In The Afterlight

Something cold coiled in my stomach. “Cate and Dolly left already?”

After everything that had happened over the past few months, I was surprised by how deeply that cut. Didn’t stop to say goodbye, didn’t stay to hear us explain it fully. Cate would rather try to blow up everything we’d accomplished in getting the agents to leave by begging them back. She’d sabotage this for us.

“It’s almost three in the afternoon,” Vida said.

I stared at her in disbelief. Some of the ice finally broke from her expression. She shook her head, muttering something under her breath that I pretended not to hear. “You were sleeping this whole time? You must have been more wrecked than I thought.”

“Listen,” I started, “about earlier...”

She held up a hand. “I get it. I just have one question—did you keep Sen’s plan from me because you thought I’d knife the bitch in the kidney?”

“That might have been part of it,” I admitted.

“Then you don’t know me as well as you think,” she said. “Because I would have gone straight for the heart. But...fair.”

“Where is everyone?” I asked.

“Gran is lying around moping somewhere,” Vida said. “Boy Scout is annoying the shit out of everyone in the kitchen.”

“What? Why?” At her shrug I asked, “And Zu?”

All at once, her expression shuttered again. When she spoke, her voice could have cut the skin from my bones. “Do I look like I give a single shit where she is?”

“Vida,” I said, “seriously—”

Whatever it was, she didn’t want to talk about it. Vida was already backing away, heading toward the stairs.

“We need to talk about this,” I said, starting after her. The look she shot back stopped me. That was the expression of someone who wanted to be left alone.

“By the way, if you decide you f**king care, when Cate was walking down into the tunnel,” Vida said, “she said something to me: tell Ruby playing with fire only gets you burned. That mean anything to you?”

“No,” I said finally. “I have no idea.”

Vida had been partly right. Liam was in the kitchen—only he was actually in the pantry, past the stoves and sinks, in the darkened back corner. He’d left the door wide open, likely to encourage some light inside other than the small flashlight he had clenched between his teeth. He was scribbling something down on a small flip notebook. I reached over to flick on the light switch, about to laugh at him for missing it, but...nothing. I tried it twice to be sure.

Liam took the flashlight out of his mouth and smiled. And just like that, the past few hours seemed to melt away into a murky puddle that I stepped clear of.

“Did you know this place needs thirty-six new light bulbs? Why in the world did they have to take the light bulbs, too?” Liam asked.

“Thirty-six is very exact,” I said with a faint laugh. “Is that your best guess?”

He seemed confused. “No, I counted. I did a walkthrough with Kylie and Zu earlier. We also could use five new door locks, several gallons of laundry detergent, and about two dozen towels. And this—” Liam gestured to the sparse shelves in front of him. “This is pathetic. I have no idea how they even found this many cans of beets, but good Lord. What can you even do with them?”

“Well, there’s fried beets, beet soup, pickled beets...”

“Ugh.” He covered his ears and actually shuddered. “I’d rather take my chances with the stewed tomatoes.”

“Is it really that bad?” I asked, stepping into the pantry with him. I didn’t really need to ask—it was. Actually, it was worse. Aside from a few loaves of bread and deli slices in the refrigerator, we had mostly canned vegetables and junk food like pretzels and chips.

I leaned against him as Liam went on about trying to find pasta, cans of soup, and oatmeal, and closed my eyes. His chest was warm against my back, and I liked the way I could feel every animated word as it rumbled through him. He reached over and gave my hair a gentle tug. “I’m boring you, huh?”

“No, I’m sorry, I’m listening,” I said. “You were talking about Lucy?”

“Yeah. She was one of the girls who kept track of the food at East River. I think she’ll be able to give some insight into how to rotate supplies and what we should be looking for.”

Right. We would need to set up some kind of team to handle supply runs, though there were already so few of us, I couldn’t imagine Cole giving consent unless the situation was absolutely desperate. And I couldn’t imagine him giving consent at all if Liam were the one going out.

“You’re tired,” he said, running a thumb under my eye. “Where did you disappear to? I tried waiting up for you, but passed out the second I lay down.”

“I took a shower and was too tired to figure out which room you guys were in,” I said, because how could I admit that I’d purposefully avoided the bunk room they chose? I didn’t want to deal with the questions, not when my head felt as heavy as my heart. After having it out with Cate, there just hadn’t been any kind of fight left in me. “I found the first open bed and tried to sleep.”

He reached up and pulled one of those small, individual servings of canned fruit off the shelf and popped the lid off before I could refuse. He continued his careful count of the shelves as I tipped the can into my mouth and downed the fruit. I saw each and every possible conversation play out across his features, every question he wanted to ask, and felt a prickle of anxiety with each silent second that ticked by.