The Ocean in the Fire

by Renee N. Meland

  “Yes. And when it’s time, I will make sure they know who is in control here.”

  Kate bit her lip. “It’s so close. I just hope we’re ready.”

  Connor looked down lovingly at his wife. Despite the fading light, her smile shone brightly. “This has been our life for years. Nobody knows how to do what we do better than us. Remember, we’re the ones in charge.” He kissed the top of her head. “Don’t worry. Everything will work out fine.”

  She snuggled against him. “You’re right, you’re always right.”

  “Of course I am.” He smiled at her. He shivered at the thought that if he hadn’t gone on that vacation at the last moment, so many years ago, the stunningly beautiful, funny, and smart woman before him would have surely been snatched up by some other man. Gratefulness that he had come to his senses overwhelmed him as he thought about suffering in the backseat of his boarding school roommate’s minivan for those excruciating hours.

  She was worth it.

  When they got back inside, Gabriel was sitting at the kitchen island, right where his sisters had been minutes before. “She’s running good now. Should be fine if we have to split.”

  His mother looked at him. “We won’t. We are going to be extremely careful about who we let in. And the only people who will be let in will be the ones who arrive right away. Otherwise, there’s too much risk.”

  “What if they all wait too long?”

  Connor joined in. “Then they will have to go back to where they came from.” He put his hand on his son’s shoulder. “We can’t risk being exposed to this thing, not after working so hard.”

  “I understand.” He stared down toward a spot in the floor across the room, the place where he knew they kept the extra gun safe: a secret compartment, hidden by boards in the floor. A couch sat on top of their hiding place, but it was fairly light weight. And even if it had been heavy, they knew how strong a person could become when something important was at stake. “How will we choose?”

  “We will choose whoever will be the most useful to us.”

  “That seems pretty inhumane, Dad.”

  Kate cut in. “We can’t keep everyone here who will need help. We just can’t. Unfortunately, that means making some tough decisions.” She ran her fingers through her son’s hair. “If the situation were reversed, they would do the same to us.”

  “How do you know that? We haven’t seen them in years.”

  Connor held his hand just next to the wall as he considered slamming it down. But after a moment’s hesitation, he rested it softly against it. “People are creatures of habit, Gabriel, and people’s habits don’t change.”

  Gabriel took a deep breath. “I’m going to go listen to some music.” He kissed his mother on the cheek. “Goodnight, Mom. Dad.”

  Despite wearing the thick-soled combat boots that protected him when he worked on cars, his steps were much quieter than his sisters’. They could hear the gentle shut of his door against its hinges, and the quiet snap of the lock. They expected to hear music, but they were met with silence. They both knew from experience that Gabriel only put his headphones in his ears when he wanted the whole world to leave him alone.

  When Connor and Kate went to bed that night, Kate immediately picked up the Steinbeck novel that was on her nightstand and began reading. She used her pillow to prop herself up, and rested the book on top of the sheets. She wore the perfect expression of concentration, but they had been married too long for him to not know that something in her manner, something in her being, was off. He stared at her until she noticed him. “What is it?” she asked.

  “I know you’re thinking something.” He reached out and placed his hand on top of hers. He took note of her wedding ring: passed down from his grandmother, to his mother, and now to her. It was simple, with one stone in the very center, attached to a solid gold band. She had told him she loved it, but he always wondered if she really did. He realized that thought said much more about him than her.

  “I’m fine, I’m just reading.”

  Kate saying she was fine just meant he would have to pry a little harder. “Tell me.”

  Kate shut the book and let out a deep sigh. “I just wonder if we’re going to have time to do the simple things, like reading in bed, after everything changes. I know it’s about survival, but survival doesn’t have to mean no more books or games with the kids or chocolate brownie Tuesdays does it?” She tossed her book back on the nightstand and it landed with a loud thud. “I mean what’s the point of surviving if we can’t live?”

  “Of course we will. It will be hard for a while, but we’ll establish a routine. You’ll see. Where is this coming from?”

