Jacopetti turned to her. “Time to shit or get off the pot, m’dear.”

She thought about Matt: weary, unhappy at the front of the room.

She thought about Colonel Tyler. The way he shook her hand one time. The way he smiled.

She couldn’t bring herself to look at either candidate. Or at Joey. Or Jacopetti, the toothless SOB. “Tyler” she said, a whisper.

Jacopetti: “Pardon me?”

She gave him a hateful stare. “Colonel Tyler!”

There was a silence in the room.

Joey turned, offered an evil grin.

Matt cleared his throat. “Colonel?”

Tyler stood up, immaculate in his uniform. “Yes, Dr. Wheeler?”

“I believe this is your gavel now.”

Beth remembered when Colonel Tyler came to town. It was in that desperate time when the storm had passed, when Beth had climbed out of the rubble into a world of no landmarks—a world of everything flat and broken, where you might find a bedframe nestled in the hollow shell of a Volkswagen, or a pleasure boat riding on a sea of windfall pines.

After a few days, Beth had been assigned to the food search. With Abby Cushman and Bob Ganish, she had hiked south on the highway—which was not even a road anymore, barely a trail among the scattered detritus of ruined buildings—to the place where the big A P had stood. Just finding it was an act of archaeology. Beth had always navigated by the man-made markers, road signs and intersections and malls. Now there was nothing except the curve of the bay, the cryptic angle of Mt. Buchanan above a plain of homogeneous junk.

The storm had left chalk-blue skies and a chill wind behind it. Beth was cold in a ragged sweater, soon dirty from prying up soggy drywall and ancient lathing, hunting for canned food, which they loaded into big double-ply garbage bags for the trip back into town. She felt like something medieval. A ragged, scrounging peasant.

Mid-afternoon, her nose running from the chill, she stood up straight to ease the ache in her back; and that was when she saw him.

Colonel John Tyler.

She knew immediately who that distant figure was. Joey had talked to him on the radio. More recently, Chuck Makepeace had announced that the Colonel was on his way to Buchanan. But that was before the storm. Beth thought the storm must have changed everything—all plans had been erased.

But Colonel Tyler had arrived as promised.

He was on foot. He was a little dusty. But he came along the ruin of the highway with his head high, face clean-shaven, his Army jacket threadbare but neat, and Beth felt a voiceless rush of pleasure at the sight of him—ghost of a world that had seemed so lost.

She didn’t tell the others. Let them scrounge in the ruins while Beth watched this man come closer. She wished her face was less dirty, her hair not so tangled.

Then Abby straightened and caught sight of him.

“Well, gosh,” she said.

Bob Ganish stood with a green garbage bag in one hand, mouth open and his belly spilling over his belt. Some welcoming committee, Beth thought. A middle-aged lady, a grimy ex-car dealer. Me.

Tyler smiled as he approached. You could see his age. He wasn’t young. But he was in good shape. His gray hair was cut close to his skull. He looked like he wasn’t tired. He looked like he could walk forever.

Beth, suddenly embarrassed, plucked at the hem of her ratty sweater.

Ganish stepped forward and introduced himself. Colonel Tyler shook hands solemnly. “We talked once on the radio,” he said: a resonant, calm voice. “Nice to meet you in person.” And Abby. “Heard a lot about you, Mrs. Cushman.”

Smiles and breathless welcome-stranger bullshit. Then they introduced Beth.

Colonel Tyler shook her hand.

His hand was big and warm. Her own hand was cold from the weather, raw from the work. She was grateful for the touch. She thought his hand was one of the most interesting things she had ever seen—a big man’s hand, creased and hard, but gentle.

“Prettiest face I’ve encountered in a long time,” Tyler said, “if you don’t mind me saying so, Miss Porter.”

“Beth,” she managed.

“Beth.”

She liked the way it sounded when he said it.

Then they all hiked back into town, Tyler sharing the weight of the canned food, and he talked a little about how bad the roads had been, “but it’s a different story over the mountains,” and how they would have to take their time, plan for the journey east, and so on and so forth, Beth not speaking or really listening much; and then all the others had to meet Tyler, show him the shelter they’d made of the intact corner of the hospital basement; and Joey was beside himself, glowing whenever Tyler talked to him, which was often, since Tyler and Joey had become good radio buddies. Then there was planning to do, Tyler conferring with Matt and Tom Kindle mainly, and the days had run in a busy torrent ever since.

But she remembered the touch of his hand.

Prettiest face I’ve seen in a long time.

Beth had passed her twenty-first birthday on the road out of Oregon. She didn’t mention it; no one knew. But it got her thinking. Maybe she’d been acting like a teenager well past her due date—riding around on Joey’s motorcycle committing penny-ante vandalism. But she was twenty-one years old; she was a woman; maybe not the world’s most attractive or well-bred specimen, but the only woman under forty among the local survivors. A fact that made Joey paranoid (not that he had any right to be) and everyone else a little nervous. Chuck Makepeace had made a couple of very tentative passes; so, even more tentatively, had Tim Belanger.

But they didn’t attract her.

Who did?

Well… Joey had, once, but that was over. An aspect of her life she didn’t much care to recall.

Matt Wheeler attracted her.

Colonel Tyler attracted her.

None of this was very surprising. What was new was the idea that she might attract them. And maybe (and here was the real novelty), maybe not just because she was the only game in town.

Since Matt, since her experience with Jacopetti in the hospital basement, Beth had been exploring a new idea—the idea that she might have some work of her own to do in this new world.

Something more significant than clerking at a 7-Eleven.

A new world, new work, a new Beth Porter coming up through the rubble.

Which reminded her of the tattoo on her shoulder.

WORTHLESS

It had seemed like a good idea at the time.

Maybe it had been.

Maybe it had been true.

Maybe it wasn’t anymore.

She would have to explain to Matt about the vote. Not something she looked forward to.

For now, she watched Colonel Tyler at the front of the room. He smiled, thanked Matt for everything he’d done, thanked everybody for demonstrating their confidence in a relative newcomer. He said he took the chairmanship seriously and he’d do his best to live up to their expectations.

Then he looked at his watch. “It’s late and I guess we all want to get some sleep before we move on in the morning. So just a little bit of business here. Some people have been complaining about the weekly meetings. We see each other every day, maybe there’s no reason to have a formal assembly so often when there’s no special business pending. Seems reasonable. I think we can safely schedule full Committee meetings at a rate of once a month, and I’ll ask your consent for that—unless there’s any objections?”

No objections, though Matt was frowning massively.

“Okay,” Tyler said. “Some picayune items… I’ve posted a watch tonight, and I think we should make that a permanent fixture. Joseph and Tim volunteered for duty. They can be our regular standing guard as far as I’m concerned—until they get tired of it, and unless anybody has a reason why not.”