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Light; pure and blinding, followed by the unfurling bloom of the cloud. Not just a cloud, the cloud – the kind he’s never seen anywhere but in used school textbooks and in the bootleg movies he watches with Hurk.
They all stare at it in disbelief, even forgetting Joseph Seed for a moment, but then the shockwave is expanding outwards, hollowing out Silver Lake in its fury…and it’s time to run. The cops, and the deputy, herd Seed off to one of the cars while the rest of them scatter in panic. Nick outdistances them all, screaming Kim’s name as if she can hear him. Sharky wants to keep running, but he forces himself to skid to a halt and think. He needs to get to the nearest Prepper bunker and needs to get there fast, but there’s no way he’ll make it on foot; he’ll need a set of wheels.
He finds a pickup, one of the bird-shit-white Eden’s Gate trucks, that’s been run off the road. A few precious seconds are wasted in his frantic search for the keys, but he finally finds them beneath the seat and jams the right one into the ignition. The engine roars to life and the tires squeal as they catch the edge of the cracked asphalt, propelling the truck onto the road.
Bunker, a voice in his head is screaming as if he doesn’t already know he needs to get to safety. He’s no genius, but he’s never been that dumb. Sharky stomps on the accelerator and hunches over the steering wheel, driving like a bat out of hell. The world shakes again with the blinding flash of another bomb, and he swerves to avoid a falling tree – everything seems to be on fire, and the flames are spreading fast. Ordinarily, this would be something to sit back and watch…but it looks like the world won’t be the only thing to come to an end if he doesn’t reach a bunker.
Sharky barely misses hitting one of the deer fleeing across the road, their hides alight from where they’ve run through the wall of flames that’s steadily moving towards him. There’s a rumbling sound coming from above, just barely audible above the cacophony Sharky’s dealing with down below, but as it passes he glances up to see a flash of yellow. “Good luck, man,” he murmurs to himself, then turns his attention from Nick Rye back to getting out of this alive. This close to the compound, there should be plenty of shacks with a Prepper hole in the bottom of them, and he guns the engine as he catches sight of a tin roof off to the left.
This one’s blocked by the flaming wreckage of two other cars – they probably had the same idea he did. “Fuck,” he yells, pounding the heel of his hand against the steering wheel in frustration. Shoving the gear lever into reverse, Sharky glances in the rear view mirror and then does a double-take because he’s just seen Grace Armstrong back there.
Another flash lights up the sky, and the ground bucks beneath his feet as he slides out of the truck. “Grace? Grace,” Sharky screams out above the roar of the flames. She’s limping, using one of her rifles as a crutch, and it doesn’t look like she gives a damn if she’s going to die out here or not. She hesitates just a little too long when he yells at her to come with him, but she lets him duck under her arm and help her to the pickup. “You got any idea where the nearest Prepper stash is?”
He has to ask her three times before she hears him, and they waste precious seconds while she gathers her thoughts up enough to answer. “Mattis family’s got a shack back in the trees,” Grace says after a small eternity. “Be rough going, but you can make it.”
“The trees? Like, the ones that’re on fuckin’ fire right now?”
Grace looks out of the side window. “Thought that’d be right up your alley.”
“Sure as shit would be if we didn’t have to drive into it.”
The drive is a harrowing one and Sharky’s hoodie is stuck to his back with sweat before they even reach the tree line. Under normal circumstances he might admit to being slightly excited, what with all the fiery death surrounding them and all, but this is nowhere close to normal.
“We’re gonna fuckin’ die,” Sharky realizes, wondering why he’s even trying to outrun it. Maybe it’s the best he deserves. He’s not a particularly good person, he knows that much, but he’s no monster, either. Not that it matters to an atomic bomb…or three, as the case may be.
Grace reaches over and grips his shoulder, shaking him out of his thoughts. “We’re here.”
He slams on the brakes and they stumble out of the soot-smeared truck. The flames are closing in fast; it’s nothing short of a miracle that the Mattis farm hasn’t been overrun by now but the whole place is about to go up and they’ll go up with it unless they can find the bunker in time. Grace hauls her bandanna up over her nose and mouth, limping in one direction while Sharky heads in the other, trying to blink some moisture into painfully dry eyes.
Sharky pulls his hoodie up over his mouth as he squints, looking around frantically to find-
“Here!”
Oh, thank god. He turns to run towards the sound of Grace’s voice, and finds her clearing away a stack of trash from the top hatch. “Lemme help.” They both paw at the debris, pulling their hands back every so often to blow on singed fingers, but it’s finally cleared off enough for them to see the thick metal wheel. Sharky yanks his sleeves down to cover his hands and reaches for it – even with the fabric helping block it, it’s almost too hot to hold onto.
It’s also impossible to turn, and the relief he’d felt upon seeing ‘safety’ dissolves back into full-blown panic. “Shit, when’s the last time he oiled it?”
Grace’s hands settle atop his, and Sharky looks up to see her eyes on him. “We’ll do it together,” she says, like it’s no big deal. Like he isn’t close to losing his fucking mind because atomic bombs have wiped out everyone and everything he knows and if he stops to think about it he’ll start screaming. “I got you, Sharky.”
Sharky ducks his head before giving a quick, tight nod. “Okay.”
