Page 16 of The Midnight Hour
Daniel nods slowly. “Why here?” he asks.
The man hesitates, and then shrugs. “We followed the map.”
“What map?” The question comes sharp and fast.
William Stratton looks bemused. “Um, the 2022 AAA Road Atlas? I think?”
Daniel lets out a sound that is part laugh, part huff of disbelief. “You haven’t answered my question,” he says. “Whyhere?”
William Stratton stares at him, blank-faced. I step out into the meadow. His wife lets out a little shriek, and I realize I’m still aiming my rifle at them. Slowly I lower it.
“Who are you?” I demand, and my voice sounds rougher than I meant it to, almost wild. “Where have youbeenthese last seven months?”
“Alex,” Daniel says quietly. “Let’s put down the guns.”
I swing my head round to stare at him in confusion, until I realize how aggressive I seem, and how terrified this family is. I can feel Sam’s gaze upon me, boring into my back. I release a shaky breath.
“Okay,” I say.
Daniel takes my rifle as Sam and Kyle step out of the woods. William Stratton sucks in a breath. “How many of you are there?” he asks.
“Seven,” Daniel replies. He takes Kyle and Sam’s rifles and stows all our weapons in the back of the truck. I’m almost positive these people aren’t a threat, but I still don’t feel good about it. He turns to the Strattons, who are looking shocked by our presence. “Why don’t we all sit down, and you can tell us how you came to be here,” Daniel suggests.
William Stratton looks like he’s not sure he wants to agree, but then he nods. “All right,” he says, and he reaches for hiswife’s hand, drawing her forward as the three of them follow us back to the campsite.
Mattie slides out of the car holding Phoebe, and Ruby follows. After a second when no one seems to know what to do, we all hunker down by the embers of the campfire, which Daniel pokes with a stick.
“Rubes,” he suggests with a smile, “do you want to make some tea?”
Smiling shyly, Ruby nods, and takes a bucket to fetch water from the stream. Everyone sits in uneasy silence until she comes back, and then fills a pot, sprinkling in some dried leaves—catnip, I think—and then sets it over the campfire, on the travel hook. Hospitality, Armageddon-style.
Then she sits down, and we all look around at each other.
“Maybe you could tell us your names,” William Stratton suggests. He has the stentorian voice of a doctor or a lawyer, someone who is used to feeling important but seems to have no idea how to navigate this new world. I know I’m being cynical, but I’m pretty sure I’m right.
As for his wife? I glance at her, my lip curling just a little. She’s somanicured, seven months after a holocaust. Her hair is sleek and shiny, her nails perfectly filed. Next to her, I feel like something chewed-up and dragged-over. Not that I’m envious. I’m just…disbelieving. It’s as if the Strattons have emerged unscathed from some alternate universe, where the United States wasn’t devastated by nuclear bombs and overrun by roaming gangs.
“I’m Daniel Walker,” Daniel says. For a second, he looks as if he might lean over and offer to shake hands, but nobody moves.
“I’m Alex, Daniel’s wife,” I chip in, and then the rest of us go through our introductions. It feels like a very weird dinner party.
“How long have you all been out here?” William asks. It seems we’re going to do chitchat.
“Just a few days,” Daniel replies. “We were at my wife’s family cottage about a hundred miles east of here, but we were attacked and so we had to move on.”
William nods, his expression turning somberly understanding. So they havesomeexperience of the real world, I think, because he’s clearly not surprised by the concept of being attacked. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he says, and my chest burns with the injustice of it all—losing the cottage to those thugs, Kerry and Justine’s needless deaths…all neatly tidied away under the simple and indifferent sentiment ofI’m sorry to hear that.
There’s absolutely no reason for me to be angry with William Stratton, who had nothing to do with any of it, and yet somehow I am.
“So where haveyoubeen?” Daniel asks. Although his voice is as mild as before, I hear a thread of challenge in it, a hint of the same anger I’ve been feeling. I can almost hear the questions clamoring in Daniel’s mind—why does your shirt look ironed?Why are your wife’s nails so polished?—because they’re the same ones in mine.
William hesitates, and then glances at his wife, who gives a twitchy little shrug in return. My curiosity sharpens; what is it they don’t want to tell us? Ben, I see, is hunched over, staring at his feet, not wanting to engage with anyone.
“We were staying in a bunker,” William admits.
“A bunker,” Daniel repeats neutrally. I picture something made of Cold War concrete, cold and damp. They don’t look like they were staying somewhere like that. “What kind of bunker?” he asks.
William sighs. “You remember those stories back before everything, about billionaires who had these luxury bunkers, underground?”
