False Dawn (14 page)

“Do you think it needs it?” she asked indifferently.

He began to find her attitude irritating. “That depends on whether you’re planning to walk very far today. If you want to cover any distance, then I’d say you need something for it, yes. I’ll swab it with betadine at least. You can’t object to that.” As Evan treated and bandaged the wound, he asked her, “Do you think you can carry your pack?”

“Of course,” she snapped.

“I’ll take some of your load, if you like.” He was bandaging the hip now, padding the hurt with gauze before sealing it with adhesive tape.

Instead of answering him, she said, “I remember when I was little, there used to be this stuff you could just spray on cuts and they’d stop hurting and heal over. Tissue cement, that was it. The vets used it for a long time before it was used on people. I sure wish we had some. It was great—worked better than this.”

Evan finished his work. “You can button up your shirt now. It’s all done for now. I’ll help you on with the pack.” This time it was not a request.

“Okay. But I can manage, Evan. I’ve managed before,” Stung, he said, “Then do it yourself.”

She slung the pack over her shoulder, grimacing as she tugged the straps firmly into place. The buckles were awkward, but she soon had them secured and her pack properly balanced.

Evan watched her as she tightened the last of the straps. “From now on,” he said, “you get help when you ask for it. You’re right: you can manage.

Thea looked at him through lank strands of dark hair. “So can you.”

By mid-day they had reached the ghost town of Oddle Bar. They had come upon it in a southward turn of the trail, down the side of a rugged river canyon now lost under deceptive drifts. There, where the mountain crooked its elbow, the town was perched, the old buildings leaning dilapidatedly under their deep thatches of snow.

“I guess we don’t sleep out tonight,” Thea said as she caught sight of the town. There was unmistakable relief in her words. “They aren’t much, these shacks, but they’re better than the tent.”

“We’ll have real shelter, anyway,” Evan said, trying not to feel too happy about their discovery. “Those two on the upper slope; the ones with the peaked roofs? they look most likely to be intact. Best to keep your crossbow ready.” Evan sensed something, an itch in his mind. He did not trust the town, or its appearance of safety. To justify his discomfort, he reminded Thea, “We aren’t the only animals looking for shelter.”

Thea nodded, beginning to feel the hurt from her bite all the way down her leg. She he did not particularly care about the danger. The lure of the old houses, and the rest they represented, pulled at her. She notched the bowstring, set the trigger and reached for a quarrel.

An old voice, breaking from lack of use, announced, “You two creeps come one step closer and I’m gonna kill you.” This was followed by the unmistakable sound of a rifle being cocked.

Evan stopped, his arm out to shield Thea. They looked at each other, and seeing the same wary fright in one another s eyes, they waited.

“How’d you get here?” demanded the old voice; it had the genderless kind of rasp that sometimes came with age.

“We came over from Buck’s Lake,” Evan answered, raising his arms as he spoke, showing the voice that he was unarmed.

“There ain’t nobody left at Buck’s Lake.”

“We came in before the snows, from the east. It was deserted then. We stayed there a couple of months. We’re going south now. To Truckee.” It was a lie, of course, but Evan did not dare say too much to the ancient voice. He looked around cautiously, wondering if there were more than one person waiting in the old houses.

“Truckee!” the ancient voice cracked with scorn. “Looking for the highway, is that it?”

“Maybe,” Evan answered.

“Or are you scouts, and you’re going to tell your friends where to find me?”

“People like that would as soon kill me as you,” said Evan.

There was a long silence, then the old voice started up again. “You with that thing on your arm Take it off and come closer. Both of you.”

“I’m not giving up my crossbow,” Thea whispered fiercely.

“Hurry it up!” the voice ordered impatiently.

“Look,” Evan called to the voice in the house. “We can’t leave our weapons out here. They’ll be ruined, and that’s no good for anybody. How’s this instead? She’ll take the quarrel out of the slot—” He motioned to Thea, and she reluctantly withdrew the quarrel. “There. It’s unarmed now. It’s not loaded. I’ll take the quarrel and put it in my pocket.” He took a cautious step forward, the quarrel still in his hand.

“Okay. You put that thing in your pocket, mister.”

Evan did as he was told, keeping a surreptitious eye on Thea. “I’ve done that” he called when the quarrel was tucked away.

