In a Handful of Dust

Lucy’s arms couldn’t keep the connection anymore, and she fell to the ground. The smell of singed flesh and burning hair filled the room, tinged with the tweak of ozone when another flash of lightning ripped through the night air, and the building shook with the rumble of the thunder. Lynn dragged herself to Lucy’s side to cradle the girl’s head in her lap.

“You okay?”

Lucy nodded, the tender skin of her cheek rubbing against Lynn’s jeans. “Did I kill them?”

“Well, Lander’s hair is on fire and he’s not doing anything about it, so my guess is yeah, you did.”

Lucy turned her face into the bend of Lynn’s knee, tears dripping onto the denim and the delayed twinges of shock sending her into a rippling mass in Lynn’s lap. Lynn’s hands moved through her hair, gently pulling the short, damp ends from her sticky face.

“I know it’s not easy, little one,” she said. “But this is the world we live in, and if we want to keep doing it, sometimes our hands are forced.”

“Lucy?” Ben’s weak voice floated above the still bodies. Lynn rose to her feet, pulling Lucy with her. Ben’s small hands patted out the fires on either side of his father’s skull, surprising Lucy in their gentleness until she realized some of Ben’s own clothing had begun to smolder, and he’d put those sparks out first.

“Ben?” She hovered over him, leaning down as close as she dared to hear his whisper.

“Lucy, we’ve got to go,” Lynn said as she opened a closet and pulled out her rifle, along with a set of keys. “Others live here too, and the storm will be waking them if that ruckus didn’t.”

Ben’s hand grabbed for hers, and she let him hold it. “I think Dad broke my back.”

“Time to go.” Lynn’s hands were on her shoulders, pulling her back from his weak grip.

“Ben,” Lucy stuttered, backing away from his pleading eyes and hands still reaching for her. “I’m sorry, I can’t.”

The plea changed to wrath in a second, and his hands went from penitence to fists as he struck the floor around him. “You will take me with you! You can’t leave me broken.”

“Ben,” Lucy said from the doorway, “you were broken long before I got here.”

He screamed at them with all the air left inside him, his wordless anger following them down in the lobby, along with the sound of his upper half dragging his useless legs behind him in a futile effort to catch up.

She followed Lynn on wobbly legs to the parking garage. Ben’s screams had brought others from their rooms, but no one was willing to face Lynn’s gun, and they had the streets to themselves. Lucy slid into the passenger seat with relief, dumping her bag in the back and letting her body go entirely slack.

Lynn drove quickly; Lucy watched her eyes darting back and forth in the rearview mirror, not relaxing until they were well beyond the pale fingers of the dead buildings that reached for the sky. The desert opened up around them again, the emptiness of it all somehow reassuring after the cluttered rot of Las Vegas.

“You know where you’re going?” Lucy asked.

Lynn tapped her temple. “It’s all been up here for the past two states.”

“All right,” Lucy said, her head tilting to one side to rest against the cool window. “I trust you.”

The three small words swelled in magnitude in the confines of the car, and Lynn tightened her grasp on the steering wheel. “I want you to know there’s a lot of things in my life I wish I could take back. If I could only choose one, it’d be Carter.”

“I know it,” Lucy said, eyes still shut. “But it’s done now. It is what it is.”

“Maybe so, but I need you to know he asked me for it. Said he couldn’t stand the guilt of dead children, bodies of the people he knew burning in a pit, and him being what put ’em there. He didn’t want to be alone and… he said he couldn’t help but hope you’d be happy, but he hated that it wasn’t with him.”

Tears that she didn’t bother to brush away poured down Lucy’s face. “But it didn’t have to be that way. He didn’t have to die.”

“I didn’t know that, and neither did he. You’re the one that holds on to hope, Lucy. The two of us, we’d already accepted that life is unfair. And he died for it, and I can’t put together enough words to tell you how sorry I am.”

“Neither one of you can be blamed for it,” Lucy said eventually. “This is a hard place we live in.”

“It is indeed,” Lynn answered. The storm finally broke around them, dropping water in great sheets that rolled off the windshield as they headed west.

“But I’m still glad I’m here,” Lucy managed to say as her eyelids closed.

The last thing she heard before she drifted into unconsciousness was Lynn heaving a great sigh and saying, “Lord, I wish I had a five-gallon bucket about now.”

Part Four OCEAN

Thirty-Four

Lucy resisted when Lynn tried to get her to drink in the morning.

“That’s water from the city,” Lucy said. “I don’t want to drink it.”