“Sure.”

  THE OLD WOMAN DROVE a hard bargain, but both Pete and McGill were painfully aware that they didn’t have many cards in their hands. No guns, no cards.

  One of the daughters, who had an empty, uncomprehending look on her face, stripped the Kawasaki while they bartered some of their remaining packs of food for gas. She kicked it into healthy roaring life after less than fifteen minutes with a set of wrenches.

  “Good with her hands, Lucille. Lord gave her that and took other things.”

  “You aren’t leaving us much, lady,” said Mac. “Barely enough for another couple of days.”

  “You got gas, with the jerricans, to take you six or seven hundred miles on your way. You don’t like it, then just ride on.”

  There was a smile on the craggy face, hardly touching the piercing blue eyes.

  Pete grinned. “Wouldn’t be that you’re the ‘Ma’ from that diner, would it?”

  “Yeah. That’s why we got food stoked. Thought it’d run out in a month or so, but we’ve been careful. We got some tablets if it came to it. Like many poor folks ended up.”

  “You the only ones left in town, ma’am?” asked Mac politely.

  “We are now. I lost my husband and son near the start. Folks thought we should share what we got. We didn’t.” She let the sentence hang, flat and ugly.

  “But the dead didn’t go to—“ began Lucille, wiping her hands with a greasy rag.

  Her mother slapped her across the face, fast as a striking cobra. “Keep that mouth shut, child,” she snarled. She tried hard to readjust her smile and failed. “Kids.” She shrugged.

  “Yeah,” Mac intoned, his fingers itching for the hilt of his hunting knife.

  The trading over, the two men reloaded their packs and got ready to leave the fair town of Hustonville.

  “Sure you don’t want to stay?” asked Ma unexpectedly.

  “Guess not.” Henderson McGill shook his head very slowly.

  “Four of us women and no men. You seem straight and clean.”

  “We are. But we got families.”

  “Hope you find them.” Her handshake was dry and firm. “You seen green shoots coming through here and there. Maybe those of us who’ve got this far might make a good fresh start. Now that Mother Nature’s had her joke on us. You change your mind, come back and look us up. Y’hear me?”

  Though it was a cool day, Mac found he was perspiring heavily as they rode clear of the little township.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Though it was pitch-dark in the kitchen, Jim Hilton could see it clear as crystal in the center of his mind’s eye.

  The double sink was on his right, by the window that looked out across the pool, over beyond the reservoir, toward the hazy blur that was Los Angeles. The electric stove was beyond that, and then the day-to-day freezer, as Lori called it. The main chest freezer was out at the back of the three-car garage.

  The index finger of his right hand was trembling on the trigger of the .44-caliber Ruger Blackhawk Hunter.

  For a quivering, surreal moment, Jim was taken back to a night when he’d gotten out of bed at four, after a party with the Harknetts around. He’d been overcome with a desire to scrape out the dish of chocolate fudge sundae he knew was sitting snugly on the second shelf of their kitchen fridge.

  He’d been sucking at the small silver apostle spoon that had been one of a set of wedding presents from his Aunt Elsie, savoring the rich sweetness, when he’d realized that he wasn’t alone in the silent kitchen.

  That time it had been Heather, blackmailing him into giving her half the sundae by threatening to tell Lori. Jim had been dieting back then, trying to shed a surplus couple of pounds.

  Now he knew he wasn’t alone in the silent kitchen.

  On the step outside, Jim heard the faint sound of Carrie nervously shifting her feet.

  “Lori?” he whispered. “That you, Lori?”

  “Who that?”

  The voice came from the open doorway into the hall. It seemed as if the speaker was crouching in the darkness.

  “Who are you? And what the fuck are you doing in my house and where the fuck is my wife and my kids?”

  It took a serious effort of will on Jim’s part not to open fire at the invisible person less than fifteen feet away from him.

  “That Captain Hilton?”

  Now he recognized the accent and the slight lilt to the voice.

  “Ramon?”

  “Is me.”

  Jim relaxed a little, uncramping his finger from the trigger.

