1
MILLIE
IT’S WAY TOO HOT to be doing this today. That’s what Millie’s thinking as she digs her stepdaddy’s grave, June sun making her sweat like a sinner in church.
Of course, most days are too hot in a post-Flicker world, and it’s just gonna get worse as the summer goes on. Ozone layer’s not what it used to be. That’s what Carey always says.
Well. It’s what he said.
Millie slams the shovel into the dirt to keep it propped upright and rubs a hand over her face. She don’t look down and left, at the spot on the ground where Carey’s body is limp, a saggy pile of limbs. She don’t wanna look at him again, not until she has to. It makes her stomach hurt.
“What are you doing? Why are you stopping?”
Deep breath. Try not to scream. As pretty a voice as Rose has, Millie still don’t want to listen to it. Especially not right now. Deep freaking breath.
She looks over her shoulder to see her stepsister standing at the secret opening to the tater hole, the hole in the ground they’ve been living in since the Flicker, the mega solar flare that destroyed … uh, everything. The opening is camouflaged in green and brown paint, disguised as part of the mountain it’s built into. Right now, with it standing wide open, Millie can see the way a concrete staircase inside stretches down and down until it disappears into the dark.
Rose, her stepsister, has a face as pretty as her voice, with big blue eyes and wild blond hair, and it irritates Millie just as much. What good is being pretty when the whole world is over, anyway?
“I’m taking a break.”
“He’s just lying there.”
Well, yeah. Of course he’s just lying there. Does Rose expect her dad to get up and dig his own grave?
The question tries to climb up and out of her mouth, but Millie swallows before she can actually say it out loud.
I know you and Rose may not always see eye to eye. But she’s a lot more sensitive than she seems. You have to be gentle with her. That’s what her mama said, weeks before she married Carey and Rose became Millie’s stepsister. It was only a year later that the whole world went upside down. But really, Millie’s world was already pretty messed up to begin with.
Still, she clenches her fists and tries for gentleness. “My arms hurt. In case you forgot, I had to carry him out here by myself.”
Maybe she fails at gentleness.
Rose narrows those pretty eyes into slits as sharp as knives. She opens her mouth to deliver some nasty retort, and Millie’s shoulders tense in preparation.
But whatever it is, she don’t actually say it. Sammy, their nine-month-old brother, tucked against Rose’s hip, chooses that moment to let out a wail. The chubby-cheeked, bright-eyed infant slaps pathetically at the button of Rose’s overalls, frustrated he can’t figure out how to undo them.
Rose’s eyes soften from knives to half-moons when she looks at Sammy. She sighs.
“That was your choice. You think you always have to do everything yourself. I could have helped.”
Yeah, okay. Millie has her doubts. “You were kind of busy.”
Rose was busy sobbing and throwing punches at the wall. Even now, her knuckles are red from connecting with concrete and metal, her eyes still puffy.
Millie don’t blame her. If she’d had time to throw a fit when her mama died, she would have. She just didn’t.
When her mama died, she’d already been sick for a while, problems from Sammy’s delivery that never got any better. Carey did his best to save her. He went into town, looked for medicine, even looked for a doctor. But in the end, they knew she was leaving them.
Millie was with her when it happened. She held her hand and told her it was okay to let go. She promised they’d be alright without her, because Millie would make sure they were.
And then her mama just … wasn’t there anymore. Her body was there, but the she-ness was gone. It was just bones and skin and hair and, eventually, right before Carey finally took it outside and buried it, a weird smell. It wasn’t her mama anymore.
And no matter how bad Millie might’ve wanted to throw a fit, she had a promise to keep. She had to take care of Sammy and Carey, and Rose, too, even though Rose acts like she don’t want it.
On the ground, down and to her right, is a dry little twig sticking out from the dirt. That’s it. That’s all there is to mark her mama’s grave.
Somewhere deep inside her belly, there’s a place where Millie locks away all the fits she don’t have time to have. When she gets so mad at Rose she sees red, she adds one. When Sammy just won’t go to sleep and nothing is making him happy, she shuffles another one into her stomach. When she’s hungry, or thirsty, or upset that she stinks because she hasn’t bathed in weeks, or scared because she don’t know when anything is gon’ get any better, she shoves it all in there. Her stomach hurts all the time.
Every single thing Millie feels about her mama is locked inside the room in her belly. When she looks at her grave, the doorknob jiggles a little. She quickly looks away.
Bells, the heat is really starting to mess with her head.
Rose still hasn’t said anything back, so when Sammy gives another vicious holler, Millie sighs. “I think it’s time for him to take a nap. Why don’t you go put him down? Neither of you got enough sleep.”
Course, the whole reason Sammy didn’t get any sleep was ’cause of Rose and her (very loud) grieving. She was up all night crying and screaming out any curse word she could think of, and everyone suffered for it.
Rose sure as heck didn’t sit next to her dad’s deathbed and tell him it was okay to let go. Rose stood there yelling at him the whole time he was sick, threatening him with things worse than death if he abandoned her. Millie’s pretty sure fear kept him going as long as it did.
But it wasn’t enough to save him, in the end.
“Don’t you need some help or whatever?” Rose snaps, though she wraps her arms a little tighter around Sammy. “Thought your arms were tired.”
“Yeah, well, so’s the rest of me. But it’s fine. I’ll take care of this.”
“You can’t just leave him sitting there in the sun all day.”
Deep breath. Shove it into your stomach. “I’m not gonna. Obviously. I said I’d take care of it. Can you please take Sammy and go? You’re not helping anyone being out here.”
“I just said I would help you!”
Sammy screeches to match Rose’s yell, and a spike of pain flares in Millie’s head, a matching one going through her belly.
