Page 38 of The Midnight Hour
“I think they’re safe,” he says quietly. “It’s all enclosed and guarded here.”
“There are four hundred people in this place,” I remind him. “Four hundred people we don’t know.”
“They’ve all been vetted the same as we have,” he reminds me. “And considering the zero-tolerance policy they’ve got going here, I think we can give the girls a little freedom.”
“All right,” I finally relent, “but be back here in an hour.”
“How am I supposed to know when an hour is up?” Mattie demands. “I don’t have a phone.”
“There’s such a thing as a watch,” I retort, and she lets out an exasperated groan.
“I don’t have one of those, either.”
“Just estimate,” Daniel tells her. He puts his arm around me, both comfort and warning. “And have fun.”
The little house feels eerily silent once the girls have all trooped out.
“I don’t think they should have gone,” I say, already fretting. “We have no idea about this place, Daniel, or what kind of people are here.”
“They’re people we’re going to be living with for theforeseeable,” he reminds me, wryly echoing Mattie. “I know it’s hard,Alex, but we’ve got to let them make a life here, just as everyone else has to.”
“I know, I know,” I say, nodding mechanically. “This is good for them.” I imagine Mattie making friends, flicking her hair, and I feel a sense of relief steal through me. I don’t need to be scared anymore, but it’s hard to let go of the fear.
“How long do you think we’ll be here?” I ask Daniel.
“How long? What do you mean?” He smiles faintly. “Are you already thinking of going?”
“No…but the whole resettlement thing. What does that even mean? Are we going to leave here to go somewhere else, somewhere…real?”
Daniel is silent for a moment. “This is real, Alex,” he finally says, his tone grave. “More real than anything else right now. The cities I saw—Utica, Springfield, Albany—they were ruins. Wrecks. And…dangerous. I can’t see anyone living in them anytime soon. And if what Stratton said about the radiation is true, that the whole east coast is a washout…”
I don’t want to think about the radiation. “I didn’t know you went all the way to Albany.”
He shrugs. “There were some barricades and that was the way around them.”
I shake my head slowly. “Why won’t you tell me about those months, Daniel?” Now doesn’t feel like the right time to address any of this, but I don’t know when will be. “Why did it take you so long to get back to the cottage?”
“I told you.” He meets my gaze, and somehow that is worse than if he didn’t, because there’s a remote blankness in his eyes that seems utterly opaque. I don’t know what’s behind it, or if anything is. “There were barricades and things like that. We had to go the long way around several times.” He shrugs in a twitchy sort of way. “Anyway, we don’t need to talk about that now. It’s in the past, Alex. Better to look forward.” A rebuke, and one I accept, because I know he’s right, even if it still feelslike there’s something heavy and immovable between us. Perhaps there always will be. “What happened to that woman and her baby, do you know?” he asks, an abrupt segue.
I shake my head. “I don’t know. A woman took her away. She said they’d give her the help she needs, but…” I trail off, not sure how to finish that sentence, or whether I want to.
Daniel nods slowly, in acceptance of what I’ve said as well as what I haven’t. His shoulders slump and he looks down at the ground, seeming moved in a way I don’t really understand. Surely he’s seen worse things than that woman and her baby. “Poor woman,” he says quietly, the words laced with grief. “Poor baby.”
“What do you think happened to them?” I ask. “I mean, before?”
“The baby looked only a few months old, but it might have been older, and was simply small from malnourishment. I think it probably starved to death.” He is silent, his face drawn in lines of stoical sadness, and his gaze is distant in a way that makes me suspect he’s not thinking of that woman and her baby at all.
A knock at the door, a determined rat-a-tat-tat, has us both jumping. When was the last time we heard a knock on a door? I can’t remember. Daniel goes to answer it, while I steel myself for whatever’s next.
It turns out to be a guy delivering our belongings, and so we spend the next hour unpacking everything, arranging it just so. Our guns have been taken, but there’s a note informing us we can collect them if and when we choose to leave the NBSRC.
“It makes sense,” Daniel remarks when he reads it. “Even if I don’t like it. You can’t have four or five hundred people walking around, armed. It would be civil war.”
Which makes me wonder if the girls are actually safe, wandering around. “What kind of people are here, do you think?”
Daniel shrugs. “I guess we’ll findout at dinner.”
After over seven months of virtual isolation, it’s strange and more than a little unsettling to think about meeting so many people, making small talk. I’m not really sure I remember how.
