The Book of M by Peng Shepherd

the power go out?
    Rhino stayed outside with the guns, asking passersby for information. The rest of us went inside the shop and pulled everything we could find off the shelves. You, Paul, and Imanuel tried to look large and intimidating as Marion and I snatched whatever was left. Single shoppers approached, eyed the five of us, then slunk away for other aisles.
    â€œGrab the rice,” Marion hissed at me as we wheeled ourselves into the never-ending line to pay. I grabbed as many as I could. In a strange way, it reminded me almost of something she and I might have done in university with our friends, while too drunk: run to the campus food store just before it closed and play various games—who could fit inside the plastic shopping cart seat like a kid again, who could swipe an entire shelf into the basket at once without dropping a single item, who could finish their list first and race tothe checkout line before the other teams. But no one was laughing this time.
    â€œPlease—I have children,” a woman behind us said. We turned around. Her cart was a third as full as ours, with food half as useful. The shelves were almost bare by then. “I have children,” she repeated. I wanted to crumble inside.
    â€œWe have children, too,” Marion lied before any of us could answer. She knew me too well. She stepped in front of us, between me and the woman, so I had no choice but to set the rice back down into our own cart.
    â€œPlease,” the woman said again, but weaker this time. “No, it’s all right.”
    â€œHas it reached Arlington yet?” Paul asked her gently. “We’re all—we’re on vacation. With our kids. We only just found out.”
    â€œI don’t know,” she said. “But I think Maryland, at least. I saw something like that on the news. That’s when I came here. My sons are still at home.”
    â€œIt’s in D.C.,” the man in line ahead of us said. He held up his phone. “They caught a guy downtown near the Verizon Center this morning.”
    The woman moaned. She sank lower over her cart.
    â€œHow are we going to pay for this?” I suddenly whispered to you. “I didn’t bring my purse.” It was probably a month’s worth of food, and all I had was a handful of crumpled bills in my jeans pocket from the day before, from when you had to pay a toll fee on the highway into Virginia from D.C., to reach Elk Cliffs.
    â€œPut it on my card,” Imanuel said. “Wedding expenses.”
    â€œOh, God,” the woman behind us said suddenly. We turned to look at her. She was holding her wallet as if it were white-hot porcelain, searing her fingers, but too precious to drop. “Oh, God.” We all looked inside. The dark green ink on the bills had somehow vanished. The papers were completely blank.
    â€œWhat the fuck,” Marion said in horror. “What is that?”
    â€œMy children,” the woman wailed. “I have to feed my children!”
    â€œI’ll pay for it!” I gasped. I was crying, terrified. I tried to shove whatever bills were in my pocket at her, desperately pressing them against her chest. Far at the front of the line, a fight broke out. People began to yell. Then we all realized that my money had become the same impossible blank things as well.

    Three days after that, reports said that almost everyone in D.C. was now shadowless. We sat in circles around the main ballroom TV, cutting marshmallows into tiny pieces and eating them slowly, to make them last. The brand on the front of the bags was a name I couldn’t read. The letters looked like they had once spelled something, but didn’t quite look like letters anymore. Rhino suggested we start trying to hunt game for food in the forest around the resort with the guns.

    Philadelphia, Baltimore, then Arlington. After that, Elk Cliffs Resort lost power, because we were on the Arlington grid.

    The day after