Ashes, Ashes

by Jo Treggiari

  They shook hands. Del’s eyes slid away from hers, and as soon as she’d given Lucy’s hand the expected up-down shake, she dropped it like it was a snake. Her fingers crept around Aidan’s forearm.

  Lucy put her backpack down and shrugged her arms out of her leather jacket. The sun was beating down. The glare beating off the broken tarmac was giving her a headache. She remembered how long it had been since she’d eaten. And most of that she’d puked up. She felt suddenly dizzy.

  Del was tiptoeing her fingers along Aidan’s biceps now. He stepped away and bent down to tighten his shoelace. “How’d it go with Leo?” he asked.

  Lucy was instantly angry. She remembered the fear she’d felt. “You could have warned me.”

  “Would you have stuck around?”

  “I almost knifed him.”

  Del snickered. “Leo is a black belt. I think he’d probably manage to defend himself against you.”

  “Not if he wasn’t expecting an attack,” Lucy fired back.

  Del rolled her eyes. “Oh come on! He took on six guys today.” She tugged at Aidan’s arm. “Tell her!”

  Aidan shook his head and mumbled something incomprehensible. Del glared at him, and then turned a poisonous gaze on Lucy.

  “Whatever,” she said, and stormed off.

  After a long moment, Aidan said, “It’s been a bad day. She’s upset.”

  You think? Lucy barely stopped herself from voicing the thought.

  Without speaking, they walked to the center of the square. Although it was still midafternoon and bright, the shadows were creeping forward. The sun was suddenly obscured behind boiling black clouds. The air felt heavy.

  Rain again, thought Lucy, and then the fat drops fell. In just a few seconds, they became a torrent. Pools of already saturated mud surged under her boots. She felt the weight of the water in the weave of her clothes. Aidan’s shaggy hair was plastered against his scalp. It seemed as if the weather never did anything by half measures anymore.

  He pulled her under a pale blue awning, but he released her arm far too soon. At a loss for anything to say, Lucy stared at her feet. Aidan looked toward the wide road by which the Sweepers had come. His face was set. She followed his gaze.

  “Where does the road go?” Lucy asked.

  “It dips down and follows the shoreline for a few miles and ends up at the island.”

  “So they’ve got a straight route from here to there?”

  “Yeah, it’s one of the only routes still accessible. They keep it clear for the vans. Otherwise they’d be on foot.”

  An older woman, her head covered by a black scarf, dragged a cover over the big pot on the fire and then joined Lucy and Aidan, who instantly made room for her. She walked slowly, as if her joints were stiff. Lucy’s Grandma Ferris had moved like that. Her solid body was swathed in black shawls. Her nose was curved like a beak and she wore heavy gold hoops in her ears, which had elongated the lobes. Lucy recognized her as the woman with the fruits and vegetables. Her black eyes flashed. “They took the priest, Walter, and sad Olive?” she asked Aidan. Her voice was accented, the consonants thickly pronounced. “My little zabkos, too?”

  Aidan nodded. “And some others I didn’t know.” She made a guttural noise in her throat and then sighed. “At least Emi and Jack are still together. They had barely settled in.” She sighed again.

  She turned toward Lucy. “And who is this?”

  Lucy tried to meet her gaze but failed. Water dripped from her hair into her eyes. Her nose was running like a faucet. She thought about wiping it on her sleeve but didn’t. Not in front of this fierce woman.

  She pulled her sweatshirt hood up, but it was too late. She was already soaked.

  “This is Lucy. She gave the signal,” Aidan said. “And this is Grammalie Rose,” he told Lucy.

  The woman stared at her for a long moment. Her dark eyes were framed by thick, black brows. They gave her face a strength that made Lucy nervous. She felt like a mouse pinned by a hawk.

  “The howl?”

  Lucy cleared her throat. “Yes,” she said in a raspy whisper, and then, louder, “Yeah.” She shot a quick glance at the stern old woman, wondering if that had sounded sort of smart-alecky.

  “You are a wolf, perhaps?” She made a dry coughing sound which Lucy realized with surprise was a laugh.

  “I just thought the sound would carry. And people would notice.”

  The old woman stared at her openly. Her eyes were very black. There was no definition between iris and pupil. It made it hard to look away.

