Two hours later, we were loading the kids and bedding onto a tired looking school bus. It was funny, but the sense of excitement that gripped the recently freed kids was infectious. Even I felt it; it was like the excitement and anticipation I felt as a kid when going on a class excursion. Despite the recent tragedy, I found myself happy to be going home.
Our small convoy started off with my Hummer in the lead. Danny rode shotgun with every other available spot taken up by our supplies. The old school bus followed, driven by Jamal, the only one among us who could drive a stick shift. Ben brought up the rear with Paul in the second Hummer holding the weapons, ammunition, and more supplies.
Jamal and I managed to steer our respective vehicles past the tank with no problems. I watched my rearview as Ben drove past it. He was not so successful and the scrape and sparks I witnessed meant he would be in for a decent ribbing about the quality of English driving when we got back.
The trip back to the Valley was uneventful and surprisingly quick now that we were driving. Danny and I chatted happily along the way, carefully avoiding any mention of Ash.
When we drove slowly over the last rise and towards the gates I was gratified to see Luke and Brooke at the gates with their weapons drawn and aimed at us. I waved my hand out of the window, confident he would have the sense to wait until we were closer before shooting. Danny didn’t look so sure.
The rest of our group was running up the hill armed and looked more than ready to fight. I looked for Indigo but didn’t see her. I felt a little niggle of worry. It only took Luke a few more seconds more to see that it was us and he quickly put his hand on the barrel of the rifle Brooke was aiming at us and pushed it down toward the ground before calling out to the other defenders. Brooke took his pistol, so he could pull open the gates with his good hand. His hook glinted in the sun as he waved us through with a flourish.
I drove through, unable to take the smile of my face.
“Dude!” he said, coming to my window and clapping me a high five with his good hand. “Welcome back. What’s with the convoy?”
“Long story,” I said. “But we have some new arrivals. I’ll fill you in after we get them settled. This is Danny. Danny, Luke.”
“Hey, Danny” Luke said.
“Hey.”
“Where is Indigo?”
“Don’t freak out, dude, she’s inside.”
“Oh good ... how is your ha-- I mean how is your ...?”
“Stump, dude. You can say it, won’t offend me. It hurts like a bitch when the painkillers wear off, but I think it’s getting less and less achy each time, which is just as well ’cause I’m running out of tablets.”
“Well, we have more if you need them, along with a bunch of other stuff.”
“It’s okay, I want to wean myself off them. It’s good you have more though, and we can always do a supply run to a hospital or something if we run out down the track. Might have to, given this little population spurt.”
He stepped aside, and I drove through and started coasting down the dirt driveway. The bus and the other Hummer followed us through and I heard Ben tooting his horn.
I pulled to a stop and felt a rush of adrenalin when Indigo opened the door of the farmhouse and ran down the stairs. I jumped out quickly and we embraced like a couple from one of those old black and white movies.
She looked at Danny when we finished kissing.
“Hey,” she said to the red-faced boy. He’d gotten out of the vehicle and had been waiting patiently as we greeted each other.
“This is Danny. Danny, this is my girl, Indigo.”
“Hey, Danny!”
“Hey,” my new friend said shyly.
“I’m so glad you’re back,” she said hugging me again, burying her face in my shoulder. I pushed her away, so I could see her face.
“Why? Is everything okay?”
“Yes, of course. I just missed you, silly.”
The bus pulled up with a squeak of brakes and the excited kids began to pile out looking at their new home.
10
After we had unloaded the two Hummers, I called a quick, private meeting with Luke and Indigo. Brooke, Ben, and the rest got the new arrivals settled into the house and began putting together a meal for lunch.
We went into the house and sat on the sofa in the living room in front of the dead TV. I gave my two co-leaders a brief rundown of our trip to Plymouth and how it had ended with the murder of siblings.
“The last we saw of him, he was driving across the bridge with the Hummer and the first set of weapons we found.”
“Sounds like an evil motherfucker,” said Luke. “Sorry for the language, Indigo, but that goes way beyond just crazy. He gunned them down in cold blood.”
“No need to apologize. You’re right though; even though the Professor and Ragg were psychopaths, I don’t think they were evil to the core. They were sort of molded by circumstance. What this Ash guy did, well, that’s just beyond anything ... it’s so ... so personal.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I should have kept a closer eye on him. I knew something wasn’t right.”
“Don’t beat yourself up about it. If you’d stepped in before that, it might have been you, or Ben, or Paul who got killed.”
I didn’t exactly blame myself for what had happened, just felt guilty that I hadn’t been more vigilant.
“Don’t worry. I won’t beat myself up. So what’s been happening here?” I asked.
The rest of the group had managed to get a lot of work done while Ben, Paul, and I were gone. The vegetable garden had been weeded and a system put in place for milking the one cow who was giving milk. They had also managed to find and capture four more of the fugitive hens and a rooster who were all now safely back in the coop. Indigo informed me they had enjoyed scrambled eggs for breakfast that morning.
“Wow, looking forward to some of that ... we didn’t exactly eat healthy while we were on the road. We brought back everything on your list though, plus Paul managed to find clothes and some other stuff, too.”
