- - End of All Things, The (46 page)

“A mite cold at times. I haven’t seen ice on the swamp in at least twenty years, though. Maybe longer. Usually not so cold as you’d freeze unless you were lying outside bare in it.”

Carly could see how Justin’s eyes sharpened with interest. Stan had a thoughtful expression. He glanced at Mindy, and they shared a moment of silent communication before turning their attention back to Tom.

“Can you grow food in the winter?” Justin asked.

“Some. Radishes, spinach, cauliflower, that sort of thing.”

Justin shifted Dagny to his other shoulder. “You must be growing all of your food if you haven’t sent anyone out for supplies.”

“We are.” Tom looked rather proud of the fact. “ ‘Course, I think some of us are gettin’ sick of being vegetarians, but what are you gonna do? We got a couple of ladies keeping chickens, but we can’t produce enough to keep the whole town in meat every day. Not yet, anyway.”

“Storm?” Carly called, and the little horse trotted around to the porch obediently. Stan must have understood her concern because he rose from his seat on the porch steps to get a rope from the wagon and tied Storm to it.

“We ain’t gonna eat your horses, ma’am.” Tom chuckled. 

Carly flushed a little, but she was still glad Storm was where she could keep an eye on her.

Sam crawled out from where he’d been dozing in the shade under the wagon and looked for Tigger. He found her in the wagon and carried her over to sit by Carly. He laid his head on her knee, and she scratched the itchy spot on the back of his neck where he couldn’t reach. Sam’s tail thumped on the porch floor, and he arched his neck under her hand, an expression very much like a smile pulling up his lips at the corners.

Tom shook his head. “And if that ain’t the damnedest thing I ever saw.”

“I won’t even reprove your language,” Cynthia said, her eyes wide with interest. “Wherever did you get him, ma’am?”

“Please, call me Carly. I found him as a puppy on the streets of Juneau. I couldn’t just let him starve. I, uh, didn’t know he was a wolf.”

“You lived in Alaska and didn’t recognize a wolf when you saw one?” Tom was amused, and he wasn’t the only one. Mindy giggled, too, and Carly gave her a playful scowl.

“People seem to think everyone from Alaska is a rugged outdoorsman who hunts bears armed with just a knife. I lived in Juneau. It’s not a big city . . .” Carly’s voice cracked as she thought of her hometown, knowing she’d never see it again. She took a deep breath to push back the tears. “But I lived in town all my life. I went fishing with my dad, but that was about the extent of my outdoor experience. The only time I’d ever seen a wolf was in the zoo in Anchorage. Sam just looked like a dog to me.” 

“How did you tame him?”

Carly shrugged. “I guess he was already tame.”

“He’s not aggressive?”

“Only when he feels I’m in danger. But he listens to me if I tell him everything’s okay. Sam is very smart.”

“I’m sure you can understand why some people would be wary of him.” Cynthia seemed a little tentative, as though she was afraid Carly would be offended. 

“Oh, sure. Justin was kind of leery of him when we first met, and Sam was still a puppy back then.”

“And the horses?”

“Carly attracts animals,” Justin said with a wry quirk of his lips. “We were followed by a moose for a while in Canada, and I just kept praying, ‘Please God, don’t let it decide to become one of Carly’s pets.’ I had this horrible picture in my mind of the thing trying to crawl into the tent with us.”

“You’ve seen a good bit of the country in your travels.” Cynthia poured another glass of lemonade. Her eyes sparkled with excitement, and Carly realized that this was probably the first news they’d had of the outside world in a very, very long time. She wished she had something better to tell them. “Can you tell us . . . Can you tell us what it’s like . . . out there? We’ve seen just a few survivors, and you were the only ones who had a baby. A living baby, that is.”

A question came unbidden into Carly’s mind, but she wasn’t about to ask when the answer could be so horrible . . . 

