Mattie coughed and gasped, "All their engines must've gone out right at the same moment, and power brakes and power steering too. It's a lot tidier on Diagonal than on Mineral because Mineral Road had the light at the time."
I was just glad he could notice anything besides how cold and sore he was. I wrapped an arm around Mattie, dragging him along with me, and Orry took Mattie's other side.
At Diagonal Highway itself, a sign pointed to the right with a hand-lettered message: Refugee Shelter in IBM Building Orry said, "Let's see if they'll feed us. At least it'll be out of the wind."
When we were about three yards from the main door, a gray-haired lady in a pebbly-gray skirt-suit pushed the door open. "Come on in. I'm Jennifer Shaw. Let's get you in here so I can close this door and open the inner one. We don't have heat so we're trying to keep everyone's body heat in."
A big man, heavyset with a thick beard and bald head, pushed the door shut behind us. "Sorry about this but we've had a couple people who tried to get violent, so I gotta pat you down while Ms. Shaw talks to you for a minute. I'm Harry Uhlman."
"Okay, but I'll need my knife when we leave," Orry said.
"No prob. But we need to keep it at the front desk. Already had one stabbing, don't need more." He was respectful and polite about frisking the guys; Ms. Shaw frisked me.
"You'll have to forgive Dr. Uhlman for not patting you down properly," she said. "He's normally a chemist, not a cop," she said.
"If there's even such a thing as chemistry anymore. I spent all afternoon trying to get gunpowder to do something besides fizz, and gasoline to burn fast enough to power anything."
Mattie, reviving now that we were out of that freezing wind, told about his homemade battery experiment, and glowed when Uhlman said, "Excellent thinking!" and scribbled a note about it.
They asked us about where we'd come from, and what we'd seen. That started Orry and Mattie crying again. Shaw and Uhlman looked at me really weird when I said, "My mother has mental problems, my dad wouldn't leave her . . . I just, you know, I couldn't stay, not with what was happening down there."
I was careful to say it kind of flat and dead, so that they assumed I was just in shock.
"Well," Shaw said, "we've already kept you standing here too long. Let's feed you and bed you down for the night. At least it's out of the weather-sorry it's not more." As we followed her through the second set of doors, into the main lobby, she said, "Mr. Andrews, your turn," and a guy in a suit went out to join Uhlman.
We followed her through the lobby and down the hall in the dim, failing light from the skylights.
Everywhere people leaned against walls, sat or lay on the floor, some chatting, most just staring.
"Most of these people were stranded in the big traffic jam last night, but all day we've had people walking in from Longmont and Boulder, even one family from Lyons," Shaw said. "You've got the record for longest walk to get here, though, I think."
In a glass-roofed atrium, they had set up tables with plastic baskets like cheap restaurants used to serve sandwiches in. The basket she handed me contained an orange, a bag of SunChips, a bag of pretzels, three slices of bread, two slices of Velveeta, a Slim Jim, and a can of Sprite. "One basket to a person, take the one we give you. You can trade among yourselves if you want. We were all here last night setting up for a big conference that, obviously, didn't happen, plus the King Soopers up the road donated a lot. Please do plan to move on soon; with as many people as we have, we won't have enough to last beyond noon tomorrow, and we have no idea where to get more."
We gobbled our food baskets. Then Shaw guided us, by candlelight, to a small windowless conference room, where the tables and chairs had been cleared out. Two families already sprawled asleep on the floor along the back wall, and didn't even stir when we came in.
We took the remaining corner that wasn't at the door, with our packs for pillows and our coats for bedding under the sleeping bags. With so many people in a small sealed room, it wasn't terribly cold.
"Good night," Shaw said, and took the candle with her.
I was almost asleep when Mattie breathed, "Claire?" in my ear.
"Yeah?"
"Did you hear what my dad said, just before they hit him? I thought he was looking right at me and I didn't, I couldn't, I want to know-"
I lied, slightly. "I thought he said, 'I love you.'"
