Behind the Ruins (Stories of the Fall)

by Michael Lane

  Amidst the chaos were little stories without endings. He found a long line of green military vehicles, trucks and tanks both, stalled in a line on the north-south highway through Spokane’s heart. They’d either survived the initial EMP pulses, or had been repaired, only to be fried by the later waves. There were bodies - dry, nearly mummified - surrounding the convoy in drifts, riddled with bullet holes, but he didn’t see any that looked like soldiers.

  In a section of the old downtown core someone had strung up corpses from the power lines like malefic piñatas, each body decorated with ribbons and bright yarn that waved in the reeking breeze. One of the bodies wore a nurse’s uniform. He remembered the lipless grins on the hollow-eyed faces; the way their hair jerked and waved in the wind.

  One long street of burnt-out cars had dozens, maybe hundreds of doll heads, each glued to the hood of individual cars like Rolls Royce ornaments in hell. The pink plastic heads with bright blue eyes were everywhere. He’d spurred his horse out of that street quickly.

  There were too many eyes in the city, too many spots to hide and snipe, and within eight or ten hours he’d been shot at once and warned off a dozen times by armed men. Grey moved out, back to what had been the suburbs and farmland surrounding the city. Raiding had damaged much of this as well, but as food supplies from homes and farms dwindled the survivors had returned to the city to scavenge. Half the houses and buildings were stripped or burned, the rest abandoned. Spokane followed a pattern he found repeated over the years; a central rotten core with too many people and no food, surrounded by a stripped no-man’s land, surrounded, finally, by sparsely populated semi-wilderness with game and some semblance of civilization. He wondered why people didn’t leave the city.

  He never stopped looking, but he never found the last three men.

  Spring finally came, and a short summer, then winter again, and hunger with it. Grey found others like himself, riding the edges of the ruins, looking for food, for ammunition. Grey took what he needed to live, killing where he had to. He preyed on others with guns for the most part. He did it in part because they had the best gear, and partly in hopes of finding the last of the men from the cabin. More than once, when desperate for shelter or food, he took what he needed from others. He killed an old man who drew an empty revolver on him in a frozen field over a half-full plastic bag of wrinkled sugar beets.

  The cold weight in his gut could cover all sorts of things, he discovered.

  Chapter 7: Thaw

  March was a bitch. The weather couldn’t decide what it wanted to do and sudden thaws alternated with northern blasts of wind and temperatures plummeting far below freezing. It was worse in the higher elevations, and Grey found his trap lines hard to run. He kept at it until the thaws set in for real, bringing in a few late-season pelts. He spent most of the month inside his cabin, reading, with brief forays outside to get water or split more wood for his stove. In mid-March he packed up and set out east, following the old route of highway 33.

  The woods were noisy now, the silent majesty of winter replaced by the crack of trees shifting, the thump of snow cascading from the boughs. The sound of water was everywhere. Streams carved dark channels through the remaining snow as they broke free of the ice, leaving deep, shadowy gulfs full of slick black rocks. Water grumbled endlessly around the stones before diving into sapphire-blue tunnels beneath the snowpack to emerge a hundred yards away, foaming and leaping.

  Grey took a pair of snowshoes and he wore them for a stretch of fifteen or twenty miles across the highest part of his route, but in most places the crusty snow supported his weight, or was shallow enough it didn’t matter.

  Others had passed that way already, and Grey read their tracks as he walked: A single man with a horse or mule, a small party with dogs, one pair of ragged boots coming down from the true high country that flanked the route and crossing it to climb again into the uninhabited mountains. The tracks thinned and then stopped for a stretch of a few miles, then began to reappear as he started the descent into the Dell.

  It took him six days to travel from Kelowna to the valley. He smelled chimney smoke long before he saw the first house.

