The System

“You gave too much away…I swear. Pop culture is my party trick. You won’t ever win.”

“You think you know already? That’s like three clues. That could almost be everyone in Hollywood.”

“Tom Hanks,” Lucy answered and she crossed her arms over her chest.

“Whatever. You’re right. I gave it away…no need to show off,” he replied and he tossed a handful of grass at her, but the wind carried it off before it could land. They settled into silence; the Guess-Who game, a variant on twenty-questions that they played during their car rides, ending anti-climatically. Then Grant sighed, and he dropped his voice down to an almost whisper. “We’ve been here three days.”

“I know.”

Lucy didn’t want to look at Grant and see the pressure to leave this place in his eyes. She knew if she saw him, saw his brown eyes and the eagerness, that she would stomp back to the cabin, pack her bag, and climb back behind the wheel of their third vehicle—some silver hatchback that still smelled like cigarette smoke and fast food—and drive straight to Nebraska without a second thought. But something was keeping her rooted in this place; a certain type of contentment that only the wilderness could provide.

Grant never pressured Lucy to make decisions. He never blindly conceded to her wishes either, and he didn’t storm forward with his own agenda. Even when Lucy wished that Grant would just take control, he refused. She admired his maturity while simultaneously feeling aggrieved that it required her to be mature, too. It would have been easy to fall into some angst-ridden teenage moodiness. Discovering your father may have helped plan the extermination of the human race wasn’t an emotional picnic. Here though—sitting among the flowers and the mountains—reality seemed more beautiful, less dark.

“I don’t want to rush you—”

“Us,” she corrected and shot him a sideways glance. “It doesn’t have to be just my decision.” He was staring right at her and she turned back to the lake and kept her eyes trained straight ahead. Nebraska—the idea of it—seemed dark and far away. It was only an eight-hour drive, and there was the potential that her family was close, but when Lucy thought of what she’d find there, the comforts of their log cabins seemed safer. And safe was good.

“Yes, it does,” Grant replied with a half-smile. “It really does.”

Lucy reached out and grabbed his hand and gave it a squeeze. She couldn’t begin to verbalize how grateful she was that Grant understood the enormity of this last leg. And she couldn’t admit to him that she was losing her nerve.

In the end, she had championed the trip, relished the idea of storming into the great unknown. There was an exhilaration born from the adventure, but they’d been on the road long enough that the novelty had worn off; now, with the truth so close, she longed for Oregon and Ethan and mornings of fixing Teddy breakfast and helping him discover the chapter books of her early childhood—Little House on the Prairie or anything with Ramona Quimby or The Boxcar Children, CS Lewis or Roald Dahl.

If her family was safe, they would have come for her. The fact that they hadn’t should have been a clue. Her heart tugged her back toward the known.

Grant seemed to sense the trepidation in her silence. He lowered himself to the ground and then tucked his arms under his head.

They sat like this several times over the past few days. Grant sprawled out staring at the sky, Lucy tucked up, knees to chest, shedding the flowers of their petals.

“We can’t stay here forever,” Grant said.

“You have to admit it’s tempting,” Lucy replied.

“Come on, Lula,” he admonished kindly, using her best friend Salem’s moniker for her. It was endearing and sad all wrapped up into one. They had been there together when Salem succumbed to the virus, and the images haunted Lucy every time she closed her eyes.

“I think we give it another night. Just one more? Sit by the fire, make a good meal. And I want to know it’s our last night. I want to enjoy it. I don’t know what lies ahead…and I want to have one good, big, night.”

“We’ll be in Nebraska by tomorrow, then?” Grant asked, his eyebrows raised.

She shuddered. Then shrugged. And finally nodded.

“Hey, I get it,” Grant said. “And I don’t blame you,” he added. “But—”

“I know,” she interrupted him. “I know. Tomorrow.” Giving them a time frame made it real and tangible; in twenty-four hours she would be in a different state and searching for her family.

Grant didn’t move from the ground. “Did you travel much? As a kid?” he asked, sensing her discomfort and changing the subject. “Have you ever been here…before everything?”

“Yellowstone?” Lucy asked, and then she shook her head. “We didn’t travel too much.” Traveling with six kids was a nightmare; all promises of joyous family vacations ended in disaster and yelling. Once they had gone to Disneyland, but it was in the pre-Harper era, as Lucy was embarking on her first year of junior high. The twins cried the entire plane trip and Galen never stopped talking; once they arrived, Ethan and Lucy kept trying to pretend like they were spending the day by themselves. They migrated ten steps forward, backward, or to the side, assuming the identities of older teens enjoying a day of independence. Once, Maxine called to them to join them in a line, and Ethan yelled back, “Stop talking to us! Creep.”

How much she had longed to be free from her embarrassing family during that particular vacation. Many of their Disneyland pictures captured Lucy’s pre-teen angst perfectly; pouty lips, crossed arms, nary a happy thought in sight. Ethan whispered in her ear while they climbed aboard Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, “It’s not like we even need them for anything. I know how to get back to the hotel. We should ask to split up.” The request was met with icy glares and too-loud lectures about the importance of family.

“Someday I’ll be dead and you’ll wish you enjoyed Disneyland with me,” Maxine had said to Lucy with an extended finger, her voice loud enough to solicit bemused smiles from passersby.

Lucy blushed then as she blushed now, thinking back on her youthful impertinence.

“Did you?” Lucy returned the question.

Grant nodded. “Only child. Divorced parents. For a few years they really tried to top each other. Indoor water parks. Hawaii. Each trip helped them feel a little less guilty. Like, hey, we can’t screw him up too badly, I mean, we took him to Sea World and Six Flags in one summer. What kid wouldn’t want that? And sure, I was at fun places, but my dad barely spoke to me. Then my parents got remarried…”

She raised an eyebrow and Grant shrugged.

“Yeah, as a kid you’d dream about that happening. And then it did, and I’m not sure it was better. I’m not sure they remarried for the right reasons. Or I should say, my dad didn’t remarry her for the right reasons. My mom never gave up hope…never stopped loving him.”

Lucy hesitated. She wanted to ask Grant about his mom. He mentioned her occasionally, but he hadn’t offered up any details of his life beyond small jabs at his dad and passing recollections about his life pre-virus. Grant spoke more about the art of pole-vaulting and mentioned his hopefulness that a movie director survived the apocalypse because how could there be a world without movies?

But Grant’s mom seemed taboo. A topic of conversation they could not traverse together. In the past eight days alone, Grant had broken down and cried twice. Both times seemed out of the blue and Lucy couldn’t pinpoint the trigger for his grief. He had seemed uncomfortable afterward too—ashamed that she had been a witness to tears—however, Lucy let the moments run their course, always quick with a comforting squeeze or a random story to change the mood.

“That’s enough of that,” he exhaled. “So, Lula, what’s on the docket for our last day in paradise?” Grant asked.