Aurora(70)

Aubrey’s breathing became regular as she listened to the music drifting up the open stairwell. She was tired and satisfied. She’d harvested three hundred gallons of water. She’d had satisfying sex with Phil, who in the past few months had revealed himself to be much more substantial than she’d ever thought. She’d been given a sliver of hope by Norman, though she refused to let herself dwell on it. And the neighbors had come together to protect Celeste, who’d shown every sign of not needing protection at all.

The kid had even punched Aubrey’s ex-husband in the throat.

It was, Aubrey thought, a nearly perfect day.





26.





Outside Jericho

Thom sat on the edge of the bed, staring down into the drawer, and wondered if Ann-Sophie expected him to take his glasses too. There were eleven pairs of them, after all; the felt-lined drawer had been custom-built to hold them, and the cases had long since been thrown away. It wasn’t as if he could just bring the nightstand with him, either. It had been molded into the wall in their bedroom. What was he supposed to do, throw a dozen pairs of thousand-dollar eyeglasses into a brown paper bag and take them downstairs? That would be a little ridiculous, wouldn’t it? Then again, the whole situation was ridiculous. Did his things really bother her that much, that she couldn’t bear to lay eyes upon them, even by accident?

Thom had never been thrown out of anything in his life, and, he quickly reminded himself, he wasn’t being thrown out now. No, no, not at all. He’d been politely asked to leave, and, by mutual consent, he and Ann-Sophie had agreed his departure from the big house was for the best. They’d returned to it back in April, after only a week in the subterranean apartment following the “attack” on Sanctuary. Thom’s nightmare scenarios about the risks of the outside world did nothing to persuade his wife and children, and the truth was, he missed the space, light, and creature comforts of the big house above ground anyway. So he had graciously acceded to their request, and they’d all moved back upstairs.

The problem was his wife hadn’t really wanted him to join them. Her behavior deteriorated over the subsequent weeks; she stopped speaking to him or feeling any responsibility to account for her whereabouts, even overnight. By mid May, Thom found himself neatly rotated back to the underground bunker. Alone, this time. Ann-Sophie had insisted it was for a “cooling-off period,” a time for them to give each other some space before coming back together to work on the relationship, but Thom wondered if this hadn’t been her plan all along and she’d simply maneuvered him, in her passive-aggressive way, back into the basement so she could have the house to herself.

Things got worse in the weeks that followed. The whole equilibrium of the community, such as it was, seemed thrown off by the change in domestic circumstances of the First Family. It wasn’t as though it could be kept secret in such tight quarters, and Thom had gone from acting as though it were all perfectly normal, at first, to shooting harsh glares at anyone who looked at him askance when he got in the elevator to go down to his apartment alone.

By the sixth week of the event, defections had begun to pick up. Over the course of two months, the community lost two of the custodial staff, the nutritionist, Dr. Rahman, and, most painfully, the married chefs, the Friedmans. None of them had bothered to go to Thom to explain their reasons for leaving or ask permission; they just got in their cars one day and drove away.

Worse, some of them had returned within a week, apparently finding the outside world unappealing, and they brought family members with them.

These days, Thom never knew who was there, who was gone, or who half the people he saw on the property over the course of any given day were. He might as well have been living in a hotel. Routines were abandoned, rules were forgotten, and there was no hierarchy whatsoever. Or, if there was, Thom knew for goddamn sure he wasn’t at the top of it.

That had been evident a few weeks earlier, when Jimmy and the other three militia members, their sole protection out here in the middle of nowhere, came to see him one Friday morning and “resigned.” Their much-less-than-believable reason for having to slink away in shame was their own “inexcusable lapse in security:” they claimed masked marauders had broken into the facility in the middle of the night, found the interlocking vault rooms on sub-level twelve, and drilled open enough safety-deposit boxes to steal $3 million in cash. Yeah, right.

Thom assumed Jimmy had been planning the heist for some time. Unable to come up with a convincing cover story, it seemed the ex-major had decided on just looking his boss in the eye and telling him an almost laughable lie. His expression practically dared Thom to question him, and Thom did not accept the dare.

Jimmy and his men left, presumably taking the $3 million with them. Thom comforted himself with the knowledge that they hadn’t managed to get into the subsequent rooms and steal the other $12 million, but, really, who gave a shit? He’d been robbed, by his own people, and they didn’t care if he knew it or not. Chloe, unsurprisingly, went with Jimmy. So much for yoga sessions, decent haircuts, and what was left of Thom’s faith in the durability of a personal-services contract. Nobody seemed to give a shit about anything anymore.

And now here he was, finding a new low point once again. Ann-Sophie had gone downstairs to see him that morning and, silly him, his heart had skipped a beat when he opened the door and saw that it was her. Maybe this was the start of the reconciliation he’d been hoping for. But, no, far from it. She was there to ask him to come upstairs and get the rest of his shit. Why this was a sudden and timely issue was beyond him, but he had sullenly agreed, and so here he was.