Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
Three weeks of summer slide by in a blur of peaceful drudgery punctuated by brief moments of happiness and sometimes, rarely, like a flash of lightning, of joy. It’s a surreal, suspended sort of time; life has been reduced to so very little, and yet empirically it’s more than we’ve had in months—fairly plentiful food, running water, hot showers, freedom from fear. Freedom, even, from knowing anything, because there are no radios anywhere, no news bulletins or updates, and no one talks about what is happening outside our barbed-wire enclosure.
It’s not that such information is banned; it’s more that no one seems to have either the urge or energy to try to find out. No one wants anything more than what we all currently have, and yet somehow, according to Michael Duart, this raggedy band of survivors is going to be the savior of civilization. Most days, I have trouble believing that we’ll be the savior of northern Ontario, much less the entire western world.
“Do you think he’s got a God complex?” I ask Daniel one evening. We are sitting on the back steps, our legs stretched out in front of us, watching the sun streak its fading colors of violet and orange across a wide, open sky. We are finding beauty where we can, because one thing I’ve learned over the last three weeks is that 22 Wing North Bay is not a particularly beautiful place, with its parking lots and weedy lawns and prefabricated buildings, although we get glimpses of nature’s majesty in the wide, blue expanse of Lake Nipissing far below us. I also saw the tunnel that led to the underground complex; there was a truck parked outside, but that was all the life I saw, and I wondered why it wasn’t being used or at least refurbished, as Michael had said.
Daniel knows exactly who I’m talking about. “Duart?” he muses. “It would be hard not to, when you’re literally trying to save the world.”
I snort with laughter before I subside into a sigh. “But is he saving the world? Really?”
Daniel shrugs, and for a second his wry mood turns dark, the way it so often does, like a cloud sliding over the sun. My husband seems more relaxed in this place, but he’s still keeping secrets. “He’s saving four or five hundred people, at least,” he states quietly, his lips pressed together, “which is certainly more than you or I can say.”
I fall silently, slightly chastened, and turn my gaze back to the sunset, wanting to enjoy its beauty, undiminished by our bland surroundings. Everyone else seems to have settled in here well. Daniel is back in an office, crunching numbers; he doesn’t tell me much about it, only that he is working out supply systems and amounts needed. Sam hauls boxes and seems to like the biceps he’s building as a result; he’s played some pickup games of basketball with the other single guys, including Ben, who he has taken under his wing; I was surprised once to see them joking around together. It was the first time I’d seen Ben look anything other than sullen.
Kyle has taken to farming; the NBSRC has several fields out by the old airport they’re cultivating, and Kyle has driven the backhoe, something he’s inordinately proud of. Mattie is helping with the kindergarten class, and Ruby enjoys science. Phoebe has come out of herself a little; the other day she brought home a tattered picture book from school and asked me to read it to her.
I’m the only one who’s determined to find a problem, it seems, and maybe there isn’t one.
“Why are you thinking about Michael Duart?” Daniel asks, nudging my foot with his. I’m glad he’s seemed happier here, even if he still has those moments of darkness. I’ve seen him chatting to Tom a few times, looking both intent and thankful, and I’m hopeful that maybe whatever memories he has been running away from torment him less here.
As for me…when I close my eyes, I still see the affable face of the man I shot dead. In my mind, he looks even kindlier and friendlier than I think he was in real life; soon, in my imagination, he’s going to resemble a smiling and benevolent Mr.Rogers. Is he a figment of my imagination, or was he really one of the good guys? Maybe I’ll never know.
I walked by the base’s chapel the other day—they hold services on a Sunday but so far we haven’t gone—and thought about going in and checking out Habakkuk 3:17–18 in a pew Bible, just so I’d know, but I didn’t. Didn’t want to make the man in my memory any more personable than he already was.
“He’s in charge here,” I tell Daniel, “so of course I wonder. And what about this committee. Do we even know who’s on it?”
“William Stratton,” Daniel replies, with a touch of humor. We’ve both seen him swaggering around here, seeming both pompous and grave, like he’s auditioning for president. Maybe he is.