“Yeah, he showed me about fifty packs of seeds for vegetables he found in the hardware store.”
“He did? He didn’t tell me about those; we’re going to need everything we can get, I guess.”
“Yeah, he already passed them on to Beau,” said Luke. “Beau looked pretty happy. I think we’ve got a real live farmer there. Lucky for us.”
“Looks like it.”
“Based on how many refugees you brought back, I reckon we’ll need everything we can grow and more,” said Luke. “We’ll have to take up hunting, too. Rabbits will be plentiful and there should be lots of other animals running free.”
“Sounds great. By the way, now that we have all these weapons, I want you to set up and be in charge of an armory. You’re the most experienced and knowledgeable with weapons, so it makes sense.”
“Sure thing,” he said. “It was a great haul. There’s even a sniper rifle. I claimed that for myself. With this—” he held up his stump, “—I won’t be much good in a firefight where I’d have to shoot quickly, but I could be of some use from a distance.”
“Awesome.”
“What about this killer, Ash?” asked Indigo. “Could he cause us problems?”
“I don’t think so. He hightailed it out of there pretty quickly afterwards, but we’ll need to be wary anyway. We’ve got enough people now, so we can have two guards at the gate 24/7 and I would also like a patrol walking the perimeter twenty-four hours a day. That’ll solve two problems: keeping us busy and making sure we’re safe. Not that I’m worried just about him; he’s probably long gone. But we don’t know who else may be out there. Now that the Chinese are gone, so has any type of law and order.”
“Agreed,” said Luke. “We’ll have to keep a close eye when we send out foraging parties. If this guy is spotted, he should be shot on sight for what he did.”
Indigo and I both agreed.
“I also think we should fortify the gate and start
reinforcing that fence. It would be next to useless as it is now if we were attacked. We can use metal and timber from the old shed and get more from the neighboring properties.”
“Great idea, Luke,” I said. “Maybe not the next-door neighbor, though. If we end up growing big enough, that’s another house and barn we can use to house people.”
“Okay,” agreed Luke.
“I don’t think it’s too early to start thinking about having a police force or something either,” said Indigo. “It could double as a standing army, you know, a group of us that’s always ready to stamp out trouble or in case of attack.”
I looked at them: my girl and my best friend. Even though a tiny part of me felt like we were kids playing at make believe, I was thankful I had lucked out and found myself partnered with such intelligent and resourceful kids. I think we all felt that way. We talked for an hour or so, making more plans and ruling in and out suggestions about the way things would work.
11
That afternoon, we had a feast to celebrate our new arrivals and our new home. It was a mix of fresh, canned, and freeze-dried food, but for the kids we had rescued from the compound, it was better than a three-course meal in the finest restaurant. Ava piped up at one point and told Paul it was like our very own Thanksgiving.
“You’re right, Ava,” said Luke loudly. “We should make this date our Thanksgiving.”
“I second the motion!” called Beau.
Ever the showman, Luke stood up and rapped the handle of his dinner knife against the table.
“A show of hands, please,” he called when everyone had turned to look at him. “Who agrees this day should be our Thanksgiving from now on?”
Nearly everyone put their hands up. Those that didn’t raise their hands looked a little bothered. It was clear what they were thinking.
“Don’t worry, everybody,” I said loudly enough to be heard. “We will still celebrate the normal Thanksgiving as well; this will just be an extra celebration for us.”
“Yes, of course,” said Luke. “Okay! In my official capacity as a member of the triumvirate, I declare this day, the third of May, to be the Valley’s Thanksgiving Day from this day forward ... that’s in addition to the fourth Thursday in November, the Thanksgiving we all know!”
Before lunch, Luke informed me he had given himself the job of keeping track of the date for our little community. He had found a current year calendar hanging in the laundry, so this year would be easy, but he had already started handwriting one for the following year, which he said was a Leap year. I was happy to let him take the job; it wasn’t really something I was interested in.
“It’s important, dude,” he said, perhaps sensing my lack of interest.
After the announcement about Thanksgiving, I saw he was right.
Everyone bunked down in the farmhouse that night, the new people taking up positions on the floor of the living room. It was crowded and warm, but much more comfortable than what they were used to. Before I went to bed, I met in the kitchen with Luke, Indigo, Ben, Brooke, Paul, Jamal, and Beau to discuss our plans for the next day. In no particular order, we decided we would start by assigning one party to dig a latrine and another to clear out the old barn, so we could start to turn it into a living space for the new arrivals.
It was a productive meeting. We also elected a reluctant Luke to be in charge of the security force Indigo had earlier suggested we set up.
“It has to be you, Luke. You know more about weapons and how to use them than anyone I know. We all know you’ll be fair and won’t try to take over the place like a mad dictator.”
When he realized we couldn’t be talked out of it, I saw a mischievous glint in his eye as he raised his bandaged stump. “All right, but when Ben finally gets off his ass and helps me get a hook on this thing, I insist you call me Captain ... Captain Hook.”
We had a good laugh and after some more quiet conversation, we retired for the evening.
Ben and Luke spent most of the next day working on Luke’s hook, while the rest of us oversaw and chipped in with the work that needed to be done.
