Reapers (32 page)

Dee had problems with her grabs and holds, however. As with her punch, she tended to lose track of her thumb. Anyone with the presence of mind to grab it and twist would put Dee down on the spot. Ellie opened her mouth to criticize, but Dee saw the error herself and shifted her thumb from the underside of Ellie's wrist.

Quite suddenly, Ellie knew that if she'd harangued Dee for it, she would have quit for the night. Perhaps for good. But she had a feel for it. Her flaws were technique issues, surmountable with practice and concentration. And though they weren't related, she shared a few things with Ellie. She was quick to frustration. Particularly when it involved a challenge to her knowledge or expertise. A good teacher would see this, and use a light touch.

"Keep an eye on that thumb," Ellie said. "If it's hard to remember, a good way to practice is to try to maintain technique during day-to-day activities."

"Like when I'm brushing my teeth?"

"Exactly."

They continued their practice.

"What style is this?" Dee said when at last they stopped.

"Standard-issue US government hodgepodge." Ellie dampened a kitchen towel and ran it around her neck and armpits. "A few things that are reasonably effective and take almost no time to learn. It's not what you'd call an art. Those take six to twelve months of daily practice to learn and years to master."

"Maybe I should just learn to shoot."

Ellie laughed. "I reached the same conclusion myself."

She didn't think it was a great idea to try full-fledged target practice, but when they took breaks from their march, she showed Dee a few things about guns, too. Dee was familiar enough with basic safety and use—again, farm life, not to mention the end of the world—but wasn't so skilled at the near-basics. Leading a target. Finding cover and using it as a support platform for her shots. Failing that, to form triangular braces of her limbs. Aiming for center of mass. And being ready, once that mass had been hit, to finish the job.

"Which means," Hobson said, "once you get
very
good at this, you should aim for the spine."

Dee looked dubious. "The spine?"

"The head moves around a lot, you know. The spine is rather static. More important, it turns out the organs are rather more resistant to damage than the nerves that control those organs."

He walked away whistling.

The land and the Hudson sloped gradually downhill. The snow grew shallow enough that they might have been able to use bikes, if they'd burned the time to find them, but their packs were so bulky it would be hard to keep steady without a trailer. Anyway, their legs and pace were used to the snowshoes. They walked on.

The tenth afternoon after they left Albany, they trudged up a gentle rise. At its top, towns and valleys spread for miles. Beyond, Ellie saw the thing she'd hoped to never see again: the Manhattan skyline, windows sparkling yellow, the towers so high and proud they were like insults from a world lost for good.

III:
HARVEST

21

And then she was alone in the snow.

She sat in the road, the sloped concrete walls boxing her in a barren canyon. It hurt some and she bled some but neither was as bad as she had always imagined getting shot would be.

But she appeared to be paralyzed. Not in the busted-spine sense, though she waggled her fingers and toes just to be sure. Instead, she had no will to move. It was like the breakers in her head had been tripped and she wasn't sure when or if they'd come back online. Was she about to die? She couldn't say. Would she ever see Tilly again? That, too, was a mystery. Had she made poor choices with her life? Well, the fact she'd been shot in or around the heart could be a sign, but due to just that, she might never know for sure.

Snow twirled from black clouds, first fine and crystalline, then in pea-sized drops, then in fat globby lumps that looked like the molecule chains from her sophomore chemistry textbook. Melted flakes stained the pavement a deeper black, then formed a coating so much like a clean white bedsheet that Lucy felt she could give the whole ground a shake and fold it up for later.

If only she could stand up.

She unwound her scarf and pressed it to her wound. The pain lurched forward but soon retreated to its former distance. The men had left a long time ago and she heard nothing but the whisper of snow on hard ground.

High on the white tower that faced her, a shadow unfurled, long and curved like a Muslim's sword. She was no longer alone. His head followed, massive but without features. A dark absence: the Reaper, the father she never had. At last he had found her, yet he waited with cosmic patience, knowing that, in the end, it was not he who had to move.

She wanted to run to him. To be embraced. To be swept away from this life that, since birth, had been nothing but misery and pain. Unloved and so became unlovable. It was a joke, to be brought to exist and to have that existence be so mean, so far from virtue, like a crippled wasp or a rattler with a broken back. She wanted to run to him and cry like a child and be taken back to that place before life that was so like a world muffled and smothered by snow.

