Chapter 10
TEN
I wake up early the next morning, while the sky is still clinging to the vestiges of darkness and mist hovers over the ground. I slip out of the tent to stoke up the fire—and make sure the Strattons haven’t stolen away in the night. But they haven’t; their car is still there, parked under the trees so it’s hidden from the road. I can hear William snoring from their tent. I turn toward the fire, and then have to check myself when I see Nicole is already there, a blank expression on her face as she sits by the flames, her knees drawn up to her chest, her manicured fingers laced together over them.
“Hey.” I speak quietly, to keep from waking anyone else. I don’t think it can be much past five in the morning. “You’re up early.”
She shrugs in response without looking at me, her zip-up hoodie sliding off one bony shoulder. I decide to go about my business. I head down to the stream to fetch water and put it on top of the stove to boil. The other day Ruby and I roasted and ground cleavers for coffee, or at least the approximation of it, and so I set them to boil while Nicole simply sits, looking blank. I have no idea what to say to her, and so I say nothing, focusing on the job at hand, while she looks remote and beautiful and brittle, in an oversized white cashmere hoodie and steel-gray yoga pants, like a time traveler from another universe.
After five minutes or so, I present her with my poor offering—a cup of brownish, boiled water that vaguely resembles coffee flavor, with no milk or sugar, of course.
She wraps her slender hands around the tin mug, her expression veiled as she remarks without expression, “Yesterday I had a Nespresso.”
I have no idea what to make of that, and, while I’m still trying to frame a response, she lets out a dark, bitter laugh, and then drains her cup.
Oh… kay.
“So…did you leave the bunker yesterday?” I ask cautiously as I sit a few feet away from her, cradling my own cup. “And drive right here?”
She nods, not looking at me. “Something like that.”
Another silence descends, as oppressive as ever. I don’t want to pump her for information…and yet I sort of do. I need to find out where they’re going, because I’m convinced, like Daniel, that they have a destination in mind, and it’s somewhere we need to know about.
“So why Kawartha?” I ask mildly as I take a sip of coffee. “I mean…it’s got to be, what? Two hundred miles from Watertown?”
Nicole looks away, her long blond hair falling out of her ponytail to cover her face. She has to be about my age, I think, and her hair is a perfect platinum. Did they have hair dye in that luxury bunker, along with everything else? Maybe even a hair salon and stylist. “Like William said, we just headed north.”
“And west,” I add mildly. “I mean, it’s not exactly a straight shot, is it? ”
Nicole whips her head around, her eyes turning ice-blue as she glares at me. “Why are you asking so many questions?”
“Because I’m curious,” I fire back, “and I think you’re going somewhere. Somewhere specific.”
We stare at each other for a long, level moment, and then Nicole drops her gaze, shrugging as she slips her hoodie back onto her shoulder. “Fine,” she says. “We are.”
I should feel victorious, or at least vindicated, but instead I’m only wary. There’s something dismissive about her tone, like wherever they’re going has nothing to do with us, and of course it doesn’t . But, like Daniel, I want it to.
“Where?” I ask.
“North Bay. There’s a Canadian Forces base there, with a huge underground complex. Sixty floors.” She speaks almost as if she’s unimpressed.
I goggle at her for a moment. “Aren’t the Canadian Forces using it?” I ask uncertainly.
“They were ,” Nicole replies with emphasis. “It was Canada’s most important air base. But the military has more or less been disbanded, and the place was basically empty, until someone took it over. At least, that’s what we were told.”
“The Canadian military has disbanded? But?—”
“After Vancouver and Toronto were hit,” she replies with a shrug, “and Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa…I can’t remember if there were others, but it’s in as bad shape as the U.S., more or less.”
“Ottawa?” That was only a hundred miles from the cottage. Have we been affected by the radiation, without even knowing it? The thought is both surreal and frightening, and yet I can’t devote any more headspace to an impossible, amorphous what-if. I suppose we’ll find out eventually, if we were. I picture myself suddenly starting to cough, or maybe a clump of hair falling out, and then thinking, yep, must be the radiation, just as expected …
I mean, everything else has gone wrong, so why not this, too?
“I had no idea so many Canadian cities had been hit,” I remark numbly. “Why Canada…”
“Because it’s next to the U.S.” She lets out a sudden laugh, high and wild, ending on a single, jagged note. “You guys are living out here like it’s the Stone Age, and you don’t realize the whole world has gone up in smoke?” She shakes her head, disdainful, while I continue to reel.
William Stratton hadn’t mentioned all the Canadian cities yesterday. I’d known about Toronto, but I’d assumed it had been hit simply because it was on the border, and the same with Vancouver. But Calgary? Ottawa? Edmonton?
This country is as ruined as the United States…and yet somehow up north is still safe? Well, I suppose it is, if there are sixty stories underground somewhere up by North Bay.
“So this base,” I say after a moment. “Are there people in it now?”
