by Sylvia Ryan
She hadn’t had her period. She should have had it right when she got back, but never did. Her brain quickly sifted through a series of facts, questioning what was going on with her body, reviewing everything since she’d arrived back home. It didn’t take long to figure out what her flu had really been. She was pregnant. Oh God, the thought had never crossed her mind.
She was disgusted with herself when she realized why her pills had failed her. She’d taken a full course of antibiotics for the bullet wound in her arm. They had nullified the effects of her pills. She knew that could happen. She just hadn’t thought about that possibility at the time. She’d had too much on her mind.
Oh God, no.
Grace didn’t want to raise a child alone in this dangerous new world or in the gaping, silent void she lived in.
She needed to go back, not for her own sanity, because if it was just that, she’d stay and sleep in the bed she’d made for herself, both figuratively and literally. But she really had no choice but to go back if she was going to have even a remote chance of delivering a healthy child.
Grace began to make a significant effort to better care for herself while she waited for the foot of snow on the ground to melt. She tried to move around more, eat more, and did things to keep busy that would positively affect her state of mind. But it was an uphill battle, and as time passed, the low temperatures of the basement kept her returning to the warm cocoon of the blankets on her bed. And the eternal dusk in her shelter continued to suck any attempts at positive thoughts right out of her.
She’d thought she was strong enough, sane enough to go it alone. She’d been wrong. She was starting to lose it. The silence grated on her and left a raw loneliness that festered and grew as each day passed. She spent her days in a womb of her own, made of heavy blankets, in the dusky darkness, with a never-ending feeling of nonexistence. She passed her days in her head for longer and longer stretches of time. It was her prison, her punishment for being so impulsive.
She missed the men so much that she physically ached from the sadness, and the pain that attacked her daily was the only proof that she still existed at all. She was a ghost, disappearing a little more every day.
Grace had the vague sense that there was something wrong with her. It was something more than the physical and hormonal effects of the pregnancy, something that sucked her dry of any desire to help herself. She gradually became aware of the fact that she was nearing the point of no return. Her muscles were starting to atrophy, and she knew she would have to do something or she would end up dying there.
As soon as the weather broke just a little bit, she’d try to make it back to Sarge’s shelter.
She cried when she thought of the reaction Sarge would have to her return. She would have to be ready for a confrontation. She would have to deal with all of them when it came to the baby.
Over and over again, Grace thought about what she wanted to say to them. The words sounded disingenuous even to her own ears. She doubted they would believe that she loved them all, but she knew without a doubt that she did. When she first realized she was pregnant, she searched her heart. She asked herself who she would choose, if she could, as the father of this baby. But she couldn’t choose, just like she couldn’t choose between them when she was there.
Every day, she made one trip outside to dump her bathroom bucket. It was becoming increasingly difficult to climb the stairs to get out of the shelter. Her legs were weak and shaky, and she was out of breath by the time she got to the top of the stairs. But it wasn’t going to be much longer. The weather was changing. The whipping winds that came off the lake and the heavy blanket of snow that clogged the world above ground were transforming into tentative sunshine and slush. Despite her increasingly frail condition, she forced herself to give a shit.
In a corner of the shelter, she collected what she could strap to her bike for her return trip. All she had to do now was to wait until she felt sure she could make the trip back to them.
* * * *
Sarge lay in the silence of the shelter. They’d all just settled in for the night. The long winter and the shared loss of Grace had bonded all of them together. There were no more feelings of animosity, no tension, just sadness. The three men were brothers, friends.
It had been several months since Grace’s disappearance, and they all had suffered her loss in silence. Luke and Van had spent almost a month looking for Grace…or Grace’s body. They had finally given up when the lake effect snows blew in cold and thick around the house. If they continued to search, the footprints in the snow could lead anyone back to their safe haven. It was too much of a risk to leave the shelter. None of them had so much as uttered her name for a month after they called off the search. He couldn’t blame Van or Luke for not bringing her up much. He couldn’t do it either.
Sarge recuperated physically, but emotionally, he and the other two men were wasted. Grief and depression swelled like a rotten corpse in the close quarters, and its oppressive funk pressed in on each man as he suffered quietly in his own personal hell. If he let his mind wander, which was easy to do when confined in a small space all winter, it didn’t take long for his thoughts to go to a dark, painful place. The uncontrolled rambling of his mind had run through every conceivable scenario of what could have happened to Grace, and they all annihilated his soul, turned his stomach, and decimated his morale to the point that sometimes he wondered why he was trying so hard to survive. His life consisted of a dim room and two other men who were as inconsolable as he was.
Every excruciatingly slow day was filled with memories of the last day Grace was with them. He wasn’t sure then if what they were going to try would have worked, but now he felt ashamed. He was ashamed that he’d hurt her, and ashamed that he was so controlling and greedy. These months alone with his thoughts had transformed his perspective. Things he’d thought were really important then maybe hadn’t been as important as he’d thought at the time.