“We’ve seen a fair amount of other people,” Justin said. “But no other babies or pregnant women. I can’t estimate a total number of survivors, but it’s high enough that the grocery stores along our path have been emptied to the bare walls. Food is becoming scarce, and people are getting desperate enough to do . . . things they wouldn’t normally do.” 

They were all silent for a moment before Cynthia spoke. “We need more watchers on the wall.”

Tom hesitated for a moment, as though he wanted to say something but thought the better of it. He changed the subject. “Those who survived, did they share a common characteristic?”

Justin and Carly exchanged glances. “I have a theory for at least some of them.” Carly explained about the flu shots from Cederna and the documents they had discovered.

“There was bound to be some level of natural immunity even though the lethality rate was artificially high,” Justin said, “as with our horses and the wolf, but we have no way of researching this. How many people remember who manufactured their flu shot, anyway?”

“I do,” Tom replied. “It was Mantis Medical. I remember seeing it on the form I signed and remembered it because it reminded me of a praying mantis.”

The sun had dipped low in the sky during their conversation, and the crickets were beginning to chirp. Tom rose to his feet and put his empty lemonade glass on the tray. “You folks are welcome to stay the night, if you like. We’ve got a few empty houses. There’s a barn on the Connell property. Your horses would be comfortable in there.”

“Thank you.” Justin glanced over to Stan and Mindy to see if they had any objections. Mindy thanked Tom and Cynthia, and Carly realized Mindy hadn’t said much during the conversation, something that was unusual for her.

“What’s wrong?” Carly asked her as they climbed into the wagon, pitching her voice low so as not to be overheard.

“Do you trust them, Carly?” Mindy asked. She settled into the seat beside Carly and kept her eyes on the hands clasped in her lap.

“What do you mean? I don’t think they’re out to hurt us, if that’s what you’re saying.”

Mindy gnawed on her lip. “No, that’s not what I mean. It’s just . . . this seems too good to be true, you know? Lemonade on the porch? It made me remember all of those summers I used to spend at my grandma’s farm when I was a kid. It doesn’t seem like things like that should exist anymore. Not with how much things have changed.”

They drove the wagon to the house, and Tom walked ahead with Justin and Stan to show them the way. They passed a group of young children playing kickball in the street, who froze in place to silently watch the wagon pass as their ball bounced away into the underbrush unnoticed. Carly understood what they were feeling. It had been a year since the Crisis began and Tom and the rest of the town council had decided to seal off the town, a year since they had seen any outsiders. And it had been a year since Carly saw any children at play. She pressed a kiss to Dagny’s forehead and thought of how lovely it would be if there were other children for her to play with.

The Connell house turned out to be a turn-of-the-century Craftsman style bungalow with a low-pitched roof and overhanging eaves. The furnishings inside were simple, functional, and uncluttered, and Carly loved it immediately. Justin took the horses out to the barn while Carly explored the rest of the house with Mindy.

“This place is amazing,” Mindy said. “I’m trying to remind myself to be alert and suspicious, but it’s just so
nice
here, like a slice of the world the way it used to be. I almost expect to sit down in the living room and turn on the six o’clock news. Did you notice the door wasn’t locked when we got here?”

“What’s worth stealing?” Carly replied.

Mindy shrugged. “I just feel like we’ve landed in Mayberry.”

As if to reinforce the image, their neighbor, Mrs. Sutton, brought over a basket of vegetables for their dinner, with a few eggs tucked inside from the chickens she kept. Carly almost cried as she thanked her. Had she become so changed by life in this new world that neighborly kindness was an oddity?

That evening, after a delicious dinner of fresh vegetables, canned chicken and eggs made into a stir-fry with rice, Carly took a shower. The water was cold, but it felt like heaven. Those quick wipe downs at camp and occasional dunks in a creek or pond didn’t do the job. It was the first time she’d felt clean in weeks. 

She sat on the bed, brushing her hair, and watched in puzzlement as Justin re-dressed in dark clothing. “Where are you going, honey?”