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.” His tone has turned repressive, slightly impatient. “There always have to be people in charge, Alex, otherwise it’s anarchy.”
“I know.” I sigh as I tilt my head to the sky, wishing yet again I could just be in this moment. This place.
“What are you afraid of?” Daniel asks after a moment. “That he’ll imprison us here or something? You know some people have already left?”
“Yes, I know.” A couple in their forties, the kind of people who could live in the woods for three weeks with nothing more than a knife and a ball of twine, decided they could do better on their own. They walked out of the gates, got in their car, and drove away, as simple as that, just as Michael Duart had promised.
No, I realize, I’m not afraid of being imprisoned, at least not by the likes of Michael Duart. I am, I realize as I stare at the twilit sky now darkened to indigo, afraid of imprisoning myself. Of letting this be enough—work, sleep, hot water, safety. Life has to be more than that. Doesn’t it? Or maybe it doesn’t.
As if reading my thoughts—he can be so good at that—Daniel says teasingly, “There’s a movie night this week. That’s something to look forward to, right?”
Every Friday night since we arrived there has been some organized social activity—a board-game night with battered boxes of Monopoly or Clue; a karaoke and darts night, which didn’t go over so well, because the reality is maybe you need to be a little drunk to get up on a table and start singing along to Celine Dion, and of course there’s no booze here at the NBSRC.
The social activities have been a nice idea, but generally pretty subdued in atmosphere. People aren’t really in the mood to party, or even laugh, but maybe one day we will be. We found the humor back at the cottage; I recall Kerry and I laughing till tears streamed down our cheeks. If we could there , when life felt so fraught and precarious, why not here, when it doesn’t?
But maybe that is, in fact, the reason why.
“It’s just…” I tell Daniel. “What’s next?”
He raises his eyebrows. “I heard next week’s Friday night fun is going to be tacos and a pinata.”
I try to laugh, but I only manage a tired sigh. “You know what I mean.”
Daniel sighs right back at me and tilts his head to the sky, staring up at the oncoming darkness. “I’m not sure I even want there to be a next, Alex,” he says quietly, like a confession. The words seem to fall in the stillness of the evening, ripple out.
“You’re good with this? Life as it is?” I speak with curiosity rather than judgement. Truth be told, I’m not sure if I really know whether I’m good with life as it is. I know I’m kicking against the goads when it comes to this place, but that might be all it is. Futile resistance, no more than an exercise in vain autonomy because I don’t want to be seen as some kind of mindless sheep, and yet do I really want to stir myself to do something else? What else is there even to do?
“I’m good with this,” Daniel agrees, his tone final. “I like my work, I like having food to eat, I like talking to Tom. You should get to know his wife, Abby?—”
“Maybe I will,” I say, something of a dismissal. She seems very nice, maybe too nice, the way she smiles and hoists a baby on her hip, all peaceable earth mama. Next to her, I have a feeling I’ll be shown up as nervy and selfish and unsure, all of which I know I am.
“Most of all,” Daniel finishes, “I like having someone else worry about the world and how it’s going.” He pauses. “I don’t want anything more.”
For a second, I picture Daniel back at our house in Connecticut, a sprawling McMansion with tasteful details and four thousand square feet of space I’d made into a cozy and welcoming home. I see him flipping burgers on our deck, opening a bottle of wine at the vast marble island in our kitchen, taking a work call in his study, ensconced in soft leather and dark mahogany, his forehead furrowed in enjoyable concentration.
“Really?” I ask, genuinely curious and a little sad. “Just this?”
He nods slowly, and for a second, no more, a bleak look comes into his eyes. “Just this.”
“What about the kids?” I ask quietly. “Don’t you want more for them? Eventually, I mean?”
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; Ruby happily 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 at the 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? People are 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 fi nish 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 sure whatever 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 then he …” 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, and he didn’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. He knew 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.
