Page 18 of The Midnight Hour
But then I see a flash of something like hatred across Nicole’s face, and I wonder if they have suffered, just in a way that isn’t obvious to us…yet.
Mattie subsides, seemingly satisfied, and again we are all silent.What now?I think. What are we supposed to do with these people?
“How did you get across the bridge?” Daniel asks suddenly, his tone abrupt. His eyes are narrowed; now he is the one who looks suspicious. “At Thousand Islands. You crossed there?”
William stares at him blankly. “Yes…we drove across.”
“Drove?” Daniel sounds disbelieving. “The bridge was closed by the Canadian Border Services, back at the beginning.”
William shakes his head. “Well, it isn’t now. There wasn’t anybody there at all. The whole place was abandoned. We didn’t see anyone.”
“Really?” I lean forward, eager now. If the Thousand Islands bridge is crossable, we can get to this base near Buffalo that way. It will be so much easier than attempting open water, never mind needing to find a boat. For the first time, I’m glad the Strattons showed up.
William looks between us all, his forehead furrowing. “How long have you guys been out here?” he asks. “Without any news?”
His tone suggests he thinks it must have been some time.
“I came across the border about a month ago,” Daniel says. “Crossed at Cornwall, but it was manned then. I was traveling up from Massachusetts.”
“A month ago…” William’s frown deepens. “Then surely you saw some of the stuff I’m talking about.”
“What kind of stuff?” I ask. For the first time, I feel like we could get some actual news of the outside world…but do I really want to hear it?
William shrugs. “Just how…abandoned…everything is now. We got news while we were in the bunker, you know, from the satellite radio. We could communicate with some of the other bunkers, too, so we had a little bit of an idea about what’s been going on across the country.”
“I mostly kept to myself,” Daniel says. “On my own, with Sam here.” He nods toward our son. He sounds like he doesn’t want to say anything more about it.
“Okay…” William replies, like he can’t quite believe it, which makes me wonder, far from the first time, what my husband isn’t saying. What he’s hiding.
Ruby stirs from where she’s been sitting very still next to me. “The tea’s ready,” she says softly, and I rise to get some tin cups. It’s time to settle in and hear what William Stratton has to tell us…and find out what the world is really like.
EIGHT
DANIEL
December, six months earlier
Outside Utica, New York
Daniel stumbles to the side of the road, his hands flung into the air, as a man he can’t see presses the muzzle of a rifle to his temple. From the corner of his eye he sees another man, grizzly and bearded, pointing a semiautomatic rifle, a serious kind of weapon, at his son, and something in him both breaks and hardens at the same time. He can’t believe this is happening already. He and Sam have been together for maybe ten minutes.
“Please,” he says, trying not to sound like he is begging even though he knows he is. “Take the car and go.”
The man chuckles, a throaty, smoke-filled sound. “Oh, we’ll take what we like,” he assures Daniel, and presses the muzzle of the rifle a little harder into his temple, chuckling again as he does so. He’s clearly enjoying this—not just the stealing, but the inducing of fear, the relishing of control. What a pathetic power trip, Daniel thinks with a sudden, savage bitterness. What a total loser,this guy, to be getting his kicks this way. He doesn’t say any of this out loud, but he feels a spurt of futile rage and hecloses his eyes briefly before snapping them open, knowing he doesn’t have the luxury of either regret or despair. Not now, not when his son’s life is at stake.
“The keys are in the ignition,” he tells the man. He forces himself to look him full in the face, yet even as he takes in his features they blur before him, so he is nothing more than a faceless body, an automaton with a gun and a grimy baseball cap. Does this man have a soul? Daniel supposes he must, but it is tattered and threadbare, judging from the relish he is showing as he moves the rifle from Daniel’s temple to his midsection, prodding his belly like he’s an animal at an abattoir. Again Daniel feels that blaze of rage, and forces himself to tamp it down. He’s so close to snapping, and he can’t, not here, not now, when he’s powerless and this wannabe badass would shoot both him and Sam simply for the pleasure of it, because he can.
While the man keeps his gun trained between Daniel and Sam, the other opens the back of the car to inspect their booty. Sam makes some small sound of protest, quickly silenced. They will take it all, Daniel thinks numbly. His backpack and Sam’s, along with Sam’s duffel bag. Admittedly, it’s not much—a couple of Slim Jims and packets of Ritz crackers are all the food he has, plus a change of clothes, a water bottle. But without those things, how will they possibly survive? And, Daniel realizes, they will take his gun. And of course the car.
The only thing they’re escaping with in this situation, he knows, is their lives. And that’s if they’re lucky.
“Empty your pockets,” the man commands, and Daniel complies. He’s not so stupid as to have put anything important in his front pockets—the car keys to the SUV left back in Canada are in the inside zipped pocket of his coat, his cash, worthless as it probably now is, tucked into his pants. The man takes a handkerchief, a stick of gum, and a crumpled Slim Jim wrapper, and with a snarl hurls it all to the ground.
“Give me one good reason not to shoot you right here,” he snaps, and Daniel stays silent.
The man glares at him for a moment as Daniel holds his gaze, even wonders if he sees a spark of something almost like admiration in the man’s wild, red-rimmed eyes. He’s on something, coke or meth or whatever it is people shoot up these days. It’s a world Daniel doesn’t know, even as he comes up hard against it,again.
The moment stretches on like an elastic about to snap, and then a canny look comes over the man’s face and he grabs Daniel by the front of his coat, wrenches it open, and pats down his inside pockets, instantly feeling the bulge of the car keys. “Ah ha, so what are these to, buddy?” he asks, his breath sour in his face.