  “So,” she said eventually, nodding her head. “Good. We need people like her.”

  “What?” said Lucy, glancing at Aidan. The corner of his mouth twisted and then flattened into a thin line again. “I’m not much use in a fight.”

  Aidan touched the welt on his cheek. “Yeah, well, neither am I.” He looked down the road and frowned. “Especially when we’re up against Tasers and a plan, and we’ve got nothing but some teenagers and senior citizens with sticks and stones.”

  “Tasers?” Lucy echoed. Those were the black boxes she’d seen the Sweepers holding. Stupidly she’d thought they were radios. No wonder the kids had held back.

  “They don’t always use them. Not against the young ones at least. It’s as if they don’t want to injure them or something,” Aidan said.

  Grammalie Rose said, “They will have their attention on Leo now.”

  Aidan nodded.

  “So you don’t really know what they’re doing with the people they take?” Lucy asked.

  “No idea, but I doubt it’s a spa treatment,” he said.

  “Nothing good,” Grammalie said heavily.

  They both fell silent.

  After a few seconds, Aidan loosened his shoulders. “Grammalie Rose, do you think …?” He paused. She swiveled those piercing eyes toward him.

  “Do I think they will come back?” Grammalie Rose exhaled. “Do I think we should try to find them?”

  Aidan nodded. His hands were clenched in fists, but Lucy thought he was unaware of it.

  “I think that would be both dangerous and foolhardy.” Aidan made an impatient gesture. The old woman raised her hand and pointed her forefinger at his chest. “And I think we will have a meeting soon and hear from everyone.”

  “Soon? Tonight?”

  She shook her head. “Feelings are running high. Not everyone is here.”

  Aidan grunted.

  Her black eyebrows bunched. “Okay?” she asked.

  “Okay,” said Aidan.

  She glanced at Lucy. A quirk appeared in the corner of her mouth.

  “I will see you soon, zabko. There are still a few hours of light left.”

  “Ummm. Okay.” Immediately Lucy berated herself. Why hadn’t she said she had no intention of hanging around? That she was just passing through?

  Grammalie Rose walked away, and Lucy watched her make slow progress, pausing to speak to one person, lay a hand on a bowed shoulder, give a swift hug to a small child who ran up to her, chattering away.

  Lucy turned to Aidan, who was flexing his bruised hand. “What’s … jabco?”

  “I think it means ‘little frog.’ She calls everybody under sixty that.”

  “Oh. So should I be worried? She scares me.”

  “She sort of scares me, too, but don’t be nervous.” Aidan stared out into the rain. “I’m glad you came.”

  Lucy glared at the ground. She pressed the backs of her hands against her hot cheeks.

  “No choice,” she mumbled, and then wished she’d kept her mouth closed.

  He shot her a quick smile which turned to a frown. “Why?”

  She told him briefly about the tsunami, skipping over the details in case she burst into tears at the thought of her lost camp. The frown got deeper.

  “Well,” he said after a long pause. She looked back at him. She’d been focusing with all her might on a cloud shaped like a teapot. “Now you can join us. We all pitch in together.
No one is alone.”

  She wasn’t at all sure about this. She felt nervous surrounded by people, and there was the danger of the Sweepers. She’d decide later. She could always sneak off in the middle of the night.

  Finally she cleared her throat. “Why do you think they take them?”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  “Well, where—”

  “To the hospital on the island. That’s where the white vans come from. That’s where the answers have always come from.” He frowned. “And the lies.”

  “That makes sense,” Lucy said slowly. She dreaded asking the next question, so she asked a different one. “How many times has this happened?”

  “Twice before. They used to grab the older folk, the ones who didn’t move as quickly. But now they’re taking anyone who is healthy. Mostly the kids. Today there were a bunch of people from …” He paused, searching for the correct word. “From elsewhere. Come for the trading. They didn’t know the drill.”

  “The people,” she said through a tight throat. She desperately needed a drink of water. Funny that she could be so wet and so thirsty at the same time. “Do they ever come back?”

  He stared at her, and then his face sort of went blank.

  When he finally spoke, she could barely hear him.

