by K. M. Fawkes
But William stood motionless, as though stricken with an idea. “Maybe it would help if somebody read to her?” he said.
“William,” said Brad in exasperation, “this is a surgery, not a women’s reading group—”
“I could use the distraction, actually,” said Anna, who had taken the bottle and drained about a quarter of it while Brad and William had been distracted. “I’d love it if someone read to me.”
“Fine.” Brad threw his hands up, exasperated, wondering how this colony of book-lovers had managed to survive even five months since the collapse. “If you really think it would keep her calm, go find a volunteer.”
If Anna hadn’t insisted on it, he wouldn’t have bothered. When the surgery began, her whimpering and moaning was likely to drown out the voice of even the most dedicated reader.
Searching for the positive, Brad was pleased to note that Anna seemed to be losing her distrust of the kindly strangers. Her suspicions had evaporated in the light of William’s benevolent and gratuitous offers of assistance. Presumably, no one who wished them ill would have gone to such lengths to accommodate her.
Worried that Anna would down the rest of the bottle if given the chance, Brad wrested it away from her.
“It’s not a good idea for you to be stone-drunk during a surgery,” he said, ignoring her protests.
“You can at least tell me where you found the bottle.”
“I would never.”
Just then William returned to the room, looking pleased with himself.
“Found a volunteer,” he said. “She’s scanning the library shelves hoping to find a book that your friend will like.”
“I hope we didn’t wake her up,” said Brad. “I know it’s late.”
“She don’t care; she loves reading aloud.” William smiled. “You wouldn’t think there’d be a place for an older woman, a teacher and librarian, in a survivalist community like ours. That’s the genius of the place. Emma likes to say there’s no use living unless we’re living for something.”
Something in the cadence of the phrase stirred Brad’s memory. “How old is this woman?” he asked.
“Mid-to-late fifties, silver hair, tortoiseshell glasses. I’ll introduce you in a minute.”
But as it happened there was no need to introduce them. A second later Emma herself came walking briskly into the room wearing a familiar-looking fox-patterned skirt and a pair of brown loafers. When she saw Brad, she let out a startled cry and dropped the book she had been carrying—a clothbound illustrated edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Brad, equally startled, took a long swig of the whiskey.
“William,” she said slowly, “when you told me you’d found a wounded girl in the forest, you didn’t mention that she had a companion.”
“Brad’s going to be performing the operation.” William paused, struck by the tense silence that had fallen between them. “Wait. Do you two know each other?”
“We’ve met,” said Brad with a grim smile. Ninety percent of the human race was dead, but here now, like a ghost out of the past, stood Emma, the professor’s wife.
Chapter 12
“If you’re going to turn up unexpectedly after an absence of ten years,” said Emma, as precise and poised as ever, “I expect a better introduction. No woman wants to be greeted with, ‘We met…once.’”
“What else do you want me to say?” Brad demanded, his voice rising. They were beginning to attract the attention of the rest of the people in the bunker. “I thought you were dead. You’re not. Congratulations.”
“Still prickly and impatient,” said Emma, staring beadily up at him from behind her thick-rimmed glasses. “You must be about thirty now?”
“Something like that,” said Brad. He had been painfully young when he first came to Nantucket, having accepted a professor’s offer of lodgings for the summer. He hadn’t realized, at the time, how young he was. “How are you still the same age?”
Emma laughed modestly, and whatever tension had existed between them seemed to evaporate.
“Walter used to say it was dangerous having you around the house because you were such a charmer. He didn’t know how right he was about that.”
“Where is Walter?” Brad asked.
“The same place as basically everyone else.” Emma shrugged in resignation, gazing wistfully down at the matted concrete. “I was convinced that I was going to catch the virus and die alongside him, but I wasn’t so lucky. I confess I was slightly disappointed when I awoke one morning and realized I would have to go on living without him.”
“The world is a hellish place,” said Brad, “but something in us wants to keep living in it.”
They were interrupted by a low moan from the coat where Anna still lay, looking tipsy now.
“Listen, I don’t mean to break up the reunion but I have to stitch my friend’s leg up,” Brad said. “If you wouldn’t mind helping me—”
“I don’t mind,” said Emma, wincing as she stooped to retrieve the book from the floor. “I hope your friend doesn’t mind a bit of whimsy with her surgery.”
“She’ll probably be oblivious at this point.”
Turning to William, Brad added in a lower voice, “I need you to go and fetch me some supplies—a couple of fresh bandages, whatever painkillers you have on hand, and the surgical equipment that Marley mentioned. Can you do that?”
“I’ll be back in a jiffy,” said William, looking eager to please, and took off.
Over the course of the next half hour, Brad removed Anna’s old, makeshift bandage and examined her wound, relieved to find that it wasn’t infected. What was more, there were no bullet fragments lodged in her flesh and the nerves didn’t appear to be damaged.