  The Dell was laid out in a simple cross, with most buildings flanking the highway route and a few off to either side along the old secondary road that intersected it. It had survived with little change since the middle of the previous century. It had been a small town, dying slowly like most small towns, before the Fall, with the nearest gas station thirty miles away. The end of the world hadn’t been that big of a deal in the Dell. People already grew vegetables and hunted or poached as needed. The defunct mill had been running a few years after the Fall, powered by an old steam engine that had lain rusting in the ferns since the early 1900s, a relic of the old mill. Much of the lumber was used locally, and the Dell had grown as raw-plank houses and businesses had replaced or expanded old single-wide mobile homes and rotting houses from the 1950s. As the Okanagan and Kootenays recovered in the decade that followed, wagons would make the trip to buy lumber, and the old mill town returned to its roots, with mule teams and oxen skidding logs down the main drag to the mill, and millhands fighting Saturday night at the saloon. It was well-placed, on the route from Alberta to the coast, and as traffic slowly picked up in the aftermath, the armed convoys brought in money and trade.

  Grey stopped at the Dell’s trading post – an expansive storefront run by a fat man with a ferocious moustache and a Dutch accent. The shop was crowded with axe handles, bags of salt from the mines by Edmonton, wax blocks, lamp oil in old wine bottles, hammers, bolts of raw wool cloth and unbleached linen, blankets, and a multitude of knickknacks that predated the new world. Grey turned over a straight-bladed dagger in his hands, one of six on display. The shopkeeper informed him it was from Japan, and had come aboard one of the merchantmen that docked now and then in Vancouver. When he heard what the merchant wanted for it, he sat it down.

  The mustachioed tradesman argued for a bit in a good-natured way, and Grey eventually traded eight mink hides he’d packed along for two pounds of salt, a serviceable No. 2 Victor trap that was probably a hundred years old and ten rough-milled silver coins about the size of a nickel. Outside the larger trade centers coins were sometimes not accepted, but they were portable, and that made them necessary. He thanked the man and left.

  At the drygoods store he traded one of the coins for four pounds of dried beans, a new steel striker and flint and a stick of rock candy that he sucked on for the next hour, while he looked for Georgia.

  He found her at the blacksmith’s. She had Josie’s eyes, but was thinner and much harder, with a face that showed little of what she thought. She was trading a set of old horseshoes in and bargaining for a new set. Grey waited while she shaved the blacksmith down. She ignored the newcomer until she had shaken on the deal, and then gestured for him to follow as she went outside. The two walked to the street’s far side, wading through a mix of snow and mud, and Georgia sat down on a bench on the porch of a closed-up hall of some sort.

  “Georgia Dunn, I presume?” Grey asked, shrugging out of his pack and sitting.

  “And you’d be Grey?” Her voice was deeper than Josie’s, and very controlled.

  “I would. Did Josie get word to you?”

  “She did. She sent a letter with a trapper named Willis.”

  “Joe Willis? I didn’t know he was still around.”

  “He is. He’s moved up by Gemside now but he still makes runs to the Port. Roads have gotten to be safe enough for that.”

  They sat a minute. Grey looked at her. Georgia was about five-three he thought, maybe one-hundred and ten pounds – though her fur jacket made that hard to gauge. She had a gnarled stippling of white scars on her left cheek and throat, as well as a slight squint on that side. Her ears were pierced, and she wore a small rhinestone in each.

  “You finished examining me?” she asked.

  “It’s funny, you look like Josie but you don’t remind me of her at all.”
<
br />   “We lived different lives. Get to what you came to talk about.”

  Grey leaned back on the bench and stared across the street. The blacksmith was making nails from scrap, his hammer ringing in a perfect rhythm.

  “The Valley’s going to see raiders this summer. I ran across their scouts last fall. I need a few good guns that can go south with me in a month or so and convince them to go somewhere else.”

  That got a faint smile from Georgia.

  “You make it sound so simple.”

  “Well, the goal is simple. Getting it done may require more work.”

  “What’s it paying?”

  “An ounce of silver a week from the Port, and loot, I suppose. You can keep a share of whatever we come across while we’re working them. I expect those that return will have a lot more guns, if nothing else. I don’t get the feeling this is about money for you. Am I wrong?”

  Georgia didn’t react. Her face indicated almost nothing of her thoughts. After a while, she spoke, her voice musing.

