The Release

“Where should I sleep?” Grant asked and at first no one answered him. “If you’re concerned about—”

“Stop!” Lucy said quickly and firmly. “No. You’ll sleep in my parent’s room…if that’s okay.”

“It’s perfect,” he replied and he walked over to the doorway and turned around one last time. “Night. And…” he looked at Lucy, “I’ll see you.”

Lucy couldn’t bear it and she rushed forward, wrapping her arms around him. “I’ll stay up with you, if you want. A game of Monopoly? You haven’t even had di

Grant kissed the top of Lucy’s head in a brotherly way and smiled. “Let me be alone.” He took a breath. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had that much.” And he turned and ascended the stairs, taking each one with slow deliberate steps, looking down at his feet. Then Lucy watched as he disappeared down the hallway.

Ethan requested a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for di

For the rest of the evening they danced around sensitive subjects and discussed their mutual horror stories. And Lucy even cried upon Ethan’s retelling of A

No one knew what was happening. It had only just started then.

Talking with Ethan felt natural, but every once in awhile he would wince, and Lucy was reminded of his pain.

“Is it bad?” Lucy asked.

He nodded. “The painkillers don’t help. If we were dealing with a normal, everyday situation, I think I would lose my legs, but Lucy, I don’t think I’ll ever walk again.”

“You don’t know that.”

“If Spencer can do what we asked of him, I’ll have a doctor take a look at them soon.”

Lucy was reminded of what those four vials bought them—a chance to save Ethan’s life.

“You think he can do it? Find someone?” Lucy asked and then as she watched Ethan’s face fall, she immediately regretted it.

But he didn’t respond. After a long moment, Ethan reached over and grabbed her hand.

“I love you,” Ethan said. “Have I ever said that before?”

Lucy smiled. “Not recently.”

“Well, I do.”

“I love you too.”

“Yes, I think he can do it. I have to believe that he can. And we’re going to survive this. We’re going to figure this whole thing out.”

“Sure,” Lucy said with a smile. “As soon as we figure out what this is.”

Lucy wanted to sleep in her own bed. Ethan, sleepy and loopy from a cocktail of Vicodin and some of their father’s scotch, passed out on the couch. For several minutes, she stood outside her parent’s bedroom and pondered going inside to check on Grant, but the darkness and the distressing prospect of finding him already gone, kept her from fearlessly waltzing over with a flashlight. She opened the door and whispered, “Grant? Grant?” but he didn’t answer. And with a heavy heart, Lucy retreated, prepared for the worst.

Lucy, who had navigated her bedroom and the upstairs hallways during power outages and darkened lightless nights before, was not afraid of retreating to the shadows of her own room to sleep under her own sheets, under her own blanket. However, something about her house felt different than the other times she had been seeped in darkness.

She thought perhaps she could sleep and convince her brain that this night was just like any other night: Her parents downstairs, discussing the day in the absence of children with hushed voices. Harper asleep in her princess bed. Malcolm and Monroe tucked into their bunk-beds, trading fart jokes and brotherly quips. Galen reading contraband books by flashlight under the covers until someone caught him and forced him to bed. These were the rituals. This is what the house was supposed to feel like. Instead it felt like a tomb.

Their house was large and cozy, even if it had paper-thin walls and décor regulations through the HOA. Her parents paid for parks and atmosphere, the promise of safe streets and cozy cul-de-sacs. Whispering Waters, their little neighborhood was called. The name implied peaceful joy, happiness, and comfort.

If only her neighbors had known that the congenial scientist, quick with a smile and always available to offer a ladder, an hour of service, or a kind word, was starting a doomsday shelter in his fruit cellar. What would they have thought if they had known that somehow he had predicted the end of the world? That he was clandestinely spiriting away food and water and vaccines and pictures of top-secret experiments right under the noses of his unsuspecting family.

Unsuspecting. It was a true and frightening word.

Ethan had a theory that their mother was in the dark. Otherwise, he pondered, why would she have ever sent Lucy back to school for her homework in the first place? And while it wouldn’t be the first time in history that a man kept secrets hidden from his wife, Maxine’s potential blindness pained Lucy greatly. And it was this lack of knowledge cost her mother both of her eldest children. No doubt their mom assumed they were dead.

And that was even operating under the assumption that her family was alive. It was a stretch and a myth; an idea born from panic and an inability to understand a world where just she and Ethan had survived Armageddon upon the human race.

All these things ran through her brain in a loop and it occupied every second of her time, keeping her alone with memories and flashbacks. She tossed, turned, flung her blankets off, then sought them out and covered herself again. Below, she could occasionally hear a muffled voice. Ethan. Moaning in his sleep. And she kept listening for Grant, a snore or a rustle of the bedsprings—but her parent’s room was silent.

Lucy, back in the room she had dreamed of and wished for while trapped at the school, felt fully alone.

Careful to keep her voice small, Lucy prayed what she could remember from Grant’s prayer at Salem’s memorial and sobbed herself to sleep.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Seven days after The Release

Teddy’s high, little voice roused Lucy from sleep.

“My mommy’s making pancakes with syrup,” he said and he poked her in the shoulder with a plastic sword from the King siblings’ communal dress-up bin. “And I’m going to have an orange juice!”

“Oh?” Lucy wondered how this was possible, but she didn’t question the child. She picked up her pillow and flipped it over to the cold side and then rested her head, closing her eyes again.

“I’m a pirate,” Teddy continued.

Then Lucy’s eyes snapped open and she swung her feet to the floor. Slipping past Teddy, who didn’t seem too fazed by her quick departure, Lucy darted up the hallway to her parent’s room and swung open the door. The quilt on their bed had a Grant-sized indent and a blanket that her mom usually kept at the foot of the bed for decoration was tossed to the floor. But Grant himself was nowhere to be seen. Lucy rushed back down the hall and got held up on the stairs as Teddy made his way down step by step. She grabbed him by the waist and then stomped down with him, Teddy protesting with, “Let me down. Pirates like to walk!”

Darla made pancakes over a refreshed fire. She held a skillet over the flame with both hands and then set it down on floor to flip them.

“Pancakes,” she a

“Where’s Grant?” Lucy asked, setting Teddy down beside his mother.