“Exploring,” he said. “Carly, this place seems too good to be true. I’m going to try to find out if it is.”

Carly hid a smile. That was her Justin—ever-cautious, ever-suspicious. Of course he would want to go scouting, but she couldn’t resist teasing him about it a bit. “What are you looking for? Bones of other travelers they’ve lured inside to their doom?”

“Ha ha.” Justin took off his guns and laid them on the dresser before he replaced them with knives.

“Justin, if their intent was just to rob and kill us or something, they could have done it easily. Why feed us and loan us a house if they meant us harm?” She had to admit, the
normalcy
of the place was disconcerting, but she didn’t think they were in any danger.

“I don’t know.” Justin rubbed the back of his neck and gave her a slightly sheepish look. “But I can’t trust them. Not yet. Keep Sam in here with you and Dagny, all right? I locked Storm and Shadowfax in the barn and secured it with one of our padlocks, so they should be safe.” He bent and pressed a gentle kiss to Dagny’s forehead and smiled when she cooed.

“Please be careful,” Carly whispered as he pulled her into a hug. Even though she didn’t think the residents were aggressive or meant them any harm, they might react badly if they found a man dressed in black lurking around in the bushes.

“I will.” He lifted a lock of her caramel-colored hair and tucked it behind her ear as his eyes grew soft. “You know, I still think your hair is the most beautiful I’ve ever seen.” He kissed her and called for Sam, who’d been lying out in the hallway with Tigger curled up beside him. From there, he could look down through the railing at the top of the stairs and keep an eye on the foyer. Justin shut him inside with Carly after giving him a scratch behind the ears. Sam jumped lightly onto the end of the bed and turned around in circles before plopping down with a contented sigh. Tigger paused to rub up against Carly’s legs before she hopped up beside him and snuggled down against Sam’s belly.

“And so we wait,” Carly said. She sighed. She didn’t think she’d ever get used to it.

It was an excellent night for spying. The overcast sky hid the moon and the town lay silent in the darkness, the only sound the chirping of crickets and the croak of the bullfrogs from the swamp. Justin slipped silently from house to house, pausing to listen, to watch, to wait.

He stopped beneath a window. The room inside was lit by a lantern, and its warm, yellow glow spilled out to pool on the ground outside. His breathing was slow and even, and he crouched, resting lightly on the balls of his feet, perfectly balanced and motionless.

A man and a woman were talking inside, discussing the options for planting their winter garden this year. A child’s voice interjected and asked his father if he could help with a math problem. Justin was surprised, but pleased; apparently, Colby had a school.

He listened for a bit more and then continued on his way. An ordinary family with ordinary domestic discussions. He shook his head. It was difficult for him to accept that the place might be exactly as it seemed, an untouched remnant of the country he thought was dead and gone.

He heard voices and ducked back among the shrubbery. The owners of those voices drew closer, and soon enough, he could make out the words.

“. . . kinda cute.” The speaker was young, male, late teens or early twenties, Justin judged. “She can’t be more than twenty or so and that’s only a couple of years older than me.”

Carly.

Another young male voice replied, “Yeah, but she’s married. And she has a kid, too.”

The first young man scoffed. “He’s
old
. She probably just shacked up with him for protection or something.”

Justin flinched. Having similar doubts deep within him was bad enough, but to hear them voiced with casual cruelty by an outsider was much worse. 

“So, what are you gonna do? Ask her out? I’d watch my ass if I were you. That guy looks pretty fuckin’ mean, and if he finds out about it . . . Well, let’s just say I’d rather not get on his bad side.”

That drew a laugh. “Might be worth it. Besides, Uncle Clayton’s on the council. He wouldn’t—”

“You think that guy gives a damn about our council? He . . .” The voices trailed away as the young men rounded a corner and went down another street.

Justin realized he was clenching his teeth and forced himself to relax. His gut burned with fury, and he had to fight the temptation to go put the fear of God into them.

He turned around as he rose and found himself looking right into the face of Tom Clark.