shifted.
“Jake, move,” said Hanna. “Let Mom get at it with the shovel.”
Jake moved, and Glenda stuck the spade down the side and levered the crate. It still wouldn’t budge.
So she dug some more. Then she helped Jake with the rope handles.
At last, they yanked it loose. “It’s heavy,” she said.
With a little more yanking they finally pulled it out of its hole onto the surrounding lip of ground. Glenda lifted the lid and saw several cans inside.
Jake pulled one out. “Irish stew! And look at this. Chicken noodle soup. And chili. And this one…it’s mandarin oranges!”
Glenda cast another nervous glance toward the highway. “Let’s get this stuff inside before someone comes. We can’t let anybody know we have it.”
“And look, here’s some flashlight batteries,” said Jake. “And candles.”
“Let’s just get it inside.”
Over the next hour they dug up the surrounding area and found five more crates. They took them inside.
They were filled with a variety of canned and dried goods, as well as, ominously, a handgun and three boxes of ammunition.
Most puzzling of all were some keys.
“What do you think they’re for?” asked Jake.
“I don’t know,” said Glenda. “Maybe his cabin. He has a cabin on Jordan Lake.”
“Do you know where?”
“No. He wanted to take me up once…when your dad was in the hospital….”
“He had the hots for you, Mom,” said Hanna.
Glenda shook her head. “No… no, I don’t think he did. We were just good friends, that’s all.”
“But you never went up, right?” said Jake.
“No.”
“Because you love Dad, right?”
“Yes.”
Jake motioned at the keys. “You think he might have food stashed in the cabin?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I don’t know where it is.”
While they dug out the sixth and final crate, Buzz Fulton, the sheriff’s brother, drove by in his truck, the old junk heap bumping and rattling along the road. He slowed as he passed the house, and Glenda knew he could see what they were doing. He came to a brief stop as he passed in front of the house, but then continued into the hills, his vehicle looking lonely, as if it didn’t belong in the sunlit stillness of the dead woods.
“Mom?” said Hanna.
She watched Buzz go until he disappeared over the west hill. Then she looked down at the handgun.
Then at her son. “You want to learn how to use this, Jake?”
19
As Gerry and Ian rode the train out to the Alleyne-Parma Observatory to take their first look at the perforated phytosphere, Gerry held his fone tightly to his ear, even though he had just ended his call to Glenda. Miracle of miracles, they had at last gotten through to each other.
He took the fone away and looked at it, then put it in his pocket.
He went over his conversation with Glenda carefully, even as Ian gave him an apprehensive glance. That desperation in her voice. He had never heard her like that before. That bit about the stew, and how they were cooking it on a fire out back because Hanna wouldn’t eat it cold. And how Buzz Fulton had driven by a few times. Good old Buzz. He had shared more than a few drinks with Buzz. And the Cedarvale asthma medicine making Hanna high all the time. And Jake learning how to use a pistol. It was all so…unsettling.
A snippet of the conversation came full-blown to his mind.
“I’m working on a plan,” she had said.
“What kind of plan?”
“I’m going to disperse the food in the woods out back. And we’re going to run watches. Me and Jake.
Hanna’s too stoned from the medicine. If anybody gets too close to the house, that’s it, Gerry, I’m not asking any questions.”
In the shrillness of this last statement, Gerry had heard his wife’s true anxiety, her tone a revelation, her sentiment a measure of just how bad things had gotten. He stared at the bleak lunar landscape as they passed a spur line that led to an oxygen production facility—three great white spheres on the otherwise gray horizon. He understood—with chill finality—the jeopardy his wife and family faced. Armed men might come to the house and take their food away. Possibly kill them. And Glenda and Jake were going
to fight them with a rifle and a pistol, no questions asked. He had to find a way to beat the phytosphere and beat it fast.
He glanced at Ian.
“So?” said Ian.
“She’s not doing too good.” And he had to struggle to keep his emotions controlled.
“But she’s keeping it together, right?”
He thought of her plan. “In a manner of speaking.”
“Because I always knew she was a strong woman. Right from the moment I met her.”
“The neighbor got murdered.”
“Really? What happened?”
“He had a food stash. Some guys came to his house, killed him, and took it. He had an extra stash buried out behind his shed. That’s what Glenda and my kids are living on right now.”
Ian lifted his chin. “She’ll get through.”
Gerry swallowed against the growing lump in his throat. If he talked too much about this, he might lose it.
He decided to change the subject.
“I was in the mayor’s office this morning for an update.” He bolstered his voice with a businesslike tone.
“Neil’s toxin not only seems to be working, but the U.S. military and its allies have destroyed fully seventy- five percent of the Tarsalan killer satellites.”
Ian raised his brow. “So maybe ships will start getting through again. Maybe you’ll go home soon, buddy.”
Gerry felt himself getting shaky again because Ian was suggesting home. “They’re telling us to stay put. I think the military’s got something planned, Ian. Over and above the toxin thing. Something big.”
Ian shook his head. “You mean something stupid.”
They reached the observatory a short while later.
For Ian, it was an occasion to take a nip from his flask and light up a joint.
Gerry, on the other hand, went directly to Heaven’s Eye.
Rather than look at Earth on the monitors, he studied it through the telescope’s actual lens.
The terminator curved along the Earth’s meridian like a black fingernail, the planet in gibbous phase, looking like a partially closed green eye. At first he didn’t see any imperfections in the uniformly emerald pall, but soon, as the Earth rotated, he discerned an ill-defined black pupil. The muck of the phytosphere was a beryl pudding, and invisible fingers tore it apart. The ragged edges around the pupil had the whiteness of a plant that could no longer produce chlorophyll.
“Do you want a hit off this?” asked Ian.
“Take a look at this. See what you think.”
Gerry moved out of the way.
