“Do you?”
“Yes.” She stared at him a moment longer and then came to the table, sitting down opposite him. She turned her beer bottle in circles, her delicate fingers moving gracefully. “You said you trusted me.”
“What?”
“In the Tahoe before I rammed the truck, I asked you if you trusted me and you said yes,” Quinn said, sitting forward.
“That was in the heat of the moment.”
“So do you?”
She regarded him for a long time before spinning her bottle again.
“I guess I have to.”
He settled back in his chair and finished his beer. The room continued to darken until all he could see of her was the white skin of her face and arms.
“I thought we were all dead back there,” Alice said just as he was about to stand and leave the room for the first watch.
“I did too.”
“You know what was overwhelming, even more than the fear?” He shook his head. “All the regrets I have came rushing back in a split second, and I thought I’d never be able to fix any of them.” She laughed in her sad way. “And now I’m ashamed of it.”
“Why? Because you have regrets or that they overshadowed your fear?”
She sighed. “Both.”
“Everyone has regrets, and as far as I’m concerned, they’re the scariest thing in the world.”
“What are yours?”
He stumbled on his answer. Licking his lips, he saw her looking at him through the dim distance between them, her eyes the brightest thing in the room.
“That I didn’t see more of the world before it was gone.”
“It’s still out there.”
“But not what makes it special.”
Alice huffed another laugh. “People aren’t special. They never were. We’re the biggest mistake in the universe. You don’t think for a second this plague was natural, do you? We did this.” She gestured to the quiet house. “We did all this. We’re the disease, not the virus that took us out.”
Quinn waited a long moment and then stood, placing his bottle in the trash near the doorway before facing her again.
“The people I knew were special, and all I can do is hope there’s others like them somewhere out there. But I guess that’s what separates you and I.”
He turned away, snagging his rifle as he went to start the first watch.
~
The night passed in an onyx haze. He sat outside on the front stoop with his back against the door. The sky continued to cloud over, clamping down the darkness like a lid being put on the world. The wind picked up and tossed leaves into the air, their passage heard and felt but not seen. He retrieved a jacket from the Tahoe and shrugged himself into it, the burn on his shoulder still flaring up whenever he moved too drastically. When the time came for him to switch with Alice, he remained where he was, stolid and unmoving, senses seeking anything besides the stirring wind.
Hours later, dawn crept across the horizon like smoke from a fire that was beginning to burn there. The clouds were lower, and as the first drops of rain began to fall, he made his way inside, locking the door behind him.
Alice lay on her side next to the loveseat, one arm stretched up, her fingers holding onto Ty’s small hand. He watched them sleep for a moment before continuing down the hall to the kitchen. In the pantry, he found some ground coffee and a filter for the coffeemaker on the counter. As the machine began its quiet chuckling, a thump came from overhead, and he tipped his face to the ceiling.