She had so much to say to him, so much to take back...if only she was given the chance to make it right.
Pete hefted the backpack, insisting he be the one to carry it, and the four of them filed up the stairs. Pete paused at the top with his hand on the knob, looking down at them.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Yes,” Nigel answered. “God help us.”
_____
The streets were deserted. As they left the garage in Susanna’s SUV, Kay was struck by how normal everything looked and felt, except for the silence. It was like driving through an elaborate Hollywood stage, a ghost town fixed in time.
“It’s so surreal,” Nigel murmured, pressing his face close to the glass.
“Crazy, huh?” Pete agreed from the front seat. “Just think, we could be the last four people alive in town. Isn’t that something?”
Kay thought it was more likely people were hiding in their homes, waiting for rescue. She did not think the radiation could have decimated the town in only a day, but she kept her thoughts to herself, not wishing to contradict Pete.
He’s telling himself a story, she thought. And no one likes to be told they’re telling the story wrong.
Susanna drove at a cautious twenty-five miles per hour, leaning forward as she gripped the steering wheel hard with both hands. Occasionally her head turned toward the mirror, but there was nothing to see, not a single vehicle moving on the road except for theirs. The bomb may not have destroyed the town, but it had effectively shut it down.
While Kay was imagining what she would say to Luna when she saw her, a single raindrop struck the windshield and ran slowly up the glass. It was as dark as oil.
Nigel leaned forward, straining against his seat belt. “Is that raindrop...black?”
“The windshield’s just dirty,” Susanna answered, flicking on the wipers. As the wipers cleaned the glass, however, fresh raindrops fell and darkened it again, each leaving a trail of black residue.
Pete followed one of the drops with his finger. “Radiation,” he murmured, almost lovingly. “The clouds must be full of it.”
The rain thickened and soon became a downpour that drowned out the hum of the motor. They rode in silence, interrupted only by Kay’s terse instructions as she directed Susanna using the map in her lap.
“I know a shortcut,” Pete suddenly announced. “Turn left up here, Su.”
Susanna glanced at Kay in the rearview mirror. “Kay?”
“A shortcut?” Kay repeated.
“I know what I’m talking about, damn it,” Pete said angrily. “Turn left.”
Susanna pressed the brake and began to turn. The wheels shivered on the slick road, but they managed to keep their balance. They were now on a smaller residential lane straddled by picket fences and neat squares of green lawn.
Pete pointed to a house on the left, a squat structure with vinyl siding in desperate need of repair. The house was an eyesore compared to the rest of the community. “Pull in there,” he instructed.
“I thought you said this was a shortcut,” Susanna said. She slowly rolled to a stop in the street and stared at the house through the thickening rain.
“It is. But first we have to make a stop.”
Nigel began, “I really don’t think this is the time—”
“Who made those suits for you, huh? Who’s the reason you’re still alive right now? You can just pull into that port right there. I won’t even get touched by the rain.”
Kay felt the tension in the silence. She felt certain this was a bad idea, but she did not wish to provoke Pete. Besides, she was not the one in the driver’s seat.
“You’ll be quick?” Susanna asked, defeated.
“You bet.”
They pulled beneath the carport and the rain fell to a distant roar all around them. It sounded to Kay as if they were standing in a cave behind a waterfall, but she knew her sense of safety was misplaced. The longer they stayed above ground, the more they strained the limits of Pete’s homemade gear. It occurred to her, with a shiver, that they were entrusting themselves entirely to a man who seemed happy to let the world burn.
Pete stepped out of the car and picked up the backpack.
“Pete,” Susanna began, “you don’t need to bring—”
But he had already closed the door. They watched him trudge to the side door of the house and let himself in without a key. As he disappeared inside, Kay felt a knot inside her relax.
“We need to decide what to do about him,” she said.
The silence in the SUV was palpable. The rain beat steadily above and around them, the drumbeat of nature marching on.
“Think about it,” she continued. “As soon as he went into the office, Al mysteriously stopped breathing. Now you can think that’s a coincidence if you want to, but I don’t.”
Susanna’s seat squeaked as she twisted around. “What are you saying, Kay?”
Kay looked from Susanna to Nigel. “I’m saying we might be next, if we’re not careful.”
A few moments passed while they absorbed her words. Nigel stared down at the gloved hands in his lap. “So what are you suggesting? You want to get rid of him?”
“We drive off. Look, he’s already home. He won’t be any worse off than most people—sitting at home, waiting for help to come. I don’t want him anywhere near my daughter, Nigel, and I’m guessing you feel the same if you think about it.”
“He’s not violent,” Nigel protested. “I know he’s weird, but he hasn’t tried to harm anyone, and you can’t prove that Al’s death wasn’t natural. And don’t forget how he’s helped us. He made these suits. Without him we’d still be stuck in that basement.”
