In a Handful of Dust

by McGinnis,Mindy

  Lucy reached for Lynn’s hair, long and unbound, tangled by the wind. “Sit down,” she coaxed. “Let me work on this rat’s nest.”

  “Sitting down doesn’t do anybody any good,” Lynn argued, but sat nonetheless.

  Lucy watched Lynn’s shoulders relax as she worked the knots free, then bound her thick hair into one large braid. “You need to learn how to do this yourself.”

  “Can’t see the back of my own head.” Lynn said. “I should hack it all off, like yours.”

  “No, I like it.” Lucy gave the braid in her hand a yank.

  Lynn yelped good-naturedly. “All right, let go of me. We got work to do.”

  Lucy kept her hand on Lynn’s braid a moment longer, delaying the trips from the line of sick to the pit where the fires burned. “It’s hard, watching the small ones go.”

  “I know it. You were terribly sick when you were small. It was more than I could stand.”

  “And the medicine from back then, it won’t help these kids?”

  “No. Your grandma said it’s only good against sicknesses caused by bacteria, and polio’s a virus. She said even before the Shortage, there was nothing anyone could do for polio once you had it.”

  “So she’s trying to figure out where it came from?”

  Lynn rose to her feet. “That’s the plan, it seems. Figure out who or what Maddy got it from. In the meantime, we’re not to let anybody near our pond.”

  “That should come naturally enough to you,” Lucy said, and Lynn gave her a swat on the behind.

  They walked up the bank, away from the shade trees and into the heat of the spring sun. Around the bend in the stream they could see Stebbs and Vera’s cabin. Beyond were the rows of sick, waiting to die or recover. A few had blankets tossed over their faces. Lucy stopped in her tracks, unable to go farther. “I can’t stand lifting the edges to see who we lost.”

  “Won’t make ’em any less dead.” Lynn took Lucy by the hand, her touch more gentle than her words. “Don’t forget your handkerchief,” she added, pulling hers up to cover her nose and mouth.

  Lucy followed suit, and they made their way through the lines. Vera spotted them and wound her way through the maze of the ill. “Lynn, I’m sorry, but I need you to—”

  “I’ve got it.” Lynn headed for the nearest bundle.

  “Who was it?” Lucy asked.

  Vera spoke softly. “There were quite a few, here in the early morning. Myrtle lost her two youngest.”

  “Hank and little Frannie?” A sound followed their names up through her throat, a wordless mourning that Lucy couldn’t keep in. “How’d she take it?”

  “She’s sleeping right now, was up all night caring for them. I don’t have the heart to wake her just yet.”

  Vera motioned Lucy away from the line of blankets, and they walked into the tall grass, the only privacy there was. “I haven’t told anyone else yet, but Alex Hale died too, and Caroline Bowl.”

  “But they’re Lynn’s age, at least. I thought it only killed babies.”

  Vera motioned for Lucy to lower her voice. “Usually, yes. From what I know of polio it mostly killed children, the old, or the weak. But Stebbs and I were the last generation to be vaccinated. You remember what vaccination means?”

  “It means you can’t get sick.”

  “That’s right.” Vera sighed and raised her heavy black hair, shot with silver, off her neck. “For now all we can do is separate the sick from the well, find the source, and hope for the best. I moved the adults over to the other side of the road, by the bridge. There’s no sense in the children seeing their parents ill. It’ll scare them more than anything. They need to be told everything is going to be all right.”

  “And what do you want me to do?”

  Vera closed her eyes against the sun that was helping the contagion bloom and grow in her patients. “Can you tell me everything is going to be all right?”

  Lucy spotted Carter in the mid morning, moving among the sick with a water jug. Her usual surge of happiness at seeing him—somewhat boosted of late by the feeling of her heart jumping into her throat—faded when she thought of Maddy.

  Looking at Carter now caused the tears to spring back into Lucy’s eyes, and she turned her back on him. The child at her feet glanced up at her. “You okay?”

  She dropped to her knees beside his blanket and put her hand on his forehead. “Adam, you’re making me look bad. I’m supposed to be the one asking after you.”

