Home by Matthew Costello

Author:Matthew Costello [Costello, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

27

September

That dinner, the first night, set the pattern for all the dinners to come during their first weeks at the inn.

Christie quickly saw that everyone sat in the same groups at their tables, night in and night out.

And it became obvious that she, her kids, and Helen were relegated to a smaller table with a few other women, women who all shared one thing.

They had no men.

Something had happened to their men.

Despite that isolation, sometimes Christie caught some of the men looking over at the table.

Looking at Kate … sometimes her. She wasn’t sure. Either possibility made her skin crawl.

Her thoughts:

Just try.

The other women at the table were quiet, dour—though Helen, as was her pattern, kept up a steady conversation.

And that at least provided the first true picture of this place, the information on how it ran.

The expectations.

The rules.

The way things really worked around here … as one night, one of the quiet women started talking, her sad, hollow eyes revealing a pain, a loss that Christie imagined easily matched her own.

During one of those early dinners, the woman talked about the “night patrols.”

She explained what they were, what the men did, and just how important they were to this place.

* * *

The hollow-eyed woman, Janna, first said the words.

Between forkfuls of food, pasty stuff, marginally edible, Helen asked … “Night patrols? What are they?”

“There’s a system here,” Janna said, almost furtively, as if she might be revealing a deep dark secret.

“A few men go out and scout places where food might be hidden. Abandoned houses with locked storage fridges, or stores with overlooked warehouses, and now—when it gets near harvest time, what used to be harvest—to check fields where things might still be growing.”

“Makes sense,” Helen said.

But Christie thought … something strange about it.

Kate looked bored with the conversation.

“Why at night? Isn’t that more dangerous?”

Again, more darted looks, more eyes scanning the room.

“It’s the way the Colonel wants it. Says there’s less chance of being seen at night. Being found.”

“Sounds dangerous to me,” Christie said.

Helen arched her eyebrows, perhaps surprised that Christie would be so bold as to offer an opinion.

Occasionally, a burst of male laughter exploded from a nearby table.

There was no laughing at Christie’s table. Not yet.

Maybe—she sometimes thought—not ever.

“So they go out, find food—?”

“Gas, too. Weapons. They find a lot,” Janna said, sounding like a faithful supporter of night patrols.

Kate’s wandering eyes had returned to the table, probably—Christie thought—taking in the rest of the room. The laughs, the few other young people near her age—

And Kate asked a question.

By now, the other women, all with the same expression, part fear, part some kind of emptiness, had tuned into the conversation.

“Do they all make it back?”

“What do you mean?” Janna said as if the question itself wasn’t clear enough.

“Does everyone come back from these ‘night patrols’?”

Kate looked at Christie, then Helen, checking that there wasn’t something completely off with her question.

Christie wanted to reach out and cover Kate’s hand.

A signal. Steady. Let it go.

Or perhaps simply … not now.

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