by Lissa Bryan
“Sorry to leave you in the lurch,” Carly murmured to Miz Marson.
The old lady shrugged. “Kaden will help.”
Carly grinned. “If you don’t mind having to go behind him and clean again.” If Kaden wasn’t such an excellent shot, Carly would suspect his eyesight was bad, since he somehow failed to notice he left half the dirt behind.
Pearl stood near the open door of the pantry, staring at the rows of jars with something akin to awe. She was tall and slender, close to the point of being underfed, but her spare form was toned with muscle, like a ballerina. Her onyx hair was woven into tiny braids and twisted up into a bun, emphasizing the graceful arch of her neck, and she had the smoothest, most blemish-free skin Carly had ever seen. It was a warm, light brown without so much as a freckle to mar its perfection.
No one should look that good after an apocalypse, Carly thought sourly. Her own skin was flushed and blotchy from the heat of the kitchen, and her hair was hanging in a tangle of sweat-soaked frizz. She tried to smooth it a bit as she approached the newcomer but knew it was futile.
“You’ve got a nice store of food,” Pearl said. “It’s been a long while since I’ve seen so much in one place.”
Carly smiled. “Thanks. We’ve been working hard.”
Pearl cocked her head. “Is it just me, or is everything in alphabetical order?”
Carly flushed a little and didn’t answer that. “Come with me and I’ll show you around a bit.” Sam, lying beside Dagny’s playpen, rose to trot after them, and Pearl jumped a little at the sight of him.
“Is that a …”
“A wolf, yeah, but he’s very well-behaved. Sam, this is Pearl.”
Sam sniffed the hand the woman tentatively extended and then turned away, apparently uninterested. A good sign, Carly thought, because Sam tended to get tense around those he found suspicious and drop his head to stare at them with menacing amber eyes.
“Did you have him Before?” Pearl asked as they stepped off the porch.
“No, I found him as a puppy afterward. He looked just like a dog when he was little. I didn’t know he was a wolf until later.”
“Just like the horses.”
“No,” Carly deadpanned. “I knew those were horses.”
Pearl shot her a startled look as if she wasn’t used to hearing jokes or she wasn’t sure if Carly was serious, but laughed after Carly gave her a grin. “I meant you found them, too. That’s what your … um … Kaden said.”
“You can call him my son. Pretty much everyone does, but I’ve got to admit it’s kind of strange being mom to someone when you’re not even ten years older.”
Pearl nodded.
Carly scratched a mosquito bite. “You’ll see a lot of families like that here. There weren’t a lot of blood families that survived intact. Stan and Mindy are the only people I know who were married Before, and I think that’s because they got their flu shot on the same day.”
Pearl stopped in her tracks. “Flu shot? What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s my theory, anyway. Almost every survivor I’ve met says they got a flu shot the year of the Crisis. A lot of people don’t remember who made theirs, but the ones who do say they came from the Cederna company.”
Pearl was blinking fast, like she was trying to collect her thoughts for questions but couldn’t think what to ask first.
Carly answered the most obvious one without waiting for it to be asked. “We don’t think it was intentional. It seems like they didn’t know, and … well … even if they had figured out the shots were giving immunity, the Crisis happened so fast, it wouldn’t have made any difference.” Some of the big cities had been virtually wiped out in just a few days, from what Troy Cramer had said on the news.
“Yeah, I suppose not.” But Pearl looked troubled.
“Where are you from?” Carly asked to change the subject.
“I’m originally from the Midwest, but was living in Los Angeles.”
Carly winced. Some of the others had told her harrowing tales of getting out of the big cities when the Crisis struck. None of them had an easy time of it. “What brought you this way?”
“I had an aunt who lived in Blanchard,” Pearl said. She pronounced aunt as ahhnt, the first person Carly ever met who did that. “I came here because I had to see if she … I had to know.”
“Did you find out? One way or the other?”
Pearl didn’t look at her. “Yeah. I found out.”
Carly gave her a small sympathetic smile. “I’m sorry.” She considered saying something about how Pearl was at least fortunate in knowing what had become of her loved ones when so many others would never know, but thought the better of it.
The residential street emptied onto the town common. There were a handful of children playing on the grass in front of a park bench where Mrs. Davis watched them. It was a task at which she excelled.
“More kids than I expected,” Pearl said. “Who’s the lady watching them?”
“That’s Mrs. Davis. She’s the Reverend’s wife.”
“You have a preacher?”
Carly nodded. “Church services on Sunday, too, if you’re interested.”
Pearl hesitated. “I’m not really religious.”
“I’m not either.” Carly shrugged. She was careful to appear casual, because she didn’t want Pearl to fear there was anything pushy about that aspect of their community. “Totally optional. Justin and I met the Davises on the road. The Reverend is the one who performed our wedding, actually. He and Mrs. Davis ended up down here, too, and we asked him to join the community.”
“Did you and Justin have the baby before you came here?”
Carly nodded. Dagny had been the reason why the isolated people of Colby thought it was “safe” to let their little band of travelers inside, but she didn’t want to say that.
“She’s the only baby I’ve seen since the Crisis.”
