“You heard me, Jim?”
“What are you saying, Nanci? I had a friend back in L.A. who’d majored in literary deconstructionism. Used to talk a whole lot about the pre-essential importance of the subtext. What’s your subtext, Nanci?”
“Mac’s near the breaking point. Too many deaths too close to him too quickly.”
Jim nodded. “I see that.”
“Normally I’d take the view that our progress to Aurora took priority over everything and everyone else. But the little girl is central to us all.”
“What can we do?”
“I suspect that any pharmacy we happened on will have been ravaged by the great unwashed.”
“So?”
“My feeling is that we should look for any isolated dwelling. Anyone shrewd enough to be still alive and flourishing in this general carnage might be clever enough to have laid in a stock of useful drugs. That’s what I’d have done myself. Keep a good look out for any side trail that seems as if it might have been in use the last day or so. Probability is that the sort of place we’re after won’t even be visible from the highway here.”
“I’ll keep my eyes open, then,” Jim said. From then on he paid special attention to side trails for any signs of recent passage.
It was eleven minutes before nine in the morning when he tapped lightly on the brake pedal three times, warning Mac that he was about to stop.
The miniature convoy halted and everyone got out, except Jeanne and Sukie.
Jim remained in the high cab, allowing the engine to idle, its exhaust barely visible in the freezing drizzle that had begun to fall.
“I spotted a path,” he called. “Bit like you said earlier, Nanci. Off to the right, kind of hidden behind a drift. I can make out what looks like a single set of prints along it. Goes up and over the brow of the hill there.”
Nanci swung up next to him again, looking where he pointed. “Yeah,” she said.
“Should we go up there in the tractors?”
She considered the question. “Anybody there will hear us coming miles away. Then again, in daylight, approaching over snow, I guess we’d have trouble sneaking in. Used to be good in the old days when there were trees for camouflage.”
Mac wiped the cold rain from his face. “Can we make a decision, Jim?” he said.
“Sure. Everyone back in the trailers and get your guns primed and ready. We’ll go in. Save splitting the force or risking leaving the tractors for someone to come along and steal.” He looked at Nanci questioningly, but she simply smiled and held out her hands, palms up.
“Fine, Jim,” she said. “Fine.”
The slope was steep, and the snow was dangerously patchy. In parts it was frozen, with a crust of ice over it. In others the wind had wiped the trail clear, and the wheels slithered in furrows of rich, deep mud.
Once they were over the top of the hill, they were faced with undulating farming land that had once carried a cereal crop. Now nothing living showed above the thin layer of white.
Jim watched the hollows where someone had walked along the track in the same direction that they were going.
Over the third hill, he glimpsed the roof of a building, with a narrow column of smoke snaking out of the red chimney. He touched on the brakes before he stopped and opened the side window of the cab, looking back to see that once again Nanci was the first out of the horse trailer.
“I make it,” she said before he had a chance to speak. “We can stop here and go in on foot. Leave two with the little girl. Couple of guns, in case.” She caught Jim’s eye. “If that’s what you think is a good idea?”
“Sure. It’s what I was going to do.”
He led the way, with Nanci at his heels. Then came Mac and Paul, with Jeff Thomas bringing up the rear. Jeanne, Carrie and Heather remained behind with Jocelyn and Sukie. The little girl seemed fretful and had suffered another fearsome bout of diarrhea that had them throwing out soiled bedding and opening the rear doors of the trailer to air it.