As William took one hand and Marley took the other, Emma read the first few chapters of The Wizard of Oz, ending with Dorothy’s first encounter with the strange inhabitants of Munchkinland. Anna half-listened, though as Brad had predicted she seemed mostly insensible, occasionally letting out a sharp cry and gripping all the more tightly to the hands of the two people on either side of her.
“How much longer?” she asked desperately as he applied the new, more absorbent sterile bandage.
“Almost done.” Brad made another stitch, bracing himself for the inevitable flinching. It was considerably easier to get the job done with two other people assisting. “Do you guys have any antibiotics?”
“We do,” said Marley. She spoke with the hushed air of a mother trying to calm a sleeping baby. “As long as you’re here, you’re welcome to them.”
Brad hoped his appreciation was self-evident. “Obviously we can’t pay you in cash, but I’m willing to help out for as long as you need. Place like this, I’m sure there’s always work to be done.”
“I’m sure we can find a use for you.” Marley motioned to William. “Last couple nights his partner has been sick and he’s been having to go on patrols alone. I’m worried that one night he’s going to take a wrong turn or lose his footing on an icy precipice and we’ll never see him again.”
“I’m a grown man, I can take care of myself,” said William, though the expression on his face suggested that he appreciated her concern. “Wouldn’t mind having a companion, though. It does get lonely out there.” He looked to Brad. “You ever hunted?”
“Often.”
Brad remembered an illustrated retelling of The Odyssey he had read as a child in which the wily sailor and his crew washed up on an island that was covered in lotus. When they ate the flower, they lost all desire to return to their homes and wives.
It would have been easy to forget his quest and to settle here where he and Anna would be warm and safe and well-fed. Soon, though, he would have to find Lee and the children. He didn’t want to say so just yet because he didn’t want to seem ungrateful, but as soon as Anna had recovered enough to move on, they would be leaving again. He would never fully be able to enjoy the peace and serenity of this community while Sammy and Martha were still under his father’s dubious care.
“Fascinating story,” said Marley. “Does she ever make it back to Kansas?”
“Have you never read or seen The Wizard of Oz?” Emma asked in surprise.
Marley shook her head. “I was more of a Doctor Who girl.”
“So was I, but…it’s The Wizard of Oz.”
Having seen how supportive the rest of the group had been during the surgery, Brad was now feeling embarrassed for his initial display of aggression. While Emma returned the book to the library and Anna was led away to a room with a couple empty beds on the floor below, he took Marley aside and said, “I don’t usually have reason to say this, but you and your crew have been exceptionally good to us tonight.”
“Did you really think we were just going to let her die?” replied Marley, looking amused. She had large, eccentric blue eyes and her hair fell in curls around her face. “My grandmother taught me that when you see someone in need, you’re supposed to help them without asking where they’re from. Besides, it’s not like we see a lot of other survivors these days. We try to help when we can.”
“Well, you’re maybe the first person I’ve met in the past five months who seems to operate by any sort of moral code. Maybe the worst thing about the collapse was what it did to the living.”
Marley nodded knowingly. Brad had the weird feeling that she was storing away everything he said in some vast reservoir inside herself. She possessed the rare quality of being able to pay attention, and remember.
“When you were operating on Anna,” she said, “she mentioned wanting to know what had happened to Sammy and Martha. Who are Sammy and Martha?”
Brad had been earnestly hoping that he was the only one paying attention to Anna’s ravings. His voice sounded oddly weak and thin over the roar of the furnace behind them.
“They were children. They were taken from us.”
“Her children? Your children?” Sensing Brad’s hesitation, she laid a reassuring hand on his arm. “I don’t mean to press the issue, and I understand if you don’t want to talk about it. I do like to have context, though. It gives me a better picture.”
“It’s fine.” Brad didn’t know how to explain to her that he hadn’t planned to discuss this tonight. “The boy’s Anna’s son. Martha was just a girl we came across—I say ‘just,’ but she became like a daughter to us.”
Marley’s bright eyes probed him curiously and sympathetically. “You keep talking about them in the past tense. If you don’t mind my asking—”
“They’re not dead,” said Brad. “As far as we know.”
“But they’re lost?”
“In a sense.”
Brad didn’t want to explain about the kidnapping, even less that his father was the person responsible for it.
“The person who took them,” he said, “we don’t think he could have killed them. Our hope is that they’re still out there somewhere.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Just a couple days ago.”
“Then you might still find them,” said Marley, not very reassuringly. “Sorry, I’m not the sort of person to offer false hope. But if it’s only been a few days and you’re confident they haven’t been—”
Brad shrugged away the notion. He appreciated that Marley hadn’t condescended with false comfort, though someone else might have been offended by her abrasiveness and honesty.
“I know the man who took them,” he said. “He’s deluded, thinks he’s doing what’s best for them even if it means taking them from the people who love them. That being said, he knows how to survive in the wilderness. I know they’re not dead. We’ll find them.”
By now much of the group was retiring to bed for the night, though a few of the men, armed with the same type of rifle that William had been carrying earlier, stood watch at the tunnel’s entrance. Motioning for him to follow, Marley left the bunker and walked at a brisk pace toward the end of the hall, where stood a wall-mounted ladder made of iron pipe.
