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In their dining room, she recognized two people from today at the clinic at another table and nodded at them. The feeling that gave her was odd, as if she were a real doctor, someone who needed to be professional on off-hours and maintain a cool distance. She could feel herself wanting to speak less at the table, to avoid eye contact. It wasn’t merely her distrust of strangers, either. This reticence was about being The Doctor. Would she have lasted as a doctor in the former world? Maybe working as a surgeon—
“Coral!” It was Abigail.
Half the table was staring at her, waiting for her to respond to some question. “I’m sorry. I was lost in thought. What did you say?”
“I asked if you wanted your hair cut after supper.”
“Thank you,” said Coral. “I would. And then I’d like to make it an early night, crawl into bed.”
“Hard day at work?” said Abigail.
Coral gave a non-committal shrug. “I’m tired. Still catching up on eating, I guess.” She looked down at her plate. The food was already gone and she had no idea what she’d been eating. Tuna, by the taste in her mouth.
“We’ll go straight home,” said Abigail.
“Not me. I need to drop by the library,” said Doug. “But I’ll be there fifteen minutes after you.”
Light was fading from the gray world as she, Benjamin, and Abigail hurried across campus and to the apartment buildings.
She and Abigail took the two metal chairs outside, to get the most of the dim light. Abigail cut Coral’s hair, fiddling with it until Doug walked up and said, “Looks good,”
“I don’t know,” said Abigail, backing up and studying her. “I didn’t have much to work with.”
“I’m sure it’s fine, thank you,” said Coral, summoning a smile. “When people compliment me on it tomorrow, should I send them to you for their own haircuts?”
“God, no,” said Abigail. “Too nerve-wracking.”
The three of them went inside, where Benjamin was sitting next to a window with a scrap of rawhide in his bare hand, turning it this way and that. His right boot was on his lap.
“What’re you up to?” asked Doug.
“Thinking about if I can fix Coral’s old boots. The shoes she has now aren’t that great for walking on snow.”
“Where’d you find the leather?”
“I asked Tyler—you know him?—for it when I caught sight of it today in a scrap pile.” He put his boot back on but didn’t lace it. “Where are your old boots, Coral?”
“I don’t know. Not upstairs in the room?”
Abigail said, “I took them to the clothing storage, sorry. I didn’t know you’d want them. No offense, but nobody would have grabbed them in that condition, so I’m sure they’re still there if you want them.”
“Okay,” Benjamin said. “Maybe you can show me where that is tomorrow on the way to breakfast, and I’ll do what I can to fix them.” He cocked his head at Coral. “You wanted to get to sleep early?”
“I did,” she said. “Thanks again for the haircut, Abigail. And for letting us stay here.”
“You’re totally welcome,” Doug said.
“Absolutely,” Abigail echoed. “I love having the company.” There was a wistful note in her voice.
Coral and Benjamin climbed the dim staircase. Behind them, they could hear the soft murmur of the others’ voices. They stripped off shoes and gloves and crawled under the stack of blankets and quilts that were piled on the futon.
Benjamin lay on his back. Coral turned to face him, so she could talk right into his ear and keep her voice low. “Tell me the best way to approach Levi, if I want to get something out of him.”
“Hmm,” Benjamin said. “I guess your best approach is to act like him. That hearty, bluff, fake thing he does like a salesman. Problem is, I think he’ll be hard to pin down.”
“How do you mean?”
“Oh, he’ll nod like he’s agreeing, but then he’ll ignore what you said and do what he wants to do anyway. You watch.”
“Will he make promises that he’ll break, do you think?”
“Absolutely, and with a straight face. No hesitation, no guilty look, nothing. He’d say a bald lie. And maybe deny a few days later that he ever said that, precisely. Or he’ll say it’s in the works and keep putting you off. I’d bet money on it.” He made an amused sound. “If there was still such a thing as money.”
“Okay,” she said. “So what if I tell him you’re working with me? Not ask. Tell.”
“But why would we do that? We can’t suddenly say I have medical training too. If that were the case, we’d have said so when they caught us out there.”
“I know.” Coral’s thoughts scrambled around, and finally she lit on one idea. “Because you’re a man.”
“You mean, like, protection for the clinic? Standing guard?”
“No. I’ll say, there are male patients, and what if they have something sensitive they don’t want to talk to the female staff about, especially to me, a stranger.”
“Like an STD?”
“Or prostrate problems or erectile dysfunction. Guy stuff.”
“I think most guys can talk to their doctors about that, even if she’s female.”
“Not older men, maybe. Or teens.”
“Erectile dysfunction generally doesn’t strike teenage boys. And so far, I’ve only seen two people in town who look to be over fifty.”
He was right about the lack of old people. “I wonder why there aren’t more. You don’t think they drove them out early on?”
“Nah” he said. A minute of silence passed, and then he said, “Strike that. Not impossible. I’d give it maybe a one in ten chance that happened.”
“One in ten? That’s a pretty high number. You don’t trust them.”
“Do you?”
“I’ve felt nervous since the beginning, but I thought I was being paranoid and kept talking myself into going along with everything. I do think Abigail and Doug are on the level, and probably Edith. But I believe your gut feelings more than I believe anybody else’s promises and explanations. If I found out something horrible about the three people I think are okay, that wouldn’t shock me, either. Nothing would shock me.”
“Not any more.”
“Exactly,” she said. “By the way, has anyone told you about bath day?”
“Huh? No.”
“Edith mentioned it. Saturdays, they use the kitchen all day after breakfast for baths. They boil water and run all three hundred people through, a dozen at a time, twenty minutes shifts, eight or nine hours of it, all told. They have to eat cold food that night, but everybody gets a warm—or at least a tepid—bath once a week.”
“Waste of fuel. They don’t have much extra to be using it like that.”
Coral thought having clean hair and clothes once a week sounded great, but he was probably right about the fuel. Maybe the town leaders thought the boost to morale was worth burning through fuel for baths. “Tell me what you did see today, about the fuel stores and anything else we might need to know.”
For the rest of the evening, they told each other what they’d seen and heard of the city, its supplies, its defenses, and its strengths and weaknesses. By the time she was drifting off, Coral was reassured that they could escape, if need be. During the day, there were people going from one job to another, or out supervising kids. At night, there were perimeter guards, but there were miles to patrol, and Benjamin said they could slip past.
It was time to start planning and collecting whatever would not be missed. She wanted to be ready to run at a moment’s notice if things took a bad turn here. She didn’t want to put that off, either.
Her fishing gear was still with her. For some reason, they hadn’t asked for it. Her knife was in her pocket, returned to her—she reached down to touch it to reassure herself of that. They had their burlap sacks and a short length of nylon rope. More rope would be good. A few cans of food would be nice. Real backpacks—or at least one—would help tremendously.
The hatchet and the rifle were the most important supplies.
And they’d be the hardest to get back.
