Ganish stepped forward and introduced himself. Colonel Tyler shook hands solemnly. “We talked once on the radio,” he said: a resonant, calm voice. “Nice to meet you in person.” And Abby. “Heard a lot about you, Mrs. Cushman.”
Smiles and breathless welcome-stranger bullshit. Then they introduced Beth.
Colonel Tyler shook her hand.
His hand was big and warm. Her own hand was cold from the weather, raw from the work. She was grateful for the touch. She thought his hand was one of the most interesting things she had ever seen—a big man’s hand, creased and hard, but gentle.
“Prettiest face I’ve encountered in a long time,” Tyler said, “if you don’t mind me saying so, Miss Porter.”
“Beth,” she managed.
“Beth.”
She liked the way it sounded when he said it.
Then they all hiked back into town, Tyler sharing the weight of the canned food, and he talked a little about how bad the roads had been, “but it’s a different story over the mountains,” and how they would have to take their time, plan for the journey east, and so on and so forth, Beth not speaking or really listening much; and then all the others had to meet Tyler, show him the shelter they’d made of the intact corner of the hospital basement; and Joey was beside himself, glowing whenever Tyler talked to him, which was often, since Tyler and Joey had become good radio buddies. Then there was planning to do, Tyler conferring with Matt and Tom Kindle mainly, and the days had run in a busy torrent ever since.
But she remembered the touch of his hand.
Prettiest face I’ve seen in a long time.
Beth had passed her twenty-first birthday on the road out of Oregon. She didn’t mention it; no one knew. But it got her thinking. Maybe she’d been acting like a teenager well past her due date—riding around on Joey’s motorcycle committing penny-ante vandalism. But she was twenty-one years old; she was a woman; maybe not the world’s most attractive or well-bred specimen, but the only woman under forty among the local survivors. A fact that made Joey paranoid (not that he had any right to be) and everyone else a little nervous. Chuck Makepeace had made a couple of very tentative passes; so, even more tentatively, had Tim Belanger.
But they didn’t attract her.
Who did?
Well… Joey had, once, but that was over. An aspect of her life she didn’t much care to recall.
Matt Wheeler attracted her.
Colonel Tyler attracted her.
None of this was very surprising. What was new was the idea that she might attract them. And maybe (and here was the real novelty), maybe not just because she was the only game in town.
Since Matt, since her experience with Jacopetti in the hospital basement, Beth had been exploring a new idea—the idea that she might have some work of her own to do in this new world.
Something more significant than clerking at a 7-Eleven.
A new world, new work, a new Beth Porter coming up through the rubble.
Which reminded her of the tattoo on her shoulder.
WORTHLESS
It had seemed like a good idea at the time.
Maybe it had been.
Maybe it had been true.
Maybe it wasn’t anymore.
She would have to explain to Matt about the vote. Not something she looked forward to.
For now, she watched Colonel Tyler at the front of the room. He smiled, thanked Matt for everything he’d done, thanked everybody for demonstrating their confidence in a relative newcomer. He said he took the chairmanship seriously and he’d do his best to live up to their expectations.
Then he looked at his watch. “It’s late and I guess we all want to get some sleep before we move on in the morning. So just a little bit of business here. Some people have been complaining about the weekly meetings. We see each other every day, maybe there’s no reason to have a formal assembly so often when there’s no special business pending. Seems reasonable. I think we can safely schedule full Committee meetings at a rate of once a month, and I’ll ask your consent for that—unless there’s any objections?”
No objections, though Matt was frowning massively.
“Okay,” Tyler said. “Some picayune items… I’ve posted a watch tonight, and I think we should make that a permanent fixture. Joseph and Tim volunteered for duty. They can be our regular standing guard as far as I’m concerned—until they get tired of it, and unless anybody has a reason why not.”
Kindle said, “We’re talking armed guards here?”
“Handguns,” Tyler said.
Abby: “Is that necessary, Colonel?”
Tyler smiled his gentle smile. “I hope it isn’t, Mrs. Cushman. I trust it won’t be. But we’d be stupid to take an unnecessary risk. There’s always the possibility of wild animals, if nothing else. I won’t ask a man to sit alone all night without some form of protection.”
(“Holy crow,” Kindle said softly.)
And more such items, none offered for a vote, but the Colonel pausing briefly for “objections,” which never came. It was businesslike, Beth thought. A little dizzying, however.
There was something about the radio: Makepeace and Joey were a joint committee and controlled access. Communication with Helpers—there was a Helper in every one of these microscopic towns—would be strictly through a designated representative: Tim Belanger. “Helper communication should be kept to a minimum, in my opinion, since we’ve all suffered at the hands of the Travellers, and I’m not sure we should place absolute trust in their emissaries, though I’ll be the first to admit they’ve been useful from time to time.”
Finally a motion to adjourn. Hands shot up. Kindle whistled appreciatively from the back row. “Fast work, Colonel.” Tyler looked mildly irritated. “You can voice your dissent at any time, Mr. Kindle. That’s what this forum is all about. However, we’re adjourned.”
“We sure are,” Kindle said.
Matt had picked up some material for Beth at a local lending library—a Red Cross first-aid handbook with a chapter on traumatic injuries, which he had annotated in the margin where it was out of date. In a couple of weeks, he wanted her familiar with the use of a hypodermic needle and a range of common antibiotics. The problems they were most likely to be looking at, aside from Jacopetti’s coronary trouble and Miriam’s geriatric complaints, were injuries and bad food. He had scheduled a session with her tonight.
But the meeting had run late… she might not show up.
Might not want to, Matt thought. It was cold in his RV. A lot of people were sleeping indoors tonight. Kindle had been warning people about turning on long-disused oil furnaces ever since they passed that burned-out section of Twin Falls, and gas furnaces weren’t working anymore, anywhere, for no known reason. But the Travellers had been scrupulous about electricity. Kindle had hooked up expensive space heaters, the kind with gravity switches to turn off the juice if somebody knocked the thing over. Heat a room, let people camp in it. It was reasonably safe and it took the chill off some arthritic bones, including Miriam’s.
But Matt preferred his camper. He had converted the RV into a combination of home and consulting office. It provided a little continuity in a world that had turned so many things so completely upside-down.
He picked up another library book, a Raymond Chandler mystery, its urban setting so distant in time and circumstance that it felt like science fiction. And he switched on a battery light and settled down.
The wind came briskly along the dry margins of the Snake River and rocked the RV on its old, loose shocks. Matt found his attention drifting: from the book to Tyler, the election, the boy who had wandered into camp this afternoon…
He was yawning when Beth knocked.
She let herself in. Matt checked his watch. “Beth, it’s late—”