As he was throwing a clean shirt over his head, Katie ran into the room. She took a look at his plate of food, and then looked back to him, her tiny features stern. “You were late for dinner,” she informed him imperiously. “Mommy is NOT a short order cook.”
Jake laughed and scooped up his daughter. How many times had he said that to Seth when he came in late for supper? And how many times had his own father said that to him? There were no restaurants in Aspen Vale, and he only knew what a short order cook was by rough description. But the saying was still used all over the valley. “I know, but sometimes Mommy does nice things for Daddy, like letting him eat late,” he responded.
Katie thought about this, and then nodded. “Mommy’s pretty nice sometimes.”
“I like to think so,” Jake said, smiling up at his wife. Beth rolled her eyes and went back into the kitchen, but she was wearing a smile when she did so. He turned his attention back to his daughter. “So, I hear you’re not tired?”
“That’s right!” Katie proclaimed, loudly enough to make Trig raise his head and give a whine of protest. “Not going to bed EVER!”
“Oh? Well what are you going to do when me and your mother go to bed?”
“Play with Trig! I missed him! You always take him with you, it’s not fair!”
“But look, Trig’s in bed, too.” Jake gestured to the dog, who was at that moment splayed out on the blanket, the towel still draped over him, glaring balefully at the noisy humans.
“Oh…. Trig looks SLEEPY,” she said. “Can he sleep with me in my room tonight?”
“I thought you weren’t going to bed?”
“Oh.” Katie looked crestfallen for a moment, then brightened. “Well, maybe if Trig gets to sleep with me, I’ll go to bed.”
“I don’t want Trig sleeping in people beds,” Beth said, coming out from the kitchen.
“Oh, I think this one time would be alright, don’t you?” asked Jake. “Trust me, if anyone has earned a bed, it’s Trigger.”
Beth pursed her lips, and then sighed. “Alright. JUST tonight, though.”
The four year old gave a squeal, hopping off of Jake’s lap and running down the hall to her room. “Trig! Come here, sleep with me!” she called. Trig gave Jake a look, and then got up, slowly trotting to the child’s room. He cast one more look their way to see if the adults were going to change their mind. When Jake made a shooing motion with his hand, he padded through the door.
“You know, now all of her bedclothes are going to smell like him, and he’ll want to sleep in OUR bed tomorrow,” Beth chided. “Not to mention how hard it is going to be to get her into bed tomorrow night.”
Jake shrugged, reaching for his plate of food. He was just about to take a bite when Katie called out from her room, “Daddy, you need to tuck me in!” Sighing, he put down his food and walked to his daughter’s room. It was the smallest room in the house, but it was packed with her toys. Mayor Townsend’s wife and Mother Harper loved to make toys for the children, and his daughter had her fair share. Katie herself was in her bed, her comforter under her chin. Trig was under the blanket with her, and looked to already be asleep again. Jake sat down in the chair by her bed and gently tucked the comforter under her sides. She gave little laughs as he did; he always “accidentally” tickled her ribs when he did that.
“Goodnight, munchkin. Goodnight, Trig. Both of you sleep tight.”
“Goodnight, Daddy. Love you. Trig loves you too.” With that, Katie turned over, a rag doll under her arm, and closed her eyes. Jake blew out the lantern in her room, and was just closing the door when he heard his daughter’s whisper. “I’m glad you back, Daddy,” she said quietly.
“I’m glad to be back, sweetheart. Goodnight.” With that, Jake closed the door.
Walking back to the living room, he picked up his plate again and began to eat. Between the food and the fire, he was starting to feel something like human again. Beth came from the kitchen with two cups of homebrew. Jake accepted his eagerly.
“Welcome home, hon,” said Beth, as she sat down on the couch next to him, feet tucked under her.
Jake put his arm around her. “It’s good to be home,” he said, breathing in the scent of her hair. For quite some time, the two of them just watched the fire in silence, enjoying each other’s company while he absently ate. He thought his wife might be interested in something more vigorous than fire-watching, but as soon as he laid his head back, he was asleep.
