“We didn’t want to distract you,” Nigel said. “There’s plenty, though, so you might as well get something to eat if you’re finished. We’re not leaving until tomorrow.”
“Because of Al?” Pete asked.
“Susanna thinks he’ll pull through,” Kay said. “He just needs a little time.”
Pete stood there in the middle of the room, blinking. He seemed to be considering something. Then he took off his mask, crossed to the kitchen, opened a cupboard, and pulled out a can of pasta with sauce. Kay got the impression he knew just where to look.
“You know,” Nigel said, “we should probably eat the perishable foods first.”
Pete studied the ham with suspicion. “Pass.”
“Just a suggestion. Where did you find the mask, by the way?”
“One of the boxes,” Pete answered, working a can opener. “The tricky part will be the rest of the face. You can put on a mask and goggles, but what about your cheeks, forehead, chin? You get a dusting of radiation on your face - say, from a gust of wind picking up while you’re outside - and you’ll be sorry. Well, depending on how long you live.”
“Sounds like a difficult problem.”
Pete shrugged, feigning modesty. “Well, when you’ve tinkered with as many problems as I have, you get used to dealing with…”
Kay tuned him out as she drifted to the couch. She was tired and had no energy to feign interest in Pete’s work. He was like a puppy at the pound, constantly in need of attention and praise.
She slipped off her shoes, crawled onto the couch, and covered herself with a folded blanket that appeared to be modestly clean. She could hear every word of Nigel’s conversation with Pete, but almost immediately her mind wandered back to the earlier events of the day: the shattered windows at the office, the robotic voice on the TV, the mushroom cloud, the sound of Dale’s screams. Then, sinking deeper, she was at home again, tossing angrily from side to side in her bed as she went over the argument line by line, justifying her own words and vilifying her husband’s. He was irresponsible, short-sighted—childish, even. He was always forcing her to be the grownup. It wasn’t fair the way he whisked Luna off to whatever destination she wished to visit, and then refused to help her understand the importance of going to school or making friends or learning practical skills so that she could get ahead in life.
Then she heard a voice come echoing back to her through the halls of memory, the sound distorted as if underwater. She was at the living room table with her husband and daughter. It was seven o’clock last night, there was still dirt under her fingernails from weeding the flower bed, and Luna had been talking non-stop about the fishing trip she had gone on with Daddy near Kittering City: the shiny green fish they had caught and the turtle she had touched and the moose that had watched them through the reeds as they glided by.
When Luna finally paused to take a bite of baked ziti, Kay heard herself say, “So, did you two get a chance to talk about school?” This subject had been a non-starter in the house for weeks. Kay thought it was time for Luna to start her education and make some new friends, which was why she would be driving Luna to her first day of school in the morning. John, however, sided with Luna, who was frightened by the idea of school and didn’t understand why she couldn’t keep going on adventures with Daddy, whose flexible job often allowed him to take Luna with him.
Kay wanted John to show some leadership. John wanted Kay to show some compassion. And so they were at an impasse.
“Not really,” John answered. “We were pretty busy.”
The silence swelled, pregnant with unexpressed feelings. The only sound was the whine of Luna’s fork as she bullied her asparagus to the edge of the plate.
“Stop pushing your vegetables around, Luna,” Kay said. “You’re not leaving the table until you finish what’s on your plate.”
John, seizing the opportunity to avoid the elephant in the room, scooted his chair closer to Luna and leaned toward her with a smile. “What, are you eating trees?” he asked.
Luna giggled. “No, Daddy, it’s asp-ag-a-rus!”
John frowned uncertainly. “I don’t know. They kind of look like trees to me. Are you sure you’re not a big tree-eating monster? Here, let me saw those trees in half for you.” He leaned over her plate and began cutting the asparagus with a knife. Kay gave him a look, but he failed to notice.
“There,” John said, “fit for a queen! Here you are, Queen Giant! We’ve brought some trees for you to eat!” He speared a few pieces of asparagus with his fork and raised them to Luna’s mouth. Luna giggled and took a bite, swinging her feet beneath the table. One of her sandals struck a table leg and nearly spilled Kay’s glass of wine.
“That’s enough, Luna!” Kay snapped. “John, she doesn’t need to be pampered. She’s not a baby any more.”
John pushed his chair back in front of his plate. His cheeks were turning red, a sure sign they would not be sleeping in the same bed tonight. “She’s six, Kay. Six. Do we have to do this in front of her?”
Luna stopped swinging her feet and looked from one parent to the other, all interest in the “trees” lost. She was like a sponge, always watching adults interact with the same slack-jawed expression she wore when the TV was on. She did not miss a single word or expression.