“So we’ve heard.” Nicole stares down into her empty coffee cup. “But we haven’t had any contact with them, so we don’t know for sure. But some people back at the bunker where we were before mentioned it as a possibility, so…” Another shrug. “Where else are we going to go?”
“But surely the military still has some kind of presence there,” I persist. It feels too easy, or maybe too alarming, to be able to walk right onto a huge military base, one of the most important in the whole country, and take up residence.
“Not as far as I know,” she replies. “The aircraft are gone, and the underground complex was abandoned about twenty years ago. They took all the equipment out back then. I heard it was used to film some sci-fi movie awhile back, but it’s basically been empty.”
Okay, so not a luxury bunker, then, but somewhere safe.
“How many people does it hold?” I ask Nicole .
“Four hundred underground.”
“Do you think it’s safe above?”
“I have no idea,” she snaps, and now she sounds irritable. “Do you think I actually know anything?”
“Your husband certainly was acting like you both did yesterday,” I retort. “With your radio communications with all these other underground condos.”
She lets out a laugh, this time a tired huff. “Trust me, it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Frankly, I’m not sure I want to head down into another one.” She presses her forehead against her knees as she lets out a soft moan. “Do you know what I miss?” she tells me. “My kitchen .”
I have no idea what to say to that.
Nicole lifts her head and looks at me with a mixture of earnestness and despair. “Don’t you miss your kitchen? Imagine sitting at your breakfast bar, the sun streaming through the window, sipping a latte, and scrolling through the news on your phone…don’t you miss that?” She drops her head back down on her knees and it takes me a few seconds to realize her shoulders are shaking with sobs.
“Nicole…” Awkwardly I scoot over to pat her shoulder. I don’t know this woman at all, and I think she’s had an easier time of it than most of us, yet in this moment I feel sorry for her. She is weeping as if her heart has shattered into a million pieces and she isn’t even going to try to put them all back together.
“Don’t.” She sniffs, then lifts her head to wipe her streaming eyes. “Don’t,” she says again, wearily, then she gives another tired laugh. “Thank God I’m not wearing mascara.”
I manage a soft huff of laughter, although I’m not really feeling it. I have no idea what to make of this woman. “What was your life like, before?” I ask. “I mean, I know what your kitchen looks like…”
“My life was irrelevant.” She sighs. “And I loved it. I was an interior designer, and don’t bother murmuring some pleasantry, because I already know you think it’s useless. Most people do. It’s certainly irrelevant now, and it was more or less irrelevant then as well. I advised people with too much money on what throw pillows they should buy.” She shrugs defiantly. “So what? It made them happy. It made me happy.”
“I’m sure it was more than throw pillows,” I tell her. “I bet you advised on some lamps, too.”
She gives me a look of shocked amazement, and then she lets out the first real laugh I’ve heard from her—deep, from her belly. I smile.
“Oh, yes,” she says. “Some really cool lamps.” A sigh gusts out of her. “What about you?”
“Oh, I was just as irrelevant,” I assure her. “Maybe even more so. I didn’t even have a job. I was a stay-at-home mom, because I more or less missed the window for another kind of career. By the time I could have gone into a field I cared about, I was forty, and it just felt…pointless. Too much effort. Or maybe I was just scared.” I lapse into silence. Before we lost the house, never mind the nuclear stuff, I’d been toying with the idea of going back to school. Retraining as a teacher, in English or history. Thinking about that barely-there dream is like looking at an old, faded photograph. The evidence is right in front of you, but you can’t quite make yourself believe it ever really happened.
“I’m sure your kids were grateful,” Nicole says, and I can’t tell if she’s being sarcastic or not. When are kids ever grateful about anything? “Did you do the whole chocolate-chip cookie thing?”
I can’t help but laugh. “Oh, yes.”
She nods slowly. “I didn’t bake. Or cook. We ordered expensive meal kits to cater for our diet. William was on some paleo thing, I was low carb, and Ben could only eat beige food for a while.” She laughs. “I bet you didn’t know there was a meal kit for that. ‘Fussy Friends.’ It’s actually called that.” She glances at me, somber now. “Don’t tell Ben I told you. He’d be so embarrassed. It’s for toddlers, and he was eating these ‘Tot Pots’ when he was thirteen.”
“I don’t think Ben and I are in the conversing stage yet,” I tell her. “I asked him how old he was, and he looked horrified that this middle-aged nonentity was addressing him.”
Nicole nods sagely. “You can be seen as a Karen even in Armageddon. Especially by my son.” Her voice is full of deep affection. “I never knew I could be so embarrassing until my son became a teenager. Then my mere presence became excruciating to him.”
I let out a little laugh, gratified that we can bond over the typical travails of motherhood. “Do they eventually find you less embarrassing?” I muse, and her eyebrows lift.
“Maybe when they’re parents themselves? Although then I bet we just become outdated and ridiculous.”
“So unfair,” I agree.
We smile, and it feels like a moment of surprising solidarity.
