"It got run over by a train. That's what makes it lucky."
"Where'd you get it?"
"I don't know, I've just always had it." Danny dipped his head toward the boy's open hand. "Go ahead, you can keep it."
A moment's hesitation, then Tim slipped the flattened penny into the pocket of his shorts. It wasn't much, Danny knew, but it was something, and there were times like these when just a little thing could help. As a for-instance: Momma's Popov, which she visited when her nerves got bad, and the visits from Mr. Purvis on the nights when Danny could hear them laughing. The roar of the Redbird's big caterpillar diesel coming to life when he turned the key each morning. Driving over the bump on Lindler Avenue, and all the kids hooting as they shot from the benches. Little things like that. Danny felt pleased with himself for thinking of this, like he'd passed along something he knew that maybe not everybody did, and as the two of them stood together in the morning sunshine, he detected, from the corner of his eye, a change in the boy's face, a kind of lightening; he might have even smiled.
"Thanks, Danny," he said.
Omaha was burning.
They saw it first as a throbbing glow over the horizon. It was the hour when the light had flattened. They were approaching the city from the southwest, on Interstate 80. Not a single car was on the highway; all the buildings were dark. A deeper, more profound abandonment than anything they'd seen so far-this was, or should have been, a city of nearly half a million. A strong odor of smoke began to flow through the bus's ventilation. Kittridge told Danny to stop.
"We have to get over the river somehow," Pastor Don said. "Go south or north, look for a way across."
Kittridge looked up from the map. "Danny, how are we doing for gas?"
They were down to an eighth of a tank; the jugs were empty. Fifty more miles at the most. They'd hoped to find more fuel in Omaha.
"One thing's for sure," said Kittridge, "we can't stay here."
They turned north. The next crossing was at the town of Adair. But the bridge was gone, blasted away, no part left standing. Only the river, wide and dark, ceaselessly flowing. The next opportunity would be Decatur, another thirty miles to the north.
"We passed an elementary school a mile back," said Pastor Don. "It's better than nothing. We can look for fuel in the morning."
A silence descended over the bus, everyone waiting for Kittridge's answer.
"Okay, let's do it."
They backtracked into the heart of the little town. All the lights were out, the streets empty. They came to the school, a modern-looking structure set back from the road at the edge of the fields. A marquee-style sign at the edge of the parking area read, in bold letters: GO LIONS! HAVE A GREAT SUMMER!
"Everybody wait here," Kittridge said.
He moved inside. A few minutes passed; then he emerged. He exchanged a quick look with Pastor Don, the two men nodding.
"We're going to shelter here for the night," Kittridge announced. "Stay together, no wandering off. The power's out, but there's running water, and food in the cafeteria. If you need to use the facilities, go in pairs."
In the front foyer they were met by the telltale scents of an elementary school, of sweat and dirty socks, art supplies and waxed linoleum. A trophy case stood by a door that led, presumably, to the main office; a display of collages was hung on the painted cinder-block walls, images of people and animals fashioned from newspaper and magazine clippings. Beside each of them was a printed label bearing the age and grade of its creator. Wendy Mueller, Grade 2. Gavin Jackson, Grade 5. Florence Ratcliffe, Pre-K 4.
"April, go with Wood and Don to find some mats to sleep on. The kindergarten rooms should have some."
In the pantry behind the cafeteria they found cans of beans and fruit cocktail, as well as bread and jam to make sandwiches. There was no gas to cook with, so they served the beans cold, dishing everything out on metal cafeteria trays. By now it was dark outside; Kittridge distributed flashlights. They spoke only in whispers, the consensus being that the virals might hear them.
By nine o'clock, everyone was bedded down. Kittridge left Don to keep watch on the first floor and climbed the stairs, carrying a lantern. Many of the doors were locked but not all; he selected the science lab, a large, open space with counters and glass cabinets full of beakers and other supplies. The air smelled faintly of butane. On the whiteboard at the front of the room were written the words "Final review, chaps. 8-12. Labs due Wednesday."
