Page 103 of Doomsdate
The airwaves are silent, but only for a beat. “That makes me happier than you’ll ever know, Maisie-girl.” He swallows roughly into the mic. “I never meant to keep you from living. I just wanted to protect you from dying. In all my old-man fearing, I didn’t even realize that they’d become one and the same thing. I’m so sorry, Maisie-girl. I’d never keep the ocean from you. You deserve every drop of it.”
The tears fall freely down my face. “I love you, Gramps. I don’t want to choose between you and living my life, though. It feels like it’s only just begun.”
“I love you, too, Maisie-girl, so damn much. I don’t know what an old man like me ever did to deserve a second chance at having a family, but I’m thankful for meeting you every day of my life. Even if our family only exists over this frequency, you’ve given me what I never managed to make for myself, and I want the whole world for you. I just wish it wasn’t full of zombies.”
I laugh into the mic. “Me, too, Gramps. Me, too.” I breathe in and out, letting the air expand my chest in a way it hasn’t managed to since our fight. “Would it be all right if I brought Everett and Chicken to come see you soon?”
“You eat meat now?”
“No, that’s the cat’s name.”
“Well, that’s a choice. But yes, honey. You could bring a damn zombie if it meant I got to see you, and I’d like very much to meet your fella. I promise I won’t even have my guns out. Well. Not all my guns. Maybe just one or two, to make a point.”
I smirk. “Sounds subtle.”
“I’m a man of few words,” Gramps says, a smile curling the edges of his gruff voice. “But many guns.”
I laugh again, letting him hear it. “Maybe we’ll come by in a day or two, after my car gets serviced and we rest a bit. Everett’s catching up with his family here, too, and well…we haven’t decided what’s next.”
“I’ll be here, Maisie-girl. No matter what, I’ll be here for you.”
“You better be,” I say, my throat tightening.
“Ten-four, my sweetheart.”
I run my hand over the shiny green metal of the radio, the first bird that never flew away.
“Ten-four, Gramps.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Everett
I’ve never seen my mother cry.
I’ve never heard this rough, teary grate in my father’s voice.
And I’ve definitely never been in a group hug with Colonels Irene and Hank Greer.
Chicken swipes at Dad’s chin from her kitty carrier strapped to my front, which finally breaks up this surreal battery of firsts. Mom and Dad stand back, immediately at attention, and my own posture clicks rigidly into place. Some things you just can’t unlearn.
Dad wipes furiously at his eyes, ordering the snot back into his sinus passages with sniffs so violent, I flinch. “Is that a…feline strapped to your person, son?”
“Affirmative.” I fit my palm over Chicken’s head like a little army helmet and begin to stroke her downy gray fur. After a few seconds, she aborts her attack against my parents. “This is Chicken.”
“Why did you name it that?” Mom asks, her pink, puffy face exceedingly puzzled.
“It helped when I first gave up meat for Louise. Anytime I was tempted by BBQ, I was forced to think of my beloved cat.”
“Genius,” Dad huffs in complete seriousness.
My brows rise. This is getting weirder and weirder.
Mom coughs into her fist. But for her muddy hazel eyes rimmed in pink, all evidence of the brief display of emotion has been banished. “Son, would you accompany us into our office for a long-overdue debrief?”
A question? Not a command?
My eyes travel longingly over to Maisie, her form distant now as Gemma leads her inside Washington Hall. I knew Mom and Dad would want to immediately review every piece of intelligence we’d gathered on the road, but I’d hoped to have Maisie by my side for the interrogation. “I don’t know…maybe later?”
