“I sure don’t know how to make it without mine.” He rubbed her back between her shoulder blades. But she didn’t look up.
“But what if they…?” Sarah asked. She didn’t finish. Both of them knew where that sentence was going. And Homer had no answer to the question anyway.
Sarah took another shuddering breath. “What I did… back at the cabin… I keep replaying it in my mind, over and over again. Wondering if there could have been some other way.”
“Welcome to combat,” Homer said. “Five seconds of life-or-death decisions, surrounded by terror, chaos, uncertainty, and stress. Then the rest of your life to second-guess it all.”
Sarah just shook her head. “It must have been the right thing. It had to be, right? Your mission is a hell of a lot more important than the lives of any two people. So why the hell can’t I just accept what happened, and move on – instead of being completely neurotic about it.” She laughed mirthlessly. “It’s pissing me off!”
Homer laughed quietly. “You know what, it’s okay – you don’t have to get neurotic about being all neurotic. If dealing with these feelings is your battle right now, then deal with them. Just be in the fight you’re in. It’s okay to struggle. The struggle never ends.”
Sarah nodded, but still stared at the black ground.
Homer said, “You think I don’t second-guess myself – every day I’m alive? That I don’t struggle with doubt, and regret, and remorse? For two years, I’ve woken up every morning not knowing where my wife and children are. And every morning I’ve made the decision to stay where I was and keep doing my job. Instead of going to find them.”
Sarah looked over. “I can’t imagine it.”
“Yeah. You can. Because you made two years of impossible decisions in a single instant. And for the same reason.”
She looked down at the ground again.
Homer exhaled another long breath. “Right before Hell Week – you’ve heard of it?”
She nodded.
“Ultimately, Hell Week is just about seeing if you can suck it up, when you haven’t slept for a few days, and you’re freezing your ass off.” He paused. “But there’s a deeper level.”
“And that is?”
“Right before it started, one of the few plausibly human BUD/S instructors pulled me aside, and he told me: ‘You’re about to go to war for the first time – and the enemy is all your doubts, all your fears, and everybody back home who said you couldn’t do this. Keep your head down and keep moving forward no matter what, never quit, and you’ll be fine.’ That advice has always gotten me through – not just the last two years. But the last twenty-two.”
Now Sarah exhaled dramatically, some of the tension finally bleeding away. But when she looked across at him, she said, “And what about the next two years? And the twenty after that?” She gestured around them, indicating the dead world surrounding them on all sides. “Look at us. We’re frail insects, taking refuge from the winter, trying to squeeze a few more hours out of our doomed, season-long lives. Maybe that’s humanity between the ice ages. We were always doomed.”
Homer looked at her warmly. “I believe there’s more than that. More than this.” He put his hand on the top of her thigh, pressed beside his, and squeezed. “It’s true we’re all on a clock. But what matters is what we do with that time. And it’s those choices that can make life so beautiful.”
“Or so horrible.”
Homer shook his head. “True enough. But it’s up to us.”
“But is it? What if our choices are impossible ones?”
Homer looked away. That was pretty close to home. “I don’t know,” he said, finally. “All I know is it’s what we do for other people that gives life in this world its meaning.”
Both of them let the fatal question lie: Which people?
* * *
Finally Sarah braced up, and stood up. She looked down at Homer, who still sat. “Hey, worst case, you’ve still got Ali.”
Now Homer stood up, and decided to take the comment in the best possible spirit. “Yes. And you’ve got Handon. I’ve never seen him look at anyone like he does you.”
“Maybe.” She reached out and squeezed his arm this time. “And, right now, we’ve each got each other.” She smiled sadly. “And our two giant bags of bricks.”
Homer laughed out loud. “Well… this barn’s as good a place as any to leave them. Come on. It’s time to go.”
Sarah didn’t move. “When did you sleep last?”
“I can sleep while you drive.”
“Not in the dark, you can’t.”
Homer got her point. They’d just learned, the hard way, that driving at night without NVGs wasn’t smart. “I’ll drive until first light, then.”
“And if you drift off at the wheel?” She checked her watch. “It’s only three hours ’til dawn.”
Homer didn’t look convinced. That was not only three more hours his family would have to survive out there on their own, if they were somehow still alive. It was three hours the JFK had to make way, and leave them stranded on this dead continent.
Sarah persisted. “You’re no help to anyone – your family, or humanity – if you become the last American military personnel to die in a rollover.”
Homer blinked heavily in the dark. It was true he’d been going for almost 72 hours on no sleep, since the night before they jumped into Chicago. It was hardly the first time in his operational career. But it probably would be the first time he’d have to do highway driving while sleep-deprived – which was notorious for lulling people to sleep at the best of times. And crashes from falling asleep at the wheel were lethal, because the driver’s dead foot depressed the accelerator.
Finally, it occurred to him that, after a few wobbles, and some questionable calls on both sides, the two of them were rebuilding their trust in each other.
