And maybe she’d be able to get her sons to stop pointing loaded guns at him, too.
On the other hand, Ella’s assessment of her employers gnawed at him. She really didn’t seem to like the Birkins. Was it just the fact that they were so privileged? Or was there something more about them to dislike?
Adam wished that Artem and Sara were here. He had grown to like and trust them in the time they’d been at sea together. He knew Artem would have immediately mistrusted these new people, but he would have also recognized the value in learning to live with them. As for Sara, she would have set to work trying to charm them, doing everything she could to correct the bad first impression and make sure that they liked her.
The sun was going down by the time his task was finished and the mower was put away. Adam was drenched in sweat. This was more physical labor than he’d ever done in his life. In fact, he thought, it might have been the only real physical labor he’d ever done in his life. There hadn’t been any call for hard work when he’d been acting in his youth, and since then he hadn’t held down a job. He wasn’t going to let Richard Birkin or any of the others in on that fact, though. They wouldn’t hear any complaints from him. He was just going to do the chores that were assigned to him and do them well. Then they’d have no cause to doubt him.
He found a rake in the shed and set to work raking up the grass clippings. It hadn’t been part of the assignment Richard had given him, but it would be best to go above and beyond. If Richard Birkin wanted an immaculate lawn—for whatever reason—then that was what he would get.
Finally finished with the work, Adam put the tools away and went back into the house. He hadn’t washed since the boat and he was desperate for a nice hot shower.
But he’d forgotten the power outage. The water that came out of the showerhead was ice cold and didn’t heat up no matter how long he allowed it to run. With a sigh, he stripped off his clothes, stepped in, and scrubbed himself clean as quickly as he could. The shower couldn’t have lasted more than two minutes total before he stepped out again, shivering and dripping on the tile floor of the bathroom.
He grabbed a towel, wrapped it around his waist, and headed for his bedroom. He was already dreading putting his dirty clothes back on, but when he reached the room he found to his surprise that someone had laid a full set of clothes out on his bed. It all looked a hair too big for him, but it was clean. He took the clothes gratefully and pulled them on, wondering who was behind this bit of generosity.
He examined himself in the mirror. He’d lost weight. His hair had grown long and his beard was unkempt, but otherwise he looked more presentable than he had in months. He felt more like a human being than he had since his first day on Cody’s yacht. He couldn’t have been better prepared for his first evening meal with the Birkins and the McTerrells.
Still, he was nervous. What would happen at dinner? Would the two families resume their argument over his worth? Would guns be drawn? Ella had implied that fights did take place at the dinner table, and that they were of a nature Adam would not expect. Her words had felt ominous.
Adam sat down on the side of his bed. Heaving a deep sigh, he buried his face in his hands. It seemed like such a short time ago that he’d been on the yacht with Cody, Artem and Sara. Each of them had had their flaws, Cody especially, but if he had the choice, he would have gone back to them in a heartbeat. The devil you know, I guess, he thought ruefully, wondering what the future held with these new people.
Eventually, hunger overcame worry. Adam stood up from the bed, did his best to comb his hair into a presentable shape with his fingers, and tugged at his shirtsleeves to straighten them. From below him, he heard a clatter and knew that Ella was probably hard at work preparing their dinner. When was the last time he’d had a full meal?
He steeled himself, opened the door, and stepped out, ready to see what Ella had been trying to prepare him for.
Chapter 5
“The clothes fit, then?” Charles McTerrell sounded delighted. “I’d hoped they would.”
“Yeah, thanks, they’re great.”
In truth, they were a bit roomy, but Adam suspected that had more to do with the weight he’d lost on the yacht than the clothes themselves. And they were clean, far cleaner than anything he’d had to wear in weeks. He had used seawater to clean his clothes on the yacht and dried them by hanging them over the railing, and everything had become crusty with salt, no matter how much he’d washed it. These clothes were soft, as if they’d come straight out of a dryer.