In his mind, he knew it was a dream. He knew that all of this had already happened. He knew that there was no real danger. But he was also in the moment, unable to change what was going to happen, unable to change what he had felt and was again feeling.
He arrived in Three Ponds on a day that was cold, but completely clear. It was just a routine visit; the winter had been easy in Aspen Vale, but Jake had heard a rumor among his scouts that there was a sickness in the village, and the Council had wanted to see how they had weathered it. Beth had been eager enough to see him go; he knew she loved him, but he also knew how surly he got when he was confined indoors for too long. Even Trig had seemed eager to get out on the road. That had made Jake laugh; Trigger was a good dog and a great scouting partner, but he hated cold weather.
Trig gave him his first sign that something wasn’t right, of course. Jake hadn’t been surprised in the least that the forward Longshooter post wasn’t manned. Three Ponds sent down a few lads every couple of years to be trained in the art, but they didn’t have many guns. Most had never seen a nomad band or a goner in their lives. And ever since Jay Carpenter had stopped coming up here himself, discipline had gone soft. Jake had tried to put the fear of the Three into a few of them, but he was a Scout from another township, and that meant they were not required to listen to him. So, when he had seen the unmanned station, he simply shook his head and muttered a curse.
Trig, however, had investigated. He sniffed the snow, and then brought his head up, ears perked up. After a moment, he had given a little whine. That made Jake take notice. He knew his dog well. He had bent down and put a hand on Trig’s back. The dog had been stiff, clearly agitated by something. “What’s wrong, boy?” Jake had asked. Jake remembered Trig giving a quick yip before leaning into his leg. But in the dream, Trig didn’t respond, and stared in the direction of the township of Three Ponds.
The image of the Longshooter station seemed to melt away into another scene. Now he was in the office of Luke Greenburgh, mayor of Three Ponds. “It’s bad, Jake, whatever it is,” he had said. “We’ve made sure people aren’t drinking out of Brush Creek, but the damage has been done.”
“And no idea what’s wrong with them?”
“Well, obviously something died upstream,” the mayor said. “They’re sick to their stomachs, feverish, pale… most of them know they should boil the water, but they don’t. We haven’t had a sickness in Three Ponds in….hell, fifty years? Not since I’ve been around, anyway.”
Jake had wanted to pound his head against the wall; nearly a hundred people sick, because they had gotten lazy. “Make sure people are boiling their water, no matter the source. It’d be better if they just melted snow instead; I don’t know why they weren’t doing that in the first place. Trig and I will head upstream and get whatever is in the water.”
“Thanks, Jake. And I can tell you the reason; last few years, some of the villagers have become convinced that Brush Creek is sacred to Lord Jezias,” Greenburgh had said. “Up until now, it’s been a good thing; they don’t let anyone befoul the river. No one can swim in it, bathe in it, void in it, et cetera.”
“Since when do you have Jezzites in Three Ponds?” asked Jake incredulously.
Mayor Greenburgh held up his hands. “At first it was just a bunch of dumb kids dabbling in the dark. Rebelling, you know. But it grew, and those kids turned into adults, and some of the other adults started thinking that way. Adults that really should have know better, in my opinion. They’ve been a nuisance ever since, telling people that the J
ezzite colonies out east have the right idea, but are just going about it wrong. Lately, they keep to themselves in a sort of coven, down by their creek.” Greenburgh snorted, blowing out his thick mustache. “They have almost a third of the village down there. If the dumb bastards survive this, I think they’re here to stay.”
“Why do they think the creek is sacred to the Lord of Death?” Jake asked, taken aback. He hadn’t really expected an answer to his question, let alone one like that. A third of the Town, worshiping Lord Jezias? The Mother had always been sacred in the Four Townships; Jezzites weren’t forbidden, but they weren’t welcomed with open arms, either. It seemed that Lord Jezias had found yet another way to make his presence known in the valley.
Greenburgh had shrugged. “I don’t know. They’re all crazy. But like I said, it’s been good for the water, and they aren’t violent, so we just leave them alone.”
