Michelle guessed James believed the Co-Op could hold their own if the Roamers attempted to take the radiation shelters. She squeezed her hands together, attempting to stop their trembling.
James turned to his dad. “How long has it been since anyone’s heard from them?”
Phil nodded gravely, eventually ending the transmission. He looked at Michelle and James. “It’s confirmed. A storm’s coming, people are preparing. But no one has heard from Ali Elrod or her family in a week.”
James moved around the center table, adjusting a map, looking at the Elrod’s southern position on the mountain. Their cabin sat at the lowest elevation—the first to be reached if Roamers came up the pass.
“The Co-Op usually looks into these matters. Are they going to check on them?”
Phil frowned. “They’ve been contacted, but no straight answer has been given. Someone needs to check in on them, though.”
The rest of the night was spent preparing. It was decided that, in the morning, James would go take a look at the Elrod house and see what he could find while Phil and Michelle prepared supplies for the storm.
Michelle went to bed that night, an uneasiness in her entire being. She was scared, but she had learned over the years to live with terror. She could hold it around her, let it sit at the gravitational edge of her being, and not let it fully in.
Eventually, James came in and joined her. They had a few moments alone with one another, quiet in the feigned peace that night presented. She reached for him, and he took her hand. His touch was warm, but his grip was tenuous. Slack. All she wanted was for him to grab her and hold on to her. To squeeze her so hard that she felt something. Pain. Safety. But he could not read her mind. So, instead, she turned to him, wrapping her arms around him. She held him fiercely, letting him know with every taught muscle and fiber of her being that she hadn’t given up.
Not yet.
Not ever.
When she slept, her courage left her and the doorway to her fears were flung wide open. How cruel for dreams to bring her such awful terror. Dreams were supposed to bring what day and life could not. A hand shook her—a lifeline out of her fitful nightmares.
“Michelle!”
She jolted awake, dawn’s sunlight embracing her before she opened her eyes to see James.
“Bad dream?” James was dressed, leaning over her.
“Just one of the usual ones.” Michelle tried to find a smile, but embarrassment couldn’t overwhelm the fear that still held her.
It took an hour for her head to clear.
James left shortly after her rising, headed for the Elrod’s cabin to see why they had not been in communication with anyone.
Michelle sat at the kitchen table, Joseph close to her.
“Will you play with me?”
She looked at her son for a long time, a smile on her face, counting on his innocence to hide her poorly worn mask. It would be a hard day, but they’d had plenty of hard ones.
Later, in the early afternoon, Phil rose to teach Joseph a few agreed-upon lessons. They would hold off teaching him how to hunt until his next birthday, but in the meantime, he could learn the aspects of the weapon and the fundamentals of how to safely operate one.
Michelle wished he didn’t ever have to learn how to use a gun, but she knew some things were out of her control.
What was in her control was how he viewed the world.
So, after lessons with Grandpa there were lessons with Mom.
She read stories to him, showed him paintings, listened to music, and read him poetry. A beautiful world.
Or at least, the remnants of one.
Then the sun set, and James hadn’t come home.
Michelle waited by the window, trying to keep her nerves below the surface.
Phil busied himself by preparing the cellar—storing water, checking their dried and canned food supplies, doing calculations.
There wasn’t more information on how large the storm would be. Perhaps the Co-Op didn’t know. What remained of the scientific community worked within their boundaries, but Michelle was sure they kept some information to themselves.
“Dad’s home!”
Joseph moved to the front window, truck headlights shining on his face.
Michelle raced to the front door, opening it.
She stood on the porch and could see Phil’s truck. But it didn’t drive into the property. Why wasn’t he coming in?
Phil appeared next to her, a radio in his hand.
“James, come in.” Phil clicked the radio, and the silence that followed seemed to last an hour. But after a moment, they heard James’s voice.
“I’m here.”
“Why aren’t you coming inside?” Michelle now held the radio.
“You need to put Joseph in the cellar and lock it.”
Michelle and Phil exchanged a look of deep wariness—unsure of why, but knew the request would not have come if it weren’t something serious.
Something bad.
The cellar no longer looked like the emergency shelter for three. The space wasn’t terribly large, although it did have a small closed-off bathroom and a divider for a single bed. But Michelle had done her work on it, making the place colorful and friendly.
In the center of the room was a two-person tent. Michelle led Joseph to it.
“I need you to stay here and not move. Can you do that for me?”
The boy’s face crinkled. “Why?”
“Because something…happened to Dad at work, and I need to help him.”
“I can help.” His voice was earnest.
“I know you can. But right now, you can help me by staying here. Can you please do that for me?”
