“Not everyone is going to join this idea, move into a city,” Matt said.
“Of course,” Dan said, nodding. “We expect there to be smaller groups living all over the country, but the five cities picked will be the hubs of this country in a very short time, since they are where all the manufacturing and food production will be happening. Mankind can only scavenge from the bones of what is left for so long.”
“I agree,” Carey said.
Beside her Matt was nodding as well.
“So, now tell me,” Dan said, staring at Carey and smiling, “if you don’t mind, how you knew what happened three years ago today.”
Carey laughed. “I don’t mind at all.”
For the second time that day she told her story of working for Dr. Canfield, who Dan, Steve, and Betty had all heard of. She told about the experiment, about how she survived, and about how a few days later she went back to the lab to find out what had happened, before heading to the coast to get away from all the death. She did not tell them where the lab was, however.
“Well,” Dan said after she was finished, “What about you, Matt?”
Matt quickly told them what he had done before, and his background, being far too modest as far as Carey was concerned, but she didn’t say anything. He also left out where he had been living.
“I sure hope the two of you will join our cause,” Dan said. “We can use both of your skills, that’s for sure. It’s all volunteer, there is no pay besides food, since at the moment there is no money system in place. The work is hard and thankless at times, as I’m sure everyone here will tell you.”
Across from Carey, Steve nodded.
“That’s an understatement,” Betty said.
Dan went on. “But at least, in my opinion, the long-term cause is right, and worth the effort.”
“Thank you for the offer,” Carey said, standing and offering Dan her hand. “I just need a little time to think about things first. This morning I was convinced I was one of only a few people left alive on the planet. All of this is going to take a little time to digest, if you know what I mean.”
Dan nodded, his firm grip around her hand. “I do understand. This is a large planet and there are very few of us left in comparison to the numbers from three years ago. Many people will decide to go their own way, and that is fine. There is more than enough room for everyone, and certainly no housing shortage. Your choice is valid, no matter which one you make.”
“You sure know how to say all the right things to a woman,” Carey said, smiling at the man in front of her.
“I was married for twenty-three years,” he said, laughing. “I should have learned, don’t you think?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
THE SUN WAS a distance below the hills to the west, and only the top of Mt. Hood was still in the bright light as they rounded the corner of the Hilton Hotel and started back down the street. The shadows of the buildings were deep, and so far there was no sign of a moon. Matt hadn’t thought to bring a flashlight with them. They were going to have to be careful getting back. It was lucky they left when they did. Another fifteen minutes and they’d be walking the entire distance in the pitch darkness.
For the first two blocks down the hill, they walked side-by-side, not talking. Matt was going over what he had heard, how good it sounded, and yet how impossible it was to believe. From Carey’s reaction in the middle of Dan’s explanation, she was feeling huge relief that people were doing what they were doing. But she was also having doubts, he could tell.
If everything Dan had said was the truth, Matt felt the same relief that Carey had shown. But he wanted to wait, to make sure before offering to help turn Portland back into a city again. He had to admit this group looked good, and sounded good, but were they really what they claimed to be? A day or two would tell the difference on that. And he had a day or two to spare at this point.
“We need to be careful,” Carey said, as they crossed the street two blocks below the Hilton.
“We’ll go slow,” Matt said. “Our eyes will adjust to the dim light and we’ll make it before it gets too dark.”
“No, I mean we need to be careful to make sure no one is following us,” she said, glancing over her shoulder.
“So you’re feeling like I am?” Matt asked, a little surprised at her statement. “We need to find out if this group is really doing what they say they are going to do, and if they are who they say they are, before we even get near them again.”
“Exactly,” she said. “We need to be careful about everything at the moment. I liked them, but not enough to just trust them with my life.”
“I agree,” Matt said. “And it just so happens I have something set up that might come in handy tonight. And give them a little test in the process.”
He reached out and took her by the hand. He pulled her into the street, turning right at the corner, and leading them up the empty pavement. He loved the feel of her hand in his, and she certainly didn’t complain.
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
He pointed up at the hill in front of them. Even in the growing dark, it was possible to see the homes perched up there, expensive in the days when a view really mattered. “I set up a generator and a locked house on the hill up there.”
“Okay,” she said, her voice low enough to not carry. “Why? I’m not following you.”
“A decoy,” he said, also keeping his voice low. “Two blocks up this direction there is a large office complex that if we were heading up to the house on the hill on foot, we would naturally cut through. We’ll start into that building, double back through a place I know we can’t be followed, and then a few minutes later I’ll light up the house.”
“So if someone is following us, they’ll think we went up there.”
“Exactly,” Matt said. “And we can see the area around it from the top of my building. And I have cameras and alarms rigged there as well.”
She squeezed his hand and didn’t let go. “Have I told you, in the short time I have known you, that I like how you think.”
