In a Handful of Dust

  “Don’t be afraid to show them how smart you are,” Lynn said, her voice fading further into weakness. “You’ve got a sharp mind, that’s of value anywhere. Watch and learn.”

  “And then?”

  “And then I get my gun back.”

  The other nurse was there in the morning, and Lucy resisted the urge to ask where Nora was. The bigger woman did everything brusquely, as if Lucy were a life-size doll whose plasticized limbs could bend in any direction while being dressed.

  “Ouch,” she said, as her head was forced through a T-shirt much too small for her. “You’re fine,” the woman said dismissively, though Lucy pulled the ribbed collar away from her neck and looked with dismay at the outlines of her ribs showing through the fabric.

  “Um . . . I think this might be for a little kid,” she said.

  “Mmmm,” was all the nurse offered in reply.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Bailey.”

  “Hi, Bailey, I’m Lucy,” she said as politely as she could manage.

  “Uh-huh.” Bailey finished folding the gown she’d taken off Lucy and moved over to Lynn’s bed. “Your mom wake up yet?”

  “I’m awake,” came Lynn’s voice, though her eyes stayed closed. “And if you try to take my clothes off, we’ll have issues straightaway.”

  Bailey stood at the foot of Lynn’s bed with her arms crossed over her chest, but Lucy noticed she made no move to touch Lynn. Even with her eyes closed and her voice pitched low, Lynn looked and sounded dangerous.

  “You going to be the one to give me trouble then?”

  “You an important person around here, Bailey?” Lucy suddenly asked, switching the big woman’s attention back to her.

  “’Scuse me?”

  “I asked if you were an important person around here. I’m guessing you’re not, since you’re cleaning up the piss of wandering strangers. So Lynn will give as she’s getting, and there will be no kind words for anybody until you bring me someone who matters to talk to.”

  Bailey glanced at Lynn, then flushed three shades of red as she backed out the room, arm muscles twitching.

  “Well, that was a nice bit of sass. I’ve heard that tone on more than one occasion as I caught you sliding out the window in the middle of the night.”

  Lucy stuck her tongue out at Lynn, but her reservations outlasted her sarcasm. “I don’t know how well I can keep it up.”

  “It was a solid start, anyway,” Lynn said, tipping her a wink before they heard Bailey’s heavy footsteps in the hallway. Lucy glanced up to see a boy standing in the doorway, his anxious face torn between amusement and interest as he glanced at her.

  “Uh, hi,” Lucy said, highly aware of the fact that the shirt she was wearing clung to her in more places than her ribs.

  “You’re requesting to speak to someone important?”

  “And that’s you?”

  He visibly tried to make himself taller. “Kind of. My dad is . . . important.”

  “So where’s he?”

  “Out. He told me to come and see if you can really do the witching.”

  “I can,” Lucy said. “Didn’t know I had to prove it.”

  “What’s your name?” Lynn asked.

  “Ben,” he answered, without taking his eyes from Lucy.

  “Well, Ben, bring my daughter a willow switch and she’ll show you.”

  “Willows aren’t easy to come by,” Ben said, his eyes still roaming over Lucy in curiosity.

  “Doesn’t have to be a willow,” Lucy said, feeling the challenge in his gaze. “Just bring me something wooden, three blankets, and a bottle of water.”

  Ben left, and Lynn’s sigh filled the room. “I don’t think you’re going to put much over him. Nasty little weasel, that one.”

  “How old do you think he is?”

  “Younger than you, by a bit.”

  “He acts older.”

  “People act lots of ways.”

  Ben was back moments later with a pencil, an IV bag, and three hospital gowns. “This’ll have to do.”

  “Good enough,” Lucy said, taking the pencil from him. “Now hide that bag under one of the gowns. I won’t look.”

  She buried her head under the pillow, taking comfort in the dark and the memory of Stebbs that the game brought rushing back. Long winters had been spent in the basement while he taught her to hone their shared ability to the point that she didn’t even need a switch to point the way. The hum of water called to her fingers, the vibration of life answering in her veins with a voice few could hear.

