Tom fingered the envelope, then drew out a brittle piece of paper so old that the edges were frayed, though the ink was new. “Who are they?”
“Vets, most of them. We rode Rolling Thunder together. And here.” Jed dug inside his shirt and slipped something from around his neck. “You take these. Show them to anyone on that list, and they’ll know you’re okay.”
The tags, warm from Jed’s body heat, were not a matched set.
The edge of the older tag was crimped, and there was no social; just Jed’s name, service number, blood type, and religion. The design of the other he was very familiar with, because his meat tag tattoo had the same information. His own tags, with their rubber silencers, were tucked in an old sock drawer back in a house that, more than likely, was now nothing but ashes.
“I shouldn’t take these.”
“Tom, you’re young. You think you can go it alone, but you ought to know by now that you can’t. You’re going to need help. Now, you take those.” Jed paused. “Humor an old fool. Do it for me, if nothing else.”
Jed had a point. If Vietnam veterans were anything like vets nowadays, the network was tight, and the bonds were for life. Draping the tags around his neck, he tucked them inside his shirt.
“Where’s your other tag?”
“With Michael. That tag of his there is the one they brought to the house. Night before the funeral, though, I slipped one of mine in there with him, so he wouldn’t be alone.” Jed put his hand on Tom’s shoulder. “Now you won’t be either.”
There was a knock at the front door. Three, actually: sharp and evenly spaced.
Darn it. Grace’s brows pulled down in a frown. Jed was early, but . . . he always used the south door. Anyway, he wouldn’t knock.
More raps: “Grace, it’s me.”
Her shoulders relaxed, but only a little. She knew the voice, but it was the wrong place at the wrong time. She would have to figure out a way to get rid of him. He couldn’t see the table, the gifts.
“Grace?”
Well, shoot. She threw a quick glance at the timer, now halfway through this ninth cycle. It shouldn’t take more than twenty seconds to answer the door. Plenty of time.
One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand . . . I’ll just say he can’t stay. She headed out of the west room and took the short hall to the front door. Three-one-thousand, four . . . I’ll be firm, and then I’ll shut the door and I won’t answer again, no matter what . . . Six-one-thousand. She dragged open the front door, wincing against a wintry blast. Seven—
Everything she needed to say piled up like those grains of sand on that miniature mountain. Her mouth opened, but not a word tumbled out. She recognized the old man in his black parka and too-large bombardier hat, pulled so far down he had to tip his head back to see where he was going.
The other two—hard and grim-faced and also old, because just about everyone was these days—she didn’t recognize at all.
Three men. For one brief moment, she felt a weird sense of déjà vu. She wasn’t at the cabin, and the world hadn’t gone to hell, and the Marines had only just arrived as she wandered out of the kitchen with measuring spoons—because, for the life of her, she couldn’t remember what those spoons were for.
Then her eyes shifted to the horses.
Three men, two rifles.
But six horses.
These men, that’s three. She felt the air drying her tongue, her voice evaporating the way the fizz in pop died. A horse for him, too, but not me or Jed—because they’re not here for us, and that makes four.
So where are the other two men?
She looked at the old man in that ridiculously outsized hat. “Abel?”
25
Saturday night.
“I don’t like it. They’ve been gone way too long, practically since dawn, and they don’t hunt during the day. Plus, they got a bonfire going in the snow. What sense does that make?” Sharon dug a grimy fingernail into a huge, weeping sore pocking her right cheek. The ulceration, mushy and liverish, occupied the bull’seye of a faded green-gray tattoo of a web like a squashed spider.
Sharon tossed a glare at Acne, perched on a low coffee table to the left of a crackling fire Alex had gotten started, and then turned an equally suspicious eye on Alex. “How come they ain’t come back to camp?”
“How should I know?” Alex asked, although this place could hardly be called a camp. From the metallic scent of hard ice and what she’d been able to make out in the failing light, the Changed had claimed someone’s old lake place: a swank and very large Victorian with gingerbread, a porch swing, and even a flagpole. Acne and Slash, the pack’s muscle, had herded them into a small guesthouse that held the long-stale whiff of sulfur and rancid fat from an ancient breakfast of fried eggs. Compared to the run-down sheds and frigid lean-tos of the past week, this place was a mansion. “I don’t know any more than you do.”
Sharon coughed a laugh. Alex had known used gym socks with better breath. “That’s horseshit,” Sharon said. “I got eyes. So does that boyfriend of yours.”
