Sunrise

“I’m going to cut your arms free now. Tell me, what are you going to do? Are we going to have some fun with your woman?”

“Nothing,” I said through gritted teeth. “I won’t do anything.”

“A pity,” Red said lightly from behind me. “But at least we understand each other.” His knife whispered at my back, and the ropes binding my arms fell away. He hadn’t even nicked me.

“Kneel and bare one arm. Place it on the chopping block. Your choice which one.”

I slowly sank to my knees in front of the log. Its surface was black and scarred. It had been used for this purpose before. I stripped off both gloves and forced my sleeves up to my elbows. I held up my hands, staring at them in horror. They had a slight blue tinge from the cold. I drew in a deep, shuddering breath, trying to decide which hand to sacrifice.

“No hurry,” Red said. “We’re happy to wait. We’ll just amuse ourselves with your woman’s lovely brown eyes in the meantime.”

Without even thinking about it, I put both arms on the chopping block. Somewhere deep within me a terrified voice wailed no, no, no—a man with one hand is a cripple, a man with none, in this postvolcano world, is dead. My head floated—I was afraid I would pass out, but my voice was still strong and clear. “The thefts were my idea. Take both my hands. I’ll pay your knife’s price for both of us.” Red tsked. “That’s not how the Law of Steel works. Choose an arm. Now.”

My fingers curled around the edge of the chopping block. The bark was rough and ridged.

“Jeff,” Red said casually, “cut out her left—”

“No!” I yelled. I pulled my right arm off the block. The gladius flashed in a huge arc, and I watched in horror as Red severed my left hand just above the wrist.

Chapter 37

At first there was hardly any pain at all. My left hand and wrist lay on the snow before me, limp without the co

Red seized my arm roughly, dragging me over to the fire. I was too dazed to resist. He plunged my stump into the pot of boiling tar. Then there was pain, indescribable in its intensity. The urine I had been holding released in a flood, and I passed out.

Darla’s scream woke me. Red laid her down in the snow beside me. The stump where her right hand had been was covered in black, lumpy tar. Consciousness fled again.

I was cold, terribly cold. Snow bit into my chest, arms, and legs; a bitter wind lashed my back. I was naked, face down in the snow. One of Red’s soldiers was hurrying away from me, carrying my boots and a bundle of damp rags that used to be my clothing. Darla was naked too, and unconscious again.

Red had retreated back to the circle of onlookers. “Let’s show ’em off in style!” he roared.

The crowd roared back. It didn’t sound like a collection of humans; it sounded like one gargantuan animal proclaiming its terror and rage to the black heavens. A snowball skimmed the ground near me. Another hit Darla’s face so hard it rocked her head sideways, splattering ice into her mouth and nose. She screamed and then started coughing.

I tried to go to her, to push myself upright, but in my rush I had forgotten about my missing hand. I planted the stump in the snow. The pain was so intense, black dots danced before my eyes. I collapsed. A ball of ice slashed across my back, and I felt a warm trickle welling in its path.

Darla was crawling toward me, wobbly as a threelegged stool. I cradled my left arm against my chest, moaning with the pain of it. I staggered over to Darla as icy missiles rained around us. We clung to each other with our good arms and started shambling toward the open gate— the only break in the vicious circle of people around us. The volume of their roar swelled, and they rushed closer.

A chunk of ice hit my nose. Blood dripped from my nostrils, streaming across my lips, filling my mouth with the taste of old copper pe

The crowd surged, following us out the gates, pelting us with snow and ice. Their roar had died down, and now we could hear individual epithets, “Thief!” “Warren scum!” and worse. I kept my good arm around Darla’s back, my hand under her shoulder, trying to hold her up. She was doing the same for me. My stump was tucked close to my chest, where the snowballs pelting my back couldn’t reach it. We ran awkwardly, with our heads down.

Even our most enthusiastic pursuers dropped off after about a mile. My feet, which had burned like I was ru

Bikezilla.

We had to make it to Bikezilla. Our go-bags were strapped to the load bed. They each contained a knife, food, a fire-starting kit and, most importantly, extra clothing. It was only another mile to the place we had hidden Bikezilla. We could make it. We would make it.

By the time we got to the right spot, we were both shivering so badly we could barely walk, let alone run. We had dragged Bikezilla across the snow berm near the ruins of a bank. I wasn’t sure how we were going to get Bikezilla back onto the road one-handed. It had been tough enough even when we were whole and clothed.

Just climbing the embankment naked, shivering, and one-handed proved to be nearly impossible. I slipped twice, once falling into Darla and knocking us both back down to the road. When I finally did reach the summit of the berm, I got the third worst surprise of the day: Bikezilla was gone.

Chapter 38

I whimpered and sagged to my knees, utterly defeated. Red must have used the day we had been held captive to follow our tracks and find Bikezilla. He had chopped off our hands, dipped the stumps in tar, and created a show of “law” for his people, but his ultimate intent was for us to die. It looked like he might get his wish. Darla topped the berm behind me. Her hand and feet were a sickly shade of blue-gray. She didn’t react much to the hole in the snow where Bikezilla had been, only nodded as if she had been expecting it. She hooked her hand under my shoulder and hauled me upright.

“F-f-farmhouse. On t-t-twenty,” she said.

I remembered it. “How f-f-far?”

“T-t-two, three miles.”

I nodded and sat down, sliding down the berm on my butt. When I looked back up the berm, I noticed that I had left pinkish streaks of blood in the snow. I tried to stand, but I was shaking so hard, it took three tries just to get up. By that time, Darla was down. Her teeth clacked like an old typewriter. I helped her to her feet, and we wrapped our arms around each other for warmth and support.

We had taken fewer than ten steps before we fell. I threw my arm out to catch myself—it’s almost impossible not to, even if your arm ends in a fresh stump—and screamed with pain so fierce that I nearly passed out. Darla had done the same thing. We lay in the road, shaking spastically like fish drowning in air.

I forced myself to my feet and helped Darla up. We took a few more steps and fell again.

We had fallen four or five times before I got to where I could keep my injured arm tucked in and allow my shoulder to absorb the force of the falls. After nine or ten falls, I looked back. We had come less than four hundred feet. The dark shell of the bank was still clearly visible despite the waning light. There was no way we were going to travel three miles before dark. I wasn’t sure I could walk another three miles at all. After dark the farmhouse would be invisible from the road. We could pass it and keep walking, oblivious, until our bodies gave out and only our ghosts could continue stalking the icy roads, searching for shelter in a barren world.