It was still early and he expected to lie restless for a while at least, but apparently he still had some sleep to catch up on. Fifteen minutes after lying down he was out, breathing slowly and evenly, his rifle close by his right hand.
Nadine was tired. This now seemed like the longest day of her life. Twice she felt sure they had been spotted, once near Strafford, and again at the Maine-New Hampshire state line, when he had looked back over his shoulder and called out. For herself, she didn't care if they were spotted or not. This man wasn't crazy, like the man who had passed by the big white house ten days ago. That man had been a soldier loaded down with guns and grenades and bandoliers of ammunition. He had been laughing and crying and threatening to blow the balls off someone named Lieutenant Morton. Lieutenant Morton had been nowhere in sight, which was probably a good thing for him, if he was still alive. Joe had been frightened of the soldier, too, and in that case it was probably a very good thing.
"Joe?"
She looked around.
Joe was gone.
And she had been on the edge of sleep and slipping over. She pushed the single blanket back and stood up, wincing at a hundred different aches. How long had it been since she had spent so much time on a bicycle? Never, probably. And then there was the constant, nerve-wracking effort to find the golden mean. If they got too close, he would see them and that would upset Joe. If they dropped back too far, he might leave Route 9 for another road and they would lose him. That would upset her. It had never occurred to her that Larry might circle back and get behind them. Luckily (for Joe, at least), it had never occurred to Larry, either.
She kept telling herself that Joe would get used to the idea that they needed him... and not just him. They could not be alone. If they stayed alone, they would die alone. Joe would get used to the idea; he had not lived his previous life in a vacuum any more than she had. Other people got to be a habit.
"Joe," she called again, softly.
He could be as quiet as a Viet Cong guerrilla creeping through the bush, but her ears had gotten attuned to him over the last three weeks, and tonight, as a bonus, there was a moon. She heard a faint scrape and clatter of gravel, and she knew where he was going. Ignoring her aches, she followed. It was quarter after ten.
They had made camp (if you wanted to call two blankets in the grass "camp") behind the North Berwick Grille across from the general store, storing the bikes in a shed behind the restaurant. The man they were following had eaten in the school playground across the street ("If we went over there, I'll bet he would give us some of his supper, Joe," she had said tactfully. "It's hot... and doesn't it smell nice? I'll bet it's lots nicer than this bologna." Joe's eyes had gone wide, showing a lot of the white, and he shook his knife balefully in Larry's direction) and then he had gone up the road to a house with a screened-in porch. She thought from the way he was steering his bike that he was maybe a little drunk. He was now asleep on the porch of the house he had chosen.
She went faster, wincing as random pebbles bit into the balls of her feet. There were houses on the left and she crossed to their lawns, which were now growing into fields. The grass, heavy with dew and smelling sweet, came all the way to her bare shins. It made her think of a time she had run with a boy through grass like this, under a moon that had been full, instead of waning like this one was. There had been a hot sweet ball of excitement in her lower belly, and she had been very conscious of her br**sts as sexual things, full and ripe and standing out from her chest. The moon had made her feel drunk, and so had the grass, wetting her legs with its night moisture. She had known that if the boy caught her she would let the boy have her maidenhead. She had run like an Indian through the corn. Had he caught her? What did it matter now?
She ran faster, leaping a cement driveway that glimmered like ice in the darkness.