“We’ve talked about this, John. When you take Luna on one of your field trips to Yellowstone or wherever, you two can paint each other’s nails if you want. But when we’re at home, we need to follow the rules.”
“Right. Because this is your house.” John rose, crumpling his napkin into a ball and dropping it beside his plate.
Kay took a swallow of wine. “Where are you going?”
John plucked his truck keys off the key rack. “I don’t want to fight again, Kay. I’m tired of it. It’s all we do now, and you know what? It never changes a thing.”
“So you’re just going to leave? That’s how you address the problem?”
“Daddy?” Luna asked forlornly.
“Go to your room, honey,” Kay said to her. “Your dad and I need to talk.” She rose and crossed the linoleum, following John to the door.
John looked back at Luna. “Go on,” he said to her. “Listen to your mother.”
“But it’s not bedtime!” Luna protested. “What about the tent?”
“Go!” he said, lifting his eyebrows. It was the closest he ever came to raising his voice to Luna. Kay could see she had really stoked his anger this time. It was no worse, however, than the anger she felt inside herself.
John stooped and picked up his black backpack, which he had brought in earlier when he and Luna returned from a weekend trip. His things were still packed, making it easy for him to just run off at the first sign of trouble.
“Off to the mountains again?” she asked as Luna stomped to her room and slammed the door behind her. “Where you can just pretend everything’s great?” She knew her caustic tone would drive him away, even if the words did not. The emotions were too powerful, however, for her to set them aside.
He turned on her. “Don’t you get it? I’m just looking out for my daughter. I love her! Can’t you see that?”
“So what, you think I don’t love her? You think you’re the only one who cares what’s best for her?”
John shook his head. “Sometimes, Kay…”
She knew she shouldn’t antagonize him further, but she wanted to, wanted him to rail and rage against her, wanted to provoke him into being his worst self so his behavior would overshadow how petty and cruel she was being.
“What?” she asked. “Sometimes what?”
“Sometimes you’re such a bitch,” he said and threw the door open, letting the knob gouge a hole in the plaster. He stormed down the hill to his truck. Kay watched him go, wanting to find some terrible insult to hurl after him, something that would sting him for the next few days. By the time she had thought of anything, however, the headlights were on and he was rolling down the hill, driving off into the night.
“I hope he’s gone a week,” she muttered, slamming the front door and pouring herself another glass of wine. If he didn’t want Luna to go to school, he’d have to come back in the morning and stop her. He couldn’t have it both ways, couldn’t run off and hide and decide what went on at home. Either he was here or he wasn’t.
Her hand shook as she drank. She stared at the family photograph on the mantel, wanting to pick it up and shatter it on the floor. That would show him, wouldn’t it? Maybe if she started breaking things, he would take her seriously.
She wrapped her arms around her knees and sank to the floor. She was still shaking, but now it was in her arm, moving up all the way to her shoulder, and there was a voice murmuring her name—
She opened her eyes and sat up quickly. Nigel was standing beside her, his face long and worried.
“It’s Al,” Nigel said. “He’s dead.”
7
Al was on his side, facing the wall. His jeans looked rumpled and baggy, as if the sickness had shrunken him in the course of a single night.
Pete was sitting in a chair beside the bed. “It just happened,” he murmured helplessly. His face was fixed on a stain in the carpet. “It just happened, nothing I could do. It just happened.”
Kay stared at Al’s lifeless body, struck by the frailty of human life. Yesterday Al had risked exposure to the radiation and saved Kay and Nigel. Now he was dead. He had, in a very real sense, given his life for theirs.
Nigel suddenly rushed from the room, and a moment later they heard him vomiting in the bathroom. Kay checked her own readings, wondering how soon the effects of the radiation might kick in, but she felt fine—as fine as a person could feel sharing air with a corpse, anyway.
“This sucks,” Pete said.
“He didn’t wake up, didn’t say anything?” Susanna asked. Kay studied Susanna’s sleepy eyes. All at once she realized that Pete must have relieved Susanna, watching Al so that Susanna could get some sleep.
Pete shook his head. “Nothing. One minute he was breathing, the next…”
“So you’ve been watching him all night?” Kay asked.
“Pretty much.”
“You must be tired.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t really need sleep, not like other people do. Just a few hours every couple of days.”
Kay nodded understandingly, though she was not sure anyone could function well on so little sleep. Susanna covered Al’s face with a blanket, and once Nigel had returned from the bathroom, they all went to the kitchen and set about making breakfast. Nigel had no appetite for more than a few crackers, but he was happy to make the food. It probably gave him something to think about besides the corpse in the next room.
As they ate, they discussed their plans. Nigel wanted to give Al a proper burial, but when Pete reminded him what would be involved in burying someone on the surface, including the danger for those doing the work, Nigel reluctantly agreed that they had little choice but to leave Al where he was.
