“Vera said you don’t have anything they want.”
“Today they wanted Neva. Now she’s gone. They could come back for me or decide they want Vera back. And if they knew Stebbs and Lucy could witch—”
“But they don’t.”
“They’ve tried to take the house before, when Mother was still alive. They want it; they just wanted Neva more. The stream won’t flow well forever, and if their whole purpose is to gather things other people need, they’ll come for my pond eventually.”
“So what are you going to do against a camp full of men? You don’t even know how many there are or where they’re at.”
“Vera will know.”
Eli was quiet for a while as he stared outside at the darkness. “Stebbs won’t like it.”
“Stebbs doesn’t run me. Sounds like you’re the one who doesn’t like it.”
“Damn it, Lynn what do you want me to say? Yes, please attack a bunch of angry men who outnumber you and won’t kill you fast?”
“You say what you like,” Lynn said. “I’m trying this one.” She braked and pulled into a driveway on the left, even though they hadn’t been moving for thirty minutes. She didn’t want to fight with Eli, but she wasn’t caving either.
Lynn hailed the house before walking in. “I don’t want to be shot for a burglar after living this long,” she told Eli. There was no answer and they went through the front door. It was obvious the second that they walked in the men had beat them there. The sofa cushions were tossed on the floor; the stuffed furniture had been slashed.
“Why’d they do that?”
“Looking for valuables people would’ve hidden, I guess,” Eli said.
“Anything truly valuable is in the kitchen.”
“Well, it’s empty,” Eli’s voice echoed off the walls in the next room. Lynn followed him to see cupboard doors hanging open. The drawers had been pulled out and dumped onto the floor. The utensils were gone. A few plastic straws rolled on the floor in the wake of her steps.
“Bathroom,” Lynn said, but it was equally bare, except for a toothbrush in the sink whose bristles were splayed and permanently hardened.
“Shit,” Eli said, looking into a cupboard by the shower. “They took everything. There’s not even a washcloth in here.”
The next house was the same, and the one after that. Lynn’s resolve hardened and their conversation stopped entirely as the night wore on. They were nearly two hours from her house when they found a modest Cape Cod tucked behind a copse of trees that had not been rifled.
“Well,” Eli said when they walked into an immaculate living room. “It makes me feel bad to say this about someone who kept such a clean house, but I hope they had an infectious disease and a well-stocked medicine cabinet.”
They skipped the kitchen and went straight to the bathroom.
“Jackpot,” Eli said when he opened a drawer under the sink. Lynn bent down to see rows of orange prescription bottles lined up carefully, with days of the week marked on the white lids.
“Any antibiotics?”
“I only know the names of a few,” he said, holding a handful of bottles in the beam of Lynn’s flashlight. “Here’s one at least— amoxicillin. The others I can only guess at.”
Lynn dumped her empty backpack at his feet. “We’ll take them all, Vera will know what’s what.” They stripped the drawer bare, and checked the rest of the bathroom. They found Band-Aids, gauze, bandages, plus a first-aid kit with sample packages of painkillers inside.
The kitchen yielded plenty of canned food, and Lynn took a new pot, a skillet, two plates, and some utensils as well. “Usually I wouldn’t take so much,” she said, somewhat sheepishly. “But I could use a new pan and I keep expecting Lucy to break one of my plates.”
“Better you than them,” Eli said, and helped her carry their stash out to the truck.
“What do you think?” Lynn put the last bag in the bed of the truck. “Should we try another or head for home?”
“Home,” Eli said.
Lynn nodded in agreement and reached for the driver’s side door. Eli stopped her. “Let me drive, you’re beat.”
She didn’t argue, and her head slipped to the side as they drove south, the heater lulling her into a much-deserved rest. When the truck came to a stop she jerked awake, disoriented by the strip of sun rising. Eli turned off the engine and rested his forehead against the steering wheel. “You awake?” His voice reverberated off the dashboard.
“Yeah.”
“Good. I dropped the medicine off at your place. Right now I need your help.”