“You’re willing to bet your daughter’s life on that?”
“There are three of us, Kay. Besides, he’s hardly in good shape. I promise we can handle him if he tries to cause trouble.”
Just then, the door of the house swung open and Pete stepped out. He was holding something in his hand, but he turned around before Kay could get a good look at it. It wasn’t until he was at the front of the car that she realized he was carrying a revolver.
Pete opened the door and dropped the backpack on the floor. Then he slid into the seat, holding the revolver in his left hand as he closed the door.
“There,” he said, smiling in the gray light. “Now we’re ready for anything.”
8
The wipers whined against the glass, fighting off the rain that struck the car in shivering black waves. The sky was a thick smear of gray that choked out the light and cast a premature twilight over Sage Springs, reinforcing the idea that they were driving through a ghost town. Kay looked for lights - the red flare of a traffic light, the flashing colors of an emergency vehicle - but saw no color, no life, nothing but the black rain flooding the town with the ashes of civilization.
The car rolled along in silence. Susanna clung grimly to the wheel, bent forward with her eyes fixed on the road, while Kay and Nigel stared at the passing houses, watching the water flare up when they hit a puddle.
“It’s like a graveyard in here,” Pete said good-naturedly. “Someone tell a joke. Go ahead, Nigel. Start us off.”
“Sorry, I’m not in a laughing mood.”
Pete snorted, the sound muffled by his respirator. “Someone’s a sourpuss. Hey, ladies, either of you do any singing in college? I bet you’d make a real good soprano, Su. Su the Soprano. Already have your stage name.” He chuckled, his left arm drifting from his thigh to the edge of the console.
“No takers?” he continued. “Alright, then.” He punched the radio. Static blared from the speaker near Kay’s head, causing her to start. Pete noticed the movement in the mirror and grinned at her. “Jumpy, huh? Good thing I’m the one with the gun.”
The radio had little to offer but a successive series of squeals and crackles, occasionally punctuated by a distant voice that faded in and out. All at once the voice returned, clearer than before, a bright flare of sound that pulled Kay
to the edge of her seat, even though the closest speaker was behind her. It was an old man’s voice, weary but resolute, with a slight country twang.
“We’re all alone up here, but it’s safe—well, not counting the bears and wolves.” A dry laugh. “If help is coming, I’ve heard nothing about it on the airwaves. I’ve been monitoring the stations all day. I don’t mean to spread more panic than there is already, but we have to prepare ourselves for the worst possibility: that this is not an isolated attack, but a coordinated strike all across the country, a determined effort to destroy this great nation.”
“I knew it wasn’t just one missile,” Pete said.
“If you’re down in the valley,” the voice continued, “stay where you are and pray that help does come. But if you can’t wait, or if you’re already mobile, come up to the mountains. The radiation hasn’t reached us, and I don’t think it will. Westward is located—”
“Fool’s gold,” Pete muttered, punching off the radio.
“Turn it back on!” Kay shouted. “Turn it on!”
Pete’s eyebrows shot up in surprise at Kay’s outburst. Combined with the goggles, the expression made him look like a big fat baby whose sibling has just taught him what an ant bite feels like.
“My husband could be up there!” Kay cried.
Susanna’s hand reached for the knob. Before she could push it, however, Pete’s thick fingers wrapped around her wrist. “Why don’t you concentrate on the road, Su,” he said in a low, menacing voice.
Susanna hesitated only a few seconds before returning her hand to the wheel.
“Much better,” Pete said, relaxing. “Now, Kay, I know it’s hard, but you have to accept that your husband is probably - almost certainly - dead by now. Or else throwing up his guts, which amounts to the same thing. And Westward? Please. A crummy little mountain town that gets snowed in by October, surrounded by nothing but miles and miles of trees and rocks? I guarantee those people - if they’re not already keeling over with radiation sickness - will be carving each other into steaks within a month. Believe me. We’re the lucky ones, not them.”
Kay sank back in her seat and watched the rain fall dismally on the town, sowing poison in the ground. She could not stay here, not even if she knew her husband was dead.
“But is it possible?” she asked quietly. “Is there any way the radiation didn’t reach the mountains? Maybe the elevation—”
“No,” Pete answered with a firm shake of his head. “The radiation’s up there, too.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know these things!” he shouted, punching the side of Susanna’s chair. Susanna let out a little scream and the car swerved, crossing the yellow line.
“I think it’s time we address the elephant in the room,” Pete went on in a calmer voice. “We all need to accept the fact that we’re probably the only ones left alive, except maybe for a few survivors scattered here and there. But they won’t last long. They don’t know how to survive like we do.”
