Striking the Balance

It was a good-sized human town, too, and one utterly without government of any sort. The Lizards had taken as many of the supplies as they could load into their vehicles. Fights broke out over what was left. Penny managed to get hold of some hard biscuits, and shared them with Rance. They made his belly rumble a little less than it would have without them.

Off to the left, not quite far enough away from his convalescent tent to be out of earshot, somebody said, “We ought to string up all the stinking bastards who kissed the Lizards’ butts while they was here. String ’em up by the balls, matter of fact.”

Auerbach shivered, not so much because of what the fellow said as at the calm, matter-of-fact way he said it. In Europe, they’d called people who’d gone along with the Nazis, people like Quisling, collaborators. Auerbach had never figured anybody would need to worry about collaborators in the U.S.A., but he didn’t know everything there was to know, either.

Penny said, “There’s gonna be trouble. Anybody who’s got a score to settle against somebody else will say they went along with the Lizards. Who’s gonna be able to sort out what’s true and what ain’t? Families will be feuding a hundred years from now on account o’ this.”

“You’re probably right,” Rance said. “But there’s going to be trouble sooner than that.” He was thinking like a soldier. “The Lizards may have pulled out of here, but the Army hasn’t pulled in. We’ll eat Karval empty by tomorrow at the latest, and then what do we do?”

“Walk toward Denver, I reckon,” Penny answered. “What else can we do?”

“Not much,” he said. “But walk-what? A hundred miles, maybe?” He gestured toward the crutches that lay by his cot. “You might as well go on without me. I’ll meet you there in a month, maybe six weeks.”

“Don’t be silly,” Penny told him. “You’re doin’ a lot better than you were.”

“I know, but I’m not doing well enough.”

“You will be,” she said confidently. “Besides, I don’t want to leave you, darling.” She blew out the one flickering candle that lit the inside of the tent. In the darkness, he heard cloth rustle. When he reached out toward her, his hand brushed warm, bare flesh. A little later, she rode astride him, groaning both in ecstasy and, he thought, in desperation, too-or maybe he was just guessing she felt the same thing he did. Afterwards, not bothering to dress, she slept beside him in the tent.

He woke before sunrise, and woke her, too. “If we’re going to do this,” he said, “we’d better get started early as we can. That way we can go a long way before it gets too hot, and lie up during the hottest part of the day.”

“Sounds good to me,” Penny said.

The eastern sky was just going pink when they set out. They were far from the first to leave Karval. Singly and in small groups, some people were making their way north along one of the roads that led out of town, others along the westbound road, and a few hearty souls, splitting the difference, heading northwest cross-country. Had Auerbach been in better shape, he would have done that. As things were, he and Penny went west: the Horse River was likelier to have water in it still than any of the streams they would cross heading north.

He was stronger and better on his crutches than he had been, but that still left him weak and slow. Men and women passed Penny and him in a steady stream. Refugees from Karval stretched out along the road as far as he could see.

“Some of us are going to die before we get to Denver,” he said. The prospect upset him much less than it would have before he got wounded. He’d had a dress rehearsal for meeting the Grim Reaper; really doing it couldn’t be a whole lot worse.

Penny pointed up to the sky. The wheeling black specks up there weren’t Lizard airplanes, or even Piper Cubs. They were buzzards, waiting with the patient optimism of their kind. Penny didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. Rance wondered if one of those buzzards would gnaw his bones.

He needed two days to get to the Horse. Had its bed been dry, he knew he wouldn’t have got much farther. But people crowded the bank, down where the river passed under Highway 71. The water was warm and muddy, and there, not twenty feet away, some idiot was pissing into the stream. Auerbach didn’t care about any of it. He drank till he was full, he splashed his face, he soaked his head, and then he took off his shirt and soaked that, too. As it dried, it would help keep him cool.

Penny splashed water on her blouse. The wet cotton molded itself to her shape. Auerbach would have appreciated that more had he not been so deadly weary. As things were, he nodded and said, “Good idea. Let’s get going.”

They headed north up Highway 71, and reached Punkin Center early the next morning. They got more water there. A sad-eyed local said, “Wish we could give you some eats, folks-you look like you could use ’em. But the ones ahead o’ you done et us out of what we had. Good luck to you.”