A night’s uninterrupted rest would be welcome. If she couldn’t see, they couldn’t either. Lynn settled into her cot, oblivious to the complete darkness of the basement. When Mother had been alive, they would light the oil lamps and stay awake to talk, planning the next day’s activities. Lynn needed no light to lie alone, wondering what the note waiting at the rock would say.
Lynn could live on her own. The daily duties of survival were well within her capabilities, but she couldn’t defend herself constantly. The pond was foremost in her mind, and she couldn’t keep a watch over it while cutting wood in the fencerow. Trips to the forest for larger loads of firewood were out of the question, as was any foraging of neighboring houses for the little things she would inevitably need.
Stebbs suffered the opposite problem; his daily chores were a trial because of his lame leg. They would benefit each other; he could watch the pond while she cut wood, and she would give him half in return. Water she would not part with. It seemed Stebbs wasn’t in need of any, even though she never saw him hauling water to his shack from some unknown source.
Her ankle was taking weight more easily, though she still wore the makeshift brace under her boot. She was able to walk, but the stench of the coyotes choked her throat nearly shut as she made her way out to the boulder. Her shirt was tucked over her nose and she had her nostrils pinched shut through it by the time she opened the note. It read:
There are people at the stream.
She stared at it. She’d been expecting an offer of help, questions about Mother, or the burning of her outbuilding. Instead, it was a statement so obvious as to be nearly insulting. She was chewing on the end of the pen that she had brought, debating on an appropriate response when the man stood up from behind the boulder.
Lynn’s instincts were too finely honed to allow for screaming. The rifle that had been lashed across her back snapped to the front so quickly that she would find a burn between her shoulder blades from the strap that evening.
He looked much different than she remembered. Years of watching Stebbs through the binoculars had not prepared Lynn for the reality of his person, the fine lines around his mouth, the brightness of his eyes, or the silver-streaked hair that peeked out from underneath his hat. She backpedaled, even though his arms were in the air and he had no weapon. The closeness of anyone other than Mother was so alien to Lynn that she had to smother the need to run away from his strangeness.
“Lynn,” he said calmly, “it’s all right.”
She had never heard her name spoken by a man before. Even when he’d recuperated at their house, Mother had not allowed Lynn to be near him much. But his voice brought long-dead memories to the surface, the pleasant sound of his tones seeping through the floorboards above her head, murmured conversations not meant for her ears. His voice hadn’t changed, but there was a calming note to it now, which her addled brain had a difficult time placing.
There was a brief time as a child when a fever put Lynn in her cot for a week, and Mother’s entire demeanor changed. She had barely ventured to the roof, even neglecting to collect water as the fever spiked. The lines around her eyes, harsh from years of squinting into the sun, had softened during those few days in the basement. And her voice changed. The factual, clipped manner of her speech had dropped, to be replaced by a softer, more comforting tone.
Lynn recognized the same elements in Stebbs’ voice. Her muscles relaxed slightly, and she brought the barrel of the gun down but ready to spring back to his center mass if necessary. Her throat, still constricted from the smell of rot, tightened further as she wondered what to say. Mother was the only person she could remember ever speaking to.
“Why’d you surprise me like that?” Lynn asked.
“I’m sorry.” He came around to the front of the rock and sat on it, pulling his hat off his head and running his hands through his hair. “Didn’t think you’d come if you saw me here, and I didn’t want to waste days writin’ if we could have a talk.”
“Uh-huh?”
He reached for his inner jacket pocket, and Lynn’s rifle snapped upward. “Whoa,” he said in the same calming voice. “Just getting my hankie.” She nodded for him to go ahead and he did so, slowly, keeping an eye on her trigger finger. The red handkerchief appeared and Lynn resisted the urge to reach out and touch it.
It was the only element of the outside world that had ever spoken of hope: a flash of red in the woods that had assured her they were not the last people left. Stebbs was proof that not everyone would attack them for the sake of drinkable water while they slept. For sixteen years, that splash of color had been her only proof of decency in the world.
