Sunrise (22 page)

Darla. I forced my eyes back open, heedless of the glare, propped myself up on a wobbly arm, and looked around.

We were still in the corner of the ruined bank. A large fire blazed, shielded from the wind and Stockton by the bank’s brick walls. Darla was nearby, facing the fire on her side like I was. A woman was pressed up against my back, another pressed against Darla’s back. A thin man with a face as hard and sharp as a hatchet—maybe in his early forties—fed the fire while a seven- or eight-year-old girl dug in the snow and ash, finding charred scraps of lumber and passing them to the man. The little girl was wrapped up tight, in an oversized pink coat with a fur-trimmed hood. Only her cherubic red cheeks and face were visible.

“Shh,” the woman behind me said. “Lay back down. You need to warm up, sleep, and heal.”

“Darla,” my voice sounded more like a frog croaking than human speech.

“She’s okay. Let her sleep. You’re safe. If we’d wanted to harm you, all we had to do was nothing.”

That made sense. I lowered myself back down, noticing for the first time that both the woman and I were wrapped in several blankets. I put my head on her arm and slept.

I woke to the woman shaking my shoulder. “Wake up, wake up,” she whispered. “We got to move on before daybreak. If we could find you, Red’s men could too.”

The mention of Red snapped me to full awareness. Darla was standing nearby, the firelight playing in red shadows across her skin. She was struggling to step into a pair of long johns one-handed. The woman—girl, I saw now—who had slept against her was trying to help.

I stood, shivering in the frozen air. To shiver was joyous—it meant my body had warmed up to the point where it knew the difference between hot and cold. My remaining fingers throbbed, my toes felt like someone was actively sawing at them with a knife, and the scrapes on my back hurt, but otherwise I seemed okay.

The woman dug a pair of long johns out of a pack next to her and held them open for me to step into. It suddenly occurred to me to be embarrassed—here I was letting my freak flag fly practically in her face. I hurried to put on the long johns, although my one-handed efforts were agonizingly slow.

They had two full sets of clothing, including winter coats, gloves, scarves, hats—even boots. Everything was too big for me and Darla, but we made do, rolling up cuffs and pants legs, wearing three pairs of socks, and stuffing a fourth pair into the toes of the oversized boots. Whenever I shoved my stump into a piece of clothing, just the cloth running over it was agonizing. It wasn’t bleeding, though—the tar had frozen to a hard lump that sealed the end of my arm effectively. I let the shirts and coats

hang long over the stump.

“Who are you?” I asked as the woman helped me dress. “Why are you doing this? Not that I’m not grateful.”

“We’ve got to hurry,” the man said. “We need to be miles away before daybreak.”

“I’m Alex,” I said, holding my hand out to him.

He shook it quickly. “Hurry!”

I tried to hurry, but I was clumsy, unsure of my new center of gravity, and suffering the aftereffects of nearly freezing to death.

“I’m Isaac, but most folks call me Zik,” he said. “My wife, Mary” The woman helping me dress nodded. “And our girls, Charlotte and Bronwyn.”

“Just Wyn,” the youngest girl said. She was dumping armloads of snow on the fire. As soon as we were dressed and the fire was out, we left. Each of the four of them had a pack. I offered to carry one, but Zik refused.

They practically dragged us over the snow berm to the road. Neither Darla nor I were moving very well. I picked myself up on the far side of the berm and started staggering down the road away from Stockton.

“Can you run?” Zik asked. “We have to get away from here.”

Instead of answering, I started jogging.

“Run as long as you can, and then we’ll walk awhile.”

I nodded. I wanted to talk to find out more about our rescuers, but I didn’t have the breath for it.

As we approached the intersection where Highway 20 met 13, Mary asked, “Which way?”

Darla leaned toward me, gasping. “Do we trust them?” she whispered.

I thought about it for a moment. They had saved our lives, no doubt about it. But would showing them how to get to the homestead endanger Anna, Max, and the rest? What if that was the point of this whole forked-up situation? “Lead them to one of the houses we’re scavenging.” I paused to catch my breath. “Maybe the one southeast of the homestead.”

Darla nodded, and instead of turning left on 13, the more direct route to the homestead, she told Mary to continue straight on 20.

