Reapers (29 page)

Ellie more or less stopped functioning as soon as they got inside. The whole house smelled like roasting chicken.

"Let me grab my wife," the man said.

He left them alone in the kitchen where a round-topped wood-fired oven crisped the skin of a bird that had been born for Ellie to eat. Her mouth flooded with saliva. Between the smoke, the smell, and the sudden warmth after hours of cold marching, Ellie was mesmerized. The few non-food thoughts she was capable of fielding were directed toward restructuring the remainder of their trip. If they bartered for enough food that they wouldn't have to forage, they could make the city in five days. Four, if they pressed hard. Meanwhile, the odds of dying in an emaciated huddle in the middle of the road receded beyond the horizon.

"God damn slavers," a woman said behind them.

Ellie whirled. A young woman faced them, eyes wide-set and furious. She pointed a double-barreled shotgun at Ellie's chest. Behind her, the bearded man walked across the linoleum, steel handcuffs glinting in his hands.

19

"Lucy?" Tilly clung hard to the wall at the edge of the roof, listing like the tower had tilted twenty degrees. "What did you do to me?"

"I drugged you, idiot." Lucy strolled across the rooftop. "Now be a good girl and go to sleep."

Tilly's eyes were as wild as a newborn foal's and her knees were just as weak; when she tried to bolt, her leg wobbled and she sat down hard. "Ow."

"Hold still before you hurt yourself."

Tilly blinked and slapped at the ground, dragging herself toward the doorway. Lucy sighed and stepped in front of her. Tilly smacked at her shins, limp-handed, then slumped to her back and tried to roll through Lucy like a log on a slope. She banged into Lucy's legs and rocked to a stop.

"He'll come for me," the girl slurred. Her eyes were outlined with kohl like an Egyptian queen. "He'll rescue me. You'll
rue
it."

Lucy laughed. "Rue what, precisely?"

"All that which is rueful." Tilly gazed up at the clouds and stars, breathing shallowly. Lucy folded her arms and waited. Tilly's eyes closed. She snored softly.

Lucy went to the edge of the roof for a look at the street, then picked Tilly up and slung her halfway over her shoulder, smelling peach perfume. At the door, Lucy shifted her weight to free her hand and open it, then trudged onto the landing.

She had a problem. The stairs were pitch black. And there were a lot of them. Tilly weighed on her like a sack of oats; no way she could carry a candle and her friend's fat ass.

After a moment's thought, she plunked Tilly on the landing, fired up a candle, set it on the landing below, then went back up for Tilly. Bracing herself against the wall, she plodded down the steps, bearing Tilly to the landing below the candle, where it was now too dark to proceed. She lowered Tilly, caught her breath, went up for the candle, and brought it to the landing below the unconscious girl, who she then picked up again and bore another flight lower until the light got too wimpy to go on.

It was a hell of a lot of work. Especially heaving Tilly up off the cement each time. But it beat the tar out of stumbling in the dark and breaking both their necks. The stairwell was nearly as cold as the night, but by the time she got downstairs, she was damp with sweat, tremble-legged, and utterly out of breath.

She rested on the lobby's cool tile, Tilly sprawled beside her. Among her other preparations, she'd gone to a gardening supply store for a wheelbarrow, which she'd left in the front corner of the lobby where Tilly would be unlikely to see it. Or to care, even if she did notice. All kinds of junk was abandoned at odd places around the city. The cause was obvious: with all this free shit lying around, scavengers gathered it up by the packload, only to swiftly decide that it was too heavy, bulky, or outright useless to carry after all. As a result, debris was scattered hither and yon, and tended to pile up at places where transportation was difficult (such as stairs; Lucy had had to clean this building's stairwell top to bottom before enacting her plan) or where a sudden case of reality set in (like outside doorways, where people remembered just how long of a walk they had ahead of them, or at curbs, where they tried to hop on bikes and discovered they were too top-heavy to continue). After a while, you got to where you hardly noticed, but every now and then, when you stumbled over a speaker on a staircase or a herd of Beanie Babies on the sidewalk, you'd swear that, now all the humans were gone, the objects had decided to get up and walk around like the tiger in
Calvin and Hobbes
.

