“We’re burning daylight,” he said quietly.
“Be off with you, then,” said Jenny, stepping back. “You boys come back quick and you come back safe, you hear?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Grey, and Looks Away pretended to doff a hat that he wasn’t wearing.
“As your ladyship commands,” he said, “so shall it be.”
They tugged the reins to turn their horses toward the road that led past the Pearl farm and out toward the east. But Jenny suddenly ran up to Picky and took the bridle, stopping the animal. Then she tugged the ribbon from her hair and tied the blue length of it to the head collar.
“For luck,” she said.
Grey smiled at her. “Thank you.”
“A lady’s favor on the steed of a knight aboard on a mission of errantry,” said Looks Away, rolling his eyes. “Good Lord save me from romantic fools.”
He kicked his horse into a gallop.
Grey winked at Jenny and cantered after.
Chapter Forty-Four
They rode in silence for much of the way.
Grey pointedly ignored the occasional amused glances aimed his way by his companion. The one time Looks Away tried to open a conversation about Jenny, Grey laid his callused hand on the butt of his holstered Colt.
“Point taken,” said Looks Away.
The miles fell away beneath their horses’ hooves.
The land was clearly broken and in places it still looked raw. A game trail through a grove of trees would suddenly end at a jagged cliff to which the fractured trunks of dead trees still clung. Then they’d have to pick their way through boulders and rotting logs and between towers of splintered granite. At one point they crossed a gorge along a slat bridge that was so new the lumber was still green.
“Grey,” said Looks Away during one of the times they had to dismount and lead the horses, “I’m sure you recognized some of those walking corpses that night.”
“You mean Perkins and the deputies? Sure.”
“I can’t rough out any scenario where that makes sense. I mean… we’re going on the assumption that Deray created the undead, or controlled them, with these magic bits of ghost rock. Right?”
“Yup.”
“But Perkins worked for Deray. We saw him less than half a day before those deputies turned up dead and reanimated. What happened to them? How did they die? Why did they die? And why were they brought back?”
“All important questions,” agreed Grey. “And my considered opinion is that it beats the shit out of me.”
“Ah.”
They remounted and rode along a deep cleft at the bottom of which lay the smashed remains of a farmhouse, barn, and corn silo. The bleached bones of at least a dozen cattle were scattered among the splintered wood.
Grey was about to ask if Looks Away knew if the farmer family had survived the Quake, but then they passed a line of crudely made crosses standing in a row. The paint was faded after all these years, but Grey could see that everyone buried there had the same last name. From the birth and death dates it looked like grandparents, parents and young kids. Eleven graves in all.
He wondered why any of the survivors would stay in such a place as this. Death, the wrath of an insane planet, and the villains who mingled science with sorcery. What could make someone like Lucky Bob and his daughter think this land was worth fighting for?
The nomad in Grey’s soul was so practiced at riding away whenever troubles got too big that he no longer felt able to understand any other choice.
As if reading his thoughts, Looks Away said, “It’s hard to walk away penniless from something you’ve put your whole life into.”
“What?”
“Jenny. It’s why she stayed after her father died. It’s why most of the families here want to fight this out. If they left, where could they go? And how could they start something new without funds or resources?”
“That’s not a decision, it’s a trap.”
“It’s a choice for some,” said Looks Away. “They love this land. Their family members are buried here. That ties them to the land.”
“Is that Sioux wisdom?”
“It’s human nature, Grey. People want to put down roots.”
“Not everyone.”
Looks Away nodded, but he wore a knowing smile.
A mile later Grey said, “I take it you and Chesterfield’s wife—.”
“Veronica.”
“—Veronica, are friends?”
Their horses walked nearly a dozen paces before Looks Away answered. “There are a lot of lonely people in this world, my friend. Is it wrong to offer comfort? Is it wrong to provide a shoulder to cry upon or an ear to listen? Is that a moral crime? Is that a sin in your world?”
“You’re asking the wrong fellow. I don’t study on sin very much. Not anyone else’s. My own sins — and they are many — provide me with enough to think about.”
“So you don’t judge?”
Grey sucked a tooth. “I’m not saying I can’t or won’t form opinions. For example I’m of the opinion that Nolan Chesterfield and Aleksander Deray would do the world a power of good if they stood in front of a fast-moving train.”
“We’re of a mind in that regard.”
“Beyond that?” Grey shook his head. “It’s a cold, hard world and if someone can find a little warmth and comfort, then good on ’em.”
That seemed to satisfy Looks Away, and he said no more on the subject.
They reached the top of a series of broken foothills, and there they paused. Beyond the ridge, stretching out for miles, was a green and lovely valley. Long, broad fields of blowing grass, orderly groves of fruit trees, and a stream as blue as Jenny’s ribbon wandering through it all. Beyond the stream was a dirt road that ran in a slow curve toward a mansion that would have fit better on a Georgia peach plantation. Three stories tall, with a row of white columns along a deep porch.
“By the Queen’s sacred knickers,” said Looks Away, even though he had presumably visited the place before.
“Is that the Chesterfield place?” asked Grey.
“It is.”
“Oh shit.”
“Indeed.”
It was not the obvious wealth or the ostentatious splendor that made them both stiffen in their saddles. It was not the nearness of a potential enemy that made their hands stray toward their guns.
It was the state of the place.
The trees lining the driveway were nothing but blackened stumps. Some had fallen, their trunks split by what looked like lightning strikes. Horses and cattle lay everywhere.
Dead.
All dead.
There were long, black trenches running back and forth across the grounds. They looked like the kind of mark Grey made when he scraped a match on a doorpost. Except these were a yard wide and some of them ran for a hundred feet across the lawn, through hedges, and even through parts of the house’s big slope roof. Anything in the path of those burns had been incinerated.
The front of the house was blackened with soot and part of the shingled roof had collapsed inward. A thin curl of smoke rose into the wind and was dissipated into nothingness by a steady breeze blowing inland.
“What the hell could have done that?” demanded Grey.
Looks Away said nothing, but his face was pale and he stared with naked horror. He silently mouthed a word. A name.
Veronica.
Chapter Forty-Five
Looks Away started forward but Grey clapped a hand on his arm and held him in place.
“She’s in there,” insisted Looks Away, trying to tear his arm free.
“Okay, we’ll go in and find her,” said Grey as he drew his pistol. “But let’s do it the smart way. Not the I-want-to-be-dead-way. You understand me? We do it smart or we go back to Jenny’s place.”