The Land of the Shadow (3 page)

“Keep trying, Daggers,” Justin said and kissed the baby again before turning back to his wife. “I’ll be home before you know it,” he said to Carly.

She watched as he reached up to the top of the closet doorframe, where he’d installed a latch so Dagny wouldn’t be able to access it for at least several more years. Inside was his arsenal—or one of them, in any case. A row of rifles stood in a rack, each with a clip of ammo taped to both sides of the butt and one nestled loose inside the chamber, needing only a tap to snap it into place. He’d installed several tilted shelves below, each with pegs to hold his extra handguns in place—he always carried at least two, concealed under the hem of his T-shirts. He insisted Carly wear one whenever she left the house, and she had gotten used to the feeling of the .45 nestled against her hip. It felt almost like her purse had at one time, like she was naked without it.

She raised an eyebrow as he began to stuff a duffel bag with guns and extra ammo. “Loaded for bear, aren’t you?”

He gave her a little grin. “Lewis always used to say, ‘
Take as many guns as you think you need, and then double it
.’ ”

“Far be it from me to question the wisdom of your former commander.” She gave the last bit of egg to Dagny, who signaled her disinterest by spitting it back out onto the tray of her highchair. Carly wiped off the baby’s face and took the dishes to the sink.

“Bye-bye!” Dagny called as her father went out the door, and kicked at her highchair in impatience to be set free.

Through the window, she saw Kaden leading Shadowfax out of the stable. Justin joined him in the yard, and the two of them hooked the mare up to the wagon, working in silent sync.

Carly stepped out onto the porch to wave to them as they drove away. For a man who said he’d never thought he would make much of a father, Justin sure was good at it. She sighed as they disappeared around the corner, and went back into the house.

Carly gave Dagny a quick bath, wondering how the baby had managed to smear egg in her hair. She was putting Dagny in her playpen when there was a knock at the door. She draped the mosquito netting over the playpen and went to answer it.

Old Miz Marson stood on the porch. At the bottom of the steps behind her was a red Radio Flyer wagon containing a box of Mason jars and a pressure cooker. “T’maters need canning,” she said by way of greeting.

Carly wanted to groan. “It’s still morning and it’s already hot. Why don’t we do it tomorrow? Justin said the barometer indicated it might rain tonight. Maybe it will cool down some.”

“Nope,” said Miz Marson. She carried in a box of lids and rings and dropped it on the counter. “Tomorrow will be even hotter and humid, to boot. We wait any longer and they’ll be too ripe. Go get ’em.”

There was no use arguing, especially when she knew Miz Marson was right. Carly slathered herself with homemade mosquito repellent, made from tea tree oil and mint, and put on her big, floppy gardening hat. She’d never been a tanner, but now, without any doctors to treat skin cancer, sun protection was even more important.

While Miz Marson began to set up, Carly took her basket out to the garden and gathered the tomatoes. Miz Marson was right—some of them were almost too ripe already. The bugs were getting bad again. She pinched off chewed-up leaves and made a mental note to come back out with the soap repellant they used on the vegetables. The commercial pesticides only had a shelf life of a few years, especially since they weren’t stored in climate-controlled areas any longer. The few that had been stable enough to use were gone now, so they were testing different mixtures of homemade repellants. The frequency of the rain added another layer of difficulty.

She carted in the first basketful, and Miz Marson washed them while Carly gathered more. After she brought in the last batch, Carly collected more wood and stacked it by the stove. She went over and tugged Dagny’s playpen farther away from the oppressive heat of the stove, under the window where she might catch a cooling breeze. The baby grinned up around the plastic keys she was chewing. At fourteen months old, Dagny was getting another tooth and gnawed on everything in sight these days. Carly wished she could give her a refrigerated teething ring to soothe her sore gums, but of course, that was impossible. Despite her discomfort, Dagny was a happy baby and would be content playing with her toys as long as she could see her mother in the same room. Carly pulled back the mosquito netting and played a quick game of peekaboo before bringing Dagny a few more toys to keep her occupied.

