I held her tightly. It got harder and harder to talk as we froze slowly to the ground, merging with it. Finally we drifted off, arms wrapped around each other, entering the longest night as one.
Chapter 39
I woke in excruciating pain. My skin was on fire with a heat that tingled and surged and spiked, as if thousands of sharp needles were being poked into me one after the other. I’d gone to Hell, and the welcoming committee was a thousand berserk acupuncturists.
I tried to open my eyes. A flickering, reddish light blinded me. Maybe I really was in Hell. My head was foggy; I couldn’t focus. I shook my head, trying to clear it, but that resulted in pain so intense drowned out the needles in my body. I lay still for a moment, trying to collect my thoughts, to understand what was happening. The front side of my body was uncomfortably hot, almost burning. There was something rough against my skin. And someone was pressed against my back. Not Darla—but I couldn’t have said how I could tell.
Darla. I forced my eyes back open, heedless of the glare, propped myself up on a wobbly arm, and looked around.
We were still in the corner of the ruined bank. A large fire blazed, shielded from the wind and Stockton by the bank’s brick walls. Darla was nearby, facing the fire on her side like I was. A woman was pressed up against my back, another pressed against Darla’s back. A thin man with a face as hard and sharp as a hatchet—maybe in his early forties—fed the fire while a seven- or eight-year-old girl dug in the snow and ash, finding charred scraps of lumber and passing them to the man. The little girl was wrapped up tight, in an oversized pink coat with a fur-trimmed hood. Only her cherubic red cheeks and face were visible.
“Shh,” the woman behind me said. “Lay back down. You need to warm up, sleep, and heal.”
“Darla,” my voice sounded more like a frog croaking than human speech.
“She’s okay. Let her sleep. You’re safe. If we’d wanted to harm you, all we had to do was nothing.”
That made sense. I lowered myself back down, noticing for the first time that both the woman and I were wrapped in several blankets. I put my head on her arm and slept.
I woke to the woman shaking my shoulder. “Wake up, wake up,” she whispered. “We got to move on before daybreak. If we could find you, Red’s men could too.”
The mention of Red snapped me to full awareness. Darla was standing nearby, the firelight playing in red shadows across her skin. She was struggling to step into a pair of long johns one-handed. The woman—girl, I saw now—who had slept against her was trying to help.
I stood, shivering in the frozen air. To shiver was joyous—it meant my body had warmed up to the point where it knew the difference between hot and cold. My remaining fingers throbbed, my toes felt like someone was actively sawing at them with a knife, and the scrapes on my back hurt, but otherwise I seemed okay.
The woman dug a pair of long johns out of a pack next to her and held them open for me to step into. It suddenly occurred to me to be embarrassed—here I was letting my freak flag fly practically in her face. I hurried to put on the long johns, although my one-handed efforts were agonizingly slow.
They had two full sets of clothing, including winter coats, gloves, scarves, hats—even boots. Everything was too big for me and Darla, but we made do, rolling up cuffs and pants legs, wearing three pairs of socks, and stuffing a fourth pair into the toes of the oversized boots. Whenever I shoved my stump into a piece of clothing, just the cloth running over it was agonizing. It wasn’t bleeding, though—the tar had frozen to a hard lump that sealed the end of my arm effectively. I let the shirts and coats
hang long over the stump.
“Who are you?” I asked as the woman helped me dress. “Why are you doing this? Not that I’m not grateful.”
“We’ve got to hurry,” the man said. “We need to be miles away before daybreak.”
“I’m Alex,” I said, holding my hand out to him.
He shook it quickly. “Hurry!”
I tried to hurry, but I was clumsy, unsure of my new center of gravity, and suffering the aftereffects of nearly freezing to death.
“I’m Isaac, but most folks call me Zik,” he said. “My wife, Mary” The woman helping me dress nodded. “And our girls, Charlotte and Bronwyn.”
“Just Wyn,” the youngest girl said. She was dumping armloads of snow on the fire. As soon as we were dressed and the fire was out, we left. Each of the four of them had a pack. I offered to carry one, but Zik refused.
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.