  Kate wouldn’t make eye contact with him, instead staring out their bedroom window. “I wanted to eventually take a road trip with the kids, maybe to the ocean. They’ve never even seen it other than online. I wanted them to be able to go to college if they wanted to. Go to a museum, see something. I always said we’d do one of those things…all of those things someday.” She laughed. “So much for eventually. Eventually’s come and gone.” She hesitated. “I’m a little bit mad at you.”

  “Why?”

  She whispered, “Because we never did any of them, and now it’s too late.”

  Connor didn’t know what to say. “I didn’t realize those things were so important to you.”

  “You never asked.”

  She turned away and switched her reading lamp off. “I love you, Connor. I don’t regret our lives one bit. We’ve done more as a family in the last ten years than most people do in their whole lifetimes. We built something special together.” She threw the covers over her head. “But sometimes you can’t see past your own nose.”

  He continued to stare at her, overcome by the all-encompassing darkness.

  That night, creaking sounds from atop their roof woke Connor up. By the time he realized it was just branches hitting the house, his heart was pounding and sweat covered his skin. He looked over at Kate, who was still sleeping soundly. Her eyes fluttered, and her face took on a conflicted expression while she slept, as if going through a dream full of movement and hard decisions.

  He got up and walked to the window, where he could almost see the entirety of his property laid out before him, glowing eerily in the moonlight. The pond glistened, reflecting a mirror image of a sky full of stars. They were the same as they had always been, but without Poe looking at them by his side as she did when she was a little girl, their magic was gone. He looked at the perimeter, and remembered how long it took him to find a plant with thorns big enough to rip apart any intruder before they could get inside. Anyone who did make it past the walls would be so mangled they wouldn’t be much of a threat any longer. The gate was the only thing on that side of the property that he couldn’t see, resting just beyond his line of sight. The cameras and motion sensor alarm he installed there would protect them while they still had power, and he and Gabriel would stand guard when that was shut off for good. Of course, they had a generator, but their fuel supplies were finite, and he had always trusted the human eye more than technology.

  Glancing toward the other side of their property, he admired another part of his handiwork: his vegetable garden. It lay safely tucked behind a cage of chicken wire, enough to keep the deer and rabbits from taking their crops. His lettuce, zucchini, spinach, and carrots, along with several other vegetables, would be devoured by woodland creatures in a matter of minutes if they were not protected. He hoped that garden would be enough to sustain him, Kate, and the children, along with as many strangers as they deemed worthy. He smiled to himself. They certainly hadn’t deemed him worthy so many years before. And now, they would pay for it.

  At that moment, Connor Holloway was sure that the universe had a way of righting itself.

  As he stared out at what they had built, he felt arms wrap around his waist. “You can’t hold what happened against everyone. Sometimes I think you hold it against the world itself. That’ll eat you alive.” H
e felt her cheek resting against his back, and listened to the smooth, soothing tone of her voice. “Depending on what they can provide, we may need them as much as they need us.”

  Connor thought about opening his mouth, but decided against it. Kate could let it go. Kate could always let it go.

  He could not, especially now.

  He pulled her face toward his own and kissed her softly on the lips. “If they can help us, then I will behave.” A mischievous grin spread across his face. “Sometimes…”

  Kate smiled. “I love you. Come to bed.” She kissed him again, this time more passionately. As they wrapped their arms around each other and fell on top of their sheets, Connor vowed that no one would ever take her from him.

  God help anyone who tried.

  CHAPTER TWO

  DREW

  By the time Dr. Drew Matthews came home, the night had become black. Usually he was home before most of his neighbors’ lights went out, but that night his own porchlights were the only thing illuminating the way from his car to his door. His wife Vera was sitting at the dinner table waiting for him, reading a book to distract herself from the fact that her husband wasn’t home yet. It looked to be one of those romance novels she was so fond of. A shirtless, well-sculpted man graced the cover, and a woman with long hair falling past her shoulders lay breathlessly in his arms. The roast that had been simmering all day had developed the softness of baby food, so she elected to put the meat into some taco shells instead of attempting to slice it, knowing it would just disintegrate against the blade. She had told him that morning she was making him her special pot roast for dinner, the one with the perfectly crusted red potatoes, something that usually he would have made sure he was home in time for—but not that night.