“They’re Marsden’s,” Charles said. “Chase’s build is closer to yours, but he’s shorter than you, so we thought this would be better.”
“I really appreciate it,” Adam said.
Ella was bending over the enormous dining table, lighting candles. She didn’t speak, but she smiled when she saw him. Adam smiled back.
“Take a seat,” Charles said.
“Does it matter where?”
“No, no, there’s no assigned seating,” Charles laughed. “Sit anywhere. Sit here. You’ll want to be able to reach Ella’s potatoes. They’re really something.”
Potatoes! Adam breathed in the starchy scent. Nothing had smelled so wonderful in what felt like forever. He needed no further encouraging. Pulling out the chair, he took a seat right in front of the potatoes.
The Birkins entered the room. The twins, Rhett and Langley, led the way, followed by their mother, and finally Richard. He met Adam’s eyes briefly, then looked away. Adam wondered whether the man had had a chance to look at the freshly mown lawn yet, and what he thought of Adam’s work.
“What’s for dinner tonight?” one of the twins asked Ella.
“Salmon and potatoes, Rhett.” Ella took the seat beside Adam. “The fish is fresh. I just caught it this afternoon.”
“Did you at least take the bones out this time?” Rhett asked.
“Yes, it’s ready to eat.”
The Birkins all sat down, and Charles joined them. Moments later, Marsden entered the room with a bottle of wine in hand.
“I thought it would be appropriate,” he said, lifting the bottle. “Since we’re welcoming a new guest tonight. Ella, will you pour?”
She stood and accepted the bottle, then walked around the table pouring a measure of wine into every glass. She reached Adam last. He considered telling her he didn’t drink—despite having fallen momentarily off the wagon on his last day aboard the yacht—but he figured that refusing their hospitality might be more dangerous than breaking his sobriety. He allowed her to pour a small measure into his glass.
Olivia, the girl who had recognized Adam, joined them in the dining room. She was followed by a boy who looked to be about the same age as the twins, or perhaps a couple years older.
“Ah,” Charles said, getting to his feet. “Adam, you’ve met my daughter, Olivia. And this is my son, Chase. Chase, this is Adam, our newcomer.”
“Nice to meet you,” Chase said.
“You too,” Adam said, thinking that this was a much more agreeable first impression than the one the Birkin twins had made. “You were out fishing when I got here, is that right?”
“Yeah,” Chase said. “I’m pretty much the best fisherman we’ve got. But I can teach you some tricks, if you want.”
“I’d like that,” Adam said. “Are there a lot of fish around the island?”
“Enough that I don’t think we’d have to worry about food for a while even if we didn’t have other supplies,” Chase said. “But really, it’s hunting that’s the future. Deer meat, not fish meat.”
“Quiet down, now,” Richard Birkin said mildly. He picked up the platter of fish, helped himself to a fillet, and passed it along to his wife.
For several minutes, the only sounds were those of serving utensils clattering against dishes and hungry diners digging in to their food. Adam realized anew just how hungry he was when he bit into the fish. He’d had nothing since landing on the island besides that strip of dried fruit Richard had giv
en him. How long had it been since he’d eaten on the boat itself? Sara had made cookies on their last day, but cookies weren’t food, and Adam had been too nervous to eat very much that day anyway…
But there was no denying that this meal was wonderful. Ella must have had a stocked spice cabinet, because she’d seasoned both the potatoes and the fish extraordinarily well. Adam thought he would have even enjoyed this meal back on the mainland before anything had gone wrong, before his perspective on what was a good meal had been skewed by the strain of supply and demand. This was delicious.
The Birkins and the McTerrells seemed not to notice the quality of their dinner. They ate as if a great meal was an everyday occurrence. When Kathryn Birkin spoke, it wasn’t to remark on the quality of the food, but to complain.
“Charles, you were working on the power today, isn’t that right?”