  “No.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  GRAMMALIE ROSE

  The old woman glowered at her. Lucy dropped her eyes. A thin trickle of sweat crept down her neck. The rain had stopped again as suddenly as it had started, and now the sun was blazing once more. She’d taken off the sweatshirt and dumped it and her leather jacket in a pile with her backpack. Even in just the thermal shirt she was hot, and also grimy with mud and what she had a sneaking suspicion was manure. Whatever Lucy had been expecting, it wasn’t this. She leaned against her shovel and looked out over the straight rows of vegetables, the vines rambling over wrought iron gates planted in the earth like trellises, the greenhouses made from old storm windows. In the distance she glimpsed others working. They moved slowly and their faces, from what she could see, were sort of strange. There were bumps and ridges where there shouldn’t have been, and their skin was smooth but strangely colored. They wore hoods and long robes. Monks, maybe? But she was too exhausted to ponder it for long.

  This mean old woman had made her dig potatoes, carrots, and beets; pick beans and zucchini; stake straggling tomato plants; and remove slugs and beetles from the leaves of Swiss chard and spinach until her fingers were covered with a gluey black residue of insect slime and guts. She hadn’t complained, though, mostly because she couldn’t. Grammalie Rose, who must have been in her seventies, had worked right alongside her, silently, one of her black shawls pulled over her hair and tied under her chin. Lucy had stared at her tough, reddened hands with their short, blunt nails as she squished bugs between her fingers and brushed dirt off of waxen potatoes before piling them into plastic buckets and tubs. She pulled rows of peas with a minimum expenditure of energy. None of the wrestling with tough stalks that Lucy was doing. Another one of those situations where her awkwardness wasn’t doing her any favors. She could almost hear her brother, Rob, pipe up, “Lucy loses to a plant!”

  Lucy kept waiting for the woman to ask her questions or just make small talk, but she didn’t. It was like she conserved energy. She marched along the rows, picking or digging, her back hunched, keeping up a solid pace while Lucy had trailed a few yards behind, her back screaming and her knees aching, barely able to drag the full container behind her. Finally, Lucy had casually asked where Aidan was.

  “Out scouting, probably. Hunting or foraging. He likes to roam, that one,” the old woman said before pointing out a cluster of bright green caterpillars on a head of lettuce.

  And now that they were finally sitting down at the edge of the lot, Grammalie Rose was sticking with the silent treatment and giving her the evil eye. It was making her feel uncomfortable. The thought that Aidan had probably known what was in store for her and had uttered no warning again! made her stutter with rage, but she shoved it down to her belly where it simmered and spat. She ground her teeth and shot the old lady her best under-the-bangs-slit-eye stare. Grammalie Rose just looked amused and lit another one of the foul-smelling brown cigarettes she liked. The threads of black smoke it gave off stunk like burning hair.

  “Have you never shelled beans, zabko?”

  As she said this, Grammalie Rose was stripping the leathery pods from the dried beans and tossing them into a pail where they rattled like marbles. She made it look really easy. Snap the end, pull off the string, split the shell with her thumbnail before spilling the purple and white beans into the palm of her hand, and throwing the shriveled ones onto a compost heap. Lucy had tried to copy her and ended up cutting her fingers to shreds and losing most of her beans in the dirt. They rolled everywhere, and who would have known that the dry pods sliced flesh like the edges of thick envelopes? Lucy hunched her shoulders, ignored the pain in her fingers, and yanked on a stubborn pod string.

  “Did you eat nothing but meat and acorn mush?”

  “Cattail bulbs. Chicory,” Lucy said. “Wild onions.”

  “No wonder you are so skinny. And without energy.”

  “I outran a tsunami today, and then I hiked over a couple of mountains,” Lucy said, feeling her ears go red. She hurled a handful of beans into the bucket with force. Her legs were falling asleep and it was impossible to find an inch of soil without rocks to sit on. “Shouldn’t we be preparing or something, in case the Sweepers come back?” she asked the old woman.

  “They will be back.”

  Lucy stared at her. “So?”

  “So, people must eat. Life goes on.”

  “You’re saying that we shouldn’t do anything?”

  Grammalie Rose just nodded and kept shelling. Her plastic bucket was full already, and she hooked Lucy’s with the toe of her clog and drew it closer. Her hands dipped and rose and dipped again.

