Following the Strandline

by Linda L Zern

  It wasn’t just El Summerlin and her army of fighting whores that Myra was trying to fix when she’d sent two of his best boys out to the edge of Titusville with one of their precious cans of diesel fuel and the last of the Zippo lighters. She’d burn the whole world down if she had to, to kill her enemies. Colon had bigger plans. He was done being her errand boy.

  Note to self: lock down the rest of the diesel fuel before Myra wasted it all.

  CHAPTER 25

  Ally had let Jamie walk as far as the first landmark on the way to the Last Fence. It was the shattered remnants of a lightning-blasted tree. The family called it the Wizard’s Tree. They’d made up a funny story about a wizard with bad aim, who’d missed the alligator dragon and hit the tree. It was one of the stories she’d told him, when he’d been trapped by his bullet wound in Parrish’s fishing shack.

  It had taken them all day to get this far. Ally was humoring his wish to see the last place Parrish and Blane were known to be, and he knew it. The same way she’d humored when he’d insisted on bringing a torch. Like he was going to be able to last through the night, searching. They should have already been to the Last Fence, but she’d held him back: sweetly, nicely, and without being obvious about it, but still it grated.

  Parrish and the kid had been gone too long. There wasn’t time to be worried about stupid crap like getting lightheaded or pain that made his teeth clench.

  If only he had the words to explain it to her.

  “Let’s rest up a minute,” she said, pretending to pant a bit.

  “Sure, you go ahead and rest up, but I’ve got to get to them.”

  He needed to tell her to get off his back, and how it was going to be, and how he wasn’t going to let anyone bully him anymore, but something about the way she suddenly bent over at the waist and took in a huge shuddering breath, made him hesitate.

  “God, Ally, I’m sorry. What’s wrong? Are you tired?”

  She didn’t straighten up and flash him that reassuring smile of hers that always put a dizzy roll in his gut. It was a feeling that made him think of being on a swing set, when the swing thumped at the highest part of the arc, just before it fell back toward the ground, weightless. Her smile made him believe in crazy ideas again—like love—like home.

  She dropped the lit torch, bracing herself against the Wizard’s Tree with one hand. She shook off his concern.

  “Come on, Ally, you aren’t the only one that gets to be a worry wart.”

  When she did look up, her eyes were two blue marbles in an oval of white stone.

  “What is it?”

  She put her hand on the soft curve of her belly and groaned.

  There was a sudden gush of blood that soaked her pants. Too much blood. He kicked dirt on the lit torch, and scooped her up. Ally shuddered in Jamie’s arms and then went limp.

  When her head thumped against his collarbone, he almost dropped her. He gritted his teeth, breathed shallow through the pain.

  A blast of nausea and the smell of blood and he was back again in the forced marches of his Junior Militia days. He used the memory of that time to keep his heart from exploding. What was happening to her was wrong. He knew about wrong. He could march through bad—he had to. He gripped her more tightly.

  Instead of looking into Ally’s unconscious face, he focused on thoughts from before. It was one of the ways the older boys broke down the new recruits in the junior units; march the new ones until they dropped. If they cried or refused to march, they were beaten with the edge of machetes, thin strips of bamboo. For children raised as pampered princes and princesses, the beatings worked. It had been easy. No one, no parent or teacher, had ever dared raise a hand to any of them in their old, comfortable lives.

  Hardly took any effort at all to have those kids booger crying and terrified, and then the leaders would step in between the ones doing the beating and the fresh ones, and bam! The commanders became saviors—father, mother, coach and king—worshipped. It was easy. They were always so grateful for the pain to stop.

  Jamie had been one of the lucky ones. He’d still had a black eye from his mom’s latest boyfriend when they’d herded him out of the storage unit he’d been living in. Being able to take a punch in the face had come in pretty handy. He’d already known how to play possum and stay off the radar of the sadists, the ones most likely to beat down on anyone smaller, weaker, more petrified. Who knew being an abused kid would have its benefits?

  Ally curled against his chest. Her lips were white, her hands slack. He stumbled and went down to one knee. Get up, Soldier. March. Don’t give them a reason to give you a beat down. Parrish’s voice, another memory to focus on, to drive him forward.

