Page 5 of The Midnight Hour
“I have no idea.”
“No, me neither.”
We fall silent and Mattie trails her fingers through the water. I’m conscious of how much responsibility she bears without complaint or even question—caring for Phoebe, making dinner, organizing everything thatIshould have. In my previous life, I was the mom who made the class cupcakes, who sent Christmas cards to everyone, even our mailman, who had color-coded to-do lists and listened to podcasts on productivity. Now I just sigh.
“Kyle has a fever,” Mattie tells me as she flickswater from her fingers, creating an arc of shimmering diamond droplets over the burbling stream. “Dad gave him some Tylenol, but he’s worried about infection.”
“We still have some of the antibiotics from Justine.” A few months ago, Ruby developed sepsis and I ended up scouring the countryside for someone with access to antibiotics; this led me to Justine, who gave me the medicine and joined our little tribe, along with her daughter. Now she’s dead, and I grieve more for Phoebe, who lost her mother, than for anyone else; I don’t think any of us really knew her that well.
“Yeah,” Mattie says slowly as she straightens. “I guess we’ll use those if we have to. We’ll keep an eye on him.”
I shake my head, instinctively resisting the idea that Mattie needs to be in charge. “You don’t have to worry about Kyle,” I tell her, and she glances at me sharply, almost a glare.
“What? He’s my friend.”
“I know,” I reply, even though I didn’t really know; Kyle came to us back in December, a weedy little kid whose two interests were cannabis and gaming. He’s grown into himself over the last few months, but I wouldn’t have thought he and Mattie were actuallyfriends. Except, who else was there for her to be friends with?
There had been Kerry, I think, with a grief that runs through me in a deep seam of sorrow. Kerry, whom I disliked at the start, with her gallows humor and sharp-eyed gaze that missed nothing, not even my own selfishness. Kerry, who gave her life to save my daughter. I miss her more than I can articulate, even to myself.
“All I meant,” I tell Mattie, trying to gentle my voice, “is that you don’t have to be responsible for everyone. Or everything. I’m worried about you, Mattie. This is too much for you to take on. You’re only fifteen.” This comes out in fumbling, staccato bursts that sound like accusations rather than empathy.
Mattie narrows her eyes, her lips pursing in disdain. “Fifteen in Armageddon looks a little different than in the life you remember,” she tells me shortly. “I’m fine, Mom.” It feels like a brush-off. Itisone, I realize, as, without a word, Mattie turns around and walks back up to the campsite.
I feel as if I’ve alienated two of my three children today and getting them back is just as important to me as surviving. The trouble is, I have no idea how to do it.
THREE
I linger by the stream for another fifteen minutes, mainly because I’m sad and scared and I don’t know what to say to my children when I see them. It’s getting dark, though, the sun a massive orange ball sinking behind the dark fringe of trees on the other side of the stream as the horizon darkens to violet, and so reluctantly I rise and head back up to everyone else.
In my absence, a makeshift campsite has been set up—the tarps fashioned into two tents, a fire pit dug, banked by stones and offering a comforting blaze. A metal pot hanging from a travel hook holds the stew Mattie mentioned. She, Ruby, and Sam are all huddled around the fire; Kyle is stretched out on the bench seat in the truck, already asleep, or maybe just feverish, with Phoebe curled up in the back. Daniel sits a few feet away from the others, studying the atlas with a small flashlight, and occasionally slapping his arm or neck when a black fly or mosquito comes too close.
It looks cozy, almost like something from our past life—a camping trip to the Berkshires, not that we did that more than once or twice. We were never great campers, until we had to be.Mattie and Sam both glance at me as I come up the hill, and then look away again without speaking.
I know I should say something, but right now I feel too cowardly, or maybe just too tired, to attempt it. I head over to Daniel and hunker down next to him.
“How are you?” I ask quietly. Such an innocuous question, and yet it holds so much import.How are you really, is what I want to ask.How are you holding up after what happened today, how are you coping with whatever happened while you went to get Sam that I still don’t know about, how are you feeling about whatever is ahead of us?Andhow can I help you, because I want to reach my husband, but it feels as if he is continually, determinedly edging away from me.
“Fine,” Daniel says briefly, the polite equivalent ofback off.
I nod toward the map. “What are you thinking there?”
“I’m not sure.” Wearily he passes his hand over his face. “I wanted to go as far west as we can get because I’m pretty sure the bridge is closed at Thousand Islands, but there just aren’t that many points to cross, and we’d have to go miles out of our way around the Great Lakes. But if we go directly south…” He traces the route on the map with one finger, to the edge of a blue swathe that is Lake Ontario. “To Port Granby or thereabouts,” he continues, “which is about a hundred miles from Toronto, we could maybe find a boat in one of the marinas, sail across…it’s about thirty miles, I think. But we’d be landing on the other side between Buffalo and Rochester, both of which I think were hit.”
I swallow hard. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“No.” Daniel is silent for a moment, his forehead furrowed as we both gaze at the atlas with the gridlines of Toronto, Rochester, Buffalo all laid out, and now all most likely destroyed. He pauses, his gaze trained on the map. “The safer thing, perhaps, would be to keep making our way north and west.” With one finger, he traces up from Kawartha to Sudbury. “Along the eastern shore of Lake Huron, and then up over thetop and down the other side,” he continues, his finger marking the proposed route. “There would be a bridge to cross here, at Mackinaw City, between the two lakes, and then down through Michigan and across.”
I stare at the roundabout route he’s mapped out, the meandering length of it. “Daniel, that has to be at least two thousand miles. We’re only a couple of hundred miles from Buffalo now.”
He scrubs at his face. “I know.”
“We can’t…it would take us all summer,” I continue, panic creeping into my voice although I’m trying to keep my tone level. “If not longer. We’d run out of food, out of gas, and then we’d still have to cross a bridge that might be closed or barricaded or whatever, go around cities…” The route he’s just traced skirts Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland. Detroit was definitely hit; I don’t know about the others. Such a journey feels enormous, insurmountable.Impossible.
We can’t do this, I think suddenly, the force of my feeling like a smack in the face. I haven’t actually thought about the future since those terrorists attacked the cottage, sent us running through the woods for our lives. I’ve been operating on numbed autopilot, but now the future looms in front of me, in front ofus, and it is both utterly unknowable and completely terrifying. Where will we find food? How will we survive? The supplies we brought from the cottage will last a week or two if we’re careful, and that’s on practically starvation rations. If we can’t make it to Buffalo…what on earth are we going to do? “We can’t,” I say again, insistent this time.
“Alex, Iknow.” His voice contains more despair than irritation, but I fall silent, feeling chastened. Of course he knows. He’s come much closer to all this than I ever have, when he went to get Sam. But is this route really our most viable option? He takes a deep breath before continuing. “It’s just…if we go south from here…I don’t know what it will be like, between Buffalo and Rochester.How bad.”
He sighs, knuckling his forehead as if he’s trying to push something out of his head. “It’s not just the radiation, Alex, it’s the other dangers. Thepeople. That little redneck gang that took on the cottage?” He shakes his head. “That’s nothing compared to some of the stuff happening in the more metropolitan areas. People have got ahold of major weaponry, huge sites they’ve turned into fortresses—malls, hospitals, hotel complexes…Ex-military and police and some prepper types who have gone totally rogue. It’s…it’s not good.”
