It was Maggie. She didn’t sound panicked. She was happy, he could hear the smile in her voice.
He clambered in the cab. Not all the way – there wasn’t room – but he poked his head in.
The toddler stopped crying when he did, and for a wonderful moment he thought it was because she had seen him. Then she giggled and he realized she was being licked rapidly on the nose by Sally. The snow leopard looked like he was grinning, and his huge pink tongue was lapping at Liz like she was a cool drink of water after a too-long thirst.
Ken felt like he had come home. He would often walk into the house – was it even there anymore? – and hear Liz laughing. Running up, not to him but to his briefcase or his papers or some other thing he carried that had caught her eye. And that was all right; that was the way it should be, in a way. He was her father, and if he was doing his job she shouldn’t feel like he was a rare treat, but rather a permanent and comforting fixture in her life. Not an amusement, but a security blanket with strong arms to wrap around her.
She didn’t laugh at him, she laughed at Sally. A hand batted out and punched the snow leopard, hitting him right on his truncated ear. Ken’s heart lurched again, this time in fear that that the snow leopard would revert to its wild roots and attack the little girl.
Sally didn’t seem to register what had to be a painful punch. He just kept licking, lapping, and Lizzy kept laughing.
Maggie looked at him, smiling. She didn’t say “She’s back, our baby is here again.” She didn’t have to. Ken saw it in her eyes, and it was as loud and clear as if she had written it in hundred-foot letters in the sky.
Buck looked morose. He was staring at Hope, waiting for her to wake. She slept on. Moaned once, but did not move her body. Still locked in whatever coma or fugue commanded her body during the attack.
Ken touched Buck’s shoulder. He thought it strange that he, the parent, should be comforting a comparative stranger about the continuing insensibility of his own daughter. But he also knew Buck wasn’t really a stranger. Not anymore. They had all shed blood for one another. They were all family, and that was right, and Buck was worried about this girl in his arms the same way he would worry about a sister, niece, mother, daughter. She was his and he was hers.
That was right, too.
The thresher lurched.
Ken worried for a moment about what new horror that portended.
Then he realized that the driver had downshifted. Slowing down.
“We walk from here,” he said. “Or most likely run.”
46
Ken saw why the driver stopped: there was another roadblock. A city bus had overturned and spun halfway through a building. It sprawled halfway across the street, blocking too much of it for the thresher to pass.
Everyone got out quickly. Sally first, leaping down to the asphalt, landing silently. He favored his left front paw, but did not whine or whimper. Just looked around like an advance scout.
The rest of the survivors piled out. The driver and Theresa came last.
Theresa hugged the driver, and Ken could tell that whatever he and the others had been through, these two had had similar experiences. Had been bound by pain and death and sacrifice. Family.
“Where’s Brandon, Elijah?” she said.
The huge man shook his head. He tried to talk, choked, tried again. “When you were being attacked, he hit them with the RPG.”
Theresa’s face shone with the dread certainty of someone who knows the end of a terrible story, but cannot help but listen to the whole of it. “He could have run,” she whispered.
Elijah shook his head. “There wasn’t time, and you know it. And he didn’t know how to drive the –“
Theresa cut him off with a gesture. She hugged him again. “I know,” she said. Her voice was a harsh whisper. “I know, you dumb bear.”
Elijah hugged her so tightly Ken thought he could hear Theresa’s ribs creak. Then he released her and Ken could see wetness shining on his face. “Your brother let himself die so we could live,” he said. “Let’s not waste that.”
Theresa nodded. The harshness came back into her expression, her eyes deadened. She looked at the group.
“Come on,” she said. “We’ve got places to go and things to do.”
She looked at the still-crying Lizzie and the still-silent Hope as she said this.
Ken didn’t like the look she gave them.
47
The run was blessedly short. Ken could feel the survivors – at least the ones he knew, if not Elijah and Theresa – going slower and slower with each passing yard, foot, inch.
They had to move around piles of debris, over crashed cars. One time they even had to help one another under a pile-up of construction scaffolding that had formed a weird tunnel that all-but-completely blocked the street. It was strangely beautiful, and Ken couldn’t help but feel like he was being born again as he crawled through one side of the tunnel and came out another.