The Land of the Shadow Read Online Free Page B

had by stepping into an air-conditioned building. She thought of David and Bryce’s solar powered fan, but as hot and humid as the air was, she wasn’t sure it would help.
    Stepping inside the house, she sighed. The stove was like a blast furnace. She went over and checked Dagny first, who was curled up, asleep, in the playpen. Her skin felt damp but not overheated. Carly wished there were somewhere cooler she could move her, but she was paranoid about letting the baby out of her sight without another trusted adult watching her.
    Miz Marson was still peeling tomatoes while the pressure cooker ticked and hissed on the stove. Carly picked up the knife and began chopping.
    “You fixing on having another one?”
    Carly stopped in mid-slice. She’d never get used to Miz Marson’s abrupt questions. “Another baby? Uh . . . no, not really.” It didn’t seem wise with basic survival still in question.
    “You on the pill?”
    With anyone else, Carly would have gotten prickly about the personal nature of this line of questioning, but Miz Marson had become something of a cross between a grandmother and a friend. “No, I can’t take it.”
    “Brought you something.” Miz Marson reached into her apron pocket and produced a plastic baggie filled with what looked like little kernels of cracked black pepper.
    “What is it?”
    “Queen Anne’s Lace seed,” Miz Marson said. “My own mama took it back in the day before you could buy the pill. Swore by it.”
    Carly chuckled. “She had you, didn’t she?”
    “She ran out.” Miz Marson shrugged.
    Carly picked up the baggie, studying the seeds inside as Miz Marson explained how to take them. “Better than nothing,” she added.
    “We . . . we’re not . . . doing nothing ,” Carly mumbled. She had wondered what they were going to do in the future. While she and Justin might have been the only couple using condoms, since everyone else seemed to be infertile, they would run out of them at some point. And within a couple of years, the existing ones would be expired.
    “Yeah, but that’s not foolproof, is it?” Miz Marson nodded at Dagny.
    Carly’s face was flushed, but she hoped Miz Marson would think it was from the heat. She said a polite thank you, although unsure if she was going to use the seeds. Perhaps she should run it by Laura and Stacy first.
    She hated to bother Stacy, whose stress was so bad, she told Carly she was losing hair. Stacy had been a nurse before the Crisis, and as the only person besides Justin with any medical training, she was now acting as the town’s doctor. She studied the medical textbooks Justin had picked up when Carly was pregnant with a sort of frantic fervor. So far, she had just had to stitch up a cut and set a broken finger, but there were inevitably going to be more challenges down the road. She had set up a clinic in the former dentist’s office where Mindy, once a dental hygienist, had found herself also promoted to doctor. Both were scared to death they would hurt someone, reduced by the available technology to practicing medicine as it was in the late nineteenth century.
    As Carly had learned, responsibility could be a terrible thing.

Chapter Two
    The wagon rattled over a patch of rough asphalt. Justin was continually amazed at how fast things fell apart without regular maintenance. Grass and weeds pushed through the cracks of the pavement and spilled over the shoulder, creeping across the asphalt.
    Beside him, Kaden was riding shotgun—literally. He had a pump-action twelve gauge sitting across his lap while he surveyed the landscape with his keen eyes. His posture was alert but not tense, Justin noted with approval. The kid was a natural.
    Hiding a smile, Justin remembered the dismay on Kaden’s face the first day he had come to Justin’s class, expecting to shoot at targets or make improvised explosives. Instead, each student found a disassembled handgun on their desk, and they spent the first couple of weeks