Halfway through the story, he stopped and said, “Susan, will you marry me?”
She rolled over, wrapped herself around him and whispered, “Of course I’ll marry you!”
He squeezed her and she squeezed him back.
“I love you!” she said suddenly, feeling the emotion more intensely at that moment than she had imagined possible.
“You are my entire life,” he told her. “All that I ever was or could ever have been was meant for you.”
That was more than she could take, and she began to weep openly, kissing him and wriggling her pajama bottoms down for one last time. They made love by candlelight, their tears mixing together as they kissed and said their vows to one another. They agreed to name the child Purity.
Susan fell into a deep sleep a short time later, and he lay beside her running his fingers through her hair and watching her sleep peacefully in the soft yellow light of the candle. He did not know who had been watching the house all that day, but he knew with absolute certainty that they would never, ever harm his wife or desecrate her body.
“I love you, Susan,” he whispered, his throat tight as the tears ran down his face. “And I love Purity. I love you both more than any man has ever loved his family.”
He blew out the candle, and Joe’s pistol went off a second later.
He then got quickly out of the bed and opened the cans of Coleman fuel, pouring them all over the mattress and the counterpane, knowing his way in the darkness by now as well as any blind man knew his own bedroom. He ran up the stairs and opened the last of Joe’s gasoline, pouring it down the stairs. He flung more gasoline around the lower level of the house, then took a road flare from the kitchen counter, popping it alight and tossing it into the basement as he ran for the back door.
The basement erupted in a blast of white flame that shot up the stairs and quickly engulfed the entire lower level of the house. Marty dove from his back porch into the dirt and scrabbled to his feet, grabbing up the carbine and slinging it over his shoulder. He was quick to get out of the light of the flames engulfing the house, running through his neighbor’s backyard by the light of the fire. He ducked quickly into the second house over and made his way upstairs, where he took up a firing position in one of the windows, watching for those who had come to eat his family.
When he saw three men in biker colors crossing the street with shotguns over their shoulders, he became so furious with himself for not hiding the Jeep that he nearly jammed Joe’s .45 up under his own chin. Instead, he quickly unshouldered the carbine and took aim at the closest Mongol. He squeezed the trigger and the biker jerked as though he had been stung by a wasp, grabbing at his neck and falling to the ground. The other two men turned and ran back across the street, but Marty was pretty good with the carbine now. He shot them down before they were able to make it to cover.
Then something hit him between his shoulder blades, and as he fell over on the floor in agony, he saw a large figure standing over him with crowbar.
Brutus picked him up from the floor with one arm and held him against the wall by his throat. “Now I got you, motherfucker, and you’re gonna pay for killin’ my brother!” He slugged Marty in the stomach and threw him to the floor.
“I didn’t!” Marty gasped. “It was him… him!”
Brutus paused before dropping his boot against the back of Marty’s neck. “Him who, asshole?”
“Jeep guy,” he groaned. “Dead under my deck!”
Brutus remembered that Gig had mentioned a body under Marty’s deck, so he jerked him to his feet and threw him into a chair.
“What Jeep guy?”
“Him,” Marty choked, his gut feeling as though he’d been run over by a car. “He tried to take my house… my wife.”
“You’re tellin’ me you killed the fucker who owns that green Jeep?”
“Jeep sure ain’t mine, mister.” Marty was still gasping for air, holding his belly. “It’s got California plates. He was a Secret Service agent… followed my wife back from JPL… check his wallet if you don’t believe me. He was a total psycho!”
Brutus stood thinking it over. If Marty’s story was true, he didn’t exactly owe him any favors now that he had killed his three men in the street, but he might be willing to let him live… for a while.
“Okay, motherfucker,” he said, grabbing Marty’s coat and hauling him to his feet. “We’re gonna check your story out. If that cat ain’t Secret Service, you’re gonna wish I’d broke your goddamn neck!”
Five minutes later Marty was on his knees in the street in front of his burning house, his hands tied behind his back as Brutus and another biker stood examining Paulis’s Secret Service ID.
“Don’t make no sense,” Gig said. “I saw a broad with red hair at the rest stop getting out of the Jeep. She was telling the Army to shoot us.”
“That had to be my wife!” Marty blurted, conjuring his lie off the cuff. “He drove her back from Caltech. Look, I’m an astronomer. I’m the guy who took the story public. My wife worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The Secret Service gave her a ride home the day before the asteroid hit. A few days later he came back and tried to take her for himself. She’s actually the one who shot him, not me.”
Brutus and the other biker stood looking at each other.
“This ID sorta proves he’s telling the truth,” Gig said. “It explains how that bastard was able to kill so many of our bros.”
“So where’s your old lady now?” Brutus demanded.
Marty started to cry, having blocked it from his conscious thought until that moment. “She’s down in the basement,” he sobbed. “Our baby… I shot her… just kill me already. Get it over with!”
“Put him in the truck,” Brutus said, strangely conflicted. “I’ll decide about him later.”
Thirty-One
Life belowground for Forrest and his flock had settled into a pleasant, if a little boring, routine within a few weeks of the impact. The children attended school with Andie for three hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon every day, and the mothers experimented with the food they were allotted to cook for each meal.
Mealtime, especially dinner, was everyone’s favorite because it was story time. They took turns telling stories about themselves or someone they knew. Sometimes the stories were funny and sometimes they were very sad, but it helped them get to know one another and to remember that they were human beings with histories and memories. And most importantly, it helped to pass the time.
At other times they read, watched movies, worked puzzles or played games, and everyone took turns riding the bicycle generators. The women also helped watch the monitors when the soldier assigned to Launch Control wanted to put his head down for a nap, or to step out and stretch his legs. In Forrest’s case it was usually to smoke a cigarette in the cargo bay.
A few of the women were even learning to knit from Maria Vasquez, a skill she had thought would be important for the children to eventually learn as well, having seen to it that a lot of yarn had made its way down into the silo. She had also begun teaching some of the other children to speak Spanish in the evenings.
Late night was the favorite time for the adults. After the children had been put to bed, they almost always played cards, and each of them was allowed either a small bar of chocolate or a shot of whiskey. Almost every mother had someone she shared with, so they could all have a little of each. It wasn’t much, but it was something to look forward to. Euchre and strip poker were favorite card games, but it was agreed that no one would strip past their underwear, the married women especially adamant.