“Okay,” he said finally. “We’ll both get some sleep, trading watches. Ninety minutes each. Back up and out at dawn.”
“My watch first,” Sarah said.
Homer just nodded, already feeling the weight of his eyelids, now that they were out of immediate danger, and sleep was a possibility. He all but literally hit the hay.
And he was out in seconds.
See the Dawn
Not just out of consciousness, but also out of this fallen world.
But still not safe.
Homer’s demons followed him, even into the dreamworld. He found himself back on another endless swim, a mile off the coast of Coronado, on another moonless black night – except this time his son, Benjamin, and his daughter, Isabel, were out there in the water with him. And that water was bottomless.
The two small children floated 50 meters away from him, straight ahead.
But they were both drowning. Calling out to him. Crying.
And however hard Homer swam, however desperately he dug in, he never got any closer to them. His strength was failing. Plus he was falling asleep. And it wasn’t just him who was going to drown as a result of his failure, and his weakness.
His children were going to sink to the bottom.
And disappear forever.
* * *
From 20 feet away, Sarah watched Homer jerk and twist on the pile of loose hay. She was so tempted to go to him, to soothe his forehead – or even to wake him, and save him from whatever night terrors he wrestled with alone. But she knew, however terrible the nightmare, it was better he keep having it.
That he get the sleep, however little, however brief.
And she also knew that, however bad the dream, the reality they were all actually in was far worse. It was almost always better to let people sleep. They wouldn’t be happy to wake up again.
And remember where they were. What had happened.
So instead Sarah just cradled her rifle, so much less sleek, high-tech, and expensive than Homer’s, and reclined against one hay bale, while sitting up on a stack of two others – and she listened for any noise outside. The barn had no windows, s
o this sentry duty seemed mainly to involve listening.
And staying awake.
And trying, however futilely, to keep her bag of bricks, and all her own demons, from creeping back in and suffocating her. However hard she pushed them away, the thoughts kept coming back to her in the dark. How she had not only let her son and husband die – but had actually killed them by her own hand, rolling that grenade into the fuel tank, between them and the ravening horde that was trying to eat them both – and would have eaten or infected everyone in the cabin, if she hadn’t acted.
And, before that, shouting at Mark to keep the damned gate closed, to leave their son out there with the dead, to not go after him, until she and Handon could clear some kind of a path. Maybe they both would have had a chance if only he had listened, for once in his ridiculous life.
But, finally, Sarah wrenched her mind away from all that again, beguiling herself from her grief by focusing on Homer where he lay in the near dark. They’d both been too distracted and overtasked for her to spend a lot of time thinking about it, but he really was a beautiful man – in perfect physical shape, chiseled and lean, with fine blond stubble starting to cover his angular chin. Much more, he was a remarkable human being. She was in awe of his equanimity and resolve, his skill and strength – and yet his gentleness. It had struck her right away.
She had heard there were men like this in the world.
But never really known any – until one knocked on her door.
Whatever stalked Homer’s dreams must have finally retreated, at least for the moment. In silence, she watched his chest rise and fall with his breathing, busying only her hands, checking her watch every ten or so minutes… until it was time.
When she got up, her limbs were stiff from the cold.
* * *
Homer woke to a hand gently shaking his shoulder.
Still, the shock of re-entering this world was greater than the coldest dive beneath a warship’s hull in a moonless night in the Pacific. He had been so far away in his dreams. Everything had been different there. He had forgotten everything.
And now he was having to remember it all over again.
“Your watch,” Sarah said. “I was tempted to take all of it.”
Homer smiled, eyes crinkling. “But you knew I’d kick your ass.”
“Yep.” She rubbed her hands. “God, it’s cold.” The barn was nothing like insulated, it was nearly December, and they were still at a latitude north of New York City. Also, they were no longer running or fighting for their lives. Homer could have told her the cold floods in fast after the adrenaline bleeds away.
“I’ve warmed the hay for you,” he said, stirring.
But before he could shake off the sleep paralysis and get up, she slipped in beside him, pressing up against him from behind – and slowly, lightly, curling her arm around his waist.
“Body heat is best,” she whispered, her head behind his.
Homer’s eyes went wide. Now he was instantly awake. He stayed where he was for four seconds – just long enough not to seem like he was leaping away in shock or horror.
“Get some sleep,” he said, patting her arm, then pulling himself gently but firmly away, and to his feet. He didn’t look back as he walked away, but paused when she spoke his name.
“Homer.”
“Yes?” he said.
“I left a present for you.”
* * *
He shook his head and laughed when he reached the sentry spot, on the pile of hay bales. He wasn’t sure what was funnier. Sarah’s present turned out to be a neat pile of 5.56mm rounds, which she must have pushed out of her own spare mags, leaving them for him and his. This made sense – she had a lot more left than he did, and there were any number of reasons they both wanted him shooting, and not her.