“Christ,” Ray said. Once a fleshy man, his gut now sagged like an empty paper bag. Putting an arm around his wife’s shoulders, he hugged Ruby closer. “Aren’t things bad enough?”
“I’m just saying what we’re all thinking,” Sharon snapped.
From his perch, Acne turned to look at them, and Sharon brayed, “Hey, you son of a bitch, when you gonna feed us?”
“Sharon.” Ruby’s voice quivered like the string of a bow drawn to the breaking point. “Don’t provoke them.”
Sharon glowered. “Well, I wouldn’t, except we’re hungry. We need food, unless you want us all skin and bones, ya assholes!” Given that Sharon had more ink per square inch than anyone Alex had ever known and that the Changed had a distinctive taste for, ah, unusual accessories like tattooed skin-kerchiefs and bandanas, Alex had a sneaking suspicion the Changed would be just as happy if Sharon was nothing but skin. Easier to peel. A mean thought, but then again, Sharon wasn’t her favorite person.
“You know why they haven’t fed us, Sharon,” Ruby said.
“Because they haven’t found anyone else. It’s just . . . bad luck.”
“Luck? Got nothing to do with it. We’re all going to end up stew meat, except maybe little Miss Alex here.” Sharon squinted.
“Don’t think I don’t see the way you and that wolf-boy keep making googly eyes at each other. That’s one itch he’s got that I’m thinking only you can scratch.”
“Sharon,” Ray said, without much heat. “Put a cork in it.”
“It’s all right, Ray,” Alex said.
“Yeah, Ray,” Sharon said. “Me and Alex are just talking while we all sit on our butts, waiting to die.”
“But must you be so hateful?” Ruby forked hair from her face with a hand that was all brittle bone tented with frail skin. “We’re all in the same boat.”
“Wanna bet? I think one of us has got herself a pretty nice little life raft. So where you think your boyfriend’s got himself to, Alex?” Sharon grinned, not a pleasant sight. Her mouth was a gaptoothed tangle of discolored, off-kilter pegs. “Think maybe he ran out, got hisself a new girlfriend? Or maybe him and that blonde are—”
Alex zoned out. This was a tune she knew by heart. Turning aside, she carefully teased flannel and gauze from her shoulder.
Her left arm throbbed and she could almost see the heat shimmers. Although she kept the wound as clean as possible, the shakes had started up a little after noon, if Mickey could be trusted. God, not an infection. If that happened, she might as well lie down in the snow right now. As she unwound the last strip, she had to bite down on her lower lip to corral a whimper. That whiff of spoilage was unmistakable. Patches of her muscle were a soupy snot-green. Okay, try not to panic. Clean it, maybe scrounge up some alcohol and antibiotics if they let you. That’s a nice house. There’s got to be a medicine cabinet somewhere.
“Oooohhhh.” Sharon’s tongue wormed over the ruins that passed for her teeth. “That looks pretty bad. You know, you could leave it rot. Get like Brian there and they’ll only kill you.”
Oh, well, that made her feel so much better. She wished she could think of something pithy, but her hunger clawed her stomach and her mind was dried up as a prune with hunger. So all she said was, “Just go to hell, okay?”
“Too late.” But the wind seemed to have gone out of Sharon’s proverbial sails because she turned away from Alex to Ruby. “Here’s what I’m thinking,” she said, confidentially. “I’m thinking the reason those little monsters ain’t come back with anyone in the last couple days? It’s because there was nobody waiting, which means the others aren’t honoring the agreement anymore.”
“Either that, or there’s no one left to send out,” Ray said. “What are you talking about?” Nobody waiting? She’d never heard them talk this way, and Alex was curious, almost despite herself. They all might share food, but she really didn’t know much about the others. Understandable: no one wanted to get too chummy with someone they’d then have to watch get turned into hamburger. “What agreement? What do you mean, no one left to send out?”
“Well, you know.” Ray lobbed a puzzled look at Ruby and then back to Alex. “Sent out the way you were. The same way we’ve all been sent.”
“I ran away. I escaped. I wasn’t sent,” Alex said, but then she recalled that, given the circumstances, she had been told exactly where to go—and Jess’s shotgun had been nothing if not persuasive. Then she felt her brain catch up to the words Ray and the others had actually used. “Sent . . . you mean, turned out? On purpose? Why? Did you do something wrong?” That would be the most likely explanation, she imagined. Rule probably wasn’t the only village that meted out expulsions for bad behavior.
