Year One (23 page)

“I think there are special vitamins I'm supposed to take.”

“Maybe we can come up with those, too. But women have had babies for thousands of years without them.”

On a half laugh, she sent him a steely stare. “Easy for a man to say.”

“It is, isn't it?” He reached for her hand. “I'll take care of you, both of you, I swear it. This is meant, Lana. How it happened, when we took every precaution. When it happened. This sign,” he added, looking at the sparkle. “This child is meant. We'll learn what needs to be done to bring him or her into the world, and to make the world safe for our child.”

She sat beside him again. “You always know how to keep me
calm. Give me confidence. I believe you. This is meant. We'll find a way.”

He turned her face to his, kissed her. “I love you. I love both of you already.”

“Max. I feel the same.”

He took her hands in his. “I pledge to you, all I am, all I have or will have. I will protect you, defend you, love you with every breath. Be my partner, my wife, my mate, from this moment.”

Her heart simply swelled. “I will. I am. I pledge to you, all I am, all I have or will have. I will protect you, defend you, love you with every breath. Be my partner, my husband, my mate, from this moment.”

“I will. I am.” He kissed their joined hands, then sealed the promise with his lips on hers.

“This is all we need between us, but I want to give you a ring. I want that symbol for us.”

“Both of us,” she said. “The circle, the symbol.”

“For both of us.” He lay down with her again, stroked her as they lay face-to-face. “I didn't ask if you know how far along you are.”

“Nearly seven weeks.”

She saw the understanding in his eyes. “Of course. It's meant,” he murmured, holding his wife and child.

*   *   *

The mood stayed bright, a study in group cooperation, for two full weeks.

Max knew himself, and his brother. As predicted, they clashed more than once over practice and study. But Max reported to Lana they made progress.

Arguments broke out, but normal ones that ebbed and flowed as they might with any insular group.

An early March thaw melted some of the snow, and though it turned everything sloppy, the sign that spring would return someday lured everyone outside for longer stretches.

Poe scavenged a hunting bow and spent an hour practicing every day. Lana often watched him from the kitchen window as he shot arrows into a target he'd drawn on a square of plywood.

He was getting better. To her relief, he had yet to aim one of his arrows at any of the deer that wandered freely out of the forest.

Shaun and Eddie bonded over fishing and Xbox.

Poe went down with Max, and reported the Wolf Boy, as he called the boy Flynn, didn't seem interested in joining the group.

Max slipped Lana some prenatal vitamins he'd found at the pharmacy.

As she entered her ninth week, Lana felt healthy and strong. She cooked, joined practices with Max and Eric, took long walks with Max or with Eddie and Joe, and participated—generally losing—in what became the three-times-weekly game night.

She knew Max pored over maps and routes, looking for the best direction for them to go in the spring. Though she'd begun to feel settled, even content, in their strange new home, she understood his reasoning.

They needed to find more people, a location they could defend rather than one with only one road in or out. And even with what they'd found in the little village, supplies wouldn't last forever.

“Why wait?” Allegra asked at a group discussion. “Why not leave now?”

“Because we have shelter and supplies. We have heat and light,” Max reminded her. “We don't want to end up traveling without any of that and get hit with a snowstorm. Another month, we'll be past that.”

“Another month.” Allegra pressed her hands to her head, shook it. “I know I'm whining, but oh shit. We've already been here
for
ever
. We haven't seen another soul—except for that weird kid you ran into. If the goal's to find people, we're failing big-time.”

“And if we run into the wrong kind of people?” Kim asked. “When we're not prepared?”

“Okay, I know things were crazy back at college, and even on the way here. But that was weeks ago. For all we know things are getting back to normal. They've got to have come up with a vaccine by now. We don't know anything because we're in the middle of nowhere.”

“She's got a point,” Eric put in.

“Yeah, and I get we're in this box and don't know what's outside it.” Shaun shifted in his seat. “But Max is right about snow through March into early April. We had a thaw, so we're getting antsy again, but it won't last.”

“What, you're the new local meteorologist?”

He flushed a little at Allegra's swipe, but stuck. His friendship with Eddie had built his confidence, Lana thought.

“No, but I've spent a lot more time here than you. Than any of you. We were damn lucky to get here. We wait until we're into April, we'll have a better chance of getting out of the box without getting stuck or getting frostbite, and finding out what's out there.”

