The day after: An apocalyptic morning (42 page)

              "Do you miss him?" Jack asked.

              "Yes," she said. "I hate to admit it, but I almost called him half a dozen times before the comet hit. I mean, I was in love with him, I really was. It's hard to let love just die like that, even when you see the person for who they really are and that person is a piece of shit. Sometimes I think we women are just a hopeless species. I'm really starting to think that now that I see how everyone in this town is behaving."

              "Skip says that Auburn is probably still there," Jack told her. "Do you ever wonder if maybe he's still down there alive?"

              She gave him a warm look. "You're pretty insightful, Jack, you know that?" she asked him. "I catch myself thinking about him all the time, wondering if he was in town when it happened, wondering if he ever thinks about trying to come up here for me. If he's alive he would've known that I was at work that day and not down in the valley."

              "Would you go with him if he came?"

              "I don't know," she said looking at him. "There's not a lot for me here. Sometimes I think that this is my punishment for trying to trap a man like I did: I'm sentenced to be an illegitimate mother in a town full of hypocritical rich women."

              "So would you go?"

              "I probably would," she admitted. "I know myself well enough to say that. I probably would. Who would miss me here anyway? They'd have to find someone else to help cook their damn pancake mix and mix their damn orange juice, but would anyone miss Stacy? Would anyone miss me?"

              "I would," he said.

              She smiled, leaning forward and giving him a hug. "You're a sweetie, Jack," she said. "Thank you for being my friend."

              He returned her embrace, feeling the weight of her stomach pushing into him, feeling the softness of her in his arms. He liked the feeling a lot. "Thank you for being mine," he told her.

              Later that morning, as he lie in his bed at the house, he took himself in hand as he always did at this time of day. Jack was, after all, a normal fourteen-year-old boy in most respects of the word and masturbation was something that he did at least once every twenty-four hour period. Usually the fantasies that accompanied this jacking were somewhat vague in nature. He thought of girls he had known in school, of women that he lusted after in the town itself. This time his thoughts spun only to Stacy. Though he had never thought of a pregnant woman as being erotic before, he did now. As he envisioned seeing her naked, seeing that bulging stomach in all of its glory, as he remembered how her softness had felt when he had hugged her at breakfast he exploded in a spontaneous orgasm of staggering power.

              It was Christine who spotted him first. It was less than an hour before the end of her second shift on duty and she was looking out the window of the northwestern guard position. Her partner for the shift - Brenda Callahan - was chatting away behind her about how Hector had promised her that he was going to dump Maria Sanchez pretty soon and make her, Brenda, his new official woman. Christine was hardly listening to her, so sick was she of the whole subject.

              "I don't know why you threatened to tell Skip if Hector came out here to visit me," Brenda said huffily. "Someday when you're old enough and the men start paying attention to you, you'll understand where I'm coming from. You have to take it when you can get it in this world."

              Christine ignored her, keeping her eyes trained outward. They were dry and sore from fatigue and she had a nasty headache forming behind them. It was getting so that she always felt like this towards the end of a double shift. It wasn't like her partners ever helped her keep an eye out. If she could even get them to stay awake for more than half the shift she considered herself lucky.

              She stretched a little, relieving the pain in her aching back and sighed, knowing that when she got home after her late dinner she would have nothing to look forward to but a cold bed and her own company. She was still terribly hurt over what Skip had done with that bitch Missy and was not sure that she could forgive him for it. He had cheated on her! Though it had been nearly two weeks now since he had admitted it to her she still could not get the betrayal out of her head. She did not know what to do. Should she move out of his house and start a new life without him? As drastic a move as that seemed, she sometimes thought it was the only solution. How could she ever trust him again? Did he even realize how much she loved him? But if she let him go, would she ever find love again? In a town with five times as many women as men, was that really likely? Especially when everyone thought she was nothing more than a child? Was she being too petty, too judgmental just because he had given into temptation a single time?

              She sighed, her heart torn in two directions. Should she stay or should she go? Should she abandon the love that she had with a man she couldn't trust and risk living without love forever? She didn't know, had no precedents in her short life upon which to base such an important decision. And so she held in limbo, refusing to resume her relationship with Skip as it had been but also refusing to take the terminal step of declaring an end. All she knew was that she was going to have to make up her mind soon. Skip had been giving her the room that she needed, holding in limbo with her, but that wouldn't last, it couldn't last. Soon, if she didn't decide, he would undoubtedly make the decision for her.

              "So," Brenda said from behind her, derailing her train of thought, "is Skip like a homo or what?"

              "A homo?" she said, turning her eyes away from the window for a moment to stare in astonishment.

              "Well, yeah," she said. "I mean, he's not sleeping with anybody and I'm here to tell you, some of the best in town have tried. The word is that maybe he's not interested in women at all. They think maybe that he and your brother have a little something going."

              "You think he's sleeping with Jack?" she yelled, horrified with the very thought.

              "That's just what people are starting to think," she said defensively. "I mean, he doesn't sleep with any of the women and he has a teenage boy living in his house. What do expect them to think?"

              "That is the most disgusting thing I've ever heard," Christine said.

              "Hey, don't blame me. I'm not the one that came up with this. I'm just telling you what I heard."

