Shadows (Ashes Trilogy 2)

“You might want to reconsider.” Wade wore glasses with thick lenses and the kind of birth control goggles only the military could love. Wade hawed on a lens and scrubbed with a dingy red kerchief. “Way’s lousy with Chuckies. Thicker than ticks on a ginger mutt.”

Tom thought of the two he’d killed, and the half-munched corpse of the old woman. “How many are we talking?”

“A lot. Look, Tom, I don’t want to tell you your business.” Wade hooked his glasses behind his ears. “But it wouldn’t hurt if you stayed put a couple more days. Smells like another storm coming anyway.”

That Wade could smell anything over pig manure would be a miracle. “Maybe that’s a reason to go. The Chuckies will probably hunker down, and Rule’s only a few days away at most. If the weather holds, I can be there even sooner.” Tom scraped out the last of the manure and tossed the shovel back into the wheelbarrow. There were still the cow and horse stalls to clean out, and if he wanted a jump on the weather, he needed to get his gear together. “I appreciate your offer, but I really do have to leave in the morning.”

“Suit yourself.” Jamming his hands in the pockets of his worn barn coat, Wade shrugged. “I’ll just go tell Nikki to put by some hardboiled eggs, and I know we got a couple jars of—”

“You don’t have to do that, Wade,” Tom said, feeling instantly guilty.

“Forget it.” Wade waved off his objections. “Least I can do.”

By the time he got to the chickens, he was working by flashlight. The straw in the coop hadn’t been changed in months, and the ammonia reek almost knocked him over. For such a slovenly farmer, Wade was very particular about separating out his manure, and chicken crap went into the woods to compost.

Which figures. Pushing the wheelbarrow through deep snow was impossible, so he’d had to go out on snowshoes first, follow the trail he and the animals had already broken, and stomp until the base layer was firm enough for the barrow not to sink. On the way out, he’d spotted Nikki slogging toward the vegetable garden with a bowl for the dog and returned her wave. Now, huffing toward the woods with the loaded barrow, he swung the yellow beam toward the garden and saw that the dog had tucked itself into the shelter, its tail fluffed over its nose.

“Right, sleep it off,” he said, but he was also relieved. Better that the dog should rest up and start out with a full belly.

It was when he was scattering scratch feed for the chickens that he noticed something.

Wade had a lot of feed: barley, corn, good hay, scratch for the chickens. He stared down at the handful of seed and cracked corn raining between his fingers. But how was Wade getting it? Wade’s only wagon had a broken axle. Even if the wagon had been in good repair, there was no way that one horse—not even a dray at that—could pull very much for very long in deep snow. Plus, there just weren’t enough animals to justify all this feed. Despite his talk about maybe building up his hogs, Wade wasn’t exactly energetic. The old guy couldn’t care for the animals he already owned.

And why wasn’t the feed stored in that stone silo? It was perfectly sound, yet Wade kept all his feed binned in the barn off the main paddock. All of it.

Then Tom really thought about all that manure he’d shoveled, all those poop piles scattered around. So much crap—and not one burn barrel. Instead, the Kings had Porta-Johns: not one or two but three.

So he hauled those here? That was a possibility, and it would be good thinking. Emptying chamber pots would get pretty old, and he bet there weren’t many farms with outhouses before the Zap. He and Jed had built an outhouse with a removable barrel just like Tom had used in Afghanistan, and traded off on burn shitter duty. But if Wade had hauled the portable toilets to his farm, how had he done it?

Maybe another wagon in that old barn? After closing up the coop, he trudged out to the wheelbarrow. That was probably it. At the back of the hog barn, he slotted the wheelbarrow, then glanced in the direction of that prairie barn. He couldn’t see it beyond the limits of the flashlight, but he sensed it silently brooding in the snow.

Of all the jobs Wade mentioned, he’d never once suggested they work on the barn. Why was that? Sure, there were more immediate problems. But any farmer took care of his tools and machinery.

He flicked a quick look at the house. The front windows were dark, although the kitchen window in back fired a dull yellow. Nikki would be there and Wade, too.

He slid the flashlight out of his hip pocket.

Just a peek.

54

It was a machine graveyard.

Tom fanned his light over a tractor, a manure spreader, and two Ford F-150s. Racks of farm implements and tackle lined the right wall. He even spotted a branding iron, which made him pause. Had those hogs been branded? He searched his memory. No, a farmer notched a pig’s ears. Some complicated system; he didn’t know what. Branding was for cattle and horses. So maybe the milkers or that bay. He just couldn’t remember.

A loaded Peg-Board was mounted above an elaborate tool bench with two vises. The cave-in had dumped snow over a large electric band saw with a circular blade that Tom thought was used for slicing through meat and bone. If so, that saw hadn’t seen action for a long time.

But the ax and that cleaver had.

Both rested on a freestanding workbench that reminded him of the butcher block his dad had used to hack beef ribs. The hand ax had a thin stainless-steel blade and leather grip: lightweight, easy to swing, well-balanced. The steel was clean but nicked in places, as if the ax had seen heavy use. Purple splotches stained the leather grip, and more blood had seeped into the cleaver’s handle, swelling and then cracking the wood. A slop bucket rested on the concrete next to the butcher block. Stiff rags stained with dark, oily splotches were draped over the rim, and smelled of old gore.

Alongside the workbench was a large white chest freezer. Of course, it wasn’t plugged in. The barn was colder than any meat locker. Rust-red tongues drooled from the freezer’s lip.

Nikki had served pork stew the first night. Wade had offered to feed hamburger to the dog.

No, that’s crazy. He felt his mind flinching away even as the suspicion formed. So the Kings did their own butchering. So what?

But would I know? Aiming the flashlight at the dried blood, he felt suddenly queasy. God, shouldn’t I be able to tell if it hadn’t been pork or beef. . .but a person?

Heart thumping, he levered open the freezer—and his breath left in a white rush.

Empty.