Article 5 (Article 5 #1)(60)

Someone cleared his throat.

We detached like the wrong ends of two magnets, and what had felt so solid between us shattered like brittle glass. Having forgotten anyone else was present, we now faced the rancher. The baseball bat was tucked under his amputated arm, and his opposite hand rested on his son’s head. The boy was now smiling foolishly. My face heated, despite the falling temperature that came with the evening.

“Sorry to interrupt. My name’s Patrick Lofton. And this is my son, Ronnie.”

*



TWENTY minutes later we were following Patrick and Ronnie down to the main house. Much to the rancher’s chagrin, we had to leave the cow where it had fallen until morning, when he could bury it properly. They couldn’t butcher it; they didn’t have a cold room large enough to store the meat, and their buyer, a man named Billings, wasn’t due for another week. At the mention of the slaughterhouse, I shuddered; it made me think of the dead dog hanging in the woman’s trailer.

Patrick had insisted that we stop in so his wife could thank us properly with a meal. When we told him we had to move on, that we had family waiting in Lewisburg, he offered to drive us there, and we agreed: The unknown tenants of the ranch house had to be safer than the desperate, starving people in the woods.

Besides, we weren’t going to be a whole lot better off than the drifters if we didn’t eat soon.

Chase had introduced us as Jacob and Elizabeth, and Patrick seemed to accept the pseudonyms, despite the fact that we’d used each others’ real names earlier. I didn’t like them; I looked nothing like an Elizabeth. The only one I’d known was Beth from home, and she was five inches taller than me with bright red hair. But at least it wasn’t Alice.

Chase had then created a flawless story about our displacement to Richmond after the Chicago bombings, which encouraged Patrick to share that he too had borne witness to such atrocities. He’d been a soldier in the U.S. Army, stationed in San Francisco, when it had fallen. It was there that he had lost his arm.

We approached a rickety red barn with white trim and a green tractor outside its oversized doors. A pasture lined the land opposite it, where thirty or so black cows were just barely visible through the failing light.

“Mind dropping your firearm here, Jacob?” Patrick asked, pausing in front of the barn. “Just until we leave. We don’t bring guns in the house, what with Ronnie so young.”

I nearly said something about the child not being too young to be shot at, but held back, knowing the request had more to do with Patrick’s concerns about us than with his son’s youth. I felt Chase straighten, then nod in agreement. He still had his baton and knife, after all.

“Sure. No problem.”

Patrick forced open the creaking door of the barn. We were blasted by the musty scent from the hay bales that lined the splintering wooden walls. In an open space before us, a motorcycle with wide silver handlebars leaned on its kickstand. I felt a trickle of nostalgia looking at it.

“Whoa. They stopped making Sportsters before the War,” said Chase in awe.

Patrick laughed. “Not bad. You know bikes, huh?”

“I used to have a crossover. It didn’t have a customized transmission or—”

“Dad, come on. We’ve gotta get Mom!” Ronnie interrupted.

Patrick’s smile from the compliment faded, and he opened a cabinet in the back corner with a key from his pocket. On the top shelf was a hunting rifle. He added the thief’s handgun to it. Chase left his there as well, with only a moment of hesitation.

The Loftons’ house was warm and spacious. The living room, just past the laundry room, was littered with toy cars and action figures. A fireplace was embedded into the wall, and on its mantle were a dozen family pictures. All smiling faces.

Chase and I scraped off our boots as he removed the backpack. I looked at him, brows raised, and he returned the sentiment.

The Loftons had money.

They weren’t rich. In fact, they probably had less than we’d had when my mother still had a job. There wasn’t even a television in the living room. But there was a glass vase and a decorative lamp on the end table, toys and books lying around, and extra clothes cluttering the floor that the boy—Ronnie—had shed at some earlier time. These were all things I would have sold when we’d been in a tight spot. The fact that they hadn’t needed to meant that they were doing significantly better than most of the country.

The kitchen had a skylight centered above an island. The walls were painted burgundy, and the towels and utensils on the counter were all fashionably black. A delicious salty scent emanated from an oversized slow cooker atop the marble counter. It had been a long time since I’d had meat; the soup kitchens never carried it, and with standardized power we couldn’t maintain a fridge. It took everything I had not to stuff my face in the cooker. The familiar hum of a generator outside distracted me.

I couldn’t tell if my stomach gripped from hunger or the sudden onslaught of nerves. A generator? They were commonplace in businesses, but not in private homes. Who were these people, friends of the president? They obviously made a good living; the price of beef was sky-high.

“Honey!” called Patrick. “Mary Jane! It’s all right, come on out!” He placed his keys in a ceramic bowl beside the fridge.

I heard a lock click down the hallway, and a door pushed open over carpet.