The Land of the Shadow (6 page)

“Let me ask you something. Did Justin ask you to come?”

“No. I followed the wagon.”

“What made you do that?”

Pearl considered for a moment. “It was the horse, I think. Before that, it was because Justin told me I could have all the food in the grocery store, but when I saw the horse . . .” She paused for a moment and ran a hand over her hair, as though to make sure her braids were still neat and smooth in their bun.

“What about her?” Carly’s curiosity was piqued.

“When I was young, I had friends in 4-H, so I’d been around horses enough to be able to tell this one is well cared for. She’s plump and her coat is shiny. She looked like she was nursing but didn’t look like she’d just had a foal. It seemed like you guys must be taking care of her well, even though she can’t be providing that much benefit with a foal.”

“Yeah, I’ve had a couple of people mention that she’s not exactly a plus in the cost-benefit column,” Carly said with a wry smile. “She pulls a plow for us and helps haul big loads, but we’re working on a wood gasifier that will let us run the tractor, and at that point—”

“A what?”

“A wood gasifier. You heat up wood until it carbonizes but not burns, and it releases a combustible gas. Since all the gasoline from Before went bad, we had to find a way to make fuel we could use to run simple engines. Like old tractors and generators.”

“Might I suggest hooking one up to an air conditioner?”

Carly was pretty sure Pearl was joking, but she answered seriously. “We’re thinking long-term survival. We’ve got to manage our wood resources wisely. We can’t chop down all the trees around us just to be more comfortable.”

“That makes sense.” Pearl pulled over a chair and sat down across from Carly. “Let me ask you something—why did Justin let me in? I assume you have that wall for a reason, and you’re not letting in every stray that crosses your path.”

“No, we’re not.” Carly took out a blank card and wrote Pearl’s name at the top. “You know how you guessed some things about us based on the horse? Well, Justin can do that, too. He’s pretty good at it. He can sometimes tell within minutes if someone will fit in here or not. He’s tried to explain it to me, how he does it, but I can’t remember all the tiny little details and what they’re supposed to tell you about a person. I just know if he let you in, he had the feeling you’d be a good member of this community. We could always reexamine that if it turned out to be wrong. He’d be the first person to tell you he’s not always right, but he does have a good sense about people. And I have a feeling you do, too.”

Pearl gazed at Carly, but her features were impassive, guarded. “Sometimes.”

“I know you have no reason to believe me, but what you see here is what you get. We’re just trying to survive the best we can, and I think we have a good group here. We all get along pretty well, and we all contribute where we can.” Carly held up one of the cards. “That’s where these things come in. I write down if you have any useful skills. It’s a system I started a few months ago, and I’m trying to cross-reference it, so if we need someone who can look at the plumbing, or whatever, we can find it fast.”

Pearl shifted in her chair and looked away, her teeth tugging at the corner of her lip. “That’s just it, Carly . . . I don’t really have any useful skills.”

“You wouldn’t have survived on your own for almost two years if you didn’t.”

“I wasn’t alone the whole time.”

“Oh.” From the tension in Pearl’s shoulders and the set of her jaw, it was a painful subject, and Carly knew all about painful subjects. She wasn’t about to pry. “Well, still . . . you can shoot, right?” She nodded toward the pistols strapped to Pearl’s hips.

“If I have to.” Pearl’s eyes were hard.

Carly marked a
c
next to her notation about shooting, for
conservative
. It was useful to know that she would fire only if necessary. It was a sign she would conserve ammo and be cautious of her targets. Pearl also wasn’t a braggart, which might be a sign of a cool head and that she was secure in her own skills.

“I assume you can also dress game?”

Pearl nodded.

“First aid?”

“Not really.”

“Okay. Can you sew? Make candles? Anything crafty like that?”

“No.”

“What did you used to do?” Carly wasn’t asking for the card’s sake. Her curiosity was genuine.

“I was an agent.”

Carly’s eyes widened. “Like, FBI?”

