“Well, I appreciate that,” Adam said. “But it really is a constant effort, and I don’t consider myself out of the woods. I probably never will be. It’s hard for me to be around substances, even now. You know, when the Birkins accused me of stealing Kathryn’s prescriptions…well, I hadn’t done it. You know that. And it was Chase lying to everyone about me that made them think I had. But at the same time, it wasn’t an insane idea. Knowing what I know about addicts and how hard recovery is, I probably would have looked to the known addict in the room first too in that situation.”
“You should still be proud of yourself,” Ella said firmly. “My parents never managed to leave their past behind them. You did. Even if it’s always going to be part of your psyche, you moved on and lived a normal life. Right?”
“Relatively normal,” Adam said, smiling wryly. “I always had members of the paparazzi jumping out at me. I don’t think that was ever going to go away. But yes, I was comfortable and happy again after my recovery. I had my health back, and my years acting had given me enough of a nest egg that I didn’t have to work or worry about money.”
He bit his lip. “By comparison to everything you went through, I was incredibly lucky,” he said. “All the bad things that happened to me in my life were of my own making, and my recovery was relatively easy. I always had great support around me.”
“Your mother wasn’t much help to you,” Ella pointed out.
“Okay, no, she wasn’t,” Adam agreed. “But pushing your kid into an early career isn’t the worst thing a mother’s ever done to their child.”
Ella sighed heavily. “Agreed.”
“The hardest part for me,” Adam said, “has been figuring out what the rest of my life is going to be about. I mean, for years I was a child star, right? And then that went away, but I was so busy with drugs, and then with rehab, that those things defined me for a while. But once I was through the initial stages of recovery—what came next? Who was I if I wasn’t a star or a junkie?”
“Did you ever figure that out?” Ella asked.
“No,” Adam said. “The nanovirus hit first.”
“You’re a survivor,” Ella said. “That’s what you are.”
He looked at her, startled. It was the kind of thing Artem would have said.
“That’s what we all are now,” she said.
Chapter 12
The fire began to dwindle after several hours. “Should I try to break up another booth?” Adam asked. “See if we can get more wood on this thing?”
“No,” Ella said. “Best to let it go out. We don’t want to be spotted if anyone else comes by here. It’s creepy, but it’s probably safer to sleep in the dark than with a lit fire.”
Adam nodded. He couldn’t help thinking of John. He supposed that was probably because of how violent their encounter had been—he had never shot and killed another person before in his life, and it somehow felt worse than the manner in which Cody had died. And not only because it had been deliberate. Adam had had his hands on Cody when his friend had died, and there was something human about that, even if it was horrific. But killing another person with a gun was cold and dispassionate. It was frightening.
For whatever reason, everything seemed to remind him of John now. Ella’s concern that other people might see their fire made him think about what those people might be like. Would other survivors be like John, barely clinging to sanity, ready to explode into a violent rage at the first sign of something unpredictable?
Surely they couldn’t all be like that, could they?
“We should talk about what we’ll do if we come across anybody else,” he said. It was something he’d been thinking about for the last few miles, something he knew he and Ella needed to agree on. “Especially once we reach Napa Bay. There are bound to be people there.”
“We’re going to look for Julie and her family—”
“Right, of course. But I’m saying, if we don’t find them.”
She was quiet for a long moment.
“I’m sorry,” Adam said. “I don’t mean to be negative, Ella. I know you’re hoping to find them, and I hope we find them too. I really do. But we have to be ready for any outcome, and…” He didn’t finish the sentence, didn’t say what he was thinking—it’s pretty likely that they’re dead.
“I know,” she said heavily, and Adam knew that she meant it. Ella was nothing if not a realist. She knew the odds were long on this endeavor. He didn’t blame her for wanting to look for her sister, but he was glad her expectations were under control.
“So what should we do when we find someone else?” he asked. “It seems pretty inevitable that we’re going to eventually, right? We’ve only been on land for a day and we already found John. And we haven’t even been into any cities yet. I’m sure there are survivors in Napa Bay.” Even if Julie doesn’t turn out to be one of them.
She sighed. “You’re right,” she said. “We do need to talk about it. We need to get on the same page about what we want our future to look like.”
He nodded. “So what are your thoughts?”
“It’s a bad idea,” she said. “Joining up with others. Putting our lives in other people’s hands. It won’t end well for us. I don’t want any part of it, unless they’re people we already know we can trust. Like Julie.”
Adam’s heart sank. That wasn’t the response he’d hoped for. He liked Ella a lot, but it was hard to be on their own in the world, and being responsible for building their fire had brought that point home to him in a big way. There was so much he didn’t know how to do, so much that might become necessary for their survival.
Still, he wanted to hear her out.
“Are you afraid we might get into another situation like the one we were in at the Santa Joaquina?” he asked.
“Not exclusively that,” she said. “But other people are dangerous, Adam. I can trust you, I think, and I hope you can trust me, but how many other people have you met since all this started who could be put in that same category? You were on a yacht with your best friend before we met. Was he a good ally to have?”