Michelle tried to put authority into her words, but she didn’t want to risk him breaking down, crying. He came first, no matter what.
But to her relief, he nodded. “I can do that, Mommy.”
Michelle left her son. She didn’t lock the metal door, but she closed it almost all the way. Then she moved outside to the truck.
Phil was next to the back door looking at something. James stood, back turned. When Michelle approached, he turned around, and she was horrified at what she saw.
He was covered in blood.
She raced to him, worriedly checking every part of him.
“Don’t worry, it’s not mine.” James gave her hand a comforting squeeze, a sticky dark smudge left on her wrist from the gesture. She didn’t care.
“Help me get her into the garage,” Phil said, and James moved toward him.
Out of the back seat, they lifted a young girl, unconscious, blood leaking in heavy pools from her side.
Michelle figured the poor thing couldn’t be more than seventeen. What had happened to her?
Inside the garage, they laid the girl out on the center table. Together, they lifted the side of her shirt and found her wound—a large tear through her side, but nothing vital seemed struck.
She had lost a lot of blood, but if they could bandage it, she might live.
“Who is she?” Michelle asked as she wiped blood from around the gash.
“Co-Op,” James answered. “She was…there when I arrived, tied to a chair. The Elrods…”
He looked at his father, knowing the words that were to come would hurt him. “The whole family was left in an open grave in the backyard.”
Phil’s face went dark. “Roamers?”
James nodded. “I crept up to the house. Was going to leave, but I saw her. Her truck was outside—you know the white trucks they all drive.”
Co-Op ranger’s vehicles were all decaled with the same phrase: CO-OP: Knowledge and Protection. At the end. They were said to be impervious to solar flare radiation. Some Co-Ops had special garage entrances where their people could enter and exit in the middle of a storm.
James eyed Michelle.
“I listened for as long as I could. There was a group of Roamers—all gathered, all working together to take the St. Paul’s Mountain Co-Op and its shelter. But some are splitting off. Taking houses with shelters, like the Elrod’s.”
Michelle’s heart hammered. “Do they know about us?”
“I don’t know.” James’s breathing never seemed to settle. “We should assume they do. And that, in the next day or two, before the storm, they’ll come try to take this house.”
Everyone went quiet.
Less than an hour of work, and the girl’s wound was clean and sewn.
They didn’t ask James what happened next, though Michelle could imagine. If he was here, with the girl, then he had killed the Roamers in the Elrod house.
She didn’t feel sorry for them. They were murderers who’d killed an old woman, her children, and grandchildren. They deserved what they got.
Michelle went outside with James, near the well, and helped clean the blood from him.
They didn’t speak a word the entire time—just moving in step, filling clean buckets, dumping murky red ones. Wringing red liquid from rags and starting again.
It took over an hour, this marital ritual of theirs.
When he was clean, she found his eyes in the moonlight. He looked into hers, but there was a hollowness to him.
She knew they exchanged the same feelings, the same unspoken words of the unfairness of the world. The difficulty of their situation.
And how maybe, perhaps, it would be better to just have died with the rest of the world.
They stared at each other for a long time, no words passing, for there were none that could comfort one another or speak what the other didn’t already know.
That this was their life.
All they could do was keep moving, keep surviving, and pray that, throughout, they could find moments of peace and joy.
James turned to her. “Is Joseph inside?”
“Yes,” Michelle responded, her heart clenching. “He should be in bed.”
“Good.” James looked down, as if his shame was a weight drawing them to the ground. “I don’t want him to see me. Until I…I just…can’t see him right now.”
He meant he couldn’t pretend.
Michelle understood.
For the night, he had been strong enough. There was only so much a person could take.
Michelle found his hand in the dark and led James to the house. Inside was blessedly quiet. She wanted time to take care of her husband, but those hopes were dashed when someone appeared at the stairwell.
“Joseph, I need you to go back to bed,” Michelle instructed, but to her great surprise, the boy raced down the stairs and threw his arms around James’s legs.
Michelle glanced at James, who was stunned, but seemed to take a deep breath—trying.
God help him, he was trying.
Phil entered the back door, and Michelle saw him take in the scene, quietly, not moving.
James looked at Joseph with that same hollow stare he’d given her. Then he hugged his son fiercely and did something that completely shocked her.
James began to weep.
Joseph’s eyes went wide, shooting to Michelle with confusion, worry, and a sheer lack of knowing what to do.
It broke her heart into a thousand pieces as the boy lifted a hand and patted his dad’s head.
“It’s okay, Daddy. You’re home now.”
James seemed to give a final shudder before gulping down his emotional release and standing.
