But that was all; the light in her eyes faded. She closed them again.
“Caleb, I’m going to examine her,” Kate said. Then, to Pim:
Stay and help.
Caleb waited in the kitchen. The children, mercifully, were still asleep. A few minutes passed, and the women appeared.
Kate gestured to the back door.
Let’s talk outside
.
The light had shifted toward evening. “What’s happening to her?” Caleb asked, signing simultaneously.
“She’s getting better, that’s what.”
“How is that possible?”
“If I knew, I’d bottle it. The burns are still bad—she’s not out of the woods yet. But I’ve never seen anybody heal so fast. I thought the shock alone would kill her.”
“What about her waking up like that?”
“It’s a good sign, her recognizing Pim. I don’t think she understood much else, though. She may never.”
“You mean she’ll stay like this?”
“I’ve seen it happen.” Kate addressed her sister directly:
You should stay with her. If she wakes up again, try to get her talking.
What about?
Easy stuff. Keep her mind off the fire for now.
Pim returned to the house.
“This changes things,” Caleb said.
“I agree. We may be able to move her sooner than I thought. Do you think you can find a vehicle in Mystic?”
He recalled the pickup he’d seen in Elacqua’s yard.
Kate seemed surprised. “
Brian
Elacqua?”
“That’s him.”
“That drunken old cuss. I’d wondered what had become of him.”
“That was pretty much my experience of the man.”
“Still, I’m sure he’d help us.”
Caleb nodded. “I’ll ride in in the morning.”
Sara was waiting on the porch with their bags when Hollis appeared, sitting atop a sorry-looking mare. With him was a man Sara didn’t know, riding a second horse, a black gelding with a back as bowed as a hammock and ancient, runny eyes.
“What’s this I see?” Sara said. “Oh, two of the worst horses I ever laid eyes on.”
The two men dismounted. Hollis’s companion was a squat-looking man wearing overalls but no shirt. His hair was long and white; there was something cunning in his face. Hollis and the man exchanged a few words, shook hands, and the man walked off.
“Who’s your friend?” Sara asked.
Hollis was tying the horses to the porch rail. “Just somebody I knew in the old days.”
“Husband, I thought we talked about a truck.”
“Yeah, about that. Turns out a truck costs actual money. Also, there’s no gas to be had. On the upside, Dominic threw in the tack for free, so we are not, technically, one hundred percent penniless at the moment.”
“Dominic. Your shirtless friend.”
“He kind of owed me a favor.”
“Should I ask?”
“Probably best if you don’t.”
They returned to the house, lightened their gear, loaded the remains into saddlebags, and secured them to the horses. Hollis took the mare, Sara the gelding. She was getting the best of the deal, though not by much. Years had passed since she’d even been on a horse, but the feeling was automatic, touching a deep chord of physical memory. Bending forward in the saddle, Sara gave three firm pats to the side of the horse’s neck. “You’re not such a bad old guy, are you? Maybe I’m being too hard on you.”
Hollis looked up. “I’m sorry, were you addressing me?”
“Now, now,” Sara said.
They made their way to the gate and descended the hill. Scattered workers were toiling in the fields beneath a late afternoon sun. Here and there a pennant still hung limply from its pole, marking the location of a hardbox; the watchtowers with their warning horns and sharpshooter platforms jutted from the valley floor, unmanned for years.
At the outer edge of the Orange Zone, the road forked: west toward the river townships, east toward Comfort and the Oil Road. Hollis drew up and took his canteen from his belt. He drank and passed it to Sara. “How’s the old boy doing?”
“A perfect gentleman.” She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and gestured eastward with the canteen. “Looks like somebody’s in a hurry.”
Hollis saw it too: the boiling dust plume of a vehicle, driving fast toward the city.
“Maybe we could see if he’d trade for the horses,” Hollis said, not seriously.
Sara examined him a moment, flicking her eyes up and down. “I have to say, you look rather dashing up there. Takes me back a bit.”
Hollis was leaning forward, bracing his weight with both hands on the pommel. “I used to like to watch you ride, you know. If I was on the day shift on the Watch, I’d sometimes wait on the Wall until you came back with the herd.”
