Malorie(42)

Hearing him say it makes it more real. And less.

“And I’m sure you have reason to believe this,” he says.

“I do.”

“Jesus,” he says. “Here I invited you to the dining car to assuage your nerves and you’ve gone and rattled mine.”

“I’m good at that.”

Dean laughs. But not without weight.

“Tell me, Jill,” he says, “how have you been able to keep it up for this long?”

“Safety?”

“Not just that. You act like we all did when it first happened, when they first arrived. Do you have any idea how many people weren’t able to stay focused like you have? I’ll guess we’ll never know that exact number. But you still live by the blindfold and the blindfold alone.”

The guitars in the room go slightly out of tune before one of the players finds his or her place again.

“Do you know anything about a census?” she asks, avoiding his question.

“I’ve heard they’re out there, but I haven’t met anybody yet. Why?”

“I’m just curious. The numbers of the world. Statistics.”

“And? Would you take more risks, depending on those numbers? Or would you still do things the way we did them when the world first changed?”

If anybody else had asked her this question, she would’ve left the table, the car, and possibly the train. She doesn’t want to talk about taking more risks. But the man reminds her so much of Tom the man that she can’t bring herself to turn from him.

When’s the last time Malorie heard an optimistic voice her own age? When’s the last time she could swap ideas, theories, even just moods with someone who understands the world as she does for having witnessed its change? Tom, her son, speaks like this. But he’s only sixteen. And her job, as she sees it, is to make sure he remains smart about whatever he wants to do. That means telling him no. That means discouraging him. That means…

Take note, she thinks. Your son talks a lot like the one man whose advice you’ve leaned on for the past seventeen years. And all you do is tell him no.

“I wouldn’t change a thing,” she says. But it feels wrong to say it, like she means it in a different way than she feels it. Malorie understands that Tom and Olympia were born into this world. She understands that they hear better than she does, that their instincts are naturally stronger than hers will ever be. She gets that Tom and Olympia could be reading a book, completely distracted, and still close their eyes before something rushed into view, as if they can sense an intake of air when anything, man, woman, creature, is near. But she also knows that she herself is the sole survivor of two major incidents—unfathomable tragedies where everyone else went mad and hurt one another, hurt themselves. Forget the countless harrowing events—Shannon’s death, Ron Handy in the service station, the trip on the river—Malorie has actually walked from the new world equivalent of two train wrecks. The house on Shillingham and the school for the blind. In the old world she would’ve been on the news for this. And when the reporter asked her how she did it, she would’ve held up a black piece of cloth and said no more.

While Dean doesn’t know any of this yet, does he sense she’s been through more than most?

“Do you have kids?” she asks him.

“I had two. Both went mad.”

“I’m—”

“So we were at home, a ranch, no second floor, windows boarded up, blankets over the boards. I’d sealed every door in the house. We had a lot of food. Dry goods. Canned goods. Enough to last months. In my infinite wisdom, my plan was to simply wait. In the dark. Macy was nine and Eric seven, and I couldn’t risk one or the two of them getting into something, getting into anything, while I was, say, asleep. So the whole place was boarded, sealed, safe. No light. We used buckets in the basement and covered the buckets with stone slabs. Honestly, I can’t imagine living any safer than we did.”

Dean pauses. Malorie wants to see his face. She thinks of Tom the man telling her of his daughter’s death in the cellar of the house Malorie gave birth in. She knows the bad part of Dean’s story is eventually coming. She readies herself for it.

“After a while, I didn’t know what was day or night. You know? We really were living in darkness. Some options had crossed my mind. Just as I imagine they crossed everybody’s. Maybe we could view the things through cameras. Maybe we could blind ourselves and carry on without the constant horror of going mad. But I didn’t take any action on any of these ideas. We felt for one another in the dark, we called out each other’s names, we slept in the same bed. All in the dark. As if the house itself was one giant blindfold. I was waiting for a literal message, I think. Waiting for a knock at the door, someone to come tell us it was over. It’s the ultimate fantasy for those of us from the old world, isn’t it? Word that the whole nightmare has come to an end? Well, no magical word came. And then it still didn’t come. And then it still didn’t come all over again. I think we lived that way for seven months, Jill. Macy and Eric growing up in the dark. As if we lived in a cave. And all the while I kept thinking how unfair it was that I, a capable father, had somehow been rendered a useless man. All I did was wait. I made no moves to better our situation. I did nothing but hold their hands down the basement steps and open their cans of food for them. And when they heard sounds outside, when they got scared, I told them they should be. I told them there were things outside that could destroy their minds.”