Epilogue
Sin
FIVE YEARS LATER
There was a dayand age not so very long ago when we could pick up a cell phone and call the person we wanted to talk to. There was a time when people could send letters and hope for a response. But today, people are nomads with no phones and no addresses. We can all thank the woman who put me on this earth for that, a woman who was never happy with anything she had. My mother, the terrorist who got her way, destroying a country so many have tried to destroy before. This country has continued to stand strong, cleaning up the pieces from broken hearts, families, entire cities, but one act is all it took, one selfish act of destruction to rebuild a country that never should have been destroyed. Now, we survivors are left to clean up the broken pieces and try to remember exactly how these pieces fit together before, in unity, and in harmony. These pieces are all jagged and cut differently and it may take a lifetime or more to figure out where to start.
The thought of leaving this country has entered my head many times. Seeking out a new beginning somewhere life hasn’t been destroyed seemed like the best alternative, but I quickly found out that the borders of the United States were closed and virtually locked, preventing any Americans from coming or going in or out of the country. It was the only way to keep the rest of the world safe from us. Even if I found a way out of this bunker without getting killed, there was still no way out.
My anger was relentless for a long time. Part of me hoped Reese would never come back because I would let her know how much she hurt me, how angry she made me. I would let her know that no one, not even my own parents made me hate so much, including myself, more than she has. But for some reason, a reason I’m not sure I’ll ever understand, I sit here, day after day, not just hoping for a miracle, but continuing to love that girl.
I’ve even taken on a job in the bunker as one of the controllers with a sick false hope of catching a glimpse of the moment Reese comes back for me. The control room is merely used as a form of our protection now, as our only goal is to keep everyone inside safe until the day comes when the outside world is free to walk around in. But the real reason I sit here every day is because I haven’t given up on her. She may very well be dead, she may have died five years ago, leaving me sitting here, waiting until the day I die, but I’m not giving up—I refuse.
And now I know why…
I’ll be damned if I don’t believe what I see right now. I glance over at the clock, needing to know the exact minute of my life that everything changes. It’s twelve in the afternoon on a Saturday on the third day in June, and it’s the first time I have seen Reese in five years.
Five years of believing my own denial, convincing myself that my fears of her death were not true. Maybe I’m imagining all of this right now, daydreaming like I find myself doing in the afternoons, but if this isn’t her, it never will be.
Staring at the monitor’s display, my eyes focus on her. She’s older, more beautiful, and dressed in clothes I would have never expected to see her in. She’s walking slowly toward the glass door that I have not walked in or out of since the day she left, but right now I’m high-tailing it down the halls to make sure I am the very first person she sees.
She came back. She’s alive. Relief is pouring through me and I don’t know how to control myself when those doors part.
I arrive at the glass exit seconds before she does and here she is with a smile from ear to ear. Her hand is in the air, waving at me as if no time has passed, as if I haven’t been more or less a prisoner of this bunker for five years, and as if I haven’t been a prisoner inside of my own heart, living in fear of what awaits me outside of these walls—fearful that I lost the only girl I’ve ever loved.
“I told you I would come back,” she says, grinning, as the door opens completely.
I grab her, feeling muscles on her arms that she didn’t have before, feeling a healthy thickness around her body. She’s not skin and bones now; she’s even more perfect. My heart swells and a mixture of anger and gratitude collide together, causing a complete disruption and utter confusion, making everything inside of me knot and ache.
“Are you okay?” I cry out.
“I’m perfect,” she says, her voice broken.
“How? What? How?” I’m speechless. I can’t put together a cognitive thought while looking at the beautiful pair of blue eyes staring back at me. She’s real. She’s here. I can touch her.
She laughs quietly, tucking a strand of her long, honey-blonde hair behind her ear. “I, I guess I’m just lucky,” she says. As my thoughts clear, my eyes focus on the rest of her face, the scars lining her cheeks, the battle wounds she must have endured. “Took a while to earn their respect. A lot of them have died—fighting each other, self-mutilation, you name it, I’ve unfortunately seen it all. Those were the Juliets who were affected the worst. But those who remain are in a better place. They’re okay, they’re more like me.”
“What are you saying, Reese?” I whisper. “Tell me you’re not leaving me again. Tell me you’re back here to stay with me. Tell me you think whatever job you were supposed to do is done now.”
“I think it’s safe out there now. They’re rebuilding everywhere, in all counties across the United States.”
I hear her words, but they seem unreal. “The clothes, where did you get them?” I can only piece together what we saw the last time I was out there with her, which was nothing but chaos.
“Stores have reopened. Life is starting to carry on. Schools are open. It’s amazing what these people have done. Of course there are times when people lose control, relapse, forget who they are and how far they have come, but we’re all working together to prevent as much of it as we can. I can’t take credit for it all, though. Those people were scared, they had no one to turn to, they were being treated as animals, but they rebounded like heroes. They needed direction and to know they weren’t alone, which is exactly why I needed to go out there. If no one stepped up to help these people, I’m afraid of what would have happened.” Reese steps into the bunker, forcing me backward, fueling more awe, shock, amazement. Her confidence is something I never saw before. “I’m sorry I didn’t come back sooner. My intention was never to hurt you, but I’m glad I did what I did.”
“You could have come back sooner?” A gut wrenching pain sears through me, wondering what reason she could have had not to come back before today, and I feel a spark of anger.
“Well, it has been safe for a few years now.” I don’t understand, and I’m sure the confusion on my face says it all without me having to. “I—I—“ Her confidence is suddenly masked by a crimson hue creeping over her perfectly plump cheeks.
“What is it?” I can handle this.Maybe I can’t.“I was pregnant.”I can’t handle this.I’m going to punch my fist through a wall. She’s with someone else. A fucking mutated human being—like herself. The thought sickens me to the point where I might actually vomit. “But before you go and hurt something or yourself,” she says, stopping me from actually putting my fist through the wall. “It was ours.”
“What?” I heard her, but I don’t understand. “Where is it? Where the hell is it Reese? We had a baby? I want to see it. You left it out there? Is it a girl or a boy? What did you name it? Where is it? Tell me, goddammit!”She said was, didn’t she?
Her eyes don’t move from mine, but I’m having trouble looking at her. I don’t know why. Yes, I do, I’m having trouble digesting this. A baby. No. That couldn’t have happened.It could have.It didn’t.It might have.
“I lost it while battling a fight I didn’t pick. I must have only been five or six months pregnant when the fight happened, but I gave birth alone in the middle of an alley to a baby the size of my palm. I tried so hard to make her cry, to make her take a breath, to look at me. I tried so hard, Sin. I’m sorry.” Tears are rolling down her cheeks, one after another. “I had to bury her alone, all while trying to figure out how I could tell you what I had done.”
Her words absolutely gut me. I can’t look away from her now. The pain in her eyes, the truth is written across her face. She had to give birth to a dead baby in the middle of a street, alone. She never should have left. I could have cared for her here. I would have been with her. I would have been a truly fucking good dad.
