Lynn caught her glance and nodded her assent. “If you want to run outside in the rain, that’s your choice.”
Lucy picked her way down a hallway where chunks of the ceiling lay on the floor, wet and moldy, finally finding a back door that led out to the yard. Another lightning flash lit up the outbuilding and she dashed into the rain, shivering as the drops slipped past her upturned collar and ran down her spine. Getting inside the building was not easy; the lilac had hugged it for a long time. Lucy pulled and hacked, breaking old limbs and bending new ones until she could kick down what remained of the door.
More lightning revealed that she’d been right—other travelers had missed the little outbuilding. The walls of the shed were lined with rusty tools, a bicycle with rotted tires sat in the corner, and bundles of twine hung from the ceiling. Lucy grabbed what could still be serviceable—a hammer, two screwdrivers with different heads, and some of the twine. A final flash revealed something piled in the corner that made Lucy laugh, despite the wet clothes clinging to her. She sprinted back to the house and into the front room, her tools and twine nestled inside the five-gallon buckets she’d found. Lynn glanced up.
“I thought the buckets might actually make you smile,” Lucy said, as she stuffed the twine into her pack. As expected, Lynn rolled her eyes, but the corners of her mouth were twitching as she turned back to the fire.
“That was close, anyway,” Joss said, watching Lynn’s reaction. “What’s so great about buckets?”
“These aren’t just buckets, lady,” Lucy clarified. “These are five-gallon buckets. You wanna carry five gallons of something? This is the bucket you need.”
Joss turned to Lynn, mystified. “What’s the big deal?”
“Where we’re from,” Lynn answered, “these buckets were kinda hard to come by. They’d get you all kinds of stuff in trade if you were lucky enough to find one.”
“Because they haul water?”
“Haul water?” Lucy said in mock exaggeration. “Oh, they haul water, and snow—which turns into water, by the way, or big chunks of ice—which also turns into water. And,” she continued, “it’s useful empty. Flip it over and set your can on it when you’re done hauling water.” She dexterously flipped a bucket, clomping it down on the floor and sitting on it with a flourish.
The crack of the gunshot was barely audible over the pounding rain, and Lucy didn’t understand why she’d been knocked onto her back until blood blossomed across the front of her shirt.
“Shit! Lynn!”
Lynn was already at the fireplace, dousing the flames with a blanket and kicking the smoking remnants into a corner. Darkness descended and Lucy heard Lynn crawling toward her.
“Where you hit?”
“It’s just my shoulder, I think,” she answered, trying to control the panic in her voice.
“Can you crawl?”
The acrid smoke from the smothered fire filled her nostrils and Lucy gasped for air. “Yeah, I think so,” she said, ignoring the flare of pain that shot through her shoulder as she followed the sounds of Lynn’s movement toward a window.
A clammy hand clasped around her ankle. “What’s happening?” Joss asked, her voice pitched high with fear.
Another bullet sliced through the plaster wall, mixing a cloud of dust with the smoke that hung low in the heavy air. Lynn growled at Joss to whisper, and the three of them hovered close to a window, heads below the sill. Lucy barely resisted the urge to shake Joss’ hand off her leg, and gritted her teeth against the pain spreading through her arm, like hot needles surging under the surface of her skin.
Lynn rose an inch so she could see through the hole where the window had been, but immediately dropped. “It’s too dark to see,” she whispered. “And too many openings here for me to cover them all.”
Lucy felt cold metal in her hand; the butt of the pistol. “Take this,” Lynn said, “and you and Joss find the stairs. Go on up if you think they’ll hold you, but get out of this room.”
“What about you? Where you going?” Lucy asked, a panic darker than the room sprouting in her belly. “Don’t leave me here!”
“I’m going outside,” Lynn said, voice pitched low. “I can’t see them, but I might be able to hear them out there without the rain pounding on the roof. If we at least show ’em we’ve got guns, they might back off.”
“And if they don’t?” Joss asked.
“If they don’t, Lucy isn’t a bad shot.”
Lucy felt Joss’ grip tighten on her leg. “Don’t you dare get hurt,” Lucy said to Lynn, her voice a growl over the drumming of the rain. “I’ll be really pissed at you if you die.”