The Longest Night

by K. M. Fawkes

  “At least a week,” Brad said as he stood up. “After that, I’ll do an evaluation.” He rubbed his hand down the cow’s side. The pain medication would be wearing off soon and he wished he could have given her more. “Then, you can go hang out with your buddies again.”

  “I’ll get her put away,” Ben said. “Go on back to your place.”

  “Yeah, that sounds like a good idea,” Brad said. “Thanks for your help, Ben.”

  “No problem,” Ben said as he led the cow to the stall he’d built. “I like these guys a hell of a lot better than I like most people, anyway. That’s why I’m out here so much.”

  Brad grinned. “I get it. That’s why I went the veterinarian route instead of going into med school.”

  Ben didn’t turn, but Brad heard the smile in his voice as he said, “That’s what I would have done in your position. You’re not great with people, you know.”

  “Believe me,” Brad said with a laugh as he left. “I’ve been told.”

  Chapter 12

  “What’s the topic of discussion tonight?” Brad asked as he approached his front door. Jack, Vance and Charlie were sat on camping chairs outside, each with a beer in gloved hand. Remington was by his master’s side, but came over to sniff Brad’s hand before settling next to Charlie again.

  “We started out gossiping about the wolf,” Jack said.

  “Coyote,” Brad corrected.

  Vance handed him a beer. “Right. And you killed it.”

  “I had to,” Brad said. “It was either the coyote or the cow and I know which one I’d rather eat.”

  “Damn straight,” Jack said.

  “You were amazing,” Charlie said. “We were all…well, amazed.”

  “It was nothing,” Brad muttered as he opened his beer. “What did you guys move on to talking about, anyway? Since my amazing and heroic efforts weren’t of enough interest.”

  “People that we’ve lost,” Jack said quietly.

  “Or seen die,” Charlie added.

  “God, why?” Brad demanded, pausing with his beer halfway to his lips.

  “Well, we’re all a little drunk,” Charlie said, swaying gently in her seat.

  That explained the slur in her speech, then. Brad looked down at her. She was one of those people who got a little red in the face when she drank. She was also apparently a lightweight. There were only two empty bottles by her chair.

  “Charlie gets maudlin when she’s drunk,” Jack explained, stroking Remington’s ears softly as he cast a smile at his tipsy wife. “And, anyway, don’t therapists say it’s good to get these things out into the open?”

  “Therapists say a lot of things,” Brad said with a shrug.

  “My wife was a therapist,” Vance said suddenly.

  “Seriously?” Jack asked. Charlie sat up a little straighter and Brad got the feeling that this was uncharted territory for Vance.

  “Yep,” he said. “She specialized in marriage counseling.”

  “Did that make your life easier or harder?” Brad asked with a smile.

  Vance grinned and shook his head. His southern accent seemed to deepen as he said, “That woman never gave me an easy day in my whole life.” He took a long sip of his beer. “She didn’t have the bots. She didn’t need ’em for one thing, and we wouldn’t have had the money, for another. But one of her patients did. And that’s how she caught the virus. She couldn’t make it to an MRI machine in time.”

  He took another long swig of his beer before he continued. “And since they wouldn’t let me back in, I couldn’t be with her. I was on the phone with her when she died. Video chat, because we both knew it was close to the end. I’ve never seen so much blood in my whole damn life.”

  “I couldn’t believe it the first time I saw someone die from it,” Jack said with a nod.

  “Who did you see?” Brad asked.

  Jack shrugged. “I didn’t know him. It happened on the train, near the beginning. Some guy in a business suit started coughing and couldn’t stop, but we couldn’t get the conductor’s attention. The call button wasn’t working.”

  Jack looked down at his hands and took a breath. “He just…he collapsed on the floor. A few people leaned over him when it looked like he’d stopped breathing. And then…God. It was like a sprinkler system came on. They were all covered in his blood. I guess they probably all got infected. They said that was how it spread. I just got lucky being at the other end of the car. And being too chicken-shit to get near him.”

