“Tell them what you told me,” Poe said to Kim. “Come on,” he insisted when she stared at him. “We need to add it in.”

“Fine. Big downer.” She sat back in her chair, drummed her fingers on the table. “Back in February, we heard the report—Eddie heard the same one—out of New York. No progress on the vaccine, government in shambles, over two billion dead.”

“We don’t know if all of that’s true,” Allegra objected. “Or any of it.”

“Empirical evidence supports. What we saw with our own eyes. You can try optimism and hope progress on the vaccine flew from that point, and within another week or so they had it. Then you’ve got to get it produced in mass quantities, and distributed when transportation is also in shambles. But sticking with optimism, the vaccine is created, produced, and distributed. That takes time,” Kim pointed out. “People were dropping like flies. Would this vaccine immunize or would it cure? Would it cure someone already dying? At the rate those infected and not immune succumbed, we could realistically estimate another billion deaths. We could realistically estimate nearly half the world’s population wiped out. And that’s going with optimism.”

“Give them the pessimist’s version,” Poe urged.

“The vaccine never happens. Using our own campus as the gauge, we could have a death rate of seventy percent—that’s about five billion people.”

“I’m not going to believe that.” Allegra’s voice shook as she groped for Eric’s hand. “I don’t believe that.”

“Take the middle ground between optimist and pessimist.” Kim paused a moment, but got a go-ahead signal from Poe. “Even with that middle ground, it’s going to be a hell of a mess out there. Bodies not properly disposed of will spread other diseases. Panic and violent assholes will cause more deaths. Despair will lead to suicides. Add in failed infrastructure, spoiled food, lack of power, unreliable communication. Being stuck here for a couple months is going to feel like a picnic.”

“What’s your solution?” Eric demanded. “Just stay here for-fucking-ever?”

“No, we can’t. We won’t have enough fuel to get through another winter. We don’t have enough defenses if somebody wants to take what we have. And we have to know,” Kim added. “We need people, and we’d better hope some of the survivors are doctors, scientists, engineers, carpenters, welders, farmers. We’d better hope people still want to make babies. We need to form communities, safe havens.

“You know how many guns are probably in this state alone?” she continued. “We’re not going to be the only ones armed. Jesus, think of the nuclear weapons, the bioweapons some nutcase could get hands on. So, yeah, we have to get out there, try to start putting things back together before somebody else blows it all the way up.”

“I…” Allegra pressed a hand to her temple. “I’ve got a headache. Can I…”

Lana rose, went to their store of medication. “Scale of one to ten.”

“An eight. Maybe a nine.”

“Take two.” She brought Allegra two Advil.

“Thanks.” She downed them with her water. “I’m really not feeling very well. I’m going to go lie down.”

“I’m sorry,” Kim began, but Allegra shook her head.

“No.” She shook her head again. “No.”

“Do you really think it’s that bad?” Eric asked.

“I think we have to be prepared for it, yeah.”

“Jesus Christ.” He shut his eyes, blew out a breath. “I’m going to go up, make sure she’s all right.” He started out, paused, looked at Max. “What about people like us?”

“Good and bad, just like anyone else.”

“Yeah.”

Eddie sat, kept stroking his hand over Joe’s head. “I guess when we go, we ought to think about heading south, down toward Kentucky to start. I know that part of things. Like Poe said back when, we need to find someplace we can hunt, fish, grow shit.”

“We’re good at fishing.”

Eddie grinned at Shaun. “Yeah, we are.”

Bracing herself, Lana turned to Kim. “Optimist or pessimist? Don’t hedge,” she added when she saw Kim prepare to do just that.

“Pessimist. Look, the reporter wasn’t some crackpot. I’d been watching her for a week solid before that last report. She held it together, even when she had a gun to her head, even when that guy shot his face off beside her. She said what she knew, what she believed, and what she felt people needed to know. The numbers at that point, the crumbling of the government? Martial law, all of it with no vaccine on the near horizon? Seventy percent, maybe more. Hell, if you get up that high in casualties, you’re already fucked anyway.”

“All right.” She’d be clear-sighted, Lana told herself. For her child. “We all have our strengths. Poe’s getting pretty good with the bow.”

“We all need weapons training,” Max said. “We all have to learn how to defend ourselves, and how to hunt, how to fish. How to cook.”

Lana smiled a little. “I’m available for lessons there. I’ll trade them for driving lessons.”

“I’m a good driver. No Asian driver cracks, black boy.”

Poe snickered at Kim. “It’s the black part of you that can drive. We’ve got a month to work it all out.”

“Then south.” Max nodded at Eddie. “Warmer climate, longer growing season.”

“We get power. Wind or water energy,” Kim said. “We build a greenhouse—extend the growing season. There’s got to be a lot of livestock out there. We herd up cows, chickens, pigs.”

“Build ourselves a world?” Eddie asked.

Kim shrugged. “It’s what we’ve got.”

* * *

Lana slept poorly, chased by dreams.

Crows circling as they had over the black circle. And the flash of something more, something darker all but blanking out the sky. Bloody lightning flamed with it, and roaring thunder followed.

She ran, an arm cradled under her heavy belly, her breath whistling, sweat and blood running. When she could no longer run, she hid, crouching in the shadows while whatever pursued her thrashed, streaked, sneaked, slithered.

When the terrible dream night ended, she walked with her broken heart weeping inside her. She walked, armed with a knife and a gun, a woman the one she’d been in New York wouldn’t recognize.

She walked, a mile, two, then three, with only one purpose. She would protect the child inside her at all costs.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

For two weeks, time was divided between plots, plans, routes, alternates, and the kind of instruction Lana never imagined herself involved in.

She’d never held a gun in her life, and now knew how to fire a revolver, a semiauto, a rifle, and a double-barreled shotgun. Her accuracy improved—still needed work—but she doubted she’d ever overcome her visceral distaste for the shock that ran through her when she pulled a trigger.

Pulling that trigger fired a missile designed to tear through flesh. She hoped, with all she was, she’d never have to aim a weapon at a living thing and pull that trigger.

But she had stopped jerking away every time she fired a gun.

She preferred being the instructor: demonstrating, explaining, walking someone else through how to make a basic soup, how to combine a set number of ingredients into a palatable meal on the fly.

She worked on her archery, though she—and everyone else—considered herself a miserable failure there. She learned how to change a tire and siphon gas, and took daily driving lessons. Those lessons comprised her favorite part of the day—an hour behind the wheel with only Max beside her.

It meant an hour learning a skill she actually liked owning, and time for them to talk about the baby.

Lessons had to be postponed when snow blew in, thick and fast. It melted under sunny skies, froze as night temperatures dipped, and left them with slicks of ice under and over the remaining snow. They spread ash they’d shoveled from the fireplaces to keep paths clear.

Lana sensed everyone, like her, longed for spring. And feared the unknown that would come with the greening.