  He shrugged. “Seems like you’re laughing most of the time. Just not today.”

  “Not today. How you feeling?”

  “Better, I think,” he said cautiously, as if voicing the possibility would make it a lie. “Thirsty.”

  “Water over here,” Lucy called out, and Carter was beside them in seconds.

  “Hey, little man, you’re looking strong,” Carter said, and Lucy had to crush her eyes shut to prevent tears from leaking at the sound of his voice.

  A smile tweaked the corners of Adam’s mouth. “Maybe.”

  “Better let me hold it,” Carter said, then looked at Lucy. “Vera said not to let it touch their mouths, so it’s more like pouring it down their throats.” Lucy saw he had two canteens, one with an X made out of electrical tape on the lid.

  “What’s that?”

  “One’s for the sick. The other’s mine, and for the people that got nothing to do but wait.”

  Lucy nodded quietly, breaking away from his gaze. His eyes were dry, but she knew Carter well enough to see the pain in them. She slid her arms under Adam’s shoulders and pulled him into a sitting position. His eyes closed in relief as he swallowed, and Lucy laid him back gently.

  “Rest,” she whispered to him, brushing some hair off his forehead. “I think you’re one of the lucky ones.”

  “One of the few,” Carter said, and her hand found his.

  “I’m so sorry,” she tried to say, but her voice broke and the tears she’d been fighting swelled out of her in a rush, coursing down her cheeks and spattering Adam’s shirt along with the wasted water that had seeped from around his weak lips.

  Carter’s arm went across her shoulder and pulled her into him, squeezing strength into her body. “I know it, I know,” he said, his own voice thick. “But not here, not in front of the small ones.”

  She nodded and pulled away, but he kept his hand on her shoulder. She’d not given much thought to his hands until the past few months, when the calluses and the strength of his fingers had taken on new meaning as she’d wondered how they’d feel against her skin. He brushed this thumb against her cheek, moving the tears back into her hair.

  He cleared his throat and stepped back from her. “I need to refill this,” he said, picking up a canteen. “Wanna come with?”

  They headed toward the stream, the midday sun baking the backs of their necks.

  “Adam seems to be getting better,” Lucy said cautiously.

  “I think so, yeah. Might take some time though. I’ve noticed the adults who went down are bouncing back quicker than the kids.”

  “And their legs?”

  “Not good,” Carter shook his head. “Jeb Calkins is getting better, sure enough, but he can’t move either of his.”

  Jeb was a single man, with a young son. “Who’s going to take care of Little Jeb?” Lucy asked.

  “Shit, who’s going to take care of Big Jeb?” Carter dipped the canteen in the creek. “What’s going on here, Lucy . . . it’s bad. It’s going to change things. We’ll be a community where half the adults are cripples, most of the children invalids.”

  “Stebbs is crippled, always has been. Doesn’t slow him down none.”

  “Stebbs has a twisted foot, broken in a trap and never healed right. That’s different from losing the use of your whole leg.”

  Lucy sat on the bank, quiet. Carter’s reasoning explained why Lynn had been scared. As usual, she’d realized what something meant in the long run, like how this year’s garden would affect the next, and
why a sickness moving through the deer meant she should avoid killing the young ones, so they could repopulate It wasn’t only people who were being crippled, but their entire way of life. Without healthy adults, they could not defend themselves. Even though outside threats were not nearly as common as they had been a decade earlier, there were still passing bands of people who wanted what they had—water.

  And now it would be easier to take it from them.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  Three

  The next day a fresh wave of patients came in. Siblings lay on blankets their brothers and sisters had vacated, either by going home or to the pits Lynn kept burning.

  “I don’t understand it,” Vera muttered, her head resting in her hands while her blank eyes coursed over her notes: jumbled, mismatched scraps of paper torn from whatever had been handy as she questioned the sick. So far, nothing had led her back to the beginning, to Maddy.

