A Single Light

by Tosca Lee

  “What if there was a bomb?” Nelise says.

  Chase hesitates. “We do have a Geiger counter and ten Tyvek suits.”

  “I’ll do it,” Micah says, fumbling with his glasses.

  His response surprises me, and I hand him the cue with a new splinter of grudging respect.

  “I’ll cover you,” Chase says.

  Twenty minutes later, they emerge from the tunnel looking like yellow astronauts, a device with an attached wand in Micah’s hands.

  Nelise moves into position at the stair door, ready to close it behind them and reopen it when they knock. I take Chase’s place at the end of the sofa.

  For a minute, there’s just the soft, hollow ring of their steps up the metal grate. They kill the lights. Nelise shuts the door.

  A few seconds later the groan of hinges echoes down the stairwell outside.

  Silence.

  As we wait, the old anxiety begins to gnaw at the base of my skull like a rodent flushed out of hibernation.

  What if it’s true? All the sermons Magnus preached on the destruction of the earth, the end to come?

  Stop.

  I squeeze my eyes shut but can already feel the breath tightening in my chest.

  Where’s Noah? Why isn’t he here?

  A loud, hasty knock. My eyes fly open as Nelise throws wide the door—and closes it as soon as the second yellow form is through.

  On reaching the atrium, Micah and Chase pull off their masks.

  “No radiation,” Micah says, out of breath, as Chase drops back against the wall to the side of the stairwell entrance, pistol ready.

  “Only thing we have to worry about is anyone who heard the noise,” Chase mutters. Nelise doesn’t even bother returning to her post under the pool table, but trains the shotgun, hip level, on the door right where she stands.

  “Maybe the wooden door in the barn muffled it,” I say.

  “No,” Micah says. I can practically hear him sweating.

  “Why? Was it open?”

  “It isn’t there.”

  I don’t understand. “You mean they took it off?”

  “No,” Chase says. “The whole barn. It’s gone.”

  2 A.M.

  * * *

  My arms and legs ache. My back and neck do, too. But my urgency for Julie’s sake hasn’t abated. If anything, it’s gotten worse every minute I’ve forced myself to stay still.

  Finally, Chase gestures to Nelise, who stays in position as Karam gets up and follows him to the tunnel.

  “Time for a new plan,” Chase says.

  A few minutes later we’re gathered around a table in the library, talking in hushed whispers.

  “I think Wynter’s right,” Preston says. “We go under cover of darkness.”

  “In the dark you can’t see booby traps, you can’t see holes in the ground,” Chase says. “Let alone guards who might have night vision.”

  “Who’s gonna have night vision?” Sha’Neal asks as though he’s lost it.

  “Hunters,” Delaney and Ezra respond in unison.

  “And crazy militia types,” Delaney says.

  “Jax has a nightscope on his rifle,” Irwin says. “It’s upstairs in the locker. Showed it to me the day he checked it in.”

  Chase glances around. “Who’s our best shot here? We got any more hunters?”

  “It’s been a decade or more for me,” Rudy says, slowly shaking his head.

  Karam, who has taken over my position at the end of the tunnel, relays the question to Nelise. A few seconds later, he turns back and shakes his head.

  “It’s gonna be you,” Irwin says to Chase.

  Chase nods. “I need a couple volunteers.”

  “I’ll go,” Karam says softly from the tunnel.

  Preston lifts a hand.

  “Me, too,” Ezra says.

  Chase stands. “Let’s gear up.”

  But I don’t think I can take another hour of sitting helplessly by while Julie’s own flesh poisons her blood.

  “One of them should be me,” I hear myself say.

  “We’re good,” Chase says over his shoulder.

  “Chase!” I say, as loud as I dare.

  “No disrespect for women’s lib and all that,” Ezra says, “but there’s a big difference between a man and a woman’s ability to defend themself.”

  “Can you defend yourself against a cough?” I say. Chase looks me in the eye at last. Gives a barely perceptible shake of his head, as though to say, Don’t.