Carly joined Miz Marson at the counter, peeling and slicing as she told her about the missing chicken. Miz Marson laid down the knife for a moment and turned to her, her light, ice-blue eyes solemn.

“You think it’s one of us?”

Carly bit her lip. “I don’t know what to think, but that’s what Justin believes. I’m sure he’s going to do that investigative-prowling thing of his and check every bit of garbage in town for chicken bones.”

“Damned shame about those eggs.” Miz Marson shook her head and went back to peeling.

“We’ll try again,” Carly said. “Then again, they might not have hatched anyway. There has to be something I’m doing wrong.”

“I think it’s the Infection.”

“Birds don’t get Infected.”

“You know that for sure?”

Carly blinked. “Well, no, but they didn’t drop from the sky because of it.”

“They could be carriers, just like us.”

Did that mean the chicks wouldn’t survive? Carly glanced over at Dagny, the only baby she knew of born since the Infection. Would other mothers face the horror of miscarriage or seeing their babies die soon after birth?

“The thief prob’ly grabbed the broody hen because the others scattered while she just sat there on the nest. Break her neck quick, and he could get out of there without the other birds making much of a fuss.”

“Is that why he took just one?”

Miz Marson nodded. “Like as not. The others would squawk and flog. The thief would’ve wanted to grab it fast without making noise.”

“Maybe we should take the next eggs and try incubating them ourselves. Justin thinks one of the solar panels would supply enough power to run an incubator.”

“Speaking of solar panels, Bryce and David were fighting over that solar panel again last night. I could hear it all the way over at my place. It almost came to blows.”

Carly took a deep breath. David had found the solar panel in the garage of an abandoned house. It hadn’t worked, but Bryce knew a little bit about batteries and electronics, and he had tinkered with the wiring until he got it working. Since their community didn’t have a specific use for it yet, Justin had said they should keep it for their personal use until it was needed.

The agreement was that they would share the panel if Bryce fixed it. Bryce would use it during the day to power a radio he was using to search for messages on the airwaves and broadcast his own, searching for survivors who might know of the whereabouts of family members he was sure had survived the Infection. David would then use it at night to run a fan with the battery power the panel generated during the day. Predictably, their agreement broke down when one or the other hadn’t used his share and thought he should be able to use it in the other time instead.

“I’ll talk to them. Justin—”

Miz Marson jerked her head toward the window. “Do you hear that?”

Miz Marson might have been elderly, but her ears were sharp. Carly listened hard and let out a small gasp of surprise when she heard it.
Music.
They exchanged an awed look for a moment, as though they had encountered a ghost of the dead world, and then Carly blinked back to reality.

“I’ll be back. Please watch Dagny for me.”

Miz Marson nodded and waved a hand. The request hadn’t been necessary.

Carly followed the sound down the street, Sam trotting beside her, his tongue lolling as he panted. She pitied him his thick coat of fur. As she got closer, she could make out the tune and singer. She’d never particularly liked country, but hearing music again after all this time was a feast for her ears, and it made her eyes sting a little. She paused to savor it for a moment, but had a job to do.

The sound was coming from the backyard of the house on the corner. Carly rounded the corner and saw Jason lying on a bench under an old Massey-Ferguson tractor, muttering as he twisted a tool up in the tractor’s underbelly.

Jason and his wife had arrived in Colby a few months ago in the early spring. Carly liked his wife, Laura, who had worked in a health food store before the Crisis and knew about medicinal herbs. Though she had been familiar with them in pill form, she was now searching the nearby area to see what grew naturally. Jason had been a prison guard but worked on cars during the weekend, and his mechanical knowledge had come in handy. His current project was converting the tractor to be fueled by a wood gasifier. If he could get it to work, they would be able to cultivate more land than Shadowfax could by pulling the plow.