“I looked at it.” Charles took a long drink of his wine. He didn’t appear to be savoring it, Adam thought. Maybe he shouldn’t feel bad about not drinking what he’d been given. Wine didn’t seem to mean all that much to these people.
“Were you able to figure out what was wrong?” Kathryn asked. “I notice it’s not back on yet.”
“No,” Charles said. “I took a look at the circuitry, but there’s no visible damage that I can see.”
“There might not be,” Adam said. “The power went out on my boat, too. It wasn’t a localized event.”
They ignored him. “We’ve been without power for days,” Kathryn said. “We haven’t been able to do any laundry, and I’m sick of having to take cold showers.”
“Not to mention that we can’t store food in the icebox without power,” Richard chimed in.
“We need to figure out what happened and get it fixed as quickly as possible,” Kathryn said to Charles. “Do you think you’ll be able to do it tomorrow?”
“The power went out on your boat?” Chase McTerrell asked Adam.
He nodded. “On the mainland, too. We saw it happen.”
Ella looked startled. “I didn’t know the mainland had lost power.”
“I think it happened all over,” Adam said. “There was a series of explosions…” His voice trailed off as he remembered the awful events of that night. They’d lost power on the boat just after the blasts, and they’d seen the lights go out on the far-off shore. Distraught, Cody had picked up his drink and taken a long swallow…
But the drink had been drugged. Adam and the others had been so afraid of Cody’s increasingly chaotic temper, so worried that he was becoming a danger to himself and others, that they’d conspired to drug him. They hadn’t counted on the fact that he would taste the difference in the drink and would know right away what had been done. In his rage and paranoia, he’d attacked Artem, and in the ensuing fight, Artem had been killed.
Then Adam and Sara had taken hold of Cody, desperate to hold him down, to stop him from doing any further damage. But Sara’s grip had been too tight. They hadn’t even realized he was struggling for air until it was too late.
That was the night Adam’s sobriety had broken. After years of clean living, it had been too much to take. He had taken a bottle to bed with him that night.
He would carry the guilt of that night with him for the rest of his life. He would always regret going off on his own and leaving Sara alone to cope with everything by herself. Because she hadn’t been able to do it. Tormented by the thought of everything that they’d done, she had drowned herself in the sea. She’d been gone by the time he awoke.
Kathryn and Charles were still talking. “We need to have power,” Kathryn said, her voice stern. “We need to be able to regulate the temperature in here. We need lights. It’s only a matter of time before somebody falls down the stairs in the night because they can’t see where they’re going. It’s not acceptable for us to be without power for days on end like this.”
“Well, I haven’t seen you out there trying to fix it,” Charles said. “If I’m not moving quickly enough, maybe somebody else would like to give it a try.”
“We all have our jobs,” Richard said. “Everyone is working hard.”
“But it’s my job to get the power to come back on?” Charles said. He shook his head. “I don’t think so, Birkin. I have no electrical experience, and you can’t just push this off on me because you don’t know how to do it. It’s not my fault the power is out.”
Kathryn pushed her food around on her plate and didn’t speak. An unpleasant silence went around the table, and Adam wondered if this was what Ella had been referring to when she’d said that fights between the Birkins and the McTerrells weren’t what he’d imagine. The tension in the room was so think it felt as if it might explode. He half-expected everyone to start yelling at any moment. But they didn’t. They were quiet and respectful, passing plates to each other, all of them acting as if they were guests at the other family’s home.
Finally, Adam couldn’t take the silence anymore. “Listen,” he said, “I don’t think you’re going to be able to restore power. Not from here on the island, anyway.”
“What do you mean, Adam?” Marsden asked.
“I think the power outage was caused by an explosion,” he said. “We heard something just before we lost power on our boat. It sounded like it might have been a bomb. And if it was, that might have caused an electromagnetic pulse that wiped out the power in the surrounding area.”
“Why would someone set off a bomb between your boat and our island?” Rhett asked.
“I don’t think that’s where it was,” Adam said. “The mainland lost power, too. We saw the lights go out. I think the bomb was set off there.”
