Behind the Ruins (Stories of the Fall)

by Michael Lane

  “Yes,” Creedy said. “By the end of June they’ll be haying, they’ll have the early fruit crops in, and the route overland to Vancouver and into Alberta should be busy.”

  Shafton pursed his lips. “We just settle in, control the bridge across the lake and start up all over again out of sight of the CDF.”

  “Yes. It’s not brain surgery, and it’ll be easy. They’re scattered up there, and there’s no sign of opposing groups. Not like down south.”

  Hollis narrowed her eyes. “And it’ll be the four of us and twenty-five men each?”

  “Don’t fixate on the numbers,” Creedy said, meeting Hollis’s stare. “Take men you can trust, if that’s only sixteen, fine, bring sixteen. It’s not going to be a war, just an occupation.”

  Straud drummed his fingers on the table. “There’s no way we can turn the Greens back, then? Or do a deal?”

  Creedy raised an eyebrow. “I know you’re fat, Leslie, and hate to travel, but don’t let your bone idleness get in the way of your brain,” he said. “I haven’t been out talking with them, but I do have information coming in from Montana. They are armed, numerous, and have some vehicles. They are repairing the tracks and trains are running. They may even have telegraphs or some kind of radio. This is the actual thing; that’s the army over there. You don’t fight an army, you move or you join. And they’re not accepting applications from outlaws; they’re executing us. So be ready; that’s all I should need to say.”

  Straud nodded morosely. “I know. Sorry I asked.”

  “No camp followers, none of that crap?” Shafton asked.

  “None,” Creedy said. He brightened. “Speaking of which, I should go play with Sam before I have to get rid of her. You want to come along, Hollis? You can bring your husband, too.”

  Hollis laughed without humor. “You never stop trying. I’ll take a pass.”

  “Your loss.”

  Chapter 10: Wenatchee

  Mal stayed on point for the group, a quarter-mile ahead of the rest as they moved south. The weather improved over the next few days, with the incessant spring showers and brief wet snow flurries giving way to bright sun. Days were comfortably cool for travel, though nights remained cold.

  The landscape changed in stages. The big fir trees on northern slopes gradually gave way to dryhill ponderosa pine. Sagebrush appeared in blue-grey domes in the rocky grassland areas. South of the crater they left the edge of Lake Okanagan, the single body breaking into ponds and lakelets, some joined by weedy canals, some by streams, some sitting aloof from the others. Viridian cattails were sprouting among the dun stalks of last year’s reeds. Ducks and geese grumbled and called from hidden sloughs beside their trail, flaring into flight if they strayed too close.

  The highlands here were split by cliffs and steep valleys, and the riders had to follow the old highway. The road was still paved for long stretches. In a few spots the freeze and thaw of winters past had broken the pavement into crumbling cobbles, or had erased it entirely under grass-grown landslides grooved by the passage of wagons.

  A few traders passed them, headed north. Cautious greetings were exchanged and one peddler followed them trying to sell his skills as a tinker until Grey warned him off. They skirted what inhabited buildings they could. It wasn’t difficult, as most houses still in use were those set back from the road. South of the ruins where Grey had watched the raiders the previous year the countryside changed again. The valley widened out, flanked by gigantic cliffs of granite and basalt, and the bottomland ahead was a startling light pink. In another half-hour they entered a land of orchards, both tended and feral, with the trees in full bloom. They camped in the perfume beneath the trees that night.

  As the band approached the old border they began to seek out conversation. People were cautious, but those with goods to sell or trade were willing to talk and often dealt with traders from the south as well as those heading north into the Okanagan. Grey and his band were eyed cautiously, but they found no trouble in trading for dried fruit and a pound of dried tea leaves. Information was harder to come by. Georgia had the best luck. She spoke with a farmwife while the others bargained with her husband for grain for the horses. As they rode on she moved up beside Grey.

  “That woman remembered seeing the others last summer,” Georgia said.

  Grey made an interrogative noise.

  “She guessed there were about twenty or thirty in all. Rumors are that they traded where they had to, but preferred to take when no one was watching. A few hunters and trappers went missing around that time, and one family’s farm was burned out. No one saw who did it, but the locals think it was them.”

