Reapers (2 page)

In the car, she carried baggies of both, Ziplocked to cut down on the smell of earth, pine, skunk, and raisins, which could get overwhelming when in quantity. She had pre-rolled joints, too. She fetched one from her bag, lit it, and passed it to Jeremy.

He sniffed it, gaze flicking between the smoke and the road, then inhaled.

"How is it, man?" Tommy said.

"Give me a second," Jeremy said, whiffs of smoke escaping with each word. He blew out a big blue cloud and laughed. "Picking you up was the best idea I ever had, Lucy."

He handed it to Wilson, who took his turn and passed it to Lucy. Tommy watched her without complaining that he was to be last. It was his place and he knew it.

They finished up and Jeremy rolled down the windows to clear the car, which now smelled like a pine forest had been wadded up and stuffed in the bottom of a sleeping bag and forgotten about for three or four months. Trees flashed by the window. For a while, each of them went as quiet as Wilson, except to laugh stutteringly or point out crows hopping alongside the road. The sun hid down behind the trees but it was still humid and no matter which way Lucy positioned her limbs they wound up sticky with sweat.

Jeremy cruised past Savannah. They stopped at the turnoff to Charleston to eat. Lucy still had food of her own, but Wilson handed her a twist of dried meat. It was chewy and stringy and gamey.

"Rabbit?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Mostly."

They got back on the road. Lucy produced another joint. She would have known where to stop for water in Florence, they had a nice little river there socked in among the trees, but the car was fully loaded and Jeremy didn't pull over until it was dark and the headlights played across the brick homes of Richmond. He pulled up in front of a house with plenty of space between it and the neighbors. Crickets sang from the woods, troubling Lucy with a memory she couldn't place. Wilson got out a pistol and chambered a round and walked up to the porch. He opened the door and slipped inside.

A couple minutes later, he walked out and crunched down the drive to the car, tucking the pistol into the back of his jeans. He leaned into the open window. "Nothing."

Jeremy nodded. "See you around back."

Tommy touched Lucy's arm and smiled wincingly. She grabbed her pack and umbrella. Tommy and Wilson shouldered gear from the car and walked through the weeds to the back. Jeremy swung off the drive into the grass, lights off, and took the car to the back yard where you couldn't see it from the street. Lucy sucked on her teeth. Could have more brains than she'd given them credit for.

Except the first thing Jeremy did after he parked was to light a fire in the yard. They had dry food and the night was as hot as an armpit, but some people just got to have a fire. While he poked at the logs, Lucy helped Wilson set up the tent.

"You know why we stopped using tents?" she said. "Because we invented roofs."

Wilson threaded a spindly pole through the tent's eyelets and moved to the next corner. "There ain't always roofs."

"There's one tonight."

"And when there aren't, best to be used to it."

Waste of time, but she helped anyway. The tent was roomy and smelled like old grass and staticky plastic. She wasn't the least concerned about sharing it with them and was beginning to believe she had misread Wilson.

They sat around the fire and passed around dried meat and unleavened bread. At Jeremy's prompting, she lit a third joint. As she prepared to hand it over, he sat beside her and took it from her, fingers brushing.

"Bet you were scared to get in the car," he said. "But we're not so bad, are we?"

She squinted against the campfire smoke. "So far."

He laughed. A quarter of the way around the fire, Tommy watched them, sweeping his hair from his eyes. Later, when they were proper destroyed, Jeremy rested his hand on her thigh. She picked it up and returned it to his lap and drew her feet close to her body. He smiled hard, eyes shining in the light of the fire.

"I'm beat." Wilson stood, arching his back. He raised his brows at her. "You beat?"

"Does stoned count?" she said, and they all laughed, even Jeremy. She went to the tent and brushed her teeth with water. Inside, she lay down under her thinnest sheet, but even that was too hot. Someone crawled through the flap and she reached for her umbrella.

"Just me," Wilson said.

He retired to his sleeping bag and soon snored in the darkness. Lucy lay with her eyes open. Two pairs of feet shushed through the grass, fading into the distance. Fifteen minutes later, the steps returned and Jeremy and Tommy climbed inside. She pretended to sleep until both of them snored as well.

