by Linda L Zern
Like now, when the cowbell kept up an incessant banging at him to hurry, she’d know how to move fast and straight to the trouble.
He moved along the Last Fence trail at a running crouch. The trail was hardly more than a hint of footsteps in the rabbit grass that grew in clumps and patches all over the old pasture. If the boys had listened to Tess, done what she’d asked, they’d have come this way, looking for the mule and the horses. But it was a good mile and a half hike to where the cowbell hung, and Blake and Blane weren’t known for their hustle.
The Last Fence, it was the only part of the ten-foot-high section of galvanized wire left from before the flare-out, a special enclosure for the exotic animals they’d raised, a fence required by laws that no one cared about or even remembered. They used it now as a landmark and a place where they hauled guts and bones to dump after the butchering, just far enough away to keep the coyotes and bobcats from the longhouse and the clearing. It worked, most of the time.
Grasshoppers flew up in tiny, jittery clouds as he traveled. Knee-high grass swished against his jeans. He kept the pace fast until he hit a wall of wild grapevines.
It was a section of vines that draped over a low-growing hedge of scrub oak, like some untamed vineyard grown by wild men. It shielded the fence from view, forming the last barrier to cross before the wire.
The bell fell silent. No excited voices or boys’ arguing over who got to bang the rusted cow’s bell next, no Blockhead the Dog barking at a couple of rowdy kids, and no Kilmer grouching. Cicadas whined as the sweat rolled down his back. Taking advantage of the hedge, Parrish checked his vest for ammo, took time to listen. Nothing.
Those boys should be arm wrestling each other by now or fist fighting.
The Virginia creeper vines had thickened up after the recent rains and were too heavy to see through; they made a handy hiding place but a poor window. Still, if you knew where to look, there were places a careful man could squeeze through the undergrowth and not be seen.
A lifetime of discipline kept Parrish from screaming his agony when he saw what waited for him.
It was Blane tied to the Last Fence, Gwen’s fuzzy-headed youngest kid—dressed in faded jeans and a man’s oversized shirt, the one with blue and brown checks. He loved that stupid shirt, wore it every day. He was only nine years old, after all. Since it was way too big, Gwen had cut it down, made the sleeves manageable, shortened the bottom. She had to wrestle it away from him to wash the ratty thing.
He’d been wearing it when they’d roped him to the fence seven feet above the ground. Blood still dripped from inside those shortened sleeves, the bottom of the pants. Had they slit his wrists? His ankles? And who?
They’d covered his head with a scrap cloth. Black blood flecked the material.
It was too much, seeing Blane like that, finding him that way. Parrish darted through the grapevines, sending the vultures that had started to gather in an explosion of nasty squawking.
When he reached the fence, he had to reach up, his only thought to get Blane down.
The child-sized body was above him, almost out of reach. Parrish leaned his rifle against the wire, reached up with two hands. The body inside the blue and brown checks was still warm, still soft.
The cloth over the kid’s head slid down, almost onto Parrish’s face. Jerking it away, he looked at the body above him: a pig. A pig dressed in the bloody clothes of a nine-year-old boy.
Holy hell.
He reached for his rifle, knowing that it was over, too late. They had him.
Distracted, he’d let himself get distracted.
“You need to keep your hands right on up there and touching our friend, Porky Pig. Face forward.”
Someone behind him, someone he couldn’t see, laughed at the lame joke. The barrel end of a gun pressed against Parrish’s spine. A man’s voice gave instructions to get ready to tie him up. These weren’t the women from the Marketplace, those Amazons; they weren’t given to taking orders from men—ever. These men were a new threat.
Disobeying, he sank to his knees, ready to take his chances against the enemy behind him. Rather be dead than forced against his will.
“Don’t. We didn’t kill the kid, but we still might.”
The sound of quiet weeping finally cut through the fog of horror that had made Parrish deaf and blind and stupid. The terror of supposedly seeing Blane hanging and bleeding out in front of him had worked. Someone grabbed Parrish by his hair, yanked his head around.
“We’ll let the kid live. He’ll be embarrassed, but he’ll be alive if you cooperate. More than fair. We could have used the real thing. We could have used that old man we killed back a ways.”