  “I have a ranch now. I have cattle, horses and three hands to run them. People in the Dell ask my advice and listen to it. They remember the early days and what we did to make this place.”

  “Well, Josie just thought you’d be interested, but I can understand if you don’t want to involve yourself in our troubles,” Grey said.

  “No. I’ll come,” Georgia said. “I was just thinking I’d be a fool to do it.”

  Grey glanced at her and then went back to watching the blacksmith work.

  “So why do it?” he asked as the smith stopped his hammering to fuel his forge.

  “Why do you do it?” Georgia asked.

  She waited, but Grey couldn’t find an answer.

  Georgia invited him to her place for supper. Grey refused once for the sake of politeness and then accepted. Her ranch was four or five miles north, and Grey walked while she rode a surefooted little fjord pony.

  Georgia’s ranch house was a survivor from before the Fall, with polished hardwood floors and thick walls of mortared stone. The windows were glazed and several fireplaces kept the rooms comfortably warm. The furnishings were simple but tasteful, and made by a local carpenter, she said.

  Dinner was beef stewed until it was as tender as butter, with flour gravy and potatoes. There was salted butter, too, and wine from an earthenware bottle. What little talk there was centered on Josie and how she was doing in her job at the Longliner. After the wine was finished, Georgia moved to the living room and asked to see Grey’s guns. He fetched his rifle from the entryway where he’d left it, and took a revolver from his belt. He didn’t present the little automatic that rode tucked in his boot top.

  Georgia looked them over, nodded.

  “The pistol is in good shape; that .270 as well.” She picked up the rifle and examined it more closely. “That’s an interesting barrel. Extended by what, six inches? It must be good for distance work.” She lay the rifle down again and sat back. “I just wanted to see if you took care of your gear.”

  “It’s important,” Grey said.

  She rose and opened a cabinet built into the wall beside the living room fireplace and withdrew a battered black plastic rifle case nearly at tall as she was. She sat it on the floor and unlatched it.

  “I don’t carry this around here. No need to,” she said, opening it and taking an evil-looking black rifle from the eggshell foam that lined the case. It had a massive telescopic sight and a long box magazine. Every inch was black metal or matte synthetic and it had a built-in bipod folded against the forestock.

  “I’ve never seen one of those,” Grey said. “It’s an ugly piece of work. What is it?”

  “It’s German; an MSG90. I came across it almost twenty years ago. It holds twenty rounds in that clip and I have a couple of spares. I imagine it’s the only one in western Canada in this condition.” She pulled the slide back, checked the chamber and handed it to Grey, who shouldered it briefly and then sat it back on its foam.

  “It’s heavy, isn’t it? You any good with it?”

  “Very,” Georgia said, looking at the rifle without emotion.

  “What’s it shoot?”

  “Seven-six-two NATO. I have plenty, before you ask.”

  Grey looked at Georgia, who met his eye with and smiled a paper-thin smile.

  “I’ll take you out shooting tomorrow. You need to see, I can tell.”

  Grey nodded.

  “It’s not anything stupid, like you’re a woman or whatever. I have to know how much I can put on your plate is all.”

  “Get some sleep, we’ll go at sunup,” Georgia said.

  In the summer of the fifth year after the fall, Grey stayed for a season with a family in Liberty, a small village that had survived and was beginning to build a beef and dairy industry supplying nearby settlements.

  Tomas Ramirez was a limping, smiling man of fifty or so with a young wife named Kirsten and two daughters, Wendy, ten, and Maria, eight. Grey rode up to the Ramirez gate one morning, surprised to see a pair of tall, long-necked animals wandering the fields beyond with a dozen black-and-white cows. He later learned they were llamas, and kept predators off the stock. The house sat on a low hill beyond the field. It was single-storied, low and long, with an attached barn. A second, higher hill rose behind it, cloaked in spindly lodgepole pines. He saw two men near the house doing chores. They paused as they saw Grey, and one went into the house.

  Grey waited, and after a few minutes a man in white pants too short for him and a checked shirt exited the house and began walking to the gate. When he was within earshot he yelled for Grey to come up and to close the gate behind him.

