In a Handful of Dust

One

Maddy died hard.

The polio that had hobbled her hours before swept through her torso and stilled her movements. Only her pupils could convey the panic as her lungs collapsed. Her chest stopped rising and falling, but Maddy’s eyes rolled from Lucy’s face to the ceiling and back again for a few minutes after, clouding with confusion. Finally they were still. A rattle chased Maddy’s last breath out of her throat as Lucy held her friend’s hand.

Vera leaned across the bed to loosen her granddaughter’s grip. “She’s gone, sweetheart. You can let go now.”

“Are you sure?”

Vera’s capable fingers closed around Maddy’s wrist, but she nodded before checking for a pulse. “You need to go wash up.”

“Use the boiled water,” Lynn said. She was standing at the foot of the bed, her arms crossed in front of her.

“I know,” Lucy said tightly, her throat still slick with tears. Lynn’s eyes flicked away from Maddy to touch on Lucy, and they softened slightly.

“Knowing and doing are two different things. Use the boiled water, then come back here.” Her eyes returned to the corpse, and her brow furrowed. “We need to talk.”

Lucy walked out of the stifling cabin and then down to the creek, grateful for the blast of fresh night air. She knelt by the flowing water and splashed her face free of tear tracks. A strong hand pulled her away from the water and she yelped, landing on her backside on the muddy bank.

“What’d Lynn say to you?” A stern voice came out of the darkness. “She told you to use the boiled water and first thing you do is come down here and stick your face in the crick.”

“Scaring me onto my ass is a hell of a way to remind me,” Lucy said, drying her hands on her pants. “You were outside?”

“Don’t have much else of a place to go. When your grandma’s tending the sick, I like to be nearby to help, what little I can do.” Stebbs put his hand out, helping her from the ground. “I didn’t mean to be so rough with you. Not an easy night for the living.”

Lucy leaned into him, inhaling his comforting smell, familiar all these years. Clean air and fresh dirt lingered around him, and she felt stray tears slip down her cheeks.

“Not easy for the dead either,” she said. “She was looking at me, those big eyes of hers full of fear like nothing I’ve ever seen before, and all I could do was sit there, Stebbs, and…” The spreading stillness that had clamped onto Maddy’s body seemed to have found Lucy’s tongue. “I heard the rattle, like Lynn always says you do. Then she passed, and everything was quiet.”

Stebbs tucked her head into his chest, and they walked back toward the cabin he shared with Vera. “True enough, there’s those that go that way. But in the silence you know they’ve gone. Something is missing.”

Lucy nodded her understanding. Though she’d asked Vera if she was sure, the wrongness of Maddy’s eyes had already answered the question. “I imagine you’ll be needing another mattress,” Lucy said, wiping her nose.

Vera’s reputation as a healer had spread beyond the boundaries of the small community; people traveled hundreds of miles to bring their sick to her door. Too often they died inside her walls, in her bed. Then anything the dead touched was condemned to flame.

The door to the cabin opened and Lynn stepped out, Maddy’s body shrouded in a sheet and curled in her strong arms. She spotted Lucy and Stebbs. “You want me to wait for you?”

Lucy nodded, and Stebbs gave her a quick squeeze on the shoulder before releasing her. “Don’t let her know I used the stream,” she whispered into his ear. “I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“I’ll keep quiet on that count,” he said. “But from now on out, you mind her.”

A breeze kicked through the tree branches above them, heavy with budding leaves. Lucy crossed her arms against the chill, grateful when Stebbs took off his jacket and handed it to her.

“You go on,” he said. “She’ll be in a hurry to get rid of the body.”

Vera came to the door of the cabin, her silhouette backlit from the candles within. “Stebbs,” she called into the darkness, “I’m going to need you in here.”

“Other people have come here to die. We’ve burned and buried plenty,” Lucy said as he zipped the coat up for her, flipping up the collar against her neck. “But this is bad, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, little one,” he sighed. “I’m afraid this one will be different.”

Maddy had never been a large girl, but the deep blackness of the pit Lynn tossed her in made a mockery of the white sheet, reducing it to a pale smudge in the lingering light.

“Sorry about that,” Lynn said, after the body hit the ground. “There’s no nice way to get her down in there.”

Lucy shrugged. “’S okay,” she said, but the awkward angle of the body, dead or not, hurt her heart. Lynn’s hand, crusted with dirt, rested on Lucy’s shoulder and she reached up to take it.

As a child Lucy had believed Lynn could protect her from everything, call down the rain, and keep the coyotes at bay. Lynn had done all these things, but her face was grim at the thought of a threat she couldn’t fight with her gun.

“So it was polio?”

“Your grandma thinks so,” Lynn answered. “Seems there’s different types, some worse than others. She wants to talk to us about it, when we’re through here.”

Lucy looked back at the crumpled white bundle. “Right,” she said. “When we’re through here.”

“You gonna be okay with this? It’s different when it’s one of your own.”

“Sounds like maybe it’s something I need to get used to,” Lucy said.

Lynn reached for the gas can at her side, dousing the body from the edge of the pit before tossing the match, her mouth a thin line. “No getting used to it.”

The black pillar of smoke rose behind them as they walked to Vera’s cabin to find Maddy’s mother cringing on a stool in the corner.

“I need to know when she first got sick,” Vera was saying. “Think hard about anything she said to you about feeling poorly.”

Monica had stayed away from Maddy’s bed as she died, unable to handle the sight of her only daughter smothering to death. Now her gaze was stuck to a spot on the floor, as if she might find answers in the pine knots there. When she finally spoke, her wisp of a voice was nearly lost in the creaking of the branches outside. “Sometime yesterday, maybe.”

Maddy and her brother, Carter, made no secret of their mother’s fearfulness. Carter had told Lucy once that even during good times, Monica looked for the bad to come, and during the bad she was more likely to hide than face it. Now Monica’s shoulders seemed to slump under the weight of blame.

Lucy approached her friend’s mother cautiously, as if she were a half-wild kitten discovered in the grass. “You don’t have to feel bad about not knowing she was sick. Even if you’d brought her sooner, it wouldn’t have helped.”

“That’s true,” Vera said. “There’s no cure for polio, and this strain moved quickly. That’s why I need to know when things first went wrong. If the incubation period is as fast as I fear, we don’t have much time.”

Behind her, Lucy heard Stebbs mutter to Lynn, “If it’s as fast as Vera thinks it is, time’s already run out.”

Lucy moved closer to Monica, took the woman’s trembling hand. “How bad off was she when you brought her?”

“Pretty bad.” Monica sniffled, and a runner of snot was sucked into her nostril. “When she came back from swimming with you and Carter, she said she had a headache. But it’s the first real hot times of the spring, and her diving into the cold water, I didn’t think much of it.”

“What was the first indication it was more?” Vera asked.

“She woke up in the night, crying something awful. Carter and me, we came running.” Monica used Lucy’s sleeve to wipe away the fresh tears coursing out of her eyes. “She was having spasms, and she thought it was a charley horse, you know? So she got out of bed to walk it off, and she—she—”

“She what?” Lynn broke in, patience expired.

Stebbs put a hand on Lynn’s shoulder. “She couldn’t walk?” he asked.

“When she tried she just fell over, said her legs weren’t working right. So her brother picked her up and ran her over here.”

“Carter brought her about two or three in the morning,” Vera said. “What time did you go swimming?”

“It was after we planted the seedlings,” Lucy said.

“About two o’clock, by the sun,” Lynn added.

“Twelve hours,” Vera said softly. “Twelve hours to beginning paralysis and twenty-four to death.”

“Is that fast?” Stebbs asked.

“Too fast to do anything about. Whatever source Maddy picked it up from, anybody who came into contact with it is already infected.”

The pale hand holding Lucy’s clenched in fear, and her own heart constricted at the words. “What about Carter?” Monica asked. “What about my son?”

“If he’s not symptomatic by now, he should be okay,” Vera said. “Which means you’re all right too, little one.”

Lucy let out the breath she’d been holding along with the woman next to her and nodded, any worries she had for herself only small drops on the wave of worry that had crashed over her at the thought of Carter being sick.

“You feelin’ all right?” Lynn asked. “No headaches or anything funny with your legs?”