  Charlie winced and reached for Jack, touching him as if in thanks that he was still with her. “You weren’t a coward,” she said. “There wasn’t anything you could have done, anyway. And this way, you came back to me.”

  He took her hand, giving her a slight smile. “Charlie’s been lucky so far,” he said, his voice relieved. “She hasn’t seen anyone die.”

  “How the hell is that possible?” Brad asked in surprise.

  Charlie laughed mirthlessly. “I’ve been lucky, I guess. And Jack. He dealt with anything we found on the road.” Her fingers tensed in Remington’s fur and the dog leaned against her, sensing her need for support. “And it doesn’t mean that I didn’t lose people. I had a big family. My parents had been together since freshman year of high school. They got married right after graduation.”

  She smiled, but it twisted a bit. “They started having kids right away. There were eight of us.”

  “Eight?” Brad yelped. “Are you serious?”

  Charlie laughed his reaction. “There have been people that have had more than eight kids,” she pointed out.

  “Yeah, but…eight of you? How big was your house?!”

  “We had four bedrooms,” Charlie said. “And my dad converted the attic, too, so I guess we technically had five.”

  Brad simply stared at her.

  Jack grinned. “I think I detect the horror of the only child in response to having to share a bedroom.”

  “Okay, maybe,” Brad said with a small laugh. “But that just blows my mind. Eight kids!”

  “It was wonderful,” Charlie said. “I had three sisters and four brothers. My dad always said that he got the mix just right. My mom took all the credit, too. They used to pretend to fight about it. I don’t know if I just never noticed or if they really never fought…but I don’t remember them ever raising their voices or being angry with each other. They loved each other so much. And they loved us, too. We are…we were a very close family. And now, I’m the only one left.”

  She was silent for a moment and then she looked up at Brad. Her eyes were sparkling with tears in the moonlight, but she didn’t allow them to fall. “What about you, Brad? Who did you lose?”

  Brad shook his head. “Nobody, really. My mother was gone before the whole thing started. My dad and I…we were never really close.”

  “What about those people you keep goin’ on about?” Vance asked. “Annie? Ain’t that her name?”

  “Anna,” Brad corrected him. “I met her a few weeks after the EMP.”

  “I thought you had kids together,” Jack said in surprise.

  Brad shook his head. “No, Sammy and Martha weren’t mine. Sammy was Anna’s son. And Martha…I found her. She was an orphan and I found her right when the first big snow storm hit. She would have died out there where she was.”

  He remembered how pale and terrified the girl had been. How she’d been unable to speak. Had she been reduced to silence again? She’d made so much progress in such a short time while she’d been with them. “Anyway, we weren’t family.” He paused, trying to think of the best way to put it. “We just…took care of each other.”

  “That doesn’t mean that they weren’t your family,” Charlie said. “You don’t have to share blood to be that.”

  After a moment, Brad nodded. “I guess that’s true.”

  He stayed silent while the conversation swirled around him, moving on to better topics as the night wore on. The word weighed heavy on his heart. Family.

  He�
�d never called them that, not even to himself. Now, he saw how well it fit. Anna, Sammy, and even Martha had been his family.

  It had been a long damn time since he’d had any family at all, and then he’d lost it. He clenched his hands into fists. No. He wasn’t going to admit that. They weren’t lost. He’d find a way back to them again, with or without help. He had to believe that. It was the only thing that kept him going.

  Chapter 13

  The sounds came first, oddly familiar although he hadn’t heard them in a long time. The sound of many different low conversations and the bustle of a busy place. Knives and forks clinked against plates all around them as the other diners cut into their meals. Busboys came by and waiters hurried over to the customers who had finished up their desserts and were waving imperiously for service.

