Lynn felt an inexpressible bubble pop in her stomach. His inability should have filled her with contempt, but instead it made her want to help him. And the woman in the shelter was so sharp tongued, it didn’t take much imagination to picture him sliced to ribbons at her feet. For some reason, she didn’t think she wanted to see that.
Stebbs watched Eli closely for a moment before speaking. “She’s a good-looking woman, yours or not, you’ve got a duty to protect her now.”
“It’s been my job since Bradley died, my brother.”
“That was his baby?”
“Yeah, his son. Neva was his wife. He died as we were leaving Entargo. One of the guards shoved Neva. Usually she’s pretty light on her feet, but she was so big with the baby she lost her balance. Bradley lunged to catch her, and the guard shot him, said he was going for his gun.”
“Just like that?” Stebbs asked.
“Just like that. He bled out in the square with his kid and wife right there. Lucy had crawled up into my lap, bawling for someone to help her daddy, and Neva was on her hands and knees cradling his head against the baby. There was a crowd around us, and a few that I knew to be doctors, but nobody could help.”
“Why not?” Lynn’s question brought Eli’s attention back to her.
“Population schedules,” he said. “You’re only allowed one child per couple, and they already had Lucy.”
Stebbs sighed and tossed a stick into the fire. “I thought they would’ve lifted that ban by now. So that’s the deal still? You screw up and the entire family is out of the city?”
“They won’t waste water on lawbreakers. Sometimes they’ll keep older kids, males mostly, to help protect the city. Lucy not being a boy helped her out in that respect.”
“Won’t help her out here,” Stebbs said shortly, giving Eli a hard stare.
“Yeah, I know,” Eli said. “I guess we were lucky when those men came for our food, Neva being pregnant and Lucy being . . . well, none of them seemed to be of that persuasion.”
Lynn glanced from Stebbs to Eli, completely lost.
“Maybe so, but your lady isn’t pregnant anymore,” Stebbs said. “And like I said, she’s your responsibility.”
“Being good-looking doesn’t seem to drop the survival rate out here.” Eli darted a glance at Lynn, but she was still trying to puzzle out their earlier exchange.
“Being good-looking and a sharpshooter doesn’t hurt,” Stebbs said with a wry smile.
The mention of shooting brought Lynn to her feet. “I gotta get back, been here too long already.”
“True enough,” Stebbs said, struggling to rise. “We’ll get you squared away, son. There’s no point you dying here when we’ve got the means to help.”
Lynn chewed on her lip as she and Stebbs struck for home. His parting words to Eli had been meant to console him but also to let her know where Stebbs stood on the issue. She’d been reluctant to offer her help for the evening, and Stebbs had promised more without asking her. She wasn’t rooting for Eli and Neva to die of exposure, but she wasn’t against them figuring out the basics of survival on their own either.
Stebbs seemed to understand her mood and held his tongue. Early morning dew had fallen on the long grass, soaking their pants as they walked and chilling them to the bone. Lynn clicked off the flashlight to save batteries once a strip of gray appeared on the horizon. They were halfway to her house when Stebbs took a misstep that turned his good ankle and brought him to the ground with a crash.
Lynn helped him to his feet and he tested his good leg. He winced when he put weight on it. “You go on without me if you want,” he said. “I know you’re in a hurry to get back to—”
“Lucy,” Lynn said, snaking an arm under his. “Yeah, I am.”
Stebbs leaned against her for support. “I was going to say ‘the pond.’”
“Yeah, that too.” She ignored the curious look he shot her as she stepped back to give him some room. “Can you manage?”
“I just need to walk it off.”
Lynn was already backpedaling toward her house. “I’ll check on you,” she called over her shoulder and dove through the grass, suddenly anxious.
She’d been seven when Mother had gone on an overnight hunt, too young to help carry the large chunks of meat Mother would be bringing home. Mother had promised she would be back the next day, and she had appeared by mid evening, dragging a travois loaded with meat behind her. Lynn had put on a brave face and claimed everything had gone well, not wanting to admit to her rock of a mother that the nighttime hours had taught her the meaning of fear.
The basement was the only home she’d ever known, but waking in the middle of the night without hearing Mother’s rhythmic breathing had taken away her feeling of safety. Every dark corner held an unfamiliar noise, each soft rustling an unidentified threat. How would Lucy, a stranger to the darkness of their underground shelter react if she woke and found Lynn gone?
Lynn cracked the basement door and held her breath for a moment in order to make out the softer sounds of Lucy’s rhythmic breathing rising up from below. She was safe and sleeping. Lynn snatched her rifle and climbed to the roof to check on Stebbs.
A pang of guilt struck her when she saw him fumbling across the fields, a walking stick in hand. She should have helped him back to his shelter. She lowered the rifle once Stebbs made it to the rock, rested a moment, and continued toward home, picking his way through the field of coyotes that had been reduced to skeletons and drying sinews.
There was time for a few hours of sleep, at least. Lynn crept to her cot silently so as not to disturb Lucy and rolled to face the wall. Nightmares were nothing new to Lynn; her waking life was full of enough disturbing images, she didn’t think it was fair that some could snake into her dreams as well. Mother’s death plagued her every night, replayed in such detail that she could count Big Bastard’s teeth as they sunk into Mother’s neck.
Lynn closed her eyes, fully expecting to see blood spilling onto grass, or even the lonely little mound of mud she’d left behind her at the stream. Instead it was Eli’s face, flickering in the light of his badly made fire. She studied him as she drifted off to sleep, in a way that she never would have allowed herself in daylight.
She could see what Mother had meant about the dead boy whose boots she’d taken. Even starving, Eli had a sparkle of youth about him, though he lacked the paunchy cheeks of the boy she’d shot. Lynn balanced the two faces in her mind, trying to tack down what exactly made them so different. In the end, she decided Eli was just easier to look at.
For the first time since her death, Lynn dreamt of a face other than Mother’s.
Responsibility brought Lynn out of the light nap, and she went about her morning chores. Lack of sleep combined with unfamiliar emotions had her mind at a rolling boil, occupying every corner of thought. Which was a good way to get killed. Her empty buckets banged against her knees as she trudged to the pond, determined to nail down the slippery feelings so that she could concentrate on reality.
Guilt she’d known before, when she’d failed Mother in a simple task or taken an extra sip from the purified water. The crushing weight of her own role in Mother’s death was constant, a dark cloud that followed her waking thoughts that she knew would billow into a storm of a nightmare if she slept.
Smaller shards of guilt were starting to prick away at her. The image of Stebbs resting at the boulder in the field floated across her vision and she shook it off. His square trade of curing her venison in exchange for her scoping out the Streamers’ camp had turned into a mess that landed her with more work than she’d had before. She ended up on the sharp end of that stick, so why did she feel bad about him struggling home?
And she should be angry with him for volunteering both of them to help Eli and Neva, Lynn thought bitterly as she plunged her first bucket into the frigid morning water. Stebbs seemed to think that the Streamers had become their responsibility and she wasn’t sure she disagreed. Their complete inability to care for themselves would leave them dead before winter. She and Stebbs had the chance to prevent that.
Lynn’s stomach clenched as the first flickers of doubt swept through her. The dark, sacred confines of the barn calmed her, and she breathed it in deeply; must and moisture, spilled oil and the ghost of gasoline. Above it all, she could smell the water, straight through the plastic tanks her nose found the scent of survival. She knew what Mother would have done. Nothing. And there would be two large graves next to the small one under the ash