The next question was where to go. None of them entertained the idea of staying in that basement, not with Al’s corpse nearby, and so, since they already knew Kay and Nigel were determined to reach the school, the only question was whether Susanna and Pete would join them.
“You’ll probably need my help,” Pete said. “Even if you get to the school, you’re gonna have to figure out a way to decontaminate your suits before you climb out of them. Otherwise you’ll just contaminate the area you enter.”
“Susanna?” Kay prompted. “Do you have family nearby, anyone you need to find?”
Susanna looked down at her plate. “No one nearby,” she answered. “The school might be a good place to stay until—well, until help arrives.”
Nobody spoke. Kay, for her part, tried to imagine what that help would look like, but she could not. Would a convoy of military trucks roll up, shadowed by helicopters as people in HAZMAT suits spilled out? The country had never suffered a nuclear attack before. Would anyone even risk coming this close to the site of the blast to save them?
“There’s something you guys should know,” Nigel said. “Once I have my daughter, I intend to drive as far from this place as I can get. I’m not waiting for rescue. I hope you can join me, but if not…”
Pete sat up straighter. “Bad idea. The rest of the country could be like this.”
“Or it could be perfectly fine,” Nigel argued. “Maybe Kittering was the only place targeted.”
Pete snorted. “Right. Some Communist dictator decides to nuke America, and he picks a little city in the middle of nowhere. Transit hub, my ass.”
“We don’t have to make the decision now,” Susanna interrupted. “The important thing is to get to the school. Not just to find your daughters,” she continued, glancing at Kay and Nigel, “but also to find other survivors. We’ll need other people if we’re going to ride this out until help arrives.”
There it was again, that innocuous phrase: “until help arrives.” What would it sound like, the drone of helicopter blades thumping through the sky, the rumble of a convoy of trucks on the road? What would it look like, flashing lights and HAZMAT suits, gurneys and caution tape?
They should have been here by now, she thought. There should have been some kind of emergency response.
Maybe there had been, and Kay had been too far underground to hear anything. Maybe they would reach the surface only to discover the recovery process had already started. Kay, however, was not crossing her fingers.
They finished their meal, filled an old backpack with canned goods and bottled water, and filed into the next room. Four suits, primarily composed of rubber coveralls, lay on cardboard boxes like desiccated corpses. A pair of rubber gloves and a respirator sat beside each one.
“Why are there only four?” Kay asked.
“Because there are four of us,” Pete answered slowly, watching her.
“But didn’t you think Al would be joining us?”
Pete blinked at her. “I was getting ready to make the last one when you guys stopped to eat. Then I gave Susanna a break, and—well, you know the rest.”
Nigel touched Kay’s arm. “Come on, we’d better get into the suits. Mind showing us how, Pete?”
Once the suits were on, Pete applied duct tape where the sleeves met the gloves and the pants met their shoes, as well as around the face to keep the goggles snug with the rest of the respirators. The suit felt airtight to Kay, but she was already heating up and she doubted how much wear the suits could withstand. If she caught the suit on a single nail, it might all be for nothing.
“Now me,” Pete said, holding the roll of duct tape out to Kay. She took it and stepped toward him.
“Nervous?” Pete asked as she started taping around his gloves.
Her eyes darted to his. “Why would I be nervous?”
“We’re about to walk right into a radiation zone. You’d be insane not to feel a little nervous.”
“Oh. Yeah, I have a few butterflies.” She squatted and began taping around his boots. She glanced up and thought she saw him smirking down at her, enjoying the situation. As soon as their eyes met, however, he looked away.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll be right there to get you through.”
“Then I guess everything will be alright.” She rose, now standing face-to-face with him, and tore off a strip of tape to lay between his goggles and respirator.
“Make sure it’s snug,” he said. “I wouldn’t be much use to you if I was puking my guts out, would I?”
“I think we could manage.”
“Might find your way to the school, sure. But getting inside without co
ntaminating everyone?” He grunted. “That would be ironic, getting to your daughter only to contaminate her. Almost like a zombie in one of the movies returning to infect its family.”
Kay stepped back, and for a moment the four only looked at one another, studying their strange suits. Kay would have found it comical if not for what these suits symbolized: a changed world, a surface now hostile to humanity. This part of the world, anyway.
Luna will think I’m an astronaut, Kay thought, and for the first time since the nuclear explosion she allowed herself to believe she really would be with her daughter again, allowed the optimism to sink into her bones and restore her confidence. It was almost over. They would still have to wait for help to arrive, sure, but she could wait for weeks if necessary so long as Luna was with her. And maybe she would have a signal by then and could call John. She could tell him to stay where he was, if it was safe, and they would join him as soon as possible.
Black Rain Page 5