With a surreal feeling, Brad followed her up the ladder into a room furnished with a Turkish carpet, a large bookshelf and a couple of leather armchairs that was lit by an old-fashioned goose-neck lamp. Places for tea were already set for them; Marley motioned for him to sit and offered him a pipe and tobacco, which he felt it would be ungracious to refuse.
After five months of perpetual darkness, even the sight of a plain room illuminated with electrical power struck Brad as bizarre; but the opulence of this room compared to the rest of the rooms in the reservoir heightened the dream-like feeling. He felt like an Arabian peasant who had been invited into a sultan’s palace, or a common sailor visiting Captain Nemo’s private quarters. He half-expected to see enormous deep-sea fish floating past the broad windows.
“Do you want some brandy?” asked Marley, reaching for a decanter on the nightstand. “Found it in a lighthouse off Boothbay Harbor.”
“Please.”
Greedily, Brad took a sip of the liquor, unnerved by the persistence of Marley’s generosity. Had she sensed that he was planning on leaving whenever Anna recovered, and was she making a bid to impress him into staying?
“Does the rest of your crew know you live in such luxury?” he asked.
Far from being offended, Marley laughed at the question. “They don’t find it nearly as impressive as you do, truly. I’m guessing it’s been a while since you’ve been inside a home.”
She was right about that, though Brad didn’t like to admit it. He had been inside houses, but none of them were lit like this; none of them exuded such an aura of warmth and comfort. The stench of death wasn’t pervasive here like it was in other places.
“I don’t guess I can judge you for taking your pleasures where you can get them,” he said.
“Most hours this room is open to the rest of the crew,” said Marley, sinking back into the chair and tranquilly lighting her pipe. “They come up here to borrow books or make tea—though we’ve had to place limits on how much tea a single person can drink during the week because supplies are running low. Tea’s going to be an increasingly scarce commodity in the world to come. After curfew the room is closed to visitors so I can get some rest.” She took another puff from her pipe, looking thoughtful. “Emma seemed to recognize you. Did you know her, before?”
Brad could sense that she had been waiting to spring this question when he was most comfortable.
“We knew each other,” he said tersely. “She was a friend of an old friend.” Eager to change the subject, he added, “How did you come to be out here? William wouldn’t tell me; he said it was a story I had better hear from you.”
“He probably wasn’t sure how much he should divulge to someone he had just met. I don’t mind telling you, though.”
Marley poured herself another half of a glass from the decanter. “I had actually worked here in the lab for about eight years before the disaster. When we realized the outbreak was on course to become a pandemic, most of my colleagues decided to go be with their families—I never saw them again. Marshall, my husband, was out of the country at the time. He phoned me and told me he didn’t want me to leave the lab. So I stayed.”
“William mentioned that you’re trying to restore the electrical grid.”
“We’re working on it.” Marley gripped her glass tightly, as if sensing the weight of the responsibility that had descended on her. “As you can see, we’ve made some initial advances. Our goal is to eventually replace the electronic circuits that were fried by the EMP with new ones. The reservoir has proven an ideal location for the task because it flows year-round, regardless of the conditions outside.”
Despite all that he had seen, a part of Brad wanted to argue that she was being delusion
al and overly ambitious. But he couldn’t deny that her work had born fruit.
“What are you hoping to achieve now?” he asked.
“Currently,” said Marley, “now that electricity and heating have been locally restored, we’re working on converting our vehicles to run without benefit of gasoline or electricity. You might have noticed that Will’s old Mercury is gasoline-powered. We have a limited supply of gasoline here, but it’s guaranteed to run out or expire eventually, so I’ve been experimenting with alternative fuels.”
Brad hesitated, not wanting to upset her with this next question. “You mentioned your husband—what was his name again?”
“Marshall,” said Marley, sensing the thrust of the question. “He was arguably the most brilliant man I’ve ever met, and his death was a tremendous loss, not just personally, for me, but professionally. It was a loss for everyone working here. He was headed to Japan for a conference in the early days of the pandemic. He contracted the virus on the flight out.”
“Had he gotten the implant?”
“No, we had both decided against it,” Marley said. “We were skeptical of the tech from the start, believing it to have been insufficiently tested before being foisted on the public. When we submitted a paper urging caution, we were threatened by lawyers representing the major pharmaceutical companies. Of course, that just affirmed our suspicions that they had no idea of the nanotech’s long-term effects—if they had been confident in their product, they wouldn’t have tried to silence us.”
Marley swirled her glass in a melancholy fashion, as if reflecting on the irony that her husband had been killed by the virus he had been trying to warn the public about.
Brad took a final swig and set his glass down, overcome by the enormity of her achievements and ambitions. He had reacted skeptically when William lauded Marley’s brilliance, doubtful that she possessed the powers he claimed or that she would use them to good ends. But here, at least, they had heat and electricity, and she had treated her guests with unlooked-for generosity. It was a lot to process.
