“Are we going to learn the truth about you, Nanci?” he asked. “Ever?”
“Whole truth and nothing but the truth, Jim. You want to bare a woman of her mysteries?”
Carrie had also been dozing, but now she sat up. “Well said, Nanci. Fact of life is that a man is always asking a woman questions, and a woman is never answering them.”
Jim laughed. “Wrong. Truth is that what a woman wants from a man is whatever the man happens to be right out of at that precise moment.”
They laughed at Jim’s response, then fell silent. About a half hour later they all felt the sudden slowing as Jeff hit the tractor’s brakes, and the convoy quickly came to a complete halt.
The noise of the idling engine made it difficult to hear, but Jeff made his intention obvious. He was leaning out of the window and pointing about a mile ahead of them, down a slope to the right.
“He looks like stout Cortez on a peak in Darien,” said Jeanne McGill.
“House!” shouted Jeff. “And there’s smoke coming from a chimney.”
They all stared down at the rectangular white building. There were three burned-out barns to the southern flank, and one ramshackle outbuilding still standing. Gray smoke curled from one of the redbrick chimneys, but was flattened by the rain, vanishing before it had gone fifty yards.
Jim noticed that makeshift shutters covered up most of the windows. But in a world where anarchy ruled, that wasn’t at all surprising. There was also the shattered remnants of a satellite dish in the side yard and a large radio antenna fixed to the main chimney.
The slushy, muddied snow that carpeted all of the surrounding fields was unmarked by any evidence of recent livestock movement, though the trail ahead of the tractors was deeply furrowed with regular use.
“Let’s go ahead,” said Jim. “It worked last time. Might work this time. It doesn’t look too much like a fortress.”
“Looks pretty cold and miserable down there,” said Jeanne McGill. “There’s a big pond, still covered in ice. It almost runs up to the house. If they’ve got a cellar, then it must be nearly underwater.”
“Everyone get their guns ready for action,” warned Nanci. “Keep it in your minds, all of you, that being careless for a moment can mean being dead for a very long time.”
But just for once, it turned out that there was no need for any concern.
As the tractors rumbled slowly down the uneven trail, the front door of the house opened. A tall, skinny man stood there, the fading light glittering off his silver hair. He carried what looked like an M-16 at his hip.
Nanci was watching through the front slit of the horse trailer. “Someone else with a gun in an upper window,” she said. “An LMG’s my guess.”
The man held up the rifle as a sign for them to stop, making a gesture for the engines to be turned off. They were a scant two hundred yards away.
“If you’re friends, then you can come ahead and stay one night with me and the woman. You get to do some chores to pay your way. You don’t want that, then keep on going, back the way you just come. No through road here.”
Jim held his hands out wide. “Sounds a good deal to me. We’ll come in.”
“Can we just see who’s inside those trailers, mister? See who we’re letting in.”
“If that machine gun opens up,” said Nanci, talking out of the corner of her mouth, “then it’ll go through the walls of the horse trailer like a straight razor through a baby’s throat.”
“Nice image, Nanci.” Jim lifted his voice. “Sure thing, mister. Eleven of us. Men, women and children.” He called behind him. “Everyone outside for a moment.”
They filed out, standing in the watery dirt. The man gave them a once-over, then he made a sign to the shadowy figure behind the upstairs window. After a brief pause he beckoned to them. “Welcome,” he said. “Oh, and a real good Christmas to you all.”
“DAVE BRADLEY. Wife’s Norma-Jean. Been married forty years next week. Been here all of those years. Saw our living vanish when that damn virus turned green to red. But we’re hanging on for a while longer. Time’ll come when we have to get out. Could be before Easter.”