Ashes, Ashes (12 page)

“Well,” he said after a long pause. She looked back at him. She’d been focusing with all her might on a cloud shaped like a teapot. “Now you can join us. We all pitch in together. No one is alone.”

She wasn’t at all sure about this. She felt nervous surrounded by people, and there was the danger of the Sweepers. She’d decide later. She could always sneak off in the middle of the night.

Finally she cleared her throat. “Why do you think they take them?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

“Well, where—”

“To the hospital on the island. That’s where the white vans come from. That’s where the answers have always come from.” He frowned. “And the lies.”

“That makes sense,” Lucy said slowly. She dreaded asking the next question, so she asked a different one. “How many times has this happened?”

“Twice before. They used to grab the older folk, the ones who didn’t move as quickly. But now they’re taking anyone who is healthy. Mostly the kids. Today there were a bunch of people from …” He paused, searching for the correct word. “From elsewhere. Come for the trading. They didn’t know the drill.”

“The people,” she said through a tight throat. She desperately needed a drink of water. Funny that she could be so wet and so thirsty at the same time. “Do they ever come back?”

He stared at her, and then his face sort of went blank.

When he finally spoke, she could barely hear him.

“No.”

CHAPTER EIGHT
GRAMMALIE ROSE

T
he old woman glowered at her. Lucy dropped her eyes. A thin trickle of sweat crept down her neck. The rain had stopped again as suddenly as it had started, and now the sun was blazing once more. She’d taken off the sweatshirt and dumped it and her leather jacket in a pile with her backpack. Even in just the thermal shirt she was hot, and also grimy with mud and what she had a sneaking suspicion was manure. Whatever Lucy had been expecting, it wasn’t this. She leaned against her shovel and looked out over the straight rows of vegetables, the vines rambling over wrought iron gates planted in the earth like trellises, the greenhouses made from old storm windows. In the distance she glimpsed others working. They moved slowly and their faces, from what she could see, were sort of strange. There were bumps and ridges where there shouldn’t have been, and their skin was smooth but strangely colored. They wore hoods and long robes. Monks, maybe? But she was too exhausted to ponder it for long.

This mean old woman had made her dig potatoes, carrots, and beets; pick beans and zucchini; stake straggling tomato plants; and remove slugs and beetles from the leaves of Swiss chard and spinach until her fingers were covered with a gluey black residue of insect slime and guts. She hadn’t complained, though, mostly because she couldn’t. Grammalie Rose, who must have been in her seventies, had worked right alongside her, silently, one of her black shawls pulled over her hair and tied under her chin. Lucy had stared at her tough, reddened hands with their short, blunt nails as she squished bugs between her fingers and brushed dirt off of waxen potatoes before piling them into plastic buckets and tubs. She pulled rows of peas with a minimum expenditure of energy. None of the wrestling with tough stalks that Lucy was doing. Another one of those situations where her awkwardness wasn’t doing her any favors. She could almost hear her brother, Rob, pipe up, “Lucy loses to a plant!”

Lucy kept waiting for the woman to ask her questions or just make small talk, but she didn’t. It was like she conserved energy. She marched along the rows, picking or digging, her back hunched, keeping up a solid pace while Lucy had trailed a few yards behind,
her
back screaming and
her
knees aching, barely able to drag the full container behind her. Finally, Lucy had casually asked where Aidan was.

“Out scouting, probably. Hunting or foraging. He likes to roam, that one,” the old woman said before pointing out a cluster of bright green caterpillars on a head of lettuce.

And now that they were finally sitting down at the edge of the lot, Grammalie Rose was sticking with the silent treatment
and
giving her the evil eye. It was making her feel uncomfortable. The thought that Aidan had probably known what was in store for her and had uttered no warning
again
! made her stutter with rage, but she shoved it down to her belly where it simmered and spat. She ground her teeth and shot the old lady her best under-the-bangs-slit-eye stare. Grammalie Rose just looked amused and lit another one of the foul-smelling brown cigarettes she liked. The threads of black smoke it gave off stunk like burning hair.

“Have you never shelled beans,
zabko
?”

