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At the sound of the voice—male with a twang of an accent—the dog raced back, raced around the man who stepped out from behind the scrubby brush at the edge of the lot.
“Hands are up, dude. Way up. Just a couple fellow travelers here. No harm. Don’t hurt the pup, okay? Seriously, man, don’t plug the pooch.”
“Why are you hiding back there?”
“I heard the car, okay? Wanted to check it out. Last time I wanted to check it out when I heard a car, asshole tried to run us over. I barely grabbed up Joe and got us clear.”
“Is that what happened to your face?”
His narrow face showed some yellowing bruising under his left eye, some still purple around the scruffy beard dangling off his jaw.
“Nah. A couple weeks ago I hooked up with this group. Seemed okay. We’re camping out, got some brews. Second night, they beat the crap out of me and stole my stash. I had some prime stuff, man, and I shared. But they wanted it all. Left me there, took my pack, my water, the works. After they took off, that’s when Joe here came up. So we hooked up. No way he’s going to kick the shit out of me. Look, just don’t hurt him.”
“No one’s going to hurt him.” Lana crouched down, and Joe flew to her, covering her face with kisses. “No one’s going to hurt Joe. You’re so sweet!”
“He’s a good dog, that Joe. Can’t be more’n three months, I figure. Some Lab in him. Can’t say what else. Could ya not point the gun at me? I really don’t like guns. They kill people, whatever the NRA says. Used to say.”
“Take off your pack,” Max ordered. “Empty it out. And your coat, turn out your pockets.”
“Oh, man, I just restocked.”
“We’re not going to take anything. But I’m going to make damn sure you don’t have a gun of your own.”
“Oh. No problem! I got a knife.” Hands still up, he pointed at the sheath on his belt. “You need one when you’re hiking and camping rough. I had a tent, those bastards took it. I gotta put my hands down to take off the pack, okay?”
At Max’s nod, he shrugged off the pack, unzipped it, pulled out a space blanket, a pair of socks, a hoodie, a harmonica, a small bag of dog food, a couple of cans, some snack food, water, two paperback books.
“I’m hoping to find me another bedroll, maybe a truck—four-wheel drive. I haven’t found anything I could get started. Snow’s coming in. I’m Eddie,” he said as he kept pulling things out. “Eddie Clawson. That’s what I got,” he added. “Can I put my coat back on? It’s freaking cold out here.”
He was thin as a rail—a long, bony man, no more, Lana thought, than twenty-two or -three. His hair, dirty blond, trailed down in tangled, half-assed dreds from an orange ski cap.
Every instinct in her told her he was as harmless as his dog.
“Put your coat back on, Eddie. I’m Lana. This is Max.” She started to walk toward him.
“Lana.”
“We have to trust someone, sometime.” She stooped over to help him pick up his supplies. “Where are you going, Eddie?”
“No clue. Had a compass. They took that, too. I guess I’m just looking for people, you know? Who aren’t dead or trying to kill me, who won’t beat the shit out of me for a bag of weed. How about you?”
He looked up when Max stepped over to study him up close.
“Dude, you’ve got fifty pounds on me easy—and it looks like muscle. And you got a gun. I ain’t going to try anything. I just want to get somewhere nice. Where people aren’t crazy. Where are you heading?”
“Into Pennsylvania,” Max told him.
“Maybe you’ve got room for two more. I could help you get there.”
“How?”
“Well, to start.” Eddie hauled up his pack, jaw-pointed at the car. “That’s a nice ride and all, but it ain’t four-wheel drive and snow’s coming. Main roads are mostly blocked, and the side roads, a lot of ’em haven’t been plowed since the last snow. I bet there’re some chains inside the gas station.”
“Chains?” Lana said, baffled. Eddie grinned.
“City, aren’t you? Snow chains. You might need ’em on the way. And a couple shovels wouldn’t hurt. Sand if we can find it. Or a couple buckets of this gravel maybe. I’m handy,” he told them. “And I’m gonna be straight. I don’t want to travel alone. It’s getting weirder than shit. The more people traveling together the better, I figure.”
Max looked at Lana, got a smile. “Let’s see if we can find some chains.”
“Yeah?” Eddie lit up. “Cool.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Eddie found chains, some tools—whoever had abandoned the gas station had left behind a well-stocked toolbox.
Then he dug out a three-gallon gas can, filled it.
“Don’t generally like carrying gas in the trunk,” he said as he stowed it there. “But, you know, circumstances. Say, okay if me and Joe go relieve ourselves before we hit the road?”
“Go ahead,” Max told him.