I took some lunch to Ben and Luke early in the afternoon, curious to see how they were coming along. I found them shoulder to shoulder, standing over a bench as Ben labored over something. They were both dripping with sweat.
“Hey, guys. Brooke fixed you something to eat,” I said, craning my neck to see what they were up to.
“Awesome,” Luke said, looking over his shoulder at me distractedly. Ben didn’t hear me or was too focused on what he was doing to care.
I put down the tray of sandwiches and drinks and moved in for a closer look, standing on tiptoes to peer over their shoulders. Ben was rasping away with a rusty old file at a perfectly formed metal hook.
“You made that?” I asked, wonder in my voice.
Ben stopped what he was doing and smiled.
“Well, not quite. We found it in the back room of the barn. It looks like whoever owned the place was using it as a curing room.”
“Curing? Like for meat or something?”
“Yeah, dude, it’s a butcher’s hook,” said Luke, unable to hide the delight in his voice. Clearly, the thought of wearing a butcher’s hook tickled him.
He picked up the hook and handed it to me. It was heavy and was about eight inches long. The straight end had been cut crudely, but the rest of the hook had now been filed to a coarse silver finish.
“It was S-shaped, so one hook would go over a bar and the carcass would be skewered on the other end. Anyway, Ben cut about a third of it off. It was a hell of a job, too. He only had a rusty hacksaw blade.”
Ben held up his hands, showing me the bloody evidence of his hard labor.
“Ouch,” I said. “You better get one of the girls to look at those hands when you’re done. Anyway, you should have a break and eat the sandwiches.”
Both famished from their hard work in the hot barn, they washed their hands in a trough of water beside the workbench and began wolfing down the egg sandwiches Brooke had made them. She and Indigo had baked the bread fresh in the oven only an hour before and it was delicious. Having power from the generator was a real luxury.
“Wow, these are amazing,” said Luke, a crumb or two escaping his overfull mouth. Ben just nodded his agreement.
“How are you going to put it on? The hook, I mean. How will it stay on?” I asked.
“I’m working on a harness while Ben finishes filing it,” said Luke. He wiped his hands on his pants and went back to the long work bench, picking up some leather straps which looked like they had come from a saddle or something. “The straps will be attached to the guard that will go over old stumpy here, then run up my arm and over my shoulders.”
“Yeah, I’m going to start working on the metal guard when I finish the hook,” explained Ben.
“Where will you get the metal for that?”
Ben pointed at an old drum behind me. There was a jagged rectangular hole towards the top rim.
“We already got it, punched it out, just have to shape it into a circle, and clean it up.”
“Doesn’t sound easy. Good luck with it; can’t wait to see it.”
I left them to it, pretty sure that, between the two of them, they would come up with something extremely practical. I headed back to help finish clearing the barn of the last of the old machinery which had filled it.
While the house itself had been quite clutter free, whoever had owned the place had made no attempt to clean out the barn. It was a big task but, as the saying goes, many hands make light work. Now that we had made some headway, the doubts I had about converting it to living quarters dissipated.
The barn was huge, with a large open floor space and a couple of rooms to the side. There was also a loft about half the size of the whole ground floor. We had the two Hummers out scavenging the neighboring homes for as many mattresses, pillows, and blankets they could carry or pile on their roofs and, with a bit of luck, we would have bedding for the
entire Plymouth group.
By late afternoon, our job was done. We had furnished the loft with an assortment of single and double mattresses. The new kids were excited and happy, several taking the opportunity to engage in a mattress-hopping pillow fight. I didn’t stop them, knowing full well it was probably the first time these kids had had any real fun since they had been enslaved by the Chinese.
I didn’t need to create rules about boys and girls sleeping separately. Jamal had beaten me to it. He had their respect and friendship from their dark days as members of the chain gang. As we watched them romp, he told me the Chinese had made him a trustee. It was to help them keep the kids in line, of course, but in that role, he had become not only a leader, he had also been able to coax privileges and medical treatment from their masters when needed.
“I did the best I could for them. I know it was wrong to cooperate with the Chinese, but we had to make the best of a bad situation ... ” he said, sounding slightly defensive.
“I know you did. You don’t need to justify it to me, Jamal. I think you did the right thing. I’m sure if you hadn’t, some of them wouldn’t be here right now.”
He nodded.
Jamal seemed happy to maintain the role of authority over the kids who had been in his charge and I was more than happy for him to continue in it for the time being. Earlier that day, when we had first begun clearing the barn, I offered him a bed in the farmhouse. He had refused, saying he wouldn’t feel right leaving the kids in the barn while he slept in relative luxury. I was coming to respect him more and more each day, and I definitely felt better knowing he would be there to supervise.
12
The boys did indeed do a good job on Luke’s prosthetic. He unveiled it that night. It was just our original group in the kitchen, along with Danny who had said yes to my offer of a place in the house, and Jamal, who was about to head down to the barn for the night. Everyone had eaten by that time and the rest of the new arrivals had already retired to the barn.
Fight Like Hell [America Falls Series | Books 1-6] Page 56