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“It’d be nice if we could spend some time together.” Lila wasn’t sure if she meant it. He’d been the apple of her eyes before this all started, but she wasn’t as in love with the man he’d proved himself to be. Raj had his moments of bravado, like when he’d slapped on a gas mask and prepared to battle their home invaders, but it was always misplaced and ended so poorly. Mostly, Raj complained. He’d been doing a lot less since Lila yelled at him, but hadn’t stopped. And Lila didn’t feel as bad about having shouted at him as she supposed she should, especially considering his baby inside her.

“Maybe you could come in, and we could spend some time together in the room.”
 

Lila looked up at him. He couldn’t possibly be thinking what she thought he was. But he was staring with a double meaning on his face, eyebrows slightly raised.
 

“What do you think?”

Yep. He really
was
thinking that.
 

“You’re kidding.”
 

“Why would I be kidding?”
 

“Because I share a room with my mom. And you share a room with Dan. And both are already asleep.”
 

“Exactly. Your mom is
out.
” He ticked his head toward the staircase as if to add,
exhausted after her crazy little tantrum
. He might even be right; she’d gone in looking defeated and drugged. If only HBO could see their great comedienne now.

“I’m not having sex with you in a cot beside my sleeping mother.”
 

“The shower then.”
 

Lila rolled her eyes. “Good night, Raj.”
 

He watched her for a minute then his face fell and he walked out, sulking. A moment later, his bedroom door slammed too loudly.
 

Lila returned her attention to the screen. It was pointless; if Terrence with all his tech knowledge hadn’t been able to pull a decent image from the surveillance feeds, she sure wouldn’t be able to. But the thudding noises had been loud enough that it seemed impossible to believe whatever had made them wasn’t visible
somewhere
. But no, she couldn’t see a thing. They’d watched the people topside scramble like ants until the light faded.
 

The cameras only showed evidence of people headed toward something out of sight. If they wanted to see what those people saw, they’d have to exit the bunker. But Terrence and Vincent wouldn’t let them. It was something Raj had, earlier in the day, seemed dangerously close to bitching about. He was holding it in, and probably thought he deserved sex for being a good boy and doing as she’d asked.
 

There was a knock behind her.
 

“Go to bed! I’m not going to scr — ”

But it was Christopher, not Raj.
 

“You’re not going to what?”
 

Lila had been about to say she wasn’t going to screw him in the shower. She turned away, feeling her cheeks burn. “Nothing. I thought you were Raj.”
 

Christopher sat with a mischievous smile — all teeth and charming green eyes. “Okay. What aren’t you going to do with Raj?”
 

“Nothing.”

Christopher made a
tsk-tsk
sound. “Well. Isn’t dating you full of perks?”
 

“Shut up, Christopher.”
 

“The guys usually call me Christopher. I kind of like it when you call me Chris.”
 

They’d been through this before. He was flirty. It was inappropriate, but he seemed to delight in her squirming. The only way to face him was head on.
 

“Fine,
Chris
.”
 

He swiveled in the chair. “What did you mean, before, about how it’s ‘all beginning’?”

“I wasn’t thinking straight. I don’t know.”
 

“When there were all those big booming noises. You said, ‘It’s all beginning,’ and it was like you knew something.”
 

“Well, I don’t.” And boy didn’t she. Lila didn’t know all sorts of things. Like, for instance, whether or not she was losing her mind.

“Did you have that talk with Vincent?”
 

“Forget it.” Christopher shook his head. “He says no one leaves the bunker.”
 

“Did you tell him that this is my dad’s house?”
 

“I did. He said your dad turned over control to Piper, and that Piper gave her blessing for Vincent to be in charge while she’s gone. He said you’re welcome to fight him for the leader role.”
 

“That’s not funny. He can’t tell us what to do.”
 

“You’re right.” Christopher nodded. “And if you really, really force it, he’ll cave. I know he will. Right now, he thinks he’s saving you from yourself. Your mom, too. He thinks you’re being emotional, not thinking straight. Get a good night’s sleep, get the crazy out of your eyes, and talk to him tomorrow. If you still really, truly want to risk going up there and getting us all killed, he may step out of the way, no problem.”
 

“How does it get us all killed?”
 

Christopher nodded toward the screen. The monitors had resumed their normal rotation, and now showed the sleepy, lantern-lit shantytown. The lanterns would die soon enough. There were only so many batteries left in the world, and Lila kind of doubted that Energizer and Duracell were cranking them out the same way they had half a year ago.
 

“They seem pretty quiet, don’t they?”
 

Lila shrugged.
 

“They were when we were with Morgan. A big, old vegetarian convention. But they’re all waiting for something. And I’d bet they’re afraid. Maybe some of them are getting cold feet. A lot of them have guns. And if they see that the door off the kitchen isn’t just a safe but that there’s actually a bunker down here filled with food and water and electricity and — ”
 

“You don’t know they’d force their way in.”
 

“I don’t know they’ll try to force their way in,” Christopher agreed. “But I
do
know that you can’t be sure they won’t.”
 

Lila sighed and shook her head at the screen. “It could be something about Dad.”
 

“How?”
 