“No,” Adam had to admit. “He wasn’t. He was disturbed and dangerous.”
“Wouldn’t you have been better off on your own than with him?”
“Honestly? I don’t know if I would have,” Adam said. “Cody was hard to live with, it’s true, but I don’t know that I would have been able to live alone either. Humans are social creatures. We need other people around, or we start to lose our minds.”
“We aren’t alone,” Ella pointed out. “We’ve got each other for company. It’s not like we’ll be stuck in our own heads all the time. We can keep each other sane.”
“It isn’t just sanity I’m worried about,” Adam said. “It’s skills. We got by tonight, with the fire making, but there are plenty of things neither one of us knows how to do.”
“We’ll get by,” Ella protested.
“I don’t know that we will,” Adam said. “On the island we had Marsden. He was a doctor. But I don’t know anything about medicine. Do you?”
“No,” she admitted.
“If one of us were to get hurt, we’d be over a barrel. And what about agriculture? We can’t keep stealing chips from carnivals forever. At some point we’re going to have to figure out a sustainable way to get food. I know the basics—plant a seed and hope it gets sun and water—but I know enough to know that there’s more to it than that.”
Ella sighed. “You make a decent point,” she said. “Other people could bring knowledge we don’t have to the table, and that might be important. But I just find it so hard to think about trusting anyone new, letting anyone in.”
“I get that,” Adam said. “I just think that eventually we’re either going to have to align ourselves with someone or declare ourselves the enemy of all we meet. And that latter option definitely doesn’t sound appealing.”
“No, I know,” Ella agreed. “You’re right. It’s just…Adam, what if we align ourselves with the wro
ng people? What if we end up with people like the Birkins and the McTerrells again? Or even worse? It could get a lot worse than them, you know. And we might not realize what sort of crowd we’re falling in with until it’s too late. The one good thing about John was that we could tell what was up with him right away. We knew he was unhinged. But there are more subtle kinds of crazy out there too.”
“What are you afraid of?” Adam asked. “Specifically, I mean.”
“I guess I’m afraid I might start to relax,” Ella said. “I feel like I haven’t really let my guard down in months, and if we get into a situation where we’re putting our faith in other people—”
“You might trust them to take care of you?” Adam asked.
“Yeah.”
“Would that be so bad?” he asked. “You trust me, don’t you?”
“Just about. But it’s also pretty close to impossible for you to keep anything from me or to do anything behind my back while we’re living in each other’s pockets like this. If you were up to anything shady, I’d be able to figure it out right away. It’s trusting myself as much as it’s trusting you, do you see?”
“I do,” Adam said.
“Sorry if that sounds mean,” Ella said. “It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s not anything about you. I promise. It’s just easier for me if I can keep the ball in my own court. But the more people we try to work with, the harder that’s going to get. You’re talking about being part of a team, and for that to work, you can’t hold yourself apart, or else you become the one people don’t trust. That’s what happened to you at the Santa Joaquina.”
“You think so?”
“Of course,” she said. “You were the outsider, so when something went wrong, you were the one they pinned it on. If Rhett had brought that guy you two found on the boat home instead of killing him, he would have been the one they blamed for the missing drugs.”
“That’s probably true,” Adam admitted.
“I know there are good things about belonging to a community,” Ella said. “And I know it’s something we should consider. But it’s hard for me to just…agree to it.”
“What if we just agree to keep our eyes out?” Adam suggested. “If we see any groups of people, we’ll meet with them. We’ll see what kind of society they’ve built. But we’ll go in careful, and we’ll keep our weapons ready. We won’t make any decisions about them until we talk it over, just you and me.”
“That’s the best offer I’m going to get from you, isn’t it?” she asked him, grinning slightly.
“I want you to be comfortable with whatever we do,” he said. “But I think this is important.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” she said as the fire flickered and died. “Okay. That’s what we’ll do.”
As the moon crawled across the sky, Adam lay on his back staring up at the stars. He had volunteered to take the first watch while Ella slept, partly out of a sense of chivalry and partly because he simply didn’t feel as though he’d be able to get any sleep anytime soon. He was exhausted, it was true, but everything that had happened since the pair of them had returned to the mainland had him feeling stressed and disturbed.
“We’re survivors,” Ella had said, and he knew she was right. But what did that mean? What kind of people would the rest of the survivors be? Would there be something they all had in common, something that had enabled them to stay alive when the rest of humanity had died?
He thought of the survivors he had known so far. There was no denying that one common thread among many of them had been an association with money. The rich seemed to survive. Of course, many of the wealthiest people Adam knew had been among the first to die, because they had been early adopters of the nanobots. But those who hadn’t gone in for nanotech had had places to retreat to—be they private yachts or country clubs—when things had gotten bad.
Even people like himself and Ella fell into this category. Adam didn’t consider himself particularly wealthy, but he was alive right now because he’d had an extremely wealthy best friend. As for Ella, she wasn’t rich, but her employers were, and as much as she disliked them, she also owed them her life.