They could have, but Kilmer would be heavy. Instead, they had Blane, buck naked except for his socks, standing under an overhang of grapevine. A man pinched the kid’s skinny neck with huge sausage-sized fingers.
They’d tied the cow’s bell around the child’s neck. The boy was dirty, snotty, but alive. While Parrish watched, the big man holding Blane shook him three times. The cowbell chimed: clang, clang, clang. Were they setting the trap up again, hoping others would show up to answer the alarm bell? He thought about the twins showing up, Tess. He needed to think.
Parrish concentrated on the men he could see. They wore a mix of combat fatigues and odds and ends for clothes. He almost expected to see one of them dressed in a checked shirt to match Blane’s. Their weapons were an odd assortment as well—older shotguns, pistols, the practically mandatory machetes. Not mercenaries, they’d be more uniform in their weapons and gear, although that had been less and less true as time had worn on. They didn’t move like military men. There was no unconscious perimeter, no tactical awareness.
Worse than mercenaries then. Mercs could be bought off—sometimes.
These men were harder to figure. Their tattoos were a tip-off: grim reapers and scythes and the word “Death” in garish ink. A biker gang gone scavenger, maybe. Raiders and looters. More interested in captives than pig’s meat, that much was clear.
Once, prepping and security experts had been happy to tell their audiences that the most dangerous groups to form in the vacuum caused by grid collapse would probably be groups of men without the worry or liability of families: already functioning gangs and single men with military training banding together, roving groups of uncontrolled foot soldiers, taking what they needed or wanted. It was a theory that turned out to be all too true.
“Move out. I’ll be done here with these two in a minute . . . or thirty.” Sausage Fingers kicked Parrish in the head, sending him face first into the dirt. Parrish stayed down and motionless. Good enough. Let the freak think he was going to be free to entertain himself with the kid. It wasn’t the first time Parrish had played dead.
The savages moved off, leaving them alone with the head savage. Parrish could guess what was coming next. He turned the red haze of rage into a weapon. They’d tied his hands in front of him with a hunk of filthy rope—a mistake—a surprising, stupid, sloppy mistake. The rope ripped skin as he worked it free.
Sausage Fingers towered over Blane as he pushed the kid toward a tree stump. When the man paused to fumble with the front of his pants, Parrish slid into position behind the distracted brute, whipped the rope over his head and into the folds of fat around his neck. Parrish crossed the rope behind the man’s head and then yanked until he went down next to the fence where vultures waited. Blane wailed.
With a finger to his lips, Parrish gave Blane a reassuring nod. “You’re okay. He’s dead. You need to be quiet, Buddy. Don’t cry. We’ll figure this out, but we need to hurry. They’ll be back.”
Parrish worked the man’s shirt from his dead body and covered Blane, tying it so he wouldn’t trip.
“Blane, you’ve got to listen. You’re going to have to get back by yourself. You hide until you can’t hear anything and then you keep hiding. Stay down. Stay. Down. Until you don’t hear anything and then wait some more. They’ll think you’ve run for
it. Remember, wait and then go to the river. With any luck, they won’t care about coming after you. Once you start moving, you keep moving.”
Parrish stopped talking, put a hand over Blane’s mouth, and listened.
“They’re coming back. Probably wanted in on some of the fun.” Parrish tried not to let his voice get rough and jagged. “Don’t think you’re going to help me, Blane! Hear me?” Then Parrish pinched the boy’s arm, hard. “There’s not enough time for both of us. You go home. But first you hide.” Shoving the kid in the hollow of a fallen log, Parrish pulled a cascade of grapevine over the hiding spot, and then headed up the fence line, away from two dead pigs and one terrified boy wrapped in a dead man’s shirt.
Blane had been too frightened to say anything or make a noise. Parrish was grateful for small favors.
CHAPTER 6
They’d put Mister Terry in Goliath’s stall in the barn, tying him to a corner post. When they put Goliath up, the old mule protested being locked in the barn by trying to chew his way out. His paddock was the one they had to repair and reinforce—constantly. It made a decent prison.
