Page 21 of The Midnight Hour
Daniel hears a tremor in his son’s voice. “They won’t,” he says. There are some steps off the porch leading to a narrow alley that runs alongside the house. If they commando-crawl down it, Daniel thinks they won’t be seen. He hopes they won’t.
Because if they are…
But no. He’s not going to think like that.
“We’ll stay low,” he tells Sam. “Follow me.”
Fortunately, the blare of music covers any sound they might make as they crawl on their forearms off the porch and along the alleyway.Marines make it look easy, Daniel thinks, and almost laughs. After just a few feet, he’s exhausted and breathing hard. He keeps going.
It’s maybe fifty feet down the alleyway to the backyard, a barren stretch of frozen grass crusted with snow, a broken picnic table listing on its side. Safely hidden now, they both stand, wincing as they do. Even with the protection of his coat, Daniel thinks his forearms are probably scraped raw.
“Now what?” Sam asks.
Daniel gazes at the rowhouses stretching in every direction, a sea of chain-link or rickety wooden fencing, roof after drooping roof.
“We keep going,” he says, and heads to the back of the narrow yard, vaults the fence, and walks on.
Behind them, from the party house, they hear a gunshot. Daniel doesn’t look back.
NINE
We all sit around the campfire, sipping catnip tea, waiting for William Stratton to speak, like children waiting for a ghost story, anticipating the delightful chill of terror, and yet it’s real.
“As far as I can tell,” William begins in his stentorian voice, seeming to enjoy having the spotlight, a man who is clearly used to it and expects it, “things have…died down a little, since the first bombs hit. That was when the military and government more or less collapsed…it was pretty chaotic. A lot of gangs, violence?—”
“That has certainly been our experience,” I can’t help but interject. William Stratton isn’t telling us anything we don’t already know, haven’t lived ourselves. It’s less than a week since the cottage burned down.
William nods, understanding, accepting. “It’s probably a little different up here,” he agrees, his gaze on me. He has very clear gray eyes and a square jaw. He reminds me of that old TV commercial:I may not be a doctor, but I play one on TV…
“Why?” I sound petulant, even aggressive, and I don’t mean to be. “All the services have been disrupted up here too,” I explain in a more moderate voice. “Electricity, internet. There’sno government or military up here, either, at least not that I’ve seen.” Now I sound almost accusing. My emotions are too unruly, impossible to manage; I feel like I have to yank them all back, bottle them up.
“No…” William agrees slowly, like he’s making a concession. “But it’s the radiation that’s the real problem.”
A silence greets this explanation, akin to a thunderclap. We all gape at him. “We thought…” I begin, feeling strangely foolish, because I already know that I have no idea what I’m talking about. “We thought the radiation was…you know, fairly localized. And would have…dissipated by now.”
“I’m no expert in these matters,” William replies, sounding like he thinks he is, “but you’re right, in terms of the immediate fallout. According to some estimates we heard through the satellite system, about fifteen percent of the U.S. population died in those first nine blasts from that fallout and its resulting movement downwind. And then, around another twenty-five percent died in the following twenty or so blasts.” He dismisses forty percent of the population with barely a wave of his hand. “And since then I’ve heard another fifteen percent died from various causes, minimum, and more are dying every day.”
“That’s over half of the U.S. population,” Sam whispers, sounding awed.
William gives him a somber look. “That’s not all, though. The contamination from long-life radioactive isotopes like strontium-90 or cesium-137, through the food chain and into the body, is more severe than anticipated, and can last for up to five years.”
“What does that evenmean?” Mattie cries. Phoebe burrows into her lap, alarmed by the outburst, and Mattie hugs her tightly.
“It means that the contamination continues after the initial blasts,” he explains. “You’re not going to die immediately, oreven notice, but over months and years it will become apparent…and it already has.”
“How?” This from Daniel, like a demand. His brows are drawn together, his forehead furrowed, his expression fierce.
William shrugs. “All sorts of ways. This is just hearsay, mind. We didn’t have any of it in the bunker, of course. But…cancer, tumors, genetic modification, infertility…I mean, obviously none of that has manifested itself yet, but it’s coming. And, of course, it’s not just the radiation. It’s the lack of medical care, of medicine and treatment…a lot of people didn’t make it through the winter, due to starvation.” He speaks so unemotionally that it feels as if we could be talking about cockroaches, not human beings. Millions and millions of human beings who died over a cold, stark winter. I think of mothers cradling babies, children wasting away, families huddled together, eating their last meal as the cold steals in.
“Estimates are,” he finishes, “that at least eighty percent of the USA’s population has died, and more are likely to.”
Eighty percent. For a long time, I haven’t let myself think about my wider family very much—my brother, my sister. Some stubborn part of myself, I know, has been imagining them all alive, struggling along as we were. But they didn’t have the luxury of a cottage deep in the woods to hide away in, fresh water, and game to trap. I’m reminded of how fortunate, despite our hardships, we truly have been. And yet…all those people. All those people whom I’veloved.
For a long time no one speaks.
“Still,” Mattie says eventually, her tone sober but also thoughtful. “That means almost a hundred million people are still alive…right?”
“Sixty million if it’s eighty percent,” Sam chimes in. He’s always been good at arithmetic.
