Reapers (28 page)

In the front yard, Hobson walked awkwardly across the surface of the drifts, round wicker shoes flapping on his feet. He lifted one foot and rapped its rim with his cane. "Stylish, wouldn't you agree? I daresay we'll be the talk of Fleet Street."

Dee laughed. Ellie asked to see the design. It was a rough job, but effective: he'd framed the rims with thick wicker and tied it to the main body of the shoe with shoelaces and fishing line looted from one of the rods in the garage. From there, he'd braced the wicker with broken-off pieces of yardstick, and finalized the design by threading the wicker through with belts, which they could strap firmly over their normal shoes.

While he set to work on the next pair, Ellie ran triage on the bike trailer. They'd have to cut back to bare essentials. She ditched the tent. Along the Hudson down to the city, there would be little space between towns, and many of them would be outright contiguous. Finding a roof shouldn't be a problem. She set aside all but one jug of water, too. Between the snow and the river, they'd be fine until they entered the city.

Piece by piece, she winnowed their supplies to the marrow. Food. Blankets. Spare clothes and shoes. Two knives apiece. Their trading goods. Some cordage and spare chair slats for snowshoe repair. The emergency kits. A single pot, and one bowl per person, which would also function as a cup.

Between their late wakeup and Hobson's work on the shoes, it was clear they wouldn't be leaving that day. As she sorted gear, she assigned Dee to chop wood and pile it at the back of the house. When Ellie finished setting up their packs, she swept the snow from the back patio, lit a fire, and boiled the entire jar of rice. The carbs would be good for the trek and as cold as it was, there was no chance the leftovers would go bad before they finished them. Anyway, they might not be in position to do much cooking for a while.

Hobson finished the third set of shoes by dusk, then spent the evening tweaking them, reinforcing the frames and straps. As the light vanished, the snowfall resumed, but it was spotty and small, bright silver motes that added no depth to the white coat enfolding the world.

"I'm hoping it'll take a week," Ellie said. The fireplace was bright and the room smelled like smoke and the mildewy water drying from their socks. "Keep your eyes out for game. We'll need it."

Dee rested her chin on her knee. "In school they told us people can go weeks without food."

"Not when they're burning four thousand calories a day pretending to be Arctic hares."

"Leather
is
edible," Hobson said. "Provided it's sufficiently boiled."

Ellie left it at that. They'd made their decision. At this point, they were closer to the city than the lakes. Either they'd make it or they wouldn't.

They went to bed early enough to be up and ready by dawn. They ate rice warmed over the fire and the last of the venison jerky. Ellie's pack was heavy but bearable. They strapped on their snowshoes and walked toward the highway.

The shoes helped immensely, but Ellie soon learned they'd be lucky to make it to the city inside a week. The snow was fluffy and the snowshoes sank several inches. They soon shifted to a single-column formation, but the person at the head had to break a trail, smoothing and compacting the snow for the followers. Her calves lost strength rapidly. They cycled the lead position every thirty to sixty minutes.

Once, they saw a brown rabbit watching from the side of the road, but Ellie missed her shot and it bounded into the snow. At twilight, a mallard and his mate squawked toward the river, wings pumping like mad, but their bullets sailed harmlessly wide.

Ellie threw her rifle over her shoulder. It smelled like spent powder. "Would help if I could hit more than atmosphere."

"A bird on the wing with a rifle?" Hobson said. "You're a farmer, not John Wayne."

"It doesn't matter. I need to be better than this."

She was still angry when they went to bed in a farmhouse. The next afternoon, the sun poked out for the first time in days, but its weak rays did nothing to diminish the snow. They made fewer miles than the first day. Dee complained about her calves and they rested four different times. Ellie's hurt just as bad, but she forced herself to press on. They sheltered the night in a home just off the road. It was small, but that was better. Easier to heat. She plucked pine cones from the yard and they dug out the seeds with their knives.

On the third day, the rice ran out. Ellie was hungry from the moment she got up till the minute she went to bed. They needed more food than they'd been eating; they were only advancing about fifteen miles a day, but each one was grueling. The best pine cones yielded just a dime-sized pile of seeds and extracting them was laborious. But with such sparse game, and snow covering anything green, that was how they spent their nights, prying seeds lose with the tips of their knives while the fire crackled and their socks steamed. Ellie passed around the chocolate she'd meant to barter. She hadn't eaten chocolate in two years and it tasted so sweet it hurt her mouth.