“Really? I was not aware.”
“It was a little creepy of me, I admit that.”
She felt suddenly happy. A smile came to her face, the first in days. “Oh, what could you do?”
“I wasn’t the only one. Sometimes you drew quite a crowd.”
“Then lucky you, things working out like they did.” She capped the canteen and handed it back. “Now let’s go see our babies.”
52
“Hey, good afternoon, everybody.”
Two DS officers manned the stockade’s outer room—one sitting at his desk, a second, much older, standing behind the counter. Greer recognized the second one immediately; years ago, the man had been one of his jailors. Winthrop? No, Winfield. He’d been just a kid then. As their gazes locked, Lucius could see a series of rapid calculations unfolding behind the man’s eyes.
“I’ll be damned,” Winfield said.
His hand dropped to his sidearm, but the movement was startled and clumsy, giving Greer ample time to raise the shotgun from beneath his coat and level it at the man’s chest. With a loud clack, he chambered a shell. “Tut tut.”
Winfield froze. The younger one was still sitting behind his desk, staring wide-eyed. Greer nudged the shotgun toward him. “You, weapon on the floor. You too, Winfield. Let’s be quick now.”
They placed their pistols on the ground. “Who is this guy?” the younger one said.
“Been a while, Sixty-two,” Winfield said, using Greer’s old inmate number. He seemed more amused than angry, as if he’d run into an old friend of dubious reputation who’d lived up to expectations. “Heard you’ve been keeping yourself busy. How’s Dunk?”
“Michael Fisher,” Greer said. “Is he here?”
“Oh, he’s here all right.”
“Any more DS in the building? We keep the nonsense to a minimum, this doesn’t have to be a problem.”
“Are you serious? I don’t give a shit one way or the other. Ramsey, toss me the keys.”
Winfield opened the door to the cellblock. Greer followed a few paces behind the two men, keeping the shotgun trained on their backs. Michael, lying on his bunk, rose on his elbows as the door to his cell opened.
“This is sudden,” he remarked.
Greer ordered Winfield and the other one into the cell, then looked at Michael. “Shall we?”
“Nice seeing you, Sixty-two,” Winfield called after them. “You haven’t changed a bit, you fucker.”
Greer shut the door, turned the lock, and pocketed the key. “Keep it down in there,” he barked through the slot. “I don’t want to have to come back here.” He turned to look at Michael. “What happened to your head? That looks like it hurt.”
“Not to sound ungrateful, but I’m thinking your being here is not good news.”
“We’re moving to Plan B.”
“I didn’t know we had one of those.”
Greer handed him Winfield’s pistol. “I’ll explain on the way.”
Peter, Apgar, and Chase were looking over Michael’s passenger manifest when shouts erupted in the hall: “Put it down! Put it down!”
A crash; a gunshot.
Peter reached into his desk for the pistol he kept there. “Gunnar, what have you got?”
“Nothing.”
“Ford?”
The man shook his head.
“Get behind my desk.”
The handle of the door jiggled. Peter and Apgar took positions against the wall on either side. The wood shuddered: somebody was kicking it.
The door blew open.
As the first man entered, Apgar tackled him from beind. A shotgun skittered away. Apgar pinned him with his knees, one hand on his throat, the other lifted, ready to strike. He stopped.
“Greer?”
“Hello, General.”
“Michael,” Peter said, lowering his gun, “what the
fuck.
”
Three soldiers charged into the room, rifles drawn.
“Hold your fire!” Peter yelled.
With visible uncertainty, the soldiers complied.
“What was that gunshot outside, Michael?”
The man waved casually. “Oh, he missed. We’re fine.”
Peter was shaking with anger. “You three,” he said to the soldiers, “clear the room.”
They made their departure. Apgar climbed off Greer. Chase, meanwhile, had come out from behind Peter’s desk.
Michael gestured in Chase’s direction. “Is he okay?”
“In what sense?”
“I mean does he
know
?”
“Yeah,” Chase said tersely, “I know.”
Peter was still furious. “The two of you, what do you think you’re doing?”