  When she opened her eyes, she saw Lynn had turned her head, unwilling to see her giving away her grace so easily to strangers. Lucy made a show of deliberation even though she felt the pulse the moment her hand passed over the middle pile, strong and sure.

  “That one,” she said, and Ben lifted it to prove her correct. Bailey’s white face floated in the door window like a curious moon.

  “You really can,” Ben said, his voice breaking on the last word.

  “Yes, I really can,” Lucy said, and forced herself to smile at him.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  Twenty-Six

  “It’s called failure to thrive,” Ben said, as they walked into the scorching sun. Lucy tried to ignore the feeling that her skin was trying to creep off her bones upon being reintroduced to the heat. Nora had warned her against walking too much on her injured foot, but she wasn’t going to let Ben know how badly it hurt her to keep in stride with him.

  “What’s that?”

  “That’s what’s wrong with me,” he clarified. “Up here.” He pointed toward the building that was their destination, mercifully near.

  “I didn’t realize there was something wrong with you. Physically,” she added.

  “Oh, there is. Failure to thrive,” he repeated, as if naming it provided an enemy. “I’m eighteen years old.”

  “You’re not,” Lucy contradicted. “You don’t even hit my shoulder.”

  Ben shrugged. “That’s why it’s called failure to thrive. We do very well for ourselves here now, but that hasn’t always been the case. When I was little, I didn’t get everything I needed, nutritionally speaking.”

  Lucy was about to point out that he was still little when she stopped in her tracks, awed by an eerily familiar sight she couldn’t quite place. “I feel like I’ve seen that before.” She gestured at the building across the street, which rose into a graceful point in the sky.

  “Not that, exactly. At least I doubt it,” Ben said. “That’s a replica of the Eiffel Tower. The original is in Paris, France. Do you know where that is?”

  “Europe,” she immediately shot back, suddenly grateful to Lynn for forcing an education on her, even if it was only culled from encyclopedias during the long winter months when their hands could be idle.

  “You can’t catch my disease.” Ben changed tracks quickly, obviously surprised that she knew the answer.

  “I wasn’t going to ask that.”

  “Maybe not, but you were wondering.”

  They walked on in silence, the towering presence of the empty buildings silencing any retort she might have come up with. Even though her memories of Entargo were limited by time and the fog of childhood, she could recall uniform skyscrapers like rectangular siblings. The buildings here were different, each a vibrant explosion of glass and cement, their colors dulled by time and the joy of life they strived to express stilled by the emptiness of the streets.

  Ben veered to the left, steering her by the elbow toward a huge building, bleached bone white by the sun. “Careful,” he said. “The railing is starting to give in a few places. You don’t want to fall in.”

  “Fall into what?”

  “That used to be a lake,” Ben said, nodding toward what looked like a miniature desert trapped by white barriers. “We can’t keep the sand
out of everything, though we try to keep the streets clean. You step out onto it and you’ll sink.”

  Lucy looked over the undulating plains of sand, carved by the hot breeze that felt like a blast from a wood fire. “Would it go over my head?”

  “No, it’s not that deep, but digging you out would be a job. I’m not strong enough to pull you out, and everyone else is busy enough as it is.”

  She didn’t ask who “everyone else” was, as they had passed no one on the streets. The shadow of the building they approached stretched out toward her, and Lucy resisted the urge to run the last few feet into its inky coolness.

  “A lake, huh?” She glanced back over her shoulder at the miniature desert. “Where’d all the water go?”

  Ben opened a door for her, and she stepped through into the heat of the building, its trapped air stuffy with the exhalations of generations. “It was all taken out and stored by my grandfather a long time ago,” he said, his chest swelling with the importance of his ancestors. “The pools too.”

  “What’s a pool?”

  “It’s—” Ben stopped and looked at Lucy as condescendingly as possible, since he was a foot shorter than her. “Exactly how country are you?”

