Next to Kim, Julie Yoo sat looking stunned.
“You okay?” Kim asked.
“Honestly? Yeah. I mean, I’m sort of numb, but not in a bad way. I’d like a glass of wine. And maybe a Xanax or something.”
Kim laughed. She brought the truck up to about forty miles per hour. She wanted to get to the plane as soon as possible, but the road was littered with dead Hell Spiders, and she didn’t want to risk an accident. With only her headlights to lead the way, she was more concerned with . . .
“Hey, Julie? Am I imagining things, or is there a pair of headlights coming toward us?”
“I see them, too.”
Kim slowed down as the headlights came closer and closer. By the time the pickup truck pulled alongside them, driver’s-side window to driver’s-side window, she’d stopped.
“Hi there,” Kim said. She honestly couldn’t think of what else to say.
“Oh my god, I am so glad to see you. And you’re American!” The guy driving was a couple of years older than Kim, maybe mid-twenties. A woman with a sour look on her face sat in the passenger’s seat.
Kim felt Julie’s hand on her leg as she leaned over. “Pierre?”
“Julie?” The man’s eyes opened so wide that Kim was afraid they were going to pop out of his head. “Julie? What on earth are you doing here?”
His passenger let out a harsh, barking laugh. “Of course,” she said. “Why not?”
The man, Pierre, glanced at the woman, clearly rattled. But then he looked past Kim right at Julie, and with a sort of puppy-dog earnestness he blurted out, “I love you! I mean, I’m sorry, I know this isn’t the time or the place, but there’s been so much happening, and I keep thinking about you, and even before any of this I kept thinking about you, and I have to tell you I love you. I’ve been in love with you forever, and—”
“Pierre.” Julie had to say his name two more times to get him to stop. Kim took a second to glance in the rearview mirror. She saw the lights of the two other JLTVs approaching.
“Julie,” Kim said, “we’ve got to go. We need to get Shotgun medical attention.”
“Right.” Julie leaned farther over so that she could put her hand on the windowsill—almost like she was reaching out to try to hold Pierre’s hand. Almost, but not quite. “Pierre, this isn’t the time or the place. But if you want to follow us, I’m pretty sure you can hitch a ride to the US.”
“Seriously, we’ve got to go,” Kim said. She shrugged. “Sorry.” By then the lights of the trailing JLTVs were almost upon them, so she started driving again. In the rearview mirror she saw the pickup truck turn around and start trailing them.
She and Julie were quiet until they hit the outskirts of the city, and then Kim said, “He loves you?”
“I guess,” Julie said.
“And you dated in college?”
“Sort of.”
“So . . . ?”
“Yeah.”
And then they were quiet again until they reached the airfield.
EPILOGUE
NEW YEAR’S DAY
Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides, Scotland
He’d wanted to go to Edinburgh. Somewhere with a major hospital, but Thuy had refused. It was a low-risk pregnancy, she said, and the Western Isles Hospital in Stornoway was more than well equipped to handle a simple childbirth. Besides, she’d said, she was working there. How was it going to look if she went somewhere else?
The other truth was that the medical systems were completely overwhelmed, not just in Edinburgh, but everywhere. It was worse in the big cities like Edinburgh and all around the globe, however, and not just medical. There had been reports of food riots in Toronto the previous week, and in parts of the world where winters were even harsher, infrastructure failures loomed large. For the most part, however, travel was back to normal. Well, not normal—nothing would ever be back to normal—but it was possible to travel. Which probably played a big role in Thuy’s insistence as well, because it meant that her family had been able to get to Stornoway. The first thing he and Thuy did after S-Day—Spider Day, the day of victory, but everybody just called it S-Day, like D-Day—was get married. Her family had to miss that, but they sure weren’t going to miss the birth, too.
They were all out there, in the waiting room, sitting with his grandfather: Thuy’s mom, dad, her brother, his boyfriend, and his boyfriend’s dog. Aonghas had no idea how they’d managed to persuade the hospital staff to allow the dog inside.