Without a word to anyone, he moved Joseph aside and headed up the stairs.
Michelle looked at Phil.
The man gave her a small nod that indicated this was normal. Phil had served in the military, seen battle—which was partially why he was so adept at survival and weaponry. So, he knew what his son was experiencing.
The erratic toll it took.
That was why the next day was so difficult.
***
“I told you to stay inside.”
Michelle raced outside toward the shouting. It was James, gripping Joseph by the shoulders.
“I’m sorry,” the little boy squeaked. “I just wanted to see the girl.”
Michelle had told Joseph about their new houseguest, who was resting in the garage. That was her mistake. But she had never seen James like this.
“What’s going on?” Michelle said, moving between them.
James turned away from her, picking up the rifle he had tossed to the ground.
“I told Joseph to stay inside today. It’s too dangerous, it’s too…”
He was about to start screaming again, she could see it in the veins of his neck.
She held up a firm hand. “James. I’ll talk to him.”
He looked like he was about to say something else, anger still coursing through him.
“James,” she said again, gentle but firm.
He took a deep breath, his anger subsiding. “It’s too dangerous.”
Michelle nodded to him, and grabbed Joseph by the hand, taking him inside.
She sat the boy at the kitchen table. He looked utterly stricken—face red, eyes cast down.
She felt bad for him, despite the fact that he had disobeyed them.
Then Michelle’s mind went to James.
Often, a great new fear would bubble up inside of her. What if she was killed? What if it were just Joseph and James? James surely couldn’t keep up this act, pretending with the boy that the world is an albeit odd but safe place.
As much as it pained her to think this of her husband, she knew it to be the truth.
He couldn’t pretend.
“I just wanted to see her.”
Michelle’s attention snapped to Joseph.
She shouldn’t have mentioned the young girl in the garage.
The girl was awake, still sore and weak from her injury. Michelle knew she was probably hungry.
“Stay here.” Michelle said to Joseph. “I’m going to see if our guest wants to join us for lunch.”
It turned out the young girl was very hungry.
Ten minutes later, she was sitting at the kitchen table across from her son, canned peaches and soup before both of them.
She ate the fruit like it was the best thing to touch her lips in years. Perhaps it was. Who knew what the Co-Op fed its people? Partially why the family never wanted to join. Everything that one ate, drank, and did was determined by them.
Joseph stared at the Co-Op girl in fascination. She was the closest person in age to him he’d ever met. “Are there other kids where you live, like me?”
Michelle felt her heart ache at that. There was only so much she could give him.
The girl shot a glance at Michelle, but Michelle had told her the rules about what she could and could not tell Joseph.
“Yes, a few,” she answered.
Joseph’s eyes went wide. “What’s your name?”
“Abby. After my mom.”
“Where’s your mom?”
Abby’s eyes went soft, then she glanced at Michelle for help, having been put in a tough corner.
“Let Abby eat her lunch.” Michelle took a bite of her own food. Her appetite hadn’t been great the past few days, but she knew she needed her strength.
“Can I show Abby the basement?” Joseph asked.
“Not right now.” Michelle exhaled, frustrated with herself more than anything. They shouldn’t be revealing the details of their shelter to anyone.
Joseph turned back to Abby. “We hide in there when the sky goes white.”
Abby wiped her mouth, then looked around the house, nodding.
Michelle pursed her lips but kept her face as even as she could.
An act for two.
Joseph set down his spoon and pushed a drawing toward Abby. It was of the Ripple, but bright green. “I know the Ripple is red, but I ran out of red crayons.”
Abby looked at the picture, tilting her head, seeming slightly impressed. Then her eyes moved curiously to Joseph. “Do you know what the…Ripple…is?”
Joseph shook his head.
Abby sat back. “The Ripple, it used to be a star. A sun, like the one in our sky that sometimes turns white.”
Joseph listened intently.
“When stars get old, just like people, they die. But when stars die, they explode. The Ripple was very close to us…so close it…” Abby hesitated, searching for the right words. “It’s not the first time it’s happened on Earth. Scientists say it’s happened several times over the last hundred thousand years. And that trees, inside their bark, keep records of these supernova events.”
The last part Michelle found intriguing, although the first part had been known to her. In a flash, the ozone layer was burned away. Now, without the Earth’s protection, solar flares were able to penetrate the surface—over and over again.
“But that’s all going to end,” Abby said casually, picking up her spoon for another mouthful of canned peaches.
Michelle narrowed her eyes at the girl. “What do you mean?”
Abby shrugged. “The Rinse. It’s ending. Didn’t you know?”
