Adaptation: book I Read Free

any right now.”
    “No?” The woman prodded her lips with the dirty mug as if she was an insolent child.
    “No. Thank you, no.”
    The woman slurped the soup. “Good stuff.” She eyed Carmella. “I heard your gunfire. I didn’t know what it was at first. It’s been so long …” The woman’s eyes hazed over before clearing and refocusing. “What’s your name? I’m Maggie.”
    Carmella tried to look at her shoulder. The bandages appeared clean. She needed to remove them to see the damage, but she was tired and it hurt too bad to move much. She looked at the woman. “Carmella Washington. Thank you for rescuing me.”
    “You would have been wolf food if I hadn’t. Get some rest, Carmella. We’ll talk in the morning. I broke a pain capsule open into some water and spooned it into you. You’ll be sleepy for a while, but maybe you’ll sleep through some of the pain. I had to sew your leg up, but it only took six stitches, one on each puncture.” The old woman smiled ruefully.
    Carmella considered the likelihood of a staph infection. Maybe it was the mention of the painkillers or the trauma of her attack, but Carmella fell asleep.
    When she awoke, Carmella’s bladder felt as if it would explode. She slid off the side of the bed gingerly, and as she stood, her leg nearly buckled when pain flared in her calf. She sat and pulled up her pants leg to examine the wound. Although covered in a clean bandage, it had begun to seep. She carefully pried the tape away exposing an angry wound, the uninjured flesh ringed with iodine. Relieved, she secured the bandage. Maggie might have been dirty, but she knew to keep a wound clean.
    Carmella stood and stumbled out of the room on the narrow path through the trash, careful not to topple towers of junk rising to the ceiling on either side of her. “Maggie?”
    She came to a landing with a stairwell leading down. Boxes stacked to the ceiling lined the corridor, and Carmella tried not to lean against them as she limped to the stairs. How had that skinny old woman managed to get her up these stairs?
    Carmella eased down the stairs and looked around. What should have been a living room on her right was a mess of chaos. At least upstairs there was some semblance of order. It was as if someone had flung trash into the room. Another room to her left was in a similar state. Rotting food, opened cans, and human and animal waste littered the floor.
    Grimacing, Carmella made her way outside. “Maggie?”
    A cat came scurrying out the door and almost made Carmella fall.
    “Carmella,” Maggie called. “Come down around the side. I’m picking tomatoes. There’s a patch of poison ivy so leave it be. Leaves of three, leave it be.”
    Carmella followed the voice and saw the woman tending to a small garden. Maggie had a basket filled with fresh lettuce, cucumbers, and tomatoes, and Carmella’s stomach groaned in hunger.
    “Good morning, sleepyhead.” Maggie smiled.
    “Good morning. Um, where can I …”
    “Pee? Anywhere you want. You gotta poop, there’s toilet tissue in the spare room upstairs.”
    “Anywhere?” Carmella looked around.
    “God don’t care and neither do I.”
    Later they ate a salad dressed in vinegar and oil.
    “Have you seen any people come through here?” Carmella asked as they sat on the porch.
    Maggie speared a slice of tomato and plunged it into her mouth. “No.” She chewed. “Not since the Blobs carried the people away on the trucks. I’d hear the trucks morning noon and night for months. And then it just stopped.” Maggie stopped chewing and stared off into the distance. “I hid. They come through here looking. But they couldn’t find me. I guess they thought the place was abandoned. They ain’t been back. Didn’t have the manpower to check a place twice. Man power.” She laughed. “Why didn’t you go with them?”
    How could she even ask that? She stared at the old woman. “Because I’m a human and this is my home. And no fucking alien