Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
In the end, the evaluations Kyle was so scared of weren’t actually that bad. After we made our decision to stay, a man returned, professionally blank-faced; Michael Duart, it seemed, had moved on. He sent us on with an escort—a woman I didn’t recognize—to the Health Center down the road, where we would have our medical checks and ability evaluations.
There was something comfortingly bureaucratic about it all; as I waited for my turn with the Center’s physician, completing a health form, I felt I could have been at the DMV or the dentist. The building was sunlit and modern, nothing apocalyptic about it at all. There were even a few magazines on the coffee table, admittedly all a year old.
“These were out of date even before the nukes,” Mattie remarked scathingly, and I smiled. Had any waiting room ever been any different?
The medical evaluation was more or less perfunctory, given by a professional yet friendly doctor—he even wore a white lab coat—who took my blood pressure and my heart rate and checked my eyesight and hearing, my reflexes and my teeth.
“You’re in good health,” he told me, “all things considered. A little malnourished, but that’s to be expected. Hopefully it will change pretty soon.” He flashed me a reassuring smile as he ticked something on a chart I couldn’t see.
Afterwards, I filled out a questionnaire about my abilities—it felt like a cross between a Myers-Briggs test and a career quiz on Buzzfeed. What was my last complete level of education? What jobs had I had? Did I like working with people or by myself? Was I more of a big vision or a small details type person?
Mattie sat next to me, snorting under her breath as she shook her head and ticked off answers. There was something both mundane and ridiculous about it all, considering how wildly dangerous the whole world was, and yet, as Daniel had said, order needed to be maintained.
Filling out forms, I supposed, was part of that.
In any case, we all pass both parts of the evaluations, even Kyle, who was particularly nervous about the ability part of it. None of us needed have worried; we are informed, in a perfunctory sort of way, that our evaluations have been successful and we need to wait for our next orders.
We stay in the medical center for over an hour. Phoebe falls asleep on Mattie’s lap while the rest of us slump in our seats before we are told where to go—the six of us to a duplex on a side street, and Kyle and Sam to the men’s lodgings, in an apartment building down the road.
The 22 Wing air base is a mix of refreshingly modern buildings, like the medical center, and other ones that, in the pre-nuclear era, could have used a major refurb. There are houses and apartment complexes mixed in with warehouses, supply depots, and massive garages and hangars. All of it is interspersed with parking lots and swathes of green grass, so the effect is part small town, part summer camp. Every so often, in the distance, I catch a glimpse of chain-link fence topped with razor wire, or, once or twice, the flash of blue that is Lake Nipissing far below us.
It is too strange to think about this being our home for however long, and so I don’t. I simply follow the woman to the house we’ve been assigned, telling Sam and Kyle to meet us before dinner, and then walk up the three sagging steps to a sliver of porch and then the dim interior, blinking in the gloom.
The woman leaves us alone, telling us our belongings will be delivered shortly, dinner is at six, and that we will be given our job assignments tomorrow. We crowd into the tiny hallway that manages to smell both of bleach and mold and stand there, no one seeming to know what to do.
Mattie ventures into the living room first, Phoebe on her hip, and then Ruby follows. I glance at Daniel, who manages a weary smile.
“Home sweet home,” he quips, and, for a reason I can’t really understand, this makes my eyes fill up with tears. “Alex…” he begins, alarmed, and I just shake my head and follow the girls into the tiny living room as I blink the tears back. I don’t even know why I’m crying; out of relief, or sorrow for all we’ve already lost? It doesn’t matter; now is not the time to cry.
Mattie has gone on to the bedroom, while Ruby stands in the middle of the living room, where two uncomfy-looking loveseats in faded beige face each other over a coffee table of fake wood laminate. A small flatscreen TV hangs on the wall, and a breakfast bar too narrow to use separates this space from a tiny, dark kitchen. Off the living room are two bedrooms, one double, one with two narrow twins, the standard-issue white sheets and scratchy-looking beige coverlets folded at the foot of each mattress. A tiny, windowless bathroom at the end of a short hallway completes our accommodation.
Home sweet home indeed, and yet it’s safe .
I sink onto the end of the double bed, gazing around in weary wonder. The entire house is carpeted in electric-blue matting, the kind you’d see in a school or a gym. It reminds me of being at one of those residential activity centers kids were required to go to in around eighth grade, for team-building exercises and organized fun. This whole experience is giving off something of the same vibe, but I tell myself that’s not necessarily a bad thing. We’re not looking for five-star accommodation, after all. We just want to be safe.
“You okay?” Daniel asks as he comes into the room.
“Yeah.” My voice is clogged, and I have to clear my throat.
Daniel frowns. “Alex…”
“It’s okay,” I say quickly. I don’t want to give in to emotion, to grief , because I’m fast realizing that’s what this is. I can see it coming for me, a towering tidal wave of sadness, ready to crash over me and then drag me under. I can’t let that happen, and yet I’m afraid I’m powerless to stop it.
