Page 7 of His to Take

4

“What do you mean,it’s all gone?” Amanda said, her eyes bright with excitement.

“Just that,” John replied after he wiped his mouth. “The snow, the cold, the bad air, it’s all gone.”

“We took our suits off,” Rex said around a mouthful of reconstituted beef stew. “It was still a little chilly out, but by the time we made it back here, it had warmed up. Can you believe that?”

Ann looked at the other women and knew they were thinking the same thing. This couldn’t be right. The skies had cleared, the snow had melted and there wasn’t any flooding?

“The ground must have been soaking wet,” Mary chimed in, but the men all shook their heads.

“The ground was moist, like it would be after a light rain, but it wasn’t soggy at all. We searched for hours and didn’t find one sign of flooding. It’s all… normal again.”

“And none of you find that strange?” Ann asked, her eyes on them all now. “What, do you think some god came down from the heavens and magicked it all away?”

“Well, no, Ann,” John said. None of them had ever been religious and hadn’t brought any kind of beliefs down into the bunker with them, but they kept using words like miracle, and our prayers have been answered. Yet, none of them prayed, that she knew of.

“What else could it be?” Stephan asked. He’d always been the quiet one, the most contemplative of them all, and Ann turned to look at him.

“Aliens? I don’t know. Maybe the volcanoes stopped, and a new jet stream started up, finally.”

“It would still take months, maybe even years to melt all of that snow, Ann,” Amanda, the most scientific one them all, chimed in. “It could be something that someone on the other side of the Earth has done. I don’t know what exactly, but it’s possible.”

“But not aliens, or god, or some unknown goddess, because feminism is dead, right, Rex?” She couldn’t miss that chance to rub that into him.

“Well, yes, Ann. I would think that women taking on classic roles again would be obvious.” He smirked at her, and she wanted to hate him, but his smile took the sting away. “It can’t be gods, though, unless they wanted to get rid of everything and start all over again.”

“You can knock that nonsense off right now, buddy,” his mother said and glared at him. “You might be taller and bigger than me, but I can still take a baseball bat to you. Don’t forget, I’m the one that used to play catch with you and taught you which end of a bat was which.”

Stephan had always been too busy, caught up in writing his books, to play with his son, but Amanda had always been there for him, which was why it sounded so odd to hear him spew such nonsense about women’s roles and their places. His mother had been a shining example of what women could do, with her athletics and her job as a science teacher.

Ann tried not to roll her eyes at him but saw that he’d astonished even himself. Did he really think that could happen? She’d never been raised to believe in creationist stories, but she could see now that he was thinking about it. Her lips pursed and she looked away. She couldn’t fall out of love with him in the span of a few hours, could she?

This sudden feminist urge she had was sparked by his words, though. She’d been complacent, forgiving, and understanding of him throughout all of these years. Life had changed, all over again, and she wasn’t sure she was ready for it. She hadn’t been the last time, but back then, she’d been young, too caught up in happiness at being so close to Rex to give in to shock and despair, but now? She wasn’t sure she actually liked him, right now.

And she definitely wasn’t sure she was ready to go outside of these walls again. It felt safe here, like home now, and she’d started to think of it as the place she’d spend the rest of her life. Sure, the food was awful, and boredom could set in if you didn’t find something to fill your time with, but it was home. It had kept them alive when countless others had died.

From what her Dad had learned over the years, it wasn’t just North America that had suffered with the sudden tectonic shifts that had set off the volcanoes, as many had postulated. Europe had also borne the brunt of the volcanic activity. Oddly, the Ring of Fire around the Pacific had been quiet. There’d even been reports that Antarctica had completely melted because of all of the activity. Ann hadn’t known there were even volcanoes down there, but Amanda had told her there were.

Life wouldn’t have been pleasant, even for those that escaped the volcanoes. The nuclear winter, caused by all of the ash spewed into the sky, had cooled the planet down significantly, and there would have been snow in places that had never seen it before. Not in this lifetime, that was for certain.

“I don’t care what caused it right now, even if it was aliens,” Mary said. “I just want to feel sunlight on my face again.”

Ann turned to her mother. She was 40 now, the same age as Rex’s mother, but without the sun damage that Amanda had suffered. Five years ago, Mary would go outside, spend her days outdoors, planting, weeding, and taking care of the home John provided for them. It was almost like a jungle in their backyard.

Amanda, on the other hand, had spent her time indoors most of the time, but when she was outside, she’d never bothered with a hat or sunscreen. Fine lines around her eyes now told the story of her life outdoors while Mary’s skin was still smooth. They were good friends, despite their differences, and that was one of the reasons her father had asked the Wolfsons to come along when the world decided to rip itself apart.

“You know the first thing you’ll do is find a hat, Mary,” Amanda ribbed her friend and they both laughed. They both knew it was true.

“You’re probably right, but to feel warmth that isn’t from a blanket or body heat again would be nice.” That had been a shock to them all, how quickly the bunker had heated up with them in it, despite its size. The concrete and bedrock walls just seemed to absorb every inch of heat they gave off. Luckily, the ventilation system kept it at a constant temperature.

“I’m going to find something to wear besides these horrible coveralls,” Ann said, but wished she hadn’t. Everybody looked at her, surprised that was what she wanted to change. But then they all laughed, and she didn’t feel so bad.

“Wow, you know, you’re right,” Amanda said on the tail-end of a chuckle. “What I wouldn’t give for a pair of jeans or sweat pants. Anything that didn’t mean we had to unzip these stupid things to go to the bathroom.”

“A dress and some heels would be nice too,” Mary sighed wistfully. “I used to like to dress up a little when we’d go out. Hard to do here, isn’t it?”

“You don’t know how many times I thought about turning these things into some kind of dress. I just couldn’t do it, though. I haven’t sewn anything since I was a teenager, and I knew it didn’t matter what I’d do, it would still look like coveralls when I finished.”