Reapers (51 page)

The thaw didn't last. Ten miles past Albany, another storm rolled in, dumping four inches of wet, heavy snow onto the woods and fields. Ellie sighed and passed out the snowshoes she'd continued to carry just in case.

But it was nothing like the blizzard that had hit them on the way down. And though Hobson and Quinn tired easily, Ellie had no worries. They had all the time they needed. She and Dee carried the packs and took turns breaking trail through the snow. Ellie intended quite seriously to never make a trip like this again, but if events conspired to break her vow, she'd make sure to drag Dee along with her.

Though she expected Dee would require little if any convincing.

Twelve days after jogging away from Yankee Stadium, they'd reached Ellie and Dee's house and, after taking a long look and brushing off the snow from Hobson's tumble, they continued straight to George's. He stood outside his front door, staring straight at them, as if he'd been waiting there the whole while.

"Quinn!" George scrambled from the porch. Quinn dropped Dee's hand and ran. The two men smacked into each other, clapping backs, laughing like old fools. They parted and George's eyes shined as strong as the lake in July. "Are you okay?"

Quinn shrugged his narrow shoulders. "They didn't feed me too good. I could hardly keep up with this crew."

"Spring planting will fix you right up," George winked. He shook hands with the sheriff, hugged Dee, and moved to face Ellie. "You did it." He smiled, but the lines around his eyes were deep and sad. "I should have gone with you."

Ellie shook her head. "We didn't know he'd been taken. Someone had to stay and search."

"I looked every day." He gazed across his fields and the trees beyond. "Did Old Man Winter take it out on the city as bad as he did the mountains?"

Hobson rolled his eyes. "As if the five boroughs had conspired to commit treason."

George laughed, shoulders bouncing. He covered his face with his hand to hide his tears. Quinn embraced him.

Dee moved beside Ellie and whispered in her ear. "Thank you."

* * *

When Tilly ran back to the bridge with the man who claimed to be a surgeon, she found Lucy gazing up at the clouds. Snow frosted the lashes of her eyes. She was smiling like she'd never quit.

The doctor set down his bag. "I'm sorry."

Tilly sank beside her and took Lucy's hand. The fingers were cool but the palm was still warm. "It's not fair. She was tougher than anyone I knew. How come one stupid bullet can erase all that?"

"Most likely because it was traveling at two thousand feet per second." The surgeon sighed and rubbed his face. "Sorry. Long day. Would you like help with the burial?"

"No." Tilly wiped the tears and snot from her face. She probably looked a fright. She felt guilty for having the thought. Lucy would have smacked her. Or more likely lashed her with a phrase that would ring in her ears for weeks. "You can't put her in the ground like some damn rutabaga. This girl burned like a forest fire."

They smashed down the soldiers' shack and laid the timbers in a pyre. She found a lighter in Lucy's bag, lit a candle, then used that to get the fire going.

"My daddy would be so proud of you," Tilly whispered.

And then, knowing it was what Lucy would have done, she turned and walked away.

The car was right where Lucy said it would be. It was reticent to start, dying as soon as Tilly quit turning the key. She didn't know what she'd do if it refused to kick over.

"Walk, shithead." Lucy's voice was so clear in her mind she busted up laughing. After three more tries, the engine caught, grumbling exhaust through the garage.

It wasn't what you'd call a fun drive, but the snow gave out around Washington. From there, she tried to take it in one fell swoop, but pulled over the first time she nodded off. After what Lucy'd been through for her, she didn't dare fall asleep at the wheel.

She rolled into town on fumes, having burnt every last gallon from the jugs in the trunk. Her house was right there where she'd left it. Some possums had broken in and crapped up the place, but after a couple days of sweeping and scrubbing, she had it all back to normal.

In town, the same people as ever were still kicking around. Beau. Lloyd. A few new faces drawn to the rumble of the boys' motors and the easy crops and fishing. Lloyd came around some, but she sent him away.
He
hadn't tried to bring her back. In a way, this whole fuck-up was his fault. If he'd been able to keep it in his goddamn pants around Tilly's best friend, Tilly would never have felt compelled to run off to the city—and Lucy wouldn't have had to chase her down.

