They Sold Me For Rice

Chapter 2: Three Months Before the End

The first thing Lucas noticed was that he was not dead.

The second was that he was warm.

He lay still with his eyes closed, afraid that if he moved, whatever this was would break. There was a cushion under his cheek. A blanket across his legs that smelled like fabric softener. Somewhere nearby a television was playing, some cooking show, a woman laughing at a joke that was not funny.

Not rain. Not screaming. Not the wet, dragging sound of the horde.

"Lucas." A hand patted his shoulder. "Sweetheart, wake up. Your food's getting cold."

He knew that voice. He had heard it ten minutes ago, or ten years ago, saying the word sweetheart right before telling him he was only worth one bag of rice.

His whole body moved before his mind caught up. He jerked upright, caught Diane's wrist in a grip hard enough to make her gasp, and stared at her.

She looked exactly as she always had. Pressed blouse, neat grey streaks in her hair, a thin gold chain at her throat. No dirt. No hollow cheeks. Her eyes were wide with surprise, and a little offended.

"Lucas. You're hurting me."

He let go. His hand was shaking, and he pressed it flat against his knee to hide it.

"Sorry," he heard himself say. His voice came out rough. "Bad dream."

"You were sleeping so deeply, I almost didn't want to wake you." Diane rubbed her wrist and gave him a small, forgiving smile. "Rest of us are already at the table. Come, now. Richard is waiting."

She walked out of the room. Lucas stayed where he was and looked at everything slowly, one thing at a time, the way a man looks at a room after a fire.

The Fords' living room. The beige couch with the stain Derek had left years ago and nobody ever cleaned. The family photographs on the wall, all those stiff smiles. The window, with its curtains pulled half open, and beyond it a blue evening sky with a few ordinary clouds drifting across it.

He stood up and walked to the window on legs that did not feel like his own. Outside, a man was walking a dog. A teenager rode past on a bicycle, headphones on. A neighbour was dragging a garbage bin to the curb.

He watched them for a long time, and his eyes began to burn.

They did not know. None of them knew.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket. It was an old model, the screen cracked in one corner, and his thumb trembled over the glass until the screen lit up. Date and time sat at the top in clean white numbers.

March 14th.

He read it three times. Then he sat down hard on the arm of the couch, because the last time he had seen the sky crack open was June 14th. He knew the date the way he knew his own name. It had been carved into him by six months of hunger and fear.

Ninety two days.

He had ninety two days.

For a while he just breathed. In, hold, out, the way his father had taught him when he was a boy and afraid of thunder. When the shaking in his hands finally eased, he opened his banking app and looked at the balance. Thirty one thousand, four hundred dollars. Savings from five years of double shifts and skipped holidays. Money he had planned to put toward a house, back when he still believed in houses.

He opened his contacts next. His own name, his own life, all of it exactly as it had been. A message from Vanessa sat unread near the top: Don't forget my dad's birthday dinner tonight! Don't be late

He looked at the little heart for a long moment.

Then he stood, walked to the hallway mirror, and made himself look.

The face in the glass was younger than the one he remembered. No scar on his chin. No sunken eyes. His skin was healthy, his hair was combed, his shoulders were square. A husband who ate three meals a day and slept in a real bed.

And behind that face, something had changed. He could see it. His eyes were the same colour, the same shape, but there was a stillness in them now that had not been there before. The stillness of a man who has already died once and has nothing left to be afraid of.

"Lucas?" Vanessa's voice floated down the hallway from the dining room, light and sweet. "Are you coming?"

He closed his eyes.

Her voice. Alive. Warm. The same voice that had whispered please don't make this harder while he lay bleeding in the mud.

Hatred did not rise in him the way he had expected. It was quieter than that. Colder. It settled in his chest like a stone dropped into a deep well, and he felt it sink and sink and finally touch the bottom.

He had spent five years pouring himself into this family and getting nothing back. In his last life, they had used him up, and then they had traded him for rice.

So what do I do now?

He could run. Take the money, drive to the other end of the country, disappear before anyone noticed. He would survive. He was sure of that. He knew where the safe places were, which cities would fall first, which roads would flood.

But running felt like letting them off the hook.

And there was something else, a thought that had been circling his mind since the moment he saw the date. Ninety two days was not a lot of time. But it was enough, if he used it well, to buy food. Fuel. Water. Medicine. Weapons. Everything the world would be desperate for in three months, when there was no one left to sell it.

And the Fords would be among the desperate.

He opened his eyes again and looked at himself.

"Okay," he said softly.

He straightened his collar. He wiped the last trace of dampness from his eyes and arranged his face into the easy, dutiful expression he had worn for five years, the one that said I'm fine, I'll handle it, don't worry about me. It came back as naturally as breathing, and that disgusted him a little. Good. He would need it tonight.

Because the Fords did not know he had come back. As far as they were concerned, he was still the same soft, reliable Lucas who would say yes to anything.

Let them keep believing that.

He walked down the hallway. The smell reached him before he rounded the corner. Roast chicken, garlic, fresh bread, butter melting on something hot. His stomach clenched so sharply that he had to put a hand against the wall.

He had forgotten what real food smelled like.

The dining room opened up in front of him, bright and crowded. Richard sat at the head of the table with a glass of red wine, laughing at something. Derek lounged beside him, scrolling through his phone. Diane was arranging dishes. And Vanessa looked up from her seat with a smile that lit her whole face.

"There you are," she said, patting the empty chair beside her. "Come sit. We've been waiting for you."

Lucas smiled back.

"Sorry I'm late," he said.

And he sat down at the table of the people who had killed him.