“Everyone. Darius, Lindsey, and I have an announcement.” She took a deep breath. Lindsey was also standing at her side, which Connor didn’t like one bit. He shivered as Poe took a deep breath. “We’re leaving.”
He saw Kate’s face grow white and felt his own do the same. “What? No Poe that’s crazy. And what about Jackson? It’s still really dangerous out there. He needs all of us. We still haven’t heard how long it will take to get the power back on, not to mention the cleanup. You could still get very sick! The infection from all the germs could kill you as easily as the disease itself!” Her mother had desperation bordering on lunacy dripping out of her voice.
“Jackson is part of the reason we are doing this. He will stay here with Vera and Drew. Darius can fly a plane. And Lindsey knows where some other communities are. There’s still a world out there, and a future. We will come back.”
“Yeah, Poe, that’s crazy. You can’t just leave. It will be a long time before the vaccine is ready, and even longer before everyone will have one to take. We have to stay here for at least that long. It could be a year or even more.” Gabriel agreed with his mother.
She didn’t respond to either of them. Instead, she asked Connor if they could talk outside for a moment.
They headed toward the pond, and sat down in the same spot where they had just before Drew and the others had arrived. The sky was clear, with stars dusting it with their otherworldly glow. Connor remembered teaching Poe the constellations when she was a little girl. Gabriel and Harper had no interest in the stars, but Poe used to sit on his lap and name them off as if she’d known them her whole life. “Dad, I’m not happy here. I didn’t realize it until recently, but now that I do, I need to go.”
“It’s not safe out there.”
“It’s not safe in here either.” She paused. “Dad, I was keeping something from you.”
Connor felt a tingling sensation in his head. Poe had never kept anything from him, except for whatever she had referenced at Blake’s funeral, some special bond that they seemed to have that he was not a part of. “What are you talking about?”
She sighed. “I knew all along that Blake wasn’t an EMT. She told me the first night.”
He waited for the anger to creep in, but it didn’t. Anger seemed pretty pointless. Perhaps it always had been. “Why?”
“Because she had helped me before, back when we still went into town. I wanted to return the favor. She saved me from some girls. They were going to beat me up, I’m sure.” She paused. “That’s not the only reason though. I didn’t tell you because I wanted something that was just mine. A friend. A secret that we shared that didn’t have anything to do with anyone else. I’d never had anything that belonged just to me. I don’t know who I am without you, and this place.”
Connor stared at her.
“Please, Dad. You know I love you. I love all of you. But I can’t stay here. Not anymore.” She paused for a moment, and they both looked out at the water. He tried to lose himself in the ripples, to forget for just a precious second what he was being asked, but he couldn’t escape it. “You know, you’re the one that made me strong, right? No matter what happened, no matter who was hurt in the process…you did right by us.” She reached out and squeezed his hand. He gripped hers in return.
Connor thought about blaming Blake, or Drew for that matter. He thought about blaming anyone but Poe. But when he looked in her eyes, he realized that whoever’s fault it was didn’t matter. There was an emptiness there that wasn’t there before. If ignorance was bliss, her bliss was gone, and there was nothing he could do to replace it. Knowing she thought he did right by his children made all the difference to him, and it would be something he would carry with him even after she was gone. He was not about to stop now. “If it’s what will make you happy, then I think you should do it.”
She smiled brighter than he’d ever seen. Sure he’d seen her smile, but there was something more inside it that time, something deeper. He wondered if she was wrong after all—if what he had given her all her life did not, in fact, make up for what he had taken away. As she hugged him and thanked him, sadness filled his heart as he realized that he had just done the hardest thing he would ever do. Because he knew there was a very good chance that once he saw her leave, he wouldn’t live long enough to see her return.
A couple days later, all of them were working on the lower walls of the house. He and Drew were holding up the wood panels while Kate and Poe hammered until their fingers bled. There was no time for bandages; they knew they had to get the house rebuilt before the weather changed.
