“Don’t look like it from where I’m sitting.”
“Steak?”
I lick my lips, still tasting it. “Rib eye.”
“Milk?”
“Dude.” I nod. “Look, all I want to do is run by Dancer’s and get the lists.”
“He really gave you steak and milk today?”
I’d laugh but it’s sad. We’re all so fecking hungry for a home-cooked meal. When spring started to green things up out at the abbey, the girls started talking about growing veggies again. All the produce was gone within a month of the walls falling. If you want to bake something, you have to run a generator to power the oven. Either that or have whatever the feck kind of setup Ryodan’s got here at Chester’s, and even then you can only bake stuff that doesn’t require butter or milk or eggs. Jo’s almost as upset that he gave me good food as she is about him not romancing her.
“I’d call and ask Dancer to courier it over but, dude, no phones and no couriers. Can we just go? We’ll be back before anybody knows we’re gone. And if you and Ryodan really are a ‘thing,’ he ain’t going to give you any guff. He’s going to appreciate a woman with a little spine and independence!” Yeah, right. Ryodan despises spine and independence. He likes good little robots.
“Did he give you anything else?”
If I was having sex with somebody and they gave someone besides me awesome food, I’d be ten kinds of furious. The way I see it, intimacy should entitle you to privileges. If it don’t, it’s just skintimacy like on TV with folks always swapping partners and hurting each other. “Fresh strawberries and ice cream,” I lie.
“Ice cream? Are you kidding me? What kind?”
It’s sleeting when we get outside. Abandoned cars are shiny with a layer of ice. Skeletal trees shimmer like they’re crusted with diamonds. Snowdrifts are piling up. There’s a group of people outside Chester’s but it’s a somber, quiet crowd and I realize these ain’t partiers trying to get inside, these are folks looking to survive what’s coming. I guess all the partiers have already been let in. Wrapped in blankets, wearing hats, earmuffs, and gloves, these are folks that got no generators at home, and the weather has turned dangerously cold, sending them out into the streets to look for a source of heat before it’s too late.
Jo and me look at the folks as we pass.
“Let us in,” they say. “We just want to get warm.”
You can tell there’s heat in the club—and a lot of it—because the area above Chester’s is bare of accumulation. The pavement is an underinsulated roof, and the heat radiating up keeps melting the snow. Even that nominal sign of warmth is enough to keep folks standing around, hoping, waiting.
There’s old people here, with nothing to trade for food or drink or the privilege of hanging at Chester’s. The big, brawny human bouncers Ryodan uses outside the club turn them back at the door, and a crowd has moved into the snow-free ruin of stone and wood that used to be the club aboveground. They got fires going in cans. They’ve gathered wood from surrounding buildings and piled it up. They look like they plan to stay a good long while. Like until they get let in. They look too defeated to fight. A cluster has begun to sing “Amazing Grace.” Before long fifty voices lift in song.
“Maybe you could talk some sense into your ‘boyfriend’ and get him to let those folks inside,” I say.
“I will,” she says. “Or we could bus them to the abbey.”
“What about WeCare? Don’t they fecking care? Aren’t they supposed to be giving away generators left and right?”
“Even if they are,” Jo says, “some of these people are too old to get out and hunt down enough gas to keep one running. You’ve been gone for weeks. A lot changed in that time. The weather is all anybody talks about anymore. Making it through last winter wasn’t as hard because the stores were all still stocked and the nights were mild. But supplies have been wiped out. We didn’t expect winter in June. All the generators are gone. People are changing. They’re fighting each other to survive. We need a long warm summer to give us enough time to grow and stockpile food before winter comes again. We need to get out and hunt for supplies in other towns.”
“They’re going to die, Jo. If we don’t stop the Hoar Frost King, we’re going to lose the other half of our world.” I look back at the crowd huddled around the fire cans above Chester’s. A mom is helping her kids get closer to one of the barrels so they can rub their hands together over the flames. Old folks that look too frail to be hiking through this ice and snow watch the kids with weary eyes that have seen three-quarters of a century of change but never anything like what’s been happening since last Halloween. Men that look like they were office workers at desk jobs before the walls fell hold the perimeter, encircling the women, kids, and old folks. They’re all displaced now. No jobs. No paychecks. None of the rules they used to live by. They look exhausted. Desperate. It fecking slays me. They’ve moved on to a new song, another hymn. Folks need faith in times like these. You can’t give somebody faith. They either got it or they don’t. But you sure can try to give them hope.
She gives me a bleak look. “If there was ever a time for you to dazzle us with your brilliance, it’s now.”
“I’m working on it. But I need stuff. Let’s go. We’ll make it back before anybody even knows we’re gone.”
We turn and begin walking down the street. I’m going to have to leave her aboveground. I’m not about to give away Dublin-down’s secrets. But I’ll take her as close as I can and leave her someplace sheltered. The snow crunches beneath my boots twice, as I sink through snow then ice, snow then ice. I hear Jo going through three layers because she weighs more than me. The sky is white with thick flakes swirling down in a dizzying display if you look up at them too long. They melt on my face, the only part of me exposed. We raided Chester’s coatroom before we left, bundling in layers, tugging on hats and mittens and boots. If this weather keeps up, we could end up with ten feet of ice and drifts in the next day or two and it will totally shut the city down. Folks that didn’t think to come out somewhere for warmth will freeze, snowed into their hidey-holes. If the sun doesn’t start shining soon, this stuff’ll never melt. It’ll just keep piling. Time is getting more critical with each passing day. I can’t believe I lost almost a whole month in the White Mansion with Christian! Speaking of which, I look around warily, checking all the rooftops, making sure the Hag isn’t sitting on one of them, knitting away, or worse, getting ready to swoop down on us. The crazy blood and guts bitch creeps me out. I shiver. “We need to freeze-frame, Jo. Take my hand.”