“Let’s walk up to the lodge,” Grant said with authority. “There’s a piano. I’ll start a fire. We can raid the kitchen and see if anything non-perishable survived.” He stood up and wiped the dirt off the seat of his jeans.
Lucy looked up at him, squinting into the late morning sun. After a moment, she replied, “It’s a date.”
The lodge was a small wooden building located a short walk from the lakeside cabins. Defunct Christmas lights were strung around the perimeter and a wood carving of a buffalo greeted travelers at the entryway. There were twelve-foot doors, with inlaid carvings that told an old story about a black bear traveling along the peaks of the Tetons. Lucy ran her hand over the wood and it was silky smooth to the touch. Then they swung the lodge doors open wide and entered the musty lounge; dust covered every surface—the spring cleaning prior to the summer opening interrupted by the virus.
Grant built a fire in the wood-burning fireplace in the center of the room. He arranged dry logs, conveniently stacked next to the side of the fireplace, and shoved in stacks of lodge brochures to add to the kindling. Then he reached into his pocket and produced his Zippo lighter, lit the corner of the paper, and stepped back to admire the flames as they licked upward, engulfing the wood in a whoosh and filling the area with warmth.
Lucy walked over to a small bar area and opened up a small refrigerator. The contents were limited, but since the lodge area was without power, the leftover items had spoiled. There was a block of limp, moldy cheese, a bottle of ketchup, and a small collection of individually wrapped butter packets. Lucy shut the door and kept moving. Hand-carved and mounted to the wall behind the bar was a wine rack. Placed into the little cubbies were dusty bottles of reds and whites and blends. She took a glass, wiped it down with a nearby paper towel and then scanned the bottles.
With the fire now crackling, Grant slid onto the piano bench and lifted the lid. He began to play a melody and Lucy spun to look at him. She recognized the song. It was from some indie band that Ethan liked; she always mocked him for his musical taste—listening to bands that steeped themselves in obscurity and thumbing his nose at popular genres. Music snobbery ran amuck on Portland college campuses; three months into his freshman year of college, Ethan abandoned his high school hip-hop loving ways, procured a fake ID, and started hitting up shows at Dante’s or across the river at Mississippi Studios. He’d go alone, which seemed tragic to Lucy. But Ethan loved it.
“Was that Spoon?” Lucy asked when Grant’s song ended. She blushed when he broke into a huge grin. “Was that impressive?” she asked with a hint of self-satisfaction.
“Not so much, actually. It’s not like they’re completely obscure,” Grant plucked out a different tune with one hand, his body still turned to face Lucy. “I was more impressed that you got Tom Hanks on the second guess.” He grinned. “Are we drinking wine?”
She shrugged. “It’s here. It’s a liquid.”
“How’s our water supply?” Grant spun his body on the bench to shift his attention. Their voices echoed in the absence of other sound.
“Dwindling.” They had each packed enough of her father’s water pouches to last a week; in smaller towns, where the virus took lives in a surge, leaving no time for looters to rise up, it was easy to find bottled water and soda cans. But in the larger cities, where people killed for clean water, there was nothing.
The bioterrorists contaminated the water supply first. Their airborne attack was secondary. Either way, despite her inoculations and Grant’s apparent inherent immunity, they were hesitant to drink tap water. And that was even if they could. In some places, like the cabins, running water ceased entirely—leaving dried up pipes and restricted access. In a pinch, the lake water would suffice, but Lucy hadn’t become thirsty enough to try it. They’d managed well on stolen goods, water pouches, and MREs. It wasn’t luxury living, but they’d encountered limited hardships.
Finding a corkscrew, Lucy spun the screw down into the softness of the cork and then yanked upward, the stopper slipping outward with a pop. Then Lucy poured a glass. She took a sip and felt the bitter liquid on her tongue. In her mind, she predicted wine was just an alcoholic version of grape juice, but she was wrong. Lucy dribbled the wine back into the glass and then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. A tiny river of purple dripped down her chin.
“It was that delicious, huh?” Grant asked. He raised his eyebrows. “If you offer me any of that, I don’t want the same cup.”
“It’s gross.”
“It’s sophisticated. An acquired taste.”
“I’ll pretend you didn’t just insult me because I don’t like wine.”
“Here,” Grant stood up and walked behind the bar. He took the bottle and raised it to his lips and then took a small swallow. “It’s not so bad,” he said, setting the bottle back down in front of them.
They stood in silence; then Lucy moved past Grant to the fire. She sat down on the hearth and rubbed her hands in front of the flame.
When she looked up, Grant was looking at her. He rested his elbows on the bar and scratched the top of his head.
“Have you been thinking about how many other people are like me?” He asked her.
“Catholic, piano-playing, hot-air balloon geniuses?”
Grant rolled his eyes. “Incorrigible.”
“Come on,” Lucy tucked her hands into her lap. “You know I don’t know how to answer that.”
They had been having the same conversations since they left Oregon. It was always variations on a theme: speculative musings, worries about the future, addressing the unanswerable. Sometimes they would know the topic was a repeat and they’d discuss it again out of interest—and out of a human need to say, “I’m still thinking about this. It’s still on my mind.” And other times, it was like they had forgotten they’d traversed that road before, delving deeply into a conversation before realizing that it felt familiar.
Out of their more common topics, they often wondered about Nebraska. What was in Brixton? Would her family be in plain sight? What if they got there and no one was there? Or they pondered life as they knew it: Would they ever eat ice cream again? How long would it take before buildings crumbled? Were there groups of indigenous people in the rain forest somewhere totally protected from the virus and living life like normal? Could there be more people immune and carving out a life in the ruins?
They never talked about Lucy’s dad.
They never speculated about his role in the bioterrorism.
Lucy let those questions stay unasked. Both of them seemed to understand that to admit Scott King was somehow involved meant they were walking straight into the lion’s den. It was a scenario that was too painful to contemplate fully.
“I know, I know,” Grant replied and he joined Lucy by the fire. “I just keep thinking how cool it would be if we just met up with a whole group of people…immune…and then we’d realize that we can start over, you know? Start a little city. Do things right.”
Grant had said that before too. “A little village, where people are kind to each other, and you pay for things with your talents, and no one is in charge, and everyone is valued,” he had mentioned once. He waxed on about taking chicken eggs over to his neighbor’s house to exchange for fresh cow’s milk. A place where everyone was a giant family with no hidden agendas. Lucy thought it sounded like the kind of city in a science-fiction movie where everyone turned out to be robots. His brand of post-apocalyptic socialism sounded nice in theory, but even Lucy knew it wouldn’t take long for people to fight for power.
She had taken AP Government, after all.
“I’m sure you aren’t the only one who survived the virus after exposure. You can’t be.” She said it once and she said it again, for his sake.