“Good with her hands, Lucille. Lord gave her that and took other things.”
“You aren’t leaving us much, lady,” said Mac. “Barely enough for another couple of days.”
“You got gas, with the jerricans, to take you six or seven hundred miles on your way. You don’t like it, then just ride on.”
There was a smile on the craggy face, hardly touching the piercing blue eyes.
Pete grinned. “Wouldn’t be that you’re the ‘Ma’ from that diner, would it?”
“Yeah. That’s why we got food stoked. Thought it’d run out in a month or so, but we’ve been careful. We got some tablets if it came to it. Like many poor folks ended up.”
“You the only ones left in town, ma’am?” asked Mac politely.
“We are now. I lost my husband and son near the start. Folks thought we should share what we got. We didn’t.” She let the sentence hang, flat and ugly.
“But the dead didn’t go to—” began Lucille, wiping her hands with a greasy rag.
Her mother slapped her across the face, fast as a striking cobra. “Keep that mouth shut, child,” she snarled. She tried hard to readjust her smile and failed. “Kids.” She shrugged.
“Yeah,” Mac intoned, his fingers itching for the hilt of his hunting knife.
The trading over, the two men reloaded their packs and got ready to leave the fair town of Hustonville.
“Sure you don’t want to stay?” asked Ma unexpectedly.
“Guess not.” Henderson McGill shook his head very slowly.
“Four of us women and no men. You seem straight and clean.”
“We are. But we got families.”
“Hope you find them.” Her handshake was dry and firm. “You seen green shoots coming through here and there. Maybe those of us who’ve got this far might make a good fresh start. Now that Mother Nature’s had her joke on us. You change your mind, come back and look us up. Y’hear me?”
Though it was a cool day, Mac found he was perspiring heavily as they rode clear of the little township.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Though it was pitch-dark in the kitchen, Jim Hilton could see it clear as crystal in the center of his mind’s eye.
The double sink was on his right, by the window that looked out across the pool, over beyond the reservoir, toward the hazy blur that was Los Angeles. The electric stove was beyond that, and then the day-to-day freezer, as Lori called it. The main chest freezer was out at the back of the three-car garage.
The index finger of his right hand was trembling on the trigger of the .44-caliber Ruger Blackhawk Hunter.
For a quivering, surreal moment, Jim was taken back to a night when he’d gotten out of bed at four, after a party with the Harknetts around. He’d been overcome with a desire to scrape out the dish of chocolate fudge sundae he knew was sitting snugly on the second shelf of their kitchen fridge.
He’d been sucking at the small silver apostle spoon that had been one of a set of wedding presents from his Aunt Elsie, savoring the rich sweetness, when he’d realized that he wasn’t alone in the silent kitchen.
That time it had been Heather, blackmailing him into giving her half the sundae by threatening to tell Lori. Jim had been dieting back then, trying to shed a surplus couple of pounds.
Now he knew he wasn’t alone in the silent kitchen.
On the step outside, Jim heard the faint sound of Carrie nervously shifting her feet.
“Lori?” he whispered. “That you, Lori?”
“Who that?”
The voice came from the open doorway into the hall. It seemed as if the speaker was crouching in the darkness.
“Who are you? And what the fuck are you doing in my house and where the fuck is my wife and my kids?”
It took a serious effort of will on Jim’s part not to open fire at the invisible person less than fifteen feet away from him.
“That Captain Hilton?”
Now he recognized the accent and the slight lilt to the voice.
“Ramon?”
“Is me.”
Jim relaxed a little, uncramping his finger from the trigger.
Ramon Hernandez had been the best handyman and gardener in the area. His plump wife, Maria, had been the finest hired cook, whose huevos rancheros could raise the dead and whose fabled carne adovada, with blue-corn tortillas, was the pride of every Hollywood dinner party.