“Is that the only weapon you’ve got?”

  Dana nodded. “Yeah. I mean, well, I have this.” She drew a kitchen knife out of her boot, a thick vegetable chopper with a good point. “Does this count?”

  Carson smiled wryly. “Yes, it definitely counts. By the gun, please.”

  “Sorry.” She leaned the knife against the wall by the rifle, but then looked up at Carson warily. “Um, Carson, are you—maybe I should keep my gun. You’re being kind of hostile. What’s up with you?”

  Really? Carson wanted to say. We’re in a destroyed city full of looters and hidden dangers. Did you expect me to throw a party for you?

  Instead, he took one step back and took a hand off his AR-15. “I’m sorry, Dana. You’ve caught me at a bad time. Is there something I can do for you?”

  Dana looked confused for a moment. Then she gave an odd snort, which Carson realized was a sob stifled with a laugh. “A bad time? I’ve caught you at a bad time? Do you have any idea what’s been going on around here, Carson? Where have you even been for the past several weeks?”

  She was speaking quickly, almost hysterically, but didn’t raise her voice like she used to. He was grateful for this, since it would have carried out the open window. In the old days—earlier that summer—he’d been able to hear her all the way across the street.

  “Well?” she demanded, looking him up and down. “The whole world falls apart, people are dying right and left, and you just show up after it’s all over looking healthy and fit? What do you mean I’ve caught you at a bad time?”

  Carson didn’t respond, couldn’t find the words. She always had this effect on him. She rolled her eyes, which were brimming with tears, and turned to grab her knife from the floor.

  “Dana! Put the knife down!” He barked the order sharply and put his hand back on his rifle, stopping just short of pointing it at her.

  She paused, knife in hand, studying his face and the weapon in his hands. Slowly, defiantly, she slid the knife back inside her boot. “Carson, I’m not sure I like the way you’re looking at me,” she said, struggling to make her voice calm. “I thought you’d be—I thought we’d be delighted to see each other again. Why are you being like this?”

  Carson sighed. “You’re right. Okay? You’re absolutely right. I’m acting like a jerk. I’m sorry. You’ll just have to take my word for it that there’s a good reason for me to be very, very cautious right now.”

  Dana still smoldered, but she folded her arms and waited for him to say something more.

  “Look, Dana. I really am sorry. I’m kind of in the middle of something right now and I wasn’t looking for anyone to be here. You sort of took me by surprise.”

  “What you mean is that I’m interrupting your plans. That you don’t want me here. That you didn’t even think I would be here, like I wouldn’t last this long.”

  “No, Dana. Not like that at all.” Exactly like that, actually. Perhaps I underestimated you. “I have some things I need to do and they are very important. I have to do these things, you understand? I came here to see what was left, if any of my stuff was still here. That’s all.”

  “What things do you have to do, Carson? You mean, survive? Yeah, I totally understand, because, guess what? That’s what I’ve been doing for the past six weeks too! So don’t act all superior like you’re doing anything different than I am.” She rubbed at a smudge of dirt on her chin, which only spread it. “You act so high and mighty. Just where do you get off greeting me with a loaded gun and treating me like a robber? We were practically dating until you took off, for heaven’s sake!”

  “We weren’t dating,” Carson retorted. Wrong thing to say.

  “What is it with you?” she nearly shrieked, coming closer to her old tone. “Why can’t you admit we have something going together? Why are you always so secretive, so stand-offish? What are you hiding? For crying out loud, Carson, I’ve been dying here alone!”

  She was raising her voice more and more, and Carson could feel the situation deteriorating rapidly. Given the choice of throwing her out the door or deescalating the situation, he opted for the latter. “I have food,” he said, in a low voice.

  Dana stopped her tirade and stared at him. “Really?”

  “Yeah. Lots of it. Sound like something you’d be interested in?”

  “Oh my gosh. I might even cry. Again, I mean. Real food? Fresh food?”

  “Uh, yeah. Reasonably fresh. And I’ll share all of it if you’ll sign a peace treaty.”