  “You need to rest, Grandma,” Lucy said from her seat on the floor. Her own body was worn out from long hours tending the patients, her emotions worn so flat she no longer flinched when even the smallest bundles headed for the fires. Lynn looked no better, her hair covered with a fine powdering of soot from the dead.

  “I can’t rest,” Vera said. “Not until we know where this came from. All we’re doing is treating the symptoms, not stopping the sickness.”

  “Maybe so.” Stebbs moved behind her, his strong hands working to ease the tension in her shoulders. “But you’re not going to make any sense out of those scribbles in the state you’re in. You’ve not slept longer than a few hours since this started.”

  “I wouldn’t even call it sleeping, what you do,” Lynn agreed. “You just kinda sit real still and doze.”

  “It’s an old doctor’s habit, and good to know I’ve still got the knack.”

  “Knack or not, you’re going to bed, Doc,” Stebbs said sternly, and Lynn motioned to Lucy to follow her outside.

  “She might be immune to polio, but that don’t mean this epidemic won’t kill her,” Lynn said as they walked down to the stream. “Vera says polio thrives when it gets hot. This outbreak is just a taste of what could be coming, if we don’t figure out the source. She won’t sleep sound ’til that happens.”

  Lucy found a spot in the tall grass that was well beaten down and took a seat. Heat lightning flickered across dark thunderheads that had formed on the evening horizon. “Not a good sign,” she said, gesturing toward the pink bolts.

  Lynn glanced up. “Nope. No rain, no cool air.” A moan rose up from the rows of the sick, out of sight beyond the tall grass, but not out of hearing range.

  “You doing okay?”

  “Mostly,” Lucy said. “It’s just all the harder because I thought it was through.” The sight of Adam, one leg dangling limp and useless at his father’s side as he was carried away, had been bittersweet. He had lived, but what kind of life he would have in their world was yet to be seen.

  “I thought it was done too. I even thought about putting out the fires.”

  “That was downright hopeful of you.”

  Lynn grunted, as she always did when Lucy teased her, but the hard lines of her mouth softened. “Stupid too.”

  “You sleeping here again tonight?”

  Lynn glanced at the chimney of their shared home, barely visible in the distance in the dying light. She sighed. “We’re needed here.” She stomped down her own area of grass and lay down. “Get some sleep,” she said brusquely, and rolled over, her braid dark with grime.

  Lucy tossed a clod of dirt at her back. “You need a bath.”

  “You need to go the hell to sleep,” Lynn shot back, but even in the dark, Lucy could hear the smile.

  Adam’s father never got up the hill to their home. A rider found Devon, collapsed and weakened, when he heard Adam yelling for help, his voice hoarse from calling. Adam rode back to Vera’s in front of the stranger, his father crumpled against the man’s back. Stebbs pulled Devon off the horse, as Lucy helped Adam from the saddle on the other side.

  “What happened?”

  Adam’s lower lip quivered, but he kept the tears from falling. “Daddy got real tired, carrying me up the hill—said he needed to stop and rest a bit. I got sleepy, and when I woke up he was sitting all funny, and he couldn’t get himself up. I yelled and yelled, but no one came.”

  “I found ’em,” the stranger in the saddle said. “Heard the boy calling. Sounded more like an injured animal than anything else. I was awful surprised when I came upon the two of them.”

  “We thank you for it,” Stebbs said. “There’s plenty that woulda left ’em.”

  “Left ’em or done worse,” the rider admitted.

  “Can we give you something for your trouble? A drink?”

  Lucy stiffened at the words. Water was like gold, and never offered freely to strangers. The man looked from Stebbs to Devon. “Don’t believe I’ll be drinking any of your water, no offense.”

  “None taken.” Stebbs nodded curtly, and the stranger rode off, anxious to put miles between himself and them.

  “Can you put him somewhere?” Stebbs nodded to Adam, who was still in Lucy’s arms. “I’ll take Devon.”

  “What do you think, mister?” Lucy said to Adam, forcing fake cheer into her voice. “Want to camp out tonight?”

  “Can I go to the healer lady’s house?”

  “My grandma, you mean?” Lucy headed for the cabin, Adam’s body light in her arms. “Why you wanna go there for?”