  “So we know they followed the valley up.”

  “Yes. Not a surprise, I know. Crossing the mountains is a lot of work. She did have one interesting bit of info, though.” Georgia grimaced and shrugged. “It’s hearsay, so take it as such, but she said one of the bunch had mentioned to someone that they were looking forward to getting to Wenatchee on their way back.”

  Grey nodded. “That’s twice we’ve heard of Wenatchee. We’ll make that our first stop.”

  That evening they camped near a crescent-shaped lake a mile or two west of the road. Ronald had brought line and hooks, and cut a twelve-foot birch sapling for a rod and promised fish for dinner. The others set up camp in a hollow where a fire would be harder to see, and by the time they finished, the young man had returned with six firm silver trout. Sowter insisted he was the best qualified cook, and took charge. No one was in a hurry to oust him as self-proclaimed chef.

  After everyone had eaten and gotten comfortable, Grey had Georgia repeat what she had told him.

  “You think we’ll find their men in Wenatchee?” Ronald asked.

  “Probably not,” Grey said. “Until recently, it sounds like Wenatchee has heard about them but not seen them. We might find some, but even if we did it’s not going to be the ones I want.”

  “But that’d be less to fight later, wouldn’t it?” Ronald crossed his legs and leaned forward, eyes on Grey.

  “We’re not looking to fight them,” Grey said. “That’s an idea you need to get away from.”

  The young man looked hurt, then confused.

  “What the hell are we doing, then?”

  Mal shifted noisily, getting comfortable in his bedroll, his feet nearly in the fire.

  “Well, that’s the question, and one we should all know the answer to. I meant to run through this anyway, but since you bring it up, this is as good a time as any,” Grey said. He picked up a stick and poked at the fire, watching the sparks swirl.

  “Okay, don’t think of this as a war, or even a fight,” he began. “This is about fear and cost and killing. We’re going to do our best to find these men and then do what we can to annoy them. Well, not them, but the men who give them orders.”

  “How...?” Ronald started, but Clay shushed him with a glare.

  “We’re going to cost them men and money,” Grey continued, still staring at the fire. “We’ll burn or take what we can from them. We’ll do our best to kill the men they value most, and we’ll try to sow as much distrust between them as we can. Don’t make the mistake of thinking we’re going to ride into a town and have a showdown. We’d die.” Grey’s voice was flat and quiet. “We’ll find out where they live, and kill them while they sleep. We’ll find out who supports them locally, and we’ll burn them out. We’ll locate their stock and run it off or kill it.”

  “That’s, well. I mean.” Ronald fell silent, shaking his head. Georgia spoke when it seemed plain Grey wasn’t going to

  “That’s how they operate, you wanted to say?” she asked. Ronald shook his head and then shrugged and exhaled noisily.

  “It is how they operate,” Georgia continued, “and that’s why we have to be just as ruthless. If we feel sorry for them, or squeamish, and don’t go as hard as we can, all we’ll do is encourage them.” Georgia leaned forward, wrapping her arms around her knees as she sat. “You’re young
and we all were once. It’s hard to understand that sometimes you do what you have to, no matter how dirty it is.”

  “So you’d kill a man in his sleep?” Ronald asked.

  “In a second,” Georgia answered. “It’s to be preferred if he’ll be shooting at me later in any case.” Ronald stared at Georgia as if seeing her for the first time. Beside him, Sowter nodded reluctantly. Doc looked unhappy but didn’t say anything.

  “Listen, Ronald,” Grey said, looking up and holding the younger man’s gaze. “You’re wondering if it makes us as bad as them. No. they’re killing folks who can’t defend themselves. They’ll rape anything with tits and burn what they can’t carry off. They’ll be coming to our home looking to do the same, and not just on a raid but to settle down and do it until they get tired. The difference is that you’ll feel bad about what we’re going to do, and they never will.”

  Ronald looked away and nodded, once.

  “I just wish there was another way,” Clay said.

  “If you think of one, tell me,” Grey said. “I’d love an option.”