“Help?”
Eli nodded and got out of the truck, motioning for her to follow. Neva lay on the ground, the derringer frozen in her palm. Even though Green Hat had done his best to cover her, a hard frost had fallen in the night, closing the wound in her temple and freezing her unseeing eyes open. Eli wordlessly scooped the lifeless body from the ground.
They laid her in the back of the truck gently. Lynn pried the gun loose from her fingers and put it in her own pocket, tucking Neva’s hand under the coat. She rode in the back with Neva as close to the stream as the truck could go, and then took turns with Eli dragging the stiff body back to the grove of ashes. They hacked away at the ground through the morning hours, placing Neva next to her nameless little boy.
“Seems like we spend a lot of time digging graves together,” Eli said, wiping the cold sweat from his brow.
“I don’t think I can do another.”
“She’ll make it.” Eli gathered the exhausted Lynn in his arms. “She’s a strong kid.”
They left the graves, walking hand in hand past the log where Neva had refused to leave her baby, now the sole sentry keeping watch over them both.
Lucy’s fever broke in the river of sweat and vomit that Vera had promised. Stebbs was kept busy running stinking bedclothes out to the cast-iron pot suspended over the fire. Lynn held Lucy in her arms in between bed changes, cradling the blond head in the crook of her elbow and rocking her gently back and forth. As the sun went down, fatigue caught up with her, and Lynn collapsed onto her own cot.
She woke in the dead of night to feel little fingers combing through her hair. “Lynn?” The parched little voice was barely a whisper.
“Hey, little one, what are you doing up? You should be in bed.”
“Thirsty.”
“Okay. You lie down.” Lynn pulled Lucy into her own cot and got to her feet. Eli and Stebbs were slumped together against the stone wall, their heads leaning against each other. Vera was on the floor at the foot of Lucy’s cot, her head resting on the frame. Lynn tiptoed past everyone for Lucy’s cup. She knew she should wake the others and share the relief of Lucy’s recovery, but she wanted the small miracle to herself. Lynn filled the cup with clean water from the pantry, then propped Lucy’s head in her hands while she sipped at it.
“Done,” she said, and fell weakly back onto the pillow. “Can I sleep here with you?”
“Sure.” Lynn slid into bed, and Lucy cuddled against her, the warmth that radiated from her small body no longer carrying the taint of fever.
“You said my mommy was coming. Where is she?”
Lynn rubbed Lucy’s back quietly for a moment. “How much do you remember?”
“Just that you said Mommy was coming, and then I didn’t feel so good. I thought I saw Mommy, but then when I woke up just now I saw Grandma is here sleeping, so I think maybe I was just confused.”
“No baby, your mommy was here to see you.”
“Is she gone now?”
“Yeah, sweetheart, she’s gone.” Lynn kept rubbing Lucy’s back in concentric circles, trying to lull her back into sleep.
“So Grandma found us?”
“She did and she saved you from your fever. You’re sick, little girl. You’re going to have to take some medicine.”
Lucy stuck out her tongue.
“Eli and I had to drive a long way to get the medicine, so it’s important, all right
? I want you to take it and no argument.”
“’Kay,” came the halfhearted reply, followed by a light snoring moments later. Lynn wrapped her long arms around her, muscles tightening in a futile attempt to shield the girl from all dangers.
“I’m going to make sure nothing can hurt you ever again.”
Nineteen
“It’s insane,” Eli protested the next morning as Stebbs eyed them both over coffee. “I can’t believe you’d even consider letting her go.”
“I’m not in charge of her,” Stebbs said. “If Lynn wants to go, she’ll go, and neither of us can stop her.”
“You could at least tell her you disagree.”
Stebbs took a long drink before answering. “I’m not so sure I do.”
“Thanks,” Lynn said.
“You’re kidding,” Eli said in disbelief.
“Quiet,” Vera chided them from Lucy’s bedside, where the exhausted patient slept restlessly. “She’s out of the woods but can still see the trees. Would you go outside?”