“So, do you think you’ll get into this place up in North Bay?” I ask, and that moment of camaraderie is forgotten in an instant.
“I have no idea. And I really don’t care.” Nicole rises from the campsite, depositing her cup by the fire, presumably for somebody else to wash. “Thanks for the tea,” she says, and she walks away, back down to the stream, making me wonder if we actually bonded over anything.
The next few hours pass in the usual blur of activity as Ruby and I get breakfast going, and Mattie goes with Phoebe to pick some more strawberries. Sam and Kyle go fishing, and Daniel checks the snares. We all have our jobs—save for the Strattons. They skulk around the camp, silent and wary, and I start to wonder when they’re going to head off. Now that I know where they’re going, we don’t need them here any longer. It’s a mercenary way to think, but it’s hard not to think that way these days. They’re using our tent, eating our precious food, and bringing nothing to the table. As much as I enjoyed that brief moment of solidarity with Nicole, now I just want the three of them gone.
“So,” William says as we are all eating breakfast around the campfire, his tone that of an announcement, “I thought we’d get going later this morning. We’re very grateful for your hospitality, but we shouldn’t use up any more of your supplies.”
I haven’t had a chance to tell Daniel what I’ve learned from Nicole, but I try to give him a meaningful nod from across the campfire. It’s okay, let them go . He catches my look and gives a tiny nod back.
“I wish you safe travels,” he tells William. “All of you, that is. Do you know where you’re headed?” His voice is mild, pleasant.
“Oh, I think we’ll just keep heading north,” William replies affably. “Safer.”
I catch Nicole’s gaze and she rolls her eyes, smiling faintly. I have to stifle a surprised laugh. Maybe we would have been friends, I think, but now we’ll never know…unless we make it to North Bay, too.
They leave an hour later, after packing their designer suitcases back in their SUV. Daniel asks them if they know how to load and shoot the guns in their trunks and when William admits, annoyed by his own embarrassment, that he doesn’t, Daniel gives them all a brief tutorial.
“Nice of whoever kicked you out to let you keep some guns,” he remarks as he hands back the rifle.
“He wasn’t heartless,” William concedes, “and in any case, these guns wouldn’t make much of a dent in the door of the bunker. They weren’t worried. ”
I glance at Nicole and see she is scowling, and I have the stirrings of a suspicion that her feelings for the man who kicked them out, whoever he was, are different from her husband’s. I don’t have any chance to explore that idea further, because the Strattons are leaving, giving us half-hearted waves and murmured thanks before they climb into their glossy SUV and head back out onto the open road.
Their departure brings relief, but also a certain flatness.
“When are we heading out?” Sam asks. “And where are we going, now that Buffalo’s not an option?” He speaks matter-of-factly, but I can see the tension in his jaw, his shoulders. I don’t think my son has looked me in the eye once since we arrived here.
“We need to think about where we’re going,” I say, and then give Daniel a significant look that no one misses.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Mattie demands. “What’s going on? What do you know?”
So much for being discreet. I’m reminded, poignantly, of our former life, when Daniel and I might attempt to speak in some sort of code at the dinner table, while our children, attuned to the merest hint of suggestion or secrecy, would demand to know what we were talking about, how it affected them. Parents weren’t allowed to have secrets.
“I need to talk to your father first,” I say, and am met with groans. “Mattie, why don’t you take Phoebe down to the stream? She loves splashing in the water.” I glance at the others. “Let’s tidy up camp.”
Everyone slouches off, reluctant and indignant, while Daniel draws me to the sheltering boughs of a large cedar tree, the same one I spoke to Sam under, a conversation that was ultimately unsatisfying for us both.
“What do you know?” Daniel asks, and he sounds caught between amusement and intent.
Briefly, I explain to him what Nicole told me about the air base at North Bay. Daniel is silent, reflective, his gaze distant as he considers everything I’ve said. The minutes pass and I try not to feel impatient.
“I think I’ve heard about that place,” he finally says. “It was built in the sixties, at the height of the Cold War, and the U.S. paid for something like two-thirds of it.”
“We don’t need a history lesson here,” I remind him as wryly as I can. “Do you think it’s real? I mean, I know the base is real, but now…do you think it’s a safe place? And will they let us in?”
He shakes his head slowly. “I can’t believe the Canadian military has just folded …but the U.S. military has folded, more or less, although I guess they’re focusing on building something out west, maybe.” He sighs, knuckling his forehead, and the slump of his shoulders reminds me of how much he’s carrying, for all of us. “I don’t know, Alex. It seems like a long shot. But if Buffalo is out of the picture, I don’t know where else to go.” He sounds despondent, and I long to put my arms around him, but I don’t.
“It’s only two hundred miles,” I say quietly. “We have the gas. We could give it a shot, at least.”
My words fall into a stillness that is shattered by a sudden, high, keening scream. Daniel and I stare at each other for one taut second as we recognize the timbre of that particular scream.
Ruby .