It’s been only a week since the cottage burned down, since my mother, Kerry, and Justine all died, since we lost everything. A week where I’ve soldiered on, focusing on practicalities, but now I’m not sure I can do that anymore. Now, sitting in this bare, ugly little room, I miss the cottage, the life we’d built there, with an intensity that leaves me breathless, a sharp pain of yearning lodged underneath my ribs, so it hurts to breathe.
I think of the sunlight pouring in through the living room windows and gilding the lake in gold. I remember Ruby drawing new, baby-skinned potatoes from the earth, a look of pride and wonder on her face, and Mattie and Kyle fishing by the lake, two slender silhouettes against a twilit sky. I think of glorious sunsets and the sense of peace that seemed to hover over the whole place, of Kerry and me laughing so hard our stomachs hurt, of the comforting crackles of woodfires in the evening and snow heaped on the railing of the deck like mounded icing, the whole world cloaked in white, with the hushed stillness that only comes from three feet of snow over everything .
None of it was what I’d originally wanted, when we’d arrived there last November, but it became something good and true. Something I loved and was proud of because I’d both shared it and built it with my own hands.
And now it’s all gone, along with people I’ve loved, and the future is a depressing little room with a stained mattress and fake wood and a life of obeying the orders of a faceless group of middling bureaucrats.
Yet, I remind myself, we will be safe and fed. We will have showers .
I press the heels of my hands to my eyes, hard enough to hurt, so I see flashing lights beneath my scrunched-closed eyelids, but it’s not enough to keep the tears in. They seep out anyway, silently trickling down my cheeks. I feel the mattress dip beneath Daniel’s weight as he comes to sit next to me.
He puts his arm around me, draws me close, so my cheek is resting on his shoulder. Neither of us speaks; the tears are still coming, now dripping off my chin. I couldn’t stop them even if I tried, and I’m not trying anymore. There’s a release, in weeping, and one I haven’t indulged in for some time. I thought I needed to be strong for everyone, but I think of Mattie crying the other day by the stream, and I wonder if that’s what I’ve needed, too. The release, as well the acceptance of grief…even if it doesn’t actually change anything, which I already know it won’t.
“Do you think we made a mistake in staying?” Daniel asks after a few minutes have passed. I can hear Mattie and Ruby in the other bedroom, moving furniture around, already making this place a home.
“No.” My voice wavers and ends on a sigh. “I don’t. I just…wish things were different.” Which is so obvious it’s absurd, but I don’t know how else to articulate how I’m feeling. I miss everything —mornings drinking cleavers coffee with Kerry, the smell of the damp spring breeze when I stepped out onto the deck. My mother’s fond smile, her eyes dimmed by dementia. The way Ruby’s would light up when she found a plant she could do something with, even if the rest of us just saw a straggly-looking weed. Mattie’s fierceness in trying to tackle everything , the way the cottage seemed to settle at night, the beams creaking comfortably as the fire crackled and blazed.
I want it all back so much, and yet I force myself to remember everything else about those brief months at the cottage—the ever-present fear of something going badly wrong, and the gut-churning anxiety when it did. The constant terror of being invaded, which we were. The yawning sense of uncertainty about everything—where we would find food, what would happen to the whole world.
Here we are safe. We’re provided for. I don’t need to be scared in the same way, even if the future remains uncertain and unknowable.
I force my head up from Daniel’s shoulder. “It’s just this carpet,” I tell him, as he raises his eyebrows in query. “It’s so ugly.”
He lets out a huff of laughter and then draws me close again, brushing a kiss against my forehead. I close my eyes, savoring the moment of togetherness, because they’ve been so few and far between.
“Okay, ew?”
We pull apart to see Mattie standing in the doorway, fists planted on her hips, a look of disgust on her face.
“Sorry,” Daniel murmurs. “How’s your room?”
“Like, minuscule,” Mattie huffs. “We’ve put the beds together so there’s room for Phoebe.”
“Let me see,” I say, dredging up a smile, and I follow her to the second bedroom, which is just as small as ours. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than we’ve had recently. I glance around for Phoebe and see she is sitting on the kitchen floor, pulling pots out of a cupboard, like any toddler might.
I walk into the kitchen and, simply because I can, turn on the faucet. Water rushes from it and I run my fingers through it, amazed and gratified. Besides the shower today, I haven’t seen running water since November. It feels like a miracle.
I tell myself this really is going to be okay.
Mattie, at least, seems energized. She makes up the beds, and then announces that she, Ruby, and Phoebe are going to look around.
“Look around?” I repeat, already alarmed. “What do you mean?”
Mattie shrugs. “This is our home for, like, the foreseeable . I want to see what it’s like.”
I glance at Daniel. “I don’t know…”
“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 the foreseeable ,” 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 feels like 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 find out 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.
Mattie, Ruby, and Phoebe return a little while later, seeming animated; apparently, there’s a youth center with a ping-pong table and some board games. They met a few other kids and, although Mattie acts dismissive, I can tell she is excited by the prospect of friends, maybe even a social life, and that gives me a flicker of gladness.
“Where are they from?” I ask, curious now. “Did they come a long way?”
Mattie shrugs. “We didn’t go into all that stuff.”
