“Excuse me,” came a woman’s voice, strange to them.

They all turned and saw two women, one old, one middle-aged.

“We heard about you,” the old woman said. “We were in the Atrium. But… can we join you?”

Adam smiled. Even a few of the others smiled.

“Welcome,” Adam said.

He didn’t need to talk about the voices in his head. He was the voice in theirs.

49

 

The spy was in a chair. He was not tied. The only other person in the room was John Hesse. Hesse’s knuckles were bloody. The spy’s face was broken. Hesse leaned back into the breakfast bar of the suite and readied his pen and paper.

The spy spoke with broken teeth, and Hesse had a pretty good idea how the Theater was guarded.

They’d take precautions, Hesse imagined. They’d guess the spy might talk. The information might be meaningless. Everything they did might be meaningless. But there was great satisfaction here. So he beat him further, then carried him in a fireman carry up and outside to the promenade, where he tossed the spy to the deck.

The spy appeared before Lee Golding, terrified of returning, terrified of staying away. His face was unrecognizably beaten, but Lee Golding knew who it was.

“They…” the spy stammered. “They… they…they are many. And we are few. That’s what he said.”

50

 

“You have to be strong now,” Jessica said to her husband in the Theater dressing room. “It is a question of strength now, which of us will win.”

“Yes,” Lee said. He leaned against the counter, the gun in his lap. “But smarts too. The gun’s an advantage but it’s not a nuclear bomb. There’s still much more of them. The gun can’t be everywhere. I can’t be everywhere.”

“That’s why defense is suicide!” she said. “What are you, now? Do you choose death like Melville? For God’s sake Lee, open your eyes. This world is full of cowards and children who won’t see. What are you, now?”

“Their numbers are a sleeping dragon!” Lee responded. “Do I want to wake it? Do I want to give them no choice but to fight?”

Smarts had always been his secret. He was so imposing physically; he always knew that his size was a double advantage, because it made them underestimate his smarts. This was a thin line they walked, he and Jessica. To survive each day longer, for one more day’s chance at rescue, he had to make every decision correctly.

She did not see it that way.

“Lee, Lee,” Jessica said. “I’ve always believed in you.”

She stood to face him, then turned and stepped away.

“I stood by you through all the mistakes you made, all the missed opportunities, because I believed that somewhere at your kernel was a strong man who could protect me. Has our life been a lie?

“You have the gun! You! Won’t you use it while it can still do us some good? If you won’t protect yourself, don’t you have the pride to protect your wife? If we keep reacting, we’ll die. We need to step outside the script. The world before was never big enough for our story, our love, Lee. This is where it should be.”

They had not had sex in weeks; in the absence of bathing, the prospect had disgusted her, and Lee had given up asking. He did not ask this time, he took. Jessica responded as physically and urgently. The huge man and the thin woman everywhere at each other with their mouths and hands, clothes coming off, forming to each other’s forms into the corner space between the couch and the counter, onto one and then the other. They were the last couple on earth. The rest were dead to them. It was an intoxicating commitment.

While they embraced and reached for each other they flew from the ship, from the war, from the flood. For the first time, they both were off the ship. It was such an unconscious relief that their passion soared, perhaps as a protection against that world breaking back in. They felt like titans making love, a mythic pair existing in ether with the great lovers of all time. They had transcended their fate and their worlds.

At some moment, the world broke in and they fell from the sky. They lay on the couch and moved slightly away from each other. It was impossible to ignore the smell. He dressed and she tried not to look at him, slick, discolored, slimy.

She recaptured a vision of the two of them, all alone and safe on this great empty ship, with enough food to wait as long as it would take. She felt happy. She admitted to herself that this was her happy ending: herself and Lee, alone surviving. A King and Queen of the ship.

“I’m going to save us,” Lee said.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked.

“You stay here, and stay safe,” he said. “I don’t want you to have to see this.”

“No,” she said. “I want to be by your side. You’ll be stronger with me.”

They dressed. He picked up the gun, and pocketed the extra magazines. Had he been destined to be here?  Had he been meant to be a man of instinct?

Lee had targets in his mind. He wanted to explain his thinking to Jessica but felt more powerful assuming her trust in his decisions. He wondered how that gun had come to his hands; but it hadn’t come to his hands any more than the other hundreds in the Theater. Lee had taken it. There was proof of what he was.

It was exhilarating, as much as it was exhausting, nerve-wracking. Life mattered to him again, here. The stakes mattered. He wanted to be the last man to keep his wife alive and un-raped. He would protect Jessica. What was the matter with that?

But who was he going to kill? Hesse, or that Colonel? He had realized he’d have to kill someone since she’d said those words. He didn’t know who, but he knew he had to kill someone. He’d killed before: the pirate he’d taken the gun from. The night of the lifeboat drill, he’d probably killed a few then, though he never knew for sure. But those were things that just happened. Instinct, again. This was different. It was planned and he was overthinking it.

Exiting their room they passed the sentry with a nod, and turned towards the Theater. Did he want to address everyone? Did he trust them? What did they need to know? To do? No, he would keep this simple. He would trust the hard things to himself.

On the stage, Jessica stayed back in the shadows. The dark, really, as the whole Theater was in shadow. Rick wasn’t in the room. Jessica wondered if he were on duty somewhere.

They were all alive in this room, she thought. Men, women, children. The dead have piled up elsewhere on this ship, but those who made the right decisions – and had the right luck – were here. They were weak, sick, and dirty, but not the walking dead Lee had described of the other groups. Some had left, over time. But no one that mattered, at least since Adam Melville’s group. Fewer mouths. Fewer to protect.

She shivered with an understanding. What a risk these people were! Why was Lee protecting them? This room, these people were not his army, they were his shackles. Even if Lee struck at those in the Atrium, could they ever be safe with these shackles?

Lee was watched whenever he was in the room. When he called the group to attention, the focus did not increase significantly.

“We’re in lockdown. The Atrium is planning an attack. That’s all we know. I’m going to find out what I can.”

He held up the gun.

“I can go places no one else can. I’ll find out what’s up. Jessica will watch my back. I’ll go fill in Dumas. He’ll be in charge of the sentries and anything that comes up. The sentries know everyone, you all know the sentries. No one else gets in. Any questions?”

There were never any questions. That’s why he asked. Lee had a way of saying friendly things while holding the gun that let you know not to ask questions.

Back into the tunnel, past Jessica’s dressing room and the larger dressing room that served as the bathroom, holding the porta-johns. She wondered how they went about the emptying from the Atrium? It was an undertaking in itself here, and it always required the gun. She imagined they were overflowing in their own filth by now. They weren’t a group there, she thought, they were just those that weren’t in the Theater.