But the joke ran deeper than that. She had been hammered by one thing after another until her core was as sharp and steely as the blade of his scythe. She couldn't let him take her any more than an avalanche could turn and flee back up the hill. She laughed and it hurt and with each pulse of pain the shadow retreated from the tower's face. Her blood was hot on her hand, the most vivid red she'd ever seen. It was hers to keep.

And she was alone again, sitting with her legs sprawled in the snow. Her knee jerked. Her chest felt tight and pink bubbles oozed from her wound. She pressed her scarf to it and stood.

Nerve had taken its shells, but left her umbrella, the way you might throw a man's balls at his feet after castrating him. She crouched to pick it up and used it as a cane as she walked away from the tunnel mouth. Its metal tip tapped and scraped the pavement beneath the bedsheet of snow.

She had properly burned all her bridges with Distro. The Feds might blow smoke up her ass about treating her wound, but she'd seen how little they actually provided their people. Reese would help her, she was positive of that, but even if she found him at the coffee house, she was equally certain he didn't know a damn thing about prying a bullet from a body. She needed people with the skill and the motive to help her.

The Kono were warrior-gangsters. They would have surgeons. After what she'd done to Duke, they'd also have plenty of reason to hasten her short march to the grave. But she had something to make them reconsider.

She walked on, block by block, watched by the buildings' vacant eyes. Her numb shock ebbed away and waves of pain surfed in to take its place. Her eyes stung. Snow whacked her in the face, melting on her cheeks and dribbling from her brows to her eyes. At 42nd Street, she stopped in front of a theater. When she hung her head, a bushel of flakes fell to the sidewalk. She was having a hell of a time catching her breath. Her chest felt so tight she could hardly pull in air. She'd figured this was all part of the fun of getting shot point blank, but in a moment of clarity, she understood something more was wrong. Yes, she'd been shot in the chest, and her lung was likely all fucked up, but for the last few blocks, it had been getting
worse
.

Once upon a time, Tilly had been in love with those sexy doctor shows. Lucy'd found them dumb as hell, but had suffered through them, at first so she'd have more excuse to stay at Tilly's house and avoid returning to her own, and later, when she'd moved into the Loman household, because it seemed rude (even by her lax standards) to demand Tilly change the channel in her own home.

All that suffering might be about to save her life.

She cast about the street. The equipment she needed was worthless enough that any hospital was likely to still have it despite years of looting, but she was in Times Square. That real estate was about a thousand times too valuable for something as stupid as a hospital. It was all theaters, Hard Rock Cafes, and watch/t-shirt/souvenir stands. She moved to one of these, pawing through the wallets and hoodies, chest feeling tighter by the second. No tubing, but the search turned up a single Zippo engraved with the words "BROOKLYN ZOO." After a couple flicks, the flame caught.

She was a bit dizzy, fluttery. Her fingertips were clumsy and tingly and felt strangely warm. Figuring they might have an aquarium, she lurched through the door of the Hard Rock, the light of her Zippo flickering over shredded booths and the stomped-up debris left behind by people who'd come for its food in the early days of the plague. Broken glass was everywhere, raising her hopes that it might lead to a fish tank, but it was merely the byproduct of smashed display cases. Someone had actually bothered to steal Clapton's guitar.

She fought for air. With mounting desperation, confusion, and fear that she'd be found dead in a Hard Rock Cafe, she stumbled deeper into the restaurant. Big swinging doors led to a kitchen. The floor was crusted with rotten food. Her lighter played over dust-dulled stovetops, pans, ladles, and lids. The cooking stations were much tighter than she expected, and even after all these years it smelled like frying oil.

Culinary tools dangled from hooks and scattered the floor. Lucy whipped her gaze across the tongs and skewers and fondue forks. She'd been looking for a turkey baster, but what she found was even better: a fat-nosed flavor injector, complete with syringe-like handle.

She tore open her shirt, inserted the tip of the flavor injector into her wound, and pulled up on the plunger.