  Brad watched as their waiter approached with a dark green bottle wrapped in a bright white cloth. Without speaking to Brad, the man leaned down to fill Anna’s glass. The dark wine splashed into it like a red wave, vivid and almost lurid. Once the waiter had filled it nearly to the rim, Anna lifted the glass by its delicate stem and took a long sip. Her eyes met Brad’s as she drank. The glass was nearly empty when she put it on the table again.

  “It wasn’t you, you know,” she said as she patted her lips with the white napkin. When she put it back on the table, it was crumpled and stained with her lipstick. The shade she’d chosen to wear was even darker than the wine. “It was me. It was always me.”

  Brad leaned across the table. “What do you mean? It had to be me. Tell me the truth, Anna. Tell me what I did!”

  She smirked and shook her head. “There were go again. What did you do? Oh, Brad. You still don’t understand.”

  “No, I don’t! Anna, all did was care about you,” he said. “I would have died for you and Sammy—”

  “I know, you cared about my son more than I ever dreamed anyone else could. And you made me feel safe,” she said, taking a delicate bite of the food that the waiter put down in front of her. It looked like deer chili, which made Brad blink in surprise and glance around at the other diners. He couldn't tell what they were eating, however; they were all too far away. The place had certainly seemed much too fancy for deer chili, though.

  He looked around more carefully. There were crystal chandeliers overhead and carpet so plush that he felt his boots sink into it under the large wooden table. The tablecloths and napkins were spotless white linen, except for the one that was now stained with Anna’s blood-red lipstick. The waiter had left the wine on their table, but Brad didn’t even have a glass. He briefly considered lifting the bottle and drinking it down right in front of all of them, but he was distracted by Anna.

  She had always been beautiful to him, but tonight, she was gorgeous. Anna was dressed to kill in a plunge-neck green satin dress. There were diamonds around her collarbones and there were some twined into her hair, too, in an elven sort of coronet.

  In contrast, Brad was horrified to look down and see that he looked like he’d been working outside all day. His hands were black with dirt. His jeans and T-shirt were dingy under the ambient light of the chandeliers overhead.

  “I’ve never had a good relationship,” she said wistfully, looking at him across the table. “I told you that, didn’t I?”

  “Anna, I don’t—”

  “I’ve never seen one either,” she said, taking another bite and patting at her lips once she’d swallowed. “My parents…they didn’t get along.”

  It felt like information he’d heard before, but he couldn’t place it. He also couldn’t understand why they were talking about it now. There were more important things than the past. He needed to know where they were so he could find them!

  “Anna, that doesn’t matter,” he said, leaning across the table and speaking urgently. “Nothing that happened in the past matters now. Tell me where you are.”

  She smirked again, but this time he saw the sadness that filled her green eyes. “Yes, it does,” she said heavily. “Of course it does. An apocalypse doesn’t erase issues, Bradley. It amplifies them.”

  “It doesn’t have to.” Distance began to grow between them, the table lengthening in front of his eyes. He reached for her hands and her fingertips just skimmed his as she got further away.

  “Anna?” he asked. He wanted to stand up, to run after her, but he couldn’t seem to get his legs to move. They felt as if they’d turned to lead under the table.

  She shook her head, looking down. “I’m sorry, Brad. I did what I had to do.”

  “You didn’t have to leave!” he yelled. “You didn’t have to leave me to face them alone!”

  He didn’t know if she didn’t respond, or if she was just so far away that he didn’t hear her answer. The noise in the dining room grew and grew as people stared at him, asking questions he couldn’t answer.

  “I don’t know,” he said in response to their stares, but their voices only grew louder. “Shut up and stop staring!” he yelled.

  As they converged on him, still asking questions, the room began to grow darker. Brad ducked the grasp of the waiter and nearly fell out of bed.

  He moved more toward the center of the mattress he’d woken on to find himself hanging off, and pulled the blankets more tightly around him. Then, he simply stared up at the ceiling, shaken by the dream.

  It had been a long time since he’d dreamed that deeply. He hadn’t even known that he was asleep, a feeling that always unsettled him. Even the dreams about the cabin hadn’t sucked him in like this one had. And those had at least made sense.