  “I’m sorry, Carson,” she sniffed, then managed a wan smile. “I can keep it together, I promise. Especially if you have food. I wasn’t expecting that.”

  “Great. Thanks for getting a hold of yourself. But in exchange, I do need some information about what’s been going on around here,” he said.

  “Sure,” she said, brushing a strand of hair out of her eyes. “There isn’t much else to talk about, is there?”

  “Is the neighborhood reasonably safe? I mean, can we talk and rest here, or should we find a secure location?”

  Dana shrugged. “It’s not as dangerous now as it was. Sometimes the looters come through, but two days ago there was a shootout between two gangs a couple blocks north, and the looters have been making themselves scarce. This area’s been combed over, anyway. I guess I’m not really sure what you mean by a ‘secure location’. Like, is there even such a thing anymore?”

  “There is, actually. And it sounds like we’ll be much safer there. Grab your rifle, and I’ll show you. Just keep it pointed away from me at all times, please.” He was still going to be cautious, even if he was committed to taking Dana into his confidence now.

  “Don’t worry, Carson,” Dana said, picking up the Remington and resting it over her shoulder. “If I haven’t shot my own foot off yet, it’s probably not going to happen any time soon. I sleep with this thing every night. Where are we going?”

  “In my bedroom,” Carson said, leading the way. “I have something to show you that will blow your mind.”

  Dana stopped in her tracks and the rifle came off her shoulder, its barrel wavering in the air threateningly. “Carson! First you lure me in here at gunpoint, lock the door behind me, and try to take my weapons. Now you want me in your bedroom? Forget it!”

  He held up his hand in surrender. “Whoa! Put the gun away, Dana. Bad choice of words, but I assure you there is nothing to fear. The bedroom is where the food is.”

  “Not the kitchen? Weird.”

  “Just stand in the hallway and I’ll show you.” Carson went into his bedroom, three walls of which were covered in stuffed bookshelves. History, mostly, but with a fair representation of thrillers, true crime, and a few other genres he enjoyed. He eyed them longingly, then threw his backpack off the bed and tipped the mattress up. Setting it against one book wall, he did the same with the bed platform underneath. Dana watched suspiciously as he rearranged the furniture, but kept up a stream of conversation the whole time.

  “Gosh, it’s nice to have someone to talk to. Seriously, where have you been all this time, Carson? I thought you were dead.”

  “Oh, just up in the hills. Hunting.”

  “Really? I didn’t know you were a hunter.”

  “I didn’t know you were either,” Carson said, glancing significantly at her rifle.

  “Oh, this?” Dana laughed, patting the walnut stock. “Yeah. I’m not a hunter. I found this.”

  “You ‘found’ it?” Carson was incredulous.

  “Yeah. I did, Carson. Please don’t ask how, or where. It was a bad day. A really, really bad day.”

  Carson nodded. “Sure.” He began feeling around in the carpet where the bed had been. Behind him, Dana leaned against the wall and her body shuddered with a long sigh. Tears came into her eyes again. “It was a really bad day, Carson. And there was nobody to help. There was nobody.”

  “Hey, you don’t have to think about it,” he said, sorry he’d kicked off the painful train of thought for her.

  Looking up at her, he felt a stab of shame. While he’d been twiddling his thumbs at a mostly-peaceful cabin in the mountains, Dana had been dealing with the complete upending of her world. For a person like her, this scenario was as bad as it could get. No friends, no one to talk to, and the only human contacts were violent predators to be avoided at all costs. Carson had his mission, but for all its strategic importance, now for the first time he truly understood what a tactical, practical difference he could have made in the lives of his fellow citizens had he remained.

  Dana had been the social butterfly of Hemingway Circle, a vivacious and charming woman that brought people together, thrived on attention, and left no one out. She enjoyed cooking for others, organizing block parties, and bringing brownies to the anti-social veteran that she found so intriguing. But the woman that stood just outside his bedroom now was hollower in every way. Her cheeks were gaunt, her eyes darker underneath, and her figure more angular and thin. Her personality had also suffered, much of her charm replaced with hard-learned suspicion and fear.