Months ago, Sarge had pleaded with God to bring Grace back to them. He had made all kinds of promises, he had cried, and then, finally, he had cursed. God hadn’t answered his pleas.
“You believe in God, Luke?” Sarge spoke into the darkness between the intermittent purrs of Van’s snoring.
“That’s a loaded question these days.” He paused for long moments. “I’ve thought the same things you’re thinking about. Why did God let so many good people suffer and die? Why did God leave the three of us here to live without Grace?”
“I’m starting to think that living through this is more of a punishment than a victory,” Sarge grumbled. “I mean, why bother? It’s funny, when I was preparing for whatever disaster came my way, I never considered that maybe I wouldn’t want to survive it.”
“That’s your chemicals talking.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“We haven’t seen the sun for more than five minutes at a time for months. Seasonal affective disorder. It happens to people who don’t get enough sunlight. Its symptoms are similar to depression. That, in combination with the fall of the free world as we know it, and the loss of Grace, well, I’ve seen people at the crossroads of Unglued Avenue and Losin’ It Lane for much less than that. It will get better. But tomorrow, you need to get some sun.”
Sarge grunted. “We’ll see. I don’t think sun is going to make a shit of difference about how I feel.”
When Sarge woke up the next morning, he tried to fight the sinkhole of despair that constantly threatened to swallow him whole. He turned his thoughts to spring. He had seed packets stored for a garden and everything he would need to start the seeds, including a portable greenhouse that needed to be assembled. It would give him an excuse to get out and soak up some sun like Luke wanted him to.
Van and Luke sat close together reading underneath a skylight.
“I’m going to the garage to start taking stock of what we have for a garden once the weather breaks. You guys want to come with?”
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Van put his book down. “Yeah.”
“Luke?”
Luke just shook his head without even looking up from the page.
It was a mild day, and the bright sun was melting the thick carpet of snow. Sarge stamped off his slushy boots when he entered the garage then surveyed the inside. He pulled out seedling starter kits, the greenhouse, and some gardening books. He handed some of the stuff to Van and then caught sight of the small collection of tools he’d left out after making Grace her seat for the latrine.
“I haven’t been in here since the day after the EMP,” he said as he picked up the tools to put them away. “I was building the outside…” Sarge stopped and stood up straight. He turned as his eyes scanned the entire space.
“Son of a bitch!”
Van looked over at him, palming his weapon. “What?”
Sarge was silent for a few moments as his mind worked through the onslaught of thoughts firing at him one right after another.
“What?” Van barked.
Grace had run away from them.
The relief Sarge felt swirled around him, enveloped him, but quickly transformed into a tornado of misery. Pain and hurt whirled uncontrollably around him, stabbing him, creating gaping holes in his soul. The force of it pulled the air right out of his lungs, and the shock nearly knocked him to his knees.
“Grace wasn’t taken. She left.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Her bike, it’s gone.”
Van looked around. “It was here when they were putting the stakes in the yard, I remember seeing it.”
“Come on,” Sarge said, picking up the gardening supplies and heading for the house.
Sarge started talking to Luke before he even reached the bottom of the shelter stairs. “Did you do anything with that bike that was in the garage?”
Luke looked up. “Are you talking to me?”
“Yeah.”
“Uh, no. Why?”
“Grace’s bike is gone.”
Luke just looked at Sarge like he was waiting for the rest of the sentence.
“She left us, Luke. She didn’t get taken. She left us.”
The men silently absorbed the new information, letting the truth sink in and take root.
“Well let’s go get her,” Van said.
Luke shook his head. “No. We forced her to leave because of our bullshit. She was tense—stressed about the mood in the shelter. She felt like her presence created antagonism between us…created a toxic atmosphere, I think is what she said.”
“Well, I can’t say it was all in her head. The hostility had been bad,” Sarge said, “but we might have been on the verge of working that out.”
“And if we go get her now, would anything be different for her? Or would the rivalry between us just start over again?” Luke asked.
The air in the dreary space was electrified, tense.
“Same shit, different day,” Luke said.
Sarge studied the other two men. Luke sat unmoving, clenching and unclenching his jaw, and Van looked like a mountain standing there with his arms crossed over his chest and a give-me-a-reason-to-fuck-you-up expression on his face. “Well, I’m just going to say it. Whether we want to admit it or not, the problem lies on our shoulders, not hers. I’ll admit that our infighting weighed on her, made her feel guilty. We drove her away. She didn’t want to cause any more problems.”
“Duh, you think?” Luke snapped, then shook his head. “If we can resolve our issues, truly come to terms with how it is going to be, we should go to her. If we can’t, we should just leave her in peace. It’s not fair to her that we can’t get our pride, our possessiveness, under control.”
“There wasn’t any hostility that last day. But I just don’t see me always sharing with two other men. I would need some private time, too,” Van said.
“I think we all would,” Sarge mumbled. “But I have to admit, I feel hostile just thinking about you guys being with Grace.”
