But that wasn’t the whole of it, he admitted to himself.
It had been crazy, half-formed, foolish, fantasy, stress-induced, exhaustion-induced—if he’d stopped for even a moment to think this impulse through, he’d have recognized its absurdity—but Andy had always liked Tia, there had been fleeting moments over the years when he’d wondered if he might more-than-like her, and he was giving up everything to serve June and Ruby City and his own ideals: his wife, his sons. (June and Ruby City and his ideals predated Beth, predated Ian and Colby, but that didn’t make abandoning them any easier.) Maybe he didn’t have to be so alone. Maybe he didn’t have to give everything up. And it was the baby, weirdly, that had triggered this fantasy, because he knew what a baby would mean to June and the rest, imagined it as a beautiful sort of gift he and Tia could make to the community.
Crazy, half-formed, foolish. Fantasy. Not even a conscious plan, not anything he could register as having entertained as a possibility until now, in retrospect, in this first quiet moment since he and the others had raised their guns on the travelers—but there it was.
And Tia had made her own crazy, half-formed plan. Now she was God knows where, and two people—kids, really—were dead.
All of this was why Andy spent his first night in eleven years under a Ruby City roof not sleeping—his eyes wide in alarm, head swarming with regrets—and embarked on his hunt the next morning in that same old familiar, albeit caffeinated, fog.
Wampa was pulling now toward Tauntaun, who had lain on his belly, posture rigid. Roz had to yank twice on the leash, offering her guttural command, before Wampa’s loping slowed to a scamper.
“That’s Tauntaun’s tell,” Roz said. “He found something.”
They closed the distance. Andy extended his finger to graze the edge of the trigger guard on his rifle, holding his breath. He didn’t think Tia was here, or close. But he knew she was armed—though the guns were supposedly unloaded—and he no longer had a sense of what she was capable of. (She could say the same about him, he knew.) If he had been her last night, he’d have used the rain and night cover to gain high ground, as high as he could stand to get, and he’d wait, hidden, for his pursuers. Then pick them off. But Tia was not a good shot, even if she did have firepower. She’d started turning down hunting excursions after the birth of her first baby, even though he knew she could use the money. He was counting on her unease with the weapon, her desperation to get home. She wouldn’t lie in wait. She’d flee.
That didn’t mean she wouldn’t turn and fire on him and Roz, if she saw them. In fact, he expected nothing less.
Roz scratched Tauntaun’s head, slipped him a treat, then Wampa. Hunched down. “Hmm,” she said. “Ain’t seeing it.”
“Seeing what?” Andy asked.
“Whatever it is to see.” She beckoned. “Bend down here. You got young eyes. Tell me what you make out.”
He did as he was told, setting his rifle carefully down beside him. Roz’s gaze was fixed on the ground at Tauntaun’s feet, where—Andy had to agree—all there was to see was dirt. A dried-up leaf. Some scraggly blades of grass. He could smell the dogs, their doggy smell, not perfume but not exactly unpleasant, and he could smell Roz and himself, their body odor after two hours of brisk, uphill hiking, and something else. Something unnatural but recognizable. Chemical.
“I think she Stamped herself.” He looked around, grabbed a stick, and leaned in further, nose almost to the ground, pushing the leaf to the side, folding back the blades of grass. There. He picked the dead tick up between his fingers and rested it on his palm.
Roz wrinkled her mouth as if she’d bitten into something sour, and shook her head. “Good lord. Throw that thing down.”
“It’s been cooked in chemicals. It’s harmless.”
“Don’t mean I want to look at it,” Roz said.
A big one—almost the size of a pencil eraser. Five of its eight legs still attached. Andy turned his hand over, letting what was left of the tick fall back to the ground, and wiped his palm on his pant leg. He picked up his gun, stood. He could not remember, for a long handful of seconds, what was supposed to come next.
“Wake up, bud,” Roz said. “We ain’t done yet.”
“I know that,” Andy said irritably. He noticed Roz’s dark look and allowed himself a second to enjoy it, though he knew that he shouldn’t push her. The missus. What did June see in this woman? This coarse, humorless woman with her soft, shapeless body and her helmet of dry hay-colored hair? The two of them had been a mystery to Andy from the very start, though he had to say, if nothing else, that aging had hurt Roz’s looks no more than youth had helped them.
Roz mumbled some order at the dogs. They took off, and she followed without a backward glance. Andy trailed after.
—
Andy’s mother had been sixteen years old when she accepted a hardship leave from Biloxi Secondary and decided, on a whim, to go ahead and try taking the Intra-Zone Career Aptitude Exam. She got one free crack at it, it was one Saturday of her life, and she knew in her heart of hearts that she was never going to be able to come back from her hardship leave, that her entire life was a hardship and only a miracle would change it. This was what she told Andy, years later, almost to the word: My entire life was a hardship. Only a miracle would change it. But she got her miracle. A few moments after she hit the Finish Exam button, the proctor called her back to his office.
There’s still an official review of scoring, he said, but you did very well, young lady. Very, very well.
How well? she’d asked.