Pearl laughed. “No, like Hollywood.”

“Wow . . . that must have been an interesting career.”

“It had its moments. But it left me rather ill-prepared for surviving an apocalypse. I had to learn on my feet.”

“Me, too. I worked in a souvenir store in Juneau, Alaska.” Carly turned back to the card and noted Pearl had managerial skills. She figured if Pearl could deal with Hollywood egos, she could handle just about every people situation.

“You’re even farther from home than I am.” Pearl tilted her head and sat back in her chair as she folded her hands.

Carly smiled a little. “Wherever Justin is, that’s my home. I admit I miss it a little sometimes. I used to see mountains outside my window, and everything here is so
flat
and open.” She shook her head a little, to rattle herself out of pointless sentimentality. “But I think I’m just missing the world that’s gone.”

“I can’t say I miss LA, but what they say about the Southwest being a ‘dry heat’ is true. The humidity here is killer.”

“And the mosquitos,” Carly said. “Alaska is bad when it comes to insects, but this is awful. Justin thinks it’s worse now because so many of the animals died. The bugs are hungry, and we’re the only available food around.”

“Maybe settling down in a swamp wasn’t such a great idea.” Pearl arched a brow at Carly.

Carly held up her palms like a balance scale. “Drawbacks, benefits . . . our town is safer because the swamp is a giant, gator-infested moat. Parts of it are impassable because of the cypress stumps, and the alligators are getting more aggressive as the food supply dwindles.”

“I bet the hunting around here is terrible.”

Carly nodded. “On the plus side, though, we don’t have many critters eating our crops.”

“So, the only meat you get is from your chickens?” Pearl propped her feet up on her duffle bag.

“No, we don’t eat those. There are just seven of them. Well, six now that one’s gone missing. We have a fish pond that we’re trying to raise stock in, too, but last summer it got some kind of algae.” Carly sighed. It seemed it was always something. They’d lost a good portion of the fish, and Justin wasn’t sure it was safe to eat the others until the algae was gone and the fish showed no signs of it.

The meat situation was becoming a bone of contention among the residents. There had even been some complaints that Dagny and Carly were given eggs first before the remainder, if any, were shared with the others. The grumbles over that particular subject were silenced when a pissed-off Justin snapped that Dagny was the youngest child in the town and Carly was the only breastfeeding mother. As soon as any of the other women had a baby, he’d see to it they got eggs before his own child, because they would be younger and more vulnerable.

“Any mechanical know-how?” Carly had her pen poised to write
no
because most girls didn’t have this skill, but Pearl surprised her.

“I used to help my cousin work on cars, when I was a kid. I won’t say that I’m skilled, but I used to change my own oil and do simple maintenance stuff like that.”

Carly wrote it down. “Any mechanical knowledge is a valuable skill to have, these days.”

“I’d like to learn how those gasifiers work.”

“Sure. We’d be happy to show you.”

“For a price.” That hard gleam had returned to Pearl’s eyes.

Carly shook her head. “It’s not like that.
We’re
not like that. It doesn’t cost us anything to share knowledge, and it’s not going to hurt us if you go off and build one of your own. So why wouldn’t we share?”

“That’s not . . . that’s not the way it is anymore.” Pearl seemed to have lost her verbal footing.

“It can be, if we want it to,” said Carly.

Pearl gave a little shake of her head, as though Carly’s words made no sense. Maybe Pearl was a pessimist about human nature, like Justin. He thought she was a bit naive for thinking they could rebuild the world into a better place if they started off right. She hoped she could prove him wrong, but if she didn’t, it wouldn’t be because she hadn’t tried.

Carly went back to her card. “Last one. How old are you?”

“Thirty-two.”

Carly blinked and felt her brows shoot up before she could stop them. She would have guessed Pearl was around her own age of twenty-four. It must have been that flawless skin.

Carly waved the finished card. “If you decide to leave, I’ll give this to you, okay?” After Pearl nodded, Carly tucked the card in its proper alphabetical spot. She closed the box and stood.

