His question broke our trance.
Avalanche dashed forward, grabbing a jug and sliding to her knees next to the cart. She got an arm under Zephyr’s shoulders and tipped the juice forward for her to drink.
The scaled woman was completely delirious, trying to push Avalanche’s arms away. Apple juice dribbled out of her changed, stiffened lips, but I think she drank at least a little bit.
I grabbed my own jug. It was too warm and too sweet, but I hardly cared. It was wet and plentiful: miracle enough.
The first of our followers entered the warehouse as I took my first sip, shoving open the door Kurt had unlocked.
ValuCo employees arrived only seconds afterward, thundering around a massive pile of cereal boxes. Each had a golf club raised menacingly. Fortunately, these lowered when they saw us. They’d been alarmed to hear noises coming from a section they thought was empty - afraid that monsters had gotten in somehow - but were happy to share their bounty.
“Only 300 people here,” a worker said, “And we had maybe a third of that this morning. The rest came from the cleaning-supply place next door and the car park down the road. It’d take us years to eat everything in this place. You came from the airport? Do you know what happened to Mary DeMarco? I know it’s a long shot, but she works check-ins for Delta, and-”
Satisfied that there wasn’t going to be a fight, I tuned the discussion out. Kurt could handle it. I leaned back against a stack of something-or-another, just taking a moment to rest.
“I’m going to try to find some food. Want to come with?” Byron asked.
My stomach felt hollow, but I shook my head. “Nah. I’ll wait here in case the people coming have any monsters following them.”
“Alright. I’ll bring you something.”
“Thanks.”
I was grateful when he left.
I hadn’t lied about hanging back to fight the monsters; I felt vaguely guilty for the way we’d bolted off ahead, leaving the group who’d followed us to fend for themselves. Intellectually, I knew that the mob was large enough that our presence shouldn’t make a big difference. Hanging back would have been a crime of a different kind, delaying the help Zephyr so clearly needed. To my left, Zephyr’s friends were deep in discussion with the ValuCo employees, trying to decide what - if anything - could be done to help her. But even if we hadn’t made any promises to the people behind us, even if we had good reasons for what we did… people had followed us. Waiting by the door in case they needed help crossing the finish line made me feel like less of an asshole.
That was only part of my reason, though.
For the past two days, I’d been laser-focused. From the moment everything had gone wrong, I’d known immediately what a terrible situation we were in. We’d gotten my oldest boy, Micah, one of those What if? books last Christmas, one of the ones from that comic guy who did the silly science scenarios, and my son had delighted in talking about them with me as he read through the book. He’d been particularly amazed by what happens if you bring the whole population of Earth to Rhode Island and have them jump at the same time: absolutely nothing, but after they're done jumping everyone dies horrible deaths from starvation and dehydration as there is absolutely no way to get that many people out of a small area like Rhode Island in a timely manner.
The airport was just like that. It might not have held the whole population of Earth, but it had held far too many people and far too little food and water. I’d known immediately that we were sitting in a deathtrap, and escaping it had consumed my mind.
For the first time since a plane had smashed the windows in front of me, I didn’t hear the footsteps of Death pacing toward me. We could still die, sure, but I at least had a chance to think.
In an ideal world, I’d use this time to explore the rules of this weird system, figure them out, bend them to my will, and find a way to get ridiculously powerful, so much that nothing could ever threaten me or the ones I cared about.
The trouble was that personal power didn't change the fact that the people I loved most in the world were out of reach.
I hadn’t been letting myself think about my wife or my kids. When things reminded me of them, I had looked away. I’d ignored the families I’d seen in the airport. When they popped into my mind anyway, I’d dragged myself back on-task as quickly as I could. It was a strategy I could justify because of the terrible situation I was in… but now I was safe. As safe as anyone was, anyway.
Safer than Meghan, probably.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Meghan. My beautiful wife. She always got embarrassed when I said that, looking away, her hands sometimes drifting anxiously to hips that - okay, yeah, - were wider than they had been when we’d gotten married, but still curvy and sexy as hell. Beyond that, she was my teammate. My partner. My best friend. We’d dated all through college and been married for over ten years. We’d been in each other’s lives for close to two decades, with very few of those days spent wholly apart. She knew me. I knew her. When I realized I’d forgotten something, half the time I told Meghan, she’d smirk at me and shake her head and call me a goose and tell me she’d already solved the problem for me, whether it was a car without gas or Christmas gifts for my parents. I did easy stuff for her that she found hard, like calling plumbers and pest control people. We played strategy games together, even single-player ones. How many people could you play a videogame with and not want to wrestle the controller out of their hands when they made boneheaded choices? But we traded it back and forth smoothly, arguing and compromising, celebrating when things went well and collapsing with laughter when a calculated risk played out terribly.
