Shadows (Ashes Trilogy 2)

But the animals were running on fumes. Raleigh was down to a handful of kibble. Dixie had run out of food two days ago. He’d stripped bark and dug down until he found mantles of moss he could tear from fallen trees, but Dixie only nibbled. Today, she’d stumbled and opened a large gash on her left foreleg from knee to fetlock. He’d used up two gauze rolls and an ace wrap before the bleeding stopped.

God, but he was so close! He could taste it. Finding Alex would be a good omen. A fresh start. Not atonement so much, but an embrace of his fate. Maybe, with Alex, the dreams would finally die. He had to get to her. Stopping for any reason felt like a mistake.

If he knocked on that door, he would rack up another debt he didn’t want to pay. It wouldn’t be right to take food and feed from these old people and give them nothing in return. From the looks of the place, they could use the help. So, there would go another day, maybe two. Maybe more. Lost. Poof. Just like that.

He could be selfish. God, hadn’t he earned it? But the animals needed rest. He rubbed a gloved hand over cracked lips. They had to do what he wanted—and he, of all people, knew what that felt like. It wouldn’t be right to drive them any further.

Anyway, if I can get Dixie healthy enough to ride, it ends up being the same amount of time, right? Just a couple more days.

“All right, guys,” he said, gathering up Dixie’s reins. “Let’s go say hi.”

Just as Tom knocked on the front door, Raleigh’s head jerked left. A rumble rose from the dog’s chest. Craning around, Tom glanced toward the ruined prairie barn with its stone silo and caught a quick orange slink moving right to left.

“Hey, come on, boy,” he said to the dog. “It’s just an old barn cat.” Then the door opened, releasing a ball of warmish air that smelled of fried onions and something ripe and yeasty, like bread or maybe homemade beer, and he forgot about it.

Big mistake.

53

Wade King was passionate about swine. By the afternoon of the second day, a Monday, Tom knew more about hog farms than was probably good for him.

“Last coupla years haven’t been too good for the other white meat.” Wade King was as large around as his Berkshires, with a belly that could have used a wheelbarrow. Dumping a load of corn and barley into a bin feeder, he waddled out of the pen as the hogs jostled and snuffled around their dinner. “First, people decide hogs are good eating. Then they decide they’re too dirty. But pig manure, it’s gold for a farm you do it right, only people don’t want to hear . . .”

Count me in on that. Tom slid a shovel under the third and last pile of pig doo. The floor was sloped, poured concrete and designed for easy drainage in the days when water came out of pressure hoses. As the winter got worse and Wade just couldn’t keep up, the manure pile had multiplied from one to three, each nearly up to Tom’s knees. Wade had propane heaters for the hogs, so the shit was only partially frozen and a lot still steamed. The smell coated his tongue; he’d gone through a half tube of toothpaste already.

“Thing gets to me,” Wade said, as Tom turned back for another shovelful, “is those jackboots in the EPA . . .”

Jackboots? He had no idea what Wade was talking about. That the man should rail against a nonexistent government struck him as vaguely ridiculous. God, he hoped Dixie appreciated this. At the moment, the mare was stabled with the other horse, her nose deep in a feed bucket.

Raleigh was a real problem, though. Neither Wade nor Nikki cared for dogs, which struck him as odd for working farmers. They hadn’t wanted Raleigh in the house, much less running loose around the animals. In the end, Tom had nailed together a rough shelter and put it and Raleigh out in the fenced-in vegetable garden. Raleigh had barked for half the night on the first day. When he’d let the dog out to run around, the golden had taken off for the ruined barn. Wade had a fit: That dog scares my layers out of letting go of their eggs, it’ll be eating buckshot for dinner. After that, Raleigh stayed in the dead garden. He only hoped the dog wasn’t getting sick. Maybe it was just excited by all the unfamiliar smells.

He was only aware that Wade had asked a question because the pause had spun out too long. “I’m sorry. What?”

“I said if you could see your way to stay a couple more days, I could use the help. Got that roof to fix, and I’m just no good on a ladder.”

“Yeah. Look, Wade, about that.” Tom slotted the shovel into the side of the wheelbarrow. “I think I’ve put you and Nikki out enough.”

“You still upset about the dog?” Wade flapped a hand larger than a ham-hock. “Things are so quiet around here and then the dog starts in. Just got on my nerves.” Wade brightened. “You know, we have some hamburger set by. I don’t know a dog doesn’t like that. We need to be friends is all. Get Nikki to mash some up with a couple eggs and—”

“No,” Tom said. “You should save your meat. I really need to be moving on come tomorrow.”

“What’s your hurry?”

“Just like to get where I’m going.”

“Where to?”

“East, I guess.” Lifting the wheelbarrow, Tom pushed for the open barn door. “Then south.”

Wade waddled after. “East Coast? Bad idea. They’re going to glow for about ten thousand years from what I heard.”

“Oh, I probably won’t go that far.” After the relative shelter of the barn, the wind cut his skin, and Tom blinked away tears. A gust snatched at the flagpole’s halyard rope. Snaps clanged against aluminum. Both the U.S. and now an old Colonial flag rippled and snapped like sheets on a clothesline. “I’ll probably stay in Michigan for a while and then maybe head down into Wisconsin again,” he said, only half of which was a b. Once he found Alex, they were heading north and away from this craziness: Minnesota, or Jed’s place on that island. Canada. “We’ll see.”

“Family?”

Tom tipped the wheelbarrow, then began raking out the load of pig manure. “No. I need to find someone, that’s all.”

“Oh?” Wade was balding, but he had eyebrows thick as furry caterpillars. One crawled toward his scalp. “Where?”

“I’m not exactly sure, but . . .” He hesitated. He’d been deliberately vague about where he was headed. Why, he wasn’t exactly sure. “She went to Rule the last I know.”

“A girl? In Rule?”

His tone made Tom look up. “There a problem?”