Page 49 of The Midnight Hour
“Houses, stores, warehouses…” Sam shrugs again. “Wherever.”
“I thought all of that stuff would have been looted by now,” I remark. I’m thinking of Corville, when we went back in December, and how empty everything was. That was nine months ago. Could there still be stores and warehouses with merchandise now?
“There’s still stuff,” Sam says. “Because…I guess…a lot of people have died, even up here. Not necessarily from radiation, but from other stuff. Starvation, illness, whatever.” He falls abruptly silent, seeming to turn inward. We’re all thinking of William Stratton’s eighty percent. Two months on from that, is it more? How much?
“But whatever those guys find…it will run out eventually,” I point out, making sure to keep my voice gentle. “What then?”
For the first time, Sam looks me in the eye. His expression is bleak. “I don’t know, Mom,” he says. “What do you think?” He’s clearly not waiting for an answer, and so I don’t give him one.
It’s only then that I realize Daniel isn’t in the room. He was sitting in the sagging loveseat across from me at one point, but I don’t recall seeing him get up. The kids have gone back to talking about robots and zombies—heaven knows that’s easier than dealing with dreary reality—and so I quietly excuse myself and go looking for my husband.
He’s in bed, dozing, even though it’s only eight o’clock.
“Hey.” I sit on the edge of the bed, the mattress springs creaking beneath me. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” He smiles faintly as his eyes flutter open. “Justtired.”
I study him for a moment, as if looking for evidence, and I find it in the deeper lines of his face, the gray in his hair and even in his skin. He looks tired, and, more than that, I’m afraid he looks unwell.
It’s a possibility I push away instinctively, instant rejection, and yet it still hovers, malevolent. I try to think if there have been other signs—has he gone to bed early before? Has he seemed to have less energy? I can’t remember. I’m not even sure what I’m looking for.
Daniel must see all this in my face, for he reaches over and catches hold of my hand. “Hey,” he says softly. “I’m just tired.”
I nod, a knee-jerk reaction. “The kids were having a debate,” I tell him a little woodenly. “Robots versus zombies.”
“A would you rather?”
“Yeah.”
“Hmm.” He frowns, giving the matter some serious thought, or at least pretending to. “What’s the zombie situation like? Are we talking rotting flesh and eating humans?”
I smile, at least a little bit. “Is there another kind of zombie?”
“Sentient robots?”
“That was one of the points of the debate.”
“Hmm,” he says again. He’s still holding my hand, running his thumb along my palm, and I’m filled with a sudden rush of deep love for him, so that tears come to my eyes and I have to blink them away. Daniel still notices.
“What is it?” he asks, all pretense of robots and zombies dropped.
“Nothing.” I shake my head. “At least, I don’t know what it is.” I wipe my eyes. “I love you,” I blurt, and he smiles, his eyes creasing, everything about him so beloved and familiar.
“I’m just tired, Alex, but I love you, too.”
It’s the first time we’ve said it to each other in a long time, and it feels rusty, heartfelt but still awkward. He squeezes my hand, then lets it go, and a few minutes later he is back todozing. I watch him sleep, memorizing his features, wondering if I’m foolish to be afraid. There are enough things to be worrying about, surely?
And yet at the same time, there’s nothing to worry about at all. Sleep, eat, work, repeat. Robots, I think with the ghost of a smile, don’t have to worry. Maybe zombies don’t, either.
Over the next few weeks, the silent, pointed looks become murmurs, and then the murmurs become mutters. A rumor goes around that one of the boys who was evicted has died. No one seems to know how or even if he really did, but the looming possibility of it remains, talked about darkly as people go about their tasks. The rules that we once accepted for safety’s sake have begun to chafe. They don’t just feel unfair; they feel wrong. And what are we doing, following them all, anyway? For what purpose, if it’s just endlesslythis?
All around us, tense little scenes play out. In the warehouse, as Sam tells us one evening, a fistfight breaks out and the supervisor looks the other way, even though this is, technically, in breach of the NBSRC’s zero-tolerance rules. In the kitchen, one of my coworkers doesn’t show up—another rule broken—and the head cook just tells her sharply not to miss another shift.
It should hearten me, these little acts of rebellion, but the truth is it just makes me even more anxious. Because if we can’t co-exist here in a way that works, what hope is there? The last thing I want is more chaos, more violence, and yet I’m afraid that’s where we’re headed, as people emerge from their chrysalises of numbness and start to wonder why. Start to want more.
Then, in October, when the trees are all leafless and the base has become a barren and bleak landscape like a frost-tipped tundra, when the very air feels charged with tension and every moment seems expectant, Michael Duart calls a communitymeeting, the first since we’ve arrived, and, I suspect, the first ever.
It’s in the gym, where the movies and quiz nights are, and as I’m getting ready to go, feeing a strange mix of apprehension and excitement, Daniel comes in our tiny bedroom and stretches out on the bed. Something in the way he settles in makes me pause in my primping—not that there’s much to primp with.