Up close, details sprang out at her. The hankie wasn’t solid red but decorated with a black-and-white paisley pattern. One edge was frayed away, and she could see awkward stitches in the splitting, brittle fabric where he had tried to prevent it from unraveling.
She’d seen many exactly like it, in the farmhouses she raided across the countryside. In one house, there’d been an entire drawer filled with red like his, and also navy blue ones. No doubt he’d come across them too, yet he stuck stubbornly to this one, with its patched holes and dangling strands. The handkerchief—familiar and yet foreign—drove a spike of emotion through her heart so unexpected her legs buckled underneath and she crumbled to the ground.
“I shot her.” The words tore from her throat, a confession she’d not made aloud even in the solitude of the basement. “I killed Mother.”
He was beside her in a second, strong hands on each of her shoulders. His touch was not the shock she had expected. Her skin did not recoil instantly, though years of being warned of the danger posed by all men had been ingrained in her. Instead, she leaned forward and put her head on his shoulder, relishing the feel of his jacket against her face.
“I heard shots.” His hand patted her back, awkward but soothing. “What happened?”
“She’s dead.” Lynn pulled back from him, suddenly embarrassed at their closeness. “There were coyotes, and I . . . I missed.”
He nodded that he understood and patted her shoulder with one hand. A flicker of deep emotion passed beneath his eyes, but with a single blink it was gone. He swallowed once, hard, and rose to his feet. She wiped her eyes quickly dry and he did the same. Stebbs cleared his throat and faced east.
“There are people over to the stream,” he said.
“I know.” Lynn clumsily rose, her ankle throbbing inside the tight boot. “Mother thought the Streamers wouldn’t last the winter. They’re burning green wood.”
He grunted his agreement. “No shots from that direction. They don’t have guns. They’ve stayed next to the water even though it’s cold. I think they’ve got someone sick who can’t be moved.”
“Or they’ve got no way of hauling water,” Lynn added, glad to be able to play a familiar game, even if it was with a new player. “So they weren’t smart enough to bring a bucket.”
They shook their heads at the same time. “City people,” they said in unison, and Lynn caught herself smiling, her face creasing into the familiar pattern before she was aware of it.
Lynn jerked her head to the south. “Those men, they’re bad news.” Mother had used that phrase to describe the worst possible things in life: the haze of a hot summer morning that meant storm clouds but no rain; black, fuzzy caterpillars warning that the winter would be especially harsh; the tiny black droppings of mice scattered in their makeshift basement pantry.
“Bad news for sure,” Stebbs said, shifting his weight off his twisted foot. “I heard them try to take you girls down.”
“Didn’t work,” Lynn said stiffly.
“No . . .” he said, his voice trailing off in a wave of nuance that Lynn wasn’t practiced enough to understand. The sound of his voice was unfamiliar to her ears, and only Mother’s small actions, mimicked and perfected forms of communication, were translatable.
They stood in awkward silence for a few moments, sharing their dread of the bla
ck column of smoke to the south. “I don’t know what to do about them,” Stebbs said, and Lynn nodded her agreement.
“They’ve got a decent-sized group,” she said. “Mother picked quite a few off in the dark that one night.”
“Did she?” A smile skimmed across Stebbs’ face as he continued to watch the south. He lowered himself slowly to the rock, resting his crooked foot at an odd angle. “What will you do if they come now?”
“Shoot them for as long as I can.”
Stebbs nodded. Lynn’s eyes trailed to his foot, her plan—labor in exchange for his guarding of the pond—seemed insulting with his mangled limb stretched out in front of her. He didn’t appear to be in need of anything, from what she could see. His skin was tan, his color healthy, his arms heavily muscled. Making the offer would only make her seem weak, the deal balanced in her favor.
