Reapers (50 page)

"Those ain't my people."

"But I doubt they'd be fighting if not for you." He laughed harshly. "Thought so. Now drop your guns. Umbrella, too. That trick's as stale as a bag of prewar Ruffles."

She stared at his seeping fingernail. "Tilly used to have a dog named Max who got an infection just like that in his paw." She let her rifle fall to the ground. "Had to amputate when it went green."

"No more head games, Lucy. Don't forget the one on your ankle."

"He was a great dog. Would do anything for a treat." She unhooked her umbrella from the strap of her pack, knelt, and laid it across her foot to keep it out of the snow. She hiked up the shin of her jeans, revealing the little pistol, and laughed. "Tilly, you remember the trick we taught him for the talent show?"

Tilly nodded slowly. "Yeah."

Lucy ripped open the velcro strap and slung aside the .22. Empty-handed, she made a gun of her left hand and pointed it at Tilly. "Bang."

Tilly's eyes bulged. She dropped from Nerve's grasp like a stone, playing dead. Lucy rocked back, swinging up the barrel of the umbrella with her foot. Nerve shouted wordlessly and fired his gun through the space Tilly's head had just departed. Lucy grabbed the handle of the umbrella. He jerked the pistol toward her. With Tilly lying flat in the snow, Lucy pulled the trigger.

The recoil knocked her back into the snow. The shot sprayed a layer of Nerve's upper body to the seven winds. He staggered back, gasping, chest a landscape of red. His gun hand shook. Tilly scrambled for the pistol. Lucy chambered her second shell and fired. Nerve's forearm vanished. His hand flopped into the snow.

"Saved you a trip to the doctor." Lucy picked up the assault rifle and sighted in on his head.

"Nope," Tilly said. "This one's mine."

Nerve tried to speak but choked on the word. Tilly aimed the pistol and squeezed. His head jerked to the side. A stream of blood splashed the snow and steamed. The air smelled like burnt powder and flame-touched steel.

"Best move before someone comes to see who's shooting," Lucy said.

Tilly frowned at the body. "Wish there were some dogs around."

"What for?"

"Well, to eat him."

Lucy laughed and hung the rifle from her shoulder. "You're a sick one."

"Learned it from you."

"Anyway, in this city, there's plenty of rats happy to do the job." She started up Broadway. "Long walk ahead of us."

Tilly marched beside her, head craned to stare at Nerve's body, reassuring herself he was well and truly dead. "Where we headed?"

"I got a car stashed outside town. Been sitting in the cold awhile, but with any luck the battery's still good. If not, I guess it's a
really
long walk."

The girl laughed. "You had this all planned."

"Much as you can plan anything."

The towers looked down on them. There would never be another city like this. Maybe that was a good thing. She gave Central Park a wide berth, angling west to the highway fronting the Hudson. The snow on the wind-blown lanes was thinner than inside the city and it was the easiest walking Lucy had done in some time.

Safely away from the battle, she took stock of their condition. She was pretty tired. Might need a nap before she tried to drive. Meanwhile, Tilly didn't have a pack of any kind. Her feet would be soaked. Would need to find some spare socks and shoes on the way to the car. The snow could make the drive an adventure, too. Well, whatever. They'd deal with it when the time came.

They took a brief rest on 76th and Lucy shared some of the bread and mini-calzones she'd squirreled away from Sicily.

"What do you want to do once we get home?" Tilly said, crumbs stuck to her lips.

"Fall asleep for about a week."

She laughed. "After we've napped, feasted, and drank till we don't know who we are."

"I dunno," Lucy said. "With Distro gone, this city's going to be short on the finer things in life. You ever thought of becoming an entrepreneur?"

"Shit, Nerve never shut up about that stuff. I got a veritable crash course in marketing."

"You handle the business, I handle the grow." Lucy nodded and chewed off a rind of sourdough. "Get us a boat, sail up here two-three times a year. Sounds fun, right?"

