Read Three (Article 5) for Free Online

coming alive on their floral comforter. A whispering, scuttling sound, and the clothing shifted. I was paralyzed, my muscles frozen. I’d landed near the foot of the bed, and watched in horror as a faded pink house slipper twisted slightly on its boney ankle and then slid off an old weathered foot as if pulled by some invisible hand.
    From the slipper erupted a legion of roaches, each the length of my thumb, flowing like lava from a volcano.
    I scrambled backward into the hallway, then leaped to my feet. Chase appeared, saying my name, but I couldn’t hold on to it. I stared past him through the door, to Sean, who’d arrived moments after Chase, now grimacing over the bodies. They weren’t moving. It was the roaches that were moving. Hundreds of them. They were everywhere.
    I jolted back, swiping my hands down my arms, shaking out my hair. My skin itched like they were on me, under my clothes and on my neck and in my shoes. Get them off get them off get them off.
    Chase grabbed my face between his hands, and finally my gaze locked on his. There was a steadiness there that grounded me and slowed my pulse.
    “Why are they here?” I asked, suddenly angry at them—the dead people. They shouldn’t have scared me. I’d seen worse. Much worse.
    “Let’s go get some air,” he said.
    I peeled his fingers away.
    “Why didn’t they clear out like everyone else?” There wasn’t any sign of violence; it was like they’d laid down to sleep and not woken up, and for some reason this bothered me even more.
    “I don’t know.”
    “They should have evacuated.” The government had cleared this area years ago.
    I swiped at my arms again, feeling the tickle on my skin.
    “Maybe they didn’t want to.” He chewed his bottom lip, looking into the room.
    His words shifted my fear to something more solid, something stronger. I’d had it backward. These people hadn’t given up, they’d made their stand. Maybe that was all we really got: a choice to control our own fate.
    “I hate roaches,” Sean was saying. “They’ll eat anything, you know. Glue. Trash. Fingernails. They even eat each other. Roach cannibals. Disgusting.”
    Chase gave him a look. “Sean.”
    “They can survive without their heads. I bet you didn’t know that.”
    “Sean,” said Chase. “Let it go.”
    “Right.”
    Behind them something had caught my eye. On the floor, where the shoe had landed, a strip of silver peeked out from beneath the thin bedspread. Chase stepped aside when I gave his forearm a small squeeze.
    “There’s something under the bed,” I said.
    Sean, pale and damp with sweat and rain, gave a grunt and motioned toward the bodies.
    “After you,” he said “I like my fingernails just fine where they are.”
    Mouth pulled tight, Chase kicked the shoe out of the way and then swept his leg beneath the mattress, knocking out a tarnished silver box the size of a briefcase but twice as thick, with a combination lock. Roaches crawled up his legs and he hastily brushed them to the floor.
    I asked, “What do you think it is?”
    “Something good,” said Sean. “Otherwise it wouldn’t be locked.”
    Chase knelt and tried to pry it open, but to no avail. The contents inside slid and clanked together as he carried it out into the hallway, where the stench was not so intoxicating.
    “Maybe we should leave it,” I said, feeling suddenly like we were desecrating a tomb. Chase had kept a wooden box in his old house filled with memories of his life before the War: pictures of his family, his mother’s wedding ring, which I knew he still carried in his front pants pocket. The thought of someone rifling through his things like we were about to do here made something pinch inside of me, but it wasn’t enough to stop.
    “No way,” said Sean, taking the case. He spun the tiny rusted numbers, but the box remained firmly closed.
    Chase rubbed the back of his neck. “Might be something worth trading.”
    “Might be something worth