Page 47 of The Last Stars in the Sky
It took Daniel four days to bike from Watertown to Utica, a distance of some seventy miles on Route 12, although it was farther on the back roads he sometimes took to avoid the few towns peppered along the route—Copenhagen, Lowville, Boonville, Port Leyden. He rode at night, to avoid detection, and slept during the day wherever he could hide—deep in a cornfield, in an abandoned barn, behind a billboard—huddling in his sleeping bag as the days grew colder, the nights colder still.
He allowed himself only two pieces of beef jerky and a handful of Ritz crackers or a granola bar every day, and supplemented with whatever he found along the way. The second day, he ate some old apples rotting on the ground of an abandoned orchard; he lost half a day of travel to stomach cramps and diarrhea as a result. After that he stuck to dried goods—in a looted Texaco on the outskirts of Lowville he found a bag of Fritos and, to his amazement, a Milky Way bar, the only things left in the whole minimart. As hungry as he was—and he was starving—he slipped the chocolate into his rucksack. It was Ruby’s favorite candy bar.
He washed and brushed his teeth in the gas station bathroom, and, when he glanced at his reflection, he was joltedto realize he didn’t actually recognize his own face. Several weeks’ growth of patchy gray beard, hollowed-out cheeks, a stringy gauntness to his neck; but most alarming of all was the look in his eyes—a kind of dazed weariness. He looked like he wouldn’t be surprised, or even care, if someone shot him, and he supposed in some ways that was how he felt.
He wanted to get to Sam; heneededto get to Sam…but he was more than half convinced that he’d die trying, and, even more worryingly, he was somewhat okay with that.
Mostly the route was quiet, but not always. On the Walmart on the outskirts of Boonville, a homegrown militia had formed. Men with bushy beards dressed in combat fatigues, armed to the teeth with knives and pistols and semi-automatic rifles, the kind that would absolutely obliterate a deer, patrolled the sweeping drive up to the Walmart, which they seemed to have made their headquarters. They looked like they would shoot at anything, and gladly.
Daniel, hiding behind a road sign down the road, quietly biked back the way he had come, and took a long, meandering country lane around the whole town, even though he’d been hoping to find some food somewhere among its stores and houses.
Somewhere between Lowville and Boonville, a dozen or so fighter jets raced across the night sky, in perfect formation. Daniel was heartened at this sign of military organization, of some sign there was still a government, an attempt, at least, at law and order, or maybe just restoring it. But he had no idea where they were going, and his lonely journey along the empty road continued on.
One particularly cold day, when snow dusted the ground, he crept into a barn on the outskirts of a farm and curled up in a corner, planning to sleep for just an hour or two, hoping he wouldn’t be discovered. He woke when a wild-eyed farmerprodded him hard with his shotgun, aiming it right between his eyes as Daniel blinked away sleep.
“Get the hell out of here,” the man said in a low, gravelly voice. “Now.”
Daniel stared at the man, saw a coldness in his eyes that suggested he would pull the trigger as easily as one of those jacked-up guys outside the Walmart would. What, Daniel wondered, had happened to people?
He scrambled up slowly from the haystack, arms flung up in the air. “I’m going,” he said, his voice a rasp. “Don’t shoot.”
The farmer’s rifle didn’t move a millimeter. His heart beating with slow, heavy thuds, Daniel wondered if the man would shoot him just for the hell of it. He walked backward out of the barn, his hands still held up, his panicked gaze never leaving the farmer’s face. When he got to the door, he started to run. He felt the space between his shoulder blades prickling as he pelted down the road, toward his bike, which he’d hidden in a field, along with his backpack.
When he finally got to Utica, he slowed down, did his best to stay hidden. It was clear something was going on here; there were barricades, police cars, army trucks, a sense of a menacing presence. He thought of what the couple back in Watertown had said, about how it was better if the police or army didn’t show up.
He had to get through Utica somehow; he kept to the outskirts of the town, skirting it along Route 169, which headed southwest toward Albany, and toward Clarkson just another twenty or thirty miles west.
