Better, maybe.
He was glad to have Talus walking alongside. He’d picked up a stick earlier—a perfect throwing stick—but every time he thought about tossing it for the dog, he imagined her running after it, and changed his mind.
The things Ashe had said last night when she came to their camp by the billboard kept popping up in his head. His stomach felt sick when he thought about eating their dinner of potatoes and clams with Clyde. Kory hadn’t liked Clyde from the beginning—he was a big faker who smiled when he was pissed. But when Ashe told the story about Clyde killing her husband, he felt like something inside his chest was shrinking and cramping.
When Papa had taught him to shoot, when he said there were people who did terrible things, Clyde was the person Papa meant. And it made him wonder: what if Clyde had shown up in the clearing, instead of Curran and Arie and Renna and Handy?
He tried not to think about any of it. Every hour or so, he wanted to break into a run, to tear off into the field or down to the river. But just when his feet almost did exactly that, his stomach would remember Clyde and Novalee—and it was definitely his stomach, not his head. Then it felt better to keep walking with Talus, with the adults all around him.
Yesterday, for a while, the whole ocean had seemed like an adventure thrown at his feet to explore. Today, the sky was too big.
The dim afternoon was fading fast when Handy spotted an old tractor barn ahead. Dense overcast had given way to marshy ground fog. It rose waist-high around them, obscuring their feet and any number of small trip hazards. They hurried ahead anyway, hoping to get under cover before dark.
The barn—essentially a large shed once meant for storing farm equipment—was rickety. If the board walls had ever been painted there was no sign of it now. The whole badly weathered structure listed somewhat to starboard, but it was fully enclosed and would be the best shelter they’d had since leaving the Wallace cabin.
As they approached, they saw that one of the two tall doors stood ajar, rocking gently in the faint onshore breeze. Its rusty hinges made low, monotonous creaks that sounded like a cancerous bullfrog.
Up close, they saw the red X slashed across the building’s highway-facing side. Arie’s house had been marked that way in an early frenzy, as had most of the homes in her neighborhood. In a few days there weren’t enough people left to bother with such haphazard recordkeeping.
It was the simplest signifier: X marks the spot. The plague was here. As it turned out, it had been everywhere. Under the dripping red mark, was this bit of doggereclass="underline"
Talus got ahead of them and approached the entrance, hunched forward with her snout lifted, sampling the air. She was cautious but hadn’t growled or alerted, so they followed her over the threshold.
It was nearly dark inside, with only the half-open door and a sizable hole in the roof to provide the faintest gray relief. The bulky silhouette of an ancient farm truck sat stolidly in the center of the shed.
“Let’s open both doors and see what’s in here,” said Handy. They dropped their packs off outside. While Handy and Curran wrestled both balky shed doors open, Renna retrieved their small solar-powered lantern. Kory had already pulled on a headlamp. Its narrow white beam moved erratically in the dark space as the boy looked around.
Arie had just retrieved her own flashlight, when Kory yelled and stumbled backward, landing on his butt near her feet.
“What?” she asked. Everyone had frozen, hands on weapons.
“There’s a dead guy,” he said. “Inside the truck.”
Handy kept his fingers around the haft of his knife and approached the cab of the vehicle. Renna stood behind his left shoulder, holding the lantern aloft. At first there was only her light reflecting off the driver’s side window, showing them their own concerned faces. But when she moved the lantern slightly to one side, there he was.
The man had been dead a very long time. Shut inside his vehicle in the uninsulated shed and dressed in heavy, absorbent clothing, he had partially mummified. His head was tipped back, mouth slightly open, as if in sleep. The eyes were empty holes and the bone of the lower jaw partially exposed, but a tight mask of brown skin still stretched over most of his face, covered by a shockingly heavy red beard.
Perhaps he’d contracted the pox and decided to end things his own way. Or maybe the notion of being a lone survivor after losing his loved ones to the Pink had been too much. Whatever his motives, the length of garden hose duct-taped to the tailpipe—its other end running into the passenger-side window—left no doubt as to how he’d died.
Arie put her hands on her hips and sighed. “We need this out of here.”
“It’s a beast,” said Curran. “We can try.” He gave the door handle a cursory tug. “Locked,” he said. “Let’s find something to break in with.”
While Arie and Renna propped the two shed doors open, Curran and Kory rummaged through the shed. Handy tied a bandana over his mouth and nose.
“How about this,?” Kory asked.
“Crowbar,” said Curran. “Excellent find.” He returned to the driver’s window. “Okay, stand back.” He swung the curved end of the bar at the glass.
The window collapsed with a satisfying clatter. Renna had her arm over Kory’s shoulders, and the two of them instinctively moved a couple of paces away. It wasn’t the smell; there was a pungent odor of decay, yes, but it was old corruption, more the rot of a tomb than a fresh grave. What repelled them was the sudden absence of a barrier between themselves and the corpse. Nothing there now but a dark arm’s length of space.
The truck’s cab sat high. Handy grabbed both sides of the doorframe and hoisted himself up onto the running board “Let’s have a light,” he said. Arie gave him her flashlight. He leaned over the body, arching himself away from the dead man. “Brother,” he said to Curran, “come over here and push the clutch.”
Curran leaned in and shoved the clutch pedal with two hands. “Do it,” he said. Handy tucked the flashlight under his arm, balanced with one hand on the top of the steering wheel, and grappled with the gearshift. With a grunt, he pulled it into neutral. The truck, parked on a slight grade, inched forward. “Hot damn.” yelled Curran. “Hurry up and push the bitch, before she quits.”
Handy dropped out of the cab and ran to push from behind while Curran threw himself at the massive front fender like Sisyphus at his boulder. Renna, Kory, and Arie joined Handy, all of them growling with the effort. Moments later, a ton of rusted American steel was over the threshold and out the door, rolling by inertia into the pitted field until the front passenger wheel landed in a deep rut. The whole truck gave a massive lurch forward, slammed to a stop, and the body inside fell out the open door and into the tall grass.
“Oohh,” said Renna, grimacing.
Talus barked and ran to inspect. Curran ran after, calling her back.
“Yeah,” said Kory. “Sorry honey.”
The adults looked at him, then at each other. Handy began to laugh, quietly at first, then harder. It was such a treat, that laugh. Soon they were all helpless with it. The clouds had parted over the ocean, as they so often did near the end of the day. A bright patch fell all around Curran, who was vigorously coaxing Talus away from the dead man. Talus was just as vigorously inspecting the corpse, not minding a bit. When Curran looked back toward the shed and exasperatedly threw his hands in the air, Renna, Handy, Arie, and Kory all roared with laughter.