A Single Light

by Tosca Lee

  Micah shakes his head. “No. At this point, we have to assume there’s been a mechanical failure.”

  Rima’s son, Karam, raises his hand. “What if something happened like an attack on the compound? What if Noah needs us? We owe it to him if he does. Whatever might be happening, there’s more of us here than up there—” he says, pointing.

  “You have to subtract eight children,” I say. He glances at me, and then concedes the point with a slight nod.

  “Noah’s a contingency planner and he knows how to handle himself,” Chase says. “The man’s a Vietnam vet. Give him some credit. I guarantee you he’s knocked some heads in his day.”

  But even as he says it, I know he’s worried, too.

  “The key phrase being ‘in his day,’ ” Jax says.

  “Guys,” Piper says. “We’re saying this like we can just decide to leave. Hello? We can’t.”

  “There’s got to be a failsafe,” Braden says. “Noah was too smart to just ‘set it and forget it.’ ”

  “Then why doesn’t anyone know about it?” someone else asks.

  But as the conversation careens toward chaos, I’m thinking about the New Earth religious commune where I grew up. How my own sister kept to a Penitence cell once she realized she’d gotten sick to keep the disease from spreading like fire behind those walls and killing her own daughter in the process.

  There is no failsafe.

  Nelise stands up. “We need to find out what’s going on!”

  “Do we?” Micah says from the edge of the room.

  Nelise blinks. “Well, I want to know!” She turns to Rudy, who used to own the largest insurance office in Alliance, Nebraska. I know this because he made sure to tell us—several times—as he presented each of us with “Rudy Bryant, CLU” pens our first night out of quarantine. “Don’t you?”

  “It sure would be nice,” Rudy says, crossing his arms. His jowls get larger when he sits like that. “And I’d be frankly surprised if Noah didn’t plan for circumstances like this.”

  “I think he did,” Micah says.

  Rudy arches a brow. “Then you do know how to fix this?”

  “No,” Micah says.

  “Son, you just said—”

  Micah points in the direction of the stairwell leading to the locked entrance above. “That door isn’t going to open for 146 more days no matter what. And that’s exactly the way Noah wanted it—for our safety. And, worst case, for the survival of our kind. Which is why we all came down here: to be sealed off from the virus wreaking havoc on the surface until the danger passed and a vaccine became available. It was part of the deal. And we took it.”

  “But the video feed malfunctioned,” Rudy says angrily. “Something’s clearly not working!”

  “The feed isn’t vital,” Micah says. “I’m not even sure it’s helpful.”

  “How can you say that?” Piper asks.

  “Is it helpful to know how many are dying?” Micah asks, looking around. “Does it encourage or lift your spirits? No. It only adds to the anxiety that’s going to deplete your immune system before you walk out of here in just over five months.”

  “But it’s the truth!” Nelise says, looking at him like he’s out of his mind.

  “It won’t prepare you any better than focusing on your health and staying strong willed,” Micah says. “We should all be putting in regular hours on the gym level. Spending less time on idle speculation and more on the maintenance of our life-sustaining equipment, garden, and bodies.”

  “Walking out into nuclear winter ain’t gonna help our immune systems none, either,” Jax says.

  “Wait, what?” Braden says.

  “He’s joking,” Chase says.

  “Am I?” Jax says. He isn’t smiling.

  “If we walk out into nuclear winter, nothing’s going to matter anyway,” Micah says.

  • • •

  “WELL THAT WAS uplifting,” Julie mutters as we convene in Chase’s and my private quarters late that night. “You okay?” she asks, studying me.

  But I don’t want to talk about the anxiety gnawing at the pit of my stomach.

  “Please. I’ve lived with imminent doom before.”

  Julie glances at Chase. “You don’t really think—”

  “Jax is an idiot,” Chase says under his breath. “That’s what I think.”

  Despite Jax apologizing for his comment at the end of the conversation, the procession downstairs to the living levels had been somber.

  “Micah didn’t help,” I say. Though he did manage to steer the conversation away from trying to get out.