There was a bucket next to Roy Terry. Tess was pretty sure she knew what the bucket was for, and it wasn’t to freshen up.
Jamie and Ally sat with their backs to the outside of the stall, side by side, not quite touching, a pistol on the ground between them. Ally had become Jamie’s shadow since he’d been wounded. Tess wondered how he felt about that. It didn’t seem to bother him. They murmured low to each other, heads close, barely noticing when Tess walked into the barn.
Above Tess’s head, voices echoed in the loft where most of the Doe Kids had settled after they’d staggered onto the S-Line to live. Their filthy camp had been burned, and they’d arrived starving, frightened, and hunted. Those children were another kind of fallout from the Fortix family of the Marketplace Mall, who’d been kid murdering, slave trading, child raping . . . Tess shook herself.
It didn’t help to go back. It didn’t. It never had.
“Hey, who is that?” Tess called up the ladder of the hayloft. There was more rustling around; peanut hay drifted down over the edge of the loft. “Come on. Who is it?”
A head with a nest of hair that spiked out like owl feathers popped out over the edge of the wooden floor above. A kid called Sweety. She was pretty sure that’s what he called himself this week. Yeah, that’s what he’d asked her to call him when he’d helped Tess milk goats two days ago.
Suddenly, a crashing thump sent an avalanche of hay down on top of Tess. Jamie and Ally finally looked up. Roy Terry tipped his head and squinted at the roof above him.
“Hey, why aren’t you out doing chores?” Tess called up.
A dog yipped out a smothered bark.
“Sweety, who’s up there with you?”
More wrestling around and then Blockhead, Stone’s dog, peeped down at her. She remembered his slobber-toothed enthusiasm when she had saved him from the mall parking lot. She hadn’t wanted a dog; mostly she’d just wanted his dog chain.
Jamie pulled himself slowly to his feet, using his good arm and the slats of Goliath’s stall. “Didn’t you tell those boys to take the dog with them when they went out to the Last Fence?”
“I did.” A sick feeling rolled in Tess’s gut at the sound of the dog that was supposed to be out with Blake and Blane and Kilmer, hunting for Goliath, a good mile or so away.
She was halfway up the steps when Ally called out, “Come down, whoever’s up there. Tess is coming up, and you don’t want that.”
“Gee, thanks, Ally.” Tess paused on the ladder, looking at her sister over her shoulder. “You make me sound like a grinch, or, or, somebody’s parent.”
Blockhead waited for her at the top of the steps, tongue ready. Sweety glanced down at her, then scampered away. There was more wrestling around.
She scrambled to the top of the ladder.
Tucked into the corner of the loft, back crushed against the barn wall, Blake Dunn sat with his legs drawn up, his face hidden against his knees. There were bits of straw stuck in his black cap of hair. Blockhead bounded back to lick at his ear. A boy, possibly named Whirl, stared at her from a heap of worn, tired blankets next to Blake.
“Blake, what are you doing here? Where’s your brother and Kilmer?”
“Some kind of trouble?” Roy Terry cried out. In tandem Ally and Jamie told him to shut up.
“Blake, where’s your brother? And why aren’t you with him?” Tess crawled into the hayloft.
The boy whined, “I wanted to talk to that man. He says he knows my dad, and I want to help my mother. I want to. I don’t need to chase after that ugly old mule. He’s mean. He bites.”
“That’s no way to talk about Kilmer,” Jamie called up.
Blake didn’t even try to smile, too churned up. He’d recovered enough from being found out to try defiance on like a new jacket. He bristled when Tess smiled at him again and shrugged his shoulders at her. Okay, time to get tough.
“You sent your brother out by himself without his battle buddy. Really? After everything that’s happened? After Jamie got hurt? You know better.”
The boy looked at Tess with his mother’s dark eyes, full of militant anger.
“He went. I told him not to go.” Like a curtain falling, guilt replaced anger, and Blake dropped his eyes. “I told him that we’d go later, after. And besides, Mister Kilmer went with him.” He glanced down at the stall where Roy Terry must be listening with interest. “That man,” he said, “is going to tell me about my father. I’m going to make him.”