“But then how could it affect us all the way out here?” Charles asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t know much about EMPs except that they can be a side effect of powerful weapons and they can neutralize electronics.” Artem had told them that. Adam wished now that he’d asked more questions about it. “Maybe it had a broader range than I realized.”
“What would be the point in setting off a bomb?” Kathryn asked. “Just to stop looters? It seems like overkill.”
She was right, Adam thought. A bomb would be useless against the real threat—the global pandemic that was the nanovirus. You couldn’t kill a virus with a bomb.
Or could you?
He remembered what Ella had said. When something big happens, there’s a chance someone at the top made it happen. Someone had set off a bomb. They must have had a reason.
“God,” he said. “I’ve been stupid.”
“What do you mean?” Charles asked.
“The EMP knocked out all electronics,” Adam said. “All electronics.”
The others looked at each other in confusion, but Ella gasped. “The bots.”
Adam nodded. “They’re dead. Or defunct. At least, they should be. It stands to reason. If all electrical devices are dead, that should include nanobots. Which means the virus can’t spread anymore.”
“If it worked,” Richard said. “Even if that was the intent behind this EMP, we have no way of knowing whether or not it was effective. The nanobots are like no technology we’ve ever seen before. And I’m certainly not going to risk my life, or the lives of my family, on a guess.”
“But it would explain why the EMP was set off,” Adam said. “It was an effort to neutralize the bots. And if it happened here, it probably happened everywhere.”
“Hold on,” Chase McTerrell said. “Are you saying there might be no power left anywhere?”
Adam hadn’t actually thought about things in those terms—he had been overcome with relief at the thought that the nanobots might actually have been wiped out. But now he paused. Even if the threat of the nanobots was behind them, that didn’t mean life was going to go back to normal. The world would never go back to the way it had been before this had all started. He remembered the night Cody had first come to that realization and how painful it had been for him.
Adam had thought himself a realist ab
out the situation. If anyone had asked him, he would have said that of course he knew there was no going back. And yet, he felt it now in a way he never had before. Always before, he realized, he had imagined that there might be a place in the world that remained untouched, a sanctuary where no one had gotten nanotech and nothing had gone wrong. Even if he himself never reached that place, it had helped to believe in it.
But he couldn’t believe in it now. If someone was still in charge, and if that person had decided worldwide EMP attacks were the way to combat the nanobots, that meant that the world as a whole had fundamentally changed. If Adam’s hypothesis was right, society as he knew it was over.
Nobody spoke, and Adam supposed the same thoughts were occurring to all of them. The power outage wasn’t just an inconvenience here on their island. It was the way life was going to be from now on. There would never be washing machines or iceboxes again. That way of living was gone forever.
Finally, Langley spoke. “It might not be true,” he said.
“Of course it’s true,” Marsden said. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. Kathryn is right. There’s no point in just bombing the mainland. There’s hardly anyone left to kill. The EMP effect had to be the reason behind the blasts.”
“It makes sense that it would work on the bots,” Charles said. “If MRI machines killed them, this certainly would.”
“So…the virus is dead, and so is everything else,” Rhett said.
“We aren’t,” Ella spoke up, but no one except Adam seemed to hear her.
“What are we going to do now?” Kathryn asked. She looked from her husband to her sons, and even to the McTerrells. The idea of a life without electricity seemed, for the moment, to have bridged the gap between the two families. Adam supposed there was nothing like a disaster for bringing people together.
“This is a good thing,” he told them. “The world is different, but if we’re right about this, the virus is dead. No one else has to die. Now we just need to learn how to live.”
“But how do we do that?” she asked, turning frightened eyes toward him. “We’re not farmers or hunters, not really. We’re used to buying our food at a supermarket and cooking it on a stove. How are we going to live with none of the things we’re used to? How long can we survive in a world like that?”
Escape The Dark (Book 2): Fearful World Page 4