  The dripping humidity cooked through him; his fever was back.

  The sandy path shimmered, dissolved at the edges. He put one foot in front of the other, heading toward the longhouse. Ally’s blood dripped into the sand. They were leaving a trail of blood. A trail he shouldn’t be able to see. There was no moon. Clouds obscured the stars. He turned, and horrified, saw a light in the eastern sky that had nothing to do with the sun or the moon or the stars.

  Jamie’s ears were ringing by the time he made the edge of the clearing at the longhouse. A voice cut through the fuzz in his head.

  “Hers is hurt. Hers has fallen down.”

  Jamie forced himself to focus on the strange grammar, remembering one of the Doe Kids—a girl, maybe nine, maybe ten, curling brown hair, the one who still talked like a three-year-old. What did they call her? Ivey? Fern? No, Ivey, it was Ivey.

  “Hers needs help.”

  “Ivey, is anyone else with you? Ally’s hurt, Honey. Run and get someone to help us—”

  And then another voice, a man. “Who’s hurt? Who’s that?” A gasp came at the end of the question. “What’s happened to Ally?”

  Ally’s dad.

  “Jon,” Jamie said. “Can you help me? She’s bleeding. We have to get her home.” His breath caught in his throat at how far they still had to go. He went down to his knees. When he looked up at Ally’s father, he saw that hopeless blank look flit back into the man’s eyes. Too much stress and the man checked out, wandered off, crawled into some self-indulgent hole—but not this time.

  Snapping, Jamie shouted, “Jon, help me! I can’t get her all the way back. You. Have. To. Help. Now!”

  “But that’s not going to solve anything.” Jon Lane took a step backward.

  Jamie struggled to his feet, grinding his molars against the black fog that threatened. “Old Man, I don’t have time for your bull crap.”

  “But, what are we going to do when we get her home? We won’t be able to stay. We’ll cook like a ham in a tin can.”

  Ivey caught the hem of Jon’s work shirt and started tugging. “Hers is hurt.”

  “You have to take her. I can’t carry her any farther. Jon, help me now!”

  The man blinked pale blue eyes hard at the sound of his name, held out his arms, and nodded to Jamie. “Come on. The fire is coming, moving fast.”

  “Are you sure it’s coming this way?” Jamie panted, handing the bleeding girl to her father. “Ivey, run for Gwen. Tell her we’re coming. Call the others. You get to bang the dinner bell.”

  “We should hurry and figure out what we’re going to do,” Jon Lane agreed, the clear light of sanity snapping back into his face as he settled his daughter more completely in his arms. “Jamie, come on!”

  CHAPTER 26

  Sam Holt thought the old man with the shotgun looked a little rocky on his feet, but the finger he held on that trigger looked steady enough. His head was wrapped in a white cloth, and his eyes were both black. Someone had smacked him a good one. A brindle dog with a head like a stump growled next to the man’s knee. Sam held his hands high.

  But he’d found it and them, the clearing Tess had described; he studied the open space around the Quonset hut, and saw that it was already full of people: a bunch of kids; a black woman who hugged a boy, maybe hers; another old man
who looked a lot like a piece of dried up straw; but the one in charge was the old man with his finger on the trigger and his head in a bandage.

  “How come you came to find this place?” The old man said.

  “Tess. She told me. She’s back there at El’s fortress.”

  “We don’t know anything about no fortress. You’d better be telling us pretty quickly who you are and how you got here,” he said, and then waggled the end of the shotgun at Sam.

  “Start with your name.” It was the woman with the boy. The knuckles of her hand looked like tangles in a shoelace, she was holding on so tightly to the kid’s arms. Who could blame her or any of them for being afraid? She was looking at a stranger covered in what could only be dried blood. He rubbed flaking blood from his hands onto his jeans.

  Trust. Sure. He needed to gain their trust. Hard to do in a world where people were always playing their advantage, taking what they wanted. Okay. He started again.

  “My name is Samuel Holt. Tess sent me here, told me to come. The fortress—the Marketplace—those mercenary women, the ones that took the mall, the old mall, she’s with them. I knew her before from church. My mom.” He had to stop and gulp. “My mother, and me we’ve been out on the river making it work, until she—” Sam said, stopped, surprised when it got tricky to keep the boulder out of his throat. He tried again. “She got sick. I took her there, hoping they had someone who could help.”