As she said this, Grammalie Rose was stripping the leathery pods from the dried beans and tossing them into a pail where they rattled like marbles. She made it look really easy. Snap the end, pull off the string, split the shell with her thumbnail before spilling the purple and white beans into the palm of her hand, and throwing the shriveled ones onto a compost heap. Lucy had tried to copy her and ended up cutting her fingers to shreds and losing most of her beans in the dirt. They rolled everywhere, and who would have known that the dry pods sliced flesh like the edges of thick envelopes? Lucy hunched her shoulders, ignored the pain in her fingers, and yanked on a stubborn pod string.

“Did you eat nothing but meat and acorn mush?”

“Cattail bulbs. Chicory,” Lucy said. “Wild onions.”

“No wonder you are so skinny. And without energy.”

“I outran a tsunami today, and then I hiked over a couple of mountains,” Lucy said, feeling her ears go red. She hurled a handful of beans into the bucket with force. Her legs were falling asleep and it was impossible to find an inch of soil without rocks to sit on. “Shouldn’t we be preparing or something, in case the Sweepers come back?” she asked the old woman.

“They will be back.”

Lucy stared at her. “So?”

“So, people must eat. Life goes on.”

“You’re saying that we shouldn’t do anything?”

Grammalie Rose just nodded and kept shelling. Her plastic bucket was full already, and she hooked Lucy’s with the toe of her clog and drew it closer. Her hands dipped and rose and dipped again.

Lucy bit her tongue. She felt like she might explode.

“But … that’s … just … grrrrr!” she shouted finally, leaping to her feet and pacing back and forth.

After a few seconds, Grammalie Rose thumped the ground beside her. The frown was back on her face. Despite her annoyance, Lucy marveled at the bushy blackness of Grammalie Rose’s eyebrows and the wrinkles fanning across her crumpled-tissue-paper face. How old was she?

“Sit down,” she said.

There was no arguing with her tone, and Lucy could hardly pull her knife on the old woman. She exhaled through her nose and sank down ungracefully, crossing her legs and shifting until she found a comfortable spot. Grammalie Rose thrust a bucket of bean pods at her.

“We
are
doing something,
zabko
,” she said.

“I’m not a frog!” Lucy said, turning a hot stare on her.

Grammalie Rose snorted out one of her dry laughs again. “
Wilcze
, then,” she said, seeming amused.

“What does that mean?” Lucy snapped, suspecting that she was being teased. She felt like she was being treated like a three-year-old and struggled to control her temper.

“Wolf cub,” she said, gesturing to the full bucket. “Full of snarls and bites.” She chuckled and held Lucy’s gaze until she sat and began work again.

Lucy slid her nail into the tough bean skin and split it, finding a rhythm that was missing before. Gradually she relaxed.
I could still leave
, she told herself,
anytime I want
.

She pushed her hand into the bucket and let the smooth beans sift through her fingers. She played with a pod, crunching it, and cast her mind about for something to say.

“How many people live in this settlement?”

“About thirty-five now. There were close to seventy-five when I first came, but some chose to move on. North. Some prefer to live on the outskirts and come in on market days. And others were taken.”

Less than forty
, Lucy thought.
And most of them kids
.

She cleared her throat and reached for a bottle of stale-tasting water. She’d drunk about a gallon already, and it seemed that she’d never get enough.

“Did you build all of this?” She waved her arm. Around the periphery of the lot were tumbled dinner plate–size slabs of concrete, rubble, and mounds of garbage big enough to climb. A chain-link fence sagging and busted through snaked around the edge.

“Not me personally.”

Lucy stared at her. The black eyes gleamed through their veil of smoke. Was she joking with her?

“It was an old landfill. A dump, literally, and next to it, a cement parking lot which did not fare too well in an earthquake. Pickaxes and a lot of sweat did the rest.” She pointed. “See the low walls over there?” Lucy nodded. Gray walls sectioned off various rectangular areas.

“Corn and herbs. We’re trying wheat and barley for the first time, now that flour can’t be had for a song or a prayer. We built those out of blocks of concrete we dug up out of the parking lot. It is backbreaking work, but a creative use of salvage.”

Her hands stopped working for a moment and she gazed over the furrows of sandy earth.