"I thought so too. But I can't get it out of my mind that maybe it was the Hindi for 'Run away!'"
"Which he would have said because he loved you," I said, taking a wild guess at what Mattie wanted to hear.
"Yeah." His arms went around me and he buried his face in my shoulder. Oh, well, if he really needed the comfort, he could sleep holding me for another night, anyway.
MONDAY, 8 JUNE 2015, ABOUT 11 A.M.
RAFTER XOX RANCH, WESTERN NEBRASKA.
Marjorie makes the funeral very impressive. Of course, she might really be commending Mattie's soul to her god. As she raises the chalice aloft, two dozen crossbows slap-buzz! in unison. Asshole Leader falls dead, and so does the hatchet man, nearest Mattie.
Machete Guy is only hit in the calf, and falls forward, closer to Mattie. He heaves himself forward with his hands as James stomps on the pedal of his crossbow, and has a head and a hand under the travois before James' next bolt strikes him square between the shoulder blades.
Soon enough?
When the sortie party reaches the travois, seconds later, they slash it loose from the harness and lift it up. Horsemen ride past them, lances held high, pursuing the three assholes still on their feet; a moment later, the fleeing enemy are all staked to the plains.
Mattie stands up, supported between two of Squad Four, waving madly with his left hand; his right arm hangs funny.
I have not heard so much cheering in many years, maybe ever.
All of a sudden, I can't breathe and my face is all wet, and I barely squeak out to James that I'd like everyone to just carry on their duties. I almost fall going down the ladder.
As I walk, wanting to run, to my quarters, Glory circles me like I'm a herd she's outriding, and everyone trying to approach me is a wolf.
Safe in our rooms at last, I just wash my face in the basin and sit down to breathe. Things will be taken care of, and Mattie will have to see the medics before he can come to me.
Now that we know that Broken can work, he'll be so interested.
I curl up, hugging myself, sobbing and more afraid than I've ever been.
THURSDAY, MARCH 19, 1998, 6:45 A.M.
NIWOT, COLORADO.
We all sat up instantly. Outside our room, somewhere else in the building, glass broke with a crash, and a woman's shout of "What are you-" ended in a shriek and moan.
Orry said, "Pull on your boots. Don't wait for a light."
I did, and I could feel Mattie doing it too. "Now coats on," Orry ordered. "Make sure you have hats and gloves. Then feel around, stuff anything else into your pack, and shoulder up. There's no time to roll sleeping bags, we'll have to leave them."
I'd taken nothing out but I felt around in case there was anything of theirs, finding one of Mattie's gloves and handing it to him.
Nearby, in the dark, a man asked, "What's happening?"
"If I'm guessing right, the building is being overrun by a mob," Orry said. "They're already inside. We're going to hope they were not organized enough to surround the building, and try to run out on the side away from them. If that doesn't work, we'll try something else. Come with us."
"Maybe we should stay and help-" the voice quavered.
"Suit yourself." Orry grabbed my hand. "Claire, take Mattie's hand. We're all going to stand up. Can you guys see the light under the door?"
"Yeah," I said.
Mattie moved beside me. "Now I can."
"All right, any of you that aren't coming with us, pull your legs and stuff in so we don't trip. Is the pathway clear?"
"Yeah," "Unh-hunh," and "Yes," came at us from the dark.
"Here we go." Orry dragged us to the door in about three big steps and threw it open.
He lunged into the sudden light, crossing the hall and putting his back to the wall. That dragged me halfway out the door. I half fell across the hallway and backed up against the wall next to Orry.
That pulled Mattie through. He looked kind of strange; it took me a moment to realize he had his socks in his mouth. Probably hadn't wanted to take the time to put them on, but didn't want to lose them either.
Right then I was too scared to laugh or even smile at this skinny boy, glasses slightly askew, in two sweaters and a heavy coat with bare ankles sticking out of snow-sneakers, and these two brown-and-red argyles hanging down from his mouth like he was a dog playing fetch. But I've smiled every time I've thought about it since. I took his socks and rammed them into one of my now empty pockets. "For safe keeping," I said.