To Joseph’s extreme discontent, Michelle placed him back inside his tent in the cellar, quickly returning to Abby, who shifted uncomfortably on the couch, her wound obviously causing her pain.
“What do you mean, the Rinse is ending?” Michelle demanded.
“They didn’t tell you? The Co-Op?” Abby seemed genuinely confused.
“No, they didn’t. They just said another storm is coming.”
Abby shook her head, perhaps frustrated by the institution she served. “Yeah, a big one. Should last three months. But…the ozone layer. It’s built itself back up. This storm…it should be the last.”
Michelle couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Could it be true? She feared to hope. “Can you prove it?”
“No, not here. But I know, for certain, that’s what all the Co-Ops have been relaying to one another. Been preparing. Maybe that’s why they kept independents out of the details. They want to be the first to claim whatever they want in the new world.”
The new world.
Michelle’s heart raced, for the first time with purpose—not terrible fear and dread.
She grabbed a walkie and called Phil and James back home.
When they arrived, Michelle took one of their rifles to guard the exterior while Abby told them what she’d just revealed.
Michelle moved along the perimeter, eyes scanning through the trees, her mind on the future and what possibilities were to come. She had never once considered this a potential reality.
No more hiding.
No more fear of nature trying to wash them off the planet.
Sure, there would be trials ahead—a new world to build—but that would be a beautiful pursuit. Something she would relish to share with her son, and not the black hole of inescapable terror that had been their life for nearly a decade.
For the first time in a long time, a genuine smile touched her lips.
She didn’t even hear the person step up behind her until a hand clasped over her mouth.
Michelle kicked out, but someone else—a woman—punched her in the stomach.
Michelle doubled over, the rifle in her hand pulled from her grip.
A man towered over her, a Roamer, from the look of his scars. His long black hair hung in strands down to his shoulders, two bright blue eyes behind dark, stringy shadows.
Next to him was a woman with dirty auburn hair, and a bald, skinny man.
All held the same burns that came only from radiation exposure.
The blue-eyed man kneeled in front of her. “Scream, and I’ll kill you. You got one chance to save yourself and that little boy in there. Tell me. Are the others armed?”
Michelle’s mind raced. These people meant to take the house. Were they giving her a choice? To keep her and Joseph alive?
The bald man coughed—a sickly sound. He was surely contaminated on the inside, his body probably scoured with radiation cancer. He didn’t have long. Maybe months.
Michelle nodded. Knowing James and Phil were armed might keep them from attacking. At least, that’s what she hoped.
When the three produced guns of their own, eyes on the house, she realized she was wrong.
The red \head retrieved ropes and tied Michelle to a nearby tree.
Off in the distance, through the woods, Michelle saw a white truck with decaled letters on the side. They must have stolen it from some Co-Op rangers.
She turned to her captors. “Please. Please, don’t hurt them. We can give you food. Water.”
The Roamer woman looked at Michelle without an ounce of pity as she placed a gag in her mouth. “Not your food or water we want. Plenty of that in our truck. It’s your shelter. Storm’s coming.”
“Let’s do this.” The blue-eyed Roamer gripped his gun, and the others followed him.
Michelle could only watch as they advanced on her house—her family. She tried to scream past the cloth in her mouth, but the words were caught in the fabric. She yanked at her hands, pulled at her bindings until sticky liquid coated the rope. But she couldn’t break loose.
A gunshot rang through the air, and the bald Roamer outside the eastern section of the house went down, a bullet having struck him right in the belly.
Good.
James and Phil were aware of what was coming for them. Her relief was short-lived, as more gunshots pierced the air.
Michelle yanked at her bindings, pulling the rope tight against the bark. In smooth motions, she moved the chord up and down, up and down. She moved fast, feeling the barest ease in the tension binding her. The only thing that stopped her was the erratic succession of bullets.
It wasn’t a standoff with unlimited ammo.
No.
These shots came in carefully, as if each bullet fired had a chance to take someone she loved.
She could only imagine what Joseph was thinking right then. She prayed he was still in the cellar.
Prayed he wasn’t scared.
Just when she thought her bindings might be loose enough to get a hand through, she heard something that made her soul slip from her body.
Not a bullet.
No.
This sound was like a whip cracking through the air.
Michelle looked up to see the sky, its familiar blue now turning a terrifying white.
The storm was early.
Michelle heard calls from the distance as the male Roamer shouted to the woman. She couldn’t hear what they were saying. It didn’t matter. She probably had five minutes, tops, before radiation filled the air.
Finally, her bloody wrist slipped through one of the bindings. She ripped the gag from her mouth, then uncoiled her other hand. Sitting on the ground, she yanked at the knot around her legs.
