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The Range Rover swerves around a corner and Mark braces one hand on the ceiling to keep his balance. He’s elbow deep in a chest cavity, his hand disappearing into the gaping wound left by a close-range gunshot with homemade ammo. When the car steadies out again, he returns full attention to keeping the young man in front of him alive long enough to get back to their makeshift hospital. He leaves a bloodied handprint on the ceiling. “Addison!” He growls over his shoulder.
She slams her foot down on the accelerator, careening through the emptied streets as rain pounds down on the windshield, making her visibility nearly zero. “Mark,” she returns, as if just making idle conversation, as if they weren’t speeding through a war zone. A glance in the rearview mirror confirms that they’re still being followed.
It’s one of the things he adores about her, this ability to drive like a bat out of hell if the occasion warrants it. But right now, it’s making his insane job of keeping someone alive in the back of a car, without hope of any useful equipment when they finally stop, even harder. He focuses his headlight on the man’s chest and replaces the now-soaked gauze with a clean rag, and runs through ten different options of telling her to please not get them killed. He finally settles on, “Be sane, please,” and then the man starts seizing. He curses.
The glowing lights of the border cut through the driving rain and she speeds past the guard houses, the infinity symbol on the Range Rover’s hood serving as good enough password. As soon as she’s through the guards drop spike strips on the road, but their pursuers slam on the breaks, squealing against the wet asphalt, and turn around before they even get close. She backs into the driveway of the fire station they’ve converted to a hospital and she hasn’t even turned off the ignition before others are opening the back hatch to help Mark with his patient.
“Next time, you don’t go alone,” the general snarls once she’s standing next to him in the rain, listening to three people try to save a man who has no hope of survival.
Addison pushes a wet tendril of hair out of her face. Her fingers leave a streak of blood across her cheek. They could only bring back one patient and hers is still lying on the sidewalk by the collapsed CN Tower. “Next time, have your shit together enough to send us with an escort.” She stalks off in the direction of home and crosses her arms tightly over her chest, her rain-soaked clothes bringing on a chill. Mark will follow when he’s done.
Addison remembers the day it happened, when the world erupted in flame. The hospital’s televisions reported an earthquake in the Pacific large enough to make everyone worry, even with closed-captioning. Her earth science is limited a general understanding of big earthquake bad, and she doesn’t know the details and progression of what happened next.
But she understands that everything went to hell and they barely got out of New York alive. She and Mark piled her BMW full of supplies, buckled newborn Ella in the backseat between cereal and sleeping bags, and followed the evacuation order, bypassing clogged freeways by clinging to back roads and side streets outlined on a map Mark found in the passenger’s side door. They didn’t stop until they hit Toronto.
In hindsight, they should have kept driving.
When the chaos settled enough and they’d figured out generators and everyone had a sense that things were not ever going back to normal, barricades went up. They’ve never come back down, and no one who comes through Toronto stays for very long.
The ammunition has long run out and so has the gunpowder, but that doesn’t stop anyone with an understanding of firearms from making new supplies. And as the years have passed and expiration dates have become history, it’s only gotten worse.
Sometimes she and Mark talk about leaving. There’s rumor of safety out west, somewhere in Saskatchewan. Most of the United States is uninhabitable now, if not from nature than from the people who have chosen the side of violence. But there’s also rumor of worse people than they have in Toronto blocking the way, and Addison doesn’t want to imagine people who could possibly be worse.
Mark wakes to find Ella curled into his side. She was born into this hell and he wants nothing more than to apologize to her for that. Her arm is tucked underneath her in a way that looks uncomfortable and he shifts, settling her on his chest.
He covers a yawn. They hadn’t been able to save his patient, but just as he was washing his hands more came in. Most of them are still alive, recuperating on cots and makeshift beds. He really wishes they’d been able to secure a hospital, back when this first started. They couldn’t run any of the equipment for long on generator power, and any antibiotics and drugs would’ve long expired, but at least they’d have basic supplies and actual beds.
He fell asleep in the downstairs bedroom so as to not wake Addison when he finally came in, and his shoulders and neck are now reminding him that this mattress has long passed its prime. He carefully gathers Ella in his arms and makes his way upstairs in the dark. The house is mostly pitch black, except for a circling spotlight that passes overhead every forty-three seconds. After three years, he’s learned where the furniture and sharp corners are.
The rain hasn’t stopped, and probably won’t for another four weeks before it turns into snow. He shivers despite his sweatshirt and hopes that they’ll have working heat this winter. They spent March bundled under piles of blankets and sweaters, noses perpetually red and running, when the community’s heat gave out.
Ella wakes up enough to recognize Addison’s sleeping form and she wiggles out of Mark’s arms. He sets her on the bed and lifts up the covers for her. She immediately curls against Addison; something must have scared her. Mark climbs in next to them, but stays awake for hours, counting passes of the searchlight.