Carly had to call his name twice before he heard her. He craned his neck.

“Oh, hey, Carly.” He slid down to the end of the bench and sat up, wiping his forehead. He had hair and eyes almost as dark as Justin’s, but his skin was so pale that the dark shadow of his facial hair was visible even when freshly shaved. His cheeks were pink from heat and exertion. “What’s up?”

She nodded toward the portable radio CD player he was using by the tractor’s wheel. “I heard the music.”

He grinned at her. “Great, isn’t it? I’m not much of a Garth Brooks fan, but I found this in the house. It’s just awesome to hear music again.”

“Yeah, it is,” Carly said. “But we shouldn’t waste the batteries. They’re a finite resource.” They had a few that could be recharged by the solar panel Bryce had rigged up, but they didn’t last very long.

“Aw, come on, Carly. It’s just a few D cells.”

“I know. But we shouldn’t use them if we don’t have to.”

He chewed on his lip, considering. “Is Justin around?”

“Why do you ask?” She met Jason’s eyes until he looked away.

“Yeah, okay.” He leaned down and switched off the CD player, then opened the back of the case and pried out the batteries. He offered them to her in his outstretched hand.

She shook her head. “You keep them. Just don’t use them if you don’t have to, okay?”

“All right. Sorry.”

She gave him a smile. “No need to apologize. How’s the tractor coming?”

Jason brightened and launched into a discourse on carburetors, to which Carly just nodded and smiled, having no idea what he was talking about. She knew she probably ought to try to learn this stuff, but it was like her brain went numb whenever anyone tried to discuss the inner workings of an engine. When Laura came through the gate and into the yard, she nearly sighed with relief.

Laura had a stack of plant books with her and a basket on the other arm. She smiled at Carly and kissed her husband on the cheek. Laura and Jason had been together for almost a year and had been living in one of the guard towers at the prison until Justin spotted them during one of his scouting missions. Good thing, too, because they had very little food since the prison hadn’t been replenished during the Crisis, and she and Jason had been living off the edible plants she found and the small animals they were able to catch in traps.

“Find anything good?” Jason asked.

“Just some comfrey and sassafras,” Laura said, lifting her dark ponytail to fan the back of her neck.

“You didn’t go near the swamp, did you?”

Laura didn’t answer, dropping her hair and shifting the basket from one arm to the other.

“Laura, come on, we talked about this. The alligators—”

Carly stepped back with a little wave of her hand. “I should be going. Miz Marson is helping me can today.”

Laura and Jason both said goodbye, and Carly darted around the house just as Jason started in about the alligators again. She heard enough of that from Justin. It was one of the reasons why he and some of the other residents had worked so long to put up the fence that circumnavigated the island. Prior to their efforts, the Wall had consisted of stacked shipping crates that barricaded just the roads in and out of town. Every inch of Colby was now encircled by a combination of chain link—provided by the prison where Jason had worked and the athletic field behind the elementary school—and wooden privacy fences they had taken from yards. Everyone felt a little safer having it up, and not just from alligators. The swamp was a natural barrier to the outside world, but the fence provided a bit of additional protection.

Carly wiped the sweat from her face and headed back to the house. The heat seemed to shimmer up from the sidewalk in lazy, humid waves, and the air felt like soup. Alaskan summers could get warm, but this was something entirely different. This felt like living in a sauna, and unlike back home, before the Crisis, there was no relief to be had by stepping into an air-conditioned building. She thought of David and Bryce’s solar powered fan, but as hot and humid as the air was, she wasn’t sure it would help.

Stepping inside the house, she sighed. The stove was like a blast furnace. She went over and checked Dagny first, who was curled up, asleep, in the playpen. Her skin felt damp but not overheated. Carly wished there were somewhere cooler she could move her, but she was paranoid about letting the baby out of her sight without another trusted adult watching her.