her fingers. “I could’ve aborted her pregnancy and they would’ve stayed in the city.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Neva wouldn’t do it. She said she’d rather have her baby out here than stay in the city and give it up.”
“She lost it,” Lynn said. “It was a boy.”
“Carried to term?”
“Uh . . .”
“Was she really big when she had the baby? Was the baby fully formed?”
Lynn remembered the fading warmth in the little bundle that Stebbs had handed her, and Eli unwrapping it to see whether he’d had a niece or a nephew.
“I think it was, yeah.”
Lynn thought about Neva’s hunched form at the tiny grave, faithfully visiting every day no matter how cold it was. The same determination had been in her face as she traded her life for her daughter’s, and Lynn felt her gut twist at the thought that Neva had known what she was about to do even as she walked away.
They drove through a crossroads, Lynn blithely ignoring the stop sign at the corner. “There’s a town up here, to the south, but it’s abandoned. Was there anything like that where you were?” She didn’t know if prompting Vera would help or hurt, but blind driving would get them nowhere. Lucy’s chances dipped with the sun and every turn of the tires.
“I don’t remember any towns. I was in the bed of the truck, most of the time, and on my back, but I had a little peripheral vision and I wasn’t looking anywhere else.”
Lynn’s stomach rolled at the implications. “If you didn’t see much, it probably was west. There’s not a lot in this direction.”
They drove a while in silence. Lynn’s hands were tight on the steering wheel, her knuckles white. “Any of this looking familiar? Are we too far out?”
Vera stared out her window, shaking her head. “Nothing looks right, but I think we were farther out than this. I do remember seeing a church spire, and thinking it was odd to see a church that big out here in the middle of nowhere.”
“Was it white?”
“Yes, but the bell had fallen out and crashed down the front of the tower.”
Hope blossomed in her chest like a crocus pushing through the winter’s ice, and Lynn swung to the right. “I know that place, it’s the old Methodist church. When I was really little, Mother used to take me hunting with her, ’cause she was afraid I’d wander outside alone if she left me behind. She’d hunt there for wild turkeys. The bell was still hanging then.”
“Your mother?”
“Gone now,” Lynn answered. “This past fall.”
“I’m sorry.”
Lynn drove fast in the fading light, scanning the horizon for the spire of the church. She hadn’t been this far from home since Mother had brought her out as a child, and though her sense of direction was keen, she didn’t trust her distant memories in the dark.
“I need to tell you something,” Lynn said. “About Neva.”
“I can’t think about her right now,” Vera said. “I can’t stop what they’re doing to her. It’s best to focus on Lucy and something I can help.”
“She’s dead.”
“What?” For the first time, Vera looked away from the window, her strong composure breaking with the single syllable.
“She shot herself in the field, not long after they took her.”
Vera closed her eyes and rested her head against the cold glass. “Neva, my poor girl. I’m so sorry, baby.”
Tears pricked at Lynn’s eyes and she stared ahead, uncomfortable in the small truck cab with Vera’s mourning. The church spire stood black against the setting sun, the red rays of evening pouring through the hole that the falling bell had torn.
“Here’s the church,” she said, driving past slowly. “Do you know where you are now?”
Vera opened her eyes and wiped away a few stray tears. She cleared her throat. “I wasn’t far from here, there was a little cemetery around the corner. I had just passed it when I heard their truck coming. I was smart enough to hide my pack behind a tombstone, but stupid enough to not hide myself. I was hoping I’d be able to get a ride.”
“It’s not like the city out here,” Lynn said. “You’re better off to distrust everyone at first and make them earn it.”
“Then it’s exactly like the city.”
Lynn drove to the little cemetery silently, parking so that the headlights cut across the graves, giving the stones long, black shadows.
“You remember which one?”
“I’ve got a general idea,” Vera said as she opened her door. “Everything was in my backpack and I ditched the whole thing.”
“They didn’t think it was odd you were traveling empty-handed?”
“They weren’t thinking with their brains once they caught me.”
Vera and Lynn fanned out through the center section of the graveyard in the long evening shadows. Lynn’s feet sank into the soft ground as she walked. The backpack was hunched sadly against the back of a leaning tombstone, the underside dark with moisture. “Got it,” she called out, hefting the backpack up with one hand.
“Careful,” Vera called out. “There are syringes in there. If they break, it’s pointless.”
Lynn handed the pack over to Vera and watched as she checked the contents. “They’re injectable liquids, we’ll have to hope they haven’t frozen since I left this behind.”
“Will they still work?”
Vera shrugged. “Only thing we can do is inject her and wait.”
They headed south, Lynn’s foot heavy on the pedal now that they weren’t looking for landmarks anymore. Full dark fell, and she noticed that Vera tensed every time they flew through a crossroads.
“Sorry,” she said when she noticed Lynn looking at her. “It’s an old habit. When I see a stop sign, I still think ‘stop.’”
“Mother used to stop at every one,” Lynn said, smiling. “She said running them felt wrong.”
“It’s a different world now,” Neva said. “I am sorry about your mother.”
“I’m sorry about your daughter.”
“Right now, I’ll concentrate on saving Lucy, and mourn later.”
Lynn sped up.
The needle sank into Lucy’s fevered skin, leaving a pucker behind. “She’s dehydrated,” Vera said. “Did she keep anything down?”
Eli shook his head. “I crushed up a few of those aspirin and put them in some water, but she lost it pretty fast.”
“Keep putting fluids in her. Her temp is dropping but it will spike again, even if the antibiotics are working. It takes a steady stream of medicine in her system to start fighting the infection. I can inject her with what I have maybe twice more, but that won’t kill the bacteria on its own. They’ll multiply and we’ll be back in the same situation in a week or two.”
“So we need more antibiotics,” Stebbs said.
Vera nodded and pushed a curl of Lucy’s hair behind her ear. “I’ve heard horror stories of people dying out here from the simplest things; I didn’t want to escape the city only to be killed by a scrape I overlooked one day too many. My own lab had the injectables, so it was easy enough to take some and adjust the inventory. But trying