He leaned over and kissed Thuy on the forehead. She was sweaty and flushed, and to his mind she’d never looked more beautiful. And then he leaned over and kissed their daughter, who was mewling and pink. If he was being totally honest, she was kind of squishy; but she was also perfect in every way, and staring at her button nose made him want to start crying all over again.
“Bring them in?” he asked.
Thuy smiled, so he opened the door and her family rushed in, chattering and oohing and aahing, and it was all he could do not to laugh as they crowded him out. His grandfather, beaming, waited patiently.
“Do you want to hold her?” he asked his grandfather.
“In time, in time, Aonghas. Let Thuy’s parents have their turn.”
They were quiet for a minute, standing together, grandson and grandfather, and Aonghas felt an almost physical weight for how much he loved the man next to him.
Padruig spoke quietly, so that only Aonghas could hear. “Does she have a name yet?”
The question genuinely surprised Aonghas. “Of course,” he said. “She’s named after her.”
“Ah. After your mother. Of course.”
“No,” Aonghas said. He realized he was about to start crying again, but he tried to hold it together. “After my grandmother. Your wife. Ealasaid. We were going to name her after you if she had been a boy, but she’s a girl, so it’s Ealasaid.”
Watching his grandfather’s face was like watching a wall crumble slowly into the sea. His lips started to tremble and then break, and then great big tears rolled down his craggy face.
It was a good way to ring in the New Year.
Oxford, Mississippi
Santiago knew that others had suffered worse, but still, it hurt.
They’d held a funeral just after Thanksgiving for Juliet. It had broken his heart, but he understood that her time had simply run out. She’d lived longer than the doctors had promised at her birth, and he had thought of every extra minute as a gift.
He’d taken the rest of that day off to mourn with his wife and Oscar and Mrs. Fine. The work crews went six days a week, and he was a foreman, but even so, his men were surprised when he was back the following morning. He told them there was too much to do, but the truth was that he was afraid to stay home. Work was solace for him, for his wife—she was a manager of a farm work crew—and even for Oscar, who had returned to school in October, when the doors reopened. The government had picked Oxford as a resettlement site, but perhaps only half of the homes were occupied. It was enough, however, to mean that there was work to do, that there were ways to keep occupied in the wake of Juliet’s death. Even Mrs. Fine worked, sitting at the register even though gas was so rationed that they pumped only on weekends and the shelves of the store were barer than they were full.
They were sad, but he was also happy, because he knew they had done everything possible and that Juliet had lived as full a life as she could have. What more could he have asked from God?
And then, only a few days after Christmas, with New Year’s Eve approaching, Mrs. Fine had not come down to breakfast. He’d known in his heart before he began to climb the stairs.
He dug the grave himself. He could have used a backhoe, but he wanted to honor her with his work. The day was overcast, but it was warm enough that he worked up a sweat. He stopped a few times for water, to eat a sandwich that his wife had packed for him. He had plenty of time. Even with the new world that lay before them, the work crews had New Year’s Day off. He would finish digging, go
home, shower, and change into his one suit—he had not expected to wear it again so soon—and they could lay Mrs. Fine to rest.
And once that was done, he thought, he would find another piece of granite as he had done for Juliet. On Juliet’s, he’d chiseled her name, her birth and death dates, and just the first three words of the song he used to sing to her: La linda manita. His work was rough, but it was as fine as he was capable of. His wife agreed that Juliet’s headstone needed nothing other than her name, the dates, and those three words.
As he dug, he knew that the granite above Mrs. Fine’s grave would have only a single word: Abuela.
Burlington, Vermont
Gordo waved the Geiger counter over the load. Every few weeks they’d get something that contained a contaminated item from the red zones. It didn’t matter how dire the warnings were; scavengers always thought it was worth the risk. Even though almost everything got screened before it made its way to Vermont, Gordo thought it was a smart precaution, so the town council decided to add the redundancy. Since the town council consisted, in its entirety, of Gordo, Shotgun, and Amy, it wasn’t like he’d needed to make much of an argument. So far he hadn’t found anything that was hot, but back in September several dozen people in Philadelphia had died from radiation poisoning after a screwup. Better safe than sorry.