  “You get into it with someone infected, they don’t need to kill you—just spit in your eye. I’m the only one here with antibodies to the disease.”

  Rudy does an honest-to-God double take. “Excuse me?”

  Chase drops his head with a soft curse.

  “How’s that possible?” Delaney says, looking around.

  “I got an early dose from the man I delivered the samples to. Which means I can defend myself better than any of you.”

  I don’t mention that I dosed Truly after retrieving her from the New Earth compound—a gift from the father she’s never laid eyes on. Or that Ashley warned me I may have only slightly more protection from the disease than anyone else.

  Midway down the last flight of stairs to my quarters, Chase comes barreling after me. Grabs me by the arm.

  “Look,” he says. “If you’re trying to put yourself in danger to somehow spite me—”

  I spin back and hiss: “Spite you? This isn’t about you! Which means when I get out there I expect you to have my back!”

  He straightens, squinting. “You think I wouldn’t?”

  I brush past him without answering.

  Downstairs, I quickly change, tie back my hair. It’s grown over the last six months, past my shoulders again.

  Down four more flights of stairs, I push through the infirmary door, stride to Julie’s bay, and pull aside the curtain. Find Rima hooking up Julie’s IV to a fresh bag of fluids, Lauren asleep in the neighboring bed with Truly.

  “Door’s open,” I say, out of breath.

  Rima looks from me to the entrance I just came through in confusion.

  “What does she need?” I ask. “The medicine we don’t have. What does Julie need?”

  “What do you mean, ‘open’?” Rima says.

  “The silo door malfunctioned—or something. It opened early.”

  Rima’s expression goes from shocked relief and the first smile I’ve seen from her in weeks—to fear. “Did you see Noah? Did you find out what—”

  “No. We’re going up to look. What does she need?” I nod at Julie.

  “IV antibiotics,” Rima says. “Piperacillin-tazobactam or vancomycin . . . Possibly aztreonam and daptomycin.” She pulls a pad and pen from her pocket and writes swiftly. “In these two combinations if you can. It’ll be a powder.”

  “How much do we need?”

  “As much as you can get.” She tears off the sheet and hands it to me.

  “Keep an eye on the girls?” I ask.

  “Of course,” she says.

  And then I’m flying up the stairs.

  3 A.M.

  * * *

  By the time I return, the air in the atrium has noticeably changed. It’s more humid. Downright balmy. Especially near the stairwell.

  Karam and I don surgical masks and gloves hastily colored with a black marker by Delaney, who fastens a holster—another find from Jax’s trove of gear—around my thigh. The latex feels alien on my fingers as I tug down the navy blue stocking cap given to me by Sabine and slip a penlight into my pocket. Snap the magazine in my pistol as Karam press checks his.

  Chase and Ezra wait near the stairwell with some kind of tripod structure as Irwin wraps black tape over the illuminated displays of two walkie-talkies.

  “I set the VOX to its most sensitive level,” Irwin says. “But you may still need to press the button to speak,” he says, showing us the round button on front. “Push to talk—the entire time you’re talking. Remember: when you�
��re talking, no one else can.”

  He hangs the clip from the waist of my jeans and fits me with a headset, twisting the bud into my right ear.

  “Testing,” Chase says, and Karam gives him a thumbs-up. He repeats the word more quietly, again and again until Karam shakes his head. “That’s the level,” he says and turns toward me. “Your voice is softer. Use the button every time. Stop at the bottom of the last flight until I tell you to go.”

  He hefts Jax’s rifle off the pool table as Ezra grabs the tripod.

  And then Chase leads us up the stairs.

  I reach for Ezra’s shoulder ahead of me as the light from below disappears, pistol in my other hand. Karam, at my side, clasps me by the elbow. The last thing I see is the sheen of sweat on his forehead.

  On the final landing, I sense more than see Chase raise the rifle in the dark. Hear his and Ezra’s methodical steps up the metal stairs. Ezra spraying the hinges. The soft groan of the heavy vault door and then . . .