“She’s the first one,” Carly said. But she couldn’t be the only one. She couldn’t be. They wouldn’t have survived this long if there was no hope for the future. That was what Carly kept telling herself, hoping she’d soon be proven right. “Maybe the Infection messed with our bodies, sort of stunned our systems for a while. We’re all carriers, even if it doesn’t make us sick.”
“Carriers?”
“We learned that the hard way.” Carly licked her lips. “We’re all Infected, though it doesn’t make us sick. Like Typhoid Mary. We can Infect people who haven’t been exposed.”
“I didn’t know there was anyone who hadn’t been exposed. How did they avoid it?”
Carly rubbed her forehead, partly as a way to break off eye contact. Her throat had tightened and it was hard to keep her voice even. “The people here … they had isolated themselves. They sealed off the town and didn’t let anyone in. Until us.”
Pearl didn’t ask, and Carly was grateful.
The kids had noticed them. They all turned to gape at the newcomer, their eyes wide. Mrs. Davis gathered them all to her and they looked away, abashed as she told them it wasn’t nice to stare.
“They’re not used to seeing Outsiders,” Carly said.
Pearl chuckled. “No kidding.”
Carly led her to the courthouse, a stone edifice but one so small it looked more like a mausoleum than a seat of government. It was a bit cooler inside the shadowed interior. Carly bent and retrieved an oil lamp, which she lit with the Zippo she carried in her pocket. The lamp’s warm yellow glow revealed the plain wood-paneled hallway.
On the left side of the hall was a courtroom and on the right, an office that had once been used for the town’s administration. There was a pile of desks and computers stacked in the far corner of the room. Kaden had offered to carry the computers down to the basement, but Carly was afraid the dampness would damage them. She felt a sort of obligation to preserve as many records of the past as possible, even if they were currently worthless. So they were stacked over in a corner until she decided what to do with them
.
She sat down at the desk she’d taken for her own and pulled out a metal box with a flip-top lid. Sam lay down beside her desk, pillowing his muzzle on his paws. “I’m just going to take some info from you, okay?”
“What for?”
“I keep track of all of the new residents, their skills and talents, that sort of thing.”
Pearl shifted on her feet and held up her hand in a halting gesture. “I’m not sure I’m staying, Carly.”
Carly arched a brow. “Oh? You’ve got a lot of choices of decent communities to consider?”
Pearl laughed. “Okay, you’ve got me there. But the thing is … I don’t really know you guys or how things are run around here. I’m not sure—I’m just not sure, that’s all.”
“Let me ask you something. Did Justin ask you to come?”
“No. I followed the wagon.”
“What made you do that?”
Pearl considered for a moment. “It was the horse, I think. Before that, it was because Justin told me I could have all the food in the grocery store, but when I saw the horse …” She paused for a moment and ran a hand over her hair, as though to make sure her braids were still neat and smooth in their bun.
“What about her?” Carly’s curiosity was piqued.
“When I was young, I had friends in 4-H, so I’d been around horses enough to be able to tell this one is well cared for. She’s plump and her coat is shiny. She looked like she was nursing but didn’t look like she’d just had a foal. It seemed like you guys must be taking care of her well, even though she can’t be providing that much benefit with a foal.”
“Yeah, I’ve had a couple of people mention that she’s not exactly a plus in the cost-benefit column,” Carly said with a wry smile. “She pulls a plow for us and helps haul big loads, but we’re working on a wood gasifier that will let us run the tractor, and at that point—”
“A what?”
“A wood gasifier. You heat up wood until it carbonizes but not burns, and it releases a combustible gas. Since all the gasoline from Before went bad, we had to find a way to make fuel we could use to run simple engines. Like old tractors and generators.”
“Might I suggest hooking one up to an air conditioner?”
Carly was pretty sure Pearl was joking, but she answered seriously. “We’re thinking long-term survival. We’ve got to manage our wood resources wisely. We can’t chop down all the trees around us just to be more comfortable.”
“That makes sense.” Pearl pulled over a chair and sat down across from Carly. “Let me ask you something—why did Justin let me in? I assume you have that wall for a reason, and you’re not letting in every stray that crosses your path.”
“No, we’re not.” Carly took out a blank card and wrote Pearl’s name at the top. “You know how you guessed some things about us based on the horse? Well, Justin can do that, too. He’s pretty good at it. He can sometimes tell within minutes if someone will fit in here or not. He’s tried to explain it to me, how he does it, but I can’t remember all the tiny little details and what they’re supposed to tell you about a person. I just know if he let you in, he had the feeling you’d be a good member of this community. We could always reexamine that if it turned out to be wrong. He’d be the first person to tell you he’s not always right, but he does have a good sense about people. And I have a feeling you do, too.”
Pearl gazed at Carly, but her features were impassive, guarded. “Sometimes.”
“I know you have no reason to believe me, but what you see here is what you get. We’re just trying to survive the best we can, and I think we have a good group here. We all get along pretty well, and we all contribute where we can.” Carly held up one of the cards. “That’s where these things come in. I write down if you have any useful skills. It’s a system I started a few months ago, and I’m trying to cross-reference it, so if we need someone who can look at the plumbing, or whatever, we can find it fast.”