  Leading his horse, Grey did. He had been riding constantly for years, and looked it. He’d made hide boots for his rifle and shotgun, and they slanted back from the saddle of his horse. His clothing was a hodgepodge of wool gear - wool because it stayed warm no matter how wet it was - and he knew he smelled.

  “Morning. I’m Tomas Ramirez. You look like trouble, but you waited at the gate, so what are you?”

  Grey smiled.

  “Trouble looking for work, maybe? People call me Grey.”

  “You know cows?” Ramirez asked. He had bushy black eyebrows that hopped expressively when he spoke.

  “Not so much. I know horses, though.”

  “Feed it, water it and make sure it doesn’t do stupid shit - same thing. Cows are just slower and shit more. You look like an outlaw, why you want to shovel cow shit?”

  “I’m tired, and I need to settle down for a while,” Grey said after a moment’s thought. “Which is funny. I didn’t know until you asked.”

  “That’s a good reason. I pay in bed and board, and you get some of the milk; you can drink it or sell it or whatever. Come winter you’ll have to go, though, I got three men we keep all year already, and in winter there’s not as much work.”

  “That sounds good to me.”

  And it was good. Grey worked hard, and there was a lot of shit-shoveling, as promised, but he had people to talk to. He’d been mute for months, and it was almost sensual to have conversations - even with Bobby, the feed boy, who was thirty-something, retarded and only interested in beetles. Trigger and Jerry, the other two hands, told stories about women and pot. The pair reminded Grey of Shaggy from the old Scooby-Doo cartoons.

  Grey would eat with the hands, but on his first night Kirsten Ramirez invited Grey and the other hands to a family dinner. Grey, hair still damp from a cold bath at the barn’s water trough, sat between Bobby and Jerry, and tried not to stare at Mrs. Ramirez. It wasn’t easy. Kirsten looked twenty years younger than Tomas, and she had straight brown hair and large brown eyes. She was pretty, humorous, smart and big-breasted. The top buttons of her flannel shirt were open in the heat of the evening, and the full swell of her breasts winked at Grey as she served. Grey spent the dinner trying to keep his eyes at an appropriate level and ignoring an iron erection that refused to go away.

  There wasn’t much co
nversation until the mashed potatoes, beef stew and cornbread were gone. Dessert turned out to be custard, something Grey hadn’t eaten in years. There was milk, of course, and soft cheese, and butter in huge quantities.

  “That was delicious, thank you, Mrs. Ramirez,” Grey said.

  “You’re very welcome. You’ll want to eat lots, Tomas expects hard work,” she said with a smile. “We have to keep you in shape.”

  Grey pulled his eyes away and focused on Tomas, who had produced rolling papers and a jar of bud.

  “It’s medicinal. Also, now, probably legal, no?” he asked.

  “I guess so. Easier to grow than tobacco, too,” Grey said.

  Ramirez finished the joint, handed it to Grey and began rolling another. Jerry and Trigger did likewise.

  “Jerry grows it. He figured it would be a cash crop, but everyone grows weed now.” Tomas lit his smoke with one of the candles that lit the table. Grey followed suit.

  “That stuff is stinky,” Bobby offered with an exaggerated grimace of disgust. “Can I go out and check on the calfs? I think the little one is sickly.” He picked his nose unselfconsciously as he spoke, and wiped his finger on his shirtsleeve.

  “Sure Bobby, you just stay around the barn, okay?” Ramirez watched him leave and sighed. “He’s a good guy, works like an ox. He’s just not much for social graces.”

  “He’s nicer than lots I’ve met,” Grey offered.

  Wendy and Maria, both wearing identical white cotton dresses, had spent the dinner whispering to each other. Maria, the youngest, piped up in a shrill voice.

  “Are you an outlaw, Mister?”

  Ramirez rolled his eyes, while Kirsten blushed. “Maria, that’s not polite,” Mrs. Ramirez said in a mom-tone. Tomas snorted. “She’s eight, Kirsten.”