The Raven's Gift - Don Rearden [94]
“I’m almost done washing my hair,” she said. “It feels so nice to be clean. You going to see if you can find Maggie?”
“Just going to look,” he said. “I didn’t want you to get spooked when you heard footsteps up top.”
He shut the door and climbed the ladder. Red reached down a hand, and John grabbed it and eased himself over the edge. He stood beside Red and looked out over the city. The tank was just high enough that they could see most of the town. Two small tendrils of smoke rose from houses, one to the west of town, and one in the middle.
“With it being as cold as it is, and only two houses with heat, maybe a few others we can’t see, I’d say there are probably less than fifty people living here. Most left. Fled by boat or snow machine, or on foot. The rest are dead. No fuel, no food. Don’t make for easy living if you can’t return to the old ways. See all those burned-out places? I think some of those fires are from people trying to burn the sickness out. They figured sick houses had to be burned. I think some of it was just madness.”
John scanned the rows of houses and vacant buildings. The scene was not new, just on a larger scale. Hundreds of structures, blackened, broken, destroyed.
“I’ve been through the whole town, at night mostly. Just looking,” Red said.
“For what?”
“I don’t know. I guess for people who needed help, for supplies, for anything, mostly looking for meaning, probably. Redemption don’t come easy.”
Red pointed toward the high school. “They tried to set up a makeshift hospital. At one point, they had over a thousand sick people inside. All laid out on gym mats and cots. Then when the power went out and there was no water or heat, it all went to hell real fast. On the outside the building doesn’t look half bad, but inside. You don’t ever want to see in there. You ever see those pictures of the stacks of bodies in Rwanda or the killing fields in Cambodia? Like that—bodies just piled clear to the ceiling. Everywhere.”
He lifted his hand again and pointed to the middle of town.
“And the hospital. Talk of Hades on earth. They quit taking patients early on, but people were forcing their way in. Total chaos. Too many sick people to help anyone. This whole place, this whole damn town just imploded on itself. Desperation brings out the best and worst in people, they say, but for the most part, what I seen wasn’t the best. Fear. Pure fear.”
Red coughed, and spit off the edge of the tank.
“You’re welcome to take a little spin through town, but nothing good will come of it. I can pretty much guarantee you that. You’re better off firing up the machine in the morning. We’ll say our goodbyes and you can get on up the river, quick as you can. The storm will have covered her tracks. Don’t suspect you’ll find the old lady.” Red took his rifle off his shoulder and looked through the scope out across the tundra beyond the wind turbines. “I’ve been thinking a lot about the skier. White camouflage. That changes everything, John, don’t you think?”
“What do you mean?”
“This is more than a government quarantine. This sickness was concocted. Man-made. Monitored. Maybe some government agency acting on its own under the guise of a pandemic.”
“And the man on skis?” John asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s here to finish the job. Make sure no one survives to tell the story.”
John looked out toward the west to see what the morning’s weather would bring. The skies were strangely clear. Like the day the two Blackhawks landed with Santa in the village. He thought of the entire village lined up across the gym floor for ice cream and oranges, like the stories of shivering Sioux grateful and unravelling warm wool blankets infected with smallpox and measles.
A crisp blue horizon told him the night would be bitter cold. He was glad to know they would have at least one more night of safety, warmth, and a bed.
“You’re worried about what the girl