If Meghan was here…
But she wasn’t. She was at home, with our three young kids relying on her.
Micah, my oldest, my old man in a nine-year-old’s body. I could always count on him to follow the rules or directions, even when no one else in the entire world would have. Last week, I’d given him the okay to install a free game on his computer. Ten minutes later, I’d come back to see him still scrolling through the terms and conditions with a bewildered expression on his face. I’d grabbed his mouse, wheeled to the bottom, and accepted, much to his horror… though he’d calmed down a little when I told him that I’d broken the rules, not him.
Gavin. Only six years old, but so sweet and cuddly. The child who’d sit down next to you on the couch and announce not that you looked like you needed a hug, but that “I wanted to hug you!”
Cassie, three years old, tiniest of my crew in body, but with enormous attitude and spirit. She was in a hurry to grow up, eternally frustrated not to be left out of anything her older brothers were allowed to do. Maybe that was why she was so attached to her stuffed turtle? I’d never considered it before this moment, but as long as she had that stuffy in her arms - and she always did - she was never the smallest. She was never completely “alone.”
Honestly, all my children were still little, even Micah. I could lift him and Gavin up, one under each arm, while they wriggled and laughed, trying to get free.
How much food does Meghan have? I wondered. Probably more than I think. She’s always laughing at me when I say we don’t have this or that. Definitely enough for a few days, probably enough for a week. Maybe enough for two weeks?
I won’t be home in two weeks.
It had taken us a day to get this far, two miles or so, and conditions had been nearly perfect. We’d had a huge crowd of supporters for a lot of it, so I’d only had to fight a fraction of the monsters, and the vast majority of the distance had been through open grassland, where nothing had a chance of sneaking up on us.
How far was it to my family? I didn’t know exactly, but I was sure it was more than a thousand miles. At this pace, it would take us almost two years to make it back.
I knew Meghan didn’t have two years of food stockpiled. She’d have to leave the house. To fight monsters.
She was gonna be crap at that.
I’d been begging her for years to start aikido, and I’d worn her down into saying she’d think about starting when Cassie did… but Cassie couldn’t start until she turned five, two years from now. Much as I loved my wife, I couldn’t deny that she’d put on a few pounds during her pregnancies, and they hadn’t come back off. She wasn’t a regular at the gym. She’d done a few sports back in high school and college, but she’d never done anything like martial arts… not that martial arts training was perfectly suited to what we were facing, but at least it was something.
Meghan had nothing. How was she going to fight monsters?
Worse, she had the kids to take care of. Micah could watch the younger ones inside while Meghan fought, but my wife would have no one to watch her back. Even if she somehow figured out a way to kill the monsters, where the hell was she going to get food from? Steal it from other people? That was about all I could think of. She-
“Burrito or ice cream mochi?”
Byron’s voice made me jump. “Uh-”
He shook his head. “Take both, then. Dude, I thought you were watching the door. Instead, I come back to find you zoned out and staring at the wall like you watching some damn tragic movie. We’re good! We made it! Celebrate a little.”
I took the food he offered, taking a bite of burrito to buy myself time to think. There wasn’t anything to say but the truth, though. “Just… worried about my wife and kids. I don’t know how they’ll make it until I get home. Meghan… I just don’t think she’s going to be good at fighting.”
Byron clapped his hand to my shoulder comfortingly. “I wouldn’t be so sure.”
I scowled at him. “She’s got the willpower, but not the training. Willpower only takes you so far.”
He laughed. “I’ve met your wife. She’s a smart lady! Don’t underestimate that. I’ve been to board game night. She’s impossible to catch in Trapwords.”
“Being clever doesn’t help you swing a weapon.”
Byron was quiet for a moment, squinting at me. “Not the way you do, no… but… that’s not the only way to fight. Come on. I’ve got some people you ought to meet.”