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"Figures," Selina says, hiking up her skirt to climb over the next piece of rubble. "Figures they'd push the button and no one would even think to tell me." She wobbles and Gary puts out a hand for her to grab. "It's the old boys club all over again. Nukes and dicks."
She pauses on top of the piece of concrete, balancing as she turns to survey their surroundings. Amy strongly suspects it's a photo-op habit. Like any good candidate, Selina always has part of her brain thinking about her optics.
Too bad no one's here to see it. Too bad the world is ending and Amy's surrounded by morons, stuck in her second least-comfortable heels.
--
This basement is the fucking worst. They've established this through many long hours of blaming each other for how they ended up here. The ceiling is low and the floor is mostly dirt and there are only a couple of flickering overhead bulbs.
However it's also the only one they've been able to find that doesn't look like the building on top of it is about to fall down. And since none of them are totally clear on how nuclear fallout works ("There's radiation," Gary had contributed. "And winds?") they haven't been able to come up with a better plan than 'wait until something changes'. ("And until someone remembers to maybe look into where the fucking Vice President is," Selina says.)
--
They've been taking turns going out to forage for necessities: unspoiled food, bottled water, solar cell phone chargers. (Not that the latter helps when the networks are all down. Amy's thumbs keep twitching.) Dan comes back late, a smear of dirt across one cheek and the baseball bat that represents their one and only weapon over his shoulder.
“Look who I found,” he says, hauling someone into the room and pushing him forward.
It’s someone more Lurch-like than any normal human should be and everyone in the basement groans at once.
“Are you kidding me?” Amy says. “It’s the fucking end of the world and Jonah survives?”
“Well, you know what they say about cockroaches,” says Mike, tearing back the top on another tin of Spam.
"Why did you bring him here?" Selina asks Dan, not looking at Jonah.
"He said he knows where there's a generator," Dan says. There's a pause while they all look at him. "Also he followed me."
"Do you know where there's a generator?" Sue says to Jonah. He straightens up and tugs down his shirt.
"Maybe," he says. "I'd have to know what's in it for me."
"Nothing," Amy says. "Nothing is in it for you." She stares him down 'til he starts squirming and looks away.
"I know there are secret underground tunnels under Dupont," he offers.
Dan snorts.
"Yeah, I read that DCist article too."
"So who else is here," Jonah asks, looking around like he's at a cocktail party trying to make the best connection. "Is your daughter, okay, um, ma'am?" he adds, upping the smarm like an afterthought.
“… oh my god, Catherine,” Selina says. “I completely— do you think she’s all right?”
Sue gives Amy a flat, pointed look. The world’s been ending for like two fucking weeks now.
—
Amy goes to wash her hands in the hose tap at the back of the cellar and of course somehow there’s Jonah lurking nearby. Eating a Twizzler; where the hell did he get a Twizzler?
“Hey Amy,” he says as she crouches and turns the faucet so it’s trickling into the bucket underneath. “Remember when you said you wouldn’t date me unless I were the last man on earth?” He holds out his hands in a gesture of smug triumph.
“If you were the last man, Jonah,” she says without looking up. “I said not even if you were the last man on earth.” She scrubs fruitlessly at the dirt embedded under her nails.
“Seriously?” Dan says, from the other end of the short hallway. “You’re using the end of days to pick up women?”
Jonah shrugs.
“Gotta make plans to repopulate the earth somehow, man.”
—
"So," Dan says to her, voice low, when they're a little bit away from the others. "When shit hits the fan, I just wanted to say I've got your back as long as you've got mine."
Amy stares at him.
"Are you trying to form an alliance with me?"
He doesn't try to deny it.
"I think we can safely say this is veering towards a survival-of-the-fittest scenario, Amy. Look around you." He nods towards the other half of the basement. Selina is slouched on a pile of couch cushions, complaining about the heat while Gary fans her with a newspaper. Jonah is watching them, a piece of beef jerky hanging out of his mouth that she's pretty sure no one told him he could take from their stash. Mike's found a stack of TV guides from the 1990s in the corner and is slowly making his way through each one, moving them from a stack on his left to one on his right. Sue's filing her nails and pretending no one else exists.
"When it comes to a fight or flight situation, who do you think's going to make it?" he asks. Amy can't help it; her brain's wired to assess competitors and political threats and she's already sized them up before he's finished talking. She presses her lips together.