At the same time, she knew she owed it to Lucy to live like the night would never end, but she didn't deserve it. Because it was her own fault, too. After a while, Lloyd and the others quit coming around.

She did what she needed to get by. Farmed the yard and those around her. Fished from the docks. Sleep, work, eat, shit. Didn't seem worth it. Summer came, humid and awful. She had taken the rifle and the umbrella with her from the city and on most nights she sat on the back porch listening to the bugs with the moonlight glinting from the steel.

Would be so easy. But the thought of being found in the grass beside a loaded umbrella was so stupid it made her stomach hurt.

The night she came closest—out of her head on moonshine, katydids screaming from the trees—and found out the barrel of the umbrella tasted like cool blood, she ran to her daddy's grave for answers, tripping in the unkempt grass. And she found that he was as dead as everyone else. She slept there, careless whether she woke again.

The following hangover was the kind you told your grandkids about. Her knees were scraped. Palms muddy. Legs itchy with bug bites. Mouth as dry as Morocco. Lucky she hadn't pitched headfirst into the creek.

There was no magic moment. She didn't think life worked that way. But bit by bit, little by little, the crushing weight eased from her chest. She scared up some paint and redid her house. Started to fence in the neighboring yard. It was there that Lloyd found her, dirt clinging to the sweat on her forearms, hair plastered flat to her temples and neck.

"Ain't seen you in a while," he said. "Heard the work."

"Gonna farm me some pigs."

He got a real dubious look on his long face. "Pigs?"

She stood and arched the small of her back. "Everyone's got to do their part to move the world forward. I mean to bring back bacon."

Lloyd nodded, swiveling his head to take in the dig. "Need a hand?"

She squinted into the sun. He wasn't the brightest of men, and she had historical doubts about his fidelity, but there was an earnestness to him that might flower into a person you could spend time with. "Who doesn't?"

He grinned and walked across the yard.

* * *

It was a lovely ceremony—and simple. A few friends from Lake Placid and the farms around Saranac. A table of George's fried chicken, Ellie's bread and cake, Dee's potato salad, and Sam Chase's fresh-caught whitefish curry, the existence of which shocked Ellie on multiple levels. It was held not in a flower-strewn gazebo erected for the occasion, but there in the grass on the island with the tower.

Hobson said he was not only a sheriff, but an ordained minister. Ellie didn't know about that—over the course of their brief acquaintance, he'd also claimed to be a cop, a P.I., a professor, and an airplane mechanic—but no one could prove otherwise, and he acquitted himself with the same cheery aplomb he applied to all things, be it toasting his morning bread or being taken prisoner by New York gangsters. His ceremony was agreeably non-denominational. At the end, Dee and Quinn kissed, then smushed Ellie's cake in each other's faces.

George walked up to her while the kids were still laughing. "It is my life's goal to make you as proud to be a part of my family as I am to be a part of yours."

Ellie hid her smile. "How long did it take you to think that up?"

"Three days," he laughed. "But it's true."

"Look at him." She nodded at Quinn, who scooped Dee up, white dress trailing, and ran with her for the shore. She wrestled from his grip and shoved him back, pointing at her dress. He pressed his palms together in apology, then flung his arms wide and fell back into the lake, tuxedo and all. "You raised the only son here who can keep up with my daughter."

George grinned, surprised, and fetched a handkerchief from his vest pocket to dab at his eye. "You'll have to excuse me. I believe I took a stray piece of cake to the left orbital."

Ellie was about to snort, but with sudden and terrifying clarity, she understood that, within a handful of years—if not months—she would become a grandmother.

* * *

Two years later, she walked out to the back porch. The night was so hot you'd think they'd broken nine sins, and Lloyd was enjoying one of the homebrewed beers that had made him the most popular man in town.

She sighed noisily. "One little sip?"

He crooked a brow. "You think?"

"How about you just wave it under my nose?"

He laughed and pushed himself up from the cushioned chair they'd liberated from a neighbor. The beer inside the bottle was room temperature. She missed the way cold bottles used to sweat. Lloyd brought the mouth under her nose and wafted it back and forth.

