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who’s going to be biting my bum around here.” She gave Mac a playful nudge, and he made a grab for her. Emily squealed and started to run toward the door of their apartment, closely followed by Mac, his arms outstretched zombielike.
    “Come here, ya wee monster, you,” he cackled and chased after her.
    She let him catch her at the front door. He wrapped his arm around her waist, turned her around, and pulled her close to him. “I love you, Emily.”
    “I love you too,” she said.

    Emily’s little group waited on the dock, watching Mac as he and his crew helped load the last few supply containers onto the deck of the HMS Vengeance . An invisible black cloud hung over her head, despite the beautiful day. In her arms, Emily cradled a sleeping Adam while Rhiannon stood at her side, a look of utter despair on the young girl’s face. A sizable crowd had gathered behind Mac’s family to bid the crew good-bye, but Emily felt more alone in that moment than she had since leaving New York.
    “Bloody hell! You look like a bulldog chewing a wasp,” Mac said to Rhiannon, when he finally climbed the steps from the dock to join them. He pulled her close and planted a kiss on the top of the girl’s head, then slipped in next to Emily, easing Adam from her arms.
    “I don’t want you to go,” said Rhiannon, her voice full of sulk and sadness. Emily almost chimed in that she was with Rhiannon 110 percent, but she knew it would only serve to make Mac’s leaving even harder on him. He knew her thoughts, knew exactly how she felt. They had gone over it endlessly in bed the night before, and the same conclusion had been reached: there was no one else with Mac’s level of experience, and there was too much at stake for every survivor if he did not go. Still, Emily felt as though she was about to explode at any second at the thought of his imminent departure.
    “I’ll be back before you know it, kiddo,” Mac told Rhiannon, cupping one tear-dampened cheek in a big hand. “Don’t worry about me. Besides, you’ll have plenty to keep you busy looking after this little one and his mum for me.”
    A shrill blast from the Vengeance ’s klaxon shattered the air.
    “Take care of them,” Mac said to Rhiannon and, after planting a soft kiss on his son’s forehead, handed him to the girl. He turned to Emily and took her into his arms. “I’m doing this for you,” he said. “Not for the others. For you, for my family.”
    Emily hugged him as hard as she could, pressing her face into his neck, drawing in his scent, and binding it to her memory. “I love you,” she whispered into his ear. “Come back to me.”
    “Always,” Mac promised. He held her for a few more heartbeats, then pulled away, turned, and strode toward the gangplank. He waved once before he climbed down into the belly of the submarine, pulling the watertight hatch closed behind him, and then he was gone.
    Within a matter of minutes all remaining hatches were sealed and the engines of the submarine began to stir the water as it eased away from the dock and headed out to sea.
    Emily and her family watched until the Vengeance slipped beneath the waves, leaving nothing but a quickly dissipating wake to indicate it had ever been there at all.

Emilywalked across the beach, Adam cradled in the crook of her arm, Thor trotting happily ahead of her, his nose fixed to the ground. Her eyes stared out to sea, but they registered nothing. Her thoughts were entirely with her husband, deep beneath the rolling waves, travelling in what equated to little more than a glorified tin can, heading north on what would either be the beginning of a new dawn for mankind or a fool’s errand that would put a hard and heavy full stop next to the final chapter of the human race. Thor eyed the waves smashing into the beach; a gray-white froth of foam pushed up from the ocean with each new swell, almost a mirror of the storm gathering to the west. The sun was already low on the horizon,