Kittridge stripped off his shirt and wiped himself down at the washbasin in the corner, then took a chair and removed his boots. The prosthesis, which began just below his left knee, was constructed of a titanium alloy frame covered in silicone; a microprocessor-controlled hydraulic cylinder, powered by a tiny hydrogen cell, adjusted fifty times per second to calculate the correct angular velocity of the ankle joint, imitating a natural gait. It was the very latest in prosthetic limb replacements; Kittridge didn't doubt it had cost the Army a bundle. He rolled up his trousers, peeled off the mounting sock, and washed his stump with soap from the dispenser by the basin. Though heavily callused, the skin at the contact point felt raw and tender after two days without care. He dried the stump thoroughly, allowed it a few minutes of fresh air, then fixed the prosthesis back in place and drew down his pant leg.
He was startled by a sound of movement behind him. He turned to find April standing in the open doorway.
"Sorry, I didn't mean-"
He quickly drew on his shirt and rose to his feet. How much had she seen? But the light was dim, and he'd been partially concealed by one of the counters.
"It's no problem. I was just getting cleaned up a little."
"I couldn't sleep."
"That's okay," he said. "You can come in if you want."
She advanced uncertainly into the room. Kittridge moved to the window with the AK. He took a moment to quickly scan the street below.
"How's everything outside?" She was standing beside him.
"Quiet so far. How's Tim doing?"
"Out like a light. He's tougher than he looks. Tougher than I am, anyway."
"I doubt that. You seem pretty cool to me, considering."
April frowned. "You shouldn't. This calm exterior is what you'd call an act. To tell you the truth, I'm so scared I don't really feel anything anymore."
A wide shelf ran the length of the room beneath the windows. April hoisted herself onto it, bracing her back against the frame and pulling her knees to her chest. Kittridge did the same. They were face-to-face now. A stillness, expectant but not uncomfortable, hovered between them. She was young, yet he sensed a core of resilience in her. It was the kind of thing you either had or you didn't.
"So, do you have a boyfriend?"
"Are you auditioning?"
Kittridge laughed, felt his face grow warm. "Just making talk, I guess. Are you like this with everybody?"
"Only the people I like."
Another moment passed.
"So how'd you get the name April?" It was all he could think to say. "Is that your birthday?"
"It's from 'The Waste Land.' " When Kittridge said nothing, she raised her eyebrows dubiously. "It's a poem? T. S. Eliot?"
Kittridge had heard the name, but that was all. "Can't say I got to that one. How's it go?"
She let her gaze flow past him. When she began to speak, her voice was full of a rich feeling Kittridge couldn't identify, happy and sad and full of memory. " 'April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / Memory and desire, stirring / Dull roots with spring rain ...
"Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain ..."
"Wow," said Kittridge. She was looking at him again. Her eyes, he noted, were the color of moss, with what looked like flecks of shaved gold floating atop the surface of her irises. "That's really something."
April shrugged. "It goes on from there. Basically, the guy was totally depressed." She was tugging a frayed spot on one knee of her jeans. "The name was my mother's idea. She was an English professor before she met my stepdad and we got all, like, rich and everything."
"Your parents are divorced?"
"My father died when I was six."
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have-"
But she didn't let him finish. "Don't be. He wasn't what you would call an admirable sort. A leftover from my mother's bad-boy period. He was totally loaded, drove his car into a bridge abutment. And that, said Pooh, was that."
She stated these facts without inflection; she might have been telling him what the weather was. Outside, the summer night was veiled in blackness. Kittridge had obviously misjudged her, but he had learned that was the way with most people. The story was never the story, and it surprised you, how much another person could carry.
"I saw you, you know," April said. "Your leg. The scars on your back. You were in the war, weren't you?"
"What makes you think that?"
She made a face of disbelief. "Gosh, I don't know, just everything? Because you're the only one who seems to know what to do? Because you're all, like, super-competent with guns and shit?"
"I told you. I'm a salesman. Camping gear."
"I don't believe that for a second."
Her directness was so disarming that for a moment Kitteridge said nothing. But she had him dead to rights. "You're sure you want to hear it? It isn't very nice."
"If you want to tell me."
He instinctively turned his face to the window. "Well, you're right, I was. Enlisted straight out of high school. Not Army, Marines. I ended up as a staff sergeant in the MPs. You know what that is?"
"You were a cop?"