  Drew looked at her as he entered the kitchen area, giving her a warm smile—always a smile, no matter how his day had been, no matter who he had healed—and who he hadn’t.

  He would have to work extra hard to produce one that night.

  “You didn’t have to wait for me.” He walked over to her and kissed her on the forehead. “But I’m very glad you did.” His jacket was still crisp, white, and wrinkle free, the same as it had been that morning when he had left. If someone who didn’t know what he’d just been through had judged his day by his coat, they would have assumed it was uneventful. He hoped that was exactly what Vera would believe. No need to alarm her, not yet.

  As she placed their plates on the table in front of their respective chairs, she asked the question he knew was coming. He had considered driving around town for a while, perhaps stopping at the dock to look at all the boats gently floating on the water, but knew that absorbing himself in the before would only make the after more painful. He hoped she didn’t notice him wincing as she opened her mouth.

  “It’s bad there, isn’t it?” She looked at him with a kind, sympathetic expression, as if she didn’t know how scared she should be. If it were up to him, she would never know. Drew had gone to the closest major hospital that day. He wanted to see for himself how fast the disease was spreading.

  He didn’t tell his wife what he’d found.

  “It’s not as good as we would like it to be, but that’s to be expected.” He took a sip of the wine she had poured him: a deep red color, with thick legs of alcohol dripping down the inside of the glass. Tannins, he thought to himself as he watched them slowly crawl. “As long as we’re careful and don’t do anything stupid, we’ll be fine.” Lying to his wife made a heavy feeling erupt in his stomach, but he ignored it.

  He didn’t want to let her know that the town with the closest hospital was almost deserted, aside from the hospital itself. The smart ones had left, while the naïve ones had stayed behind, and paid the price for their brash ignorance. Saying out loud that as he passed through the town, people were dragging themselves down the street, looking at him with sunken eyes and sharp cheekbones was too much to bare. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her that as he approached the hospital, he saw a man in a medical facemask standing in front of the door, pointing behind him at the road which Drew was driving down. It was only when he started to get out of his vehicle that he realized it was his friend, Michael, the college buddy that he had been planning to visit that day, hoping he could somehow help with the pandemic that had reached Michael’s city. Michael had helped him get through a particularly tough loss of a patient several years earlier, and he had finally seen an opportunity to return the favor.

  He thought he’d get the chance.

  Drew took a moment to scan the building, and realized that all he could see through the windows were clusters of people, some in doctors’ and nurses’ uniforms, but most in hospital gowns. There were so many beds in each room that he couldn’t imagine how the doctors reached the patients in the back without leaning over the patients in the front—a recipe for a quick spread. The patients’ gaunt bodies seemed unnaturally pale in the hospital’s fluorescent light, but after passing so many sick people on the street, he guessed that their coloring had nothing to do with the bulbs. As he started to walk toward the steps, his friend yelled in a tone muffled by the mask, “Drew, don’t come any closer! Get back in your car and go!”

  “But why? What’s going on? I can help!” He took one last step forward, only to have Michael wave him away.

  “The hospital’s overrun. Hospitals east of here are bursting at the seams, so they started sending people here.” He reached up and wiped the sweat from his brow. “We can’t contain it anymore. We’re doing the best we can but people just keep getting sicker. At this point, we are just trying to make them comfortable.” He removed his mask and took an extra deep breath of air that Drew hoped wouldn’t end up killing him. They had said on the news that they were fairly certain the disease was not airborne, but he was skeptical. They had also said it wouldn’t make it past the east coast, and it had traveled all the way west in a few short weeks. The revelation that Michael removed his mask to make sure Drew could hear him clearly hit him like a steel beam. If he was willing to forego any possible protection the mask may have provided, he knew he was already gone. “I can’t let you come in here. Everyone inside…you need to go home. Take care of Vera. There’s nothing to do here now.”

