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The four of them walked back to the apartment and stayed up talking, the topic drifting from one thing to the next. Coral suggested to Doug that he give up on the 19th century novel research and look at the early 20th century instead. “Maybe ones about poor people, who had to do their own doctoring.”
He looked crestfallen.
Abigail laughed and said, “He prefers the 19th century.”
“And if I were looking for farming techniques, I’m sure that’d be more useful. But they had a totally different idea than we do of medicine. All blood-letting and diseases we don’t even acknowledge any more. The vapors. Seriously?”
“Maybe there’s something in Moby-Dick,” Doug said.
“I think you’d have that memorized by now,” Abigail said, looking fondly at him.
Coral felt a wave of anger that this nice couple couldn’t have the life they had a year ago. She hated Fate right then, hated the asteroid or whatever it was that had caused this, hated that Doug wasn’t happily ensconced with a pile of old books, working on his thesis, that Abigail wasn’t making plans for their first baby. They were decent folks. They deserved a decent, long life.
But they weren’t going to get it.
She tried to turn her feelings off. She didn’t need to increase her sympathy for any of the townspeople. She needed to sever herself from them—emotionally, and then physically. She looked to Benjamin, listening intently to something Doug was saying. Without her partner by her side, she didn’t think she could survive alone, either.
Three hundred was too many. But surviving took two. Maybe she could ask these two to go along with them? Doug might pull his weight...but Abigail, nice as she was, could not. That was a problem. Everyone had to work hard out there. A person injured, or ill—well, you made allowances for that for a time, knowing they’d be back to speed soon enough. A person who simply couldn’t cut it? That person was a liability. That person was like an anchor sunk through a hole in the ice, and if you stayed connected, stayed tangled up with her, she’d pull you down to your death.
Kathy could make it, though. Coral tried to imagine the three of them, her, Benjamin, the new girlfriend going off together. No. It’d require a fourth person too. Another male, she supposed. Someone for her.
She didn’t want that. What did she want? Here, she was fed. She had a job to do. Tomorrow, she could keep on as she had this past week. But after that? The day would come—and soon—that she had to leave.
Benjamin had always been part of that plan—or at the very center of it. But if he were drifting away...if he wanted to start a relationship with someone else....
Coral didn’t want that to happen. She looked at Benjamin and tried to imagine survival without him. She couldn’t.
The three of them went up to bed, and Coral said she was going to stay and flip through Doug’s books. She didn’t, though. She sat and watched the candle burn down and tried to get her head clear. She had to talk to Benjamin. But what to say to him?
The candle was flickering when he came down the stairs. “You coming up?” he said.
“I’ve been thinking.”
“Yeah, I figured.” He sat in a chair. “What’s up?”
She took a deep breath. Get it out there. “I was watching you and Kathy. Are you involved with her?”
His eyebrows shot up. “I—no.” He was obviously surprised.
“Would you like to be?” Before he could answer, she pushed on. “I don’t want to stop you from being happy.”
He was shaking his head slowly. “What brought this on?”
“I was watching the two of you. There’s something there.”
“Just friendship. Or no, not even that, really. Companionship on the road. On the job.”
“I think it’s more. On her part, I’m pretty sure of it.”
“Really?” He had a half smile.
“If you need my permission....”
“Gee, thanks.” The smile was gone.
“I mean, I won’t stop you from being happy. It’s a horrible world, and if you can find someone to—you know—keep you warm for a little while, you should.”
He stared wordlessly at her.
The longer he did, the more exposed she felt. And nervous. She wanted to speak to fill the silence, but she didn’t have anything to say that would sound any less stupid than what she’d said so far.
Finally he said, “That’s it? That’s what you’ve been worried about?”
“Well yeah.” And all the downstream effects of it. What it meant about their future, when they left, if it was going to be two or three of them leaving together. Or the two of them alone, not including Coral.
“Okay.” He got up. “Coming up to bed?”