“I’m all right, Lynn. Really.” Lucy waved Lynn off, but Lynn still looked her up and down, as if she expected to see the virus surface in the form of fleas or ticks. “Even if I wasn’t, it’s not something you can just pull outta me, you know?”

Monica’s sweaty hand pulsed inside Lucy’s own. “No, there’s nothing you can do,” she said, as if reassuring herself.

“So if the girl got sick after swimming in the pond, but her brother and our little one is all right, what does that mean?” Stebbs asked.

“It means the pond probably isn’t the source,” Vera answered.

“Damn right it’s not,” Lynn said. “I’ve been drinking that water my whole life.”

“You’ve been drinking water from the pond after you’d purified it,” Vera corrected. “I wouldn’t rule it out.”

“It can’t be the pond,” Lucy argued. “Why wouldn’t I be sick then, or Carter?”

“It’s hard to say,” Vera said. “Polio is usually contracted person-to-person, but it can be waterborne.”

“So she got it from somebody else? But who else is sick?” Lucy asked.

And the first knock on the door came.

Two

The knocks continued through the night and into the morning; the healthy came carrying the sick, and the sick carrying the virus. Lynn and Lucy dragged blankets to the grass downwind of the cabin for the invalids to be laid on. Most were dying even as Lucy settled them onto the ground, the eerie rattle that she had first heard from Maddy now filling her ears like the sound of cicadas. Vera talked with those who could still speak, desperate to find out where they had been before confessing there was nothing she could do for them.

“There’s really no cure?” Lucy asked, as she dumped a bucket of stream water into the kettle Lynn had set up near the bank. “There’s nothing Grandma can do?”

Lynn shook her head. “Way I understand it, it kills some, cripples some. Some only get a bit of a fever from it. Vera said it usually hits the kids, but it can get adults too. There was some president that had it.”

“It kill him?”

“No, your grandma said it crippled him, though. So I guess there’s no telling who’s gonna get it, and what it’s gonna do to them.”

Lucy snapped a branch over her knee. “That sucks.”

“Maybe,” Lynn said as she took the kindling from Lucy. “Maybe those that get sick are just happy to have it done, no matter how it ends. Like when Poe said,

Lucy sighed and cracked another stick in half. “Couldn’t your mother have taught you any happy poetry?”

Lynn smiled, but it was the one, slow and sad, that always came with talk of Mother. “She taught me what she knew. So has Stebbs. He told me once that people like me and him are badly built for times like this, when there’s nothing we can do.”

“You need an enemy,” Lucy said, understanding immediately.

“I do. And when it’s a sickness, I guess the best weapon I’ve got is the fire for the bodies.”

“That and the fact you’re not likely to be kissing anybody,” Lucy said, poking Lynn in the ribs with the end of a stick.

“That’s more of a precaution than a weapon,” Lynn said, easily grabbing the end and pulling Lucy onto her knees with one swift jerk. “And don’t worry yourself about whether I’m kissing anybody or not.”

“Touchy.” Lucy rose, brushing the dirt off her knees.

“But you’ve got a point.” Lynn smacked her flint together, trying to coax a spark into the branches.

“What’s that?”

“I’ve seen the way you and Carter have been looking at each other lately, and you shouldn’t be doing any kissing either.” A small spiral of smoke rose from the kindling, and Lynn rocked back on her heels. “Now’s not the time to be figuring out if you’re more than friends.”

Lucy tried to ignore the flush that spread up her neck and to the roots of her tightly cropped blond hair. “I’m not stupid.”

“Stupid doesn’t factor in when a boy’s mourning his sister and looking for comfort.”

“I’m not—”

The older woman held up her hand. “That’s all I’m saying about it. I’m not asking any questions, just telling you whatever’s going on needs stowed until we know more about this sickness. Understood?”

“Understood.”

Lynn held her eyes for a moment, then crouched low to breathe life into the fire she’d started. “I know we’ve not talked about… uh, some things.”

“Stebbs already explained to me about sex, if that’s what you’re getting at,” Lucy said, and the flush that had begun to recede reclaimed some ground.

“That poor man.” Lynn’s fire flared, and she studied it.

“What’s this about, Lynn? Why you talking to me about love when we’re burning the dead?”

“’Cause we’re about to hit some hard times, and I need you to listen to me. I tell you to go to the basement and not come back up, you go. I tell you to climb a tree, you head for the highest one, you hear?”

“You’re worried.”

“This whole conversation is me being worried.”

Even though the sun burned brightly, Lucy could feel a chill from the little graveyard nearby where her mother and stillborn brother lay, her uncle Eli with them. Lynn’s eyes shifted there too, as if following Lucy’s thoughts, and the chill settled into Lucy’s bones. If Lynn was worried, there was real danger.

Lucy reached for Lynn’s hair, long and unbound, tangled by the wind. “Sit down,” she coaxed. “Let me work on this rat’s nest.”

“Sitting down doesn’t do anybody any good,” Lynn argued, but sat nonetheless.

Lucy watched Lynn’s shoulders relax as she worked the knots free, then bound her thick hair into one large braid. “You need to learn how to do this yourself.”

“Can’t see the back of my own head.” Lynn said. “I should hack it all off, like yours.”

“No, I like it.” Lucy gave the braid in her hand a yank.

Lynn yelped good-naturedly. “All right, let go of me. We got work to do.”

Lucy kept her hand on Lynn’s braid a moment longer, delaying the trips from the line of sick to the pit where the fires burned. “It’s hard, watching the small ones go.”

“I know it. You were terribly sick when you were small. It was more than I could stand.”

“And the medicine from back then, it won’t help these kids?”

“No. Your grandma said it’s only good against sicknesses caused by bacteria, and polio’s a virus. She said even before the Shortage, there was nothing anyone could do for polio once you had it.”

“So she’s trying to figure out where it came from?”

Lynn rose to her feet. “That’s the plan, it seems. Figure out who or what Maddy got it from. In the meantime, we’re not to let anybody near our pond.”

“That should come naturally enough to you,” Lucy said, and Lynn gave her a swat on the behind.

They walked up the bank, away from the shade trees and into the heat of the spring sun. Around the bend in the stream they could see Stebbs and Vera’s cabin. Beyond were the rows of sick, waiting to die or recover. A few had blankets tossed over their faces. Lucy stopped in her tracks, unable to go farther. “I can’t stand lifting the edges to see who we lost.”

“Won’t make ’em any less dead.” Lynn took Lucy by the hand, her touch more gentle than her words. “Don’t forget your handkerchief,” she added, pulling hers up to cover her nose and mouth.

Lucy followed suit, and they made their way through the lines. Vera spotted them and wound her way through the maze of the ill. “Lynn, I’m sorry, but I need you to—”

“I’ve got it.” Lynn headed for the nearest bundle.

“Who was it?” Lucy asked.

Vera spoke softly. “There were quite a few, here in the early morning. Myrtle lost her two youngest.”

“Hank and little Frannie?” A sound followed their names up through her throat, a wordless mourning that Lucy couldn’t keep in. “How’d she take it?”

“She’s sleeping right now, was up all night caring for them. I don’t have the heart to wake her just yet.”

Vera motioned Lucy away from the line of blankets, and they walked into the tall grass, the only privacy there was. “I haven’t told anyone else yet, but Alex Hale died too, and Caroline Bowl.”

“But they’re Lynn’s age, at least. I thought it only killed babies.”

Vera motioned for Lucy to lower her voice. “Usually, yes. From what I know of polio it mostly killed children, the old, or the weak. But Stebbs and I were the last generation to be vaccinated. You remember what vaccination means?”

“It means you can’t get sick.”

“That’s right.” Vera sighed and raised her heavy black hair, shot with silver, off her neck. “For now all we can do is separate the sick from the well, find the source, and hope for the best. I moved the adults over to the other side of the road, by the bridge. There’s no sense in the children seeing their parents ill. It’ll scare them more than anything. They need to be told everything is going to be all right.”

“And what do you want me to do?”

Vera closed her eyes against the sun that was helping the contagion bloom and grow in her patients. “Can you tell me everything is going to be all right?”

Lucy spotted Carter in the mid morning, moving among the sick with a canteen. Her usual surge of happiness at seeing him—somewhat boosted of late by the feeling of her heart jumping into her throat—faded when she thought of Maddy.