  Ramon Hernandez had been the best handyman and gardener in the area. His plump wife, Maria, had been the finest hired cook, whose huevos rancheros could raise the dead and whose fabled carne adovada, with blue-corn tortillas, was the pride of every Hollywood dinner party.

  “That really you, Captain Jim?”

  “Yeah. Where’s Lori? And the twins?”

  The voice came from higher up, as if Ramon got up off the floor. “Not good news, Captain.”

  Those four words were like a stiletto of ice piercing Jim’s heart. During the difficult trek to Tahoe Drive, he’d seen nothing but death and horror, but he’d clung to his hope that somehow things would be different back home.

  “Can I come in?” whispered Carrie, hearing voices from inside the house.

  For several heartbeats he didn’t answer her. He’d heard her but he hadn’t listened. She had to repeat the question.

  “Oh, yeah. Come in.” He holstered the revolver. “Ramon, can we sit down and talk?”

  The voice drifted ahead of him, into the big living room with its long bookshelves and the stone logs in the fireplace. There was the scratching sound of a match being struck, followed by the flicker of light.

  “We keep drapes drawn, Captain. Not many candles left now.”

  Carrie was at his heels, so close he could smell her sweat.

  The single stump of candle gave only a quivering pool of light. Ramon was barely visible behind it, and the rest of the long room remained in deep shadow.

  Jim perched his hip against the back of his own favorite armchair. He could just make out the pale shape that was Carrie Princip, standing by the picture window.

  “Tell me, Ramon.”

  “You been in space?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Now you back.”

  “So you see. Just tell me. We know something about this Earthblood that killed all the plants. Just tell me first where my wife and daughters are. That first, Ramon.”

  “My wife dead.”

  “Oh, I’m real sorry.” But he wanted the man to hurry up.

  “She was such a big…you know… woman.” There was the shimmer of Ramon’s hands describing the shape of his wife’s hips in the still, dark room.

  “Please,” said Jim softly.

  “Come see.”

  “Shall I come?” said Carrie.

  “No,” he said on a sigh. “No, just wait here for me, will you?”

  “Sure.”

  Ramon had already gone out the other door into the corridor that led to the bedrooms. There was a time when Jim could have followed him, surefooted as a mountain goat. Not now. Twice he stumbled over furniture that shouldn’t have been where it was.

  “You all right there, Captain?”

  “Yeah.”

  Now he could see another light. Another candle, steady and still, in what had been their bedroom.

  Jim bumped his elbow against the corner of the door, nearly falling. His shoulder hit a picture on the wall.

  A print of Christina’s World, by Andrew Wyeth. He’d bought it as a present for his wife on their tenth anniversary, just before the Aquila had soared from the launching pad.

  “In here. Keep hushed, Captain.”

  “Lori.” He wasn’t even sure whether he’d really whispered her name, or whether it had been whispered inside his mind.

  “Is not Mrs. Hilton. Is Andrea.”

  Jim’s eyes were adjusting to the faint light in the room, and he could make out a shape on the bed, lying still under their bright-patterned quilt.

  “Andrea? Where’s my wife? Where’s Mrs. Hilton, Ramon? And Heather? I don’t understand.”

  There didn’t seem to be enough air in the silent bedroom. Jim swallowed, mouth dry.

  “Andrea, baby,” he called softly, moving until the bed touched his knees. He was aware of a foul smell hanging around him.

  “I think you too late, Captain.”

  He spun round, reaching out and grabbing Ramon by the wrist, conscious of how thin and frail the gardener had become, the tiny bones feeling like a trembling sparrow in his fingers.

  “What the fuck? Too late!”

  “Please, you hurt me.”

  Jim let him go and knelt by the bed, his hand touching the figure beneath the covers. The smell of excrement and vomit was much stronger.

  “Baby,” he whispered.

  “I think she has gone, Captain.” Then Ramon leaned closer, his ear to the still figure’s mouth. “Just barely there, but no help for it. Not long now…”

  His daughter’s arm rested on top of the quilt, and he touched it. Touched the shrunken fingers with his own.

