Sunlight!

So today, Derek comes over to me. "Clarissa," he says, and he's using his Sensitive and Understanding voice. I can just picture his face. "I don't think sitting around in this basement in the dark all the time is doing you much good."

No shit, Sherlock, I think, but I don't say anything. I think about starting to cry but it seems like a lot of effort, you know.

"Come on," he says. "Time to get you out of here."

What?

He gets the baby all bundled up and then he opens up the door. And for the first time in, what, a week? two weeks? it seems like so much longer. For the first time in ages, I see sunlight. Thank God; I was afraid Gretchen was going to grow up like one of those creatures that lives in caves, with translucent skin and no eyes, you know?

It was so bright! I blinked and squinted and tried to look for monkeys. It was blinding. You have no idea. You think you remember what sunlight looks like - but you really have no god damn idea after sitting in the dark for that long.

Derek leads me to the car. He was smart enough to wear sun glasses, so he's not as blinded as I am, but he trips over a fire hydrant. I was glad I was carrying the baby! By the time we get in the car, our eyes have pretty well adapted to the light, and I look around.

It's awful. Abandoned cars everywhere. Some of them have been burned; many of them have the windshields shattered and the hoods popped. The buildings aren't much better, all broken windows and graffiti. There's garbage everywhere and it smells like urine. I think I see a body down the street but when I squint at it I realize it's just some paper. Even for the west side, this is pretty bad, and for a minute I get choked up thinking about the house Derek burned. But then I square my shoulders and get all brave again.

Derek drives me over to the West Side Convention Center. He tells me that a lot of the survivors have gathered there, and we'll be able to meet people, pick up some information, and trade for supplies. He's filled the trunk with alcohol and cigarettes and canned peaches. He only packed bottles of gin - there are only like two bottles left in the basement. I don't think that was a coincidence. But I'll switch to vodka if I have to.

It's not a long drive to the Convention Center, but it's further than I'd want to walk, and I wonder how we're going to travel around once we run out of gas. I don't think it's going to be very easy to buy more gas.

We're cautious all the time, looking for monkeys. But we don't see any. It's a little safer in the daytime, usually - at least you can see them coming. At night, they can sneak up on you and kill you without you even noticing.

But it's a good day, so we reach the Conv Center without any problems, and Derek parks the car. He gets a really good parking space, right next to the door. "Wait here," he says, and he goes over to the main entrance. He knocks on the door, and after a minute, I see someone come up to it. It looks like he's carrying a gun, some kind of big machine gun thing. I want it desparately. I will make Derek get me one. Derek talks to the man for a minute and then the door opens, and Derek waves for me to come in. I grab Gretchen and run for the door. I don't want to be caught outside if the monkeys come.

The guard locks the door and leads us into the convention center. The lights are on - plain old ordinary electric lights! It's so gorgeous I could almost cry.

They've turned the convention center into its own little shanty town. People are camped out, doing the best they can with a blanket or two. There are some food stalls set up along the perimeter, and I see a lot of trading going on. People are buying food, mostly, it looks like, but from what little I see, people are buying and selling pretty much anything you can imagine: alcohol and cigarettes and food, obviously, but clothes, books, Japanese jade buddha statues, Martin Luther bobble-head dolls, roller blades, Scrabble sets, parakeets, anything you can imagine.

The guard leads me and Derek through all this and up a flight of stairs in the back to an office. He knocks on the door, and lets us in.

The man sitting behind the desk, I swear to god, he looks just like that guy on Welcome Back Kotter, the teacher. You know, Kotter. He's got that hair and that mustache, only he looks like a total badass, and he's got total badass bodyguards standing beside him. Holy crap.

"Hello," he says to us. "Welcome to New Utopia."

What? He renamed the convention center? But then I figure it out - he's thinking this is more than a bunch of people hiding from monkeys. Whoa.

Derek smiles. "I'm Derek, and this is Clarissa. We heard about New Utopia and wanted to see it for ourselves." We'd heard about it? He never told me, damn it. But if he had, I surely would have wanted to see it, so I let it go. I shift Gretchen on my hip.

Mr. Kotter smiles at us and spreads his arms wide, as if to encompass it all. "It's a modest start," he says, "but we need to start somewhere. Once we've destroyed the plague of monkeys, we'll work together to rebuild civilization. Are you safe where you are, or will you be joining us?"

Holy crap, of course we'll be joining them. They have ELECTRICITY.

But Derek's shaking his head. "Not right now," he says. "We're in a safe place. And I'm not so sure it's safe to collect everyone together like this - how secure are you here?" He sort of puffs his chest out when he says it, and I can see Mr. Kotter's bodyguards tense up a little.

Mr. Kotter isn't smiling any more. "Very secure," he says, and I believe him. I totally believe him. I want to stay here and be protected by him and have ELECTRICITY and other people to talk to.

"Good," says Derek. "We've got a good stash of supplies and want to trade. And we want to have a good relationship with your group - we can support each other. That's why we came today, to introduce ourselves."

Mr. Kotter's nodding now. "Independents, yes." He makes his eyes look sad. "I hope you konw what you're doing," he says. "If the monkeys attack you, try to come here, and we'll do our best to help you."

"Likewise," says Derek. What the hell is going on? Why is Derek posturing like this? There's so much testosterone in the room that I'm about to grow a beard.

They went on like that for a while more, but I stopped listening. Eventually, we left. On the way out, Derek traded some peaches for a bike for him, and one of those stupid little razor scooters for me. Neither one of them will be any good for escaping monkeys, but they'll be better than walking. As we leave, I look back longingly at the people living in the main room. For a minute I get this crazy impulse to just hand Gretchen to Derek and run into that room and lose myself among them - find friends, stay in the place with ELECTRICITY, but the moment passes, and we go back to the car and drive home to our basement.

Derek tries to explain it to me on the way home. "I don't trust that man," he says. "We had to introduce ourselves so that we could trade with them but I don't trust him. Yeah, he's got electricity, but is that all it takes to win you over?" Well, maybe. Electricity is pretty great. He's shaking his head. "He's got some odd beliefs and he's trying to organize his new civilization around them. It all sounds good right now when you're just trying to stay alive and he's got electric lights and machine guns - but I just don't know."

Derek starts to explain Mr. Kotter's beliefs but I interrupt him. I'm not in the mood for one of his philosophical political discourses. Christ. "We're all alone in the basement, Derek," I say. "All alone in the dark. Maybe Mr. Kotter has some odd beliefs - but from where I'm sitting, your belief that we're doing well is pretty damn odd, too." And then I get choked up and start crying. I hate it when I do that; I cry so easily.

Derek mutters something under his breath and that just makes me cry harder. Then we're back in the basement.

It sure is dark in here.