Chapter 19
NINETEEN
A month after my heart-to-heart—or not—with Nicole Stratton, four men, no more than boys, really, are evicted from the NBSRC for drinking. They were friends of Sam’s, the guys he played basketball with, some of them only sixteen years old, and they found some booze in the warehouse. One evening after curfew they drank two bottles of vodka and went joyriding around the base in a jeep.
Daniel and I were in bed, holding on to each other for warmth, because now it’s nearing the end of August the nights are getting chilly, when we heard them roar past, honking the horn, out of their minds—an act of idiocy, daring, or desperation, or maybe all three. We heard someone speaking through a bullhorn and then a single shot, fired in warning. Neither of us spoke as we waited, clinging to each other now, having no idea what had happened.
The next morning Sam tells us all about it.
“They just chucked them out,” he says, caught between disbelief and outrage. Underneath both emotions I sense a deep, pervading unhappiness. “With nothing. I mean, no supplies, no weapons…just the clothes on their backs. It’s so unfair. All they did was have a drink.”
Daniel and I have been listening to his rant silently, offering neither sympathy nor judgement. It’s the first time since we’ve arrived that we’ve seen the zero-tolerance policy enacted, and it’s immensely sobering. The thought of four young men, none of them over twenty and two of them significantly younger, escorted out of the camp to face the wide world with only the clothes on their backs…well, it does make you straighten up, determined to toe the line and, more importantly, to be seen doing it.
I mention the whole episode to Nicole; we’ve chatted periodically over the last few weeks, and her cool-voiced cynicism is refreshing and dispiriting in turns.
“What did you expect?” she asks when I broach the subject. “You can’t have a zero-tolerance policy and then not enforce it. That’s just asking for a lot of trouble.”
“I know, but…” I hesitate, trying to untangle my feelings. “It just seems so harsh. Couldn’t they have given them some supplies? A gun?”
“A gun?” She is incredulous, her elegant eyebrows—despite having been in this camp as long as I have, she looks salon-fresh—arched. “So these kids could use it against them?”
Them, not us, I note. I wonder if Nicole allies herself with anyone. “No, but…some food, then,” I persist. “Some supplies.”
She shrugs. “This isn’t a charity.”
“Yes, but it’s meant to be a community, isn’t it?” I reply, a little sharply, gesturing to the base stretching all around us. “We’re meant to be working together, building something here.”
Once again her eyebrows lift, and a little smile plays about her mouth. “Are we?” she asks .
The question—and the infuriating lack of an answer to it—continues to haunt me as the days and then weeks go by. August drifts into September as the leaves turn shades of crimson and ochre, their edges curling up before they flutter to the ground, turning brown beneath our feet.
I begin to realize that I’m not the only one asking questions, feeling uncertain and even discontented. The mood of the base has shifted with the seasons; as the first frost tips the grass and rimes every dead leaf in white, I feel it like an electric current in the air, rippling silently around everyone as we go about our business—sleep, eat, work, the weary slog of this half-life.
Is it discontentment? Uncertainty? Fear? The boys who were unceremoniously marched to the gate—or ceremoniously, all things considered—remain in our collective consciousness, even without anyone saying anything, ever, about it.
I try to verbalize some of the vague thoughts swirling through my mind one evening when we are all hanging out in our tiny living room; the weather has become colder, the sky the color of steel, the nights closing in darkly so no one wants to be outside much after dinner. I’m sitting in a chair, brushing Phoebe’s hair; Ruby is reading a book and Sam is flicking through an old gaming magazine he found somewhere—all vestiges of the former world, the ghostly remnants of what was and all that is left.
“Do you think we’re building something here?” I ask, like I’m starting a debate. This house believes we are all spinning our proverbial wheels, and I’m not sure if I’m okay with that.
Sam glances up from his magazine, instantly alert, his hair—he needs a haircut—sliding into his face. It amazes and saddens me in equal measure that we have never gotten to the bottom of whatever was troubling him back at Kawartha—and clearly still does. Even now, he is not meeting my eye.
“Building something,” he repeats, without expression or, it has to be said, much interest. “Like what? ”
“I don’t know.” Except I do know, sort of. I think back to those admittedly not halcyon days at the cottage, when Kerry’s mother, Darlene, taught us how to set a beaver trap, and her trapper friend Joe showed me how to skin and gut the one I’d caught. When we had a garden and a greenhouse and hope, frail as it was.
At the time, it never felt like remotely enough. I was sick with anxiety, apprehension, and grief; I missed everything the way it had been—which, I realize belatedly, I’m still doing. Am I viewing our cottage time through the sepia haze of sentimentality simply because it’s gone? Maybe one day I’ll look back on our time at the NBSRC in the same way.
And maybe I won’t , because we’ll still be here…and that , I know, is the real problem.
Where is any of this going ?
“What are we supposed to be building?” Mattie asks. She is sitting on the floor, her back against the sofa, because it’s so crowded in this little room, and belatedly I clock that Kyle is leaning back against her drawn-up knees in a way that is decidedly familiar, and this gives me the same sort of jolt I experienced back in Kawartha, only more so, so it feels for a second like I’ve stuck my finger into an electric socket. What is going on there? And for all my daughter’s eye-rolls and huffy insistences…doth she protest too much? Do I need to talk to her about it, read her the riot act, or maybe just tell her to take precautions? The thought is most unsettling. I am not ready for that, and I don’t think Mattie is, either.
