had lit a fire. The sun shone in a perfect sky. Michaela and Boy threw a Frisbee to one another, and I saw Michaela call to Ben to join in. He caught the Frisbee and spun it back to Boy. When Boy easily plucked it out of the air his laughter carried across the field.
Michaela must have worked her magic to cheer up the kid. That image of a few carefree moments stayed with me. It wasn’t always going to be like that. You know as well as I do, when life starts to look nice and easy that’s the time you really should start to worry.
Twenty-four
“Watch and learn, Valdiva… I’m going to show you how to make bread. Our kind of bread, that is, so it won’t come in a fancy wrapper.” Tony called across to Ben, “You best watch, too. You’ll be on bread duty in a day or so.”
Ben joined us at the fire that burned just outside the doorway of the barn. Sitting in the fire was an oven that looked to be made out of a steel toolbox. Soot encrusted the thing to hell and back-pretty it wasn’t. I’d seen Tony unloading the contraption from the bike trailer earlier. The others in the group were busy with their own chores: checking bikes, pumping tires, cleaning spark plugs, oiling firearms. Some sat in the shade fixing worn or torn clothes with needle and thread. A fifteen-year-old with bleached dreadlocks hammered tiny nails into the heel of his boot where it flapped loose. Only Zak took it easy. He’d climbed up onto the bales of hay where he’d fallen into a corpselike sleep with the black Stetson over his face. We could hear his snores from here.
Tony used a box lid to fan the flames until the embers burned white beneath the makeshift oven. “Stand the oven on stones or bricks or whatever’s at hand so there’s a gap between the bottom of it and the ground. The heat needs to be drawn through there to get it good and hot. You see? OK. Now you scoop a jug full of this flour from the red tub into the mixing bowl. Then replace the tub lid straightaway, because someone always winds up putting their foot in it and knocking it over. And flour is like gold dust these days.” He picked up a tin mug. “Now use this to add two mugs of water. Add a good pinch of salt. Mix the flour, water and salt together. When it’s the consistency of mud start kneading it with your hands.”
Ben frowned. “When do you add the yeast?”
“We’ve got no yeast.
We’ve never had yeast.”
“What makes it rise, then?”
“It doesn’t. This is the kind of bread they’d make in the old, old days. You know, Bible days? Ancient Egypt days? That’s right, guys, we’re living in the past. OK, it’s flat as your grandma’s pancakes, it tastes bland as toilet paper, but it fills that hole in your stomach.”
Ben caught my eye. I knew what he was thinking. That to survive we were going to endure some Stone Age living conditions.
Tony continued. “When you’ve kneaded the dough, break it up into small patties about the size and shape of a hamburger-economy-size hamburger, that is. After that, put them on this tray and into the oven for thirty minutes. There,” he said like a TV cook, sliding the tray with its cargo of dough lumps into the oven. “Nothing to it, is there?” He shot us a grin. “Of course the first half dozen or so times you do this you’ll make a king-sized mess of it. You’ll burn the bread one day. The next it’ll come out raw. You’ll drop the dough into the dirt and everyone will get mad at you.” Smiling, he shook his head. “I should know, it happened to me plenty, but you’ll get used to it.”
“I don’t think I want to get used to it,” Ben said.
“It’s that or go hungry.”
These people had got a little industry running like a finely tuned motor. Of course, what that industry produced was survival-survival one day at a time. Here they all were, busily keeping their bikes running, their clothes mended, making enough food to fill their bellies. It was an industry hanging by a thread. Call me pessimistic, but I wondered what happened when they ran out of gas for the bikes or flour for the bread.
Tony left me in charge of watching over the bread in the oven (it needed careful feeding with thin sticks of firewood, then fanning with the speed of a lunatic to keep the heat up). He took Ben across to the bikes, where he showed him how to ride the big Harley. A few of the others gathered ’round, amused when it appeared that Ben would fall off. Little did they know he was an expert on that old dirt bike of his, and he soon mastered the machine.
I broke sticks, eased them into the embers. I blew on the fire to get it blazing, then fanned it with my hand, which was pretty hopeless really. Soon my fingers felt as if they’d fly off from the knuckles, I was fanning that frantically.
“What are you doing, Valdiva? You look as if you’re spanking the invisible man.”
“I might as well be, for all the good I’m doing.” I squinted up into the sun to see Michaela standing there, watching me with obvious amusement.
“Here, this might be better.” She offered me a piece of stiff card.
“Thanks.”
“Are you getting the hang of it?”
“Making bread?” I shrugged. “So far so good. How’s Boy?”
“He’s fine now. But as you see it doesn’t take much to upset him. His nerves are still raw after what happened to his sister.”
“The girl was his sister? I didn’t know.”
Michaela sat on the ground beside me. She nibbled a shoot of grass, the tip of her tongue every now and again touching the stem as she tasted sweet sap. “He’d been living rough with his sister for a while. We don’t know how long exactly because he refuses to say any-thing about his past or where he was from, or even to admit what he’s really called. We found him in the house where his sister had been killed by the hive.”
“You mean he was living there?”
Her expression was grim. “Not living there. He’d just laid down at the top of the stairs. He’d have died if we hadn’t found him when we did. In fact, he was so dehydrated we thought we were going to lose him anyway.”
“Poor kid.”
“It was the shock, I guess. Seeing what that thing did to his own flesh and blood.”
“What did it do to her?”
She fixed me with those eyes that were so dark I’d swear they were black as coal. “You’ll keep asking me about the hive, won’t you? You’re never going to give up.”
“You said you’d tell me everything.”
“In exchange for the food.”
“Things have moved on since then. The way I look at it now, Ben and I are going to be dependent on you for survival, aren’t we?”
“More wood?”
“Huh?”
She nodded at the fire. “You’ve got to keep feeding the fire with sticks, otherwise the bread won’t bake properly.”
I broke more sticks and pushed them into the embers while she fanned the flame with the card. “I will tell you about the hive, but I’ve got something to con-fess.”
“Oh?”
“I know precious little. I knew you were keen… well, almost lusting after information about the hive would be more accurate. I’m afraid I exploited your curiosity to get food.” She gave an apologetic smile. “I figured you might not deliver the food if I didn’t have some lever on you.”
“But you know something?”
“A little. Not much.” She gave me a sideways look. “At least not enough to satisfy your curiosity.”
“OK, cough up what you do know.”
“You’ve got a charming turn of phrase, Valdiva. You know that?”
I shrugged at the same moment that I heard cheers and applause. Ben rode ’round the barn, his face blazing