The conference room door opened and a young couple came creeping out, holding hands.
Tossing his head, Orry indicated we should go down the hall, away from the reception area where we'd come in. The couple came with us.
At the end of the corridor, there was a glass door, marked EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY and DOOR IS ALARMED.
Alarmed? In that door's position I'd be terrified. It didn't seem like a time to share that joke.
Snow was piled against the glass at least two feet deep. It took all five of us shouldering against it to break the door from its hinges and knock it down across the drift.
Orry and the man heaved it out of the way, and we were out into the snow, running west across the old parking lot, the thick snow sliding under our soles and grabbing at our pant legs. Behind us, the yelling was louder. When I looked back, a handful of people were fighting in the parking lot. The couple was headed north, toward the smoke plumes of the town.
"I feel kind of bad about running out on everyone else," Mattie said.
I never felt bad about things like that, so I distracted him. "Let's get around to the back side of that building over there, so I can give you your socks, and maybe there's someplace dry to put them on."
There was a dry, though cold, concrete bench in a northeast lee corner of the cross-shaped office building. Mattie sat down with a sigh of relief and pulled his shoes off, and I handed him his socks. While he put them on, Orry crept back and peeked around the edge. He said it looked like the mob was mostly still inside the IBM building, and the few people running out were heading north to Niwot.
"Okay, I'm ensocked and be-shoed," Mattie said. "How far do we have to go?"
"Eleven miles from here," Orry said.
"What if we get lost in this blizzard?" Mattie asked.
"Around here," I explained, "blizzards blow in from the northwest. So if we keep the wind and snow in our faces, till we hit Colorado 7, we'll be good enough."
"How do you know all that?"
"She read it in Journal of Blizzardology, the special Niwot edition," Orry said.
"Don't be mean, Orry. I know it from cross-country skiing up here. We had to know how to not get lost. In fact, I kind of wish we had skis."
"There's a full set of different sizes at the shelter," Orry said. "Not that it does us any good here. What I'm really wishing for is a good knife. Uhlman took mine for safekeeping and I don't think he'll be giving it back."
THURSDAY, MARCH 19, 1998, 12:00 P.M.
NEAR LEFT HAND VALLEY RESERVOIR, COLORADO.
Around noon, we saw a house by itself with a big flapping note on the door: Honey, electricity/phone don't work, going to ride Shadowfax into town for milk & coleman. Will keep trying to get you on phone. Call(when phone comes back)no matter how late.
The barn in back was closed, with a dead frozen Labrador lying where he'd tried to push his way through the locked door.
"Figure they're not coming back?" Orry asked.
"If they do, we'll apologize our asses off," I said.
With a short split log from the woodpile, I broke the porch window, and climbed into the living room. A little yappy dust mop of a dog came running out. I yelled, waved my arms, chased the little bastard into a bedroom, and shut the door. He went all crazy in there, howling and yipping and jumping at the door.
Orry and Mattie laid a fire in the woodstove. I took a mattress off a bed in the spare room and used firewood and the couch to brace it up against the broken window. Orry's search of the cupboards turned up a bong and an empty lighter; we splashed rubbing alcohol on an electric bill, sprayed the sparks from the lighter onto it, and used that to light the fire.
The bag of meat scraps labeled ELK4STEW and the big bag of frozen mixed vegetables in the freezer were still cold, so I started them thawing in a big stockpot on the quickly warming woodstove. I brought in shovelfuls of snow from the porch and added them to the pot till eventually we had enough water to cover all the food. The room was getting pleasantly warm by the time the pot began to boil, and we took turns napping and watching.
When I woke from my turn napping, the blizzard was dying down, the boys had taken off their coats, and the food smelled overwhelmingly good. We found bowls and silverware, served out the improvised soup, and ate as much as we could.