Chapter Thirteen - together.

After an expected amount of time for women's ablutions and scrubbing and brushing and fussing and such, the two came in to the kitchen.  They looked well-rested, but weary - I suppose everyone had that weariness of the old veteran soldier who had been in too many battles.

They did fetch up similar, considering that they were twins; you could tell the difference, as June's eyes had a little more green or hazel, and Judy's were more cornflower blue.  June was perhaps a little more squarely built, but Judy a little more lanky; you'd only know it so when they were together in the same place.

June was more forthcoming about her pilgrimage through Captain Trips' Mausoleum & Wasteland.  She had been in college at the University of Chicago.  She was studying physical chemistry.

When the New Picture started to shape up, she had two things figured out:

• A city full of scared, panicky people is noplace to be.
• Scared, panicky city folk are helpless in a crisis.

Some Rocky Mountain hubris, there, perhaps, but she got out going west and never looked back.  After the military stopped running around squalling and proceeded to lay down and die, she got ahold of a pickup, a little trailer and a little bit of canned goods, and started the run across to Moline.  She was out of the Windy City before the Big Stink hit; even just out of Moline.  The highway was littered with cars and trucks filled with deadizens - she felt a little sad, and worried quite a bit for her folks.  But since surviving this epidemic was a very rare thing, indeed, she had little hopes that any of her family was alive.

There were the chance few imbeciles wishing to be highwaymen; you could sniff 'em out a mile away.  Flatlanders were the queerest people.  They just didn't understand courtesy.

For a courtesy extender, she picked up a big bullhorn that could tell things to company, and a nifty set of binoculars with huge lenses - must have cost a couple hundred dollars.  If someone looked to be setting up a roadside trap, she had a Dragunov she'd sighted in nicely for 600 yards, and about five canisters of 7.62×54mmR to fill it up.  She was always walking around with a Winchester Model 1892 in .44-40, or a Win 94 in .30-30; either one a Western girl's must-have fashion accessory, good out to bullhorn range.  She kept a useless toy in the truck bed - a Barrett M82, and maybe 100 rounds of .50, just in case somebody started pestering her beyond Dragunov range.

They had always had firearms around home, and yes, they were dangerous, and living out-country enough where they had deer and elk on the menu at home, they were as useful and dangerous as fire - don't have any and you freeze to death; but wildfire out in the woods could kill you quick.  June knew all this stuff - it wasn't really on her mind.   

What was foremost in her mind was - is resistance to Captain Trips genetic?  Meaning, was Judy also alive, and Mom and Dad?  It pulled at her, picked at her mind, like a crow on a fresh eyeball.  There wasn't any way of knowing, except for knowing, she thought.  They had a little bit of intuition about each other, most twins do have a little.  Not enough to answer this question, though.

Across Iowa and Nebraska, here was green corn.  It gives you the runs.

Gleaning a little of this, a little of that, across the towns; and running across the flat, lifeless fields, she began to pick up some night-time dreams, of an old Black woman on the western prairie ahead, and a malignant Shadow somehow, further own.  The shadow tempted others, to come in and be fawned over and arrogant and yield petty powers - but the Shadow seemed to be greedy for everything, and only took up what it touched, like a tornado.

Out past Omaha, she begin to luxuriate in the high dry plains and the crisp blue sky, promising mountains on ahead.   The sweet comforting call of Mother Abagail was not too far away.