“Count of three,” Grace tells him. “One…two…three.”
He tightens his fingers and heaves with all his might, feeling pain radiate up into his palms where he’s probably going to leave the top layer of his skin on the metal. The wheel slowly starts moving, then spins faster as they gain enough leverage to overcome the rusted metal threads. Sharky starts to lets go and, just like he’d thought, some of his skin stays behind. “Aw, fuck…!”
“Let’s get it open,” Grace yells. What he can see of her face above the flag bandanna and below the brim of her hat is shiny with sweat and the beginnings of a bad burn. If he can see it that clearly on her skin, Sharky doesn’t even want to know what he looks like.
Ignoring the agony in his hands and fingers, Sharky grips one edge of the hatch while she grabs the other, and they lift it up. Grace slips past him down the ladder and he follows quickly, grasping the inside of the hatch and pulling it down over his head. Having loosened the mechanism earlier from outside, it’s a lot easier to spin the wheel to lock the door.
Sharky climbs down the ladder, ears still ringing in the sudden quiet of the shelter. It’s cool and dark at the bottom, a stark contrast to the hell they’ve just escaped from. He can hear Grace moving around and he should go see what he can do to help her, but his legs finally give out and he slides down the wall to sprawl on the floor. “Jesus,” he whispers. “Fuck.”
“Sharky.” Grace comes back to stand in front of him before his mind has a chance to kick into gear. “We’ve got wounds to see to.”
She has to say it twice more before he really hears her, then they move into the cramped ‘living room’ with a rickety-looking bunk bed and a pile of Field and Stream back issues. They both start pulling off their outer layers, and Sharky focuses on the pain in his hands when the ache behind his eyes starts to build up. “Thought all that bullshit Joseph was sayin’…was just bullshit,” he blurts finally. “I mean, I knew shit was bad but…!”
Grace turns back around to face him and they stare at each other before one of them moves forward. He’s not sure if it’s Grace or himself that reaches out first, but suddenly they’re in each other’s arms. He can feel her tears soaking into his shirt but that’s okay because he’s crying, too. How many people out there didn’t have a chance to get to safety? Friends, family…those little kids he’d heard the Deputy had rescued out by Jacob’s stronghold. Strangers he’ll never know and people he wishes he’d never met; he cries for them all.
They huddle together on the floor until their sobs dry up into wet-sounding hiccups, and Sharky realizes that he’d ordinarily be embarrassed - especially around Grace – but he doesn’t feel that way at all. What he does feel is…well, it’s complicated. But it feels right somehow that he say something about it. “Uh. Grace?”
She turns her head, still clinging to him as tightly as he’s holding on to her, and Sharky can feel the damp sweep of her lashes against his throat. Grace doesn’t ask him to explain anything; she just leans her head back so that they can look at each other for a minute before they come together for a kiss. It’s wet and sloppy and nothing like he’d imagined, back when his only concerns were barbecuing Angels and wishing in vain that Grace would give him the time of day. It’s needier than the fires roaring across Hope County, and burning twice as hot.
Grace tugs at his belt loops to bring him closer and Sharky moves in without a second thought. Usually he’d be running his mouth off right about now, doing some teasing and cataloguing everything so that he could brag about it later. This time, it’s not like that at all.
This time, it’s all about wanting something that can dull the pain of being alive when he shouldn’t be…and offering comfort the same way it’s being offered to him.
He kisses her harder and feels her press against him. “Don’t say anything,” Grace mumbles against his lips. Sharky hears don’t ruin it ring out into the bunker louder then if she said it out loud, but she’s got nothing to worry about; he’s not about to let his mouth spoil anything about this.
There’s not going to be too many people left to tell, anyway.
They struggle with undressing and her elbow nearly takes out his left eye, but their clothes finally hit the floor. After that it’s all hot, loud breathing and white-knuckled need. She guides him to where she wants him and there’s no place he’d rather be. Grace sinks her nails into his back, lifting her hips up to meet his, and they fill the bunker with the sharp slap of skin against skin. Sharky manages to forget about the world ending until Grace slips her hand between them to help herself out a little, because when she comes her head tilts back and he’s reminded that some people call an orgasm a ‘little death’.
There’s plenty of death happening just a few feet above their heads. Desire and sorrow build up inside him anew until his chest aches with it, and their frenzied coupling ends with a release that should feel good…but it doesn’t. Not really.
“Sorry,” Sharky says, rubbing at his stinging eyes as he moves off to one side. “I…I can do better than that, swear to God.”
Grace rolls over to face him and drapes a long leg over one of his thighs. “Don’t worry about it. Next time, right?”
He looks at her, wondering when she took the time to grow a sense of humor. “Real funny there, Grace.”
“What else we got to do, trapped down here?” Grace asks. “It’s been a fucked-up day, Sharky, and I need a break from it. Let’s get some sleep.” Her eyes - deep, dark, and still wet with tears of her own - say what her mouth doesn’t, and he finally understands that he never actually needed her to say more than six words at a time. All he needed to do was to pay attention to what she was saying when she wasn’t making a sound.
He surprises both of them by moving closer and kissing her, then they curl up together under a blanket to wait for the screams in their head to stop. Sharky buries his nose in Grace’s hair and that helps a little; for the first time since the bombs started dropping, it feels like he can breathe again.