Read Online Exchange Rate by Bonnie R. Paulson - Free Book Online

the vinyl covered cushion.
    Mike wiped at his cheeks, skin scratching on rough whiskers. He shrugged. “What’s okay? Man, we’re going nuts here. Nobody to talk to but ourselves. Mary’s been muttering to herself for a while now. I think she’s losing it. We need to be around people. This is... it’s not something all of our preparations could’ve prevented, you know? We could’ve locked up the poison, sure, but we were having problems before... before...” He avoided John’s eyes.
    “Okay, yeah, I can imagine.” John glanced in our direction. He’d mentioned a few weeks back we might be more grateful for our nomadic lifestyle someday. We hadn’t seen the plus sides then, but sitting there in Mike’s living room, I could appreciate the opportunity we’d had to move around and meet other people, even when some of those people tried to kill us. I mean, seriously, not everyone’s perfect.
    Too much loss dragged at me and I could feel my reverence for the situation slipping. A large part of me wanted to turn to Bodey and make out with him, make him feel as alive as I needed to feel. Another part of me wanted to start cracking jokes and be silly, because I hadn’t laughed in so long. What if I couldn’t remember how?
    What if so much our humanity leached away as we struggled to say alive?
    “Mike, what kind of a community is down that way?” I had to know and he seemed to want to talk like loneliness ate at him.
    His eyes brightened and he leaned forward. “The rumors are that once you go in, you don’t want to come out. Every weekend, they shine lights through the entire night. Lights! They have electricity. And music? I heard they have bands playing which means they might have dancing.” Mike focused on his fingers for a minute. “Mary loves dancing. Maybe...” He shrugged. “But no children are allowed. They can’t be. I don’t know. A rumor? An unsafe rumor? But maybe...” He stared at the grains of the floor, grief twisting his features.
    Electricity and music? Could it be? “Who’s running the place? Are things getting back to normal?” I couldn’t hide my hope. What would I give for fifteen minutes of comfort? A bed? A bath? A toilet? A microwave?
    “I’m not sure on either account, but I do know they have fences and they have laws and people don’t want to leave.” That seemed good enough for him, that people wanted to stay. So many stories matched mine – where people got to where they thought they’d be safest at the end and wanted to leave. Nothing was as it was supposed to be.
    A place where you didn’t want to leave? Could I imagine such a place? Only if it felt safe, comfortable, even some convenience. What would I give up for those things?
    I didn’t have much to give up, so I guessed I’d give up everything. “I’d love a place like that, if it were real.”
    John glanced at me sharply, then back to Mike. “When are you leaving?”
    “This evening. It’s a sixteen hour hike on log roads through the woods. Most likely, we’ll take two days. Mary can’t walk that long in one go. So, we’ll make camp somewhere along Fernan before finishing our trek.” His eyebrows raised and he grabbed John’s arm. “Come with us. We could make a good go of it. A community, John, it could be like before.”
    The magical word you said with more reverence than God.
    Before.
    Before.
    Before the bombs and the loss of home and loved ones. Dare Before even mean before the sickness and the complete lack of control? The chaos which divided so many? Was it okay to want to go back in time to Before? Or was that being pessimistic? Would thinking like that put me in the place Mike and Mary had reached, where nothing but escaping my safety net would help me?
    “You know, it sounds awesome, but the kids just got married. I was thinking maybe they could have a night where they don’t have pressures on them, you know? We lost all of our things in a fire.” John tempered the good news with our