Nicole throws back her head as she lets out a laugh of genuine humor, hard a sound as it is. “No. Because he said he’d make William believe we’d been having an affair.” I stare at her, and then she spells it out in a voice that suggests I’m stupid, which I probably am: “And if William believed that, which he would, he would kill me.” Still I stare, and Nicole sighs impatiently. “All right, that might be a little melodramatic. William has never laid a hand on me, although I wouldn’t put it past him. I’ve seen it in his eyes, when he’s wanted to, but he’s too controlled for that. He prefers emotional violence.”
Which sounds terribly chilling. “Why haven’t you ever divorced him?”
“Because,” she informs me flatly, “he has a watertight prenup and he’d do his utmost to make my life a misery if I let him—and then there’s Ben.” Her expression softens on her son’s name even as her eyes flash with something close to hatred for her husband. “Ben adores him, but William would poison him against me, and Ben wouldn’t even realize he was doing it. He’d drip it into his ear and my son would turn against me without even knowing why. I couldn’t stand that. I just couldn’t.” She draws a ragged breath as she wipes at her cheeks.
“I understand,” I say quietly. I feel as if Sam has turned against me, quietly but determinedly, but that, of course, is my own doing. Nicole’s situation is far more sympathetic…and so very grim. “So you convinced William to leave the bunker?” I surmise. I have trouble believing that such an arrogant man would be willing to go meekly, without a good reason.
“I can be surprisingly persuasive when I play the scared little woman.” For a second she smiles, her eyes glinting with humor, and I have that strange sense of complicity that we have shared before and which makes me feel Nicole and I really could be friends. Maybe, I reflect, we already are. “I told him we’d be better off somewhere else, where I didn’t have to be scared, and where people would value his intelligence and leadership abilities. Men can be so stupid when it comes to their egos.” She sighs. “At least mine can. Your husband seems okay.” She glances at me in query, and I find myself blushing—in shame.
It wasn’t all that long ago that I was angry with Daniel, unbelievably angry, and yet it all seems so petty now, especially in light of all that Nicole has endured.
“He’s a good man,” I state, a fact.
Nicole nods. “You’re fortunate, then.”
“I am,” I agree, and I know I mean it.
We are silent for a long moment; from the gym I can hear the smarmy bleating of the actor in the movie.
“The thing is,” Nicole remarks after a moment as she lights another cigarette, “that man—the one who raped me—he wasn’t actually a bad guy.”
I stare at her in disbelief. “He raped you, knowing you’d never tell your husband, and kicked you out of a bunker into a nuclear holocaust, and he’s not a bad guy?” And what about there being no good guys?
“I mean before,” she clarifies. “He was some tech millionaire, smart and a little nerdy, but kind of charming, too. We knew him socially. He was always kind of self-deprecating, never arrogant, a little socially awkward, maybe.” She smokes silently for a few seconds. “But when we were all in that bunker,” she continues reflectively, “with the swimming pool and Nespresso machines and all the rest of it…well, you’d think everyone would stay civilized, but it’s a thin line, you know? And it’s so easy to cross. And it made me realize that most people aren’t evil—they’re not these Machiavellian monsters you can dismiss as horrible anomalies of the human race, twirling their moustaches as they plot to take over the world. Most people are just small-minded and selfish, pathetic and petty, and when everything else breaks down, well, that’s what comes out.”
She lowers her gaze from her study of the darkened horizon to gaze at me. “Michael Duart’s got this great vision, right? Or so he says. But what’s the point of a vision, any vision? How can we possibly build a better world when it’s still full of broken, selfish, stupid people? And I don’t mean intellectually. Just…” She shakes her head slowly. “No one has the will for anything bigger, and so we’ll all hunker down in our bunkers and bases and eke out our days and nothing good will ever happen. Nothing bigger than this, than our stupid little selves, because no one is willing to risk what they have, no matter how small it is.” She finishes her cigarette and drops it onto the cracked asphalt before deliberately grinding the butt beneath her leather boot. “Welcome to the rest of your life,” she tosses over her shoulder as she walks away, into the darkness.