The radiation detector didn’t let out a single beep, so Gordo cleared the load. “I’m done for the day,” he said to his assistant, Wendy. She was only sixteen—a kid, really—but she was a quick learner, and these days sixteen was old enough to earn your place.
“Want me to finish logging everything?” she asked, but he could tell she didn’t really want to. He kept long hours, and it was unusual that he’d knock off before seven. He was sure she liked the idea of seeing her boyfriend.
“No worries. We can pick up where we left off in the morning.”
He spent a few minutes straightening papers and shutting down his computer, and then he did a quick round to make sure the warehouse was sealed up. They were fortunate to live in an area that had access to a lot of natural resources, so there wasn’t the same kind of pilferage that was a problem in some of the resettlement areas, but it didn’t hurt to be careful. Burlington had been extremely lucky, and they’d suffered casualties of only approximately twenty percent of the population, but that meant the area’s needs were higher, too. Most of Gordo’s time was spent as a glorified stockkeeper. He entered the code to set the alarm, checked to make sure he had the monitor in his pocket—he’d get an alert if the alarm went off—locked up, said good night to the two guards coming on for the night shift, and started walking home.
He could have driven, since he rated a car and triple gas rations, but they lived only a few blocks from the warehouse. He liked the walk. He felt lucky to be able to enjoy walking, particularly after what had happened to Shotgun. The man didn’t complain about it, but Gordo was pretty sure Shotgun’s leg still ached where the spiders had torn it up. As nasty as it looked on the outside, there’d been a lot of damage inside to muscles and nerves and tendons. Shotgun was able to get around okay with a cane now, but he would always be gimpy.
It had been a mild winter so far, thankfully, and the streets were bare. It was mild enough that Gordo didn’t bother zipping up his jacket. He walked quickly, ready to get home. He and Amy had taken a gingerbread-style cottage that was only a few doors down from a Victorian that Shotgun and Fred shared with an older couple. Gordo and Amy’s house had two small bedrooms—one for them and one that Gordo used as an office—but the living area had been renovated sometime recently. It was an open space, with the kitchen and dining room and living room all one single room.
He was still five or six houses away when he heard Claymore barking and saw the dog running toward him.
“Hey, boy!” Gordo bent down, bracing himself, but as always Claymore skidded to a halt instead of crashing into him. The chocolate Lab was whining and wagging his tail so hard that Gordo was afraid the dog was going to knock himself over. He laughed and gave Claymore a heavy scratching on his chest and behind his ears. “Come on, buddy. I wasn’t gone that long.”
Claymore ran ahead the rest of the way, disappearing into the yard behind the house. Gordo bounced up the steps and pulled the door open.
“Hey. Smells good.”
Amy was standing in the kitchen with Fred. She was still dressed from teaching—she had been installed as an English teacher at one of the middle schools despite her protests that being a technical writer wasn’t proper training, and she’d surprised herself by really enjoying the work—but she had on a dark-blue apron over her dress. Fred was wearing what he wore every day: loafers, slacks, a button-down, and a bow tie. On top, he’d thrown a white apron with the word GrillMaster! spelled out in red letters.
“Don’t let the apron fool you,” Fred said. “We’re having pasta.”
Of all of them, Fred might have adjusted the quickest. Despite complaining about having to survive Vermont and the attendant winters, he’d found a natural fit; at the referendum meeting the week after they arrived—the same one that had elected Amy, Shotgun, and Gordo to the three council seats—those in attendance had voted overwhelmingly to appoint a director of activities. The thought was that the post-S-Day world was going to be hard enough. It didn’t have to be joyless. Amy immediately nominated Fred, and he was elected by general acclaim. It was the job he was born to do. Burlington had already been one of those vibrant college towns, and Fred was like the magic elixir to bring things back to normal and then some. While he’d always been good at throwing a party, it turned out that he also had a knack for getting other people to throw parties, and the fact that almost everything was rationed didn’t seem to stop him.