“Right. The lady got any more of them?”

“Yes. In my pack!” Thea shouted resentfully. “They’re zipped in. I can’t reach them without taking off my pack.” This was untrue, but she was determined not to give up her crossbow.

“Then you can start walking up here, real slow. No talking between yourselves. You can walk nice and easy so’s I can get a better look at you. I don’t want no damn raiders or Pirates in here. You get me?”

Thea shot a look at Evan, who shrugged and started toward the largest house on the upper slope. He kept both of his hands in plain sight. Thea shook her head, but followed him through the snow, their progress marked by the undulating path of their shadows stark as ink at their feet.

When they were no more than twenty feet from the door the voice spoke again, sounding even more like a rusty hinge. “Come in one at a time: I want to check you over.”

“No,” Evan said quickly. “Both of us or none.”

“Maybe the lady feels differently,” said the voice slyly.

“I feel the same,” Thea said immediately. “Both of us or no one.”

There was a rustle in the house and then the voice spoke from farther back in the darkness. “Okay, you creeps, you can come in. But take it slow. No sudden moves. No talking. And no falling over or any of that. I know all those tricks. I’ll shoot you if you try anything.”

Thea and Evan exchanged one quick look, then entered the old house. The room they came into was obviously a bedroom on the second story of the building. Flowered wallpaper peeled like bark from the walls, and two wardrobes flanked the door, The rest was monastically simple, having a hard chair, a table, and a small stove, which glowed now with warmth and added a soft, ruddy light to that provided by a branch of candles.

“You can put them packs down,” the voice said from beyond the inner door. “But look you do it careful.”

“Look, old man,” Evan said, trying to be patient. “You ordered us up here. You’re the one with the gun. What do you think we’re—”

“I ain’t no old man!” shrieked the voice. There was a loud clang as the rifle fell to the floor, and in a moment a wizened old woman, her face as dark and twisted as a walnut, stormed into the room. She was dressed in a violent orange skiing jacket and electric blue thermal pants, which were tucked untidily into beautiful high suede hoots. Her sparse, filthy hair was elaborately set and cascaded around her face in greasy ringlets, a token to her vanished youth. She was almost as tall as Evan, and it was he she confronted.

“What do you mean, calling me a man. I am not, not a man.”

“Yes, I can see that,” Evan told her gently, wondering where she had got the clothes she wore. The smell of her was like a separate presence in the room.

She seemed to find Evan’s reaction flattering, for she giggled girlishly and struck a pose. “Do you like this? Real special. No one ever looked at me, back then.” She twirled on her toes. “Bet you haven’t seen an outfit like this before.”

“I haven’t,” Evan said truthfully. “Where did you get it?” He hoped that this strange old woman might be willing to give him extra information if she thought he admired her.

“This old rag? I’ve had it for years.” She coquetted in the doorway, touching her hair. “You can’t imagine what they left behind. When the Oroville Dam got blown up, before all that big flap about the radiation leaking in the dumps off the coast that cleared out the big cities, all the guests left…And they didn’t take their stuff, not all of it. So I took what I wanted.” Her old eyes grew dreamy. “It was wonderful, all those pretty things. And perfumes. And jewels.”

“Guests?” Evan asked, incredulous. By no stretch of the imagination could Oddle Bar have accommodated guests in over a hundred years. “Here?”

“Of course not, silly man. I worked at Squaw Valley, the place where they had the Winter Olympics, a long time ago. It was quite a place for a while. It had some bad times, too. But all the best people came there, in their fancy cars and furs. Some of them had posh houses in the Valley and some stayed at the hotels there. It was really something, mister. I worked there year around, taking care of closed houses when the hotel work was slow. But when the dam went, the troopers ordered us out of there; they said we’d have to go on Highway 50, not Highway 80, due to flooding. Most everyone packed up and skedaddled. I took my time leaving.” She touched her hair again, a delicate, primping gesture that was as ludicrous as it was frightening.

“Took your time? Didn’t the troopers make you leave with the others?” He knew that this was the question he was supposed to ask. and that her answer was something she would be very proud of.

