The Land of the Shadow (8 page)

“Three years,” Stan said. “That’s how long I calculate we have at our current output before the diminishing returns catch up to us. And that’s assuming we can find seed for next year’s crop.”

“I have a few more towns to check.” But they both knew the odds of that paying off in any substantial form. “And the tractor will reduce our labor if we can get it working. We’ll be able to plant more fields.” Though not inside the safety of the Wall. That troubled him.

Would they have to station guards to protect their food? The situation out there only grew more desperate as time passed, and putting guards outside the Wall would be putting them in danger. People were already willing to kill for food. He and Carly had seen it on the road. Was Justin willing to let his people die to protect it? It was a question he couldn’t answer yet.

“Yeah, if we have something to plant in those extra fields.” Stan sounded glum.

Carly would have said something full of hope and promise to lift Stan out of his gloom, but Justin didn’t have her talent for optimism. “I’m thinking potatoes.”

Stan rubbed his chin. The town had already been growing red potatoes in a large garden plot, but the yield had been small. Not enough to feed twenty-seven people as a mainstay crop. “We’ll need to plant a lot more in order to have enough of a buildup.”

Justin nodded. They had started a second plot in the spring by recycling almost all of the first harvest into seed. It took just two months for a crop to mature, so they could hope to grow at least four crops per year. As many as five, if the winter was mild or if they experimented with containers that could be both insulated from the cold and allowed enough sunlight. He thought again about that greenhouse Carly wanted.

“A potato is just, what, three hundred calories if it’s a big one?” Stan shook his head. “They’ll help, of course, but we need to supplement. We need protein. We need meat or dairy . . . something.”

Justin kicked a large stick out of the way before Stan could trip over it. “Unless you can get the pond producing fish, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.”

Stan scuffed his feet against the dirt. “I keep having this feeling my dad probably talked about this sort of thing when I was a kid. At the time, though, I thought he had the stupidest, most boring job in the world. Hatching fish just to dump them in the lake so the tourists could go fishing?” He let out a sigh as he shook his head. “And now I can’t help but wonder if I had listened to all those ‘boring’ details about his job, I could help keep this community alive.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Justin said. “All Miz Marson’s knowledge about raising chickens hasn’t helped us much.”

Stan was silent for a long moment before he asked, “No hope with the chickens?”

Justin watched as Sam circled the same spot, sniffing one patch of ground in deep whiffs. “They seem to be sterile. Or the chicks aren’t viable. Either way, it doesn’t matter. We’ll get eggs until the hens are too old to lay, and that will be the end of it.”

“Damn.” Stan looked almost nauseated by the news, which told Justin all he needed to know about how precisely Stan had followed the numbers. He knew how close to the edge they were.

Stan shuffled his feet again. “You gonna . . . should we invest the feed in them when we’re not even getting much in the way of eggs?”

“Carly thinks we should keep trying. She still has chicken feed, which will last her for a while before we have to start dipping into our own stocks to feed them.”

Stan glanced back toward the house. “And Carly’s idea of eating the alligators?”

“Would help for a time. But we have no idea how many of them there are, nor whether they can reproduce.”

“Think anyone will eat it?”

“If not now, they will when they get hungry enough.” Justin’s tone was grim even to his own ears. He started to think of a way he could soften his words but saw an anomaly along the fence line.

Quickening his steps, he approached a pile of brush clustered at the bottom of the fence. Regular patrols were supposed to keep the fence clear of any growth or debris, including the weeds which grew fast in the hot, well-watered environment. These weeds were dead, however, the leaves limp and pale as if they had been wrenched from the ground and piled up a few days ago. A cut in the fence was partially concealed behind it but had been pushed aside when the gator crawled through.

“What is it?” Stan asked.

Justin crouched down and pointed. The opening was just a couple of feet high, so only a little of the metal curled back to announce the breach. It had been cut with a sharp tool, which was no surprise, the edges beveled from the pressure of the blades. He spotted a fiber snagged on one of the ends and removed it. Plain black nylon, likely from a jacket. He rolled it between his fingers while he studied the ground. There were scrape marks in the soil where a person had crawled through, including a deep gouge that had left a scratch on one of the rocks. Metal, likely from a belt buckle. Claw marks and bits of torn grass dotted the earth on either side of the tracks, smoothed out by the alligator’s belly.

Justin stood. “Stan, take a message to Grady. Tell him I want to see him as soon as possible. And bring back some wire on your way.”

“Sure,” Stan said, heading off.

Justin spotted something on the opposite side of the fence and got down on his stomach to wriggle through the hole. There, small and gleaming white against the grass, was a chicken feather. He crumpled it in his fist and shoved it into his pocket, reminding himself he could get angry later. Right now, he had to think and determine his next move.

Carly wasn’t sure she had the stomach for this. Even after all this time, cleaning game still made her nauseated, and butchering an alligator was much worse. The carcass smelled like slightly rancid fish, and it was growing worse as the sun heated the bucket where they tossed the chunks of fat.