There was one last gunshot, and Michelle heard the yell of someone screaming ring through the air.
It didn’t sound like James, but it was hard to tell.
She couldn’t think, couldn’t imagine all the terrible possibilities that were out there. She just had to get free.
The knot finally gave a sliver of purchase, and she was able to push the rest of the rope away. She jumped to her feet, turning around, ready to race home—when the barrel of a gun pointed staright at her face.
It was the blue-eyed Roamer. He held his side, which dripped with blood, a pistol aimed at Michelle. “In the truck, now.”
“Please, just…”
The man silenced the rest of her words with a sharp jab of the metal to her side.
As Michelle moved toward the Co-Op truck, she looked up through the trees to see the sky a deep, pulsing white.
Mere minutes were left.
Hands still in the air, she looked over her shoulder to see the man trying to reach into his pocket, all the while keeping his pistol aimed at her back.
When he finally produced the truck keys, his fingers slick with his own blood, he dropped them in the dirt.
Cursing, he reached to get them, and Michelle saw his gun hand waver.
Just for a second, the barrel pointed away from her.
It was the image of her family that was in her mind when she turned and kicked the Roamer square in the jaw. He fired a bullet that made her shudder, but it bounced off the impenetrable truck’s glass before he tumbled over.
Michelle made her move, snatching up the keys, unlocking the truck, and jumping inside.
She closed and locked the door as bullets flashed against the glass.
She jolted, terrified. But the glass held.
The blue-eyed Roamer screamed bloody murder outside the truck. He pulled on the door handle, but thankfully, it didn’t budge. He stepped back and pointed his pistol at her.
Michelle yelled, bracing herself. But the bullets bounced right off.
She looked at the corner of the truck. There was a dial adjacent to the speedometer—a meter she knew quite well. Its needle ticked in the yellow, edging toward red.
Michelle stared through the windshield as the sky turned pure white.
The blue-eyed Roamer glared back at her.
She pointed to the sky, a smile on her face.
Realization dawned on the Roamer, just a moment too late.
The air snapped like lightning cracking, consuming everything.
The Roamer screamed, holding his hands out before him.
Michelle held her breath, the white wave all around her, but the truck kept her safe.
It seemed like an eternity until the white light disappeared and the surrounding forest appeared normal.
But it was far from normal—far from safe.
She looked at the truck’s radiation meter.
It was deep in the red.
Michelle knew it might be for weeks. She refused to panic. The redhead had said there were supplies in the truck. Michelle reached toward the back, into the covered trunk, and saw a massive heap of food, water, and other survival gear.
Plenty for just her to last a long time.
But what about her family? Had they made it into the cellar? Was anyone hurt?
She looked around and found a radio. She tuned it to the designated family channel, but only heard static.
Then, slowly, the crackling gave way to voices.
“She’ll be okay.” That was Phil. He was all right.
Michelle pressed the button on the radio, speaking into it. “Hello? Can anyone hear me?”
No response.
Then another voice was heard.
“How do you know?” Abby asked.
The outgoing mechanism on her radio must be fried, but it was picking up their signal.
But what about James and Joseph?
Michelle’s heart raced, heavy and aching. James hadn’t made it back, had he? Her paranoid thoughts continued to assault her like the sun’s radioactive discharges upon the planet.
It was too much.
“I don’t. I just know in my heart. That girl’s a survivor.” Phil’s pride in her pulled her back to the present, helping her not fall into despair. “I’m going to rest a minute. The channel’s open. Keep an eye on the radio. And them.”
Then, through the radio, she heard something.
Laughter and crying can often sound like the same noise, but a mother knew.
Joseph’s laughter trickled in over the radio.
It was more than she could bear to know he was safe.
“Your name is Borqiz, and you’re a troll!” Joseph said.
Then she heard James.
“Borqiz. What kind of name is that?” James called out.
She could hear the strain in his voice. Worry, she knew—for her and her safety.
But there was something else on top of it: a command of will, pushing his tone to be comforting.
“All right, well, you better hide because Borqiz the Terrible is coming to eat your bones.”
For a long time, she just listened to the sounds of her husband playing with their son.
She didn’t know what she was supposed to do. Where she was supposed to go. But it didn’t really matter.
She would survive.
More importantly, so would they.
Michelle put the key in the ignition and fired up the truck, pulling down the forest road, the only thing guiding her in the sky—the dark red of the Ripple.
Three months.
I’ll see you then, my love.
I can’t wait to show you a new world.
I’ll see you then.
At the beginning.