“Therein lies the problem,” Luke said. “The tension level in the shelter has already shot through the roof during the few minutes it took us just to have this conversation.”
“It’s not going to work,” Van stated. His tone and posture seemed to acknowledge defeat. “I don’t even know why you’re so interested.” He bobbed his head in Sarge’s direction. “You treated her like shit.”
The barb Van shot at Sarge hit its target dead center and sank deep into Sarge’s cache of guilt and regret.
“You have no fucking clue what was between us,” Sarge barked.
“I have eyes, and what I saw was an egomaniac and a bully. You’re the reason she left,” Van snarled back.
Without warning, Sarge charged Van, tackling him to the hard cement floor. He connected his knuckles to Van’s face with a crack before being bucked off.
“You want to fight for her? I’ll fight…but I’ll fight fair. No pussy surprise attacks,” Van spat at Sarge while they circled one another.
Luke stood up and approached the circling men. “Dammit, you two, this is the type of shit that drove her away in the first place.”
Before the last of Luke’s words left his mouth, Sarge made an end run around Luke and charged Van again. Both men landed punches on the other before they fell to the floor a second time with a thud. Luke tried to pull Sarge off of Van and was nailed in the eye by Sarge’s elbow as Sarge drew back to deliver another punch in Van’s direction.
Van took advantage of Luke’s interference and got out from under Sarge’s weight.
“Enough!” Luke roared as he started toward the stairs. “You two are dumb-ass fools if you think this shit can continue. I would fucking run away from you, too!” he yelled over his shoulder as he stomped up the shelter stairs and left Sarge and Van alone.
Luke’s words doused Sarge’s homicidal impulses. He stood breathless and eyed Van, who absently rubbed a drop of blood sliding down from his nose.
Sarge backed away and sat in a chair at the table. “He’s right. And you’re right. I was hard on her. It was truly only because it would have ripped me to shreds if anything ever happened to her.”
Van bent over and braced his hands on top of his thighs, trying to catch his breath. “So what do you want to do?” he panted.
“Get Luke. See if we can work out something we all can live with.”
Chapter 22
The men popped the shelter door sometime in the small hours of the morning. As Sarge peered down the stairs into the total blackness, an instant of doubt flickered in his mind.
“Grace, it’s Sarge,” he called down.
No answer. He pointed his flashlight down the stairs. The air of anticipation that the men exuded when they entered the house fizzled.
“She’s not here.” The disappointment in Van’s voice stifled them all.
Sarge, Van, and Luke descended the stairs silently and walked through the rows of shelves that stocked the shelter. Unlike Sarge’s shelter, the sitting and sleeping area were on the far end of the basement instead of at the bottom of the stairs.
Sarge swept the room with his flashlight and glanced upon the sleeping area. There was a person sleeping in the bed. Immediately, Van raised his weapon to cover Sarge as he went over to investigate.
It was Grace. A relieved look passed from man to man as they closed in on her sleeping form.
“I don’t want to wake her up,” Sarge whispered as he lifted a chair from the sitting area and set it quietly close to the bed. “I need to get a few hours sleep before this goes down.”
Van and Luke followed suit.
Sarge sighed and relaxed a little, enjoying the soothing knowledge that Grace was safe. Now that he’d seen her, he worried whether he could live with the plan that all three of them had agreed on. He supposed it was about as fair and equal as a situation like this could get. They’d decided that the sleeping arrangements would rotate with her, like before. They would take h
er together when she wanted it, and any one-on-one sex could only occur if the man was assigned to sleep in the bed with her that night. And most importantly, there was to be no sniping, no competition, and no complaining.
The repercussions of not following the agreement would be swift and brutal. No place in the sleeping rotation for six months. Which, according to their plan, meant no sex for six months.
Sarge dozed on and off, lost in a fog of semiconscious dreams. Gradually, the sun’s first rays traveled through the tiny, round skylight, transforming the blackness to the eternal dusk of her shelter. The men’s greedy eyes absorbed the lines of Grace’s face and body as they were slowly revealed.
Sarge’s heart pounded with the deep, regular thud of a bass drum as his eyes roamed over Grace’s face. She looked sick. Her skin looked the color of ashes, and she had dark half circles smudged beneath her eyes. She had lost weight, a lot of weight. Her cheeks were shallow depressions over the bones of her face.
Alarm began to filter through the relief that he’d felt since they’d found her. His eyes darted to her chest. It was rising and falling with regular, even breaths.
“She looks…half dead,” Van whispered.
Luke sat next to her on the bed, and Grace startled awake at the light caress of his finger on her cheek.
“Good morning, ladybug.”
Grace’s eyes opened wide. They took him in, and it was several moments before a dawning expression transformed her face.
“Luke? You’re really here?” It only took a split second for Grace’s look of disbelief to change into a rush of ragged sobs. She sat up and hugged Luke frantically and then caught sight of Sarge and Van behind him.
“Oh, my God, I missed you guys so much. I’m sorry,” she cried. “I’m sorry more than you’ll ever know.”
