Page 54 of The Midnight Hour
“You needed the rest,” she tells him, and Daniel shakes his head, frantic.
“My son…my mother-in-law…I left them waiting in a car.” He takes a gulping breath. “How long have I been asleep?”
Dorcas frowns, full of sympathy. “About twenty-four hours.”
Twenty-four hours!It feels like an obscene amount of time.Daniel throws off the covers; at least he is still dressed. “I have to get back to them,” he hurls at her, like a demand. He swings his head around wildly, although he doesn’t even know what he’s looking for. His coat? His keys? He doesn’t even have keys, never mind a car; he left them with Sam.
“Where’s your son?” Dorcas asks, and her voice is steady despite his obvious agitation. “Your mother-in-law?”
“On the exit ramp off 91 South,” he replies, and now he sounds miserable. To his shame, his eyes fill with tears, and for a second he thinks he might break down and sob.If anything has happened to Sam…
“That’s over a mile away,” she tells him, frowning. “You’re not on Church Street anymore. My friend Cal helped me get you back here, to my house, when you’d fallen unconscious.” She eyes him critically. “And I’m sorry to say I don’t think you can walk that far.”
Daniel knows he can’t walk that far. He sinks onto the bed, letting his head fall into his hands. “How could I have let this happen…” He chokes on the words.
“Listen.” Dorcas puts a hand on his shoulder, and her touch, solid and sure, is comforting. “I can walk down there and check for you. You stay here and rest.”
He looks up, blinking at her in bleary surprise. “You’d…you’d do that for me?”
She smiles, looking almost amused. “I might be entertaining an angel, after all, as the Good Book says,” she teases him. At least, he thinks she’s teasing him. “Yes, I’ll do that for you.”
Daniel has forgotten about such sweet, simple kindness. It didn’t take very long, he realizes, for most people to descend to savagery and selfishness, but he is so grateful that Dorcas did not. “It’s a jeep,” he tells her, “about twenty years old, parked by the barricade on the south ramp?—”
“I think I’ll be able to find it. There aren’t many cars parked aroundhere these days.”
“Thank you?—”
“You thank me by resting up,” she tells him sternly. “I don’t want you getting sicker, not after I gave you my coffee and soup.” She squeezes his shoulder and, as meekly as a child, Daniel climbs back into bed. Those few moments of exertion and anxiety cost him; he’s feeling weakened again. By the time he hears the front door close, he’s already sinking back into sleep.
He wakes he doesn’t know how long later, disorientated and dry-mouthed. Dorcas is standing at the foot of the bed, looking somber. Daniel’s stomach swoops.
“Did you…”
Already she is shaking her head. “I’m sorry, Daniel. When I got to the car, it was abandoned. I called out and looked around, but there wasn’t anyone there at all.”
TWENTY-ONE
Michael Duart’s “town hall”—his term—is in the gym, where most of the social events have been held, but this meeting doesn’t have the same indifferent amiability to it. As I walk in with Mattie—Ruby and Phoebe stayed behind with Daniel, and Sam and Kyle are going to meet us there—I feel the tension like an electric hum in the air. People are starting to feel angry, and they want answers.
Mattie looks around for Kyle—I haven’t asked her about that relationship, but I have the maternal gut instinct that something is going on, or at least could be—while I glance around for Sam. Something in me judders to a shocked halt when I see him in earnest conversation with none other than Nicole Stratton, their heads bent close together, Sam gesturing with what looks from across the room like anxious determination.
It’s so incongruous, soweird, that for a second I just stare. Was I aware they knew each other? I knew Sam knew Ben from basketball, but Nicole? Why would they talk to each other like this, urgently and secretively?
Mattie heads off to join Kyle, leaving me alone, wondering where to go. I’ve been at the NBSRC for three months now, butI still haven’t grown close to anyone. Mattie has a circle of girls she hangs out with; even Ruby has made a few buddies. Sam’s got his basketball guys along with Kyle, and Daniel talks regularly with Tom; I’ve seen Tom clap him on the shoulder, smiling and nodding.
As for me? I make chitchat with the other kitchen workers during my shift, and I sometimes exchange barbs or jokes with Nicole, but that’s it. I won’t be sad to leave here, I think suddenly, and then I wonder why I’m thinking that way, almost as if I’m about to go.
Michael Duart comes to the front of the gym, and I take a seat in one of the folding chairs by myself. Mattie is sitting with Kyle, and Sam and Nicole have both disappeared. I can’t make sense of that, and I’m not sure I want to. I focus on Michael Duart, and his so-called spin.
He starts off by welcoming us all as if we’re at a dinner party or a corporate meeting, or maybe a cross between the two, introducing himself and his “team”—that’s when I see that William Stratton is sitting at the top table, flashing everyone a toothy smile, and the sight of him makes me miss some of Duart’s smooth-sounding intro, but I pay attention when he talks about radiation levels, and how we all need to stay at the NBSRC for “the foreseeable future.”
That’shis plan? And are the radiation levels really that bad? I’m filled with both unease and doubt. If they’re that bad, why aren’t we in the underground complex that’s meant to be the big draw of this place, where we can definitely be safe?
Just then, someone asks that question out loud. His voice is strident without being aggressive, but Michael Duart’s mouth purses like he’s annoyed.
“The underground complex isn’t yet ready for habitation,” he explains in a voice that I think is meant to sound careful but comes across as prim. “And you can be assured that we are monitoring radiation levels closely. At the moment, the entireNorth Bay area is at acceptable levels, but outside of this area…” He trails off ominously.
“So you think that might change?” someone else asks—a dark-haired woman, sounding anxious, her fingers knotted together.