Pearl shifted in her chair and looked away, her teeth tugging at the corner of her lip. “That’s just it, Carly … I don’t really have any useful skills.”
“You wouldn’t have survived on your own for almost two years if you didn’t.”
“I wasn’t alone the whole time.”
“Oh.” From the tension in Pearl’s shoulders and the set of her jaw, it was a painful subject, and Carly knew all about painful subjects. She wasn’t about to pry. “Well, still … you can shoot, right?” She nodded toward the pistols strapped to Pearl’s hips.
“If I have to.” Pearl’s eyes were hard.
Carly marked a c next to her notation about shooting, for conservative. It was useful to know that she would fire only if necessary. It was a sign she would conserve ammo and be cautious of her targets. Pearl also wasn’t a braggart, which might be a sign of a cool head and that she was secure in her own skills.
“I assume you can also dress game?”
Pearl nodded.
“First aid?”
“Not really.”
“Okay. Can you sew? Make candles? Anything crafty like that?”
“No.”
“What did you used to do?” Carly wasn’t asking for the card’s sake. Her curiosity was genuine.
“I was an agent.”
Carly’s eyes widened. “Like, FBI?”
Pearl laughed. “No, like Hollywood.”
“Wow … that must have been an interesting career.”
“It had its moments. But it left me rather ill-prepared for surviving an apocalypse. I had to learn on my feet.”
“Me, too. I worked in a souvenir store in Juneau, Alaska.” Carly turned back to the card and noted Pearl had managerial skills. She figured if Pearl could deal with Hollywood egos, she could handle just about every people situation.
“You’re even farther from home than I am.” Pearl tilted her head and sat back in her chair as she folded her hands.
Carly smiled a little. “Wherever Justin is, that’s my home. I admit I miss it a little sometimes. I used to see mountains outside my window, and everything here is so flat and open.” She shook her head a little, to rattle herself out of pointless sentimentality. “But I think I’m just missing the world that’s gone.”
“I can’t say I miss LA, but what they say about the Southwest being a ‘dry heat’ is true. The humidity here is killer.”
“And the mosquitos,” Carly said. “Alaska is bad when it comes to insects, but this is awful. Justin thinks it’s worse now because so many of the animals died. The bugs are hungry, and we’re the only available food around.”
“Maybe settling down in a swamp wasn’t such a great idea.” Pearl arched a brow at Carly.
Carly held up her palms like a balance scale. “Drawbacks, benefits … our town is safer because the swamp is a giant, gator-infested moat. Parts of it are impassable because of the cypress stumps, and the alligators are getting more aggressive as the food supply dwindles.”
“I bet the hunting around here is terrible.”
Carly nodded. “On the plus side, though, we don’t have many critters eating our crops.”
“So, the only meat you get is from your chickens?” Pearl propped her feet up on her duffle bag.
“No, we don’t eat those. There are just seven of them. Well, six now that one’s gone missing. We have a fish pond that we’re trying to raise stock in, too, but last summer it got some kind of algae.” Carly sighed. It seemed it was always something. They’d lost a good portion of the fish, and Justin wasn’t sure it was safe to eat the others until the algae was gone and the fish showed no signs of it.
The meat situation was becoming a bone of contention among the residents. There had even been some complaints that Dagny and Carly were given eggs first before the remainder, if any, were shared with the others. The grumbles over that particular subject were silenced when a pissed-off Justin snapped that Dagny was the youngest child in the town and Carly was the only breastfeeding mother. As soon as any of the other women had a ba
by, he’d see to it they got eggs before his own child, because they would be younger and more vulnerable.
“Any mechanical know-how?” Carly had her pen poised to write no because most girls didn’t have this skill, but Pearl surprised her.
“I used to help my cousin work on cars, when I was a kid. I won’t say that I’m skilled, but I used to change my own oil and do simple maintenance stuff like that.”
Carly wrote it down. “Any mechanical knowledge is a valuable skill to have, these days.”
“I’d like to learn how those gasifiers work.”
“Sure. We’d be happy to show you.”
“For a price.” That hard gleam had returned to Pearl’s eyes.
Carly shook her head. “It’s not like that. We’re not like that. It doesn’t cost us anything to share knowledge, and it’s not going to hurt us if you go off and build one of your own. So why wouldn’t we share?”
“That’s not … that’s not the way it is anymore.” Pearl seemed to have lost her verbal footing.
“It can be, if we want it to,” said Carly.
Pearl gave a little shake of her head, as though Carly’s words made no sense. Maybe Pearl was a pessimist about human nature, like Justin. He thought she was a bit naive for thinking they could rebuild the world into a better place if they started off right. She hoped she could prove him wrong, but if she didn’t, it wouldn’t be because she hadn’t tried.
Carly went back to her card. “Last one. How old are you?”
“Thirty-two.”
Carly blinked and felt her brows shoot up before she could stop them. She would have guessed Pearl was around her own age of twenty-four. It must have been that flawless skin.
Carly waved the finished card. “If you decide to leave, I’ll give this to you, okay?” After Pearl nodded, Carly tucked the card in its proper alphabetical spot. She closed the box and stood.