"Sort of. Mostly we provided security at American installations, air-bases, sensitive infrastructure, that kind of thing. They moved us around a lot. Iran, Iraq, Saudi. Chechnya for a little while. My last duty was at Bagram Airfield, in Afghanistan. Usually it was pretty routine, verifying equipment manifests and checking foreign workers in and out. But once in a while something would happen. The coup hadn't happened yet, so it was still American-controlled territory, but there were Taliban all over the place, plus Al Qaeda and about twenty different local warlords duking it out."
He paused, collecting himself. The next part was always the hardest. "So one day we see this car, the usual beat-up piece of junk, coming down the road. The checkpoints are all well marked, everybody knows to stop, but the guy doesn't. He's barreling straight for us. Two people in the car that we can see, a man and a woman. Everybody opens fire. The car swerves away, rolls a couple of times, comes to rest on its wheels. We're thinking it's going to blow for sure, but it doesn't. I'm the senior NCO, so I'm the one who goes to look. The woman's dead, but the man is still alive. He's slumped over the steering wheel, blood all over. In the backseat is a kid, a boy. He couldn't have been older than four. They've got him strapped into a seat packed with explosives. I see the wires running to the front of the vehicle, where the dad is holding the detonator. He's muttering to himself. Anta al-mas'ul, he's saying. Anta al-mas'ul. The kid's wailing, reaching out for me. This little hand. I'll never forget it. He's only four, but it's like he knows what's about to happen."
"Jesus." April's face was horrified. "What did you do?"
"The only thing I could think of. I got the hell out of there. I don't really remember the blast. I woke up in the hospital in Saudi. Two men in my unit were killed, another took a piece of shrapnel in the spine." April was staring at him. "I told you it wasn't very nice."
"He blew up his own kid?"
"That's about the size of it, yeah."
"But what kind of people would do that?"
"You've got me there. I never could figure that out."
April said nothing more; Kittridge wondered, as he always did, if he'd told too much. But it felt good to unburden himself, and if April had gotten more than she'd bargained for, she had a way of hiding it. In the abstract, Kittridge knew, the story was inconsequential, one of hundreds, even thousands like it. Such pointless cruelty was simply the way of the world. But understanding this fact was a far cry from accepting it, when you'd lived it yourself.
"So what happened then?" April asked.
Kittridge shrugged. "Nothing. End of story. Off to dance with the virgins in eternity."
"I was talking about you." Her eyes did not move from his face. "I think I'd be pretty screwed up by something like that."
Here was something new, he thought-the part of the tale that no one ever asked about. Typically, once the basic facts were laid bare, the listener couldn't get away fast enough. But not this girl, this April.
"Well, I wasn't. At least I didn't think I was. I spent about half a year in the VA, learning to walk and dress and feed myself, and then they kicked me loose. War's over, my friend, at least for you. I wasn't all bitter, like a lot of guys get. I didn't dive under the bed when a car backfired or anything like that. What's done is done, I figured. Then about six months after I got settled, I took a trip back home to Wyoming. My parents were gone, my sister had moved up to British Columbia with her husband and basically dropped off the map, but I still knew some people, kids I'd gone to school with, though nobody was a kid anymore. One of them wants to throw a party for me, the big welcome-home thing. They all had families of their own by now, kids and wives and jobs, but this was a pretty hard-drinking crowd back in the day. The whole thing was just an excuse to get lit, but I didn't see the harm. Sure, I said, knock yourself out, and he actually did. There were at least a hundred people there, a big banner with my name on it hung over the porch, even a band. The whole thing knocked me flat. I'm in the backyard listening to the music and the friend says to me, Come on, there are some women who want to meet you. Don't be standing there like a big idiot. So he takes me inside and there are three of them, all nice enough. I knew one of them a little from way back when. They're talking away, some show on TV, gossip, the usual things. Normal, everyday things. I'm nursing a beer and listening to them when all of a sudden I realize I have no idea what they're saying. Not the words themselves. What any of it meant. None of it seemed connected to anything else, like there were two worlds, an inside world and an outside world, and neither had anything to do with the other. I'm sure a shrink would have a name for it. All I know is, I woke up on the floor, everybody standing over me. After that, it took me about four months in the woods just to be around people again." He paused, a little surprised at himself. "To tell you the truth, I've never told anybody that part. You would be the first."