  “If you don’t have an option, though, don’t natter on about it,” Georgia said, rising and pouring herself a cup of tea from the pot that sat in the fire’s edge. “That’s just self-pity.”

  “Not moral qualms?” Doc put in.

  “No,” Georgia said. “It’s self-pity. Everyone here would be ecstatic if lightning would conveniently hit each of these sons of bitches right now and kill them. You’d sleep like babies. What’s bothering you is that you have to get your own hands bloody.”

  “Amen,” Mal muttered from his bedroll. “Can we sleep now?”

  “What are we hoping to get from picking at this bunch?” Harmon asked, ignoring Mal.

  “That’s the question,” Grey admitted. “Their boss won’t scare even if his men do, but he will get angry. If we can make his control look like it’s slipping he’ll have to try to come out and deal with us personally, or his own men will kill him. We need to get him angry enough to come out looking for us. If we can get him, the rest should fall apart and squabble amongst themselves.”

  Harmon considered that for a while, then cocked his head and peered at Grey.

  “You know he’ll come out?” he asked. “If he doesn’t have the balls for it he might duck his head and hope he can ride it out.”

  “I rode with him,” Grey said, poking at the fire again. “He’ll come out. He’s got balls enough, and brains.”

  A few heads came up at the admission. Only Ronald really looked surprised.

  “That’s why the Reverend has a hard-on for you?” Doc asked.

  “I think he remembers me from somewhere.”

  “You should ask him if we get back,” Doc said, leaning back and pulling his blanket up to his chin.

  Grey hawked and spit into the fire, watching embers glow white hot before crumbling away to orange, red, black.

  They travelled for another eight days. Grey set a slow pace, and they went watchfully.

  Wenatchee was a sprawling collection of six or seven smaller towns at the edges of the original city’s ruins. Vineyards and orchards surrounded these settlements, and beyond them rangeland where small groups of ranchers ran cattle. The landscape was opening out into broader panoramas of grassland and sagebrush to the southeast, and the hard basalt crusts that gave the scablands their name. Trade routes led north and south. The south route was far busier, joining the old interstate corridor that led up into and across the Cascade Mountains, then down to the coast and on to Puget Sound and the communities there.

  The bustle and activity surprised Grey. Even five years ago, towns were hunched behind fences, desperate to survive. Merchants in Wenatchee’s boroughs were selling coffee from Mexico, porcelain from China and canned goods from plants in the east.

  Clay suggested they introduce themselves as hands from a ranch up north that had burned out, looking for a work. It wasn’t much of a story, but it would do. There were saloons in most of the settlements that served local wine and beer, and some offered lodging. While there were some complaints, mostly over the possibility of a hot bath, the group travelled a few miles farther, searching along the banks of a runoff-swollen river until they found a sheltered site for their camp. Doc, Sowter and Harmon set up the tents while Mal disappeared into the cottonwoods, scouting the area. The others rode back to the nearest roadhouse, a two-story wooden building painted a faded barn red with a crooked sign that said ‘food and drink’. They arrived as the sun touched the western horizon.

  A string of horses were tied up along the rails outside the building. Music and the sound of voices seeped through the walls, and the windows were brightly lit. Two water troughs sat against the west wall of the building. Both were half-full. They watered the horses before tying them with the others. Clay pointed to the taps at each trough.

  “Pretty fancy. Plumbing for the horse troughs,” he said. He stepped to one and turned the tap. Water jetted into the trough, and he shut it again. Clay scanned the horizon for a moment and pointed at the shadowy shape of a small water tower on a low hill to the north, cloaked within a thick knot of trees.

  “I get the feeling things are on the mend a bit,” Clay said. Georgia chuckled and smiled at him.

  “It’s been thirty odd years, and we’re impressed with a faucet,” she said. “We set a pretty low bar. Let’s go get a drink.”

  “Talk little, listen lots,” Grey warned.

  A second sign hung in the entryway, brightly lit with a pair of lamps, over an archway that led to a set of wide wooden stairs going up.

  “No guns, no fighting, no credit. Enjoy your stay at the Ciderhouse,” Georgia read. She looked around. The vestibule had one other exit, an old double panel kitchen door that had been set into the left wall, and someone had carved the word “check” on it. She banged on it with a fist and the upper half opened, revealing a paunchy man in a faded corduroy jacket.