As soon as Lucy had the strength to stand again, she hoisted Tilly inside the wheelbarrow, careful not to whack the girl's lolling head on the metal rim, shouldered her pack, and pushed her way out the front door, rubber wheel bouncing down the steps.

She grinned at the night. The next few miles would be a bitch, but they were all that stood between her and getting out of this wretched place.

She got less than a block before footsteps pounded down the street.

Lucy swerved into the nearest storefront and leaned around the corner. Five men ran down the street and headed straight for the apartment she'd just extracted Tilly from. One of the runners kept his back so straight it didn't look like he was moving at all. Dark as it was, Lucy knew that stillness anywhere. Nerve.

He headed into the apartment building with two of the men. The other pair stayed outside, eyes on the street. Tilly made a choking noise, like she was gagging on her own spit. Lucy grabbed her chin and turned it sideways and the noise stopped.

Five minutes later, Nerve walked out the front door and spoke to his people. While two remained streetside, the other three went door to door. Lucy wheeled Tilly inside the store. It smelled heavily of leather. Coats hung from racks, but others had been cast to the floor, snarling the lanes. She powered through them and located a staircase that fed into the upstairs apartments. Quietly as she could, she ran up to the third floor, found an unlocked door, stashed her bag, and came back for Tilly, whose white shins dangled from the edges of the wheelbarrow, legs spread most unladylike. Outside, men called back and forth, growing nearer.

Lucy picked Tilly up. Her back twinged. Halfway up the third floor, she slipped on a step and crashed down on the side of her foot. Her ankle collapsed. Pain rifled up her ligaments. Somehow, she hung tight to Tilly, mashing the girl into the wall to prevent them both from falling. Someone shouted, muffled. Using the wall for support, Lucy slid upright. White heat shot directly from her leg to her brain, but the initial pain had already begun to fade, and she forced herself to climb on. Tilly's warm body dragged her down like a thousand pounds of sun-baked sidewalk. She got to the third floor landing, gasped for breath, then limped her way to the apartment and locked the door.

She threw Tilly down on the bed, generating a cloud of dust, and slumped her back against the door. Tears of pain slid down her cheeks. Things had gone from swell to fucked in a hurry. Tilly must have left the forged note in her apartment. Nerve found it, saw his faked handwriting, gathered his people, and ran straight for the address. That was some garbage luck right there. Ten more minutes and she'd have been half a mile away. Another hour and she could have been up into Kono territory. Ghosted, gone.

She went to the window and parted the blinds. Two men had run off to have a scout around, but the others continued their methodical sweep of the street. They weren't in much hurry. But she'd left a time on the note, too. Nerve would know she couldn't have gotten far.

"Tilly?" he called, voice echoing down the channels between the buildings. "Are you there?"

Lucy smiled harshly. He would delay her, that's all. Soon as they moved on, she'd wheel Tilly across the river, load her in the trunk, and drive on back home.

Something thumped heavily to the floor. Beside the bed, Tilly swayed on her hands and knees, head hanging, drooling on the carpet.

"Where are we?" she said, spit gleaming on the corner of her mouth.

"What kind of bum drugs did that boy sell me?" Lucy said. "I just sent you under not thirty minutes ago!"

"Tilly!" Nerve called.

"Is that him?" Tilly tried to stand and fell to her knees. She looked up at Lucy, hair dangling down her eyes, and laughed like such a Hollywood imbecile it made Lucy want to cry. "I told you he'd come for me. He loves me."

"You're drugged," Lucy said.

She laughed some more. "He's gonna be so mad at you."

"He won't have the chance."

"Think so? I think when I scream my little lungs out, he'll come running like the wind."

Lucy clenched her teeth. "You keep your mouth shut."

"Or what?" Tilly grinned. "You'll shoot me?"

"I'll shoot
him
." She grabbed her umbrella from beside the door. "Moment he steps in the door, I'll sponge-paint the walls with his guts."

Tilly's face grew somber. "You can't do that. I'll warn him."

"Then maybe I'll bash your teeth in. I never made no promises about saving
those
."

The other girl blinked heavily, mouth hanging half open. "What are you talking about?"

"Quit talking or you'll find out."

Miraculously, Tilly obeyed. On the street, men went in and out of fast food joints and dress shops and discount shoe outlets, giving each store no more than a minute or two before moving to the next. Weren't going door to door, then. About time she caught a break.

