David Stern is about to give up on his watch for the night. Lowering the binoculars, he lets out a pained breath, shaking his head. He has no idea what time it is, or how long it’s been since he’s slept, or how many hours he’s been perched on the roof of this godforsaken semitrailer, gazing over the top of the barricade, ceaselessly scanning the distant woods and hills of the neighboring tobacco country, hoping he might see a ghostly figure returning, beating the impossible odds of the previous day’s climactic series of events. He stretches his sore, arthritic joints.
“And how long are you gonna keep waiting for her to magically appear?” a voice says from below.
David jumps with a start. “Jesus, Babs!” He looks down at his wife. “How long have you been standing down there?”
“About a year and half.”
“Very funny.” He starts climbing down a ladder that leans against the trailer. “Did the kids finally nod off?” he asks as he hops down to the street.
The safe zone, which encompasses four square blocks of Woodbury, includes several merchants whose shelves haven’t been completely picked clean, as well as a small bed-and-breakfast formerly called The Green Veranda, whose rooms are currently occupied by the six children. Earlier that night, they set up a makeshift infirmary in the front room of the inn, where Norma Sutters, if she’s still awake, is continuing to look after Harold.
On the whole, though, compared with the hardships of living underground, the place is an oasis of luxury.
“All except Tommy,” Barbara says with a weary shrug. Her face is bandaged, and her voice has gone a little nasal due to the swollen bridge of her nose. But to David, in the moonless dark, illuminated only by a torch burning in front of the inn, she is the most beautiful woman on earth. “The boy insists on staying on at his sister’s bedside with a shotgun across his knees.”
“Good for him,” David says, and looks around the zone. “I’m still trying to get used to the quiet.” He jerks a thumb at the wall. “There’s a few stragglers out there.”
“Yeah, there’s a few creepers around—must be either atheists or Jews.”
David looks askance at her. “Huh?”
“They didn’t follow the preacher. Weren’t interested. Can’t say I blame them, either, even though, according to your mom, I’ll always be a shiksa.”
Too tired to laugh, David just grins and shakes his head and touches her cheek. “Whaddaya say we go and try to get some of that sleep people have been talking about?”
She’s about to answer when they hear an incongruous noise outside the wall on the wind.
They look at each other.
Barbara finally says, “They may be Jews, but since when do they drive?”
David turns and hurries back up the ladder, grabbing the binoculars, peering through the lenses at the darkness beyond the outskirts. He sees the headlights first, and then recognizes the car.
“I’ll be a son of a bitch!” he mutters, and hastens back down the ladder. “C’mon!” He trots over to the truck cab blocking a ten-foot-wide gap between barricades. Barbara follows.
David hands her his pistol, then climbs up into the cab, fires up the engine, and backs away from the entrance. Barbara holds the gun on the opening. She thumbs the hammer back when she hears the rumble of a big engine closing in.
David sits in the truck cab, poised to roll it back across the gap.
Miles Littleton’s purple Dodge Challenger, now as battered as a demolition derby car, booms through the opening and skids to a stop. David revs the semicab’s engine, then pulls back across the opening. He hurriedly climbs down the sideboard with a smile on his face.
“Thank God!” Barbara says, lowering the gun, putting a hand to her mouth. Her eyes moisten. When the Challenger’s dented driver’s door squeaks open, she says, “Miles, we thought for sure we lost you out there!”
A battered and bruised Miles Littleton climbs out of the muscle car. “Nope! Still kickin’.” He gives her a sideways smirk. Barbara hugs the young man, and David furiously shakes his hand, and Miles says, “And look who I found.” He indicates the backseat. “Wandering alone out there, dehydrated as fuck, totally messed up.”
David and Barbara lean in and see the figure curled up on the backseat, unmoving and silent. Barbara can barely breathe. “Is she—?”
“Sawing logs, y’all,” Miles informs them, “snoring like a motherfucking bull moose.” He pauses. “I guess she was pretty worn out.”
“Thank God she’s okay,” Barbara mutters, wiping tears from her black-rimmed, bruised eyes.
David carefully opens the rear door, reaches down to Lilly’s dusty hair, and strokes it gently. She has a furrowed brow, a strange expression on her face. David wonders if she’s having a nightmare. “Maybe we should let her sleep a while,” he says, backing away from her, gently closing the door. He looks at Barbara. “I think she’s earned it.”
“I don’t know.” Miles leans against the front quarter panel. “After she drifted off, I kept noticing her in the rearview, tossing and turning and shit. I think she might be having a major fucking dream.”
David thinks about it for a moment, and finally says, “Let’s let her sleep.” He shares another glance with Barbara, and then turns to Miles. “Everybody deserves a chance to dream.”
The three of them gather at the front end of car, leaning against the hood, idly chatting. David and Barbara give Miles some water, and check his wounds. Miles waxes poetically about the benefits of an old-school roll bar and shoulder harness in a 1972 production-line car made in America. They talk some more about the events of the past few days, and they wait patiently for their friend to navigate her nightmare.
And they will wait patiently, and they will guard that car with their lives, and they will continue to wait in the flickering darkness that night for as long as it takes for Lilly to work through the thickets and problems of her epic dream.