Looking at Carter now caused the tears to spring into Lucy’s eyes, and she turned her back on him. The child at her feet glanced up at her. “You okay?”

She dropped to her knees beside his blanket and put her hand on his forehead. “Adam, you’re making me look bad. I’m supposed to be the one asking after you.”

He shrugged. “Seems like you’re laughing most of the time. Just not today.”

“Not today. How you feeling?”

“Better, I think,” he said cautiously, as if voicing the possibility would make it a lie. “Thirsty.”

“Water over here,” Lucy called out, and Carter was beside them in seconds.

“Hey, little man, you’re looking strong,” Carter said, and Lucy had to crush her eyes shut to prevent tears from leaking at the sound of his voice.

A smile tweaked the corners of Adam’s mouth. “Maybe.”

“Better let me hold it,” Carter said, then looked at Lucy. “Vera said not to let it touch their mouths, so it’s more like pouring it down their throats.” Lucy saw he had two canteens, one with an X made out of electrical tape on the lid.

“What’s that?”

“One’s for the sick. The other’s mine, and for the people that got nothing to do but wait.”

Lucy nodded quietly, breaking away from his gaze. His eyes were dry, but she knew Carter well enough to see the pain in them. She slid her arms under Adam’s shoulders and pulled him into a sitting position. His eyes closed in relief as he swallowed, and Lucy laid him back gently.

“Rest,” she whispered to him, brushing some hair off his forehead. “I think you’re one of the lucky ones.”

“One of the few,” Carter said, and her hand found his.

“I’m so sorry,” she tried to say, but her voice broke and the tears she’d been fighting swelled out of her in a rush, coursing down her cheeks and spattering Adam’s shirt along with the wasted water that had seeped from around his weak lips.

Carter’s arm went across her shoulder and pulled her into him, squeezing strength into her body. “I know it, I know,” he said, his own voice thick. “But not here, not in front of the small ones.”

She nodded and pulled away, but he kept his hand on her shoulder. She’d not given much thought to his hands until the past few months, when the calluses and the strength of his fingers had taken on new meaning as she’d wondered how they’d feel against her skin. He brushed this thumb against her cheek, moving the tears back into her hair.

He cleared his throat and stepped back from her. “I need to refill this,” he said, picking up a canteen. “Wanna come with?”

They headed toward the stream, the midday sun baking the backs of their necks.

“Adam seems to be getting better,” Lucy said cautiously.

“I think so, yeah. Might take some time though. I’ve noticed the adults who went down are bouncing back quicker than the kids.”

“And their legs?”

“Not good,” Carter shook his head. “Jeb Calkins is getting better, sure enough, but he can’t move either of his.”

Jeb was a single man, with a young son. “Who’s going to take care of Little Jeb?” Lucy asked.

“Shit, who’s going to take care of Big Jeb?” Carter dipped the canteen in the creek. “What’s going on here, Lucy… it’s bad. It’s going to change things. We’ll be a community where half the adults are cripples, most of the children invalids.”

“Stebbs is crippled, always has been. Doesn’t slow him down none.”

“Stebbs has a twisted foot, broken in a trap and never healed right. That’s different from losing the use of your whole leg.”

Lucy sat on the bank, quiet. Carter’s reasoning explained why Lynn had been scared. As usual, she’d realized what something meant in the long run, like how this year’s garden would affect the next, and why a sickness moving through the deer meant she should avoid killing the young ones, so they could repopulate. It wasn’t only people who were being crippled, but their entire way of life. Without healthy adults, they could not defend themselves. Even though outside threats were not nearly as common as they had been a decade earlier, there were still passing bands of people who wanted what they had—water.

And now it would be easier to take it from them.

Three

The next day a fresh wave of patients came in. Siblings lay on blankets their brothers and sisters had vacated, either by going home or to the pits Lynn kept burning.

“I don’t understand it,” Vera muttered, her head resting in her hands while her blank eyes coursed over her notes: jumbled, mismatched scraps of paper torn from whatever had been handy as she questioned the sick. So far, nothing had led her back to the beginning, to Maddy.

“You need to rest, Grandma,” Lucy said from her seat on the floor. Her own body was worn out from long hours tending the patients, her emotions worn so flat she no longer flinched when even the smallest bundles headed for the fires. Lynn looked no better, her hair covered with a fine powdering of soot from the dead.

“I can’t rest,” Vera said. “Not until we know where this came from. All we’re doing is treating the symptoms, not stopping the sickness.”

“Maybe so.” Stebbs moved behind her, his strong hands working to ease the tension in her shoulders. “But you’re not going to make any sense out of those scribbles in the state you’re in. You’ve not slept longer than a few hours since this started.”

“I wouldn’t even call it sleeping, what you do,” Lynn agreed. “You just kinda sit real still and doze.”

“It’s an old doctor’s habit, and good to know I’ve still got the knack.”

“Knack or not, you’re going to bed, Doc,” Stebbs said sternly, and Lynn motioned to Lucy to follow her outside.

“She might be immune to polio, but that don’t mean this epidemic won’t kill her,” Lynn said as they walked down to the stream. “Vera says polio thrives when it gets hot. This outbreak is just a taste of what could be coming, if we don’t figure out the source. She won’t sleep sound ’til that happens.”

Lucy found a spot in the tall grass that was well beaten down and took a seat. Heat lightning flickered across dark thunderheads that had formed on the evening horizon. “Not a good sign,” she said, gesturing toward the pink bolts.

Lynn glanced up. “Nope. No rain, no cool air.” A moan rose from the rows of the sick, out of sight beyond the tall grass, but not out of hearing range.

“You doing okay?”

“Mostly,” Lucy said. “It’s just all the harder because I thought it was through.” The sight of Adam, one leg dangling limp and useless at his father’s side as he was carried away, had been bittersweet. He had lived, but what kind of life he would have in their world was yet to be seen.

“I thought it was done too. I even thought about putting out the fires.”

“That was downright hopeful of you.”

Lynn grunted, as she always did when Lucy teased her, but the hard lines of her mouth softened. “Stupid too.”

“You sleeping here again tonight?”

Lynn glanced at the chimney of their shared home, barely visible in the distance in the dying light. She sighed. “We’re needed here.” She stomped her own area of grass and lay down. “Get some sleep,” she said brusquely, and rolled over, her braid dark with grime.

Lucy tossed a clod of dirt at her back. “You need a bath.”

“You need to go the hell to sleep,” Lynn shot back, but even in the dark, Lucy could hear the smile.

Adam’s father never got up the hill to their home. A rider found Devon, collapsed and weakened, when he heard Adam yelling for help, his voice hoarse from calling. Adam rode back to Vera’s in front of the stranger, his father crumpled against the man’s back. Stebbs pulled Devon off the horse as Lucy helped Adam from the saddle on the other side.

“What happened?”

Adam’s lower lip quivered, but he kept the tears from falling. “Daddy got real tired, carrying me up the hill—said he needed to stop and rest a bit. I got sleepy, and when I woke up he was sitting all funny, and he couldn’t get himself up. I yelled and yelled, but no one came.”

“I found ’em,” the stranger in the saddle said. “Heard the boy calling. Sounded more like an injured animal than anything else. I was awful surprised when I came upon the two of them.”

“We thank you for it,” Stebbs said. “There’s plenty that woulda left ’em.”

“Left ’em or done worse,” the rider admitted.

“Can we give you something for your trouble? A drink?”

Lucy stiffened at the words. Water was like gold, and never offered freely to strangers. The man looked from Stebbs to Devon. “Don’t believe I’ll be drinking any of your water, no offense.”

“None taken.” Stebbs nodded curtly, and the stranger rode off, anxious to put miles between himself and them.

“Can you put him somewhere?” Stebbs nodded to Adam, who was still in Lucy’s arms. “I’ll take Devon.”

“What do you think, mister?” Lucy said to Adam, forcing fake cheer into her voice. “Want to camp out tonight?”

“Can I go to the healer lady’s house?”

“My grandma, you mean?” Lucy headed for the cabin, Adam’s body light in her arms. “Why you wanna go there for?”

“She fixed me before. I thought maybe she could finish it up now and make my leg better.”