After a few moments rest, Stebbs propped himself on his good leg, jerking the other one underneath him as he rose. “You gonna be okay, kid?”
Lynn kept her sight trained in the distance. “Yup,” she said dismissively, “I’m fine. Mother didn’t raise any idiots.”
“Didn’t expect she would.” Stebbs motioned toward the smoke of the Streamers’ pitiable fire. “After their smoke’s gone for a few days, I’m going over there, see if they had anything useful.”
“Okay,” Lynn said, surprised at his freedom to wander without worry. His little shack must hold nothing of value, and his source of water well hidden. She took a sideways glance at his injured foot. “It’s a decent hike.”
“Yup.”
“I could go,” she offered hesitantly. “If you’d stay and watch over the pond.”
Stebbs rotated his twisted foot for a moment, considering. “You trust me to do that?”
“You could have killed us at any time.” Whether Mother had liked him or not, Stebbs had been a constant presence who never threatened them, even when their defenses were down. “You don’t need our water.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t.”
Lynn nodded, letting the conversation drop there. To ask where he got his own would be the highest of betrayals in their world. “So two days, do you think?”
“Two days of no smoke from the stream, and I’ll come.”
“All right.”
They nodded stiffly and parted ways, each picking their path carefully through the bloated, rotting bodies of the coyotes.
Eight
“I can’t go right now,” Lynn argued, her arms bloody from the elbow down. A small deer carcass hung from the tree, a pile of organs and intestines underneath it. Stebbs looked critically at the jagged cut she’d made from clavicle to pubic bone. Mother’s stronger, more confident slashes had looked much neater.
Stebbs ignored her protest while he looked at the tarp she’d rigged around some green saplings, tepee style. “You going to smoke it?”
“That’s the plan. The shed’s gone, but that tarp should do the trick for now.”
“It’ll draw attention.”
“They know I’m here.”
“Don’t know you’re alone,” he countered. “If they send someone for a look and they don’t see Lau—your mother, you’ll be in a world of hurt.”
She ignored him while she skinned subcutaneous fat off the carcass. He had a good point, but she didn’t want to admit that she’d made a mistake in shooting the deer too early to freeze the meat.
“There’s another way, you know,” Stebbs said. “You can salt it, hang it in the trees to cure.”
“I don’t have enough salt.”
“I do. I’ll butcher this while you’re gone; you split with me whatever the Streamers had.”
Lynn didn’t ask how he had enough salt that he could offer to preserve a whole deer for a neighbor. The process of rotting had begun the moment the heart stopped pumping, and already the flies were gathering at the folds of the wound she’d opened.
“Go get your salt then,” she said stiffly.
Walking away from the house felt like a crime, even though she trusted Stebbs. The familiar roof looked distinctly odd from a distance, the tilted angles of the second story at odds with the lightly sloping section over the kitchen where she and Mother had always camped. When it was blocked from view by trees, Lynn clamped down on the surge of betrayal that filled her gut. She pushed the ever-present worry of whether Mother would approve to the back of her mind, as she crossed the clover field she’d seen every day of her life but not set foot in once.
She had tucked her hair under the stocking cap, a simple gender disguise that Mother had taught her, and the cool breeze brought goose bumps to her exposed neck. They prickled down her chest and the length of her arms. Autumn was gorgeous, with the leaves changing and falling, spinning to the ground to be crushed under her boots. But their death and downfall served as warning echoes to the other living things around them: the cold is coming, be prepared.
Lynn was confident the Streamers were dead. Their meager green fires had sputtered, then stopped entirely. Anything in a weakened state would not have survived the past two nights without a fire. She kept her rifle in the crook of her elbow as she picked her way through the long grasses toward the stream. There was no doubt that the camp of men had also noticed the passing of the Streamers. Buzzards wouldn’t be the only scavengers picking over their campsite.
