by Mike Mullin
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?”
“Other than calling us Mr. and Mrs. Stumpy,” Darla said. “What, are congratulations in order?” Dr. McCarthy asked. “You got married and didn’t invite me to the wedding?” “No . . .” I said.
“Yes . . .” Darla said at almost the same time.
“Sort of,” I amended.
“Well when you figure it out, let me know,” Dr. McCarthy said. “Anyway, your arms . . . I’m not sure.”
Not exactly what you want to hear your doctor saying. “You’ve got burns from the tar Red used to seal your stumps, and normally we’d want the burns to get some air, but if I go mucking around in there trying to get the tar off your skin, I’m afraid I’ll reopen or infect your wounds. Might be best to do nothing.”
“So a bionic hand is out of the question?” I said.
Dr. McCarthy smiled, but his eyes were sad. “Afraid so.” He reached into his old-timey, black leather doctor’s bag and pulled out a bottle of pills, opened it, and counted out ten. “Take one a day each for the next five days.”
“What are they?” I asked as he poured them into my hand.
“Antibiotic. Levaquin.”
I was so startled, I almost dropped the pills. Antibiotics were priceless—I could probably buy twenty weeks’ worth of food with the ten pills in my hand. “Thank you.”
“Mayor’s been buying them. He’s got a source, but he won’t tell me who. I suspect he’s trading with one of the gangs. Medical supplies are about the only thing he’ll trade pork for. And I figure we owe you, even if he doesn’t see it that way.”
“You look at our feet yet?” I asked.
“No. Why?”
“Pretty sure they’re frostbitten. Might be more along the side of my body.” I started taking off my clothing, which was sort of embarrassing given the fact that we were in a one-room longhouse, and I hadn’t really figured out how to undress myself one-handed. But I wanted him to check us both over thoroughly. Frostbite can be deadly.
One of my toes—the little one on my right foot, which had rested against the ground—was completely black and lifeless.
“That toe’s going to have to come off, Alex.”
“Don’t you think I’ve lost enough body parts?”
“Too many. But if I leave that dead toe on there, all the antibiotics in the world won’t help you. You’ll lose the rest of your body parts—all at once.”
I sighed heavily. “Well, get out your hedge clippers, then.”
“I think I’ll use a scalpel, if it’s all the same to you. I’ll need three pans of boiling water and a couple of helpers.” Ed and Max volunteered to help. The four of us lapsed into a tense silence while waiting for the water to boil. When the water was ready and the scalpels sterilized, Dr. McCarthy fumbled around in his medical bag, finally pulling out a leather-wrapped stick.
“I guess you still don’t have any painkillers,” I said. “No. Sorry.” He passed me the stick, and Ed and Max took hold of my leg. I bit down on the stick; the leather was slick and tasted slightly of soap and salt.
When Dr. McCarthy started working his scalpel around my toe, I screamed—I couldn’t help myself. The sound that escaped around the stick sounded more like the trumpet of a tortured swan than anything human. Darla put her hand in mine, and I gripped it fiercely. Then, mercifully, I passed out.
When I awoke, I discovered that Darla had lost two of the toes from her left foot. Dr. McCarthy left us with a long list of things to watch out for around our wounds: redness, streaking, swelling, pus—the usual signs of infection. Darla and I had dealt with it before.
I slept through most of the next five days. Every now and then I would wake and stare at the stump on the end of my left arm. The tar had cracked, and red, burnt skin was visible in the cracks, forming a crazed red-and-black patchwork looking more like an arm that belonged on Sauron the Deceiver than on anything human.
It hurt terribly—far worse than it had at the moment it had been lopped off. Yet I could still feel my missing hand, still tell it to clench and unclench. Doing so sent waves of pain washing up my arm, but I did it anyway, holding up my arm, making my phantom hand form a phantom fist over and over again, relishing the pain in some sick way.
Darla lay next to me. She was always asleep when I woke. I didn’t wake her, didn’t want her to see me staring at my stump, manipulating my invisible fist until the pain made tears run down my face.
I woke one day to an argument. Uncle Paul was sitting on a nearby cot, trying to convince Darla to come help him wire the inside of a heating tank. She kept saying she couldn’t, that one-handed, she’d only get in the way. He told her he didn’t know how to do it, which sounded like
BS to me. Finally Darla sighed and levered herself up out of the cot. I pretended to sleep through the whole thing.
The next morning I woke to Uncle Paul shaking my shoulder. I was deep in a dream about flashing knives, and I lashed out, hitting Uncle Paul in the chest with my stump. The pain was so inte
nse that tears involuntarily poured from my eyes. Uncle Paul either didn’t notice or pretended not to.
“Darla needs you,” he said.
I glanced at the cot beside mine; Darla wasn’t there. “What’s wrong?”
“She’s just sitting in the greenhouse, staring at her stump. She doesn’t say anything or do anything unless I ask her to and tell her directly and exactly what I need. She’s like a robot.”
“We’ve both had a rough week, if you hadn’t noticed.” “Yeah, I noticed. And Darla’s one of the toughest women I’ve ever met. But everyone needs some help sometimes. She needs you.”
I rolled over to face away from him. “I’m tired,” I said, which was true.
I heard Uncle Paul standing up behind me. “Think about it, would you?”
I grunted something noncommittal, and he left. How was I supposed to help Darla when I didn’t even want to get out of bed? How was I even supposed to put on my boots one-handed? How would half a man be useful to anyone, let alone her? I rolled over, heedless of the pain it caused my stump, and tried to get back to sleep.
Chapter 41
I couldn’t sleep. The image of Darla sitting in the greenhouse, flexing her phantom hand, had wormed into my mind and wouldn’t leave. I tossed and turned for more than an hour and then threw the covers off, hunting around for some clothes.
Getting dressed one-handed is ridiculously challenging. Buttons, zippers, drawstrings, shoelaces— all of them are designed to be operated two-handed. I cussed at imaginary clothing designers in the most inventive terms I could think of. Velcro: Why didn’t they make everything with Velcro fasteners? It worked fine for toddlers.
I didn’t go straight to Darla. Instead I talked to Max, Zik, Ben, Alyssa, Anna, and Charlotte, looking for an item I wanted to give to Darla. Wyn had one, and she handed it over gravely, warning me that it didn’t work—it hadn’t brought her sister Emily back.
Darla was on her back on the dirt floor of the underconstruction greenhouse. Her head was turned so she could stare at her stump, and I could see the muscles in her arm tensing and relaxing, over and over.