Lucy swallowed hard before speaking. “Sweetie, didn’t anybody tell you that you won’t ever be using that leg again? It’s ruined.”

Adam shrugged. “Dad says it never hurts to ask. Worst anybody can say is no.”

Vera glanced up when Lucy walked through the door with her burden.

“Devon fell ill taking him home,” Lucy said as she laid Adam on the bed.

“Where’s Devon?” Vera had been at the table, poring over her notes again. A fresh patient meant new information, and she was on her feet in a second.

“Stebbs has him down with the sick.”

“How’d he get back here on foot with Adam?”

Lucy began tucking pillows under Adam’s shoulders to prop him up. “A man on a horse found them, brought them back here.”

“And where is this man?”

“Took off when he saw what we were dealing with.”

“Stebbs let him leave?”

The shock in her grandma’s voice got Lucy’s attention. She looked up to see that Vera had gone white, her fists clenched.

“Yeah, why?”

“If he picked it up from Devon, he’ll infect everyone he meets. Or die alone in the wilderness.”

Lucy glanced back at the little boy in the bed, his frightened eyes bouncing between the two women. “Let’s hope he didn’t catch it then.”

“Quick as this is moving, it’s a better bet to hope he dies alone.”

It fell to Carter and Lucy to deliver the news to Devon’s wife. The family lived on a remote hill, because Abigail’s mistrust of people ran deep, even more so than Lynn’s. She preferred to take her chances on the hillside, somewhere her family had a good view of everything around them, their own well, and no other houses in sight.

Lucy trudged up the incline, her calf muscles burning. “I don’t know how Devon could’ve made this climb carrying Adam even if he were healthy,” she said.

Carter wiped the sweat off his forehead. “I know she’s got her reasons, but damn, this is inconvenient for the rest of us.”

“Lynn says she’s got a right to live up here, if that’s what she wants.”

“And what do you say?”

Lucy tripped on a branch and muttered a curse. “I say she can’t expect help to come running if we can’t hear her yelling for it.” Her breath hitched in her chest, and she slid to the ground. “Sorry, I gotta stop.” Days of tending the ill had stripped her of strength.

Carter rested next to her, their backs against a huge oak. “I’m not in a hurry to get up there, anyway. You and I aren’t exactly her favorite people.”

One of Lucy’s more ill-advised pranks had involved swapping out Abigail’s prized newborn calf with a stuffed animal of a cow. The punishment had been steep—Lynn had made her haul water from the pond for a month—but the fun had been worth it.

Lucy rolled her eyes. “I think being one of Abigail’s favorite people requires blood relation. So I’ll pass. Besides, there was no harm done.”

“You’re still a rabble-rouser.” Carter knocked his knee against hers.

“And you’re trouble.” She knocked it back.

“Remember you and me and Maddy slept up in her haymow so we could see her face when she came down to the barn in the morning?” Carter went on, laughing. “And Maddy didn’t know there was a bunch of kittens up there, ’til one of them jumped on her? Turned out that herbal soap your grandma gave Maddy for her birthday had catnip in it.”

“I swear I didn’t know that.” Lucy giggled.

“Maybe not, but you knew full well it was just a kitten in her hair, and you started screaming about bats anyway, and she went through the roof. You and me was trying to shush her up, but she woke up baby Adam all the way in the house.”

“Yeah.” Lucy’s smile faded. “Yeah, I remember.”

And now Maddy was dead, and the baby whose cries they’d wished away that night was a crippled little boy whose father might not live through the day.

Carter quieted as well, his own thoughts turning toward the present. He rose to his feet, holding out a hand for her. “C’mon then,” he said. “Let’s get this over with.”

Abigail didn’t answer Carter’s knock. He tried again, but they heard no movement in the house. He pulled his fist back to try another time, then froze mid motion. “You don’t suppose she caught it and died up here, do you?”

Lucy backed off the porch, glancing around the overgrown yard to the outbuildings. “Doubt it. The garden’s recently watered and the cows aren’t kicking up a fuss, wanting to be milked. She’s in there. She just doesn’t want to talk to us.”

“Better make my point then,” Carter said, and redoubled his efforts, pounding on the door.

Lucy stepped farther out into the yard and glanced up into the second story of the old farmhouse. A curtain hastily slipped back into place. “She’s up there,” she said to Carter. Then, more loudly, “Abigail, it’s Lucy from down by the pond. I need you to come out here and talk to us.”

Carter joined Lucy in the yard and called up at the window. “Abigail—it’s about your son. Get down here or we’ll walk off and you won’t know what’s happened.”

A thin voice crept through the open window. “If he’s dead, I don’t want to know.”

Carter sighed. “He ain’t dead. Now come down.”

They heard shuffling as she walked away from the open window, then nothing for several minutes until the front door creaked open. A small woman with ratted blond hair peered around the corner.

Lucy tried her best smile, one that could melt even Lynn at times. “We need to talk to you about Devon.”

“Thought you said this was about Adam?”

“Him too,” Carter said, stepping toward the porch.

“You stay back there,” Abigail said sharply, her thin voice suddenly strong. “I can hear you fine from the yard.”

“All right then.” He slowly backpedaled to stand next to Lucy. “I think she’s got a gun,” he said to her softly.

“Who doesn’t?” Lucy sighed, then raised her voice toward Abigail. “We came to tell you what’s going on with your man and boy. You can put the rifle down.”

Abigail stepped out onto the porch, rifle pointed at the ground. “Tell me what you like, makes no difference what I’m holding at the time.”

“It’s slightly rude,” Lucy said. Carter shot her a dark look, and she clamped her mouth shut.

“Rude ain’t nothing that I’ve done. Rude is breaking into people’s barns and pulling tricks on them.”

“Lots of people are sick, Abigail,” Carter said quickly. “Devon’s one of ’em.”

A line appeared between Abigail’s eyes as she studied the two teens. “Adam’s the one who’s sick. Devon took him down to your healer to make him well.”

“And she tried, Abigail, she did,” Lucy said, emotion making her voice thick. “But this sickness—it’s not like a normal fever. It’s polio, and Adam… he’s okay, but… he’s…”

“He’s crippled,” Carter said. “No way around it.”

Abigail’s mouth tightened. “What about Devon? What’s wrong with him?”

“Same thing,” Carter answered. “It’s not good, Abigail. You should come down, be with your husband.”

“You think, do you?” Abigail said, her mouth twisting. “So everyone can get a good look at the woman who won’t come down off the hill?”

Lucy glanced at Carter. He grasped her wrist, urging silence.

“You come up here, to tell me my man—who don’t get sick—is sick, and my boy—who was fine yesterday—is a cripple today. I wouldn’t believe either one of you if you told me it was raining and my head was wet with the drops.” She cocked the gun and strode toward them to the edge of the porch.

Carter stepped in front of Lucy. “We came up here to deliver a message,” he said, “and we’ve done it. We’ll be leaving now.”

“You came up here to make a fool of me,” Abigail hissed at them. “Devon ain’t sick with nothing but lust, looking at that woman who calls herself your mother, little girl. You wanna make a laughingstock of me, drag me down the hill so I see what’s really keeping him down there?”

Carter stepped backward, pushing Lucy behind him. “Nobody’s laughing down there, Abigail. I promise you that.”

“Go on then.” She jerked the rifle toward them. “Get on back down there and tell my man to come back to me, and bring my son. I know he’s whole, and I know he’s well, and I know you two are full of shit.”

Her voice cracked on the last word and she retreated back into the house, slamming the door behind her. Carter and Lucy stumbled down the decline of the hill as they headed for the woods, Abigail’s rising sobs breaking on their ears.

“Does she really think we’d make up a story to bring her down the hill for kicks?” Lucy asked.

“Hard to say.” Carter held a tree branch for her to pass by before letting it snap back. She smiled to herself; a year ago he would’ve let it hit her in the face. “But don’t let what some crackpot thinks of you ruin your day.”

“It’s more likely the dead bodies’ll do that,” Lucy said.

Carter laughed and grabbed her hand suddenly. “Remind me never to come to you for comfort.”

She opened her mouth to apologize, but he waved her off and they walked on, fingers intertwined. They followed the stream downhill toward Vera’s, neither of them commenting on the fact that they were holding hands, or how very normal it felt.