“In a second,” she said. She watched him go partway up the stairs, and then the candle spat and guttered out. Well. What the hell had just happened? She should feel relieved, but if anything, she was more confused than before.
She tried to straighten out her thoughts, but they were twisted up and kept looping around each other, leading her in circles.
She waited in the dark until she thought he might be asleep, and then she went up. Quietly as possible, she removed her boots, unzipped her jacket and crawled under the covers. Normally, she would move up against him and share warmth. Now that felt awkward, wrong. She settled down on her half of the futon, alone, and stared into the dark.
She lay like that for long minutes, assuming he was asleep. When he spoke, she jumped in surprise.
“I forget how young you are sometimes.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I could see it back at the house, you know, at the beginning. You were young then. Young and afraid. But over the months, you’ve changed. You’ve grown up. Hell, in some ways, you’ve become middle aged like me. I got used to that. I forget you’re still a teenager.” He made a sound that was not quite a laugh.
“I don’t feel like one,” she said. She didn’t, either. She felt like she had lived half a lifetime this past year.
“No. And you aren’t a kid, not in most ways. But you should be. It breaks my heart sometimes that you missed that. You should be in school, and dating, and having wild weekends with your first great lover.”
“I was thinking the same thing myself—but about Doug and Abigail. They should be reading books, and starting a family, and shopping at IKEA for a crappy bookcase.”
“I’m talking about you, not them. They had some good years. You didn’t get your chance. That’s why I haven’t pressed you to leave sooner. Here—this place? It’s the last of civilization. Here, you have a chance to have the career you had dreamed of. You have an apartment, and moments like tonight, BS-ing with this other young couple.”
“That’s why we’re still here?”
“Yeah. It’s part of it. I couldn’t ask you to leave this. There’s going to be nothing like this out there, not for a long time. Maybe not ever again.”
“I haven’t been deluded about that, not since early on.”
“Back then, you wanted to find something just like this. You said so more than once. I thought this was still what you wanted.”
“I did then. But I’ve changed. I don’t want this now. I liked how we were before, you and me, fishing and hunting. I don’t regret a thing.”
“Then let me regret for you, okay? I regret the life you’ll never have. It’ll make me feel better.”
“You don’t sound like you feel better. You sound sad.”
“I am, Coral. I am.”
She reached for him and pulled herself close to him. “You know how I feel, don’t you? You’re my family. You’re everything to me. I love you.”
“But not like that.”
“Like that is gone. It’s as much history as the flippin’ IKEA. Romance is for people who have time for it. For people who are well-fed. Like those silly women in Doug’s novel. Embroidery and whist and country dances. Stupid.”
“You’d rather have gutting rabbits and ice fishing and hauling a sled like a workhorse?”
“I would! That’s exactly what I want.”
“It can’t be.”
“I mean, maybe not if all things were possible, but that’s not the world we live in. In this world, I liked those things. I liked them way better than this. I liked the two of us being out there, on the move, making our way together. This place? It’s doomed. But even if it weren’t, it’s not what I want any more. I want to get back to the life we had. With just the two of us.”
There was a long silence, where he felt his chest rise and fall with every breath. “Okay. We’ll start gearing up for it tomorrow.”
“Really?”
“Really. Before a week has passed, we’ll be gone.”
“Thank you.” She clung to him, loving him more than ever. Her heart felt like a big open wound. “Oh, thank you.”
“Okay, okay. Don’t make a big deal of it. We always knew the time would come. Boise wasn’t forever.”
“It is a big deal. It’s huge.”
She kept clinging to him, trying to work up her courage. It took so long he grew restless. “So we’re okay? That’s it?”
“Not quite,” she said.
“What, then?” he said.
“This,” she said, and she rolled onto him and began to kiss him. Not because she was afraid of losing him to Kathy. And no, not from some romantic idea out of the old world. But because they were a family, and they were partners, and they both deserved something more than the endless straining to survive.
