Jack walked down to Christie and the Blairs. He looked at all the Paterville families gathered by the lakeside. Off to the left, the roaring fire sent glowing embers flying up to a clear night sky. Already, stars could be seen, way more than in the murky skies over Staten Island.
Tom laughed. “Marshmallows. Wouldn’t that be sweet.”
Jack spotted Simon sitting on the sand close to Christie. Too close, he thought.
Digging in the sand. Not playing with the Blair kids. Jack’s antennae went up. Something happen there?
And Kate?
He looked around and spotted her, a dark shape but recognizable to a parent, standing by the fire while some young guys fed the blaze pieces of wood.
“The fire’s nice enough,” Jack said.
Tom came closer, lowered his voice. “You know, we
“Drink?”
Tom grinned. “Doesn’t taste great but packs a wallop.”
Didn’t sound bad to Jack. He nodded. “Okay. Let me see if Christie and the kids are all okay.”
He went over to Christie.
“Tom and I going to go up to the cabin and talk.”
“Talk?”
Jack leaned close. “He has something to drink.”
As Jack said the words, he thought,
“You okay with that?”
Christie nodded. “Sure. If it’s drinkable—save me some?”
Jack laughed. “I will.” Back in the day, she liked her glass of white wine. Rare stuff now.
“Yeah,” he said. “I will.”
Jack was about to add,
As if Christie wouldn’t watch him like a hawk.
“All right. See you later.”
He turned back from the shoreline and joined Tom for the walk to the cabins.
* * *
Kate looked at the fire. The red glow painted the bodies of those tending the fire, the boys poking it, feeding in piece after piece of wood.
She stood so close to the blaze that the heat felt as if was toasting her face. The streaming flames reflected in the lake; the water so flat like a black mirror.
She caught one of the guys working the fire look right at her—and he smiled.
The same lifeguard, she thought. The same guy she had seen today. Skin all tanned, his hair bleached blond.
The boys where they lived, the boys her age, seemed so stupid, so immature.
This older boy was different.
She smiled back, and then quickly lowered her eyes down to the fire, right into the heart of the burning wooden coals sparking like reddish-yellow jewels.
* * *
“Go on. Take a hit of that.”
Jack brought the coffee cup up to his lips, first giving the substance a smell.
Alcohol.
The government hadn’t exactly banned the sale of it, but with anything that could be used for food or fuel, booze became both hard to find and amazingly expensive.
“And it’s okay to drink this?”
“Been having it every night. Under the stars. It’s a beautiful thing.”
Tom extended his cup for a toasting clink. Jack knocked his cup into Tom’s.
“Down the hatch,” he said. The smell: gasoline. The taste: well … maybe this was what gasoline tasted like.
“Whoa. Nobody light any matches around us.”
“The cook brews it up. Somehow. The kitchen workers can get you a bottle. Supposedly Ed Lowe doesn’t know about it. Keeping this place all about family fun and stuff.”
Jack took another sip, suddenly less eye-popping than the first.
“I’m guessing … a little bit goes a long way?”
“Got that right.”
Then, quiet. The sound of singing began to echo from the lake below. The bonfire’s glow flickered in and out of the dense trees that shielded the cabins.
Jack turned to Tom. “So, Tom—what do you do?”
He tried to keep the cop-tone out of his voice.
“Do—or did? I used to work at a research center run by NYU in the city. Now I work at one of those government supply centers. Handing out food when we have it. Place is a zoo.”
“What kind of research?”
The question seemed to make Tom hesitate.
“Lots of things. You’ve heard of GM food? Genetically modified? My lab experimented with that a lot. All government funded. Modifying strings of DNA, playing with—oh, I’m just boring you.”
“Not at all.”
Tom didn’t continue.
The sounds rolling up from the lake were undecipherable. Voices, laughs, a squeal. The fire casting a reddish-yellow glow over the water.
“What happened?”
“Hmm?”
“Why did you leave?”
“The government shut the whole thing down. Actually, they cherry-picked a few of the team, brought them to Washington. Think they were disappointed in the rest of us. Like we couldn’t stop what was happening.”
“Then—this was after?”
Tom looked at Jack. “After? You mean after the world went to hell, after the food started disappearing? Yeah.
Jack wondered if Tom had something do with what happened. So many theories. Experiments gone wrong. Tinkering with food production.