Lucy dropped his hand as they came into the clearing near Vera’s cabin. She could hear Lynn clearly as they approached. “You’d better be damn sure about this,” she was saying. “Once it’s said, there’s no taking it back.”

“Something’s up,” Carter said.

The door was propped open, and through it Lucy could see Vera bent over her notes, exhaustion dimming the usual brightness of her eyes. “I’m sure,” Vera said quietly.

Lucy knocked hesitantly on the open door. “Uh… are we interrupting?”

Stebbs shook his head. “No. You need to come in here. Both of you. And shut the door behind you.”

Lucy’s trembling hand struggled with the simple hook-and-eye lock. Stebbs was only serious with her when things were dire.

The three adults looked at one another for a moment, the weight of their silence resting on Lucy’s heart more heavily than any words. “What? What is it?”

“Who’s gonna tell him?” Lynn asked, looking to Vera and Stebbs.

“Tell me what?” Carter asked, his hand finding Lucy’s despite the adults seeing.

Vera cleared her throat. “I’ve been looking at my notes, trying to figure out the source of the outbreak. You remember there was a lull, and then we got slammed by more sick than we had in the first wave.”

“Like the brothers and sisters of people who were first sick,” Lucy said slowly. “They were passing it to each other.”

“Except they weren’t,” Vera said. “I thought so too, but then I realized the incubation period was wrong. If the second wave of patients were catching it from their siblings, they would’ve been symptomatic sooner. Instead they weren’t showing up here until their brothers and sisters were better.”

“Or dead,” Lynn added.

“Incubation period?” Carter looked from Vera to Stebbs. “What’s that mean?”

“It’s the time period from when you’re exposed to the virus to when it actually makes you sick. This second wave was getting sick after they came here.”

“So they caught it here,” Lucy said. “No big surprise, this place was crawling with sick.”

Vera shook her head. “No, sweetheart. We made sure there was no contact between the well and the ill. The first rule of keeping a contagion in hand is quarantine.”

“People break rules, Grandma.”

“If it were an isolated case or two, I would agree,” Vera said. “But every person in the second wave had been here. So it had to have been someone carrying it between the two groups.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Carter said, color draining from his face. “It was me, wasn’t it? I must’ve mixed up which canteen I was using for the sick and for the well.”

Lucy felt his fingers go cold in her own. “You wouldn’t do that,” she said, voice hard. “You wouldn’t make a mistake like that.”

Stebbs walked over from his place beside Vera and put a hand on Carter’s shoulder. “It’s best you sit down, son. There’s more to tell.” Stebbs steered him away from Lucy to the empty chair opposite Vera.

“Lucy,” Lynn said. “You come on over here with me now.”

Her body tensed in rebellion, every muscle wanting to follow Carter, but Lynn’s tone left no room for argument, and Lucy joined her against the wall.

“He wouldn’t have done that,” she said vehemently to Lynn. “He’s smarter than that.”

“It wasn’t the water,” said Vera. “Do you remember me telling everyone about the different kinds of polio, and how they affect people?”

“Yeah. Some people are paralyzed, like Adam. Some people only get a fever, and then feel fine. Some die, like my sister,” said Carter.

“And some don’t even know they have it,” Vera said.

Realization dawned on Lucy, her heart collapsing under the weight of what Vera was saying. “No,” she said, the word barely squeezing past her lips. “He is not sick.” Carter’s gaze jumped from Vera to Lucy, his confusion evident.

Vera reached across the table, clasping his hands in her own. “I’m so sorry. I tried to find another answer, but it fits. Your sister was the first, the people who came in after had all interacted with you at some point. The second wave was so perfectly timed, it had to be someone here. You were the one moving between the sick and the well, carrying messages and sharing your water.”

“Can you… Is there any way to tell, to be sure?” Carter asked, his voice stronger than his shaking hands.

“Without a way to look at cells in your blood, no. All I’ve got to go on is timelines and crossed paths,” Vera said.

“So you could be wrong,” Lucy said.

“It’s possible,” Vera admitted, still looking at Carter. “But that would put me back at square one, searching for a source. So I need you to tell me—had you not felt well at any point before Maddy got sick?”

Carter shook his head, his throat too constricted for speech. Stebbs stepped behind him, put his hands on the boy’s shoulders. “This is important, son. So think hard, and be honest.”

“No fever? No muscle spasms?” Vera continued.

“No, nothing,” Carter said.

“What about headaches?”

Carter stopped shaking his head and closed his eyes. “Shit,” he said, slowly and quietly, the one syllable damning him. “Yeah. The day we went swimming. I had a blinder, but I went anyway.” He opened his eyes and looked at Lucy. “’Cause I wanted to see you.”

A breath slipped from her hitching chest, and a sob followed it. She tried to go to him, but Lynn’s grip on her arm was like an iron band. She couldn’t offer him comfort when he put his head on the table and sobbed for the death he had brought upon his sister, the racking breaths shaking his frame, his tears soaking Vera’s notes. Vera and Stebbs did what they could, the inoculated surrounding the infected, the innocent watching from the shadows.

Four

“You can’t see him again, Lucy. I’m sorry,” Lynn said.

Lucy sat on her bed in the home she shared with Lynn, her heartbeat a dim echo inside her body. Light flickered across the walls from the oil lamp on Lucy’s nightstand, the flame burning low on the wick. Lynn sat at the foot of the bed.

“I mean it. It’s not games now. I know you’ve snuck out of here once or twice in the past, but you can’t go to him. I won’t let you.”

Lucy nodded absently, her mind still wrapped around the image of Carter sobbing, and Lynn pulling her away from his infected tears.

“What’s going to happen to him?” Lucy asked, her voice thick with hours of crying.

“Can’t say,” Lynn answered. “Your grandma and Stebbs said they’d be by after a while. You can ask your questions then.”

“It’s not fair.”

A wry smile twisted Lynn’s mouth, and she shrugged. “What is?”

Lucy teared up again, fresh salt water burrowing new tracks over her swollen cheeks. Lynn took her hand and squeezed it. “No, it’s not fair, little one. Carter did nothing to deserve getting sick. Knowing that he killed his sister, and brought death and twisted limbs on so many, is a weight to bear.”

“I don’t know if he can take it,” Lucy said, her fear welling into a panic. “What if he—he—”

The specter of suicide, the death her own mother had chosen, wasn’t a stranger in their bleak world.

Lynn shook her head. “I don’t think he’s the type, and I’m not just saying it.”

A heavy knock on the front door reverberated through the house, up to the second floor where they sat. Lynn’s hand shot to her side, and Lucy realized she was wearing her pistol.

“It’s probably your grandma,” Lynn said, her voice tense with other possibilities. “Sit tight.”

Lynn left the room, and Lucy wiped her face on the comforter, scrubbing away the dried salt and fresh tears that had gathered. She heard muffled voices below, recognized Stebbs’ low drone, along with Vera’s comforting tones. Three pairs of footsteps came up the stairs, and Lucy lengthened the wick on the oil lamp. The flame flared and lit Vera’s face as she walked into Lucy’s room, her wrinkles etched more deeply than before, eyes sunk with exhaustion.

“How you doing, honey?” she asked Lucy, gathering her into a hug.

“Okay,” Lucy croaked. “How’s Carter?”

“We had a good long talk,” Stebbs said, leaning against the wall. “He’s sleeping now, back at our place.”

Lynn propped herself against Lucy’s dresser. “Poor bastard. You talk to his mom?”

“Yeah,” Stebbs said uneasily, his gaze shooting to Vera. “Yeah, we did.”

Vera took Lucy’s hand and looked at Lynn. “Girls… we need to talk.”

“Why? What’s going to happen to Carter?” Lucy pulled her hand away from Vera. “What’s going on?”

“Carter is a sick boy,” Stebbs said. “He can’t be around other people.”

“For how long?”

“That’s where it gets tricky,” he said. “Your grandma can’t say for sure.”

Vera reached for Lucy’s hand again, but she yanked it back. “What do you mean?”

Vera sighed. “Sweetheart, you’ve got to understand. When I was in medical school, polio was nearly eradicated—that means it hardly existed anymore. It wasn’t something we spent a lot of time learning about.”

“One of the things you didn’t learn was how long somebody carries it. That what you’re saying?” Lynn asked.