  “Sorry, Carson,” she said, drying her eyes.

  “You really don’t have to apologize, Dana.”

  “No, really, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, about everything. Everything I’ve ever said or done. None of it was worth anything. I tried so hard—” she broke down and sobbed for a few minutes. Carson stood up and went to her, putting his arms gently around her and letting her cry into his shoulder.

  “I always tried to build a community around me, you know?” she finally choked out. “But it’s all gone, all of it. I wanted friends so badly, and now where are they? I’m the lone survivor around here.” She sniffed and rubbed at her eyes, smearing the grime across her face. “They came for your house, Carson. There was nothing I could do. It actually started with the neighbors. A couple weeks in, when everybody had noticed you weren’t around, they started poking around to get at your water and food. I didn’t stop them. And later, when the really nasty people came through, I had my rifle but I still didn’t try to stop them. I didn’t want them to notice me.”

  Carson shook his head and tilted her chin up. “Don’t worry about it, Dana. That was never your responsibility. Did they hit your place too?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “There was a group of them, pretty early on. They had guns. I couldn’t do anything, none of us could. The cops were long gone. They took everything.”

  “How have you scraped by since then?”

  Dana shrugged. “I stole things. The supermarkets were cleaned out less than a week after. Cars weren’t working, so you had to walk down and push the cart back. Lots of people just waited for folks to leave the store, then beat them up and took their carts. I found things. After people left, I became a looter too.” She bit her lip. “The last few days, I’ve… I’ve… eaten garbage, Carson.” She sobbed again. “Sorry, sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to, I was hungry, and all the food was gone. I’m sorry.”

  Carson shook his head. There was a pit in his stomach as he realized the extent of what his friend had been through, what he could easily have prevented. She wasn’t his responsibility, they weren’t married or anything… but she had suffered terribly, and with a few words or an hour of his time he might have spared her all of it. But he hadn’t bothered, didn’t feel it was his place.

  “You survived, Dana. You’re still here, because you’re strong and you did what you had to. I admire that. It’s always easier to give up, or turn completely feral and lose all your humanity.” He led her into the bedroom and pulled a book off the shelf to show her. Lord of the Flies. He handed it to Dana. “Ever read it?”

  She nodded. “I’ve seen lots of that. Worse. It makes me sick to think about.”

  “You just have to keep going, Dana. That’s the point. You never give in, you never surrender your humanity. Die, maybe, if it comes to it. But you don’t ever let the animal inside take over.”

  Her tears finally stopped. “Sounds like you’ve thought a lot about this.”

  Carson looked around at the bookshelves lining the room, bending under the weight of over a thousand books. “Yeah. Maybe too much thinking and not enough acting.”

  She sniffed and tried to smile. “You are such a bookworm, Carson. Always reading. You never came to any of my parties. You were probably sitting in here reading all these books, weren’t you?”

  He smiled. “Don’t you ever read?”

  “Sure. Harry Potter. And Dan Brown.”

  Realizing he’d find little common ground on that front, Carson knelt where the bed had been and felt until he got his fingers under a concealed slit in the carpet.

  “Enough about the past. Let’s talk about dinner. What would you eat right now, if you could have anything?”

  “Oh, what a question.” Dana rolled her eyes heavenward. “You have no idea how much time I have spent during the past month imagining food. Anything at all? Let’s see. Chicken Alfredo, heavy on the chicken, heavy on the Alfredo. Green beans with garlic butter. Red potatoes, those little succulent ones. With more butter. Rolls, hot rolls. Then chocolate, lots of it. In many forms. Maybe a German chocolate cake, or a pan of brownies. That’s for starters.” She stopped, embarrassed. “Is that too much? Sorry. I’m a pig, I know.”

  Carson shook his head. “Stop apologizing, Dana. You’ve never done anything in your life you need to apologize for. Now check this out.”

  He pulled back a large flap of carpet, revealing a trapdoor set into the cement floor.

  Dana leaned forward, eyes wide. “What is that?”

