Lynn wiped her sleeve across her mouth. “I’m happy I grew up at all.”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Joss countered. “Used to be we were raised on dreams. Now we tell the kids they’re lucky to be alive. In that way, I do miss the city. There were more options there. You were exposed to more things.”
“The city, huh?” Lynn said, glancing up from the bottle of wine. “It exposed a lot of people to cholera.”
“Sickness happens out in the country too. You’re running from it, after all.”
“Maybe,” Lynn granted. “But people weren’t meant to live that way, inside of boxes stacked on top of each other.”
“What were you expecting Entargo to be like?” Lucy asked, curious as to what Lynn’s vision had been.
Lynn shook her head, gaze lost in the dying embers of the fire. “I don’t know. But when I saw it, all I could think of was the lump your grandma cut out of old Mr. Adams, you remember?”
Lucy nodded. It was hard to forget the cancerous mass one of their neighbors had reluctantly revealed to Vera, a black tumor that had bulged from the back of his knee.
“It was like that, for me,” Lynn continued. “An unnatural growth cropping up somewhere it had no business, in the middle of fields and forest, with straight cement roots no amount of cutting will ever get out of the dirt.” Her eyes lingered unfocused on the flames. When she spoke again, it was with the tone of voice Lucy knew meant she was using words not her own, quoting a poet long dead from a book of her mother’s that lay mildewing miles behind them.
“And in these dark cells,
packed street after street,
souls live, hideous yet—
O disfigured, defaced,
with no trace of the beauty
men once held so light.”
Lucy reached across the fire and plucked the bottle out of Lynn’s hands. “No more wine for you.”
Ten
The road was mesmerizing. Lucy put one foot in front of the other, kept her gaze on the horizon, and never stopped moving. The overgrown country roads slashed across the fields in unbending lines. The sky had been gray since morning, echoing back the colors of the road and just as endless. From rim to rim it was filled with clouds that gave no rain, only a teasing promise some might fall. Maybe.
Joss and Lynn were silent. The air was dense with humidity, stilling even the wildlife. For hours the only movement Lucy had seen was the swirl of gnats in front of her own face, drawn by the sweet smell of her sweat. She trudged on, picking a landmark in the distance and passing it, then picking a new one.
Her thoughts slid back to Carter and Lake Wellesley, wondering if he’d been ousted along with the other people squatting around its banks. There were plenty of empty houses nearby. If he could find a water supply and begin stockpiling wood for the winter, there was no reason why he wouldn’t make it. But the hopelessness in his face when he’d last spoken to her hadn’t given her much to hold on to. If he didn’t want to live, he wouldn’t.
The forked ash stick in her pack rubbed between her shoulder blades, reminding Lucy she could have found water for Carter, helped him in a priceless way no one else was capable of. If she’d had the presence of mind to share her secret as they stood saying good-bye in the moonlight, she might have been able to see if his trembling hands were capable of witching. At the least it would’ve bought her a few more hours with Carter, And possibly a source of life for him.
She slapped at the gnats in frustration, angry with herself for not being quick enough to think of sharing her secret in that moment. Water couldn’t cure him of the virus in his blood, but it could keep him safe, and tied to a piece of land where she’d be able to find him again.
And she was going to. Joss’ comments from the night before had planted a seed in Lucy’s brain that sprouted during the night, giving life to a new goal. If people in California didn’t have to dedicate their time to fighting off starvation, maybe someone like Vera had used their spare moments to learn more about the illnesses that cut down people like scythes through wheat. Someone, somewhere, could know how long Carter would be communicable.
And if it wasn’t forever, she was going to find him again. If it was true that there were places where she could do more than gather water and find food every day, then Carter deserved to live that way too. Joss had said it was important to want something, and once Lucy had warmed up to the idea, she refused to make a choice. She could have California and Carter both. She wanted everything.
“There’s a place coming up called Fort Recovery,” Lynn said, using her handkerchief to wipe the sweat from her brow.
“I could go for some recovery,” Joss said.
“Too bad, cause we’ll be going ’round.”
“Why are we avoiding it?”
“It’s big,” Lynn answered. “Too big to not have someone in it somewhere.”
“Do you always think people are a bad thing?” Joss asked.