“Sorry, ma’am,” Stebbs said, rising to his feet.
“Stop calling me that, mister,” Vera said, and tossed a dirty pillowcase in his direction. “Feel free to wash that when you’re done with your coffee. And once she’s asleep, your pants are coming off.”
Eli and Lynn both froze in mid stride, looking at each other in shock.
“I think she means to look at my leg,” Stebbs explained, and winked at them.
“I might be able to rebreak the original injury and set it correctly,” Vera said in an attempt to cover the blush that crept across her cheeks.
“Well, that’d be good,” Lynn said lamely, and hurried up the stairs, Eli close behind.
Stebbs ignored their teasing glances when he followed them outside. “Look, Eli, I know you don’t like the idea of Lynn going over there to check out their camp, but she’s right. Their strength will grow. If we’re going to do something about it, we need to do it now.”
“And what will we do?”
“I can’t say for sure until I go and look,” Lynn answered. “Could be they’re so strong we can’t do anything. Except leave.”
Hope sprang into Eli’s gray eyes. “You’d do that?”
“Worst-case scenario—maybe.”
“Listen, both of you,” Eli said, glancing between them as he spoke. “In Entargo, there was always this rumor that California was still . . . normal. That they had so many desalinization plants by the sea that they were self-sufficient, had excess even. If that’s true, we should go.”
“Rumor?” Stebbs asked, hitting hard on the word. “Where’d you hear this?”
“It was something that would get repeated a lot, you know? Bradley had heard it through military sources, but he said mostly it was kept quiet so that people wouldn’t leave, to keep them paying for water.”
“Or it’s a mercy to keep fools from wandering out west in search of something doesn’t exist,” Stebbs said. “You’d take Lynn and Lucy thousands of miles on foot without water, exposing them to God knows what on the road?”
“It’s an idea,” Eli said defensively.
“Sorry, Eli,” Lynn said. “I’d rather shoot people in Ohio than walk to California.”
Eli snorted and looked at the ground.
“Look,” Stebbs said, trying to ease the tension between them. “I know you’re not used to the way we live out here. You’ve learned a lot, but the next lesson is a bitch. We’ve got to defend what’s ours, or we die. Lynn’s always known that, she’s lived that way to an extreme that I never went to, but there’s some sense in it. I was too comfortable, too content to see the danger those men posed. Once the smoke stopped to the south, I didn’t think about it anymore.”
“And I wasn’t smart enough to know that what I saw in the sky was the glow from electricity,” Lynn said bitterly.
“You can’t beat yourself up about that, kiddo. Vera said they’re running generators. They’ve got heat going in the houses, on top of electricity. We assumed they died; really they traded up. You had no way of knowing what you were looking at, having never seen a working lightbulb in your life.”
“Where are they getting the gasoline for generators?” Eli asked.
“Trade,” Stebbs said. “They’ve got a few women over there. Vera said a gallon of gas gets you half an hour. They’re set up in South Bloomfield,” Stebbs said. “Lynn, you familiar with that place?”
Lynn nodded. South Bloomfield was a small village by the stream to the south. It was nothing more than a bridge, a cluster of houses and a township hall at the crossroads. She’d raided the houses years ago in search of a pair of scissors.
“I’m going,” she said stubbornly. “Soon as possible.”
“At least let me come with you,” Eli said. “I don’t like the idea of you going alone.”
“Sorry, Eli, but I might as well drive right through town honking the horn as take you with me. You’re as delicate as an elephant in the woods. And Stebbs would slow me down, no offense.”
“I’m getting my leg rebroke. You’ll eat those words one day, missy.”
“’Til then I can still outrun you,” she said, ignoring the dark looks Eli gave her. “I’m going to check on Lucy.”
Vera was sorting through the prescriptions they had found when Lynn got downstairs. “How’d we do?”
“Pretty good, actually,” Vera said, holding out a bottle for Lynn to see. “This one is Augmentin. Normally I’d say it’s a little too strong for someone Lucy’s size, but it’s expired so some of the potency is lost. I’ll start her on it and see where it gets us.”