He laughed, leading them around a wreck. “You mean devious?”
“And careful,” she said.
“That I am,” he said.
He led her toward the office complex. A few minutes later they ducked inside the dark building and instead of going on through to the next street, they moved to the right down a narrow hallway that he had kept swept clear of dust to cut down on footprints.
Finally, going slowly in the pitch darkness of the hall, they got to a back door and went quietly out into the night. On a ledge there he picked up a remote control that would start the generator up in the house.
“Okay, now we be very quiet,” he whispered, moving through the back alley and down the hill toward the street, keeping her hand in his. He had scouted this out, making sure there was nothing that he could trip on in the dark, and since it was getting very dark right now, he was glad he had.
At the edge of the building he stopped, keeping the two of them against the wall, not willing to go out into the open again just yet.
“How long?” she whispered.
“It always took me about five minutes to climb the distance from this office complex to that house. I figure one more minute.”
She squeezed his hand showing she understood.
He waited what he thought was long enough, then flicked the switch. From above the edge of the alley a glow lit the night, casting faint shadows on the buildings across the street.
“Drapes are pulled and everything,” he whispered to her. “They won’t know we’re not in there.”
He let go of her hand and eased out a little, checking the street in both directions for any movement.
There was no one that he could see.
“Ready?” he asked in a whisper.
She nodded and reached out and again took his hand. “Ready.”
It took them a long thirty minutes to make it through the wrecks and back into his buildi
ng, but by the time they got there, he was sure no one had followed them.
He wasn’t sure anyone would have wanted to, but he felt a lot better being certain.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CAREY LET MATT lead her back into his dark apartment. She could just imagine that in the old days, the city would have lit up everything for as far as she could see from the penthouse, but now there was nothing but the outlines of buildings, deep shadows, and the faint pink of the last of the sunset on the top of Mt. Hood.
The coolness of the apartment felt wonderful against her face and arms after the muggy heat of the evening air outside. Just for the air-conditioning alone she was lucky Matt had found her. Not counting the fact that she doubted she would have worked up the courage to go talk to a bunch of bikers alone. More than likely, she would have seen them coming from a distance and just turned and headed back to the coast.
She had almost done just that. It might have been years before anyone found her, or before she might have tried to come back.
Matt was someone special. She had known that from the moment she had first seen him. And her attraction and respect for him had grown with every passing hour. He had treated her as an equal, while at the same time worrying about her, and giving her the use of his apartment for safety.
And as a team, they had gone to the group that came into town. She liked the feel of being beside him, working as a team. She hoped that would continue for much longer than one day.
She slid her rifle off her shoulder as Matt made sure the elevator was locked. “If you need to go down,” he said, “use the key I gave you.” He pointed to a spot over the top of the call button. “It fits in right here.”
“Thanks,” she said. “But I’m not going anywhere, except to the bathroom. I want to wash some of the sweat off my face and arms.”
“I don’t blame you,” he said. “I’ll take a turn after you. But we’re going to have to keep the lights off for the moment,” he said. “Can you find the bathroom down the hall in the dark? After the door is closed you can click on the light.”
“I can find it,” she said, gently touching his arm as he came up to her.
“I’m going to check to see if anyone followed us here, or up to the decoy house,” he said, taking her hand and holding it for a moment.
Then he let go and set off through the shadows of the apartment toward the faint light coming from the electronics room, leaving her alone in the semi-darkness.
She let the feeling of his touch linger for a moment longer, then managed to get down the hall to the bathroom. Less than five minutes later, she made her way back through the apartment to the security room without kicking any furniture, or banging her toe on any corner.
Buddy sat in the door of the security room, the faint light from the monitor framing him like an Egyptian god.
“You waiting for me, Buddy?” she asked, bending down and extending her hand in an offer to pet him. “Or guarding the room?”
Buddy leaned forward into her palm, letting her scratch his ears, telling her clearly that he had been waiting for her to come and do her duty in worshipping him.
“You really are a cat person, aren’t you?” Matt said, turning around in his chair to watch her and his cat.
“I am,” she said, “and I miss mine. I’m glad Buddy is giving me a little cat fix.”
Matt laughed, clearly in a good mood. What he had seen on the screen had encouraged him, that was for sure.
“No one followed us?” she asked.
“Not a sign of anyone,” he said. “I don’t think any of those people have moved out of that two-block area since they got into town. A deer set off one of my motion sensors off of I-5 an hour ago, but that’s about it. With this system, I could never tell there were so many people in town.”
She sat on the floor in the doorway so that she could keep petting Buddy. Then she stared up at the monitor and all the green lights on Matt’s security map and tried to make some sense out of all this.
“Okay, if I remember right, there’s a grocery store close to the Hilton,” she said.
“There is,” Matt said.
