[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.At last they stood on a snowy, overgrown dirt road a few hundred feet from the nearest house.“Booby trap?” Thea asked.“It doesn’t look like it,” Evan answered, but he did not put his chain down.He knew that if he were in one of the houses, he would not show himself.He would wait silently, holding back, keeping his peace, his invisibility, until he could pick off the invaders without disclosing his presence.Traps and deadfalls would be his protections of choice.“Shall we go in?” she said, giving her crowbar an experimental heft.He nodded as he made up his mind.The few yards to the back door were all that they had to cover.He went ahead and pushed carefully on the weathered wood.The door swung open.It had not been locked or even latched.Inside they found what was left of the householders: four partly decayed bodies lay sprawled in the living room, a strange phosphorescent mold on their peeling skins.“Chemical contamination.They must have tried to farm the forest after it had been sprayed,” Evan said as he knelt by one of the bodies.“Too bad.It doesn’t look like anything else went wrong, though.This isn’t leprosy.It isn’t cancer.”“It doesn’t have to be—they’re dead just the same,” Thea said dryly.She had raided the kitchen for knives and found two or three with fine sharp blades, as well as the bonus of a meat cleaver.“There’s also some canned food,” she reported carefully.“Home canned.No dates.”Evan rose from the side of the nearest body.“It could be contaminated too, of course.That’s what you’re saying? If they did the canning after the forest was sprayed.And there’s no way to tell.”She nodded her confirmation before turning back to the kitchen.“No way.”Evan followed her, furtively rubbing his hands on his fraying habit.“We’ll have to take a chance and eat.There isn’t much choice.”“What if we don’t eat?”He opened his hands hopelessly.“Look out there.It’s a long way to other food, and no guarantee it’ll be any safer than this.If we don’t eat, we starve.”“I see.” She leaned against the kitchen table, looking at the disorder around her.“There’s no wood.We’ll have to break up furniture if we want any heat.And the water doesn’t work.I tried that already.”He put down the chain.“We don’t have to stay here very long.Only until we’re out of our chains and our feet heal a bit.Let’s hope we can find boots while we’re here.”“Or until we die, like the others.”So it was settled.In the house they found saws and files and after long work they were free of the manacles.A salve in a tube left in the bathroom turned out to be good medication for the abrasions on their wrists and ankles: after a few days they felt better and the marks began to fade.They buried the bodies they found, then set to work sorting out the food jars, and worked out a program for a systematic raid on the other houses for boots and clothes, ending up with a choice and variety that was almost intoxicating.Evan found proper scissors and trimmed his hair and beard.After some powerful persuasion he talked Thea into letting him cut her hair.“You can’t want to have it all matted and flopping in your eyes,” he said gently, touching her head.“It’s silly, Thea.”“I like it.Besides, we have combs now.” Her chin was out mulishly and there was deep discomfort in the back of her eyes.She said truculently, “You don’t have to do it.I can manage.”Then he understood.“Look, Thea, I’m not going to trap you.I’m not trying to force you to do anything you don’t want to.It’s your hair, and you can wear it any way you want.It’s also very dirty and scraggly and a damn nuisance.You said so yourself.But if you want to keep it, fine.I know I want mine cut off.”“Good.All I’ve got to do is wash and comb mine and it will be fine.”He handed her the comb he had found and watched as she tried to drag it through the tangles.“Let me cut your hair, Thea,” he said once more when the comb had broken.“I just want to make crossbows,” she mumbled, but Evan could see that his suspicions had been right, and that she still feared his touch, even his nearness.Her body kept an uneasy truce with itself and she went on this precarious way to avoid the fear which still lived in her
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]