“Improvement Committee,” she told me. “It’s just talk right now. There are bigger projects to tackle before we all get hot showers again.”

  I supposed it was a luxury item, considering. But it was hard to let that be too much of a black mark against the place when compared to what was already being offered. Shelter. Power. Food.

  Food...

  “Where does the food come from?”

  Elaine looked past me in a failed attempt at avoidance.

  “You’ll have plenty in your kitchen for a week,” she said.

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know,” she told me.

  “Martin wouldn’t answer that question either.”

  “Then maybe you should stop asking it,” Elaine suggested.

  So we were trusted. To a degree. The people of Bandon had accepted us into their community, without yet accepting us completely. I supposed that was fine, except for the fact that they were the ones who had advertised for people to join them. To build up their numbers, presumably.

  “Take tomorrow,” Elaine said, sidestepping the brief burst of awkwardness. “Get used to things. Then we’ll slot you into an assignment.”

  “Assignment?”

  She regarded me with a look that doubted I was too stupid to understand the obvious.

  “This isn’t summer camp. Everyone pulls their weight.”

  “Of course,” I said, trying to erase the impression of idiocy I’d given.

  Elaine looked to my rifle where I’d leaned it next to the fireplace.

  “Burke will probably put you on the wall.”

  The wall...

  “That sounds ominous.”

  “Weeks of boredom interrupted by seconds of terror,” she said, almost smiling. “Or so it’s told.”

  She turned and went to the door, stepping out and looking back as I followed, standing just inside the house. My house.

  “If you need anything, have any questions, your neighbors can steer you right.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and she left the porch, heading down the walkway, stopping once again halfway to the sidewalk.

  “I’m two blocks over if they can’t help you.”

  I nodded a thanks and she left, walking up the dark sidewalk. No different than anyone might. Except for the submachine gun slung across her back.

  “Wait,” I said, leaving the house and porch and going to where the walkway ended, waiting as she paused and looked back to me. “Elaine...”

  She smiled. It was a good smile, if somewhat measured. She wore it well, the sort of expression offered only when truly felt.

  “Morales,” she said. “Elaine Morales.”

  “Eric Fletcher.”

  “Glad to meet you, Eric Fletcher.”

  “You, too.”

  She turned away and continued up the block. I watched until she rounded the corner and was gone.

  * * *

  Two hours later I was sitting in a chair in the living room, staring at a clock atop the mantle. A cord ran from it to a wall outlet. Its hands moved, second hand ticking time away. I smiled at the simple sight. At the reminder of a once mundane device now made amazing by the relative abundance of electricity. I might have marveled at it for hours to come, but the knock at the door ended my distraction.

  A knock at the door...

  My door. How odd was that? How long would it take for that sound, and the concept of a visitor, to seem normal once more?

  “Hello, Eric.”

  Martin stood on the porch, rifle slung over his shoulder. An AK, I could easily tell. On his belt a pouch hung low with two additional magazines. Thirty rounders. The man wanted to be ready wherever he was.

  “Martin...”

  “Can I come in?”

  I didn’t need to offer a ‘yes’. I simply opened the door fully and stepped aside. The man entered and immediately leaned his rifle against the wall near the entry. Right next to mine.

  “Ready to grab and go,” Martin commented, seeming pleased at the placement of my weapon. “You’re a good addition to the town.”

  “Let me guess, a common defense?”

  Martin nodded and gestured a chair near the cold fireplace.

  “May I?”

  “Please,” I said, sitting once my guest had.

  “Common defense,” Martin repeated. “Very founding father of you. I like that. And, yes, we ask that those who decide to stay be prepared to defend the town.”

  “That’s necessary?”

  The man nodded, a tiredness to his affirmative response.

  “I wish it weren’t,” he said. “Burke will give you an assignment. Probably on the wall.”

  “Right. Elaine said the same thing.”

  “Elaine...”

  He let her name hang there for a moment, a hesitant prelude in how it was delivered.

  “Did she share her story with you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Didn’t ask,” I told him.

  “In time you should.”

  His suggestion did make me curious. Everyone who’d survived had a story. Little was ordinary anymore. Not in extraordinary times. Which made me wonder what set the tale of Elaine Morales apart from what others had experienced.

  “And how about you,” I said.

  “Me? I’m an open book.”

  “When you choose to be.”

  He smiled at my soft shot across his bow.

  “That wasn’t meant for you,” Martin said, a note of apology in his tone. “It was for your friend’s benefit.”

  “Neil?”

  “I didn’t want to create a rift, so I laid it out to both of you.”

  “We were all in on saying we had things to offer so we could land.”

  “I know,” Martin said. “It’s not about what you did. It’s about what he might do.”

  I was at a loss. The man had spent all of ten minutes, maybe twenty, in the presence of the best friend I had, and he was peering into some dishonest part of his nature.

  “Just what do you think he’s going to do?”

  “He’s with the woman,” Martin said. “And the girl. Yes?”

  “He is.”

  “I thought so.”

  So he’d pegged Neil and Grace as a couple, and Krista as part of their blended union. What possible bearing that could have on his trusting of my friend was beyond me.

