faux casual voice.

"It was alright," May said and shrugged.

"What did you guys do?"

"Riya and I just talked a bit," May replied. "Her family is doing as fine as you can be doing with the whole world ending."

Mom looked at me. "And you, Neal?"

I shrugged. "It was awkward," I lied. "Just sitting there and not doing much, I guess."

"Anyways," May said loudly before Mom could keep interrogating us. "What delicious can of food are we going to be eating for brunch today?"

"String beans," Mom said. "And make sure to take the vitamin gummies."

May went into the pantry and grabbed a can of strong beans and went into the kitchen to open it and heat it up over the fire. "Where's Dad?" I asked Mom.

"In the garage," she replied. "We've got a lighting and heating system down, but we just need more power."

"Do the solar panels work?" I asked.

"Yes, actually," Mom replied. "We packed away the solar panels when the volcanoes erupted because we didn't want the ashfall to damage them, but your father brought them out to see if they worked and they did charge the batteries a little bit."

"So what's the problem?"

She sighed. "We just need more panels. There's just not enough to maintain the lighting and heating system."

"You think that the greenhouse is going to work?"

"Hopefully," Mom said.

How are we going to get enough power to make the greenhouse work? Solar works but not that well because of the ashfall. I don't think that Dad or anyone in this family has any clue about how to make wind turbines or river powered ones. Getting a generator might work, but gasoline is as extinct as dinosaurs. It's weird to think about how much we're all thinking about power now compared to before when we just flicked on the lights so casually.

Mom declared that tomorrow was dish-washing day. May was pretty annoyed by that, but even I could see her protests were more half-hearted now compared to when the world was a bit better.

"Can electricity just come back?" she asked during dinner.

There was an awkward pause as everyone waited for the lights to flicker back on because that's what would've happened in the movies. But the lights stayed off, and May grumbled, "I can't believe that I'm actually missing the dishwasher."

"Me too," Mom said. "But we just have to keep adapting."

"Screw the Moon," May mumbled under her breath.

Mom didn't even scold May for saying that, probably because there was a part of her that agreed with May. She only sighed and dumped her used fork in the sink. Dish-washing tomorrow is going to be a pain.