I.

Ray Santos woke up to the sound of rats in the walls. It was 6:14 AM on a Tuesday in November, and the temperature in the abandoned building on Atlantic Avenue was thirty-eight degrees. He pulled his father's old flannel shirt tighter around himself and counted the cans of food on the shelf: three cans of beans, two cans of corn, one can of peaches. That was breakfast, lunch, and dinner for three kids for the next four days, assuming nobody got hungry on the fifth day.

Samir Hassan was already awake, sitting cross-legged on the floor with a piece of chalk and a section of wall that used to be a classroom before the building was abandoned three months ago. He was drawing a multiplication table—seven times seven is forty-nine, eight times eight is sixty-four—and muttering the answers under his breath like a prayer.

"Samir," Ray said. "We need to find food today. The bodega on the corner is closed. The guys running it are hoarding everything."

Samir didn't look up. "Seven times nine is sixty-three."

"Samir."

"Eight times nine is seventy-two."

Ray walked over and took the chalk from Samir's hand. "Listen to me. We need food. Not math. Food."

Samir looked at him with eyes that were too old for his eleven years. His father had been a mathematics teacher at a community college in Queens before the sickness took him. Now Samir spent his days drawing multiplication tables on abandoned walls and his nights shivering under a pile of stolen blankets.

"I know we need food," Samir said quietly. "But if we forget the numbers, Ray, then what were we? Just animals?"

Ray didn't answer. He picked up his backpack and walked out into the hallway. Behind him, Samir picked up the chalk and started drawing nine times nine.

II.

Maria Lopez was already at the bodega when Ray found her. She was eleven years old and had been working at her mother's store on Fulton Street since the sickness, which meant she had been working there for three months. Her mother was dead. Her father was dead. The bodega was hers now, which meant she was responsible for restocking shelves, collecting money, and keeping the guys from the next block over from "donating" everything on the premises.

"Big Ray," Maria said when she saw him. She was small for eleven, with dark hair pulled back in a tight bun and a face that looked like it had already seen too much. "You got anything to trade?"

Ray patted his pockets. He had four dollars and a half—mostly in coins, some of it dented from being spent and respent so many times. "What you got?"

Maria pointed to the shelf behind her. Canned soup. Bread. A half-pack of cigarettes that she wasn't going to sell because cigarettes were worth more than food in the right circumstances.

"Soup's two dollars. Bread's a dollar. Cigarettes..." She paused. "Cigarettes are four dollars."

Ray counted his coins. He had four dollars and a half. He bought a can of soup and a loaf of bread. He kept fifty cents.

"Tell Samir I'll bring him soup tomorrow," he said.

"Tell Samir to come get it himself," Maria said. "I can't leave the store."

III.

The shelter was in an abandoned church on Dean Street. Mrs. Gable, the retired social worker, said it was hers now. She was seventy-two years old and one of the few adults who had survived the sickness, which made her the most powerful person in a three-block radius. She didn't act powerful. She acted tired.

"Ray," she said when he walked in with the soup and bread. "Good. We need to talk about distribution."

There were twelve kids in the shelter—some orphans from the neighborhood, some who had wandered in from other parts of Brooklyn. They slept on mattresses on the church floor and ate whatever Mrs. Gable could scavenge from the surrounding blocks.

"The guys from East New York are asking for protection money," Mrs. Gable said. "They say if we don't pay, they'll come in here and take everything."

Ray sat down on one of the pews. He was tired. He had been tired for three months. "What do you want me to do?"

"Decide," Mrs. Gable said. "You're the one who tells everyone what to do. So decide."

Ray thought about it. He thought about Samir and his multiplication tables. He thought about Maria and her bodega. He thought about the fifty cents in his pocket that he had been saving for a rainy day, except it hadn't rained in three months and the fifty cents was still there, useless.

"We'll pay them," Ray said. "Half the soup. Half the bread."

Mrs. Gable nodded. She didn't argue. She had learned, over three months, that arguing with Ray was like arguing with the weather.

IV.

That night, Ray sat on the roof of the abandoned building on Atlantic Avenue and looked out over Brooklyn. The skyline was a jagged silhouette against the moonlight—brownstones and walk-ups and the occasional skyscraper that had been half-finished when the sickness hit and had stayed half-finished ever since.

He thought about the old world, the world before the sickness. He remembered his mother, who used to make Sunday gravy and make him clean his room and tell him to stay in school. He remembered his father, who worked at the port and came home with fish smells in his hair and a five-dollar bill in his pocket that he always gave to his wife.

They were dead. The whole world was dead, or close to it. And here he was, sitting on a roof in an abandoned building, trying to figure out how to feed twelve kids and pay protection money to guys from East New York.

He took out the fifty cents and held it in his palm. Two quarters. They were warm from being in his pocket all day.

He closed his hand around them and stood up. Below him, Brooklyn was quiet. The moon rose over the East River, casting a silver path across the water. Somewhere, a dog barked. Somewhere else, a child was crying.

Ray put the quarters back in his pocket, went downstairs, and told Maria he would bring the soup tomorrow.

Maria locked the bodega door, counted her change, and walked home in the rain.

--- 【张量数学编码】 OTMES-v2-XJY-04-80D771-E2800-M0-T180-EA01 TI=28.0 (T5 苦难级) | M1_悲剧=8.5 | M8_科幻=5.5 | M4_诗意=4.0 | N1_主动=0.40 | K2_理性=0.30 | θ=180°