With the speed of a thought, he was no longer in the office. Now he was hiking upstream with Trig, trying to figure out what was causing the sickness. The more he thought about it, the more irritated he became. Brush Creek was frozen solid; the only way the religious crazies in Three Ponds had been able to get to it had been by breaking the ice. So, if the water was frozen, how was it being fouled, and how would he ever find it? But he knew he had to try; he was Scout Captain of the largest of the Townships, after all. He would have lost a lot of prestige if he had not offered to go out and try to find the problem, and so would his town.
As it was, it was easier to find than he would have thought. Much like Aspen Vale, Three Ponds had their own Ruins. When the Awakening occurred, the town had tried to burn all the corpses out in the woods. It had been a dry summer that year and the fire had spread to the surrounding forest, and eventually to the town. They had rebuilt around three small ponds downstream of the original site, and so should have known that they needed to boil their water, without exception. But the Three Ponders had been blessed; even during the Awakening, the goner attacks had been light compared to what their neighbors went through. Their secluded location had also saved them pain during the Dog War; only a few of the nomads had come this way, and never a large band. Like most people who were blessed, they had thought their blessings would last forever.
Jake and Trig had wandered alongside the creek all the way to where the village of Snowmass had stood before the Awakening. Many of the buildings were long since gone, the burned out timbers having been buried by the merciful Mother, or washed downstream. Here and there, the shell of a building could be seen; many of them were made of the square red blocks that the piggies had been so fond of using. Of those that did stand, most were still black from the fire nearly a century ago, and none were probably safe to go into. Jake took note of them without much concern; they were far enough from him that he’d have plenty of warning if a stray goner did shamble out from one of the broken structures. He followed the creek to where it opened up into a fair sized pond. In the middle of that pond, Jake could see shapes. Broken, refrozen ice chunks were piled up around them, almost as if whatever it was had been dropped through the frozen pond, only to have it refreeze around them.
Roping himself to a nearby tree, he tested the ice gingerly. It seemed thick enough, but he knew how misleading that could be. Slowly, step by step, he inched his way out to the shapes. As he got closer, he could see that the strange objects were drum shaped, and metal. He continued out onto the frozen pond, his heart pounding. He knew what they were now. He had seen them in the Ruins, and Sardy Field, and other places. They were the containers that the piggies would use when they needed to store some vile chemical that would poison people. He inched closer, reaching out with his axe to rap on the side of one of the containers. He noticed that it had a strange symbol; a triangle, that had been divided in three by seemingly random lines. At first he had been hopeful; these drums did not appear to be rusted out like those he had seen before. As his axe hit the metal, though, a hollow ring had sounded.
And then he was back in Three Ponds, his axe biting into the shoulder of the goner who was attacking, the blade getting stuck in the flesh and bone of the creature. He recognized the person the goner had been, but hadn’t known him well enough to remember his name. The thing had not even flinched as the steel nearly severed his left arm; it simply came at him face first, mouth open. Thankfully, it was very cold, and the goner had not been able to move very fast. Jake had pulled his belt knife and spun around the lunging corpse, his blade skewering it’s Gone’s Sack. The goner immediately slouched, and Jake pulled his blade free. The sack let loose a spurt of red-purple fluid, and the goner collapsed. Jake set a foot on the corpse and tugged his axe free. “Trig, come!” he called out. The dog had another goner by the ankle, growling menacingly. The goner, for its part, was focused only on Jake. It had been a child, no more than seven or eight, still wearing her nightdress. Trig gave a final tug on the goner’s leg, sending it sprawling. Once it was down, he bit into the small sack on the child’s head. No one knew why, but Lord Jezias never made goners out of dogs, which made them useful partners in fighting them. Once the child stopped moving, Trig loped after Jake as he ran to the building where Mayer Greenburgh had kept his office. A couple of Longshooters were positioned at the windows, so Jake figured it had to be at least somewhat fortified. His suspicion proved correct; one of the young men beckoned him to jump in through the window.