Carly had started with removing the hide. She and Justin both agreed leatherworking was a skill that needed to be revived, but she was sort of regretting the decision at the moment. She kept a bucket of crushed sidewalk salt ready should Justin bag a deer on one of his scouting missions. That hadn’t happened so far, and so her first try would be with this gator hide. After she had completed the distasteful and more-difficult-than-expected task of skinning the creature, she spread a thick layer of salt over the hide and rolled it up. She prayed she would be able to get the stink off her hands.

“Make sure you don’t hit his musk gland,” Miz Marson said. “He has ’em under his chin and under his tail.”

“Where under the tail?” Carly peered at the bloody carcass for clues.

Miz Marson shrugged. “Not sure. Just telling you what I was told back when my husband’s friends used to hunt them.”

Carly slapped down her knife onto the six-foot folding table they were using as a butcher’s block. “So you’ve never actually done this?”

“Nope.”

Carly thought about dumping the bucket of stinky fat chunks on her head, but refrained. She tossed a hunk into the bucket. “Why are we saving this, again?”

“To make soap.” Miz Marson’s hands were twisted with arthritis. On bad days, she could barely flex them, but today, she was as nimble as a chef as she sliced the lean meat thin for drying. “Another thing we need to relearn. The Tide isn’t going to last forever.”

“I think our clothes would smell
worse
after we wash them with this.” Carly smiled at Sam, who had returned from wherever he went with Justin and settled under the table near her feet.

Miz Marson considered. “I can’t say how it will smell once we’re done rendering it. May be that it ends up we can’t use it, but that makes this good for practice, ’cause we ain’t out anything if it doesn’t turn out right. You been saving those wood ashes?”

Carly nodded and tried to copy the deft, economical movements of Miz Marson’s knife.

“Good. We’ll get the lye started after we finish up here.”

“Where did Pearl go?” Carly asked, grimacing as she flicked her hand to try to dislodge a stringy piece of meat stuck under her nail. It flipped off into the air and Sam caught it with a deft jump. He chewed with apparent relish and settled back down, motionless, his amber eyes intense as he watched the table for any scraps that might fall to the grass. There was a small ache in Carly’s heart as she thought of how Tigger used to get bored with these vigils and attack Sam’s tail or bat at his legs to try to get him to chase her, testing his patience. But Sam would not be moved as long as food was out. His opportunistic nature just wouldn’t let him.

The cat’s death had been a powerful and sobering lesson, a reminder that the Infection could come back at any time if it mutated enough to overcome the immunity given to the survivors by the Cederna flu shots. It kept her up some nights, knowing she could do nothing to protect the people she loved.

Miz Marson shrugged. It seemed she was comfortable with the idea of Pearl roaming around and exploring on her own, which made Carly more comfortable with the idea herself. Like Justin, Miz Marson had good instincts about people.

After they had the meat sliced into thin strips, they soaked almost all of it in salt water and hung each piece on individual hooks suspended from dowel rods. They carried the rods to Miz Marson’s house, where they propped them between sawhorses on her screened-in porch. It was ideal as a drying location.

The rest of the meat Carly laid aside for cooking that night. Several of the townspeople who had stopped by during the butchering had grimaced at the idea of eating an alligator. After smelling the fat, Carly didn’t have much of an appetite for it herself, but she marched down to the little park in the center of the town and set up a fire and began cooking while Justin taught his class. As she had expected, the smell of roasting meat proved irresistible, and soon there was an impromptu picnic going on as people brought vegetables, potato cakes, and cornbread to eat with it.

Pearl rejoined them after disappearing for a few hours, likely doing the same kind of reconnaissance Justin had done when they’d first set foot in Colby a year earlier. She didn’t partake of the gator meat, or any of the townspeople’s food, though it was offered in an attempt to draw her into the group. Everyone was curious, of course, but Pearl stayed back, observing from the small patch of arborvitaes near the park’s edge. She was polite and friendly enough when people spoke to her, but it was obvious she wanted to be left alone.

Justin and Carly sat against the war memorial. She leaned back against him, and he wrapped his warm arms around her. He nuzzled her neck and pressed a kiss under her ear, sending a delicious shiver through her.

“This was a great idea,” he said. “We needed to come together for something fun and positive, instead of another town meeting over what to do about patrol assignments or water pipes.”

“You’ll have to have one about the fence.” She shifted their sleeping daughter from one shoulder to the other. The baby stirred but did not wake, stuffing her fist into her mouth for a comforting chew.

“Tomorrow,” Justin said.

Carly sighed because she knew that meant he would spend the night watching the spot himself, but he was right. The town had needed an evening just to enjoy one another’s company.

Someone tapped at the door just as Carly extinguished the lamps for the night. She set the last one on the kitchen table and went to answer the door. It was very rare they had visitors this late. Justin lingered in the doorway, one hand behind his back. He nodded at Carly and she opened the door.