“Tell them what you told me,” Poe said to Kim. “Come on,” he insisted when she stared at him. “We need to add it in.”

“Fine. Big downer.” She sat back in her chair, drummed her fingers on the table. “Back in February, we heard the report—Eddie heard the same one—out of New York. No progress on the vaccine, government in shambles, over two billion dead.”

“We don't know if all of that's true,” Allegra objected. “Or any of it.”

“Empirical evidence supports. What we saw with our own eyes. You can try optimism and hope progress on the vaccine flew from that point, and within another week or so they had it. Then you've
got to get it produced in mass quantities, and distributed when transportation is also in shambles. But sticking with optimism, the vaccine is created, produced, and distributed. That takes time,” Kim pointed out. “People were dropping like flies. Would this vaccine immunize or would it cure? Would it cure someone already dying? At the rate those infected and not immune succumbed, we could realistically estimate another billion deaths. We could realistically estimate nearly half the world's population wiped out. And that's going with optimism.”

“Give them the pessimist's version,” Poe urged.

“The vaccine never happens. Using our own campus as the gauge, we could have a death rate of seventy percent—that's about five billion people.”

“I'm not going to believe that.” Allegra's voice shook as she groped for Eric's hand. “I don't believe that.”

“Take the middle ground between optimist and pessimist.” Kim paused a moment, but got a go-ahead signal from Poe. “Even with that middle ground, it's going to be a hell of a mess out there. Bodies not properly disposed of will spread other diseases. Panic and violent assholes will cause more deaths. Despair will lead to suicides. Add in failed infrastructure, spoiled food, lack of power, unreliable communication. Being stuck here for a couple months is going to feel like a picnic.”

“What's your solution?” Eric demanded. “Just stay here for-fucking-ever?”

“No, we can't. We won't have enough fuel to get through another winter. We don't have enough defenses if somebody wants to take what we have. And we have to know,” Kim added. “We need people, and we'd better hope some of the survivors are doctors, scientists, engineers, carpenters, welders, farmers. We'd better hope people still want to make babies. We need to form communities, safe havens.

“You know how many guns are probably in this state alone?” she
continued. “We're not going to be the only ones armed. Jesus, think of the nuclear weapons, the bioweapons some nutcase could get hands on. So, yeah, we have to get out there, try to start putting things back together before somebody else blows it all the way up.”

“I…” Allegra pressed a hand to her temple. “I've got a headache. Can I…”

Lana rose, went to their store of medication. “Scale of one to ten.”

“An eight. Maybe a nine.”

“Take two.” She brought Allegra two Advil.

“Thanks.” She downed them with her water. “I'm really not feeling very well. I'm going to go lie down.”

“I'm sorry,” Kim began, but Allegra shook her head.

“No.” She shook her head again. “No.”

“Do you really think it's that bad?” Eric asked.

“I think we have to be prepared for it, yeah.”

“Jesus Christ.” He shut his eyes, blew out a breath. “I'm going to go up, make sure she's all right.” He started out, paused, looked at Max. “What about people like us?”

“Good and bad, just like anyone else.”

“Yeah.”

Eddie sat, kept stroking his hand over Joe's head. “I guess when we go, we ought to think about heading south, down toward Kentucky to start. I know that part of things. Like Poe said back when, we need to find someplace we can hunt, fish, grow shit.”

“We're good at fishing.”

Eddie grinned at Shaun. “Yeah, we are.”

Bracing herself, Lana turned to Kim. “Optimist or pessimist? Don't hedge,” she added when she saw Kim prepare to do just that.

“Pessimist. Look, the reporter wasn't some crackpot. I'd been watching her for a week solid before that last report. She held it together, even when she had a gun to her head, even when that guy shot his face off beside her. She said what she knew, what she
believed, and what she felt people needed to know. The numbers at that point, the crumbling of the government? Martial law, all of it with no vaccine on the near horizon? Seventy percent, maybe more. Hell, if you get up that high in casualties, you're already fucked anyway.”

“All right.” She'd be clear-sighted, Lana told herself. For her child. “We all have our strengths. Poe's getting pretty good with the bow.”

“We all need weapons training,” Max said. “We all have to learn how to defend ourselves, and how to hunt, how to fish. How to cook.”

Lana smiled a little. “I'm available for lessons there. I'll trade them for driving lessons.”

“I'm a good driver. No Asian driver cracks, black boy.”

