Keene moved away from Joe and Sid and stepped over the low wall of sandbags into the room. It had once been an office but had been turned into a watch post, with an improvised bed, a collection of coats, capes, hats, and weapons hanging along the opposite wall, and the desk serving as a general table. Vicki didn’t make any immediate move but stood staring from the doorway as if paralyzed. Keene was distantly aware of Joe’s voice outside saying something over the bullhorn. He crossed the room slowly and looked at her. She was wearing jeans with a stained shirt and sweatband around her forehead; her hair was matted, and her face, he could see even in the dim light, was cracked, swollen, and streaked where perspiration had carried away the grime. He didn’t think he had ever seen anyone look more wonderful. Her eyes looked him up and down silently. Keene waited for the offbeat remark, the dry understatement. He could see her mind running over the combinations, rejecting one after another as not fitting the moment. And then, instead, she just came a step nearer, hugged him with both her arms, and buried her face against his shoulder. Keene pulled her tight, rubbing his face onto her hair. He felt her gripping tighter, then starting to shake as everything she had been storing up found release. In that strange way things had always been with them, it was the things they didn’t say that said the most. Finally, he drew back enough to speak.
“About Robin. Joe said . . .”
“His arm’s broken, but it seems clean. We tried to set it.”
“I’ve got a couple of medics with me. He’ll be okay.” A hundred questions were tumbling over one another to get out. Keene shook his head, not knowing where to begin. “What about the others?” he asked. “Karen, Judith?”
“Karen left for Dallas with her boyfriend before the evacuation started. Celia came here with me but left with the military. I never heard from Judith. . . .”
Keene could see the tears starting, her fighting to hold them back. “I guess we won’t be going back to the Bandana this time,” she whispered.
“I never liked the music there, anyway.”
Now the stupid talk. It had to come. They were never going to change. And then Vicki abandoned the attempt and hugged him close again, and he kept holding on because he felt his face wet too and didn’t want her to see. And all the time he wondered to himself why this was the first time they had ever let each other know their feelings like this.
The noise of the truck pulling up outside and the voices of the others finally parted them. Another figure appeared from the corridor behind the door that Vicki had come through, thirtyish maybe, with sandy hair and stubble, dressed in baggy pants and a red T-shirt. Vicki said his name was Jason, an Amspace prelaunch technician that Joe had brought with him after Vicki relayed Keene’s message. Jason had actually worked on some of the equipment installation at Montemorelos and knew the layout there. And that was it: just the four of them, and Robin.
Keene was perplexed. “No others? Harry Halloran? Wally? Ricardo?”
Vicki shook her head tiredly. “Sorry. Harry got here but he didn’t make it through. I don’t know about any others. It’s a long story.”
Cavan came in with Joe, who from the shouts and laughs Keene could hear outside had already passed out the news that Vicki was here. “We’ve been on the move since first thing this morning,” Cavan was saying. “Everyone could use a meal. How are you stocked here?”
“Not too badly. Our dining room is across the corridor. The menu’s a bit restricted, but there’s plenty of room. We’ve got the whole place to ourselves.”
“We’ll need to be ready to move out as soon as the water recedes.”
“And travel overnight?” Joe sounded skeptical.
“There’s no choice,” Cavan said. “The next tide will cover this whole place.” Joe whistled. It seemed he hadn’t realized things were that close.
Alicia and Dash came in with a medical pack. “Where’s Robin?” Alicia asked.