“It was an old landfill. A dump, literally, and next to it, a cement parking lot which did not fare too well in an earthquake. Pickaxes and a lot of sweat did the rest.” She pointed. “See the low walls over there?” Lucy nodded. Gray walls sectioned off various rectangular areas.
“Corn and herbs. We’re trying wheat and barley for the first time, now that flour can’t be had for a song or a prayer. We built those out of blocks of concrete we dug up out of the parking lot. It is backbreaking work, but a creative use of salvage.”
Her hands stopped working for a moment and she gazed over the furrows of sandy earth.
“It is not good soil, but it is good enough for what we grow here. The manure helps.”
“So there are animals?” The thought of eating meat that was not newt or squirrel made her mouth water.
“Not anymore. We lost our last five goats just last week. Poachers.” She scowled blackly. “The cows and the chickens died in the second wave.” She sighed. “What I wouldn’t give for a good honest egg.”
“And the vegetables?” asked Lucy. “I mean, these are like what you used to get in a store. Not foraged daylily bulbs and wild greens.”
“This was a neighborhood once. The kind that existed before all the troubles. People owned their homes and they grew extra food for their families. We adopted their gardens and their sheds. We used whatever we could find. That’s what scavengers do.” She picked up a trowel and turned it over in her hand. The clunky handle had obviously once belonged to some other implement and was kept in place with coils of wire.
Scavengers. Grammalie Rose said it with pride, but Lucy had always thought that scavengers were no better than thieves. She remembered what she had said to Aidan up in the tree and she blushed. Fortunately, the sharp-eyed old woman didn’t notice. She had risen to her feet, uttering small complaining noises as her knees creaked, and picked up the two full buckets of beans. She jerked her head at Lucy and then at the other tubs overflowing with produce. Lucy slid her arms through the handles, two on each side. She was balanced, but she felt the tug across the back of her shoulders and the promise of pain to come. Not for the first time in the last year, she thought longingly of a hot bath.
They walked back toward the square. A few people were sweeping the grimy puddles of rainwater away. Others were making piles of cans, rocks, and chunks of brick and sharpening sticks. More were unrolling large carpets woven from bright strips of plastic or squatting on the ground making repairs or dismantling pieces of machinery. Lucy could only guess where the heaps of gears and chains and oddly-shaped metal bits had come from and what use they could be now.
After Grammalie Rose’s explosion of conversation, she’d reverted to silence again. When they reached a long awning, she grunted and stopped. A narrow table of pine planks stretched at least twenty-five feet beneath the canvas tent. It was supported in five or six places with sawhorses. Knives of varying sizes gleamed on the rough surface. There were pots and pans, wooden cutting boards, colanders, and more of the plastic tubs. A fire crackled and smoked at the far end.
Lucy dropped her containers on the ground with a relieved groan and eased her backpack off. She worked her arms around, trying to loosen her shoulders. Maybe now she could go sprawl out somewhere, enjoy the last of the sun’s warmth, and take a nap.
Grammalie Rose raised an eyebrow as if she knew what was passing through Lucy’s mind. They locked eyes for a long moment. Lucy was on the verge of walking away when Grammalie Rose said in a mild tone, “You don’t work, you don’t eat.”
Lucy nodded shortly. Her stomach felt like an empty balloon. She’d had no food for more than twenty-four hours. The old woman thumped her on the back. “Not so sullen, wilcze. The preparers get to eat first,” she said, “and everyone must take a turn. This is not some cruel sort of punishment dreamt up especially for you.” She made a croaking noise that sounded suspiciously like a chuckle and pushed her toward the table. There were people down at the far end scrubbing potatoes. They were surrounded by mounds of dirty yellow spuds, and yet they chattered and laughed together.
“Henry!” Grammalie Rose called, and pointed to one of the tubs Lucy had hauled.
Henry was small and dark, maybe in his early twenties, with brown hair that stuck up in a duck’s tail over his forehead and twinkling brown eyes.
“Henry, this is Lucy.”
Henry grinned at Lucy and stuck out his hand. She shook it, conscious of her filth-encrusted fingers. “Leo told me about you,” he said. “He said you seemed okay.”
“I am.”
“Hmm.” He ran his eyes over her in a not entirely clinical way.
“You don’t look like a doctor,” Lucy said, trying to cover her embarrassment.
“Oh, I’m not a doctor, but I do my best.”
She felt vaguely unsettled.
He checked out the rest of their containers. “Looks like bean soup tomorrow. We’ll have to soak them first.”
Grammalie Rose grunted. “I’ve been making bean soup since your father was your age. Let tomorrow take care of itself.” Henry made a face and skipped backward to avoid a slap. “First things first,” the old woman said in a louder voice. “Take the onions and the carrots, malpa.”
Henry staggered off, bowed under the weight of two tubs, and Grammalie Rose showed Lucy where a large bowl of tepid water was. Next to it was another slimy block of soap, this one off-white and shapeless. “Wash well, wilcze,” the old woman said, sinking down on a bench. Even though her eyes had closed as if she were resting, Lucy still felt them on her back.
She rolled her sleeves up above her elbows and scrubbed her hands with the soap. It smelled of industrial strength solvent and lard. Her fingers tingled now as if they’d been sprayed with an acid solution, and the bandaged wound across her palm stung. She also took the opportunity to wash her arms and the back of her neck, too, so although she smelled of paint stripper, she felt a little cleaner.
There were six skinned dead things on the table that needed their innards removed, and she was pretty sure that was next on the list of chores. Whoever had skinned them had left their little white tails attached. “Letting us know they are not cats,” Grammalie Rose said, touching a cotton ball tuft.
“Do you hunt cats often?” Lucy asked. Meat was meat, but cats were carnivores and never tasted good. Most carnivores didn’t. She’d caught a weasel in a snare once and boiled it up, and the meat had been stringy, gamey, and really tough.
“Not often, but when the hunters bring them, they remove the fur and the tails so we can pretend it is something else.”
Looking away from the sad little carcasses, Lucy’s attention was captured by a hooded, cloaked figure that approached the table and carefully picked up the tub Lucy had used to wash her hands. The water was almost black with grime and bits of insect wings floated in it. His hands were gloved.
“Good,” said Grammalie Rose. “Sammy, please bring us some fresh water if you can.”
The man nodded. His hood slipped back a little and Lucy gasped. His features were covered completely by a mask. It was smooth and beautifully ornate, painted a luminescent white with gold filigree and flourishes around the cutout ovals where the eyes should be. His own eyes burned red behind the mask. A bow-shaped mouth was molded half-open and colored with more of the gold paint. The skin of his neck where the mask ended and his cloak gaped was blackened and cracked, as if it had been charred in a terrible fire.
Lucy stepped backward. Her heart was hammering in her chest, and she was unaware that her arm had knocked over a bowl and sent garlic and beets spilling onto the ground. He was a S’an. He was infected. A walking time bomb.