Page 61 of Doomsdate

“I was going to say ‘upset,’ but sure.” I don’t have a lot of practice comforting people, either, but we’re friends now, and that’s what friends do.

He groans again. “I have to find a safer place to stay tonight—can’t stay here with those windows downstairs—and then go to the decrepit remains of the White House and wait for my insane parents to pick me up like a kid from school, only in a helicopter, which they know I’m terrified of, and I’ll probably have to hear what a failure I am through those ridiculous padded headphones they make you wear all the way back to West Point or until I fall out of the side of the open chopper, whichever happens first, and then—”

“I’ll stay with you tonight, Everett.”

He stops his rant and peers up at me. “What?”

“I’ll stay so you and Chicken don’t have to be alone,” I repeat. “Just until your parents get here. Then I’ll be on my way.”

He props himself up on his elbows, his face bent in concern.

“I can’t ask you to do that, Maisie.”

“You don’t have to ask. I just offered.”

“I’ve already added a day to your trip by this detour. Spending the night will add at least one more. What will Gramps say?”

“Gramps can say whatever he wants, but he doesn’t tell me what to do. He’s spent the last forty years living on his own; he can handle a few more days before I get there.” I wince, feeling the sting of the morning’s misunderstanding all over again. “If you want to stay together a little while longer, that is. If you’d rather I leave, I will.”

He sits up all the way. “Of course I’d rather be with you. But I don’t want you to risk your safety by staying in this city overnight for me. Are you sure about this, Maisie?”

I don’t know where this falls with our boundaries and rules, since we’ve already railroaded those once today, but I reach over and take his hand in mine.

“Listen—we still have a plan. We know where to meet your parents and what time to be there. You’re still going to see Gemma, albeit under slightly worse circumstances than you were expecting, and we’re in Washington, D.C., your favorite place!” I shake his hand in mine. “We have a couple of hours before we need to find a secure spot to hunker down. Maybe we’ll find something useful, like weapons or tools or, ooh, government secrets.” I waggle my eyebrows. “Will you show me around?”

Everett blinks. “Show you what, exactly? Our nation’s capital populated with flesh-eating corpses?”

I knit my fingers through his and squeeze. I may not have a lot of experience comforting people, but after twenty years of living with Mom, I do know what fear looks like when it’s taken hold of you and made you desperate.

Luckily, I also know what brings you back. Baking projects. Knitting by the fire. Burrowing into the here and now of the moment you’re in and letting tomorrow fend for itself.

“Flesh-eating corpses or not, I’ve never been here before. I’ve never been to a museum, ever.” I give him a little smile, willing him to join me in this moment. “And if I recall from the car, you mentioned rockets, dinosaur bones, and some kind of bat limo?”

“Batmobile,” he corrects weakly, but he’s looking at me with curiosity now. “Are you serious?”

I shrug, feeling bolder by the minute. I don’t want to admit it, but Everett’s words about Amélie keep ricocheting around my head. Maybe I’m ready to expand my life for something bigger and more meaningful, too. Or maybe I’m not ready per se, but staying small and careful and so goddamn contained feels like wearing a shoe that no longer fits, and the thought of staying that way, in this city of treasures on the edge of its own collapse, rubs me raw.

And seeing Everett so disappointed like this, after all we’ve already been through today? Feels even worse.

“Well, the National Mall is just a few blocks away from here.” Everett sniffs. “And it’s probably deserted since the apocalypse hit over a Friday night, and there are no residential areas nearby. Well, except for the White House, and that’s apparently abandoned.”

I stand, pulling all six-feet-plus of him to his feet with me, thrilling at the way his body fills my immediate space.

“Come on, Professor. Let’s go.”

The small smile that blooms through his sadness feels like a victory.

It’s hard not to gawk out the windows at the manicured green lawns and immaculate white buildings of downtown D.C. as I drive the last few blocks to the Mall. I’m not sure what I expected, but the nation’s capital seems both smaller and cleaner than it has any right to be. Maybe it’s because prepper radio always refers to it as “the Swamp,” while Mom favored “Satan’s Asshole,” but the beautiful grounds and pale granite buildings, with their stately marble columns and stalwart rectangular façades, are squarely at odds with everything I’ve ever imagined. I always assumed the pictures on money were a lie, a fiction, just like everything else that Mom told me about the U.S. government, but it turns out reality has more in common with the green shades of a dollar bill than my mother’s theories.

A dollar bill that’s now speckled with zombies, but still.

Fortunately, Everett was right about that, too. The sunlit lawns of the National Mall are largely empty, with the occasional zombie tourist swaying like a decaying dandelion in the March breeze. Weeds in an otherwise pristine garden.

We park the car on a stretch of empty road between two long lawns, the Washington Monument towering just ahead, and I grab my empty loot bag from the back. Scavenging here should be fun. Food trucks lie tipped on their sides, their contents raided and splattered on the asphalt, a stark reminder that while the handful of zombies outside right now may be docile, at night they’re anything but.

“I can’t believe we got this parking spot,” Everett says, his smile growing as he pulls Chicken out from her carrier. “Even in an apocalypse! Amazing.”

We walk toward the great obelisk, Everett listing facts about what a dick George Washington was while Chicken and I pad quietly behind. There are no other survivors that I can see. And yet…I don’t feel alone. Neither does Chicken, guessing by her alert posture, tail pointed high in the air.