“Yes,” Vera said. “He could be a carrier for a week, a month, or forever. I simply don’t know.”

“I fetched his mother,” Stebbs said, “brought her back to our place, and explained the situation. Told her that her son would have to leave.”

Lucy clutched a pillow to her chest, denial tearing a hot path down her insides. “No, you can’t do that. You can’t make him go just because your stupid college didn’t teach you something forty years ago. That’s not fair and you know it.”

“What’s fair then, little one?” Stebbs asked. “Letting him stay? Not telling people he’s sick and having him infect others?”

“Stebbs is right, Lucy,” Vera said. “It’s the only thing I can think to do.”

“But what if it’s only for a week, or a month, like you said? What then? He’s gone and he never comes back because you were wrong.”

“That’s true,” Vera said. “But what if we take the chance, let him come back, and more fall sick? What do we tell them?”

“And then what?” Stebbs continued. “Try again later and tell the next round of sick it’s their bad luck and we were wrong again?” He shook his head. “I know you got feelings for the boy, but we talked it and talked it and this is the only way we can think is best for everyone.”

“Except Carter,” Lucy said stiffly.

“What’s best for Carter is if it hadn’t ever happened,” Stebbs said. “But we’re past that.”

“Easy for you to say,” Lucy said, anger clipping her words. “You can’t get sick.”

Stebbs’ face went cold, and his tone matched it. “Kid, there ain’t been nothing easy about this. You don’t know the half of it.”

Lynn perked up at his words. “What’s that mean?” Stebbs looked away from her, and she rounded on Vera. “What aren’t you saying?”

“There is one other possibility I didn’t mention in front of Carter,” Vera said.

Lucy’s heart leapt. Possibilities meant options, and hope. “What is it?”

Vera claimed her hand and wouldn’t give it up. She smiled sadly at her granddaughter before speaking. “It could be you.”

“Me?” she said softly, touching her chest as if the continued beating of her heart stood in denial. “It could be me?”

“It’s not you,” Lynn said through her teeth, and moved toward Vera. “And damn you for saying such a thing to her.”

Stebbs yanked her back by the shoulder. “Easy now. Getting angry ain’t helping.”

“Neither is saying a bunch of bullshit,” Lynn spat.

“I wouldn’t think it, much less say it, if there weren’t a chance it was true,” Vera said. “She was with the sick and the well as much as Carter. She was with Maddy. I can’t condemn him without questioning her.”

Lynn struggled out of Stebbs’ grip and kicked the wall, but held her silence. Vera turned to Lucy.

“Sweetheart, has there been anything, any headache, fever, back pain? Anything at all out of the ordinary you can think of, before Maddy died?”

Lucy shook her head slowly, her mind poring over the hours and days before her friend’s death. “No… I… I don’t think so.”

Images of Maddy flickered through her brain—her friend in a painful coil under the bedspread, her dead body lying at the bottom of the pit. She took a ragged breath, and Adam’s tiny smile flooded her thoughts along with Carter’s slumped body at Vera’s table as he wept for his fate.

“Say it’s not me, Grandma,” she begged, clutching Vera’s hand so tightly her nails left crescent cuts that filled with blood. “Say I didn’t do it to them.”

Vera’s soft, cool hand trailed over her hair. “I can’t tell you for sure. I’m sorry.”

Lucy fell forward onto Vera, burying her head in her lap and sobbing as Carter had, with no hope and nothing left but pain. Vera clasped her arms around her granddaughter and cried as well.

“So what’s it mean?” Lynn asked Stebbs, her mouth a hard line.

“That’s what we’re here to talk about, kiddo.”

Lucy touched her throat as the shot of whiskey Lynn had given her burned down. She imagined it drowning out the virus that might be living in her veins, purifying her blood in a surge of alcohol. But it wasn’t that easy.

They had moved to the kitchen at Vera’s insistence. Her grandmother had washed Lucy’s face and put a cold rag across her swollen eyes, while Lynn and Stebbs had shared a glance and uncorked a bottle of whiskey for everyone. It was Lucy’s first taste of alcohol and she had sputtered, spraying droplets across the table that Vera wouldn’t allow Lynn to clean up.

“I won’t believe it’s her,” Lynn said again. “The boy admitted to having a headache the day before his sister got sick. It has to be him. I’ve been with Lucy as much as anyone, and I’m not sick.”

“It’s likely you’re right,” Vera conceded. “But there are other factors to consider.”

“Like what?” Lucy asked.

“When I brought Carter’s mom over to the cabin to break the news to her,” Stebbs said, “she went biblical—fell to the floor, gnashed her teeth… . It was all Vera could do to keep her from harming her own self, which wasn’t exactly helpful.”

“Monica’s never been one for helpful,” Lynn said.

Stebbs shook his head. “Once we got her calmed down, we told her the boy would have to go. He took the news better than she did, I’ll say that. She broke down all over again, said she’d lost her daughter and now we was taking her son away. So Vera told her she could always go with him.”

“What’d she say?” Lucy asked.

“Exactly what you’d expect her to say,” Vera answered. “No.”

“She cut him loose?” Lynn asked.

“She’s not made of strong stuff,” Stebbs said. “Even if she had gone with him, she’d be more of a hindrance than a help to the boy.”

Lucy imagined poor Carter standing in a corner of Vera’s house, his mother rejecting him in favor of her own comfort. “Maybe she would’ve been,” Lucy agreed, “but now he’ll be alone.”

“What’s this got to do with us?” Lynn asked.

“When I explained to Monica why I suspected it was her son infecting the second wave of victims, she came to the same conclusion I had,” Vera said. “She knew you and Carter had been working together during the epidemic.”

“So she knows it could be Lucy,” Lynn said, guessing the end before Vera could come to it, “and she’s not likely to keep her mouth shut about it, with you two kicking her son out.”

Stebbs nodded. “Monica’s a coward, but not stupid.”

The warm spot the whiskey had formed in Lucy’s stomach had managed to calm her a little, and the exhaustion from hours of crying had lulled her into a stupor while the adults talked. But Lynn’s words brought a spike of cold fear bursting through the warmth.

“Is she telling people I’m sick too? Are you going to make us leave?”

“We don’t know what to do, honey,” Vera admitted. “But yes, it’s likely Monica will tell people you could have been the source. Which means a few things: people will expect us to treat you the same way as Carter, and if we don’t…”

“If we don’t, it’d stir up an already pissed-off hornet’s nest,” Stebbs finished. “Lots of people are mourning right now, and once that’s done, they’ll turn to wanting to know why their people died. They’ll need somebody to blame.”

“Even if we let you stay, you’d be in danger,” Vera said.

“They’d hurt me?”

“They would,” Lynn said. “Much as I don’t like agreeing. They would turn on you, if they thought it’d protect them from falling sick themselves, or losing more of their own. People are harsh animals. You’ve not had to see that firsthand in a long while.”

“Lynn’s right,” Stebbs said. “And Monica’s an injured animal, ready to bite at any threat. Right now, that’s us.”

Lynn’s hand went to her gun. “She can’t bite if I shut her mouth for her.”

“I won’t allow that, Lynn,” Vera said. “Killing her would only solve half your problem anyway.”

“What’s the other half?”

Stebbs gave Lynn a shrewd glance. “You’re not going to like what I have to say next, but don’t hit me, okay, kiddo?”

Lynn’s eyes narrowed, and Lucy noticed she made no promises.

“Abigail came down the hill today,” Stebbs said carefully, keeping an eye on Lynn.

“Oh crap,” Lucy said. “I forgot to tell you.”

Lynn’s eyebrows drew together. “Forgot to tell me what?”

Vera put a hand on Lynn’s taut shoulder. “It seems she believes you and Devon have, um…”

“Christ,” Stebbs broke in. “She thinks you’re sparking him.”

Lynn flushed a deep red. “She thinks I’m… with…” She trailed off, eyes wide. “Well, I’m not.”

“Much of a relief as that is to hear,” Stebbs said, “I don’t think she’s going to believe you.”

“Why not?”

“Lynn,” Vera said softly. “Sometimes when people are—”

“What she’s saying is that Abigail is cracked in the head,” Stebbs finished. “She’s convinced herself you’re sleeping with her man, and no amount of truth is going to sway her otherwise.”

