In a Handful of Dust (7 page)

“Seriously, now.” Lynn frowned. “If you don’t want me to go, if you don’t want to be alone—”

“I’m not scared of being alone,” Lucy said quickly.

Lynn turned and loped down the hill to the gravel road they’d been following the day before. Farmhouses dotted the hills and overgrown fields that surrounded them. With luck, Lynn would find serviceable shoes in one that was close and be back before midday. Lucy tried to reassure herself that it wouldn’t be long, and that the empty sky above her hadn’t grown larger the second Lynn disappeared.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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“L
ucy . . . Lucy, wake up!”

Rough hands were shaking her, and Lucy kicked out instinctively, sending the man reeling back. She flipped onto her belly and was crawling for the rifle before she recognized the voice saying her name. “Carter?” she said in disbelief, pulling herself off the ground.

He nodded from the shade of the tree, his hand covering a bloody nose. “Good to see you again, I think,” he added, pulling his hand back from where she’d kicked him in the face.

“Shit, I’m sorry.” She moved toward him, but he held up a bloody hand to stop her.

“Don’t want to take any chances,” he said, backing away from her.

She stopped, but it wasn’t easy. Her heart told her to go to him, but caution kept her rooted in place. “You still think it’s in you?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been picking apart every little feeling I get now. Wondering if I’m tired from walking or just plain sick like Vera thinks. I can’t say for sure if it’s in me, but I’ve figured out what ain’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“Whatever it takes to live. I don’t have it, Lucy.”

The denial she’d been about to voice died on her lips when she took a good look at him. Carter’s hands were filthy, his wrists starting to thin out already due to hunger. The delicate skin around his mouth was bruised, fading to yellow at the corners. And he had no weapon, no backpack, no food.

“Where’s your gun?” Lucy asked. “Where’s your stuff?”

“Somebody bigger than me took it.” Carter sighed, his tongue poking at the bruise by his lip. “Along with some of my teeth.”

“You were robbed?”

“Didn’t take long,” he said. “I started out same day you guys did, going the other direction. I hear footsteps behind me about noon, I turn to see who it is, and next thing I know my face is on the road. I woke up awhile after, my face damn near boiling from the heat of it against me for so long.”

Lucy cautiously knelt down beside him, and he turned his head to show her. Gravel pocked his cheek in spots, melted into the skin. She brushed at it without thinking, and he recoiled from her touch as much as from the pain.

“You shouldn’t be near me.”

She took his hand in her own even though she knew he was right. “If you believe that, why’d you come find me in the first place?”

“To say good-bye, again, I guess.” He shrugged. “Which is plain stupid. We said it good and solid already. I’m just not ready to let you go yet.”

“You’re not going to,” Lucy decided. “Follow us. Lynn doesn’t have to know. If you can reach Entargo, there’s people there that can test your blood, and if you’re clean, there’s no reason you can’t come with us to California.”

“And if I’m not, they shoot me dead.”

“Take the chance,” Lucy said. “What else is there?”

“Nothing,” Carter agreed. “There’s nothing for me. I don’t have people like you do, Lucy. Vera and Stebbs, they’re positive it’s not in you, and Lynn’s leaving her whole life behind just to be at your side. My mom, she heard it might be me and she wouldn’t even look in my face anymore for fear of catching it herself. With Maddy gone and me on my own, I just can’t . . .”

Lucy tightened her grip on him. “You can’t what?”

“I can’t see anything for me.”

She tossed his hand away. “So what then, you give up? You’re done? You going to find a nice place to curl up in a ball like a sick possum and just die? Even with me offering you a way out? Follow me, Carter. I’ll leave food out. Lynn’s leading us straight to water every day. You can make it.”

“I can’t keep up, Lucy,” he said, looking away from her. “I can’t keep your pace, and you can’t give me half your food without hurting yourself. I won’t let you do that.”

“I don’t usually eat much,” she said stubbornly.

“You’re not usually walking across the country either,” Carter said.

“I’m leaving it out anyway,” she said, sticking to her plan. “So you can either follow and make it matter, or the critters can have it and I’m weaker for no good reason.”

“Lucy, don’t do this—”

“It’s done. Now you get out of here before Lynn comes back and shoots you.”

