IV
Katey pulled the lever and tipped the last scoop of manure into the compost pit. Then she backed and turned the loader toward the gateway, two tubular posts interrupting the fence. As the red loader rolled toward it, steers and heifers backed away in vague semi-alarm at the commonplace activity. The field broke as she touched the control, and snapped back into place when she'd passed through.
A lot of nice beef, she thought bleakly, and no one left to eat it. She wheeled down well-worn tracks to the equipment shed and parked the loader, then walked to the house, crossing green lawn past two small mounds with the sods neatly replaced, each mound with a small bed of flowers at the north end. The unfelt insect barrier let her into the house, re-forming behind her. Scanning the contents of the pantry, she decided (1) that strawberry shortcake would make a nice dessert; it was a favorite of Pete's. And (2) that she'd better get some more shortcakes when she went into town. But she wouldn't go in alone; no way. Pete would have to go with her, the first time at least.
Passing the tridee controls, she almost reached to turn it on, then remembered. Instead she picked up a magazine. There hadn't been a broadcast for three days, and the last she'd heard, it seemed as if everyone else in the world was dying. For all she knew, she and Pete were the only ones left in the world. None of their friends answered their phones, not locally, not long distance.
Occasionally she looked up at the clock, at first casually but later restlessly. For an hour she forced herself to sit there, then got up and went outdoors. The air was still. Midday thunderheads were building over the Front Range, as they usually did this time of year, and above timberline she could see distant snowfields glinting white. But here the sun shone down hotly on cornfields and sugarbeets, and rows of dark, shiny-leaved cottonwoods. The air was humid from irrigation and moist soil, and pungent from the feedlot and compost pit.
She stood staring across at the equipment shed, her nails pressed into the heels of her hands, her face stiff. She couldn't decide which machine to take. The manure loader seemed like the only one feasible, but she couldn't make up her mind to use it.
So she went back into the house and lay down for a while. She didn't sleep, but was conscious only in a sense of the word.
Distant thunder got Katey onto her feet again; it was after 1400 hours, and there was no more doubt in her. Mechanically she went out, hosed and scraped the residual manure from the loader, climbed onto the seat and drove out of the yard. The road was dirt but not dusty, bound with lignite waste from the papermill at Loveland, a shady green tunnel between rows of large cottonwoods. Five hundred meters down the road she turned into a gap in the line of trees. The loader bounced on fat tires and shock absorbers as she crossed the covered mainline irrigation canal and into the corn field. Once she'd passed the row of trees, she could see the rig with its big tank of virus suspension, its spray booms like tubular wings spread wide. It was stopped at the end of the field, and she turned the loader toward it, carefully skirting the outside row of meter-high corn, until she saw her husband lying on the moist loam.
She got down, limbs wooden, mind wooden, and grunting, rolled Pete's big body into the loader, oblivious to the flies that swarmed up from him at the disturbance. Then she climbed back onto the seat, raised the loader, and turned the rig back toward the gap in the cottonwoods.
Parking in the yard, she got a spade, and carefully dug up the sods from a long rectangle of green lawn. Carefully she piled them to one side. With the backhoe she dug a pit, like the two Pete had dug, but a lot larger. When it was as deep as the backhoe would make it, she drove the loader up and tipped it. Her husband's big body thumped heavily into the hole. Then she leaned against the steering wheel and wept bitterly for several minutes, loud wracking sobs. When she was spent, she lowered the loader to push dirt into the hole and tamp it. With the spade she put the last of the soil on the top and patted it down. Then she laid the sods back on neatly, watered the mound, and fastidiously washed away the soil that she hadn't been able to scrape up with the spade.
When she was finished, she went to the flowerbed that bordered the driveway, dug up some petunias and dwarf phlox, and planted them at the head of the new grave. It was after 1530 hours when she was done, and only when she'd put the loader away did she remember that she hadn't eaten since breakfast.
* * *
Katey didn't prepare a meal, only a hurried sandwich. She would leave this place. Not permanently, she thought, but for now, for the time being. She didn't think her mind could survive the night there. She had no notion of where else she might stay, but not there, not in the home she'd made with Pete. The edge off her hunger, she showered and put on clean clothes: jeans and a twill shirt. The last thing she did before leaving was turn off the feedlot gate so the feeder stock could get out and forage. Then she drove the pickup down the road toward Sheldon, riding smoothly on a cushion of air.
From the broad swell of land above Sheldon, the town looked much as it always had, like a dark irregular open woodland, with silver maples, hybrid elms, and cottonwoods lining the streets and guarding the houses. There were red and blue and green roots, glimpses of walls, and behind it a row of prairie skyscrapers—grain elevators.
But entering it on the county road, it looked very different. Some—most—of the older homes had burned to the ground, browning the foliage of nearby trees. The composition walls of most newer homes were strongly fire-retardant, but in many of them the windows were blackened eyes. Here and there on pavement and lawn lay bodies, some bloated, some ravaged. And even living next to a feedlot was no preparation for the stench.
Slowly she began to circle through the streets. Birds chirped and sang. Boat-tailed grackles flashed dark iridescence, and magpies rose chattering from bodies as she approached. Turning a corner, she found three vultures at a meal. They were too gorged to fly, and hopped away grotesquely while she stopped and threw up through a hastily opened door. When she saw a pack of dogs worrying something beside a porch, she broke and accelerated away, holding down her horn as she fled.
She hurtled out of town, past the lumberyard, the horn a shrill trumpet of fleeing sound. She'd driven three miles before she was aware of the pursuing truck in her rear-view mirror. Briefly she kept her speed, then slowed, and as it drew nearer she pulled over and settled to the ground.
She stood beside the door and watched her follower get out of his cab. They looked at one another for a minute across five meters of silence, and she was surprised at her thoughts. He was—not small, but twelve or fifteen centimeters shorter than Pete and perhaps thirty kilos lighter.
He spoke first. "God but I'm glad to see someone! I wondered if I was the only person left! I was at the lumberyard when I heard your horn. Loading supplies to build a cabin in the foothills, and—" He stopped. "My name is Art Feldman. I'm a—I was the history teacher at Sheldon High."
She found herself answering. "I'm Katherine Maustaler." She paused. "Build a cabin? When you can live in any house in town?"
"None of them will be livable when the Mountain States power system breaks down. And there's no way we can maintain or service an orbiting power station. Eventually, maybe in years but maybe just months, all the installed backups and bypasses will be engaged. After that, the first thing that goes wrong and—" He shrugged. "There's probably not a house around here that can be decently heated except by electricity. Even fireplaces are hard to find nowadays, and they're gluttons for wood but not much for heat. I want to build a snug shack in the foothills, where there's lots of timber for firewood." He gestured at the truck cab behind him. "I've got a rifle and cartridges to get meat with, and tools . . ."
Of course, she thought, and build a brick stove and chimney, and an outer wall of lodgepole logs for added insulation. "I'd like to help you," she said.
He looked at her without answering, looking suddenly solemn, a little as if he might cry. Then he held out his hand and they got in his truck.