“You saw her earlier?”
“They were torturing her at the marina.”
“Jesus. Why didn’t you-”
“Save her? I did. Steve would have killed her. I spun him a story and he believed me. Then Dave had to go and jump the gun. She would have been fine after a few days.”
“A few weeks, maybe.”
“Or a few weeks. The point is, she would have been fine. She knew what I was doing and she was playing along. Your husband’s a doctor. Did he give her anything?”
Gillian sighed. “He’s not my husband.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Boyfriend?”
“I guess.”
“Maybe live-in lover.”
“Give it a rest. Things are difficult enough without you popping back into my life.”
“My mistake. I only spent the last six months fighting everyone in the world to get to you. Maybe I shouldn’t have bothered.”
She stopped on the second floor and glared at him. She dropped her voice slightly when she said, “It was hard on me, too. It still is. It’s hard for everyone, okay? You, me, Jay…”
“But he’s the one you’re with. It can’t be that hard on him.”
“I…”
He put a hand on her belly. Four months, and it already looked bigger than a medicine ball. He didn’t want to imagine what she’d be like in four more months. It would be massive and impossible for him to ignore even if he wanted to. All those nights and weeks and months wondering if she was alive, imagining different scenarios about their reunion…
He felt like a two-time chump just thinking about it.
“Your hand’s cold,” she said.
“I’ve been out in the rain.”
“You’re going to catch a cold.”
“I’ll live.” He looked up, seeking out her eyes. “Four months. If you’d just waited a little longer…”
She looked down at his hand, circling her belly over the nightgown. She placed her hand over his and squeezed. “I know.”
“How?”
“How?” she repeated.
“You know what I mean.”
She didn’t answer right away.
“Gillian…”
“It just happened. It sounds stupid, I know, but it’s true. I was one of his helpers and I probably saw him more than anyone in town, including Jordan. One night I was depressed and thinking about…everything. I used to do that a lot, you know. Every face I saw, I wanted it to be you. Every time someone new came through Processing, I wanted them to be you. I thought you were dead, Keo. I tried to be positive, but every day it got harder. And he was lonely, too, and I guess we just thought it would be okay if we weren’t both lonely for one night.”
“Jordan didn’t know?”
“No. I worked in Medical and she was in Agriculture.”
“Do you love him?”
The question blurted out of him. He didn’t know where it came from, and he regretted asking as soon as it left his mouth. Not because it was something he didn’t want to ask, but because it was something he didn’t want to know the answer to.
She didn’t say anything right away, and the wide-open second floor seemed entirely too large. Although she was standing right in front of him and he could feel her belly pressing against the palm of his hand, she was more distant now than she had been in all those days and nights he thought about her, dreamed of her, and rehearsed their reunion over and over again.
Four fucking months.
“No,” she said finally. “He’s a good man, Keo.” She looked up at him. “But I can never love him the way I love you.”
“You say ‘love.’ Not ‘loved’…”
“I know what I said.”
He smiled. “Does he know that?”
“Yes.”
“But he’s still with you.”
“He’s a good man…”
“Stop saying that.”
“It’s the truth. Maybe one day I’ll come to love him, but it’s never going to be the way it was with us. Back at the cabin, all those months together after the end of the world… You can’t replicate something like that.” She put a warm hand against his cheek and traced the long scar. “But it has to be this way now. Because I need him to care for this baby. And I need this place to keep it safe. Do you understand?”
“But it won’t be safe. Not for your baby.”
“It will be.” She took her hand away and wrapped both arms around her stomach. “The doctors have privileges that the others don’t. My baby is going to be spared.”
Classes within classes, right, Steve?
She pursed her lips. “I know it’s selfish. It’s not fair to all the other mothers, but Jay has a special position here. What happened to me was an accident. Or, at least, I thought it was at first. I wasn’t going to keep it, you know. I was going to leave with Jordan. Then one day I felt it.”
“It?”
“The baby. It kicked. After that, I couldn’t go through with it. I couldn’t leave to raise my baby out there. It wouldn’t have survived for long. But in here, it could. I could watch it grow.”
“In this town…”
“It’s better than out there. Maybe if you had been here earlier, things would be different. But you weren’t, so I made a choice. And I chose my baby.”
She placed her head against his chest and Keo slipped his arms around her. He held her tight and never wanted to let her go, the way he had over six months ago when Pollard’s soldiers attacked the cabin. He had made that choice to save her.
Joke’s on you, pal.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“I know,” he whispered back.
He kissed her hair and inhaled her scent. Just soap and water, he knew, but it was still better than anything he had smelled in months.
Then, because he couldn’t take it anymore, “Let’s go see Jordan.”
*
Jordan was unconscious and lying on a bed in the guest bedroom. She was pantless and wearing an oversize button-down shirt that went all the way down to her thighs. Her face was still badly bruised, the purple and black swelling over her left eye even uglier now than when he had seen it earlier at the warehouse.
The room was dark, but there was enough LED light coming through the back window to see Jordan and her protector. He was a black man in his thirties with a shaved head, and he stood next to the window looking out at the streets-or at least what little of it he could see through the falling rain. He had a Walther P22 with an attached suppressor that he clenched tightly at his side, and the gun twitched when the door opened and Keo stepped inside with Gillian.
“Hello, Dave,” Keo said.
The man grinned. “I’ve never heard that one before.”
“What’s that?”
“What?”
“What?” Keo repeated.
“‘Hello, Dave,’” the man said. “From 2001.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“It’s a science fiction movie. Stanley Kubrick? That’s where the line’s from.”
“I don’t watch a lot of movies.”
Dave shook his head. “Whatever. That your golf cart down there?”
“You need a ride?”
“Hell yeah.”
“This is Keo,” Gillian said. “He’s a friend of ours.”
“‘Ours’?”
“Jordan and me.”
“What happened to your face?” Dave asked him.
“Shaving accident,” Keo said.
“Oh yeah? I ran out of shaving cream months ago.”
“I use butter.”
“Butter?”
“Yes.”
Dave looked like he was trying to figure out if Keo was kidding him, before finally saying, “Word of advice. You’re not nearly as quiet as you thought you were being. I could hear the two of you talking through the wall.”
“Sorry,” Gillian said, and gave Keo an embarrassed look.
“Anyway, I’m seeing a lot of activity on the streets. Soldiers with flashlights moving through the rain. What’s going on?”
“They’re looking for you,” Keo said. “Going house to house. Two of them are on their way here now. We have about twenty minutes to get you and Jordan to a better hiding spot.”
“Shit,” Dave said. “Where?”
Jay appeared behind them, squeezing through Keo and Gillian. “Excuse me,” he said, and walked to the bed.