“Under the circumstances, we thought a direct approach was best,” Greer replied. “We have a vehicle outside. We need you to come with us, Peter, and we need to leave right now.”
Peter’s patience was at its end. “I’m not going anywhere. You don’t start talking sense, I’ll toss your asses in the stockade myself and throw away the key.”
“I’m afraid the situation has changed.”
“So the virals aren’t coming back after all? This is all some kind of joke?”
“I’m afraid it’s the opposite,” Greer said. “They’re already here.”
53
Amy was going to miss this place.
They had decided to leave the rest of their chores undone for the day. There seemed no point in finishing them now.
Sometimes,
Carter told her,
you got to let a garden tend itself.
She felt sick, almost feverish. Could she control it? Would she kill him? And what of the water?
You got to do it the way Zero done,
Carter had told her.
Ain’t no other way to go back to the way you were.
The girls were watching a movie in the house. It was one Amy remembered, from being just a girl herself:
The Wizard of Oz.
The movie had terrified her—the tornado, the field of poppies, the wicked witch with her sickly green skin and battalion of airborne monkeys in bellman’s hats—but she had also loved it. Amy had watched it in the motel where she and her mother had lived. Her mother would put on her little skirt and stretchy top to go out to the highway, and before she left she’d sit Amy down in front of the television with something to eat, something greasy in a bag, and tell her:
You sit tight now. Mama will be back soon. Don’t you open that door for nobody.
Amy could see the guilt in her mother’s eyes—she understood that leaving a child by herself wasn’t something her mother was supposed to do—and Amy’s heart always went out to her, because she loved her, and the woman was so remorseful and sad all the time, as if life was a series of disappointments she could do nothing to stop. Sometimes her mother could barely get out of bed all day, and then night would fall, and the skirt and the top and the television would go on, and she’d leave Amy alone again.
The night of
The Wizard of Oz
had been their last in the motel, or so Amy recalled. She’d watched cartoons for a while and, when these were over, a game show, and then she flipped around the dial until the movie caught her eye. The colors were odd, too vivid. That was the first thing she noticed. Lying on the bed, which smelled like her mother—a mélange of sweat, and perfume, and something distinctly her own—Amy settled in to watch. She entered the story when Dorothy, having rescued her dog from the clutches of the evil Miss Gulch, was racing from the storm. The tornado whisked her away; she found herself in the land of the Munchkins, who sang about their happy lives. But, of course, there was the problem of the feet—the feet of the Wicked Witch of the East, sticking out from beneath Dorothy’s tornado-driven house.
It went on from there. Her attention was complete. She understood Dorothy’s desire to go home. That was the heart of the story, and it made sense to Amy. She hadn’t been home in a long time; she barely remembered it, just a shadowy sense of certain rooms. As the movie drew to a close, and Dorothy clicked her heels together and awoke in the bosom of her family, Amy decided to try this. She had no ruby slippers, but her mother had a pair of boots, very tall, with pointed heels. Amy slid them on. They rose up her skinny, little-girl legs nearly to her crotch; the heels were very high, making it difficult to walk. She took tender steps around the room to get the hang of it, and when she felt comfortable she closed her eyes and tapped the heels together, three times.
There’s no place like home
,
there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home …
So convinced was she of the magical power of this gesture that when she opened her eyes she was shocked to discover that nothing had happened. She was still in the motel, with its dirty carpet and dull immovable furniture. She yanked off the boots, hurled them across the room, threw herself down on the bed, and began to cry. She must have fallen asleep, because the next thing she saw was her mother’s frightened face, looming over her. She was shaking Amy roughly by the shoulder; her top was stained and torn.
Come on now, honey,
her mother said.
Wake up now, baby. We got to go, right now.
Carter was skimming the pool. The first leaves were falling, crisp and brown.
“I thought we were taking the day off,” Amy said.
“We are. Just got to get these here. Bothers me seeing them.”
She was sitting on the patio. Inside, the girls had reached the part of the movie where Dorothy and her companions entered the Emerald City.
“They should turn it down a bit,” Carter remarked. He was dragging the skimmer along the edges, trying to work some small bit of debris into the net. “Girls are going to wreck their ears.”