Page 46 of The Midnight Hour
He sighs again and closes his eyes, his face still tilted to the wide-open night sky. “They’re happy here, Alex.”
Just as Nicole said…but will they be happy here forever? It’s a respite for all of us, but is it our future? But maybe we don’t need to think about our future. If I’m trying to prove a point, I’m failing, and, I acknowledge, maybe that’s a good thing.
But the twitchy, restless feeling still dogs me as I go about my days—porridge and coffee followed by kitchen work, a short break where I wander the site, averting my gaze from the barbed wire yet coming up against it at every turn, because even though the 22 Wing base seemed big when we first arrived, I’m starting to realize just how small it is. My short break ends with more meal prep, dinner, and then back to our house for a quiet evening of nothing much.
I’ve seen Nicole a few times, going about her business, but we haven’t hung out and I doubt we ever will. Daniel chats to Tom on occasion, and I give his wife, Abby, a few uncertain smiles, but that’s it.
Sam and Kyle hang out with all the single guys, including Ben, while Mattie often goes out with a group of girls; Rubyhappily stays in and reads her book on plants, although I have seen her with some of the other girls in the little school. Phoebe, while still quiet, seems to enjoy preschool, and she lets me give her a bath now and comb her hair; it’s a surprisingly sweet moment of my day.
But that’s it—day after day. Nothing really changes. A few more people arrive; the days get hotter. Someone tells me about the tiny, winged shadflies that emerge from the lake every summer and swarm over buildings, causing a stink when they’re squashed; up at the base, we only see a few, clinging to whatever they can. I exchange banter with a couple of other women in the kitchen, without any of us ever touching on anything serious or even real. No one talks about outside, no one discusses before or a potential after our time at the NBSRC.
The movie night is in the gym, with chairs and a large screen set up. The movie itself is a DVD of a brainless comedy from the 1990s; no disaster or action movies for us, I think a little sourly. We wouldn’t want to get ideas.
I sit next to Daniel on a folding chair as the comedian clowns for the camera and the insipid plotline unfolds predictably. No one is laughing at the corny jokes, but I see a few smiles, hear some soft huffs, as if that’s all anyone is capable of these days.
Except I find I’m not even capable of that. Halfway through the tedious movie, I walk out of the stuffy gym and into the cool night, letting the breeze from the lake blow over me. Then I see the red tip of a cigarette glowing in the darkness and I hear a woman’s voice remark dryly, “I didn’t like that movie the first time I saw it.”
It is Nicole Stratton, leaning up against the wall of the gym and smoking a cigarette, eyeing me with cool indifference.
“I didn’t think smoking was allowed here,” I remark. It’s banned, along with drugs and alcohol. For a second, I think of Kerry smoking on the deck at the cottage, wrinkling her nose atthe menthol taste. The cigarettes had been ten years old, from my parents’ time.
Her eyebrows lift. “It’s not.”
“Then…”
“William got them for me.”
“He did?” I’m not surprised, I realize, not really, but it’s still unsettling. William is on this governing committee after being here for just a few weeks, and he’s flagrantly breaking the rules, offering his family perks? Did I really expect anything else?
“Socialism is always corrupt,” Nicole informs me with a hard laugh. “How can it not be?Peopleare corrupt, even the ones with the best intentions. They just can’t help themselves.”
“That’s pretty cynical,” I remark mildly. She shrugs in response, indifferent to my assessment. “I guess you saw some of that at the billionaire bunker,” I venture.
“Yeah. I did.” Her voice is harsh, and I’m not sure how to respond. Then she continues, her voice growing so savage that she is practically choking on her own bitterness, “And that experience taught me that anyone can do anything. There are no such things as good guys, not in this world. Not in any world, but especially not in this one.”
For a second, I think of the man in the truck. I don’t want him to be a good guy, so the thought there aren’t any is strangely comforting, but before I can say anything to Nicole a sob escapes her, and then another, as if torn from the depths of her body. I’m shocked, even though I remember her crying back at Kawartha; that had been a silent kind of grief, while this feels like a relentless, futile fury. She hurls her half-smoked cigarette to the ground and grinds it to ash before covering her face with her hands as her shoulders shake.
I stand there for a few seconds, and then clumsily I put my arm around her, the gesture feeling unnatural. “Whatever it is…” I begin, uselessly, knowing there’s no helpful way to finish that sentence. She shrugs off my awkward embrace as her shoulders continue to shake.
“Whatever it is?” she chokes through her tears. “Whatever it is?”
I don’t reply, because I’m pretty surewhatever it is, anything I say will make it worse. I feel like I already have. Yet why is she crying like this, saying these things? “Something happened,” I finally say slowly. “At the bunker.” As soon as I say the words aloud, I realize it is blindingly, and insultingly, obvious. Of course something happened. I think back to when the Strattons stumbled upon us at Kawartha—Nicole’s brittle fragility, like she was trying to hold the broken pieces of herself together, like she was no more than a handful of jagged shards. I saw it and I judged her, I realize, assuming she was just reacting to post-bunker life, without her Nespresso and her manicures. Guilt gnaws at me, a corrosive substance.
Will I ever get people right, I wonder. I’ve made so many mistakes in my judgement—Nicole, Kerry, Kyle, and, most damningly, the man in that truck who I shot dead. They all had to prove me wrong. Prove themselves to be far better, stronger people than I ever gave them credit for. Than I was, and maybe ever could be. I think again of that man on the road, the look of surprise on his face as he crumpled to the ground.
Nicole lowers her hands from her face, then wipes the tears from her eyes with a single finger, like she’s making sure her mascara isn’t smudged. Instincts from a former life, useless here.
“I was raped,” she says flatly, and I recoil slightly, because, while part of me must have suspected in what direction this was going, it’s still a shock to have such a violent and ugly thing stated so plainly, without emotion. “By the guy who took over the bunker. It was pragmatic of him, really. A power move, nothing more.”
“How could…”
“William was popular there.” She gives a short, sharp laugh. “I know you aren’t convinced by him because he hasn’t bothered to try with you. You’re not important enough.” She says this so matter-of-factly, I find I can’t even feel insulted. A weary sigh escapes her, and she carefully wipes her eyes again. “But when he tries,” she continues, “he can be so very charming. People are won over, even when they think they won’t be. They convince themselves they’ve got the measure of him, and then they go along with his plans without a peep.” She shakes her head, resignedly rueful now. “I’ve seen it a million times.”
“And that’s what happened at the bunker?”
“After Ed—that was the original developer—died, people wanted to just continue on as we were. I mean, it was a very good set-up. But thenhe…” Her mouth shrivels up like she’s swallowed a lemon, and I know she won’t say his name, this faceless rapist, that she can’t bear to make him more human. “He wanted some of his family and friends to get in on it. Understandable, I guess, but we’d all paid a lot of money to be there. And William confronted him. There were people who would have rallied around William, because of course they didn’t want to be kicked out either, andhedidn’t really have anyone on his side. I mean, if he could throw us out, he could throw everyone out, right? He’d managed to get some guns from the armory, but he wasn’t invulnerable. Other people had guns. It could have gotten really ugly.Heknew he needed William to go, and if he used violence it might backfire. So he raped me.”
I’m still struggling to make sense of that terrible, twisted logic. “But surely that would have made William even angrier?” I ask hesitantly.
