Yesterday I found your car keys in a dark cubby of my dusty desk,
even though I’d sworn to you I hadn’t touched them,
the morning you grabbed the spares, annoyed,
and ran out the door on your way to an appointment,
on your way to meet up with a monster.
I wish I could hear you say I told you so.
— EPITAPH FOR CHASE LANGLEY
(NOVEMBER 23, 2035–AUGUST 6, 2067),
BY CHLOE MALDIN, HIS WIFE,
DECEMBER 19, 2068
We should know more.
That’s all Gunny said, but we all realized what he meant. We should know more about who was going to live or die, who would need food and supplies in another day or two.
Who wouldn’t.
“You can walk, Dad?” I said.
“My legs are fine.”
Gunny led us to the dirt road and down it. Except for Tia and me, we must have looked like a short procession of antisocial strangers — loners — carefully pacing themselves to avoid contact with one another.
Once near the truck, which Gunny had driven well off the road and into the woods, he stepped a distance away and told Tia and me to help ourselves first, since we were the least likely to be infected. I hadn’t been out in the air when the stuff fell, and Tia of course was a girl.
But so was Sunday.
Under the tarp we found food and water, flashlights, lanterns, batteries, blankets. Tia and I took what we needed and moved away, farther into the forest. We located a small flat clearing within shouting distance of the pickup, turned on the lantern, gathered cedar boughs for a mattress, and laid down our blankets. While we were busy, flashlight beams danced away from the truck in turns. A lantern winked on fifty yards away through the trees; a second one came to life fifty yards in the opposite direction.
“Dad!” I shouted.
“Here!” he answered, and I identified which light belonged to him.
“Gunny!” Tia called. We all knew where he was setting up camp now, but I was glad Tia had thought to include him in our little roll call.
His response confirmed his whereabouts, his health. It traveled back to us from the direction of the other light. “That’s me!”
We dimmed our lanterns. Full dark fell all around us. The night had grown chilly.
The hollow clap-clap-clap of a helicopter — distant, for a time — disturbed the quiet. The sound got louder, closer. I doused our lantern. Dad’s and Gunny’s went dark, too. A searchlight probed the trees a quarter mile away, then nearer, as the chopper hovered and moved, hovered and moved, and we scrambled into darker tree shadows and undergrowth.
The copter drifted away. The light disappeared. The noise faded and died.
From somewhere far off came the low growl of an engine, something big and ponderous creeping along the road. I pictured PAC’s armored vehicle — the one the sentry, Miller, probably, had described over the talkaloud — coming to assess the damage and do more if necessary.
A minute later there was a shockingly louder noise, startling and explosive, thundering through the forest, echoing off the surrounding hills.
Then it was quiet again — so quiet it felt as if a giant blanket had dropped over us. The engine sound was gone.
“A mine,” Tia said. “More killing.”
I pictured body parts — flesh and metal — scattered across a narrow dirt road, blasted against trees, hanging from branches. Tia took my hand. We sat, close and silent, on a fallen log. While we downed water, cheese and crackers, dried fruit, and chocolate, I couldn’t help wondering if this was my last supper. I tried to lighten that dark thought with a couple of questions: Shouldn’t we have some wine? And a few apostles?
The lame attempt at gallows humor didn’t work. My mind instantly boomeranged back to other questions, life-or-death ones: The three males in our little group were supposedly inoculated against Elisha, but how many of us were, really? Was the vaccine any good? Had it had time to be effective? It didn’t take a genius to realize that one or more of us might not get out of this.
As if she was listening in on my thoughts, Tia shivered, head to toe. “It’s cold,” she said.
We slipped off our shoes and stretched out between the blankets. I should have felt awkward, maybe, but I was too tired to feel awkward, and by now Tia seemed as if she belonged next to me, her ankle resting lightly on mine. I stared up at the stars, brilliant in the thin clean air, and listened to her breathe, judging the efficiency of her ins and outs. I took a deep breath, then another, evaluating mine.
She laid her fingers, then the soft inner surface of her wrist, on my forehead. She kept it there, which made me nervous for at least a couple of reasons. “Feel okay?” she asked, faking offhandedness.
For a moment I thought about asking her to tell me how I felt. But I decided I’d rather not know how the temperature of my forehead measured up against the impartial no-nonsense warmth of her wrist. “Fine,” I said.
My eyes closed. I felt Tia turn on her side, away from me. I heard her try to stifle a sob, to keep it to herself, and I put my arm around her and pulled her close. She squirmed nearer, her shoulders to my chest, my lips an inch from her neck. I breathed her in and held on tight, experiencing the jerky rhythms of her quiet weeping. I tried not to cry myself.
Despite all that had happened, being this close to her felt vaguely sexy, and I allowed myself to enjoy the sensation for a long moment. The last thing I remembered before I drifted away was touching her cheek, and the heartbreaking feel of her warm tears on my fingertips.