We jogged in silence, listening for any hint of pursuit, constantly looking over our shoulders. Either no one was following us, or we eluded them. We jogged for about a mile, walked for about a mile, and then stopped for a short break and a little water. Repeating that about five times brought us to one of the farmhouses we had partially dismantled; a trip we could have made in less than two hours on Bikezilla took the rest of the night and all morning.

I almost expected to see Ed or Max at the farmhouse, but no one was there. Half the roof was missing, as if some gargantuan monster had taken a bite of the house, found its taste lacking, and moved on in search of juicier prey. We’d been working on dismantling its roof—the long rafters were perfect for supporting the glass roof of a greenhouse.

“You live here?” Zik said.

“No,” I replied. Maybe it was rude, but I decided it was

best to be clear. “We’re grateful—you saved our lives. But we’re not sure we should show you our new homestead.” Mary whirled to face me. “We have nowhere else to go,” she said. “Red will kill us if we go back to Stockton.” “So you’re from Stockton?” I asked.

“Let’s get inside,” Darla suggested. “You have a fire-starting kit?”

“We’ve got something better,” Charlotte said. She stepped around behind her dad and dug through his pack, coming up with a lighter. “It works.”

Darla eyed it lustfully. “Nice. Come on inside.” She held the front door open—we had broken the lock getting inside the first time. “I’ll build a fire while you guys hash things out.”

“I’ll help you,” Charlotte offered.

We trooped into the living room, and Darla set about collecting scraps of lumber and arranging them in the fireplace. I tried sitting on the moldy couch, but that aggravated the lacerations on my back and butt. I crouched near the fireplace instead.

“When Stockton ran out of food the first time,” Zik said, “I was drafted to fight—I was there when we attacked Warren. It was horrible. The people I shot at . . . they were my neighbors, some of them my friends. We yelled at each other across the gymnasium during basketball season: Blackhawks versus Warriors. Hell, we were on the same side in baseball and softball; we fielded a combined team called the Warhawks. But I didn’t dare say no to Red. He could’ve hurt Mary or the girls. So I went along and shot to miss.

“So when we started to run out of food again a couple of months ago, I was afraid I’d be forced to fight. Afraid I’d have to shoot at friends and neighbors again. We were already planning to flee. I . . . I wish we had run then.” “We were wondering how Stockton was getting food,” I said.

“I was too—for a while, at least. We started getting packages of wheat, corn, and rice in Chinese packaging, black beans, even dried fruit: stuff we hadn’t seen in more than a year. I had no idea where it was coming from. Red’s not exactly the chatty type.”

“Except about his damn knives,” I said.

“I’d like to jam a knife so far up his ass, he’d taste it,” Darla said.

“Yeah, he does go on about those knives,” Zik said. “Anyway, we heard rumors. Girls were disappearing.”

I instantly thought of the Maquoketa FEMA camp. We had stopped the Peckerwoods from raiding it for slaves—were they turning to another source?

“It was only rumors for a few weeks. People missing. Nobody we knew well. And then they took Emily.”

Mary leaned close. The small fire Darla had built was magnified in her eyes. “They took her from me. Tore her right out of my arms! She’s only fifteen.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Red’s men,” Zik said. “Later, I bribed one of them to talk. Cost me a week’s rations. They traded Emily for food. Red is selling the girls of our town to some prison gang . . . for food.”

“To the Peckerwoods?” I asked.

“How’d you know?”

“They run in this area. Used to hang around Anamosa and Maquoketa in Iowa too, but most of that group is dead. Might be some still in Cascade.”

Mary seized my left shoulder, rattling it so hard that my stump bumped against my chest. I couldn’t suppress a low moan. Mary was oblivious. “You know them? You know where they took Emily? Where she is? Tell me!”

I peeled her hand off my shoulder. “I don’t know where they took her. They could have traded her to the Dirty White Boys—that’s what they did with Darla when they had her. Or maybe there are other gangs—there must be.” “They had her,” Mary said, looking at Darla, “and you brought her back?”

I waited until Mary looked back at me and met her gaze, holding it. “I did.”

“You could find Emily.”

“No. I have responsibilities here. And my father got killed looking for Darla.”

“I’m sorry,” Zik said to me. He turned to his wife, speaking softly, “Honey, we’ve got to focus on keeping Wyn and Charlotte safe. We get them settled, then we’ll go looking for Emily. I swear it.”