"What do you think happens next?" Tilly said, more quiet and lucid than before.

"Once they get tired of hunting for your replaceable ass, we walk on out of here."

"I'm not leaving the city."

Lucy braced her umbrella across her knees and put on a special-big grin. "I'm afraid you don't have a choice."

Tilly rolled her eyes. "And then what, genius?"

"We take a walk across the river. I got a car parked over there. Town's got the most ridiculous name you ever heard."

"
After
that. Back home. You think I'll be grateful? That I'll learn my lesson? Jesus, do you think we're
friends
?"

Lucy looked from the window. "How do you mean?"

"We barely spoke the last year!"

"Friends don't need to see each other every day. We were off doing our own things, that's all."

Tilly laughed sickly, then touched her temple. "My head hurts, you dumb bitch."

Lucy rooted around in her pack and flipped Tilly a white pill. "Here."

"What's this?"

"You think I'm gonna drug you again?"

"Don't try to play innocent with me. I know you far too well."

"It's Advil." Anger welled up inside Lucy. "What's your problem?"

The girl shook her head and dry-swallowed the pill. "Don't even start."

"Is this about Lloyd?"

"My boyfriend? Why would you think that?"

From the window, Lucy thrust her finger at Tilly's chest. "Ex."

"You think that makes it better? What kind of fool doesn't know you don't go after a girl's ex?"

"There aren't exactly many dudes around town these days. You expect me to cross state lines every time I want some dick?"

Tilly snorted and looked to the ceiling in disbelief. "Do you have any idea how selfish you are?"

"You should talk," Lucy said. "You're the one who fucked Jordan Brewster."

Her eyes snapped to Lucy's. "I did not!"

"That's what I told him when he was bragging around school. Then he told me about the scar on your butt. The one you got from the nail on the dock."

Tilly squeezed her temples, eyes shut, voice gone weary. "We didn't have sex. I went down on him. Didn't even take my bra off."

"And even though he was gonna be my first boyfriend, I forgave you. Boys are just boys. There's always a new one. They're nothing to wreck a friendship over."

"This isn't about Jordan or Lloyd or any other
boy
, Lucy. Sometimes the past just adds up. For me, that town is nothing but bad memories."

"Well, I don't believe that at all," Lucy said. "That's where you grew up."

"Exactly!" Tilly laughed. "You should know all about it. The way the other kids treated you? That's where you want to stay your whole life?"

"We had fun, too. What about the Sunday we went down to the river and we fished and swam around and dried off on the rocks? And while we were lying there, you said what if we just never left? So we stayed the night, even though we had school the next day and your parents would be worried sick."

"They cussed me blue. Surprised they didn't slap me red, too."

"Or when Myra Lowe got that Mercedes for her birthday. Remember? It wasn't even new, but she was so snotty about it. Gunning it out of the parking lot. Swearing at us when we were walking home. But I knew she kept her keys in her locker, so you said we should teacher her a lesson about—what was it, 'the temporal nature of material things'?—and we stole them, and you drove that Mercedes right out of the school lot. Drove around town until it was running on fumes, then you crashed it into the ditch!"

Tilly frowned. "Lucy, that's not how it happened."

Lucy quit cackling. "They had to winch it out. Whole front end was as busted as Myra. Remember?"

"I said we should park it in the lot behind the school to give her a scare. You're the one who was driving. When you drove it into the ditch, I swear to God I thought I was going to die."

"I don't think so. I think you were driving."

Tilly shook her head. "You cut your eyebrow on the steering wheel. You probably still got the scar."

Lucy thumbed a small ridge on her eyebrow. Down in the street, two men approached their building and disappeared inside. "Well, I know this much. You were there with me, and you were enjoying yourself."

"Whatever. I don't care about what happened then. That's the whole point."

"You can't do that!" Lucy bolted upright. Something clunked down on the street. Her survival instincts squeezed her wrath dead; it evaporated, leaving her pain crystallized and inert. Her voice, a shout just seconds before, was steady and low. "You were my friend. The only one I ever had besides my cat, and he didn't have a choice. Then one day you quit on me without a word. Well, you can't do that. You owe me."