"Right," he says. "You, me--"
"-- Sue," she fills in.
"Exactly," he nods. "I was hoping you could reach out to her about this."
"Why, because we’re both women?" Amy snaps.
"No, because she hates me," he says.
"I hate you," she points out and he gives her that one particularly infuriating grin.
"Do you?" he says.
"Yes," she says flatly. "Yes, definitely, yes."
--
What happens later is definitely not her fault. She's read that prisoners can literally go insane from boredom, the sheer monotony of nothing at all to do. So from that sense it's self-preservation, really. It's either watch Gary take everything out of his bag and reorganize it for the twelfth time or --
"Psssst." It's Dan, sticking his head out of the basement crawlspace he's been exploring. "Look what I found." He jerks his head to gesture her over.
"What?" Amy says, but gets up despite herself. Dan disappears inside and she has to crouch down to follow him. The floor is dirt here too and sticks to her palms and bare knees when she crawls in. (It's not like her skirt suit could get any more ruined.)
There's a faint light a few feet in, which turns out to be Dan's palm covering the flashlight so it glows in a pink circle around the edge.
"Look what I found," he says and pulls his hand back from the flashlight just enough to show her the 6-pack of cans. Yuengling, god knows how old, but --
"Score," he says, grinning. The flashlight from below makes his face all angles and shadows, like a kid at camp.
Six of them; that's enough for one each. (Minus Jonah. Obviously.) Or just enough for two people to get kind of buzzed on. She closes her eyes for a second and then looks back at him, hating that she knows him well enough to know he's thinking the same thing.
--
Three beers is not that much, but neither of them's had a lot to eat today (this week) and her tolerance is down from not drinking since this whole thing started. The beer is disgusting: warm and watery and so goddamn welcome. She can't believe she's been having to endure the nuclear apocalypse without any liquor.
"It's better if you drink it fast," he'd offered after cracking one open and handing it to her, so that's what she'd done: trying to ignore the taste, enjoying how it filled her empty stomach.
They're both on their third and final drink now, though Amy suspects he's a little ahead. She's sitting on the opposite side of the little crawlspace tunnel, back against the wall. Dan turned the flashlight off to save the battery and her eyes have adjusted enough that she can see his face swimming in the darkness across from her.
"And did you see," she starts, giggling a little. "Her face when Gary showed her 'the lavatory'?"
Her knees are bent in front of her, feet beside him on the opposite wall, and he's mirroring her. The side of her knee keeps brushing up against his and she sways her legs back and forth a little, bumping against him.
"A bucket and a scoop for dirt, Madame Vice President," he says, bumping back. Amy's head is swimming pleasantly and she watches Dan tilt his head all the way back and swallow the last of his beer. There's a pause and she lets her legs rest against his.
"You've gotta wonder how many staffers made it through this," he points out. "There's probably going to be a power vacuum."
"You're horrible," she says without energy, as though she hasn't been thinking the same thing.
"No, I'm a strategist," he says, rolling his can away down the crawlspace and bringing his hand back up to cover her knee.
"An opportunist," she counters.
"At least I admit it," he says and she never noticed that Dan's hands are really, really big. At least like this, covering her bare, grubby knee. In the silence, she realizes she's staring at it and looks back up to see if he's noticed.
"Sorry," he says and doesn't move it.
"No you're not," she says. "You're never sorry."
He shrugs. "It's a waste of energy."
"Right," she says dryly.
"Regret is for idealists," he says. "Not people like us." Her eyes have strayed back to his hand but she looks up at that, just in time to realize how close his face has gotten to hers. He's leaning forward across the crawl space and his other hand is on her chin, turning her head and -- oh -- he's angling it so he can cover her mouth with his.
He doesn't kiss nice; maybe always, maybe just here, with her. He's biting at her lips before she's even fully reacted, teasing her mouth open, sweeping his tongue slick and sure over hers.
Whatever: she's drunk, she's bored, she's scared, she's horny. She kisses back. It startles him a little when she brings up her hand to the back of his head, presses her blunt nails into the nape of his neck. She feels his hand tighten around her knee and there's a surge of feeling between her legs that makes her overly aware of how his fingers are just a hands-length away from--
"Now who's an opportunist?" he says, pulling back and grinning and god, she fucking despises that smirk. She digs her nails a little deeper, angles him in so she can press her tongue into his mouth. She's going to wipe it off his face if it's the last thing she does.