Gordo hung up his coat and came over to give Amy a kiss. “Hey,” he said. “Wine! What’s the special occasion?”
Amy kissed him. “We’ve got guests.”
Gordo smirked. “I’m not sure having Shotgun and Fred over counts as a special occasion.”
As he spoke, he felt a gust of cool air and turned to see Shotgun limp through the door. And then, to his surprise, following right behind were Kim and a stocky young man who looked to be close to her age.
The next few minutes were a hubbub of hugs and introductions. The boy was Kim’s boyfriend, nineteen or twenty, the same age as Kim, and evidently also a Marine, and Amy herded them all to the table.
“I’m only here overnight,” Kim said once they were all seated. Claymore had come in the door with them. He’d been attached to Kim’s hip the entire time. He was standing next to her, his head on her lap. “Technically, I’m here on business.” Gordo passed her the basket of bread. She took a piece, ripped off half, and promptly handed the other half to Claymore.
“Business? Come on, Kim. Are we really supposed to believe you’re here on business? We all know the only reason you came up to Burlington was so that you could see Claymore,” Gordo said, and they all laughed. “Seriously. What business, exactly, does Lance Corporal Kim Bock have in Burlington?”
Kim’s boyfriend nearly choked on his bread. Shotgun casually handed the kid a glass of water.
The boy took a sip and then put the glass down. “Sorry. Just, well, that was funny.”
Gordo looked at him. “What?” Then he looked at Kim. “What did I say?”
Kim shrugged. “Well, I’m not wearing my uniform, so it’s hard to tell, but I’m not a lance corporal anymore.”
The boy coughed. Or maybe he laughed. Gordo couldn’t tell.
“Congratulations, Kim,” Amy said. She lifted her wineglass. “I know you’re not technically old enough to drink, but I think this deserves a toast. To . . . well, what are you now if you’re not a lance corporal? What’s your rank?”
Kim hesitated, and then she lifted her glass. “Major general, actually.”
Gordo couldn’t figure out what was funnier: the way Kim’s boyfriend blushed, the fact that neither Fred nor Amy seemed to understand what Kim�
�s new rank meant, or the fact that the announcement made Shotgun spit out his wine. Either way, he had to laugh.
Shotgun shook his head. “Well, that’s impressive.” He put his arm around Fred. “That means she’s a, what, two-star general?”
“Two very shiny stars,” Kim said. She opened her hands up in a gesture of innocence. “It’s pretty crazy. The armed forces don’t work like that. The Marines don’t work like that. But, well, I’m basically Cannon’s bird dog, and between him and the president a lot of rules got broken.”
They talked of her promotion for a while, of all the ways in which Cannon and the president bucked tradition and rewrote the laws to make it happen, and of the steep learning curve Kim was facing in her new job. And then she spent a while asking them about their new lives in Burlington. The entire time she never once stopped petting Claymore. After a while she pushed her plate a few inches away and wiped at her mouth with her napkin.
“The thing is,” she said, “I really am here on business.”
Fred let out a gasp. His voice shook as he spoke. “They’re back?”
“Oh, gosh, no!” Kim used her free hand to touch Fred’s hand. “I’m sorry. No. Honestly, I don’t think we’re ever going to feel completely safe, but since Nazca, since S-Day, we’ve been clear. Not even the hint of a whisper. I mean, yeah, every few days somebody has a scare and we have to check something out, but no. No more spiders. That’s the thing, though. That’s the special project. We’ve been devoting so many resources toward recovery, but maybe we need to put more resources into making sure nothing like this ever happens again. That’s why I’m here.”
“The answer is no,” Amy said.
It surprised Gordo. It surprised everybody. He looked at his wife. She had a stern look on her face. He recognized it, because he’d visited her classroom one day and saw her whip it on when a few boys were acting up. It was a face that brooked no disagreement.
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