  “Oh, no. No, God.”

  “Cholera. Mrs. Hilton, she left about three weeks back.”

  “Left?”

  “I bury her in the garden. Dig deep, Captain, so coyotes don’t get her. Put big stones on top. Under magnolia. Think it might live again one day.”

  Tears were coursing over the stubble on Jim Hilton’s cheeks as he held his daughter’s hand in his.

  “Where’s Heather?” he whispered hoarsely.

  “She gone only a couple days.”

  “You buried her, too, Ramon? By Christ, but you been busy for the family.”

  “No, not bury Miss Heather, Captain. She don’t got the cholera. She couldn’t stand it once her sister slipped into the long sleeping. She knew. Cared for Mrs. Hilton. Knew what was happening. Asked me to take care. She gone.”

  “Left. Where did she go?”

  He felt the shrug rather than saw it. All Jim could see was the tiny, guttering candle flame, and all he could feel was his daughter’s weightless hand resting in his.

  The flame went out, and Ramon left him alone in the cold, velvet dark. Once he thought Carrie might have come in and sat with him.

  Andrea Hilton died just after dawn, as the light shone through gaps in the drapes. At the very last he thought he might have felt a tiny response. A squeeze of her fingers against his own.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  It seemed as if the whole of the Catskills had been wiped away in one catastrophic fire. A flaming holocaust that had swept clear across the millions of acres of dead and dying trees, taking away everything and everyone in its path.

  Mac sat the saddle of the antique Norton motorbike, looking eastward, away toward the state line with Connecticut.

  “Sixty miles or so, from the map. And then around another hundred to Mystic.”

  Pete Turner swung his legs over and off the pillion seat, stretching. “We’ve only got enough gas for another hour… hour and a half. Then we walk. Don’t figure we’ll get any gas around here.”

  The Kawasaki had finally given up the ghost the previous day, October 15.

  On the way northward from near Memphis, the two friends had been lucky enough to find two small hoards of gasoline, both times in solitary houses set well back off side roads.

  They’d increasingly discovered that the interstates and main highways were either blocked by abandoned vehicles or were the territory of roaming gangs of armed men.

  The farther north and east they got, the worse the situation became.

  When they’d set off from Stevenson base, three interminable weeks ago, Henderson McGill’s intention had been to take the straightest, fastest route available. Stick to the interstates to New York, then up to Boston.

  He’d quickly begun to have second thoughts.

  In a single morning, not far from Lexington, Kentucky, they’d come under hostile fire from two of the killing gangs. The first time it was a ragged salvo from inaccurate hunting rifles. The second time it was a lethal spray of concentrated lead from three or more M-18s on full auto.

  Mac and Pete had skidded around in a cloud of dust, taking to the shoulder of the road, the spray of dirt concealing them from any further bullets while they powered away on full revs.

  Pete swore that the men who’d opened fire had all been wearing military uniforms.

  Since then it had been side roads and extreme caution all the way.

  They’d seen enough of the mountains of corpses on the outskirts of some of the small Southern cities to be able to make a horrified guess at what a metropolis like New York must resemble.

  “Charnel house. Only people going to be alive in the big centers of population are ghouls and the clinically insane,” Mac had said.

  “You not going to Boston?”

  “No. Not now.”

  “Mystic first stop?”

  Mac had sighed, leaning back against the bole of a fallen tree, staring into the flames of the small fire they’d risked lighting. The temperature had dropped alarmingly as they moved north, with frost on the outside of the tents.

  “Jeanne and the three oldest will have tried to get out before the going got too tough. I know them. And they’d have headed for Mystic to hole up with Angel and the four littlies.”

  “Sure?”

  “Course I’m not bastard sure, Pete! But it’s the best guess I got....”

  So then they’d reached the ebony wilderness of the Catskills, with one motorbike, its tank near empty, and a single day’s supply of food, the last of the hi-concentrate. One tent and a sleeping bag each, a couple of good knives—and not much else.

