“Oh my god… what are we going to tell them…?” Sarah groaned, also shakily getting to her feet.
“Nothing we don’t have to.” Adam replied in a firm tone. He gently put his hand around her shoulder in a comforting gesture as she sniffed and wiped the last tears from her eyes.
“I’ll handle it.” She said, strength returning to her voice. They both walked back to the living room. Inside they found Zoey asleep on the couch, still wrapped in the blanket. An empty teacup and her glasses lay on the coffee table next to her. Her legs were propped up on Steven’s lap, who sat at the foot of the couch, playing a video game on the television. He apparently heard them step into the room because he leaned back slightly as they approached.
“So?” He asked, without taking his eyes off the virtual machine gun mowing down aliens on the big screen. “You were gone for quite a while. It’s the end of the world, so I have to assume you two were either fucking or drinking. So nice of you to invite me.”
“Wha- we… excuse me!?” Sarah stammered. She really couldn’t get a feel for this guy.
“Shut up, kid.” Adam snorted. “Stop wasting our… MY… precious electricity on pointless entertainment, especially not on my save file!” Adam began to angrily stomp towards the younger, and much smaller man. Steven hastily paused the game and turned to look at them with a startled expression, being careful not to wake up his sister as he did so.
“I-I’m sorry,” he apologized. “It’s… been a… day. Games calm me down and help bury the hurt, you know?” Steven looked down at Zoey, her chest rhythmically rising and falling with each deep, slumbering breath. “I haven’t exactly been the best big brother for her… my only hope was that she would take me as an example of how not to live your life and do something great with hers. I don’t care about my own future, but seeing her bright one stolen away like this is a bit too much…” He sighed regretfully and placed a hand on Zoey’s forehead, brushing some errant strands of hair out of her face.
“Mnn… uhh..?” Zoey blinked her eyes open at the touch. “Stevie…? I had such a weird dream…” She sat up to stretch and the warmth visibly drained from her face as she got her bearings. “O-oh… right…” She slumped over. She took a deep breath and slipped her glasses back on. “Diana. Did you… find her…?” She pulled her legs off of Steven and shifted to look over the back of the couch at the older adults.
“I’m sorry, Zoey,” Sarah said carefully with a frown. “We scoured those cameras for hours but didn’t see any sign of her.” Zoey’s expression became downcast and she lowered her head.
“Y-yeah… that’s what I figured,” Zoey murmured in a small voice. “I knew the odds of finding one person randomly on a few little cameras were close to zero.”
“It’s possible that she managed to get away, and that’s why we didn’t see her.” Adam suggested, following Sarah’s lead. “Who knows- I’m sure there are other pockets of people safely holed up. Maybe she could have found her way to one of them? We can keep searching though, just in case.” Despite Adam’s relaxed tone, Steven’s eyes shifted between him and Sarah suspiciously. He opened his mouth to say something but closed it as his sister let out a comforted sigh.
“You’re right… there’s always hope.” She said, looking at them with a forced smile. “I like to believe that.” Her words were accented by a loud rumbling coming from her stomach. She blushed a little and laughed. “Oops… I guess my stomach doesn’t care about the end of the world, huh?”
“Well it is pretty late in the afternoon and none of us have eaten all day, I’m guessing.” Adam said, patting his own belly. “I could use a bite. Remember, we don’t have a good idea on how long we will be stuck here, so we will have to be careful with our food… but I don’t see a reason we can’t eat well today to lift our spirits, right gang?” He clapped his hands and headed to the kitchen. “I’ll teach you all my secret recipe for canned beans and canned thanksgiving dinner.” He smiled with a wink as the rest of the group followed him to help prepare.
The spread of food was surprisingly decent despite having come almost entirely from cans. Zoey and Steven ate hungrily and chatted about various things to take their minds off of the day’s events. Adam nursed his food a bit, but Sarah had no appetite at all.
She forced herself to swallow the warm beans to get the much needed calories, but every time she put something in her mouth, her mind was swarmed with the images of her young students being forced to ingest all kinds of alien and human spunk. She gagged softly at the sensation in her mouth pairing with the thought, drawing Adam’s attention. He gingerly put a hand on her knee under the table, giving her a soft, knowing look and squeezing gently. She returned his gaze.
“How are we going to survive this?” She whispered to him.
“One day at a time,” he replied. “One day at a time.”
The group cleaned up dinner and spent the evening getting to know each other more: their skills, their interests, their physical condition, and the like. Adam was surprised to find out that Steven was a popular video game streamer that he watched regularly, having never revealed his real face and speaking with a characterized voice. Likewise, Steven was impressed with Adam’s engineering youtube channel and the two of them quickly found common ground in their hobbies.
While the boys got chummy, Zoey and Sarah discussed some theories about the creatures and shared observations. After a while, the group felt the weight of the day’s turmoil and exhaustion hit them all at once. The boys and girls split between the two small bedrooms and they bid each other goodnight. As Sarah attempted to let sleep take her and drive away the nightmares of the day, she heard Zoey shuffle in the cot across the room.
“Professor…?” She asked in a quiet voice. “Are you still awake?”
“Just call me Sarah, Zoey.” She turned to look at the girl through the darkness. Her sleepy face was slightly illuminated by the dim red light near the floor. “What’s on your mind?”
“You found Diana, didn’t you.” Here tone didn’t imply that this was a question. It was hard to read Zoey’s expression in this lighting, but her voice was full of complicated sorrow, not accusation. Sarah was silent for a moment; her heart began to beat a little faster as she contemplated her next words.
“Yes,” she replied in a clear voice. “We did.”
“How… how is she…?”
“Alive. And that’s what matters.”
Zoey paused for a beat before speaking again.
“I’m… not so sure. There are some things worse than death…” Her voice trailed off and she went quiet for several minutes.
“Zoey?”
“Prof- I mean, Sarah…” Zoey spoke up again, her voice momentarily muffled as if speaking into her pillow. “We’ll be able to save her, right…?” Her voice did not sound hopeful. Sarah didn’t really know what to say. She was done trying to lie to people to cover up painful truths. Who was she to judge what was best for others? Here eyes came to rest on the room’s steadily glowing red light, and then they opened wide.