Page 32 of The Last Stars in the Sky
“Eat,” she advises. “You’ll feel better.”
And then she leaves him alone.
Somehow, he manages to ease up in the bed until his back is leaning against the wall, and slurp down the soup, even though it is lukewarm, greasy, making his stomach roil. He knows he needs to eat. He needs to get out of here.A whole week. He has to keep moving.
The woman returns, his clothes draped over one arm—khakis, shirt, his fleece vest, all washed and dried. But not his watch, he thinks, not his money, not his gun.
“Thank you,” he says, as she puts the clothes on the bed.
“Are you strong enough to come out?” she asks, and he nods.
“Yes. Yes.”
She leaves again.
He rises from the bed, his limbs rubbery and shaking. He can’t believe how weak he feels, how utterly helpless. He’s at the mercy of this woman, whoever she is. So far, she’s been kind, but even so, he knows he can’t trust her.
He pulls on his clothes, grateful not to be naked. Small mercies, he thinks, and almost smiles. Then he remembers Sam. Alex, Mattie, Ruby. Are they all right, back at Lost Lake? Will he ever see any of them again? He remembers how he held Alex, before he left, how it felt as if she wanted to burrow into him, and how he’d wanted her to. He’d wanted to say so much, to takeback the last six months, to have been someone different, but at least he could be different now.
He opens the door and steps out into the hall. The walls are an off-white turned to an uneven brown, nicotine-stained like the ceiling, and the hall is covered in brown shag wall-to-wall carpet. He feels as if he has stepped into the 1970s. He follows the hall to the main room of the ranch house—there is an L-shaped sofa on one end, with a large TV, its flat screen black and silent, and a dining room table and chairs on the other. A man is sitting at the table, smoking. He has long gray hair tied back in a ponytail, and his face is utterly inscrutable. The woman comes in with cups of coffee and places them on the table before retreating to the doorway of the kitchen, where she stands with her hands on her hips.
“Thank you,” Daniel says, knowing he sounds too formal, “for having me here.” As if they asked him to stay.
The man blows out smoke and points to the chair opposite him. Daniel sits. The man takes one of the cups of coffee, and he realizes the other one is for him. He takes it with murmured thanks—it is instant, lukewarm, with no milk, undissolved granules floating in the murky liquid. It tastes bitter, but he’s glad for it.
“Can you tell me what’s been happening?” he asks after a moment when it seems as if no one is going to speak.
“We found you down by the point,” the woman says, the words seeming to burst out of her. “You were half-dead from the cold, clothes frozen to your back.” The man gives her a quelling look; he certainly seems more sparing with words than she is. Daniel takes another sip of coffee, doing his best not to wince at the acrid taste, the coffee granules catching on his tongue in bursts of bitterness.
“You got sick from being wet,” the man states. His voice is low and gravelly. “Fever and all. You cross the river?”
“Yes.” Daniel decides not to mention the border police, the gunshots. He thinks the man might know about them, anyway.
“Where are you going?”
“Clarkson, New York, near Syracuse. To get my son.” His voice throbs and he takes another sip from his coffee to hide his emotion, but his hands shake and he puts it down again. The man glances at his wife, whose lips are pursed. Daniel senses an unspoken conversation flowing around him like a river, currents pulling. Then the man sighs, shifts in his seat. He blows smoke to the ceiling, squinting up at the blue-tinged haze.
“Things have changed since you crossed,” he states, and Daniel tenses.
“How have they changed?” he makes himself ask.
“People have been saying there have been more strikes.”
“What?” He lurches forward in his seat as if he has been pushed from behind, his hands clenched and clasped between his knees. “What? How? Where?”
The man shrugs, still staring at the ceiling. “Some say Detroit. Buffalo.”
“Omaha,” the woman fills in. “I heard Omaha.”
“Has there been any news? On the TV, the radio?” His questions come out in gasps; he had told Alex there might be more strikes, but he realizes in this moment that he hadn’t really believed it. He had thought the worst had already happened because he’d so wanted it to be true. He’dneededit to be true.
“Sometimes on the radio,” the man replies with a shrug. “But the power is out everywhere now. No electricity, no water, no internet, no nothing. No one hears or sees much of anything, these days. Don’t even know where the nukes came from.”
“It must be Russia,” the woman said, sounding important.
The man shrugs. “Russia, China, who knows? Don’t suppose it matters much, now.”
“Is martial law still in effect?” Daniel asks, thinking it must be. The police will be out in force, the army too. There might be barricaded roads, helicopter surveillance, armed patrol…His mind is racing, picturing vague scenarios from disaster movies. It will be harder than ever to find a way to Clarkson.