  “And? Did they?” the black woman asked.

  “Whose blood is on your shirt?” The old man made of straw barked.

  Sam was about to explain, to plead, when another man, strangely familiar, came stumbling into the clearing, a bleeding girl in his arms. Behind him followed a tall guy, clutching one arm to his chest. Shouts of “Jamie” and “Jon” and “What’s happened?” and then a scream from beyond the clearing, a rush and a girl that looked just like the hurt one was bending over what had to be her unconscious sister.

  Something in Sam’s mind clicked: The twins. Tessla’s sisters. They’d been just two tiny dolls in their baby seats when Tess had first shown them off one summer at some picnic or something: Alpha and Zeta.

  Half forgotten, left behind, a little boy wrapped in a dirty man’s shirt threw himself toward the woman and boy.

  He cried out, “Mommy!”

  “Oh my God, Blane.” He disappeared into her arms and the hugs of the first boy.

  “Where’s Mister Parrish?” someone called.

  “We found Blane,” ZeeZee explained over her shoulder to the tall boy. “Parrish sent him back. They’ve taken him, Parrish, but what’s happening to Ally? Gwen! Why is she bleeding?” The girl’s eyes were stricken. “What do we do?”

  The question galvanized the woman named Gwen. She dragged the child by one hand and directed traffic with the other. Her other son hovered near his brother. “Bring her inside, put her on her bunk. Grab some towels. Blake, go.”

  A teenage boy wearing clothes meant for someone with some muscle and more height and carrying a machete stopped the rush of movement toward the Quonset hut.

  “Stop! We can’t be here when the fire comes.” He pointed to the east. The tree line around the clearing had kept the bigness of the fire hidden, but the black smoke had arrived, puffing up above the tree line for the first time. “It’s coming very fast.”

  The tall guy, pale and flushed by turns, with red hair flopping in his face, agreed. “It must be massive, jumping roads, rivers. There hasn’t been enough rain, even after the big storm. We have to go. If the winds pick up any worse than this . . .”

  The man carrying the girl started to put her on the picnic table, turned to look at Samuel. He gently lowered her head onto the hard wooden planks. With one hand on the motionless girl, he turned to stare at Samuel.

  “Mister Lane. It’s me. Sammy. Sammy Holt.”

  For a moment, Jon Lane looked blank and uneasy.

  “Jon?” The woman pushed the half-dressed boy behind her as she bent over Ally. “We need to decide something. I think Ally’s miscarrying this baby.” The towels arrived. The boy, Blake, took a look at the blood on Ally’s pants, stepped back, and started to sniffle.

  A gust of wind rattled the underbrush around them. A few of the ragamuffin kids started edging to the far side of the clearing, away from the sharp tang of burning.

  “Where can we take her? We have to go, now!” The kid with the machete, brown eyed and whip thin, shouted, “You kids, be still!” Children froze, their eyes going big and round. “Go where you’re told. Don’t make us tell you twice. Shut up! Listen to ZeeZee.”

  ZeeZee Lane, blond hair pulled back out of her face, ordered, “Dad, Gwen, wrap her up in a blanket so that we can carry her. The rest of you get your Bug-Out bags if you have one. Jamie, can you bring the emergency pack? Let’s head upriver as far as we can go and then—” She ran out of steam, remembered. “The animals, in the barn. Someone needs to let them go. They’ll know what to do better than we do.”

  One of the two old men shuffled away. Shotgun-Man dropped the barrel of the gun, flipped a hand toward Sam. “If you know the Lanes, you’re okay. You can help them. I’ll go help Jess T. We’ll find you at the river.” He nodded to ZeeZee, glared at Sam. “Help them carry Ally. I would, but I can’t.”

  “Kilmer, you just got up. I thought you were dead.” Gwen warned.

  “No time to pout around hurt. I can walk and shoo some goats.” He walked away wobbly and careful.