  Crickets and cicadas in full symphony. A sound so beautiful I want to weep.

  I can just make out Chase crouched against the dark sky, pivoting in as wide an arc as the cement frame will allow. Tapping Ezra, who raises his gun.

  The next instant, they’re out, dissolving into the darkness.

  I can smell the night. Practically taste the humidity. A firefly glows into a single pinpoint of light, disappears, and seems to reappear in two places at once.

  There’s another scent, too, though I can’t quite put my finger on it.

  Soft static in my ear. “Antenna is up,” Ezra says.

  “I hear you loud and clear.” Irwin.

  And then silence.

  Karam and I wait on the stair.

  I count to 60, to 120.

  360.

  I wonder where the moon is, the stars. Search for Ursa Major, trying to orient myself.

  Hiss of static. “Farmhouse is dark,” Chase says quietly.

  That short sentence ratchets my pulse against my eardrum.

  I tell myself of course it’s dark. It’s the middle of the night.

  Chase’s voice comes through again: “Shed’s intact.”

  A minute later: “No one at the gate. No sign of patrol.”

  His last sentence unnerves me the most. There were four men in two trucks patrolling the section last December, and others stationed around the perimeter fence.

  Where is everybody?

  “We’re coming back.”

  A few seconds later Chase and Ezra reappear just beyond the door.

  “Ezra,” Chase says without lifting his head from the stock of the rifle.

  “In place,” Ezra says.

  “Karam.”

  He moves ahead of me, crouching four steps from the top.

  “Yup.”

  “Wynter?”

  I touch the button on the walkie-talkie. “Ready.”

  I chamber a round. Take the stairs on the balls of my feet.

  Step out onto an uneven surface, the humidity instantly clinging to my clothes, my skin.

  The smell hits me then.

  Ash. Like a dank hearth.

  Twenty feet to my right, a pile of rubble hulks in the darkness.

  What happened here?

  I crouch beside Chase on wooden debris.

  Thumb off the safety.

  The Quonset building sits between the barn—or what’s left of it—and the farmhouse, and even from here I can see that the sliding metal door is open, the interior dark.

  We keep to the grass along the gravel drive. Forty yards out, Chase crouches, scope trained on the building. Gesturing for me to wait, he moves to the side of the entrance.

  A beat, and he steps inside.

  My heart trips in my chest as I wait.

  “Anything?” Karam asks.

  “Place has been cleared out,” Chase says.

  He emerges from the darkness.

  “Fog coming in,” he murmurs. “Another twenty minutes and I’m not going to have clear sight of the road.”

  Hiss of static. “Wait till dawn?” Ezra inquires.

  I touch the button. “No. We go now.”

  “We’re going,” Chase says. And then turns to me and whispers, “Stay with me.”

  I lay a hand on his shoulder. A second later, we’re moving toward a giant locust tree in the direction of the farmhouse. It’s the closest I’ve been to him in months, even in training, and the sense of him, so familiar, triggers sadness in me.

  Followed by anger, my new old friend.

  A furious flapping in the grass somewhere to my right sends me skittering back. I raise the pistol as Chase snaps around. The sound stops. Comes again.

  “Just heard something,” Ezra says.

  “Injured bird,” Chase says.

  “You see it?”

  “Looking at it right now.”

  We reach the north side of the house, turn our backs against the brick. He gestures toward the east side and I nod in agreement, not wanting to hazard the wooden porch.

  We duck beneath a set of windows to the corner. Chase rounds it, rifle raised. Sweeps the scope back across the yard where a set of solar path lights ought to be glowing. And then I’m following him, low, toward the back door where we stop just short of its frame.

  It’s ajar.

  Chase slings the rifle over his shoulder and draws his pistol. Reaching across, he pushes the door open and pivots into the entrance. A beat, and he moves into the house.

  I wait, heart slamming in my ears. Anticipating raised voices, a shot. Gunfire.

  Because I’m certain by now anyone we run into here won’t be Noah.

  “House is clear,” Chase says.