But that’s not the only reason Ella and I are alive, he reminded himself. We’re also still here because we were loners before the virus hit. Adam hadn’t spent much time out of his house, so when the bots started to be passed around from one victim to the next, he had been largely protected. Who knew being a hermit would save my life, he thought wryly.
Then there were people like John. Adam knew there must be more survivors out there like him, people who had clearly stocked up in case of some sort of doomsday event and were now living hidden away in bunkers underground. How likely was it that all the people in those situations were crazy, as John had been?
They can’t all be, Adam thought. Some of them must have friends and family with them, and that would keep a person sane.
Maybe his and Ella’s best chance would be to find a group of survivalists, who would be well prepared and have plenty of supplies. But on the other hand, why on earth would people like that want to share their bounty? What could Adam and Ella possibly offer them?
I can’t believe we’ve only been ashore for a day, he thought wearily. So much seemed to have changed in that time. The world seemed to have grown so much bigger.
Before today, he had only been worried about himself and a few other people. It hadn’t much mattered what was happening on the mainland. He had listened to radio broadcasts and kept himself informed—before the EMP had made that impossible—but he hadn’t realized until now what a sense of detachment he’d cultivated. If he’d heard that the mainland was populated exclusively by people like John, he would have been horrified. But he wouldn’t have felt the raw, visceral fear that he felt right now.
What kind of people are here with us? he wondered. We’ve survived—but what kind of world do we belong to now? And was this a place where he could manage to live? Was there a life here for him and for Ella, or would they spend the rest of their days on the run, looking for a place where they could finally relax and say they were at home, never to find one?
Adam knew that he would never be at ease until he found a community to belong to, a group of people that he could call his own. He had thought, for a long time, that the people on the yacht would be that group. He had been with his best friend, and even though Cody had been struggling to shake off his addiction, there was something very comforting about having a familiar face at his side. He had also truly enjoyed living with Artem and Sara, both of whom were pleasant people.
But all of them were gone now.
He had been much less relaxed on the island, where he’d felt every day as if the Birkins and the McTerrells were on the verge of throwing him out or snapping into violence. They had frightened him. But even so, he had learned a great many survival skills during his time there, and it had been helpful to know that he was surrounded by people with a common goal—keeping the group alive.
I want that again, he thought. I want to be part of a group that’s dedicated to keeping each other alive. There was strength and safety in numbers, after all.
But what if the world was full of people who couldn’t be trusted? What if Ella was right? If that was the case, Adam might never find that sense of community again.
Ella lived in fear of the day when she might relax and let her guard down. Adam lived in fear that that day might never come.
He rolled over, turning his back to Ella, and curled up in the darkness. He knew he had a partner at his side, and that was good. But right now, he felt utterly alone.
Chapter 13
July 19, 2026
“Let me look at it,” Ella said, her fingers carefully probing Adam’s face.
“Do you have to touch it?” He winced away. It felt as though his skin was splitting open along the line of his cheekbones. “That really hurts.”
“Yeah, your nose is definitely broken.”
“Well, it was rammed w
ith the butt of a gun,” Adam reminded her. “I’d say that’d do it for anybody.”
“Are you going to be okay to keep going?” Ella asked.
“Yeah, of course.” He got to his feet and picked up the duffel bag. He felt in considerably worse shape than he had yesterday. His face had hurt then, but now he was in agony. Still, he knew he couldn’t let something like a broken nose hold him back. Things could be a lot worse.
“You can see okay?” Ella asked.
“Yeah. Why?”
“Your eyes are pretty swollen.”
Adam shrugged. “I can’t really tell,” he said, trying to sound more casual than he felt. He didn’t want to admit that just the act of talking was painful.
“Okay,” Ella agreed. “Let’s get moving, then. I want to try to get to Napa Bay by nightfall.”
That was optimistic of her, Adam thought. Napa Bay was still miles away. They hadn’t covered very much ground yesterday. On the other hand, they had had to double back, and they’d been sidelined by their encounter with John. Maybe today would run more smoothly.
He could only hope.
As the sun rose in the sky, the day became oppressively hot. Adam ached to gulp down a bottle of water, but he knew they had to ration their stores. He and Ella passed a single bottle between them, taking tiny sips at regular intervals so that they wouldn’t become too dehydrated, neither of them raising the issue of what they would do when this bottle ran dry. We can’t open another one, Adam thought to himself. We really ought to limit ourselves to one a day, at least until we find a renewable source of water.
But he knew that was a dangerous way to live. Half a bottle of water a day wasn’t enough to sustain a person.
And the heat really wasn’t helping. Adam cursed the sweat that poured down his face. His body should be conserving water, not eliminating it like this.
They spent the bulk of the day in silence. Ella didn’t seem to want to talk, and that was fine with Adam. He didn’t feel much like conversation either. She set a grueling pace, and he was hard-pressed to keep up, but he could tell how eager she was to reach Napa Bay.
Escape The Dark (Book 3): Into The Ruins Page 10