  “No, he didn’t,” Julie says. “Does that man ever smile?”

  “Only around Seth,” I say, remembering the way Micah grinned the first time Chase and I met him when we stopped over on our way to Colorado. He’s changed since the doors closed.

  We all have.

  Julie turns to Chase. “So is it possible, what they were saying?”

  Chase shakes his head. “What would be the point? We’re already down. No one’s going to risk retaliation from an ally when our economy, infrastructure, agriculture—everything—is already obliterated. We’re a third world country right now.”

  “That’s what I was thinking, but the world is a crazy place filled with crazier people than before,” Julie says.

  I exhale slowly. Draw a stabilizing breath.

  “Unless you’re seeing something I don’t, Noah’s comm going out doesn’t change anything,” Chase says.

  “No,” I say. “We stick to the plan.”

  DAY 44

  * * *

  It takes a lot of work to survive. We perform maintenance on the silo’s generators, commodes, air filters, pumps. Test the water and air purity. Scrub the showers so prone to mold. Inventory supplies.

  Act cheerful around the children.

  I create a hopscotch grid with some masking tape and teach Truly and her friends to play. Read from Charlotte’s Web at night.

  It looks like normal daily life, but it’s not. Though after fifteen years in a walled compound, two-and-a-half months trying to adjust to life on the outside, and four days as a fugitive, I don’t know what normal is.

  In a way, nothing’s changed. I can tomatoes—a job I used to despise at New Earth. But I’m the only one other than Nelise who knows how, and she’s too busy midwifing green beans, spinach, cucumbers, and bigger organic strawberries than we ever produced in the compound.

  In another way, everything’s changed.

  The recycled air feels brittle. The silence of this place, one of its most calming features our first days here, is tinged with the tension of resolute survival . . . and the aimless wait for something that never comes.

  Or can’t come fast enough.

  I steal time with Chase—as much as two people who live with sixty-one others can. In addition to jujitsu, he now teaches fighting technique and self-defense two hours every day.

  Because when the door opens, we might need it.

  The plan is simple: once the silo opens, we get to Wyoming. Maybe by June the world will have forgotten me, but it’s a chance I can’t afford to take. I have Truly to protect, and that means obscurity. Nestled away in a cabin belonging to a buddy of Chase’s—the place he was headed to when I barged into his Jeep and his life.

  Noah has said he’ll have a vehicle and supplies waiting for us. When those doors open, if I can find a way to thank him unseen, I will. I hope I can.

  But if not, we’ll separate only as long as it takes for Chase, Julie, and Lauren to visit the nearest vaccination center and receive immunizations.

  And then make our way west.

  DAY 51

  * * *

  I repeat myself sometimes. Have to ask Julie to tell me when I do it. Meanwhile, my day-to-day is one long series of repetitions that begin at the table: oatmeal for breakfast one day. Malt-O-Meal the next—chocolate. I never had that growing up, and the novelty of eating anything chocolate for breakfast would norma
lly strike me as slightly rebellious. Today, it’s just one more vacuum-packed reminder of Noah’s forethought that makes me wonder why we don’t have a periscope on the world above.

  When I say as much to Chase, he shakes his head. “I think he saw a lot of things he wished he never had. Maybe he didn’t want that for anyone else.”

  Which isn’t reassuring.

  The children ask what it’ll be like when we leave. If they’ll have to go back to regular school again. How big Buddy will be when we emerge. If there will be presents waiting since they didn’t get any at Christmas.

  I give answers I have no way of knowing. Yes. Forty pounds. And if they’re very good.

  It’s different than the picture the five of us paint in hushed brushstrokes, alone: chasing Buddy. Digging for worms. Fishing the Green River gorge for wriggly rainbow trout.

  Which makes Truly giggle.

  She doesn’t realize she’ll have to learn to eat fish. That it may make her sick at first, or even horrify her. That she’ll do it in order to survive.

