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red and vile but I can’t stomach the grit of the water right now. Two more days until the next rations are handed out, if we’re lucky.
    I’m the only one with a sick gut. Unless the rest of them aren’t showing it, better at finding privacy than I am.
    This is how we live: barely, it feels. Survival strung together with the small thread of authority left in this city, no one implementing rules because there’s nothing to save, and not enough of a population to police. We expect every care package to be our last, don’t even ask questions when we pick it up, just take what we can, add it all to our small stockpiles of salvaged batteries, scavenged items looted from hollowed out convenience stores, the rubbing alcohol and antiseptic creams we’ve taken from abandoned houses.
    Aimee’s up, her body a pink silhouette in the corner of my eye. She says something but the bedroom’s too hot for me to even breathe in so I move to the bathroom without answering her, press myself against the bare tub, seeking a cool surface.
    Someone’s hung up shower curtains, cloudy clear plastic with black polka dots. Optimism, maybe, that we’ll be able to squeeze a shower or two out of the taps one of these days. You never know. The grid seems to flicker on and off, out of nowhere. Anything can happen.
    There’s a clanging of metal from the mudroom at the back of the house, blending with the chainsaw of runny lungs. Must be Cam or Trevor, who are constantly bringing back things they find in the streets, along with illnesses. Sickness is always running through this house, runs through the city still.
    â€œBikes.”
    It’s the only word I can hear through the bathroom floor. The guys raise their pitch when they say it, excited. They’ve been picking them up all over the place, they said. Just cutting the locks and taking them. Not likely that anyone will come looking for them.
    From downstairs, Aimee’s maple voice asks: “Where we gonna ride them to?” My head is swimming too much to tap into recognition patterns. Another wave of cramps passes through my abdomen and I don’t hear the answer, just close my eyes. Hope to sleep past the pain.
    A few hours of half-sleep and the space where the ache was has been filled with what I hope are slivers of hunger. Downstairs, Cam’s showing off a find of thirty boxes of packaged cakes and donuts looted from the waste bin behind a warehouse west of downtown they found when they went out riding earlier. The boxes are all marked expired but the cakes are still soft in their sealed plastic, no mold. Good enough. Better than the dried beans and maggoty rice in the kitchen.
    All afternoon, the crush and snap of plastic wrapping torn open runs parallel to the tears in every roll of my stomach. I can only eat a bite of vanilla, something soft and bland enough to keep down.

- 8 -
A SÉANCE OF WHITE NOISE
    T he electricity weaves us with black and white. Cuts in and out, unpredictable but enough to let us have something, to give us what we really need.
    We all ride together from the Victorian, pull up outside the charred shell of what used to be the Mission, a pack of clanging chains and steel toe tension, thin red bandanas tied to pale ankles. The marquee has held on, hangs empty, but we don’t need it to tell us why we’re here. We have messages written on windows, word of mouth, longing and intuition. There aren’t as many people outside as I was expecting. The building is hollowed out, becoming an unholy structure, its ceiling blasted by flames.
    Cam says he heard the band’s worried that they might not get through their whole set, not sure how much electricity there is. It could all be blown out by their amps.
    Someone wonders out loud if this is the best idea, if we should save the energy for something else. Everyone groans, throws stony faces towards the question. What else is there if we can’t have one more