“They couldn’t make me go: they couldn’t find me. Let me tell you. it was confusing there, all those rich people in their expensive cars, all of them scared about the bombs planted in the mountains. That’s what the troopers said, that there were bombs in the mountains and that they were going to blow them up. They did, too. You should’ve seen them run. Leaving tons of pretty things. I helped myself. There were all kinds of clothes left behind, all kinds. I got more’n three hundred outfits, some I haven’t even worn yet. They’re gonna last me a lifetime.” She laughed quite suddenly, showing dark brown stumps where her teeth had been.

“Three hundred?” Thea stopped in the door, watching the old woman with increasing alarm. She could feel the hair on her neck rise as she watched the old woman pout for them before crowing, “And they’re all mine! I chose them all—the prettiest clothes in the world!”

“You must enjoy them,” Evan said, making his face smile.

But already the old woman had shifted again. A crafty look stole into her bright eyes. “You said you come from Buck’s Lake. Where were you before that?”

“Portola,” Thea said before Evan could answer. “Out of Idaho.” Her eyes dared Evan to contradict her.

“You come a long way,” the old woman said carefully, measuring them from under her hooded lids. “I disremember the last time I got someone through here from Idaho. Must’ve taken a long time, coming all that way.”

Evan said, shrugging out of his pack. “We’re trying for the coast; if we can get to Truckee, we can follow the highway down.”

“Why’d you leave?” The question came like a gunshot.

Evan had an answer ready for her, but he hesitated, as if it were hard for him to talk. “You heard about that poison gas? That the Army buried out in the mountains?” He felt glad weakness come over him as the old woman favored him with a guarded nod.

“Well,” he said, deliberately pausing for effect. “It leaked.”

“Yep.” The old woman gave a rusty bray of laughter. “I know about that.

Had a bunch of folk through here just after it happened.”

What Evan had told her was true enough. Some of the Pirates had drifted in from that part of the country, telling stories of dead livestock, of ranchers and farmers killed by the air, lying rotting in the open, their faces blistered and burned.

“That was some time back,” the old woman recalled, reaching once again for her rifle.

“For the most part, it was,” Thea said, taking up the tale from Evan. “The big leaks, that is. But that gas spreads, like fog. In time it reached us. And some of the smaller containers didn’t rupture until later. We thought we could hold out in the mountains back of Twin Falls, but then, year before last, all the sheep died, and most of the birds, and the people a couple of miles away started to get sick. So we left. There wasn’t anything else we could do.” Thea was always surprised at how easily she could lie. It was as if she were outside herself, letting another woman live in her for the lie. She almost believed for an instant that she had really lived in Idaho and raised sheep.

“Too bad,” the old woman said perfunctorily. “But it won’t do you no good to go to the coast, It’s all dead down there. Been dead for years. And there’s Pirates all over the roads.

“Pirates?” Evan asked, as if the word were new to him.

“Yep. You know, raiders. They come in, take over, loot and all. Then, when they’ve used the place up, they burn it down and go on.” She chuckled. “But they ain’t never found me. Don’t know how to. Couldn’t get up here if they wanted to. Come to think of it, they did get as far as Graeagle last month, where all them golf people used to come. But them Pirates didn’t come up here.” Abruptly she sat on the floor, patting it. “Sit down. Sit down. You can relax. I ain’t gonna do nothing to you. You’re okay, I can see that. Sit down.”

Obediently Evan folded onto the floor, leaning back against his pack, seemingly at ease, but watching the old woman carefully.

“Tell me more about the Pirates. I haven’t heard about them.” He smiled as he said this while a cold fear gathered in him: he realized that the Pirates had to reach Graeagle through Quincy. He couldn’t bear to think of what had happened to Quincy.

“They’re a bad bunch, them Pirates. Mean, I tell you, they’re so mean they skin people, yep, they do. And make leather with the hides.” The old woman went on with her recital of the horrors the Pirates had committed, adding her own thoughts when the facts grew dull. She talked in the singsong way that people who talk to themselves often use. The words were so familiar to her that they had lost much of their meaning. Once started, she spoke in a rush, as if a dam had broken.

Thea listened to the babble in fear. The old woman was dangerous. She could feel it in the air. She was wrong. Try as she could, Thea could not rid herself of the deep conviction that the talkative old woman would harm them if she could.