“Stebbs,” Lynn called down the steps. “I need you out here.”
He came to the bottom of the stairs. “What?”
“Up here,” she said. He climbed the steps and shut the door behind him when he saw the look on her face.
“Neva’s dead.”
“How?”
“Did for herself, with the derringer I gave her. Not long after they walked off. They left her out in the field.”
Stebbs sat down on the stone steps, resting his head in his hands.
“What do we do?” Lynn asked.
“We’ll have to go get her, but right now we’ve got worse problems.”
“How bad is Lucy?”
“I don’t know much about sickness, but by the look on her grandma’s face, I’d say it’s bad.”
Lynn sat beside him, ignoring the freezing water that soaked through her jeans. “What do we do?”
Stebbs put his arm around her, and she leaned into him. “Kiddo, you and me don’t do so well in situations we can’t control. There’s nothing you could’ve done for Neva, and we can’t help Lucy now. It’s not up to us.”
She rested her head on his shoulder, tears of futility pricking at her eyes. “Don’t think I care for that.”
The door burst open behind them, and Vera ripped past, Lucy’s shaking, naked body clutched in her arms.
“Jesus, woman!” Stebbs yelled.
“She’s seizing!” Vera screamed, and disappeared over the bank of the pond. They ran after her, Eli on their heels, and crested the bank to see Vera plunge the white form into the icy blackness of the pond.
Lucy’s eyes snapped open and she screamed, scratching frantically at the strong arms holding her body under the water. Lynn grabbed Vera and yanked her backward, but her strength was outmatched by the older woman’s determination. She landed on her back, the wind knocked out of her.
“Get off me!” Vera yelled. “We break the fever or she dies.”
Lucy kicked weakly, her efforts sending ripples through the water that broke against the ice still covering the depths. Vera pulled her out, and her limbs fell limply to the side, spraying Lynn’s face with freezing droplets.
“Take her,” Vera handed her off to Eli, who raced back inside.
Vera slumped next to Lynn on the bank, clutching her wet arms to her sides. “It was the only thing I could think of,” she said. “Once the fever gets past a hundred and five there can be serious brain damage. I had to cool her, fast.”
“Did it work?” Stebbs asked.
“She stopped seizing, but it will spike again.”
“What’s wrong with her?” Lynn asked.
“I’m guessing it’s a bacterial infection, though it could be viral. Her medical history makes me think the former; she’s always been susceptible to the bacterial kind.”
“Neva said Lucy’s fevers always went real high,” Stebbs said.
“Some people’s bodies burn higher than others.” Vera rose to her feet, looking at the ice crystals re-forming where she’d broken through with Lucy’s frail body. “It’ll spike again, and I’ll have to dunk her.”
“I have some medicine,” Lynn said. “It’s mostly expired, but there is some aspirin. That can bring down a fever, can’t it?”
“It can, but if it’s old it can’t do much against what she’s facing. It’s probably too much to hope that you have some antibiotics?”
Lynn shook her head and followed Vera as she started back to the house and her patient, wet arms clutched against the rising wind. The older woman kicked in anger at a frozen clod of dirt. “I smuggled some medicine out of the city when I went, but I hid my pack when I ran into those men on the road.”
“Is it far?”
“Too far on foot to do Lucy much good. They picked me up in their truck and we drove a while before we got to their camp.”
“How long?”
Vera gave a shudder that had nothing to do with the temperature. “Long time.”
“Did you have a general sense of direction? Could you find it again?”
Lynn opened the door for Vera and they descended into the basement together. Eli had wrapped Lucy in the extra blankets and had her lying in the cot near the fire. Vera put her hand on her forehead, frowning. “I had a compass on me, and a map. They took them both. I know we traveled east to get here, and I could recognize the area again. By the time we found the meds and came back though, it would be too late.”
“I have a truck,” Lynn said. “I’ll drive you.”
Vera tucked the blankets tightly around her granddaughter, her decision made the second she put her hand against Lucy’s burning flesh. “We leave now. Eli—stay close to Lucy. If she seizes again, you’ll have to dunk her. I know it’s ugly, but it’s the only way to keep her temp down. Let me see those aspirin.”
Lynn handed the coveted bottle over to Vera, ashamed at the rattling of so few pills inside.
“These are years past effectiveness,” Vera said critically. “Usually I’d say the drug is broken down past any use, but we don’t have a lot of options.” She handed the bottle to Eli. “Crush up two of these and mix it with some water, try to get Lucy to drink it. You—” She pointed to Stebbs. “Strip the other cot and start some water boiling so there will be clean bedding ready. And keep the water boiling to sterilize the dirty. If this fever breaks, she’ll be covered in sweat, and vomiting will probably follow. That’s the best-case scenario.”
“What’s the worst case?” Stebbs asked.
“It doesn’t break.”
The truck started without a problem, and Lynn let out a sigh of relief.
“You were worried?” Vera asked.
“Don’t drive much, except for emergencies,” she answered. “Truck doesn’t always want to start up, and that’s the kind of day it’s been.”
“Right.”
Lynn headed straight west, her hands drumming against the wheel in an effort to channel her energy. Words bubbled up from her chest, looking for an outlet. “We’re lucky they didn’t come until after the melt. Even in this truck we couldn’t have managed the roads in all that snow.” The idea that something as simple as a snowmelt could dictate whether Lucy lived or died left her feeling shaky and unanchored.
“They talked about coming sooner,” Vera said calmly. “But Roger—the one who did all the talking—”
“Gap Tooth?” Vera gave her a blank look. “The one missing teeth?”
“Yes—that’s Roger. He said they should wait. They wanted Neva, but they knew they would have to take you by surprise. If they used the trucks, you’d hear the engine and be on the roof in a second, and they couldn’t make the walk until the snow melted a little. Roger said from what they knew of you they had no guarantee you wouldn’t shoot us all, including me.”
“A couple of months ago, I might’ve,” Lynn admitted.
“How did Lucy end up with you?”
Lynn was quiet for a moment, weighing her words. Vera still didn’t know Neva was dead, and it would fall to her to tell her.
“They couldn’t care for her,” she said slowly. “Surviving out here is hard, and they weren’t ready for the weather. They thought they’d have shelter sooner.”
“Why didn’t they? It seems like there’s plenty of abandoned houses around.”
“Their original plan was to stay in my house, near a source of water. When they saw I was there, they knew they couldn’t take it. They were worn down and weak. Neva didn’t want to leave the stream, so they stayed there.”
“Living where?”
“Eli did a decent job of building them a little shelter. Stebbs—that’s the man back at my house—he talked me into coming over and visiting them. Eli and Neva decided that Lucy would be better off with me.”
“They should have never tried it,” Vera said, placing her hand against the passenger window and splaying