“So with that, and both hotel kitchens, and the nearby restaurants, there would be enough supplies left in those storage rooms to feed those people for a long time. Am I right?”
“You are,” Matt said. “And from the smell that was coming from that kitchen off the ballroom, the group probably brought in their own supplies as well, maybe from game they shot along the way.”
She nodded. That group didn’t need to go anywhere for food, at least for the night.
“They just ignored us after we left,” Matt said. “I don’t think I could have done that in their position.”
“Then it’s clear they weren’t real worried about the two of us,” Carey said. “Why?”
In the light from the monitor she could see Matt shake his head. “I honestly don’t know. I’m slowly starting to believe they are doing what they say they are doing. But even that makes no sense. They are in a new place, yet I didn’t see any guards as we approached, or left. Did you?”
“Not a one,” she said. “And no one had a gun. They didn’t feel it was a priority, even though we carried guns walking into the middle of them.”
“Which can only mean they are very secure that there are no dangerous groups of people in this area,” Matt said. “How would they know that? My security systems would have seen any advanced scouts they sent into the city, and there just hasn’t been any.”
Suddenly, it dawned on Carey how those new people would know she and Matt were no danger. After three years, she had already forgotten what century they were living in.
“Satellites,” she said, laughing. “I bet they know where every person in this entire area lives. If you had the kind of resources they claim they do, and were planning on moving twenty thousand people into an area, wouldn’t you scout everything out first?”
“Of course,” he said, shaking his head and laughing. “And most of the spy and weather satellites would be working just fine after three years.” He laughed. “It seems our thinking has gone backwards in three years.”
“That it has,” she said. “It felt odd today even thinking about electromagnetics again. Three years ago that was just about all I thought about.”
He reached over and picked up the radio-controlled remote. “No point in keeping the lights on in the decoy house. I have a garden on the roof here. They know exactly where I live, and more than likely, what vegetables we had for dinner.”
Carey laughed. “No wonder they weren’t surprised when we showed up. They probably got word we were on the way.”
“And they sure didn’t need to follow us home on the ground tonight,” Matt said.
“I’m starting to think these people are the real thing,” Carey said. “Their story sure sounds logical on the surface. And they are being very consistent with the story.”
“And three years is about the right amount of time that it would take for everything to fall apart, then groups to get back together and start working on something like this.”
“True,” she said, giving Buddy a good scratching under his chin. His purring was filling the room. “And as you said, Portland is a logical place to start over because of the resources here.”
“So what do we do now?” Matt asked, sitting in his chair watching her pet his cat.
She smiled at him, noticing how handsome he was even in the dim light. “How about that movie you promised me. And the popcorn. We can talk about the rest of this tomorrow.”
“Perfect idea,” he said. “But you’re going to have to help me pick out a movie.”
“Something classic and pure escapism,” she said, pushing herself to her feet slowly. The long day was starting to catch up with her. She could feel the exhaustion creeping into her mind. It was hard to fathom how much had happened today, yet she didn’t want the day to end just yet.
“All right,” he said. “Popcorn is in the pan
try. I’ll get the movie if you get the popcorn started.”
“Deal,” she said. Again he was treating her like a partner and she liked that. She liked that a lot, actually.
“I’ll reset the alarms here on the security system, just in case anything comes into the area,” he said. “But I have to warn you, my nighttime alarms are louder than the day ones.”
“Oh, joy,” she said.
He laughed as she moved back into the darkened living room area. A moment later he flipped on the lights.
“Wow, those are bright,” she said, shading her eyes as she smiled at him.
“They will dim for the movie,” he said, “I promise.” He went past her toward the elevator foyer.
“You’re not going outside to get a movie, are you?” Carey asked from the kitchen area as he reached the elevator and unlocked it.
“Nope, just down a floor,” he said. “I have two rooms downstairs full of movies.”
“On the same floor as your second garden?” she asked, smiling at him.
“Just across the hall,” he said, as he got onto the elevator and the door closed.
She went over to where her backpack leaned against the wall and kicked off her shoes. Then she took her socks off and stuck them into a pocket of the backpack. Her feet had been hot all day. She would apologize to Matt if they smelled, but she needed to get out of those shoes.
The tile floor of the kitchen area felt wonderful on her bare feet as she got two packets of microwave popcorn out of the pantry and started one.
Then she stood and looked around. With the lights on inside and the windows and city around them dark, she got a much better feel of the immense size of this place. Yet even with the size, it was still comfortable.
The apartment was clearly Matt’s, yet she felt at home here, as if she had lived here at one point. She had never been in another person’s apartment where she felt this good, this at home. Even Paine’s apartment in Eugene was always just Paine’s apartment, and when she stayed there with him she had always been the guest. And Paine had said he felt the same way about her place. When they got married they had planned on finding a new home and furnishing it together, to try to make it their place.
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