Page 42 of The Midnight Hour
“Near Springfield.” He tells himself it will be safe; it’s been nearly four weeks now, since the first blasts. Maybe people were dying of radiation a few weeks ago, but not now. He’ll keep Sam in the truck or indoors as much as possible. They can still do this.
“Good luck,” she tells him, and then she shuffles back into the living room, presumably to wait out the rest of her life. It is a sad yet also moving thought, its own kind of bravery. Daniel is about to head outside, but then he decides to investigate the kitchen. He doesn’t feel guilty as he takes two liters of bottled water and another knife, just in case. There’s no food left, but if there had been he knows he would have taken that, too.
The car takes several tries to start, but then Daniel is reversing out the drive and heading back to Route5 and the bridge across the river. He doesn’t see anyone along the way, and he wonders how many people here have died. At the bridge, he glimpses the sign for the RV park and marina, and he groans aloud. He does not want to go find that boy. He does not want to have todeal with him.
And yet…can he really leave a child on his own? Resolutely he pulls the car onto the side of the road and heads into the park. It is utterly desolate, the RVs either shuttered and locked up tight or completely abandoned. Daniel picks his way through the tufty, frost-tipped grass as he calls out, “Hello? Anybody here? Little guy? I said I’d come back for you…”
He goes to the RV the boy had gone into before and sees that it is empty; there’s a sour smell about the place but at least no dead bodies—and no boy. He stands there for a moment, wondering what to do. Wanting to go.
He steps outside again. “Hello…” he calls. There’s no answer.
Daniel stands there for several moments, breathing in and out, imagining the radioactive particles entering his body, his bloodstream. Killing him slowly…or maybe even fast. How is he to know?
“Hello…” he calls out again, half-heartedly. High above him a bird twitters, and the sound comforts him—and gives him the resolve he knows he needs. There is still life—for that little bird, for him, and, most of all, for Sam.
His gaze sweeps around the campsite, searching for a sign of the boy, and then in the distance he sees a woman peek her head out of one of the camper vans. Her hair is tangled, her expression suspicious. She has the dirty-faced boy hoisted on one hip.
“Are you okay?” Daniel asks, and in response she retreats into the van, shutting the door behind her.
Daniel waits another moment, and then he turns and walks back to the car. As he drives across the bridge, all he feels is relief.
SEVENTEEN
ALEX
As we walk back to our duplex, I can’t shake the feeling that we’re at some kind of family camp, or on one of those low-budget all-inclusive vacations. Dinner was a muted affair, but we got dessert—canned fruit cocktail, swimming in syrup, the kind I haven’t had since I was a kid. Michael Duart stood up to make an announcement, welcoming the latest residents. I wondered how many there are besides us. Tom nodded at us as we left, and his wife smiled shyly. I managed a smile back, wondering if one day we’d be friends.
I don’t know what to make of seeing William Stratton next to Michael Duart; he can’t have arrived much before we did, and yet he was already chummy with the mastermind of this place, which is, I reflect, exactly the kind of guy I thought he was. But where are his wife and son? I think of Nicole, the bleakness I saw in her eyes, the despair that bordered on indifference, and I hope she’s okay.
But in the meantime, I have my own family to worry about. Phoebe refused to eat the casserole, despite Mattie’s patient cajoling; I’m uncomfortably aware of how silent and withdrawn she has become at only four years old. I don’t know her wellenough even to guess what might draw her out of her shell, and in any case Mattie is so possessive of the little girl, and seems to resent my poor attempts at interference. Maybe I’ll just leave it to her, I think wearily, even if it doesn’t feel right, to hand off my mothering to a fifteen-year-old.
As for the others…like Phoebe, Sam seems subdued, and he still isn’t looking at me. Ruby has yet to speak today, at least in my hearing. And I’m worried about what we’re all going todohere—what are these jobs they’re going to give us? What if we can’t do them well enough? We’ve found a safe place, but everything about the North Bay Survival and Resettlement Center feels unfamiliar and uncomfortable, like a scratchy blanket I have no choice but to wrap around my shoulders, because I am that cold. I just hope in time I’ll come to appreciate and savor its warmth.
That night, I lie on the uncomfortable mattress, the sheets rough, and stare up at the squares of ceiling tile that look like something out of a low-budget office. Next to me, Daniel breathes slowly, already asleep. In the girls’ bedroom, I hear the squeak of springs every time one of them turns over, and in the distance the smack of a screen door opening and closing. Everything feels so strange, especially after where we’ve been, what we’ve seen and endured. I want to feel relieved, to breathe out an at-last sort of sigh, but I don’t yet. I can’t. I tell myself it will come tomorrow.
The next morning, just before the first sitting of breakfast, another brisk and bland-faced official taps the door and then hands us “an NBSRC Welcome Pack,” which is just a few stapled sheets outlining the expectations of our existence in this place. I’m impressed at the mediocre bureaucracy of the endeavor; in times like these, a typed sheet detailing tedious rules is almost admirable. We don’t have time to read all the information before breakfast, but we do discover the jobs we’re meant to report to immediately after the meal—Daniel is inaccounting, Sam in warehouse, Kyle in farming, and Mattie helping at the school. I’m working in the kitchen, while Phoebe will be in the childcare program, Ruby enrolled in school.
We walk to breakfast feeling a cautious not-quite-excitement at this new phase of life, with jobs we report to, something that feels like a novelty. Breakfast is a cup of watery instant coffee, a bowl of just as watery oatmeal, and a single sugar sachet for flavor. It’s still more than I’ve had in a long while, and I eat every last bite, savoring the sweetness. I look around for William Stratton, and, more importantly, Nicole and Ben, but I don’t see any member of that family anywhere.
After breakfast, Mattie takes Ruby and Phoebe to the educational facility—she’s made friends with some kids her age, so she knows where she’s going—while Sam, Kyle, and Daniel all head off to find out where their jobs are, and what exactly they will be doing. I stay in the mess hall for the second sitting, since I’m pretty sure being on kitchen duty means I’ll be working here.
As the building finally empties out, I feel a weird loneliness sweep suddenly through me—I’ve been cheek by jowl with my family formonths, all of us working together for a common goal—survival—and it’s strange and somewhat unsettling to be on my own now, doing something most likely mundane.
Admittedly, at the cottage I had plenty of alone time; I went for walks, or out to pick berries or check traps, but even when I was on my own we were still all working together, toward a common cause. And while I know that’s the kind of thing that is meant to be happening here, right now I feel untethered. Maybe a job will help anchor me to this new life. I take my bowl and cup to the plastic basin by the kitchen hatch and look around for someone to report to.
The kitchen is a hive of activity, and definitely not big enough to serve four or five hundred people, even though that’s what it is doing. I hover in the doorway uncertainly until a solid-looking woman with an apron swathed around her middle and a mesh cap covering her salt-and-pepper curls gives me a firm nod.
“New?”
“Yes—”
“You can start here.” She nods toward an industrial-sized sink. “Rinse and load,” she tells me. “Rinse and load.”
I spend the next hour doing exactly that, finding a comforting numbness in the repetitive mundanity of the actions. I’m also more than half amazed that I’m actually running a dishwasher. I wonder if the novelty of having electricity will ever wear off, become commonplace again, the way it once was, but right now I am simply enjoying the ease of it.
There are a dozen women in the kitchen, applying themselves to various tasks, and yet no one really talks. I’m glad; I don’t think I’m capable of conversation. For months, conversation has revolved around the practicalities of survival, and when those are taken away it feels as if there’s no longer anything important or interesting to say.
By mid-morning, we are finished, and we get a short break before we need to return to start prepping for the evening meal.
