Dad

Comforting Elizabeth is interrupted by a dark-haired man entering the medical clinic. Is this handsome man Elizabeth’s boyfriend, JT? His face is pale, and the hand holding a walkie-talkie shows the whiteness of tension.

“Dolf?” Melody asks. “What are you doing here?” Fear raises her voice an octave.

“We need to go ASAP. Something’s happened.”

There’s apparently a crisis protocol, because all three spring into action.

Melody hurries to the patient room, escorting the woman inside to the door with her daughter as Elizabeth strides purposefully into another exam room, returning moments later with a ring of keys. Probably locking up the medications. The guard, a young man with blond hair wearing a deputy badge, helps Dolf roll down steel blinds on the inside of the windows.

I stand in the middle of the room with nothing to do.

The exterior of the building, marked by a barber pole, is run-down, whereas the interior is maintained better than most clinics I’ve seen on my journey. I heard this was the place to get first aid by asking at the village trading post. When I approached, limping painfully from an infected cut on my foot, the guard asked me a series of questions before letting me inside.

Clearly, these protocols are in place to thwart raiders. “Can I do anything to help?”

Elizabeth’s blue eyes are bright with tears when she looks up at me. “I don’t know what you can do, Dad.”

“Is this your father?” The dark-haired man turns to face me, his eyes wide.

“Yes,” Elizabeth answers, the single word not enough to let me know how she feels about me being here.

Dolf extends a hand. I shake it, feeling strength and power in the grip. “I’m Dolf Luciano. Elizabeth’s brother-in-law.”

My gaze flies to Elizabeth.

“You’re married?” My voice trembles and my stomach clenches. I’ve missed so much of my daughter’s life. “I thought this young man might be JT, the man you spoke of so highly.”

“No. JT’s my older brother,” Dolf answers, shaking his head. “Elizabeth, I assume we’re taking your father back to the Haven?”

Elizabeth looks at Dolf. “Of course, my father’s coming with us. And yes, Dad, JT and I got married a while ago.”

I release a sigh of relief. She’s bringing me home. I’m welcome. But will her new husband feel the same?

I follow them out the door, trying not to limp. Dolf locks it and with the help of the young guard, pulls a rusted metal gate across the door so that the building appears abandoned.

“Anything else I can do?” the deputy asks.

Dolf shakes his head. “Thanks, Deputy Gummer. JT will be in touch if we need you.”

Gummer tips his head and, holding his shotgun up, heads down the main street.

The town looks barely inhabited, one of the many empty husks left by the Scorching. A few burned buildings stand unrestored, adding a forlorn air.

North Fork’s survival strategy seems to be to appear deserted.

I saw a lot of survival strategies on the road: towns that banded together behind fortifications, others existing in anarchy, with only the strong surviving. Towns that were traps for the unwary. And towns like this, hiding a beating heart of life behind a battered facade.

That’s me: a battered façade hiding a heart that’s still going. I used to have a purpose, to know what I was on the planet for, and all that burned up in the Scorching.

The only thing left worth living for is my beloved daughter and making amends.

I follow Elizabeth, Melody, and Dolf to a black Humvee parked behind one of the buildings in an alley. “What’s going on?” Melody asks.

Dolf glances over his shoulder at me, gauging if I can be trusted. What has he been told about Elizabeth’s proud, foolish father? Does he hate me for the part I played in the Scorching? Does he know that I voted to hoard the original vaccine? Not that it ended up mattering…

“Lucy has been kidnapped.”

“Oh no!” Elizabeth cries. Whoever this Lucy is, they care about her deeply. Elizabeth points to the right side of the back seat and I get in. “Do you have a weapon, Dad?”

“I do.” I limped into North Fork with nothing but my gun and the clothes on my back, a broken homeless man with an infection in his foot.

Elizabeth picks up a double-barreled shotgun and rests it on the windowsill as Melody lifts a Colt revolver. They both watch vigilantly out the open windows as Dolf drives through the village and onto a country road, steadily accelerating until we’re at the top end of the Humvee’s speed.

I watch the empty, fecund countryside roll by, glancing occasionally at Elizabeth and Melody’s set faces. I can’t help contrasting the pretty, carefree little girls they were with the tense, powerful women they’ve become.

I clear my throat. “So, you’re happy?”

Elizabeth frowns. “There is still a lot of work to do, Dad. My sister-in-law, Dr. Nani Kagawa, and I have been working hard on a vaccine for the secondary flu strain. We recently got a supply of antibodies, but extraction and processing of the virus is complicated by having been stored in a human host.”

“Elizabeth is doing amazing work,” Melody swivels to give me that movie-star smile she’s had since childhood. “We’re all living in the Haven, JT’s survival complex.”

“It must be very tight quarters.” All the questions I have jumble at the back of my throat.