The heat woke her before the sun could slash into the tent. Her clothes were getting grimy, so she headed into the house, a creaking and dusty old place, and found a t-shirt that was a pretty good fit. She stripped off her sweat-crusted tank top and pitched it into a corner. She had no use for it anymore.

The boys got up and they ate and got on their way. No one had much interest in talk and she gazed out the window for signs of human life. Trees stared back. Jeremy stopped the car just past Baltimore to grab a bite and stretch his legs. Lucy went for a walk into the woods. She didn't go far and the men's voices drifted on the damp air. When she climbed back on the shoulder, they stopped chatting and waited for her to get in the car.

This far north, the day cooled down a bit, but humidity clung to the horizons in a white haze, softening the sprawl of cities and townships. The highway jogged through Delaware and then into Jersey, the sunken lanes buffered by tall corrugated walls.

Jeremy didn't wait until they got to Philadelphia. With the road still nestled below the sound-dampening barrier walls, he let the camo Charger coast to a stop and cut the engine.

He twisted in his seat. "You got a cigarette in that bag of yours?"

"Hope unfiltered isn't too strong for you," she said.

He rolled his eyes. She reached into her bag and got out two hand-rolled and hand-grown twists of shredded tobacco. Jeremy lit up, inhaled, and drew back his head, holding the white cigarette away from his face.

"Tastes funny."

"That's because it's real."

He brought it to his lips and took a drag and let the smoke trickle from his nose like some sort of gangster. "Three of us had a talk, Lucy."

She cocked her head. "What about, Jeremy?"

"New York is dangerous. We don't want you to go there by your lonesome. You should come with us."

"That's mighty generous, but I need to find my friend."

He nodded, gazing across the highway at the rusted-out cars, blowing smoke from the corner of his mouth. "We can't let you leave, Lucy. For your own good."

She raised her brows at Wilson. "You agree with him?"

Wilson glanced at Jeremy and for just a second she thought he might buck orders. And if he bucked, that was the end of it; he followed because of his daddy issues or because Jeremy owned the car or what have you, but if Wilson ever stood up for himself, he'd discover he was the real authority here.

But an angry look came into his eye and he wouldn't quite meet her gaze. "It don't have to be like that. We can be partners."

Lucy set her umbrella across her lap and tucked her knees together. "And if I don't want to be partners? If I get out and walk?"

Jeremy reached into the gap between the driver's seat and the gear shift and withdrew a chrome .45. "There's bad men out there, Lucy. You wouldn't last a day."

Lucy couldn't say she was surprised. When a man saw a woman on the road, he saw a trip that could only end in rape or death. Something about that sight in their mind's eye made too many of them plenty happy to take on the role for themselves and ensure it came to pass.

She had to admit she got a kick out of teaching them to expand their minds.

She jerked her head at Tommy. "You really that tired of fucking him? He looks pretty cute to me."

The three of them gaped. Jeremy's hand moved on the pistol. She spat her cigarette in his face, swung up her umbrella, and pulled the custom trigger of the pistol-grip shotgun that composed the umbrella's handle and shaft. The bang was loud enough to blind a man. The top of Jeremy's head vanished. The driver side window shattered. A hail of safety glass bounced across the road.

Wilson grabbed for the umbrella's closed spokes. Lucy swung down from his grasp and shot him in the solar plexus. He banged into the door and collapsed over the gear shift. She turned, tucking her shoulder against her head in case Tommy had a mind to sock her one, but he'd flung open the door and scrambled onto the asphalt.

She scooted out into the afternoon sunlight and whistled. "Stop right there, boy."

Tommy's shoes skidded in the overgrown grass of the median. He turned with great reluctance, as if fearing she'd shoot as soon as she saw the whites of his eyes.

She aimed the umbrella at his chest. "I want that car, Tommy."

"Take it!"

"I would, but someone has made a terrible mess of it. Mind running a rag around it for me?"

He dry-heaved. "You'll shoot me after."

"Could be. I will certainly shoot you if you don't."

Blinking back tears, he walked toward her. "All our blankets and such are in the trunk."

"I seen your rifles in there, too. So don't try to get smart with me."