Kate put down her hammer briefly and came up to Connor. She had avoided him since their fight, not trying to hide it from the others and sleeping on Vera’s cot with her instead of in bed with him. Though she would sit next to him at breakfast, she would never say a word, and she would keep her eyes trained on the bread and cured meat in front of her. Their children seemed to notice, but none said anything, just pretended they didn’t see that what was once a team was broken in two.
She started to ask him a question about the next step. But before she had a chance, sparkling dots formed in his eyes and he slipped into blackness.
When he woke up, Drew had his hand on his wrist, and he felt the tall grass encircling him, tickling the skin on his forearms. For a brief second, he realized that the clear blue sky was beautiful, and he’d wished he’d spent more time appreciating blue, flawless days like that one. He started to sit up, and felt Drew’s hands on his back. “Whoa, take it easy.” He had no intention of doing that, but his body seemed to have other ideas.
He noticed Poe was also at his side. “Dad, are you okay? Please tell me you’re okay.” She turned from him to Drew. “Is he okay?”
Connor stared hard at Drew, willing him to realize what he was thinking, begging him with his eyes. “Yes, he just fainted. Probably didn’t drink enough water this morning or something. Nothing to worry about.”
Poe kissed Connor on the forehead. “That’s a relief. You rest for a while, okay, Dad?”
“Yes, Connor, go rest.” Kate hugged him. She started to walk back to the construction area, but hesitated. Connor couldn’t help but wonder if a part of her knew, a part she wasn’t conscious of…somewhere deep inside her realizing that the time she had left with her husband was becoming as fleeting as a sunrise. “I love you, Connor.”
The words hit his ears like music. He hadn’t lost her, not yet. And if he hadn’t by then, he never would. Time would see to that. She may never forgive him for what he’d done, but he would always have her love. And maybe that was enough. “Okay, I love you too. As the girls walked away, he readdressed Drew. “Thank you.”
“I’m not going to tell them, but you need to.”
Connor nodded. “I will when it’s the right time.”
Drew helped him up and walked with him back to the bunker.
CHAPTER TWENTY
DREW
Drew had watched Kate work on the house for hours that morning. He had to tell her something, something that was years in the making, and he didn’t have the slightest clue how to begin. So instead, he watched as she hammered one wood beam into another, sweat dripping down her forehead and hair pulled back with a scarf. Her sleeves were rolled up past her elbows, and he wondered if she had forgotten about the tank top she was wearing under her long-sleeved shirt. She seemed to be making more progress than Cassius and Gabriel put together. Perhaps it was because she loved the house in a way they never could.
She finally noticed him, and he was forced to act. He waved as if he hadn’t been staring for so long and started walking toward her, hoping that the right words would come on the way there.
They didn’t.
“Why don’t you take a break for a couple minutes?” He said. “The rest of them can handle this for a while.”
Kate let out a labored breath. “Thanks but I’m fine.” She reached into her toolbox and pulled out three nails, examining them carefully befor
e picking which one to use.
“Actually, I was hoping I could talk to you.” He hesitated. “Alone.”
“Is it Vera? Is she okay? Her eye seems to be getting better.”
“Vera’s fine. This isn’t about her.”
Though her expression did nothing to hide her confusion, she consented. “All right.”
They walked in silence down the hill behind the barn. From that vantage point, they could hardly see the damaged house, and if one avoided looking at it the setting was quite serene. “What’s this about, Drew?”
“Where’s Connor?”
Kate smiled. “Oh, he’s organizing the bunker. Or talking to Gordon over that darn radio. I know he enjoys it, but really, how many updates from the east coast can there be?” She laughed awkwardly then looked at him. “Are you going to tell me what this is about?”
Unconsciously, Drew found himself sitting down in the grass, his arms resting against his knees. Kate sat down next to him. They listened to the rustling of the trees nearby, and watched as the birds flitted between them. Drew didn’t speak for quite a while, and appreciated Kate’s patience. Finally, he took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“Your baby. It’s my fault. I know it’s my fault.”