“I don’t know,” I say a beat later than I should have. “Just…something.” Realizing how lame I sound, I continue a little more earnestly, “I mean, remember when Michael Duart gave us that whole song and dance about saving civilization? What happened to that?”
Mattie arches an eyebrow, clearly skeptical. “How do you see that even happening, exactly? ”
“Well, we wouldn’t be stuck on this base forever,” I reply with sudden ferocity, surprising myself with the strength of my feeling. “Going about our business like some—some robot army. We need to wake up out of our—our dream sleep and do something.” I think of Nicole. “Start building something bigger than ourselves.”
My daughter only looks amused by my stirring little speech. “A robot army that suddenly wakes up?” she muses. “I think you’re thinking of that disaster movie that came out, like, ten years ago, Mom. Except it was zombies, not robots, and they’d all been given this electrical charge or something that turned them into killing machines. I think it was with Will Smith? Or maybe?—”
Sam suddenly comes to life, his face alert with interest. “What would you rather be,” he asks the others, “a zombie or a robot?”
“Are you sentient?” Mattie immediately flashes back, getting into the spirit of the game. “Like, do you know that you’re a robot or a zombie? Because that makes a difference.”
“If you don’t know, does it even matter?” Kyle ventures hesitantly, and Mattie and Sam both turn to look at him with surprised admiration.
“Truth,” Sam concedes on a sigh, and Ruby looks up from her book.
“I think I’d rather be a robot,” she remarks quietly. “They seem nicer.”
Everyone has forgotten the point I was making, even me. Not that I even know what it was in the first place. But to my surprise they drop their robots-versus-zombies debate to circle back to what I was saying.
“We can’t do anything,” Mattie tells me with authority, “until the world calms down, like, a lot.”
“How do we know the world isn’t calm already?” I counter. “We’ve been at this place for over two months now with basically no outside communication. Life could be going on normally somewhere.”
They are all silent; I realize they haven’t considered this, and yet these are the kinds of concerns it feels like everyone should be having—and some people already are. I see it, I feel it, in various throwaway interactions. The pile of potatoes we are ordered to peel without any discussion about whether other food can be found or grown, or what we’ll do when the food we have runs out.
Last week I had to line up with two dozen other weary souls for new clothing for Phoebe and Ruby, as they’d outgrown what they had. All clothes are kept in a warehouse and divvied out by need, a need that’s decided by the bureaucrat running the operation rather than anyone who actually needs anything.
When I got to the front of the line, I gave them Ruby and Phoebe’s sizes, and they filled a shopping bag for each girl; I came away with two pairs of jeans, a pair of leggings, two t-shirts, a sweatshirt, and a pair of sneakers each. It was all decent stuff, if well-worn—where did it come from? And when the girls both grew again, would there be more? Already I knew I would not be the one to decide.
I didn’t ask anything about it, and no one else in the line did, either; we just took our bags and went, but I could feel the questions forming on all of our lips. I continued to see it in the dawning apprehension in everyone’s eyes, the silent, pointed looks people shared. The numb blur of the first weeks here was wearing off, and the four boys who had been kicked out were a kind of wake-up call that no one was quite yet ready to heed. So we took our bags of somebody else’s clothes and went back to our little lives without a murmur.
“The world is calm,” Sam says suddenly. “Too calm. It’s basically empty. Everything is.”
Mattie and Kyle both swivel to stare at him; Kyle is still leaning against Mattie’s legs, and she’s got her hand resting casually on his shoulder. “What do you mean?” she asks.
Sam shrugs. “Part of the warehouse crew go out to get supplies from places?—”
“What kind of places?” Mattie asks, her voice sharpening.
“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. “Just tired.”
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 to dozing. 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 endlessly this ?
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 community meeting, 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.
“Aren’t you going?” I ask, and I hear the wavering note of uncertainty in my voice.
“Tell me your impressions,” Daniel replies easily. “Take notes.” He pillows his hands behind his head as he closes his eyes.
“Daniel…”
His eyes remain closed as he tells me gently, “I don’t need to hear Duart’s spin, Alex. That’s all.”
“But what if he says something important?”
He opens his eyes. “Do you really think that’s what’s happening here?”
“No, but…we can’t be passive.”
He gives a little shrug, his head still resting on his pillow. “I’m okay with passive at this point.”
Slowly I lower my brush. I place it very carefully on top of the fake wood dresser, as if this matters, as I meet his gaze in the tiny mirror above. “I don’t understand,” I state clearly and slowly, “why you don’t care.”
For a second, the very air between us almost seems to shimmer and vibrate. I have the deep-seated and desperate impulse to snatch my words back, stuff them in my mouth, and beg him not to answer. He stares at me steadily in the mirror, his gaze resolutely unblinking.
Neither of us speaks, and it feels as if we are hovering on the edge of something, and I absolutely do not have the strength or courage to look down .
Then Mattie bulldozes into the room, just as she has a thousand times before, her energy frantic and intense and entirely oblivious.
“I don’t have any clothes,” she moans, half accusation, half lament.
I almost want to laugh, except I really don’t. Slowly, like I’m agreeing to a stalemate, I move my gaze from Daniel’s in the mirror to turn to my daughter. “I’m not sure this is meant to be a social occasion, Mats.”
She gives a theatrical groan. “Mom, you don’t understand anything .”
Except, I think, as my gaze moves inexorably back to my husband’s in the mirror, registering the bleakness there, I’m afraid that I do.