In a Handful of Dust

“Rest,” she whispered to him, brushing some hair off his forehead. “I think you’re one of the lucky ones.”

“One of the few,” Carter said, and her hand found his.

“I’m so sorry,” she tried to say, but her voice broke and the tears she’d been fighting swelled out of her in a rush, coursing down her cheeks and spattering Adam’s shirt along with the wasted water that had seeped from around his weak lips.

Carter’s arm went across her shoulder and pulled her into him, squeezing strength into her body. “I know it, I know,” he said, his own voice thick. “But not here, not in front of the small ones.”

She nodded and pulled away, but he kept his hand on her shoulder. She’d not given much thought to his hands until the past few months, when the calluses and the strength of his fingers had taken on new meaning as she’d wondered how they’d feel against her skin. He brushed this thumb against her cheek, moving the tears back into her hair.

He cleared his throat and stepped back from her. “I need to refill this,” he said, picking up a canteen. “Wanna come with?”

They headed toward the stream, the midday sun baking the backs of their necks.

“Adam seems to be getting better,” Lucy said cautiously.

“I think so, yeah. Might take some time though. I’ve noticed the adults who went down are bouncing back quicker than the kids.”

“And their legs?”

“Not good,” Carter shook his head. “Jeb Calkins is getting better, sure enough, but he can’t move either of his.”

Jeb was a single man, with a young son. “Who’s going to take care of Little Jeb?” Lucy asked.

“Shit, who’s going to take care of Big Jeb?” Carter dipped the canteen in the creek. “What’s going on here, Lucy… it’s bad. It’s going to change things. We’ll be a community where half the adults are cripples, most of the children invalids.”

“Stebbs is crippled, always has been. Doesn’t slow him down none.”

“Stebbs has a twisted foot, broken in a trap and never healed right. That’s different from losing the use of your whole leg.”

Lucy sat on the bank, quiet. Carter’s reasoning explained why Lynn had been scared. As usual, she’d realized what something meant in the long run, like how this year’s garden would affect the next, and why a sickness moving through the deer meant she should avoid killing the young ones, so they could repopulate It wasn’t only people who were being crippled, but their entire way of life. Without healthy adults, they could not defend themselves. Even though outside threats were not nearly as common as they had been a decade earlier, there were still passing bands of people who wanted what they had—water.

And now it would be easier to take it from them.

Three

The next day a fresh wave of patients came in. Siblings lay on blankets their brothers and sisters had vacated, either by going home or to the pits Lynn kept burning.

“I don’t understand it,” Vera muttered, her head resting in her hands while her blank eyes coursed over her notes: jumbled, mismatched scraps of paper torn from whatever had been handy as she questioned the sick. So far, nothing had led her back to the beginning, to Maddy.

“You need to rest, Grandma,” Lucy said from her seat on the floor. Her own body was worn out from long hours tending the patients, her emotions worn so flat she no longer flinched when even the smallest bundles headed for the fires. Lynn looked no better, her hair covered with a fine powdering of soot from the dead.

“I can’t rest,” Vera said. “Not until we know where this came from. All we’re doing is treating the symptoms, not stopping the sickness.”

“Maybe so.” Stebbs moved behind her, his strong hands working to ease the tension in her shoulders. “But you’re not going to make any sense out of those scribbles in the state you’re in. You’ve not slept longer than a few hours since this started.”

“I wouldn’t even call it sleeping, what you do,” Lynn agreed. “You just kinda sit real still and doze.”

“It’s an old doctor’s habit, and good to know I’ve still got the knack.”

“Knack or not, you’re going to bed, Doc,” Stebbs said sternly, and Lynn motioned to Lucy to follow her outside.

“She might be immune to polio, but that don’t mean this epidemic won’t kill her,” Lynn said as they walked down to the stream. “Vera says polio thrives when it gets hot. This outbreak is just a taste of what could be coming, if we don’t figure out the source. She won’t sleep sound ’til that happens.”

Lucy found a spot in the tall grass that was well beaten down and took a seat. Heat lightning flickered across dark thunderheads that had formed on the evening horizon. “Not a good sign,” she said, gesturing toward the pink bolts.

Lynn glanced up. “Nope. No rain, no cool air.” A moan rose up from the rows of the sick, out of sight beyond the tall grass, but not out of hearing range.

“You doing okay?”