He hesitated at first, but she was certain now, certain of the rightness of it, and she convinced him of her certainty. By morning, their bodies had forged a covenant together, and they were as married as they’d been claiming to the townspeople all along.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING, WHEN she went downstairs, Coral’s attention was drawn back to Abigail. She whispered to Coral that she was afraid she couldn’t control her nausea in public, so she’d skip breakfast Luckily, Doug’s mind seemed elsewhere, and after kissing his wife’s forehead, he left early, mumbling to himself. Coral was worried about Abigail not eating, but she couldn’t think of a solution to that. Abigail would just have to skip a meal.
Benjamin held her hand as they walked to breakfast. He was being terribly sweet, and Coral thought he was the one with romantic tendencies he had wished upon her. For herself, she felt as if she had skipped right over romance and courtship and into a comfortable middle of a marriage, where a deeper love had already replaced infatuation. It seemed like everything should have changed after last night, but it hadn’t, not for her. She loved him yesterday. She loved him today.
Even better was knowing they were going to get away from here together before the place collapsed. That put a bounce in her step as she gave his hand a final squeeze after breakfast and turned for the clinic.
She began the day by showing Edith the dog-eared pages from the veterinary books. If she was going to leave here within a week, she could at the very least leave it a better place, and leave Edith a more prepared medic. She told Edith she should take the afternoon off too, and get some rest for a change. After a token protest, Edith left. Coral would make sure she got another day off before Coral disappeared. Maybe none of that would matter in a month, but it still seemed like the right thing to do.
The clinic wasn’t busy at all. Coral had time to go through the supplies and figure out what, if anything, she felt okay about taking. Or about stealing—at least be honest about what she called it.
She wished she could get rid of this guilt she felt over stealing. She didn’t owe these people anything. She hadn’t made promises. She had accepted their food, but she had worked for it, and so had Benjamin. Did it give her the right to steal from them? Maybe not. She wouldn’t leave empty-handed. Nor would she take everything from them.
At supper that night, people were talking about someone who’d gone missing, a guy named Will. “When was this?” she asked.
“Where have you been?” asked Beth, a regular at their table.
“Probably distracted by Julie,” Coral said.
“Two days ago,” she said. “But he wasn’t missed until that night. The people in his building searched for him the next day, and they told Levi, and he sent a squad out trying to track him, but there was nothing.”
“I’m telling you,” said Eric, a single man who didn’t speak up much, “he was always a touch weird. I think he finally went crazy and wandered off.”
Abigail said, “He wouldn’t last long out there. Poor guy.”
“Better him than me,” said Eric, and Abigail watched the disapproval on the faces around her. Eric was either incapable of noticing it, or he didn’t care.
“If I go missing, I hope someone will come look for me,” said Beth.
“They did look for him,” said Eric. “Maybe he didn’t want to be found. Maybe he was tired of trying.” He pushed back from the table and walked out, leaving his bowl on the table.
“He’s upset too,” said Abigail, looking after Eric. “He shows it differently.”
He’d left several bites of food in his bowl. “Does anyone mind if Abigail finishes his dinner?” she said. “She missed breakfast.”
The eyes around the table looked longingly at the food, but no one protested when Coral reached over and pushed the plate to Abigail, who shot her a grateful look.
“So tell me about this missing man,” Coral said, and she listened to her table-mates dissect the fellow’s personality and speculate on why he might have gone missing.
“Maybe he pissed off Levi,” said Doug.
There was a sudden shocked silence at the table. Coral could see him jerk when Abigail kicked him under the table.
Coral said, “Is there any hint of foul play? Was his room trashed or anything?”
“No,” said Beth. “He’s just...gone.” She changed the subject immediately. Doug’s comment had changed the mood at the table.
Coral tuned her out and thought about the possibility the man had been murdered and what would be done about it. It wasn’t as if they had a fully stocked forensic lab. Coral herself might be asked to do an autopsy. And then what? An arrest? A trial? More public shaming? Summary execution of the murderer? She wondered if there was any system in place for a serious crime.