Poe snickered at Kim. “It's the black part of you that can drive. We've got a month to work it all out.”

“Then south.” Max nodded at Eddie. “Warmer climate, longer growing season.”

“We get power. Wind or water energy,” Kim said. “We build a greenhouse—extend the growing season. There's got to be a lot of livestock out there. We herd up cows, chickens, pigs.”

“Build ourselves a world?” Eddie asked.

Kim shrugged. “It's what we've got.”

*   *   *

Lana slept poorly, chased by dreams.

Crows circling as they had over the black circle. And the flash of something more, something darker all but blanking out the sky. Bloody lightning flamed with it, and roaring thunder followed.

She ran, an arm cradled under her heavy belly, her breath whistling, sweat and blood running. When she could no longer run, she
hid, crouching in the shadows while whatever pursued her thrashed, streaked, sneaked, slithered.

When the terrible dream night ended, she walked with her broken heart weeping inside her. She walked, armed with a knife and a gun, a woman the one she'd been in New York wouldn't recognize.

She walked, a mile, two, then three, with only one purpose. She would protect the child inside her at all costs.

 

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

For two weeks, time was divided between plots, plans, routes, alternates, and the kind of instruction Lana never imagined herself involved in.

She'd never held a gun in her life, and now knew how to fire a revolver, a semiauto, a rifle, and a double-barreled shotgun. Her accuracy improved—still needed work—but she doubted she'd ever overcome her visceral distaste for the shock that ran through her when she pulled a trigger.

Pulling that trigger fired a missile designed to tear through flesh. She hoped, with all she was, she'd never have to aim a weapon at a living thing and pull that trigger.

But she had stopped jerking away every time she fired a gun.

She preferred being the instructor: demonstrating, explaining, walking someone else through how to make a basic soup, how to combine a set number of ingredients into a palatable meal on the fly.

She worked on her archery, though she—and everyone else—
considered herself a miserable failure there. She learned how to change a tire and siphon gas, and took daily driving lessons. Those lessons comprised her favorite part of the day—an hour behind the wheel with only Max beside her.

It meant an hour learning a skill she actually liked owning, and time for them to talk about the baby.

Lessons had to be postponed when snow blew in, thick and fast. It melted under sunny skies, froze as night temperatures dipped, and left them with slicks of ice under and over the remaining snow. They spread ash they'd shoveled from the fireplaces to keep paths clear.

Lana sensed everyone, like her, longed for spring. And feared the unknown that would come with the greening.

With Max and Poe on a scavenging trip, Lana decided on a full-house inventory, making notes on what she thought they should take with them. Numerous kitchen items—the big stewpot, frying pan, manual can opener, a colander, bowls, the mortar and pestle Max found for her in another cabin. Her knives, of course.

They could make do with one wooden spoon, one slotted, a single spatula—but if they, as planned, took another car, she'd wedge in more supplies and equipment.

They'd designated finding and bringing back a truck or SUV as the top priority for today's scavenging trip. Putting her faith in Max to do just that, she earmarked more.

She looked up from detailing their medical and first-aid supplies when Kim came in. “These are holding up pretty well,” she said, “but it wouldn't hurt to add to them once we're on the road. I can supplement these holistically once we're into spring. That, at least, is something I've learned about before.”

“I know a little about it. My mother was big into holistic and Chinese medicine.” As she spoke, Kim wandered to the window. “Listen, I really want to get out, get some sun. It's warmer today.
Are you up for it? I don't want to get a demerit for ignoring the buddy system.”

“Sure. I could use a walk.”

“We've had some more thawing, so it's sloppy out there, but—”

“Just let me get my boots.” Setting down her pad, Lana went to the mudroom. “Are you feeling all right?”

Kim shrugged, grabbed her own boots. “Itchy. I guess it's knowing we're winding up our time here. Part of it's tedious, sure. Rinse and repeat. But routine gets comfortable. I want to go. We have to go, but—”

“I know.” After choosing one of the lighter jackets, Lana added a scarf. “I think we all know.”

“I've had this weird dread hanging over me all morning. My personal black cloud.” Kim zipped up her jacket, pulled a ski cap over her lengthening wedge of ebony hair. “Probably caught it from Allegra. I'm not ragging on her,” Kim claimed after Lana gave her an elbow poke. “She's been lifting her weight, and cut back on the whining. But, Jesus.” She yanked open the door, took a deep inhale of air as they stepped out. “You can practically
see
her black cloud.”

