Mike Mullin - Sunrise

“I’ve got to go.”

I pushed through the crowd until I reached her, Darla on my heels. “Mrs. Manck?” I started, dreading what I had to say.

“Where’s Lynn?” she asked, her face twitching, lips curling down as if she already suspected the answer. “Is he okay?”

“He didn’t make it. I’m sorry.”

Her face was porcelain white. She stood rigid except for the tremors chasing across her cheeks. “No. No. You could be wrong. Maybe he’s only hurt.”

“We brought his body back.”

“He’s not… it could be someone else’s body.”

“I wish. I wish it were anyone else. Me. Or nobody.”

Mrs. Manck sagged. She looked as if she might faint. I stepped toward her, opening my arms to catch her, give her a hug, offer whatever insufficient comfort I could. Instead of embracing me, she lashed out.

I was totally unprepared for the violence of her blow. Her fist caught my jaw, rocking my head sideways with a snap I felt all the way down to the base of my spine. I raised my arms to block—too late, of course—and stepped back.

She didn’t move forward. Her hands fell to her sides, and her trembling grew more violent as if her fury had migrated inward from her fists.

Darla hadn’t moved. Now she opened her arms, just standing there. Tears streamed down Mrs. Manck’s face, and she fell forward into Darla’s arms.

I lowered my fists and stepped around their hug so I could see Darla’s face. She mouthed, “Go on, I’ve got this. I’ll find you later.”

I was relieved, but I also felt a little guilty. I’d led the attack on Stockton; its consequences, including Lynn’s death, were my responsibility. I should be the one dealing with the aftermath, not Darla. I walked on toward the house anyway.

Dr. McCarthy was working in the living room/makeshift hospital. Mom and Belinda were in there, helping him. All three of them looked utterly exhausted. I managed a tired wave in their direction and turned toward the stairs. “Alex, wait,” Dr. McCarthy called.

I took a couple more steps and sagged onto the staircase to wait.

It took Dr. McCarthy a moment to get to the foyer; the living room was packed so tightly with makeshift pallets that it was difficult to move around without kicking a patient. “Good. You heard me.”

“Yeah. I’m so tired I may fall asleep right here. What did you need?”

“I… I wanted to apologize. For what I said before you left. You were right. We needed that food. And you got it.” I turned my head away. “Tell that to Mrs. Manck.”

“Lynn didn’t make it?”

I shook my head.

I felt Dr. McCarthy’s hand on my upper arm. “Maybe it’s kind of like medicine,” he said. “You fight to save everyone, do everything you can, but people die anyway.” I didn’t respond, and after a short silence, Dr. McCarthy went on. “I became a family practitioner in part so I could avoid that—the constant death—I never understood how ER docs or thoracic surgeons handled it. How they could live with all that death. But it found me anyway. And now I think I know. How surgeons deal with it. It becomes motivation. To keep struggling, to keep learning, to save whoever you can.”

“Maybe I’ll feel more like struggling after I’ve slept.” I stood, but Dr. McCarthy didn’t let go of my arm.

“You did the right thing. Even though I told you not to. I’m proud of you, Alex. I got to know your dad a bit after the eruption, before he went looking for you. I think he’d be proud too.” Dr. McCarthy dropped my arm and turned back toward the living room.

I trudged up the stairs, the tears I hadn’t been able to cry before flowing freely down my face. It was all I could do not to sob out loud.

I reached the empty bedroom still crying, pulled my frozen boots off my nearly frostbitten feet, and crawled into bed without even taking off my coat.

Eventually the tears subsided, but I couldn’t sleep. My mind ground over the events in Stockton: the guns aimed at me, Standish and Cliff as they died in Doctore s mansion, Lynn’s corpse laid out in dirty snow. My whole body was sore, and my eyes were swollen from crying. I was desperately tired, but my mind wouldn’t allow me to sleep. I laid there for an hour or more before Darla came into the room and slid into the bed alongside me. Then finally, nestled in her arms, I slept.

The pork in the trucks was originally from Warren, but Mayor Petty was still mostly unconscious and in no shape to divide it up. I talked to Uncle Paul and Dr. McCarthy about it, and we agreed to send the seven semis of pork back to Warren with the refugees but to keep the panel van. It contained enough meat to feed Uncle Paul’s family—my family now— for years. I sent one of our remaining pickups to Warren and kept one—it’d be useful around the farm, at least until we ran out of gas.

It took three days to get people moved from the farm back to Warren. Most of them volunteered to

stay behind and help dismantle the ramshackle structures they’d been living in, but I could tell they were anxious to get home, so I told them not to bother.

We scavenged the useful bits of the lean-tos but broke most of them up for firewood. For a while that saved us from the increasingly long trek to find uncut timber. We needed a lot of it—Darla said more than a cord per week—to keep the fires burning in the living room and in the hypocausts, the system of small underground tunnels that kept our greenhouses warm.

Fortunately the greenhouses were in decent shape. Since people had been sleeping in them and all the kale had been harvested and eaten, we had to turn the dirt and replant. I hoped our new crop of kale would come in soon enough to stave off scurvy. I didn’t particularly look forward to pulling a bloody toothbrush out of my mouth every morning. All our ducks were gone, slaughtered over the past few weeks to feed the horde from Warren, but we still had a breeding pair of goats.

Dr. McCarthy didn’t move back to Warren right away. Several of his patients, Mayor Petty included, were too sick to move. So Belinda returned to Warren to staff the clinic, and our living room continued to serve as a rude hospital.

Uncle Paul moved into Max’s room with the rest of the guys, because he said he couldn’t sleep in the master bedroom. So Mom theoretically had the master bedroom to herself. She hardly ever slept there, though—or slept at all. She spent most of her time in the living room, helping

Dr. McCarthy care for the last of the patients, particularly Mayor Petty.

Ed hadn’t left either, even after almost everyone else had moved back to Warren. Finally I asked him about it while we were chopping wood. “You headed to Warren soon?”

Ed lowered his axe, leaning on the handle. “Well, uh…”

“Well, what?” I held the hatchet I was using midswing, waiting for him to answer.

“Been meaning to ask you. Couldn’t find the right time. Or words. You know.”

“No.” I set my hatchet down. “I have no clue what you’re talking about, Ed.”

“Thought I’d stay here. If you don’t mind, that is.” Ed leaned over farther, putting more weight on the axe handle. “I mean, you know, figure I owe you—”

“You don’t owe me anything, Ed.”

“That’s not true. But even if it was, I’d want to hang around and help. Seems like, well, stuff happens around you.”

“That’s a great reason to leave—not stay,” I said.

“But still…”

I thought about it a moment. “That’d be fine,” I said finally.

Ed straightened up and hefted his axe. “That’s set, then.” I picked my hatchet back up. “Hey, why’re you asking me? It’s Uncle Paul’s farm.”

Ed checked the swing of his axe. “You want me to ask him?”