  Carson withdrew his key ring, selected the appropriate key, and unlocked the trapdoor. He pulled it open, revealing a steep set of metal stairs, more of a ladder really, descending into darkness. He flicked on a flashlight that was hanging from a nail at the top, and gestured to the secret basement.

  “It’s dinner time. Come on.”

  “You go first.”

  Carson climbed down, flashlight in hand. The ladder went down about eight feet, ending anchored to the cement floor of the cellar. The walls were lined with shelves. But not bookshelves…

  Dana climbed onto the head of the ladder and began descending after him. “Oh my gosh, Carson, this is so cool.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “Now that you mention it.” He shined the flashlight around until he found a battery-powered lantern and turned it on, which illuminated the space nicely.

  It was a larger room than at first appeared, and seemed to run under a good part of the house above. It had been carefully dug out of the townhome’s crawlspace, deepened and widened and shored up with braces and cinderblocks until it was a usable and secure pantry, bunker, and all-purpose hideout. To Dana, it revealed one of many hidden wells in the psyche of the man she had always wondered about but never gained access to.

  Against one wall there was a workbench, and on the wall above it several tools neatly arranged. Every square inch of the cellar had been maximized for efficient use of space. All the supplies imaginable were on the shelves: flashlights, lanterns, candles. Spare batteries, matches, fire-starters of all kinds. Backpacks, sleeping bags, pads, tents. Snowshoes. A rack of guns, with stacked boxes of ammunition underneath. Two large storage barrels of water.

  And best of all, the food. Shelves and shelves of it, some dehydrated or freeze-dried backpacker’s meals, some in cans, some boxed, some MRE’s, even some bottled fruit in Mason jars. Dana pointed at the glass jars with arched eyebrows.

  Carson laughed. “No, I don’t can my own. I helped one of my friends prune his mom’s orchard and pick her fruit last year, and that was how she showed her gratitude. Elberta peaches, the best. You can’t have any of those. Mine, all mine.”

  “You selfish swine.” Dana giggled as she stared around at the prepper’s cornucopia. “I cannot believe this was hiding here all the time, and only you knew about it!”

  “I think,” said Carson, walking to one of the shelves, “that I will have some barbecued pork on mashed potatoes, followed by spaghetti and meatballs. Dessert shall be . . . yes, there.” He took a jumbo package of M&M’s, the crowning glory of Mars chocolate company, from the shelf, checking the expiration date. “Doesn’t expire for another year. My cup runneth over.”

  Dana was speechless. “You have M&M’s?”

  “It would appear so.” Carson was enjoying this.

  “This is incredible. This is the best thing that’s ever happened in my life!”

  “What, a cement room stuffed with food? Doesn’t take much to make you happy.”

  “No,” she said. “Not anymore, it doesn’t.”

  “Well, it’s not just for looking at,” Carson said. “Let’s dig in. The MRE heaters in the corner there will allow us the luxury of a hot meal down here without any fumes or open flame. I’ll show you how they work.”

  Chapter 7: Prepper’s Paradise

  As the sun sank blood-red in the west through the smoky haze outside, Carson and Dana closed the trapdoor and by the light of a few lanterns shared a meal of several courses. Dana ate like wild animal, and Carson was pretty famished, as well. Only when they were stuffed, and each had a bag of M&M’s to munch, was Carson able to get more level-headed information from Dana. He set up a fold-out cot for her and sat back on a couple of duffel bags full of toilet paper and other soft supplies. As ever, it was his talkative neighbor that started the conversation.

  “You’re one of those preppers, aren’t you?”

  “I beg your pardon?” Carson was all bland innocence.

  “You know what I mean. Those doomsday types that stockpile stuff. A prepper.”

  “I must confess myself at least partially guilty. I did stockpile a few small items, as you can see.”

  “Well,” she said. “I’m glad you did. It always seemed so goofy to me, those types of people. And now it’s like you’re the only one in the world who makes any sense.”

  Carson inclined his head. “Thank you.”

  “So what’s going on?” she asked. “I mean, what happened? The world just stopped working one day?”