“My sense, from what I've seen and what she's said, is she came from privilege. Only child of well-off parents—divorced parents, and maybe a little spoiled by both as compensation.”

“Yeah, WASP princess. Sorry, that
is
ragging on her, and I really barely knew her before all this, and only casually at best once she and Eric hooked up.”

“Were you and Eric…”

“What? Oh, no.” On her laugh, some of the stress in Kim's face lifted. “We had some classes together, and he dated a friend of mine for a while last year. I knew Shaun better—a couple of nerds. It was just chance, really, that the five of us ended up taking off together. We all ended up hiding out in the theater—the prop room. Poe had
a car, Shaun had this place, so we decided to get the hell out. We had one more, my friend Anna. She didn't make it.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't know you'd lost someone. You were close?”

“Dorm mates. We didn't have a lot in common, but we hit it off, and we got pretty tight. She was a theater major, and that's how I ended up in the prop room. She dragged me in there. She wanted to stay, ride it out, but I convinced her we had to go, we had to take off with the others.”

“You were right to go, Kim. You couldn't have risked staying.”

“I know, and I hang on to that. It was the first night out … We hadn't gotten very far, things were crazy. We actually found this empty house—a shack really. Anna was kind of a wreck, I guess we all were. In the morning … we found her in the morning.”

Lana said nothing as Kim gathered herself, breathed in deep.

“She'd hanged herself from a tree branch. She used a bedsheet. And she'd pinned a note to her coat. It just read: ‘I'd rather die.'”

Lana put an arm around Kim's shoulders. “I'm so sorry.”

“I don't know why I've been thinking about her so much today. Part of that black cloud. Where's everyone else? I know Max and Poe are out car shopping.”

Change the subject, Lana thought, and gave Kim a quick squeeze before dropping her arm. “I think Eddie and Shaun took Joe out for some exercise, maybe some archery practice.”

“It's good for Shaun—Eddie and Joe, I mean. Even inside the circle of nerds, he's the one who usually got picked on or ignored. Eddie treats him like he's cool, and that's probably the first time in his life Shaun's approached the outer edges of the boundaries of coolness. And he's done more than pull his weight. We have the house because of him. Yeah, he screwed up, but since then he's not only toed the line, he's worked really hard.”

“He has,” Lana agreed. “He treats the cooking lessons like a science class, and that's not a bad thing.”

Kim bent to pick up a thin, whiplike branch, swinging it idly as they walked. Restlessness pumped out of her.

“It's kind of awful to say, but all this shit that's happened? Freaking global plague, forced to adapt to survivalist mode? It could be the making of Shaun.”

“It's going to make or break all of us.” They stopped and watched a herd of deer stream through the trees. “I'd worried some that the situation, the dynamics, would damage Max and Eric's relationship. I still have moments when I can see Eric's resentment, but he swallows it, does what needs to be done.”

“Max is the leader. Everybody knows it. Eric has more trouble with it, but he knows it, too.”

“For me, then Eddie, Max taking charge was just natural. The rest of you…”

Kim whipped her switch, shook her head. “Look, I could and would have told everybody we had to ration the supplies, go out, find more, make a plan. And I'd have gotten Poe on my side of that because he's no idiot. But we wouldn't have been able to get everyone in line. Still, Eric sort of took point on the way here, and he's had to abdicate that role, you could say, since you and Max joined us.”

She glanced over at Lana. “And we have supplies, organization, a plan because you did. Allegra? She's the princess, and Eric gets to be the knight. I guess it works for them. Where are they, anyway?”

“I don't know. They weren't in the house?”

“I didn't see them, and the stuff they usually wear outside wasn't in the mudroom.”

“They probably needed a walk, too. It is warming out, and the sun feels good. I guess we could get more snow, but I'm going to believe winter's back is broken.”

“I want to see things growing again, make stuff grow again.” Kim tipped her face up, breathed in.

“An herb garden. It's the first thing I want to do. I grew herbs in Chelsea, in pots on the windowsill. I wish I'd brought them with me.”

They circled back—following the rule not to wander too far from the house without everyone knowing.

“I'm glad you wanted to walk,” Lana said. “I didn't realize how much I needed to get out, too.”

They both turned at the sound of running, sliding footsteps. Lana gripped Kim's arm as she looked left. Nearly in sight of the house, she thought, close enough to see and smell the smoke from the fires left banked and simmering. If they had to run …

Then Joe burst out of the trees. Lana's instant relief, even the laugh at her own paranoia, faded as Joe pressed to her, shivering.