Keeping the gun on him, she opened the driver's door. Jeremy spilled onto the pavement. Gunk sopped from the bowl of his skull. She kicked him out of the way, took his pistol, and knelt to pull the trunk release at the base of the door frame. Finished, she circled around Tommy, keeping the umbrella pointed square at his chest. He extracted an armful of blankets from the trunk.

"And get those pants off you, for God's sake," Lucy said. "I do not want you leaking piss in my brand new car."

Miserably, he wiggled out of his jeans and peeled away his soaking briefs. His balls were shriveled against his body. He opened Wilson's door and lowered the body to the pavement. Inside the car, he tried to swab up the mess with the blankets, but much of it was heavy and thick and he had to scoop it out with his bare hands. He began to cry, retching between sobs.

"Don't you feel sorry for them," Lucy said. "All
I
wanted was a ride. Your friends were the ones who decided to get violent."

Tommy didn't reply, but he stopped crying, indicating there was a hint of steel in his spine after all. She wasn't worried. If Jeremy and Wilson had been sharks, Tommy was a remora, there to remind the sharks they were big, grateful to snatch up the scraps that tumbled from their toothful mouths.

He went to the trunk for a fresh blanket and pressed it into the puddled blood. Once it was sodden, he faced her, hands stained red. He wore a dark t-shirt and his thighs were bright white and squiggly with long black hairs.

"I can't get any more," he said. "I need some water or something."

"It's okay, Tommy. You done just fine."

The anger he'd built up swabbing the hot, bloody car fled from his face. "I did what you wanted. I cleaned it best I could."

"I know." She let the tip of the umbrella droop. "Now git."

He glanced down the highway. "I ain't got no pants."

"And I got a gun in my hand and a yearning to use it."

Tommy let out a shuddery breath, then bolted down the black asphalt. She watched him go, then consulted her map, turned on the Charger, and drove north. With the late afternoon light bouncing from Manhattan's distant towers, she pulled into the Knickerbocker Country Club, which was the funniest thing she'd seen all day, and stashed the car. The boys had a lot of goods in their trunk and it was close enough to retreat to should the city prove a challenge.

Before walking to the bridge into Manhattan, she made sure to oil and clean her umbrella. Based on Tilly's letter, she was all but certain her friend was dead. And that meant she had a lot more killing to do.

2

When her one and only daughter announced she was getting married, Ellie's first response was not her proudest one.

"Who?"

"
Who?
" Dee honked with laughter. "The drifter who slept behind the Masons' barn last winter. I'm pregnant, but despite the fact he's a toothless hobo, he wants to do the right thing."

Ellie gazed across the sunlit kitchen and thought unparental thoughts about the girl she'd rescued from New York when the plague's shadow fell over the world. "Tell me you're not actually pregnant."

Dee raised a brow. "Would you kick me out?"

"Of course not. But I might kick Quinn Tolbert's balls into the lake."

"You're supposed to be happy."

"For the sake of clarity—and Quinn's balls—will you answer the question?"

Dee sighed and stared at the light on the lake past the window. "Not that I know of. So you can stop strangling that rolling pin."

Ellie glanced down at her hands, which were whitened with flour and her death-knuckle grip on the pin she'd been using to roll out the week's bread. She went frozen with a sudden case of Split.

She'd first heard the word in town and understood its meaning at once: the disconnect that came when your brain, focused on its daily tasks, remembered how different your life
used
to be before the two apocalypses. She, for instance, had once been incapable of cooking anything more complex than macaroni. Instead, she'd ordered takeout four times a week and nuked leftovers on the days in between. Between college, post-grad, and the DAA, she'd never had time to cook, let alone to learn how to do it.

But first and foremost, cooking was women's work. While the DAA had been progressive in hiring, in general attitude, it was positively caveman. Half its agents thought of themselves as the techno-analyst version of James Bond while the other half saw themselves as the techno-analyst Jason Bourne. In that environment, the women had to out-man the men. So hell no she didn't know how to cook. Cooking was for housewives.

Then the plague taught her how few meals could be eaten completely raw. Particularly when you lived in a seasonal place like the Adirondack mountains, where frost and snow meant edible plants were only available in quantity for half the year at best.