One night, as darkness fell and he started to bike, he heard the staccato sound of gunshots—not just from one gun, but several, many. It sounded like warfare, and he wondered if that was what was happening. What, he’d wondered many times as he’d biked from Watertown to Utica, was happening in theworld? Just how bad was it all? The glimpses he saw—the men bristling with guns and ammunition outside the Walmart, the looted stores, the farmer who had pointed his rifle in his face—suggested that it was very bad indeed, and yet he found he still couldn’t grasp the how and why of it. Why wasn’t the army imposing order? Why weren’t things getting back to normal at least a little, in places that couldn’t be too badly affected—like Utica, over two hundred miles from any of the blast sites? Unless, of course, other cities had been hit—like Omaha, as the woman had said back in Watertown. Where else? He was troubled not just by what he saw, but what it had to mean.
When he was biking, he tended to let his mind empty out, focusing on the burn in his legs and the open road before him and nothing else. But when he rested or slept, the thoughts came, along with the deep and terrible fears. What if he couldn’t get to Sam? What if he made it to Clarkson, but couldn’t find him? It had already been over two weeks since the first blasts, after all. Would Sam really have stayed in his dorm, or even in Clarkson at all, for that length of time? And if he’d left, where would he have gone? The thought of reaching his destination and yet not finding his son was too dispiriting, and so Daniel tried not to dwell on it. He tried to believe in some providential force of nature or deity that meant he had to find Sam, simply because he’d come this far. It couldn’t be all for nothing.
At other times, he let himself think about Alex and Mattie and Ruby. He told himself that they had to be safe since they were at the cottage; there was enough food to last a month or two at the very least, so if they just stayed put, hunkered down until he came home…
And yet he knew that was not in his wife’s nature. Moreover, he feared how others in the area knew about the cottage, its resources, its acreage, its private lake…They’d known for years, for decades, ever since Alex’s parents had rocked up to thisremote corner of Canada, two well-to-do Americans, and built their own cabin, and gamely played at homesteading, while everybody local had looked on, more than a little skeptical.
When Daniel couldn’t bear to think about his family anymore, he thought about the world. He considered the places he would never see again, that the children of the future would only know from photographs—the Statue of Liberty, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the White House, the Lincoln Memorial, the Hollywood sign, the Golden Gate Bridge…all gone. It was inconceivable,still. Sometimes, he played number games in his head, with time—three months ago he was living in Westport, worried about money and finding a job. Six months ago, he was starting his new job, full of hope, looking toward summer. A year ago, he hadn’t been fired even for the first time, never mind the second; his biggest worry had been what college Sam might get into, keeping Mattie on track, helping Ruby with her social challenges.
Those worries felt so absurd now, and yet so precious. He thought he’d give just about anything to have the luxury of being worried about such small things again. The luxury of beingannoyedby something—a delayed train, an overflowing trash can, a hangnail.
Thinking about Alex was hardest of all. He thought of their last night together, the way he’d held her in his arms, and she’d let him. The way she’d felt, tucked into him, their legs twined, her head on his shoulder…he ached to feel that again. To believe it would happen.
On the eastern side of Utica, as night draws in and the wind turns bitter, he pauses outside a farmhouse—made of white clapboard, with a wide front porch, everything neatly tended, an American flag waving from one of the porch’s posts. Surprisingly, the curtains haven’t been drawn and he can see into their front room—two children curled up on a sofa, readinga book by the light of an oil lamp. It is so cozy, so lovely, so deeply, painfullyfamiliar, that he feels a lump rising in his throat, an ache in his chest, and for a second, he’s afraid he might weep. It could have been Mattie and Ruby on that sofa, legs tangled together, a book in front of them, Mattie pointing out the pictures, Alex watching on from the kitchen as she bustled about, making dinner, humming under her breath…
Then the front door opens, and a man steps out on the porch, his tread heavy in his boots. He’s holding a rifle clasped against his chest.
“You out there,” he calls. “You gonna move on?”
Daniel starts; for a second, it felt almost as if he were dreaming. “Sorry,” he calls, his hands tightening on the handlebars of his bike. “Sorry. Yes. I’m moving on.”
The man squints as he watches him wheel the bike around, but as Daniel prepares to cycle away, his voice calling from the porch stops him. “Wait.”
Daniel tenses, knowing he can’t outrun a gun, praying this isn’t the end of everything.
“When’s the last time you’ve eaten?” the man asks.
The question is so unexpected that it takes him a few seconds to respond. “I’ve had some beef jerky a few hours ago,” he finally says.
“I mean,” the man replies gruffly, “a square meal.”