I get it; I don’t think I want to hear dozens or even hundreds of other people’s stories—either what they endured or how easy it was. I’m not sure which would be worse, but I already know I don’t have the emotional bandwidth for any of it.
And so it’s with something approaching dread that I walk with the others toward the mess hall just down Duxford Road, the main street of the base. It’s a sunny day, the sky hazy and blue, although as the sun sinks lower in the sky I feel an oncoming chill in the air, the promise that the night will be cool.
Lots of people are trudging toward the mess hall, a sprawling, one-story building in white stucco with a gazebo and garden area in the back. Kyle and Sam have joined us and say the single men’s lodgings are fine, four bunk beds to a room and communal bathrooms.
“Did you meet anyone?” I ask, and they simply shrug in reply. I can’t tell if that’s meant to be a no or a yes, and I don’t press. I think we’re all feeling a little battered, as well as unused to social interaction. I glance, with cursory curiosity, at my fellow residents, but it’s hard to tell much about any of them. They look weathered, as I do, with a weary resignation in their faces that I recognize all too well. Everyone’s wearing an assortment of clothes that look like they came from a garage sale; at least we were able to change out of our blue boiler suits.
“Nothing marks you more as a noob than this suit,” Mattie had declared when she, Ruby, and Phoebe returned. She gladly peeled it off to replace with her own t-shirt and cut-off shorts, as did Ruby.
Inside the mess hall, there are long folding tables with benches; it’s crowded, and it looks like the space is meant to cater for about a third of the number of people crammed in there. The food is served in bowls in the middle of the table—some kind of tuna casserole, and, while it’s definitely not my kids’ favorite, it’s hot and nourishing and I know they’ll eat it.
We sit at one end of a table, squeezed in close together, as others take their own seats. I look around, deliberately not meeting anyone’s eye, just as I suspect everyone else is deliberately not meeting mine. There’s a weird, muted feeling to the place, like everyone has been turned down a notch. Is that simply a result of the trauma we’ve all undoubtedly experienced—I suspect most people here are suffering from some form of PTSD—or is it this place itself?
Either way, I don’t mind. I can happily be on autopilot for a little while. I can coast along without thinking too deeply about anything, because right now I don’t think I can handle anything else.
I’m just starting on the fairly unappealing pile of congealed tuna and pasta on my plate when Daniel suddenly gasps and rises from the table.
“Tom,” he practically shouts, and we all stiffen and look around at each other, alarmed, uncertain. “Tom!” he calls again, and this time he really is shouting.
“Daniel—” I begin, only to stop when I see a man walking toward us. He is tall, round-faced, plain but friendly looking.
“Daniel, isn’t it?”
“You remember.” Daniel’s voice chokes. I stare at him, bewildered. This has to be someone he met on his journey back to the cottage, I realize, but why hasn’t he ever mentioned anyone?
Tom nods slowly. “I remember. You found your son?”
“He’s right here.” Daniel pats Sam’s shoulder proudly. “You were so kind. I went back to your house, after, but you’d gone, but…”
Tom nods again, in understanding. “We had to leave in a hurry. We heard about a base near Buffalo that was accepting people. My cousin told us, you remember, the reservist?”
“I remember.”
“We didn’t have time to pack,” Tom explains, “so we just left it all pretty much as it was.”
“Isaac’s blanket…” Daniel blurts, sounding emotional again, and bewildering me further. Who is Isaac? “There was blood on it. I thought…”
Tom frowns in concern, and then a light of understanding comes into his eyes. “Teething,” he says succinctly. “A tooth broke through. Man, he’s missed that blanket, though.”
Daniel shakes his head in wonder. “It’s so good to see you.”
“I’m glad you made it,” Tom replies, grasping his hand. “We left Buffalo two months ago and came here. The radiation…well, it’s all been worse than anyone realized.” He nods toward us. “This your family?”
“Yes…” Daniel introduces us and we murmur hellos. It’s clear that Daniel feels something more for Tom than this stranger feels for him. He greets us all politely, chats to Daniel for a few seconds more, wishes us all well, and then moves back to his table, where a woman and three young children are sitting.
Slowly Daniel sinks back into his seat. “I can’t believe it,” he whispers. “I can’t believe it. All this time…all this time I thought they were dead. I was so sure…” His voice chokes .
I’m about to ask a question when Mattie nudges me hard in my side.
“ Mom .”
I’m still thinking about Tom and his family as I turn to her. “What is it?”
Wordlessly she points to a table at the far end of the hall, where I see Michael Duart is eating, his expression composed and alert even from this distance.
“What…” I begin again and she hisses between her teeth,
“Look who’s sitting right next to him.”
I move my gaze and my eyes widen in surprise at the sight of the so very self-assured man talking Michael Duart’s ear off.
William Stratton, looking very cozy with our esteemed leader for someone who had to have arrived just yesterday. My gaze moves farther down the table, but another man is sitting next to him, and I realize I don’t see Nicole or Ben Stratton anywhere. It seems like the North Bay Survival and Resettlement Center holds more than a few surprise visitors.