  Only in private do I ask what we’ll do if the cabin is filled with squatters. How we’ll find food beyond fish and wild game. There’s a book of edible plants in the library. We pore over pictures of wild asparagus, raspberries, and dandelion greens, memorize preparations for thistle root and daylilies, the characteristics of safe and unsafe mushrooms.

  I’ve suggested, in moments alone with Truly, that it might be fun for us to make up new Wyoming names.

  “I like the name Charlotte,” Truly said yesterday, coloring a picture I drew of a cabin on a lake surrounded by wildflowers. A fresh beginning for our makeshift family filled with sunshine and hope.

  Until night comes and the conjecture begins. About what’s happening above us. If the first batches of vaccine are ready. How many pharmaceutical companies around the world have dedicated themselves to its nonstop production.

  “It’s too soon,” Julie says. “It’ll take months, even with the aid of the UK, maybe Switzerland or France.”

  Jax starts in on his regular rant about all the countries that owe the United States favors, how there better be foreign troops defending our ports and asses for once by the time we get topside. He’s drunk; his wife, Piper, pretending to protest as he shows Chase—and by extension, me—pictures she sent him from her junior year abroad in the Philippines six years ago, which mostly consist of her on the beach. I look on with interest, not because I’m fascinated by her in a string bikini, but because I dream of seeing an ocean like that.

  “Even our allies,” Jax says, jabbing a finger at his phone’s screen. “You don’t see refugee camps for Americans there. Ever. Do you, Karam?” he says, unable to resist poking his favorite bear.

  “Gosh, it’s late,” Chase says, ready to stave off another argument; last night he had to drag Jax off to the showers to cool down.

  • • •

  CHASE IS QUIET that night. And I know he’s worried about his family, whose names I’ve only recently learned, and friends he’s known far longer than he’s known me.

  I ask him to tell me about growing up in Ohio. Why he enlisted in the Marines. The girls he dated—including Jessica, whom he was with for two years.

  He grimaces and rolls away when I mention her name. “I really don’t like talking about her,” he says. “Can we just chalk that one up as an expensive lesson?”

  “Expensive?”

  “She never gave me back the ring,” he says, sliding a hand beneath his head.

  I blink in the darkness.

  “I told you we were engaged,” he says. And then: “Didn’t I?”

  “No,” I say slowly.

  “Oh. Well, does it matter?”

  “No. It doesn’t matter.” But as I say it, I feel tipped slightly off-axis. And even though it’s true that none of us are who we were before, I’ll still obsess about it through the night and spend tomorrow biting back questions, by which time he’ll have forgotten we even had this conversation.

  Things are different between us than they were during that frantic trip to Colorado, the memory of which is like so much white noise to me now. When we knew every conversation might be our last. When we were all each other had.

  I lie awake long after his breath evens with sleep, unsettled. Certain that he means to go with us to Wyoming. Realizing I have no idea how long he plans to stay.

  DAY 72

  * * *

  “Chase,” Micah says, out of breath as he strides into the dining hall, where Chase and I are the last ones eating a late tomato soup and reconstituted “cheesy pasta” lunch sprinkled with fresh basil from the garden.

  Chase lowers his fork, instantly alert. “What is it?”

  “You’d better come,” Micah says.

  I get to my feet and follow them as they take the stairs two at a time. Up to the library, where alarmed and angry voices issue through the tunnel from the atrium.

  We shove past Sha’Neal, who cleans on Julie’s crew, and her husband, Ezra. Emerge into the false sun of the atrium to find Jax red-faced, tendons standing out from his neck as Preston grapples him backward.

  “You hurt her, I swear to God, I’ll kill you!” Jax shouts, snot running down his nose. Movement from the corner of my eye. Braden, backing along the wall behind the pool table, Piper clutched in his arms.

  A butcher knife pressed to her neck.

  Behind him, the door to the stairwell that leads to the sealed entrance above hangs open for the first time since the day we closed it.

  “Calm down!” Preston grits out.

  “Hey, Braden,” Chase says, palms lifted. “What’s going on, man? Talk to me.”

  “We need to get out of here,” Braden says, breathing hard.