  Drew didn’t want to tell his wife about the nausea that enveloped him as he turned around and drove away, leaving behind the friend who had turned down a potentially helpful hand in order to keep him and his family safe. So instead, he smiled.

  “Totally good.” He knew he would have to tell her eventually, but he figured there was no reason to take away her peace of mind any sooner than he had to. It reminded him of the fact that, though he hadn’t had to often, he would always go get a cup of coffee before he had to speak to a terminally ill patient’s family. Those three extra minutes of not knowing was the only gift he could bestow on them, and he gave it gladly.

  As they ate their makeshift tacos, Blake Turner and her four-year-old son Jackson walked through the front door, and sat down at the two remaining chairs at the kitchen table. Blake had known the Matthews since she was born, and didn’t bother to knock anymore.

  Drew and Vera didn’t mind one bit.

  “Hi, sweetie!” Vera said as Jackson ran up and threw his arms around her. She turned to Blake. “Hi, baby, have you eaten yet?” She nodded toward the extra roast sitting on the counter. “You want some?”

  “Naw, we ate already. Just wanted to come say hi.”

  Jackson crawled into Vera’s lap, and she adjusted masterfully to eating her tacos with one hand. “Mom and I had nuggets. With BBQ!”

  “Oohh…sounds yummy.” Vera smiled at him. “McDonald’s?”

  “Nope, Mommy said those have weird stuff in them. We had veggie nuggets.”

  Drew sighed. “Blake, you know the chemicals in those things are just as bad as whatever random meat parts they put in the chicken nuggets.”

  “Eww! Meat parts! Gross!” Jackson stared at Drew in wide-eyed horror. He clutched the teddy bear that he
carried with him a little harder, and buried his face in Vera’s shoulder.

  “Believe it or not, Drew, he actually likes the veggie ones better.” She pretended to shake her head at her son. “My strange child, I tell ya.” Ruffling his hair with her hand, she said, “Hey, why don’t you go upstairs to the office? I bet Miss Vera still has some coloring books up there for you.” Jackson nodded enthusiastically and ran up the stairs.

  As soon as he was out of hearing distance, Blake asked Drew what Vera had already. “So? How’d it go? Was it bad?”

  “Not as bad as it could be. We will be vigilant though.”

  Blake leaned back in her chair. “Well if the shit hits the fan, come get us would you?”

  Vera reached over and grabbed Blake’s hand. “Of course we will. And watch your language.”

  Blake was Drew’s best friend’s daughter. The men had been next door neighbors since they were kids, both living in the same houses where they grew up. Vera and Drew never had children, but they raised Blake right alongside her parents. Her mother had died in a car accident when she was twelve, so Vera was the one that held her hand through Jackson’s birth. Before Blake’s father died of cancer six months ago, he left her the house, and told Drew to look after her and his grandson when he had gone. Drew said he never had to ask.

  “So exactly how likely is it that the shit will, in fact, hit the fan?”

  Drew swallowed hard. Lying to his wife was hard enough. Lying to someone he considered his daughter was next to impossible. The only other time he had lied to her was when he told her there was no such thing as monsters. Monsters did exist; sometimes in nature, sometimes in people. Both were terrifying. “We will be okay.”

  “Oh good. Because I have a job interview tomorrow at that new salon! It’s about an hour from here. Horrible commute but I need the money and I can’t stay in my house any longer. I’m going stir crazy. I need to get my hands on some scissors and hair!” Blake smiled brightly. She had been out of work for months since her father had passed, and once she had decided she was ready to go back, no one wanted to hire her. She had been combing the newspaper ads for so long Vera had started teasing her that her fingers would turn black from the ink. “Vera, I was hoping you could watch Jackson for me tomorrow.”