“It is not good soil, but it is good enough for what we grow here. The manure helps.”

“So there are animals?” The thought of eating meat that was not newt or squirrel made her mouth water.

“Not anymore. We lost our last five goats just last week. Poachers.” She scowled blackly. “The cows and the chickens died in the second wave.” She sighed. “What I wouldn’t give for a good honest egg.”

“And the vegetables?” asked Lucy. “I mean, these are like what you used to get in a store. Not foraged daylily bulbs and wild greens.”

“This was a neighborhood once. The kind that existed before all the troubles. People owned their homes and they grew extra food for their families. We adopted their gardens and their sheds. We used whatever we could find. That’s what scavengers do.” She picked up a trowel and turned it over in her hand. The clunky handle had obviously once belonged to some other implement and was kept in place with coils of wire.

Scavengers
. Grammalie Rose said it with pride, but Lucy had always thought that scavengers were no better than thieves. She remembered what she had said to Aidan up in the tree and she blushed. Fortunately, the sharp-eyed old woman didn’t notice. She had risen to her feet, uttering small complaining noises as her knees creaked, and picked up the two full buckets of beans. She jerked her head at Lucy and then at the other tubs overflowing with produce. Lucy slid her arms through the handles, two on each side. She was balanced, but she felt the tug across the back of her shoulders and the promise of pain to come. Not for the first time in the last year, she thought longingly of a hot bath.

They walked back toward the square. A few people were sweeping the grimy puddles of rainwater away. Others were making piles of cans, rocks, and chunks of brick and sharpening sticks. More were unrolling large carpets woven from bright strips of plastic or squatting on the ground making repairs or dismantling pieces of machinery. Lucy could only guess where the heaps of gears and chains and oddly-shaped metal bits had come from and what use they could be now.

After Grammalie Rose’s explosion of conversation, she’d reverted to silence again. When they reached a long awning, she grunted and stopped. A narrow table of pine planks stretched at least twenty-five feet beneath the canvas tent. It was supported in five or six places with sawhorses. Knives of varying sizes gleamed on the rough surface. There were pots and pans, wooden cutting boards, colanders, and more of the plastic tubs. A fire crackled and smoked at the far end.

Lucy dropped her containers on the ground with a relieved groan and eased her backpack off. She worked her arms around, trying to loosen her shoulders. Maybe now she could go sprawl out somewhere, enjoy the last of the sun’s warmth, and take a nap.

Grammalie Rose raised an eyebrow as if she knew what was passing through Lucy’s mind. They locked eyes for a long moment. Lucy was on the verge of walking away when Grammalie Rose said in a mild tone, “You don’t work, you don’t eat.”

Lucy nodded shortly. Her stomach felt like an empty balloon. She’d had no food for more than twenty-four hours. The old woman thumped her on the back. “Not so sullen,
wilcze
. The preparers get to eat first,” she said, “and everyone must take a turn. This is not some cruel sort of punishment dreamt up especially for you.” She made a croaking noise that sounded suspiciously like a chuckle and pushed her toward the table. There were people down at the far end scrubbing potatoes. They were surrounded by mounds of dirty yellow spuds, and yet they chattered and laughed together.

“Henry!” Grammalie Rose called, and pointed to one of the tubs Lucy had hauled.

Henry was small and dark, maybe in his early twenties, with brown hair that stuck up in a duck’s tail over his forehead and twinkling brown eyes.

“Henry, this is Lucy.”

Henry grinned at Lucy and stuck out his hand. She shook it, conscious of her filth-encrusted fingers. “Leo told me about you,” he said. “He said you seemed okay.”

“I am.”

“Hmm.” He ran his eyes over her in a not entirely clinical way.

“You don’t look like a doctor,” Lucy said, trying to cover her embarrassment.

“Oh, I’m not a doctor, but I do my best.”

She felt vaguely unsettled.

He checked out the rest of their containers. “Looks like bean soup tomorrow. We’ll have to soak them first.”

Grammalie Rose grunted. “I’ve been making bean soup since your father was your age. Let tomorrow take care of itself.” Henry made a face and skipped backward to avoid a slap. “First things first,” the old woman said in a louder voice. “Take the onions and the carrots,
malpa.
”