  “I found him trying to tamper with the main door,” Micah murmurs.

  A high keen escapes from Piper, the mascara she insists on wearing every day running down her cheeks.

  “We need someone to go up. Find out what’s happening up there!” Braden says. “For all we know there could be a war—a—a ballistic missile. A nuclear strike!” His facial expression twists. “Man, don’t look at me like I’m crazy! Jax said the same thing himself!”

  “If that’s the case,” Chase says, “you really, really don’t want to go out there. We’re safe down here, okay?”

  “What if our air system fails? What if the door doesn’t open? We’ll starve to death—we’re gonna die!”

  “Please! Please don’t hurt her,” Jax says, his threats having subsided to pleading.

  “It’ll open,” Preston says, practically hanging on Jax, his arms wrapped around him. “Tell him, Micah.”

  “It’s a different system,” Micah says. “One has nothing to do with the other. But if you tamper with it, if you start shoving that knife around the edges trying to get it to open now, you could damage it. For all we know, he already has.”

  I turn to Micah and mouth, Shut up.

  “Open it,” Braden says. “Just for a minute. We can close it again if it’s bad. I just need to know. I need to see! I can’t take this—this waiting. I can’t!”

  “All right. Calm down, buddy,” Chase says. “Let’s see what we can do. Okay? But you’ve got to let go of Piper. That’s the deal. We can’t do anything like this. Let her go, and we’ll figure out the door. Right, Micah? We can open it for just a look, right?”

  “Uh, sure,” Micah says.

  “You’re lying!” Braden says. “He wants to keep us here!” He points at Micah with the knife.

  In a flash, Chase is flying over the pool table. Someone screams as his hands collide with Braden’s wrist and the knife goes skidding across the floor.

  “Move!” he shouts, dragging Braden down, arm around his neck. Instead, Piper falls to the floor with them, kicking and clawing her way out of Braden’s clutch as the two men roll into the wall. Chase doesn’t let go until Braden’s form slumps. Three seconds later, the fighter once known as Cutter Buck releases him and gets to his feet.

/>   “Is he dead?” Piper cries.

  “No.”

  “Don’t let him go!” Jax shouts, dragging Preston forward.

  “Too long and he might not wake up,” Chase says. He turns to Micah. “What do we want to do with him?”

  Micah blows out a breath and glances at Preston, who slowly lets Jax go. But before he can answer, Piper lurches across the floor.

  Flash of metal.

  I shout: “No!”

  With a scream, she sinks the knife into the back of Braden’s neck, yanks it out, and drives it deep again.

  Chase whirls around. “What the—”

  He leaps back as she lashes out at him, swinging wildly with the knife, blood on her hands, her face.

  “Piper!” Jax gasps.

  I bolt to the rack on the wall behind her, jerk out a cue stick. Upend it and rush in swinging. Chase’s eyes go wide and he leaps out of the way as the butt connects with Piper’s head—crack!—and sends her sprawling sideways.

  Jax howls and shoves past me. Falls down to gather his wife in his arms as Chase kicks the knife from her hand.

  “Oh, my God,” Micah says, hands going to his head as he turns away.

  I throw the cue away from me onto the green felt of the pool table. There’s a fresh red smudge on the thick end.

  A pneumatic gurgle issues from the floor.

  “Sweet Jesus,” Preston says as I grab the throw blanket off the sofa. There’s blood everywhere behind the pool table, soaking between panels of the laminate wood floor.

  “Get the doctor!” Chase says, whipping off his shirt and dropping to a knee to press it against Braden’s neck.

  “Yes. I’ll—I’m going,” Preston stutters as voices issue from the tunnel. I throw the blanket over Braden and then stiffen, recognizing Lauren’s laughter.

  “Don’t let them in here!” I shout.

  A rush of movement—Preston, hurrying toward the tunnel. “Get Rima! Don’t come in. Just get her!” With a curse, he shoves past them as Micah yells at him to hurry.

  “He’s bleeding out,” Chase mutters.