Doomsday Rebirth novel · Chapter 24 of 24

Chapter 24: Two Doors

Gillian's POV

On the ninetieth night I could not sleep, so I made bread.

By dusk the next day the whole west hall smelled of it.

The compact lay on the folding table with the dent in its leg, and a dozen people stood around it with pens.

I had not wanted a speech.

"Read it once," the cook with bad shoulders said. "Out loud. So nobody can say they didn't hear."

I read it, and it was only four lines long.

Lorain Avenue and the Terminal's west hall share one charter.

Each keeps its own door.

Neither door locks on a person.

Anyone put out of either gets a hearing in the room first.

The welder signed for Lorain, and the bakery woman, and my aunt.

The council signed for the west hall.

Among them was the woman I had last seen at the front of my line in the other life.

She did not meet my eyes when she did it.

I let that be hers to carry.

Gordon signed last, in a big loose scrawl, and then he stood there for a moment with the pen in his hand.

"I'm not on any list," he said.

"No," I said. "You're not."

"I'd like to carry the water barrels."

"They're in the cistern. Ask Tuck."

He nodded, and went, and for once in his life he did not shake anyone's hand on the way out.

The dark rain had come on the ninth of November, and at every dark of the moon since.

Nobody in the west hall had gotten wet in any of them, and the room had held seven hundred.

Lacey had washed more pots than I could count.

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