Jim didn’t speak, stricken by the bizarre appearance of the person they were passing. From the black, damp-stained clothes and the way of walking, his assumption had been that the lonely vagabond had been male. Now, as they crawled past, he could no longer be certain.
The clothes were the tattered remnants of what had once been a classy dress suit, complete with dark purple silk cummerbund wrapped around the skinny waist. A silvery bow tie decorated the wattled throat. But the material of the suit was speckled with patches of green mold and seemed to have a shawl of brown spiderwebs across the shoulders. One foot was enclosed in the torn residue of what had been an elegant patent leather shoe. Hardly the best footwear for such bitter weather. The other foot wore only a baseball sock, stained and filthy.
The face that turned up toward the cab of the leading tractor was androgynous, with a cropped halo of mousy brown hair smeared with lumps of clay. The cheeks had been daubed with white paint, the eyes circled in dark blue, and a slash of crimson across the bloodless lips.
The carriage had only three wheels and squeaked so loudly that Jim Hilton could hear it above the roar of the tractor’s powerful diesel engine. It was filled with parcels of all shapes and sizes, mostly wrapped in brown paper and tied with neatly knotted lengths of twine.
Where the nose should have been, there was only a dark, suppurating hole, fringed with ragged fronds of pale green skin that was oozing a nameless liquid down over the mouth. The person had lost all the teeth, and there was another weeping ulcer on the left cheek, below the half-closed eye.
The sunken eyes locked with Jim’s, and one hand came off the carriage. As he tensed, ready to open up with the Ruger Blackhawk Hunter, Jim realized that the creature was simply waving to him, the palm of the hand flapping to and fro. The thumb and three of the fingers were missing.
“Hi, there!” Jim called, waving back.
“Happy Christmas to you, and may choirs of angels sing you to your rest.”
The voice was gentle and educated.
Jim craned as high as he could to watch the figure as it vanished slowly behind him. Then a rolling section of the blacktop made it vanish altogether.
They were silent for a long time after, wondering about the different kinds of desolation Earthblood had visited on people. And about how little they could do even for those close to them, and nothing for others at all.
When it came time for them to try to find a reasonably safe and secure place to pass the night, they conferred briefly.
At Nanci’s suggestion, they decided to take a narrow track off to the right that led into the higher ground to the east. “Snow is melting fast, and the wind smells as if it’s set fair for a day or so. There’s less chance of our being spotted if we keep off the main highways. And more chance of finding an abandoned house for shelter.”
It was sensible advice, and Jim passed it forward to Jeff Thomas, who was taking his turn at the wheel. The ex-journalist nodded, grinning back at Jim. For the first time in an age, Jeff looked something close to happy.
There was an occasional shower of heavier rain, breaking through the misty drizzle and rattling on the roof of the horse trailers. Jim moved to the rear of the rocking and rolling vehicle, hanging on to the sides to steady himself. “Good job none of us suffer from travel sickness,” he said. “This is worse than the worst reentry simulation.”
Sly was cradling his wooden doll, Steve, singing his own erratic versions of Christmas carols to it. Heather was dozing next to him, one arm thrown across her eyes. Nanci was sitting in the other corner, patiently fieldstripping and reassembling the Heckler & Koch automatic.
She caught Jim watching her. “This is all a bit like connecting neck bone to collar bone and thigh bone to hip bone,” she said, smiling in the dim light of the trailer.