Shadows Have Gone (18 page)

Justin watched the crossroads at Clayton for a few hours before he approached it, just to make sure there was no one nearby. As he approached, he studied the early morning dew on the grass, looking for fresh footprints, broken vegetation, fresh oil spots on the road, anything that would indicate people had been nearby within the last day or so. He saw nothing. The breeze carried no trace of smoke to his nose.

At the crossroads was a plastic tote with a snap-on lid. Justin tossed a stone at it and then used a branch to pry off the top, retreating a few paces. When nothing happened, he approached and looked down inside.

There was a box of Lucky Charms cereal with a note on it. The note was carefully printed in wide, distinct lettering that he could read, even with his dyslexia.

SOMEONE WANTS TO MEET WITH YOU.

Justin stared at the box of cereal, an artifact from a bygone era. He hadn’t seen one of these in what? Over a year? He couldn’t hazard a guess.

It had once been his favorite. As a foster kid, it had been a rare treat. He remembered getting in trouble because he had once stolen a box from his foster mother’s kitchen and hidden it in his room. As an adult, he used to make sure he always had a box of it, one of his own that he never shared. An overnight guest once became very offended when he snapped at her for helping herself to some of it before he woke. The young lady hadn’t dated him again after that. Not that he blamed her, since it did seem like something weird to get mad about.

His buddies in the Unit had known better than to ask. Most of them had come from broken backgrounds themselves and had their own unusual fixations on personal space or not sharing certain possessions.

He remembered Carly laughing at his delight when they’d found a box in the first grocery store they’d scavenged. Fortunately, she hadn’t been interested in it, and he hadn’t had to force himself not to make an issue of sharing. He’d savored each bite of it, munching on handfuls here and there as they wound their way through Canada. Some nights, after she was asleep, he’d take the box out beside the camp fire and eat a few kernels, knowing it was likely the last he’d ever have and wanting to stretch it out as long as possible before it was gone. He’d eaten the last bits with real regret and tossed the box into the fire, thinking about how having a box to himself had represented independence and security in ways he didn’t want to fully analyze. He’d sat and watched the flames consume the bright red box until it was nothing but a curl of ash.

And now Justin held an identical unopened red box in his hands.

It could be just a coincidence
, he thought. Likely, it was. Whomever it was who wanted to meet with them, they had just left a gift as a goodwill gesture. A random gift, not tailored for anyone in particular.

But the pit of his stomach was cold as he stared at the box, the cartoon leprechaun grinning up at him.

Justin looked around. The long, unmowed grasses at the side of the road bowed in the breeze. Heat shimmered up from the pavement. Justin looked back down at the box in his hands, and his stomach churned. He wished then that he had listened to Carly and never come to Clayton. Her feelings had been right on this one.

His instinct was to leave the box with his knife thrust through it in reply, but what if he was wrong? What if it was just an innocent gift?

It couldn’t be what he was thinking.

It couldn’t be.

He dropped the box of cereal back into the plastic tote and put the lid back in place. He looked around again. He saw no one, but his skin crawled with the feeling of being watched. His own paranoia, no doubt, but that paranoia had saved his life a few times.

He turned and walked away.

Carly was weeding the garden when she heard footsteps behind her. She turned to see Pearl standing there.

“Oh, good lord,” she said. “He sent you to babysit me?”

Pearl laughed. “You know how he is.”

Carly sat back and lifted her hat to wipe at her sweaty forehead. She pointed at the house. “I suppose you should make yourself useful, then. There’s another hat on a peg right inside the door and a pair of gardening gloves inside the bench.”

Pearl went to get them, stopping to pat Sam, who lay on the cool concrete of the porch beside Dagny in her playpen. She came back with big floppy hat already perched on her head, and Carly noted sourly that somehow she managed to make it look stylish, its brim drooping down to conceal one side of her face as she strolled across the lawn.

She knelt in the row across from Carly and began to pluck weeds out of the soil. “Don’t be mad at him.”

“I’m not. Exasperated, maybe. Not really mad. You’re the one who should be mad with the way he’s wasting your time.”

“I get to hang out with you, just the two of us. I hardly ever get to do that, so it’s not a waste of time.”

Carly smiled at her. “Thanks. It’s nice to get to talk to you, too. You know, really talk. How’s Austin doing?”

“Good.” Pearl seemed surprised by this, as if she marveled she’d been able to keep him alive this long. “He’s a good kid. Hell of a Scrabble player, never picks his shorts up off the bathroom floor, and eats like a football team. Typical teenager.”

Carly laughed.

“Justin was right about him, I think. He doesn’t seem to have a mean bone in his body. From the little he’s told me about Marcus’s crew, they pretty much treated him like a victim, too. He hasn’t said much, but I get the feeling it wasn’t an easy time for him.”

“Thanks, Pearl. I know this wasn’t easy for you, but Justin knew you were the only one who could do it.”

Pearl snorted. “Bullshit. He did it because he thought it would be good for me. Like riding a horse. If you fall off, get right back on, or you won’t get on again. Well, he’s right. I probably would have stayed away from taking care of anyone for the rest of my life if it hadn’t been for this.”

“Will you tell me why?”

Pearl adjusted her hat, pulling it a little lower over her eyes. “I suppose. I mean, I never really wanted to keep it a secret. I just didn’t want to talk about it.”

“I understand. I think everyone does. We all have things we don’t really want to talk about.”

“I met them in Idaho. After I left LA, I had to decide where to go. I’d known I had to get out of the city. Things fell apart fast in LA. It was . . .” She paused for a moment and then just shook her head. “Things were bad.

