Andrew

LEAVE IT TO THE STATE OF FLORIDA to have a public library in a strip mall. It’s the age-old question: What came first, the library or the Kmart it’s attached to?

The Key Largo Public Library is the rendezvous area for everyone in the Keys after the storm. Its strip mall location has the added benefit of offering room and shelter for about twelve hundred people—the current tally, which, rumor has it, is not expected to grow much more.

We still don’t know what happened on the lower Keys, but over the last three days there have only been a hundred or so stragglers. None of them were at the naval base.

There’s talk about sending a few groups there to find out what happened, but mainly it’s to get supplies. Because what survived the storm is dwindling fast. They’re saying we might run out of food by Christmas, which is in five weeks. But that’s another rumor. That’s what happens when a committee of elected officials isn’t able to give answers immediately and locks themselves away in a conference room in the library while they have everyone else doing supply runs and returning with waterlogged boxes of canned goods from around the Keys. Rumors start. Rocky Horror has been off with a couple other tech people helping to get the radio tower going again so we can check in on the Cuban colony and a few settlements we’ve talked with up the coast.

Meanwhile the rest of us stay here, waiting for something to change. Half the people in the Key Colony are dead or missing, but I can’t stop thinking about Liz and Frank and Matthew and Lisa and Quinten and Jeremy and Lucy. The seven people I saw every day since I got kicked off the boat but won’t see ever again.

It’s especially hard because I can’t really take the time to grieve them without neglecting the kids who are still here. They’re all orphans, and the ones who died were really the only family any of them had left. So I’m stuck trying to pretend to be strong while inside I have flu-year flashbacks of every person I knew dying. And I have to remind myself the kids all experienced that, too. And, yeah, sometimes Jeremy could be a real shit, and Frank had no filter, and Liz was a know-it-all who liked to scold me for every little thing as though I, personally, was going to destroy the kids’ ability to function in postapocalyptic society. But I still miss them all so much.

While I’m in the middle of thinking about them—distracted when I should be paying attention to the card game I’m playing with Taylor, though she doesn’t seem to be into it either—a white guy with dark brown hair and a long beard goes over to Amy and asks to talk to her.

Amy gets up and walks about three feet away. I can hear almost every other word they say, something about the Committee and the Keys. He looks over at me and Amy follows his gaze. Then she thanks him, and he nods and leaves.

“What was that about?” I ask.

“Where are Jamie and Cara?” she asks.

I point over at the boat crew, who are doing a wonderful job making me feel excluded and keeping their meetings away from me. “Mourning the loss of their boat. Did you know that damn thing was struck by lightning twice and survived another hurricane when it was in New Jersey? Plus it’s from the eighties. Maybe she needed to be put to rest. Right on top of a house.”

“I need to talk to the three of you when they’re done. Come find me?”

I don’t like the tone of her voice. “What’s up?”

Henri-Two fusses in the sling across her chest. “Just come find me. I’m going to go feed her.”

“Yeah, all right.” I watch her go, then turn to Taylor. “Can you help Daphne look after the kids while I’m gone?”

“You gonna tell me what she tells you?” She doesn’t even look up from her cards. But next to her, the Kid looks away from Bobo long enough to glance between the two of us.

“Of course. But try and eavesdrop a little more on that lady who thinks her husband is sleeping with the rabbi.” It’s nice to know other people in the Keys still have their own relationship dramas despite the devastation from the hurricane. It adds an illusion of normalcy. I’m also thankful that all the uncertainty between Jamie and me has been on hold the last few days. That’s a nice change.

I hand over my cards to Taylor, who begins putting them away. Admiral Hickey sees me coming, and Jamie follows his gaze over to me.

“Amy wants to talk to us about something,” I tell him, then turn to Cara. “All three of us.”

Cara and Jamie turn to Hickey, probably to ask for permission to leave. Without a word from either of them, he nods. “Go ahead; I’ll send Trevor for you both when we’re heading to the marinas.”

Jamie and Cara follow me. “What was that about marinas?”

“He wants to find another boat,” Cara says. “But not to get Henri. To do supply runs along the coast to see if there’s anything we can bring back.”

At least this means we can put a pin in Jamie’s need to go back to the cabin. That fills my chest with a bit more hope. After everything, maybe staying here and helping out will make him realize we’re a part of this community. It could make him change his mind about staying.

Especially since it seems we’re going to be living with the remainder of Team Orphan now. And, honestly, I really want to. Losing the other kids and Liz made me realize exactly how much I care about them. Seeing people for ten-plus hours a day almost every day will do that.