“Have Devon set her straight,” Lucy said, seeing Lynn was beyond words. “She thinks the world of him. If he says it as well as Lynn, she’s bound to believe it.”

“Devon passed away this morning,” Vera said quietly.

“And with him dead, there’s no one to do the denying but the one she’s accusing, and Abigail half out of her head with grief—”

“And the other half of her head not being all that stable to begin with,” Lucy finished.

“She’ll be gunning for you,” Stebbs warned Lynn.

She shrugged. “I got a gun too.”

“And I bet Lynn’s a better shot,” Lucy said.

“Good shot or not, is that your plan?” Stebbs asked Lynn. “Climb up on the roof again and shoot anybody comes near? That the kind of life you want for Lucy? What you had? Skulking in the basement and sniping from the roof? Scared to talk to anybody for fear they’re gonna take something from you?”

Lynn swallowed hard, and Lucy could see the struggle tearing her in two. Lynn’s own mother had protected the pond against any who would take a drink from it, animal or human. The pond, and their home, had been the only world Lynn knew until she was Lucy’s age. Only her mother’s death and an injury had forced her to reach out to Stebbs for help; otherwise Lynn would’ve been content to remain as she had been. Alive, but alone.

“No,” Lynn said slowly. “I wouldn’t have that for you, Lucy. It’s no kind of life, and you’re not suited to it, anyway.”

“I can do it,” Lucy said, even though the thought of living in isolation made her skin grow cold. “You tell me and it’s done. I don’t want you to give up everything on account of me.”

“Little one,” Lynn said sadly, “that’s what a real mother does.”

The numbing effect of the alcohol had spread to her brain; it was the only way to explain the cool, calm way Lucy packed only the most essential things in a backpack. Her hand hovered over Red Dog, a stuffed animal Lynn had given her as the first indication her heart was softening toward the little girl she’d taken into her home.

“Probably shouldn’t,” a gruff voice came from her bedroom doorway, and Lucy turned to find Stebbs leaning there.

She clutched Red Dog to her chest. “He was Lynn’s when she was a kid too. Leaving him behind feels wrong.”

Stebbs shuffled into her room, gently taking Red Dog from her hands. He peered into the black button eyes, seeing something other than a stuffed animal there. He cleared his throat. “Why don’t you leave him with me? I’ll keep him safe for you.”

Lucy nodded dumbly, knowing it was a false promise meant to console a child. “Yeah, okay,” she said, swiping at the tears leaking from the corners of her eyes.

“C’mere, girl,” Stebbs said, and folded her into his arms.

She could only cry and inhale the strong smell of him, the woods and the water, the dirt and the air, one last time.

Lucy found Lynn pondering the racks of purified water they kept in the basement, a grim expression on her face. She glanced up when she heard Lucy’s step.

“You ready?”

“I’m packed, yeah.”

“That’s not the same thing as ready.” Lynn looked back at the bottles of water. “The thing about water,” she said, almost to herself, “is that it’s so damn heavy.”

Years of hauling water from the pond to the holding tanks in the barn had taught that lesson to both of them. “Yeah,” Lucy agreed. “It is.”

“We can’t carry enough to get us far. And we can’t trust water we find along the way to be clean. And that’s assuming we can even get to any that hasn’t already been claimed.” Lynn’s voice drifted off, their problem evident.

“Want me to bring my witching stick?”

With her forked ash stick Lucy had found water for many of the families in their community, always in private, and always attributing the find to Stebbs. The ability to witch water was a blessing and a curse—it could save lives, or ensure the bearer was marked for life as a person of high value in a world where money no longer mattered. Those who could find water worked in secret for fear their ability would earn them a pair of chains, with a stern master on the end.

“Bring it,” Lynn decided. “I haven’t lived this long to die of thirst on the road.”

“We’d be stupid not to,” Lucy said.

“It’d be stupid to use it. That’s a last resort, and you remember it.”

Lucy nodded and sat down on the steps to watch Lynn, who couldn’t tear herself away from the water. She ran her fingers over the bottles and heaved a sigh.

“Saying your good-byes?” Lucy teased.

“Beyond Stebbs and Vera, who else have I got to say it to?” Lynn asked, a self-deprecating smile on her face.

“There’s others that like you, if you’d let ’em.”

Lynn hefted her own backpack onto her shoulders. “Now’s a poor time to start liking people,” she said gruffly. “You say yours?”

“Yeah,” Lucy said, pushing the single syllable past the lump in her throat.

Lynn gave her a searching look. “If you didn’t do it good and thorough, you go do it again, understand?”

“You don’t think we’re ever coming back, do you?”

“Coming back or not, don’t matter. We’re leaving behind an old woman and a cripple in the wake of an epidemic. They’re stuck with a bunch of helpless children, and half the adults here got one arm or leg that don’t work. You say good-bye and you say it right, ’cause either we’re gonna die or they are.”

Lucy nodded, emotion choking off her voice when she tried to speak. The pond and her family had been her world for years, slowly sprinkled with new faces as more people found safety among them. Always her life had been planned—a man, a home, a well, and eventually children. Now it was all skewed, thrown off-balance by an invisible enemy she couldn’t fight. “What if… what if it is me, Lynn? What if all those dead children and ruined people are my fault?”

Lynn was on her knees on the step below Lucy in a second, gripping her face so tightly Lucy could feel her skin stretching.

“You listen to me now—I know you, understand? I know you right past your skin, through your bones, and down into your blood, and there is nothing inside of you that could hurt anyone. I know it for a fact, I know it the way I know the sun’s going to come up tomorrow the same place it did today. You hear me?”

“I hear you,” Lucy said. If Lynn, who was faithless, had faith in her, it was all the validation she needed.

Lynn let go of her cheeks, smoothed the short strands of blond hair from her forehead. “If you want to go and say a bit to Carter, he’s still over at Vera and Stebbs’ place.”

Lucy couldn’t control her surprise. “Really?”

“I shouldn’t let you,” Lynn said. “But I know what not getting to say good-bye feels like. Stay a good piece away from him while you’re talking, no matter how hard it is.”

“I will.” Lucy nodded emphatically, an odd mixture of elation and fear coursing through her body. She wanted to see Carter, needed to see him so badly that the possibility had her stomach dipping to her knees and her heart jumping into her throat. But the excitement was tinged with sadness, the knowledge that no matter what they said to each other, it would be their last words.

“You go on now,” Lynn said, turning back to the bottles of water. “Be back in an hour. We’re leaving as soon as there’s morning light.”

Five

The long grass was wet with night dew, soaking Lucy’s jeans as she crept quietly to Vera’s house by the creek. The sick were still lined up in rows, their blankets tucked around their hunched shoulders as they slept under the trees along the bank; the healthy made similar lines on the other side of the cabin, at a safe distance from their stricken loved ones.

There was a candle burning inside the cabin, and she saw Vera’s shadow pass by a window. She tapped lightly on the glass, and Vera motioned her around to the door, smiling as she opened it.

“Are you packed, sweetheart?”

“More or less.”

“I think ‘less’ would probably be best,” Vera said.

“Lynn said I should say my good-byes.”

Vera stepped outside and took Lucy’s hand, leading her down to the creek bed. “I want to talk to you, before you go.”

Lucy nodded, felt the warm rush of tears returning to her eyes. She’d been so wrapped up in wondering what she would say to Carter, she hadn’t realized this would be the last time she saw her grandmother.

Vera pointed toward the bend in the creek, where a small break in the trees allowed them to see the cemetery crosses in the moonlight. “Do you remember your mother?”

“Not much,” Lucy admitted. “I remember how sad she was, and how—” She broke off, not wanting to say anything that could be misunderstood. “How different from Lynn,” she finished.

“I think ‘delicate’ is what you’re trying to say.”

“Yeah, that’s definitely it.”

“She was delicate, very much so. Your mother wasn’t made for this kind of life, and while I know that, it still kills me every day to think what she chose instead.”

Lucy felt her grandma’s hand shaking in her own, and she squeezed it. “I’m sorry, Grandma. I’m sorry you had to lose her like that.”

“And now I’m losing you.” Vera turned to her, eyes wet. “Don’t think for a second we didn’t try to find a way for you to stay.”