He paused, and when he spoke again there was a subtle undercurrent of boyish excitement in his voice. “I never believed in God before, but look at us. Two men, two women. If that isn’t Providence, I don’t know what is.” He reached across the console and tentatively brushed his fingers across Susanna’s arm. Susanna tensed but did not move.
“Of course,” he continued, dropping his hand, “we don’t have to make any decisions right away. We can let it happen...naturally. For the record, I’m also open to the idea of sharing. For one thing, it would increase the chances of pregnancy, which is important if we’re going to repopulate the Earth. You ladies might still be young, but the clock is ticking.”
He smiled and traced the path of a raindrop as it slipped down his window. “Tick-tock, tick-tock. Wouldn’t want to run out of time, not with the entire human race depending on us.”
_____
Kay could just discern the arched entrance of the school through the sheets of rain. Seen head-on, the school bulged outward in layers, each wider than the last. She tried to remember the layout of the school from when she had dropped Luna off yesterday morning. Everything, however, looked different in the gray light and the driving rain. The flag was gone, torn from the pole, the windows turned to black mouths with broken teeth, and an array of debris lay curled against the front wall, thrown there by a vicious gust of wind: diesel buckets, lawn ornaments, flower pots, articles of clothing, a political sign that someone had once planted in their yard.
Johnson Elementary, like the rest of Sage Springs, was now a shadow of its former self.
“Pull right up to the doors,” Pete said.
Susanna dutifully drove beneath the school’s porte-cochère and parked in front of the doors. The parking lot behind them was nearly empty, a sign of the panic that must have ensued after the blast. Despite the silence of the town, however, Kay did not believe Pete’s suggestion that they were some of the last people in the country, not least of all because it was so obvious why he wanted to believe it. Even if every major city in the country had been bombed, millions would still be alive in rural towns and mountain villages, waiting for someone to tell them it was time to come out of hiding. Pete’s theory was only a sick fantasy, a way to gift himself what his disappointing life had never provided.
They climbed from the car and assembled at the entrance. The hallway inside was dark, littered with papers that skittered and swirled in the breeze. The rain tinkled musically in the aluminum gutters.
Pete pulled a small flashlight from his pocket. He shined it tentatively into the dark hallway before seeming to think better of it.
“How about you lead the way, Nigel?” he asked pleasantly, holding the flashlight out to him.
Nigel eyed the flashlight skeptically. “Why don’t you want to go first?”
“Because something might creep up behind us, take us unawares. Someone ought to watch the rear, and it might as well be the person with the gun.”
Pete pressed the flashlight into Nigel’s chest, and after a moment he took it. He moved into the hallway, his rubber suit sparking visions in Kay’s mind of astronauts on distant planets. Maybe they would find an ancient artifact detailing the origin of life, or come across rows of pulsing eggs inside which a monstrous brood dreamed fantasies of their first kill.
Into the dark they went. Kay and Susanna followed Nigel, sticking close together like sisters, while Pete trailed a few paces behind. He was humming softly.
“They’ll probably be in the basement,” Pete called halfway down the hallway. “Think you can find it?”
Nigel did not reply. He moved steadily forward, occasionally pointing the flashlight at a classroom in passing but not breaking stride. He knew where he was going. Kay felt almost sick with anticipation.
“Here it is,” Nigel said a short time later, shining the flashlight on a wooden door with a hydraulic closer above. “It’s not much of a basement. Mostly used for storage. There’s just the one room, if I remember correctly.”
“You went down there?” Kay asked, surprised. Most parents who visit a prospective school aren’t interested in seeing the boiler room.
Nigel frowned at her, but he did not reply. She did not understand why he would be upset by the question—perhaps it was only a trick of the light.
“Alright,” Pete said as he shuffled up to them. “You ready, Spaceman?”
“What about decontamination?” Kay asked.
“We’ll get to that. Don’t worry. You think I didn’t consider that little detail?”
As Nigel opened the door and began moving down the stairwell, it occurred to Kay that Pete had probably given it plenty of thought—a little too much, perhaps.
9
Kay was not sure what she had been expecting: bright lights, balloons and streamers, a ring of children playing duck-duck-goose under the wise, watchful gaze of a gray-haired teacher sitting cross-legged with a radio in her lap and a box of juice packs at her side. Maybe cartoon characters dra
wn in crayon on the walls, part of a constant effort to keep the children distracted.
Instead, what she saw at the end of Nigel’s flashlight caused her heart to sink: dusty cardboard boxes, a set of gangly marionettes fallen in the corner like bodies in a mass grave, a few sets of chairs stacked on one another.
But no children.
“I can’t believe it,” Nigel said after a cursory sweep of the room. “They’re not here. They must have been whisked away as soon as the bomb went off. They’re probably miles away by now.”
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