“I told you I had an aunt in Blanchard. The rest of my family was gone, so I decided to head to Blanchard to see if I could find her. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t find her, but I had to have a goal. I guess I’m just that sort. Couldn’t wander . . . had to have a specific direction.

“I studied the map and decided I had to head north. I’d never make it through the deserts of the southwest. It was just too dangerous. I remember driving through there once with my parents as a kid. They used to warn you to bring a gallon of water per person in the car with you in case you broke down and to stay with your vehicle if anything happened. What would happen if I broke down? There’d be no one to come and help me, and I couldn’t count on abandoned gas stations having any water or fuel.

“And so I headed north, up past the mountains. The vehicles were still running at that time, but what if the roads were blocked somewhere along the way?”

Carly chuckled. “You sound like Justin. That’s the way he thinks.”

Pearl smiled. “Maybe there’s a reason he and I get along so well.

“I headed up through California to Oregon, and then crossed into Idaho. Crazy as it sounds, I sort of have fond memories of that trip. It was . . . peaceful. Quiet. I didn’t run into anyone. I saw a few people, but I kept my distance, and they didn’t bother me. So I had a lot of time to think, to process what had happened. Maybe I needed that peaceful time to myself to come to grips with it.”

Carly crossed her arms and shifted on her knees. She had spent the time alone after the Crisis in a state of numb shock, in denial. Maybe Pearl was just better suited to adapt than she was. Carly tried not to be envious but failed.

“I stopped at a little town right across the Oregon border to try to siphon some gas, and that’s when they came running out of the house. A woman about my age and a little girl of six. I’m sorry, but I still can’t say her name. Can’t even think it in my head.

“They ran from their house to intercept me. Ran right out in front of me and I nearly tipped my bike trying to stop. Now I wish to Christ I’d driven around them and went on.” Pearl stared at the ground. Her voice was tight and strained. “They were both crying, ‘
Oh thank god! Thank God you’re here!
’ Like they’d been waiting for me to appear and rescue them.”

“They told me later they had seen a couple of men passing through, but they were afraid to travel with a male. They believed I was going to take them somewhere safe. I started to tell them I wasn’t looking for any travel companions, but their gratitude and joy I had finally come was just . . . I couldn’t leave them.

“I’d been riding a scooter. It was efficient on gas, and I could easily stop and siphon enough from a stalled car to keep it going. But having the mom and the little girl and their gear with me meant we had to take a car. That made things a lot harder, as I’m sure you know. You could drive along just fine for a few miles, and then turn a corner and there’s a pileup in your path blocking the entire road. Or a bridge out. Or a tree across the road. It seemed like a hundred things. If you couldn’t drive around it, you had to unload the car and haul your gear around it and walk until you could find another vehicle. Sometimes miles. Though my scooter couldn’t go as fast as a car, it was actually quicker to travel because I could navigate around roadblocks more easily.”

Carly nodded. “That’s why Justin and I took bicycles.”

Pearl rubbed her temples. “It wasn’t long before I knew the mom wasn’t going to make it. She simply wasn’t able to cope with the world being so different than what she expected. She broke down in tears frequently, and when she’d break down, we couldn’t get her moving along again. She’d get tired and want to stop in the middle of the day, or she’d wander off by herself. She wanted to follow the dietary restrictions of her faith, but scavenged food isn’t reliable in that respect. I tried to tell her I didn’t think God would want a little girl going hungry if food was available, but she . . .” Pearl groaned and took off her gloves to rub her eyes. “She was expecting the world to go back to normal any day, or for us to find a place that was untouched by the Infection.”

“I was like that,” Carly said. “It took a while before Justin could get me to accept that things had changed permanently. God only knows what would have happened to me if he hadn’t come along.” She thought of herself writing checks for the groceries she had taken from the abandoned store, waiting in her apartment for the power to come back on. Waiting for order to be restored.

“You were able to adapt,” Pearl said. She put the gloves back on and ripped out a weed with more force than was necessary. “She wasn’t. She didn’t
want
to. So I had a constant struggle with her, on top of the struggle we had to survive. She didn’t want the kid to learn any survival techniques. She kept saying the girl didn’t need to know any of that stuff. And it made her angry if she caught me teaching her things like how to light a fire. Had a fit one day when she learned the little girl had watched me skin a rabbit, as if the gore would scar her for life. She would turn on a tap and drink the water right from it, and when I explained that there wasn’t any water purification any more, she stared at me like I was insane.

“She would look at me sometimes like I was a traitor to humanity or something. Like trying to survive and adapt made me complicit in the end of the world. I don’t know if she thought that if a lot of us stood up to reality, it would change or what . . .

“I’m sorry, I’m babbling. I’m just trying to explain my frustration.”

“It’s okay,” Carly said. She wanted to put an arm around Pearl’s shoulders, but Pearl wasn’t a hugger. “I really do understand.”

Pearl found a small rock, and after wiping off the soil, she tossed it to the driveway. “She wanted to add more people to our group and got angry when I said no, but God, they were already causing too much trouble. I couldn’t stand the thought of trying to drag more of them along.”

She looked up at Carly and winced. “I’m sorry. I know how that sounds. It sounds cold and callous, and that’s how it sounded to me, too, as the words were leaving my lips, but I just couldn’t do it. I sometimes felt like I was trying to drag them from a burning building and she was fighting me every step of the way. But now that I had picked them up, I felt responsible for them. Sometimes I would sit out in front of the tent in the morning, drinking my coffee and thinking about what an asshole I’d be if I gave into temptation and just left them. Sometimes I wanted to, so badly, but then I would look down at that little girl . . . God knows, they wouldn’t have survived five minutes on their own.”