I want to make sure all the others stay safe. That includes Amy and Henri-Two.

And double for Jamie and Cara.

We find Amy at the bank near the shopping center’s entrance. She’s under the awning of a drive-through teller window feeding Henri-Two.

“Sit,” she says, motioning to the asphalt in front of her.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

But Cara sits across from her. Jamie follows, so I finally sit, too.

“Rocky Horror sent someone to tell me so I could be the one to tell you all.”

My stomach begins to tie itself in knots. What could they possibly be so worried about that they want to tell the three of us before everyone else?

“The radio’s working again,” Amy says. “They haven’t been able to get in touch with Cuba yet, but there’s a couple settlements up the East Coast who have confirmed that the worst of the hurricane missed them. It looks like the storm went from here up the western coast to the panhandle and then inland. A settlement in Alabama said they got some bad wind and rain, but nothing like what we had.”

That doesn’t explain why we needed to be the first to know.

“We asked a few of the East Coast settlements for help,” Amy says.

That’s when I start to connect the dots. Dots that look like the bullet hole in my boyfriend’s side.

“You can’t!” I say. It’s the only thing I can even think to say. There’s no way they can ask Fort Caroline for help.

Amy continues as if she didn’t hear me. “The Committee has been in contact with them since before you both arrived. Initially the Committee agreed to never mention that you’re here. But now they’ve asked those other settlements for help, and all but one said they couldn’t.”

“Why not?” I ask.

“There’s plenty of reasons, Andrew. People are having trouble growing crops because of the pests. The supplies in stores have been spoiled by wild animals and rodents. Or maybe they just don’t want to help us. Fort Caroline is the only one that’s offered.”

“They’re lying,” Cara says. “They would never help someone else.”

She’s right. Fort Caroline doesn’t do aid. They once let a kid die because they didn’t want to waste medical supplies on him.

“It’s some kind of trap,” I say. “They’re coming here to take from you.”

“There won’t be anything for them to take,” Amy says. “The Committee has been lying to everyone about how many supplies we have. Even with rationing, we’ll be out of food just after the new year. Without fuel, we can’t get out of the Keys to search for more supplies. We need help and they’re the only ones offering.”

“Find someone else!” I say.

“When will they be here?” Jamie asks.

Amy looks down at Henri-Two. “Probably a couple weeks. They’re driving supplies down but will be stopping along the way to pick up more and find fuel as they go.”

Cara gets up and leaves. I want to follow her, but I’m not sure if my legs will hold me up. My body is tense and my heart’s racing.

“We’ll be gone before they get here,” Jamie says.

“No,” I say.

He looks at me with pitying eyes. “We can’t be here. If someone recognizes us—”

“They won’t! We can just hide somewhere—the southern Keys, maybe. Wait for them to leave.”

There are supplies down there. The bridges have been wiped out, so we haven’t been able to go and get whatever hasn’t been destroyed by the storm. And there could be more survivors there. Maybe they just don’t have someone like Rocky Horror to fix their radio.

There’s a solution here that doesn’t involve us leaving.

There has to be.

“Andrew,” Amy says. Her voice sounds broken. “They’re coming here for Jamie. Fort Caroline has been sending out broadcasts warning the settlements about him for months now. The Committee gave in and told them he’s here and that they’ll turn him over in exchange for help and supplies.”

My body reacts physically to the thought, like I’m a tire someone slashed a hole in and I’m slowly deflating. Jamie was right. He was scared they’d show up here and that the Keys would turn him over to them and he was right.

“We need to get your things together and you need to get out of here,” she says. “Tonight.”

“Okay.” Jamie stands, but I still can’t move. “Andrew. We have to—”

“What do you think is going to happen when they show up and Jamie isn’t here?”

Amy nods as though she’s thought of this already. She covers herself with her shirt and begins to burp Henri-Two. “I honestly don’t know. But I don’t think we should be here to find out.”

We?

“If you don’t mind the two of us coming along, that is,” she continues. “We’ll try not to slow you down.”

“Of course,” Jamie says. “And you won’t slow us down.”

“You said you couldn’t travel all the way up to your mom with Henri-Two.”

She sounds tired. Resigned. “I said I didn’t want to. But I also never thought this would happen. As much as I want to stay here, I’ve also heard what you’ve been through with those people. I don’t want to be indebted to them, and I don’t want to raise my daughter in a place where a community turns on their own people.”

That makes me think of the kids and what’s going to happen to them.

Why did the Committee do this? Why did they agree to give Jamie up for food? There are any number of ways we all could have survived this, but they chose the only one we can’t take back.

Everything is ruined now.