Tess grabbed Blake’s elbow, and dragged him to the loft ladder. He climbed down and she followed. She guided him out of the shadows of the barn into the softening afternoon sun, out of earshot of their prisoner. She could hear Jess T talking to Samantha and the other goats out in the big oak paddock. Samantha bleated a response. It sounded like a serious conversation between their old milk goat and her grandfather’s oldest ranch hand. Jess T and Kilmer had been part of the S-Line Ranch from the beginning. There’d never been a question that they’d make their home with Colonel Kennedy when the dominoes had started to fall. Her grandfather had prepared for seven years of lean and a lot of people had called him crazy, a lot of very dead people.
Blake yipped, “You’re not my mother.”
“Keep your voice down and somebody drag that dog down from up there.”
Sweety and Whirl started pushing and pulling at the big dog.
“Hush, Blake.” Tess brushed hay from her hair. “We don’t need to tell that man in there anything more about us. So far, the only people doing the talking around here are people who live here. We don’t know how that man knows your father’s name. You’ve already told him more than you should. And you didn’t even realize you were doing it.”
He’d gotten tall, Gwen’s oldest boy. He’d only been four-years-old when he and his brother and mom had made their way to the longhouse and safety.
Blake’s father, Bruce Dunn, had never made it to the S-Line, like Tess’s mother. Shocked, Tess looked at the pouting boy and realized they had that in common—a missing parent swallowed up by the black hole of the world’s collapse.
“Blake, we’ll find out what he knows, but you’ve got to trust me. We will, but we’re going to do this right. Come on. Let’s go get your brother and Mister Kilmer and make sure your mom knows you’re okay.”
She watched the anger drain out of the thin bones of his shoulders. Well, they had that in common too, carrying the weight of too many worries on skinny shoulders.
She gave him a companionable pat on the back.
Tess walked Blake back to his mother. Trails crisscrossed the S-Line Ranch like roads; instead of asphalt and cement, the trails were dirt and matted grass flattened by the constant comings and goings of everyone who lived and worked and hustled to keep the food growing, the animals healthy. Convenience had not been part of Colonel Kennedy’s master plan, and there was a lot of backtracking if you f
orgot to bring the mineral oil for the rabbits’ ear mites.
No, it wasn’t convenient having the stockpiles and resources spread out all over the four thousand acres of the ranch, but it was smart. If there were a catastrophe—fire, tornado, flood, raccoon invasion—they wouldn’t be wiped out everywhere, or so the theory went. So, they walked—a lot.
The trail to the barn was one of the short trails, an easy jog. Tess and Blake had already made the turn to the longhouse when the dinner bell started to ring. Clang. Clang. Clang.
Blake hadn’t just gotten tall. He’d gotten fast too. He beat Tess to the longhouse by three steps.
Gwen cradled Kilmer’s bloody head in her lap, her butcher’s apron smeared with grisly war paint.
“He staggered in, on his own.”
The old man’s breathing came short and fast. It was more like panting than breathing. He sounded like a dog. A tracery of clotting cuts covered the side of his head. There were dirt and splinters in the wound. Someone had smashed him a good one, maybe with a tree branch or the butt of a gun. Tough old bird that he’d made it all the way back to the longhouse without help.
“Get me one of those folded blankets, in the corner, over there.”
Blake did not have to be told twice. He handed his mom a threadbare baby blanket that had belonged to the twins a long time ago. When Gwen eased Kilmer’s head onto the blanket, blood dyed the pink teddy bears red.
“Gwen!” Tess said.
“I know. I know.” The older woman shook her head as she met Tess’s eyes. “It’s bad. Get my bandages and medical kit, Honey.” She reached out and ran a hand down her son’s cheek, wiping tears off his face. “It’ll be okay. He’s too grumpy to die.” Gwen tucked the blanket more carefully around Kilmer’s gray face. “Tess, he was with Blane. Parrish?”
Tess was already on her feet.
“The cowbell at the Last Fence was ringing,” Gwen added. “I heard it ringing.”
“I’ll get them. I’ll find them.”