In a Handful of Dust

Lynn held out a hand and pulled Lucy from the boulder. “Then she’s dead. You might have hem-hawed on whether or not you like her, but I never did.”

“So why’d you let her come with us in the first place?”

Lynn took a swallow from her water bottle and put it back in her pack before answering, eyes glued to the approaching figure of Joss. “’Cause of the way she came up on us back at the lake, so quiet and still. I figured she might have something to offer other than creeping. Turns out it’s her best quality.”

Joss was close enough to make out their conversation, so Lucy switched to another topic. “What’d you make of the field of corn?”

Lynn looked to the horizon, and the black storm clouds assembling there. “Trouble.”

Twelve

The rain was falling so heavily their water bottles couldn’t stand up in the torrent, and Lucy ran out to collect them. Joss had spotted an ancient brick house standing alone in the middle of a field, the drive leading to it as full of grass as the acres around it. They ran for the house as the clouds opened up, the fat drops spattering around them as they ducked under the eaves of the buckling walls.

Lucy guessed the house had been old even before the Shortage. The open spaces for high windows, broken now, reminded her of home, as did the plaster walls that were crumbling into dust. Miraculously, the stone fireplace still stood, and the soot traces there showed other travelers had used it as they passed. The flames flickered across the walls in the early shadows that had fallen.

The driving rain slipped through the cracks in the roof, dripping down onto their heads and finding their new place seconds after they’d moved. A fresh drop smacked Lucy on the nose, after she’d changed spots for the fourth time. She jumped up in frustration, swiping at her face. “Dammit!”

Lightning flickered, and she spotted an outbuilding in what remained of the backyard, overgrown by a lilac bush. “Building out there,” she said to Lynn. “Could be something useful.”

“Doubt it,” Lynn said. “Looks like people have stayed the night here before. Anything worth taking’s probably already took.”

“I’ll go check,” Lucy said, despite the fact that it was still pouring. Joss sat silently near the fire, her wordless presence grating on Lucy’s nerves.

Lynn caught her glance and nodded her assent. “If you want to run outside in the rain, that’s your choice.”

Lucy picked her way down a hallway where chunks of the ceiling lay on the floor, wet and moldy, finally finding a back door that led out to the yard. Another lightning flash lit up the outbuilding and she dashed into the rain, shivering as the drops slipped past her upturned collar and ran down her spine. Getting inside the building was not easy; the lilac had hugged it for a long time. Lucy pulled and hacked, breaking old limbs and bending new ones until she could kick down what remained of the door.

More lightning revealed that she’d been right—other travelers had missed the little outbuilding. The walls of the shed were lined with rusty tools, a bicycle with rotted tires sat in the corner, and bundles of twine hung from the ceiling. Lucy grabbed what could still be serviceable—a hammer, two screwdrivers with different heads, and some of the twine. A final flash revealed something piled in the corner that made Lucy laugh, despite the wet clothes clinging to her. She sprinted back to the house and into the front room, her tools and twine nestled inside the five-gallon buckets she’d found. Lynn glanced up.

“I thought the buckets might actually make you smile,” Lucy said, as she stuffed the twine into her pack. As expected, Lynn rolled her eyes, but the corners of her mouth were twitching as she turned back to the fire.

“That was close, anyway,” Joss said, watching Lynn’s reaction. “What’s so great about buckets?”

“These aren’t just buckets, lady,” Lucy clarified. “These are five-gallon buckets. You wanna carry five gallons of something? This is the bucket you need.”

Joss turned to Lynn, mystified. “What’s the big deal?”

“Where we’re from,” Lynn answered, “these buckets were kinda hard to come by. They’d get you all kinds of stuff in trade if you were lucky enough to find one.”

“Because they haul water?”

“Haul water?” Lucy said in mock exaggeration. “Oh, they haul water, and snow—which turns into water, by the way, or big chunks of ice—which also turns into water. And,” she continued, “it’s useful empty. Flip it over and set your can on it when you’re done hauling water.” She dexterously flipped a bucket, clomping it down on the floor and sitting on it with a flourish.

The crack of the gunshot was barely audible over the pounding rain, and Lucy didn’t understand why she’d been knocked onto her back until blood blossomed across the front of her shirt.

“Shit! Lynn!”

Lynn was already at the fireplace, dousing the flames with a blanket and kicking the smoking remnants into a corner. Darkness descended and Lucy heard Lynn crawling toward her.

“Where you hit?”