In other circumstances, it would have been a pleasant walk. The countryside was resplendent with color, the sky a bright blue. The breeze shifted the grass around her, wafting into her face the faintly spicy scent of green leaves turning brown. But Lynn’s eyes saw only usefulness in these small miracles. The fading greens and yellows allowed her brown coveralls to blend nicely with the surroundings; the unclouded sky gave a little more warmth to the earth. The breeze shifting the grass covered the sounds of her movement, the slight fragrance from broken stalks masked her scent as she neared the stream.
She approached the camp from downwind, studying the area around her for other intruders. A squirrel chattered angrily and she dropped closer to the earth, aware that it was signaling distress. Lynn crept forward, ignoring the brambles that tugged at her as she moved.
The squirrel was perched warily on the opposite bank, rocked back on its haunches and regarding a straight line of acorns with suspicion. It chattered again, letting the whole woods know he was uneasy with the situation and unsure what to do about it. At the other end of the line of acorns squatted a little girl.
Her arm was outstretched, palm up, beckoning the squirrel to come closer. She was filthy, her face streaked with grime except for two clean rivulets streaking from her mouth where she’d drank from the stream. Her tattered shoes sucked at the mud as she tried to lure the squirrel closer. The sharp corner of her elbow poked through the worn crease of her sleeve.
The squirrel continued to chatter at the girl, while taking hesitant steps closer, stuffing acorns into its mouth. Lynn spotted the Streamers’ campsite thirty yards downstream. Someone had dragged a fallen tree over to a live tree with a fork growing in it, propped the dead one into the notch and stacked branches along the sides to provide some cover. It wasn’t a bad idea, but they’d neglected to put any mud or leaves over the branches. It might provide the barest shelter from the wind, but rain would drip in constantly, and it would hold no heat. A pile of half-burnt sticks lay in front of the opening.
No matter how badly it was made, the person who built it would’ve been much bigger than the child kneeling in the mud. Lynn kept her eyes on the shelter as she moved closer to the bank. Left on her own, the child would die, and soon. Even if she were successful luring squirrels, she had no way to cook meat and no source of heat. Even a stocked pantry wouldn’t save her once the snow fell. She would die of exposure, leaving a small white skeleton to be carried away by the swollen spring river.
That image caused Lynn to fire her rifle before she was aware she’d made a decision. The squirrel’s chatter stopped instantly, its body blown sideways. The girl jerked t
o her feet, oblivious to the fine spray of blood that flecked her pale face. Lynn crossed the stream with the gun pointing downward, hoping the girl would realize she meant no harm.
But the harm had already been done. When Lynn picked up her kill by the tail and presented it to the girl, her bottom lip shook.
“Cha-Cha.” Her tiny voice barely escaped her mouth before evaporating in the cold afternoon air. “You killed Cha-Cha.” The resounding wail that followed was much stronger, and Lynn dropped to her knees beside the child as tears started to spill forth.
“Stop!” Lynn spun left and right, nervous that they would draw attention. “Stop, please stop.” She put her hands on the tiny, sharp shoulders, alarmed at how near to the surface her bones were. “I’m sor—”
The blow came from above and to the right, knocking Lynn into the stream, her rifle spinning out of reach. She flailed wildly, gasping for air before she’d cleared the surface. A rush of cold water filled her lungs and she scrambled for the bank, where she retched it back out. She’d lost her hat; cold, wet coils of hair hung in her face and she swiped them away, searching for her attacker.
“Christ,” said a male voice. “It’s a girl.”
He was standing in front of the child, his arms spread wide to shield her, a thick branch in one hand. Lynn clutched her midsection, still queasy from the feeling of water rushing into the dark internal corners of her body. Her gun was lying in between them on the bank, but she made no move for it.
“Yes,” she said, “I’m a girl.” She struggled to her feet, alarmed at the unsteadiness in her legs.
He dropped his makeshift weapon and grabbed the child, pulling her in front of him. “Take her,” he pleaded. “Take her with you.”