Ruins

“It’s not going to rain,” said Calix. “I’ve been reading these skies since I was four.”

“Color me unconvinced,” said Heron. “We go forward or we go back; we’re not staying outside.”

Now that he’d stopped walking, Samm felt the chill air creeping through his arms and chest. “Is it supposed to be this cold?”

“No,” said Phan. “The last few weeks have been cooler than usual, but this is like nothing I’ve ever felt. Is this always like this out in the Badlands?”

“It wasn’t when we came through here before,” said Samm.

“The horses need to stop,” said Calix. “They can’t keep this pace much longer.”

“We should have stopped in the last town,” said Ritter. He looked at Heron sharply, his displeasure strongly evident on the link. “Too bad our scout led us into the middle of nowhere.”

“This is the Midwest,” said Heron. “Everywhere is the middle of nowhere. The next town is only another two miles, maybe less if we can find an outlying farmhouse.”

“Keep moving,” said Samm, and the group fell back into step. They kept an even pace with the horses now, tired and thirsty and rubbing their arms in the cold. The temperature seemed to plummet even further as they walked, and when they finally saw a row of low houses, they left the road eagerly, numb and exhausted. The highway was on a slight elevation, and the hill running down to the buildings was covered with dry, brittle grass that crunched like eggshells under their feet. It was an old farming community, like Heron had predicted, the fields now barren and desolate. The first house in the row was too ruined to serve as a proper shelter—a sliding glass door in the back had broken years ago, and a decade of windstorms had filled the interior with toxic dirt and dust. The next house was better, but too small to house them all. Samm left the Partials there, telling them to seal the doors and windows as well as they could, and took the horses and humans to the third house down. Heron followed him, and he sighed. She was never good with orders.

“You need to show them how to cover the gaps,” said Samm. “I can show Calix and Phan.”

“They’re big boys,” said Heron. “They can deal with it.”

“So you want to deal with the horses?”

“I want to see if this godforsaken hole has anything resembling a downtown,” said Heron. “We’ll use almost all the water we packed just on the horses, and we need to find more.”

“Take Ritter,” said Samm. “We shouldn’t go anywhere alone.”

“I’m taking you.”

Samm glanced at Calix, but she was apparently too tired to have been paying attention. Even Phan seemed ready to collapse. “I need to take care of the horses.”

“So take care of them,” said Heron. “Just don’t take all night.”

Samm linked his frustration, but said nothing and got to work. If Heron wanted to get him alone, it was almost certainly because she wanted to talk, and given how rare that was, he decided it was a good idea to know what she was thinking. He took Phan and Calix inside and set them up in the basement storage room—there was no food or water, but more important there were no exterior windows, and the surfaces were clear of toxic buildup. The horses he set up in the living room, doing his best to cover the floor with plastic tarps—not to keep them from fouling the carpet, but to keep them from eating it. He found some metal pans in the kitchen and filled them with the water they’d brought with them, then wearily unloaded their packs and saddles while they drank. It was more than half an hour later when he trudged back outside; the sky was dark and starless, and the freezing air bit at his nose and cheeks.

“This way,” said Heron, hopping down from the hood of the rusted van she’d been sitting on. “There’s a school about a mile down the road, with three big plastic jugs of water in the teachers’ lounge.”

“I told you not to go anywhere alone,” said Samm, walking beside her down the road. “What if you’d gotten injured and nobody knew where you were?”

“If I get injured in an empty town a thousand miles from any possible enemy, I deserve to die.”

“Well . . . we wouldn’t leave without you.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

Samm linked his exasperation. “I assume I’m here because you wanted to talk about something.”

“Interesting,” said Heron. “What do I want to talk about?”

“I have no idea,” said Samm. “Since you’re playing coy, I’ll start with the items on my own agenda. I need to know how dedicated you are to this mission.”

“I’m here,” said Heron simply.

“Here for how long?” asked Samm. “Here until something flips your loyalties backward again?”

“The Third Division survived for thirteen years because something in that Preserve kept them alive,” said Heron. “Whatever it is—maybe Williams, maybe their life support system, maybe the microbes in the dirt that keep the plants healthy—could keep me alive as well. The secret to my survival is back there, in the Preserve, along with all the food and water and shelter I could ever need. And yet I’m here.”