Mary glared at her husband.

“I don’t like it any better than you do,” Zik said.

“So how’d you find us?” I asked. “And why?”

“We were there when they . . . shortened your arms,” Zik said. “No choice. Everyone’s got to attend those things—gets the bad lot feeling all patriotic and scares the pants off the good guys. We need a place to go—figured you might take us in, in return for our help. So we snuck over the wall after dark and started looking for you. You weren’t hard to find. I figured that bank was the only shelter you’d be able to reach in your altogethers.”

“You want to join our homestead.”

Zik nodded.

“Everyone works—long days, some nights on guard duty too.”

“We’ll pull our weight and then some, if we can manage it.”

Darla whispered in my ear. “What if they’re spies?”

I thought about that idea—it didn’t seem likely, but it was possible. “You wouldn’t be allowed to leave the homestead without permission. Maybe not allowed to leave at all for a few months. I can’t take the risk that you might lead others to us.”

“We need to look for Emily.” Mary’s voice was freighted with anguish.

“That’s a fair precaution,” Zik said. “But as soon as you see you can trust us, I want permission to go looking for my daughter.”

“You work out, and I’ll do everything I can to help.”

I held out my good hand, and Zik shook it. Suddenly I was responsible for twelve souls. I felt every one of them keenly, weights burdening my already sagging shoulders.

Chapter 40

When I stepped out of the abandoned house where we had been talking, I saw two figures in the distance, trudging down the road toward me. I backed up, reentering the house and closing the door. “Someone’s out there. You all bring any weapons?” “Just knives,” Zik said.

I stepped over to the window. We had already taken all the glass, so the drape flapped in the wind, giving me an intermittent glimpse of the road. When the figures had halved the distance to the farmhouse, I could make out their faces: Uncle Paul and Max. I flung open the door and ran down the road toward them, with Darla hot on my heels.

“Uncle Paul! Max!” I cried.

“Alex!” he yelled and then doubled over coughing. By the time he was able to resume talking, we had reached him. “We were headed to Stockton. Figured maybe Bikezilla broke—” His breath caught in his throat, and he suddenly stopped. After a short pause, glancing back and forth between me and Darla, he said, “My God. Your hands.” “Red caught us,” I said flatly “I’ll kill that mother—”

“Get in line,” Darla said.

“I should never have let you go there,” Uncle Paul said. “No.” I grabbed his arm. “No regrets. We’re alive because of the supplies we got in our raids. If you’d told me before all this started that I’d have to trade my hand to get the homestead up and running, I would have done it.” “Me too,” Darla added.

Max was staring at my stump with grim fascination. “Did it hurt? Having your hand chopped off?”

“No, Max, it was completely painless,” I said.

“Christ,” Darla said to Uncle Paul, “what kind of idiots are you raising?”

“Sorry,” Max said.

“I think we’re both a little rattled,” Uncle Paul said. “Not as much as we were,” Darla muttered.

I looked back—Zik’s family huddled inside the still-open door. “I need to introduce you to Zik and his family. They saved our lives.”

After the introductions, we all trudged back to the homestead together. I asked Uncle Paul to get the newcomers settled in and explain the situation to everyone else. Darla and I headed for our bedrolls. It was just after lunchtime, but we were dead on our feet.

When we next woke, Dr. McCarthy was there, holding a work light on an extension cord and examining my stump in minute detail. “Satan’s teeth, Alex. Would you please quit bringing me unusual injuries to treat?”

“Last time,” I said. “I promise.”

He snorted in disbelief. “Your setup out here is unbelievable. Thought I’d never see working electricity again. I want to switch the light on and off a few dozen times just for the joy of it. Like kids do when they grow tall enough to reach the switches.”

“You’d better not,” Darla said from her bedroll beside me. “Wears out the bulbs faster.”

“I won’t. But I’m tempted to move out here.”

“You and Belinda would be welcome anytime,” I said. “But don’t tell anyone where we are, okay?” I would have preferred it if no one but Rebecca knew, but I could see why Uncle Paul had felt the need to fetch the doctor.

“I won’t. I’m not going to mention your electric lights either. You might wind up with tourists out here if I did.” “What about, you know, our arms?” I asked. “What do we do about them?”