He placed one hand on either side of her face with a sad smile, and her thoughts raced for a string of words that would make the feelings in her heart and the harsh nature of their world work hand in hand.

But there was nothing.

Deceiving Lynn wasn’t an entirely new experience for Lucy. She’d snuck out of their house more than a few times, told small fibs about broken windows, even bailed out of chores once or twice on a whim. But failing to tell her Carter was trailing them outdid all her white lies, and the guilt didn’t sit well. But she could bear the burden, knowing the alternative was to leave Carter to die.

Lucy ignored her conscience pangs as Lynn wrapped her foot in some bandages she’d found, padding the heel well before sliding the new boots over Lucy’s feet.

“How they feel?” Lynn asked.

“Pretty good, might be a little loose.”

“Loose can give you a blister just as bad as tight can,” Lynn said, her forehead creasing.

“Yeah, but I need the room for the bandage,” Lucy said quickly, not wanting Lynn to leave the camp again. “And who knows how long it will take us to get to California . . . I might grow into them.”

“Hopefully not that long,” Lynn said, as she lay down on her blanket, eyes sliding to the horizon and the dark clouds piling up above the sunset. “Might rain.”

“Feels weird not running for buckets.”

“We should set out our bottles. They’ll catch something at least.”

They piled their backpacks and blankets underneath the spreading canopy of the pine as the clouds neared, flickering lightning licking the edges of the storm front.

“Think it’ll be bad?” Lucy asked.

Lynn watched the clouds for a moment. “Not very,” she decided. “It’ll be one of those that gives us a soaking and then moves on. I should’ve noticed it sooner. We could’ve been in one of them houses below.”

Lucy slid under the lowest branches of the pine, the needles tickling her back as she lay on her stomach. “There’s good cover here. We’ll be fine.”

Lynn scooted over to lie next to Lucy, her face propped in her hands. “Something’s not right,” she said, her eyes darting over the horizon. “I don’t know if it’s bothering me I didn’t see that storm coming sooner, or . . .”

“Or what?”

“Or if it’s like I feel somebody is watching.”

“Nobody is watching us,” Lucy said quickly. “There’s nobody out here but you and me.”

“Maybe. But keep your gun close,” Lynn said, her nerves still clearly on edge. “I guess I’ll lay here in the dirt and watch the first rainfall I’ve never been running around willy-nilly to collect.”

The next day dawned clear. As Lucy dragged herself out from under the pine, she saw Lynn critically inspecting the water bottles they’d left out the night before.

“Catch much?”

“Not too bad, but I think a critter got curious in the night, knocked this one over.” She held up an empty bottle. “Not a drop in it.”

“Critters, what can you do?” Lucy shrugged, forcing the image of Carter chugging the water, his bruised and broken lips cracked with thirst, out of her mind.

“Shoot ’em,” Lynn said, and shoved the empty into her pack along with the rest. They made good time once Lucy had convinced Lynn her new boots weren’t bothering her. She regretted putting on such a convincing show; if Carter couldn’t keep up with them, he was a goner. They ate a sparing lunch of Stebbs’ venison jerky along with some dried peas, their rations so meager Lucy knew the small amounts she could spare for Carter would only keep him alive for so long.

“Do you think we should hunt while we’re still in an area we know?”

“Maybe,” Lynn said, “but we’ve got plenty of food to keep us going at least out of Ohio. Once we’re low, we can start thinking about hunting smaller animals, something we can eat in one or two meals. We can hit some empty houses up, see if there’s anything left in the way of cans.”

Lucy looked past the words Lynn was saying and into her tone. “But not yet?”

“Not yet,” Lynn said, looking up at the midday sun. “Mostly I want to get moving. The faster we get to California, the sooner we don’t have to worry about things like food and water.”

“Right,” Lucy agreed, knowing full well Carter wouldn’t be able to do “fast” for long.

The gravel road they were on switched into a patchy pavement, then intersected with a wide highway with a straight yellow line painted down the middle. Lucy walked to the edge where the grass had begun to reclaim its territory, shooting up through the blacktop and reaching for the sun.

“Which way?”

“If you still want to see Entargo, we go left,” Lynn said. “Up to you.”