  I step inside the mudroom past an open closet. An old washer and dryer. There’s garbage strewn on the floor.

  Chase comes back, closes the door behind me as I thumb the safety on the pistol and holster it.

  “Won’t lock,” he murmurs.

  I move to the windows, draw every shade I find as Chase goes to check the front door. A moment later, he’s got his cell phone out, the screen turned down to a dull glow. He holds it up.

  “Anything?” I murmur.

  “Nothing. Could just mean the tower’s not working.”

  I take out the penlight, move through the living room into the bedroom, beam trained on the floor. Close the curtains.

  Scan the room.

  The bed is rumpled. No, it’s filthy—covered in garbage. Open cans, plastic bags. A syringe or two.

  I move into the bathroom, which has no window. Try the light switch.

  Nothing.

  I check the medicine cabinets, the cupboards. Find a pair of nail clippers and some empty pill bottles.

  It’s been cleaned out of anything useful.

  Back in the bedroom I search the open drawers of the dresser. Find a dead mouse.

  Static in my ear. “Found the office,” Chase says. “Downstairs.”

  I retrace my way through the living room to the kitchen, take the stairs just past the pantry down to the basement. Find Chase shining his flashlight inside the open door of a room set back in a bay so that when the metal door is shut, it’s flush with the concrete wall.

  “Looks like a converted storm shelter,” he says when I peer inside. A bank of security monitors occupies the south wall over a panel of master switches, gauges, and indicators. All of them dark except one, shining like a red eye in the darkness. I recognize the clock on the opposite wall from Noah’s video comms.

  Chase steps over a mass of tangled cords spilled—or yanked—from the open cabinet beneath the control panel like the intestines of an eviscerated creature, shards of what sounds like glass crunching beneath his feet. He sweeps his flashlight over the single live indicator. Unlike the other items on the panel, it isn’t marked; the label’s been torn away.

  “The light’s on,” he says. “There’s just no one to see it.”

  Outside the office, I shine the beam of my flashlight down the le
ngth of the subterranean chamber and stare. To call it a basement is an understatement. It stretches so far I can’t see the other end. But that isn’t what has my attention.

  The space is filled with row after row of metal storage shelves. All littered with boxes, rubber totes, and their lids.

  I stride to the closest unit, grab a tote, and slide it toward me. It’s empty. I sweep down the row past empty plastic bags, turn over a box filled with packing peanuts. Scan the shelf below it.

  “What are we searching for?” Chase says, moving to the next unit.

  “IV antibiotics.”

  I fumble through a container of eyeglasses. Shine my light on the bin beside it, turn it around.

  INSECT REPELLANT

  “They’re labeled,” I say.

  “Kids’ shoes . . . Baby clothes . . .” A minute later, Chase says, “Here! Medical supplies.”

  I hurry over, seize the nearest bin. GAUZE. It’s empty. I move on and find sutures, surgical glue, bandages—their labels, at least, if not the items themselves.

  We finally locate the medicines. Pull each tote off the shelf to peer inside.

  ASPIRIN. COUGH SYRUP. PENICILLIN.

  Empty.

  Every single one.

  Not that it would matter, because there isn’t one for IV antibiotics.

  Static, and then: “Guys, there’s something out here.”

  Karam. I’d forgotten about him and Ezra, guarding the entrance to the silo.

  “Something or someone?” Chase says.

  “Not sure. I just heard something running toward the trees.”

  I fumble around in a last, desperate bid, tearing bins from the shelves before kicking them out of my way.

  “Wynter.”

  I turn to find Chase’s flashlight trained on a break in the wall. No, a passage. “I bet that leads to the bunker in the shed.”

  It was a charmed place to me once, the veritable underground hotel of buried shipping container rooms outfitted in kitschy furniture and antiques. Magical not only for its gravity-assisted showers on the ground floor but for the single night we spent together there.

  I push the memory away and start off, but he catches me by the arm, his eyes on that dark opening. And I realize that anyone in the house when Chase first came in could have escaped down here.