  “Upriver! When we get that far,” Jon Lane moved to stand next to his daughter, “I think I know somewhere we can go.” Behind them the red-haired guy helped Gwen roll Ally into a flowered quilt. They knotted the ends, slid a long pole through the knots.

  “Dad, you think?” ZeeZee snapped. “Or you know?”

  He looked at her, tilted his head, and amended his statement. “I know somewhere we can go.”

  Sam stepped up. “The fortress, I mean the Marketplace. It’s got a wall, a big mud wall. Believe me, I know. It will stop a fire for sure. We could go there.”

  Jamie stepped into the ring of frightened eyes. “Maybe. But I think we aren’t going to have enough time. We need to head out. Now. Stay close. Keep up. We can’t afford to slow down. Get your battle buddy. Let’s move. Okay, Sammy Holt, let’s go. Head for water.”

  CHAPTER 27

  The Marketplace had been an anthill before; now it was a beehive smacked with a stick. The day, so bright at the start, had faded into haze and shadows. The moat continued to grow bigger, deeper, a giant triangle with three sharp points. The workers were concentrated now—at the gate and on the wall facing to the east. Tess tried to watch the hive buzz.

  Her head pounded where she’d been hit, and it hurt to open her eyes all the way. Backbone against the mud wall, knees drawn up against her chest, Tess tried to choke down the bile in her throat. A sullen guard stood over her.

  Finally, a woman, holding a shovel like a rifle, pushed her way over to Tess. A quick nod and her guard walked off without a backward look.

  “You stay. You dig. We don’t have time for whatever that was.” Shovel Woman pointed in the direction Goliath and Golda had disappeared.

  “She’s one of yours. I brought her home,” Tess muttered.

  “Yeah, I know her. Golda. You brought me a dead girl.” Muscles in the woman’s jaw jumped as rivers of sweat streamed through the dirt smeared on her exhausted face. Pale gray eyes in a nest of wrinkles peered down. “You should have shoved off.” She pointed the shovel toward the sky. “That’s not rain.”

  A boiling black dragon stretched up and up and up. Why hadn’t she realized how bad it was? Smelled it? Put together what was happening? But Tess knew the answer.

  Golda and empty gestures.

  Tess pushed up against the wall at her back, bracing her hands against the cracking mud. “I can’t do this. My family. Please. I have to get back to them. They need me.”

  “Should have thought of that before you started dropping off dead bodies.” />
  “Tell El and Britt. I brought Golda back—I have to go.”

  Hands grabbed at her, and someone shouted, “Climb.” Tess climbed. From the top of the wall, the line of flames looked like faint wriggling snakes against the black horizon. If only it hadn’t reached the S-Line yet.

  “Down.” Another rope ladder led down into the moat. When she reached halfway, someone gave the ladder a hefty shake, and she fell backward into the moat, landing in a heap in the muck. Her stomach revolted. She threw up. Water seeped and puddled around her ankles. There was dirt in her eyes. A short-handled spade landed in the mud next to her.

  Above her, one of the guards at the gate yelled, “Dig.” Workers lowered buckets up and down the side of the biggest ditch Tess had ever seen.

  Half-blinded, she tasted grit and muck and sick. Another digger pressed the spade into her hands. She dropped it. Swiping at her face one-handed only smeared the mud. She grabbed the end of her shirttail, turned it inside out, and did her best to clear the filth out of her eyes. Torches glowed on the wall above.

  “Better now?” In front of her, a mud-covered gnome of a man smiled. There was dirt in his grin. “And welcome back.”

  Laugh or cry; it was hard to know how to respond to that smile. “Mister Terry, I presume.”

  He picked up the shovel and pressed it back into her hands.

  “Dig! Or they might not feed you.”

  Somehow she doubted it. They’d already told her to report to El when she was done digging.

  At the top of the escalator, a teenaged girl, not one of the Amazons or El or Britt, met Tess with a sleeping bag—a real one, not just a bedroll. There was a rip that had been sewn up with dental floss; someone knew the trick of it, a dancer’s trick for sewing the ribbons onto their point shoes. Dental floss was heavy duty, waterproof, and easy to sew with. Her grandfather had stored cases of the stuff. It made home feel closer, seeing that neat, tidy repair.