They got up and continued on, going silent as they skirted Kono's uptown territory. Beyond the park, as they walked past a ritzy campus, they started telling each other about the last few weeks. Tilly had had a real time of it—soon as he'd learned about her, Nerve had kept her prisoner in the tower—but she didn't seem too shaken up by it. She laughed and marveled at Lucy's stories of getting shot, of seeing the aliens touching down in the marshy field, of battling Distro in the snowy woods of Central Park. Lucy left out a few parts, like when she shot the President of Manhattan, but by the time they reached the steel span of the George Washington Bridge, there was still plenty of story to tell.

Up on the bridge, two Fed soldiers came out from their shack, rifles slung over their chests.

"What's up, Phil?" Lucy said. "How y'all doing?"

Phil cocked his head. "When a pretty girl knows your name, it's always a good day. What can I do for you?"

"Just heading out of town. I found my friend. This here is Tilly."

Tilly smiled and stuck out her hand. "Pleased to meet you."

"Likewise," Phil winked.

His partner moved beside him. "Passports?"

Lucy patted her pocket. "Know what, my bag got stolen."

"I left mine in my room," Tilly said. "I didn't know we'd be leaving."

The second soldier frowned. He had dark brows and lips that never seemed to quit moving. "We can't let anyone through without a passport."

"I respect the law as much as the next man," Lucy said, "but there's been some extenuating circumstances. This morning, I helped your people assault Distro headquarters. My friend here was being held prisoner. We just want to get home to Florida."

"Not without papers."

"Man, you saw me come in here," Lucy said.

"We see lots of people." The man shifted his rifle. "Things have been heavy lately. If we don't do things by the book, we could face a court martial."

Phil gritted his teeth. "Listen, how about we run down to City Hall for the records?"

Lucy snorted. "By the time you get down there, they'll be closed. You're gonna walk all the way back here in the dark? Where are we supposed to sleep?"

Tilly's eyes darted between them. "Maybe we can find an apartment."

"So we get to freeze all night? What if someone catches up with us? Like one of Nerve's buddies who saw us take him down?"

The second soldier's face went guarded. "Were you involved in the commission of an assault?"

"For Pete's sake, he was a war criminal." She huffed, breath hanging in the air. "You want to head down to City Hall and satisfy your curiosity regarding our status, by my guest. Our names are Lucy Two and Tilly Loman. And we're going home."

The man moved around her. "I can't allow you to do that."

"Sure you can," Lucy smiled. "You're a big boy. You can do whatever you want."

She took Tilly's arm and clumped through the snow past the barricade. The day was overcast and the river looked as gray as molten lead. A single flake of snow tumbled past Lucy's face. She looked up and sighed at the clouds. A long day was about to get longer.

"
Stop!
" Phil screamed.

Something kicked Lucy in the back so hard her legs dropped from under her. At the same time, a gun went off. She slipped into the snow.

"Oh shit," she said.

"Lucy!" Tilly got down beside her, touching her back, her chest. The girl's hands came away bloody.

The second soldier stood in front of the barricade, rifle smoking, drooping from his hands like a spent erection. His eyes shined with the intensity of a mistake that can't be undone. His throat worked.

"I told you no!" He mashed his lips together. He raised the gun again.

To his right, Phil brought up his rifle and shot the man in the back of the head. The soldier toppled facedown into the snow.

"Lucy," Tilly said. "You been shot."

Lucy nodded numbly. "Got my legs."

"No, it's your back. You're bleeding." Tilly turned to Phil. "Come help her!"

Back down the bridge, Phil gaped at the body of his partner. He glanced at the girls, hands hanging from his sides, then ran away toward the city, snow flying from his shoes.

"Hey!" Tilly hollered. "God damn it!" She eased Lucy's pack from her shoulders and got out the spare shirt. "You got any scissors?"

"Left side pocket." Despair fluttered in her chest like a bat trapped in a bedroom. To have come so far and go down like this—trigger-happy psychopath who took her brush-off of the rules as a personal affront—she wanted to pound her fists and kick her heels, but her legs refused to move.

The scissors rasped as Tilly cut the shirt from her back. Tilly pressed the spare shirt against her wound, but the sensation stopped halfway down Lucy's skin. It felt like the one time her mom had taken her to the dentist. On the drive home, her mom had passed her a Coke. The drink was cold on half of Lucy's lip, but on the other half, she felt nothing at all. The Coke had dribbled down her face and beaded on her lap and her mom had laughed.

"Oh Jesus," Tilly said. "We got to get help. You stay right here, okay?"