If Rose don’t go away and take all her feelings with her, Millie’s gonna lose it. Rose does not know how to shove anything down. Every single little thing she feels, all the time, comes bursting out of her. She’s like a tornado. Or a wildfire. Or a tornado fire, which is probably a real thing, with the world as screwed up as it is. And being around her is like standing in the middle of a natural disaster.
It sucks.
And, like, Millie gets it. Really, she does. It’s not fair, the things Rose is going through. But if she starts thinking about how it ain’t fair for Rose, she might start thinking about how it ain’t fair for her, either, and then the room in her belly would burst open, and nothing would ever get done.
And she can’t afford for things not to get done. Neither can Sammy or Rose.
If she lets herself really think about how much everything sucks, they’re all gon’ die.
“All I need’s a lookout.” Millie shrugs. They haven’t had a lot of problems with strangers passing by the bunker, but it could happen anytime. Strangers are not to be trusted. Strangers are why she’s digging this grave right now. “And Corncob can handle that.”
As if summoned by the sound of her name, the skinny brindle hound appears from around a jagged corner of the mountainside, trotting over to Millie’s side.
Corncob was Millie and her mama’s before the world ended, before they ever knew Carey and Rose, even. After the Flicker, the adults warned her that the dog probably wouldn’t make it. They couldn’t find food for her, and they couldn’t justify giving water rations to a pet, even a beloved one. They just wanted Millie to be prepared for the inevitable.
But here she is, a year later, surviving on what she can scavenge, and somehow always coming back. She’s bonier than she used to be, sure, but she’s alive. That’s more than Millie can say for the people who doubted her.
As Corncob settles next to Carey’s dead body, resting her head on his chest, Millie sighs, hard. “Rose, please just go inside.”
Even across the yard, Millie can feel the tornado fire about to destroy everything in its path.
But, instead, Rose turns around and stomps down the stairs into the darkness below. And Millie can bury her stepdad in peace.
2
BY THE TIME SHE’S done, the sun is lower in the sky and the air is finally cooling off. It does nothing to dry the sweat drowning her, too thick with humidity and postapocalyptic poison, but she’s used to being a gross swamp monster by now. She tosses the shovel to the ground, next to the fresh mound of dirt, and wipes her stained hands off on her shorts. Corncob growls at nothing in the distance. The two of them head down into the tater hole together, Millie closing the latch over their heads as they go.
The doomsday-prepper-style bunker originally belonged to Carey’s uncle. Apparently, the whole family thought he was real special in the head, living out in his hole in the ground in the middle of nowhere, Appalachia, stocking up on guns, installing his own private well, and buying freeze-dried food that was supposed to be for, like, astronauts. Imagine his family’s surprise after the Flicker, when he turned out to be the smartest in the whole bunch.
Well, to be fair, none of them were very surprised, because none of them survived. Not even the uncle. But Carey knew where the place was, and it ended up being the only reason their family lived.
Mostly lived. For a while. For now.
The whole thing is made from old shipping containers, with concrete packed along the inside to create thick walls. The low, depressing ceilings have dim strips of light, powered by a few solar panels up on the surface. They don’t help much, casting more of a shadowy effect than anything else, but it’s all they have.
It used to be creepy, when Millie first got here. She remembers being scared all the time, though maybe that had more to do with the apocalypse than the bunker. Now she can’t really think of anywhere safer than a hole in the ground.
Unfortunately, given what’s gon’ happen next.
When she steps down into the main room, off the staircase, she’s in one container—the living room, with old couches covered in dog fur and some of Sammy’s dirty clothes lying around. All the other rooms are separate containers connected to the first, divided by hanging curtains instead of real doors.
It’s quiet, which means Sammy is probably sleeping. She wanders into the kitchen container as Corncob trots over to one couch to get comfortable.
Rose is sitting on the counter, eyes glossed over. Their portable radio is on at her side, playing nothing but static. It only sometimes works underground, anyway. And even up on the mountain, there are whole days when it’s still nothing but static.
“Can you turn that off?” Millie sighs. “We need to talk.”
Rose’s eyes flick to her face. The stepsisters stare each other down. A long moment ticks by.
Millie senses the tornado fire again just before Rose snaps, “I don’t have anything to say to you.”
Deep breath. Shove it down.
There is no time to fight with Rose. She reminds herself of this so she don’t strangle her.
“Okay, then.” She crosses her arms, leaning against the wall opposite her stepsister. The radio continues its irritating crunching. “We need to leave. I’m thinking tomorrow morning. Get an early start.”
It’s been a long time coming, even though it sucks. They’re safer from the elements, and from other people, down here than they’ll ever be anywhere else.
But the well’s dried up. Their food savings ran out a while ago, and their newest batch, what Carey was able to scavenge before he died, is running low, too. And being stuck out in the middle of nowhere ain’t gonna help them replenish anything.
Carey’s plan was to get them out of here in the next few days. He was on a trip to town, desperately trying to gather last-minute supplies for the road, when he was attacked by another survivor. He barely made it back alive. And he never got better.
It’ll be harder now, just the two of them and a baby. But they still have to go. If they don’t, Millie knows they’re gonna starve, or shrivel up from dehydration.
Rose taps her fingers against the countertop. Her shoulders are tight beneath her jaw, her eyebrows drawn together in a sharp V over her nose. Ready to pounce on a fight as soon as Millie gives her even a little bit of room for one. “So, what’s your plan? We just go outside and start walking? In what direction?”
“To my grandma’s house.” Millie’s been thinking about it for a few days now. Maybe even longer than that, just without realizing it. As soon as she knew Carey was on the way out, she started putting this new plan together. Rose just wasn’t ready to hear it yet.
To be fair, Rose probably still ain’t ready to hear it, because Rose wants to fight about everything all the freaking time. But whatever.
Copyright © 2024 by H.E. Edgmon