              Christine shook her head and put her eyes back out the window. She was about to launch into a seething lecture about how idiotic the rumors that passed in this town were but before she could do that, movement outside the wall caught her eye. She had caught just a brief glimpse of someone flitting from one tree to another, right on the edge of the open ground that separated the last set of hills from the concrete wall. "Someone's out there," she said, putting her hands on the binoculars around her neck.

              "Imagine that," Brenda said, bored. "Another straggler."

              "I don't think so," Christine said, trying to spot more movement. "He didn't move like a straggler. He's being sneaky."

              Brenda got up from the bed and walked over to the window. She took a quick glance outside. "I don't see nothing," she said. "Are you sure you're not imagining things?"

              Christine did not favor this with a response. She put the binoculars to her face and started examining the tree where she had last seen the movement. At first she saw nothing but bark and pine needles dripping with water but after a moment, a face appeared from behind it. Though all of the people that appeared behind the wall were bearded, dirty men, Christine instantly realized that she had seen this particular bearded, dirty man before. "I see him," she said, watching as he peered carefully at the wall in front of him. "He's someone I ran out of here yesterday from post 3."

              "I still don't see nothin," Brenda said from behind her. "Why would someone come back after you ran him off anyway?"

              "Because he really wants to get in here," Christine said. "Get on the radio and tell Skip what's going on."

              "Shouldn't we wait until we're sure that someone's out there?"

              "Someone is out there, you idiot," she barked. "Now get on the fucking radio and tell Skip!"

              "Now listen here," Brenda said huffily. "I don't know who you think you are, little missy, but you will not..."

              "He's moving," she yelled, watching helplessly as he suddenly broke into a sprint towards the wall. She dropped the binoculars from her face and picked up the rifle. Before she could get it to her shoulder he passed out of her line of sight, the wall itself hiding him from view. "Goddammit," she said, putting the rifle back down. Now she fully understood what Skip had always said about the vulnerabilities of the current guard positions. Though they could see the open ground on the other side of the wall, they could not see the area immediately on the other side. Now that the intruder was safely there, he could move along the wall at will, invisible to all of the guard positions.

              "Where'd he go?" Brenda, who had finally gotten a glimpse of the man, asked.

              "He's against the wall," she said, pushing Brenda aside and picking up the walkie-talkie. "This is position 2," she said into it. "Skip, are you there?"

              Skip was in the community center in the main office, going over the roster for the upcoming night shift when the call came in. He knew immediately from the tone of Christine's voice that something unusual was happening. He picked up the microphone from the CB set on his desk. Jessica and Paul, who were both going over paperwork of their own, also noted Christine's tone and looked up from what they were doing.

              "Right here, Christine," Skip said. "What's up?"

              "A man armed with a hunting rifle and a sidearm just sprinted from cover a hundred yards west of my position. He's now up against the wall somewhere and I've lost visual. I was not, repeat not able to get a shot off at him. He was moving too fast."

              "Copy that, Christine," he said, grabbing a map of the subdivision and unfolding it. He placed his finger on the approximate spot that she was describing. "Any idea where he is now?"

              "None. He could be moving either way. Information only, he's the same person I drove off about two o'clock yesterday afternoon from position 3."

              "Are you sure?" he asked.

              "That is affirmative. It's him all right."

              "Okay," Skip said. "Stand by for a minute, Christine and keep your eye out for him. Position 1, Position 3, Position 4, all of you check in right now."

              This took a minute to accomplish but all of the other posts finally did acknowledge him and affirmed that they had heard what Christine reported.

              "Keep a sharp eye out, everyone," he told them all. "Especially you guys at position 1. There's a good chance he might be heading for the gate. Since Christine didn't get a shot off he might not even realize that we know he's here." He set the microphone down and looked at the map again. Paul got up from his chair and came over to look over his shoulder.

              "What do you think he's up to?" Paul asked.

              "He's trying to get in, obviously," Skip replied, his finger tracing back and forth along the wall. "Since Christine recognizes him from yesterday that means he realizes we guard the place and has probably figured there's something worth guarding in here. He's also figured out that we're blind to what happens directly under the wall. That means he has a fairly good idea of where our guard positions are. If I was him I would wait until dark and then scale the wall."

              "The same way you got in," Paul said.

              "Right," he agreed. "Only he won't give himself up to the perimeter patrol. If he manages to get inside after dark then we'll have no idea where he's at. He'll be able to hide anywhere."

              "Then we have to make sure he doesn't get in," Paul said.

              "Exactly," Skip said.

              "Uh... excuse me," Jessica, who had been monitoring the conversation, broke in.

              "What?" Skip asked.

              "Has anyone besides Christine seen this person?"

              "I don't know. What does that have to do with anything?"

              "Well, she might be mistaken," Jessica said. "I mean, it sounds rather incredible that someone would try to hide against the wall like that. And given her propensity for exaggeration, maybe..."

              "I'm not even going to favor that with a response," Skip said, glaring at her. "If you don't have anything constructive to add, why don't you keep your mouth shut, okay?"

              "How dare you talk to me like that," she yelled. "Maybe I should remind you that..."

              "Jessica, shut up," Paul told her. "Give it a rest for now."

              She fumed at him but did as he asked.

              "What's the plan?" Paul asked Skip.