  “She fixed me before. I thought maybe she could finish it up now and make my leg better.”

  Lucy swallowed hard before speaking. “Sweetie, didn’t anybody tell you that you won’t ever be using that leg again? It’s ruined.”

  Adam shrugged. “Dad says it never hurts to ask. Worst anybody can say is no.”

  Vera glanced up when Lucy walked through the door with her burden.

  “Devon fell ill taking him home,” Lucy said as she laid Adam on the bed.

  “Where’s Devon?” Vera had been at the table, poring over her notes again. A fresh patient meant new information, and she was on her feet in a second.

  “Stebbs has him down with the sick.”

  “How’d he get back here on foot with Adam?”

  Lucy began tucking pillows under Adam’s shoulders to prop him up. “A man on a horse found them, brought them back here.”

  “And where is this man?”

  “Took off when he saw what we were dealing with.”

  “Stebbs let him leave?”

  The shock in her grandma’s voice got Lucy’s attention. She looked up to see that Vera had gone white, her fists clenched.

  “Yeah, why?”

  “If he picked it up from Devon, he’ll infect everyone he meets. Or die alone in the wilderness.”

  Lucy glanced back at the little boy in the bed, his frightened eyes bouncing between the two women. “Let’s hope he didn’t catch it then.”

  “Quick as this is moving, it’s a better bet to hope he dies alone.”

  It fell to Carter and Lucy to deliver the news to Devon’s wife. The family lived on a remote hill, because Abigail’s mistrust of people ran deep, even more so than Lynn’s. She preferred to take her chances on the hillside, somewhere her family had a good view of everything around them, their own well, and no other houses in sight.

  Lucy trudged up the incline, her calf muscles burning. “I don’t know how Devon could’ve made this climb carrying Adam even if he were healthy,” she said.

  Carter wiped the sweat off his forehead. “I know she’s got her reasons, but damn, this is inconvenient for the rest of us.”

  “Lynn says she’s got a right to live up here, if that’s what she wants.”

  “And what do you say?”

  Lucy tripped on a branch and muttered a curse. “I say she can’t expect he
lp to come running if we can’t hear her yelling for it.” Her breath hitched in her chest, and she slid to the ground. “Sorry, I gotta stop.” Days of tending the ill had stripped her of strength.

  Carter rested next to her, their backs against a huge oak. “I’m not in a hurry to get up there, anyway. You and I aren’t exactly her favorite people.”

  One of Lucy’s more ill-advised pranks had involved swapping out Abigail’s prized newborn calf with a stuffed animal of a cow. The punishment had been steep—Lynn had made her haul water from the pond for a month—but the fun had been worth it.

  Lucy rolled her eyes. “I think being one of Abigail’s favorite people requires blood relation. So I’ll pass. Besides, there was no harm done.”

  “You’re still a rabble-rouser.” Carter knocked his knee against hers.

  “And you’re trouble.” She knocked it back.

  “Remember you and me and Maddy slept up in her haymow so we could see her face when she came down to the barn in the morning?” Carter went on, laughing. “And Maddy didn’t know there was a bunch of kittens up there, ’til one of them jumped on her? Turned out that herbal soap your grandma gave Maddy for her birthday had catnip in it.”

  “I swear I didn’t know that,” Lucy giggled.

  “Maybe not, but you knew full well it was just a kitten in her hair, and you started screaming about bats anyway, and she went through the roof. You and me was trying to shush her up, but she woke up baby Adam all the way in the house.”

  “Yeah.” Lucy’s smile faded. “Yeah, I remember.”

  And now Maddy was dead, and the baby whose cries they’d wished away that night was a crippled little boy whose father might not live through the day.

  Carter quieted as well, his own thoughts turning toward the present. He rose to his feet, holding out a hand for her. “C’mon then,” he said. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Abigail didn’t answer Carter’s knock. He tried again, but they heard no movement in the house. He pulled his fist back to try again, then froze mid motion. “You don’t suppose she caught it and died up here, do you?”