She watched the horizons for smoke and the towns for signs of life: anywhere she could trade her tea and silver for bread and meat. Near Kingston, a column of smoke climbed to meet the gray clouds, but it was in the western foothills a half day's walk through the woods. Any survivors from these lands had moved away from the road or learned to hide the evidence of their lives.

No sooner had the sun come up than Dee shot a squirrel from the tree. As Ellie dressed it, forcing Dee to observe and learn, Hobson blasted a rabbit across the road. He cleaned it and they built a fire and spitted the meat and ate right there. It was greasy and gamey, but after a day of nothing but pine nuts, it tasted like fresh honey.

After that, they didn't eat for two days.

They soon grew silent, focused on the snow ahead, on smoothing a trail for the two behind them, on the grumbling of their guts and the aches in their legs and heads. With an hour of daylight left, they quit marching to scour the homes of a subdivision, but the canned corn they turned up was bulging with botulism.

Ellie stood on the front porch and stared at the snow-clogged street. At the corner, a yellow lab bounded from behind a home, snow spraying with each jerky leap. Ellie raised her rifle and set her eye behind the scope.

"What are you doing?" Dee said behind her.

Ellie lowered the gun. "Thought it was chasing a rabbit."

That night, she ate more pine nuts. She could feel the hollowness in her belly but it no longer hurt. She dreamt she swept the snow away from the back garden and revealed a potato casserole, still warm. Ellie knew it wasn't a sign—it couldn't be—but when she woke, she went out back with a snow shovel and dug down to the grass.

At best, they were halfway to New York. The snow was an inch or two shallower than it had been outside Albany but still deep enough to snarl bicycles. She figured it would be another five days on foot. With their stomachs empty and their muscles flagging, they wouldn't make it.

While Dee was out using the bathroom and brushing her teeth, Hobson walked up beside Ellie. "Well?"

"Well what?" she said.

"As to the matter of our impending starvation."

"We'll find something."

"Perhaps we could hasten that process by dedicating half a day to a deer hunt."

She scowled into the glare of the snow. "Seen any tracks?"

"A few," he said, voice pitched high with the concession that he might be generous with his estimate. "And I doubt the game warden will fine us if we happen to bag a doe."

She laughed dryly. "How can there be so much land and so little to eat?"

"There's plenty to eat. The problem is nature has helpfully preserved it beneath a foot of goddamn snow."

"My fear is we go out to hunt and come back with nothing. Meanwhile, there could be a populated settlement two miles down the road, or wasteland all the way to New York. What's the right move?"

He rubbed his hand across his salt and pepper stubble. "That's the conundrum, isn't it? All we can do is guess."

"I'm not much for guessing."

"So I gathered." The back door slammed. Dee scuffed her boots. Hobson raised his eyebrows. "So?"

"We'll see what the road brings today." Ellie wasn't certain she was making the right call, but the act of deciding brought strength back to her nerves. "If it's more nothing, we'll hunt tomorrow. Wait any longer and we might not have the energy."

"Fortunately for us, it doesn't take much get up and go to sit behind a tree and wait for a buck to snort." He clapped her shoulder. "We'll make it, Ellie."

"What are you guys talking about?" Dee said.

"Think we'll try hunting tomorrow," Ellie said. Maybe it was just the tan she'd earned from the sun on the snow, but Dee's cheeks looked sharper. "Some venison would be pretty good about now, right?"

"Right now, a pig's asshole would taste pretty good."

"Jesus!"

"Wouldn't it? Some butter and pepper? Sweet potatoes on the side?"

Ellie refused to dignify that. Especially since denying it would be a lie. They strapped on their snowshoes and hefted their packs and continued into the white.