“Hold still,” Addison says, taking the man’s chin in her hand and forcing him to face her so she can clean and suture the deep cut on his forehead. He’s obviously military, and concerned about the two men who came with him, especially the one whose eye had swollen to twice the size it should be. Mark took one look at him and directed him to another room. “Where’d you get this, anyway?”
“Chicago.”
Addison raises her eyebrows. “That’s a long way to go without having anyone take care of you.” They showed up on foot this morning.
He looks at her blankly. “Had to make a quick exit.”
She drops the subject.
The airman with the swollen eye reappears later without it. Mark could’ve saved the eye if he’d had anything useful, but all medicine is 19th century combat medicine now. He’s accustomed to the complete silence, broken by the staccato of gunfire, but their guests are not. They stiffen on alert at every noise and even seem a little confused by the situation. It’s not the first time Mark’s seen this behavior since the end, but military should be more well-adjusted. He wonders what their assignments were, and if they know anything about what happened. He doesn’t ask.
Addison almost asks the older one, the one clearly in charge, if they’d consider staying once everyone’s healed up enough. But there’s a look in his eyes that she understands too well: he’s searching for someone he refuses to believe is dead. She stays quiet. All three leave in the spring, after helping an ambush that gets the base a few months’ worth of food.
They’re left alone for four months after that. Mark chooses not to consider the weekly raids on their fences to be actual attacks. It makes things look a little more hopeful.
The generators give out for good on her fifth birthday, and Ella learns to read and write by candlelight. She likes school well enough, but she’d rather be at home with her parents. Outside is scary, even when it isn’t dangerous. Her teacher sometimes brings in cookies, made with the last remnants of flour that she can find. Ella thinks they’re a little dry and dense, but they’re sweet and better than the rations they get weekly. She hates canned vegetables and rice, but eats dinner anyway because her parents ask.
Sometimes she overhears them talking about leaving, when they think she’s asleep. She doesn’t sleep too well some nights: it’s too loud and too bright. She has friends here in Toronto, but she thinks she might like to live somewhere else. Someplace quieter.
“You wanna get married?”
Addison raises an eyebrow. She’s wrist-deep in a uterus, trying to turn the baby in the right direction. “Now?” Her patient’s perfectly stable, but birth isn’t exactly something they can pause in the middle for a wedding, or even this conversation.
“She’s – ow ow ow – a little occupied at the moment.”
Mark shrugs and shoves his hands in his pockets. “It was just a suggestion.”
“Get out!” Both women shout at him.
He leaves before Addison can throw something.
“I meant it, you know,” he says, later that night. He frowns at his crossword puzzle. He hates crosswords, but there really is nothing else to do and his attention span tonight won’t let him read.
Addison peers over the rim of her glasses. “I know,” she says. “And sure.” She’s still technically married to Derek, the divorce hadn’t gone through yet, but really doubts anyone’s going to argue. He’s probably dead anyway. She returns to her book and turns the page.
Seven years after the end, there’s a mass exodus from Toronto. Mark’s surprised they all made it this long in the city; food had been nearly impossible to find for two years. They say goodbye to friends and acquaintances and people they barely tolerated, and start walking.
Ella skips along the shoulder of the road, sometimes kicking rocks into the overgrown grass. Everything is beautiful, even the hulking, abandoned cars occasionally strewn across the road. She chases after a butterfly, careful not to get too far ahead of her parents.
It’s Mark’s turn to stay alert and he spies movement in the grass to their left. “Ella!” He calls out to his daughter. She turns and runs back to him. He holds her hand and puts her between him and Addison. It’s probably nothing, a rabbit maybe, but he isn’t taking chances.
They hit the Saskatchewan border and immediately see signs directing them south to Regina. Mark spreads their map on the hood of a truck. The sun beats warmth onto his shoulders. Ella giggles and he looks up from the map to see her twirling in the middle of the road. He smiles. Addison’s pretending to take pictures.
Detouring around Saskatoon will add another few days to their journey, but since they don’t really know where they’re going, he doesn’t think it’ll matter much. They pay attention to the warning signs.
Addison stretches, reveling in the bed underneath her. She yawns and turns over. Mark catches her and kisses her cheek. She digs deeper into the covers, searching for protection against the autumn chill in the air. Mark tugs the blanket up around her shoulders.
Ella’s asleep down the hall in her own bedroom, finally adjusted to the idea of having her own space. She’s made friends in school, and isn’t as far behind the other kids as they’d feared. They have food and hot water and usually have electricity. Addison doesn’t understand how this paradise can possibly exist amidst all the chaos around it, but it does. She’s no longer reliving her trauma rotation on a nightly basis, and they aren’t woken up by searchlights or gunfire. They’ve found home, or as close to home can be, in Gateway. It all feels so normal, and normal feels strange after a month and a half of walking across Canada, even more so after seven years of dodging bullets in Toronto.
“We never got married,” she whispers.
Mark smiles in the early dawn. “We can fix that.”
She grins.