"There's nobody there," Lucy said. "Just run, Tilly. Car's at the Knickerbocker Country Club. It's a Charger. Assholes painted it camo. I left the keys inside the back bumper."

"No! You listen and you listen good. You came all this way for me. After all you done, ain't no way in the world I'm going to leave you on this bridge." Tilly forced a smile to break across her blood-smudged face. "I know I don't have to tell you to be brave."

Tilly grabbed Lucy's rifle and sprinted back down the bridge into the city. Lucy shouted after her, but the noise came out a croak. She didn't know if she meant to command Tilly to turn around and run to the car or to beg her not to leave her alone.

Tilly's footsteps faded into the distance.

And Lucy understood she wasn't alone. She couldn't feel her legs or her belly, but she felt his breath on her neck, cold as the arctic wind. She had fallen with her back to Manhattan, but she torqued herself around, dropping on one elbow and grabbing her dumb thighs, pulling them around until she faced the city and the man with the scythe.

His cowl gazed down from the ashen clouds. His scythe was the river, a dull gunmetal sweep. His presence killed even the water in the air, hardening it into bone-white bits that swirled around her like slain flies. As cold as it must have been, she felt nothing but a perfect peaceful warmth.

And Lucy got it. His games had not been the thoughtless malice of a cat with a cricket. He had been testing her. Training her. Until she'd become his sweet blond angel. Ready and able to cut his swath across Manhattan and harvest its wicked crop. She had done her deed. Here, at last, was her reward.

As Lucy died, she remembered three things.

First, she remembered Mom laughing about the day she would die, because she always remembered this.

Second, she remembered when Vic Loman had asked her to always look out for Tilly. Lucy had sworn with such hot vehemence that the life flooded back to his eyes and she thought, for just a moment, that her promise had cured him. The life and light faded from his eyes not sixty seconds later, but the smile twinkling in them lasted past the end. She remembered that look whenever she needed to be strong.

Last, she remembered something from so long ago she couldn't be sure it wasn't a dream. She was young. A grassy field. She'd wandered far from home but knew her mother wouldn't notice. The grass was so green she tried to eat it but it tasted no good. The sun was as warm as a hug. A forest grew from the end of the clearing and Lucy ran to it but stopped in awe.

The forest buzzed and thrummed and pulsed. A sea of sound swept her forward. She ran into the woods and the trees were alive: their skins writhing with wings and legs, each little piece piping its own note, until ten million different tunes became one vast song. She laughed but the forest's noise was so dense she couldn't hear herself. Each step she took stirred a cloud of whirring bugs, but the song played on, too big to ever be broken, vibrating down to the core of her heart. She stayed inside it until the sun went away, then went home to her empty house.

As soon as she woke up the next morning, she ran back to the clearing and stopped on her heels. The woods had gone silent. In the shadow of the canopy, she walked on empty shells—but when she closed her eyes, she could still hear the forest singing. Letting her know that a song, like a life, will always play in the hearts of those who were there to hear it.

She'd been so young, she'd forgotten all about it. Because she hadn't needed to remember until now.

On the bridge to the island, snow touched Lucy's face and melted into streams. You might have thought she was crying, but you would have been wrong.

EPILOGUE

When she saw her house, Ellie stopped so suddenly the sheriff plowed into her back, knocking them both down. They laughed, snow soaking their backsides, and helped each other to their feet.

Hobson grinned down the trail. "Forget you'd put that there, did you?"

She brushed snow from her pants. "I never knew how much a home could mean to me."

The four of them watched it a moment, as if it might jump up and leave, then continued along the trail to the north of the lake.

Three days after leaving New York, a warm wind had blown in from the southwest, stealing the snows from the fields. Puddles riffled shin-deep by the shoulders of the highway. Birds splashed in the melt and pecked at soil they hadn't seen in weeks. After so long slogging around in snowshoes and soggy socks, walking on hard pavement with dry feet felt like flying.

They took advantage of the melt to do some hunting. The deer were out in force, nibbling exposed shoots. Dee knocked one down first try. They took a day to clean and dress it, to salt and smoke as much of the meat as they could and roast a full haunch then and there. The fresh meat tasted like it had been born for them.