The cars on the shoulder of the highway were suggestions of steel under snowy drapes. Ellie's knees didn't want to lift, but she forced herself to smooth the trail, one step after another, using the rote repetition of her feet to prevent her head from dwelling on the emptiness of her stomach. She had never been without food for so long. Not even after the collapse. If anything, it had been easier then. Such a swift and total end that kitchens and pantries were full of cans and jars and sealed bags. Every house you visited yielded a new buffet.

But those days were gone. The leftovers had spoiled or been devoured. The old world was now as bereft as the blank plains of the Hudson Valley. You coaxed your life from that, or you starved.

They had done that, the people of the lakes. Even George, troubled as his farm became, had built a lasting corner for himself. He and Quinn hadn't wanted, not truly; Ellie's farm produced enough for the lot of them. Self-sufficient, independent, they would have been immune to the tricks and temptations of outsiders.

But George's shortcuts doomed him. His pride ate holes in that armor of self-sufficiency. He couldn't bring himself to rely on Ellie—whether because she was a woman, or simply a person who wasn't himself—no matter how temporarily, no matter how close their two families were to becoming one. So the offer of the men in the black fedoras had penetrated that armor like a crossbow bolt: take on our line of credit, and everything you deserve can become yours.

It was a hook like any other, attached to a transparent line of terrible strength. And the mouth at the end was always hungry.

A fat flake of snow struck her face. She blinked, then laughed. Gone delirious with hunger. She breathed, bringing herself back. And saw a column of smoke not long to the west.

She stopped and pointed. "Smoke."

Tired and hungry, the others had been paying all their attention to their feet. They looked up, wary, as if language could no longer be trusted.

Hobson's whole face brightened. "How interesting."

"People?" Dee said.

"Has to be." Ellie brought her binoculars to her face and saw black. She'd left the lens cap on. She pulled it off and tried again. The woods were much too dense, but she didn't need to see the house to know it was there. The smoke of a forest fire would form a plane. This was a single rising line.

"Shall we approach?" Hobson said. "Or do you deem it too risky?"

"Everything we do now is a risk." She capped her binoculars, oriented herself to the hills, and stepped off the road.

Scattered snowflakes sieved through the trees. A squirrel chided them from the branches and Ellie reached for her gun, then thought perhaps it wouldn't do to be shooting at things on their way to a stranger's home. It smelled of snow, like always, but within ten minutes, she smelled smoke, too. Somehow, it reminded her of bacon. Her stomach sprang to life with a fierce ache.

The home waited in a clearing of tree trunks and drifted snow. Its lower windows were boarded over and the side of the yard was filled with trucks in various states of dismantling. A pillar of gray smoke unfurled from the chimney. The home was painted dull brown with irregular black zebra stripes—woodland camouflage.

"Careful," Ellie said. "But try not to look like you're being
too
careful."

"What?" Dee said.

Ellie opened her mouth to holler a greeting. The front door parted before she got out a single word. A man stood in the doorway, bearded, rifle in hand. "Keep your hands where I can see them."

"We're out of food," Ellie said.

"Eat each other. Problem solved."

"I've got trade. Gold, silver—"

He snorted, breath misting in the cold. "I'm a man, not a crow. I don't give a shit about shiny rocks."

"Coffee," she tried. "Tea. Some medicine, maybe."

"'Maybe' like St. John's nonsense? Or the good stuff?"

"Pharmaceutical. And 'maybe' as in I don't want to give it up."

"There's a reason 'pain' starts with 'pay.'" He glanced between them. "Where you from?"

"Up north."

The man smiled. "You ask inside our home, but all you'll trust us with is 'up north'?"

"Albany," she said. The lie was instinctive, and she knew at once it was a bad one. Her mind had seized the first name that wandered through it. It was the kind of mistake she could only have made after days of nonstop effort without food.

"Albany," he said, before she could backtrack, rolling the word around his mouth like a piece of hard candy. He was early middle-aged and had an upstate accent whose stretched vowels sounded tailor-made for bellowing across the wooded valleys of New York. "What brings you down here?"

"Looking for someone."

"Bet you are," he mused. He tipped his head toward the house. "Come on in."

They filed up the steps, Hobson taking up the rear. As he entered, the man scanned the yard, face somber, and closed the door. With the windows boarded, the front rooms rested in twilight; in the back of the house, the kitchen was bright with snow-reflected sun.