She handed her another bottle, with only a few small pills inside. “That one is amoxicillin, it’s an all-purpose antibiotic that I’d prefer to give her, but it lacks the punch of the Augmentin and there isn’t enough to keep a stable amount in her bloodstream long enough to kill off all the bacteria. You keep it, and if you ever get a cut that looks bad, take the pills until they’re gone.”
Lynn looked at Lucy, peacefully curled into a ball under her clean blanket, a freshly boiled Red Dog tucked under her chin. “This bacterial infection . . . how did she get it? Was it in the water? Something I gave her to eat?”
“I can’t say for sure how she got it, Lynn. But I can tell you that if you hadn’t been feeding her these past few months, she’d be dead for sure.”
“Right.”
“It’s not your fault. It’s just something that happened.”
“It is what it is—that’s what Mother would always say.”
“She sounds like a smart woman.” Vera smiled at Lynn and touched her shoulder. “I don’t want to upset you, but I’m going to move Lucy over to the stream house. The damp air down here could lay the groundwork for an opportunistic infection.”
“You could move her upstairs,” Lynn offered. “Plenty dry there.”
“Maybe, but the nights still get cold and judging by the ductwork I see here in your basement, there aren’t working fireplaces up there, right?”
“No,” Lynn admitted. “There’s not.”
“Eli said that little shed that he and Stebbs built is tight as a drum, holds the heat and has no drafts. I’m sorry, but in Lucy’s condition it’s the better bet over an old farmhouse.”
“It’s all right,” Lynn said. “I want her healthy. I’ll be fine. When are you leaving?”
“I’d like to take the meds back to the stream today, and get a proper bed set up for her there. If we could all be safely tucked in by nightfall I’d be pleased.”
“Take the cot she’s been using.”
“You’re sure?”
“No need for it here,” Lynn said. “It’ll just be me.”
She made it a point to be up on the roof when they left. Vera sloshed through the muddy yard, a sleeping Lucy slumped over her shoulder. Eli followed with the cot and Vera’s backpack. Stebbs walked beside him, weighed down with medicine, extra blankets, and Mother’s rifle, with instructions to leave it w
ith Eli at the stream house. Lynn knew he would’ve refused it if she’d tried to give it herself, and was relying on Stebbs’ prolific common sense to overrule Eli’s objections.
Eli made it as far as the wood cord before he put down the cot and turned back. Lynn sighed and put her eye back to the scope for a distraction. Vera and Stebbs had stopped to wait for him, and she saw Vera leaning close to Stebbs while he spoke to her. Closer than necessary. Lynn bit her lip to keep the smile from spreading. “Wily asshole,” she said under her breath.
“Hey now,” Eli’s voice came from behind her. “I know you’re not happy with me, but I don’t think I quite deserve that.”
“Not directed at you,” Lynn said, nodding toward the older couple standing in the distance. “Don’t make them wait too long. Lucy needs to get indoors.”
Eli sat beside her on the shingles, ignoring the fact that her attention was focused on the rifle and not him. “I don’t want to go.”
She made sure she had control over her voice before she turned to him. “Vera and Lucy need you.”
“And you don’t.”
The words came out clipped and bitter as the air they landed in, dropping between the two of them like icicles. Lynn dropped her head back to the scope, close enough that her eyelashes brushed the cold metal.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“It’s true though.” Eli looked to the south. “I’m worried about what you’ll do once we leave.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Just promise me you won’t do anything stupid.”
“Done.”
Eli sighed and put a hand on her shoulder. She hesitated a moment, then gripped him back. “Come back,” she said, her shaky voice betraying her. “When you can. When they’re safe.”
“Soon as possible,” he said, his voice husky. Then he was gone. He emerged in the yard, shoulders hunched against the cold, head down against the wind. Lynn covered them with the rifle, not allowing tears to blur her vision until they were out of sight.
Not a Drop to Drink Page 19