  “A man will do anything for his family,” Martin said. “Anything to keep them alive and safe. Steal. Lie. Cheat. Kill. I know I would.”

  “Neil is as decent as they come,” I told him.

  “So was I,” Martin said. “Then the world changed. Rules went out the window. We’re trying to reestablish some of that here. Some people can’t hack that. Life out there has changed them too much.”

  “Not Neil.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Martin said.

  I sat back in my chair. The man before me was no James Layton. He was no dictator laying down his law under the threat of death. I really didn’t know what he was. But I might be able to know more of who he was.

  “Where is Micah’s mother?”

  “Probably dead,” Martin said, knowing he’d had to offer more to fill in the huge blanks his answer created. “She ran off with my best friend when Micah was two.”

  His best friend. It began to dawn on me why some pre-judging might have occurred. Though it seemed that any animosity or suspicion by proxy should have been directed at me. The friend of the one who was spoken for.

  Or, maybe, I was just reading too much into what the man was saying.

  “She couldn’t handle Micah’s issues,” Martin said, no melancholy, no regret in his manner. “All I can say is she missed out on one great kid.”

  Single father. With a son whose life included the extremes of a parent’s dreams and nightmares. Excellence and illness.

  “Life wasn’t always peaches before the blight,” Martin said. “And it’s not now. But it is good.”

  He was an odd one, I thought. Tough. Tender. Realist. Optimist. But not one whose intentions were transparent.

  “Why did you come here tonight?”

  “Micah said I should,” Martin told me.

  I half snickered at his reply. The little guy was pulling some pretty big strings. Or so I thought.

  “The truth is, I was thinking about stopping by anyway. You seem like a level-headed sort, and we really need that moving forward.”

  That was his reason, maybe. Just the desire for a chat. But his reason did not exist in a vacuum.

  “Why did you son zero in on me?”

  Martin shrugged and shook his head slightly, more amusement than confusion in the gesture.

  “Hell if I know,” he said. “Another mystery of Micah.”

  I wasn’t sure how comfortable I was having a prepubescent super genius place his attention on me. Especially so soon after arriving in a place that appeared to place great deference on anything he said. Or suggested.

  Martin stood, waiting by his chair as I rose.

  “Don’t let yourself get overwhelmed,” he said, reassurance true in his voice. “This really is a good place. We just want to keep it that way.”

  He left after a handshake. I walked him to the door, but no further, and closed it before he’d even made it off the porch.

  I didn’t know what to expect of Eagle One before reaching this spot on the coast of Oregon. That place, imagined, had been but a destination. A hope. In many ways, it had delivered on its promise.

  The rest would come. That was what I told myself.

  Thirty One

  It was a park. An honest to God park, with play equipment and children laughing and grass so green it almost hurt to look at. That it was made from some recycled plastic and, as I’d been told by a neighbor that morning, pilfered from a college football stadium, mattered little. To look upon it and connect the image with a still familiar memory of the real was a pleasing diversion.

  Krista tugged at Neil’s hand as the three of us entered the park, pulling him toward the swings and monkey bars and slides, a row of manufactured greenery beyond, fake plants taken from the waiting rooms of medical offices and hair salons.

  “Come on!” she commanded him.

  He tossed a glance back at me as the child dragged him off.

  “Guess I’ll be seeing you,” he said, stumbling forward.

  Stumbling and smiling. A true smile.

  “Fletcher!”

  I looked toward the voice and saw Burke sitting at a picnic table, Elaine across from him. A red plastic cup sat before him, and a bottle, smoky contents within nearly half gone. The man waved me over, his hand gesturing vigorously. Social niceties were something I was having to reacquaint myself with, including the act of being polite to one I’d rather ignore.

  But I could not dismiss the invitation. And, in any event, it was not just Burke at the table. Elaine balanced out the bombast certain to greet me with a quiet normalcy.

  Again Burke urged me over, and I moved to join them, taking a seat on the bench next to Elaine.

  “Good morning,” I said, looking to each of them.

  “Morning,” Elaine said.

  She wore a pistol on her left hip, but her MP5 was nowhere in sight. Burke’s AK was leaning against the end of the table. Though I could not see it, I was certain he had a pistol in the thigh holster I’d noted on him just after we landed, and I imagined another small handgun hidden somewhere on his person. Probably a knife as well. And I wouldn’t have been surprised to see him take a grenade from a pocket and place it on the table for effect.

  “You settling in okay?” Burke asked.

  “Getting used to things,” I said. “It’s been a while since there was this much life around.”

  I noticed several people approaching Neil and Krista at the play equipment, four adults offering greetings, two children among their number. The little ones joined Krista in climbing and swinging, slipping into behaviors that, thankfully, had not been erased from their nature.

  “Where’s...” Burke struggled for the name.

  “Grace,” Elaine prompted him.

  “Grace,” Burke said. “Where is she?”

  “Neil said she wanted to get the house organized.”

