Jim hesitated, his natural caution seeping back, quenching the white-hot flare of his rage. “Would a badge like that make me welcome here?”
The laughter was gone, and the muzzle of the long gun was drilling right between Jim’s eyes again. The voice grew colder, less wild. “Best you open up that fine parka, Captain Hilton.”
Jim did, pulling it back. “The way you come at this,” he said, “makes me think you might not be a big supporter of the Hunters of the Sun.”
“Could be.”
There was a long silence. Jim glanced behind him and saw that the others were still standing where he’d left them. At the top of the snowy slope he could just make out the two tractors and their trailers.
“Do we come in or not, mister? And I’m still waiting for you to throw me a name. You and your friends and relations tucked away in that house?”
“Cole Dalton. This is my land you’re driving across, Captain Hilton. And I live here alone since my wife and daughter passed away.”
“We have a seriously ill child, Mr. Dalton. She needs drugs or she’ll be dead by dawn.”
“What’s wrong with the kid?”
“Typhoid, we think.”
“You throwing out anything she shits on? And keeping your hands clean?”
“Best we can. Got rid of the soiled blankets.” Nobody had mentioned washing hands. Once society crumbled, hygiene was one of the first casualties.
“I can maybe find something.”
“Could barter. A good gun for the right drugs.”
There was a long pause. “Captain, if you’re telling me the truth, then I could get mighty insulted by the suggestion I’d want to trade to help a sickly child. Bring her down and let me see. But the rest stay where they are.”
“Sure thing.” Jim turned away, then back to the threatening gun. “Grateful, Cole.”
“Get to it.”
Jim went back to the others, and they made their arrangements. Jeanne McGill carried Sukie, with Carrie at her side to help her over the steeper, slippier parts of the track. The little girl had faded away into a coma, not even opening her eyes as she was jolted around.
“Get closer!” The barrel of the rifle had disappeared, and Jim could make out the blurred shape of a man’s head and shoulders behind the glass of the attic. “Just one of you. The one with the baby. Unwrap her for a second so’s I can… Fine. I’m only letting the mother and child in first. Rest of you back off. Including you, Captain.”
“Cold and wet out here, Dalton,” said Jim.
“Been like that a spell. Guess you’re part used to it by now. Another half hour won’t harm you. Not if you lived clean and thought clean.”
There was no point in arguing. Jim went to Jeanne and stood close while she covered Sukie up again with the blanket. “You got the .32?”
“Under my coat.”
“Use it if you have to.”
“Maybe I could take him out anyway, once I’m in. Might be safest for us all.”
Jim realized in that moment how Jeanne McGill’s longer exposure to the post-Earthblood world had changed and hardened her more than he’d known.
“No,” he said. “Only if you have to do it.”
“Sure.”
EVERYONE STOOD together on the slope of the hill, looking down at the silent building.
“Pretty farm,” said Carrie. “Must’ve been something when it was running properly.”
Henderson McGill kept kicking at bunches of snow, exposing the mud below. “How long?” he said with a vicious calm. “How long before we kick the bastard door in?”
“There hasn’t been any shooting inside,” said Nanci Simms reassuringly. “No screams.”
“Could be more than just him. Could be a whole bastard family of chainsaw-waving crazies. How do we know?”
Jim took him by the arm. “Mac, just simmer on down, will you? ‘Course we don’t know. We know Sukie’s dying. Got that? Your baby is dying. There’s a slim chance that Cole Dalton might have the right drugs. Slim but realistic. You want to just piss that away and Sukie’s life with it?”
“No.”
“Give me the rifle, Paul,” said Nanci.
Jim turned. “Why?”
“Take out his eye if he appears and things aren’t right. Get it done.”