She inhaled deeply. "God, I can't wait to get this thing out of me."

He laughed some more. "Well, we got to come up with a name first."

"I got that covered. If it's a girl, we'll call her Lucy Three."

"Is that so?" he said. "And if it's a boy?"

"You kidding? Lucas."

He swigged his beer, fortifying himself for an argument, then sighed and laughed and set his fists on his hips. "There's no escaping that girl, is there?"

"We should pray ours is half as tough."

"Mm. Just so long as she ain't
too
much like her."

"No," Tilly said. She laughed so loud it came out like a honk. "Lord, no. With Lucy, a little went a long way."

But she missed her still, sometimes so fierce it was like pins dragged across the contours of her heart. Lucy had been a lot of things. A friend. A bitch. A force of nature. The most frustrating human Tilly had ever known.

And irreplaceable.

Crickets sang from the yard. They weren't in harmony, but they didn't care who heard. Tilly closed her eyes and smiled.

* * *

Late spring wind dragged hot black clouds across the skies of Albany. Ellie used the scope of her rifle to watch the six-sided office burn. A part of her hoped someone would flee it, but they'd been too thorough for that.

"What do you think?" Dee said. "Should we string the bodies above the highway? Change the sign to say 'Property of the Colsons'?"

Ellie pulled away from the scope to stare her down, but Dee couldn't keep a straight face. Ellie scowled. "I'm not sure how I feel about you joking about this."

"Yeah, I'm sorry. These slave-taking assholes deserve a twenty-one-gun salute. Think we can get Robert Frost for the eulogy?"

Out of habit, Ellie shaped a rebuke, but she discovered she didn't believe it. She moved the rifle to the crook of her arm. "We'll catapult them into New York. Kill two birds with one stone."

It was Dee's turn to stare for hints that she was joking.

"Fear not," Hobson said. "Your mother's not
that
ambitious. Anyway, I heard from Nora. Our departure from the stadium touched off a full-scale riot."

"And we just cut off the supply of replacements," Dee said. She grinned at the sheriff. "High five!"

He held up his hand and awkwardly received her smack. Ellie smiled. This had been the last step; Hobson's posse had dealt with the men in the black fedoras the same day the strike team left for Albany.

The office burned on. Other than the tower of smoke, it was a peaceful summer day. She expected it to stay that way for some time.

But the world had grown large. Dark. She could no longer see beyond the horizon. She doubted it would be the last time the people of the Lakelands would have to take arms to protect each other.

She thought they'd be up for the challenge.

* * *

She'd fallen in love as soon as she'd stepped on the island.

The deep blue sea. The haze on the horizon. The wind that took the edge off the warmth. And that warmth—one day after the other, as dependable as the tide, a literal paradise. The only time it came close to cool was the December evenings when the wind blew in from the sea. You could put on pants then, if you felt like it, but you'd feel pretty foolish once the sun was down and the wind left with it.

She and Alden had set up at one of the hotels north of Lahaina. It was a little dry on this side of the island, but the resorts and the town made for easy scavenging, and it was plenty green in the foothills above town. They didn't even have to farm in an organized way. Pop some seeds in the ground and let nature do the rest. Mangos, pineapple, taro root. She had been hesitant, at first, to take the fish—all those stripes and colors made her think poison—but after a little research, she learned which ones were safe to eat. Often, she and Alden flippered into the reefs with spears, as much for the fun as for the catch.

A handful of people lived in town. Others built shacks on the shore, but there was enough space that everyone had their own beach. She heard one of the villages in the jungle on the northeast lump of the island was more or less untouched, but even with bikes, the trip was a bitch—winding roads, bridges collapsed into waterfall-carved ravines, cliffs on all sides.

Anyway, each morning she got to wake up to the sight of Molokai and Lanai warming in the haze like great green whales. She was jealous she hadn't been born here.

But Alden was getting restless. He was well into his teens, and with few girls around, and no video games, go-karts, or wrestling shows, he spent too much of his time kicking down the beach with his hands in his pockets. These days, she could hardly talk him into practicing kung fu.