Her brain must have ordered her chest to shut up about its problems, because this didn't hurt at all. A lot of air and a bit of frothy, pink blood filled the chamber of the injector. The pain and pressure in her chest decreased. Sweat popped out across her entire body in such a thick sheen that she could have used the sidewalk as a Slip 'N Slide. Then she got very dizzy and had to sit down.

She pushed the plunger of the injector, squirting a flatulent blast of air and froth, then returned it to her wound and sucked more air. Already, her chest felt leagues better. That seemed to do it, and so she sat there for a good while, breathing the cold air, letting her senses return. After a while, she gathered herself and walked outside.

The makeshift cane of her umbrella tapped along the street. She continued north. Sometimes she smelled the smoke of heating oil, soon replaced by the crisp scent of fresh snow. At other times she had to stop and draw more air from her wound. The walk uptown took approximately several forevers. At least the north-south blocks were the short ones. That helped her sense of progress when her limbs got heavy and the throbbing in her chest got so bad she wanted to curl up on the elegant steps of Fordham University.

After another mile, the walk was just a thing she did because there was nothing else to do. An inch of snow clung to the streets. Back when the city had lights, it must have been the prettiest sight in the world.

Down the blocks to the west, smoke rose in orderly plumes from Central Park. She supposed if you lived in Manhattan and you didn't have electricity, that's where you set up shop. Not a lot of wood stoves in the apartments, she'd wager. Must have built themselves new houses right there in the park. Feds might have parceled out the land to reduce disputes. Then again, it sounded like the Kono held sway over much of it and Distro had their finger in the pie as well. Too many chefs. With guns. Shootout right there in the Hard Rock kitchen.

She laughed some, already forgetting why, and then she didn't think much at all.

She came back to it on the street she'd fled down after shooting Duke. The snowfall had slowed. Around the block, light spilled from the front of Sicily. She walked up to the red padded door, cane clicking.

The stout bouncer emerged into the cold. "You armed?"

"Only bullet I got is right here." She opened her jacket, exposing pale skin. A hungry look came over his face. He got a gander at the blood washing down her chest and looked like he might puke instead.

He looked up to her face. "You're that girl. The one who capped Duke."

She zipped up her jacket. "I need to see Ash."

"He needs to see you, too." He opened the door and leaned inside, keeping an eye on her. "Brian! Ludrow! Get out here!"

Two men emerged: Brian, and another who was the kind of idiot who wore short sleeves in a snowstorm because he'd be damned if he wasn't going to show off the veins on his biceps.

"Yo Brian," the bouncer said. "This the girl who exed Duke?"

"Shark eyes," Brian said. Snow caught in the stubble on his scalp. "That's her."

"I want to see Ash," she said flatly.

"Why didn't you pull the trigger on me?" Brian said.

Lucy shook her head. A bad idea. The world shook with it. "You weren't a bastard. Come on, guys. Most cultures consider it rude to leave a lady in the snow when she's been shot."

Ludrow, the man in the short sleeves, walked up close enough that she could smell his sweat. "I don't think you're a lady. Anybody who shoots Duke and then comes back for more must be packing eight pairs of balls."

Faces appeared in the bar windows. The white ones looked as pale as Lucy felt. Smelling a fight, men and women stepped outside, zipping leather jackets and heavy padded coats.

Ludrow jerked a thumb at her. "This is the girl who shot Duke. What do you think he'd like us to do to her?"

"I vote we don't do a thing," the bouncer said. "Let that chest wound do its work. Hours of fun."

Lucy's knees quivered, but she knew if she fell, the Kono would kick her until the rest of her guts were in worse shape than her lung. She found Brian's eye. "Will you get Ash for me?

"I think she needs more hurt," Ludrow said. "Get me an icepick. We can put out her eyes without killing her any faster."

Someone shoved her in the back. She winced and cast around for Brian but he was gone. All that remained was a sea of angry faces. She turned to snarl at the woman who'd pushed her and Ludrow cocked back his arm and slapped her across the cheek. Her face was half numb and the pain tingled and burned like hot needles. A man kicked at her stomach. She turned her hip into it. The kick was clumsy and half-committed, but it nearly knocked her down. Lucy staggered, braced herself with her cane. She couldn't fall.