Elizabeth shakes her head and her eyes flash with pride as she explains. “The Haven is a military survival compound that can hold fifty comfortably, twice that in a pinch. The army used it for survival practice drills back in the seventies and eighties. JT had the foresight to buy and restore it before the Scorch Flu broke out. All of the surviving Luciano family has congregated here. We have become something of a hub of support for the town.”

“I understand. I saw a lot of destruction on the road from Washington. Everyone wishes they had somewhere like that.”

We pull up at a security kiosk beside a long stretch of cement wall topped by coils of razor wire, a jarring sight in the peaceful, plentiful rolling farmland protected by jagged mountains that we’ve just driven through.

A steel gate retracts to reveal a well-maintained dirt road leading up toward a secondary wall and finally, a log cabin on a knoll. It certainly doesn’t look like a military installation that can house a hundred.

The Humvee roars through a second gate that opens for us—they must be monitoring on video. I’m impressed and pleased by the level of security surrounding my daughter’s home.

“You did good coming here, honey. This place is beautiful and secure. All I ever wanted was for you to be safe, and you are.”

“Wait until you meet JT, Dad. Then you’ll know how lucky I really am.” She reaches out and takes my hand. Nothing ever felt as good as Elizabeth holding my hand, even as my belly tightens with apprehension.

I resisted my daughter leaving Washington with a stranger, no matter how capable and deadly JT had proved to be. I will never forget the terror and frustration of finding Elizabeth’s goodbye note. I squeeze her hand back.

How will my son-in-law receive me? Though we’ve never met, I can imagine what Elizabeth told him. She was so angry about how we dealt with her attacker, Billy, and how we’d handled distributing the first vaccine…and I’ve brought nothing to help this group of people. I’m just a broken-down old man, another mouth to feed.

Dolf parks the Humvee in a large steel barn. As I step out my bad foot sends a blast of pain up my leg, wringing a cry from my lips.

“Oh, what’s the matter, John?” Melody catches me under the arm and keeps me from falling. Elizabeth runs around to grasp me under my other arm, hooking it over her shoulders.

“An unfortunate laceration on my foot. I’m afraid it’s infected.”

Dolf walks ahead into the log cabin as Melody and Elizabeth help me onto the porch.

A tall, dark, good-looking man stands in the doorway, intent hazel eyes focused on me. “Who is this, E?”

Melody and Elizabeth help me to a nearby Adirondack chair. “JT, meet my dad, John Johnson. Dad, this is my husband, JT Luciano.” Her voice rings with pride as she goes to stand beside him, circling his waist with an arm.

He draws her close to his side, and a long moment passes as we take each other’s measure. JT is large, strong, and handsome. Intelligence shines in his gaze.

My daughter made a good choice.

“Don’t you mean…Senator Johnson?” I’m not imagining the harsh note in JT’s voice.

I lift myself upright in the chair with all the dignity I can muster, and a lifetime of pride holds me stiffly as I extend a hand to the young man. I say the words I rehearsed so often in my mind through lonely miles on the road. “Just John, please. All that is past. I’m pleased to meet you, and I’m deeply sorry for how things unfolded in Washington. I wish I could have met you then, and thanked you for taking care of my daughter and bringing her to us. Seeing her that last time meant the world to Susanna…and to me.”

I’m dimly aware of Melody slipping around us to enter the cabin, and of the bustling urgency of voices inside. JT shakes my hand, then loops a long arm around Elizabeth again. There’s protectiveness in the gesture and in everything about JT’s posture as he takes in Elizabeth’s disheveled appearance and red, puffy eyes.

JT glares at me, clearly blaming me for Elizabeth’s upset. “I just had to tell your wife that her mother died,” my voice breaks. “I’m so sorry I didn’t bring any better news, or anything to offer but my thanks and apologies.”

“Oh, darling E.” JT’s gaze softens as he looks down at Elizabeth. She sags against him with a muffled sob. He tucks her head under his chin, stroking her back. “I’m so sorry, honey.”

My daughter is protected, and well cared for. It is all I could have hoped—that she be safe, healthy, and loved, doing work she enjoys that makes a difference in the world.

These things have come true for Elizabeth, in spite of the Scorch Flu, in spite of the loss of her mother. But my remaining years stretch ahead, a dim and terrifying fog of emptiness with only my girl to brighten the prospect of them.

Oh Susanna. I miss you so much.

I shut my eyes and cover them with a hand, letting my own tears flow.

JT clears his throat and I can tell that he’s kneeling beside me. “I see you need some first aid, John. Why don’t you come inside, get cleaned up and have it looked at?” JT’s baritone is soft and kind. “You look like you’ve had a rough road getting here, and I’m glad you came. Elizabeth needs her father in her life.”

Gratitude chokes me as I nod, and allow my son-in-law to help me inside the cabin.