Not her business. She was leaving here—remember? Benjamin was looking at her. She gave him a reassuring smile.
Doug left the table a minute after that, saying he had to stop by the library, and Abigail watched him go. As the three of them walked back to the apartment, she confided that she was worried about him. “I think he got into it with Parnell or Levi today,” she said.
“Over what?”
“I don’t know. The books, maybe? Something has been eating at him for a couple days.”
Coral wondered if he suspected his wife was pregnant. Maybe he’d appealed to Levi for a reconsideration of the rule against babies. “Doug doesn’t seem to like Levi.”
“I don’t know that many people like Levi. Or even know him very well. He’s kept us organized, and alive, and we’re grateful. But Doug never did accept people telling him what to do.”
“I’m surprised he was in grad school, then. Isn’t that all about people telling you what to do?”
“He picked the most—I don’t know what to call him. Lazy? Cavalier? Drunken anyway, thesis advisor in his department for just that reason. But he had a run-in with one prof. He’s far too willing to challenge the leaders. I wish he’d try and get along here, though.”
Coral thought Abigail had a good point. Rebel all you want, resist all you want in your mind, but pretend to agree. Don’t make yourself a target. She had learned that the hard way. “If you want me to talk to him when he gets back—”
“Ye gods, no. He’ll keep you up all night arguing about the philosophical underpinnings of whatever.” She laughed, but it wasn’t a happy sound. “I hope whatever he’s doing right now, it’s not arguing with those guys.”
She and Benjamin kept Abigail company until Doug came home. He looked angry when he came in the door, but when he looked at Abigail’s worried face, he looked sheepish. “I’m going out tomorrow with the next scavenge.”
“I thought it wasn’t your turn yet.”
“It is now.”
“What have you gotten yourself into? You didn’t argue with Levi or Parnell, did you?”
“I offered to help look for Will is all.”
“Did you get into an argument?”
“No,” Doug said. “And in a way, I won. We’ll be scavenging and looking for Will, both.”
“Oh, Doug.”
“I need to clean my rifle,” he said, and he trotted up the stairs.
A moment later, Abigail gave Coral a wan smile and followed him.
“Hmm,” said Coral. “So they use these assignments as punishment.”
“I don’t think that’s quite it,” said Benjamin. “It’s more a reminder: we run things.”
“Change of subject. I have a first aid kit put together for us and hidden in one of the empty rooms at the clinic. I left the window unlocked, so we can get to it any time.” She had left most of the medical supplies alone.
“Good. I’ve finished turning our sacks into backpacks. Your old boots are repaired, though you might want to carry what you have on now as backups.”
Coral glanced down at her shoes, which were not built for long-distance hiking. “Better than nothing, but are they worth the weight?”
“I think the repair on the boots should hold up—for a while at least. A month or two.”
“I hope we’re still alive in a month or two.” If the scavenging teams weren’t finding food, how would they?
He ignored that. “I have the rifle. I’ll take any chance I can to take more ammo. Your knife, the fishing gear, still in your bag?”
“Yeah. We’re missing the hatchet, though. I’d like that back.”
“I’ve been keeping my eye out for it. No luck so far.”
“We’ll miss it if we can’t find it.”
“Yeah.”
“We have to get to the MREs.”
“There’s one in my pack from the trip.”
“That’s good. You didn’t starve yourself to keep it?”
“No. If I get sent out again before we leave, I might find a way to grab another one or two.”
“If only I could figure out how to get into the kitchen stores. At night, when no one else is there.”
“Are they left alone at night?”
“I assumed yeah, there were.”
“There may be a guard on duty. Or two.”
“Really?”
“Makes sense. The residual heat from the stoves would make it a great assignment too. In fact, it makes sense to put a few people in there, not one. One person might steal food with no one the wiser. Three or four people, rotated from night to night, would keep their eyes on each other.”
“There has to be some way to grab some food. We’ll figure it out.” She stood and reached out her hand. He took it and they went up to bed together.
