Brady smiled joylessly. “Yes, sir.” He gave the gas another five miles per hour.
Thom turned away, looking out the window at the endless housing developments as they raced past them. “Where are you?” he asked Lisa.
“In the hangar.”
“How’d you get there so fast?”
“I live five minutes away. Remember?”
“Oh, right. Yeah, you mentioned that.” If she had, Thom had absolutely no recollection of it. He moved on. “What about Ann-Sophie and the kids?”
“Francis picked up Ann-Sophie from the house at 9:35, and Antonio got both kids from school at 9:38. The cars met ten minutes later and now Ann-Sophie has both of them and is on the 310 Southbound, ETA four minutes ahead of you.”
“How soon can we be wheels up?”
“As soon as you’re settled in. The plane’s fueled, Marques is ready, and you were right, the only other pilots here are weekenders with prop planes. The weather cooperated. I was worried about the lack of a tower when you picked this place, but you’re good to go.”
“What’s the flight time?”
“An hour forty-seven. You’ll be on the ground with a two-hour cushion before onset.”
Thom sat back in his seat and allowed himself a tiny exhalation. Everything was going so radiantly according to plan that it was impossible not to feel just the tiniest bit proud of himself. He attempted to banish it—pride was Kryptonite—but then he decided to cut himself a bit of slack and allow a microscopic fleck of self-regard to flourish. Just for a moment.
“There is one complication.”
Thom closed his eyes. You see what happens when you let your guard down? “What do you mean?” he asked.
Lisa hesitated. “Marques needs to speak with you.”
“Is there a problem with the plane?”
“Marques will tell you himself.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? What complication? Tell me, right this second.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll see you in eight minutes.” And she ended the call.
Thom felt his body course with rage. Lisa had never, ever, not one time failed to obey a direct order from him, and then she’d compounded her unthinkable mutiny by actually hanging up on him? Was he the only one who gave a shit about propriety anymore?
No matter, he told himself, taking a deep, steadying breath. No matter what was about to happen, no matter when it came, Thom Banning knew one thing for certain.
He was prepared.
4.
Aurora
What was suddenly clear to Aubrey was that she’d learned exactly nothing from COVID. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. She had learned once again that wildly unexpected events do happen in life and that they can last way longer than you’d ever imagine, with much more far-reaching consequences. Therefore, it’s only basic common sense to stock up on supplies and hope the dreadful day never comes. She’d become mindful of the fact that she was no longer a solitary person in this world but, rather, the sole caregiver for a moody teenage shithead, and that she had a moral obligation to be prepared to provide for them both. Things happen. Be ready.
Her first step, eighteen months ago, had been to find out exactly what a person would need in the next big emergency. She’d googled “basic home disaster kit” and found hundreds of hits to choose from. The first few were sponsored, overpriced duffel bags jammed with too much of the wrong stuff, but a few links down she found an article with a dot-gov suffix, so she’d clicked on that. The handy checklist seemed to cover everything, not just for another deadly virus but for earthquakes, fires, power outages, even a dirty bomb explosion. Dutifully, she’d printed it out and taped it to the rust-proof black steel storage rack she’d bought on Amazon for $200 and put together one rainy Saturday, just around the corner from the basement stairs.
Aubrey stood in front of the rack now, staring at the two-page disaster checklist, which she’d even laminated before taping it to the support on the right side. She’d gotten off to a great start. The lamination, she felt, was a particularly heads-up touch. One item had been crossed off, the very first on the list: DOWNLOAD THE RECOMMENDED SUPPLIES LIST. There was a neat black line drawn through it, a line so straight and true that it fairly shone with confidence and pride in one’s farsightedness. Yes, she’d done that.
The rest of the list, however, was clean, white, and unmarked. The storage rack itself held precisely one item, or eleven, depending on how you wanted to count them, a cardboard sleeve that had once held twelve cans of Goya Black Beans. One of the cans was missing, and she remembered clearly the day she’d made them as a side dish and discovered that both she and Scott despised Goya Black Beans. She’d only bought them because she’d read they could be stored for long periods of time, but, damn, you could hang on to those eleven cans of beans for a decade and still not eat them.