“What is it, Joe?”

Shaun slipped his way out of the trees, nearly face-planting in the melting snow before Eddie grabbed him, pulled him up again.

“What happened?” Lana demanded.

“Something way weird back there.” Shaun pushed up his glasses, the lenses fogged from his own panting breaths. “Way weird. We should go back to the house. We should get Max.”

“Just wait. Take a breath. What did you see?”

“Either of you bring walkies?” Eddie asked.

“No, we only went for a walk.”

Shaun, face pink from running, breath still coming in pants, looked back toward the trees. “I'll get one. I'll contact Max—he took one—tell him to come back. We need him to come back.”

“Like pronto,” Eddie added.

Shaun took off in an awkward, slipping run.

“Eddie.” Patience fraying, anxiety building, Lana spoke sharply. “What's going on?”

“Did you ever see
Blair Witch
? You know, like, the movie?”

“No,” Lana said as Kim said, “Sure.”

“I love spooky movies.” Eddie comforted Joe with one hand, looking back over his shoulder. “Don't like living in one. You know how they had all those symbol-things hanging from trees?” he said to Kim.

“Yeah. Creepy.”

“Well, you want to talk creepy? We've got a shit-ton of them back there. Hanging all over the hell. Off the track we use, but Joe started back that way, and we saw footprints, so we went to check it out. All these symbols, like—what it is?” He drew in the air with his finger.

“Pentagrams.” Lana's chest tightened.

“Yeah, those, and these weird-ass little dolls, too. Made out of twigs and brush string and shit, and torn-up rags. I know some of it's from my Grateful Dead T-shirt.
Blair Witch
, baby, and it ain't good.”

“I need to see.”

Eddie shook his head. “It's bad, Lana. Bad like that black circle. You can feel it. And there's blood on the snow. It looked fresh. A lot of blood, and, you know, ah, entrails. Joe? He peed himself. Nearly did myself.”

“What black circle?” Kim demanded.

“We'll explain later. I need you to show me. If someone's coming this close to the house, using dark magicks, I have to see it, counteract it.”

“I knew you were going to say that.” After scrubbing his hands over his face, Eddie dropped them. “Let's just wait for Max, okay?”

“Eddie, I need to see it. Then I can explain the symbolism to Max, and we can put together what's needed to counteract it.”

“Okay, okay, but we're not going past where Joe peed himself and I almost did. Here comes Shaun.”

Shaun rushed back, face red now with the effort, breath heav
ing. “I told them.” Leaning over, he braced his hands on his knees. “They're coming. Ten or fifteen minutes, but they're coming.”

“Good. Now take me back, and in ten or fifteen minutes Max and I will figure out what we have to do.”

“Back?” Still bent over, Shaun lifted his head. His face went pale beneath the red. “In there? I'm not going back in there. No way any of us should go back in there. Max—”

“Isn't here,” Lana pointed out.

“Would you rather wait here by yourself?” Kim asked, taking a step forward.

“Hell no.” He fell in behind Kim, head swiveling side to side. “I just don't think this is a good idea.”

“Neither is leaving up black magick symbols,” Lana shot back. “Last month we found a ritual site—dark, dangerous. And again too close to the house. We purified it. And that's what we'll do with whatever this is.”

“You didn't tell us,” Kim accused.

“No, and maybe that was a mistake.” When Eddie stopped, she looked at the trampled snow to the left. “Angling closer to the house.”

“Yeah. It's rough going—a lot of brush, downed branches, rocks. It's why we stick to the trail.”

“If we wait for Max—”

Kim rounded on Shaun. “Lana's as much a witch as he is.”

To settle it, Lana moved forward on the broken snow. She'd gone no more than two yards before she stopped. She felt it pulsing, pumping, oozing. Darker and more potent than the circle, she realized as her skin went clammy.

That had been an offering. This, she feared, a realization.

She pressed a hand to her belly, to her child, and swore she felt a pulse in there as well. The light beating.

Trusting it, she continued on.

Blood, death. Sex. She smelled it all, mixed and smeared together.

Then she saw. Inverted pentagrams dangling from branches. Thirteen by thirteen by thirteen. Blood splashed red over the white snow, and the gore was piled on a makeshift altar of stones where something had been gutted.