  “Very,” Lucy said, her voice lost in the faded opulence that surrounded her. The lobby stretched for what seemed like miles, far past the daylight streaming through the sand-grimed windows behind her. The rounded arcs of light cast by the windows were quickly eaten by the depth of a darkness so complete Lucy could only guess at the height of the ceiling, or where the walls ended on the far side. The heat from the outside had tapped the last of her rebuilt strength, and her lungs struggled to pass the weighty, warm air in and out of her body. Her foot throbbed so deeply she could feel a pulse in her knee.

  “I need to sit,” she said weakly, seconds before falling to the floor, the impact softened by a rug so deep her fingers sank into the fibers, and she wondered if it would close over her head like the sands outside, and the raging waters of the river.

  Ben walked into the shadows and she heard the scraping of furniture, followed shortly by the reemergence of his face, puffy with exertion, as he pushed a padded chair to her. “Have a seat,” he said grandly, then dropped to the floor next to her, falling back onto the carpet and staring into the emptiness of the far-reaching ceiling.

  Lucy could almost forgive his attitude when she saw how much it had cost him to bring her the chair. She lifted herself into it, studying his pasty, pale face while he had his eyes closed for a moment. “Thank you for the chair,” she said.

  “Dad says I need to make sure I’m polite. He says a boy built like me won’t get a girl who wants protection. So I’ve got to aim for one who wants someone to be nice to her.”

  “So you’re nice on purpose, not because you want to be, is what you’re saying?”

  “Is ‘nice’ a naturally occurring trait?”

  Lucy didn’t answer, since she doubted failure to thrive was a naturally occurring trait either. Ben sat up and pulled himself to his feet using her chair. “C’mon. Dad’s in the gardens. He’ll be wanting to see you.”

  She followed him through the cavernous lobby, their footsteps echoing out and above them, bouncing off the unseen walls and ceiling. They emerged from the darkness into a garden so bright Lucy’s eyes ached from the contraction of her pupils. The garden stood in stark contrast to the hollowness of the lobby, every inch covered with light and green growth. Lucy’s words did not echo endlessly there, instead absorbed by the life around her, drinking in her voice instead of throwing it back at her in defiance.

  The loamy smell of good, wet dirt filled her nose and made her soul ache for home, and lengths of green fields drenched with rain. The sudden whiff of life was so direct and strong Lucy felt woozy again, and she settled onto the cold marble floor with a soft sigh as her skin drank in the moisture around her, her body answering the life in the room with a response of its own as she felt every pore in her skin opening up to drink air cleaned by green leaves.

  “I think she likes it,” said a deep voice, and Lucy startled from her reverie to see a man among the vegetation, his smile a glaring white against the backdrop of green.

  “Dad, she can do it,” Ben said by way of introduction.

  The smile slipped for a second as he shot an irritated look at his son, and then returned when he glanced at Lucy. “Hello, little one,” he said. The endearment sounded so natural in his deep voice that she felt comforted.

  “Hi,” she said shyly, suddenly aware that Ben’s father had a handsome face to match his voice. “I’m Lucy.”

  “Lucy, welcome.”

  She ducked her head in response but could think of nothing to say. Ben backed away as his father came toward them, emerging from the garden like a god of life. He was a massive man, the biggest Lucy had ever seen; he would dwarf Lynn, and Lucy herself only rose to his elbow. Feeling more childlike than ever, she reached up to shake his hand.

  “I’m Lucy.”

  “You already said that.” He winked at her, and her hand was immediately lost inside his, which was coated with the rich blackness of the soil.

  “I’m Lander,” he said, releasing her hand and clasping her shoulder, turning her away from Ben. “Impressive, isn’t it?”

  Lucy’s eyes were still riveted on Lander’s bicep, so she didn’t realize he meant the garden until Ben sighed heavily. “Yes,” she said, redirecting her gaze. “It’s . . . is that a tomato?”

  The inviting flash of red among the waves of green brought Lucy out from under Lander’s protective arm, her mouth watering at the sight of a favorite food so long denied her. “You grew a tomato?”

  “More than one, actually,” Lander said. “That’s the first ripe one of this crop.”

