our fearless leader was asking was two questions at once,” Mildred explained.
Krysty saw Ryan frown a bit at that, and she flashed him a grin.
“Why don’t you tell us what happened first?” Mildred asked.
Mariah moistened her lips, then she looked down at her hands, lying in her lap like crippled white birds.
“Stickies attacked us before dawn,” she said. “The, uh, Baylah family lived here. Actually, a few families did. They were all related to one another somehow, I reckon. I never did get it straight, and no one bothered explaining it to me. Paw and Maw Baylah owned the ’stead, though, and ran the show.
“Just all at once I woke up and there was screaming everywhere. Screams of people and animals in pain. And that awful screeching the muties make.”
“Ones with mouths anyway,” J.B. said, nodding.
“You were sleeping in your dress?” Mildred asked.
“I do a lot,” the girl explained. “In case somebody decides to rouse me out in the middle of the night to do chores.”
Krysty watched her closely. If those chores included the sort of sexual favors that were sometimes demanded as the price of boarding—even of children—she wasn’t giving the fact away in her face and manner any more than in her words.
If that sort of abuse had happened, the guilty had more than likely paid by now. For what that might be worth.
“You got away?” Ryan asked.
“I was sleeping in the pantry,” she said. “They didn’t find me. At first. But when I looked out the door to see what was happening, they spotted me. They were...feasting already and across the kitchen. I ran out the door and hid in the first place I hit.”
“This shed,” Krysty said.
She nodded. “I shut the door. They started hammering on it. Dust flew all off it—I could just see by dawn light seeping in through the little window. I hoped they would get tired and go away. But they knew I was there and didn’t give up. Then the door sprang open, and I curled up in a ball like the way that you found me, closed my eyes tight and started to scream.”
From the doorway, Ricky made a strangled sound.
“Relax, kid,” Mildred told him without looking around. “We know the stickies didn’t eat her.”
“Why not?” Ryan asked.
“Ryan,” Krysty said.
He raised his eyebrows at her. “What? It’s a fair question.”
Mariah just shook her head. She still didn’t look up.
“What happened to the stickies?” Ryan asked carefully, his lone blue eye on Krysty.
Mariah shook his head.
“I don’t know. The door burst open. The wind was howling. A big bunch of snow and dust blew in. And the stink—the stickie stink, and fresh blood. And worse—”
Worse likely meaning the reek of torn-open guts, Krysty knew. She was double glad the cold wind tended to carry off the charnel smell and deadened such scent as remained.
“But the stickies didn’t come in. I waited and waited to feel their...those awful sucker fingers on me. And those teeth. But it never happened. I still didn’t open my eyes because I didn’t want to see the world anymore.”
“Hard to blame you there,” Mildred said.
“Any idea what happened to the muties?” J.B. asked.
“Why?” Mariah sounded confused. “What did? I wondered if something scared them off.”
“Something chilled them,” Ryan said. “More than that—it was like they all got blown up or chopped to pieces.”
“Never seen anything like it,” J.B. added.
“And from this outlandish collection of humankind,” Doc remarked, “that is a remarkable statement indeed.”
Mariah continued to shake her head in what Krysty took for incomprehension.
“We found a man with an ax outside,” Mildred said. “We, uh, chilled him. We had to. He thought we were stickies and came rushing at us. We found stickie blood on his ax and stickie wounds on his body after we took him down.”
“That’d be Elias,” Mariah said. “He always did have a temper on him.”
“Enough to chill an entire pack of stickies?” Mildred asked. “Enough to wipe out the whole rest of the farm?”
Mariah just shook her head. “He was big and strong. And you know how men can get when the anger comes upon them.”
“Yeah,” Ryan said.
Jak called softly from the doorway, “All chills inside. Wind dying.” No one had heard him approach. His friend Ricky started at his sudden speech, banging his head on the top of the door frame.
Ryan had been hunkered down beside Mariah, his weapons sheathed or slung, hands on the thighs of his sun-faded jeans. Now he nodded decisively and stood.
“Right,” he said. “Well, thank you kindly. That’s all we needed to know. We’ll be leaving you to it, now.”
“Ryan, we can’t just leave her,” Krysty protested.
He looked at Krysty in what seemed genuine consternation.
“It’s time to go,” he aid. “Shake the dust of this place off our boot heels.”
“But what’ll happen to her?”
“She’ll find her way. Or she won’t. She made it this far, anyhow, and that’s a thing. It’s not our problem what happens to her now, though. One way or another.”
As Krysty scowled at him, the girl abruptly launched herself at her. Blasters whipped up, but instead of attacking her, Mariah was suddenly clinging to her and sobbing. Krysty judged herself lucky she’d been on her knees; otherwise the girl, slight as she was, might’ve bowled her over backward.
“Krysty’s right,” Mildred announced as the redhead began to stroke Mariah’s head and murmur soothingly to her. “We can’t just leave her out in the middle of this god-awful wasteland.”
“But she’s been living here just fine all along,” J.B. said.
“When she had a family and a working farm around her,” Mildred shot back. “What is wrong with you, John? Where’s your compassion?”
He blinked at her through the round lenses of his specs. “Compassion?” He sounded as if the word was unfamiliar to him.
“There’s food,” the girl said, still sobbing and her face pressed sideways to Krysty’s neck. “Supplies. Powder