  “Yeah? You got stuff to stow?” He asked, staring. “Haven’t seen you before. You can read? Saw the sign?” His voice was rough, clipped and largely disinterested. Georgia nodded while Grey craned his head and peered into the warder’s little room. Coats hung on a series of nails driven into the back wall, and shelves to the left and right held a selection pistols, a pair of rifles, a stubby submachinegun and a few big hunting knives.

  “You check your stuff here. No cost, but remember to pick it up. Don’t bother trying to claim what’s not yours. I got a perfect memory. If you sneak something in, Tony, he’s the owner, will send you back out without it. That clear?”

  “As crystal,” Clay chimed in. He unbuckled his belt and handed it and his revolver over. Ronald paused a moment and sucked his teeth, then did the same with his Glock. Georgia smiled and handed over her heavy woolen coat. Grey shrugged off his long deerhide duster and the fur vest he wore beneath it. He retrieved an old folding jackknife that rode clipped to his belt, and proffered it.

  The doorman tucked each item away, showing interest only in Grey’s vest. He wanted to know what kind of fur it was. Grey told him mink. The man stroked it once, gently, and set it with Grey’s coat and knife.

  The Ciderhouse was just that, they discovered. The lower floor under held a massive cider press and a cooper’s shop. That area was locked off with chain-link, a padlocked gate giving access to their left as they began to mount the stairs. The wooden steps led up to the second floor. The air smelt strongly of tart apples and alcohol, and someone was playing guitar and singing an old song.

  They emerged from the stair in a well-lit room that was body-warm with the two or three dozen locals present. They sat at tables or clustered along the bar, talking, eating and drinking. A frizzy-haired woman in a blue smock swept past with a wooden tray filled with cups and glasses of all sorts; to Grey no two looked alike.

  “Welcome, and don’t just stand there, go find a table and have a seat and I’ll be by as soon as I can,” she said, all in one rapid-fire blur at a near-shout, as she pa
ssed.

  “There’s a table over in the corner, I think,” Ronald said. He set off through the press, muttering apologies to those he jostled.

  “Fuckin’ drunk kids,” muttered one sour-faced old man as Ronald slid past. The boy flushed but kept moving. Clay was a big man and made considerably more contact as he followed Ronald, but the old fellow just looked up sourly at him, then turned away as Clay gave him a sunny smile.

  They were scarcely seated before the woman in blue came by again.

  “Welcome to the Ciderhouse,” she almost chirped, “Ciders all around, I expect? We’ve got a roast going, and carrots and gravy, so there’s food, too.”

  They settled for cider, as Sowter would be making dinner, and Georgia paid for two rounds, using a single piece of Grey’s silver and getting a handful of little square brass coins in return.

  The cider followed soon after, and was sweet and good. Clay sipped his and watched the rest of the room. Georgia counted the brass bits into her pocket and raised an eyebrow at Grey.

  “I know. Silver buys more than I expected down here,” he said. “So there’s some reason there’s not a lot in circulation, I guess.”

  “That matter to us?” Clay asked. “You think maybe someone we know of has a hand in it?”

  “No idea. Tell you what, I’m going to wander over to the bar and see what they have beside cider. Remember, we’re looking for work, so ask around.” Grey rose and made off into the crowd.

  The bar sat across the right rear corner of the big barroom, balanced on the left by a rough stage occupied this evening by a man playing acoustic versions from the grunge catalogue on an old six-string. He was good, played fast and sure and had the crowd singing along on the choruses. Grey wedged into the end of the bar where he could watch the singer, and where he was amongst a group of big-handed, tanned men in worn boots. He bought drinks, had a few in return, and did a lot of listening for the two hours before the musician packed up and the crowd began to thin. Throughout that time he spared peeks to track the progress of the others. Georgia had taken Clay to the little dance floor before the stage and was dancing with him, quite well. Grey blinked at that and shook his head. Ronald had picked up a cute, chubby blonde that clung to him with drunken affection and was trying to talk to her while she rubbed against him.