  Nearer the plants, Lucy could see the bunches of green tomatoes, swelling with life and drinking in the sun from the glass ceiling above, the moisture from the thick air around it. The one that had caught her eye had just turned, the skin a deep orange that would turn to overripe redness in a day or two.

  “It’s yours, if you want it.” Lander’s voice was at her elbow.

  She reached for it, her hand barely glancing the thin skin pulled taut over the meat of the fruit, vibrant with life. It snapped off the vine easily, the spicy scent of the broken stem delivering the taste to her mouth before she’d touched it to her lips. “You’re sure? It shouldn’t go to someone else, someone who—”

  “I grew it,” Lander said. “What’s here is mine, and that is for you. There’s plenty more where that came from.”

  Needing no more urging, Lucy bit, her sharp teeth breaking the skin and sending the red juice spilling over her lips and dripping to the marble floor at her feet.

  Lynn looked mistrustfully at the green tomato Lucy had brought her as proof of the garden down the street. “You ate one?”

  “A red one, yeah,” Lucy said, flooded with guilt that it hadn’t occurred to her to save part of the ripe one for Lynn. “I thought you could set that one in the windowsill, ’til it’s ready.”

  Lynn sniffed it, closing her eyes in a replica of Lucy’s moment of bliss at the smell. A small smile tugged at her mouth, but it was tinged with sadness, and Lucy knew she was thinking of home instead of the small miracle in front of her.

  “Once you feel good enough, you’ve got to see it,” Lucy said, unable to hide her enthusiasm. “I guess it used to be a botanical garden.” She pronounced the word slowly so it came out correctly, unable to shake the thought of Ben’s mockery even when he wasn’t around. “They had all kinds of weird plants and things there people would come to look at, so when the Shortage hit, Ben’s grandfather pulled up all the flowery plants and they used that dirt for vegetables.”

  “Uh-huh.” Lynn ran her thumbnail over the tight green skin of the tomato. “And how do they water this garden?”

  “I didn’t ask. But Ben said Lander’s dad took all the water out of the fountains and swimming pools—and there were a ton o
f pools, Lynn, you should see this place—and stored it in the hot water tanks of all the hotels.”

  “You sound impressed.”

  “I can’t not be,” Lucy said. “We’re in the middle of the desert and you’re holding a tomato.”

  Lynn sniffed the skin one more time and handed it to Lucy to set in the windowsill. “Who is Lander?”

  “That’s Ben’s dad. Wait ’til you meet him, Lynn—good God. He’s massive.” Lucy felt herself warming at the memory of his smile. “He might even make you feel feminine.”

  Lucy turned from the windowsill to see Lynn staring over her shoulder out at the bright-blue sky. “I’ve never felt more or less of a woman because of a man.”

  “I didn’t mean . . .” Lucy stumbled over her words, but Lynn waved them away.

  “Don’t worry about it. I’m just sick of being in this hospital bed.”

  “It’s actually not a hospital,” Lucy piped up. “This is a hotel, same as the other where the garden is, but they took some of the first-floor rooms and brought over equipment from the hospital so everyone isn’t scattered all across the city.”

  Lynn nodded, but her eyes slid shut as exhaustion claimed her again. She licked her lips before trying to speak. “Everyone?”

  “Yeah . . . well, that’s how Ben put it. Everyone.”

  “No idea how many?”

  “So far I’ve just met Ben and Lander, Bailey and Nora.”

  “I doubt it’s the four of them, if they’ve been hoarding pool water for generations. What else did you see when Ben took you outside?”

  “Not much, really,” Lucy admitted. “It’s a city that’s falling apart. Ben said they all live in the first one or two stories of the hotels along the strip here because the heat is unbearable if you go any higher, and the sand is blowing back into the city on the edges. They try to keep the main road clear for the cars they send out, but they can’t keep up with much else.”

  “Yeah, that’s what has me thinking.”

  “Thinking?” Lucy had to prod Lynn when she didn’t volunteer more information. “Thinking about what?”

  Lynn opened her eyes again, the strength in them outshining her weary body. “If they’ve got all the water and food they need, why they sending patrols out into the desert?”