Mindy McGinnis - In a Handful of Dust

“Come see for yourself what I’m scared of.”

Lucy felt Joss’ hand on her elbow and resisted the urge to shake it off. She walked to the break in the trees.

A vibrant green fanned out from the road in symmetrical lines, marching into the distance as far as Lucy could see. The breeze blowing through the knee-high stalks made more rustling than the woods.

“Shit,” she said, all cleverness wrung from her. “How many people does it take to plant that much corn?”

“And how many more to eat it all?” Lynn asked, already backtracking into the shadow of the woods. “We’re turning around. Right now.”

“To go where?” Joss asked. “To do what?”

“Away from here,” Lynn said simply, breaking into a trot and leaving the road for the cover of the woods. Lucy followed, holding back branches so they wouldn’t whip Joss in the face. They cut into the middle of the woods, where Lucy scrambled up a tree for a better look.

To the south, the road where they had found the hanged men was wide, and she could easily see it from her perch. No houses were in sight, no community capable of sowing the immaculate field of corn.

“Anything?” Lynn’s voice, though hushed, carried from the ground. Lucy shook her head and shimmied back down.

“Can’t see anything for miles,” she said, once her feet hit the ground. “Behind us there’s the road we were on. There’s another one to the north of us running east–west we could travel. But there’s no good cover, just grass on both sides.”

“So now what?” Joss asked, nerves cracking her voice. “What’re we gonna do?”

Lynn looked at the height of the sun in the sky. “We’ll head north for now,” she decided. “Cut across the grass to the next road, and the one after that if we have to, ’til we find something that can cover us better than blades of grass.”

“And then?”

Lynn sighed. “And then I’m gonna put you in charge, and ask you a bunch of annoying questions.”

Lucy squelched a smile as they cut across the road and into the grass, trotting at a decent pace. They hit the next east–west road, a patchy asphalt trek that Lynn didn’t care for. They trotted through another stretch of thick grass that danced over their heads as they passed by. Behind her, Lucy could hear Joss panting for breath.

They broke out of the pasture onto another road, this one gravel. Lynn kept them to a jog and set off to the west, glancing back to be sure they followed. Lucy nodded to her that she was fine, then jerked her head backward and lolled her tongue out to show that Joss wasn’t doing so well. The slightest eyebrow twitch from Lynn conveyed exactly what she thought of that, and Lucy could’ve sworn she picked up the pace. A splash of gray rock in the distance broke the parade of green, and Lucy called out for Lynn to stop when they reached it, feigning a limp.

“Blister,” she panted, holding one foot in the air like a wounded animal.

“Want me to look?” Lynn asked, her voice carrying back to Joss, who had fallen behind. Joss slowed to a walk when she saw they had stopped.

Lucy nodded and sat on the boulder, resting her supposedly injured foot on Lynn’s knee. Lynn’s quick hands undid the laces, and she glanced over her shoulder to see if Joss was approaching.

“Your foot’s perfectly fine, isn’t it?”

“Those weren’t her people back there,” Lucy said as Lynn slipped the boot off her foot.

“You guessed that too?” Lynn pulled off Lucy’s sweaty sock and pretended to look at the blister that didn’t exist.

“That or they were her people and it didn’t bother her at all to see them hanging. She’s either lying or coldhearted. Whichever way, it makes up my mind as to whether I like her or not.”

“Oh, you can like her all you want,” Lynn said, wrapping a fresh bandage around Lucy’s heel. “Just don’t trust her.”

Lucy thought of her ash stick in Joss’ hands, the spark of interest that had flashed in her eyes. “I don’t.”

“Good. But my guess is she didn’t ever know those dead men.”

“Why would she lie about it?” Lucy asked as Lynn slipped the sock over her toes.

“Remember that time you had a tick above your ear, neither one of us noticed it ’til it was big as a grape?”

“Yeah?”

“Joss is like that, I think. Attaches herself to whoever looks like the best bet and sucks the blood out of ’em until they wise up to her.”

“She was left behind at Lake Wellesley,” Lucy said. “Whoever she was traveling with had her figured out.”

“I think so too.” Lynn nodded. “And she was lucky enough to come upon our fire. Now she’ll say she might as well stick with us, as her ‘people’ are dead.”

Lucy glanced back down the road, saw that Joss had stopped to pull a water bottle from her pack. “So what do we do?”

“Not much we can do, really. Hopefully something looks good enough to make her want to stay in a town we come upon. Or maybe a group bigger than our own that she’d feel safer with. I’ve tried sneaking outta camp a few times at night. Woman sleeps lighter than a grasshopper. So for now, we put up with her. She’s annoying, but she’s not a threat.”

The next words stuck in Lucy’s throat, not wanting to come out. “What if she were?”

Lynn held out a hand and pulled Lucy from the boulder. “Then she’s dead. You might have hem-hawed on whether or not you like her, but I never did.”

“So why’d you let her come with us in the first place?”

Lynn took a swallow from her water bottle and put it back in her pack before answering, eyes glued to the approaching figure of Joss. “’Cause of the way she came up on us back at the lake, so quiet and still. I figured she might have something to offer other than creeping. Turns out it’s her best quality.”

Joss was close enough to make out their conversation, so Lucy switched to another topic. “What’d you make of the field of corn?”

Lynn looked to the horizon, and the black storm clouds assembling there. “Trouble.”

The rain was falling so heavily that their water bottles couldn’t stand up in the torrent, and Lucy ran out to collect them. Joss had spotted an ancient brick house standing alone in the middle of a field, the drive leading to it as full of grass as the acres around it. They ran for the house as the clouds opened up, the fat drops spattering around them as they ducked under the eaves of the buckling walls.

Lucy guessed the house had been old even before the Shortage. The open spaces for high windows, broken now, reminded her of home, as did the plaster walls that were crumbling into dust. Miraculously, the stone fireplace still stood, and the soot traces there showed other travelers had used it as they passed. The flames flickered across the walls in the early shadows that had fallen.

The driving rain slipped through the cracks in the roof, dripping down onto their heads and finding their new place seconds after they’d moved. A fresh drop smacked Lucy on the nose, after she’d changed spots for the fourth time. She jumped up in frustration, swiping at her face. “Dammit!”

Lightning flickered, and she spotted an outbuilding in what remained of the backyard, overgrown by a lilac bush. “Building out there,” she said to Lynn. “Could be something useful.”

“Doubt it,” Lynn said. “Looks like people have stayed the night here before. Anything worth taking’s probably already took.”

“I’ll go check,” Lucy said, despite the fact that it was still pouring. Joss sat silently near the fire, her wordless presence grating on Lucy’s nerves.

Lynn caught her glance and nodded her assent. “If you want to run outside in the rain, that’s your choice.”