“A long way,” DeVontay said. “But we’re closer now than we were this morning.”
Rachel understood the response on a metaphorical level. They might not have a bigger purpose—and she certainly didn’t, not since turning her back on the Lord that had seen her through easier times—but Rachel had convinced them that her grandfather’s mountain compound was the only desirable destination. Stephen believed they would leave from there and go on to find his father in Mississippi, but Rachel couldn’t see past the next day’s walk.
What happens after After?
“You’ll like the mountains,” she said, helping Stephen swaddle into the makeshift bedding.
“Sing me to sleep?” he said, drowsily, exhaustion seeming to hit him all at once.
DeVontay sensed their need for an intimate moment and retrieved his rifle. “I’ll go take a look around.”
He ducked through the jagged opening where the nose had torn free from the plane’s body, then slipped into the growing darkness. Rachel stroked Stephen’s brown hair. The bedtime routine had started a week ago, when Stephen announced that his mother used to sing to him. Since they’d left her in a hotel room where Stephen had been trapped with her corpse for three days, Rachel had taken on an ever-deepening mothering role.
But even that was colored with guilt. She’d been the “responsible one” when her younger sister Chelsea had drowned, and her whole life afterward had been about making amends. Rachel had trained to be a school counselor because she wasn’t Catholic enough to become a nun. Now there were no more schools, and the only person she could counsel was a ten-year-old boy who had seen his world shatter in the blink of an eye.
“What song would you like?”
Stephen snuggled into the jacket. He looked years younger, almost like a toddler with his thick lashes and pursed lips. “Beatles.”
That didn’t narrow it down much, but it was too late for the rousing fun of “Yellow Submarine.” And “Help!” would be a little too maudlin. She took a breath and began “Blackbird.”
She made it fine through the chorus, even though she wasn’t a great singer, choosing a low, sweet lilt. The tune itself was like a bird, sinking and then rising, testing the wind and finding its altitude. And on the final verse, her voice broke, sunken eyes learning to see. She managed to turn the stutter into a vocal embellishment and recover for the finale, wondering if this was the moment they’d been waiting for all their lives.
“Sing it again,” Stephen murmured, eyes closed.
“In a little bit, honey. I need to go check on DeVontay. Be right back.” She kissed his forehead and he was asleep before she reached the wreck’s opening.
Outside, the air was crisp with autumn’s cool, a skein of stars brilliant against the blue-black ceiling of the universe. The vivid lime-green auroras so deep and haunting in the wake of the electromagnetic upheavals had diminished but still hung like a ghost overhead. The smoke of distant cities had grown thinner over the past week, giving her hope that the worst might be over.
But hope was something she didn’t quite trust, and any temptation to call upon whatever divine force might be beyond the wall of stars vanished when she saw the plane’s shattered passenger area.
“That was a pretty song,” DeVontay said from the darkness behind her.
She turned, unable to make out his shape against the trees. “You weren’t supposed to listen.”
“It’s not like I could put on the headphones and jam to my iPod.”
“It’s amazing how quiet it is out here.”
They both listened to the muted chirrup of insects, the orchestra rubbing legs and wings together to warm up for a nightly performance.
“You can see the stars, too,” DeVontay said. “There’s the Dipper and Cassiopeia.”
The Big Dipper was obvious, but Rachel squinted against the field above, straining to discern depth. She tried to recall the assignments from her college astronomy lab. Her lab partner had been a tall guy named Randy Woodard who smelled of clove cigarettes, and she’d spent too much of the lab making small talk that she wished would lead to big talk. In the end, Randy turned out to be dating a library assistant and she made a B-minus.
She hated herself for not knowing Cassiopeia, as if the information would somehow give her control over their place in the universe. “I don’t see it.”
Then DeVontay drew close behind her, his breath on her neck, reaching one arm around to grip her wrist. He guided her hand until they were both pointing at the sky and waving in the shape of a W. “There,” he said, in a voice that was almost inaudible. “Those five points.”
He held her hand a moment longer and she stiffened, not sure whether she wanted to sag back against his body. She sensed his muscles coiled like a tiger’s, though she couldn’t be sure whether the tiger would bolt into a run or leap upon its prey. His breathing was fast and heavy.
She hadn’t thought of him in that way…not like she had Randy Woodard. But wasn’t DeVontay the father to Stephen just as she was the mother? Wasn’t it natural that they…pair off…for whatever this new world intended?
Didn’t she have a duty to be fruitful and multiply?
And despite her denial of a God above, she couldn’t help but think this was some great practical joke He was pulling. What if God wasn’t an all-knowing force with a predestined plan, but was instead just a childlike entity that had set the universe in motion and then stood back to watch in wonder as it unfolded? Wouldn’t such a God be snickering right now at the absurdity of it all?
DeVontay tensed and moved slightly away from her. “What’s so funny?”
She hadn’t realized she’d laughed out loud. But the moment was broken, just like the blackbird’s wings in the Beatles’ song. “It’s just strange,” she said, recalling her astronomy professor griping about urban light pollution that fouled his telescopic view. “Without any lights, you can see better.”
“That’s real deep, Rachel,” DeVontay said, and she couldn’t be sure if he was stung by the rejection or just being DeVontay. Maybe she’d imagined the romantic gesture. It wasn’t like she had much experience in such matters.
“Seriously. You could count the rest of your life and still not get them all.”
“That’s why people invented constellations. They just picked out the big patterns and used them instead of worrying about all the little details.”
“You don’t sound so streetwise-Philly now,” she said.
“Maybe the Zapheads weren’t the only people to get changed by the solar storm,” he said. He moved farther away, restoring their personal space to its previous distance.
She groped to salvage his feelings without making the moment any weirder. “Where did you learn the constellations?”
“Virginia Beach. We went there on vacation when I was twelve. I had one of those little star charts on a cardboard wheel. I stood in the sand at night, the waves crashing around, and I taught myself. At the time, I imagined I might get shipwrecked one day and I’d have to sail home by the stars. I figured anywhere I went, at least I’d know where I was.”
“Do you?”
“Do what?”
“Know where you are?”
She could see his eyes, the celestial light making them sparkle, even the glass one, and then she took the three biggest steps of her life and was in his arms. His lips brushed her temple and she whispered, “No. Just hold me.”
He didn’t answer, just complied. The firelight bobbed and grew low inside the nose of the plane, outlining the jagged orange mouth where they would soon enter to sleep. They would not sleep together. Not yet, maybe not ever.
Somehow, it wasn’t that important. For now, his arms were enough, strong and safe and comforting.