“Let’s go left then,” Lucy said, and walked onto the road, her new boots clunking against the tarred surface.

Lynn followed, her hand resting lightly on the butt of the gun jammed in her jeans. “I don’t like traveling the bigger roads,” she said. “Could mean more people.”

“More than what? Zero? ’Cause that’s how many we’ve seen.”

“Doesn’t mean we haven’t been seen,” Lynn argued, but fell silent as they walked.

The highway cut through fields once sown with corn, now choked with waist-high grass and clumps of maples that had seeded themselves over the years. Houses that had been neglected for decades stood like skeletons, their siding peeling off like flaps of skin to show the framework. Around three in the afternoon, Lynn stopped Lucy.

“We’re gonna want to steer clear of that one.” She nodded into the distance at a house that looked no more imposing than the others they’d passed.

“Why that one?”

“See the sun glinting off all the windows? None of them are broken. Somebody’s living there. No point giving them the willies by walking past.”

They veered off the road and into the abandoned fields, going slowly over the uneven ground and decades of brush growing unchecked. They cleared a rise to find the remnants of a town nestled in the valley, the road they had been following cutting straight through it and marching into the distance, where a new sight broke the horizon.

Lynn frowned. “What’s that?”

“The city,” Lucy said, her heart skipping a beat. “It’s Entargo.”

“Yeah, but what . . .” Lynn trailed off, her confusion evident. “How come I can see it so far away? What am I looking at?”

“That’s what we called a skyscraper. It’s a really, really tall building.”

“Taller than them cell phone towers we’ve got out our way?”

“Oh yeah. Much taller.”

“Huh.” Lynn put one hand on her hip, brows still furrowed.

Lucy tried not to smile. It was so odd to see Lynn perplexed. “What were you expecting?”

“Don’t know.” Lynn shrugged. “Something more like that, I suppose.” She gestured toward the village below them. “Just more spread out.”

“There’s places that look like that,” Lucy said, surprised the memory was still there. “It’s where the people mostly lived, the housing areas. But the big buildings like that were mostly for the government, and the hospital where Grandma worked is one of them.”

Lynn nodded, eyes distrustfully riveted on the gray towers. “Isn’t it scary to be up that high?”

“Not really. We lived in one something like that, called an apartment building. Lots of people live in one, you have your own rooms, but you’re all stacked up on top of each other.”

Lynn sat down, unscrewed the cap of her water bottle. “You didn’t have your own house?”

Lucy took advantage of the break to rustle in her pack and slip a few pieces of jerky to the ground while Lynn wasn’t watching. “Having your own place might sound better than living in one of the towers,” she explained, “but it wasn’t. Mostly the people that lived in the outlying areas were on their own. If you lived in the city in one of the towers, you were safer. They were guarded, always. Our water was cleaner. We even had bathrooms.”

“Didn’t know you remembered much about it.”

“It’s hard to forget having a bathroom.”

“I have a bathroom,” Lynn said defensively.

“Sure you do. Remember what happened when I tried to use it?”

“Lord, that was a mess I did not enjoy cleaning up.” Lynn stored her water bottle and shouldered her pack. Lucy took her time doing the same, aware that every second she delayed could make a difference to Carter.

“Still wanna see it?” Lynn asked.

“Sure.”

“All right. We’ll see how close we get. Somebody takes a shot at us, I don’t care how much you miss your bathroom. We’ll give it a wide berth.”

“Somebody takes a shot at me, a bathroom might come in handy.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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L
ucy stood on the overpass, stunned.

Entargo was dead.

“Cover your nose, little one.” Lynn slipped her handkerchief over the lower half of her face. “There’s no knowing what’s on the wind here.”

She did as she was told, hands numb. The outer belt they stood on ran above and outside the perimeter of the city, giving them a good view of the streets, empty except for the trash blowing through them.

“Whatever happened here, it wasn’t long ago,” Lynn said, her voice muffled. “Breathe through your mouth. There’s no stench that way.”

The rows of dead back home had been burned quickly to ward off contagion, so Lucy had never smelled rotting people. The smell of death and decay was no stranger; wild animals ripped one another open all the time, leaving behind the bits they weren’t interested in to fester in the sun.