“I know it,” Lucy said, her own voice growing thick. “Could you come?”

Vera shook her head, and the little flame of hope that had sparked in Lucy’s chest died. “No, little one. I’m an old woman, and my man is a cripple. We’d slow you down, and more than likely die along the way.”

“Lynn thinks you’ll die if you stay,” Lucy said.

“We may. But you two won’t have to stop to bury us, and I can lie here with my daughter and her little son.” Vera wrapped her arms around Lucy, who sank into her like a child.

“I’m going to miss you,” Lucy said. “And I love you a whole lot.”

“I love you a whole lot too, little girl,” Vera said, then pulled back to give Lucy a stern look. “I’ll let you see Carter, but you don’t go past this line.” She made a mark in the dirt with her foot. “Promise me.”

“Why not?” Lucy asked, the tears she’d been shedding all day erupting again, along with her frustration. “If you think I’m infected too, what does it matter?”

“Sweetheart”—Vera’s hand rested on her arm, her touch as light as always—“I don’t think it’s you. But I can’t back that up in any way other than the feeling in my heart.”

“Lynn said the same thing.”

“She’s got a mother’s instincts without ever having borne a child, and for once she and I agree on something. You’re not the carrier, little one. But like Stebbs said, Monica isn’t stupid, she’s figured out it could be you just as well as Carter, and we can’t very well exile one of you and not the other.”

“Then I’ll leave with him,” Lucy said, the words tumbling out of her as the idea occurred. “Lynn won’t have to leave her pond and he won’t have to be alone.”

“And that leaves Lynn behind to deal with Abigail gunning for her with all the bitterness in her heart. And more than likely you’ll be dead from Carter’s love in less than a week,” Vera said sternly.

Lucy was about to say that was fine, but the words were stuck.

Vera watched her closely. “That’s not what you’re meant for. Life’s got more in store for you than dying to prove a point. This conversation is one I’ve been meaning to have with you, but I never thought it’d take the deaths of so many for me to talk to you about life.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean maybe this is your chance to break free, to get out and see the world beyond this little place. I know there’s good out there; I’ve seen it. It’s not all hardship and strangers the way Lynn thinks. There’s more to life than a water source, and I’ve prayed you’d get to see that before you settled here.”

“A water source is pretty damn important,” Lucy said.

“It is,” Vera conceded, “but it’s not the only thing there is. Take this chance for what it is, Lucy. Get out of here. Don’t live Lynn’s way, or Stebbs’ way, or even my way. Live, and go find something new.”

Underneath the weight of fear in her stomach, Lucy felt a quiver of excitement, something that had long lain dormant. It reminded her of days in Entargo, her tiny fingers pulling back the curtains even as Neva protested, so that she could see the streets below, teeming with people she had yet to meet and the endless possibilities of what could happen that day.

“So you promise me you’ll keep your distance from Carter when you’re talking, and you keep that promise,” Vera said, bringing Lucy back into the present.

“I promise,” Lucy said, her voice stronger than she felt.

Vera disappeared into the trees and Lucy stood alone in the dark, her shoulders trembling. A stick snapped and she jerked at the sound, her pulse racing.

“Lucy?” Carter’s voice sounded thin and unsure. “You there?”

“Carter?” she called out, and heard the rustle of dead leaves underfoot as he came near. “Over here.”

He emerged out of the dark, so changed from the boy she knew that she had to resist the urge to run to him. His eyes were sunken and red-rimmed, his shoulders slumped, and his hands shook as he leaned against a tree for support.

“Your grandma said I can’t come closer than this maple,” he said.

“I’ve got a line in the dirt over here telling me what to do,” she answered, and he smiled a little.

“That’s just like you, to have a line.”

She laughed. “We really did it this time, didn’t we?”

“And here I always thought Devon was teasing when he said I’d be the end of him.”

Her face fell. “It’s not your fault, Carter. You didn’t know.”

Carter slid to the ground by the maple, his feet dangling over the bank. “What’s Lynn always say? ‘It is what it is’?”

“It is what it is,” Lucy agreed. “And it sucks.”

“That’s two different ways of saying the same thing,” Carter said, and a silence fell between the two of them while they both waited for the other to say the inevitable.

Lucy cleared her throat. “Lynn told me about your mom, that she… she…”

“Sold out on me?” Carter tossed a stick into the stream, and they heard the splash without seeing it. “Big surprise there.”

“I’m sorry about it.”

Carter shrugged. “Vera said you and Lynn are leaving.”

“Yeah, she thinks…” She paused, measuring her words. “Did she tell you it might be me?”

“She said so, but I don’t believe it.”

“Why not?”

Carter looked at her across the space dividing them, his gaze so intense she felt her pulse jump. “I can feel it in me, Lucy,” he said, his voice barely audible over the swaying tree branches. “Sick or not, I feel it. And I feel the weight of all those dead little kids on me.”

Lucy thought of Lynn, who had held her and sworn she had nothing to feel guilty about, her own conviction burning bright enough for the two of them. Carter had no one, and she was forbidden from comforting him. The silence between them had grown thick, and she didn’t know how to break it.

“So what are you going to do?” Carter asked. “Where are you going? South?”

Lucy shook her head. “Lynn said the only thing we’d get away from in the south is the winters, and we’d be giving up more than that by leaving the pond. I guess a long time ago my uncle Eli told her California is still, you know… normal.”

“Normal, huh?” Carter smiled and threw another stick into the creek. “What’s that mean?”

“Eli told her they’d built a bunch of desalinization plants to make ocean water drinkable, so they weren’t hurt bad by the Shortage.”

“A drinkable ocean? That’s a lot of water.”

“And no winters, from what Stebbs and Grandma say.”

“Sounds like heaven.”

“It could be,” Lucy said. “But getting there’ll be hell. There’s a lot between me and it.”

“And I’ve never known you to back down,” Carter said. “The only thing bigger than the world is fear, Lucy. Don’t let it get the best of you.”

“What about you? What are you going to do?”

Carter stood up and stretched, his long arm muscles gleaming in the white moonlight. “Oh, I figured I’d find some old ugly hermit somewhere, spit in his mouth, and see if he gets sick.”

“That’s a great plan, buddy,” Lucy said.

“I had real plans once, you know?” Carter said. “I was starting to think maybe you and me, we could have a little place of our own someday.”

“Yeah. I was starting to think that too,” Lucy said, tears catching in her throat.

They looked at each other across the void they could not bridge, their silent, saltwater good-byes streaming down their faces.

“You should go,” Carter said abruptly, turning away from her. “Stay safe, stay with Lynn. Name a baby after me.”

“Shit,” Lucy choked. “I’ll name two.”

“Now that’s just stupid.”

Lucy laughed through her tears, and he turned around. “Go on now, Lucy. It’s not going to get any easier.”

She turned and ran through the woods, crashing through the underbrush and into the wet grass that whipped at her legs. The cold night air felt like it would burst her lungs but she kept running, sprinting past the still bodies of the sick.

The four of them stood in an awkward circle as the sun came up. Stebbs and Vera with their arms around each other, Lucy and Lynn weighed down by their packs.

“You’ve got everything now? You double-checked your bullets?” Stebbs asked Lynn. She had her rifle strapped to her back, a handgun at her side.

“You gave me enough ammunition to kill every stranger between here and the West Coast,” Lynn said, hunching her shoulders against the weight of her pack.

“Good Lord, don’t shoot everyone you meet,” Vera said.

“Not right away, anyway,” Stebbs added.

Lynn looked over at Lucy. “You ready?”

“I am,” Lucy said. She almost wished Stebbs and Vera had not come. Good-bye had been hard enough once.

“Well,” Lynn said, and kicked at a clump of grass, “I guess that’s it then.” She looked up at Stebbs, and Lucy realized Lynn had not said good-bye to anyone.

“Maybe I’ll see you again someday, asshole,” Lynn said, and shook Stebbs’ hand. He pulled her into a hug and clapped her on the back, careful not to hit her rifle.

“Maybe, kiddo,” he said, his voice shaky. “Maybe.”

Lynn pulled away from him, swiping at her tears. “Don’t let anybody move into my house,” she said sternly, and reached for Lucy’s hand.

They walked to the edge of the grass together and stepped out onto the road.