“It’s a disaster, a damned disaster!” Jake heard Greenburgh say. He knew that this was only part of the dream; the mayor had said that when he first got into town. By this point, Greenburgh was dead, and in a few hours later he’d be attacking the building he had worked in for so long. Jake had tried to calm the people down. One of those people was Bill Reddin, who hadn’t seen his boy Dave. “That idiot spends every minute he can with Ella Rosewood,” he complained. “Why aren’t they back? Oh, Mother, save my boy!” Jake hadn’t been sure whether that was a true prayer to the Mother, or a father pleading for someone to help his son. He hadn’t asked.
The night hadn’t been too terrible; it had been far too cold for all but the freshest of the Gone to be able to move. Still, they could hear moaning from the large building where the crazies had moved. If it was warm enough in there…
The townspeople that were left, for their part, started to come together then. When Jake set out, he had four Longshooters, twenty men, and ten women. Jake’s old friend Ken Rosewood and his wife Edith had come, both wielding stout clubs. “We haven’t seen my Ella,” Edith had told him. Her eyes were red and swollen. “I need to know she’s alright. I need to know Jezias hasn’t got her.” Ken hadn’t said much of anything. He had been a Scout before a fall blew out his knee. Jake had tried to talk to him earlier, but the man had closed himself off. In the dream, Jake promised him that they would find his little girl, just as he had before. But the part of him that knew he was dreaming recognized the look in his friend’s eyes. Ken had already given her up for dead or worse.
They set out about ten in the morning, hoping that the morning cold would keep the Gone inside slow. But the building had been full of sick people. There had been a lot of fires going, and though they were out, the inside of the building had been warm enough to keep the goners active. As the villagers set out, some of the Gone left the building to attack. Jake had been worried that fresher goners would move better, but they stumbled around like every other one he had ever seen. Still, they were fast. Jake turned in time to see one of them tear out the neck of a panicked Longshooter before the boy ever got off a shot.
Instinct alone saved Jake, as he turned back to face the building just as a goner who had clearly been a farmer in life tackled him. He brought his knee up as the goner came at him, and kicked out, using its momentum to flip it over him. He didn’t have time to put in a killing blow, though; another goner was already on him. He stabbed for its throat with his axe, using the spike on the weapon's head like a spear. It went clean through the creature’s neck and into its Gone’s Sack. The goner went lim
p, but when he pulled on his axe, it had lodged in the creature’s spine and wouldn’t pull free. By this time the farmer was up and coming at him. Trig grabbed at its ankle, but the farmer had been a great deal larger than the little girl who had attacked the night before. Jake pulled his belt knife to face the creature, but it suddenly jerked forward and fell, face down. Behind it stood little Edith Rosewood, barely five feet tall, holding a gore soaked club and looking both frightened and ferocious.
Now he was in the building again, the corridors dark and narrow. Jake had never smelled the Gone so strongly than in that building; he didn’t know how to describe it, except as what copper might smell like if it spoiled. The survivors of the first attack had split into groups. The two Longshooters had taken the main and second floors, while Jake took a group into the basement. They had all thought that the thirty or so of the Gone that had attacked would be most of them, and that this would be clean up. Ken and Edith Rosewood were with one of the other groups; Jake figured that any goners that hadn’t been part of the attack would have been in the basement where they might not have seen the townspeople. They had both done well in the fighting outside, but one look at Edith’s face told Jake that she probably shouldn’t see any more of it. As far as they knew, neither Ella nor her boyfriend was a part of this cult. There was no logical reason for her to be here. But she had not come home, and this was the only building in town where they hadn’t looked. He thought about sending them both away, and discarded the thought just as quickly. With their daughter missing, he knew they’d never go.
As it turned out, Jake’s group only found four goners in the basement. They were quickly dispatched. He was just beginning to relax a little bit when he heard the gunshots go off above his head. To his surprise, everyone in his group immediately started moving towards the stairs to see what was going on and if they could help. He made a mental note to not underestimate the Three Ponder’s courage again. They stopped at the main floor of the building to listen. It didn’t take long to realize that the action was another floor up. Jake led the way, Trig hot at his heels.
Aspen Vale: A Tale of the Gone Page 4