This place isn’t our home anymore.

And we have to go back on the road.

I finally feel strong enough to stand and Amy does as well. I take Henri-Two from her so she can button up her shirt. Baby Henri is half-asleep, completely oblivious to the difficult decision her own mom has made. Amy holds out her arms and I pass her over. We walk back to our spot and I lock eyes with Taylor, who is talking to the Kid.

What’s going to happen to them?

Jamie goes to Cara and tells her we’re leaving with Amy and Henri-Two. But I can’t stop watching the kids. Worrying about what will happen if we leave them here. Fort Caroline only wants the people who fit in with their rigid systems.

“Cara, what do you think is going to happen when Fort Caroline gets here and finds out Jamie isn’t really here?” She lived with them longer than we did. She knows more about how they operate.

Her eyes cloud. “Nothing good.”

“Will they kill them?”

“Probably not. They might convince the ones they want to come back with them. The rest they’ll leave here to starve.”

“The kids?”

Cara follows my gaze. “They’ll probably say they can help take care of them. Then when they get to Fort Caroline, they’ll put them in the school and train them for their army.”

“Will they come down here with their army?”

“I don’t know. Probably not.”

“What are you thinking?” Jamie asks.

“We have to tell Daphne and Kelly.”

He shakes his head. “We can’t bring all these people with us. Someone will notice when we sneak out of here tonight with a group of kids.”

“We can’t leave them here. We don’t know what’s going to happen when Fort Caroline arrives and finds out they were tricked.”

“We already have a baby, how are we going to take care of seven kids?”

“We’ll figure it out.” I turn away from him and he calls after me. I head over to Taylor first. I promised I’d tell her, and I keep my promises.

Also, she’s old enough that she can make her own decision. But once I get through the backstory about Fort Caroline, it’s a quick conversation. She probably knew she was going to leave with us before I even brought it up.

“We have to bring the others,” she says.

“Good. I need your help convincing Daphne and Kelly, too.”

She nods, looking older than just thirteen. As if she’s grown three years since the storm. Together, we make our way over to Daphne.

We’ve talked about leaving—going back to the cabin—so often, and in our fantasy it was so simple. But now that it isn’t a fantasy—now that we’re facing the actual journey itself—it’s clear it’s a massive undertaking with a bunch of moving parts. And those moving parts are big and dangerous.

Daphne and Kelly are harder to convince than I thought they’d be. Especially Kelly. But Cara tells them what living in Fort Caroline was like, how the power structure was set up and who benefited from it—and how it would absolutely never be anyone from the Keys. The kids deserve better than becoming cannon fodder for Fort Caroline, too.

Finally, after several hours of discussion, Daphne agrees. But Kelly is still on the fence. Jamie made it clear he still thought it was a bad idea for them to come with us, but it’s their decision now.

When Rocky Horror returns to camp, he comes right over to me, looking worried. “She told you, right?”

“Yes. We’re leaving tonight.”

He nods. “I’m coming with you.”

“Seriously?”

“What, like I’m going to stay here and wait for the queer-hating authoritarian losers to realize the person they traveled four hundred miles for is gone? And how long till they find out I’m the one who tipped him off? Hard no.”

I pull him into a tight hug. “Thank you. For telling us.”

“Of course. Now let me go pack my shit.”

I let him go, but ask if I can borrow the golf cart he pulled up in.

He looks up at the sky before handing me the key.

“Don’t be long. Once the sun is down you’ve only got enough battery for maybe ten miles.”

“Got it.”

I tell Jamie and Cara to stay with the kids while Daphne keeps working on trying to convince Kelly to come along. She doesn’t have to, but I wouldn’t want to leave her here. Also, the more adults we have to help with the kids, the better.

I make it before sunset and park the golf cart in the last rays, hoping it will charge the battery a bit more to get me home. Especially since I’ll need to have the headlights on.

Our bedroom smells even more like mildew and mold than it did five days ago. Maybe there really is no salvaging these buildings.

I reach up onto the top shelf of the closet. My hands find only dust at first—the water must not have reached this high, which is a good thing.

Then my fingers touch the cold metal of the handgun. Not in a safe, no lock on the trigger, just loaded and out in the open. Well, on the top shelf of the closet. I take it down and tuck it into the waistband of my jeans—first checking that the safety is still on, of course.

Then I reach up with two hands and take down the rifle. The one we still don’t have bullets for, because we thought we wouldn’t need them.

Unfortunately, the guns are important. Because there are people out there looking for us. For Jamie. And there are more dangers on the road than people.

If we’re going to survive again, as much as I hate these things, we’ll need them.