He laughed. “It’s okay.”
She gave one of her needles a wave. “I just want to mention, in case our boy here takes a turn for the worse, I’ve always thought you had a very nice look to you. Plus, you’re a war hero. I’d be interested in anything you had to say, Lieutenant.”
“I’ll give it some thought.”
“Of that I have no doubt.” She dropped the yarn to her lap. “As it happens, my shift begins in thirty minutes, so I’ll leave you two to talk about me.” She rose, bagged her knitting, patted Michael on the arm, then thought better of it and kissed him on the top of his head. “Need anything before I go?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine, Michael. You’re far from fine. You scared the living hell out of me is what you did.”
“I said I was sorry.”
“Keep saying it, bub. One day I’ll believe you.” She kissed him again. “Gentlemen.”
When Lore was gone, Peter took her seat. “Sorry about that,” Michael said.
“I don’t know why you keep apologizing for her, Michael. You’re the luckiest guy on planet Earth, as far as I’m concerned.” He tipped his head toward the bed. “So how’s the leg really?”
“It hurts like hell. Nice of you to finally visit.”
“Sorry about that. Eustace is keeping me busy.”
“So how many have you found?”
Peter understood that Michael was asking about the other First Colonists. “The number we’re hearing is fifty-six. We’re still trying to track everyone down. So far we’ve found Jimmy’s daughters, Alice and Avery. Constance Chou, Russ Curtis, Penny Darrell. The Littles are going to take some time to sort out. Everybody’s spread all over the place.”
“Good news, I guess.” Michael stopped, leaving the rest unstated. So many others, gone.
“Hollis told me what you did,” Peter said.
Michael shrugged. He looked a little embarrassed, but proud, too. “It seemed like the thing to do at the time.”
“You ever want a job in the Exped, you let me know. Assuming they’ll have me back. The next time we talk, I might be in the stockade.”
“Peter, be serious. They’ll probably make you a general for this. That or ask you to run for president.”
“Then you don’t know the Army like I do.” And yet, for just a moment, he thought: what if? “We’ll be leaving in a few days, you know.”
“So I figured. Don’t forget to bundle up. Say hello to Kerrville for me.”
“We’ll get you in the next trip, I promise.”
“I don’t know, hombre, the service here is pretty good. The place kind of agrees with me. Who’s going with you?”
“Sara and Hollis and Kate, but that’s obvious. Greer’s staying to help with the evacuation. Eustace is putting a team together.”
“What about Lish?”
“I’d ask her if I could find her. I’ve barely seen her at all. She’s been riding out on this horse of hers. She calls him Soldier. What she’s doing I have no idea.”
“I’m sorry you missed her. She came by this morning.”
“Lish was here?”
“Said she wanted to say hello.” Michael looked at him. “Why? Is that so strange?”
Peter frowned. “I guess not. How did she seem?”
“How do you think? Like Lish.”
“So there wasn’t anything different about her.”
“Not that I noticed. She wasn’t here very long. She said she was going to help Sara with the donations.”
As interim director of public health, Sara had discovered that the building that served as the hospital was, as she’d long suspected, a hospital in name only. There was almost no medical equipment, and no blood at all. With so many people injured in the siege, and babies being born and all the rest, she’d had a freezer brought over from the food-processing facility and had instituted a program of blood donation.
“Lish as a nurse,” Peter said, and shook his head at the irony. “I’d like to see that.”
What became of the redeyes themselves was never fully understood. Those that hadn’t been killed in the stadium had essentially ceased to exist. The only conclusion to be drawn, supported by Sara’s story about Lila, was that the destruction of the Dome, and the death of the man known as the Source, had caused a chain reaction similar to the one they’d seen in Babcock’s descendants on the mountain in Colorado. Those who’d witnessed it described it as a rapid aging, as if a hundred years of borrowed life were surrendered in just a few seconds—flesh shriveling, hair falling out in clumps, faces withering to the skull. The corpses they’d found, still dressed in their suits and ties, were nothing but piles of brown bones. They looked like they’d been dead for decades.
As the day of departure approached, Sara found herself working virtually around the clock. As word had spread in the flatland that actual medical care could now be had, more and more people had come in. The complaints varied from the common cold to malnutrition to the broad bodily failures of old age. A few seemed simply curious about what seeing a doctor would be like. Sara treated the ones she could, comforted those she could not. In the end, the two felt not so very different.
She left the hospital only to sleep, and sometimes eat, or else Hollis would bring meals to her, always with Kate in tow. They had been quartered in an apartment in the complex at the edge of downtown—a curious place, with wide, tinted windows that created a permanent evening light within. It felt a little eerie, knowing that the former occupants had been redeyes, but it was comfortable, with large beds made with soft linens and hot water and a working gas stove, on which Hollis concocted soups and stews of ingredients she didn’t want to know about but which were nonetheless delicious. They would eat together in the candlelit dark and then fall into bed, making love with quiet tenderness so as not to wake their daughter.
Tonight Sara decided to take a break; she was dead on her feet, and starving besides, and missed her family keenly. Her family: after all that had happened, how remarkable these two words were. They seemed the most miraculous in the history of human speech. When she had seen Hollis charging through the entrance of the Dome, her heart had instantly known what her eyes could not believe. Of course he had come for her; Hollis had moved heaven and earth, and here he was. How could it have been otherwise?
She made her way up the hill, past the toppled wreckage of the Dome—its charred timbers had smoldered for days—and through the old downtown. To move freely, without fear, still seemed a little unreal to her. Sara thought about stopping into the apothecary, to say hello to Eustace and whoever else was around, but her feet refused this impulse, which quickly passed. With anticipation lightening her step, she ascended the six flights to the apartment.
“Mummy!”
Hollis and Kate were sitting together on the floor, playing beans and cups. Before Sara could uncoil the scarf from her neck, the girl leapt to her feet and flew into her arms, a soft collision; Sara hoisted Kate to her waist to look her in the eye. She had never told Kate to address her by this name, not wanting to confuse her more than necessary, but this had turned out not to matter; the girl had simply done it. Having never had a father before, Kate had taken a little more time to adapt to Hollis’s role in her life, but then one day, about a week after the liberation, she had started to call him Daddy.
“Well, there you are,” Sara said happily. “How was your day? Did you do fun things with Daddy?”
The little girl reached toward Sara’s face, wrapped her nose with her fist, and made a show of snatching it from Sara’s face, popping it into her mouth, and pushing her tongue against the inside of her cheek. “I haf yur nose,” she said thickly.
“Now, give that back.”
Kate, beaming wildly, blond hair bouncing around her face, waggled her head with playful defiance. “Nuh-uh. It’s mine.”
Thus, the tickling, and laughter from all sides, and the theft of more bodily parts, and the eventual return of Sara’s nose to her face. By the time the struggle was over, Hollis had joined in. Cupping the back of Kate’s head, he