“You didn’t ask for my last name.”

“We don’t need it. You’re the only Pearl here.” Carly shrugged. “I can add it, though, if you want.”

Pearl gave a little smile. “Pearl was my grandmother’s name. Kind of old-fashioned now.”

“It’s
unique
,” Carly said. “Few of us use last names around here, except for some of the older folks. Pete calls Justin ‘Mr. Daniels,’ but that’s because he heard my last name and assumed it was Justin’s.” She smiled inwardly as she thought about Justin’s flushed cheeks as he explained he hadn’t corrected Pete because he wasn’t attached to Thatcher, the last name he’d been given in foster care, but he would be proud to wear the Daniels name if Carly had no objection. She didn’t. She thought it was a touching tribute to the respect he’d had for her father.

Carly carried the lamp to its spot beside the door and extinguished it. She and Pearl stepped out into the blazing-hot sunshine.

“I want to show you a bit of the town before we go back,” Carly said. She led Pearl around the corner to Main Street with Sam trotting beside them, his tongue lolling as he panted. Pearl stopped in her tracks to stare.

It was a Main Street that hadn’t existed anywhere for two years. A Main Street where shops were still open and people still strolled with bags dangling from their arms. Several stopped to say hello to Carly or to give Sam a pat. Apart from the fact that there were no cars parked along the street, it looked like a lazy Saturday afternoon in the long-lost days of Before.

“The stores don’t use cash anymore, of course,” Carly said. “We’re on a barter system. Trading stuff we grow or make. It feels kind of weird to pay three tomatoes for a book, but there you go. We also trade labor, like an hour’s worth of work in someone’s field in exchange for food items or Mrs. Davis watching the kids. The parents will all pay her in food when they come to pick them up. She makes a day’s worth of food for her husband and herself by watching the kids, and that leaves the Reverend free to do other stuff for their family and the town.”

“And it works?” Pearl’s tone was dubious.

“Well, we have our conflicts just like all human beings do, but all of us want a peaceful, productive community. We only let in those we think are going to contribute to that goal.”

“And that’s why you have the Wall.”

“Yeah, that’s why we have the Wall, secured by regular patrols. There are people out there who . . . well, you know, I’m sure. There are thieves and thugs, and people driven to do things by desperation. We have to protect ourselves. That’s why Justin is teaching classes in guns and combat.”

“How’d he learn it?”

“In the army.” Carly turned and led Pearl down the street toward her house.

It was strange to think of it as “her” house, because for a long time she’d thought of it as “the Connell house.” She’d never met the family who had lived there Before, but their marks on the house were being eradicated as little replacements and erasures occurred in the course of everyday living. Bit by bit, Carly’s family had taken the Connell’s things, the stuff they didn’t need, to trade in at the stores for the things they did. The last vestige of the Connells was a family portrait in the living room that Carly refused to remove. She thought there ought to be something of them left.

Carly realized that the next question Pearl was apt to ask was how she and Justin had ended up leaders of the town, but she wasn’t ready to talk about that yet. They were walking past where the church had once stood. No trace of it remained now, and the pit that had once been beside it was grown over with wild grasses. Carly kept thinking they should put some sort of memorial there, but it still hurt to remember. A short distance away, Justin had planted a tree, around which he kept the grass trimmed and neat. Perhaps that was his memorial.

Instead of giving Pearl the chance to ask the question, Carly talked about Justin’s class. She described how he’d begun, teaching them to disassemble and reassemble a gun, so they might be able to repair it if need be. Later, he taught them shooting, but not just blasting away at a stationary target but how to find cover first, identify the target, and assess its weaknesses. He was also showing them how to use more rudimentary weapons, such as the slingshot and bow. The supply of bullets wouldn’t last forever, after all. He hoped in the future to find some flintlocks in nearby museums that might still be useable. He could make gunpowder, and they could cast lead bullets. He just couldn’t make the precise cartridges needed by today’s guns.