On the other hand, just when they had started to regain each other’s trust, she went and pushed it too far. Trying it on with him, right there in the hay.
But then he remembered for the millionth time that people are what they are – confounding and frustrating bundles of contradictions, capable of both the greatest atrocities and the most sublime mercies, usually landing somewhere in between.
Neither angels nor demons, he thought. Fallen angels.
He took a breath, tuned into the night – and, hearing nothing, started clicking the loose rifle rounds into his own empty mags.
Carefully wiping down each one first.
* * *
But the familiar, mechanical motion wasn’t enough to fully occupy or distract his mind. That sharp jolt of waking just now, of remembering everything all over again, was nothing like new.
Virtually every morning for the past two years he had woken up, rolling over and saying his wife’s name – only to have it all come back to him again in a sickening rush, one that never diminished over time, never got any easier, no many how many times he lived through it.
He thought again about how he couldn’t judge Sarah for her emotional recklessness just now – any more than he could judge her for her tactical recklessness back on the road. He pretty much stayed out of the business of judging people.
We’re all sinners, he thought, for the thousandth time.
That much he knew. And he also sure knew what it was like to be lonely. This woman had just lost her whole family, the only people she’d had around her for two years. And she was smart enough to know there was a good chance she’d never see Handon again, either. She was suspended between two places of comfort – over an abyss of isolation, emptiness, and peril.
She might not even see the dawn. Neither of them might.
They could both be dead by morning.
And, looking across the darkness at the curve of Sarah’s hip as she slept, he remembered that’s what he and Ali had told themselves. Every time they snuck off to be alone together. That soon they’d probably be gone – which had been undeniably true, given the kinds of missions they went on, and the dead world into which they were sent to do them. The odds were always against them surviving another day.
And so depriving themselves of any comfort, any tenderness, even a little human happiness, just seemed crazy.
But he also knew that’s how the devil gets you.
That’s what sinners tell themselves.
He thought now about loyalty, and infidelity, and brotherhood. And he wondered where Ali, and Handon, and the rest of the team, were right then. He wondered what Ali must be feeling in that moment. To have lost him. To have been left behind. To have been abandoned, cast aside for someone else.
To be the one not chosen.
But Homer had chosen nothing. He’d done what he had to do.
In any case, Ali had let him go. Working with her so closely, for so long, Homer could predict what she would do in a tactical situation with breathtaking accuracy. Trouble was, he also always knew what she was thinking.
And he knew she had been afraid for a long time – of him leaving, of him dying, of all the dangers their love for each other entailed. Not least the risk that their personal feelings, this comfort they selfishly took, would ultimately interfere with the operational effectiveness of the team – which could result in catastrophe, for the others who served with them, or even for everyone else alive. Because one day one of them might be forced to choose…
Between the other’s life, and Alpha’s mission.
Already, they’d seen this happen in Chicago, with the disastrous HAHO jump – when, despite the clear operational parameter that the mission was everything, and force protection was to be sacrificed if completing the mission required it – nonetheless, instead of hitting the target LZ on his drop, which he still could have done, Homer chose to follow Ali down to the wild west of street level. So that he could protect her.
Or else just die with her.
And he sure wasn’t the only one who had noticed this, or was worried about it. Not the only one wondering if his and Ali’s decision to be together might yet exact an even higher, an unacceptable pric
e – and so ought to be reversed, before it was too late. And now, in a way, Homer had made the decision for both of them – by leaving her to go look for his wife.
So, yes, he could know with a pretty high degree of certainty what was going on in Ali’s head right now.
And it wasn’t good.
He’d always known full well he had never committed to her. How could he? He never really believed his wife was dead. He definitely never knew, not with anything like certainty. All he knew for sure was that he had been sinning all this time. Having it both ways. That his need for some stability, some connection, a little flame of human warmth, had been even greater, because he was plagued with guilt and uncertainty about his family.
But all that was coming to an end now.
One way or another.
Homer was too smart to kid himself. The odds that his wife was alive were less than infinitesimal. He wasn’t going back to rescue her. He was going back to find out for sure she was dead. And he also knew the price he would almost certainly pay for this was… losing Ali. How could she take him back after this? After his abandonment of her, choosing someone who wasn’t there, who wasn’t even alive, instead? No, Ali wouldn’t be there if he ever did get back to her.
And then he would have no one.
Which he felt, somewhere deep down, was what he deserved.
* * *
He rotated his watch to check it, a few seconds before the alarm was set to vibrate against his wrist. But he didn’t need to. Through a small knothole in the wood siding of the barn, he could see dawn finally blanching outside. It was time.
He started to rise.
But then he paused, and put his eye right up to the knot. Not scanning the area for security. Just simply taking in the faint, barely perceptible bleeding of a light that wasn’t even orange yet, but barely dark brown. Nonetheless, it brought with it the promise of warmth. It warmed him just to gaze upon it.
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