“He’s all right, Max. I just don’t sense any harm in him.”
“I’ve got the same sense. We’re both still getting used to having more than we did. And for now, at least, we’re going to have to deal with strangers. But he fell in with a group of strangers, and I think he’s telling the truth about them turning on him, beating him, leaving him for what he had on him. We’re going to need to hone what we have, hone that sense we’ve started to develop. Because he won’t be the only one we come across.”
“You’re worried about Eric, because you don’t know who he’s with.”
“He’ll be with us soon. Get in the car, it’s cold. And I want to start it before he gets back. No point showing him, showing anyone, right now, what we have.”
They got in. Max watched in the rearview, held his hand over the ignition to start it when he saw Eddie and the dog trotting back.
“Jump in, Joe.” Eddie slid in after the dog. “Gonna say thanks again. It’s going to feel good making some miles sitting down instead of on my feet.”
As Max pulled out of the lot, Lana swiveled around to look at Eddie. “How far have you come?”
“Don’t know exactly. I was up in the Catskills. Friend of mine got an off-season caretaker job at this half-assed resort up there. Like something out of the movie—you know the Dirty Dancing movie with the cabins and all that?”
“‘Nobody puts Baby in a corner.’”
“Yeah, that’s the one. This place wasn’t as nice as in the movie. Kinda run-down, you know? But I went up to help him out—we were doing some repairs, too.
“We didn’t watch much TV, and the Internet was pretty much jackshit, but then we heard about people getting sick when we went into the town nearby one night to toss back some beer.”
Joe stretched out over his lap, and Eddie stroked and petted with his long, bony fingers.
“I guess that was about three weeks ago—lost track. I called home—had to go into town for that, too—the next day because I couldn’t get through that night. Cell reception was buggy back at the resort, and the owners shut down the landline phones in the winter. Cheap bastards. Anyway, I couldn’t reach my ma, and got more worried. Then I got ahold of my sister. She said how Ma was real sick in the hospital, and Jesus, I could hear Sarri was sick, too.”
He kept stroking the dog, but turned to stare out the side window. “I went back, to pack up, tell Bud—my friend—and I could see he wasn’t feeling good. This bad cough. But we packed up, started out before nightfall—left his truck there because he wasn’t feeling up to driving by then. He got sicker, sick enough I detoured off to find a hospital.”
He shifted back to look at Lana. “It was crazy, man, just nuts. This little Podunk town, and everybody’s trying to get out any way they can. I could see, like, boarded-up houses and shops—and some busted into—but they had a hospital, and I got Bud to it.”
He took a slow breath. “I couldn’t just leave him that way, but my ma and Sarri … I couldn’t reach either of them when I tried from that place. Cal
led half a dozen people before I got one to answer. My second cousin Mason. He said—God, he sounded bad, too. He said my ma and his both were gone, and Sarri was in the hospital and it didn’t look good. He couldn’t get out, he said not to come home, it was bad there. Nothing I could do. No point trying to call my old man. He took off not long after Sarri was born, and I wouldn’t know where to … Anyway. Bud didn’t make it. Sarri or Mason, either.”
“I’m sorry, Eddie.”
After swiping at his damp eyes, he went back to stroking Joe. “I just started driving, wasn’t thinking straight. Then I got to this place in the road, all blocked with cars so I couldn’t get through. Turned the truck around, headed another way. I just kept hitting roads that were blocked up, then the truck broke down on me. Better than two weeks, I guess, I’ve been on foot. Learned to stay clear of your bigger towns—bad shit happening, man, serious shit. Back roads are better. I think about heading home—that’d be a little spot called Fiddler’s Creek, outside of Louisville. But I don’t think I could stand it knowing my ma and my sis are dead. Don’t think I could stand going home knowing they’re not there. You lose anybody?”
“I lost my parents a few years ago,” Lana told him. “I’m an only child. Max can’t reach his parents—they’re in Europe. We’re going to meet up with his brother.”
“I pray he’s well. I’m not much good at praying, though my ma tried to make me a God-fearing churchgoer. But I’ve been practicing just lately, so I’ll pray he stays well.”
Max flicked a glance in the rearview. “Thanks.”
“I figure we got to try looking out for each other now.” Eddie rubbed his bruised jaw. “Some don’t see it that way. Sure glad you do. You’re city—it shows. What city?”
“New York,” Max told him.
“No shit? I heard it was, like, real bad there. When’d you get out?”
“Yesterday morning, and it is bad.”
“It’s bad everywhere,” Lana added. “More than a billion people dead from this virus. They keep saying the vaccine’s coming, but—”
“You ain’t heard.”