  What the hell had this dream even been about? He didn’t consider himself to be a very spiritual man, but he did believe that dreams had a purpose. They were usually the subconscious shouting at you. Except, this time, it was like his subconscious was shouting at him in a language he didn’t speak.

  He pushed his hands through his hair, trying to go back to sleep. He could worry about the crazy dream in the morning, when he’d have plenty of time on the fence inspection duty he’d been assigned. The Major hadn’t been pleased about the coyote, so he’d assigned everyone a section. It would be a lot of work, and he could really use a few more solid hours of rest. He could get them if he went back to sleep right now.

  He closed his eyes, ordering himself to shut it off and go to the sleep. His eyes popped open again a few minutes later, though. An idea was slowly dawning in his mind. He had heard her words before.

  “I’ve never had a good relationship.”

  Anna had told him that once over dinner. And she’d also mentioned that her parents’ relationship had been strained. She’d told him that it had ended in a bitter divorce.

  Those were the things she’d told him over the course of the months they’d spent together. But there was plenty that he didn’t know as well. For instance, she’d never told him what had happened with her twin sister—the one Brad hadn’t even known about until the night she’d told him about her birthday party.

  In short, Anna was a woman who kept plenty of secrets, but he could piece something together with all of that. Something that explained why she had run. It explained it very well, in fact.

  Despite the fact that it had taken so long to kick in, his subconscious mind had done a fair job of summing up the problem. Anna had been terrified. Terrified of giving up the control she’d fought so hard for once Sammy was born, but equally terrified of her own choices. That was why she’d insisted on so much work leading up the winter. She needed to feel in control, even within the confines of safety.

  “An apocalypse doesn’t erase issues. It amplifies them,” he whispered into the darkness of his bedroom. “Damn straight it does.”

  Their issues had simply been at odds during the end. He’d clung so tightly to the cabin that he’d lost everything to keep it. She’d run from someone who never would have hurt her because of all of the people who had.

  He should have listened to his instincts. He shouldn’t have kissed her that night. Then, mayb
e she would have been less afraid of him bending her to his will over the cabin and they could have talked it out.

  Or maybe she would have run anyway. He knew that he wasn’t wrong in thinking that she’d developed feelings for him. So maybe nothing he’d done would have mattered and she would have done exactly the same thing. But maybe she wouldn’t have.

  At sunrise, having finally given up on the idea of getting any more sleep, Brad got up and got dressed. There was no point in lying in the dark reliving how beautiful Anna had been in the dream and how much more beautiful she’d been back in the cabin. He had a fence to inspect.

  “Hey,” Jack said when Brad stepped out of his front door.

  “Hey,” Brad said, doing a double take. “You’re up pretty early.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said. “I thought I’d get a head start.”

  Brad was impressed. Jack tended to sleep as late as he possibly could. “Well, that’s—”

  “And I stepped in a hole in the dark and twisted my ankle,” Jack finished with a wry grin. “I guess that’s what I get for trying to earn another gold star. And for getting out of bed early.” He winced as he moved just slightly. “I’ll never do that again, I promise you.”

  “Do you need me to take a look at it?” Brad asked.

  Jack shook his head. “No, it’s not a big deal. I mean, I’ve sprained it before, so I know it’s not serious.”

  “No swelling?” Brad asked pointedly.

  “No. Well, I mean, just a little.”

  “I’ll be right back.” Brad walked across to the cow pen and leaned down, chipping some ice out of the water trough.

  He stuffed the ice into one of the plastic bags that usually held feed and walked back to Jack. “Here you go,” he said, holding the bag out. “Put the ice on it for twenty minutes. Then, just leave the bag out here. It won’t melt. Ice it once every hour and keep it elevated.”

  “The only problem with that is that I’m supposed to be checking the fence,” Jack said as he shifted in his chair once more, making a face when he accidentally put weight on his injured ankle.