Then it was Kate who initiated the silence. Drew tried to pay attention to the grass under his feet, noticing every blade as they brushed against his toes. His shoes had worn thin, and he hadn’t made time to repair them. Connor had offered him a new pair, but he liked the ones he had. He’d been wearing them the day they arrived. They were worn, and familiar. He hoped after that day, the pain from what he had done would become less so. But mostly, he just wanted to do the right thing.
“Thank you for saying that. I’m sure that wasn’t an easy thing.”
Lovely, lovely Kate, forever a peaceful heart, despite what had been done to her. She had tasted the very worst in humanity, yet somehow was able to give him the understanding he didn’t deserve. “How do you do it?”
“What?”
“Forgive.”
She smiled. “Forgiveness isn’t for you. It’s for me. I forgave you a long time ago. Not because you particularly deserved it, but because I didn’t want to carry the weight of what you did around with me. I just wanted to live my life and be a good mother to the children I had left. Those three needed me, and I had no business folding on them.” She reached out and put her hand on top of Drew’s. “You’re a good man. You made a terrible mistake, but you’re a good man. You don’t need absolution from me, because I never gave you power over me to begin with.”
She got up and looked at him, then gave him a small kiss on the top of his head. “You’ve more than proven yourself around here. You saved Poe’s life. Let that be your absolution.” As she walked back toward the house, Drew sighed, and hoped she had walked away in time to miss the tear sliding down his cheek.
Drew lingered there, staring out into the woods that had given and taken so much from all of them. It had sheltered them from disease, but it had also hidden dangers that they had barely escaped from. He realized that applied to humanity as well, and sometimes the hero and the villain were the same person. He had come up the mountain thinking that Connor was the worst kind of human being, and now he had come to think they weren’t so different. Perhaps if he had been through what Connor had, he would have been the same way. Whatever kind of man he was, he knew the love of a woman like Vera, and for that, any monster that was hidden within him could stay buried there, nestled between the agony of never knowing what might have been had they had a child of their own, and the anger that he had toward himself which, despite Kate’s kindness, he was sure would always remain.
***
CONNOR
The day Poe left with Darius and Lindsey was at the beginning of summer. Connor had Gabriel make a second getaway truck from his old truck, the one he had used every time he had gone into town. Despite the vaccine, he knew whoever had survived the pandemic had to do something to ensure that they lived, and many times, that meant they had to make sure someone else died. To beat a threat, sometimes you had to become one. Connor knew that better than anyone. Providing that vehicle was the last thing he could do to protect Poe from other people who had done what they needed to for survival, people who didn’t know her or love her, and he intended to do it well. He trusted Gabriel to do it right. Somewhere along the line, Gabriel had turned into someone he could depend on, even if he hadn’t noticed. He would regret not noticing for the rest of his life, however short it might be.
The entire group said goodbye, but only Connor and Drew stayed until the trio were so far down the road they could no longer be seen. As he stood there, gazing out at the silhouette which was all that remained of his daughter, he whispered, “Please keep her safe.” His own words came from nowhere, materializing out of some unconscious place that he had just become aware of in that moment. Perhaps the empty spot on the shelf was there no longer. And that possibility gave him more peace than he could have ever imagined.
“You didn’t tell her, did you?” Drew asked, although Connor knew it was more of a declaration.
“If I’d told her, she would have stayed.”
Connor and Drew remained side by side for what they weren’t sure were minutes or hours. But as Connor stared down the road that once held his daughter, he imagined he saw her footprints in front of him, glowing like the stars they loved so fiercely.
About the Author
Renee N. Meland is the author of The Extraction List Series, young adult science fiction novels optioned for film by 5x5 Media, INC. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and daughter, and believes that storytelling is the best job in the world.
Follow Renee N. Meland on Twitter: @reneenmeland
Find her on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/reneenmelandsbooks/
Learn about her other books on her website: https://www.reneenmeland.com/
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