  Actually the gas in the tank of the trusty old Norton kept them going right across the state line into Connecticut before the engine coughed once and then finally fell silent.

  “North of Danbury,” said McGill, studying the creased remains of their road map. “Near dusk. Could hole up for the night.”

  “Some houses up there, on the right.” Pete pointed ahead of them.

  “Might be some gas stashed in one of the garages. I’ll push the bike and you can carry the packs. That a deal?”

  “Sure. Why not?” Pete laughed. “Few weeks ago I’d have spit in your eye at the thought of hiking around with a heavy backpack on. Now I guess I feel fitter than I have in years. And I’ve kept up the practice on the martial arts.”

  “Yeah. I’ve seen you, remember? Any son of a bitch tries to get cute with you is gonna end up with his head jammed up his ass.”

  THEY GOT LUCKY.

  “Figure we’re far enough away from any real big towns for refugees and looters to have got here. And we’ve stuck to back roads, as well. Seems like nobody reached these places.”

  “There was enough gas in that single can out in the garage to carry us the eighty miles or so to Mystic.”

  “If both your families are there, Mac, and they’re all well, it’s going to be a straggle to get nine more people on the pillion of the Norton.”

  The house they’d discovered had been owned by a realtor, a man in his fifties with a wife a couple years younger. They had no children but they’d owned a golden retriever called Helga.

  Mac and Pete knew all of this because the house hadn’t even been entered. Helga was lying in the bedroom, on the floor, with a crusted saucer by her nose. She’d been dead for months. The tiny round brass disk bearing her name was tarnished, stained with smears of green verdigris.

  Her owners were also in the same room, side by side on the bed, their skeletal, sinewy hands clasped. The empty pill bottles were on the round table by the window.

  Mac and Pete left the couple where they were. Their bodily fluids had leaked clean through the mattress, dripping and leaving a dark stain on the pale cream carpet.

  Though death must have been all around them, the husband and wife had left a short suicide note, on the table, alongside the pills.

  Food finished. No place to go. No point in going on. Poor Helga has gone ahead of us and we shall soon be joining her. If anyone reads this, do not cast a cruel, judging eye on us and what we’ve done. We are together as we’ve been through so many good married years. Horseman, pass by.

  Mac pulled the door shut. There was a single unopened tin of dog food in the empty, stripped-pine kitchen.

  “Fancy it?” asked Pete.

  “There’s some catsup. Powdered chilies. Cumin and some oregano. Mix the whole lot up, and I reckon I could just about manage it.”

  They got a fire going in the grate, against the bitter cold that was riding down around them on the teeth of a raging blue norther.

  The logs crackled, bright and dry.

  “Guess there isn’t any more green wood left anywhere in the country,” said Mac.

  “Maybe none in the world. Remember that all the tundra and forests across Russia had gone from green to red.”

  Neither of them heard a sound outside the isolated house.

  The first clue that they had intruders was when the door of the living room swung silently back. Framed in the doorway were two figures. Both looked to be in their late teens, wearing plaid jackets and jeans.

  Peter had discovered a supply of candles on a top shelf in the kitchen and had stuck them around the room on plates and saucers. In the wavering light the uninvited visitors looked like Halloween goblins. But Mac had a feeling that the trick-or-treating might turn nasty and mean.

  Mac’s hand found its way toward the hilt of the knife in an instinctive reaction that vaguely surprised him.

  The taller of the two spoke. He was holding a short-hafted ax. McGill noticed that the other one had some kind of device strapped to his right wrist, but he was in shadow and Mac couldn’t make out what it was.

  “Who the hell are you? You got any food? Any liquor? No guns? That your chopper out back in the garage?”

  “Lot of questions, son.” Mac stood up slowly, feeling a sense of vulpine threat seeping from the pair.

  Pete also stood, flexing his fingers so that the knuckles cracked. “We got no food. No liquor. No guns. And the motorbike belongs to us. Now you got your answers and you can leave the same way you came in. Right?”