Lynn drove to the little cemetery silently, parking so that the headlights cut across the graves, giving the stones long, black shadows.
“You remember which one?”
“I’ve got a general idea,” Vera said as she opened her door. “Everything was in my backpack and I ditched the whole thing.”
“They didn’t think it was odd you were traveling empty-handed?”
“They weren’t thinking with their brains once they caught me.”
Vera and Lynn fanned out through the center section of the graveyard in the long evening shadows. Lynn’s feet sank into the soft ground as she walked. The backpack was hunched sadly against the back of a leaning tombstone, the underside dark with moisture. “Got it,” she called out, hefting the backpack up with one hand.
“Careful,” Vera called out. “There are syringes in there. If they break, it’s pointless.”
Lynn handed the pack over to Vera and watched as she checked the contents. “They’re injectable liquids, we’ll have to hope they haven’t frozen since I left this behind.”
“Will they still work?”
Vera shrugged. “Only thing we can do is inject her and wait.”
They headed south, Lynn’s foot heavy on the pedal now that they weren’t looking for landmarks anymore. Full dark fell, and she noticed that Vera tensed every time they flew through a crossroads.
“Sorry,” she said when she noticed Lynn looking at her. “It’s an old habit. When I see a stop sign, I still think ‘stop.’”
“Mother used to stop at every one,” Lynn said, smiling. “She said running them felt wrong.”
“It’s a different world now,” Neva said. “I am sorry about your mother.”
“I’m sorry about your daughter.”
“Right now, I’ll concentrate on saving Lucy, and mourn later.”
Lynn sped up.
Eighteen
The needle sank into Lucy’s fevered skin, leaving a pucker behind. “She’s dehydrated,” Vera said. “Did she keep anything down?”
Eli shook his head. “I crushed up a few of those aspirin and put them in some water, but she lost it pretty fast.”
“Keep putting fluids in her. Her temp is dropping but it will spike again, even if the antibiotics are working. It takes a steady stream of medicine in her system to start fighting the infection. I can inject her with what I have maybe twice more, but that won’t kill the bacteria on its own. They’ll multiply and we’ll be back in the same situation in a week or two.”
“So we need more antibiotics,” Stebbs said.
Vera nodded and pushed a curl of Lucy’s hair behind her ear. “I’ve heard horror stories of people dying out here from the simplest things; I didn’t want to escape the city only to be killed by a scrape I overlooked one day too many. My own lab had the injectables, so it was easy enough to take some and adjust the inventory. But trying to take more or to take pills from someone else’s lab would’ve been suicide.”
A heavy silence filled the air at Vera’s last word, and she put her hand to her mouth as if to force it back in.
Stebbs cleared his throat and shared a glance with Lynn. “You’ll have to search some houses for the pills she needs.”
Lynn began lacing her boots back up even though she’d just sat down. “I’ll go now.”
“I’m coming with you,” Eli said, dragging his own boots out from under Lucy’s cot.
“You do this sort of thing often?” Vera asked, her composure regained.
“Sometimes,” Lynn said as she shrugged her coat back on. “If we need something we don’t have handy. I haven’t been out scavenging in a long time though, no idea what the nearby houses look like these days.”
“Those men that took me . . . that’s what they were doing—scavenging. They’d go house to house and clear out anything that seemed useful—medicine, blankets, and tools. They had it all stockpiled back at their camp.”
“Why’d they need all that stuff?” Lynn asked blankly.
“They don’t. They’re taking it so that others that do need it have to come to them for it.”
“To trade,” Stebbs finished for her. “Sons of bitches.”
Lynn remembered the traveler on the road, the stranger whose boots had been taken off his feet in order to be stockpiled somewhere. “I won’t trade with them, even for medicine.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Vera said. “You don’t have anything they want. They’re on the stream. It’s flowing well right now from all this melt so they don’t need water. But you’re going to have to drive a long time before you get to a house they haven’t cleaned out.”
Lynn tucked her handgun in her waistband, slung her rifle over her shoulder. “We’ll drive then,” she said. “Surely there’s somewhere they haven’t been.”
The evening was cold and she leaned into Eli as they walked out to the truck. “Did Stebbs tell you?” Lynn asked quietly.
“About Neva? Yeah.”
Lynn rested her head against the steering wheel before starting the engine. “I can’t believe she did that. Eli, I swear I never thought she’d use it for that.”