“I don’t know. Cameron said this place was special, but he didn’t know why. Or whoever he talked to didn’t know. He also said that Dad was special. And that the ships came here. Don’t you think
he
’
d
want to know?”
 

“Call him. Tell him to come back and look.”
 

She’d already tried. But Lila didn’t feel like telling Christopher. She felt unhinged. Dad was still missing and didn’t know he had a grandchild on the way. Raj was no help. If Mom kept unraveling, Lila might end up raising this child by herself. She didn’t know the first thing about babies and had no way to find out what she needed to know. She’d have to deliver here, without a doctor. And worse, she was having phantom pains she’d only told her mother about (her crazy mother, maybe) and suspected — and yes, she knew how nuts it sounded — that her baby was somehow communicating with her. Warning her that something needed to be done … or undone. Showing her the future or what might someday be.
 

Lila buried her face in her hands.
 

“Hey … ” Christopher planted his hand on her shoulder.
 

“Do you know what today is?”
 

“I could get a cal — ”
 

“It’s my birthday.” Lila looked up, her vision blurred. She tried on a wry smile. “Not exactly the way I saw spending my eighteenth: underground, afraid, alone.”
 

“You’re not alone.”
 

“I’m more alone than you think.”
 

Christopher put his hand on Lila’s.
 

“Well. I’m here anyway.”

Lila tried to laugh, but it came out as a half sob. She corrected, snorted, wiped her nose with the back of her hand. She was such a disgusting mess.
 

“Where’s my birthday present?” she said, hoping to waste seconds. She wished he’d go away — not because she wanted Christopher gone, but because she needed to be alone.
 

But why was she asking questions if she wanted him to leave?

“If it weren’t so late, I’d bake you a cake.”
 

Lila laughed again. “Hardly seems like a cake-baking world anymore. Maybe you should give me a gun. Maybe for your present, you could shoot your way through the crowd to get me outside.”
 

She looked up. Maybe that hadn’t been funny.
 

“I killed the bad guy for you. Does that count?”
 

The terrible thing was, it kind of did. Lila remembered screaming with Piper. The spatter of blood — one more threat leaving the world. Christopher behind the trigger. It was more than anyone else had done, other than her father and Piper. Certainly more than Raj.
 

Lila nodded. Christopher leaned closer. She answered his sarcasm, her voice stupidly serious, almost quiet. “That
was
very romantic.”
 

He reached out with his foot and closed the control room door. Lila found she didn’t mind. There was, it turned out, one place in here where two people could be alone.
 

His hands on hers felt strong. Safe. She just wanted it all to be over. She wanted to stop worrying. To stop being pulled in a dozen directions. To stop feeling so constantly unsure. She wanted someone else to make her decisions for a while. To make the ground stop shaking beneath her, both literally and figuratively. To give her some solidity and substance. To be her rock, at least for a little while.
 

For just a
little
while.
 

“Happy birthday, Delilah Dempsey.”
 

And for a little while, Lila forgot all her troubles, all her worries.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Cameron stopped his horse shy of the first huge gray mass. To Piper, he looked afraid.
 

They’d been on the edge of a large clearing when they’d stopped to take their drink. Once back atop their horses, it had been easy to see down the gently sloping hill and into the clearing.
 

First they’d seen one stone. Then another, maybe twenty feet past it.
 

And after moving past a few intervening trees, they’d seen the rest: two long lines of huge stones bisecting the clearance. The lines were parallel with fifty feet or so between them. The stones themselves were taller than broad — rock fingers, not squat round boulders.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Piper said.
 

“I have.”

Cameron hopped off his horse. He uncoiled the braided rope and tied his mount to one of the last trees before woods gave way to grass and slowly walked forward, as if in a trance.

Piper had lost a lot of her bearings but thought the freeway was still somewhere to her right and they were facing west, directly through this clearing. They’d just stopped, and if they were truly facing a week of travel, she wanted to keep moving. But fascinating geology was apparently, for Cameron, worth stopping for. Maybe he’d take their picture to share online if the network ever returned.
 

Piper reluctantly hopped down, tied off, and came to Cameron’s side.
 

“Should we keep moving?”
 

“Have you ever been here?” he asked, not looking toward her. “Meyer’s house isn’t that far, but it’s not like there are any roads. Did you ever hike through this area?”
 

“I’d never been to Colorado at all before we came to the ranch.”
 

Cameron moved slowly forward. He ran his hand along the surface of one rock then knelt at its base. He dragged his fingers along the dirt at its foot where the ground was buckled, like a bunched-up carpet. Grass bulged in odd lumps in a rough circle around all of the stones’ bases as far as Piper could see.
 

“Why?” she asked, watching him.

“I was wondering if it’s always been here.”
 

“There are all sorts of weird rock things around here.”
 

Cameron continued to play in the dirt. Looking at the wavelike rings of raised grass at the bottom.
 

“These were placed here recently.” He stood. “All of them.”
 

“Okay.”

“It doesn’t bother you?”
 

“A bunch of rocks? No. They don’t bother me.”
 

Cameron ran his hand along the stone. “This is granite. It’s probably three hundred tons.”
 

“You know a lot about rock weights.”
 

“I’ve seen them before, I told you.” He backed away then looked up at Piper. “We need to go around.”