  Lucy bit her tongue. She felt like she might explode.

  “But … that’s … just … grrrrr!” she shouted finally, leaping to her feet and pacing back and forth.

  After a few seconds, Grammalie Rose thumped the ground beside her. The frown was back on her face. Despite her annoyance, Lucy marveled at the bushy blackness of Grammalie Rose’s eyebrows and the wrinkles fanning across her crumpled-tissue-paper face. How old was she?

  “Sit down,” she said.

  There was no arguing with her tone, and Lucy could hardly pull her knife on the old woman. She exhaled through her nose and sank down ungracefully, crossing her legs and shifting until she found a comfortable spot. Grammalie Rose thrust a bucket of bean pods at her.

  “We are doing something, zabko,” she said.

  “I’m not a frog!” Lucy said, turning a hot stare on her.

  Grammalie Rose snorted out one of her dry laughs again. “Wilcze, then,” she said, seeming amused.

  “What does that mean?” Lucy snapped, suspecting that she was being teased. She felt like she was being treated like a three-year-old and struggled to control her temper.

  “Wolf cub,” she said, gesturing to the full bucket. “Full of snarls and bites.” She chuckled and held Lucy’s gaze until she sat and began work again.

  Lucy slid her nail into the tough bean skin and split it, finding a rhythm that was missing before. Gradually she relaxed. I could still leave, she told herself, anytime I want.

  She pushed her hand into the bucket and let the smooth beans sift through her fingers. She played with a pod, crunching it, and cast her mind about for something to say.

  “How many people live in this settlement?”

  “About thirty-five now. There were close to seventy-five when I first came, but some chose to move on. North. Some prefer to live on the outskirts and come in on market days. And others were taken.”

  Less than forty, Lucy thought. And most of them kids.

  She cleared her throat and reached for a bottle of stale-tasting w
ater. She’d drunk about a gallon already, and it seemed that she’d never get enough.

  “Did you build all of this?” She waved her arm. Around the periphery of the lot were tumbled dinner plate–size slabs of concrete, rubble, and mounds of garbage big enough to climb. A chain-link fence sagging and busted through snaked around the edge.

  “Not me personally.”

  Lucy stared at her. The black eyes gleamed through their veil of smoke. Was she joking with her?

  “It was an old landfill. A dump, literally, and next to it, a cement parking lot which did not fare too well in an earthquake. Pickaxes and a lot of sweat did the rest.” She pointed. “See the low walls over there?” Lucy nodded. Gray walls sectioned off various rectangular areas.

  “Corn and herbs. We’re trying wheat and barley for the first time, now that flour can’t be had for a song or a prayer. We built those out of blocks of concrete we dug up out of the parking lot. It is backbreaking work, but a creative use of salvage.”

  Her hands stopped working for a moment and she gazed over the furrows of sandy earth.

  “It is not good soil, but it is good enough for what we grow here. The manure helps.”

  “So there are animals?” The thought of eating meat that was not newt or squirrel made her mouth water.

  “Not anymore. We lost our last five goats just last week. Poachers.” She scowled blackly. “The cows and the chickens died in the second wave.” She sighed. “What I wouldn’t give for a good honest egg.”

  “And the vegetables?” asked Lucy. “I mean, these are like what you used to get in a store. Not foraged daylily bulbs and wild greens.”

  “This was a neighborhood once. The kind that existed before all the troubles. People owned their homes and they grew extra food for their families. We adopted their gardens and their sheds. We used whatever we could find. That’s what scavengers do.” She picked up a trowel and turned it over in her hand. The clunky handle had obviously once belonged to some other implement and was kept in place with coils of wire.

  Scavengers. Grammalie Rose said it with pride, but Lucy had always thought that scavengers were no better than thieves. She remembered what she had said to Aidan up in the tree and she blushed. Fortunately, the sharp-eyed old woman didn’t notice. She had risen to her feet, uttering small complaining noises as her knees creaked, and picked up the two full buckets of beans. She jerked her head at Lucy and then at the other tubs overflowing with produce. Lucy slid her arms through the handles, two on each side. She was balanced, but she felt the tug across the back of her shoulders and the promise of pain to come. Not for the first time in the last year, she thought longingly of a hot bath.