Chapter 9: The Only Comfort Left
The silence in the storeroom was a living thing, pressing in on us, thick with the scent of dust and cardboard and the coppery hint of what Mary had done. It was Nancy who broke it, her voice a thin thread in the dark.
“Is he… is he still moving?”
Ellie’s arms tightened around Mary. “No, sweetheart. He’s not.”
I forced my hands to stop shaking and grabbed the flashlight from where it had rolled. The beam was stark, clinical. “We pack. Fast. That noise might have drawn others.”
My engineer’s mind clicked on, a blessed distraction. I calculated volumes, weights, nutritional values. “Water first. One case. We can come back for the rest if the route is clear. The rice. The first-aid kit. Protein bars if you see them.”
We moved like automatons, filling our backpacks until the straps strained. No one looked at the barricaded door. No one mentioned the shape beyond it. The only sounds were the rustle of cardboard and our own labored breathing.
Getting out was a blur of fear and motion. We moved the shelving just enough to slip out, single file, back into the sepulchral glow of the main store. We didn’t look at the counter. We stepped over the dark, still form on the floor and into the blinding, hateful sun.
The three blocks home were a gauntlet of new terrors. Every rustle in the bushes was Phil, resurrected. Every distant groan was a horde converging on the Quick-Stop. Mary walked in the center of us now, her crowbar hanging limp at her side. Ellie kept a hand on the small of her back, a constant point of contact.
Our house never looked so beautiful, a fortress of nailed plywood and painted blackout curtains. We scrambled through the reinforced side door, into the mudroom, and I slammed the deadbolt home, my forehead resting against the cool wood. The familiar smell of home—lemon cleaner, Ellie’s linseed oil, the underlying scent of our own fear—wrapped around me.
“Clear the room,” I murmured, the routine a mantra. We did, moving through the downstairs in practiced silence, checking corners, securing windows.
Only when the final check was done did the tension in my shoulders unknot, just a fraction. We dumped our packs in the kitchen with soft, heavy thuds.
Ellie was already at the sink, pumping water from the hand-well, washing her hands over and over. Nancy was staring at the pile of supplies, her eyes wide.
“We got rice,” she said, as if announcing a miracle.
“We did,” I said, pulling cans of vegetables from my pack. “And peas. And beets. God, I hate beets.”
A shaky laugh escaped Nancy. It was a brittle sound.
Mary hadn’t moved. She stood by the table, still clutching the crowbar. Her knuckles were white. Ellie finished washing, dried her hands on her jeans, and went to her. She didn’t speak. She simply pried Mary’s fingers loose, one by one, and took the weapon. She placed it on the counter with a definitive clink. Then she pulled Mary into a full, rocking hug.
I saw Mary’s body stiffen, then collapse. A single, violent sob shook her frame, muffled against Ellie’s shoulder. “I just… he was right there,” she choked out.
“I know,” Ellie whispered, her voice thick. “I know, baby. You kept us safe.”
It was Nancy who broke the moment, her voice deliberately bright, an artist changing the subject with a splash of color. “You know what else we got?”
We all looked at her. She was rummaging deep in her own overstuffed backpack, past the water bottles and the packets of noodles. Her hand emerged, triumphant, clutching a clear glass bottle with a red label.
“Ta-da!”
It was vodka. Decent stuff, too. Not the bottom-shelf rail liquor.
A stunned silence fell. Then Ellie let out a wet laugh, still holding Mary. “Nancy Willow, where on earth did you find that?”
“Bottom shelf, behind some spilled detergent,” Nancy said, a real grin breaking through. “It was in a puddle. I think it saved it from being looted.” She looked at Mary, her expression soft. “I thought… we could use it. To clean things. Or, you know. To drink.”
Mary pulled back from Ellie, wiping her face with the heel of her hand. She stared at the bottle. “That’s a liter of 80-proof sterilization solution,” she said, her voice rough but edged with her usual pragmatism.
“It’s also Tuesday,” I said, the words coming out before I could stop them.
Everyone looked at me.
I shrugged, the motion feeling strangely free. “I mean, it’s probably Tuesday. And we’re alive. And we have peas. And… we’re together.” My gaze met Mary’s, held it. “That sounds like a occasion.”
A ghost of a smile touched Mary’s lips. “Okay,” she whispered.
We didn’t get fancy. We washed four jelly jars, the last of our unbroken glassware. Nancy poured two fingers into each. We didn’t toast. Toasts were for a world that was gone. We just lifted them, caught each other’s eyes over the rims, and drank.
The fire of it was a shock, a cleansing burn that swept from my throat to my gut, melting a little of the icy dread that had settled there since the Quick-Stop. Ellie coughed. Nancy’s eyes watered. Mary took hers like a shot, grimaced, and set the jar down with a definitive tap.
“Well,” she said, her voice stronger. “That’s disgusting.”
“Next time, I’ll find lemons and make us cocktails,” Nancy promised, sipping hers with a wince.
We sorted the supplies after that, the vodka buzzing a soft, gentle fog between us, blurring the sharpest edges of the day. We counted, we stacked, we inventoried in the flickering light of the hurricane lamp. The rice went into the airtight bin. The water was lined up like soldiers along the wall. The beets were relegated to the back.
Later, in the fortified darkness of our bedroom, the house settled into its nightly symphony of creaks and moans—some from the wood, some from outside. Ellie curled into my side, her head on my chest, her breath warm through my shirt.
“She’ll carry that,” Ellie murmured, her voice barely audible.
“I know.”
“We all will.”
I stared up at the ceiling, where the shadows from the lantern danced. I saw Phil’s milky eye. I saw Mary’s swing. I saw Nancy’s bottle, catching the sickly light of the Quick-Stop.
“We carry it together,” I said, and it wasn’t a platitude. It was a blueprint. A load-bearing calculation. The only one that mattered.
Down the hall, I could hear the soft murmur of the girls talking in their room, a low, steady sound that was more comforting than any silence. They were safe. For now. We were all under one roof, with peas and rice and a future that was, for tonight, exactly one day long.
Ellie’s breathing evened out into sleep. I lay awake, listening, guarding the fragile perimeter of our survival, of our love, until my own eyes grew heavy and the vodka’s warmth finally pulled me under.