Outside the Wire
Page 10
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Cadmus stood back from the fire, watching the walls of Sanctum. They weren't walls really, but rather old semi-truck trailers turned over on their sides and filled with dirt. This side was a snakey quarter mile long. Along the forward lip was an unbroken line of concertina and barbed wire and Cadmus could make out little guard shacks spaced out on top.
Silhouetted against the wall in the dark, a little trio ambled up.
"Mr. Cadmus, you out here?" It was the old man's voice. Tense. He carried a pack and the big bolt-action rifle. Another silhouette fidgeted with a shotgun.
For an instant Cadmus thought they just might plug him. "Joseph, over here."
The old man relaxed and loosened his grip on the rifle. He held it by the barrel and rested the butt on the ground. Only then did Cadmus let the bear rest and step forward into the circle of light.
The girl sucked in breath.
A huge nude man covered in fresh healed wounds must have been a sight. The blush spread up her neck, stopping only at the ugly red and purple bruise across the bridge of her nose and forehead. Looking past him now as if there might be someone else in the dark, a complicated expression of sadness formed when she saw no one.
Cadmus reached for his pack and then pulled out his shirt and faded jeans.
"Domino, Harmony. Glad to see you all made it safe."
Domino held his shotgun low, but ready. Cadmus could smell the silver in the barrel and see the fear in the boy's eyes.
Joseph handed the rifle over and asked with a pained expression, "Checkers?"
"He died well. They all did, man and wolf alike."
"I thought maybe some would have got out," Joseph said, his guarded eyes downcast.
Cadmus just shook his head.
Harmony made a sound as if to ask something, but the question died on her lips in a wave of sadness.
"Did you kill all the wolves?" Domino asked with a hard look.
"Most. The fight went out of them when I took the alpha. They’d no need to finish it. I couldn’t carry off all the meat and wouldn’t eat it myself, so they just waited me out."
“What meat?” Joseph asked.
Cadmus let his expression answer for him.
"Momma explained you were doing right by us, Mr. Cadmus, and I'm sorry I protested so hard. I came to thank you," Harmony said. "It was just the thought of the other mother and the fathers, there with the wolves." Her young woman’s voice cracked and let the little girl show through.
"You deliver the package?"
She cleared her throat and said, "Yes."
"What was it?" Cadmus asked as he pulled buttons through holes on his shirt.
"It was a sciencey-thing, called a pea-see-are machine. It's for DNA, I'm told. There's sciencey folks here with the new believers," she said.
Cadmus nodded, let his eyes linger until she dropped hers, and then said to Joseph, "I'll take my pay now, if it's all the same."
"Sure, sure," said Joseph. "We need to get back inside before Miss Harmony’s missed, she snuck out after us. Should we see if you might come in to the town? Seeing as you saved their sciencey thing, and the girl."
Cadmus shook his big head.
Joseph sighed and slipped another bag off his shoulder. He handed over two brick-sized boxes and said, "Sixty rounds of thirty-caliber, like I promised. No silver though, that’s hard to come by."
Cadmus slipped the ammo into his pack. Joseph pulled a smaller box out and handed it over too.
"Really, don't seem this is enough for your trouble."
The old man slipped the little silver rectangle into his big hand.
"What is it?" the girl asked.
"It's called a harmonica," Joseph said.
Cadmus smiled as he ran the pad of his thumb over the etched letters. He glanced up and said, "It's more than that. It's a Hohner Chromatic. Just like my father's."
He picked out the notes to an old blues tune as he left the silent normals to their world and he returned to his.
B.E.K.s