  We’d spent the previous day just getting acclimated. I’d left Neil and Grace alone, giving them a chance to spend what would pass for family time with Krista. I’d mostly wandered through the house, my house, arranging things to suit my taste, marveling at the cabinets full of food in the kitchen.

  And I’d slept. Fleeting thoughts of exploring the town, of strolling outside, were superseded by an insatiable desire to close my eyes, and keep them closed. As often happened, I dreamed of the green world. Not places like this with its manufactured homage to the past. No, during my first full day in Bandon, until the afternoon crept toward three o’clock, my subconscious had placed me in a vast, open field, with stalks of alfalfa tickling my shins as I walked through it. Then ran through it. The dream was soundless, but my mouth gaped giddily, as one might when laughter burst forth uncontrollably.

  When I woke, I remained in bed for a good half hour, trying to remember every piece of the placid and silly dream, then trying to make myself forget it. I needed to face the day, embrace this place, without letting pleasant shadows of a past long gone make me wish for more.

  “It’s not easy moving into someone else’s place and making it your own,” Elaine commented.

  I nodded. But Burke snickered breathily at her observation.

  “First night here, I slept like a baby,” he said. “Haven’t moved a damn thing in the house since then. Still sleep like a baby. Whoever lived there before is just dust now.”

  Elaine glanced at the cup and bottle, her silent appraisal of this part of the man’s being verging on harsh. Burke poured a splash of whiskey into the red plastic cup and slid it slowly across the picnic table toward me.

  “Little early for me,” I said.

  “Suit yourself,” he said, keeping the cup and taking a long sip. “Best thing to come from the blight—no laws against drinking in public.”

  I couldn’t tell if the man was a crazy optimist, seeking some good in any situation, or if he was that far out on the edge of society that this new world had come to resemble one he’d imagined before it all went to hell.

  “Gonna miss this when it’s gone,” Burke said, lifting the bottle to admire the smooth brown contents, gone by half after his pour. “Just five or six bottles left in town.”

  “And he has four of those,” Elaine said.

  “Four and change,” Burke corrected her, tipping the bottle her way in offering.

  Elaine looked to me, grinning dismissively.

  “I don’t touch the stuff,” she said. “Burke considers that a character flaw.”

  He nodded and gave his cup another splash before twisting the lid back on the bottle and setting it aside.

  “Nothing even close to this at the supply center,” Burke said.

  “Supply center?”

  “In the old Post Office,” Elaine clarified for me. “If you need something that’s not food you can pick it up there. Toilet paper, a flashlight. Similar things.”

  “Everything our patrols can scrounge that’s useful is funneled there,” Burke explained.

  “Smart,” I said.

  They were organized. I’d realized just how much the night we landed as the coordinated force, led by Burke, made it impossible for us to execute any threat against them, if that had been our intent. That type of regimentation clearly also existed in how they gathered and maintained supplies for the population.

  “Excuse me...Eric, right?”

  I looked up to see a man and a woman standing near, two of the same who’d offered greetings to Neil and Krista. They had the look of a couple about them. Each wore wedding bands, and I guessed they were pushing sixty.

  “Eric, this is Doc Allen,” Elaine said. “He’s the one who saved Micah’s life.”

  “You’re the surgeon?” I asked.

  “Yes. And, please, it’s Everett. This is my wife, Carol.”

  “So pleased to meet you,” Carol said warmly, taking my hand in both of hers. “I hope you’ve been made comfortable.”

  She flashed a look toward Elaine.

  “He’s settled into a nice house,” Elaine assured the woman.

  “The Readiness Committee worked hard to make sure we can accept new arrivals,” Carol explained. “We want to see people enjoy the fruits of our labor.”

  Burke lifted his cup and took another long sip, adding some volume to the swallow this time for effect. The doctor’s wife shifted her gaze momentarily to him, maintaining a smile with some effort.

  “Well, we just wanted to say hello,” Everett said to me. “I’m over on Franklin near Cross if you have any medical needs.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate that.”

  The doctor gave a nod to Elaine, and to Burke, then headed off with his wife.

  “Burke, you’re a piece of work,” Elaine said, openly judging the man now.

  He laughed softly and looked to me.

  “Some people, like the good doc’s wife, think all that needs to be done to get the world working again is to have committee meetings and flash tight smiles to those lessers who live among them.” He took another drink, draining his red cup and tapping his own chest. “This lesser thinks it would be in their best interest to remember just who it is who keeps the Horde from cooking them up for Sunday dinner.”

  The Horde...

  My confusion must have been more obvious than I’d intended. Elaine tried to fill in the blanks.

  “That’s our pet name for the psychos from up north,” she said. “They congregate in and around Seattle. Every once in a while they send some raiders our way.”

  “Drug addled cannibal scum,” Burke commented, draining the last of his whiskey and turning the empty red cup over before smashing it atop the table. “Not a worthwhile mouth breather among them.”

  Elaine made sure his mini-tirade was over before going on.

  “They’re the main threat we face,” she said.

  “Main outside threat,” Burke added, the amount of drink he’d consumed that morning working on him, a tinge of slur to the edge of his words.

 

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